01. The Place of Eschatology in St Paul's Religious Thought

Chapter I THE PLACE OF ESCHATOLOGY IN ST PAUL’S RELIGIOUS THOUGHT

Few provinces of religious thought have possessed a more perennial interest for the average man than that which is concerned with conceptions of the Last Things. The religious ritual of primitive races is pre-eminently associated with the events which follow the cessation of earthly existence. The sacred books of ancient peoples are peculiarly rich in eschatological speculations. We have only to recall the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Babylonian epic of the Descent of Istar, the Bundehesh of the Persian Avesta, to realise the remarkable fascination of the unseen world and its experiences for the naïve theologians of antiquity. The Nekyia of the Odyssey and the Sixth Book of Vergil’s Æneid no doubt reflect the popular beliefs, and also, in their turn, react upon them. The quaint Apocalypses of post-canonical Judaism are almost wholly engrossed with the events of the End. And as the history of religion is traced down the centuries, those periods are rare which do not give evidence of the absorbing attraction with which Eschatology is invested for human thought and imagination.1 [Note: Dr Fairbairn probably does not exaggerate when he says: “To the thinker, the theological is the distinctive side of a religion; but to the multitude, the eschatological … Christianity has exercised a greater command over peoples, though not over individual minds, by its Eschatology than by its Theology.”-Studies in the Philosophy of Religion and History, p. 154.] The Christian faith has not been exempt from this inherent bias of religious speculation. The New Testament gives no scanty space to conceptions of the Last Things. And in so doing, it serves itself heir to the spirit of Old Testament prophecy. It is natural to expect that a man like St Paul, so deeply imbued by nature and training with the traditions of his nation, and so earnestly absorbed in its Messianic hope,2 [Note: The fact of his devotion to the Law is evidence of this. For the meaning of zeal for the Law in Judaism lay in its conception of the covenant between God and His people. Devoted observance of the Torah on their part was the condition of God’s fulfilment of His promises, notably the inauguration of the Messianic epoch (see especially Marti, Geschichte d. Israelit. Religion, p. 289).] would continue even from his Christian standpoint to assign a peculiar prominence to the occurrences of the final epoch. In any case, as we shall presently discover, his course was marked out for him by the evangelic tradition. The teaching of Jesus Himself had contained a remarkable eschatological strain. This reappears in most of the New Testament writings. But perhaps nowhere is it found so closely woven into the texture of the primitive theology as in the Letters of St Paul. Accordingly, a study of his conceptions of the Last Things is of fundamental importance for his whole Christian outlook. In them is most fully revealed the transformation which Christianity produced in this region of thought. We can trace the workings of the apostle’s religious experience as he starts from the inherited beliefs of Judaism, modifies these under the influence of his new relation to the risen Christ, and transfers the emphasis and the accent from the letter to the spirit. But St Paul has also laid the foundation for the Eschatology of the Christian Church. That has in some important respects deviated from its Pauline basis. It is therefore of value to reach as accurate and comprehensive a view as possible of the form in which his conceptions of the Last Things took shape. Thereby we shall be able to check the accretions of subsequent ecclesiastical theories. And at a time when discussions of the Future State and kindred topics appear to possess a growing fascination for the public mind, it should help towards sanity of judgment and a due respect for the limits of human knowledge, to aim at a closer acquaintance with the eschatological teaching of one who did not shrink from the frank confession, “At present we see in a mirror only dim outlines, but then face to face. At present my knowledge is a fragment, but then shall I know as completely as I have been known.”1 [Note: The objection may be brought against our inquiry that it is illegitimate to speak of a specially Pauline Eschatology. Thus, e.g., Wrede: “There is a Pauline doctrine of redemption, a Pauline doctrine of justification, but there is-to speak cum grano salis-no Pauline angelology and eschatology, but only a Jewish or primitive-Christian” (Aufgabe u. Methode d. sogenannten Neutestamentlichen Theologie, p. 66). Even granting the general accuracy of this assertion, we should consider it well worth while to make a careful examination of the Pauline conceptions as representing the best type of primitive-Christian Eschatology. We will readily admit that the apostle has much in common with the average beliefs of the earliest Christian communities. But it is precisely the points at which he deviates from these, not only in details and definite representations, but still more in general breadth of outlook and caution of judgment, which appear to us of primary importance in the history of Christianity.]

Perhaps no more important contribution has been made within recent years to the interpretation of the New Testament than the accentuation of the eschatological strain which runs throughout its literature. The dream of that little group of disciples who formed the nucleus of the Christian Church was a purified theocracy. In this they were true to the highest expectations of Jewish Apocalyptic. When their Master preached the Kingdom of God, a willing echo responded from their hearts. For prophets and psalmists had seen glorious visions of a time when God’s purpose for His people should be fulfilled: when the genuine Israel should rejoice beneath the Divine sway: when the holy nation should be a light to lighten the Gentiles. The Baptist had announced that the Kingdom was at hand. When the disciples had reached the point of confessing that Jesus was the Christ, they thereby virtually acknowledged that the rule of God had already begun: the coming age (αἰὼν μέλλων, עוֹלָםהַבָּא) was casting its shadow upon the course of the present. Their conviction was for ever established by their experience of the risen Lord. A momentous problem which pressed upon their minds was the reckoning of the time when the new Æon should break in. The mysterious hints concerning the future which their Lord had given them were hard to comprehend and adjust. The main impression they had gained was the expectation of His speedy return and the accompanying world-judgment. Perhaps they foreshortened the perspective. Perhaps the wonder of the new Christian movement, with all its amazing experiences, seemed to demand a rapid development of events up to the great consummation of the Parousia. Just as the Old Testament prophets, when they felt the currents of Providence quickening in any direction, looked for the immediate entrance of Jehovah into the world-history, and saw the fortunes of the nations ripening for a final decision, so the phenomena of the dispensation of the Spirit seemed to promise to the ardent hearts of the first Christians the immediate close of the earthly and secular era, and the ultimate separation for glorious ends of the community of believers. Thus an eager upward gaze characterises the New Testament epoch. It will be modified by its immediate environment. When worldly opposition to the Gospel is most stubborn, when the persecution of the saints rages most fiercely, the cry, “Come quickly, Lord Jesus,” will rise with more piercing intensity. When the wrath of man is restrained, and the Christian society is suffered to expand and flourish, the yearning for the Parousia will take the form of a heightened activity in preparing the way of the Lord. St Paul shares to the full in the dominant mood of his age. It is evident that the burden of his early missionary preaching was a Christian version of the Baptist’s older message: “Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand.” For he reminds the Thessalonians of their response to his Gospel in these words: “Ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to await His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus, who delivers us from the coming wrath” (1 Thessalonians 1:9-10).1 [Note: Of course this conviction of a speedy fulfilment is a commonplace of eschatological expectation, cf. Apoc. Bar., xx. 6, “For they (i.e. the times) will come, and will not tarry”;Revelation 1:1, “Things which must shortly come to pass”; and Smend (Z.A.T.W., 1885, p. 236), “The essence of Apocalyptic is the certainty of the immediate nearness of the Messianic future.” See also Volz, Jüdische Eschatologie, p. 164.] In subsequent chapters the several conceptions of the Last Things which bulk most largely in the pages of the apostle must be dealt with. For the present we shall briefly examine the eschatological implications which lie deep in his view of religion.

It might be difficult, in the case of so many-sided a religious nature as that of St Paul, to attempt to sum up in a single conception that which he regarded as the supreme blessing of the Christian calling. Some might identify it with the forgiveness of sins, some with the condition of the justified person. Some might describe it under the vague term salvation, others might find it in fellowship with Christ, and others still in eternal life.2 [Note: Thus Steffen: “At least as strong as, indeed, even more powerful than the experience of the forgiveness of sins, is his joy regarding the certainty of an eternal life … He sighed, as scarcely any other has done, beneath the curse of the transiency of all that is earthly” (Z.N.T.W., 1901, ii. p. 124). So also Titius: “Since (for Paul) the conception of life is the decisive one for religion as contrasted with that of righteousness, and since, accordingly, the conception of resurrection has, in the representation of salvation, preference to that of judgment, the view of the pneumatic life in Christ has preference to the conception of justification, while at the same time, in this latter, attention to the ethical nature of the new life falls into the background” (Paulinismus unter d. Gesichtspunkt d. Seligkeit, p. 270).] All these statements are certainly justifiable, as expressing each a side of the truth in which the mind of the apostle can rest with perfect satisfaction. They are all, moreover, consistent with one another, for they are all closely linked with his personal Christian experience. The forgiveness of sin, justification, salvation-these represent one primary aspect of it. The possession of the Spirit, fellowship with Christ, eternal life, set forth another of equal value. The result of his meeting with the risen Jesus was the creating within him of a new life. “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature” (2 Corinthians 5:17). He shares in the eternal life of his Lord. He possesses the Spirit of Christ. “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His” (Romans 8:9). But this wonderful relationship in which his soul recognises an immediate contact with the Divine has nothing arbitrary about it. It is God’s response to his faith, faith in Jesus Christ as the Propitiation for sin, as the Mediator of forgiveness, as the Saviour in whom men may be reconciled to God. Without pursuing for the present the discussion of the organic connection between these two normative aspects of Christianity, according to St Paul,1 [Note: See an instructive discussion by Steffen, of “The relation of Spirit and Faith in Paul” (Z.N.T.W., 1901, H. ii. pp. 115 ff., 234 ff). Steffen distinguishes too sharply between the “mystical” and the “ethical” aspects of St Paul’s religious consciousness.] we have to inquire how far they imply, in their content, a forward gaze. We may select Justification as typical of the one side of the relationship, and the Life in the Spirit as representing the other. Now Justification and the New Life may be so accurately described as the two foci of the Pauline system, that if we discover an eschatological bias in them, we may safely postulate such a background for the whole world of his religious thought.1 [Note: Wrede’s caution is thoroughly to the point: “In proving that Paul always looks to the future, it is not enough to emphasise certain passages. It must be shown that all the chief conceptions of his doctrine of salvation, and especially those which one would like to interpret otherwise, bear in themselves a reference to the future, or are definitely determined by expectations of the future” (Th. L.Z., 1894, Sp. 131).] In the first place, let us briefly sum up St Paul’s teaching on Justification. We are justified freely by the grace of God through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus (Romans 3:24). God has manifested His grace (ἐχαρίτωσεν) to us in the Beloved, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of transgressions (Ephesians 1:6-7). This new relation to God, this new standing which we have in His sight, is His response to our faith. He looks upon us, not as we are in ourselves, but as we are in Jesus Christ, His dear Son, who died in our stead (2 Corinthians 5:14-21). What we could not do, that Christ has done, done for us (Romans 8:3-4). Therefore in the boldness of faith we can claim the saving benefits of His death for ourselves. Thus, having been justified as the result of (ἐκ) faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 5:1). In Him we are made heirs of God, assured of His fatherly love. These are the first stages in our new relation of reconciliation to God: the first stages, and not the consummation. There is still a race to be run: there is still an inward conflict to be faced: there is still a goal to be reached, the prize of God’s high calling in Christ Jesus (Php 3:14). “If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life” (Romans 5:10 : cf. ver. 9, “Much more, having been justified now (νῦν) by His blood, we shall be saved through Him from the wrath”). The apostle rejoices, indeed, in the assurance of God’s forgiveness for Christ’s sake. He is confident that there is now (νῦν) no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). But the passages which have been quoted, the crucial passages for this conception, clearly show that, in the midst of his joy, he looks forward with yearning to the completion of salvation which awaits the believer in the day of God’s final decision. Justification may truly be called the anticipation of salvation, the anticipation of the final judgment. But St Paul-who, for all his Christian idealism, is too sadly acquainted with the struggles of the life in the flesh-craves the realisation of that blissful future, when sin and death and judgment are no more to be reckoned with. There is no real inconsistency between the two positions. His outlook is absolutely true to religious experience. The joy of God’s favour in the present earthbound life is at best a broken joy. “We were saved by hope; but hope that is seen is not hope; for what one sees, why does he hope for? But if we hope for that which we do not see, by patient endurance we eagerly expect it” (Romans 8:24-25). The believing soul dare not trust itself. It has staked its all upon the grace of God made manifest in Christ. It remains conscious of its extraordinary debt to that grace. Thus, in the tremulousness of such self-distrust, and keeping in view the lofty heights of spiritual excellence to which he is summoned in the knowledge of the power of Christ’s resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, St Paul speaks with humble caution: “If haply I shall attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have attained already, or have been already perfected, but I follow after, in the hope that I shall indeed grasp that for which I was grasped by Christ Jesus” (Php 3:11-12). Quite plainly, then, from the standpoint of a justified man, the apostle’s gaze is turned eagerly towards the future. He knows himself to belong to the σωζόμενοι, but the salvation (σωτηρία) is a process which culminates when the exalted Christ shall return in glory, and both the dead and the living shall be transformed into perfect fitness for His fellowship. Probably it is stating the truth too strongly to say, with Titius, that in Paul’s “hope, not in his present possession of salvation, lies the crucial point for his personal feeling” (p. 21)1 [Note: The opposite tendency is found in the assertion of Beyschlag, that “hope … does not, in the case of Paul, as in the case of Peter and the other original apostles, form the centre of gravity of subjective Christianity: he finds that in a belief in the salvation that has appeared in the fact of the Cross” (N.T. Theol., E. Tr., ii. p. 254). But that salvation, as St Paul conceives it, has hope in the very heart of it.] . The man who can exclaim with exultation, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ,” and then, after weighing all his perils, can triumphantly affirm, “Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us,” is surely sufficiently aware of the surpassing worth of the salvation which has already been brought near to him. Yet the statement points in the true direction. “This present evil age” (Galatians 1:4) hampers the fulfilment of God’s saving purpose. The coming era,2 [Note: It is a one-sided view of Pauline Christology which would affirm that “the entire function of the Son of God, who has appeared in the flesh, consists in the introduction of this close of the world which leads to the final death of the flesh” (so Holtzmann, N.T. Theol., ii. p. 196). But the side which is here exaggerated has too often been ignored by expositors of the New Testament.] the era of the perfected Divine order, which will be inaugurated by the Parousia of Christ, the Resurrection, and the Judgment, will be the entire vindication of the believer. The full meaning of his justification will appear when he is openly acknowledged by the Judge. The eschatological element in Justification is fully borne out by St Paul’s use of the terms σωτηρία and σώζεσθαι. The noun does not occur very frequently in his writings, but its usage is unmistakable. In 2 Corinthians 7:10 it is contrasted with θάνατος, in Php 1:28 with ἀπώλεια. In Romans 13:11, the eschatological character of the conception appears with decisive clearness: “It is time for you now to be roused from sleep; for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night has advanced, the day (i.e. of the Lord) is at hand.” The same thought lies behind his exhortation to the Philippians: “Work out your own salvation to the end” (σωτηρίαν κατεργάζεσθε, Php 2:12). Here the main emphasis falls on the final issue. Salvation is only accomplished, is only, in the complete sense, realised, when Christ shall appear. It seems to us by no means accidental that in the Pauline Epistles the word appears most commonly in the phrase εἰς σωτηρίαν, in which the idea of a goal to be reached is quite obvious. An instructive instance is 1 Thessalonians 5:9 : “For God did not appoint us with a view to wrath (εἰς ὀργήν), but with a view to the obtaining of salvation.” Noteworthy, and fully corroborating this position, is the antithesis of salvation to wrath. For ὀργή is an eschatological term, and, in the Epistles, invariably denotes the condemnation of the judgment day.1 [Note: The term has already come to have this application in Judaistic literature. Cf. Jub., xxiv. 30; Slav. Enoch, xliv. 2.] Another example worthy of notice is 2 Thessalonians 2:13 : “God chose you from the beginning with a view to salvation.” The phrase εἰς σωτηρίαν is explained or supplemented, a few clauses further on, by the words, “with a view to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Here again our contention is amply verified, for “glory,” as we shall see afterwards, is one of what may be called the technical terms of New Testament Eschatology. It is needless to refer to the contrast several times drawn between οἱ σωζόμενοι and οἱ ἀπολλύμενοι, a contrast which points self-evidently to the final issues of human character. But it is worth while to lay stress on the remarkable expressions in Romans 5:9-10, which have been already quoted: “We shall be saved through Him from the wrath,” and “we shall be saved by His life.” These statements, which occupy a fundamental place in the apostle’s argument, can have nothing in view but the experience of the redeemed believer at the Parousia of Jesus Christ. A further illustration of the position we are emphasising is to be found in the term ἀπολύτρωσις, which is a kind of synonym for σωτηρία.2 [Note: Titius describesσωτηρίαandἀπολύτρωσιςas being merely negative expressions for equipment with life (p. 54). It is so far true that St Paul regards eternal life as the supreme blessing of the End for believers. The terms, however, may be just as strictly taken as positive expressions for deliverance from sin. And it is easy to trace the connection between the two sides of the conception, when we remember the apostle’s statement inRomans 6:23, that “the wages of sin is death.”] Justification is effected “through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:24). When we investigate the full content of “redemption,” according to St Paul, we discover that it includes certain remarkable elements. Thus, from Romans 8:23, “We also ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly expecting (our) sonship, the redemption of our body,” the true scope of ἀπολύτρωσις may be ascertained. It is not exhausted in the forgiveness of sins, and the deliverance from their guilt and dominion. It stretches into the future, and embraces the transformation of the bodily nature which Christ shall accomplish by changing it “into the likeness of the body of His glory” at the Parousia (Php 3:21). The same idea meets us in Ephesians 1:14, where St Paul speaks of the Spirit as “the pledge of our inheritance with a view to the redemption of the purchased possession” (i.e., the entire life and constitution of the believer). This is repeated in Ephesians 4:30, where again he describes believers as being sealed by the Spirit, “with a view to the day of redemption” (εἰς ἡμέραν ἀπολυτρώσεως), the day, of course, when Christ shall be revealed.1 [Note: On the eschatological aspect of Justification, see especially Kölbing, S.K., 1895, pp. 1 ff.; Pfleiderer, Paulinism, i. pp. 227, 228; Wernle, Der Christ u. die Sünde bei Paulus, pp. 22, 100 ff. This last suggestive discussion is marred here and there by unqualified statements. Thus, e.g., “The Christian receives through justification the right to all the blessings of the Messianic community, without an ethical transformation being derived from it,” as if the faith in Christ which justifies is not ethical from itsvery raison ďêtre. The same paradoxical character is found in the author’s main contention, as e.g., p. 112: “The doctrine of the walk in the Spirit is so enthusiastically set forth, and so completely regulated by the hope of the Parousia, that no place is left for sin in the life of Christians.”]

It might be felt, however, that the conception of Justification was one which, from its very essence, possessed eschatological bearings.1 [Note: “Righteousness, Judgment, Parousia, are indissolubly connected” (Cremer, Rechtfertigungslehre, p. 350).] The idea of acquittal or condemnation presupposes a judgment. And from the apostolic standpoint, that judgment takes place at the end of the present era, and constitutes the inauguration of the future Kingdom of God. It is otherwise when we turn to the second focal conception of St Paul’s religious thought, the Life in the Spirit. At the first glance it appears as if there were little room here for a relation to the Last Things. “In Paul,” says J. Weiss, “the eschatological tension is strongly counterbalanced by his Christ-mysticism. He who, through the Spirit, is united with Christ and lives in Him, has surmounted space and time” (Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes, p. 61). Nevertheless, in this province also, we discover the very same trend. The Life in the Spirit is the direct result of St Paul’s first contact with Christian realities. The revelation to him of the risen Jesus was necessarily the revelation of the Messiah. The hope of his fathers was actually realised. The ends of the world had come. He was now living in the last time. But this revelation was not merely to him. It was also in him (Galatians 1:16 : ἀποκαλύψαι τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ ἐν ἐμοί, “to reveal His Son in me”). He had not only been convinced of the existence of that Jesus whom he persecuted. The living Lord had laid hold on his life (Php 3:12 : κατελήμφθην ὑπὸ Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ). He had become its energising principle. It was no longer he that lived, but Christ that lived in him (Galatians 2:20). It was so amazing a transformation for a human experience, that he could, in all soberness, call it a new creation. But this transfigured life, with all its potency, with all its victorious energy, was, of necessity, grievously hampered. Its medium for the present was a fleshly nature, liable to sin and weakness and decay. Ideally, indeed, the flesh was crucified: annulled through fellowship with the death of Christ (Romans 6:6; Romans 6:2; Galatians 5:24). That was its ultimate fate-a fate as to which there could be no question. As a matter of real experience, the flesh still warred against the spirit, thwarting its impulses and often defeating its strivings (Galatians 5:16-17). The law of sin and death had been abolished for those who were in Christ Jesus. The law of the Spirit of life in Him had taken its place (Romans 8:2). But that new law, the law of liberty (cf.Galatians 5:1) could not have free scope for its workings under present earthly conditions. It was the spirit of sonship which Christians had received, for God had sent forth the Spirit of His Son into their hearts, crying, Abba, Father. So that they were now heirs of God, joint-heirs with Christ (Galatians 4:6-7; Romans 8:15-17). Yet that Spirit was only the first-fruits (ἀπαρχή, Romans 8:23) of the glorious heritage one day to be possessed. Even for the children of God (Romans 8:16) it was a time of waiting, of sighing, of groaning: they must still yearn for the perfected sonship (8:23). This relation to God, when consummated, involved a transformation of the whole man, not only of spirit, but of body. And the redemption of the body, which meant its conformity to the glorified body of Christ (Php 3:21), would be the final stage of the Spirit’s operation. For the present, the life-giving Spirit was possessed only as pledge (ἀρραβών, Ephesians 1:14). Such an earnest pointed continually forward. Even the mute creation sympathised with the craving of believers for their future inheritance of bliss (Romans 8:22). They were linked together by the ardent yearning to be delivered from the bondage of corruption (φθορά, Romans 8:21), and to attain to indissoluble life. At this point we can clearly perceive the eschatological bearing of St Paul’s idea of the possession of the Spirit. The peculiar function of the Spirit is to impart life (ζωοποιεῖν, e.g., 2 Corinthians 3:6, τὸ δὲ πνεῦμα ζωοποιεῖ, “the Spirit makes alive”; cf.1 Corinthians 15:45, ὁ ἔσχατος Ἀδὰμ εἰς πνεῦμα ζωοποιοῦν, “a life-creating Spirit”). That gift fortifies its possessor against the doom of death. For, “the gift of God is eternal life (ζωὴ αἰώνιος) in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23). Its true significance is revealed in the words of Romans 8:2 : “If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised Christ Jesus from the dead shall quicken (ζωοποιήσει) also your mortal bodies through His Spirit, which dwelleth in you.” Plainly, the full realisation of this life belongs to the events of the End, is finally attained in the Resurrection.

We have briefly considered the eschatological trend in the two primary conceptions of St Paul’s religious thought. But his wistful yearning for the future, blissful consummation is everywhere visible. The hope that lies in front of him is in very truth the anchor of his soul. It is no casual thought which he expresses in the words, “By hope we were saved” (Romans 8:24). When tribulation presses on him, he contrasts “the light affliction which is for a moment” with “the exceeding and eternal weight of glory” which is its issue (2 Corinthians 4:17). When he reflects on his own experience, he comes to the conclusion that “the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which is to be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18). If the Christians’ confidence in Christ belongs only to this life, then are they of all men most miserable. The present is the time of imperfection. “We know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the consummation (τὸ τέλειον) shall have come, then that which is fragmentary (τὸ ἐκ μέρους) shall be abolished” (1 Corinthians 13:9-10). The principle of his life, in a word, is to look, not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. “For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18).

Before proceeding to examine St Paul’s conceptions of the Last Things, so far as that is possible, in detail, it will be of advantage to observe the form in which these conceptions are presented, and the limits within which the apostle has chosen to move. Such an inquiry will provide us with cautions for our further investigation. It will place us on our guard against illegitimate inferences from the statements of the Epistles. It will supply us with certain regulating principles for our estimate of St Paul’s positions. It will suggest to us the kind of questions we have a right to put, and the lines on which we may expect to be answered. The whole treatment of the Last Things in the New Testament is noteworthy for its freedom from exaggeration, its habit of abstaining from precise definition, its tacit acknowledgment of the mystery of the unseen world and the future life. This can only be realised after a careful study of the parallel Eschatologies in other sacred literatures, and the curious cross-questionings of the future which meet us in modern times.1 [Note: “The spirit of man coveteth divination” (Lord Bacon).] The contrast is decisive, when we place, for example, the teaching of Jesus side by side with the speculations of the Jewish Apocalypses. In the former, details are conspicuously absent. There is no elaborate delineation of the events which belong to the consummation of all things. There is no highly-coloured portrayal of the bliss of Paradise, or of the doleful gloom of Gehenna. The grotesque pictures of the renewal of nature are altogether lacking: so is the vivid scenery which forms the background of the Judgment and God’s final victory over evil.2 [Note: We fail to see any ground for Holtzmann’s sharp polemic against Haupt for laying emphasis on the lack of highly-coloured pictures in the Eschatology of Jesus (N.T. Theol., i. p. 335, note 3). Haupt would, of course, admit the use of figurative descriptions. This is all that can be asserted of the “great feast,” “eating of bread,” “thrones of judgment,” etc., which Holtzmann quotes as examples of “colours.” Haupt’s statement does not seem to us one-sided: “The conception ofζωήin its full meaning-the supra-earthly Divine life-is the central thing for Jesus, which He always keeps in view. He who has that has all, and there is no advantage in laying stress on the peripheral features. So we find in Him no answer to all the questions which are usually treated in connection with the Resurrection. When thisἀνάστασιςis to come, how the body of the consummation will be related to the present body, how to the condition in Hades … all these are questions which do not exist for Him. He believes in the power of God (Mark 12:12), which can establish life in all directions, and it is enough for Him that this life will be a heavenly one, analogous to that of the angels and of God Himself” (Eschatolog. Aussagen Jesu, p. 92).] A similar antithesis reveals itself if we compare St Paul’s conceptions with, say, the Persian Eschatology, which some scholars regard as an influential factor in Jewish beliefs. Here, side by side with remarkable spiritual intuitions, there appears a crude realism. Thus the restraint and caution of St Paul’s idea of the life after death are thrown into relief by the minute delineation of the journey of the soul, e.g., in Vendîdâd, xix. 27-33, where we read that the pious soul, after he has departed, is met by a beautiful virgin, the incarnation of his own good deeds. She conducts him over the Hara-Berezaiti (the sacred mountain, now Elburz): she bears him upwards from the bridge çinvat into the road of the spiritual divinities. Vohu-manô, the good spirit, rises to greet him; then with joy the soul of the faithful passes into the presence of Ahura-Mazda (see Söderblom, La Vie Future d’après le Masdéisme, pp. 88-91). Doubtless the explanation of this contrast which we have been emphasising lies in the fact that the normative element of New Testament Eschatology (Gospels and Epistles) is to be found in the religious consciousness of those who gave it shape. The careful and sensitive reader has always the impression that Jesus and His apostles, in dealing with the Last Things, are perfectly well aware that they must use imagery derived from human life, as lived under its ordinary earthly conditions, to body forth processes which belong altogether to the suprasensible world.1 [Note: One of the chief flaws in Kabisch’s Eschatologie des Paulus is the persistently literalistic treatment of metaphorical language. At the same time, it must be remembered that for New Testament writers the boundary lines between fact and symbol were far less rigid than for modern minds.] To interpret the picture of judgment in Matthew 25:1-46 by a crass literalism, is to ignore the most valuable instrument of the preacher, the use of impressive figure, to say nothing of the fact that our Lord, as a true man, must constantly have thought in pictures.1 [Note: Cf. Haupt, op. cit., p. 159: “The designedly pictorial character of His utterances, which are only the individualising and plastic expression of religious and ethical ideas, is, in this department, entirely analogous to the manner in which He is wont to express Himself in other provinces.”] We need only reflect upon our own conceptions of the events of the End, in order to discover how large a place must be given to metaphor, if we are to deal with that region of religious thought at all.2 [Note: See Paradise Lost, bk. v. 571-577:- “What surmounts the reach Of human sense, I shall delineate so, By lik’ning spiritual to corporal forms, As may express them best, though what if Earth Be but the shadow of Heaven, and things therein Each to other like, more than on earth is thought.”]

Further, the writers of the New Testament must employ language which will find some point of contact with the minds of their hearers or readers. And so they are content to move more or less among the conceptions of the Last Things current with their audience, modifying these when it is needful to bring into prominence some spiritual aspect of the question which is, as yet, unfamiliar. In the light of this fact, it is almost ludicrous to find St Paul’s eschatological ideas discussed at times in a tone of disparagement, because they so frequently harmonise with the teachings of Judaism. The conceptions of the Parousia and the Judgment must have constituted, as we shall see, a most powerful element in the missionary preaching of the apostle. Then, as now, the solemn issues of life possessed a unique force of appeal to the conscience. Would not that force have vanished if St Paul had been led to approach his hearers from a more theoretical or philosophical standpoint? We know that he found his most ready converts in the God-fearers (οἱ σεβόμενοι τὸν θεόν) who were already acquainted with the Old Testament and the doctrines of the Synagogue. It was in accord with the remarkable preparation of the Diaspora for the Christian Gospel that the apostle’s affirmations concerning the Last Things should follow the general outlines laid down by the Scriptures and the teaching of post-canonical Judaism. More noteworthy, as we shall discover, is the freedom with which he deviates from traditional views, or rather transforms them for use in the service of the faith of Christ.1 [Note: See especially, Titius, pp. 47-49; Reuss, Histoire de la Théologie Chrétienne, ii. p. 211.]

It may be said without exaggeration that St Paul has no Eschatology. By that we mean that he has never approached the subject in a systematic fashion.2 [Note: Cf. Deissmann (Th. L.Z., 1898, Sp. 14): “What is called the ‘Eschatology’ of Paul has little that is ‘eschatological’ about it … Paul did not write de novissimis … One must be prepared for a surging hither and thither of great thoughts, feelings, expectations.”] A man of his speculative cast of mind, and one whose supreme hope was bound up with the glorious, unseen future, must often have been borne along in flights of ardent search, if by any means he might pierce the darkness lying round the borders of the world where Christ now ruled. But while he delights to dwell on certain sides of the eschatological problem, and seems, at first sight, to give these a disproportionate place, he does not even supply the materials for constructing anything in the nature of a scheme, far less does he attempt to reach such a construction for himself.1 [Note: This is in harmony with his general theological method, which is aptly described by Prof. Ramsay (Expos., vi. 6, p. 86): “Paul sees like a man. He sees one side at a time. He emphasises that-not indeed more than it deserves-but in a way that provokes misconception, because he expresses one side of the case and leaves the audience to catch his meaning, to sympathise with his point of view, to supply for themselves the qualifications and the conditions and the reservations which are necessary in the concrete facts of actual life.” Cf. A.B Davidson onHebrews 12:1: “Even a writer of Scripture may be allowed to throw out a brilliant ideal conception without our tying him down to having uttered a formal doctrine.” In this avoidance of rounded-off system the apostle is true to the traditions of his nation. “You can make a digest and system of their (i.e. the Rabbinic) law, but a system of their theology you can only make with the utmost caution and many reservations” (Montefiore, J.Q.R., xiii. p. 171). From this point of view, Weber’s well-known work, Die Lehren de’s Talmud, must be checked by Bacher’s admirable collections, Die Agada der Tannaiten, 2 vols., 1884-1890.] It is difficult, in examining the religious thought of a born theologian like St Paul, to refrain from attempting to classify it within the confines of a dogmatic plan. And when an investigator, of set purpose, refuses to deal with his teaching on these lines, he is supposed to be doing an injustice to the apostle. It is surely no discredit to St Paul that he did not attempt to bind himself down to a logical sequence in his views of Christian truth.2 [Note: Cf. Fairbairn, Philosophy of the Christian Religion, p. 440: “Paul, as he lives before us in his Epistles, is a man who holds many men within him-so many … that we may describe him as the most unintelligible of men to the analytical reason of a critic who has never warmed to the passion or been moved by the enthusiasm of humanity; but the most intelligible of men to the man who has heard within himself the sound of all the voices that speak in man.”] He is logical enough when his spiritual experience demands it, but a large part of his affirmations regarding the religious life and destiny of men is thrown off, as occasion prompts, in vague hints, in outbursts of intense spiritual emotion, in pictures set within the framework of his inherited training, in arguments devised to meet the needs of a particular church or a particular group of converts. As Professor Gardner finely expresses it, “His writings do not constitute a philosophic system, because they are not purposefully hammered out, but fused by an intense heat from within … His basis is not only certain principles worked out to their logical results, but also experiences, like flashes of lightning, which lit up the cave of consciousness, and melted its contents into new and sometimes irregular forms” (Historic View of Christianity, pp. 217, 218). Obviously, therefore, we need never be surprised to find gaps in the hypothetical system for which our minds crave.1 [Note: See a most instructive paragraph in Drummond’s Philo, i. p. 186: “While a system of thought is still growing, its successive stages and ultimate logical results disclose themselves only by degrees. For a time an explanation may be deemed sufficient which contains, unperceived and unresolved, a variety of problems destined to try the skill of future inquirers: we are not justified in forcing on one of its earliest exponents its implicit contents, which may never have become explicit in his consciousness. The critical historian is apt to be impatient of vagueness, and in a question which appears to him inevitable, and did in fact arise inevitably in the course of the development, he will have it that each writer must have had an opinion one way or the other: whereas to many thinkers the question may never have occurred, and were we able to propound it to them, we should find them unprovided with an answer.” Pfleiderer, Paulinism, i. p. 259 ff. (E. Tr.), greatly exaggerates the lack of cohesion in Pauline Eschatology.] Especially, in a department like Eschatology, in which words and images derived from prosaic earthly experiences have to translate for human minds the mysterious events and processes of a life raised above material limitations, we may expect to move among half-truths, dim symbols of realities, paradoxical statements which refuse to be harmonised.1 [Note: That perplexities of this kind belong to the very nature of Biblical Eschatology, is well brought out by Laidlaw (Bible Doctrine of Man, p. 223): “There are two distinct lines on which … these disclosures (i.e. of eschatological truth) are set forth. The first is that which we may call “personal,” for in it the future is spoken of as part of the development of an individual human being.… The other is that which we may call “dispensational,” when these last events are spoken of on the public scale as moments in the development of the kingdom of heaven, or of the dispensation of redemption in the hand of the Lord Jesus Christ. Thoroughly to connect these two in a complete system of eschatology, is a task for which our theology is confessedly incompetent.… The Scripture itself does not give us a complete view of these connections.”] We believe, indeed, that St Paul’s eschatological conceptions have a far greater mutual congruity than some recent investigators have been willing to recognise. But in an age when the notion of development is regarded as the key to all problems, it is perhaps natural that scholars should use it in explaining certain phenomena which look like antinomies in the Pauline Epistles. This view has been worked to its furthest limit by Sabatier, Pfleiderer, Teichmann, and others. Such a possibility must, of course, be admitted; but when we consider the very brief space of time within which all the extant letters of the apostle were written, we may well be on our guard against straining this line of argument.2 [Note: Cf. Denney (Death of Christ, p. 115): “To suppose that a great expansion of his (Paul’s) thoughts took place between the letters to the Thessalonians and those to the Corinthians, is to ignore at once the chronology, the nature of letters, and the nature of the human mind.”] If at any point there appears to be a change of view or a modification of statement, it is safer to look for the cause in the immediate occasion of the writing, or in some marked crisis in St Paul’s experience which has led him to recast his earlier conclusion. An alteration of standpoint, for example, regarding the state entered immediately after death, is often supposed to have taken place in the apostle’s mind in the interval between the writing of the First and Second Epistles to the Corinthians.1 [Note: So, e.g., Holtzmann, N.T. Theol., ii. p. 193; Teichmann, Die paulinischen Vorstellungen von Auferstehung u. Gericht, p. 39. Cf. also Beyschlag, N.T. Theol., ii. pp. 270, 271.] This is held by some expositors to be the result of theological development. By others it is regarded simply as a more or less arbitrary modification of view. While others still attribute it to the terrible perils through which St Paul had passed during his sojourn at Ephesus.2 [Note: See2 Corinthians 1:8.] If there be any such change of conception, a question which must be examined in detail in a subsequent chapter, the last-named hypothesis is certainly the most satisfying. But after all, it must be borne in mind that, as a distinguished theologian once said in our hearing, a man may have several Eschatologies. That is putting the matter summarily, but the remark is abundantly true to experience. Probably most of us are conscious of the fact in our own religious thought.3 [Note: Account should certainly be taken of the peculiar habit of the Semitic mind. See a luminous statement by Dr E. Caird (Newspaper Report of Gifford Lectures, Glasgow, 1902): “It (i.e. the Hebrew mind) lived … in the consciousness of an unanalysed whole of experience, and represented it now in one aspect and now in another, as one might stand before a sea that was illuminated from moment to moment by flashes of lightning.” This seems to us as truly as it is strikingly expressed. It contains the key to many problems of New Testament thought.] Its real explanation lies in the nature of the problem with which we are dealing. Our Lord Himself, as we have seen, in place of setting forth any definite instruction as to the unseen world and the future destiny of men, spoke at all times in pictures, only making clear the spiritual side of the mystery, namely, the certainty for the believer of unbroken fellowship after death with the eternally-living God. It was the same with the apostles. They also confine themselves, as a rule, to hints and illustrations. In their missionary preaching they emphasise one aspect or group of aspects of the Last Things. When they come to detailed arguments, dealing with particular difficulties, a different phase of the subject gains a momentary prominence. It is no concern to them if some of the details do not admit of inclusion in a general scheme. Indeed we need never expect entirely harmonious pictures in this province of thought. For the profoundest imagination is soon baffled when it attempts to depict the inexpressible realities of the heavenly world in terms of earthly experiences.1 [Note: See Schleiermacher, Der christliche Glaube, iv. pp. 209, 220; Orr, Christian View of God and the World, pp. 334-336.] No perfect definiteness is attainable; rather a distant adumbration which must be estimated as nothing more. If we should be confronted at any points in St Paul’s eschatological thought by conceptions which seem to overlap each other, or images which, if expanded to their furthest limits, appear to leave an unresolved residuum, we must not only bear in mind the cautions already laid down, but we must also endeavour to realise by the use of the philosophical imagination that ideas, which from our standpoint present an aspect of mutual exclusiveness, might seem far more consistent if we could take up our position in that world of thought to which the first Christian writers belonged.1 [Note: See an admirable treatment of assumed contradictions in Pauline Eschatology in Bornemann’s edition of Meyer on Thessalonians (Meyer,5-6 1894), pp. 186, 534-536. Cf. Jülicher, Einleitung in d. N.T., p. 27. Deissmann, in an instructive review of Teichmann’s Paulinische Vorstellungen von Auferstehung u. Gericht (Th. L.Z., 1898, Sp. 14), points out the danger of mixing up Nebeneinander with Nacheinander.]

Further, in attempting to grasp St Paul’s conceptions of the Last Things, we must not begin by putting certain definite questions to which we demand an answer. The function of New Testament theology is to understand the statements of the apostolic writers “from within their ideas and experiences.” We must be prepared to recognise that some of those eschatological problems which press most heavily upon us, did not appeal to the apostle at all. Others, on which we care for nothing but a definite decision, St Paul is content to leave on a borderland of mystery. While, occasionally, he takes considerable pains with matters which have come to be more or less remote from our religious interest. These facts are fully explained by the long interval which separates our time from the Apostolic Age. It is a false conception of inspiration which would expect St Paul to satisfy all our questionings even within his own sphere. The inspiration of the apostle is an equipment of the Spirit for the work he has immediately to do. Certainly much of that work was to be for all time, but its conditions were determined by given historical facts. And one of the fundamental truths of God’s operation in history is a gradual change in the mental perspective of nations and individuals.

Enough has been said to show that it is impossible to discover anything in the nature of a system of Eschatology, a group of logically related and wholly coherent conceptions of the Last Things, in the Pauline Epistles. We find, indeed, many distinct and momentous affirmations, many fragments of doctrines, respecting certain facts and events of the End. Some of these are an echo of popular ideas, some remain fixed beliefs, fundamental data for the apostle, whenever he chances to deal with eschatological questions. But however unsystematic they may be in their nature and form, we are not for that reason to imagine that they were only of secondary importance in the judgment of St Paul. The attempt has been made in the earlier part of this chapter to prove that an eschatological element lies in the very centre of his religious thought. But he lays no stress on those scenic features which are so prominent in most speculations on the Last Things. It is extremely suggestive to observe that in the Imprisonment-Epistles, written apart from the heat of controversy, written when their author has leisure to survey the complete bearings of his Christian knowledge, and is plainly rejoicing with a serene gladness in the solidity and majesty of the Christian certainties, he delights to sum up his forecasts of the Last Things under the general designation of Hope. Undoubtedly this aspect of his thought is prominent throughout the Epistles. As early as his letter to the Galatians, we come upon the remarkable affirmation of his Christian position in these words: “We through the Spirit by faith eagerly expect the hope of righteousness” (ἐλπίδα δικαιοσύνης, i.e., the hope which righteousness brings or guarantees, chap. 5:5). In Romans, side by side with more detailed conceptions of the End, the idea of Hope stands in the foreground. Apart from the classical passage in chap. 8, which we quoted at the outset in dealing with the eschatological strain in his doctrine of Justification, we find the apostle asserting in chap. 5:5 that “the (i.e. Christian) hope does not put to shame, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us.” The only definition of this Christian hope is that it rests on the assurance of the love of God imparted by the Holy Spirit.1 [Note: Cf. the hope of enduring life in several Psalms, a hope which was also based on the assurance of God’s faithfulness (virtually = His love). A striking parallel is Wisd. 3:4:ἡ ἐλπὶς αὐτῶν ἀθανασίας πλήρης. J. Weiss suggestively observes that the fundamental note of the preaching of Jesus was hope, “undoubtedly a hope certain of its end, but still always hope” (Die Predigt Jesu v. Reiche G., p. 71).] In the Imprisonment-Epistles he leaves his conception of Hope still more undefined. “The hope laid up for you in heaven” (Colossians 1:5), “the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27), “the hope of His calling” (Ephesians 1:18), “one hope of your calling” (Ephesians 4:4)-these are typical descriptions of the blissful consummation which awaits the believer.2 [Note: This conception, like all those which are normative for St Paul, has its roots in the Old Testament. “One can see how closely the meaning which life has in the sum of religious thoughts in the Old Testament, coheres with the character of hope, which pre-eminently determines the stamp of this religion. It is not the beginning of things which the Old Testament emphasises: everything stretches into the future. On this is founded the healthiness of their religion” (Kleinert, S.K., 1895, p. 711).] It might be an exaggeration to say that at this stage in his Christian career the apostle prefers to turn aside from all statements of detail, and to rest in a blessed certainty around which he leaves a margin of mystery. Yet one feels that such a view lies at least in the direction of the truth. Certainly, in those letters which form the climax of his religious thinking, he deals very slightly with the pictorial elements of Eschatology, choosing rather to select and emphasise those aspects of it which have a directly spiritual value. This is in genuine harmony with the teaching of our Lord Himself. He varies His imagery, He changes the picture, but underlying every metaphor and every illustration are to be found certain commanding spiritual affirmations which bear with immediate force upon the central issues of human destiny. And the apostle has unquestionably transformed the prophetic-apocalyptic traditions of Judaism from which he started, in the spirit of Jesus, and under the influence of His teaching. It is not, of course, to be supposed that St Paul has wholly renounced the original framework of his conceptions. Statements, for example, in Philippians, which is probably the latest of the Imprisonment-Epistles, remind us vividly of his earlier eschatological utterances. But, as the result of advancing Christian experience, and a more complete surrender to the power of the Spirit, he has discovered where to place the accent in his teaching on the Last Things. He is more concerned about the essential realities, and less about their temporary expression. May we not suppose that the apostle’s experience is a picture in miniature of the experience of the Christian Church in this dimly-lit and mysterious province of her thinking? May we not believe that, in the purpose of her Divine Guide, she also is led forward from the material vestments of eschatological conceptions to the great spiritual certainties which they enwrap? In this historical process the teaching of St Paul must prove of permanent value, since, by reason of his Divinely-trained instinct, he remains a master in the delicate and precarious operation of discerning between the letter and the spirit.1 [Note: Cf. Titius, p. 289: “The expectation of the Parousia continues, and is still, for a whole century, a powerful guarantee for the self-realisation of the Church and a stimulus to more ardent effort, but the distressing effect of its delay has disappeared. They can look forward to it with calmness. And this altered mood is above all else the life-work of the apostle Paul … It is his life-work, in spite of the fact that he himself, as regards his personal feeling, is rooted in the eschatological-enthusiastic condition of mind, and abides by that.” Mr Myers’ beautiful lines are scarcely true to the apostle’s outlook:- “OH THAT THY STEPS AMONG THE STARS WOULD QUICKEN!

OH THAT THINE EARS WOULD HEAR WHEN WE ARE DUMB!

MANY THE HEARTS FROM WHICH THE HOPE SHALL SICKEN, MANY SHALL FAINT BEFORE THY KINGDOM COME.”-ST PAUL, P. 24.

They bear the impress of a wearier age.]