12. X. The Basis of Paul’s Thought— (2) God Is Good

X. The Basis of Paul’s Thought— (2) God Is Good The religion of Paul was definitely and absolutely inconsistent with the characteristic Oriental doctrine of a pantheistic type. Yet all such forms of thought start, as Paul did, from the perception that man by the very fact of his existence is separated from God and ought to aim at reunion with Him.

Why then did not Paul take the step which so many Asiatic forms of religious thought have taken? How did he avoid the pantheistic view and the inference from it, which was so tempting to an intensely emotional and devotional nature like his, that man should seek re-absorption in the Divine through liberation from the human nature, that man should strive to lose his individuality and to be merged in the one God? So far as we have yet gone, we do not see where and why Paul, starting from the same initial principle, diverged so widely from the general trend of Oriental religious thought.

He was saved from this step by the whole force of Hebrew tradition and the promise given to his fathers. The Promise had been made and must be fulfilled; and fulfilment of the Promise led in the diametrically opposite direction from that dream of absorption in the Divine nature, which was the goal of the highest Asiatic religious thought outside of the Hebrew people. The fulfilment of the Promise lay in the perfecting of the race through the perfecting of the individual, not through the annihilation of his individuality. The Promise is just a more simple expression, such as an early people could most readily understand, of the philosophic principle that God is good. In the act of creation God has bound Himself; He has given a pledge or a Promise. He will never violate the Promise, which He has repeated often to His chosen people. What God has done must be good and perfect; it cannot fail or become worse; it must grow towards perfection. Man, who was made in the image of God, must attain to the true end of his nature in some way and by some process, planned from the beginning by God. This process was to be realised through the coming of the Messiah. That is the Promise, or the Covenant or Testament (διαθήκη).

Promise, Covenant, Testament, are terms that describe only in a crude and imperfect way the act which they designate. Being English terms, they denote things that are different from the things which were designated by the ancient words thus translated. Moreover, even the ancient terms denote human actions, whereas this action of God is unique and unlike any ordinary event: it is alone in its class, and names that describe other acts do not exactly suit this action. Yet each of these terms describes correctly some side or aspect of this action. Like a promise this action of God’s is purely voluntary: it comes entirely from one side and is received by the other: the giver is all-powerful, the receiver has no influence over it (except the influence of prayer). Like a covenant this action is legally binding and cannot be broken: it makes and is the law, and has all the force and inviolability of law. Like a testament (The term is not much used in the text of the English Version; but it is the ordinary rendering of the Greek termδιαθήκη, and it is the name given to each part of the Bible.) this action is a legal document, in which one party alone confers by his free disposition complete validity and legal force, and in which the person benefited simply accepts without having any authority to influence the act. On the other hand, the term covenant is unsuitable in so far as it suggests the idea of two parties entering into a voluntary agreement: the term testament is free from the suggestion that there are two parties, but it has serious defects as implying that it is revocable at any time by change of mind in the testator, and that it comes into force only at his death (Even in that early stage of the development of a testament, when it was instantaneous in its effect and irrevocable (according to Maine, Ancient Law), the testament denuded the giver to enrich the heir; but such a stage need not be considered.): the term promise loses all the solemnity and the terror (so to speak) of the law. The Promise of God is the necessary expression of His goodness. It is His free gift to man, yet it arises inevitably from His character and His relation to man. It is the outcome of His nature, for His nature is love. The early Hebrews did not lay much stress on the love which is the nature of God. They dwelt far more on His power, as was inevitable in the earlier stages of their history, because wisdom began (as the Preacher says) with the fear of the Lord; and thus they were taught by the law as their pedagogue to obey and to be in a certain degree wise. Yet they had a firm hold on this expression of the love of God in the Promise, which implies that ultimately His love will be triumphant and unmistakably manifested.