17. XV. The Purpose of God

XV. The Purpose of God

Some years ago the present writer attempted to summarise in three propositions the Pauline philosophy of history. (In The Cities of St. Paul, Part I. “Paulinism in the Graeco-Roman World,” p. 12.) It will help to clarify our ideas on the subject, if we compare those propositions with the fundamental Pauline principles or axioms as they are stated in the present work. The first proposition was “The Divine alone is real: all else is error”. This is merely a statement of the effect in history and society of the first and most fundamental principle in Pauline and Hebrew thought, “God is”. Start from that principle: think as Paul thought, view life as he viewed it: the result of your contemplation expresses itself in that proposition: “There is nothing real except God”. This proposition is simply the converse of that fundamental principle. The second proposition was: “A Society, or a Nation, is progressive in so far as it hears the Divine voice: all else is degeneration”. Here a new idea is introduced, viz. progress. The writer’s object in stating those three propositions was simply to express broadly the observed facts of history. Human history is a history of progress: but progress depends absolutely and wholly on one condition, and cannot be achieved without it.

It may here be added, not because I wish now to reply to criticism, but simply to make clearer the present explanation of the subject, that objection was taken by some critics at the time to this second proposition, on the ground that it ignores and denies the development which runs through the history of mankind. The criticism is false, and misapprehends my words. In this second proposition it is stated as the normal fact that human history is progressive, if a certain condition is observed. Progress is the law of nature; it is to be expected; it ought to take place; but it is not inevitable and invariable; on the contrary it is comparatively rare in history; most men and most nations degenerate except in so far as they are urged and forced on by the few who are active and progressive.

There is no necessary contradiction between the two assertions, that progress is normal, and that progress has been rare and unusual. As Paul would put it, God’s intention was that progress should be the course of man’s life but His intention has been impeded and prevented by the evil and the fault of man. What, then, is evil? Is it stronger than God? Is it able to thwart the will of God? It has been in the past able to do so; but it cannot always do so; for the will of God must in the end triumph. Here we are brought face to face with the problem of sin; and to put in our current language Paul’s solution of this problem so that it shall not be misunderstood by us is no easy matter, and will need some time and careful preparation. The general principle, however, is certain; and has been laid down in Section X as the second Pauline axiom, “God is good”. He cannot be God, if His will does not triumph. He cannot be good, if His creation is to be a wreck. This second axiom finds its historical solution in development: there is a progressive, though slow, triumph over evil. Thus the law of development stated in the second proposition is implied in the second axiom: the presence of evil, suffering, sin, and degeneration in the world which God has created are reconciled with the truth of that axiom through the law that these exist to be overcome in the upward progress of mankind. The will of God is the soul of history. Such is the philosophic theory of Paul. To him the process of human affairs was the gradual evolution of the Divine Will within those conditions of time and space that hedge man in. Paul presents to us the appearance of the Christ in the world as the culmination of the older period of history and the beginning of the new period: the past leads up to it and finds its explanation in it: the later time starts afresh from it. The purpose of God unfolds itself throughout. That apparently evil seems to us successful is due to our taking too narrow a view: take a wider view, fetch a wider compass, and you perceive that the Divine will is triumphant in its own way and at its own proper time.

Hence Paul’s thought must always be interpreted as dominated by his conception of the Divine purpose working itself out step by step: “When the fulness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law,” or “When it was the good pleasure of God, who had marked me out for that end even before my birth, to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles”. (Galatians 4:4;Galatians 1:15f.) In these and other places, historical events occurring in the succession and process of time, day by day, or year by year, are pictured as steps in the working out of a foreordained purpose. This is a thoroughly Hellenic way of expressing the truth. Greek poetry and Greek philosophy, in their highest and most characteristic manifestations, always picture history after this fashion, beginning from the opening paragraph of the Iliad, where the confused and tangled web of the Trojan War is described as a series of steps by which “the will of the supreme God worked itself out to its consummation,” Διὸς δʼ ἐτελείτο βουλή. The pure Hebrew might content himself with unshakable faith in the principle that God is good, and that He will give good at His own time; but the Greek mind seeks to understand the means and to imagine the process. In the second proposition, then, we meet the Greek-trained Paul: it may be doubted whether a Jew wholly ignorant of Greek thought would ever have framed his thought in this exact way. The Jewish way is not out of keeping with this (for both are good attempts to describe the same great truth in more or less figurative terms); but it starts from a different point of view, picturing God as the potter who deals at his will with his vessels and his clay, and advancing from this side towards the same ultimate truth.

Yet, although my purpose was to show Paul as the Apostle who most clearly regards human nature and history as progressive, various critics described me as denying that there has been development and progress in the world, I maintain that there must be progress, and that there has been progress; but human history is very far from being a continuous record of progress. And further, I venture to assert that a scientific investigation which starts from the assumption that all history is a history of progress must lead far astray. What of China, or India, or the Mohammedan lands, or the savage degenerates — in short, the greater part of the world? Have they been progressive? How often in history are we struck with the same phenomenon, a brief period of progress followed by a long time of retrogression and degeneration. Take the religion of Apollo, and the subsequent history of Greek religion. Take the teaching of Aeschylus and the subsequent history of the Attic drama. Take the Mohammedan countries, whose history as a whole has been usually a sudden outburst of moral fervour and enthusiasm, followed by a long period of deterioration and decay. In every case one finds at first a clearer and stronger perception of the nature of God suddenly acting on a people, and causing a marked improvement, but not able to clarify itself in a continual progress towards truth. Progress ceases because the nation no longer hears the Divine voice. Or take even European civilisation: it prides itself on its progress, but it is transforming the world into a series of vast armed camps, and inculcating in practice the standard of judgment that a nation ranks as great, not because of its excellence in literature or art or learning or moral rectitude, but because it has trained itself to be able at need to kill the largest number of its neighbours in the shortest possible time. That is not the way in which the few judge; but that is the standard of the many and of the diplomatists and ambassadors. Is that progress? Either it is a temporary madness, or it is degradation. A friend of the present writer, a great Oxford scholar, used to display some beautiful old book, a fine edition of a classical author, and say “They talk of progress”. There is much in Europe that is not progress. Yet still progress is the law of nature and the will of God.