33. XXXI. The Measure and Estimate of Faith

XXXI. The Measure and Estimate of Faith In the Pastoral Epistles, as has been commonly held, “faith loses its unique significance and is almost reduced to a place side by side with other virtues,” so that “the gift of eternal life appears almost as a reward of good living”. At the present moment we are not discussing the authenticity of those Epistles, but simply the question whether this is a doctrinal position different from that of Paul’s earlier letters, and characteristic rather of Paulinism as conceived by a pupil of the Apostle. That in the earlier letters salvation is said to come through faith and the gift of God, not through works, is of course admitted. From that we start. That is emphasised over and over again in the letters; and no quotations are needed to prove that this is the true Pauline teaching. But is that inconsistent with the statement that salvation is the result of the work and intense effort of the individual? There is no inconsistency; and he that finds inconsistency between the two statements has never apprehended in a right way the true nature of the relation between man and God. Paul, who says so emphatically that salvation is the free gift of God through faith, can with equal emphasis utter the advice, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling”. (Php 2:12: on the apparent (but only apparent) inconsistency involved see Section XXXIII) Both are true: they contemplate the same operation, but from different points of view. Such is the true relation of the Divine nature to the human nature. One statement does not exhaust the character of that relation.

Moreover, faith is the driving power that turns man back from his tendency to degradation, and starts him in the course of movement towards God. The way to measure or estimate a force is through the effect that it produces: no other way is recognised by science. Now it will be observed that, where Paul is attempting to rouse, to stimulate, and to move the minds and hearts of men, he speaks most about faith and lays all the stress of his teaching on faith, but where he has in his mind the thought of judgment regarding men, he speaks of works, i.e. of the effect that this force produces. In the practical problems of Church management, therefore, Timothy and Titus have to look to works as the standard of measurement. Only thus can they estimate the driving power in the heart of man. They cannot measure the faith, or judge the character, of their congregations in any other way. Yet throughout those same letters the characteristic Pauline view of faith is suggested in various passages, e.g. 1 Timothy 1:2, 1 Timothy 1:4, 1 Timothy 3:9, 1 Timothy 5:8, 1 Timothy 5:12, 1 Timothy 6:12; 2 Timothy 4:7; Titus 3:5. (See Dr. R. F. Horton’s Introduction to the Pastorals, p. 7. 12.) The same thing is equally characteristic of the earlier letters, if we make allowance for the far greater part that is there devoted to stimulating, and the much less attention that is given to estimating. When in these letters Paul speaks of estimating the conduct and character of men, he has in mind the estimating which is done by God: although He knows the thoughts of the heart, He does not estimate the deserts of men by their faith, but by their works and their conduct. The Final Judgment partakes of the nature of a trial issuing in a formal sentence: and even in this trial, at which all “the counsels of the heart are made manifest and the hidden things of darkness are brought to light,” (See1 Corinthians 4:5.) the test which is applied is conduct. “It is indeed surprising,” says Professor W. P. Paterson regarding the Final Judgment, (The Apostles’ Teaching, i, p. 116. Such is the usual remark made by theologians on this topic.) that no mention is made of faith.” From our point of view, however, that is quite natural and inevitable. There can be no other scientific measure of a force except in the effect it produces; and on this the estimate is based. “We must all be made manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done through the body according to what he hath done, whether itbe good or bad.” (2 Corinthians 5:10.) “Whatsoever good thing each one doeth, the same shall he receive again from the Lord.” (Ephesians 6:8.) So again, writing from a slightly different point of view, Paul speaks to the same effect: “Not the hearers of the law are righteous before God, but the doers of the law shall be treated as righteous, . . . in the day when God shall judge the secret things of men according to my gospel by Jesus Christ”. (Romans 2:13-16. That the American Revision is right in so connecting the structure of the sentence seems clear, and has been already stated: the intermediate words are parenthetic. It refers to meditation in secret, not to the final judgment (as Westcott and Hort punctuate).) If in Romans, Ephesians and Corinthians the judgment of God is consistently based on works, the judgment of men must still more necessarily be based on the same external standard, and not on the impossible attempt to estimate a hidden force in the heart and nature of man.

Those who would restrict the social and philosophic out look of Paul, as a thinker and teacher for all time, to the bare and narrowest form of the statements which are made most frequently and most emphatically in the earlier letters, miss much of his thought and character. He did not try to win men by setting before them a complete system of philosophy. He hammered on the potent and penetrating nail of faith. This was the all-important means of getting into their hearts, and this is the most characteristic idea of Paulinism as a power to convert: no emphasis can be too strong on that point. This, however, does not exhaust the mind, or the philosophic position, or even the teaching, of Paul.

Now, when we attempt to go further and comprehend Paulinism as a complete system of thought and of teaching, and to show how it can make itself intelligible to men of the twentieth century, we must remember that he did not always preach to the unconverted or the newly converted and immature; and we should not exclude the possibility that he could organise and govern as well as persuade and convert. It is the denial, sometimes overt and conscious, sometimes half-unconscious, of this possibility, that causes much of the difficulty experienced as to the truly Pauline character of the teaching in the Pastoral Epistles. The importance of faith in the teaching of Paul was immense; but there was much more than faith in his teaching. Regarding this wider teaching there are only obscure hints in the earlier Epistles. On the other hand, it is the substance of the latest Epistles, because it is there suitable to the position of those to whom Paul was writing; and to condemn these as non-Pauline, because their teaching is more advanced, and “sub-Pauline” rather than “Pauline” (according to the fashionable terminology) is purely unscientific. The emphasis which Paul lays upon faith is wholly justified and necessary. Faith is the motive power of good life: through its force man can begin to move towards God, and its continued impulse is needed right through to the end. We can make no step except through it. Without faith man is helpless: it is the power of the Divine within him, believing, hoping, loving, and seeking after the Divine around him. Too much emphasis cannot be laid on the indispensableness of faith.

It is not always easy for the practical expounder of Paulinism to find words that will rightly and exactly express the situation. In such perplexity, if you lay the superior stress on faith, you will not go far wrong.

Yet in attempting to comprehend the nature of Pauline teaching, we must remember that even Paul himself does not say that it is the only thing, nor even that it is the greatest thing. “Now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). The singular “abideth,” instead of the plural, is not merely a grammatical feature: it bears closely on the sense. (This I would venture to add to Dr. Harnack’s exquisite statement of the quality of this passage, as set forth in an earlier page of the Expositor for June, 1912.) Paul does not mean simply that each one of the three separately and by itself remains permanent. He never would say so emphatically that you can trust in the permanence of any one by itself without the others. He means that the Divine unity of faith, hope, love is the permanent thing amid the flux and change of the world. Faith, as he says in 1 Corinthians 13:2, is by itself insufficient; however great faith I have, however my faith fulfils the supreme test, it would be nothing without love. In 1 Corinthians 13:13, he implies that any one of the three is incomplete without the other two. And, if you are determined to weigh them against one another, love is greater than faith as a constituent element in the Divine whole; and love is in itself the most lasting and most Divine thing in the universe, for it, more completely than anything else, is the Divine nature. (I may be permitted to refer to the chapter in my Pictures of the Apostolic Church, on 1 Corinthians 13.)