last enemy, shall be vanquished, and all shall have become new.1

If the question is asked what are the sources or the affinities of Pauline anthropology in general, it must be said that it is neither Hellenistic philosophy nor Pharisaic theology, but a Christian modification of the popular anthropology which was common to the whole of antiquity, and which we usually call Animism, according to which the soul or spirit is a generally invisible yet not wholly immaterial being, but which stands in so loose a relationship to the body as its containing vessel that it can at times pass out of it (cf. 2 Cor. xii. 2), just as other spiritual beings can temporarily or permanently enter into it and dwell in it. The view of sin, especially, as a demonic power, a spiritual being which dwells in the material body, which rouses the passions, enslaves the will, and causes death, corresponds exactly to the fundamental animistic view according to which all abnormal excitations of the soul life, whether in a good, or, more especially, in a bad sense, are referred to the over

1 On the assumption, which Paul adopted from contemporary thought, that evil is an actual entity in man, its existence cannot well be otherwise reconciled with the origin of man as a created being than by supposing a corruption of human nature taking place in Time and caused from without. The matter is, of course, otherwise conceived in our present-day evolutionary view, according to which evil is not an actual entity, but the disharmony, the as yet defective organisation, of the impulses which belong to our nature, but of which the harmonious ordering cannot be original, because, for a moral being, it must be the task of intelligent activity, of education and culture. The teleological idealism remains in this case the same as in Paul's view, but without the dark background of demonic depravation, that metaphysical reflection of ancient Pessimism.

mastering influence (the domination) of spiritual beings who take possession of man. This view of the popular animism in regard to particular passionate excitations is extended by Paul to a permanent possession of the flesh by a demonic spiritual being which has taken possession once for all of the human race, and therein he did not stand by any means alone, but only shared the views which, under the influence of the prevailing pessimistic mood of his time, had grown up in many circles. The Pharisaic teaching about the Jezer hara or evil impulse, which as a hostile spirit, or Satan, dwelt in man's body from birth and at an early age raised itself into an effectual power,' stands quite on the same footing, and in the Greek world also there are a multitude of parallels in the Orphic theology and in the Platonic, Stoic, Neo-Pythagorean, and especially the Philonian, philosophies. But the Pauline anthropology is not to be explained as derived from these parallels; it is merely that it has the same roots as they in the primitive fundamental conceptions of animism, which at that period, owing to the prevailing mood of pessimism and religious enthusiasm, had in many cases been sharpened into a more or less logical dualism. But it is the more necessary for that reason to notice the specific distinction between the anthropology of Paul and that of his contemporaries, Jewish as well as Greek. While according to the Platonic, Stoic, and Philonian philosophies, the spirit which belongs to the nature of man, or, according to

2

1 Weber, Altsynagogale Paläst. Theol., 204 ff.

2 See above, p. 43 f.; of Jewish Hellenism we shall have more to say at a later point.

+

others, the spiritual part of his soul, is from the first divine, immortal, unstained, and is the victorious power which overcomes sensuality, Paul, on the other hand, ascribes these characteristics, not to the natural spirit of man, but to the supernatural spirit which through Christ enters into the man from without, in contrast with which the natural spirit, while it has, no doubt, in its intelligence a certain divine endowment, has no real divine power, but is morally indifferent and exposed to corruption. In this respect it may be said that the dualism between the divine and the human being is more radical and pessimistic in Paul than in the contemporary Hellenistic philosophy. But, to counterbalance that, he holds out the prospect of a more complete overcoming of the dualism which now prevails: he expects not only, like the aforesaid Greek thinkers, a deliverance from the body, but a deliverance of the body itself through the life-giving Spirit of God at the resurrection. Pharisaic theology taught, it is true, something similar; but while its doctrine represents the whole body as restored in its earthly materiality, Paul does not think of a resurrection of the flesh but only of the body, the form of the organism, and in a different, heavenly substance. Paul, therefore, teaches, in agreement with the Pharisees, deliverance of the body, but not deliverance of the flesh; in agreement with the Greeks, he teaches liberation from the flesh, from earthly sensuality, not, however, in a disembodied, purely spiritual state, but in a new body appropriate to the circumstances of the heavenly life; therefore not a one-sided deliverance of the spiritual part of man with the permanent abandonment of the bodily, but a

deliverance of the whole man, body, soul, and spirit (1 Thess. v. 23), effected, however, by the slaying of the flesh as the present seat of the powers which oppose God. On the basis of a most pessimistic judgment of the actual world as ruled by demonic powers and lying under sentence of the divine wrath, Paul's hopeful faith rises to the ideal of a new creation in which the glorious freedom of the children of God shall receive a victorious manifestation, and the groaning and yearning of Nature be thereby satisfied and stilled; and God, in short, be all in all. And this bold idealism thenceforth remained the faith of Christians, the faith which has overcome the world and continues to overcome it. The distinction is only that we to-day, on the ground of what we have learned from history, expect the realisation of that ideal of a new world in which nature and spirit are purified into harmonious organs of the divine will, to be attained by the historical development of the Christian spirit and by the ethical effort of the Christian community, whereas ancient Christianity expected it to result from a supernatural catastrophe.

THE THEOLOGY OF PAUL

CHAPTER XIV

HEATHENISM AND JUDAISM

We have seen that Paul regarded the condition of the natural man as a universal subjugation to the bondage of sin and death, a fate brought upon the race by the sin of the first man, imposed by a divine sentence, and carried out by the oppression of demonic powers. If, again, we cast a glance at his description of the religious condition of the heathen and the Jews, we meet the same thought once more, but with this difference, that, in the one case, the enslavement of man under the God-ordained domination of spiritual powers is prominent; in the other, the freely-incurred guilt of man which calls down God's judgment.

To the Galatians, who had been converted from heathenism to Christianity, and who stood in danger of being led astray by Jewish legalism, Paul says in Gal. iv. 8 ff.: "Then, when ye knew not God, ye served them that are by nature no gods. But now that ye have known God, or rather been known of him, how can ye turn again to the weak and miserable powers of the elements, desiring to be again in bondage to them? Ye observe days and months and times