earned by honourable work, not obtained by begging, in order that they might not be dependent on any one and might share what was their own with others. From the early Christian ideal of community of goods he was so far removed that his epistles constantly assume the possession by his readers of private property gained by work, and imply that the acquirement of property is not only permitted but obligatory, as a condition of the honourable independence of one's own personality, and of kindly sharing with, and helping of, the needy (1 Cor. vi. 10, vii. 30, ix. 7; 2 Cor. viii. 13 f., ix. 7 f.). It is true that in this no theoretic ethical value is as yet allotted to work; the Protestant idea that the application of one's personal capacities to the production of wealth for the general advantage belongs essentially to the ethical ideal, was as foreign to Paul's thought as to that of antiquity in general. In this, as in his estimate of marriage, the monastic morals of Catholicism maintained the early Christian way of thought which was opposed to nature and to the progress of civilisation, whereas Protestantism, with a clearer insight, has corrected it.

THE THEOLOGY OF PAUL

CHAPTER XIX

THE METHODS AND AIMS OF THE PLAN
OF SALVATION

THE theology of Paul issues in a religious philosophy of history, which regards the past and the future from the teleological point of view as a connected divine plan of salvation. The impulse to this theodicy was given by the objections brought by Jewish Christians against the Pauline Christianity, which centred about two points. One was the annulling of the Jewish law by the Pauline gospel of faith-righteousness, which seemed to conflict with the character of the law as a revelation. The second, and no less serious, objection, had reference to the actual success of the Pauline mission to the Gentiles, which had indeed at the outset been greeted with joy (Gal. i. 24), but later became more and more suspect to the Jewish mind in proportion as the multitude of the Gentile brethren began to outnumber the Jewish believers in the Messiah. That seemed to make the Messianic kingdom the heritage of the Gentiles, whereas it had been promised to Abraham and to his seed, and ought therefore to belong, if not exclusively, at least primarily, to the

people of the promise, namely, the Jews. The practical consequences of the Pauline mission to the Gentiles seemed therefore to lead to the abrogation of the promises made to the Fathers, as his doctrine of faith seemed to lead to the abrogation of the law. It is especially in the Epistle to the Romans that Paul sets himself to meet these two objections. After having defended, in the first eight chapters, his doctrine of justification by faith against the objections taken from the law, and proved its consistency with the divine revelation of the law, he turns, in chaps. ix.-xi., to the solution of the other main question: How was the more rapid increase of Gentile as compared with Jewish Christians in the kingdom of Christ to be reconciled with the promises which God, according to the scriptures, had given to the Patriarchs of Israel?

The offence caused to the Jewish Christians by the actual course of events was based on the impression which had long been deeply rooted in the Jewish mind, that the Chosen People, in virtue of their legal covenant, could make good a documentary claim to hold the prerogative in the kingdom of Christ. In view of this self-righteous claim, Paul reminds them of the truth which was fundamental in his own as in every true, religious life of the unconditional dependence of man upon the free grace of God, with whom none may litigate and bargain, since He owes no man anything. This unconditional character of the gracious will of God he proves to the Jew from his own history. Even in the history of the Patriarchs, God proved the sovereign freedom

of His will in that, without any regard to human worth or unworthiness, He chose one before another, as in the choice of Isaac before Ishmael, in the preferring of Jacob before Esau, and in the showing of mercy to Moses and the rejection of Pharaoh. From these examples the principle of the divine choice is evident: He "has mercy upon whom he will, and whom he will he hardeneth. So then it is not of him that willeth, or of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy" (ix. 16, 18). But does not this absence of limitation of the Divine will destroy all human responsibility? Paul himself anticipates this objection, but he does not allow it to embarrass him at all, merely striking it out of the way with the reminder that the creature has no right whatever to litigate with the Creator and to question "Why hast thou made me thus?" As the potter, from one and the same material, makes one vessel to an honourable, and another to a less honourable, destiny, so God, out of the same material of human nature, makes some individuals vessels of wrath, destined to destruction, some vessels of mercy destined to glory. In doing so He willed to exhibit, in the former His wrath, i.e. His holiness which must unconditionally destroy evil, and His power, i.e. His unconditioned self-determination as creative will; at the same time, however, they were also to serve Him as means-and for that reason He bore with them with great long-suffering, instead of at once delivering them over to destruction-in order to exhibit in the vessels of mercy the riches of His glory which, in contrast with those to whom He does not accord mercy, is manifested the more

gloriously as unconditional free grace (verse 22 f.).1 Thus the final aim of all divine fore-ordination is the revelation of grace, to which the revelation of wrath served only as a means. That, in itself, indicates that love, the exaltation of which is the final aim, is also the highest motive of the divine pre-ordination, and that the will of wrath is not opposed to it as equally essential in such a way that they mutually limit each other and hold each other in check, but that the exhibition of wrath serves only as the temporary means towards the eternal aims of love-a thought which is applied to the destiny of Israel in chap. xi., where Paul consolingly holds out a prospect of the final acceptance even of those who are now apparently rejected, but who are in reality only temporarily put back.

But before he gives his doctrine of predestination this conciliatory conclusion, he seeks to mitigate its apparent hardness by another method of regarding it. He descends from the height of the absolute divine decree to the historical level, and shows how the

1 In this argument, ix. 19–23, passages from the Book of Wisdom, xii. 8-22 and xv. 7, have unmistakably been present to the apostle's mind. From the latter he took the picture of the potter, which is, however, used there in a different connection. But in the former passage we find essentially the same thoughts of the divine patience in sparing the reprobate, which serves to enhance the glory of the avenging power of the sovereign Lord against His enemies, and at the same time to exhibit His mercy towards His chosen children. The author of the Book of Wisdom, not behind the Pharisees in Jewish self-satisfaction, naturally understands by the chosen the Jews, and by the rejected the heathen. Paul has simply reversed this teaching. His doctrine of predestination, like his doctrine of the law, is simply Pharisaism turned the other way round.