The life and work of St. Paul

EPISTLE TO THK ROMANS, AND THEOLOGY OP ST. PAUL. 461
of the heart." Not if we bear in mind that these controversies arise mainly
from " the afterthoughts of theology." We can only understand St. Paul's
views in the light of his own repeated elucidations, comments, and varied
modes of expression ; yet with this guidance we should sum up the results of
endless discussions, prolonged for a thousand years, by interpreting his words
to mean that In the Gospel is being made known 1 to the world that inherent
righteousness of God, which, by a judgment of acquittal pronounced once for
all in the expiatory death of Christ, He imputes to guilty man, and which
beginning for each individiial, with his trustful acceptance of this reconciliation
of himself to God in Christ, ends in that mystical union with Christ whereby
Christ becomes to each man a new nature, a quiclcening spirit.
It is impossible, I think, in fewer words to give the full interpretation of
this pregiiant thesis. The end and aim of the Gospel of God is the salvation
of man. Man is sinful, and cannot by any power of his own attain to holiness.
Yet without holiness no man can see the Lord. Therefore, without holiness no
man can be saved. How, then, is holiness to be attained P The Gospel is the
answer to that question, and this Epistle is the fullest and most consecutive ex-
position of this divine dispensation. The essence of the answer is summed up in
the one phrase " JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH." In this verse it is expressed as
" the righteousness and justice of God" which" is being revealed in the Gospel
from faith to faith." The word for " righteousness " is also rendered " justification."
But neither of this word, nor of the word "faith," lias St. Paul ever
given a formal definition. It is only from his constantly-varied phrases, and
from the reasonings by which he supports, and the
illustrates them, that we can ascertain his meaning.
quotations by which he
Many writers have main-
tained that this meaning is vague and general, incapable of being reduced to
rigid and logical expression, impossible to tesselate into any formal scheme of
salvation. We must not overlook the one element of truth which underlies
these assertions. Undoubtedly there is a vast gulf between the large impassioned
utterances of mystic fervour and the cold analytic reasonings of
technical theology ; between emotional expressions and elaborate systems ;
between Orientalism and scholasticism ; between St. Paul and St. Thomas of
Aquinum. Speculative metaphysics, doctrines of sin, theories of imputation,
transcendental ontology these in the course of time were inevitable ; but
these are not the foundation, not the essence, not the really important element
of Christianity. This has been too much forgotten. Yet there is all the dif-
ference in the world between understanding what Paul meant to express,
and pretending to have fathomed to their utmost depths the Eternal Truths
which lie behind his doctrine ; and it is perfectly possible for us to comprehend
God's scheme, so far as it affects our actions and our hopes, without
;tion of the doctrine is quite another thing, and all attempt to do it lands us at once in
the region of insoluble "
mysteries. We cannot measure the arm of God with the finger
of man. "
1 affoitaAvirrerai "progressive revelation," but tyavepaOii, it has been once for all
manifested ; or rather tra?c'pwr