The life and work of St. Paul

THE SCHOOL OF THS BABBX. 29
enslaved ; and thai he deduces from it, not the Kabbala and the Talmud " a
philosophy for dreamers and a code for mummies" 1 but the main ideas of
the Gospel of the grace of God.
It will be easy for any thoughtful and unprejudiced reader of St. Paul's
Epistles to verify and illustrate for himself the Apostle's use of Scripture.
He adopts the current mode of citation, but he ennobles and enlightens it. 2
That he did not consider the method universally applicable is clear from its
omission in those of his Epistles which were intended in the main for Gentile
Christians, 3 as also in his speeches to heathen assemblies. But to the Jews he
would naturally address a style of argument which was in entire accordance
with their own method of dialectics. Many of the truths which he
demonstrates by other considerations may have seemed to him to acquire
additional authority from their assonance with certain expressions of Scripture.
We cannot, indeed, be sure in some instances how far St. Paul meant his
quotation for an argument, and how far he used it as a mere illustrative
formula. Thus, we feel no hesitation in admitting the cogency of his proof
of the fact that both Jews and Gentiles were guilty in God's sight but ; we
should not consider the language of David about his enemies in the fourteenth
and fifty-third Psalms, still less his strong expressions " all " and " no, not
one," as adding any great additional force to the general argument. It is
probable that a Jew would have done so; and St. Paul, as a Jew trained in
this method of Scriptural application, may have done so too. But what has
been called his " inspired Targum " of the Old Testament does not bind us to
the mystic method of Old Testament commentary. As the Jews were more
likely to adopt any conclusion which was expressed for them in the words of
Scripture, St. Paul, having undergone the same training, naturally enwove
into his style though only when he wrote to them this particular method of
Scriptural illustration. To them an argumentum
argument of this kind would be an
ex concessis. To us its argumentative force would be much
smaller, because it does not appeal to us, as to him and to his readers, with all
the force of familiar reasoning. So far from thinking this a subject for
regret, we may, on the contrary, be heartily thankful for an insight which
could give explicitness to deeply latent truths, and find in an observation of
minor importance, like that of Habakkuk, that " the soul of the proud man
his steadfastness "*
is not upright, but the just man shall live by i.e., that
the Chaldeans should enjoy no stable prosperity, but that the Jews, here
ideally represented as " the upright man," should, because of their fidelity,
live secure the depth of power and meaning which we attach to that palmary
truth of the Pauline theology that "the just shall live by his faith,"*
Reuss, Th&ol. Ckrtt. i. 268 and 408421.
3 See Jowett, Romans, i. 353362.
* There are no Scriptural quotations in 1, 2 Thess., Phil., Col.
4 Hab. ii. 4. (Heb. tajiDMJ, by his trustworthiness.) See Lightfoot on. Gal. iii. 11,
and p. 149.
5 GaL iii. 11 ; Eom. L 17 ; also in Heb. x. 38. St. Paul omits the pov of the LXX,,
which is not in the Hebrew,