The life and work of St. Paul

492 TflS LIFE jLSb WORK Of St. PAUL.
which he was the Apostle of the Gentiles. He has shown that Jews and
Gentiles were equally guilty, equally redeemed. The Redemption was achieved ;
but only by faith, in that sense of the word which he has so fully explained,
could its blessings be appropriated. Alas ! it was but too plain that while the
Gentiles were accepting this great salvation, and pressing into the Kingdom of
Heaven, the Jews were proudly holding aloof, and fatally relying on a system
now abrogated, on privileges no longer exclusive. Their national hopes, their
individual hopes, were alike based on a false foundation, which it has been the
Apostle's duty inexorably to overthrow. Their natural exclusiveness he meets
by the unflinching principle that there is no favouritism with our Heavenly
Father; he meets their attempts after a legal righteousness by proving to
them that they, like the Gentiles, are sinners, that they cannot attain a legal
righteousness, and that no such endeavour can make them just before God.
Obviously he was thus brought face to face with a tragic fact and a terrible
problem. The fact was that the Jews were being rejected, that the Gentiles
were being received. Even thus early in the history of Christianity it had
become but too plain that the Church of the future would be mainly a Church
of Gentiles, that the Jewish element within it would become more and more
insignificant, and could only exist by losing its Judaic distinctiveness. The
problem was, how could this be, in the face of those immemorial promises, in
the light of that splendid history ? Was God breaking TTi.s promises P Was
God forgetting that they were " the seed of Abraham His servant, the children
of Jacob whom He had chosen ? " l To this grave question there was (1) a
theologic answer, and (2) an historic answer. (1) The theologic answer was
that acceptance and rejection are God's absolute will, and in accordance with
His predestined election to grace or wrath. (2) The historic answer was that
the rejection of the Jews was the natural result of their own obstinacy and
hardness. The two answers might seem mutually irreconcilable ; but St. Paul,
strong in faith, in inspiration, in sincerity, never shrinks from the seeming
oppositions of an eternal paradox. He often gives statements of truth
regarded from different aspects, without any attempt to show that they are, to
a higher reason than that of man, complementary, not (as they appear) contra-
dictory, of each other. Predestination is a certain truth of reason and of
revelation ; free will is a certain truth of revelation and of experience. They
are both true, yet they seem mutually exclusive, mutually contradictory. The
differences between Supralapsarians and Sublapsarians do not really touch
the question ; God's foreknowledge is always recognised, but in no way does it
solve the difficulty of the absolute decree. If we say that St. Paul is here
mainly arguing about great masses of men, about men in nations, and the
difference between Jews and Gentiles, that is partially true; but he most
1 " Who hath not known passion, cross, and travail of death, cannot treat of foreknowledge
without injury and inward enmity towards God. Wherefore, take heed that thou
drink not wine while thou art yet a sucking babe " (Luther). He also said, " The ninth
chapter of the Epistle to the Romans is the ninth. Learn first the eight chapters which
precede it."