The life and work of St. Paul

PREDESTINATION AND FREE WILL. 493
definitely recognises the case of individuals also, and God is tlio God not only
of nations, "but of individuals. In any case, this sacrifice of the individual to
the interests of the mass would be but a thrusting of the difficulty a little
further back. The thought that many, though Edomites, will be saved, and
many, though of Israel, will be lost, may make the antenatal predilection for
Israel and detestation of Esau less startling to us, and it is quite legitimate
exegetically to soften, by the known peculiarities of Semitic idiom, the painful
harshness of the latter term. But even then we are confronted with the pre-
destined hardening of Pharaoh's heart. St. Paul recognises all Scripture
recognises the naturalness of the cry of the human soul ; but the remorseless
logic of a theology which is forced to reason at all about the Divine prescience
can only smite down the pride of finite arguments with the iron rod of revealed
mysteries. Man is but clay in the potter's hands. God is omnipotent ; God
is omniscient ; yet evil exists, and there is sin, and there is death, and after
death the judgment ;
and sin is freely forgiven, and yet we shall receive the
things done in the body, and be judged according to our works. All things
end in a mystery, and all mysteries resolve themselves into one the existence
of evil. But, happily, this mystery need in no way oppress us, for it is lost in
the Plenitude of God. The explanation of it has practically nothing to do
with us. It lies in a region wholly apart from the facts of common life.
When St. Paul tells us " that it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that
runneth," he is dealing with one order of transcendental ideas ;
but when he
comes to the common facts of Christian life, he bids us will, and he bids us
run, and he bids us work out our own salvation with fear and trembling;
exactly as he tells us that justification is of faith alone, and not of works, and
yet constantly urges us to good works, and tells us that God will reward every
man according to his works.1 Beyond this we cannot "
get. Decretum
horribile fateor," said Calvin, "at tamen verum." Theology must illustrate
by crushing analogies its irreversible decrees, but it cannot touch the sphere of
practical experience, or weaken the exhortations of Christian morality.
God
predestines ; man is free. How this is we cannot say ; but so it is. St. Paul
makes no attempt to reconcile the two
"
positions. Neither here nor anywhere
else does he feel called upon to deal with speculative extremes. And in whatever
way the question be speculatively adjusted, absolute dependence and
moral self-determination are both involved in the immediate Christian self-
consciousness." 8 The finite cannot reduce the infinite to conditions, or express
by syllogisms the mutual relations of the two. The truths must be stated,
when there is need to state them, although each of them belongs to separate
orders of ideas. Since they cannot be reconciled, they must be left side by
side. It is an inevitable necessity, implied throughout all Scripture, that, as
regards such questions, the sphere of dogma and the sphere of homily should
often be regarded as though they were practically separate from each other,
1 oiroSiWvai (Bom. il. 6; 2 Tim. iv. 8); iirrr.oo- (Col. lii. 24); pirfi* (1 Cor. iii. 8j
jix. 17), &c.
* Bftur, Paul. II. 269.