The life and work of St. Paul

740 APPENDIX.
grace; the unserviceableness and yet the moral necessity of good works ; are In absolute
accordance with the most fundamental conceptions of St. Paul's acknowledged writings.
If some of these great truths, of theology here receive a richer, more mature, and more
original development this is only, what we should expect from the power of a mind which
never ceased to grow in grace and wisdom, and which regarded growth in grace and wisdom
as the natural privilege of a Christian soul. On the other hand, we might well be amazed
if the first hundred years after the death of Christ produced a totally unknown writer
who, assuming the name of Paul, treats the mystery which it was given him to reveal
with a masterly power which the Apostle himself rarely equalled, and most certainly
never surpassed. Let any one study the remains of the Apostolic Fathers, and he may
well be surprised at the facility with which writers of the Tubingen school, and their
successors, assume the existence of Paula who lived unheard of and died unknown,
though they were intellectually and spiritually the equals, if not the superiors, of St.
Paul himself ! In no single Epistle is the point of view so clear, so supreme, so final
in no other Epistle of the Homologoumena is the doctrine so obviously the outcome and
issue of truths which before had been less fully and profoundly enunciated so undeniably
the full consummate flower from germs of which we have, as it were, witnessed the
planting. At supreme epochs of human enlightenment whole centuries of thought seem
to separate the writings of a few years. The questions which occupy the Apostle in the
Thessalonians and Galatians seem to lie indefinitely far behind the goal which his thoughts
have now attained. In earlier Epistles he was occupied in maintaining the freedom of
the Gentiles from the tyrannous narrowness of Jewish sacerdotalism ; here, on the other
hand, he is dwelling on the predestined grandeur of the equal and universal Church.
In the Epistles to the Romans and the Galatians he has founded the claims of Christianity
on "a philosophy of the history of religion," by showing that Christ is the Second Adam,
and the promised seed of Abraham ; here he contemplates a scheme predestined before
the ages of earth began, and running through them as an increasing purpose, so that aeon
after aeon revealed new forms and hues of the richly-varied wisdom, and the Gentiles
(KOI v/xeis, i. 13) as well as the Jews are included in the predestined election (e/cXrjpu^ev,
irpoopio-BevTfs, i. 11) to the purchased possession (n-epuronjais, 14). And not to exhaust,
which would be indeed impossible, the manifold aspects of thia so-called "colourless"
Epistle, the manner in which it expresses the conception of the quickening of spiritual
death by union with the Risen Christ (ii. 1 6) ; the present realisation, the immanent
consciousness of communion with God ; the all-pervading supremacy of God in Christ ;
the importance of pure spiritual knowledge ; the dignity given to the Church as the
house (ii. 20-22), the body (iv. 1216) and the bride (v. 2527) of Christ, all mark it
out as the most sublime, the most profound, and, if I may use the expression, the most
advanced and final utterance of that mystery of the Gospel which it was given to St. Paul
for the first time to proclaim in all its fulness to the Gentile world. 1 It is not surprising
that when these truths had once found utterance they should have had their influence
on the teachings of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews and upon St. Peter and
St. John ; nor is this any ground whatever, but rather the reverse, for looking with
suspicion on the authenticity of the Epistle. 8
1 Entirely an I disagree with Pflelderer, I have received great help from his PBwHnfemws (B. T.
H. 162193) In the -
study of this Epistle.
2 See 1 Pet. i. 14 (Eph. iv. 14) ; 1 Pet. i. 20 (Eph. 1. 4) ; 1 Pet i. 7 (Eph. 1. 6) ; 15 111. (Eph. 5) ;
Si. 9 (Eph. 1. 14) ; 1. 3 (Eph. i. 17) ; U. 11 (Eph. II. 3) ; lii. 7 (Eph. tit 6) ; v. 10 (Eoh. Iv. 2), &C. See
Webs, Petrintech. Lehrbegr. 434,