00.2. Preface
Preface The following chapters are a study in the history of early Christian thought. This description fixes the method and the limits of the investigation.
When I had the honour of being appointed to the Cunningham Lectureship, I chose the subject here discussed, for reasons which may be briefly summarised. In an investigation of Paulinism, undertaken for another purpose, I had been growingly impressed by the vital bearing of St Paul’s eschatological outlook upon his theology as a whole. His conceptions of the Last Things were manifestly factors of supreme importance in the organisation of his religious thought. Yet there seemed to be no department in which greater confusion prevailed as to the precise interpretation of his statements. Evidences of this were patent even in the works of well-equipped students of New Testament theology. Further, one was well aware that in the innumerable publications of modern times having the Last Things for their theme, all sorts of arguments in support of the most conflicting theories had been founded on passages selected from the writings of St Paul.
Such considerations as these suggested the propriety of a fresh investigation of the sources, an investigation which should keep in close touch with the genesis of the apostle’s thought. From this standpoint, large use has been made of the prophetic books and the later apocalyptic literature, while the developments of the Synagogue-theology have also been kept in view.
Two features, pre-eminently, have emerged into prominence for my own mind as the result of the inquiry. The one is the necessity of grasping the great religious conceptions of the Old Testament in their original setting, if we are to penetrate into the texture of the Pauline theology. For the apostle clearly reveals himself as “an Hebrew of the Hebrews,” and carries forward in a large atmosphere the most splendid traditions of the prophets. His new Christian experience, indeed, seems to have quickened within him a finer sensitiveness to the deeper elements in the earlier revelation. The other feature which impresses one most powerfully is the decisiveness with which St Paul has laid the foundation of the Christian hope of Eternal Life, not in any vague speculations concerning human personality in the abstract, but in the relation of the individual soul to the risen Lord, Jesus Christ. He attains his end without any of those theoretical surmises as to existence which have brought confusion into so many modern discussions. Life in Christ is for him something larger than existence. It is existence raised to its highest power-the supreme, unsurpassable reality.
If these pages contribute in any measure to a clearer vision of the inspiring prospect which the apostle reached through knowing “the power of Christ’s resurrection,” the labour spent upon them will not have been in vain. In view of what has been said above as to the intimacy of St Paul’s relation to the Old Testament, there will be nothing surprising in the acknowledgment that I owe more than I can tell to the class lectures of my late revered teacher, Dr A. B. Davidson. The published literature to which I am under obligations is referred to throughout.1 [Note: My MS. was in the press before Sokolowski’s recently-published monograph, Die Begriffe Geist und Leben bei Paulus in ihren Beziehungen zu einander (Gött., 1903), came into my hands.] I must also express my deep indebtedness to my friend, the Rev. H. R. Mackintosh, D.Phil., Aberdeen, who was good enough to read the proofs, for many valuable suggestions and criticisms.
H. A. A. KENNEDY.
Callander, March 1904.