03. St Paul's Conceptions of Life and Death

Chapter III ST PAUL’S CONCEPTIONS OF LIFE AND DEATH

It is obvious that if we are to form a true conception of St Paul’s forecast of the Last Things, we must endeavour to discover with as much accuracy as possible the precise force of certain fundamental terms which constitute the elements, so to speak, of his eschatological construction. Pre-eminent among these are the basal ideas of Life and Death.

Nothing has been the cause of greater confusion and error in estimating the apostle’s point of view than the tacit assumption that his use of terms is identical with ours. Indeed, the more familiar the terms, the more unhesitating the assumption. As a consequence, lines of argument have been frequently drawn from statements of St Paul, which he would not ave understood, far less sympathised with. We believe that this erroneous hypothesis is especially misleading in the instance before us. Life and Death are notions belonging to the common stock. It scarcely occurs to us to inquire whether their connotation is the same for us as it was for a Jewish apostle in the first century of our era. But the inquiry is of supreme importance, as we shall find, for our whole discussion. As an example of the misconceptions which may arise from neglecting to penetrate to the foundation of an idea, we may quote a few sentences from Matthew Arnold’s St Paul and Protestantism. “Paul’s conception of life and death,” he says, “inevitably came to govern his conception of resurrection. What indeed … is for Paul life, and what is death? Not the ordinary physical life and death;-death, for him, is living after the flesh, obedience to sin; life is mortifying by the spirit the deeds of the flesh, obedience to righteousness. Resurrection, in its essential sense, is therefore, for Paul, the rising, within the sphere of our visible earthly existence, from death in this sense to life in this sense” (p. 143). There could scarcely be found a more glaring misrepresentation of the apostle’s thought than that contained in these sentences, as we hope immediately to show. And the words are the more misleading, inasmuch as they emphasise to the exclusion of all others, an element which, of course, does belong to St Paul’s ideas of life and death. The error really springs from an ignoring of the Old Testament background, out of which the apostle’s conceptions emerge. This source of confusion too frequently reveals itself, even in the discussions of trained theologians.1 [Note: See, e.g., Kabisch’s discussion of θάνατος in St Paul (Eschatol. d. Paulus, p. 101). So, to a slighter extent, Prof. Beet’s treatment of “life” and “death” (Expos. iv. 1. pp. 203-207) suffers from a neglect of the roots of these conceptions in theOld Testament and Judaism. It is more important to keep these sources in view than to refer to the Homeric ideas.] The inferences, therefore, which may or may not be deduced from many important affirmations of St Paul regarding Life and Death must depend on the exact content which these terms held for him.

Let us deal with the negative concept in the first place. Careful readers of the Old Testament must have observed the horror which death inspires in the Hebrew mind. One or two instances may be quoted. In Psalms 88:2-5 we have this appeal: “Let my prayer come before Thee: incline Thine ear unto my cry; for my soul is full of troubles, and my life draweth nigh unto Sheol. I am counted with them that go down into the pit: I am as a man that hath no strength: cast off among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, whom Thou rememberest no more: and they are cut off from Thy hand.” A similar note is heard in Psalms 6:3-5 : “My soul also is sore vexed: and Thou, O Lord, how long? Return, O Lord, deliver my soul: save me for Thy loving-kindness’ sake. For in death there is no remembrance of Thee: in Sheol who shall give Thee thanks?” In giving thanks for his recovery, Hezekiah expresses his fear at the approach of death: “I said, In the noon tide of my days I shall go into the gates of Sheol; I am deprived of the residue of my years. I said, I shall not see the Lord, even the Lord in the land of the living: I shall behold man no more when I am among them that have ceased to be. My habitation is removed, and is carried away from me as a shepherd’s tent: I have rolled up like a weaver my life; He will cut me off from the loom.… Like a swallow or a crane, so did I chatter; I did mourn as a dove: mine eyes fail with looking upwards.… But Thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption … For Sheol cannot praise Thee, death cannot celebrate Thee: they that go down into the pit cannot hope for Thy truth” (Isaiah 38:10; Isaiah 38:12; Isaiah 38:14; Isaiah 38:17-18). The description of Sheol in Job 10:20-22 sheds light on their shuddering apprehensions: “Let me alone … before I go whence I shall not return, even to the land of darkness, and of the shadow of death: a land of thick darkness, as darkness itself; a land of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness.” According to the Old Testament conception, life is the opportunity for all joy, for all good. Death, indeed, is inevitable. And its calamity is mitigated when it presents itself as the close of a long earthly career, rich in well-being. The man who dies full of years and honour is like a shock of corn reaped when it is wholly ripe (Job 5:26). The life of such an individual is carried on in his descendants (Psalms 103:17).1 [Note: These conditions diminished the horror of death also for the Greeks. Cf. Kaibel, Epigramm. Gr. 68,ὅλβιον εὐγήρων ἄνο[σον]…τύμβος ὅδʼ εὐθάν [ατον … ἕχει]; also C.I.A. 2, 2541,εὐδαίμων δʼ ἔθανον παίδων παῖδας καταλείπω[ν] (Herkenrath, Studien zu d. griech. Grabschriften, Feldkirch, 1896, p. 27).] But death under any other conditions is an utterly doleful fate. It robs men of all prospect. It shatters human power and capacities. It is a paralysis of the entire personality.2 [Note: Death, in the Old Testament, “is the phenomenon which we observe” (A. B. Davidson, H.D.B., i. p. 739). The recognition of this tersely stated truth would often have saved pages of useless discussion.] For throughout the earlier stages of Hebrew religion, there is no thought of one part of the person surviving death. The spirit, indeed, the ruah, which has been imparted by God, cannot die. It returns to Him who gave it (Psalms 146:4; Ecclesiastes 12:7). But the nephesh, the natural principle of life, which is closely dependent on the ruah, and is the bearer of the personality, shares in the fate of the physical organism. It is not a mere separation of soul and body. For the conception of a disembodied soul is foreign to Old Testament thought. It belongs to Hellenism, as e.g., Plato, Cratylus, 403 b.: ὅτι τε γάρ, ἐπειδὰν ἅπαξ τις ἡμῶν ἀποθάνῃ ἀεὶ ἐκεῖ ἐστι, φοβοῦνται, καὶ ὅτι ἡ ψυχὴ γυμνὴ τοῦ σώματος πάρʼ ἐκεῖνον ἀπέρχεται, καὶ τοῦτο πεφόβηνται: “For they fear that, when once any of us dies, he is always there, and of this also they are afraid that the soul, disembodied, departs to him” (i.e. Pluto). For the Hebrew, death is the reducing of the person, in the sum-total of his energies, to a nerveless and phantom-like existence in Sheol, the place of assemblage for the dead. There, no moral distinctions prevail. There is a dreary equality among the shades (rephāîm). Up to this point, we may find parallels in other ancient civilisations. Thus the Greeks reveal the dark shadow which death casts across the gladness of their life by the epithets which describe it on their sepulchral inscriptions, epithets such as “bitter,” “ruinous,” “relentless,” etc. Euphemisms were far rarer in this connection than in modern times. The under-world stretches hopelessly before the wistful gaze of men. It is called φθιμένων ἀέναος θάλαμος, “the eternal chamber of those who have withered” (so an inscription in Kaibel, Epigr. Gr. cxliii. 2, quoted by Herkenrath, op. cit., p. 22. See also pp. 19, 21, 24). The bucolic poet Theocritus has the mournful line, ἐλπίδες ἐν ζωοῖσιν, ἀνέλπιστοι δὲ θανόντες: “Among the living hope endures, but hopeless are the dead” (Idyll. iv. 42). It was the same in the Roman world. Catullus laments: Nobis quum semel occidit brevis lux, nox est perpetua una dormienda: “When once the short-lived light has vanished, we all must sleep through an unbroken night” (v. 5 f.). And Seneca, speaking of the courage of Socrates, tells how he remained in prison, ut duarum rerum gravissimarum hominibus metum demeret, mortis et carceris: “that he might set men free from the fear of two most grievous fates, imprisonment and death.” But there can be little doubt that the horror of death was heightened for Hebrew minds by the predominantly religious cast of their thought. The value of the present life is immensely enhanced by the fact that it is only with the living that God can enter into relation. He is conceived pre-eminently as the living God, and only the living can respond to His claims. The true purpose of life, indeed, is fellowship with God. It has often occasioned surprise, that so devout a people as the Hebrews should, for generations, have rested content with the conception of an earthly relationship to Jehovah. Probably the explanation is due to the circumstance that that relationship was one of peculiar intimacy, of unique power and reality. They felt the Divine presence with a wonderful thrill of immediate consciousness. Human life from beginning to end could be alive with God. Hence a long and prosperous existence is the recognised mark of God’s approval, the most convincing evidence of true piety. “Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee” (Exodus 20:12). “If thou were pure and upright, surely now would He awake for thee and make the habitation of thy righteousness prosperous” (Job 8:6). “For evil-doers shall be cut off, but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth. For yet a little while and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt consider his place, and it shall not be. But the meek shall inherit the earth, and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace” (Psalms 37:10-11). For the earlier stages of their religious reflection, death is that which robs of all blessedness.1 [Note: On the special horror of death felt by the Jews, see Smend, Alttest. Religionsgeschichte, pp. 504, 505. An interesting aspect of the same fundamental idea appears in Philo, who, as Drummond points out, regards the body as antagonistic to the soul, “not because it is material … but because it is phenomenal, transient, mortal” (Philo, ii. p. 297).] They that go down to Sheol cannot praise God. All bonds of intercourse with the Most High are snapped. Sometimes the dead are described as if existing in the under-world almost beneath the sway of another tyrannical power. There is a kind of personification of Death, resembling that of the Greek Hades, when it is said in Psalms 49:14 : “Like sheep they are laid in Sheol; death shepherds them.”2 [Note: In ancient literature it is hard to distinguish between a person and a personification. Animistic ideas lie deep in the naive, popular consciousness. Bousset, grouping together such passages asIsaiah 25:7f.; 4 Ezra 8:53; Apoc. Bar. xxi. 23; Test. Levi 18;1 Corinthians 15:26; 1 Corinthians 15:55, all of which treat of the destruction of death at the end, would relate the figures ofθάνατος,Hades (cf.Revelation 20:13), and the angel of Hades closely to that of the devil, finding in them personal opponents of God (Religion d. Judenthums, p. 241, note 3). So also Kabisch on1 Corinthians 15:20(Esch. d. P., p. 162) and Titius, p. 220 (on sin and death in Paul). We need hardly refer to the frequency of such personifications in Greek literature. A striking instance is Pindar, Olymp. ix. 35-38. “In the Vosges … Death’s personality is accepted as an act of creation. ‘Votre vie aura un fin,’ God said to Adam, ‘et la mort fut créée’ ” (Edin. Review, 1902, p. 381).] But further elements disclose themselves in the conception. It may be difficult to fix the time at which the connection between sin and death came to be emphasised in the popular consciousness.1 [Note: Probably this doctrine was based on a literal interpretation ofGenesis 3:1-24. So Denney onRomans 5:12. See especially Wisd. 2:23 f:ὅτι ὁ θεὸς ἕκτισεν τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἐπὶ ἀφθαρσίᾳ, καὶ εἰκόνα τῆς ἰδίας ἰδιότητος ἐποίησεν … φθόνῳ δὲ διαβόλου θάνατος εἰσῆλθεν. St Paul was in all likelihood acquainted with this book. Cf. 1 Clem. ad Cor. iii.,ζῆλον ἄδικον … ἀνειληφότας, διʼ οὗ καὶ θάνατος εἰσῆλθεν εἰς τὸν κόσμον; and Evang. Nicod., chap. 23, p. 736,ὦ ἀρχιδιάβολε, ἡ τοῦ θανάτου ἀρχή, ἡ ῥίζα τῆς ἁμαρτίας. Mr F. R. Tennant has sought to show in his recent work, The Sources of the Doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin (Cambridge, 1903), that the earliest indication of the idea that death is a consequence of our first parents’ sin, occurs inSir 25:24. From that time onwards it appears frequently in Judaistic literature-e.g., Enoch lxix. 11; Slavon. Enoch xxx. 16; Apoc. Bar. liv. 15; 4Ezra 3:7. It was the usual teaching of the Rabbis. In commenting upon 4 Ezra 7:11, which he compares withRomans 5:12f., Mr Tennant remarks: “In neither place is it explained how Adam’s sin made his posterity sinful. Perhaps in neither case had the writer developed or received any definite theory on the point” (p. 229). His own view is that St Paul has “clothed the current notion of Adam as the cause of human death, and the root of human sin, in the language of his mystical realism” (p. 266). Certainly St Paul has given us nothing in the nature of a theory on the subject, but is not his conception of race-solidarity something deeper than a Judaistic speculation? Strangely enough, to most primitive peoples, death seems an abnormal event, and immortality the normal course. (See C. P. Tiele, Inleiding tot de Godsdienstwetenschap, ii. p. 197 f.; qu. by Söderblom, op. cit., p. 52.)] In any case it was a natural inference to draw. Sin separates from God. In their view, this is also true of death. Unrelieved death was felt to be a judgment, a doom. Sin and death were inextricably interwoven. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4; cf. the Genesis-narrative, chap. 2:17: “In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die”). In the prophetic period the religious horizon is extended. The vision of the future glory of the Kingdom of God dawns upon the broken nation. Thus the darkness of death is deepened. Not only is it an event which deprives of the present opportunity of fellowship with Jehovah, but it also shatters all prospect of coming blessedness. Further, the frailty and transiency of which it is the crowning proof, the sharp pangs which accompany its approach, the unsightliness and decay which follow its presence, the bitter pain of soul it inflicts on those who are left behind-all these, its associations, impress them as an outrage upon a creation made in the image of God. Plainly, therefore, we may say that for the Hebrew mind the physical fact has a spiritual significance. And so viewed, it is only typical of that remarkable strain of thought, discernible throughout their reflection on the universe, which assumes that the physical is always the medium, the vehicle of the moral, such being its purpose and meaning in the Providential order. Thus death is only intelligible to them in the light of the weakness and sinfulness of humanity. And surely at this point their conception bears witness to the great truth of the ultimate unity of the physical and spiritual worlds, a unity which we regularly break up in our theoretical arguments, and as regularly presuppose in our working, personal experience.

We know that a striking change passed over the Jewish view of the condition of things ushered in by death. This was stimulated by the powerful influence of the doctrine of a Divine retribution, a doctrine which took shape, as we have seen, amidst the strange revolutions of the fortunes of the Jewish nation. There had been various isolated yearnings for uninterrupted fellowship with God. Several remarkable psalms give ample proof of that. We can scarcely suppose that the idea of a resurrection, as we understand it, passed before the psalmists’ minds. Rather was it the passionate cry that, in some miraculous manner, God would deliver them from the gloomy lot of Sheol. But in the Maccabæan period these cravings and hopes took a more concrete form. Victory had roused afresh the sense of national unity. God’s people were still a factor to be reckoned with. The glorious heritage of the past could still be honoured and defended. The triumphal mood was not, indeed, of long duration. Too soon the people again became conscious of their bondage. But an inextinguishable hope had been kindled. The present was the Æon of distress and anguish, in which God’s arm seemed to be shortened. But it was only the precursor of the great Æon to come, when the holy seed should be vindicated, when the Divine purpose for Israel should be laid bare in the eyes of all the nations. Who, then, were to share in that era of felicity? Necessarily, the remnant of the people, the survivors of the chosen stock. Yet, as we have noted, this did not satisfy the sentiment of the nation. Were the heroes of their history, the men who had shed their blood for the faith, to have no part in the joyful restoration? The sense of justice revolted from the thought. The omnipotent God could rectify the inequality. His power could invade Sheol. He could bring the righteous dead to life again. This bold conviction laid the foundation for the great resurrection-hope. Now they could follow the workings of the Divine retribution. Resurrection would be the recompense at least of the eminently righteous. Nevertheless, the expectations of many devout hearts must have been mingled with fear. Would they live to see the redemption of Israel? If not, had they any right to expect a place amongst those favoured ones whom God should ransom from the grave? The more tender their consciences, the more hesitating would be their hope. Superficial minds might picture a resurrection which was little more than a mechanical scene amid the events of the end. The deeper and more earnest thinkers, conscious of failure and transgression, would still view death with gloomy forebodings, for the hope which shone beyond was flickering and dim.

Perhaps enough has been said to account for their dread of death, as that appears in the Old Testament and in the Hebrew mind. It is time now to ask, What relation does the Pauline conception of death hold towards that which we have been considering? Unless we have strong evidence to the contrary, we must believe that the apostle uses the term in its current significance. But we have distinct corroboration of the fact. As it happens, St Paul makes very definite statements concerning death. “As by one man sin entered the world, and death by sin, and so death hath come upon all men, in that all have sinned” (Romans 5:12). “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). “O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:24). He speaks of “the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:2). He describes “the sting of death” as sin (1 Corinthians 15:56). Death is the last enemy to be destroyed in God’s warfare with evil (1 Corinthians 15:26). The final issue of God’s redeeming purpose is that death is swallowed up in victory (1 Corinthians 15:55). These examples, and there are many more, may help us to realise the prominent elements in the apostle’s view of death. Of course there are passages where he uses it in an apparently colourless sense, but it is only by following such clues as these just given that we can penetrate to his real inner thought.

Evidently, for St Paul, as for the men of the Old Testament, death signifies something far deeper than the natural close of life. Too commonly a false analysis has been made of his conception. His idea of death has been qualified by various limiting adjectives. Thus the apostle is supposed in some passages to speak of “physical” or “natural” death; in others of “ethical,” in others still of “spiritual.” In some places he is assumed to have “temporal” death before his mind, in others “eternal.” We believe it is no exaggeration to assert that such distinctions would have been meaningless for St Paul. In this respect he is thoroughly true to the essential nature of Hebrew thought. Theirs was a synthetic view both of life and of death.1 [Note: See this admirably brought out by Dr Davidson in Expos. v. 1, p. 330.] And no fact has to be borne more carefully in mind than this when we attempt to estimate the conceptions of St Paul. For him death is one indivisible experience. It is the correlative of sin. Like all the Biblical writers, he never distinguishes between “moral” (or “spiritual”) and “physical.” It is to miss the permanent ethical element in the apostle’s thinking, when the assertion is made that the physical experience of death in itself was the supreme evil to the mind of St Paul. Thus Kabisch, to whom the merit belongs of emphasising the bearing of this aspect of that experience on the apostle’s feelings, is led into exaggeration and consequent misconception by ignoring the other aspects which have to be reckoned with. “Sin,” he says, “came (according to St Paul) into the world. But this, in itself, is not the evil, were it not that by it death also came into the evil, were it not that by it death also came into the world. For we actually find the apostle dwelling upon the thought, that without law, sin is not imputed. Therefore the misery does not lie in sin itself, but in that which is decreed on account of it” (i.e. death, Esch. d. Paulus, p. 86).1 [Note: Cf. Kabisch, pp. 88, 89: “There are religious views which receive no support from this deep, overpowering impulse to live, which puts other ideas in the background. To them pure death, the mere cessation of existence, is not the most dreadful thing which can be conceived.… (For Paul) death, passing away, is the sum of all that is fearful.… By the æsthetic, equally with the ethical side of his consciousness, it (i.e. death) is abhorred.” Such assertions are untrue to the whole basis of Pauline theology. They cannot be supported by any relevant evidence. The same misconception, arising from an illegitimate partition of the apostle’s thought, is found in an otherwise most suggestive discussion of Steffen’s: “How greatly at times, in certain moods of his religious life, the physical-hyperphysical outweighs the ethical, may be recognised for Paul in the fact that his powerlessness under the law culminates in the crushing utterance of woe, ‘Who shall deliver me from the body of this death.’ He sighed, as none other has done, beneath the curse of the transiency of all that is earthly,” (Z.N.T.W., 1901, H. 2, p. 124). It is the transiency, as charged with the issues of sin, that weighs him down.] This appears to us a complete distortion of the apostle’s teaching. However obscure may be the reference to the imputation of sin in Romans 5:13 (a statement belonging to a passage which, as Dr Denney well expresses it,2 [Note: Expos. vi. 4, p. 304.] “in spite of the enormous place it has filled in the history of dogma, is hardly more than an obiter dictum in the Epistle to the Romans”), St Paul asserts in the preceding sentence that death passed upon all men, because all sinned (ἐφʼ ᾧ πάντες ἥμαρτον). In whatever speculative fashion the apostle may have conceived the connection between the sin of Adam and that of his descendants, we know from his whole religious outlook that when he makes the statement, “all sinned,” he can never have in view an unmeaning, mechanical fiction. Apart from any theorising on inherited guilt, we have his position clearly stated in Romans 3:23 : “all sinned (πάντες γὰρ ἥμαρτον) and fall short of (ὑστεροῦνται) the glory of God.” All are blameworthy. Death, therefore, in St Paul’s view, is not something which works, as it were, mechanically. It is, as it speaks to the sensitive conscience, the shadow of the wrath of God. It is for that reason the apostle shrinks from it in terror. “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death” (Romans 7:24). He exults to think of a time when its sway shall be abolished. “O death, where is thy sting? O death, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law: but thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:55-57). The latter passage is decisive for the view we advocate. Not the mere physical experience, not the mere consciousness of mortality, nor, on the other hand, a spiritual doom ushered in by death, but viewed as belonging entirely to the soul, and out of relation to the physical experience:-not with alternatives such as these have we to deal in estimating St Paul’s standpoint, but with an event which includes and implies them all. This quailing in the presence of death is very marked throughout the New Testament, and a careful appreciation of it is of real importance for the comprehension of early Christian thought. We may recall the striking instance in Hebrews 2:14, where Christ is said “through death” to destroy “him that hath the power of death-that is, the devil”-and to set free “those who through fear of death were, throughout the whole of their life, subject to bondage.”1 [Note: AN INTERESTING PASSAGE MAY BE QUOTED FROM BOSWELL’S LIFE OF JOHNSON:-“I EXPRESSED A HORROR AT THE THOUGHT OF DEATH. MRS KNOWLES: “NAY, THOU SHOULDST NOT HAVE A HORROR FOR WHAT IS THE GATE OF LIFE.” JOHNSON (STANDING UPON THE HEARTH, ROLLING ABOUT, WITH A SERIOUS, SOLEMN, AND SOMEWHAT GLOOMY AIR): “NO RATIONAL MAN CAN DIE WITHOUT UNEASY APPREHENSION.” MRS KNOWLES: “THE SCRIPTURES TELL US, ‘THE RIGHTEOUS SHALL HAVE HOPE IN HIS DEATH.’ ” JOHNSON: “YES, MADAM; THAT IS, HE SHALL NOT HAVE DESPAIR. BUT, CONSIDER, HIS HOPE OF SALVATION MUST BE FOUNDED ON THE TERMS ON WHICH IT IS PROMISED THAT THE MEDIATION OF OUR SAVIOUR SHALL BE APPLIED TO US-NAMELY, OBEDIENCE; AND WHEN OBEDIENCE HAS FAILED, THEN, AS SUPPLETORY TO IT, REPENTANCE. BUT WHAT MAN CAN SAY THAT HIS OBEDIENCE HAS BEEN SUCH AS HE WOULD APPROVE OF IN ANOTHER, OR EVEN IN HIMSELF UPON CLOSE EXAMINATION, OR THAT HIS REPENTANCE HAS NOT BEEN SUCH AS TO REQUIRE BEING REPENTED OF?…” BOSWELL: “THEN, SIR, WE MUST BE CONTENTED TO ACKNOWLEDGE THAT DEATH IS A TERRIBLE THING.” JOHNSON: “YES, SIR. I HAVE MADE NO APPROACHES TO A STATE WHICH CAN LOOK ON IT AS NOT TERRIBLE” (IV. 297, 298, BIRRELL’S ED.). CF. THE DICTUM OF LA ROCHEFOUCAULD: “EVERYTHING THAT IS MOST CALCULATED TO PERSUADE THAT DEATH IS NOT AN EVIL HAS BEEN WRITTEN … YET I DOUBT WHETHER ANY SENSIBLE PERSON EVER BELIEVED IT, AND THE TROUBLE TAKEN IN ORDER TO PERSUADE OTHERS AS THE WRITERS THEMSELVES OF IT SHOWS PLAINLY THAT IT IS NO EASY ENTERPRISE. EVERY MAN WHO CAN SEE DEATH AS IT IS, FEELS IT A TERRIBLE THING.” PROF. SHALER TREATS THE FEAR OF DEATH FROM A VERY DIFFERENT STANDPOINT. “IT IS WELL TO REMEMBER,” HE SAYS, “THAT THE INSTINCTIVE FEAR OF DEATH IS NOT, AS OUR FOREFATHERS DEEMED IT, A DREAD OF COMING TO A PLACE OF JUDGMENT, THOUGH THAT IDEA HAS ADDED TO THE PANG. ITS SOURCE IS TO BE LOOKED FOR IN OUR ANIMAL ANCESTRY, WHERE THIS FEAR, BLIND AND UNCONSCIOUS OF ITS OBJECT, WAS ABSOLUTELY DEMANDED FOR THE FIT PRESERVATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL” (THE INDIVIDUAL, P. 200). BUT DOES THIS EXPLANATION LEAD US ANY DEEPER INTO THE MEANING OF THE EXPERIENCE FOR A RATIONAL, ETHICAL BEING?]

Plainly, this recoil from death is precisely in line with that which we have noted in the Old Testament. Death is regarded as separation from God. The tender conscience shudders at the prospect as merited separation. So death, conceived as the final word on human destiny, becomes the synonym for hopeless doom. Probably, therefore, St Paul could not picture a more appalling penalty for sin than death, and all that death, in its complete paralysis of the personal being, must involve. With his tremendous experience of the inner conflict between self and the holy law of God, and of all the misery which that conflict stirred within him, he perhaps felt little need of emphasising extraneous penalties in addition to the awful crisis of death. A death which was death pure and simple, with the sharp sting of sin in it, with nothing to mitigate the soul’s isolation from the living God, with no hope or prospect in it, an existence robbed of all that makes existence worth having, would loom before his eyes as an overpowering judgment. As we shall see presently, this view of death sets in an extraordinarily vivid contrast the revelation of eternal life made in Jesus Christ. Indeed, to recognise its significance to the full, we require to have before our minds the apostle’s view of the “life everlasting.”1 [Note: It is not our aim in this investigation, even if we were competent for the task, to examine St Paul’s conceptions of such experiences as death or life in the light of current scientific theory. Unquestionably, biological science would rule out as irrelevant the intimate connection between sin and death which is so important for the apostle. And yet science can only go a very short distance in pronouncing upon the meaning of death. “It must be admitted,” says Weissmann (and we quote from him as a representative biologist), “that we can see no reason why the power of cell-multiplication should not be unlimited, and why the organism should not therefore be endowed with everlasting life. In the same manner, from the physiological point of view, we might admit that we can see no reason why the functions of an organism should ever cease. It is only from the point of view of utility that we can understand the necessity of death … I consider that death is not a primary necessity, but that it has been secondarily acquired as an adaptation … Death is to be looked on as an occurrence advantageous to the species as a concession to the outward conditions of life, not as an absolute necessity, essentially inherent in life itself … (Death) is an adaptation which first appeared when, in consequence of a certain complexity of structure, an unending life became disadvantageous to the species” (Essays upon Heredity, ed. 2 (E. Tr.), i. pp. 23, 25, 111). Of course, this theory regards man merely as an animal. But, viewing him as a self-conscious ethical being, must not the union of his rational life with the bodily organism be conceived differently from the relation of the vital functions of the “lower” animals to their bodies? And keeping in mind the break, which science has never surmounted, between rational and merely animal life, may we not conceive, even from the scientific standpoint, a situation in which, for self-conscious persons, “utility,” coinciding with a domination of the spiritual over the material, might have demanded the transition of the individual into a higher stage of life, without the occurrence of the adaptation called death? In the event of man’s acting in perfect harmony with his highest good, might not the whole organism have followed other lines of development which would have still further differentiated it from that of inferior species, and more directly and immediately assimilated it to the nature and existence of God?] But before we leave St Paul’s conception of θάνατος as a bare and gloomy fact of human existence, a fact which, in the words of Professor Kähler, “as we sinners experience it, has remained the preacher of responsibility,” it is necessary to examine briefly the closely related term ἀπώλεια, “destruction,” as it is employed in the Pauline Epistles. This is of importance, because many arguments have been based upon it, in the attempt to establish the theory of annihilation, which forms so essential an element in the hypothesis of Conditional Immortality. We must confine ourselves to St Paul, but his use of the term and its cognates is sufficiently clear and instructive. The noun ἀπώλεια occurs but rarely in the apostle’s writings. There are about a dozen instances of the verb, ἀπολλύναι. In 2 Thessalonians 2:3, he describes the “man of lawlessness” by the epithet, “son of ἀπώλεια.” In Romans 9:22, he speaks of “vessels of wrath fitted out for ἀπώλεια.” The camaraderie of Christians in courageous adherence to their faith is to be to their adversaries a proof of their ἀπώλεια, but of the Christian’s σωτηρία (Php 1:28). And to the same Church he writes of a group of nominal members of the Christian community, who are “enemies of the Cross of Christ, whose end is ἀπώλεια” (Php 3:18-19). The verb occurs most frequently as a designation of those who reject the Gospel of Christ: they are οἱ ἀπολλύμενοι as opposed to οἱ σωζόμενοι (so 1 Corinthians 1:18; 2 Corinthians 2:15; 2 Corinthians 4:3; 2 Thessalonians 2:10). In Romans 2:12, it is said of those who sinned without having the law (ἀνόμως), that without having the law, ἀπολοῦνται. The fate of those Israelites in the wilderness who were bitten by the serpents (Numbers 21:6) or died of the plague (ib. 14:37) because of their murmurings, is described by the same term (ὑπὸ τὼν ὄφεων ἀπώλλυντο … ἀπώλοντο ὑπὸ τοῦ ὀλοθρευτοῦ, 1 Corinthians 10:9-10). If Christ be not risen, then those who fell asleep in Christ ἀπώλοντο (1 Corinthians 15:18). The apostle, in recording his own trials as a worker for Christ, speaks of himself and his fellow-labourers as “cast down, but not ἀπολλύμενοι” (2 Corinthians 4:4; 2 Corinthians 4:9). In two interesting passages where he is dealing with Christian liberty and its responsibilities, he warns his brethren to walk warily: μὴ τῷ βρώματί σου ἐκεῖνον ἀπόλλυε, ὑπὲρ οὗ Χριστὸς ἀπέθανεν (Romans 14:15), “Destroy not with thy meat him for whom Christ died”; ἀπόλλυται γὰρ ὁ ἀσθενῶν ἐν τῇ σῇ γνώσει, ὁ ἀδελφὸς διʼ ὃν Χριστὸς ἀπέθανεν (1 Corinthians 8:11), “For he who is weak is destroyed by thy knowledge, the brother on whose account Christ died.” The only other occurrence of the verb is in 1 Corinthians 1:19, where he quotes part of Isaiah 29:14 from the LXX.: ἀπολῶ τὴν σοφίαν τῶν σοφῶν, καὶ τὴν σύνεσιν τῶν συνετῶν ἀθετήσω, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and make void the understanding of the prudent.” This quotation is interesting as occurring immediately after his use of the phrase οἱ ἀπολλύμενοι, indicating that it is in harmony with the usage of the Septuagint. It is evident that in all of the above passages which bear on the future destiny of men, ἀπώλεια is used as the antithesis of σωτηρία, and ἀπόλλυσθαι of σώζεσθαι. The question of existence is not before the apostle’s mind at all. Blessedness and its converse are the ideas which concern him. In one or two of the instances quoted, the verb is exactly equivalent to ἀποθνήσκειν (so 1 Corinthians 10:9-10; also 1 Corinthians 15:18, where ἀπώλοντο = “died” in the ordinary sense of the word, “died without the possibility of a blessed resurrection”). The verse from the LXX. is, of course, figurative, thus showing the wide sense in which the apostle knows the verb can be used. And in this respect, the two remaining passages are extremely suggestive. He is warning against the damage which may be done by a reckless and selfish use of Christian liberty. Hence we may translate, “Do not ruin by what you eat, that brother for whom Christ died”: “For he that is weak is damaged (or ruined) by your knowledge, the brother on whose account Christ died.” Quite obviously, there is no hint of “destruction,” or “extinction” here. He speaks, as we speak, of one man “ruining” another without in any way meaning to specify in what this ruin will formally issue.1 [Note: Many instances of this sense ofἀπόλλυμιcan be given from later Greek. The following are taken from an interesting paper by Prof. Massie in Expos. ii. 2, pp. 64-70. Polyb. xxxii. 19: “They did not wish the people in Italyκατʼ οὐδένα τρόπον ἀπόλλυσθαι(to become in any way demoralised)”διὰ τὴν πολυχρόνιον εἰρήνην. In Dion Chrysost. xxxi. 348 c, the phraseτοῖς ἐσχάτως ἀπολωλόσιis used as a description of immoral character, “those who are utterly abandoned.” Plutarch (De Cupid. Divit. chap. vii.), pointing out the bad training which misers give their children, says: “The children they think to educateἀπολλύουσι καὶ προσδιαστρέφουσι(they ruin and pervert).” In his Vita M. Antonii, 66, he describes Antony at Actium as fleeing after the woman (Cleopatra)τὴν ἀπολωλεκυῖαν ἤδη καὶ προσαπολοῦσαν αὐτόν(“who had already ruined him, and would ruin him yet more.”)]

We have already pointed out how largely St Paul’s terminology, as well as the complexion of his thought, was affected by the usage of the LXX. Now ἀπώλεια and its cognates are frequently found in the Septuagint. In the numerous examples which we have examined, its significance varies from what we should call a “calamity” to “destruction” in the sense of death, and the doom which that involves. Thus, Ezekiel 29:12 (of Egypt), δώσω τὴν γῆν αὐτῆς ἀπώλειαν, where it means “desolation,” or “devastatation” (Heb. שְׁמָמָה); Jude 7:25, καταστρωθῆναι … ἐν δίψῃ καὶ ἀπωλείᾳ μεγάλῃ, co-ordinated with “thirst” = “sore calamity”; Proverbs 6:15, ἐξαπίνης ἔρχεται ἡ ἀπώλεια αὐτοῦ, where ἀπώλεια = Heb. אֵיד, distress, calamity (lit. = that under which one bends, .D.B.); Isaiah 54:16, ἔκτισάσεοὐκεἰςἀπώλειανφθεῖραι = destruction (in the sense of “kill” = Heb. שָׁחַת). Perhaps our word “ruin” would most adequately cover the various applications of ἀπώλεια. Of special importance and value for our discussion is the use of ἀπώλεια and kindred words in the of Solomon, a book which shows some singularly interesting points of contact with Pauline thought.1 [Note: Grafe (in Abhandlungen C. v. Weizsäcker gewidmet, pp. 253-286) attempts to show that St Paul derived from Wisdom “a large number of words, ideas, and illustrations” to express “conceptions and convictions gained from other sources”; while “in a few not unessential points he shows himself materially influenced by Wisdom, in his doctrine of predestination, in his eschatology, and in his criticism of heathenism and its idol-worship” (p. 286). We are unable to accept his arguments for the latter position (see Additional Note, p. 344 f.). But there is much to be said in favour of his statement “that Paul, even if Wisdom were not his source, repeatedly shows a contact in expression with significant conceptions and groups of conceptions belonging to Hellenism, conceptions which, on the one hand, exercised the most powerful influence on the higher part of the heathen world, and on the other, by reason of the depth and earnestness of their content, could most readily form an alliance with Christianity” (loc. cit.).] The godless, we read, are to be wholly destroyed by God: εἰς ὕβριν ἐν νεκροῖς διʼ αἰῶνος. ὅτι ῥήξει αὐτοὺς ἀφώνους πρηνεῖς … καὶ ἕως ἐσχάτου χερσωθήσονται (Wisd. 4:19). This last expression, ἕως ἐσχάτου χερσωθήσονται, is one of the strongest conceivable for destruction. The verb has a more intense force than ἀπόλλυμι. Yet the writer continues, καὶ ἔσονται ἐν ὀδύνῃ, “and they shall be in anguish.” Thus their destruction is by no means conceived as annihilation, although it is described in the most drastic and vivid terms. They still possess a conscious existence, which, however, is sheer ruin, so far as the idea of life is concerned. The same notion is met with in apocalyptic literature. Thus, e.g., Enoch cviii. 3 has the following description of the ungodly: “Their names shall be blotted out of the book of life and out of the books of the holy ones, and their seed shall be destroyed for ever, and their spirits shall be slain, and they shall cry and make lamentation in a place that is a waste wilderness, and they shall burn with fire where there is no earth.” Cf. Enoch xcix. 11, xxii. 13. This is true to the Hebrew standpoint. The ungodly are destroyed. That is, they lose all true life, all that would count as life to a Jew. But they do not lose conscious existence.1 [Note: Cf. the Babylonian conception: “The body decays in the grave (Shalamtu = name given to the corpse, ‘that which is done with’), but the soul lives in the gloom of Hades, and in that abode of horror leads an immaterial shadow-like existence” (Jeremias, Babylonian Conception of Heaven and Hell, p. 31).] Here, for example, they are still in anguish. The same interpretation will be found to hold strictly for St Paul. In his Epistles, ἀπώλεια and ἀπόλλυσθαι are the exact antithesis of σωτηρία and σώζεσθαι. Both sides of the contrast are concerned with the true life of the individual. It may be noted that repeatedly in the LXX., ἀπώλεια is the translation of אֲבַדּוֹן, the place of ruin in Sheol for the lost or ruined dead. All that makes life worth living is destroyed for them. The existence they still possess cannot be called life at all. That has been lost, shattered. But even able writers ignore this distinction between “life” and “existence.” Thus Ménégoz: “It is not only Paul’s anthropology, but also the Pauline idea of redemption that is opposed to the understanding of death as anything else than the abolition of existence”; and again, “The whole theological system of Paul falls to pieces if death be understood to mean anything else than the suppression of existence” (Le Péché et la Rédemption d’après St Paul, pp. 78, 84).1 [Note: Dr Petavel, a leading exponent of this theory, defines Annihilation in his sense of the term as “the gradual diminution of the faculties possessed by the individual ego, and the final extinction of that master faculty by which we take possession of the other faculties” (Problem of Immortality, p. 202). We are not here concerned with arguments for or against Annihilation as a theory, but we have no hesitation in asserting that a definition like the above would have appeared altogether irrelevant to St Paul. He deals with a different set of categories.] Similarly, Mr Edward White, commenting on the words εἰς ὄλεθρον καὶ ἀπώλειαν (1 Timothy 6:9), affirms that “the Greek language does not afford two stronger expressions than these for denoting the idea of literal death and extinction of being” (Life in Christ, p. 383). A closer acquaintance with Hebrew and Jewish modes of thought would have shown those writers who have established their view of annihilation on such New Testament terms as ἀπώλεια, ἀπόλλυσθαι, ὄλεθρος, κ.τ.λ., the impossibility of such a deduction. What moderns are apt to forget is, that for the Old Testament writers and for St Paul, the question of the existence of the person had no interest whatsoever. They were not concerned at all with considerations of immortality in the abstract. It was life which occupied their thoughts: the life of the community or the individual: that is, existence in touch with God. When that contact was lost, the outlook for the person was the most hopeless they could imagine. For death could then signify for him (in St Paul’s view) nothing else than the experience in which the meaning of sin for God should be most overpoweringly felt. This is unmitigated disaster, ἀπώλεια, ruin.1 [Note: CF. A. B. DAVIDSON (EXPOS. V. 1, P. 333): “THEY (I.E. OLD TESTAMENT SAINTS AND PROPHETS) DID NOT REASON THAT THE SOUL WAS IMMORTAL FROM ITS NATURE-THIS WAS NOT THE KIND OF IMMORTALITY IN WHICH THEY WERE INTERESTED-THOUGH FOR ALL THAT APPEARS THE IDEA THAT ANY HUMAN PERSON SHOULD BECOME EXTINCT OR BE ANNIHILATED NEVER OCCURRED TO THEM.” SIMILARLY, PROF. ROBERTSON SMITH: “WE HAVE NO REASON TO SUPPOSE THAT THERE EVER WAS A TIME WHEN THE HEBREWS HELD THE ANNIHILATION OF THE SOUL IN DEATH. BUT THE CONTINUED EXISTENCE OF THE REPHAIM … IS NEVER THOUGHT OF AS LIFE: NAY, IT IS THE VERY CONTRARY OF LIFE, OPPOSED TO IT AS DARKNESS IS TO LIGHT” (EXPOS. I. 4, P. 356). SEE ALSO, FOR ST PAUL’S VIEW, AN ADMIRABLE PARAGRAPH BY F. KÖSTLIN, JAHRB. F. DEUTSCHE THEOL., 1877, P. 275. FOR INSTANCES OFἀΠΩΛΕΙΑAND COGNATES IN JUDAISTIC LITERATURE, SEE VOLZ, OP. CIT., PP. 282, 283.] From the positions that have been stated, it is not difficult to approach St Paul’s conception of Life, which is, perhaps, the most important of which we have to treat in view of the discussions before us. Let us begin, as before, with the Old Testament background of the conception.

Ζωή and ζῆν, the terms employed by the apostle, are almost invariably in the Septuagint translations of the Hebrew חַיִּים and חָיָח. These Hebrew words are, of course, frequently equivalent to “life,” “live,” in our common usage, as applied to the ordinary physical existence of mankind. Briggs, Brown, and Driver, in their Hebrew Lexicon, remark of חָיָח that it often has “the pregnant sense of fulness of life in the divine favour.” Instances are, .g., Deuteronomy 8:3, “Man doth not live by bread only, but by everything that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live”; Isaiah 38:16, “O Lord, by these things (God’s promises?) men live, and wholly therein is the life of my spirit”; Ezekiel 33:19, “When the wicked man turneth from his wickedness, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall live thereby”; Habakkuk 2:4, “A righteous man by his faithfulness shall live” (“such a character has in it the quality of permanence,” Davidson, loc.); Psalms 80:18, “Quicken Thou us, and we will call upon Thy name”; Ecclesiastes 7:12, “The excellency of knowledge is that wisdom preserveth the life of him that hath it”; Deuteronomy 30:15, “See, I have set before thee this day, life (חַיִּים) and good, and death and evil”; Proverbs 8:35, “Whoso findeth me, findeth life”; Psalms 133:3, “There the Lord commanded the blessing, even life for evermore” (חַיִּיםעַד־הָעוֹלָם). The lexical note quoted above does no more than justice to the Old Testament conception of Life. It emphasises the large content that is included in it, a content amply attested by the examples which have been given. This wide significance of the idea of life is in full accord with the essential attitude of the Old Testament to natural phenomena. Their importance, for it, consists in their capacity of revealing the moral forces which work in and behind them. The Old Testament writers have no abstract interest in the meaning of life. Such statements as those of modern biological science that “perfect correspondence (to environment) would be perfect life” (so Herbert Spencer, Principles of Biology, i. p. 88), lie outside the region of their reflection. And yet, by a slight alteration we might affirm that, for them, perfect life consists in “perfect correspondence” with God.1 [Note: Cf. Mr Mivart’s interesting admission from the scientific point of view: “It is impossible to adequately define life without taking into our definition the idea of ‘an end’ in the orderly changes which it presents, and it seems needless to include within it a reference to the environment” (Contemp. Review, xxxv. p. 707).] It is just because He is the all-absorbing environment for their thought, that Life, like every other fundamental conception, assumes in the Old Testament a predominantly religious cast. We may gather, therefore, from the instances cited above, that there is a blending of the physical and the religious. Take Deuteronomy 8:3 : “Man doth not live by bread only, but by everything that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live.” We should be apt, in such a statement, to distinguish between the physical and the spiritual. The Old Testament writers are conscious of a unity in which the physical is always included, but taken up, as it were, into a higher synthesis. Of typical significance is the affirmation of Psalms 36:9 : “With Thee is the fountain of life.” Life, in its fulness, springs from God. This truth is emphasised by the Creation-narrative of Genesis 2:7, in which it is said of God (we quote the Septuagint on account of its importance for St Paul’s thought): ἐνεφύσησεν εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ πνοὴν ζωῆς, καὶ ἐγένετο ὁ ἄνθρωπος εἰς ψυχὴν ζῶσαν, “He breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” Life, that is to say, is the result of the impartation of the ruah of God. Ruah (πνεῦμα in the LXX. and St Paul) is the energy of God, going forth and acting, the energy of God in its definite operations. God, to the Hebrew, is pre-eminently the Living One. The chief factor in his conception of God is that of activity, an activity whose power cannot be limited. See, e.g., Jeremiah 10:10-12, “The Lord is the true God; He is the living God, and an everlasting King: at His wrath the earth trembleth, and the nations are not able to abide His indignation.… He hath made the earth by His power, He hath established the world by His wisdom, and by His understanding hath He stretched out the heavens”; Daniel 4:34-35, “I blessed the Most High, and I praised and honoured Him that liveth for ever: for His dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom from generation to generation: and all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and He doeth according to His will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of earth: and none can stay His hand, or say unto Him, What doest thou?”1 [Note: Grill (Untersuchungen, etc., i. p. 237) calls attention to the interesting fact that the New Testament writers, when they speak expressly of God as the “living,” conceive the being of God as Power, in thorough accordance with the Old Testament usage and conception (cf.Matthew 26:63;Acts 14:15;Matthew 16:16; Matthew 16:18-19;1 Thessalonians 1:9;Hebrews 9:14;2 Corinthians 3:3).] Kleinert points out that side of the life of God which is related to “enjoyment” is scarcely found in the Old Testament: it only appears in relation to His activities; see, e.g., Psalms 104:31 : “The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever: the Lord shall rejoice in his works”; also, Zephaniah 3:17; Isaiah 62:4; Joshua 3:10, (S.K., 1895, p. 701). He notes further that all God’s living energy is borne along by the constant knowledge and willing of itself: that is to say, it is personal (op. cit., p. 706). This conception of God as the Living is most intimately related with the Hebrew idea of Him, not precisely (in the earlier stages of thought) as Spirit, but always as having Spirit.1 [Note: See Siebeck, Zeitschr. f. Völker-Psychol. xii. p. 392.] Thus His most characteristic operation is the breathing out of His spiritual energy (ruah, N.T. πνεῦμα). The result in the creation of man is that he becomes εἰς ψυχὴν ζῶσαν, “a living soul.” That is to say, man is constituted a “person.” He possesses a principle of life (nephesh, in the New Testament, ψυχή), a rational principle with an intelligent side, or faculty, which St Paul designates by νοῦς. The Divine side of his personality may be termed the ruah, the human the nephesh, yet it would be hazardous to draw too sharp a distinction between them. It is important to note that in the Creation-narrative this “living soul” is ascribed only to Man 1:2[Note: “According to Bammidbar rabba, chap. xvi., the first man, as the image of God, received eternal life: his transgression made him mortal” (Weber, Lehren d. Talmud, p. 208). Cf. the relation of Wisd. 2:23 f. toGenesis 1:26; Genesis 2:7; Genesis 2:3; and see Grimm’s instructive note on Wisd. 2:23. Philo draws a sharp contrast between theδύναμις ζωτική, or physical principle of life, and theδύναμις λογική, or rational principle. The former belongs to all living organisms (ζῶα); the latter, found in theνοῦς, belongs exclusively to man, and differentiates him from the mereζῶον(see Quod. det. pot. insid. sol., 82, 83, C. W.).] “It is this capacity for moral and spiritual action,” says Kleinert, “in short, the distinctively human, which entirely determines the specific appreciation of life and the value of life, in the Old Testament” (loc. cit., p. 679). At death, according to the Old Testament, the Divine ruah is withdrawn, and there can be no life without that: hence, with the paralysis of the whole person, the nephesh is shattered, ruined. We can already discern the preparation for a more spiritual psychology (although it is scarcely permissible to use so formal a term) such as we discover in the writings of St Paul.

But, to return to the Old Testament, Life is the supreme blessing. “See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil” (Deuteronomy 30:15). “Whoso findeth me (i.e. wisdom), findeth life” (Proverbs 8:35). “Wisdom preserveth the life of him who hath it” (Ecclesiastes 7:12). This last passage (and it is only one of many which might be adduced) clearly shows that the physical permanence of life is to be included in what may appear the purely “spiritual” statements of those which precede it. Some of the verses quoted on a former page, more especially a group which is well represented by Psalms 80:18, “Quicken (literally, ‘make us to live’) us, and we will call upon Thy name,” may appear, at the first glance, to have an entirely spiritual connotation. Yet when we bear in mind the Hebrew conception of life as the inbreathing of the Divine ruah, it would be probably an exaggeration to assert that there was no trace of a physical element involved.1 [Note: “Life (in the Old Testament) is what we so call when we see it, the subsistence of the complete personality in the unity of its parts, body and soul” (A. B. Davidson in H.D.B., i. p. 739). Cf. Kleinert, S.K., 1895, pp. 700-725, for the various religious aspects of Life in the Old Testament.] When we pass on to the Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal literature, we still move among Old Testament ideas, but these have been strikingly modified. We may mention one or two significant passages in 2 Maccabees, where πνεῦμα and ζωή are directly co-ordinated: e.g., 7:22, τό πνεῦμα καὶ τὴν ζωὴν ὑμῖν ἐχαρισάμην-“I granted to you your spirit and your life”; 14:46, ἐπικαλεσάμενος τὸν δεσπόζοντα τῆς ζωῆς καὶ τοῦ πνέυματος … τόνδε τὸν τρόπον μετήλλαξεν-“Calling upon Him who is Lord of life and spirit … in this manner he departed.” These find a close parallel in Ezekiel 37:5 : Ἰδοὺ ἐγὼ φέρω εἰς ὑμᾶς πνεὺμα ζωῆς … καὶ δώσω πνεῦμα μου εἰς ὑμᾶς καὶ ζήσεσθε· καὶ γνώσεσθε ὅτι ἐγώ εἰμι κύριος-“Behold, I bring to you the spirit of life … and I will put my Spirit into you, and ye shall live, and ye shall know that I am the Lord.” Quite clearly, ζωή depends immediately on πνεῦμα. In the pseudepigraphal writings, we find, as we should expect, the Old Testament idea of Life (with the physical side largely in evidence) as a recompense of righteousness. See, for example, Sibyl. Orac. iv. 45: “The righteous shall remain on the fruitful earth, as God gives them spirit and life and grace.” This is a higher form, however, of the conception than that which appears, e.g., in Enoch v. 9: “They (i.e. the righteous) shall not be punished all the days of their life, nor shall they die of plagues or visitations of wrath, but they shall complete the full number of the days of their life, and their lives shall grow old in peace, and the years of their joy shall be many, in eternal happiness and peace, all the days of their life.” We are here reminded forcibly of the beautiful picture in Zechariah 8:4 : “Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, There shall yet old men and old women dwell in the streets of Jerusalem, and every man with his staff in his hand for very age.” There is nothing transcendental in these delineations. But now there comes into far greater prominence what we may designate the eschatological conception of Life. A few examples will make this clear. Slavon. Enoch l. 2, “Ye shall inherit the endless life1 [Note: Bousset notes how the expressionçÇéÅé òåÉìÈídominates apocalyptic literature. He gives numerous examples (Religion d. Judenthums, p. 263). . Volz, Jüdische Eschatol., p. 306 (on the simple idea “live”): “The most universal but most pregnant word for participation in salvation is ‘to live’ … = be blessed (saved), in 4 Ezra 7:21, 129, 8:6; Ps. Sol. 14:3, 15:13 (opp.ἀπόλλυσθαι) … the blessed (saved) are the , Apoc. Bar. xlix. 2, li. 11 (vivimus, 4 Ezra 7:67); they attain to life … = be blessed (saved), 4 Ezra 7:137 f.” “In 85d onLeviticus 18:5, we see a characteristic transference from the present to the future; it is said there: ‘He who keeps the law receives thereby life in the coming Olam: if thou sayest, In this Olam, is not his end death? Therefore it is to be explained, He shall live thereby in the coming Olam’ ” (. cit., p. 326).] which is to come; Ps. Sol. 3:16, “They that fear the Lord shall rise to life everlasting, and their life in the light of the Lord shall no more fail”; ib. 9:9, “He that doeth righteousness heapeth up life for himself with the Lord”; Sibyl. Orac., prooem, 84, 85, “Those who reverence the true and everlasting God inherit life (i.e., inhabit evermore the green garden of Paradise); Apoc. Bar. xlii. 7, “Corruption shall take those that belong to it, and life those that belong to it.” Here we have precisely the idea which the New Testament calls “eternal life,” and the later Jewish literature “the life of the future Æon” (see Dalman, Worte Jesu, pp. 129-131, where a brief summary is given of the process by which this conception has been reached). This forms, in our Lord’s discourses, the antithesis to ἀπώλεια (see, e.g., Matthew 7:13-14). It is largely equivalent, in His use of it, to the expression which predominated in His teaching, “the Kingdom of God.”1 [Note: See Haupt, Eschatol. Aussagen Jesu, pp. 85, 86. Von Schrenck puts the facts aptly: “That condition in which the rule of God is to be fully realised, and the children of God in fellowship with one another and in untroubled bliss are to see God and rejoice in His rule-that will beζωή” (Die johanneische Anschauung von “Leben,” p. 37). He notes how Jesus took the Danielic and contemporary expectation of an eternal life and deepened it in accordance with His religious-ethical view of the comingβασιλείαof God. Volz traces the eschatological conception of “Life” through the following stages: (1) = Continuance, as presupposition of participation in salvation; (2) = Participation in salvation; (3) = Sum of blessings in the period of salvation; (4) = Eternal blessedness (see Jüdische Eschatol., pp. 326, 327).]

It is important to observe that the Old Testament idea of Life does not stand in isolation from this later conception. We can see already how the difference between them is bridged over in such passages as the following:-Ps. Song of Solomon 13:9, “The life of the righteous endureth for ever”; Wisd. of Song of Solomon 3:2-4, “In the eyes of the foolish, they (i.e. the righteous) seemed to have died, and their departure was reckoned a misery … but they are in peace. For even if they were punished according to the view of men, their hope was full of immortality” (Song of Solomon 1:15, “righteousness is immortal”);2 [Note: Cf. the remarkable parallel in Philo (Quod det. pot. xlix, C.W.):ὁ μὲν δὴ σοφὸς τεθνηκέναι δοκῶν τὸν φθαρτὸν βίον ζῇ τὸν ἄφθαρτον. The same idea is highly elaborated in Enoch cii. 4-civ.] Apoc. Bar. xiv. 13, “These (i.e. the righteous) without fear leave the world, and trusting with joy, they hope to receive the world which Thou has promised them.”3 [Note: A suggestive parallel from Greek religion is to be found in Soph. Frag. 753 (N):ὡς τρὶς ὅλβιοι κεῖνοι βροτῶν, οἳ ταῦτα δερχθέντες τέλη(i.e. those initiated into the mysteries at Eleusis)μόλωσʼ ἐς Ἅιδου· τοῖσδε γὰρ μόνοις ἐκεῖ ζῆν ἔστι, τοῖς δʼ ἄλλοισι πάντʼ ἐκεῖ κακά. See Rohde, Psyche,2 Bd. i. p. 294. Rohde points out that the continued life of the soul after its separation from the body was not so much taught at Eleusis as presupposed, for “this belief lay at the foundation of the universally-diffused soul-worship. What the initiated at Eleusis gained was a more vivid idea of the meaning of this existence of departed souls, which was left empty in the conceptions which lay at the basis of soul-worship” (loc. cit.).] Here, the thought of the continuity of the life of the righteous in the present with that which awaits them after death, is brought into full prominence.

It is difficult to determine precisely what theory these writers held as to the basis of the endurance of life in the righteous. Possibly hints towards the comprehension of such a theory may be found in passages like Slavon. Enoch xxx. 8: “I ordered My wisdom to make man of seven substances … his spirit from My spirit and from the wind.” There is an immortal element in man, which, if rightly cherished, will be the pledge of immortality. This thought finds unique expression in Wisd. Song of Solomon 2:23, 24 (a passage already referred to, which cannot, however, be taken as a typical example of the literature or period in question): “God created man for incorruption (ἀφθαρσία), and made him a copy of His own peculiar essence (ἰδιότης), but by envy of the devil death entered the world, and they that are of his portion make trial thereof.” It is quite possible that these writers (like Ecclesiastes 12:7) conceived the πνεῦμα as returning to “God who gave it,”1 [Note: Cf. and contrast Inscr. of Antiochus of Commagene (69-34 b.c.):σῶμα … πρὸς οὐρανίους Διὸς Ὠρομάσδου θρόνους θεοφιλῆ ψυχὴν προπέμψαν, εἰς τὸν ἄπειρον αἰῶνα κοιμήσεται (Cumont, Textes … relatifs aux Mystères de Mithra, ii. 89).] in the case of those who had defied God’s will and yielded to the sway of evil. But it would be unsafe, where opinions are so vague and fluctuating, to attempt even the outline of any hypothetical theory. From the foregoing brief investigation, we are able to realise the ideas which were in the air, more especially among the Pharisaic circles in which St Paul received his early training. It should prove of genuine interest to attempt to discover the new and the old in his formulation of his great primary conceptions. What content, then, did the idea of ζωή have for the apostle? The idea, even in its deeper suggestions, was, probably, in no sense foreign to his earliest thinking. Indeed, certain hints afforded by the Epistles would lead us to believe that the question of a true, victorious, indissoluble life was a pressing one for St Paul even in his pre-Christian days. There can be no doubt that the craving for life in the fullest sense of the term, is a factor of immense weight in the religious consciousness. A recent philosophical writer has said: “Not God, but life, more life, a larger, richer, more satisfying life, is, in the last analysis, the end of religion. The love of life at any and every level of development, is the religious impulse” (Prof. Leuba, Monist, xi. p. 572: quoted by James, Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 507). In the form in which it is here expressed, this dictum is an exaggeration, but certainly an exaggeration in the true direction.1 [Note: Cf. Tennyson’s well-known lines:- “Thou wilt not leave us in the dust.

Thou madest man, he knows not why- He thinks he was not made to die, And Thou hast made him: Thou art just”

(In Memoriam, Prelude); and James (Human Immortality, p. 11), “The whole subject of immortal life has its prime roots in personal feeling.”]

“The universe,” writes Prof. James, “with every living entity which her resources create, creates at the same time a call for that entity, and an appetite for its continuance” (Human Immortality, p. 78). We have seen that death was an experience at which St Paul shuddered.1 [Note: For the Judaistic fear of death, see Weber, Lehren d. Talmud, pp. 325, 326.] The correct interpretation of 2 Corinthians 5:1 ff. (as we shall discover) adds emphasis to what has already been urged on this point. No thought has such power to kindle his soul into exultation as that of the final and complete vanquishing of the last enemy, which is death. But this is not all. Life, genuine life, in its widest connotation, appears to him as the original purpose of God for humanity. He speaks of the commandment of God as intended for life (Romans 7:10 : ἡ ἐντολὴ ἡ εἰς ζωήν). He makes a very remarkable statement in Galatians 3:21 : εἰ γὰρ ἐδόθη νόμος ὁ δυνάμενος ζωοποιῆσαι, ὄντως ἐκ νόμου ἂν ἦν ἡ δικαιοσύνη: “If a law had been given which was able to make alive, then, essentially, righteousness would have sprung from the law.” These words let us see deep into the texture of the apostle’s religious thought. The supreme discovery which he has made is that of his own flagrant misconception of the way of salvation. He believed that he could attain complete satisfaction and peace with God by keeping the commandments. But this turned out a hopeless effort, and he then discovered that faith in Jesus Christ could do for him that in which the law was powerless. It authenticated itself to him as the means by which he could realise his true end. In the passage before us he identifies the highest conceivable purpose of God with ζωοποιεῖν, “making alive.” But it is no incidental reference. The more closely we examine his religious outlook, the more distinctly shall we find that it is dominated by the conception of Life. Nothing reveals the fact more clearly than its relation to the apostle’s conception of Justification, and its cognate, Salvation. Thus in Romans 5:1-21, which sums up his discussion of justification by depicting its blessedness, the final contrast in which the humanity which starts from Adam is placed over against the humanity which originates in Christ, resolves itself ultimately into the supreme contrast between life (ζωή) and death (θάνατος). Life is, in fact, the issue and goal of justification (see the remarkable phrase in verse 18, εἰς δικάιωσιν ζωῆς, “justifying which confers or leads to life”). The normative function of this idea for his entire thought is no less marked in the succeeding section of Romans, which deals with the state of grace. Here again, the inference they are to draw from their new relation to Christ, that relation which he has described as “buried with Him by baptism into death,” “united together with the likeness of His death,” is that they are now “alive (ζῶντας) unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (6:11), or, in another place, as “made free from sin and become servants of God,” they have their “fruit unto holiness, and the end (τὸ τέλος) everlasting life” (6:22). It is scarcely necessary, in view of some preceding sections in this discussion, to point out the prominence of the conception of Life in the group of ideas which centre round salvation. A typical example is 1 Corinthians 1:18 : “The preaching of the Cross is to them that perish (τοῖς ἀπολλυμένοις) foolishness; but unto us which are being saved (τοῖς σωζομένοις) it is the power of God.” The issues of those two decisive processes which must sift mankind are obviously the very same as have been emphasised above: ἀπώλεια and σωτηρία. Ἀπώλεια and θάνατος are, of course, synonymous for the apostle. Σωτηρία is merely the negative conception for that gift of God which is contrasted with θάνατος in Romans 6:23, namely, eternal life (ζωὴ αἰώνιος) “in Jesus Christ our Lord” (cf. the words of Romans 5:10, which strikingly corroborate our position, “If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved in His life,” σωθησόμεθα ἐν τῇ ζωῇ αὐτοῦ).1 [Note: Titius, pp. 53-55, is very suggestive on this whole subject. See also p. 186: “The essential meaning of the kingdom of God is for Paul as for Jesus, life (in1 Corinthians 15:50βασιλείαalternates withἀφθαρσία) and glory (cf.1 Thessalonians 2:12). The conception of blessing leads us to the same connection. In itself of universal meaning, and embracing all the Divine benefits, it is already in the Old Testament referred to the Messianic benefit of Life (cf.Deuteronomy 2:26-28with 30:15, 19;Jeremiah 21:8), and as inMatthew 25:34; Matthew 25:41, so also inGalatians 3:1-29, Abraham’s blessing is fully identified with eternal life. This shows the manner in which the conception of life is introduced into the context (3:11, 12) which treats of blessing and cursing.” “It was life, which all these rules (i.e. the ritual of the Avesta) were destined to propagate and to foster: strong and wholesome life as they understood it, the life of the body which must not suffer diminution by sin or by want or by bad treatment … the life of the soul which is nourished by holy instruction and the adoration of God; the life of the race … the life of nature” (Söderblom, op. cit., p. 115).] Life, that is to say, is for St Paul the summum bonum. Life eternal (ζωὴ αἰώνιος) is the supreme reward for a course of perseverance, through faith, in righteousness: it is the gift of God which is richly bestowed in Christ Jesus.2 [Note: It is scarcely relevant for Grill to remark (Untersuchungen, i. p. 323): “How little determinism (election, working of Spirit, etc.) asserts itself in the Pauline consciousness at the expense of subjective conditions, or of the purely ethical manner of attaining final salvation, is evidenced by the fact that in the whole of the Pauline section of the New Testament world of ideas, the attribute ‘eternal’ is never applied to the present Christian life.” Surely this is not a point which calls for emphasis, seeing that theζωήwhich St Paul attributes to believers now virtually partakes of all the qualities embraced under the termαἰώνιος. As Haupt suggestively points out in dealing with the teaching of Jesus, the epithetαἰώνιοςshows a tendency throughout the New Testament to pass from its quantitative sense of “endlessness” into the qualitative idea of “supra-earthly,” having the quality of that Æon in which the dominion of God is complete (see Eschatol. Aussagen Jesu, p. 84). Undoubtedly the beginning of this transition is visible in St Paul, as Grill himself practically admits a few sentences before (loc. cit.). Indeed, his definition of “Life,” as used in the Fourth Gospel, might hold of the apostle’s conception: “Life … is the continuous, organically-unified activity of a capacity of forces, imparted by God through Christ to receptive (believing) men, according to its nature renewing itself continually and perfecting itself from its Divine source, which not only (and this in the first instance) in a wholly spiritual fashion on the side of consciousness, ethically, and in a moral-intellectual manner, is effectual as a principle of development, but also forms the real condition for physical glorification, the spiritual bodily perfecting of the human personality, and from the beginning evokes the feeling of attaining blessedness” (op. cit., p. 306). This definition, although inordinately cumbrous, is both deep and comprehensive.]

Let us briefly endeavour to reach the basis of St Paul’s thought on the subject. We have seen that the great blessing of the future order of things, in which God’s sway should be paramount, was already in the literature of Judaism frequently summed up as life, or eternal life.1 [Note: An interesting summary of the history of this conception in Judaism is given by Dalman, which we here abridge.Daniel 12:2first speaks of the “everlasting life” (çÇéÌÅé òåÉìÈí) of the pious; then in the first pre-Christian century, Ps. Sol. 3:16 (. 13:9); Enoch xxxvii. 4, xl. 9 (. lviii. 3); lxii. 14 (see Slavon. Enoch lxv. 10);2Ma 7:9; 2Ma 7:36;4Ma 15:3. Also in the Onkelos-Targum, which does not speak of the “future Æon,” the conception has found a place asçÇéÄéÄ òÈìÀîÈà(Leviticus 18:5), meant in this sense. Thus the collocationéÄéÄçÅé áÌÀçÇéÄéÄ òÈìÀîÈà, “He shall live in the eternal life,” makes clear in the passages cited, and in the Targum onEzekiel 20:11, Hosea 14:10, thatçÇéÄéÄ òÈìÀîÈàis in these regarded as equivalent toòÈìîÈà ãÀàÈúÅé. The rest of the older Jewish literature has the expression “eternal life” almost exclusively when it stands in contrast to “perishable life.” Numerous examples (Worte Jesu, pp. 127-128.)] This included all that we mean by “physical” life, but it evidently regarded this as directly sustained by the power and fellowship of God. Our difficulty was to discover how this sustenance of life was mediated, and on what lines the original “natural” life of the body was raised, so to speak, to a higher power, charged with the potentiality of eternity. When we turn to the writings of St Paul, we are left in no such perplexity. It will always, indeed, be impossible to reach a complete analysis of delicate spiritual experiences; but the apostle has set forth clearly enough the general features of his own appropriation of the Divine gift of life, its conditions, and its channel. Whatever St Paul may have carried with him from his training in a devout Jewish home and subsequently in the schools of the Pharisees, the unique spiritual crisis of his own life formed the regulating factor in his conceptions of the Divine workings in human experience. It may be difficult for us to construct any coherent picture of the objective phenomenon which was presented to the Pharisee as he journeyed to Damascus: objective we say expressly, for there are no arguments which can weigh against the calm conviction exhibited by St Paul as to this event. For except on the ground of unshaken conviction, no man, who, in describing other visions and revelations, employs so entirely different a tone, could have uttered the bare statement, “Have not I seen Jesus our Lord?” (1 Corinthians 9:1). But after all, the more important part of this extraordinary crisis, practically, was the spiritual transformation of which the apostle was conscious. This, or rather the result of this, he describes in language which fits in with remarkable aptness to that section of his thought which we are discussing. “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith, faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). Here we have placed before us with unmistakable clearness what he conceives to be the genesis of the new life in him. The first clause holds the key. The Christ whom St Paul met on his memorable journey was the Christ who had been crucified. We know what that tremendous fact meant for the apostle. He found in the Crucified the propitiation for his sins. He found in His atoning death the supreme revelation of the love of God, the love of God as forgiving love, welcoming the sinner, setting him in a new relation to God, and also in a new relation to sin. His own response to that marvellous love was faith, complete trust in the Christ who had died for him, and by that faith he made Christ’s death his own. Sin became to him what it was to Christ. He was through faith introduced into a new environment, the environment of the victorious Lord. Henceforward, he breathes the atmosphere of that new realm, the realm of grace. He lives its life. As all careful readers of the Epistles must have observed, the apostle regards the whole grand experience of salvation from two points of view, the one of which is really the obverse of the other. In a number of important passages the prominent conception is that of dying to sin with Christ, and living in Him to God. A striking example is Romans 6:5 ff.: “If we have been engrafted into the likeness of His death, we shall be also into the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this that our old man was crucified along with Him, that the body of sin might be annulled with a view to our no longer serving sin.… Now, if we die along with Christ, we believe that we shall also live along with Him, knowing that Christ, having risen from the dead, no more dies; death no longer rules over Him. For in that He died to sin, He died once for all; but the life He lives, He lives to God. So also do you conclude yourselves to be dead (νεκρούς) as regards sin, but living as regards God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, so as to obey its lusts, nor offer your members to sin as tools of unrighteousness.” Here is the new life looked at from the human side, from the side of man’s response to the divine mercy made manifest in Christ crucified for him. By faith in the virtue of that atoning death, the believer identifies himself with it. He shows his willingness to throw off the yoke of sin and to enter the service of righteousness. The best proof of his willingness, the best evidence of the meaning of his faith, is the actual refusal to yield his members as tools of unrighteousness (Romans 6:13). Accordingly, such an expression as that quoted at the outset, “I have been crucified with Christ,” has a large and rich content. The fleshly nature has entered on a process of annulment and abolition, because in Christ it is cut off from its old environment, sin. Faith has brought the personality, as a whole, into contact with that new principle of life which belongs to the living Christ who was raised on account of our justifying (διὰ τὴν δικαίωσιν ἡμῶν), and the new life is really the full expression and self-evidencing of justification. But this wonderful process can be viewed also from its complementary side, namely, the operation of God in Christ, the activity of the Holy Spirit. We cannot, indeed, think of the two sides as apart from each other. For, as Prof. Denney admirably expresses it, “The faith which abandons itself to Christ is at the same time a receiving of the Spirit of Christ, or of what to experience is the same thing, Christ in the Spirit; there are not two things here, but one (the italics are ours), though it can be represented in the two relations which the words Faith and Spirit suggest” (Expos. vi. 4, p. 426). This intimate connection is strikingly shown, e.g., in Galatians 5:5 : “For we by the Spirit (πνεύματι), as the result of faith (ἐκ πίστεως), eagerly await the hope of righteousness” (ἐλπίδα δικαιοσύνης, lit., the hope which righteousness guarantees). But it is natural to find that the apostle, in speaking of the new life of the believer as something which has passed beyond its initial stage, the dawning of faith in Christ crucified, which unfolds the high possibility of breaking with sin once for all on the basis of God’s forgiving love, should think most frequently of the power which sustains the new relationship, and is none else than He who has reconciled the sinner to God. Christ, that is to say, is his new life-principle. This fact he realises in a particular form. “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me (v.l., thee) free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:2). “If Christ be in you, the body is dead on account of sin, but the Spirit is life on account of righteousness” (8:10). “Christ in” him, is equivalent to the “Spirit of life,” or the Spirit which is life. He lives by the Spirit (cf.Galatians 5:25 : εἰ ζῶμεν πνεύματι, πνεύματι καὶ στοιχῶμεν, “If we live by the Spirit, let us take each step by the Spirit,” στοιχεῖν referring to the details of conduct). Here we touch a fundamental aspect of St Paul’s religious experience. The primary importance of his meeting with Christ lay in the fact that, in response to his faith in the crucified and risen Redeemer, his soul was brought into a marvellous new contact with a power outside himself, which he could only attribute to the living Lord. This he could describe as the Spirit of God, or of Christ, dwelling in him. Henceforward he is led by the Spirit of God (Romans 8:14 : ὅσοι γὰρ πνεύματι θεοῦ ἄγονται,οὗτοι ὑιόι εἰσιν θεοῦ). “The Spirit itself (αὐτὸ τὸ πνεῦμα) bears witness with (συμμαρτυρεῖ) our spirit that we are children of God” (Romans 8:16). Here he concentrates his thought on the Divine part in the new life of salvation. Unquestionably, the existence of faith is presupposed all through, faith in the Son of God who loved him and gave Himself for him. Only by such means can his nature be linked to the Divine, the supernatural, the activity which springs from the living God. It was of no concern to him to inquire as to the relation in time, or sequence, of faith to the possession of the Spirit. Both were included in the same glorious unity of spiritual illumination. Both must ultimately be traced to God. “For by grace have ye been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, to God belongs the gift” (θεοῦ τὸ δῶρον, Ephesians 2:8). The Spirit, therefore, is the Divine factor, working in the believing soul and sustaining the life of faith.

It will be of interest to ask, How is this gift of the Spirit, which is the principle of the new life, related to the apostle’s psychology? As we have already observed, St Paul has, strictly speaking, no psychology. The phenomena of the inner life interest him solely on their religious side. He accepts in general the Old Testament view of the constitution of man, perhaps regulating his thought especially by the Creation-narrative in Genesis 2:1-25. According to the Old Testament, as we have seen, man consists of flesh (bāsār), soul (nephesh), and spirit (ruah). We need, it is true, to exercise caution in analysing the difference between nephesh and ruah. Ruah is not higher than nephesh, neither is it, strictly speaking, distinct from it. Rather is it nephesh possessing or manifesting power. All influences from God are influences from His ruah. And the immortal part of man, as ruah, receives these influences.1 [Note: These latter sentences are condensed from MS. notes of Dr A. B. Davidson’s lectures.] We noted, at an earlier point in our discussion, that at death the nephesh, as the bearer of the personality, descends into Sheol, while the ruah, which was the quickening influence in the person, returns to God from whom it came. Conceptions such as these lie at the basis of St Paul’s view of the constitution of man. Only, as we might expect, certain important modifications have to be observed. The conception of “flesh” (bāsār, σάρξ), which predominates in the Old Testament as an inclusive description or definition of the bodily nature,1 [Note: FOR THE USE OFΣΑΡΞAS DESIGNATING THE BODY, EVEN IN GREEK PHILOSOPHICAL LITERATURE OF THE FIRST TWO CENTURIES A.D., SEE ZELLER, THEOLOG. JAHRBÜCHER, 1852, PP. 293-297.] has, of course, an influential place in Paulinism. Side by side with it in the writings of the apostle, there appears the cognate term σῶμα, not often found in the Septuagint as a translation of bāsār, which may perhaps best be rendered in English as “organism.” The term, that is to say, is colourless as compared with σάρξ. The latter, in St Paul’s usage, almost always implies the bodily nature in its present condition, the bodily nature as we know it in experience.2 [Note: See Cremer, in Herzog3 vi. p. 104.] It has already been pointed out that the apostle is not interested in the physical side of man as such. Its ethical import is that which concerns him. In this aspect of it, he is too well aware that it is corrupted by sin. We see nothing in his writings to justify the hypothesis so frequently charged upon him, that he took a dualistic view of human nature, holding the inherent evil of matter. The constitution of matter is a problem which would never appeal to him.3 [Note: Cf. Denney: “The Flesh belongs not to his psychology-he has no such thing-but to his moral and religious experience: it is that in him which does not submit itself to the law of God, and cannot, but lives in the perpetual revolt of sin. It is common to ask how Paul conceived man’s nature to have become what it is, or whether he conceived it to have been what it is from the beginning. These are questions to which no answer is supplied: they are questions, indeed, which it would have been as impossible for Paul to answer as it is for us.… We know what the Flesh means as soon as we have a conscience at all, and memory reaches no further, if indeed as far” (Expos. vi. 3, pp. 291, 293).] Man as a living person is made up of body (flesh) and soul (spirit). Man as a person is sinful: from that the apostle concludes that those elements in him which compose his personal being, are, as a matter of experience, tainted by sin. At this point we touch a difficult problem in St Paul’s religious terminology. As we know it, σάρξ, the flesh, is corrupt. So is the ψυχή, the soul, which is the inward principle of the σάρξ, like the nephesh, the bearer of the personality, the natural life-centre of the individual. Neither of these can be conceived without the other. Σάρξ is meaningless apart from ψυχή. And ψυχή is never posited except as informingσάρξ.1 [Note: See, e.g., Lüdemann, Anthropologie d. Ap. Paulus, p. 4; also p. 33.] But the ψυχή has what one may call a higher side. This the apostle generally designates νοῦς, the power of moral discernment, perhaps virtually equivalent to our term “conscience.”2 [Note: The late, semi-philosophical term συνείδησις occurs repeatedly in the Pauline Epistles, but almost exclusively where he is discussing questions of Christian liberty. Henever employs it when describing the processes of the new life which reveal themselves in the depths of Christian experience. The word is probably one of the few links which directly associate him with the intellectual activity of contemporary Hellenism.] A closely allied expression is ὁ ἔσω ἄνθρωπος. Both of these terms (or in the case of the latter, an exact parallel) are to be found in Greek philosophy. In its philosophical usage, νοῦς denotes, according to Siebeck (Geschichte d. Psychologie, i. 2. p. 52), “the thinking spirit, that part of the soul peculiar to man, which animals do not possess, linked to no bodily organ, in its deepest essence un-become (ungeworden) and incorruptible.” Plato (Republic, ix. 589 A.) speaks of τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ὁ ἐντὸς ἄνθρωπος, which seems an exact equivalent of the Pauline phrase. It would be, of course, unsafe to infer that these conceptions occur in their Hellenic sense in St Paul. As regards the last-named, there is no need to look for its basis in Platonic thought. “The man within” is an idea which might quite naturally be found in popular currency. In St Paul’s usage it seems practically identical with νοῦς, in the sense of that part of man’s nature to which Divine influences and appeals will usually attach themselves. It is that aspect of the innermost life of man which lies open to God.1 [Note:ΝΟῦΣOCCURS VERY RARELY IN THE LXX. WHEN IT DOES, IT USUALLY TRANSLATES THE HEBREWìÅáORìÅáÈá, HEART.] In the New Testament, νοῦς is almost confined to the Pauline Epistles. If St Paul did not adopt the term from contemporary Greek thought,2 [Note: The Aristotelianνοῦς, e.g., really finds its New Testament parallel inπνεῦμα. See Siebeck, Zeitschr. f. Völker-Psychol. xii. pp. 397, 398.] as is quite probable, he certainly modified it according to his own view of man’s inner constitution.

Now, if the apostle had restricted himself to the use of the terms we have been considering, to express the factors in human consciousness, apart from the Divine operation, it would be a perfectly simple matter to delimit his conceptions. Thus we should be able to assert without reservation that, wherever he uses πνεῦμα to denote an element in the inner life of man, he has in view either the direct gift of the Divine πνεῦμα imparted to the individual, or the human soul in its new condition as transformed by the Spirit of God. As a matter of fact, this may be stated as his normal standpoint. The conception of πνεῦμα has become gradually spiritualised, if we may so say, in Jewish thought. From the earlier Greek conception of it as a kind of air or breath, which came to be regarded as the bearer of vitality and a link between σῶμα and ψυχή, it had reached, among the Stoics, the position of the creative principle (the πῦρ τεχνικόν) through which the organic development of all things takes place. It was at the same time “the all-penetrating, quickening power and soul of the world, the breath of life in all, and as such the deity itself.” Hence, from being conceived as the most highly refined “body,” it came to be regarded as λόγος, reason. This aspect of πνεῦμα was developed by the Jew Philo, and naturally it came to be affected by the intensely ethical and spiritual character of the Old Testament conception of God.1 [Note: See, on the whole development, Siebeck’s admirable essay in Zeitschr. f. Völker-Psychol. xii., especially pp. 373-395. Cf. his Geschichte d. Psychol. i. 2. pp. 148-155.] St Paul carries the process to its highest point. For him the πνεῦμα, according to his normal view, is the Spirit of God, mediated through the exalted Christ. In one passage he expressly identifies the Spirit with Christ: “Now the Lord is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:17; with this may be compared ver. 18, καθάπερ ἀπὸ κυρίου πνεύματος, “as from the Lord who is (the) Spirit”). The indwelling of the πνεῦμα is the basis and pledge of eternal life in the believer. We shall return to this point: but a difficulty must first be noted. There are about a dozen passages in which St Paul uses πνεῦμα in a looser sense. It is needless to enumerate all of these here. The following examples will suffice: 1 Corinthians 2:11, “For who of men knoweth the things of man save the spirit of man (τὸ πνεῦμα τοῦ ἀνθρώπου) which is in him” (cf.Romans 8:16, “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are children of God”) a passage in which a distinctly human πνεῦμα is contrasted with the Divine; 1 Corinthians 5:3, “Being absent in the body but present in the spirit” (τῷ πνεύματι, cf. 7:34, 16:18; 2 Corinthians 2:13), where he uses πνεῦμα in a popular or colloquial sense; 1 Thessalonians 5:23, “May your spirit and soul and body, in their entirety, be preserved blamelessly” (ὁλόκληρον ὑμῶν τὸ πνεῦμα καὶ ἡ ψυχὴ καὶ τὸ σῶμα ἀμέμπτως … τηρηθείη), where we should suppose (with Dr A. B. Davidson) that this is a rhetorical combination, not to be interpreted prosaically, or as representing any psychological theory of the apostle’s. We need not be in any way astonished at these exceptions to his stricter usage. Nor is there occasion, with Holsten (Paulin. Theologie, pp. 10-11), to look for special reasons why St Paul should employ πνεῦμα of the human spirit. No thinker is strictly accurate in his terminology. There are freer moods in which he avails himself of current terms, entirely unconscious of the fact that pedantry will demand uniformity in his language. There is some force, also, in the observation of Titius (p. 240, note 1), that St Paul, “with the exception of 1 Corinthians 2:11, nowhere speaks of the spirit of man, not even in 1 Corinthians 5:3; 1 Corinthians 5:5; 1 Corinthians 7:34, etc., but of the spirit of the Christian, and nowhere is this Christian determination of the spirit without importance in the context,” although we doubt whether this distinction was to any large extent before the apostle’s mind in the relevant passages. But to return to his strict conception of the πνεῦμα. This implies undoubtedly the entrance of a new factor, the Divine energy into the inner life. He gives various descriptions of the experience. These are all involved ideally in the first genuine contact of the soul with God in Christ through faith. When the soul recognises the love of God in Christ as the Saviour, and appropriates that forgiving love by faith, it is brought into touch with God as living, and dealing with it. This is, in St Paul’s view, an experience of the Divine πνεῦμα. Yet we find him urging it, at times, on those who have already been baptised. It is absurd to say (with some expositors) that the apostle associated the reception of the Spirit with baptism. Had this been the case, baptism would not occupy the comparatively insignificant place which it does in his teaching. Baptism is indeed a vivid picture or illustration of the saving process. On the one hand, it sets forth the unseen experiences which are attained through faith. As the baptised person is plunged out of sight in the water, and then rises out of the cleansing element a member of the Christian community, so does the believer, who by faith appropriates the benefits of Christ’s atoning death and resurrection, pass out of contact with the sinful life of the flesh, annulled on the Cross, and rise in fellowship with the risen Lord to newness of life in the Spirit. But, obviously, the picture also symbolises the relation of the believer to the Spirit. For all that has happened to him in the experience of salvation, his death to sin (immersion beneath the water), and his entrance upon a new life (emergence from the water), is really accomplished for him in response to his faith, accomplished by the Divine operation; is the work, as St Paul would put it, of the Holy Spirit. Necessarily, in that sense, the experience of baptism emphasises the reality and significance of the gift of the Spirit, and thus quickens the believer’s consciousness of its possession.

What happens in the reception of the Spirit may be described as an ἀνακαίνωσις τοῦ νοός, “a renewing of the νοῦς” (Romans 12:2). From the remarkable collocation in Ephesians 4:23, ἀνανεοῦσθαι … τῷ πνεύματι τοῦ νοὸς ὑμῶν, “to be renewed in the spirit of your mind,” we may infer that St Paul regards the Divine πνεῦμα as taking possession of the νοῦς. This implies that there is now a new moral centre of the personal life. Yet we must not conceive the Divine Spirit as passing over, as it were, into the subjective, regenerated life of the believer. For the apostle always regards the Divine energy as continuing to act on the life of the believer as a distinct objective power.1 [Note: See Weiss, N. T. Theol. (E. Tr.) i. p. 477.] This is evident from Romans 8:16. The person becomes πνευματικός, “spiritual,” instead of ψυχικός, “natural” (virtually equivalent to “conditioned by human nature as such”). The ψυχή, or soul, which is the substratum, so to speak, of the νοῦς, is overshadowed, or rather supplanted in the government of the personality, by the πνεῦμα, which becomes the basis of the new life. Thus the new life may be said to be at the same time supernatural and psychologically mediated. It is very doubtful whether any trace remains of the more ancient quasi-physical side of the conception. Unquestionably πνεῦμα can mean “breath” and “wind,” and some theologians imagine that St Paul does presuppose, in a sense, and inbreathing (material in the most refined degree) of the Divine life. Pfleiderer, for example, speaks of the πνεῦμα, according to St Paul’s view, as “in itself a transcendent physical essence, a supersensuous kind of matter, which is the opposite of the earthly, sensuous materiality of the σάρξ” (Paulinism, i. p. 201). Kabisch holds that in St Paul “the πνεῦμα has a kind of physical, or, to put it better, metaphysical, substantial quality” (Esch. d. Paulus, p. 113). We can find no evidence in the Epistles for this position. It seems to attribute to the apostle an analysis of the new Divine life altogether foreign to his method of thought. But, bearing in mind his synthetic conception of life, to which we have already referred, we are justified in affirming that this experience affects what we should designate the physical life of the believer. This, at least in its essential element, shares in the quickening (ζωοποιεῖν), which is a main function of the πνεῦμα. Probably it would be truer to the apostle’s conception to say that the whole person is quickened by the life-giving Spirit. Nothing less can be the meaning of the strong words of Romans 8:11 : εἰ δὲ τὸ πνεῦμα τοῦ ἐγείραντος τὸν Ἰησοῦν ἐκ νεκρῶν οἰκεῖ ἐν υμῖν, ὁ ἐγείρας ἐκ νεκρῶν Χριστὸν Ἰησοῦν ζωοποιήσει καὶ τὰ θνητὰ σώματα ὑμῶν διὰ τοὺ ἐνοικοῦντος αὐτοῦ πνεύματος ἐν ὑμῖν: “If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised from the dead Christ Jesus shall quicken even your mortal bodies through His Spirit dwelling in you.”1 [Note: Cf. Titius: “When he speaks of the Spirit which makes alive (2 Corinthians 3:6;1 Corinthians 15:45), of the life of Jesus Christ, or of the Spirit in believers (Galatians 2:20; Galatians 5:25;2 Corinthians 4:10-12; 2 Corinthians 5:15;Romans 6:4; Romans 6:11; Romans 6:13; Romans 8:2; Romans 8:6; Romans 8:10), we must not interpret the ‘life’ metaphorically, as in1 Thessalonians 3:8, but in addition to the spiritual, ethical reference, the supernatural must necessarily be maintained. He deals with thereal, higher life, … which … forms a transition-stage to that (i.e. eternal life)” (p. 263). The truth is, as Pfleiderer well expresses it, that “the two ideas of the ζωή, the ‘eschatological’ [a far better description than ‘transcendent-physical’ which healso employs, e.g. i. p. 204], and the ‘ethical’ interpenetrate one another” (Paulinism, i. p. 206). It has to be remembered that St Paul would never consider each by itself apart.] This quickening has nothing spasmodic or abnormal about it. It is a gradual, orderly process, thus described in 2 Corinthians 4:16 : ἀλλʼ εἰ καὶ ὁ ἔξω ἡμῶν ἄνθρωπος διαφθείρεται, ἀλλʼ ὁ ἔσω ἡμῶν ἀνακαινοῦται ἡμέρᾳ καὶ ἡμέρᾳ: “But although our outward man decays, our inner man is renewed from day to day.” We shall have to discuss later on the relation of this process to the genesis of the σῶμα πνευματικόν, the “spiritual body,” which is to be the organism of the glorified believer. Enough, however, has been said to indicate the steps which St Paul presupposes in the inauguration of new life in the individual, and his conception of its psychological mediation.

We are now, therefore, in a position to summarise his precise conception of Life. In many passages, of course, he uses ζωή in the more or less colloquial sense of existence in the world: e.g., Romans 8:38 f., “I am persuaded that neither death nor life … shall be able to separate us from the love of God”; Php 1:20, “According to my hope that … Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death”; 1 Corinthians 15:19, “If in this life we have only hoped in Christ.” On these it is unnecessary to comment. At the other extremity, ζωή has for him the definite sense of a future reward or boon which God will bestow. This may be designated as its “eschatological” usage. In this sense, ζωή is generally qualified by the adjective αἰώνιος. The phrase invariably denotes life looked at in prospect, in its complete realisation. Ἀιώνιος is an eschatological adjective. But even here, where the future outlook is so prominent, ζωή seems usually to be regarded as the end, or the crowning-point, or the reward, or the harvest, of a preliminary course of experience and discipline which leads up to it. Thus, in Romans 2:7, ζωή is the recompense of perseverance in righteous conduct and of the quest for glory and immortality; in Romans 5:21, it is the goal and aim of the reign of grace through Jesus Christ; in Romans 6:22, it expresses the end (τέλος) or climax of the life of freedom from sin and bondage to God, and hence it is further defined as the gift of God (in contrast with the wages of sin) in Christ Jesus. Finally, in Galatians 6:8, the apostle designates as ζωή the harvest reaped ἐκ τοῦ πνεύματος by him who sows εἰς τὸ πνεῦμα. Plainly, there is an organic connection between ζωή and that human experience of which it is the culmination. It is in no sense an acquirement added on at death or judgment or the inauguration of the coming Æon. Ἀιώνιος shows what is its quality. It partakes of the nature of God Himself, and of the new glorified life which He introduces. It is eternal. There are one or two passages which contain, apparently, this shade of meaning, although αἰώνιος is lacking: e.g., Romans 5:17, “Those receiving the superabundance of grace, and of the gift of righteousness, shall reign in life through one, Jesus Christ”; also Php 4:3, “Whose names are in the book of life” (ἐν βίβλῳ ζωῆς). But St Paul always regards life as a present possession of the believer. As such, it is the direct result of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and may even be termed the actual presence of the Spirit in the human personality. We have seen how the apostle conceives this endowment, as related to the natural inner constitution of the individual. Most typical instances are: Romans 8:2, “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and death”; 8:6, “The mind of the spirit is life and peace”; 8:10, “If Christ be in you, the body is dead (νεκρόν) because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” This last example leads us to one or two passages in which the ζωή of the believer is represented as the very ζωή of the exalted Christ: so 2 Corinthians 4:10-11, “Always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, in order that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body; for always we, the living, are delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal body”; Colossians 3:4, “When Christ shall be manifested, our life (ἡ ζωὴ ἡμῶν), then you also will be manifested with Him in glory.” With these verses may be compared the remarkable expression of Ephes. 4:18: “Alienated (ἀπηλλοτριωμένοι) from the life of God.” This life, as we have noted, belongs to earthly experience: e.g.2 Corinthians 4:12, “Life works (ἐνεργεῖται) in you.” It is by no means something abnormal. It was God’s original design for man, for ἡ ἐντολή, the commandment of God, was one designed for life (ἡ εἰς ζωήν, Romans 7:10). “If a law had been given, able to make alive (ζωοποιῆσαι), righteousness would essentially have sprung from the law,” Galatians 3:21). The possession of “life” is really the ideal of humanity. It forms the content of the Gospel of Christ which is a savour from life unto life (2 Corinthians 2:16). It is a transformation of the former condition, which was also, in a sense, ζωή. Through the power of the Spirit, the believer receives καινότης ζωῆς (Romans 6:4). The transformed life, which necessarily includes the “physical,” swallows up death (which also, for St Paul, includes the “physical” aspect), and passes on into the eternal world (2 Corinthians 5:4; 1 Corinthians 15:54).

All the evidence which we have examined corroborates our earlier statement that St Paul’s view of Life is synthetic. He would not have affirmed of the believer that originally he possessed a natural life, but, when he surrendered himself to Christ, received a spiritual. The new life is a renewal of the old from its very foundations. It is not a renewal of one part but of the whole. It embraces the physical (to use our distinctions) as well as the ethical or religious. For St Paul, the sum of the believer’s experiences is a unity. Life includes the totality of his energies. It cannot be divided up into provinces, of which one may be contrasted with another. Its only contrast lies in Death. Death for the apostle means the ruin of the whole personality. Life means its triumphant continuance in the power of the Spirit beyond the barriers of earth and time, in conformity with the nature of the glorified Christ, who is the Image of the invisible God.