and lightly made, can be substantiated. But we are only concerned here with the unanimity of Paul and Christ in their ethical teaching; and there is one consideration going to the very root of the matter, which, if duly weighed, will be sufficient, as we think, to refute Wrede's contention, and to show that, fundamentally, the Master and His apostle were at one in the requirements and conditions which they taught as essential to the new life. The inmost spring, the very fons et origo of vital religion in the new life of love and helpfulness is, we maintain, the same for both. It will not surely be denied by any student of the epistles, that the great object of the Pauline dialectic is to place man, emptied of trust in self, bankrupt in righteousness, in a condition of receptiveness before God. This, for Paul, is where religion begins with the weakness which takes hold of the divine strength, with the want which brings its empty vessel to the fulness of God. And this, in Paul's reading of history, is the deepest meaning of the religious experience of his own race. This, indeed, he declares to be the very purpose of the law, to reveal and condemn sin and shut a man up to the consciousness of his own utter impotence. The Jew seeking a righteousness "of his own " failed utterly, even as did the Greek seeking a wisdom "of his own"; the reason being that righteousness and wisdom alike have their source in God, and come to man only as he forgets self and becomes the willing instrument and receiver of the power and grace and wisdom that are from above. But this idea, fundamental in Paul, is fundamental also in the teaching of Jesus. It is, indeed, the beginning of everything. It is the very first of the laws of the kingdom. With it the Sermon on the Mount (between which and Paul it is so often asserted ་ 1 there is no vital point of contact) begins. "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven." Analyse that great saying of Jesus and what does it yield you? Surely the whole principle of the Pauline dialectic and the living heart of the whole of the Pauline religion.2 In perfect agreement with all this is the fundamental importance assigned both by Jesus and by Paul to faith, faith in God, the fountain of all good, faith in the Fatherhood of God and in the sonship and calling of man. With both faith is something more than mere mental assent, or even implicit confidence in the provision and care of a Heavenly Father. It is the inspiration and dynamic of life, the ruling principle in shaping conduct. It is the spiritual vision in man of the ideal by which, in virtue of his vital relation to the living source of all power and renewal, he already is what he aspires to be and has what he longs for. The distinctive note of Christ's ethics is the inwardness of the moral law as distinguished from the externality of the ceremonial law. He commends righteousness as the aim of man, but it is not the righteousness of outward observance, but of inward spirit. "Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter the kingdom of Heaven." Almost in identical terms Paul insists upon the need of inward purity, the purity of the hidden man of the heart. Christ lays emphasis upon the fulfilment of our duties 1 Even Weiss asserts that Paul's "Ethical system based on supernaturalism can never be harmonised with the commands given in the Sermon on the Mount." Paul and Jesus, p. 112. 2 The writer has pleasure in stating that the substance of this paragraph has been suggested to him by his friend, Rev. Charles Allan of Greenock. to our fellow-men. Paul also enforces the obligation of mutual service, expressly declaring that it is in the bearing of one another's burdens that the followers of Christ fulfil His "law."1 Further, the ethics of Christ and of His apostle are one in declaring that man owes to his fellow-man an even greater debt than duty. Christ's principle is, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself"; and in the spirit of his Master, the apostle's injunction is, "Owe no man anything, but to love one another." According to both, love is more than law, and he who only does his duty has not attained to the true spirit of Christian service. Christ transforms morality from a routine into a life; and with Paul goodness ceases to be a thing of outward rule, and becomes a spontaneous energy of the soul. For both all virtues are but various expressions of a single vital principle. "Love is the fulfilling of the law." The dynamic of devotion is, according to Christ, God's love towards us. Nor is it different according to Paul: "The love of Christ constraineth us." If we turn from the motive of service to the aim and purpose of life, again we find the Master and the disciple in substantial agreement. "Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect" is the standard of Christ; to attain to the perfect life,—“ the prize of the high calling of God in Christ "is the aim of Paul. Nor do they differ in their conception of the ultimate goal of the world. It has been affirmed by Joh. Weiss that "we do not know whether Jesus turned his gaze upon the inhabited world as a whole."2 "His heart is preoccupied with the people immediately about Him. He confines Himself to the little flock,' to the 'few' who are chosen,' and it is His task to save from impending judgment the souls of 1 Gal. vi. 2. the people of the towns and villages of Galilee." "To Paul, on the other hand, the most important point is that the Word should not be bound,' but that it should run (2 Thess. iii.; 2 Tim. ii. 9). He describes his work by the metaphors of a triumphant campaign of God through the land (2 Cor. ii. 14), and the reconciliation of 'the world' is his object. Paul, with his Greek culture and Roman citizenship, cannot rest content with gathering believers upon a small spot of earth-so soon as he has decided for Christ, plans for wide-world missionary enterprise come before his mind." But in our view, so far from seeing in this perfectly true description of Paul's aim an antithesis to that of Christ's, we regard it rather as the natural and logical outcome of his Master's teaching. Jesus' immediate care was for those about Him, and He began with the people of His own land; but we miss surely the whole significance of His Gospel and the meaning of His message if we do not see that it was an evangel for all men, tidings of hope for man as man. Not only does He declare that the "field is the world" (Matt. xiii. 38), but He proclaims a kingdom into which the heathen shall flock and sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob (Matt. viii. 4). Surely no one can doubt that Christ's ethical ideal, which he looked for as the realisation of the object of His mission, was a redeemed humanity, a complete renewal and re-establishment of human society-which he designated "the kingdom of God." Paul, with his splendid conception of humanity, sees that kingdom typified and realised in the risen life of his Lord, but he is not therefore to be regarded as offering a different idea of the ultimate aim of Christianity. For the advent of the Christ-like man will be itself the realization of the social ideal, the coming of God's kingdom on the earth. It is by growing up in all things unto Him who is the head that the whole body will be perfected in the perfection of its members. And this is what Paul means when he sums up in these splendid words to the Ephesians, the goal and ideal of all human faith and endeavour-" till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." It is evident then that there is no radical difference between the ethical teaching of Jesus and that of Paul. On the contrary, there is everywhere identity of spirit and aim, and in not a few instances a striking similarity of language. In passages dealing with questions essentially ethical, while there is no attempt at literal quotation, we find reminiscences of the words of Jesus. In emphasizing an ethical command Paul knows himself to be acting entirely in the spirit of Jesus. "We have the mind of Christ," he declares to the Corinthians, by which he means not merely that we think as Christ, but that "Christ thinks in us." "The mental processes of the Christian are under the immediate inspiration of the Spirit of Christ.”2 He it is that enables His followers to develop, apply and interpret, the will of God. Hence, too, when in 1 Cor. iv. 17 he speaks of "my ways which be in Christ ”(τὰς ὅδους μου ἐν Χριστῷ), and in Romans xvi. 14, "I know and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus" (οἶδα καὶ πέπεισμαι ἐν Κυρίῳ Ἰησοῦ), he is implying that the "way" and the "conviction are his in virtue of his inward communion with Christ. But it is no mystical or mechanical obsession of Christ's spirit which Paul claims as compelling him to utter Christ's mind and follow His method. The idea is that in such matters the personality 1E.g. Rom. xii. 13, 1 Cor. xiii., or Col. iii. J. Weiss, Paul and Jesus, p. 115. |