which debases his natural life into a self-asserting independence and makes himself the sole object of his thought.1

III.

It but remains to indicate the significance of the natural powers of soul and body for the ethical life. This may be best done by gathering up the results we have arrived at under several heads.

1. Paul presupposes the accountability of man. This is an assumption not of Pauline ethic alone but of all ethic. Unless man is in some sense free to choose and is responsible for his actions, his life has really no ethical value. A science of ethic implies that no individual act is necessitated. We could not treat man as responsible, and still less as culpable, if at any single point he were forced into wrong-doing. Freedom of will in the practical sense in which all men understand it, is a necessary postulate of Christian as of all genuine ethic. This sense of accountability underlies the Gospel's offer of salvation and the call to repentance and faith, and it is the basis, not only in the Pauline epistles but throughout the New Testament, of the moral life and of the final judgment. It is true there are some passages in which the apostle seems to deny human responsibility. The pathos of man's lot lies in the world-wide prevalence of sin and of its dire penalty. Never has the evil of mankind been painted in darker colours, never has its universality been proved more convincingly than in the language of the apostle. "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God." Observation and history alike witness to the

"Man

1Cp. Augustine, Civ. Dei. xiv. cap. iii. where he says, assumes an evil character not because he has flesh, but because he lives according to himself."

world-wide range of sin. It is only too evident that Jews and Gentiles are equally under its dominion. is written," says the apostle, "there is none righteous, no, not one."

"It

That sin is no accidental phenomenon in human experience, but a necessary consequence of man's nature, is confirmed, it is alleged, by two Pauline lines of argument.

(1) Sin is inherent in the flesh; it is an original part of man's nature, and therefore he cannot be justly held responsible for it. But we have just seen that this is not the view of the apostle. Notwithstanding the high authority of Pfleiderer we must dissent from the statement that Paul identifies sin with flesh or associates evil exclusively with the body or sensuous nature of man. In Romans vii. 17, 18, where he speaks strongly of the power of indwelling sin, he takes care to distinguish it not only from the ego, but also from the flesh in which it dwells. So far from sin and flesh being identical, and man being on that account irresponsible, he expressly summons his readers in 2 Cor. vii. 1 to cleanse themselves from all defilement of the flesh and spirit. The flesh is not in itself defiling though it needs and admits of cleansing. It is not the flesh which determines the value of man: it is man that determines the value of flesh. The flesh of the lower animal has no ethical worth, it is simply unmoral. That life in the flesh is sinful does not imply that the flesh in itself is sinful. Our vice does not consist in the fact that we are first animals, but that we do not afterwards become men. Our bodies, parts and passions are the stuff out of which we shape and fashion ourselves. Saints and sinners are made by opposite processes out of the same material. It is the mind which gives to human passions and appetites

F

their ethical significance. And it is just because man is free to use his bodily powers for base or for noble purposes that they may become the vehicles of sensuality or the instruments of virtue. "What makes our heaven that also makes our hell." In short there is nothing evil but spiritual evil; and the world of nature, all natural creation, all material objects, all bodily parts become good or evil as we make them. The whole natural order is but the raw material which exists for the service of a spiritual order. If we are sinners, our flesh becomes the occasion and instrument of our sins. If we are spiritually minded, it becomes the condition and instrument to us of all purity and righteousness. Our body is a true part of us, and it is not by leaving it behind but by taking it up into our higher self that we become spiritual.1

(2) But it is also alleged that in the passages in which Paul refers to man's participation in Adam's sin, he virtually denies human responsibility. Sin exercises a sovereign dominion to which all are subject through Adam's one act of disobedience.2 The interpretation of the passage upon which this statement is founded has been much disputed. Even granted that it means that we actually become sinners by inheritance, and, by reason of the solidarity of the race, do incur in some actual sense the taint of our first father's iniquity, the apostle is only giving expression to the now universally acknowledged fact of heredity, which, while it may be taken as a mitigating element in the final judgment, does not prevent us from attributing to ourselves and to others responsibility for our deeds. It is, however, maintained by many that the passage can only mean that we ourselves have sinned personally as well as

1Cp. Du Bose, The Gospel according to St. Paul, p. 261 ff.

2 Rom. v. 12 ff.

Adam, and so have become liable to the same penalty as he. The point of the parallel which the apostle institutes between Adam and Christ is, that as the sin of Adam brought forth not contracted guilt but death upon all, so the obedience of Christ secures not our own virtue but life. That is to say we all, as the children of Adam, inherit the consequences of his guilt, but not the guilt itself. We are born into a world of suffering and death, but whether that world will mean also a world of sin depends not on what Adam did, but upon what we ourselves here and now do, upon the use we make of the life that is given to us.

But apart from these passages there are many others which indubitably affirm both accountability and culpability. In Romans i. 18 the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness, and in Romans ii. 6 the apostle writes that "God will render to every man according to his deeds." The whole argument of the first chapter of Romans rests on the assumption that the heathen are guilty, not because they have inherited a burden of sin from their fathers, but because while they had the power to know God, they glorified Him not as God. They sinned not because evil was inherent and inevitable, but because a revelation was given them both in outward creation and in their own inward consciousness, and they deliberately refused the light, turning their natural gifts and privileges into means of degrading lust and idolatry, so that they are without excuse. But the Jews are in no better condition-" Thou that judgest doest the same things." Both therefore, Jews and Gentiles alike, are accountable for their deeds and answerable for the use they have made of their respective revelations. God is no respecter of persons. We have not, indeed, all

But

received the same endowments and opportunities. as we have received so we shall be judged. "As many as have sinned without the law shall perish without the law, and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law." The standard of verdict in the final judgment is just the moral action of each individual.1 That, and that alone, according to Paul, will determine the eternal destiny of every man. "For," says the apostle, we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that everyone may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad."

Too often in the past has the apostle Paul been presented as the fashioner of an iron system of irresistible might and sovereignty. Men, it has been alleged, are but the puppets of a divine destiny, which, irrespective of their wills, arbitrarily doomed a part of the race to perdition and a part to glory. No more grotesque caricature of his teaching could be conceived. Paul is really the great champion of human freedom, the preacher of individual responsibility. And it is because he is this that he is the teacher whom more than all others the present day needs. Rising out of the profundity of his thought and the subtlety of his language, two highly ethical truths appear-the actuality of personal sin and the accountability of the individual man. Inherent depravity, human inability, the weakness of the flesh-or their modern substitutes, heredity, environment, constitutional frailty-will not avail as excuses. One great fact stands clear and unassailable in the letters of this apostle-the freedom and responsibility of every man before God. Except upon the basis of this fact his preaching of Christ has no value, and

1 Rom. ii. 6-10.