and it claims that sin everywhere, and from the first, has been a cause
of degradation in the individual and the race. Now here is the real
point at issue in the relations of religion and science. The {80} main
question is not about human origins or a primaeval fall. It is simply
on the comparatively easy field of actual human existence. Is human
freedom--freedom within limits to choose and act--a reality? Can man
therefore misuse this freedom to do what he need not have done and
ought not to have done? And has he, in fact, constantly been doing
morally wrong things, wilfully and knowingly, which he need not have
done? Does, therefore, the area of human history present at every
stage a result or product which human wilfulness and lawlessness, that
is, sin, has contributed to spoil and to degrade below its natural
level? Now it is this--the real existence of countless human actions
which need not have been and ought not to have been--which contemporary
science, with a necessitarian bias, is largely occupied in denying.
Granted the reality within limits--limits which have no doubt often
been grossly exaggerated, but granted the reality within due limits--of
human freedom, and therefore the possibility and reality of actual sin
and guilt and degradation which need not have been, I do not believe
there remains any serious conflict in the moral region between religion
and science. The conflict, I say, is continually {81} being taken back
into the region of original sin or the original fall. But this is a
quite secondary area of debate, in which I believe there can be no
serious disagreement, if there is agreement in the primary area of
actual human sin. The universal moral consciousness and common sense
of man bears witness to the fact that we can do and do do what we ought
and need not. It recognizes, moreover, the moral truth of St. Paul's
idea that this lawlessness of the will has its perverting effects on
the intelligence and on the passions. The human conscience then
responds to St. Paul's account of the origin and history of human sin,
and of its fruits both in the individual and in society. And if
psychological science is inclined to deny the very existence of any
faculty of free choice such as makes sin possible, it will be found on
examination to be going very far beyond what it can prove. For the
reality of guilt and sin, and the degradation which results from it, we
have the human consciousness; against it we have no positive evidence:
nothing in fact but the habitual unwillingness of specialist science,
physical or theological, to recognize its limits.
3. St. Paul finds the root of sin in the refusal {82} of man in
general to recognize God. He asserts that they might have known Him,
or rather did know Him, but declined to act on that knowledge. Now it
is noticeable that he does not ascribe this knowledge of God, which he
declares to have been possible to man everywhere, to an original
revelation, nor even in this place to the moral conscience, but to the
evidence of nature. In this, as in his ridicule of idolatry, he is in
accordance, not only with Jewish thought, but with contemporary Greek
philosophy. The argument from design had become habitual in the
schools, having been stated first of all with transparent simplicity by
Xenophon in his account of the reasoning of Socrates. St. Paul then
finds in this instinctive inference from nature up to nature's God, 'a
testimony of the soul naturally Christian.' He is able, at Lystra and
Athens, to assume that men will respond to it.
It is another question, into which St. Paul does not specifically
enter, how far back in human history the appreciation of this reasoning
goes. But it is worth noticing that among our contemporary
investigators of the history of religion, some at least of the most
acute have been coming back to what we may call a modified {83} form of
the doctrine of an original monotheism[17]. They think that even
savage religions generally bear traces, that are plainly independent,
of a belief in one great and mostly good God; and that there is no
evidence that this higher belief was developed out of the lower belief
in manifold spirits of more ambiguous characters. They see no reason
to suppose that the higher belief has been gradually arrived at within
any period into which the human mind can penetrate with its
investigations or its well-grounded conjectures. Humanity appears to
them to have been haunted from its origins with this belief in the one
God; and they regard all the higher religious movements as attempts not
so much to arrive at, as to retain hold on, a belief which is
continually in danger of being overlaid and forgotten. It does not
appear that anthropological science is at all likely to disprove such a
view which on the other hand has a great deal of evidence to justify
it. At least, the {84} evidences of deterioration in the history of
religion are manifold and conspicuous. The lowest view of God and man
is not by any means always the oldest. And the recognition of such
facts is quite consonant with the doctrine of the evolution of religion
in its more reasonable forms.
Meanwhile, every one is in sufficient harmony with St. Paul's argument
who recognizes the universal facts of sin and guilt and needless moral
deterioration among men; and who recognizes also that the secret of sin
is the wilful refusal on men's part to know God as they might have
known Him, and obey Him as they might have obeyed Him.
4. Besides these difficult questions, we should mark what is both
plain and instructive, that St. Paul regards man as necessarily living
either above himself or below himself. Man's true nature is to be in
dependence upon God. Therein is his true liberty and dignity of
sonship. When he tries to be independent, to be his own master simply,
he loses the true principle of self-government and becomes the victim
of his own passions. God 'gave men up,' handed them over as slaves to
dishonouring passions. This theory of human nature is intimately bound
up with all St. Paul's {85} teaching about grace and redemption, and we
shall hear more of it.
5. We shall do well to notice, finally, one consequence which follows
from recognizing that the lowest stage of moral degradation lies, not
merely in doing what is wrong, but in having ceased to disapprove of
it. That is to say, the lowest moral stage carries with it a complete
loss of ideal, or absence of the standard of right and wrong; and this
lowest stage is anticipated before it is reached. It follows,
therefore, and we must not forget it, that the actual conscience of the
individual, or of the society, at any particular moment affords no
adequate standard of right and wrong. The moral conscience, like the
intelligence in general, requires enlightenment. It supplies no
trustworthy information, except so far as we are at pains to keep it
enlightened. More than this, its capacity to keep us admonished
depends on our habitually observing its injunctions. To disobey
conscience is to dull it, and finally to make it obdurate and
insensitive. The absence of conscientious objection to a particular
course of action may therefore be due either to our having neglected to
enlighten our conscience or to having refused to obey it. The duty of
an {86} individual to himself is not only to obey his conscience, but
also take pains to enlighten it. And the duty of the individual to
society is to make continual efforts to keep the corporate conscience
up to standard.
[1] 1 John iii. 4. The Greek phrase implies exactly that all sin is
lawlessness, and all lawlessness is sin.
[2] Rom. v. 13, 14.
[3] Cf. Wisd. xiii. 1-9: 'For verily all men by nature were but vain
who had no perception of God, and from the good things that are seen
they gained not power to know him that is, neither by giving heed to
the works did they recognize the artificer.... For from the greatness
of the beauty even of created things in like proportion does man form
the image of their first maker.... But again even they are not to be
excused. For if they had power to know so much ... how is it that they
did not sooner find the Sovereign Lord of these his works?' Apoc. Bar.
liv. 17, 18: 'From time to time ye have rejected the understanding of
the Most High. For his works have not taught you, nor has the skill of
his creation which is at all times persuaded you.'
[4] Isa. xliv. 18-20.
[5] Wisd. xi. 15; xiii, xiv, xv. St. Paul's debt to the Book of Wisdom
is apparent (1) in the kinds of idols he mentions; (2) in the way in
which the thought of idolatry leads on to that of uncleanness and
sexual immorality; and (3) in the idea of retribution by the natural
law of results.
[6] 1 Thess. ii. 16.
[7] Butler's _Analogy_, part i. ch. 2.
[8] _Pirqe Aboth_, iv. 2 (cited by S. and H.).
[9] S. and H. p. 49.
[10] He implies, as Dr. Farrar points out, 1 Cor. v. 9-10, that pure
society did not exist in Corinth.
[11] See my _Ephesians_, pp. 91, 92, 255.
[12] Rom. ii. 13-15.
[13] Rom. ii. 26.
[14] See also app. note E on physical science and the fall.
[15] Cf. F. B. Jevons, _Introd. to the Hist. of Religion_ (Methuen),
pp. 394, 395: 'Everywhere it is the many who lapse: the few who hold
right on. The progressive peoples of the earth are in a minority.'
'Though evolution is universal, progress is exceptional.'
[16] Cf. Huxley, _Evolution and Ethics_ (Romanes Lecture, 1893,
Macmillan), p. 36: 'The theory of evolution encourages no millennial
anticipations. If, for millions of years, our globe has taken the
upward road, yet, some time, the summit will be reached, and the
downward route will be commenced.'
[17] The allusion is to (1) Jevons (_op. cit._ cap. xxv), who seems to
think some 'amorphous' form of monotheism may very probably lie behind
totemism. He strongly repudiates the notion that the lower form is
necessarily the older. (2) Andrew Lang, _Making of Religion_
(Longmans, 1898), chaps. ix and xv. Cp. also Orr's _Christian view of
God and the World_ (Elliot, 1893), pp. 212 ff., and notes E, F, G.
{87}
DIVISION I. Sec. 2. CHAPTER II. 1-29.
_Judgement on the Jews._
St. Paul in his judgement of the Gentile world is but repeating, with
more of moral discernment, what he would have learned in his Jewish
training. But the strict Jews who had taught St. Paul, though some
among them must have been good men, ready to enter into the deeply
penitential spirit of their psalmists and prophets, do not seem as a
rule to have liked to think of their own people as liable to divine
condemnation. They chose to suppose that the Gentile world alone was
the area upon which divine vengeance would light, while the Jews were
to appear as the instruments of God's judgements, or at least
themselves exempt from them. They had forgotten all the superabundant
warnings against such a spirit which the prophets from Amos to John the
Baptist had let fall. This frame of mind--censorious when {88} it
looks without, lenient to the point of blindness when it looks
within--sometimes appears when one thinks of things in the abstract as
almost impossible, in the form at least in which St. Paul here proceeds
to attribute it to the Jews. We can hardly believe that any
responsible beings could be so blind as St. Paul implies that his pious
fellow-countrymen were. But it needs only experience to convince us
that even in its grosser forms this frame of mind is extraordinarily
common in individuals, in nations, and in churches. Certainly the
nation of England is not, and the representatives of religious England
too often are not, exempt from the common failing. And in the case of
the Jews we have also the witness of our Lord. He represents the
religious Jewish world as honeycombed with hypocrisy of a plain and
gross sort. They are to Him very types of the men who behold the mote
that is in their brother's eye, but consider not the beam that is in
their own eyes. St. Paul's witness then is only the same as the
Christ's.
Here then St. Paul turns abruptly upon a Jew who may be supposed to
have been listening to the indictment of the Gentiles with expressions
of sympathy, and bids him look {89} within and recognize that the Jew
also falls under the same indictment and on the same grounds. And he
proceeds sternly to cut away any possible ground of confidence which he
might derive from the thought that he had 'Abraham to his father.'
God's judgement is directed by an absolutely impartial 'truth' or
estimate of the facts in their inner reality. If in any particular
case of persistent sin His judgement seems to linger, it is not that He
has forgotten or will overlook; it is only that He is merciful and
forbearing, and gives long space for repentance[1]. But, meanwhile, if
the opportunity is not taken, if the heart is hard and impenitent, a
store is being laid up against the offender in the place of judgement,
which will break out in the great day in manifested wrath. God's
principle of judgement is absolutely free from partiality. There are
men {90} who have steadily in view the true aim of human life, its
imperishable glory, its final and permanent honour, and, therefore,
preferring eternal to temporal things, patiently go on doing good; they
may be Jews or Greeks, but in either case indifferently, the reward
that they have sought will be theirs with the accompaniment of inward
peace. There are other men who are contentious, and refusing the
leading of the truth, make themselves servants to unrighteousness.
They may be Jews or Gentiles, but the divine wrath, showing itself in
outward suffering and inward anguish, will be upon them all equally.
For God judges men impartially in the light of their opportunities.
Those who have the advantage of a revealed law shall be judged and
acquitted according as they have, not listened to it merely, but obeyed
it. For a law known and not kept, so far from commending us to God, is
but the instrument of our judgement. And those who have not this
advantage are yet not without an inward light in the natural moral
consciousness of mankind. Those who have sinned against this light
shall find nothing else was needed to bring them to their ruin. And
those, on the other hand, who by its help keep the moral law in effect,
without {91} any assistance from a revealed law, are their own law for
themselves. They have the law in its practical result written in their
hearts as their conduct shows, and their natural conscience bears its
accompanying witness. For conscience, both individual and social,
reflecting on all human actions to condemn, or, more rarely, to acquit,
anticipates the final divine judgement which, as St. Paul continually
announces, it will be the office of Jesus the Christ to pass unerringly
upon things secret as well as open in the 'day of the Lord.'
The specially revealed law on which the Jew relied, which it is his
boast to have received from God, and in virtue of which he could
rightly claim to have a knowledge of divine things which other men had
not, and to be the teacher of the nations, the interpreter to other men
of the divine will--this law finds its first application to those
themselves to whom it is given. How can they preach the commandments,
whether it be the eighth or the seventh or the second that is in
question, so long as they have so bad a reputation for keeping them?
They cannot deny that as of old, so now, their moral conduct causes the
heathen to blaspheme their religion, instead of {92} being drawn
towards it. To have received circumcision in physical fact is of no
profit at all, unless it be accompanied by the obedience of which the
mark in the flesh is but the symbol. Disobedience is in God's sight
uncircumcision. And where the obedience is, God will reckon it as if
the symbol were there also. The morally obedient Gentile will sit in
judgement on the morally disobedient Jew. For that is the divine
principle. God everywhere and always looks to the spiritual reality as
it is seated in heart and will, and is satisfied never by outward
distinctions. Jew (Judah) means 'praise.' But if the Jew is to merit
his name, he must not be satisfied with the applause of men. He must
commend himself to God who sees the heart.
Wherefore thou art without excuse, O man, whosoever thou art that
judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for
thou that judgest dost practise the same things. And we know that the
judgement of God is according to truth against them that practise such
things. And reckonest thou this, O man, who judgest them that practise
such things, and doest the same, that thou shall escape the judgement
of God? Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance
and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to
repentance? but after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up
for thyself wrath in the {93} day of wrath and revelation of the
righteous judgement of God; who will render to every man according to
his works: to them that by patience in well-doing seek for glory and
honour and incorruption, eternal life: but unto them that are factious,
and obey not the truth, but obey unrighteousness, _shall be_ wrath and
indignation, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that
worketh evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Greek; but glory and
honour and peace to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first, and
also to the Greek: for there is no respect of persons with God. For as
many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as
many as have sinned under law shall be judged by law; for not the
hearers of a law are just before God, but the doers of a law shall be
justified: for when Gentiles which have no law do by nature the things
of the law, these, having no law, are a law unto themselves; in that
they shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience
bearing witness therewith[2], and their thoughts one with another
accusing or else excusing _them_; in the day when God shall judge the
secrets of men, according to my gospel, by Jesus Christ.
But if thou bearest the name of a Jew, and restest upon the law, and
gloriest in God, and knowest his will, and approvest the things that
are excellent, being instructed out of the law, and art confident that
thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them that are in
darkness, a corrector of the foolish, a teacher of babes, having in the
law the form of knowledge and of the truth; thou therefore that
teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? thou that preachest a man
should not steal, dost thou steal? {94} thou that sayest a man should
not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? thou that abhorrest
idols, dost thou rob temples? thou who gloriest in the law, through thy
transgression of the law dishonourest thou God? For the name of God is
blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you, even as it is written.
For circumcision indeed profiteth, if thou be a doer of the law: but if
thou be a transgressor of the law, thy circumcision is become
uncircumcision. If therefore the uncircumcision keep the ordinances of
the law, shall not his uncircumcision be reckoned for circumcision? and
shall not the uncircumcision which is by nature, if it fulfil the law,
judge thee, who with the letter and circumcision art a transgressor of
the law? For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that
circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: but he is a Jew, which is
one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, not
in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.
1. As at the end of the first chapter we asked whether St. Paul was
fair to the Gentile world, so now we ask whether he is fair to those of
his own race whose religious tendencies he had known so well from
inside. And the answer again is that he undoubtedly represents aright
the dominant tendency and temper among them. The prophets had always
had to fight against the natural but false idea of divine election,
which held the Jewish race secure in the favour of Jehovah, simply
because He was their God and they were His people. They bring to bear
{95} all the activities of an inspired intelligence and heart to make
their fellow-countrymen perceive that they are only secure in God's
favour so long as they are like Him in character. Now down to the
period of the Captivity, the prophets could also denounce the people
because they were constantly false to Jehovah in matters of worship as
well as of morality. After the Captivity, however, the tendency to
idolatry is gone for ever. After the Maccabean period the exclusive
and legitimate worship of Jehovah becomes a matter of passionate
enthusiasm in the Jewish race. Henceforth therefore their danger from
the false idea of election passes into a new phase. We must be in the
favour of God, they now could plead, because we have Abraham to our
father, and because we keep to the worship of our God with an
irreproachable zeal for His law. Against this sort of strengthened
pleading John the Baptist, the last of the prophets, aims his bare
moral teaching. God's wrath is just about to fall upon His people he
declares, because it lacks in real moral righteousness. Repent ye, be
changed, get you a new heart--is his one word of preaching. This
keynote passes intensified into the teachings and the denunciations of
Christ. Nothing {96} more surely stamps the narrative of 'the woman
taken in adultery' as historically genuine[3], than its profound truth
to the moral attitude of Christ in face of Scribes and Pharisees. The
point of His reply to their trial question is that they who would
enforce a divine law, and thus stand for God before the world, must
themselves be morally sound. 'He that is without sin among you, let
him first cast a stone at her.' It is moral conformity, not merely
orthodoxy, which qualifies us to act for God. It is then precisely
this attitude of Christ towards the Jews zealous for the law, which St.
Paul is reproducing in the passage which we have just read.
He suggests also in its last words--where he is playing on the meaning
of the name of Judah--another deep element in Christ's depreciation of
the religious spirit of the Jews. Their religion was a matter of
public opinion--with all the stagnancy which belongs to the public
opinion of a compact society--not a matter which lived with ever fresh
life in the inner relation of the conscience to God. 'How can ye
believe which receive glory one of another, and the glory which cometh
from the only God ye seek not?' {97} St. Paul then is certainly right
in his estimate of Jewish religion. One indeed who describes with as
vivid reality as he does the pride of a Jew in his religious
privileges--one who had all the reason that Saul of Tarsus had for
knowing what it was to feel this emotion from within--could hardly have
been wrong in his estimate of its weaknesses.
And if the particular moral defects which St. Paul attributes to the
religious Jew are surprisingly grave--theft, adultery, and
temple-robbery--here too what he says out of his own experience is
confirmed from other quarters. Avarice was a notorious sin of Jews.
Our Lord accuses the Scribes of 'devouring widows' houses[4]' under
cloak of religion, and denounces the Pharisees also for leaving their
outwardly purified cups and platters inwardly full of 'extortion.' It
is only a subtler form of theft that He alludes to when He denounces
them for sanctioning the practice of dedicating property as a 'corban'
to the purposes of religion in order to evade the righteous claims of
parents. The story of Susanna, the brief but stern words of our Lord
about the seventh commandment in His Sermon on the Mount, and His {98}
significant language on the occasion already alluded to of the woman
taken in adultery, interpret St. Paul's language as to sins of the
flesh. And the language of the town clerk at Ephesus in exculpating
St. Paul and his company, suggests that 'temple-robbery' was a not
unfamiliar imputation upon Jews. It appears that with all their horror
of idols--and though everything connected with an idol was expressly
declared to be 'an abomination,' unless it had been already desecrated
by Gentiles[5]--they could not always resist the opportunity of
appropriating the rich stores of the temples. The 'religious' Scribes
and Pharisees (though not of course the best of them) were, in fact, as
a body truly hypocrites, as our Lord summarily said they were.