ingly ensues on the day of Christ's second coming (1 Cor. v. 5; Rom. xiii. 11), when by Him (v. 9; comp. 1 Thess. v. 9) God's judgment decides who are to fall into condemnation and who are to be saved from it. Salvation is therefore simply future; but it is the peculiarity of a living hope, certain of its end, that even now it anticipates this end, that even now that end is ideally present to it. By hope the Christian can even now regard himself as saved (viii. 24: TO Exπídi cowonμev). It is, however, implied in particular in this purely negative idea, that when the conditions of this salvation are perfectly fulfilled the man knows himself saved, although that from which he is to be saved comes only in the future, and only along with that the full reality of the salvation itself. In this sense has salvation even now been given to the Gentiles (xi. 11), the day of salvation is even now (2 Cor. vi. 2); for while the gospel offers righteousness (Rom. i. 17), the want of which alone brings condemnation to them, it must be savingly powerful for the salvation of believers (ver. 16). Whoever, therefore, is brought to believe through the preaching of the gospel, is even thereby saved (1 Cor. vii. 16, ix. 22, x. 33; Rom. xi. 14, 26, x. 1). We have here just the same interpenetrating of the present and the future, which we noticed in the teaching of Jesus and Peter (§ 15, c; 51, c).

(c) The positive correlate to the negative idea of owτnpia is the idea of wn, and this we have already met with in the Epistles to the Thessalonians, in harmony with the preaching of the early apostles as the object of Christian hope (§ 64, d). That the gospel is the power of God unto salvation (Rom. i. 16) is grounded (ver. 17) on this, that it reveals a righteousness. which brings life (comp. v. 10: owlŋσóμela èv τy (wy); and, according to 1 Cor. ii. 15, 16, the preaching of the gospel is ἐν τοῖς σωζομένοις . . . ὀσμὴ εἰς ζωήν. The fundamental law of the divine righteousness, according to which life falls to righteousness (§ 65, d), is therefore not only not abolished in Christianity, but it comes to be directly the basis for this portion of the doctrine of hope. Righteousness, doubtless, is given by grace to men in justification; but after this has taken place, according to that fundamental principle, even life must be assigned to Him who has been declared righteous (Rom. v. 21:

ἡ χάρις βασιλεύει διὰ δικαιοσύνης εἰς ζωὴν αἰώνιον; comp. vv. 17, 18: Sixaiwois (wns). But righteousness is not only imputed to man, it is also really restored in him; and the end also to which this actual righteousness leads, according to vi. 22, can only be eternal life; but as it is produced only by grace, this eternal life, obtained by means of grace, remains a gracious gift of God, which we have received in Christ (ver. 23). But now actual righteousness is wrought in man by the Spirit, and there is thereby laid a new foundation for the hope of life. For it was the Spirit, on account of whom Christ could not abide in death (§ 78, d), whose very nature is such that He is (woToLoûv (1 Cor. xv. 45; 2 Cor. iii. 6), and for this reason He is called (Rom. viii. 2) the Spirit of life. Because, therefore, the object of the Spirit's efforts, even that, therefore, which He wishes by His activity to effect in us, is life (ver. 6), then each one who obeys the rule of the Spirit will live (ver. 13), will from the Spirit inherit eternal life (Gal. vi. 8). If this Spirit has once wrought in us a new life of the Spirit (§ 86, b), then this life, on account of the righteousness to be appropriated by it, holds within itself a life raised above (Rom. viii. 10) the death under which

2

1 It follows from the express mention of eternal life, that that correlation of righteousness and life do not refer to the new moral life, as Schmid (ii. p. 245) and Messner (p. 200) suppose, in which sense it would form a simple tautology. In our Epistles the new moral life is generally mentioned in contrast to being dead with Christ (Rom. vi. 4, viii. 11, 13), and very often, as in Gal. v. 25, as life in the pregnant sense. Besides, occurs (Rom. vii. 9) in a metaphorical sense, when the play of thought, that the man lives as long as sin is dead in him, and dies as soon as it revives, determines the representation. Neither in 1 Cor. xv. 22 nor in Rom. v. 10 (Gess, pp. 106, 191) is the new moral life spoken of, not to speak of in the woriñoni, Gal. iii. 21 (Immer, p. 283). Not at all can one attribute a transference of the eschatological idea to the ethical, Rom. viii. 10 (Pfleiderer, p. 206 [E. T. i. 207]; comp. on the other hand, § 84, c, footnote 13).

In this passage vua can designate only the new spiritual life wrought in us by the Spirit, not the Spirit that is received Himself, as von Hofmann (in loc.) will have it; because, as R. Schmidt (p. 36) properly remarks, this latter is life in Himself, and not because of righteousness; but neither does it designate, as R. Schmidt himself will have it, the natural spirit of man, because only those in whom Christ is are spoken of. But then it also follows from this that dimarón cannot be understood with him (comp. also Gess, p. 192) of imputed righteousness, but only of righteousness of life; because the latter, but never the former, is drawn from the indwelling of Christ in us (by His Spirit). (Comp. § 84, d.)

on account of sin the body falls; and even in this sense one can say that the Spirit is the earnest of the future perfection (note a). But through the Spirit we enter upon a living fellowship with Christ, and this secures to us, to be sure, in the first place, only a new moral life (vi. 8); but this life in fellowship with the risen Christ, who can die no more (vv. 9, 10), carries within itself the warrant of an eternal continuance.

(d) We have already seen (Rom. viii. 10) that the apostle, while he transports himself to the end of human life, where the result of the development of his life, led by the Spirit (in opposition to the flesh), must come to light, says that the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life, i.e. according to its nature it involves life in itself, because of righteousness (note c). It is clear from this that for the Christian bodily death has lost its significance. On this account is life, ver. 13, is a partaker,

of which the Christian, according to put in opposition to bodily death, as though the latter had for the Christian completely ceased. This death can no longer separate him from the love of God (ver. 38); it can no more put an end to the life in fellowship with Christ, raised as He is above death (vi. 8-10). Bodily death is hence no longer for the Christian death, it is now but a transition state, from which he awakes to a higher life, a state of blessed rest, a sleep (κouãoba: 1 Cor. vii. 39, xi. 30, xv. 6, 18, 20, 51; comp. 1 Thess. iv. 13-15). Apart also from the resurrection

3 By this biblical mode of expression (comp. Matt. ix. 24) one is by no means, with Usteri, p. 368, to think of the idea of an actual sleep of the soul, as that sleep forms but the contrast to the life of activity in the body (comp. Biedermann, p. 299). On this account also there is by no means to be necessarily connected with it the idea of a troubled shadowy life (Pfleiderer, p. 259 [E. T. i. 263]), so that here again there emerges an irreconcilable contradiction between the supposition of an intermediate state formed from the Jewish (?) hope of the Parousia, and the idea of an immediate blessedness in fellowship with Christ, in which Pfleiderer then sees involved the immanent development of the new (religious moral) life for ever (p. 260 [E. T. i. 264]). The supposition of Sabatier (pp. 153–157), that there came to the apostle, under the fear of death which threatened him between the First and Second Epistles to the Corinthians, the thought of martyrdom, and therewith that of a blessed life with Christ immediately after death, and transformed all his eschatological ideas, is quite unprovable. Even in 2 Cor. v. 2, 4, his longing is to live to the Parousia, in order by the change to be exempted from the laying aside of the body in death.

4

from death, with bodily death then begins, that is to say, for the Christian a state of blessedness by the fellowship with Christ, which is no longer hindered and troubled by the fleshly life, otherwise the apostle could not long ἐκδημῆσαι ἐκ τοῦ σώματος καὶ ἐνδημῆσαι πρὸς τὸν κύριον (2 Cor. v. 8), and with this longing quiet (comp. Phil. i. 21, 23) the desire to live to the Parousia in order to be exempted from bodily death (ver. 4). That reference should on the whole be made so seldom to the intermediate state between death and the resurrection results from this, that Paul along with that generation hoped to survive till the second coming of Christ (§ 63, d), and questions about the intermediate state were taken into account at most but hypothetically. If Paul (1 Cor. xv.) contends with the deniers of the resurrection as though the denial of the resurrection implied a denial of any (at least any blessed) existence after death (vv. 18, 19, 32), it is to be considered that to him, with the denial of a possibility of the resurrection, Christ's resurrection fell (vv. 13, 16),

* Paul scarcely thought of the soul of the believer in this fellowship with Christ as in Hades, which, according to Rom. x. 7, is thought to be in the abyss (comp. Phil. ii. 10: xaraxtóvın), since the exalted Christ is verily in heaven; but rather as in Paradise (2 Cor. xii. 4); and this is by no means to be sought (as Luke xxiii. 43) in Hades, but beyond the third heavens (ver. 2), therefore in the special dwelling-place of God. This fellowship with Christ is by no means, as Pfleiderer, p. 259 [E. T. i. 263], supposes, the curdoğanvas, Rom. viii. 17, since a cμa rūs dins belongs to the latter. That Paul supposes the clothing with such a body to come immediately after death (which would only furnish a contradiction accepted by him to the doctrine of the resurrection, unless recourse were to be had to the idea of an intermediate body, an idea which he rightly rejects), follows neither from ver. 1, where the existence of a resurrection body in heaven (ixous» . . . iv rois oùpavoïs) is but the expression for the possession ideally present by hope (comp. Matt. v. 46, vi. 1), nor from ver. 3, where, according to the correct reading and the connection, only the supposition can be expressed, that he will be found clothed and not naked (i.e. yet alive) at the Parousia. But even if one were to accept Pfleiderer's interpretation, which is supported by an untenable reading, then the whole interpretation would proceed on the supposition that those who survive till the Parousia will not be unclothed (i.e. dead), but clothed upon (comp. § 99, a), it cannot therefore admit the idea of a consummation commencing immediately at death, for that would contradict the hope of a Parousia. It may be incomprehensible to modern views how the consummation should not begin immediately after deliverance from the fleshly body (p. 260 [E. T. i. 264]); to Paul, however, to whom the consummation of salvation is an act of divine grace, which can be brought about only by the return of Christ, it cannot commence at death.

and that then one could no more speak of a fellowship with the living Christ.5

$97. The Resurrection and the Inheritance.

Comp. Fr. Köstlin, d. Lehre des Apostel Paulus von der Auferstehung (Jahrb. f. d. Theol. 1877, 2).

The victory over death is completed only by the resurrec tion, and this must be given to all Christians, both on account of their living fellowship with Christ, and on account of the Spirit of God dwelling in them (a). But the resurrection gives them a body of an entirely different kind, which, freed from all corruptibility and weakness, shining with the splendour of heavenly glory, has become entirely the organ of the Spirit (b). With this glorified body of the resurrection, Christians receive also a share in the divine glory, and therewith enter on the full inheritance of the children of God (c). Finally, they also receive the inheritance promised to Abraham and his seed in the perfected kingdom of God, and in the joint-lordship with Christ (d).

(a) The final consummation of the Christian cannot consist of purely spiritual fellowship with Christ (§ 96, d); for corporeity is an essential condition of complete life, and as its dissolution in death is in consequence of sin, its resumption must be involved in the completion of redemption. principle the redeemed is delivered from death as the punish

In

Then only the troubled shadowy life of Hades would remain, and, from the first, according to the Jewish consciousness, it was no true life and no blessing. On the other hand, a life in fellowship with the exalted Christ could be no more an "unhappy" life, even though there was not the perfect blessedness, and when Pfleiderer, p. 259, footnote [E. T. i. 262], asks what need was there for the resurrection if the soul is already in fellowship with the glorified Christ, he overlooks the fact that Paul, like that whole time, could not conceive a created life in the full sense without a body, and that this (according to footnote 4) purely spiritual fellowship with Christ cannot be the blessed consummation hoped for. If Paul comforts the Thessalonians regarding the fate of their departed brethren, not by referring them to that prelimiminary blessed fellowship, but to their resurrection at the Parousia, that arose from the fact that they, according to 1 Thess. iv. 15, were mainly anxious whether the former would not come at a disadvantage in reference to those who should survive at the Parousia (§ 64, c). He can therefore speak only of their fate at the latter epoch.