1. No doubt, on the text of Gen. xv. 6, St. Paul is right. It was Abraham's faith that is declared to have been reckoned to his account by God as equivalent to righteousness. But when we get beyond a mere text, is it not, we are inclined to ask, more true to the general spirit of scripture to say, with the author of the First Book of the Maccabees, 'Was not Abraham found faithful in temptation, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness[[6]]?' or with St. James, 'Was not Abraham our father justified by works, in that he offered up Isaac his son upon the altar? Thou seest that faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect[[7]].' No doubt certain Rabbis state the principle pedantically when they speak of Abraham having kept the whole Mosaic law by anticipation[[8]], but is it not true to say that Abraham was accepted by God, and on the whole is represented in the Bible as so accepted, not only because he believed, but also because he 'was found faithful in temptation,' and did good works, or acted as a good man?
Now, if by 'accepted' is meant 'finally accepted,' St. Paul would say this as of Abraham, so of every other accepted man. He must be finally judged and must receive according to his works or character. As we shall see, there is no real discrepancy between St. Paul and St. James on this matter. And St. Paul never disparages 'good works' which are the fruit of faith, only 'works' or 'works of the law' which represent a false attitude of man to God. But the question which he is here asking is, What is the ground of acceptance for a man at starting? What is it puts him at starting in the right relation to God? In other words, What is the root of real righteousness? And his answer to this question is, it is only self-surrendering faith which brought Abraham, or which brings any other man, into acceptance.
In giving this answer St. Paul had in view another attitude with which he had been long familiar, and which he calls 'seeking to be justified by works of the law.' It was the attitude of the Jews, especially as they appear in St. John's Gospel. They were proud of their divine law and of belonging to the chosen people, the children of Abraham and Moses. They knew how to make good their standing-ground with God. By keeping the law, as the law had come to be understood among themselves, they could accumulate merits altogether out of proportion to their failures or demerits. They could even be helped by the merits of the old saints[[9]]. Thus they could stand before God on the basis of a certain engagement or covenant, into which God had entered with His people, and claim their due reward.
This utterly demoralizing attitude—leading as it does to formalism and hypocrisy, or, at the best, unprogressive stagnation—this attitude, which left out of sight all the higher and infinite elements in the Old Testament, was the actual attitude of contemporary Pharisaic Jews. The characteristics with which it endowed them were pride in the law; a sense of personal merit coupled with a contempt for 'sinners of the Gentiles,' or the common 'people which knew not the law'; a self-satisfied stagnation which made them utterly resent the new light of the gospel; a regard for the public opinion of their class, which made them slaves to convention; and moral hollowness and rottenness within. It was because this was their attitude that they rejected the Christ. 'Going about to establish their own righteousness, they did not submit themselves to the righteousness of God.' It was because St. Paul had been brought up in the school of the Pharisees, but had come to perceive its moral rottenness and to accept Jesus as the Christ, that he bases all his doctrine on the substitution of justification by faith for justification by works.
By 'works' or 'works of the law' he means an attitude towards God which left a man largely independent of Him. Under the divine covenant the man of the covenant has a certain task to do, a certain law to keep: that kept, especially in its external requirements as contemporary authority enforces it, he is his own master. He is entitled to resent any further claims upon him. This religious ideal means, as we have seen, pride, stagnation, conventionalism, hypocrisy. And the more it is considered the more unnatural it appears. For
(1) It ignores the fundamental relation of man to God, viz. that, as a creature, he depends absolutely and at every stage on God. He has no initiative in himself. Thus the only attitude towards God which expresses the reality is one in which God is recognized as continually supplying, or promising, or offering, or claiming, and man is continually accepting, or believing, or corresponding, or obeying.
(2) It ignores the ineradicable taint of sin in man, and the accumulated guilt of particular sins. A man may gloss over his inward sinfulness, and cloak and ignore his secret sins; he may live outwardly in high reputation; but if he comes to know himself, he knows himself as a sinner, who depends, at starting, absolutely on God for forgiveness and 'deliverance from coming wrath.'
(3) It is quite contented to leave all mankind, except a small elect body, out of the conditions of acceptance with God.
In substituting 'faith' for works of the law, then, as the principle of justification, St. Paul was really 'returning to nature'; he was realizing facts, and supplying a basis for a morality both progressive and universal. Further, he was true to all the highest teaching of the Old Testament, which continually finds the source and ground of sin and failure in man's independence of God; which is averse to nothing so conspicuously as to substituting external conformity for moral character; which is heavy with the consciousness of sin; which humbly expects a fuller, wider, and richer disclosure of the kingdom of God. Finally, he was true to that deep and summary teaching of our Lord to the Jews, 'This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.' No doubt it may still be said St. Paul argues in an 'uncritical' manner on the basis of a particular text. But in doing this he was doing as his Jewish contemporaries did; and if the particular text is used to prove a real or true principle, who shall complain of it?
2. And now to conciliate St. Paul and St. James. It is a satisfactory task, for the statements which appear so contradictory admit, when they are examined, of an easy harmony.