In common with his countrymen and the Gentiles, Paul undoubtedly believed in a world of light and bliss situated over the sky, where the Deity, surrounded by his angels, reigns in immortal splendor. According to the Greeks, Zeus and the other gods, with a few select heroes, there lived an imperishable life. According to the Hebrews, there was "the house of Jehovah," "the habitation of eternity," "the world of holy angels." The Old Testament contains many sublime allusions to this place. Jacob in his dream saw a ladder set up that reached unto heaven, and the angels were ascending and descending upon it. Fixing his eyes upon the summit, the patriarch exclaimed, not referring, as is commonly supposed, to the ground on which he lay, but to the opening in the sky through which the angels were passing and repassing, "Surely this is the house of God and this the gate of heaven." Jehovah is described as "riding over the heaven of heavens;" as "treading upon the arch of the sky." The firmament is spoken of as the solid floor of his abode, where "he layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters," the "waters above," which the Book of Genesis says were "divided from the waters beneath." Though this divine world on high was in the early ages almost universally regarded as a local reality, it was not conceived by Jews or Gentiles to be the destined abode of human souls. It was thought to be exclusively occupied by Jehovah and his angels, or by the gods and their messengers. Only here and there were scattered a few dim traditions, or poetic myths, of a prophet, a hero, a god descended man, who, as a special favor, had been taken up to the supernal mansions. The common destination of the disembodied spirits of men was the dark,stupendous realms of the under world. As Augustine observes, "Christ died after many; he rose before any: by dying he suffered what many had suffered before; by rising he did what no one had ever done before."1 These ideas of the celestial and the infernal localities and of the fate of man were of course entertained by Paul when he became a Christian. A few texts by way of evidence of this fact will here suffice. "That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and those on earth, and those under the earth." "He that descended first into the lower parts of the earth is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens." The untenableness of that explanation which makes the descent into the lower parts of the earth refer to Christ's descent to earth from his pre existent state in heaven must be evident, as it seems to us, to every mind. Irenaus, discussing this very text from Ephesians, exposes the absurdity and stigmatizes the heresy of those who say that the infernal world is this earth, ("qui dicunt inferos quidem esse hunc mundum.")2 "I knew a man caught up to the third heaven, . . . caught up into paradise." The threefold heaven of the Jews, here alluded to, was, first, the region of the air, supposed to be inhabited by evil spirits. Paul repeatedly expresses this idea, as when he speaks of "the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that worketh in the children of disobedience," and when he says, "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness, against wicked spirits in heavenly places." The second heaven comprised the region of the planetary bodies. The third lay beyond the firmament, and was the actual residence of God and the angelic hosts. These quotations, sustained as they are by the well known previous opinions of the Jews, as well as by numerous unequivocal texts in the writings of the other apostles and by many additional ones in those
1 Enarratio in Psalmum XC.
2 Adv. Hares. lib. v. cap. 31.
of Paul, are conclusive evidence that he believed in the received heaven above the blue ether and stellar dome, and in the received Hadean abyss beneath the earth. In the absence of all evidence to the contrary, every presumption justifies the supposition that he also believed as we know all his orthodox contemporaries did that that under world was the abode of all men after death, and that that over world was solely the dwelling place of God and the angels. Nay, we are not left to conjecture; for he expressly declares of God that he "dwelleth in the light which no man can approach unto." This conclusion will be abundantly established in the course of the following exposition.
With these preliminaries, we are prepared to see what was Paul's doctrine of death and of salvation. There are two prevalent theories on this subject, both of which we deem partly scriptural, neither of them wholly so. On the one extreme, the consistent disciple of Augustine the historic Calvinist attributes to the apostle the belief that the sin of Adam was the sole cause of literal death, that but for Adam's fall men would have lived on the earth forever or else have been translated bodily to heaven without any previous process of death. That such really was not the view held by Paul we are convinced. Indeed, there is one prominent feature in his faith which by itself proves that the disengagement of the soul from the material frame did not seem to him an abnormal event caused by the contingency of sin. We refer to his doctrine of two bodies, the "outward man" and the "inward man," the "earthly house" and the "heavenly house," the "natural body" and the "spiritual body." Neander says this is "an express assertion" of Paul's belief that man was not literally made mortal by sin, but was naturally destined to emerge from the flesh into a higher form of life.3 Paul thought that, in the original plan of God, man was intended to drop his gross, corruptible body and put on an incorruptible one, like the "glorious body" of the risen Christ. He distinctly declares, "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." Therefore, we cannot interpret the word "death" to mean merely the separation of the soul from its present tabernacle, when he says, "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men." On the other extreme, the fully developed Pelagian the common Unitarian holds that the word "death" is always used in the arguments of Paul in a spiritual or figurative sense, merely meaning moral alienation from God in guilt, misery, and despair. Undoubtedly it is used thus in many instances, as when it is written, "I was alive without the law once; but, when the commandment came, sin rose to life, and I died." But in still more numerous cases it means something more than the consciousness of sin and the resulting wretchedness in the breast, and implies something external, mechanical, visible, as it were. For example, "Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead." Any one who reads the context of this sentence may see that the terms "death" and "resurrection" antithetically balance each other, and refer not to an inward experience, but to an outward event, not to a moral change, but to the physical descent and resurrection. It is certain that here the words are not employed in a moral sense. The phraseology Paul uses in stating the connection of the sin of Adam with death, the connection of the resurrection of Christ with immortal life, is too peculiar, emphatic, and extensive not to be loaded with
3 Planting and Training, Ryland's trans. p. 240.
a more general and vivid significance than the simple unhappiness of a sense of guilt, the simple peace and joy of a reconciled conscience. The advocates, then, of both theories the Calvinist asserting that Paul supposed sin to be the only reason why we do not live eternally in the world with our present organization, and the Rationalist asserting that the apostle never employs the word "death" except with a purely interior signification are alike beset by insuperable difficulties, perplexed by passages which defy their fair analysis and force them either to use a violent interpretation or to confess their ignorance.
We must therefore seek out some third view, which, rejecting the errors, shall combine the truths and supply the defects of the two former. We have now to present such a view, a theory of the Pauline doctrine of the last things which obviously explains and fills out all the related language of the epistles. We suppose he unfolded it fully in his preaching, while in his supplementary and personal letters he only alludes to such disconnected parts of it as then rose upon his thoughts. A systematic development of it as a whole, with copious allusions and labored defences, was not needed then, as it might seem to us to have been. For the fundamental notions on which it rested were the common belief of the nation and age. Geology and astronomy had not disturbed the credit of a definitely located Hades and heaven, nor had free metaphysics sharpened the common mind to skeptical queries. The view itself, as we conceive it occupied the mind of Paul, is this. Death was a part of the creative plan for us from the first, simply loosing the spirit from its corruptible body, clothing it with an ethereal vehicle, and immediately translating it to heaven. Sin marred this plan, alienated us from the Divine favor, introduced all misery, physical and moral, and doomed the soul, upon the fall of its earthly house, to descend into the slumberous gloom of the under world. Thus death was changed from a pleasant organic fulfilment and deliverance, spiritual investiture and heavenly ascent, to a painful punishment condemning the naked ghost to a residence below the grave. As Ewald says, through Adam's sin "death acquired its significance as pain and punishment."4 Herein is the explanation of the word "death" as used by Paul in reference to the consequence of Adam's offence. Christ came to reveal the free grace and gift of God in redeeming us from our doom and restoring our heavenly destiny. This he exemplified, in accordance with the Father's will, by dying, descending into the dreary world of the dead, vanquishing the forces there, rising thence, and ascending to the right hand of the throne of heaven as our forerunner. On the very verge of the theory just stated as Paul's, Neander hovers in his exposition of the apostle's views, but fails to grasp its theological scope and consequences. Krabbe declares that "death did not arise from the native perishableness of the body, but from sin."5 This statement Neander controverts, maintaining that "sin introduced no essential change in the physical organization of man, but merely in the manner in which his earthly existence terminates. Had it not been for sin, death would have been only the form of a higher development of life."6 Exactly so. With innocence, the soul at death
4 Sendschreiben des Apostels Paulus, s. 210.
5 Die Lehre von oer Sunde und vom Tode, cap. xi, s. 192.