We have seen that the germ of Paul's manifested activity was his discovery that his body was acting quite mechanically without, or even against, the direction of his will and his recognition that as a being he had some other function to fulfil than to be the mere pasive experiencer of the behaviour of that body. We have looked at the Greek-Hebrew soil in which his thought developed, and have examined with some care the form which it took as it grew. We have seen that it exhibited not a system of doctrine but a manifold picture of man as he is and his potentialities.
There remains for us to see what Paul has to tell us of the actualization of these potentialities, the "new creation" as he calls it. This will be nothing less than the remade man in his new rôle, functioning now for the first time as a normal human being, a "son of God."
Our subject is really the theology of the Apostle Paul. This may seem surprising in view of the fact that we have just been demonstrating that Paul had no theology. However, there is no real inconsistency. What I meant then was that Paul had no theology in the popular sense. Of course he had an essential theology.
In the same way, there is a popular meaning, and a real meaning for other words. Gnosticism: there is a real Gnosis, the knowledge of which comes from experience, very different from the arrogant and sterile intellectualism of the Gnostics as we know them. There is a real Theosophy, the Wisdom of God, and it does not develop the fantasies of a Theosophical Society.
So theology in the real sense does not consist of speculative verbalizations about God nor deductions as to the nature of God drawn from the reports or the experiences of others, but it is the conceptual formulation of one's own experience of God. It is, as the name implies, the God-Word, the Word of God, the divine seed growing in us. Of course Paul had a theology in this sense. We cannot expect him to define the new state in so many words. It is beyond that. But if we look closely we can pick out from what he does say, plain intimations of the nature of the new relation as it presented itself to his consciousness in his experience.
When we tried to analyze the structure of the Epistle to the Romans, we found that the heart of the epistle was formulated in a double statement, the fact of sin and the way out, expressed thus at the end of the seventh chapter:
1.Miserable man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
2. God! To whom be thanks through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The first part of this statement, the fact of sin, Paul develops in the seventh chapter, where he paints a picture of his observed mechanicality and will-lessness which cannot be anything short of terrifying in its stark reality to those who have chanced to catch a glimpse of themselves as they are.
The second part of the statement, the liberating God, Paul develops in the 8th Chapter; and it is there, if anywhere that we should expect to find a statement of his theology. And that is exactly where we do find it, in the first two verses, where he says:
"There is now, therefore, no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus. For the law of the spirit, life in Jesus Christ, has set me free from the law of sin and death."
This statement of his theology is made in somewhat different words in the Epistle to the Galatians, which I have already observed is the Epistle to the Romans in a nutshell. There Paul says:
"I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me."
That is the sum total of Paul's theology, Life IN Christ,—Christ IN me. Those two phrases mean the same thing, so close is the union. The idea seems very simple, almost trite, yet I do not expect to be able to do more than hint at its richness and vitality.