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Diagram 1 (repeated) (click to enlarge) |
Now we have finished with the main structure of the letter. There are some subordinate parts of the diagram that I ought to refer to and then I am through. Those other parts give the diagram the appearance not only of an atom, or of an insect, but of a dirigible also.
The lines on the left represent the introduction, the first seven verses of the epistle. They are most remarkable on account of what we have previously noticed, that is, that Paul saw the whole letter at once. He did not have to think it out. See what he put into those verses:
"Paul, a slave of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart to proclaim God's gospel which He promised concerning His Son. By human descent he belonged to the family of David, but by his spirit of holiness he was miraculously marked out Son of God after the resurrection of the dead."
He sums up there, not only his authority and the substance of his gospel, but a disquisition on the person of Christ, and the nature of spiritual reality. The thoughts that are suggested here would take a lifetime to digest.
The tail of the dirigible is simply chapter sixteen, which includes personal remarks to various individuals.
Down below I have two "baskets," representing Paul's two statements of his intention to visit Rome, one in chapter one and the other in chapter fifteen. That there are two statements goes to show that the structure I have set forth is the actual structure. It is obvious that if the structure had been sequential, it would not have been necessary for balance to repeat these remarks, but as the thought here is three-dimensional, Paul found it advisable to put his statement on the two sides, just as we have two eyes and two ears.
There is another indication of this structure in the doxologies that are found in the Epistle to the Romans. We expect to find a doxology at the end of an epistle written in logical sequence, but here there are about six doxologies. In Ch. 16 verses 25–27, at the very end, we read:
"To God, the only wise, through Jesus Christ, even to him be the glory, through all the ages, Amen."
Ch, 15, verse 33:
"May the God of peace be with you, Amen."
The same chapter, verses 5 and 6:
"And may the God of patience and of comfort grant you full sympathy with one another after the example of Christ Jesus, that with oneness of heart and voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Chris."
Ch. 11, verse 36:
"For all proceeds from him and exists by him and for him, to whom be the glory forever, Amen."
Ch. 8, verse 37–39, I have already read. It is a doxology in essence
You see what has happened. One doxology was not enough for Paul. He knew well enough that this was not a writing by the ordinary scheme of association with a beginning and an end, but a sphere the surface of which might be reached in many directions. Each time he came to the surface he had a doxology.
Now for these antennae, so-called. Some atoms are what is called radio-active. That is, they lose or expel some of their electrons from time to time. These radio-active substances are particularly valuable, vivid and precious. It seems to me that I see in this epistle certain elements evidencing radio-active properties, because they are not directly connected with the main thought, but interject, as it were, suggestions of profound ideas which do not simply scintillate but which glow with a light not of this planet, and which may be compared to the radiations cast off, for instance, by a substance like radium. There are many more, but perhaps these will suffice to give the diagram the proper radio-active appearance. Of course I shall not try to probe the meaning of these utterances. I am just trying to point out their existence.
The first I have chosen in Chapter 8, verse 22:
"For we know the whole of creation is groaning in the pangs of childbirth until this hour."
What is that childbirth? He says in verse 19:
"All creation is yearning, longing to see the manifestation of the sons of God."
It seems to me that the thought is this: The universe was created for the precise purpose of giving birth to beings conscious of their position and duty in the universe. These are the sons of God. It makes us perhaps feel our responsibility more if we ponder that thought.
Another is Chapter 7, verse 18:
"For I know that in me (i.e., in my lower self), nothing good has its home, for the wish to do right is there, but not the power. What I do is not the good I desire, but the evil deed I do not desire."
Paul came to that conclusion from experience. I think there are vey few who will admit frankly that they are acting, not as they will but as automata; and before you get a cure for the condition it is first necessary to recognize the situation. As Socrates said in the passage I have quoted, "Know thyself."
Chapter 3, verse 25: Here Paul says, referring to Jesus Christ,
"Whom God put forward as a mercy-seat through faith in his blood."
What does this mean? The Greek word which I have translated as "mercy-seat" is often translated as "propitiation," giving quite another meaning. Even Weymouth translates it "propitiation," but he excuses himself; he knows he is wrong. He says the Greek word is "mercy-seat," but that we can hardly use it because if we do Christ is made at once priest, victim and place of sacrifice. Weymouth has a good deal of understanding but in this case he does not seem to be able to think of the mercy-seat except as a place of sacrifice. The mercy-seat was the cover of the ark of the covenant and on the annual day of atonement it was sprinkled with the blood of the explatory victim. But it had a far deeper significance, and that is what Paul refers to here. It was the place of the presence of God. "For I will appear in the cloud upon the mercy-seat." Lev.16:2. We must remember also that "faith in his blood" does not mean "belief in the efficacy of the shed blood," but a faith in God resulting from a relationship with Christ so close that it amounts to blood kinship. So what Paul means is that in our kinship to Christ we find God.
There is another thought. Christ is a mercy-seat because without him we could never escape from our original state of slavery. I think of the doctrine of William Blake, where he speaks of what he calls the mundane shell as the "limit of contraction." From the sun the radiations of the divine love have gone forth, and they might go on to annihilation if it were not for the mercy-seat of God, this "limit of contraction," just this material world, where if we will we can begin to grow towards God. In the same way, he says, "Time is the mercy of Eternity." That is, out of the awful immensity of eternity, with which we cannot hope to cope, these moments are given to us wherein we may work out our own development.
So Paul too says Christ is a mercy-seat, not a propitiation: Living "in Christ," as he says, we look at ourselves impartially, determine what is wrong, and start on the road to recovery.
The other passage I have marked is Chapter 1, verses 18–23, a passage to which I have already referred a number of times. There Paul points out that in each one of us is full knowledge:
"God, before the creation of the world, gave to every man full knowledge of himself."
If we are ignorant, it is only because we have not troubled to pierce through the accretions with which we have been overlaid.