them in the order of their necessary appearance on the earth before the consummation. They are given with some variation as follows: The Torah, Repentance, Paradise, Hell, the Throne of Glory, the Sanctuary, Messiah. When he wishes to raise hope to the pitch of certainty he says, "The soul of Messiah is laid up in paradise from the foundation of the world." Assurance is made doubly sure when the revelators declare as in Enoch that they have seen him waiting for the time of his appearance in the treasure-house of souls. True the distinction is made by our modern theologians with great care between logical and real preëxistence. But the distinction is at best a tenuous one and in practice tends to disappear. The later Jewish mystics depict the Messiah as impatient of the delay, imploring to be sent to the rescue of Israel. Pseudo-Barnabas already quotes an Enoch-fragment which seems to be using Ps. 102:13, 23 (LXX) of the "shortening of the time to have pity upon Zion," as in the Gospels also the days of waiting are "cut short." According to Barnabas Enoch had said: "For to this end hath the Master cut short the periods and the days, that His Beloved might hasten and come to his inheritance." 11 If the simple narrative of the Synoptic evangelists contains no trace of the doctrine of the preëxistence save the Voice from Heaven at the Baptism, which declares the fore-ordination and election of the Beloved in Pauline terms: "Thou art my Son, the Beloved; upon thee my choice was set," this is no more than we should expect from a narrative which leaves little room for theological evaluation of the scenes elsewhere than in the prologue. But Paul has both room and occasion for such theological evaluation; and Paul's equivalent for the Synoptic passage just quoted is the famous verse

11 See the article, "Heb. 1: 10-12 and the Septuagint Reading of Ps. 102: 23" in ZNW III (1902), p. 180 ff.

in Colossians: "It was the 'good-pleasure' that the whole pleroma of the Spirit should take up its abode in the Son of His love, in whom we have our redemption, the forgiveness of our sins. For he is the Image of the invisible God, the Firstborn of all creation; for in him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through him and unto him, and in him all things consist."

We shall see presently why it is needful for Paul here to set the higher sovereignty (and hence by Jewish logic earlier origin) of Christ over against that of the angelic hierarchies, and on what scriptural basis he rests the claim, the teachings of Hebrew Wisdom. But without waiting for this it must already be apparent that Paul could not be a believer in revelation as the Hebrew understands it,- could not have had the mystical experience of vision of the "Son of God" in glory which he shared with his predecessors in the faith, above all could not possibly have taken over the utterances of Jesus which embodied their faith in him as the Son of Man destined to appear upon the clouds of Heaven without constructing from this as the very basis of his world-view a doctrine of the preëxistence of the Christ. If in his case the preëxistence of the Messiah is not a mere waiting in the treasury of souls, but an active participation in the work both of creation and redemption, this comes in part from his familiarity with the doctrine of the Wisdom writers concerning this spiritual agent of God in the work of creation, revelation, and redemption. In part we must attribute it to the necessity the Apostle is under of conveying to his converts from the Hellenistic world some sense of the values represented by that discarded title of the Christ, "the Son of Man." As we have seen, the Son of Man is for

Paul the head of that humanity that is to be in “the manifestation of the sons of God." He is that spiritual second Adam who was before, even as in the consummation he comes after, the natural that was first. It is the permeation of humanity with the "mind” that was in him that brings the triumph of the Creator's will, the unification and reconciliation of all in the spirit of service. Immortality there cannot be save in this spirit. Individually and socially the mind of the first Adam, grasping and self-seeking, is death. The mind of the second Adam, created anew in the moral likeness of God, is life and peace.

We have to look back to the teaching and story of Jesus through a two-fold translation here. We see it as reflected in the mind of a Jewish scribe, defending the truth against reaction to Jewish legalism, interpreting it again to Gentiles steeped in the mysticism of the religions of personal immortality. But would our knowledge of the abiding values of that teaching and that life be adequate without Paul? Is there indeed any evangelist, save the great disciple of Paul at Ephe sus, who so teaches the world what it means to have had a Christ in their midst?

3. Christ as the Wisdom of God

Little time indeed remains in which to speak of the third great factor in Paul's Christology, the conception which he takes mainly from Hellenistic Judaism of the saving Wisdom of God. Later we find an increasing disposition to substitute the infinitely poorer term the Logos, as a concession to Stoic metaphysic. Philo begins the change for Jewish writers, the fourth evangelist among Christians. But the moral values are almost wholly wanting to the Greek conception. Heraclitus does make the Logos complain of human neglect in something like the tones of the Hebrew plaints of Wis

dom, but the resemblance is remote. The Stoic pantheist's conception of the Logos has nothing of the human tenderness of the brooding Spirit of God, whose voice is the murmur of the dove, whose wings are stretched protectingly over her wayward young. The Hebrew conception of the creative Spirit is of a being whose delight is with men, who comes forth with entreaty to save them from the error of their ways, longing for their return. The Stoic Logos compares with this as the physicist's conception of the ether compares with the Christian's belief in a saving Spirit of God in Christ. When Paul thinks of the Wisdom of God, he has in mind that which the writer of the Wisdom of Solomon calls "the Spirit of the Lord which hath filled the world, and which holdeth all things together (1:7), she that was the artificer of the creation, and rejoiced with God in his habitable earth, a "hidden wisdom" which the wise of the world cannot search out, but which as a saving spirit "goeth about herself seeking those that are worthy of her; and in their paths she appeareth unto them graciously" (Sap. 6:16). Paul thinks of the Wisdom of God as a holy spirit, only-begotten (ovoyevés) yet manifold . . . beneficent, loving toward man, all-powerful, all-seeing, pervading and penetrating all things, a breathing forth of the power of God and a clear effluence of the glory of the Almighty, an effulgence from the everlasting light, an unspotted mirror of the working of God, and an image (Kwv) of His goodness." Paul thinks of this Wisdom of God as the spirit of revelation and redemption, which "from generation to generation passing into holy souls maketh men to be friends of God and prophets.' He thinks of it as "reaching from one end of the world to the other with full strength and ordering all things graciously." He believes that "it is given her to live with God, and that the Sovereign Lord of all loved her."

66

He believes with the Son of Sirach that this spirit came forth from the mouth of the Most High and covered the earth as a mist," that it made its throne in the pillar of cloud and made its tabernacle in Israel, in order that in the end it might go forth to the world as the four streams from Eden, watering all lands, "bringing instruction to light as the morning, and making Israel's knowledge of God to shine forth afar off." He believes with Baruch that Israel's calamities came when she forsook this way of Wisdom, even as the nations perished because they had it not. With Baruch he exclaims in the words of Moses concerning the Law: "Who hath gone up into Heaven and taken her and brought her down from the clouds? Who hath gone over the sea and found her and will bring her for choice gold?" God only gives this spirit of his own knowledge and goodness, "He that sendeth forth the light and it goeth, who called it and it obeyed Him with fear. He hath found out all the way of knowledge, and hath given it unto Jacob His Servant, and to Israel that is His Beloved. After this did she appear upon earth and was conversant with men." 12 Paul believes that this creative and redemptive Spirit, this spirit of the knowledge, fear and love of God, this spirit of revelation of the purpose and will of the Creator, so hidden from the world, is the special endowment of Israel, whom God chose for this very purpose, that it might be His Servant to bring peace and reconciliation with the universal Father to all the ends of the earth through the knowledge of Him. He believes that this eternal Spirit tabernacled for the redemption of humanity in Israel as a whole, and was incarnate in successive leaders of Israel by divers portions and in divers manners, in Joseph, in Moses, in Solomon; for this is the belief

12 The quotations are made in abbreviated form, from Sap. 1: 7 ff., 6: 12 ff., 7: 21-8: 7; Ecclus. 24; and Bar. 3:9-37.