s come. "For us, who approach Christianity through a scholastic
theology, it is Christ's divinity which establishes His being without
sin. For Paul, who approached Christianity through his personal
experience, it was Christ's being without sin which established His
divinity. The large and complete conception of righteousness to which he
himself had slowly and late, and only by Christ's help, awakened, in
Christ he seemed to see existing absolutely and naturally. The devotion
to this conception which made it meat and drink to carry it into effect,
a devotion of which he himself was strongly and deeply conscious, he saw
in Christ still stronger, by far, and deeper than in himself. But for
attaining the righteousness of God, for reaching an absolute conformity
with the moral order and with God's will, he saw no such impotence
existing in Christ's case as in his own. For Christ, the uncertain
conflict between the law in our members and the law of the spirit did
not appear to exist. Those eternal vicissitudes of victory and defeat,
which drove Paul to despair, in Christ were absent; smoothly and
inevitably He followed the real and eternal order in preference to the
momentary and apparent order. Obstacles outside there were plenty, but
obstacles within Him there were none. He was led by the spirit of God;
He was dead to sin, He lived to God; and in this life to God He
persevered even to His cruel bodily death on the cross. As many as are
led by the spirit of God, says Paul, are the sons of God. If this is so
with even us, who live to God so feebly and who render such an imperfect
obedience, how much more is He who lives to God entirely and who renders
an unalterable obedience, the unique and only son of God?" This, says
Arnold, is undoubtedly the main line of movement which Paul's ideas
respecting Christ follow; and so far we have no quarrel with our guide.
But he hastily goes on to an assertion which seems arbitrary and
controvertible. He is forced to admit that Paul, who saw perfect
righteousness in Christ and believed in His Divinity because of it, also
identified Him with that Eternal Word or Wisdom of God, which, according
to Jewish theology, had been with God from the beginning, and through
which the world was created. He also has to admit that Paul identified
Christ with the Jewish Messiah who will some day appear to terminate the
actual kingdoms of the world and establish His own. But in both these
cases he treats St. P