Kitabı oku: «St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans: A Practical Exposition. Vol. II», sayfa 6

DIVISION V. § 4. CHAPTER XIII. 8-10.
The summary debt

Christians are willingly to pay tribute and tax as a debt, a thing due in God's sight to His ministers. But this obligation is a specimen of innumerable obligations which we owe to our 'neighbours' – debts only limited by human need. And the Christian is to take a wide view of his obligations, and to let there be no legitimate claim upon him unfulfilled, no debt unpaid, except the one which a man ought always to be paying and still to be owing, for it is infinite – the debt of love. Here, in loving each other man with the same real regard to his personal interests as we devote to our own, is the satisfaction of the moral law. All the particular 'commandments' – those of the Second Table, and any other there may be – are comprehended in this one. For love can do no harm to any other, and can therefore break no commandment.

Owe no man anything, save to love one another: for he that loveth his neighbour hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shall not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not covet, and if there be any other commandment, it is summed up in this word, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: love therefore is the fulfilment of the law.

St. Paul gives here a very noticeable expansion to the idea of not being in debt. In its literal sense we have all of us a horror of it, at least in theory.

 
'No debtor's hands are clean
However white they be.'
 

We must both let that theoretic horror of debt dominate our practice in money matters, and also expand our idea of 'debts.' According to Christ's teaching, the priest and Levite did not pay their debt to their Samaritan neighbour, because they thought him a stranger with no claim on them. Dives ignored his rich man's debt to Lazarus. Of those who are to appear on the left hand of Christ's judgement-seat, each will be condemned because he never realized his debt to Christ in the persons of all those who had needs to which he might have ministered. St. Paul, as an apostle, acknowledged his debt to all the Gentile world¹¹⁷, and we members of a church, catholic in idea, but as yet so far from catholic in fact – we Englishmen, members of an imperial and spreading race, responsible for the name of Christ all over the world – have a portentous and lamentably unfulfilled debt to the races of Africa and India, and to the whole world.

We can all think of manifold debts – to the lonely whom we might visit, the misunderstood whom we might sympathize with, the ignorant whom we might teach, the weak and oppressed whom we might support and combine, the sinful whom we might convert and establish in good living; so many debts to family and friends; so many debts to Englishmen and fellow Christians, to Africans and Asiatics. Is it not bewildering even to attempt to realize our debts? And yet, let a man make a beginning, and all will be well. Let him steadily set himself to behave towards those whom he employs or those who employ him, towards his domestic servants or his masters, towards railway porters and shop assistants and others who minister to his convenience, as being men and women with the same right to courteous treatment, and to a real opportunity to make the best of themselves, as he has himself; let him steadily refuse to 'exploit' those immediately concerned with him, or treat them as merely means to his ends or instruments of his convenience; let him thus realize his debts to his nearest 'neighbours,' and the whole idea of humanity, of brotherhood, will be deepened and made real to him. Serving the few, he will come to serve the many. His prayers will go before his actions, and enlarge their scope. He will get a habit of considerateness and thoughtfulness for others, as belonging to Christ, which will express itself habitually towards all, and especially the weak. His 'neighbour' will come to mean, as in our Lord's parable and in St. Paul's expression in this place, any 'other man¹¹⁸.' And in our days when the old personal relations of masters to workers have been so largely merged in the relation of companies to unions or to men and women in masses, we shall never allow ourselves to forget that combinations are combinations of individuals, and that neither individual responsibility, nor responsibility for the individual, can be obliterated by union or by numbers.

St. Paul, we notice, is here plainly reproducing our Lord's saying about love and the law¹¹⁹; and he would seem to have the teaching of the parable about the Good Samaritan in his mind; as in the previous section the saying 'Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's,' and in the end of the preceding one (xii. 14, 19) the prohibition of vengeance and the injunction of love to enemies in the Sermon on the Mount. St. Paul's ethical teaching is in fact found to be throughout based on our Lord's, whether our Lord's words were with him in a written form or came to him simply in the oral tradition.

And we do well to remember, as we read this familiar passage, that here is the centre and kernel of Christianity. It is the revelation of a new and universal duty, based on a revealed relationship of all men to a common Father: the duty which lies upon all men of loving all men, because God loves all men with a father's love, or rather because God is love, and only by the life of love can we share His fellowship¹²⁰. The Christian 'enthusiasm for humanity' has thus its roots in a disclosure of the character of God, and of His mind towards every man.

DIVISION V. § 5. CHAPTER XIII. 11-14.
The approach of the day

And the motive for paying our debts, in this wide sense, is that we must 'agree with our adversary quickly, while we are with him in the way,' for the day of account is at hand. This worldly world lies asleep to the spiritual realities, but its short night – the time of darkness – is nearly over. The great deliverance is nearer to us than when we first became Christians. The day of the Lord is almost dawning. Let us see to it then that all that is only fit for the darkness is stripped off us: that we are suitably equipped for the day, so that when it suddenly dawns it shall not put us to shame. Sensual lusts and loveless passions indulged – gross sins, such as none of the Christian communities had quite got rid of – will appear improper conduct indeed when the sun rises. And there is only one garment proper for the day; it is the garment of Christ's righteousness, or rather of Christ Himself, with whom we must invest ourselves. As for our lower nature, it is to be our servant merely – not a master, whose clamorous demands we are to study to satisfy.

'And this, knowing the season, that now it is high time for you to awake out of sleep: for now is salvation nearer to us than when we first believed. The night is far spent, and the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in revelling and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and jealousy. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.

St. Paul, no doubt, was still in eager expectation of the immediate second coming of Christ; and that expectation has proved mistaken. Now our Lord plainly did not mean His disciples to know when His judgement was to be made manifest, and St. Paul apparently recognized this¹²¹, so that his immediate anticipation of the end can never have been part of his faith – never more than the reflection of the eager desire which filled the heart of the Church. On the other hand, our Lord did mean His disciples to go on expecting Him. Thus St. Paul's admonition is as applicable now as ever. The future of the world and of each nation and institution is precarious: things which seem solid and strong may crumble and melt; how soon God is to make plain His judgements, in part or on the whole, we do not know; when each one of us is to pass by death to the great account we do not know. There is no reasonable attitude towards the unknown coming of judgement except to be ready, and, though the darkness of the alienated and godless world is all around us, to live as children of the light eagerly expecting the dawning of the day¹²².

And to meet Christ we must be like Christ. And to be like Christ we must be in Christ, clothed with His righteousness, invested with His new nature, fighting with the weapons of His victorious manhood. The 'evil' which is in ourselves, the unregulated flesh, we can only 'overcome with good' – the good which is Jesus Himself: for it is no longer we that live in our bare selves, but Christ that liveth in us. We are baptized into Him, we possess His spirit, we eat His flesh and drink His blood. What remains is practically to clothe ourselves in Him¹²³, appropriating and drawing out into ourselves by acts of our will His very present help in trouble. So can we become like Him, and be fitted to see Him as He is¹²⁴.

This passage played a memorable part in St. Augustine's life; for when the child's voice had bidden him 'open and read,' these were the words upon which he opened, and which sealed his conversion to the faith he served so nobly – 'not in rioting and drunkenness, … but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ.' 'I had no wish,' he tells us, 'to read any further, nor was there any need. For immediately at the end of this sentence, as if a light of certainty had been poured into my heart, all the shadows of doubt were scattered¹²⁵.'

DIVISION V. § 6. CHAPTER XIV. 1-23.
Mutual toleration

St. Paul's practical exhortations show no definite scheme, but flow out of one another in a natural sequence. He began with the fundamental moral disposition required by life in the Christian community (xii). He proceeded to the relation between the Christian community and the government of the world outside (xiii. 1-7). This led him to lay brief and vigorous emphasis upon the universal range of Christian obligation (8-10), and the motive which is to make Christians zealous in rising to its fulfilment (11-14). Now¹²⁶ he comes back to the difficulties which arise among Christians – the difficulties in actually living together as members of the same community – difficulties on those small points of religious observance which seem so unimportant in the abstract, and which, in the actual experience of intercourse, prove to be so terribly important, and so easily give rise to a 'crisis in the Church.' How were the reasonably-minded majority¹²⁷, who thought that all kinds of food were morally indifferent, to behave towards the scrupulous who would only eat vegetables? How were those Christians, who recognized no distinction between one day and another, to behave towards people who still held the mind of the writer of Ecclesiasticus, that 'some days God had exalted and hallowed, and some he had made ordinary days¹²⁸'?

The problem of 'lawful meats' had often been before the early Christians. It could not but have been so, seeing that those among them, who had passed under Jewish influences had been brought under a system in which the distinction between clean and unclean meats had been rigorously observed. True, our Lord had 'made all meats clean¹²⁹,' as He had opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers. And the vision which reassured St. Peter on the latter point, and forbade him 'to call any man common or unclean¹³⁰,' was expressed in a form which implied that the same principle would apply to food. But this fundamental catholic principle, in its sharp opposition to Jewish particularism, was not accepted without a struggle at every point. How hotly, for a time, the struggle raged, we dimly perceive in the narrative of the Acts, and especially in St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians¹³¹. But at the Jerusalem conference the fundamental catholic principle was unmistakably reaffirmed. Gentiles were to be admitted to brotherhood without circumcision or the keeping of the law. Henceforth then the reactionaries had no ground to stand on. The law of clean and unclean meats had gone with the rest of the Jewish laws. But while the Gentiles won a complete victory on the main principle, they were required by the apostolic council to make concessions to Jewish habits in eating, such as could not affect the main principle. They were to eat meat killed in the Jewish manner, with the blood thoroughly drained out. This in itself would probably exclude them from the Gentile shambles, where also much of the meat which was for sale would have been offered to idols¹³². By the observance of such a concession, then, Jew and Gentile were to live and eat together in peace.

The actual enactment of the Jerusalem conference had a limited application to the Gentile Christians of Antioch and Syria and Cilicia¹³³. But the principle was a vital and universal one: to hold firm the catholic or 'indifferentist' principle, but to make concessions for love's sake and to facilitate mutual fellowship. And this same principle St. Paul soon had reason to apply again at Corinth. There the problem was not – How could Jew and Gentile live and eat together? but How far could Gentiles, who had become Christians, associate with Gentiles who were still adherents of the old religion, and eat their meats? St. Paul, in answering this question for the Corinthians, strongly asserts the indifferentist principle – that meat of all kinds is God's gift and good, and that it can have contracted no moral pollution through any idolatrous ceremony to which it has been subjected. No questions, therefore, are to be asked as to its antecedents. In this physical sense meats which had been offered to idols might be freely eaten. But when such eating could do harm, when, for instance, one man points out to another that a particular portion of food has been part of a sacrifice, and it is plain he will be scandalized by the eating of it, then the other must abstain¹³⁴, restricting his own lawful liberty for charity and Christian brotherhood's sake.

Now St. Paul had heard of a new form of the old difficulty at Rome¹³⁵. There was a Jewish asceticism – similar to what is found frequently among orientals, and was practised in Europe among the Pythagoreans – which required men to abstain from animal food altogether and from wine. Such was probably the rule of the Essenes in Palestine¹³⁶, as of the Therapeutae in Egypt, and such was, according to a very early authority, the rule of St. James, the Lord's brother. Such a practice, then, had found favour among a minority of Christians at Rome. And St. Paul in the passage we are now to study, in principle plainly approves of the indifferentist practice of the majority. He knows, and is persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean of itself. It is, he implies, a weak and unduly scrupulous conscience which makes men vegetarians. But, on the other hand, this weaker brother – this man with less clear perception of Christian principle in the matter – must in no way be alienated. He is to be made welcome. There is no obligation upon him to eat meat. God laid no such requirement upon him when he became a Christian. 'God received him.' The Church must continue the like liberality, and not even seek to pronounce judgement in the matter. In life and death each man is Christ's servant, and is responsible to God for what he does or does not do. Therefore let each man simply be faithful to his own conscience before God in this matter, so that whatever he eats he can 'say his grace,' or 'give thanks,' with a good conscience; and let him be respectfully tolerant of his brother's practice – the strong not despising the weak, nor the weak judging and condemning the strong.

So far for liberty. But if, by using our liberty to eat meat, we are found to run a risk of really troubling our brother, or even (what is worse) leading him to act against his conscience and eat what he feels he ought not¹³⁷, then we must abstain. This becomes matter of character and peaceable fellowship and spiritual joy, and these are the really material things in the kingdom of God. Sooner than do injury to this really divine cause, sooner than be a hindrance to his brother, the Christian had better willingly abstain altogether from flesh and wine too.

In passing St. Paul had noticed another indifferent matter besides the eating of meats. It was the observance of days. St. Paul undoubtedly considered that all distinction of high days and common days, all distinction of the sabbath from other days, had been in principle abolished by Christianity. For Gentile Christians, like the Galatians, to be 'observing (Jewish) days, and months, and seasons, and years¹³⁸,' is to show a miserable disposition to fall back upon a superannuated legal idea of religion – to fall back from the religion of the Spirit to the religion of the letter; from the substance to the shadow. For the Christian, in fundamental principle, there are no 'sacred days,' for all days are indifferently sacred. As instructed Christian men could eat all meats, so they could regard all days as on the same level in God's sight. But all Christians had not the full perception of principle. Among the Galatians, indeed, the tendency to observe days is viewed more severely as part of a general reactionary tendency. But at Rome it appears to have represented simply the practice of a harmless, if imperfectly enlightened, minority, and St. Paul merely ranks it among things indifferent, which are to be frankly tolerated. It is to be purely left to the individual conscience.

With these preliminary explanations – which in this case will serve our purpose better than an analysis – we can read this section without experiencing any great difficulty.

But him that is weak in faith receive ye, yet not to doubtful disputations¹³⁹. One man hath faith to eat all things: but he that is weak eateth herbs. Let not him that eateth set at nought him that eateth not; and let not him that eateth not judge him that eateth: for God hath received him. Who art thou that judgest the servant of another? to his own lord he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be made to stand; for the Lord hath power to make him stand. One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let each man be fully assured in his own mind. He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord: and he that eateth, eateth unto the Lord, for he giveth God thanks; and he that eateth not, unto the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks. For none of us liveth to himself, and none dieth to himself. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; or whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ died, and lived again, that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living. But thou, why dost thou judge thy brother? or thou again, why dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgement-seat of God. For it is written,

 
As I live, saith the Lord, to me every knee shall bow,
And every tongue shall confess to God¹⁴⁰.
 

So then each one of us shall give account of himself to God.

Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge ye this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock in his brother's way, or an occasion of falling. I know, and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean of itself: save that to him who accounteth anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean. For if because of meat thy brother is grieved, thou walkest no longer in love. Destroy not with thy meat him for whom Christ died. Let not then your good be evil spoken of: for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. For he that herein serveth Christ is well-pleasing to God, and approved of men. So then let us follow after things which make for peace, and things whereby we may edify one another. Overthrow not for meat's sake the work of God. All things indeed are clean; howbeit it is evil for that man who eateth with offence. It is good not to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor to do anything whereby thy brother stumbleth. The faith which thou hast, have thou to thyself before God. Happy is he that judgeth not himself in that which he approveth. But he that doubteth is condemned if he eat, because he eateth not of faith; and whatsoever is not of faith is sin.

1. According to St. Paul a catholic church ought to mean a tolerant church, and a 'good catholic' a large-hearted Christian. If men of all races, with all sorts of traditional instincts and habits, were to live together in close social cohesion in the Christian community – and that was essential – this must involve much mutual forbearance, much self-restraint, and deliberate toleration of differences¹⁴¹. St. Paul plainly not merely uses, but loves, the language of toleration. 'One man eateth, another man eateth not,' 'One man esteemeth one day above another; another esteemeth every day alike. Let each man be fully assured in his own mind,' 'Receive ye him … not with a view to decisions of disputed questions.' Thoroughly in St. Paul's spirit is the familiar saying 'in necessary things unity: in those less than necessary liberty: in all things charity¹⁴².'

In necessary things unity. To St. Paul this principle meant a clear limit to toleration. There is a common teaching which lies at the basis of the Church which must not be interfered with, which is strictly necessary. 'Though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach unto you any gospel other than that which we preached unto you, let him be anathema¹⁴³.' 'How say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, neither hath Christ been raised: and if Christ hath not been raised, then is our preaching vain, your faith also is vain¹⁴⁴.' Plainly there is an essential fundamental creed which must not be trifled with. The same is true about the moral law. In respect of that also the Christian body must exercise upon its members the severity of judgement¹⁴⁵, that 'he that hath done' the evil deed 'might be taken away from among them,' or excommunicated. Once more, we cannot conceive St. Paul making the necessity of visible unity a secondary consideration¹⁴⁶, nor the recognition of the authority of the apostolic ministry which is to be the centre of unity, nor the sacraments, which again are not only means of divine grace to the individual but instruments and bonds of unity. Nor again would St. Paul undervalue the spirit of obedience to the rules of the Church. He hates the spirit of heresy or separatism. 'We have no such custom,' he would say to the recalcitrant, 'neither the churches of God¹⁴⁷.' Once again, St. Paul is prepared to let everything turn on even a small and unessential point, if that point has become the symbol of a vital principle for good or evil. Thus, in itself, 'circumcision was nothing,' but when among the Galatians the practice of it came to mean a practical Judaizing – a practical abandonment of the fundamental Christian principle – then 'Behold, I Paul say unto you, that, if ye receive circumcision, Christ will profit you nothing¹⁴⁸.'

Here, then, are St. Paul's essentials, as to which he is intolerant – a fundamental tradition of faith and morals: the maintenance of the unity of the body by means of the apostolic stewardship, and through the 'one baptism,' and the 'one loaf': and the spirit of due subordination which is necessary to corporate life. But in a spirit very unlike what has at times become prevalent in the Church, he would clearly minimize the action of authority, and leave large room for the free movement of conscience in Christians. 'Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in anything ye are otherwise minded, even this shall God reveal unto you: only, whereunto we have already attained, by that same rule let us walk¹⁴⁹.'

Surely it is not very difficult to apply this spirit of St. Paul to our own time, in view of those subordinate points which excite such deep animosities. Men are by fundamental disposition, in great measure, ritualist or puritan, ecclesiastically or individually minded, disciplinarian or mystical. And the Church should lay on all a certain common law of doctrine and morals and worship, sufficient to keep them all together in one body. But, consistently with the coherence of the body, why should there not be both an ornate and a bare ritual of worship, both societies of strict observance and individual freedom, and a wide field of open questions in which we do not even expect 'decisions of doubts'? Instead of my own reflections on this subject I will ask my readers' attention to the following extracts from a suggestive book¹⁵⁰.

'At all times there are those to whom what we may call the minor symbolism of ritual is far from being as helpful as it is to others. There is the greatest diversity here. Modes of worship, which repel one man as bleak and bare, attract another by their very simplicity. The diversity is so natural and so obvious that it calls for neither apology nor explanation; yet it is easily strained into a cause of disruption.'

'St. Paul is speaking of strong brethren and of weak; of those who need earthly guides and of those who do not; of those who attach high value to rules and forms and helps; and of those for whom ordinances have but little significance; of mystics and disciplinarians.'

'Again, do we not still want a scientific theology? I mean a theology which should do what any scientific treatise does. It should lay down clearly and plainly the essential conditions of unity, and as regards the unessential should content itself with saying, "Here men differ; one thinks thus, another thus." … Ask yourself, What is it that will carry me, being what I am, to heaven? What is it will carry my brother here, who is so unlike me, to heaven? What is it that will carry us both to heaven? There you will find the essential.'

St. Paul, we observe, lays great stress upon honesty of conscience. He wishes men, even in small matters, seriously to cultivate a conscience of what is right, as men should do who even in small things expect a divine judgement; and seriously also to cultivate the faculty of not interfering with their brother's conscience. ('Hast thou faith? Have it to thyself.' Do not parade your superior enlightenment.) He is greatly afraid of people leading others, or being led for mere agreement's sake, to do what their own conscience does not justify. And to do even a good thing because another does it whom we want to be like, without ourselves feeling sure it is good, or with a doubtful conscience¹⁵¹, this, St. Paul says, is sin. This warning we really need to lay to heart in our age, when fashion is such a very strong force in religion. This individual follows that individual and 'supposes it must be all right, as every one seems to do it'; this congregation follows that congregation in adopting a popular practice, without its real basis and justification being considered. But fashion and the influence of members is a great danger in religion. 'Let every man be fully assured in his own mind.' 'Whatever is not of faith is sin¹⁵².'

2. Plainly, when St. Paul wrote his epistles, there was no observance of a Sabbath obligatory upon Christians¹⁵³. But was there none of Sunday? 'The first day of the week' was already 'the Lord's day,' so far as that Christians who could not meet to 'break the bread' every day, met on that day specially to commemorate the death of their risen Lord till He should come again¹⁵⁴. It was already sufficiently distinctive for St. Paul to name it as the appropriate day for laying by alms for the poor¹⁵⁵. But these special observances of it were not obligatory. Christians, when they could meet every day, might make their eucharist every day. No such observance of Sunday was yet enjoined as was incompatible with regarding all days of the week alike. Nothing less than this can satisfy St. Paul's words. In principle, as Bishop Lightfoot said¹⁵⁶, 'the kingdom of Christ has no sacred days or seasons, because every time alike is holy.'

Yet the bishop adds, 'appointed days are indispensable to her efficiency.' This was soon found to be the case. Probably before the end of the first century, the Didache mentions not only the observance of Sunday by the eucharistic service, but the observance also of the Wednesday and Friday fasts. Clement, about the same date, strongly emphasizes the principle of order in place and time, as still belonging to Christian worship. 'They, therefore, that make their offering at the appointed seasons are acceptable and blessed.' The Canons of Hippolytus show that by the end of the second century there must have been a great development of ecclesiastical regulations, so far restraining the individual liberty of the earliest days, and that, as far as we know, without protest or sense of alarm. Nor need St. Paul have been in opposition to such church rules. The spirit of regulation is strong in him¹⁵⁷. On the other hand, there is no doubt that the Church has not generally, one might say has hardly ever, been conscious, as St. Paul was, of the danger of religious regulations as such. It is so much easier to keep certain rules than to acquire and maintain a certain mind and spirit and principle of action. In the history of the Church St. Paul, we feel, would very often have been saying, 'I am afraid of you: the rules are good in themselves, but there are dangers attaching to all rules of which you seem to be quite unconscious. There is a lower sort of religion of forms and observances, and you may fall back into it as easily as the Galatians.'

But after all, rules for living religiously, private or ecclesiastical, are, we all know, invaluable, and practically necessary. A man or a church that should attempt to dispense with them would come to disaster. It is very difficult to fathom the depth of the mischief that has come about in the corporate social life of the Church of England, through the neglect of the surely moderate amount of regulation which was provided for us by the Prayer Book in the way of festival and fast days and of daily service. To keep a few simple, intelligible, religious rules all together gives almost as much as a common creed the feeling of social coherence. Even the extremest Paulinist need have no fear so long as the ecclesiastical regulations do not reach the point of becoming a burden – so long as no one could be in danger of priding himself on 'acquiring merit' by their mere observance; and so long also as the principle is kept clearly in view that 'the rules were made for man and not man for the rules.' But I do not think there can be any reasonable doubt that St. Paul would repudiate the idea that any rules of worship and observance, other than those which are necessarily involved in the administration of the sacraments, can obtain by prescription a right to permanence. 'They may be changed according to the diversities of countries, times, and men's manners.' They were made for man; and the Church or the churches – with due regard to mutual fellowship – can modify or abolish them.