Paul by William Wrede

Author:William Wrede [Wrede, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 1907-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

b — The Doctrine of Redemption

Three questions arise of themselves : (i) Wherein lies the misery from which the redemption releases us? (2) How and by what means does Christ bring the redemption to pass? (3) In what does the benefit of this redemption consist?

(1) The Misery of Mankind before Christ and without Christ

The redemption is, according to Paul, in a phrase which is brief and yet exact, release from the misery of this whole present world. Every other conception of it, even release from sin, would be too narrow. The character of this present world is determined by the fact that men are here under the domination of dark and evil powers. The chief of these are the 'flesh,' sin, the Law, and death.

To Paul these are not mere abstract terms as they are to us. Thinking, as he did, in the modes of the ancient world he regarded such abstractions as effective powers, almost as actual beings. Sin appears, so to put it, as an active agent ; death stands in the same rank with superterrestrial spirits, whom Christ overcomes, and is destroyed by him like an individual being.

All these powers stand in the closest alliance. He that is delivered up to the one falls a victim to the others also. The most important relation is that between the flesh and sin.

The word flesh — though it often has a more general meaning — signifies in the most characteristic usage of Paul the external, material part of man, his bodily self. Every man ‘is in the flesh,' that is, he stands in a finite, sensuous existence. But this, of itself, implies sin. Sin clings indissolubly to the flesh, 'dwells' in the flesh, originates indeed in the flesh and its impulses. The phrase 'flesh of sin' is alone enough to express this. It is true that Paul, in another treatment of the matter, of a more historical kind, derives sin from the sin of Adam — not however in the later ecclesiastical sense. But if we throw out the question (which he does not himself put) whence came the sin of Adam, hardly any other reply would be possible than to point once more to the flesh.

Man then, through his mere earthly and bodily existence, is made subject to the power of sin. Sin is not merely to be found, as a matter of fact, in all men, but is a necessity.

To embitter this servitude yet more the Law comes into play. The Law turns sin into a punishable transgression, into guilt ; it even increases sin, by stimulating it in order to exercise its own power ; and if it gives man a 'knowledge of sin,' that only means, it makes him aware how forlorn is his state. What, however, reveals his misery most clearly is that sin, implacably and by a firmly rooted law, draws death in its train, a death after which there is no Life more. What remains then at last to man? Nothing but

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