and warns men as if salvation might be gained or lost by their effort. Those who are lost, are lost
by their own unbelief. Perdition is the righteous judgment for sin unrepented of and persisted in.
It is a strange misunderstanding to make Paul either a fatalist or a particularist; he is the strongest
opponent of blind necessity and of Jewish particularism, even in the ninth chapter of Romans. But
he aims at no philosophical solution of a problem which the finite understanding of man cannot
settle; he contents himself with asserting its divine and human aspects, the religious and ethical
view, the absolute sovereignty of God and the relative freedom of man, the free gift of salvation
and the just punishment for neglecting it. Christian experience includes both truths, and we find
no contradiction in praying as if all depended on God, and in working as if all depended on man.
This is Pauline theology and practice.
Foreknowledge and foreordination are the eternal background of salvation: call, justification,
sanctification, and glorification mark the progressive steps in the time of execution, and of the
personal application of salvation.^798
(2.) The Call (κλῆσις) proceeds from God the Father through the preaching of the gospel
salvation which is sincerely offered to all. Faith comes from preaching, preaching from preachers,
and the preachers from God who sends them.^799
The human act which corresponds to the divine call is the conversion (μετάνοια) of the
sinner; and this includes repentance or turning away from sin, and faith or turning to Christ, under
the influence of the Holy Spirit who acts through the word.^800 The Holy Spirit is the objective
principle of the new life of the Christian. Faith is the free gift of God, and at the same time the
highest act of man. It is unbounded trust in Christ, and the organ by which we apprehend him, his
very life and benefits, and become as it were identified with him, or mystically incorporated with
him.^801
(3.) Justification (δικαίωσις) is the next step. This is a vital doctrine in Paul’s system and
forms the connecting link as well as the division line between the Jewish and the Christian period
of his life. It was with him always a burning life-question. As a Jew he sought righteousness by
works of the law, honestly and earnestly, but in vain; as a Christian he found it, as a free gift of
grace, by faith in Christ. Righteousness (δικαιοσύνη), as applied to man, is the normal relation of
man to the holy, will of God as expressed in his revealed law, which requires supreme love to God
and love to our neighbor; it is the moral and religious ideal, and carries in itself the divine favor(^798) Rom. 8:30: "Whom he foreordained them he also called (ἐκάλεσεν): and whom he called them he also justified (ἐδικαίωσεν),
which is also the beginning of sanctification), and whom he justified, them he also glorified (ἐδόξασεν)."The proleptic aorist is
used for the future to indicate the absolute certainty that God will carry out his gracious design to the glorious consummation.
(^799) Rom. 10:14, 15. A chain of abridged syllogisms (sorites) by which Paul reasons back from effect to cause till he reaches
the first link in the chain. On the κλῆσις(vocatio) see Rom. 11:29; 1 Cor. 1:26; 7:20; Gal. 1:6; Eph. 1:18; 4:14; Phil. 3:14, etc.
The verb καλέω is of very frequent occurrence in the Gospels and Epistles.
(^800) Rom. 2:4; 2 Cor 7:9, 10; 2 Tim. 2:25.
(^801) Baur (p. 154) distinguished five conceptions of πίστις (from πείθειν): 1st, conviction in general, a theoretical belief or
assent. In this sense it does not occur in Paul, but in James 1:17. 2d, conviction of the invisible and supernatural; 2 Cor. 5:7,
πίστις as distinct from εἷδος. 3d, religious conviction, 1 Cor. 2:5; 2 Cor. 1:24, etc. 4th, trust in God, Rom. 4:17-21. 5th, trust in
Christ, or the specific Christian faith, Rom. 3:22; 1 Cor. 15:14; Gal, 1:23, and always where justifying faith is meant. Weiss (p.
316) defines the Pauline idea of justifying faith as " the very opposite of all the works required by the law; it is no human
performance, but, on the contrary, an abandonment of all work of our own, an unconditional reliance on God who justifies, or
on Christ as the Mediator of salvation. "But this is only the receptive side of faith, it has an active side as well, πίστις is
ἐνεργουμένη δι ̓ ἀγάπης. See below.
A.D. 1-100.