Various attempts have been made to explain this usage. In an excellent paper on the root pry, Kautzsch 1 defines righteousness' to be conformity to a norm; and in his exceedingly good treatise on the theology of these chapters, Krüger 2 defines the norm in this case to be Jehovah's will, which is a redemptive will, upon the whole. Hence He is righteous when He acts along the line of this redemptive will, or in conformity to it; or, in other words, according to His redemptive purpose. Is there Does not But does it not seem that these definitions are rather abstract? And when it is said that righteousness is conformity to a norm, is not that either false, or to say nothing more than that righteousness is righteousness? A man would not be righteous who habitually lied, though he would speak according to the norm of falsehood. not in the norm itself the idea of righteousness? the existence of a norm imply a prior judgment as to what is right, and the norm is the expression of this judgment? Conformity to a norm is not righteousness unless the norm be right, or embody righteousness. Correspondence is only the evidence of righteousness, not righteousness itself. A particular act or general conduct is righteous, because it is an instance of that general of which the norm is an embodiment. Therefore, to say that Jehovah's redemptive acts are righteous because they are in correspondence with His general will, which is a redemptive will, is hardly true; they are righteous only because that redemptive will to which they correspond is righteous. And thus we come back to the question, why are a righteous God' and a Saviour' identical expressions? 1 Die Derivate des Stammes prx im Altt. Sprachgebrauch. 2 Essai sur la Théologie d'Ésare 40-66, par F. Hermann Krüger. Paris : Fischbacher. 3 From what appears elsewhere, we gather that Dr. Davidson's answer to this question was that, while in other books the term 'righteous' and its cognates convey legal ideas, in Second Isaiah at least they express the constancy of God's purpose regarding Israel, His trustworthiness in all His dealings with His people, even in His chastisements.-ED. PROPHETIC VIEW OF HISTORY 399 6. General Considerations on the Eschatalogy of the On this whole subject of the Eschatology of the Old Testament the following remarks may also be made with regard to its rise, its development, and its contents: (1) It is, of course, now a commonplace to say that Amos taught that Jehovah is absolute righteousness, the impersonation of the moral idea; that moral evil alone is sin; and that the only service Jehovah desires is a righteous life—although Amos also teaches that Jehovah is good and compassionate (ii. 9, vii. 1); that Hosea represents Jehovah as unchanging love, which no ingratitude of His people can weary or alienate; and that to Isaiah, Jehovah is the transcendent Sovereign and universal Lord,-whose glory fills the whole earth,-the ip of Israel. Both Hosea and Isaiah insist much on the inwardness of religion. is a state of the mind, a prevailing consciousness of Jehovah. The want of this consciousness, insensibility to the Lord the King, is sin; and it is the source of all sin, of the levity of human life, and the self-exaltation both of men and nations. Further, the prophetic ideas form but half of the teaching of the prophets; the greater half lies in their own life and personal relation to God. It (2) Taken as a whole, the prophetic teaching amounts to the full ethicising of the conception of Jehovah. And the moral is of no nationality; it transcends nationality, and is human. The righteous God is God universal, over all. The principles of the human economy have at last clearly reflected themselves in the consciousness of the prophets, and human history is seen to be a moral process. It has, at all events, a moral aim, and will have a moral result. The universalism of the prophetic idea of God, and its influence on the prophetic notion of history, is most clearly seen in Isaiah. The movement of the prophetic thought towards the universalistic idea of God may have been aided by the entrance of the universal empires of Assyria and Babylon on the stage of history. This gave them a new conception-that of the world; and it created a new correlation Jehovah and the world. (3) What is called Eschatology,—the doctrine of rà oxaтa, the last things, the final condition of the world, could not have arisen earlier than this. The idea of a final condition of the world could not arise apart from a general conception of the meaning of human life and history; and what suggested the meaning of human history to the prophets was their conception of the moral being and the universal rule of Jehovah. An eschatology; a condition of final result; a condition of mankind and the world at the end of Jehovah's operations, arose very naturally. (4) The Old Testament, however, is what might be called Theocentric. Jehovah operates; He accomplishes all; and He finds the motives of His operations in Himself. Hence the final condition of the world is not in the Old Testament the issue of a long ethical development in human society, ending in a perfect moral world or kingdom of righteousness upon the earth. The final condition. is rather due to an interposition, or a series of interpositions, of Jehovah. These interpositions, of course, are all on moral lines; in the interests of righteousness they are to make an end of sin and bring in everlasting righteousness, and the issue is a kingdom of righteousness. But the issue is due to a sudden act, or a sudden appearance, of God, and is not the fruit of a growth in the hearts of mankind. (5) It is not enough, however, simply to say that an eschatology, the conception of a final condition of mankind, could hardly have arisen before a general conception of the nature of the human economy, or at least of those things that are needful to man's perfection and felicity, had become general. There is the question, had such a conception come to the prophets? Now the answer to that question is, that the meaning of human history, or the understanding of its tendency, of its movement towards an eschatological goal, was not revealed to Israel by study of the life of mankind, but by reflection on the nature THE TWO ESCHATOLOGIES 401 of God as revealed. God was the real Maker of history. To the prophets there are no such things as mere events or occurrences; all events are animated, so to speak, with a Divine energy. God is the author of the events, and His mind, His will, or His purpose is in them. Hence, when so broad a view as that of human life or history as a whole is taken, it is, so to speak, secondary. It is the reflection of the view taken of God, of His being, and therefore as an inference from His being, of His purpose, and of what the issue will be when He realises His purpose, or, as we might say, when He realises Himself in the history of mankind. So soon as the ethical being of Jehovah was conceived, and His oneness as God, there could not but immediately follow the idea also that human history, which was not so much under His providence as His direct operation, would eventuate in a kingdom of righteousness which would embrace all mankind. No doubt the way in which this is conceived is that this kingdom of righteousness is first realised in Israel, and that through Israel it extends to all mankind; for the nations come to Israel's light, and kings to the brightness of its rising," this light being the glory of Jehovah dwelling in Israel. But the unity of God creates the unity of mankind. (6) So we have an eschatology of two kinds: that of the kingdom, and that of the individual. The former is what is taught concerning the perfection of the nation or people of Israel, or on a universal scale of the nations or mankind; and the latter, so far as the individual is considered in himself as distinct from the people, would constitute the doctrine of immortality. But one of the things that surprise us more and more in the Old Testament is the place given to the individual. How little the individual bulks in it, how greatly the individual loses himself in the community,-thinks of himself always as part of it, has hopes for himself only so far as he has hopes for his people. Pure or true individualism, ie. the individual's consciousness of himself in relation to God, and as having a destiny of his own to work out or to inherit out of all relation to the destiny of the community, and independent of all other men-this kind of individuality appears in the Old Testament only in a few great instances. XII. DOCTRINE OF THE LAST THINGS- 1. Differences in Modes of Thought. In much of the teaching of the Old Testament, as we have seen, it is the destinies of the People of God as a people that are specially in view. But there is the question also of the Individual, and what the Old Testament has to say of him. This comes into view in connection with the Old Testament conceptions of sin, death, life, and immortality. Very much of what is taken up into the Christian doctrine of Immortality appears in the Old Testament in connection with what is said of the People or the Kingdom of God, especially in the prophetic teaching. But there is much more than that in the New Testament doctrine; and in the Old Testament itself there is an Eschatology of the Individual as well as an Eschatology of the Kingdom or People. In entering now on the teaching of the Old Testament on the subject of a Future Life, we have to notice certain matters of general interest, and certain broad considerations which have an important bearing on the view we take of the Old Testament position. These must be borne in mind if we are to understand aright the Old Testament conception of a future life. We may notice, in the first place, the point which has just been referred to, namely, the relation of the Eschatology of the Individual to that of the Kingdom or the People. A large portion of the contribution which the Old Testament makes to Christian Eschatology is derived from the Eschatology of the Nation. To this belong such points as |