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A Manual of Introduction to the New Testament
A Manual of Introduction to the New Testament Author:Bernhard Weiss Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 10 Doctrinal Views Of The Epistle". view can the peculiar teaching of onr Epistle be adequately explained.1 The fundamental thought of the Epistle is the f... more »ounding of the New Covenant, which is destined finally to realize the fulfilment of the Old Covenant promise that was not possible under the Old Covenant; a thought scarcely touched upon in any of the Pauline Epistlea. Hence the object of the attainment of salvation is discussed with exclusive reference to the nation of Israel, not because the author has any wish to shut the Gentiles out from it, but because he is solely concerned with the question as to how tbe original recipients of the promise should attain to its fulfilment. This would in truth have been impossible to the Gentile Apostle. The fact that salvation could not be attained under the Old Covenant, did not, as with Paul, lie in the carnal nature of man, but in the fleshly character of the law. The thought is not here fixed on the law as a divinely given ordinance of life, as with Paul, but on the legal expiatory institution, which could only atone for sins of infirmity; whereas Paul never contemplated this side of the law or this distinction of sins. Cut if the law is not designed to briug about the attainment of salvation, it is intended to prepare the way for it, though not, as with Paul, by awakening the consciousness of sin and exciting a desire for the attainment of salvation, but by the typical prefiguration of the perfect atonement promised for the Messianic time ; a thought that was first taken up by Paul in the Captivity Epistles and manifestly adopted from the primitive apostolic sphere of thought. For the purpose of establishing this, the ulJs already foretold in the Old Testament, now appears upon the earth, which name here denotes a being eternall...« less