Paul and his interpreters

Of course, every further logical step in this direction involves further sacrifice of historical understanding and an increasing necessity to indulge in imaginary constructions. But all these consequences are already present in germ in the mere assertion that Paul is to be understood from the Mystery-religions, even though those who maintain this view do not want to proceed any further than the facts which have to be explained seem to them to warrant. As between the students of Comparative Religion and Drews the relation is similar to that between the legitimate and illegitimate Tübingen schools. Here, too, the alternative lies between “scientific and inconsistent, and consistent and unscientific.” That means that an absolute antinomy appears between the logic of the attempted solution and that of the data of fact; which is as much as to say that the problem has been wrongly grasped, and that this way, whether it be followed for a certain distance only, or right to the end, can never lead to the goal of a satisfactory solution.

VIII

SUMMING-UP AND FORMULATION OF THE PROBLEM

THE study of Paulinism has nothing very brilliant to show for itself in the way of scientific achievement. Learning has been lavishly expended upon it, but thought and reflection have been to seek.

Writers went to work with an almost inconceivable absence of plan, and wanted to offer solutions before they had made clear to themselves the scope of the problem. Instead of seeking a definite diagnosis, they treated the symptoms separately, with whatever means happened to come to hand.

It was inevitable, therefore, that the study of the subject should move along intricate and continually recrossing paths, and engage in long and devious wanderings, only, in some cases, to arrive back again at the point from which it started. That Paul’s doctrine of redemption was thought out on the lines of a physical nature-process had been asserted by Lüdemann as long ago as the year 1872. Nevertheless, theology hit on the plan of “spiritualising” it, and took very nearly thirty years to get back to this discovery.

To neglect this structure, this schematism of the problem is not permissible. It has not been independently invented and imposed from without upon the past history of research, but represents its actual results, and points the way for all subsequent attempts at a solution.

The problem consists in the two great questions: what Paul’s doctrine has in common with primitive Christianity, and what it has in common with Greek ideas.

It is complicated by the fact that our only information about the beliefs of the primitive Church comes from Paul. His writings are the first—and indeed the only—witnesses which we possess upon the point, since the First Epistle of Peter and the Epistle of James give us information at best about a non-Pauline, certainly not about a pre-Pauline Christianity.

The standard by which the primitiveness of Paul’s Christianity has to be measured and tested has, therefore, in the first place to be arrived at by the method of arguing backward from itself. Nevertheless, the difficulty is not so great as it appears when thus theoretically stated. The most general features of the earliest dogma can be found without difficulty in the Epistles. These consisted in the belief in the Messiahship of the Jesus who had died and risen again, and in the expectation of His parousia in the immediate future.

Moreover, the problem as a whole is simplified by the fact that the second of the fundamental questions has been clearly answered by the history of Pauline study. The answer is this: Paulinism and Hellenism have in common their religious terminology, but, in respect of ideas, nothing. The Apostle did not Hellenise Christianity. His conceptions are equally distinct from those of Greek philosophy and from those of the Mystery-religions.

The impossibility of anything in the nature of a Hellenic gospel being present in Paul appears from the fact, that every view of this kind when thought out in its logical implications must arrive at a point where it has to do violence to historical tradition. It became apparent that it is impossible for a Hellenised Paulinism to subsist alongside of a primitive Christianity which shared the Jewish eschatological expectations. One must either, as the Ultra-Tübingen critics did, transplant the Epistles and the doctrine from the primitive period to the second century, or, as some of the votaries of Comparative Religion have endeavoured to do, explain primitive Christianity as a product of Graeco-Oriental syncretism.

That only a very few investigators have drawn these inferences is not due to the fact that they are not justified. It was want of courage, of logical consistency, and of the necessary contempt for the rest of the facts which prevented them from making the venture. So they offered compromises, imposingly dressed out in words but inwardly untenable, and talked themselves and others into believing the impossible, namely, that a Hellenisation of the primitive Christian belief effected by Paul as an individual is really conceivable.

The solution must, therefore, consist in leaving out of the question Greek influence in every form and in every combination, and venturing on the “one-sidedness” of endeavouring to understand the doctrine of the Apostle of the Gentiles entirely on the basis of Jewish primitive Christianity. That implies, in the first place, that the Pauline eschatology must be maintained in its full compass, as required by the utterances of the letters. But merely to emphasise it is not everything. The next point is to explain it. What was the scheme of the events of the End, and what answer was given by eschatological expectation to the fundamental questions which could not be avoided? Are there two resurrections or one; one judgment or two? Who are to rise again at the parousia? Does a judgment take place then? On whom is it held? What are its standards and its subject? Wherein do reward and punishment consist? What happens to the men of the surviving generation who are not destined to the Messianic kingdom? What is the relation between judgment and election? What is the fate of believers who are elect and baptised but who have fallen from grace by unworthy conduct? Can they lose their final blessedness, or are they only excluded from the Messianic kingdom? Does Paul recognise a general resurrection? If so, when does it take place? Is it accompanied by a judgment, or do only the elect rise again? When does the judgment take place at which the elect judge the angels?

Is there, then, any possibility of explaining the mystical doctrine of redemption and the sacramental teaching on the basis of the Jewish eschatological element?

The attempt is by no means so hopeless as it might seem in view of the general consideration that Judaism knew neither mysticism nor sacraments. It is not really a question of Judaism as such, but of apocalyptic thought, which is a separate and independent phenomenon arising within Judaism, and has special presuppositions which are entirely peculiar to it.

That a mysticism of this kind existed before Paul is not known. It may be conjectured that the conditions under which it could develop were not present until after the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Whether the Lord’s Supper in the intention of Jesus Himself directly conveyed something to the partakers, or whether it only became a sacrament in primitive Christian times, must be left undecided.

That the intensified eschatological expectation should go so far as to produce sacramental conceptions is in itself intelligible. Those who stood on the threshold of the coming glory must have been eagerly anxious to gain an assurance that they themselves would be partakers therein and to obtain tangible guarantees of “deliverance” from the coming judgment. The conception of “marking out” and “sealing” plays in apocalyptic thought a very important part. Similar provisions are a characteristic product of any intense expectation of the future.

It is, therefore, highly probable that the Baptist, and primitive Christianity, created eschatological sacraments which, as already established and accredited, Paul had only to take over.

The bearing of these statements and considerations must be shown from the Epistles. How far it is possible to trace the genesis of the mysticism and the sacramental doctrine from the eschatological beliefs of the Apostle cannot be determined a priori. The one thing certain is that no other way of explanation is possible than that which leads from the circumference of his future-hope to the central idea of his “theology.” All other interpretations hang in the air.

The Apostle’s most general views must be taken as the starting point from which to explain how he arrives at the paradox that the believer is united with Christ, experiences along with Him death and resurrection, and becomes a new creature, emancipated from fleshly corporeity. The assertion that these statements are meant in a “physical” sense does not carry us very far. The reason which explains their “reality” must be shown. Simply in and by themselves they are not explicable. What has been advanced regarding the solidarity of Jesus with the human race is far from sufficing to make it in any degree intelligible, especially as Paul has not in view Christ and humanity, but Christ and the elect.

The mistake in the attempts at explanation hitherto made consists in the fact that they seek to argue from the facts of the death and resurrection of Jesus, simply as such, directly to that which takes place in the believer. In reality, it can only be a question of a general event, which in the time immediately preceding the End brings about this dying and rising again in Jesus and believers as together forming a single category of mankind, and thus antedates the future into the present. For that which happens both to the Lord and to the elect it must be possible to find some kind of common-denominator which exactly contains the factors, the forces which are at work in the two cases. Since those which produce their effect in Christ are the first to become manifest, Paul can cast his theory into the form that the believers have died and risen again with Him.

The case lies similarly in regard to the Apostle’s views about universalism and the law.

It was not by his experiences among the Gentiles that he was led to universalism. And the thought is not simply that mission work among the heathen ought to be permitted. He maintains the view that there is a pressing necessity to carry the Gospel abroad. It is under the impulsion of this thought that he becomes the Apostle of the Greeks.

The sole and sufficient reason for this view he finds in the peculiar condition of the world between the death and the parousia of Christ. To it are due the conditions in consequence of which a share in the privileges of Israel is open to the Gentiles without their being obliged, by taking upon them the law and its sign, to enter into union with Israel. In saying this it is not the Apostle’s meaning that they merely do not need to do so; they must not do so, on pain of losing their salvation.

Since Ritschl, the representatives of the history of dogma have been concerned to obscure the problem of the law in Paul and to turn theology into paths of easiness. They assert that it was a purely practical question, which did not touch doctrine in the strict sense. This was the expedient by which they escaped from the difficulty when it was raised by Baur. It is time that it should be given up.

What is the relation between predestination and the sacraments? Why do the elect of the final generation need a provision which was not made for those of earlier generations? This too must result from the unique character of the time. The only logical assumption is that to this special provision corresponds a special blessedness, going beyond the ordinary blessedness involved in election as such, which is reserved for the final generation and cannot be obtained otherwise than through baptism and the Lord’s Supper. But wherein does it consist?

All these questions are, like the mystical doctrine, to be answered by reference to the special conditions of the period between the death of Jesus and the parousia. It must be possible to refer back the whole of the teachings to one and the same fundamental fact. It follows that there must be no more talking about the “uniqueness of the event at Damascus” and psychologising about Paul’s “religious experience,” no more spiritualising and modernising, no making play with the distinction between religion and theology, or with the discovery or concealment of contradictions and antinomies, or other similar exercises of ingenuity.

And, finally, the solution must explain the enigmatic attitude which subsequent generations take up in regard to the Apostle of the Gentiles. They know him, but they owe no allegiance to him. He created no school. The theology of an Ignatius or a Justin does not attach itself to him. There is something more in this than a simple oversight. If these theologians do not turn to him for aid, though he stands like a giant among them, that must be due to the fact that it is impossible to do so, and that in the course of the natural development of things they have been led to follow quite other paths.

For some reason or other, the conditions under which he created his system must be for them unimaginable. It is true they are still in the period between the death and the parousia of Jesus, but they can no longer interpret it in the same way as the Apostle did. Why are they no longer able to bring into play the forces which he assumes to be in operation when he refers everything to the dying and rising again of Christ and the believer? Which of his presuppositions is for them lacking? May it be that the intensity of the eschatological expectation has so declined that the mysticism associated therewith can no longer maintain its ground?

The Ultra-Tübingen critics demanded of theology proof that the canonical Paul and his Epistles belonged to early Christianity; and the demand was justified.

Argument and counter-argument must be drawn from the contents. The theological scholarship which had to meet the attacks of Steck and van Manen had no solid arguments to oppose to them. Its Paulinism was so complicated, Hellenised and modernised, that it could at need find a place in theological text-books, but not in primitive Christianity. On the other hand, an explanation which shows that the Apostle’s system is based on the most primitive eschatological premises, and at the same time makes it intelligible why subsequent generations could not continue to follow the road on which he started, thereby demonstrates his primitive Christianity and, to this extent, also the genuineness of his chief Epistles. The possibility that they might be primitive-Christian, and yet not written by the historic Apostle of the Gentiles, hardly calls for serious consideration.

Any one who works out this solution is the true pupil of Baur, however widely he may diverge from him in his views and results. By unequivocally determining the date of the writings in question on internal grounds and excluding all other possibilities he is exercising “positive criticism” in the sense intended by the Tübingen master, and justifies him in the face of the adversaries against whom he can no longer defend himself.

It may no doubt prove to be the case that this “positive” criticism will appear distressingly negative to those who look for results which can be immediately coined into dogmatic and homiletic currency.

Their opinion, however, is of small importance.

It is the fate of the “Little-faiths” of truth that they, true followers of Peter, whether they be of the Roman or the Protestant observance, cry out and sink in the sea of ideas, where the followers of Paul, believing in the Spirit, walk secure and undismayed.

INDEX