Among the works which controverted the Tübingen view of Paulinism a prominent place belongs to an early work of Richard Adalbert Lipsius on “the Pauline doctrine of justification.”22 Along with his scientific purpose the author also pursues a practical aim. He puts himself at the service of the anti-rationalistic reaction which aimed at restoring the old evangelical ideas to a position of honour, but in doing so did not grasp hands with the orthodoxy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but took as its starting-point the ideas which it finds present in the New Testament. In giving an objective presentation of the central Pauline doctrine of justification he believes that he is offering to the Protestantism of his time a view which it can adopt as its own.
For the Apostle of the Gentiles, he argues, justification is not a purely legal, forensic act, but also an ethical experience. Faith is an ethical attitude which produces an inward righteousness. What is really effectual in redemption is the fellowship with Christ in life and death. It is brought about by the Spirit of God and of Christ, who unites himself with the believer and transforms his personality.
Lipsius is the first to recognise the two trains of thought in Paulinism, and to remark that the one is based upon the juridical idea of justification, while the other has its starting-point in the conception of sanctification—of the real ethical new creation by the Spirit. He does not, as had always previously been done, make everything of the one and nothing of the other, but aims at showing how they are brought together in the Apostle’s thought.
The importance of the eschatological passages does not escape him. He assumes that the thought of the parousia gives an inner unity to the Apostle’s ideas.
It is true that Lipsius did not succeed in fully discharging the task which he laid upon himself. He weakens down one set of ideas in the interests of the other, [pg 020] and solders the two together externally by the use of skilfully chosen expressions; but it remains his great merit that he was the first to recognise this duality in Paul’s thought. Had he not been pursuing a dogmatic interest alongside of his scientific investigations he would doubtless have come to still closer quarters with the problem.
While his critics were at work Baur had not been idle. From 1850 onwards he published in the Tübinger Jahrbücher für Theologie, which had superseded the Tübinger Zeitschrift für Theologie, a series of separate investigations of the Pauline Epistles.23 He had resolved that the final results of his study of the Apostle of the Gentiles, with which he had begun his work, and which throughout his whole lifetime had been his favourite study, should be set forth in a new edition of his Paulus. This was to be the crown of his work.
But it was not to be. Death snatched him away from his task when he had only just cast the first part into its new shape. The second and most important, which was to treat the “system of doctrine,” he did not reach.24
To a certain extent a substitute for what was thus lost was furnished by the “Lectures on New Testament Theology,” published by the master’s son in 1864.25 The chapter on Paulinism is very striking in its brevity and clearness, and shows a great advance on the work of 1845. At that time Baur had examined and interpreted Paul’s [pg 021] teaching by the light of the Hegelian Intellectualism. Now he tries to grasp his ideas historically and empirically, and to describe them accordingly.
He discusses successively the Pauline views on sin and flesh; law and sin; faith in the death of Christ; law and promise; law and freedom; the righteousness of faith; faith and works; faith and predestination; Christology; baptism and the Lord’s Supper; the parousia of Christ.
Eschatology, which in the first edition was quite overlooked, receives here abundant recognition. Baur admits that the Apostle fully shared the faith of the primitive community in the nearness of the parousia, and was at one with it in all the conceptions referring to the End.
The Pauline theology as thus empirically apprehended has no longer the bold effectiveness of the speculatively constructed system of the year 1845. It becomes apparent in Baur, and increasingly evident in the work of subsequent investigators, that the self-consistency and logical concatenation of the system become obscured and disturbed in proportion as progress is made in the exact apprehension of the individual concepts and ideas.
III
FROM BAUR TO HOLTZMANN
MONOGRAPHS UPON PAUL
Adolf Hausrath. Der Apostel Paulus (1865, 172 pp.; biographical. 2nd ed., 1872, 503 pp.).
Ernest Renan. St. Paul (1869, 570 pp.; biographical and theological).
Auguste Sabatier. L’Apôtre Paul (1870, theological). (E.T. by A. M. Hellier, 1891.)
Otto Pfleiderer. Der Paulinismus (1873; 2nd ed., 1890; theological). (E.T. by E. Peters, 1877.)
Carl Holsten. Das Evangelium des Paulus (1st pt., 1880; 2nd pt., 1898).
NEW TESTAMENT INTRODUCTIONS
Eduard Reuse. Geschichte der heiligen Schriften Neuen Testamentes (5th ed., 1874). (E.T. History of the Sacred Scriptures of the New Testament, by E. L. Houghton. Edin. 1884.)
Christian Karl von Hofmann. Pt, ix. of “Die Heilige Schrift.” 1881.
Heinrich Julius Holtzmann. Einleitung in das Neue Testament. 1885.
Bernhard Weiss. (Same title.) 1886. (E.T. by A. J. K. Davidson, 1887).
Frédéric Godet. Introduction au Nouveau Testament. 1893.
Adolf Jülicher. Einleitung in das Neue Testament. 1894. (E.T. by J. P. Ward, 1904.)
Theodor Zahn. (Same title.) 1897. (E.T. of 3rd ed. 1909).
WORKS ON NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY
Eduard Reuss. Histoire de la théologie chrétienne au siècle apostolique. 3rd ed., 1864. (E.T. by A. Harwood, 1872.)
Bernhard Weiss. Lehrbuch der biblischen Theologie des Neuen Testaments. 1st ed., 1868; 6th ed., 1895. (E.T. Edin. 1882.)
Christian Karl von Hofmann. Pt. xi. of “Die Heilige Schrift.” 1886.
Willibald Beyschlag. Neutestamentliche Theologie. 1891. 2nd ed., 1896. (E.T. Edin. 1895.)
GENERAL WORKS ON PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY
Ernest Havet. Le Christianisme et ses origines (4 vols., 1884).
Karl von Weizsäcker. Das apostolische Zeitalter. 1886. (E.T. The Apostolic Age, 1894.)
Otto Pfleiderer. Das Urchristentum. 1887. (E.T. of 2nd. altered ed., see later.)
STUDIES ON SPECIAL POINTS
Carl Holsten. Zum Evangelium des Paulus und Petrus. 1868.
Fr. Th. L. Ernesti. Die Ethik des Apostels Paulus. 1868.
Emmanuel Friedrich Kautzsch. De Veteris Testamenti locis a Paulo apostolo allegatis. 1869.
Franz Delitzsch. Paulus des Apostels Brief an die Römer in das Hebräische übersetzt und aus Talmud und Midrasch erläutert. 1870. (The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans translated into Hebrew and illustrated from Talmud and Midrash.)
Hermann Lüdemann. Die Anthropologie des Apostels Paulus. 1872.
Albrecht Ritschl. Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung, vol. ii., 1874. (The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation.) (E.T. of vols. i. and iii. only).
H. H. Wendt. Die Begriffe Fleisch und Geist bei Paulus. 1878. (The Meaning of the Terms Flesh and Spirit in Paul’s Writings.)
Louis Eugène Ménégoz. Le Péché et la redemption d’après St Paul. 1882.
Eduard Grafe. Die paulinische Lehre vom Gesetz. 1884. (The Pauline Teaching about the Law.)
Gustav Volkmar. Paulus von Damaskus zum Galaterbrief. 1887. (Paul, from Damascus to Galatians). A biographical study, with a critical comparison between the data of Galatians and Acts.
Alfred Resch. Agrapha. Ausserkanonische Evangelienfragmente. 1888. On the Question whether Sayings of Jesus have been preserved in Paul’s Writings.
Otto Everling. Die paulinische Angelologie und Dämonologie. 1888.
Johann Gloël. Der Heilige Geist in der Heilsverkündigung des Paulus. 1888. (The Holy Spirit in Paul’s Preaching of Salvation.)
Hermann Gunkel. Die Wirkungen des Heiligen Geistes nach der populären Anschauung der apostolischen Zeit und nach der Lehre des Apostels Paulus. 1888. (The Manifestations of the Holy Spirit according to the Popular View of the Apostolic Age and according to the Teaching of Paul.)
Eduard Grafe. Das Verhältnis der paulinischen Schriften zur Sapientia Salamonis. 1892. (The Relation of the Pauline Writings to the Book of Wisdom.)
Adolf Deissmann. Die neutestamentliche Formel “in Christo Jesu.” 1892. (The New Testament Formula “in Christ Jesus.”)
Richard Kabisch. Die Eschatologie des Paulus in ihren Zusammenhängen mit dem Gesamtbegriff des Paulinismus. 1893. (Paul’s Eschatology in Relation to his General System.)
W. Brandt. Die evangelische Geschichte und der Ursprung des Christentums. 1893. (The Gospel History and the Origin of Christianity.)
Ernst Curtius. Paulus in Athen. 1894.
E. Bruston. La Vie future d’après St Paul. 1894.
Hans Vollmer. Die alttestamentlichen Zitate bei Paulus. 1895.
Ernst Teichmann. Die paulinischen Vorstellungen von Auferstehung und Gericht und ihre Beziehung zur jüdischen Apokalyptik. 1896. (The Pauline Views of Resurrection and Judgment and their Relation to the Jewish Apocalyptic.)
Theodor Simon. Die Psychologie des Apostels Paulus. 1897.
Paul Wernle. Der Christ und die Sünde bei Paulus. (The Christian and Sin in Paul’s Writings.) 1897.
CRITICISM AND EXEGESIS
Bruno Bauer. Kritik der paulinischen Briefe. 1850-1851-1852.
Christian Hermann Weisse. Beiträge zur Kritik der paulinischen Briefe. 1867. (Contributions to the Criticism of the Pauline Epistles.)
H. J. Holtzmann. Kritik der Epheser und Kolosserbriefe. 1872. Die Pastoralbriefe. 1880.
Eduard Reuss. Les Épîtres pauliniennes (“La Bible,” pt. iii.). 1878.
Georg Heinrici. Das erste Sendschreiben des Apostels Paulus an die Korinther. 1880. Das zweite, etc. 1887.
P. W. Schmiedel. Auslegung der Briefe an die Thessalonicher und Korinther in Holtzmann’s “Handkommentar.” 1891. (Exposition of the Epistles to the Thessalonians and Corinthians in Holtzmann’s “Handkommentar.”)
R. A. Lipsius. Auslegung der Briefe an die Galater, Römer und Philipper in Holtzmann’s “Handkommentar.” 1891.
WORKS OF A GENERAL CHARACTER, OR DEALING WITH COGNATE SUBJECTS
Emil Schürer. Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte. 1873. From the 2nd ed. (1886) onwards the work bears the title: Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi. (E.T. History of the Jewish People in the time of Jesus Christ. Edin. 1885.)
Karl Siegfried. Philo von Alexandrien als Ausleger des alten Testaments an sich selbst und nach seinem geschichtlichen Einfluss betrachtet. 1875. (Philo of Alexandria as an Expositor of the Old Testament, considered both in himself and in regard to his historical influence.)
Ferdinand Weber. System der altsynagogalen palästinenschen Theologie. 1880. The second edition (1897) bears the title Jüdische Theologie auf Grund des Talmud und verwandter Schriften. (Jewish Theology exhibited on the basis of the Talmud and allied writings.)
W. Gass. Geschichte der christlichen Ethik. 1881.
Theobald Ziegler. Geschichte der christlichen Ethik. 1886.
Edwin Hatch. The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church (Hibbert Lectures for 1888).
Theodor Zahn. Der Stoiker Epiktet und sein Verhältnis zum Christentum. 1894.
Adolf Harnack. Dogmengeschichte, 3rd ed., 1894. (E.T. History of Dogma, 1894-1899). Die Chronologie der altchristlichen Literatur bis Eusebius. Vol. i., 1897.
PROBLEMS many and various confronted theological science when it attempted to carry forward Pauline studies from the position in which they had been left by Baur.
It was needful to clear up once for all the questions of literary criticism, to examine in detail the individual conceptions and trains of thought, to make clear the unity and inner connexion of the system, to show what rôle Paulinism had played in the development of early Catholic theology, and how far it was at one with primitive Christianity, and to solve the question whether the material employed in its construction was of purely Jewish, or in part of Greek origin.
In regard to the literary question a certain measure of agreement was in course of time attained. Baur had distinguished three classes of Epistles. In the first he placed, as beyond doubt genuine, Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans; Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, Thessalonians, and Philemon formed the second class, being considered uncertain; the Pastoral Epistles formed the third class, and were regarded as proved to be spurious.
The views of the Tübingen master regarding the first class and the third were adopted by the majority of scholars of the next generation. No doubts were raised against the great Epistles; the Pastoral Epistles were rejected. Holtzmann, in his work on the Letters to Timothy and Titus,26 supplied a detailed argument in favour of this conclusion.
[pg 026] Of the letters of the intermediate class, the first to the Thessalonians and that to the Philippians were by many rehabilitated as Pauline. The second to the Thessalonians was rejected with increasing confidence. A special problem was presented by the letters to the Colossians and Ephesians, both because of their evident mutual relationship and particularly in regard to certain parts of the Epistle to the Colossians which made a strong impression of genuineness. Holtzmann offered a solution which gave general satisfaction. He adopted the hypothesis that Colossians was based upon a genuine Pauline letter which had been worked over by a later hand.27 The redactor he identified with the author of the Epistle to the Ephesians.
While there was this general consensus in the critical camp, which was ratified in Holtzmann’s “Introduction,”28 the most diverse opinions on special points are found. Some attempts were made to save the [pg 027] genuineness of the second Epistle to the Thessalonians. For some, the Epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians are genuine throughout and represent a later phase of the Pauline theology. Nor were there lacking attempts of all kinds to rehabilitate the Pastoral Epistles. Those who did not venture to defend them as wholes make a point of retaining at least the “personal references.”
The presentation of the Pauline teaching was, however, hardly affected by the literary divergences. Not even the most conservative of the critics had the boldness to place all the letters which have come down under the name of Paul on a footing of equality. Even those who regarded the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians as genuine did not fuse ideas of these Epistles with the system extracted from the four main Epistles, but presented them separately; and any who were not converted to the rejection of the Pastorals at all events took the precaution to give a separate chapter to the Pauline theology of these writings.29 If only the personal references might be saved, these Epistles were as completely excluded from the presentation of the Pauline system as if they had been pronounced wholly spurious.
Thus it continued to be the case, as it had been with Baur, that, generally speaking, only the four main epistles were taken into account in describing the Pauline system. The only significant change was that the epistle to the Philippians began to be put on the same footing, and, with a few exceptions, scholars no longer hesitated to regard as Pauline the conception of the pre-existence of Christ which is expressed in the section on the incarnation and obedience unto death. It was realised that the main epistles also presuppose this view, even if they do not state it so explicitly.
There were, of course, as time went on, attempts to [pg 028] explain the composition of the four main epistles and Philippians as arising by the working up together in each single epistle of two or more originals, but these were not of any real importance for the study of the Pauline doctrine. It was only a carrying out of the task suggested by Semler, when he pointed out that we have not got the letters in their original form but only as prepared for public reading by the early Church. But the constitution of the Pauline material is scarcely affected by the attempts to reconstruct these originals. They have a purely literary interest.
Theology, so far as it was occupied with the study of the Pauline system, did not allow itself to be at all disquieted by the rejection of the whole of the Epistles proposed by Bruno Bauer in his “Criticism of the Pauline Letters.”30 Nor was its confidence shaken by the hypothesis that the letters have been worked over to a very large extent and in a very thoroughgoing fashion. Christian Hermann Weisse’s “Contributions to the Criticism of the Pauline Epistles,”31 which appeared in 1867, where he sets forth the justification and the principles of this method, scarcely attracted any attention, as was indeed the case with almost all the theological work of this writer.
The elucidation of the details of the Pauline doctrine is vigorously pursued. An empirical definition is attempted of the terms sin, law, conscience, justification, redemption, election, and freedom. A special interest attaches to the study of the terms flesh and spirit. After Holsten had endeavoured to trace the significance of the word flesh, Lüdemann—in a brilliant work published in 1872—endeavoured to arrive at a clear idea of the Apostle’s anthropology and its place in his doctrine of salvation.
There are, so runs his thesis, two conceptions of [pg 029] “flesh” in Paul. The one agrees with the naive, simple Jewish linguistic usage, and means only the natural being of man. The other is much more precise and belongs to a dualistic system of thought. In it the flesh is defined as the necessary cause of sin and corruption and as the absolute antithesis to spirit. On close examination it appears that not merely two conceptions of “the flesh” existing side by side, but two different doctrines of man’s nature, and consequently two different conceptions of redemption, are found in Paul.
According to the system which connects itself with the simpler, broader conception of the flesh, sin springs from the freedom of the will; the law is assumed to be inherently possible of fulfilment; redemption consists in a judgment of acquittal pronounced by God which has its ground solely in His mercy; righteousness is imputed; the act which brings redemption consists in faith. This circle of ideas, which forms a self-consistent whole, is described by Lüdemann as the “Jewish-religious,” the “juridical-subjective,” doctrine of redemption. It has its source in reflection on the death of Jesus.
The other system of ideas is defined as the “ethico-dualistic.” In contradistinction to the former it makes use of an “objectively real” conception of redemption. It presupposes the more precise, narrower conception of “the flesh,” and regards sin as proceeding from it by a natural necessity. The law is the ferment of sin; death the natural outcome of the flesh. Redemption can therefore only consist in the abolition of the flesh. It is based on the communication of the Spirit, which produces in the man a new creature and a real righteousness. The redemptive act takes place in baptism. The ideas of this second system are based on the Lord’s resurrection.
The coexistence of a juridical and an ethical system of thought in Paul had been held by others before Lüdemann. What he did, however, was to follow out each separately into its details, and to endeavour to prove that all the contradictions and obscurities which are to be observed [pg 030] in the conceptions and statements of the Pauline theology find their ultimate explanation in the coexistence of two different doctrines of man’s nature and two different doctrines of redemption.
Hitherto the doctrine of redemption which appears alongside of the juridical had been described as “ethical.” He remarks that it is conceived not merely ethically, but actually physically, and therefore defines it as ethico-physical. Further, he is of opinion that the two theories are not co-equal in importance. He holds that in the ethico-physical “the real view of the Apostle” is set forth, which only tolerates the other alongside of it, and more and more tends to push it aside wherever in the discussion Paul can count upon a thorough understanding of the real essence of the matter.
In the Epistles the development, he thinks, takes the following course. The Letter to the Galatians knows only the primitive Jewish system of thought with reference to Christ’s vicarious suffering and righteousness by faith; it does not advance to the bolder realistic doctrine of righteousness.
In the Epistles to the Corinthians, according to Lüdemann, the Apostle does not make much use of dogma. “The less advanced position of the church there may have been one cause of this.” But the fundamental conceptions of the ethico-physical series of ideas begin to appear in them. Later on they attain to “constitutive importance” and “force their way into the leading dogmatic statements.” In the first four chapters of Romans the old view still finds expression. From the fifth onwards the new tenets are developed fully and clearly.
This second series of ideas is not Jewish but Greek. Lüdemann’s view is that Paul, “in the attempt to give dogmatic fixity to the doctrine of salvation, presses on beyond the horizon of the Old Testament consciousness and is carried in the direction of Hellenism.”32 The latter [pg 031] offered him a clearly-thought-out doctrine of man, in which the dominant idea was the antithesis of flesh and spirit, and made it necessary for him to think out a physically real doctrine of redemption.
Pfleiderer33 also works out the two series of ideas, separating them scarcely less sharply than Lüdemann does. But he prefers to describe the series which runs parallel to the juridical, not as physico-ethical, but as mystico-ethical. Moreover, he does not admit that the ethical series expresses Paul’s view more adequately than the other. He is of opinion also that the two sets of conceptions held an equal place in the consciousness of the Apostle from the first. By logically thinking out the Jewish idea of the atoning death, Paul was led—according to Pfleiderer—to the anti-Jewish conclusion that redemption is for all mankind, and that the law is consequently invalidated. With this view there is united another, the source of which lies in the Hellenistic anthropology. This is that redemption consists in the influence exercised by the Holy Spirit upon the fleshly creatureliness, in consequence of which sin and death are abolished. The beginning of this process is to be sought in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In the close connexion of the Pharisaic and Hellenistic elements “lies the characteristic peculiarity of the genuine Pauline theology, which can only be rightly understood when these two sides of it both receive equal attention.”
That in Paulinism two lines of thought go side by side is recognised by almost all the investigators of this period. But in the importance assigned to each of them great divergences appear. Reuss makes the juridical ideas entirely subordinate to the ethical; in Ménégoz the former are more strongly emphasised than the latter. No one except Pfleiderer holds them to be on an exactly equal [pg 032] footing. In general the ethical set of ideas is regarded as the original creation of the Apostle, and is assumed to represent the deepest stratum in his thought. Accordingly, it is generally also held that the doctrine of the abolition of the flesh by the Spirit comes to its full development later than the other, which is based upon the atonement and imputed righteousness. Lüdemann’s theory of a development within the Pauline doctrine is adopted by the majority, though only in a less pronounced form.
It should be mentioned that the first important attempt to prove the existence of different phases in the thought and life of Paul was made by Sabatier.34 His work L’Apotre Paul appeared in 1870, two years before Lüdemann’s study. At first the Apostle held, according to the French scholar, a simple doctrine which can be psychologically explained from his rabbinic training and his conversion. At the time of his great controversies he was compelled to work out for himself a philosophy of history which would enable him to prove that the law was only a passing episode in the history of salvation, and that justification by faith had always lain in the purpose of God. This doctrine takes a dominant position in the Epistles to the Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans. In the letters written during his imprisonment the Apostle advances to a speculative, gnostic development of his ideas. The coexistence of the juridical and ethical series of ideas does not receive the same prominence in Sabatier as in the later writers, who were influenced by Lüdemann and Pfleiderer.
When all is said and done, there is in the works of this period much assertion and little proof regarding the development within Paulinism. One almost gets the impression that the assumption of different stages of thought was chiefly useful as a way of escaping the difficulty about the inner unity of the system. This [pg 033] problem is, however, rather instinctively felt than clearly grasped. The scholars of this period do not feel it incumbent upon them to trace out the connexion in which these disparate sets of ideas must have stood in the view of Paul. They show no surprise at his passing so easily from the one to the other and arguing from each alternately, and they do not ask themselves how he conceived the most general ultimate fact of redemption which underlies both of them. They do not seek to arrive at a really fundamental view of the essence of Paulinism.
Their method of procedure in their presentation of the doctrine is itself significant. They do not trace its development from one fundamental conception, but treat it under dogmatic loci, as Baur had done in his New Testament Theology. The scheme is more or less closely based on that of Reformation dogmatics. It is therefore assumed a priori that the Pauline theology can be divided into practically the same individual doctrines as that of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin. Really, however, a preliminary question arises whether this arrangement of the material does not introduce a wrong grouping and orientation into the Apostle’s system, and whether it does not destroy the natural order and relative importance of the thoughts, falsify the perspective, tear asunder what ought not to be disjoined, and render impossible the discovery of the fundamental idea in which all the utterances find their point of union. This procedure is innocently supposed to be scientific; as a matter of fact it leads to the result that the study of the subject continues to be embarrassed by a considerable remnant of the prepossessions with which the interpretation of Paul’s doctrine was approached in the days of the Reformation.
It is not less prejudicial when others, as for example Holsten,35 adopt an arrangement of the material suggested by modern dogmatics. As the Pauline theology has, if possible, less affinity with the latter than with the Reformation theology, the error is almost more serious.
In general these scholars are quite unconscious of the decisive importance which attaches to the arrangement and articulation of the material. It has, indeed, always been weakness of theological scholarship to talk much about method and possess little of it.
Otto Pfleiderer, alone, is not entirely in this state of innocence. He has an inkling that the usual way of approaching the subject is not wholly free from objection. In the first edition of his Paulinism (1873)36 he raises the question whether the “genetic method” is not demanded by the task of tracing out the organic progress of the development of dogma in its Pauline beginnings. Practical considerations, however, determine him “to arrange the matter very much according to the customary dogmatic loci,” while, however, at the same time giving as much attention as possible to the position of the dogma in the Pauline system.” He fears that the carrying out of the genetic principle would lead to many repetitions, and would make it more difficult to get a general view of “the way in which the separate doctrines were connected with their bases.”
In order to salve his conscience he gives at the beginning, “by way of an introductory outline,” a sketch of the “organic development of the Pauline gnosis from its single root.” This general view—it occupies twenty-seven pages—is the most important part of the whole book. The succeeding chapters treat of sin, flesh, character of the law, aim of the law, Christ’s atoning death, Christ’s death as a means of liberation from the dominion of sin, the resurrection of Christ, the Person of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of God and heavenly Christ, the appearing of Christ in the flesh, faith, justification, sonship, the beginning and the progress of the new life, the Christian Church, the Lord’s Supper, the election of grace, the parousia, and the end of the world.
Lüdemann was prevented by the task which he had set himself from adopting the division according to loci. [pg 035] His object was only to investigate Paul’s conception of the fleshly man in its relation to his doctrine as a whole. In this way he was led to arrange the ideas in their natural order and, without strictly intending to do so, to give a general account of Paulinism, which is almost entirely free from the defective arrangement of other works, permits something of the logical articulation of the Apostle’s circle of ideas to appear, and certainly penetrates more deeply than the rest into the Apostle’s world of thought.
As the works of Reuss, Weiss, Pfleiderer, Holsten, Renan, Sabatier, Ménégoz, Weizsäcker, do not aim at understanding and showing the development of this doctrine from a single fundamental thought, there are no real divergences in the general view which they take of the system. The differences of opinion with their predecessors which the authors express in their text and notes relate, in point of fact, only to details and minutiae, surprising as this may at first sight appear. The plan and design of the system are in general everywhere the same; the differences regard only the mixing and application of the colours, and the question how far Greek influences are to be recognised.
In going through these works one after another, one is surprised to observe how great is their fundamental resemblance. At the same time there is something curiously “elusive” about them. At a given point one might be inclined to think that one of the authors was formulating a thought more clearly, or giving it more exclusive importance than the others; and one is just about to note this as a special characteristic of his view. A few pages later, however, or in a following chapter, one finds additions or reservations which show that he does not really think differently from the rest. The differences lie not so much in the actual conception as in the literary presentation, and in the manner in which the material, which is essentially a whole, is parcelled out among the different loci. There is thus nothing to be [pg 036] gained by analysing the various conceptions one by one and comparing them with one another. Since there is no real difference of fundamental view, the comparison would lose itself in endless and unessential detail.
To the general impression of monotony is to be added that of complexity. At the end of each of these works one is inclined to inquire whether the author really means to ask the reader to regard what is here offered as representing a system of thought which once existed in the brain of a man belonging to early Christianity, and was capable of being understood by his contemporaries. All the arts of literary presentation are employed to subtilise the conceptions, to describe the thoughts with exactitude, and to bring connexion and order into the chaos of ideas. But the result gives no satisfaction. No real elucidation and explanation of Paulinism is attained. The resulting impression is of something quite artificial.
The welcome which these authors’ works received from their contemporaries shows that the latter saw in them an advance in the knowledge of Paulinism. They felt them to be satisfactory. That only means that the readers’ presuppositions and requirements lay within the same limitations as those of the authors.
What had been the result arrived at? A description of the Pauline doctrine, a remarkably detailed description, but nothing more. That doubtless implied a certain progress. It did not, however, extend so far as the authors and their readers assumed. Both innocently supposed that in the description they possessed at the same time an explanation—as though the descriptive anatomy of this organism sufficed to explain its physiology. They were unconscious that they had so far only looked at Pauline thought from without, and had never gained any insight into the inner essence of the system.
In these works the Apostle’s statements are quoted one after another, and developed in his own words. The authors think they have discharged their task when they [pg 037] have so arranged the course of the investigation that all important passages can be respectably housed.
The odd thing is that they write as if they understood what they were writing about. They do not feel compelled to admit that Paul’s statements taken by themselves are unintelligible, consist of pure paradoxes, and that the point that calls for examination is how far they are thought of by their author as having a real meaning, and could be understood in this light by his readers. They never call attention to the fact that the Apostle always becomes unintelligible just at the moment when he begins to explain something; never give a hint that while we hear the sound of his words the tune of his logic escapes us.
What is his meaning when he asserts that the law is abolished by the death of Jesus—according to other passages, by His resurrection? How does he represent to himself the process by which, through union with the death and resurrection of the Lord a new creaturehood is produced in a man, in virtue of which he is released from the conditions of fleshly existence, from sin and death? How far is a union possible between the natural man, alive in this present world, and the glorified Christ who dwells in heaven; and one, moreover, of such a kind that it has a retrospective reference to His death? The authors we have named do not raise questions of this kind. They feel no need to trace out the realities which lie behind these paradoxical assertions. They take it for granted that Paul has himself explained his statements up to a certain point—so far, in fact, as this is possible in the world of feeling to which religion belongs.
This self-deception is made the more easy for them by the fact that they are accustomed to clothe their own religious views in Pauline phraseology, and consequently they come to treat as the authentic logic of Paul, arguments which they have unconsciously imported into their account of his teaching. They fail to reckon with the possibility that the original significance of his utterances [pg 038] may rest on presuppositions which are not present to our apprehension and conception. For the same reason they all more or less hold the opinion that what they have to do with is mainly a psychological problem. They assume that the Pauline system has arisen out of a series of reflexions and conclusions, and would be as a whole clear and intelligible to any one who could succeed in really thinking himself into the psychology of the rabbinic zealot who was overpowered by the vision of Christ on the road to Damascus.
The writer who goes furthest in this direction is Holsten. In his work on the “Gospel of Paul and of Peter”37 he describes how Paul, while he was persecuting the new faith, was, as a Jewish thinker, occupied with the thought of the offence of the cross and the alleged resurrection. While still a fanatical zealot “he constantly carried with him in his consciousness the elements of the Messianic faith, even though as negative and negated.” By the keenness of his theological dialectic he was compelled to imagine what the alleged facts would really signify if the belief of the disciples were justified. The “principle of the Messianic faith” was, in him, “alive in greater definiteness than even in the consciousness of the followers of the Messiah whom he persecuted.” The Messiahship of Jesus could not for him take its place as a hope and faith within the Jewish system of thought and religious life, [pg 039] but necessarily implied the destruction of what he had hitherto held to be true. Thus the persecutor had in principle thought out for himself to its ultimate consequences the revolution which would result from the acceptance of the Messiahship of Jesus. And this he translated into word and deed after he had experienced the vision on the Damascus road.
Other writers take as the starting-point for their psychological arguments the passage in Romans vii., where Paul depicts the despair of the man who recognises that the law, although it is spiritual and was given with a view to life, can only in the fleshly man produce sin, condemnation, and death. What we there read concerning the struggle between the natural, powerful will of the flesh and the law, is, they think, written from the point of view of the pre-Christian consciousness of the Apostle. He had experienced this agony of soul, and it was by this that the Jewish religious attitude had been broken down in him. Therefore in his Gospel he does not desire to retain anything from the faith of his fathers.
These two main lines of psychological theory are followed for a longer or shorter distance in all the works of this period. Hand in hand with this psychologising goes a tendency to modernisation. The scholars of this period spiritualise Paul’s thought. The transformation varies in extent for the different ideas. The statements about the atonement and imputed righteousness are the least affected by it. What is unintelligible in these is put down to the account of the Jewish Rabbinic mode of thought in which Paul is supposed to be held prisoner. On the other hand, the conceptions regarding union with Christ in his death and passion, and the new life in Him through the Spirit, are subjected to paraphrase and explanation until nothing of the realistic sense is left remaining. The question is not faced why Paul, if he wanted to say anything so “spiritual” and general as this, should have adopted so exaggerated, paradoxical, and materialistic a method of expression.