In order to arrive at his sacramental view Paul does not follow the natural method of advancing by way of the thought of purification to that of renewal by regeneration, but follows a different route, which leads him to an estimate of it that has nothing to do with the fundamental conception of purification, and therefore remains without analogy in the Mystery-religions. This is a fact of great significance.
The Mystery-religions speak, as Paul also does, of the pneuma and its workings, but the possession of the pneuma is never represented as an immediate and inevitable consequence of baptism.
With the Mystery-religions are associated speculations about the renewal of man’s being, represented as taking place in regeneration, which they bring into some kind of relation, closer or more remote, with baptism. But when Paul speaks of the new creature which comes into being in the sacrament, the thought of regeneration does not for him come into view, for he makes no use of it at all. Instead of that he asserts in Rom. vi. that in baptism there is an experience of death and resurrection in fellowship with Christ, from which results newness of life and the new ethic associated therewith. How the act and the result are logically connected he does not explain. He is content to place them side by side.
So far as we know, there exists in the Mystery-religions no analogue to this dying and rising again effected solely by the use of water. To interpret Rom. vi., as Dieterich does, as referring to a spiritual death and “new birth” is not permissible, since the text says not a word about that. The post-Pauline theology, that is the Johannine and Early Greek theology, explain baptism as regeneration, and seek to find a logical basis for this effect in the doctrine that the Spirit unites with the water as the generating power. Paul has nothing of all this.
Nor does he show any knowledge of the idea that Christian baptism arose out of the baptism of Jesus as an imitative reproduction of it. He never, in fact, mentions the baptism of Jesus. Nowhere does he suggest that in baptism the new man, the “Child of God,” is born in the believer, as Jesus was in this act raised to His Messianic office.
There is in fact no evidence from the earlier literature which suggests the existence of views of that kind regarding the origin and significance of Christian baptism. In early Christianity it is as far from being an imitative reproduction of the baptism of Jesus as the Church’s Lord’s Supper was from being an imitative reproduction of the historic Last Supper. The conception of an “imitative reproduction” was first introduced by modern theology.
To cite the taurobolium as an analogue of Paul’s baptism, with the death and resurrection which it effects, is not admissible. In the first place, the taurobolium is a baptism of blood; in the next place it is closely connected with a sacrifice; in the third place, the burial and rising again are actually represented. The sacramental significance is thus derived from the many-sided symbolism. In Paul there is no trace of all this. “Plain water” effects everything.
One point in regard to which great hopes had been placed on the Mystery-religions was the solution of the enigma of I Cor. xv. 29. Wernle regarded it as self-evident that the Apostle in permitting and approving [pg 211] baptism for the dead had allowed himself to become infected by the heathen superstition of his Corinthian converts, and took him to task for this lapse in his book on the “Beginnings of Christianity.” In his zeal he forgot to enquire whether the heathen had any superstition of the kind.173
Those who tried to supply this omission did not meet with much success. The heathen showed themselves better than their reputation and less “superstitious” than the Christians! Of a baptism for the dead, or anything at all of this nature, they show no trace.
Failing more relevant evidence, some have quoted Plato, who in the Republic (ii. 364-5) makes Adeimantos say, appealing in confirmation to the Orphic writings, that by means of offerings and festivals, atonement and purification for past misdeeds is effected for whole towns as well as for single individuals, for the living and also for the dead.
This passage, however, does not refer at all to personal dedications with a view to “renewal,” such as the baptism practised in the Mystery-religions and in Christianity, but to expiatory sacrifices in the ancient Greek sense.174
In the Taurobolia, representation of one living person by another is supposed to have been possible, but there is no mention of a representation of the dead.175
The baptism of the dead which is attested by a papyrus is not a baptism for the dead.176
That living persons went through the ceremonies of initiation for the dead is not known.
Thus baptism for the dead has not, so far at least, proved susceptible of explanation from heathen sources, but must be regarded as a peculiarity of Christianity!
The outcome of the study of the sacraments from the point of view of Comparative Religion is a very curious one. The Apostle thinks sacramentally; in fact his doctrine is much more “mysterious” than that of the Mystery-religions. But the nature of the sacramental conception is quite different in him from what it is in them; it is as if they had grown up on different soils.
The difference relates both to the conception of the supernatural working of the sacraments, and also to the position which the sacramental element takes in the doctrine as a whole.
In the Mystery-religions the sacramental idea arises by way of an intensification and materialisation of the symbolic. The act effects what it represents. The result can in a sense be logically understood when once the thought is grasped that the world of appearance and the world of reality stand in mysterious connexion with one another.
In Paul we have an unmediated and naked notion of sacrament such as is nowhere else to be met with. Symbolism is no doubt involved in the most general significance of the act. In this sense baptism is a “cleansing” and a “consecration,”177 and the sacred feast establishes [pg 213] fellowship among the partakers. But the assertions which go beyond this show not the faintest connexion with the outward significance of the rite. Contact with the water is supposed to effect a dying and rising again with Christ, a partaking in His mystical body, and the possession of the Spirit. The eating and drinking at the Lord’s Supper is a confession of faith in the death and the parousia of Christ, and is also fellowship with Him.
The sacramental is therefore non-rational. The act and its effect are not bound together by religious logic, but laid one upon the other and nailed together.
With that is connected the fact that in Paul we find the most prosaic conception imaginable of the opus operatum. In the Mystery-religions there is a mysterious procedure surrounded by imposing accessories. The impressive appeal of symbolism is brought to bear in every part. Every detail is significant, and lays hold upon the attention.
In Paul everything is flat and colourless. While some of his references might suggest the impression that his conception of Christianity bore some kind of analogy to the Mystery-religions, yet as a whole it entirely lacks the corresponding atmosphere. There is nothing of the effective mise en scène characteristic of the Greek sacramental beliefs. How lacking in solemnity must have been the method of celebrating the Lord’s Supper, when it could degenerate into an ugly and disorderly exhibition of gluttony! How little does the Apostle think of the external act of baptism, when he founds a church in Corinth and himself performs the rite only in the case of one or two individuals!178 He preaches sacraments, but does not feel himself to be a mystagogue; rather, he retains the simplicity in regard to forms of worship which belongs to the Jewish spirit.
There were no long preparations for the cultus ceremonies, and nothing is known of a distinction between higher and lower grades of initiation, such as form an [pg 214] essential part of the Mystery-religions. The first ceremony of initiation confers at once final perfection. Among those who are admitted there prevails the most complete equality. The conception of the “mystes” does not exist.
In the Mystery-religions everything centres in the sacred ceremonies. They dominate thought, feeling, and will. If they are removed the whole religion collapses.
In Paulinism it is otherwise. The doctrine of redemption is no doubt closely connected with the sacraments, but the latter are not its be-all and end-all. If baptism and the Lord’s Supper are taken away the doctrine is not destroyed, but stands unmoved. It looks as though the weight of the building rested upon these two pillars, but in reality it does not totter even if these supports are withdrawn.
The Johannine and the early Greek doctrine are conceived as real Mystery-religions. The Fourth Evangelist and Ignatius know no other redemption than that which is bound up with the sacraments. In Paul the redemption can be thought of apart from them, since the whole mystical doctrine of fellowship with Christ rests upon the single conception of faith. Nevertheless he allows it to be closely bound up with the external ceremonies, and seems to have no consciousness of the fact that this connexion is unnecessary and illogical.
The remarkable duality in Paulinism lies, therefore, in the fact that the sacramental idea is intensified to an extreme and unintelligible degree, while at the same time the necessity of the sacred ceremonies does not logically result from the system as a whole, as this would lead us to expect.
The sacramental views of the Apostle have thus nothing primitive about them, but are rather of a “theological” character. Paul connects his mystical doctrine of redemption with ceremonies which are not specially designed with reference to it. It is from that fact, and not from a specially deep love for Mysteries, [pg 215] that the exaggeratedly sacramental character of his view of baptism and the Lord’s Supper results. It is in the last resort a question of externalisation, not of intensification.
It is therefore useless to ransack the history of religions for analogies to his conceptions. It has none to offer, for the case is unique. The problem lies wholly within the sphere of early Christian history, and represents only a particular aspect of the question of Paul’s relation to primitive Christianity. The fact is, he did not introduce the sacramental view into the sacred ceremonies, but found already existing a baptism and a Lord’s Supper which guaranteed salvation on grounds which were intelligible from early Christian doctrine. He, however, transformed the primitive view of salvation into the mystical doctrine of the dying and rising again in fellowship with Christ. Since the connexion between redemption and the sacraments was given a priori, he draws the inference that the sacraments effect precisely that wherein, according to his gnosis, the inner essence of redemption consists. How far they are appropriate to the effect which, on the ground of his mystical doctrine, he holds to take place, does not for him come into question.
In the sacraments the believer becomes partaker in salvation. Therefore, he concludes, in them that happens which constitutes redemption, namely, the dying and rising again with Christ.
Paul therefore takes the sacraments by storm. He does not theorise about the ceremony, but ascribes to it without more ado the postulated effect. That is not a procedure which could have been followed either by a Greek or by a modern mind.
Paulinism is thus a theological system with sacraments, but not a Mystery-religion.
This may be confirmed by a further observation. The Apostle occupies a strongly predestinarian stand-point. Those who are “called” inevitably receive salvation; those who are not, can never in any way obtain it. There [pg 216] is no analogue to this in the Mystery-religions. They can only conceive of election in the sense and to the extent of holding that there is a calling and predestination to the receiving of the initiation which confers immortality. And there are actually some beginnings of such a conception.179
But Pauline predestination is quite different. It is absolute, and seems inevitably to abolish the necessity and meaning of the sacraments. Anyone who belongs to the number of the elect becomes ipso facto partaker of the resurrection. At the end of all things a great company from the generations of long-past times will arise to life without ever having received baptism or partaken of the Lord’s Supper. That being so, what becomes of the sacraments? In what respect are they necessary?
A good deal of energy has been expended in seeking analogies from other religions for the Corinthian baptism for the dead; it would really have been much more to the point to enquire why baptism for the dead was considered desirable. If the dead are among the elect, they have no need of it; if not, they could not have inherited life, even if they had received the sacrament during their sojourn on earth. To what end, then, is this baptism for the dead?
The most important point to notice is that everywhere in the Pauline sacraments the eschatological interest breaks through. They effect, not re-birth, but resurrection. That which in the near future is to become visible reality, they make in the present invisibly real by anticipation. The Greek Mysteries are timeless. They reach back to primitive antiquity, and they profess to be able to manifest their power in all generations. In Paul the sacraments have temporal boundaries. Their power is derived from the events of the last times. They put believers in the same position as the Lord, in that they [pg 217] cause them to experience a resurrection a few world-moments before the time, even though this does not in any way become manifest. It is a precursory phenomenon of the approaching end of the world.
Separated from the eschatology, the Pauline sacraments would become meaningless and ineffectual. They are confined to the time between the resurrection of Jesus and His parousia, when the dead shall arise. Their power depends on the present, and also on the future, fact. In this sense they are “historically” conditioned.
While therefore in the Mystery-religions and in the Johannine theology the sacraments work of themselves, in Paul they draw their energy from a universal world-event, from which it is, as it were, transmitted.
It now becomes clear why the Apostle cannot describe as a “Re-birth” the condition brought about by baptism. The renewal consists in the fact that the coming resurrection-life is, for the short period which remains of the present course of the world, received by anticipation. Re-birth, on the other hand, implies an uneschatological system of thought in which the individual reckons more or less on a normal span of life, for which he seeks an inner divine being which shall subsist alongside of or above the earthly. It is only at a period when eschatology is falling into the background that the Greek conception of re-birth, such as is associated with the Mysteries, can supersede the old mystico-eschatological conception of the proleptic resurrection. Accordingly it presently appears in Justin and the Fourth Evangelist. From that point onwards baptism brings re-birth. In Paul it produced only an antedated dying and rising again.
The sacramental conception of the Apostle is therefore derived from an entirely different world of thought from that of the Mystery-religions.
It is a different question, however, in what relation his “physical”180 mysticism in itself, apart from the [pg 218] sacraments, bears to the world of ideas associated with the Greek Mystery-religions.
To this question Reitzenstein, the “pneumatic”181 among the students of Comparative Religion, devotes a careful study. He avoids conventional catchwords and rash conclusions, and endeavours to discover the conceptions and ideas which are common to both, and to follow them out in detail.
With this purpose he brings together everything which he can find in the language of the Mysteries and the Hermetic literature relating to such ideas as “service” and “military service” of God, “justification,” “pre-existence,” “gnosis,” “spirit,” “revelation,” “pneumatic,” “heavenly garment,” and “transformation.”
For the first time the material for a study of Paul from the point of view of Comparative Religion is brought together with a certain completeness, and the impression which it makes is very powerful. The theologian who reads these passages with an open mind will be lifted out of the ruts of conventional interpretation. It is as if a flood of new thought had streamed into the channels of ordinary exegesis, whether critical or otherwise, and swept away the accumulations of rubble.
Whether all the explanations are sound, and whether many expressions, such as e.g. “servant” and “prisoner” of Christ, and imagery—for example, that taken from the military life—could not be just as well explained directly as by the roundabout way of their use in the Mystery-religions, may be left an open question. What is certain is, that Reitzenstein has made an end of the cut-and-dried conception that Paul simply translated his theology from Jewish thought into Greek language, and proves that [pg 219] he knows the scope and exact application of the words of the religious vocabulary, and along with the terms and expressions has taken over suggestions for the presentation of his ideas. Without the possibilities and presuppositions supplied by the religious language of the Greek Orient it would have been more difficult for him to create his mysticism. He found in existence a tone-system in which the modulations necessary for the development of his theme offered themselves for his disposal.182
Reitzenstein remarks with much justice that particular words and phrases do not of themselves prove very much, but that what is really of importance is the connexion of the passages. Are there sets of ideas in Paul which are allied with those of the Mystery-religions? What realities stand in the two cases behind the references to the mystical doctrine of the miraculous new creation of the man while in his living body?
The description and paraphrasing which commentaries and New Testament theologies bestow upon the Apostle’s assertions do not suffice for Reitzenstein. He wants to understand and come to grips with the thought, and to arouse in others the same discontent.
The possibility that the Pauline mysticism might be capable of being explained from within appears to him excluded. With all the reserve which he imposes upon himself he nevertheless believes himself to have proved that the central conception of “the deification and [pg 220] transfiguration of the living man is derived from the Mysteries.” The conviction of a miracle of transformation taking place in his own person, is, he pronounces, not Jewish. Therefore he thinks that Paul represents a kind of ancient Jewish prophetism modified by the influence of the Hellenistic Mystery beliefs.
The “history of the development” of Paul’s thought he conceives as follows: The influence of Greek mysticism, with which he had already a literary acquaintance, helped to prepare the way for that momentous inner experience which eventually caused a rupture between the Apostle and his ancestral religion. “This influence,” he thinks, “increased in the two years of solitary struggle for the working out of a new religion.” A renewed study of Greek religious literature became necessary “from the moment when the Apostle dedicated himself to, and began to prepare for, his mission to the Ἕλληνες.”
By the method which he applies, Reitzenstein is necessarily driven to adopt this far-reaching view. He makes no effort to take into the field of his argument the Late-Jewish eschatology, as preserved in the post-Danielic literature, in the discourses of Jesus, and the Apocalypses of Baruch and Ezra. Whatever is not self-explanatory, and cannot be explained from the Old Testament, is, according to him, derived from the world of thought associated with the Mystery-religions.
The proper procedure would really have been to examine the conceptions drawn from apocalyptic thought and those from the Mystery-religions independently, and then to decide which of them rendered possible the better explanation. The best way would have been for Reitzenstein to discuss the matter step by step with Kabisch, who had sought to derive the fundamental conceptions of the Pauline mysticism from eschatology.
The total neglect of eschatology forces him to some curious conclusions. After showing, in opposition to a canonised confusion of thought, that there is not the slightest connexion between Paul’s doctrine of the first [pg 221] and second Adam in I Cor. xv. 45-49 and Philo’s theory about the two accounts of the creation in Genesis, since in that case the pneumatic heavenly man would be the first, and the psychic earthly man the second,183 he comes to the conclusion that the view set forth in I Corinthians must have underlying it “the belief in a god ‘Anthropos,’” who came to be identified with Christ.
This hypothesis naturally suggests itself to Reitzenstein, because in Poimandres he believes himself to have discovered a myth about Anthropos.184 But is this, even if it were held to be proved, of such a character that the Pauline conception of the first and second Adam could without more ado be derived from it? Is the complicated hypothesis necessary?
Paul’s conception can be explained without the least difficulty on eschatological grounds. The first Adam brought mankind under the dominion of death. Christ is the Second Adam because He by His resurrection becomes the founder of a new race, which in virtue of that which has taken place in Him becomes partaker of an imperishable life, and acquires a claim to the future possession of the pneumatic heavenly body which He already bears. The Second Man comes from heaven because the pre-existent Christ, in order to become the founder of the “humanity of the resurrection,” must appear upon earth and assume fleshly corporeity. He is “life-giving spirit” because the pneuma which goes forth from Him as the glorified Christ, works in believers as the power of the resurrection. This being so, what purpose is served by bringing in the very doubtful myths about the god Anthropos, especially as Paul, though he certainly thinks of his Second Adam as a heavenly being, never anywhere speaks of Him as God.
This is typical of a series of similar cases.185
On the other hand, it is just this one-sidedness which makes the charm and the significance of the book. Reitzenstein shows, both positively and negatively, how far the analogies from the Mystery-religions will take us. Ordinary theologians—since Kabisch had remained without influence—had simply designated as Greek everything which they could not understand from Late Judaism, and described as Late-Jewish whatever they could not understand as Greek. Reitzenstein, the—unconscious?—antipodes of Kabisch, would like to make an end of this simple game and compel people to choose one horn or other of the dilemma. Instead of entering on theoretic discussions, full of “not only, but also,” and “either . . . or,” he goes straight forward as far as he thinks he can feel firm ground under his feet, and has thus contributed, to an extraordinary degree, to the clearing up of the situation.
Contrary to his intention and conviction, however, the outcome is not positive but negative.
Like Dieterich and others, Reitzenstein takes it for granted that Paulinism makes use of the conception of Re-birth, and he feels that that is in itself a sufficient reason for not regarding it as a product of Judaism.186
The assumption being unsound, all the discussions and arguments based on it fall to the ground. In particular, the fine parallels from the Hermetic literature must be given up. Further, it is not legitimate to treat the [pg 223] mysticism of the Mystery-religions and that of Paul as directly corresponding to one another. The former is a God-mysticism, the latter a Christ-mysticism. The resulting differences are greater than at first sight appears. In the Graeco-Oriental conception, what is in view is the “deification” of the individual man. As the divinity of the particular Mystery which is being celebrated is always thought of as the highest divinity, the mortal enters into union with the being of God as such.
The Pauline Christ, however, even though He is called the Son of God, is not God, but only a heavenly Being. The renewal which is effected by fellowship with Him is not a deification—the word never occurs in the Apostle’s writings—but only a transference into a state of super-sensuous corporeity, which has to do with a coming new condition of the world.
Greek thought is concerned with the simple antithesis of the divine world and the earthly world. Paulinism makes out of this duality a triplicity. It divides the super-earthly factor into two, distinguishing between God and the divine super-earthly, which is personified in Christ and made present in Him. God, and therein speaks the voice of Judaism, is purely transcendent. A God-mysticism does not exist for the Apostle—or, at least, does not yet exist. A time will come no doubt in the future, after the termination of the Messianic Kingdom, when God will be “all in all” (I Cor. xv. 28). Until then there is only a Christ-mysticism, which has to do with the anticipation of the super-earthly life of the Messianic Kingdom.
To treat Graeco-Oriental and Pauline mysticism as corresponding factors, is to perform a piece in two-four time and a piece in three-four time together, and to imagine that one hears an identical rhythm in both.
Another point of difference is that Graeco-Oriental mysticism works with permanent factors; the Pauline with temporal and changing ones. The Messianic-Divine drives out the super-earthly angelic powers which [pg 224] previously occupied a place between God and the world. It is in the very act of coming. But in proportion as it advances, there passes away not only the super-sensuous angelic element, but also the earthly and sensuous. Christ-mysticism depends upon the movement of these two worlds, one of them moving towards being, the other towards not-being, and it continues only so long as they are in touch with one another as they move past in opposite directions. The beginning of this contact is marked by the resurrection of the Lord, the end by His parousia. Before the former it is not yet possible to pass from one to the other, after the latter it is no longer possible. A mysticism which is thus bound up with temporal conditions can hardly be derived from the Greek timeless conceptions.
The act, moreover, by which the individual becomes partaker in the new being is in the two cases quite different. The Mystery-religions represent the “transfiguration” of the living being as effected by his receiving into himself a divine essence, by means of the gnosis and the vision of God. It is thus a subjective act. According to Paul’s teaching the “transfiguration” is not brought about by the gnosis and vision of God. These are rather the consequence of the renewal, the efficient cause of which is found, not in the act of the individual, and not in the inherent efficacy of the sacrament, but in a world-process. So soon as the individual enters by faith and baptism into this new cosmic process he is immediately renewed in harmony therewith, and now receives spirit, ecstasy, gnosis, and everything that these imply. What according to the Greek view is the cause, is for Paul the consequence. Thus, even though the conceptions show a certain similarity, they do not correspond, because they are connected with the central event of the mysticism in each case by chains which run in opposite directions.
A figure which exactly illustrates one’s meaning may claim pardon even for somewhat doubtful taste. In the Mystery-religions, individuals climb up a staircase step [pg 225] by step towards deification; in Paulinism they spring in a body into a lift which is already in motion and which carries them into a new world. The staircase is open to all; the lift can only be used by those for whom it is especially provided.
So far as Comparative Religion is concerned, therefore, the case is exactly the same in regard to the “physical” element in the mystical doctrine of redemption as it was in regard to that of the sacramental doctrine. On close examination the historico-eschatological character of the Pauline conception is in both cases so all-pervading that it invalidates any parallel with the Mystery-religions, and leaves them with nothing in common but the linguistic expression. The mystical and sacramental aspects of the “physical” element in redemption do not for him stand on the same footing with the eschatological, which is immediately given with the conceptions of transformation and resurrection, but must be in some way capable of being derived from it. Only when that is done will the Pauline doctrine of redemption be explained.
It is to be noted that Reitzenstein tries in vain to render intelligible either the connexion of the soteriological mysticism with the facts of the death and resurrection, or the fellowship which is therein presupposed between the believer and the Lord. In his exposition of Rom. vi. the parallels with the Mystery-religions force him into a wrong line, and compel him to think of the objective process as a subjective one. He assumes that everything becomes clear and simple if once the Apostle is understood to speak of a voluntary dying, which is neither purely physical nor merely metaphysical, but is based upon the thought that we must not sin any more because we have taken upon us Christ’s person and lot, and have crucified our natural man.
But in Paul it is not a question of an act which the believer accomplishes in himself; what happens is that in the moment when he receives baptism, the dying and [pg 226] rising again of Christ takes place in him without any cooperation, or exercise of will or thought, on his part. It is like a mechanical process which is set in motion by pressing a spring. The minute force employed in pressing the spring bears no relation to that which thereon comes into play; only serves to release a set of forces already in existence.
In the Mystery-religions the thought is: We desire not to sin any more, therefore we will undergo initiation. Paul’s logic is the converse of this, and takes the objective form: Christ’s death and resurrection is effectually present in us; therefore, we are no longer natural men and cannot sin any more.
The whole distinction lies in the fact that the mysticism of the Apostle of the Gentiles is based on historico-eschatological events, whereas the Mystery-religions are in their nature non-historical. Where they make use of myths they use them in the last resort merely as pictures of that which the “mystes” performs or undergoes, not as events charged with a real energy, as the death and resurrection of Jesus are for Paul.
But the fact of the far-reaching outward and inward resemblances of language between the Graeco-Oriental and the Pauline mysticism are not affected by that. As though by a pre-established harmony in the history of religion, it came about that the mysticism which developed out of eschatology was able to find complete representation in the language of the Mystery-religions, and found there ready to its hand conceptions and expressions which facilitated, suggested, and in some cases were even indispensable to its fuller development.
Reitzenstein’s merit is that of having determined exactly and unmistakably the meaning of Paul’s language, and having at the same time shown that Jewish Hellenism and Greek philosophy had practically no part in him.
Of course, it is not possible to decide how much of this [pg 227] religious language Paul found already in existence, and how much he created for his purpose. It must not be forgotten that the Oriental Mystery-religions did not receive their complete development under Greek influence until a considerable time after the appearance of the Apostle of the Gentiles. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that he and they found in existence the same Greek religious vocabulary, laid hold of it, and perfected it.
One error of the students of Comparative Religion deserves particular mention, for it is typical. In consequence of the parallelism which they maintain between the Mystery-religions and Paulinism, they come to ascribe to the Apostle the creation of a “religion.”187 Nothing of the kind ever entered into his purpose. For him there was only one religion: that of Judaism. It was concerned with God, faith, promise, hope and law. In consequence of the coming, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, it became its duty to adjust its teachings and demands to the new era thus introduced, and in the process many things were moved from the shadow into the light and others from the light into the shadow. “Christianity” is for Paul no new religion, but simply Judaism with the centre of gravity shifted in consequence of the new era. His own system of thought is certainly for him no new religion. It is his belief, as fully known and worked out in its implications, and it professes to be nothing else than the true Jewish religion, in accord both with the time and with the Scriptures.
Another remark that has to be made is that the students of Comparative Religion are inclined to make an illegitimate use of the word eschatology when it suits their purpose. They think themselves justified in applying it wherever in the Mystery-religions there is mention of death, judgment, and life after death, but they forget that in doing so they are using it in a much more general sense than that which we have to reckon with in the Pauline [pg 228] doctrine. The term eschatology ought only to be applied when reference is made to the end of the world as expected in the immediate future, and the events, hopes, and fears connected therewith. The use of the word to designate the subjective future end of individuals, in connexion with which no imminent catastrophe affecting all mankind is in question, can only be misleading, since it creates the false impression—exempla docent—that the Pauline eschatology can be paralleled and compared with an eschatology belonging to the Mystery-religions. Of eschatology in the late Jewish or early Christian sense there is not a single trace to be found in any Graeco-Oriental doctrine.188
Therefore, the Mystery-religions and Paulinism cannot in the last resort be compared at all, as is indeed confirmed by the fact that the real analogies both in the mysticism and the sacramental doctrine are so surprisingly few. Reitzenstein’s attempt has not succeeded in altering this result, but only in confirming it. What remains of his material when the circle of ideas connected with the thought of “re-birth” is eliminated, and the all-pervading eschatological character of the fundamental ideas and underlying logic of Paulinism are duly considered in making the comparison?
Finally, the question may be permitted, What would have been the bearing of the result if Dieterich and Reitzenstein had really proved the dependence of the Apostle’s doctrine upon the Mystery-religions? The simple declaration of the result would have been only [pg 229] the beginning of things, for immediately the problem whether, understood in this way, the Apostle’s doctrine could still have belonged to primitive Christianity would have arisen and called aloud for solution. The theory that Paul personally transformed the Gospel on the analogy of the Graeco-Oriental Mystery-religions is menaced by the same difficulties which previously brought about the downfall of the theory held by the Baur and post-Baur theology, that he Hellenised the Gospel. The hypothesis advanced by the students of Comparative Religion is only a special form of that general theory, and can do nothing to minimise the a priori difficulties, or those raised by the history of dogma in connexion with it.
How does Paulinism as understood by Dieterich and Reitzenstein fit into the history of the development of Christianity?
If the Apostle during the first generation had introduced such a tremendous innovation as the Greek “physical” mysticism of redemption and the sacraments into primitive Jewish Christianity, could the latter have permitted this and continued to keep him in its midst? How was it possible for it to admit without a struggle, indeed unnoticed, something so entirely alien, and to raise no objections either to the Christology or to the mysticism or to the sacramental doctrine of the Apostle, but simply and solely to his attitude towards the law?
And how, on the other hand, could the later Hellenising theology pass over in silence the man who had been its precursor in uniting the conceptions of Graeco-Oriental religion with the Gospel? The inexplicable fact that Paulinism played no part in the subsequent development, but is left to lie unused and uncomprehended, becomes still more inexplicable if Dieterich and Reitzenstein are right. They assert that the Hellenising force did not issue from philosophy but from the Graeco-Oriental religious movement, and found expression in Paul not less than in the Johannine and early Greek theology. [pg 230] Why, then, are the results so different in the two cases that they have no kind of outer or inner relation to one another? If the same force is applied at different times to the same object and in the same line, can the resultant movement vary so much in direction? How is it possible that Paul represents a Hellenisation of Christianity which is so unique in character and so unnoticed by others? How could two different types of Greek transformation of the Gospel come into existence, and in such a way, moreover, that the second discovered nothing Hellenic in the first?
According to the theory of Dieterich and Reitzenstein, Paulinism ought to be detached from early Christianity and closely connected with Greek theology. The contrary is the case. It stands in undisturbed connexion with the former, whereas it shows no connexion whatever with the latter.
Any one who thinks of the Apostle’s doctrine as in any sense a Hellenisation of the Gospel, whether he owes allegiance to ordinary theology or to Comparative Religion, has gone over to the radicalism of the Ultra-Tübingen party, and must, like it, go forth with his Paul out of primitive Christianity into a later period, unless, indeed, as the Comparative method admits, he is prepared to consider the faith of the early Church as Graeco-Oriental, or Paul as the founder of Christianity.
In any case the hypothesis of a Hellenising of the Gospel in early Christianity carried out by Paul as an individual is a historic impossibility. From the dilemma, either early Christian or Greek, there is no escape, however one may twist and turn.
If the students of Comparative Religion had been better acquainted with the attempt of the Ultra-Tübingen critics, and had had a more accurate understanding of the difference between Paulinism and the Johannine and early Greek theology, they could hardly have retained the open-mindedness necessary to the commencement of their undertaking; for in that case they would have been [pg 231] forced to reflect on the inconvenient consequences of their possible victory.
Since they did not enter on such considerations it was difficult for them to do justice to Harnack. Here and there they took occasion to accuse him of being behind the times and reproach him with having given too much importance to the influence of philosophy in relation to the Hellenising of Christianity, and too little to that of the Mystery-religions. They are not wholly wrong in this. He does not give sufficient recognition to the “physical” and sacramental elements in Paulinism, and does not work out sufficiently fully the parallel between the Mystery-religions and the Johannine and early Greek theology. In laying the foundations of his history of dogma he is too exclusively interested in the development of the Christology, instead of starting from the curious complex of Christology, soteriology, and sacramental doctrine which is characteristic of the Pauline as well as of the Johannine and early Greek theology, and determines the course of the history of dogma.
But this somewhat one-sided view of primitive and early Christianity is far from affording the complete explanation of his attitude of reserve in regard to the results arrived at by the students of Comparative Religion. If he forms a low estimate of the influence of the Mystery-religions upon Paul and the earliest period of Christianity, he is led to that result by pressing considerations from the history of dogma, by which the consequences of the theory put forward by the students of Comparative Religion are made clear to him. Like Anrich, he recognised from the beginning the weaknesses of the theory, which remained hidden from the champions of the method.
It is not possible for any one who holds that Paulinism shows the influence of the Mystery-religions to stop half-way; he has to carry his conclusion back into primitive Christianity in general and to explain even the genesis of the new faith as due to syncretism. The latter [pg 232] stand-point is taken up by Hermann Gunkel189 and Max Maurenbrecher.190
They hold that the belief in a redeemer-god, such as was present in Jewish Messianism, was also widely current in the Graeco-Oriental religions, and that subsequently, in consequence of the historic coming of Jesus, these two worlds of thought came into a contact which generated a creative energy. From the process thus set in motion primitive Christianity arose. This account of its genesis also explains, they think, why it goes much beyond the “teaching of Jesus” and the religious ideas which formed the content of Late Judaism, and includes mystical and sacramental beliefs.
The historic Jesus did not, according to Gunkel and Maurenbrecher, hold Himself to be the “Redeemer.” Therefore, the real origin of Christianity does not lie with Him but with the disciples. They, having been laid hold of by the power of His personality, and finding themselves compelled to seek a solution of the problem of His death, referred to Him the already existing myth of the Saviour-God, and thereby gave to the set of ideas which had hitherto only existed as such a point of historical attachment, both for Orientals and Jews. From this time forward the religious ideas which attached themselves in the one case and the other to the conception of a redeemer-god flowed into a common bed and formed the stream which, as Christianity, overflowed the world.
Maurenbrecher, who seeks to work out the hypothesis in rather fuller detail, holds that in Galilee, which in view of its history had certainly not always been a purely Jewish country, the Messianic idea and the non-Jewish belief in redemption were already present and had to some extent intermingled, and that it was, therefore, no accident that the new religion which after the death of Jesus took [pg 233] its rise in the revelation made to Peter should have gone forth from Galilee. The advantage, he goes on to explain, which the young Christianity possessed among a purely heathen population in comparison with the other competing Oriental religions, arises from the Jewish element, “which in consequence of the peculiar intermixture of which Christianity was the outcome had entered into the universal Oriental religion of redemption.” “Conversely, however, it was precisely the non-Jewish element in the Christian faith which for the Jews made this new religion a really new and higher stage of their religious life.”
This hypothesis is unable to recognise any unique character in Paul. What Dieterich and Reitzenstein claim for him, it finds already completely realised in the primitive community. The result is that Maurenbrecher hardly knows what to make of him, and emphasises his Jewish side much more strongly than his Graeco-Oriental aspect.
The solution of the problem worked out by Gunkel and Maurenbrecher is not based purely on Comparative Religion, but, as the latter writer justly points out, is a kind of synthesis between the views of liberal theology and that of its opponents. The fundamental idea comes from the latter; but in agreement with the former the existence of a historical Jesus is retained.
The retention of this remnant of critical history is, however, unnecessary and illogical. If the origin of Christianity essentially depends on the intermixture of an Oriental belief in a redeemer with the Jewish expectation of the Messiah, and, given a contact and interpenetration between the two, must necessarily have arisen, it is not obvious why the rôle of a historical Jesus should be—or whether it can be—retained in connexion with it.
In Gunkel and Maurenbrecher it is only a stop-gap, which is brought into a wholly external connexion with the growth of the new religion. They retain His coming as the phenomenon by which the contact of the two religious worlds is set up, but not as a fructifying element.