Origen of Paul's Religion: Chapter 1

8/14/2019 Origen of Paul's Religion: Chapter 1

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THEORIGIN OF PAUL'S RELIGION

CHAPTER IINTRODUCTION

THE following discussion is intended to deal, from one particular point of view, with the problem of the origin of Chris-tianity. That problem is an important historical problem,and also an important practical problem. I t is an importanthistorical problem not only because of the large place whichChristianity has occupied in the medieval and modern world,but also because of certain unique features which even the mostunsympathetic and superficial examination must detect in thebeginnings of the Christian movement. The problem of theorigin of Christianity is also an important practical problem.Rightly or wrongly, Christian experience has ordinarily beenconnected with one particular view of the origin of the Chris-tian movement; where that view has been abandoned, the experi-ence has ceased.

This dependence of Christianity upon a particular con-ception of its origin and of its Founder is now indeed beingmade the object of vigorous attack. There are many whomaintain that Christianity is the same no matter what itsorigin was, and that therefore the problem of origin shouldbe kept entirely separate from the present religious interestsof the Church. Obviously, however, this indifference to thequestion as to what the origin of Christianity was dependsupon a particular conception of what Christianity now is; itdepends upon the conception which makes of Christianitysimply a manner of life. That conception is indeed wide-spread, but it is by no means universal; there are still hosts ofearnest Christians who regard Christianity, not simply as amanner of life, but as a manner of life founded upon a message-upon a message with regard to the Founder of the Christian3


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41 THE ORIGIN OF PAUL'S RELIGIONmovement. For such persons the question of the origin ofChristianity is rather to be called the question of the truthof Christianity, and that question is to them the most important practical question of their lives. Even if these personsare wrong, the refutation of their supposed error naturallyproceeds, and has in recent years almost always proceeded,primarily by means of that very discussion of the origin of theChristian movement which is finally to be shorn of its practicalinterest. The most important practical question for the modemChurch is still the question how Christianity came into being.

In recent years it haa become customary to baae discussionsof the origin of Christianity upon the apostle Paul. JesusHimself, the author of the Christian movement, wrote nothing-at east no writings of His have been preserved. The recordof His words and deeds is the work of others, and the dateand authorship and historical value of the documents in whichthat record is contained are the subject of persistent debate.With regard to the genuineness of the principal epistles ofPaul, on the other hand, and with regard to the value of atleast part of the outline of his life which is contained in theBook of Acts, all serious historians are agreed. The testimony of Paul, therefore, forms a fixed starting-point in allcontroversy.Obviously that testimony has an important bearing uponthe question of the origin of Christianity. Paul was a contemporary of Jesus. He attached himself to Jesus' disciplesonly a very few years after Jesus' death; according to hisown words, in one of the universally accepted epistles, he cameinto early contact with the leader among Jesus' associates;throughout his life he waa deeply interested (for one reason oranother) in the affairs of the primitive Jerusalem Church;both before his conversion and after it he must have had abundant opportunity for acquainting himself with the facts aboutJesus' life and death. His testimony is not, however, limitedto what he says in detail about the words and deeds of theFounder of the Christian movement. More important still isthe testimony of his experience aa a whole. The religion ofPaul is a fact which stands in the full light of history. Howis it to be explained? What were its presuppositions? Uponw h a ~ sort of Jesus was it founded? These questions lead intothe very heart of the historical problem. Explain the origin


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INTRODUCTION ISof the religion of Paul, and you have solved the problem of theorigin of Christianity.That problem may thus be approached through the gate-way of the testimony of Paul. But.th&t is not the only way toapproach it. Another way is offered by the Gospel picture ofthe person of Jesus. Quite independent of questions of dateand authorship and literary relationships of the documents,the total picture which the Gospels present bears unmistakablemarks of being the picture of a real historical person. In-ternal evidence here reaches the point of certainty. I f theJesus who in the Gospels is represented &8 rebuking the Pharisees and as speaking the parables is not a real historicalperson living at a definite point in the world's history, thenthere is no way of distinguishing history from fiction. Eventhe evidence for the genuineness of the Pauline Epistles is nostronger than this. But if the Jesus of the Gospels is a realperson, certain puzzling questions arise. The Jesus of theGospels is a supernatural person. He is represented as pos-sessing sovereign power over the forces of nature. What shallbe done with this supernatural element in the picture? I t iscertainly very cillBcult to separate it from the rest. More-over the Jesus of the Gospels is represented al advancing lomelofty claims. He regarded Himself as being destined to comewith the clouds of heaven and be the instrument in judgingthe world. What shall be done with this element in His con-sciousness? ~ o w does it agree with the indelible impression ofcalmness and sanity which has always been made by His char-acter? These questions again lead into the heart of the prob-lem. Yet they cannot be ignored. They are presented in-evitably by what every serious historian admits.The fundamental evidence with regard to the origin ofChristianity is therefore twofold. Two facts need to be ex-plained-the Jesus of the Gospels and the religion of Paul.The problem of early Christianity may be approached in eitherof these two ways. I t should finally be approached in bothways. And if it is approached in both ways the investigatorwill discover, to his amazement, that the two ways lead to thesame result. But the present discussion is more limited inscope. I t seeb to deal merely with one of the two waYI of ap-proach to the problem of Christianity. What was the originof the religion of Paul?


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6 THE ORIGIN OF PAUL'S RELIGIONIn di8cus8ing the ap08tle Paul the hi8torian i8 dealingwith a 8ubject important for its own 8ake, even a8ide from theimportance of what it presUpp08es about Jesus. Unque8tion

ably Paul was a notable man, wh08e infiuence has been feltthroughout all 8ubsequent hi8tory. The fact itself cannot becalled in que8tion. But 8ince there i8 wide difference of opinionabout details, it may be well, in a brief preliminary word, todefine a little more cl08ely the nature and extent of the in-tluence of Paul.That infiuence has been exerted in two waY8. I t wasexerted, in the first place, during the lifetime of Paul; andit haa been exerted, in the 8Nond place, upon 8ubsequent generations through the medium of the Pauline Epi8tles.With regard to the 8econd kind of infiuence, general con-8ideration8 would make a high estimate natural. The PaulineEpistles form a large proportion of the New Te8tament, whichhas been regarded aa fundamental and authoritative in all agesof the Church. The U8e of the Pauline Epi8tle8 as normativefor Christian thought and practice can be traced back tovery early times, and haa been continuous ever 8ince. Yetcertain con8iderations have been urged on the ot}ler 8ide a8indicating that the infiuence of Paul has not been 80 great a8might have been expected. For example, the Chri8tianity ofthe Old Catholic Church at the cl08e of the 8econd centurydi8plaY8 a 8trange lack of under8tanding for the deeper ele-ment8 in the Pauline doctrine of 8alvation, and 80mething ofthe 8ame state of affairs may be detected in the 8canty re-mains of the 80-called "Apo8tolic Father8" of the beginningof the century. The divergence from Paul was not con8ciou8;the writer8 of the cl08e of the 8econd century.all quote thePauline Epi8tles with the utm08t reverence. But the fact ofthe divergence cannot altogether be denied.Variou8 explanation8 of thi8 divergence have been proP08ed. Baur explained the un-Pauline character of the OldCatholic Church a8 due to a compromi8e with a legali8tic Jewi8h Chri8tianity; Ritachl explained it a8 due to a naturalprocess of degeneration on purely Gentile Chri8tian ground;Von Harnack explain8 it a8 due to the intru8ion, after thetime of Paul, of Greek habits of thought. The devout believer,on the other hand, might 8imply 8ay that the Pauline doctrine


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INTRODUCTION01 grace was too wonderful and too divine to be understoodfully by the human mind and heart.1

Whatever the explanation, however, the fact, even afterexaggerations have been avoided, remains significant. I t re-mains true that the Church of the second century failed tounderstand fully the Pauline doctrine of the way of salvation.The same lack of understanding has been observable only toofrequently throughout subsequent generations. I t was there-lore with some plausibility that Von Harnack advanced hisdictum to the effect that Paulinism has established itself &8 aferment, but never as a foundation, in the history of doctrine.In the first place, however, it may be doubted whether thedictum of Von Harnack is true; for in that line of develop-ment of theology which runs from Augustine through the Refor-mation to the Reformed Churches, Paulinism may fairly beregarded as a true foundation. But in the second place, evenif Von Harnack's dictum were true, the importance of Paul'sinfluence would not be destroyed. A ferment is sometimes asimportant as a foundation. As Von Harnack himself says,' 'the Pauline reactions mark the critical epochs of theologyand of the Church. . The history of doctrine could bewritten as a history of the Pauline reactions in the Church." IAs a matter of fact the influence of Paul upon the entire lifeof the Church is simply measureless. Who can measure theinfluence of the eighth chapter of Romans?The influence of Paul was also exerted, however, in hisown lifetime, by his spoken words as well as by his letters.To estimate the full extent of that influence one would haveto write the entire history of early Christianity. I t may bewell, however,. to consider briefly at least one outstandingaspect of that influence-an aspect which must appeal evento the most unsympathetic observer. The Christian move-ment began in the midst of a very peculiar people; in 815 A.D.it would have appeared to a superficial observer to be a Jewishsect. Thirty years later it was plainly a world religion.

S Compare "Jesus and Paul," in Biblical GIld TAeological 8 tH ' - byMembers of the Faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary, 191i, pp.MSf. Hamack, LeArbtlCA der DogfflftgcAiclde, 40te Aufl., i, 1909, p. 1M.(EngUsh Translation, Hueory of Dopa, i, 18905, p. 188.) Hamack, loco cit.


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8 THE ORIGIN OF PAUL'S RELIGIONTrue, the number of its adherents was still small. But thereally important steps had been taken. The conquest of theworld was now a mere matter of time. This establishment ofChristianity as a world religion, to almost as great an extentas any great historical movement can be ascribed to one man,was the work of Paul.This assertion needs to be defended against various 0b-jections, and at the same time freed from misinterpretationsand exaggerations.In the first place, it might be said, the Gentile missionof Paul was really only a part of a mighty historical process-the march of the oriental religions throughout the westemworld. Christianity was not the only religion which wasfilling the void left by the decay of the native religions ofGreece and Rome. The Phrygian religion of Cybele had beenestablished officially at Rome since 2041 B.C., and after leading as o m ~ h a t secluded and confined existence for several centuries,was at the time of Paul beginning to make its influence felt inthe life of the capital. The Greco-Egyptian religion of Isiswas preparing for the triumphal march which it began ineamest in the second century. The Persian religion of Mithraswas destined to share with Isis the possession of a large partof the Greco-Roinan world. Was not the Christianity ofPaul merely one division of a mighty army which would haveconquered even without his help?With regard to this objection a number of things may besaid. In the first place, the apostle Paul, as over against thepriests of Isis anl of Cybele, has perhaps at least the meritof priority; the really serious attempt at world-conquest wasmade by those religions (and still more clearly by the religionof Mithras) only after the time of Paul. In the secondplace, the question may well be asked whether it is at all justi-fiable to class the Christianity of Paul along with those othercults under the head of Hellenized oriental religion. Thisquestion will form the subject of a considerable part of thediscussion which follows, and it will be answered with an em-phatic negative. The Christianity of Paul will be found to betotally different from the oriental religions. The threat ofconquest made by those religions, therefore, only places insharper relief the achievement of Paul, by showing the calamities from which the world was saved by his energetic mission.


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INTRODUCTION 9I f except for the Pauline mission the world would have becomedevoted to Isis or Mithras, then Paul was certainly one of thesupreme benefactors of the human race.Even apart from any detailed investigation, however, onedifference between the religion of Paul and the oriental religionsis perfectly obvious. The oriental religions w.ere tolerant ofother faiths; the religion of Paul, like the ancient religion ofIsrael, demanded an absolutely exclusive devotion. A mancould become initiated into the mysteries of Isis or M i t h ~ a s without at all giving up his former beliefs; but if he were tobe received into the Church, according to the preaching ofPaul, he must forsake all other Saviours for the Lord JesusChrist. The difference places the achievement of Paul uponan entirely different plane from the successes of the orientalmystery religions. It was one thing to offer a new faith anda new cult as simply one additional way of obtaining contactwith the Divine, and it was another thing, and a far moredifficult thing (and in the ancient world outside of Israel anunheard-of thing), to require a man to renounce all existingreligious beliefs and practices in order to place his whole reliance upon a single Saviour. Amid the prevailing syncretismof the Greco-Roman world, the religion of Paul, with thereligion of Israel, stands absolutely alone. The successes ofthe oriental religions, therefore, only place in clearer lightthe uniqueness of the achievement of Paul. They do indeedindicate the need and longing of the ancient world for redemption; but that is only part of the preparation for thecoming of the gospel which has always been celebrated bydevout Christians as part of the divine economy, as one indication that ''the fullness of the time" was come. But the wideprevalence of the need does not at all detract from the achievement of satisfying the need. Paul's way of satisfying the need,as it is hoped the later chapters will show, was unique; but whatshould now be noticed is that the way of Paul, because of itsexclusiveness, was at least far more difllcult than that of anyof his rivals or successors. His achievement was therefore immeasurably greater than theirs.But if the successes of the oriental religions do not detractfrom the achievement of Paul, what shall be said of the successes of pre-Christian Judaism? I t must always be rememberedthat J u d a i s ~ in the Brst century, was an active missionary


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10 THE ORIGIN OF PAUL'S RELIGIONreligion. Even Palestinian Judaism was imbued with the missionary spirit; Jesus said to the Pharisees that they compassedsea and land to make one proselyte. The Judaism of the Dispersion was no doubt even more zealous for winning adherents.The numberless synagogues scattered throughout the cities ofthe Greco-Roman world were not attended, as Jewish synagogues are attended to-day, only by Jews, but were also filledwith hosts of Gentiles, some of whom had accepted circumcisionand become full Jews, but others of whom, forming the classcalled in the Book of Acta ''God-fearers'' or "God-worshipers," had accepted the monotheism of the Jews and the loftymorality of the Old Testament without definitely uniting themselves with the people of Israel. In addition to this propa-ganda in the synagogues, an elaborate literary propaganda,of which important remnants have been preserved, helped tocarryon the misionary work. The question therefore ariseswhether the preaching of Paul was anything more than a continuation, though in any case a noteworthy continuation, ofthis pre-Christian Jewish mission.

Here again, as in the case of the longing for redemptionwhich is attested by the successes of the oriental religions, animportant element in the preparation for the gospel must certainly be detected. I t is hard to exaggerate the service whichwas rendered to the Pauline mission by the Jewish synagogue.One of the most important problems for every missionary isthe problem of gaining a hearing. The problem may be solvedin various ways. Sometimes the missionary may hire a placeof meeting and advertise; sometimes he may talk on the streetcorners to passers-by. But for Paul the problem was solved.All that he needed to do was to enter the synagogue andexercise the privilege of speaking, which was accorded withremarkable liberality to visiting teachers. In the synagogue,moreover, Paul found an audience not only of Jews but alsoof Gentiles; everywhere the "God-fearers" were to be found.These Gentile attendants upon the synagogues formed notonly an audience but a picked audience; they were just theclass of persons who were most likely to be won by the gospelpreaching. In their case much of the preliminary work hadbeen accomplished; they were already acquainted with thedoctrine of the one true God; they had already, through thelofty ethical teaching of the Old Testament, come to connectreligion with morality in a way which is to us matter-of-course


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INTRODUCTION 11but was very exceptional in the ancient world. Where, as inthe market-place at Athens, Paul had to begin at the verybeginning, without presupposing this previous instruction onthe part of his hearers, his task was rendered lar more difficult.Undoubtedly, in the case of many of his converts he didhave to begin in that way; the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, for example, presupposes, perhaps, converts who turneddirectly from idols to serve the living and true God. Buteven in such c,"ses the God-fearers formed a nucleus; theirmani/old social relationships provided points of contact withthe rest of the Gentlle population. The debt which the Christian Church owes to the Jewish synagogue is simply measureless.This acknowledgment, however, does not mean that thePauline mission was only a continuation of the pre-Christianmissionary activity of the Jews. On the contrary, the veryearnestness 01 the eifort made by the Jews to convert theirGentile neighbors serves to demonstrate all the more clearlythe hopelessness of their task. One thing that was fundamental in the religion of the Jews was its exclusiveness. Thepeople of Israel, according to the Old Testament, was thechosen people 01 God; the notion of a covenant between Godand His chosen people was absolutely central in all ages of theJewish Church. The Old Testament did indeed clearly providea method by which strangers could be received into the covenant; they could be received whenever, by becoming circumcisedand undertaking the observance of the Mosaic Law, they shouldrelinquish their own nationality and become part 01 the na-tion of Israel. But this method seemed hopelessly burdensome.Even before the time of Paul it had become evident that theGentile world as a whole would never submit to such terms.The terms were therefore sometimes relaxed. Covenant privileges were offered by individual Jewish teachers to individualGentiles without requiring what was most oifensive, like circumcision; merit was sought by some of the Gentiles by observanceof only certain parts of the Law, such as the requirementsabout the Sabbath or the provisions about food. Apparentlywidespread also was the attitude of those persons who seem tohave accepted what may be called the spiritual, &s distinguished from the ceremonial, aspects of Judaism. But alls u c ~ c o m p ~ m i s e s were aifected by a deadly weakness. Thestnct reqwrements of the Law were set forth plainly in the


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I i THE ORIGIN OF PAUL'S RELIGIONOld Testament. To cast them aside, in the interests of missionary activity, meant a sacrifice of principle to practiceit meant a sacrifice of the zeal and the good conscience of themissionaries and of the true satisfaction of the converts. Oneof the chief attractions of Judaism to the world of that daywas the possession of an ancient and authoritative Book i theworld was eagerly searching for authority in religion. Yetif the privileges of the Old Testament were to be secured, theauthority of the Book had to be set aside. The characterof a national religion was therefore too indelibly stamped uponthe religion of Israel i the Gentile converts could at best onlybe admitted into an outer circle around the true householdof God. What pre-Christian Judaism had to otfer was therefore obviously insu1licient. Perhaps the tide of the Jewishmission had already begun to ebb before the time of Paul;perhaps the process of the withdrawal of Judaism into itsage-long seclusion had already begun. Undoubtedly thatprocess was hastened by the rivalry of Christianity, which offered far more than Judaism had otfered and otfered it on farmore acceptable terms. But the process sooner or later wouldinevitably have made itself felt. Whether or not Renan wascorrect in supposing that had it not been for Christianitythe world would nave been Mithraic, one thing is certain-theworld apart from Christianity would never have become Jewish.But was not the preaching of Paul itself one manifestation of that liberalizing tendency among the Jews to whichallusion has just been made and of which the powerlessnesshas just been asserted? Was not the attitude of Paul inremitting the requirement of circumcision, while he retainedthe moral and spiritual part of the Old Testament Lawespecially if, as the Book of Acts asserts, he assented upon oC"-casion to the imposition of certain of the less burdensomeparts even of the ceremonial Law-very similar to the ac-tion of a teacher like that Ananias who was willing to receive king lzates of Adiabene without requiring him to becircumcised? These questions in recent years have occasionally been answered in the aftirmative, especially by KirsoppLake.1 But despite the plausibility of Lake's representation

l Tie EMIift' E p i l t ~ ' of Bt. P-Z, 1911. pp. IS-iS, eapeclally p. i t . C0mpare Lake and Jackson. TM B. , . . . . , ' of OAriltiGtaUy, Part I. ,,01 I. 19iO.p.I66.


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INTRODUCTION 18he has thereby introduced a root error into his recoDltructionof the apostolic age. For whatever the teaching of Paul was,it certainly was not "liberalism." The background of Paulis not to be sought in liberal Judaism, but in the strictestseet of the Pharisees. And Paul's remission of the requirementof circumcision was similar only in form, at the most, tothe action of the Ananias who has just been mentioned. Inmotive and in principle it was diametrically opposite. Gentile freedom according to Paul was not something permitted;it was something absolutely required. And it was requiredjust by the strictest interpretation of the Old Testament Law.I f Paul had been a liberal Jew, he would never have been theapostle to the Gentiles; for he would never have developedhis doctrine of the Cross. Gentile freedom, in other words,was not, according to Paul, a relaxing of strict requirementsin the interests of practical missionary work; it was a matterof principle. For the first time the religion of Israel couldgo forth (or rather was compelled to go forth) with a reallygood cODlcience to the spiritual conquest of the world.Thus the Pauline mission was not merely one manifestationof the progress of oriental religion, and it was not merely acontinuation of the pre-Christian missi9n of the Jews; it wassomething new. But if it was new in comparison with what wasoutside of Christianity, was it not anticipated within Christianity itselfP Was it not anticipated by the Founder ofChristianity, by Jesus HimsellPAt this point careful de6nition is necessary. I f all thatis meant is that the Gentile mission of Paul was founded altogether upon Jesus, then there ought to be no dispute. A different view, which makes Paul rather than Jesus the true founderof Christianity, will be c o m ~ t e d in the following pages.Paul himself, at any rate, bases his doctrine of Gentile freedom altogether upon Jesus. But he bases it upon what Jesushad done, not upon what Jesus, at least during His earthlylife, had said. The true state of the case may therefore be thatJesus by His redeeming work really made possible the Gentilemission, but that the discovery of the true significance of thatwork was left to Paul. The achievement of Paul, whether itbe regarded as a discovery made by him or a divine revelationmade to him, would thus remain intact. What did Jesussay or imply, during His earthly ministry, about the universal-


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U THE ORIGIN OF PAUL'S RELIGIONism of the gospelP Did He make superfluous the teaching otPaul?The latter question must be answered in the negative; at-tempts at finding, clearly expressed, in the words of Jesu.the full doctrine of Gentile treedom have tailed. I t is oftensaid that Jesus, though He addressed His teaching to Jews,addressed it to them not as Jews but as men. But the discovery of that fact (whenever it was made) was no meanachievement. Certainly it was not made by the modem writers.who lightly repeat the assertion, for they have the benefit of

the teaching of Paul and of nineteen centuries ot Christianexperience based upon that teaching. Even if Jesus did address not the Jew as a Jew, but the man in the Jew, the achievement ot Paul in the establishment of the Gentile Church wasnot thereby made a matter ot course. The plain man wouldbe more likely to stick at the fact that however Jesus addressedthe Jew He did address the Jew and not the Gentile, and Hecommanded His disciples to do the same. Instances in whichHe extended His ministry to Gentiles are expressly designatedin the Gospels as exceptional.

B ~ t did He not definitely command His disciples to engagein the Gentile work after His departure? Certainly He didnot do so according to the modern critical view of the Gospels.But even i t the great commission. of Matt. xxviii. 19, 20 beaccepted as an utterance of Jesus, it is by no means clear thatthe question of Gentile liberty was settled. In the great commission, the apostles are commanded to make disciples of allthe nations. But on what terms were the new disciples to bereceived? There was nothing startling, from the Jewish pointof view, in winning Gentile converts; the non-Christian Jews,as has just been observed, were busily engaged in doing that.The only difficulty arose when the terms of reception ot the newconverts were changed. Were the new converts to be receivedas disciples of J esU8 without being circumcised and thus without becoming members of the covenant people of GodP Thegreat commission does not answer that question. I t does indeed mention only baptism and not circumcision. But mightthat not be because circumcision, for those who were to enterinto God's people, was a matter ot course?In a number of His utterances, it is true, JesU8 didadopt an attitude toward the ~ e r e m o n i a l Law, at least toward


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INTRODUCTION 15the interpretation of it by the scribes, very different fromwhat was customary in the Judaism of His day. ''There isnothing from without the man," He said, "that entering intohim can defile him: but the things which come out of him, thoseare they that defile the man" (Mark vii. 15). No doubt thesewords were revolutionary in their ultimate implications. Butthere is no evidence that they resulted in revolutionary prac- ttice on the part of Jesus. On the contrary, there is definite jreason to suppose that He observed the ceremonial Law as it \was contained in the Old Testament, and definite utterances fof His in support of the authority of the Law have been pre- Iserved in the Gospels.The disciples, therefore, were not obviously unfaithful :to the teachings of Jesus if after He had been taken from them!they continued to minister only to the lost sheep of the house }of Israel. I f He had told them to make disciples of all thenations, He had not told them upon what terms the discipleswere to be received or at what moment of time the specificallyGentile work should begin. Perhaps the divine economy required that Israel should first be brougltt to an acknowledgmentof her Lord, or at least her obduracy established beyond peradventure, in accordance with the mysterious prophecy ofJesus in the parable of the Wicked Husbandmen,1 before theGentiles should be gathered in. At any rate, there is evidencethat whatever was revolutionary in the life and teaching ofJesus was less evident among His disciples, in the early daysof the Jerusalem Church. Even the Pharisees, and at any ratethe people as a whole, could find nothing to object to in theattitude of the apostles and their followers. The disciplescontinued to observe the Jewish fasts and feasts. Outwardlythey were simply loyal Jews. Evidently Gentile freedom, andthe abolition of special Jewish privileges, had not been clearlyestablished by the words of the Master. There was therefore Istill need for the epoch-making work of Paul.

But if the achievement of Paul was not clearly anticipated in the teaching of Jesus Himself, was it not anticipatedor at any rate shared by others in the Church? According toI Matt. :01. 41, and parallel&, ThIs verse can perhaps hardly be held torefer exclusively to the rejection of Jesus by the rulers; it seems also toapply to a rejection by the people as a whole. But the full implicationsof 10 mysterious an utterance may well have been lost sight of in theearly Jeruaalem Church.


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16 THE ORIGIN OF PAUL'S RELIGIONthe Book of Acta, a Gentile, Cornelius, and his household werebaptized, without requirement of circumcision, by Peter him-self, the leader of the original apostles; and a free attitude to-ward the Temple and the Law was adopted by Stephen. Thelatter instance, at least, has ordinarily been accepted as his-torical by modem criticism. Even in founding the churcheswhich are usually designated as Pauline, moreover, Barnabasand Silas and others had an important part; and in the found-ing of many churches Paul himself was not concerned. I t is aninteresting fact that of the churches in the three most im-portant cities of the Roman Empire not one was founded byPaul. The Church at Alexandria does not appear upon thepages of the New Testament, the Church at Rome appearsfully formed when Paul was only preparing for his comingby the Epistle to the Romans; the Church at Antioch, at leastin its Gentile form, was founded by certain u n n a m ~ Jews ofCyprus and Cyrene. Evidently, therefore, Paul was not theonly missionary who carried the gospel to the Gentile world.I f the Gentile work consisted merely in the geographical ex-tension of the frontiers of the Church, then Paul did not byany means stand alone.Even in the geographical sphere, however, his achievementsmust not be underestimated; even in that sphere he labored farmore abundantly than any other one man. His desire to plantthe gospel in places where it had never been heard led himinto an adventurous life which may well excite the astonishmentof the modem man. The catalogue of hardships which Paulhimself gives incidentally in the Second Epistle to the Cor-inthians shows that the Book of Acta has been very conserva-tive in ita account of the hardships and perils which the apostleendured; evidently the half has not been told. The results,moreover, were commensurate with the hardships that theycost. Despite the labors of others, it was Paul who plantedthe gospel in a real chain of the great cities; it was he whoconceived most clearly the thought of a mighty Church uni-versal which should embrace both Jew and Gentile, barbarian,Scythian, bond and free in a common faith and a commonlife. When he addressed himself to the Church at Rome, in atone of authority, as the apostle to the Gentiles who wasready to preach the gospel to those who were at Rome also, hi.lofty claim was supported, despite the fact that the Church at


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INTRODUCTION 1'7Rome had itself been founded by others, by the mere extent ofhis labors.

The really distinctive achievement of Paul, however, does \not consist in the mere geographical extension 01 the lrontiers Iof the Church, important as that work was; it lies in a totallydifFerent sphere-in the hidden realm of thought.1 What wasreally standing in the way of the Gentile mission was not thephysical barriers presented by sea and mountain, it was ratherthe great ban;ier 01 religious principle. Particularism waswritten p,ain upon the pages of the Old Testament; in emphaticlanguage the Scriptures imposed upon the true Israelite theduty 01 separateness from the Gentile world. Gentiles mightindeed be brought in, but only when they acknowledged theprerogatives of Israel and united themselves with the Jewishnation. I f premonitions of a difFerent doctrine were to befound, they were couched in the mysterious language ofprophecy; what seemed to be fundamental for the presentwas the doctrine 01 the special covenant between Jehovah andHis chosen people.This particularism 01 the Old Testament might have beenovercome by practical considerations, especially by the con-sideration that since as a matter of fact the Gentiles wouldnever accept circumcision and submit to the Law the only wayto carryon the broader work was quietly to keep the moreburdensome requirements of the Law in abeyance. This methodwould ha.ve been the method 01 ''liberalism.'' And it would havebeen utterly futile. I t would have meant an irreparable injuryto the religious conscience; it would have sacrificed the goodconscience of the missionary and the authoritativeness of hisproclamation. Liberalism would never have conquered theworl!l.Fortunately liberalism was not the method of Paul. Paulwas not a practical Christian who regarded life as superiorto doctrine, and practice as superior to principle. On thecontrary, he overcame the principle 01 Jewish particularismin the only way in which it could be overcome; he overcameprinciple by principle. I t was not Paul the practical mis-sionary, but Paul the theologian, who was the real apostle tothe Gentiles.

I For wbat follow., compare the article clted In B'blkcd . . " Tholo, . . ,s,..,.. pp. MUa7.


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18 THE ORIGIN OF PAUL'S RELIGIONIn his theology he avoided certain errors which lay nearat hand. He avoided the error of Marcion, who in the middle

of the second century combated Jewish particularism by representing the whole of the Old Testament economy as evil andas the work of a being hostile to the good God. That errorwould have deprived the Church of the prestige which it derivedfrom the possession of an ancient and authoritative Book;as a merely new religion Christianity never could have ap-lle8led to the Gentile world. Paul avoided also the error ofthe so-called "Epistle of Barnabas," which, while it acceptedthe Old Testament, rejected the entire Jewish interpretationof it; the Old Testament Law, according to the Epistle ofBarnabas, was never intended to require literal sacrifices andcircumcision, in the way in which it was interpreted by theJews. That error, also, would have been disastrous; it wouldhave introduced such boundless absurdity into the Christianuse of the Scriptures that all truth and soberness would havelIed.

Avoiding all such errors, Paul was able with a perfectlygood conscience to accept the priceless support of the OldT ~ s t a m e n t Scriptures in his missionary work while at the sametime he rejected for his Gentile converts the ceremonial requirements which the Old Testament imposed. The solution ofthe problem is set forth clearly in the Epistle to the Gala-! tians. The Old Testament Law, according to Paul, was trulyauthoritative and truly divine. But it was temporary; it wasauthoritative only until the ful6llment of the promise shouldcome. I t was a schoolmaster to bring the Jews to Christ;and (such is the implication, according to the Epistle to theRomans) it could also be a schoolmaster to bring f!!'iTery oneto Christ, since it was intended to produce the necessary consciousness of sin.This treatment of the Old Testament was the only prac-tical solution of the difficulty. But Paul did not adopt itbecause it was practical; he adopted it because it was true.I t never occurred to him to hold principle in abeyap.ce evenfor the welfare of the souls of men. The deadening blight ofpragmatism had never fallen upon his soul.

The Pauline grounding of the Gentile mission is not tobe limited, however, to his specific answer to the question,


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INTRODUCTION 19"What then is the law?" I t extends rather to his entire unfolding of the significance of the Cross of Christ. H e ~ -hibited the temporary character of the Old Testament dispensation by showing that a new era had begun, by exhibitingpositively the epoch-making significance of the Cross.At this point undoubtedly he had precursors. The significance of the Cross of Christ was by no means entirelyunknown to those who had been disciples before him; he himself places the assertion that Christ "died for our sins according to the Scriptures" as one of the things that he had "re-ceived." But unless all indications fail Paul did bring anunparalleled enrichment of the understanding of the Cross.For the first time the death of Christ was viewed in its fullhistorical and logical relationships. And thereby Gentile freedom, and the freedom of the entire Christian Church for alltime, was assured.Inwardly, indeed, the early Jerusalem disciples were already free from the Law; they were really trusting for theirsalvation not to their observance of the Law but to whatChrist had done for them. But apparently they did not fullyknow that they were free; or rather they did not know exactlywhy they were free. The case of Cornelius, .according to theBook of Acts, was exceptional; Cornelius had been receivedinto the Church without being circumcised, but only by directcommand of the Spirit. Similar direct and unexplained guidance was apparently to be waited for if the case was to berepeated. Even Stephen had not really advocated the imme-diate abolition of the Temple or the abandonment of Jewishprerogatives in the presence of Gentiles.

The freedom of the early Jerusalem Church, in otherwords, was not fully grounded in a comprehensive viewof the meaning of Jesus' work. Such freedom could notbe permanent. I t was open to argumentative attacks, andas a matter of fact such attacks were not long absent. Thevery life of the Gentile mission at Antioch was threatenedby the Judaizers who came down from Jerusalem and said,"Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, yecannot be saved." Practical considerations, considerationsof church polity, were quite powerless before such attacks;freedom was held by but a precarious tenure until its under-


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10 THE ORIGIN OF PAUL'S RELIGIONlying principles were established. Christianity, in otherwords, could not live without theology. And the first greatChristian theologian was Paul.

I t was Paul, then, who established the principles of theGentile mission. Others labored in detail, but it was he whowas at the heart of the movement. I t was he, far more thanany other one man, who carried the gospel out from Judaism.into the Gentile world.The importance of the achievement must. be apparent toevery historian, no matter how unsympathetic his attitudet o w ~ r d the content of Christianity may be. The modern Europeall world, what may be called ''western civilization." isdescended from the civilization of Greece and Rome. Ourlanguages are either derived directly from the Latin, or at anyrate connected with the same great family. Our literatureand art are inspired by the great classical models. Our lawand government have never been independent of the principlesenunciated by the statesmen of Greece, and put into practiceby the statesmen of Rome. Our philosophies are obliged toreturn ever anew to the questions which were put, i f not answered, by Plato and Aristotle.Yet there has entered into this current of Indo-Europeancivilization an element from a very diverse and very unexpectedsource. How comes it that a thoroughly Semitic book like theBible has been accorded a place in medieval and modern lifeto which the glories of Greek literature can never by anypossibility aspire? . How comes it that the words of that bookhave not only made political history-moved armies and builtempires-but also have entered into the very fabric of men'ssouls? The intrinsic value of the Book would not alone havebeen sufficient to break down the barriers which. opposed itsacceptance by the Indo-European race. The race from whichthe Bible came was despised in ancient times and it is despisedto-day. How comes it then that a product of that race hasbeen granted such boundless influence? How comes it that thebarriers which have always separated Jew from Gentile, Semitefrom Aryan, have at one point been broken through, so thatthe current of Semitic life has been allowed to flow uncheckedover the rich fields of our modern civilization?The answer to these questions, to the large extent whichthe preceding outline has attempted to define, must be sought


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INTRODUCTION 11in the inner life of a Jew of Tarsus. In dealing with the apostlePaul we are dealing with one of the moving factors of theworld's history.That conclusion might at first sight seem to affect unfavorably the special use to which it is proposed, in the present discussion, to put the examination of Paul. The more important Paul was as a man, it might be said, the less importanthe becomes as a witness to the origin of Christianity. I f hismind had been a blank tablet prepared to receive impressions,then the historian could be sure that what is found in Paul'sEpistles about Jesus is a true re1lection of what Jesus reallywas. But as a matter of f a ~ t f.aul -..s a genius. I t is of thenature ofgenius to be creative. May not whafllaul says aboutJesus and the origin of Christianity, therefore, be no mere rellection of the facts, but the creation of his own mind?The di1llculty is not so serious as it seems. Genius is ~ o t incompatible with honesty-certainly not the genius of Paul.When, therefore, Paul sets himself to give information aboutcertain plain matters of fact that came under his observation, as in the first two chapters of Galatians, there are notmany historians who are inclined to refuse him credence. Butthe witness of Paul depends not so much upon details as uponthe total fact of his religious life. I t is that fact which is to beexplained. To say merely that Paul was a genius and therefore unaccountable is no explanation. Certainly it is not anexplanation satisfactory to modern historians. During theprogress of modern criticism, students of the origin of Christianity have accepted the challenge presented by the fact ofPaul's religious life; they have felt obliged to account for theemergence of that fact at just the point when it actually appeared. But the explanations which they have offered, as thefollowing discussion may show, are insu1licient; and it is justthe greatness of Paul for which the explanations do not account. The religion of Paul is too large a building to havebeen erected upon a pin-point.Moreover, the greater a man is, the wider is the area ofhis contact with his environment, and the deeper is his penetration into the spiritual realm. The ''man in the street" isnot so good an obserVer as is sometimes supposed; he observes only yhat lies on the surface. Paul, on the other hand,was able to sound the depths. I t is, on the whole, certainly


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ti THE ORIGIN OF PAUL'S RELIGIONno disadvantage to the student of early Christianity that thatparticular member of the early Church whose inner life standsclearest in the light of history was no mere nonentity, but oneof the commanding figures in the history of the world.But what, in essence, is the fact of which the historical im-plications are here to be studied? What was the religion ofPaul? No attempt will now be made to answer the questionin detail; no attempt will be made to add to the long list ofexpositions of the Pauline theology. But what is really essential is abundantly plain, and may be put in a word-the religion of Paul was a religion of redemption. I t was foundednot upon what had always been true, but upon what had recently happened; not upon right ideas about God and His relations to the world, but upon one thing that God had done;not upon an eternal truth of the fatherhood of God, but uponthe fact that God had chosen to become the Father of those whoshould accept the redemption offered by Christ. The religionof Paul was. rooted altogether in the redeemina w ~ r k of JesusChrist. Jesus for .paul was primarily not a Revealer, but a-S C L v j Q ~ ~ . .- The character of Paulinism as a redemptive religion in-volved a certain conception of the Redeemer, which is per-. fectly plain on the pages of the Pauline Epistles. Jesus Christ,Paul believed, was a heavenly being; Paul placed Him clearlyon the side of God and not on the side of men. "Not by manbut by Jesus Christ," he says at the beginning of Galatians,and the same contrast is implied everywhere in the Epistles.This heavenly Redeemer existed before His earthly life; camethen to earth, where He lived a true human life 01 humiliation;suft'ered on the cross for the sins of those upon whom the curseof the Law justly rested; then rose again from the dead by amighty act of God's power; and is present always .ivith HisChurch through His Spirit.That representation has become familiar to the devoutChristian, but to the modern historian it seems very strange.For to the modern historian, on the basis of the modern viewof Jesus, the procedure of Paul seems to be nothing else thanthe deification by Paul of a man who had lived but a few yearsbefore and had died a shameful death. 1 I t is not necessary to

1 H. J. Holtsmann (in ProtutGatilcA. Moaat.A.,t., iv. 1900. pp. 4651 . andin OAriltlie,.. W.U, Xldv. 1910. column ISS) admitted that for the rapidapotheosis 01 Jesus as i t is attested by the epistles of Paul be couldcite no parallel in the religious history of the race.


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INTRODUCTION !8argue the question whether in Rom. ix. IS Paul actually appliesthe term ''God'' to J esus-certainly he does so according tothe only natural interpretation of his :words as they s tandwhat is really i m p o r t a n ~ is that everywhere the relationshipin which Paul stands toward Jesus is not the mere relationshipof disciple to master, but is a truly religious relationship.Jesus is to Paul e v ~ the ~ j e c t o! _ ! ' ~ w . < ? ~ s .. faith.'---That fact would not be quite so - surprismg-ll"Pkul hadbeen of polytheistic training, if he had grown up in a spiritualenvironment where the distinction between divine and humanwas being broken down. Even in such an environment, indeed,the religion of Paul would have been quite without parallel .The deification of the eastern rulers or of the emperors dijfers.,. toto from the Pauline attitude toward Jesus. I t dijfers inseriousness and fervor; above all it dijfers in its complete lackof exclusiveness. The lordship of the ruler admitted freely,and was indeed always accompanied by, the lordship of othergods; the lordship of Jesus, in the religion of Paul, was air'solutely exclusive. For Paul, there was one Lord and one Lordonly. When any parallel for such a religious relationshipof a notable man to one of his contemporaries with whose mostintimate friends he had come i ~ t o close contact can be citedin the religious annals of the race, then it will be time for thehistorian to lose his wonder at the phenomenon of Paul.But the wonder of the historian reaches its climax whenhe remembers that ~ a ~ w a ~ _ ! ! o ~ _ a p ~ l y t h e i s t or a pantheist,but a Jew, to whom m O D O t h e i . t ~ was the very breath of Iife.1The Judaism of Paul's day was certainly nothing if not monotheistic. . But.in the intensity of his monotheiam Paul WASnot d i f F ~ t from his countr"Y.U'en. No one can possibly showa deeper scorn lor the plany gods of the heathen than canPaul. "For though there be that are called gods," he says,"whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many, andlords many,) But to us there is but one God, the Father, ofwhom are all things, and we unto him; and one Lord JesusChrist, by whom are all things, and we by him." (I Cor. viii.IS, 6. ) Yet it was this monotheist sprung of a race of monotheists, who stood in a full religious relation to a man who haddied but a few years before; it was this monotheist who designated that man, as a matter of course, by the supreme religious .term "Lord," and did not hesitate to apply to Him the passages I. Compare R. Seeberg. D,r U ,." , . .. , f lu CAriB_gloMb. . . . 191" pp. I f .


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U THE ORIGIN OF PAUL'S RELIGIONin the Greek Old Testament where that term was used to trans-late the most awful name of the God of Israel! The religion of

. . Paul is a phenomenon well worthy of the attention of the his-I torian.In recent years that phenomenon has been explained infour difFerent ways. The four ways have not always beenclearly defined; they have sometimes entered into combinationwith one another. But they are logically distinct, and to acertain extent ~ h e y may be treated separately.There is first of all the supernaturalistic explanation, whichsimply accepts at its face value what Paul presupposes aboutI Jesus. According to this explanation, Jesus was really aheavenly being, who in order to redeem sinful man came vol-untarily to earth, sufFered for the sins of others on the cross,rose from the dead, ascended to the right hand of God, fromwhence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I fthis representation be correct, then there is really nothingto explain; the religious attitude of Paul toward Jesus wasnot an apotheosis of a man, but recognition as divine of onewho really was divine.The other three explanations are alike in that they allreject supernaturalism, they all deny the entrance into humanf istory of any creative act of God, unless indeed all thecourse of nature be regarded as creative. They all agree,therefore, in explaining the religion of Paul as a phenomenonwhich emerged in the course of history under the operation ofnatural causes.The most widespread of these naturalistic explanationsof the religion of Paul is what may be called the ''liberal"view. The name is highly unsatisfactory; it has been usedand misused until it has often come to mean a l m o s ~ nothing.But no other term is ready to hand. "Ritsch1ian" might pos-sibly describe the phenomenon that is meant, but that term isperhaps too narrow, and would imply a degree of logical con-nection with the Ritschlian theology which would not fit allforms of the phenomenon. The best that can be done, there-fore, is to define the term "liberal" in a narrower way than issometimes customary and than use it in distinction not onlyfrom traditional and supernaturalistic views, but also fromv a r i ~ u s "radical" views, which will demand separate considera-tion.


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INTRODUCTION 15The numerous forms of the liberal view diger from othernaturalistic hypotheses in that they attribute supreme impor

tance in the formation of the religion of Paul to the in1luenceof the real historic person, Jesus of Nazareth, and to theexperience which Paul had near Damascus when he thoughthe saw that person risen from the dead. Jesus of Nazareth, ,according to the liberal view, was the greatest of the children Iof men. His greatness centered in His consciousness of stand- ,ing toward God in the relation of son to Father. That con- \sciousness of sonship, at least in its purity, Jesus discovered, ,was not shared by others. Some category was therefore neededto designate the uniqueness of His sonship. The categorywhich He adopted, though with reluctance, and probably to- ,ward the end of His ministry, was the category of Messiahship.His Messianic consciousness was thus not fundamental in Hisconception of His mission; certainly it did not mean that Heput His own person into His gospel. He urged men, not totake Him . ! L ~ . " " Q b j ~ . d . of t h ~ i ~ . f..ai1h, but only to take Himas & . J L ~ ~ p l ~ " ~ ! > r their l a i ~ 1 . ! ; ~ o t to have faith in. Him, ~ u t lahave faith 1D GOa1iKe "tIIS fatth. Such was the impressionof His personality, however, that after His death the love andreverence of His disciples for Him not only induced the.hallucinations in which they thought they saw Him risen from Ithe dead but also led them to attribute to His person a kindof religious importance lJlUc:h ~ ~ ~ a d _never claimed. Theybegan to make Him not only an example loi---r&iUiout also theo M ~ J . J i ! P . The Messianic eTement"in "Hiiflife1iegantlew ,to assume an importance which He had never attributed to it; :the disciples began to ascribe to Him divine attributes. This iprocess was somewhat hindered in the case of His intimate Ifriends by the fact that they had seen Him under all the Ilimitations of ordinary human life. But in the case of theapostle P ~ u l , who had never Him, tbe process of dei1icat i o ~ could go on unchecked. What was fundamental, however,even for Paul, was an impression of the real person of Jesusof Nazareth; that impression was conveyed to Paul in variousways-especially by the brave and pure lives of Jesus' disciples, rwhich had impressed him, against his will, even when he was .still a persecutor. But Paul was a child of his time. He was .obliged, therefore, to express that which he had received fromJesus in the categories that were ready to hand. Those cate-


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16 THE ORIGIN OF PAUL'S RELIGIONgories as applied to Jesus constitute the Pauline theology.Thus Paul was really the truest disciple of Jesus in the depths: of his inner life, but his theology was the outer and perishable) shell for the precious kernel. His theology was the productof his time, and may now be abandoned; his religion was de-rived from Jesus of Nazareth and is a permanent possession

t of tpe human race.Such in bare outline is the liberal view of the origin ofPaulinism and of Christianity. I t has been set forth in 80many brilliant treatises that no one may be singled out asclearly representative. Perhaps Von__l!arnack's ' 'What isChristianity?" 1, among thepopular exposH:ioiis,-ma, stm serve:S-weIiaS"anyother. The liberal view of the origin of Christianity seemed at one time likely to dominate the religious lifeof the modern world; it found expression in countless sermonsand books of devotion as well as in scientific treatises. Now,however, there are some indications that it is beginning to fall;it is being attacked by radicalism of vario.us kinds. Withsome of these attacks it will not now be worth while to deal; itwill not be worth while to deal with those forms of radicalismwhich reject what have been designated as the two startingpoints for an investigation of the origin of Christianity-thehistoricity of Jesus and the genuineness of the major epistlesof Paul. These hypotheses are some of them interesting onthe negative side, they are interesting for their criticism ofthe dominant liberal view; but when it comes to their ownattempts at reconstruction they have never advanced beyondthe purest dilettantism. Attention will now be confined to, the work of historians who have really attempted seriously to: grapple with the historical problems, and specifically to thosewho have given attention to the problem of Paul.Two lines of explanation have been followed in recentyears by those who reject, in the interest of more radical views,the liberal account of the origin of Paulinism. But these twolines run to a certain point together; they both reject the liberalemphasis upon the historic person of Jesus as accounting forthe origin of Paul's religion. The criticism of the customaryview was put sharply b y _ , ! . J ! ~ e 19042, when he declared

1 Hamack. DGI W. . . . tIM Qlrilt...... 1900. (EngUsh Tr&D8latlon.W1acd " Ol.v'fartU", 1901.)Wrede, p__ 1906. (EngDah Tr8ll8la.tlon. PCIIIl, 1907.)


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INTRODUCTION 17that Paul was no disciple of Jesus, but a second founder ofChristianity. The religious life of Paul, Wrede insisted, was not really derived from Jesus of Nazareth. What was fundamental for Paul was not the example of Jesus, but His redeeming work as embraced in the death and resurrection, which wereregarded as e v ~ n t s of a cosmic significance. The theology ofPaul-his interpretation of the death and resurrection of Jesus I--cannot, therefore, be separated from his religion; on the contrary, it is in connection with the theology, and not in connection with any impression of the character of Jesus, that thefervor of Paul's religious life runs full and free. Theologyand religion in Paul, therefore, must stand or fall together;if one was derived from extra-Christian sources, probably theother must be so derived also. And such, as a matter of fact,Wrede concludes is the case. The religion of Paul is not based \at all upon Jesus of Nazareth.Such, in true import, though not in word or in detail, wasthe startling criticism which Wrede directed against the liberalaccount of the origin of Paulinism. He had really only madeexplicit a type of criticism which had gradually been becominginevitable for some time before. Hence the importance of hislittle book. The current reconstruction of the origin ofChristianity had produced a Jesus and a Paul who really hadlittle in common with each other. Wrede, in his incomparablysuccinct and incisive way, had the courage to say so.

But if Paulinism was not derived from Jesus of Nazareth,whence was it derived? Here the two lines of radical opinionbegin diverge. According to Wrede, who was supported by) t . . . l l r i i . ! : ~ . ! j 1 working contemporaneously, the Pauline conception of Christ, which was fundamental in Paul's religiousthought and life, was derived from the pre-Christian conception 'of the Messiah which Paul already had before his conversion. .The Messiah, in the thought of the Jews, was not always conceived of merely as a king of David's line; sometimes he wasregarded rather as a mysterious, p r e e x i s t ~ ~ , . heavenly beingwho was to come suddenly with the-clouds of heaven and bei ~ ~ ~ . This transcendent conception which

S Die Baut.Avag tl8r ~ c A . , . OA""tolo, . 1908; "Zum. 'l1lema Jesusand Paulua," In z.it,cArift fGr die " .. "tarnfttlicA. Wu,.,.,cAGft, vii,1908, P{): lli-1l9; "Der Apostel Paulus ala Zeuge wider das ChrfstusbUd derBYaDgeI1eu," In Prot"taatiHA. llnatlA'ft" :Eo 1908, pp.


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18 THE ORIGIN OF PAUL'S RELIGIONis attested by the Jewish apocalypses like the Ethiopic Bookof Enoch, was, Wrede maintained, the conception of the Jew,Saul of Tarsus. When, therefore, ,gaul in h i s - E p i ! ~ , .!!,ts .C 1 h ~ ~ . l ! . u : b ' j s t ~ , and as standing close to flie Su

I preme BeIng in rulership and judgment, the phenomenon,though it may seem strange to us, is not realll ~ e ; it isexactly what is found in the apocafypses. WliiLt was new inPaul, as over against pre-Christian Judaism, was the beliefthat the heavenly Messiah had already come to earth and carried out a work of redemption. This belief was not derived,Wrede maintained, from any impression of the exalted moralcharacter of Jesus; on the contrary, if P ' ! ! ! L h ~ _~ ~ ! ! I _ ~ ~ m e i n t ~ _ . ~ . ~ . 1 ~ s e c o ~ c t with the historical Jesus, he mighthave ~ a d diilfcUIty m identifying Him so completely with theheavenly Messiah; the impression of the truly human characterof Jesus and of His subjection to all the ordinary limits ofearthly life would have hindered the ascription to Him of the

transcendent attributes. Jesus, for Paul, merely providedthe one fact that the Messiah had already come to earth anddied and risen again. Operating with that fact, interpretingthe coming of the Messiah as an act of redemption undertakenout of love for men, Paul was able to develop all the fervor ofhis Christ-religion...-:; . . . . In very recent years, another account of the origin ofPaulinism is becoming increasingly prevalent. This account1 agrees with Wrede in rejecting the liberal derivation of thei religion of Paul from an impression of the historical personof Jesus. But it differs from Wrede in its view of the sourcefrom which the religion of Paul is actually to be derived.According to this latest hypothesis, Paulinism was based notupon the pre-Christian Jewish conception of the Messiah, butupon ctontemporary papn..nillgioll.o .... --This hypotheSis represents the application to the problem of Paulinism of the method of modern comparative religion.About twenty years ago that method began to be extendedresolutely into the New Testament field, and it has been be-coming increasingly prevalent ever since. Despite the prevalence of the method, however, and the variety of its application,one great comprehensive work may now fairly lay claim to betaken as summing up the results. That work is the book ofW. Bousset, e n t i ~ e d . " ~ ! ~ o s Christos," which appeared in. . "-.. ... "


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INTRODUCTION 191918.1 I t is perhaps too early as yet to estimate the full im-portance ot Bousset's work. But unless all indications fail, thework is really destined to mark an epoch in thf,! history ot NewTestament criticism. Since the days of F. C. Baur, in theformer half of the nineteenth century, there has been no such .o ~ a l , comprehensive, and pndlJ: c ~ i i C e h > ' e d rewriting'ore a r ; Cliristtau hIstory has now' appeared in Bousset's"Kyrios Christos." The only question is whether originality,in this historical sphere, is always compatible with truth.According to Bousset, the historicity of Jesus is to bemaintained; Jesus was really a religious teacher of incom-parable power. But Bousset rejects much more of the Gospelaccount of Jesus' life than is rejected in the ordinary ''liberal''view; Bousset seems even to be doubtful as to whether \lJesus ever presented Himself to His disciples as the Messiah,the Messianic element in the Gospels being regarded for themost part as a mere re:8ection of the later convictions of thedisciples. After the crucifixion, the disciples in Jerusalem,Bousset continues, were convinced that Jesus had riaen fromthe dead, and that He was truly the Messiah. They conceivedof His Messiahship chie:8y under the category of the "Son ofMan"; Jesus, they believed, was the heavenly being who intheir interpretation of the Book of Daniel and in the apoca-lypses appears in the presence of the supreme God as the onewho is to judge the world. This heavenly Son of Man wastaken from them for a time, but they looked with passionateeagerness for His speedy return. The piety of the early Jerusa-lem Church was therefore distinctly eschatological; ii...."!!."'!..funded DQt upon any conviction of a present vital relation toJ e s u s , ~ ' ! t o n the hope of His f u t ~ r e coming. In the Greek-speaking Christian communities of sUCh cities as Antioch andTarsus, Bousset continues, an important additional step waataken; Jesus there began to be not only hoped for as the future :judge but also adored as the present Lord. He came to be lregarded as present in the meetings of the Church. The term' ~ . o ~ ~ J " with the conception that it represents, ]!Q.8 neyer .. :.:cording to Bousset, a ~ l i ~ ( L ~ . ! L . J ~ ~ in the primitive Pales-tinian Church; it was f i ! B . L ~ e d . to _Him. ..in HelleDiatic.Christian communities h'ke the one at Antioch. And it wasthere derived distinctly from the prevalent pagan religion. In

lCcmpare a1Io Bouaaet, I . . . . d.r Hwr, 1916.


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80 THE ORIGIN OF PAUL'S RELIGIONthe type of religion familiar to the disciples at Antioch, the term"Lord" was used to denote the cult-god, especially in the socalled "mystery religions"; and the Antioch disciples naturallyused the same term to designate the object of their own adoration. But with the term went the idea; Jesus was now considered to be present in the meetings of the Church, just as thecult-gods of the pagan religions were considered to be presentin the worship practiced by those religions. An importantstep had been taken beyond the purely eschatological piety ofthe Jerusalem disciples.

But how about Paul? Here is to be found one of the boldest elements in all the bold reconstruction of Bousset. Paul,Bousset believes, was not connected in any intimate way withthe primitive Christianity in Palestine; what he "received" hereceived rather from the Hellenistic Christianity, just described,of cities like Antioch. He received, therefore, the Hellenisticconception of Jesus as Lord. But he added to that eGnception by connecting lhe. .Lord" with the "Spirit." The" L ~ r d " thus became present not only in the meetings of theChurch for worship but also in the individual lives of thebelievers. Paulinism as it appears in the Epistles was thuscomplete. But this distinctly Pauline contribution, like theconception of the Lordship of Jesus to which it was added,

I was of pagan origin; it was derived from the mystical pietyof the time, with its sharp -du8.Iism between a material and a, spiritual realm and its notion of the transformation of man, by immediate contact with the divine. Paulinism, therefore,I}Ccording. to : a 0 1 J ~ , e t , was a religion of redemption. But assuch it was derived not at all from the historical Jesus (whoseI optimistic teaching contained no thought of redemption) butfrom the pessimistic dualism of the pagan world. The "liberal"distinction between Pauline religion and P a u l i n ~ theology,the attempt at saving Paul's religion by the sacrifice of histheology, is here abandoned, and all that is most clearly distinctive of Paulinism (though of course some account is takenof the contribution of his Jewish inheritance and of his owngenius) is derived from pagan sources.The hypothesis of Bousset, together with the rivalrecon-structions which have just been outlined, will be examined in thefollowing discussion. But before they can be examined it willbe necessary to say a word about the sources of information


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INTRODUCTION 81with regard to the life of Paul. No discU8sion of the literaryquestions can indeed here be undertaken. Almost all that canbe done is to set forth very brie1ly the measure of agreementwhich has been attained in this field, and the bearing of thepoints that are still disputed upon the subject of the presentinvestigation.The sources of information about Paul are contained almostexclusively in the New Testament. They are, first, the PaulineEpistles, and, second, the Book of Acts.Four of the Pauline Epistles-Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinth- \ians, and Romans-were accepted as certainly genuine byF. C. Baur, the founder of the " , ! , ~ b i u g e n " ~ ~ o o l " of criticismin the former half of the nineteenth century. ' this favorableestimate of the "major epistles" has never been abandoned byany number of really serious Illstorians, and three of the otherepistles-l TJJ.e.l!sal.onians, Philippians, and Philemon-havenow been actded to the ''homologoumena."'""SeftIr episUes, therefore, are accepted as genuine to-day by all historians except afew extremists. Of the remaining epistles, Colossians is accepted by the majority of investigators of all shades of opinion, and even in the case of 2 Thessalonians and Ephesians, theacceptance of the hypothesis of genuineness is no longer regarded as a clear mark of "conservatism," these two epistlesbeing regarded as genuine letters of Paul by some even of thosewho are not in general favorable to the traditional view of theNew Testament.With regard to the Pastoral Epistles-l and 2 "Timothyand Titus-the issue is more clearly drawn. These epistles, atleast in their entirety, are seldom regarded as genuine exceptby those who adopt in general the traditional view of the Ne lfTestament and the supernaturalistic conception of the origin ofChristianity. That does not mean that the case of the PastoralEpistles is d e s p e r a ~ e r t a i n l y the present writer is firmlyconvinced that the epistles are genuine and that a denial oftheir genuineness really impoverishes in important respects ourconception of the work of Paul-but it does mean that with regard to these epistles the two great contending views concerning the New Testament come into sharp conllict; commonground, in other words, cannot here be found, as in the case ofthe major epistles, between those who hold widely divergentviews as to the origin of Christianity.


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INTRODUCTION ssWhat could be the explanation of so extraordinary a procedure?Only two explanations are possible. In the first place, theauthor may have retained the ''we'' with deceitful intent, withthe intent of producing the fa:lse impression that he himselfwas a companion of Paul. This hypothesis is fraught with insuperable di16culty and is generally rejected. In the secondplace, the author may have retained the ''we'' because he wasa mere compiler, copying out his sources with mechanical accuracy, and so unable to make the simple editorial change of"we" to "they." This hypothesis is excluded by the strikingsimilarity of language and style between the we:.sections andthe rest of LukeL:Acts, which shows that if the author of thecompleted double work is in the we-sections making use of asource written by some one else, he has revised the source so asto make it conform to his own style. But if he revised thesource, he was no mere compiler, and therefore could not haveretained the first person plural which in the completed book produced nonsense. The whole hypothesis therefore breaks d o ~ . Such considerations have led a number of recent scholar&-even of those who are unable to accept the supernaturalisticaccount which the Book of Acts gives of the origin of Christianity-to return to the traditional view that the book wasactually written by Luke the physician, a companion of Paul.The argument for Lucan authorship has been developed withgreat acumen especially by Von Harnack1 And on the basisof p ~ r e l y literary criticism the argument is certainly irrefutable. I t can be r ~ f u t e d , if at all, only through a considerationof the historical contents of the book.Such attempts at refutation have not been lacking; theLucan authorship of Acts is still rejected by the great majority of those who maintain the naturalistic view of the originof Christianity. The objections may be subsumed under twomain heads. The Book of Acts, it is said, is not the kind ofbook that could have been written by a companion of Paul,in the first place because it contains an account of miracles,

SL d u , " f " .Anst, 1906 (EngHsh TranslaUon, Lwlu tM Ply. . . .190'1); DH .Apolt.'gHeliclt., 1908 (English TranslaUon, TA .J.et, of til.J.pDltz.., 19(9); N. . . U.t.r.uc1t"rtg.. zur .J.po,t.'g.lCliclt. Vftd _.J.bf_rtglUit '"1' "fIOpt"e"- 8"Gflg.'v., 1911 (English TranslaUon,PM D",. of til .Ac" IMd of tA. SytlOptic Go",.", 1911).


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M THE ORIGIN OF PAUL'S REUGIONand in the second place, because it contradicts the PaulineEpistles, particularly in the account which it gives of therelations between Paul and the Jerusalem Church.'The former objection is entirely valid on the basis of anynaturalistic account of the origin of Christianity. Eft'ortshave indeed been made by Von Harnack, C. C. Torrey, andothers, to overcome the objection. Belief in miracles, it itsaid, was very general in the ancient world; a miraculous interpretation could therefore be placed upon happenings for which;' the modern man would have no difficulty in discovering a natural cause. Luke was a child of his time; even in the we-sections, Von Harnack insists, where the work of an eyewitnessis universally recognized, a supernaturalistic interpretation isplaced upon natural events-as, for example, when Paul excites the wonder of his companions by shaking oft' into the firea viper that was no doubt perfectly harmless. Why, then,should the presence of the supernatural in the rest of the bookbe used to refute the hypothesis of the Lucan authorship, ifit is not so used in the we-sections? 1This method of refuting the objection drawn from the

rpresence of the supernatural in Luke-Acts has sometimes ledto a curious return to the rationalizing method of interpretai tion which was prevalent one hundred years ago. By thatmethod of interpretation even the details of the New Testamentmiracles were accepted as historical, but it was thought thatthe writers were wrong in regarding those details as miraculous.Great ingenuity was displayed by such rationalists as Paulusand many others in exhibiting the true natural causes of details which to the first observers seemed to be supernatural.Such rationalizing has usually been thought to have receivedits death-blow at the hands of Strauss, who showed that theNew Testament narratives "Were" either' to be accepted as awhole--miracles and al l-or else regarded as myths, that is,as the clothing of religious ideas in historical forms. Butnow, under the impulsion of literary criticism, which has ledaway from the position of Baur and Strauss and back to thetraditional view of the authorship and date of the New Testament books, t,.e expedients of the rationalizers have in s o m ~ cases been revived.

I Harnack, Dw .4po1t.lgllclaicltt., 1908, pp. Ill-ISO (English Translation, Tit .4ct. of tM .4,0.,'11, 1909, pp. ISS-l61).


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INTRODUCTION SISThe entire effort of Von Harnack is, however, quite hopeless. The objection to the Lucan authorship of Acts whichis drawn from the supernatural element in the narrative isirrefutable on the basis of any naturalistic view of the originof Christianity. The trouble is that the supernatural elementin Acta does not concern merely details; it lies, rather, at theroot of the whole representation. The origin of the Church,according to the modem naturalistic reconstruction, was dueto the belief of the early disciples in the resurrection of J esua ;that belief in tum was founded upon certain hallucinations inwhich they thought they saw Jesus alive after His passion.In such experiences, the optic nerve is affected not by an external object but by the condition of the subject himself.But there are limitations to what is possible in experiences ofthat sort, especially where numbers of persons are affected andat different times. I t cannot be supposed, therefore, that thedisciples of Jesus thought they had any extended intercourse

with Him after His passion; momentary appearances, with possibly a few spoken words, were all that they could have experienced. This view of the origin of the Church is thoughtto be in accord with the all-important testimony of Paul,especially in 1 Cor. xv. 8-8 where he is reproducing a primitivetradition. Thus desperate efforts are made to show that thereference by Paul to the burial of Jesus does not by anymeans confirm the accounts given in the Gospels of events connected with the empty tomb. Sometimes, indeed, in recentcriticism, the fact of the empty tomb is accepted, and thenexplained in some naturalistic way. But at any rate, the cardinal feature of the modem reconstruction is that the earlyChurch, including Paul, had a spiritual rather than a physicalconception of the risen body of Jesus; there was no extendedintercourse, it is supposed; Jesus appeared to His disciplesmomentarily, in heavenly glory.

But t ~ s entire representation is diametrically opposed tothe representation in the Gospel of Luke and in the Bookof Acta. I f there is anyone writer who emphasizes the plain, .physical character of the contact between the disciples andtheir risen Lord, it is the author of Luke-Acts. In proof, itis only necessary to point to Acts :x. 41, where it is said that the .men JeJu-e held table-companionship with His disciples after


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86 THE ORIGIN OF PAUL'S RELIGIONHe was risen from the dead! But that is only one detail. Theauthor of Acts is firmly convinced that the contact of the risenJesus with His disciples, though not devoid of mysterious features, involved the absence of the body of Jesus from the tomband an intercourse (intermittent, it is true, but including,hysical proofs of the most definite kind) extending over aperiod of forty days. Nothing could possibly be more directly contrary to what the current critical view regards as thereal account given in the primitive Jerusalem Church and by theapostle Paul.Yet on the basis of that modern critical view, Von Har-nack and others have maintained that the book in which sofalse an account is given of the origin of the Church was actually the work of a man of the apostolic age. I t is no wonderthat Von Harnack's conclusions have evoked an emphaticprotest from other naturalistic historians. Luke was a closeassociate of Paul. Could he possibly have given an accountof things absolutely fundamental in Paul's gospel (1 Cor. n .

I 1-8) which was so diametrically opposed to what Paul taughtPHe was in JeJ'UBalem in 58 A.D. or earlier, and during yeanof his life was in close touch with Palestinian disciples. Couldhe possibly have given an acc,!unt of the origin of the JerusalemChurch so totally at variance with the account which thatchurch itself maintained P These questions constitute a complete refutation of Von Harnack's view, when that view is takenI as a whole. But they do not at all constitute a refutation oCthe conclusions of Von Harnack in the sphere of literary criticism. On the contrary, by showing how inconsistent thoseconclusions are with other elements in the thinking of the investigator, they make only the more impressive the strength ofthe argument which has overcome such obstacles. The objec-

t tion points out the antinomy which exists between the literarycriticism of Von Harnack and his naturalistic account of the. origin of Christianity. What that antinomy means is merelythat the testimony of Acts to the supernatural origin ofChristianity, far from being removed by literary criticism, isstrongly supported by it. A companion of Paul could nothave been egregiously mistaken about the origin of the Church;but literary criticism establishes Luke-Acts as the work of acompanion of Paul. Hence there is some reason for suppos-


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INTRODUCTION 87iug that the account given in this book is essentially correct,and that the naturalistic recoDstruction of the origin ofChristianity moat be abandoned.The second objection to the Lucan authorship of Actsis based upon the contradiction which is thought to exist be- Itween the Book of Acts and the Epistles of Pau1.1 The way .to test the value of a historical work, it is said, is to compareit with some recognized authority. With regard to most ofthe narrative in Acta, no such comparison is possible, sincethere is no account parallel to Acts by which it may be tested.But in certain places the Book of Acts provides an accountof events which are also narrated in the isolated biographicalparts of the Pauline Epistles-notably in the first two chaptersof Galatians. Here at last is found the long-sought opportunity for comparison. And the comparison, it is said, resultsunfavorably to the Book of Acts, which is found to contradict.the Epistle to the Galatians, not merely in details, but in thewhole account which it gives of the relation between Paul andthe Jerusalem Church. But i f the Book of Acts fails to approve itself in the one place where it can be tested by comparison with a recognized authority, the presumption is thatit may be wrong elsewhere as well; in particular, it is quiteimpossible that a book which so completely misrepresents whathappened at a most important crisis of Paul's life could havebeen written by a close friend of the apostle.This argument was developed particularly by Baur andZeller and their associates in the "Tiibingen School." Accord- jug t q } ~ a ~ ~ _ the m a ~ o ~ ~ i s t l ~ of, P a ~ c o ~ s t i t u t e the primarys o u r c ~ 01 mformation about 'tlie 'apostobc age; they shouldtherefore be interpreted without reference to any other source.When they are so interpreted, they show that the fundamental lfact of apostolic history was a con1lict between Paul on oneside and the original apostles on the other. The con1lict, Baurmaintained further, is particularly plain in the Epistles tothe Galatians and Corinthians, which emphasize the completei n d ~ n d : e n c e of Paul with reference to t h ~ p i l l ~ ~ 8 of t h e . J . ~ t J I f t -

For what foUawa, compare "Jesus and Paul," In BiblictJI IMICI8,tIdiu by the Memben of the Faculty of Princeton Tbeolorcal Seminary.191i. pp. 54Sf.; "Recent Critlclam of the Book of Acts, In Priac"OfITl,ological B m -, mi. 1919. pp. 598-597.


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88 THE ORIGIN OF PAUL'S RELIGIONlem Church, and his continued opposition to the efforts of Jewish Christians to bring the Gentiles into subjection to the Jewish Law-efi'orts which must have been supported to some extent by the attitude of the original apostles. This conffict,Baur supposed further, continued up to the middle of the secondcentury; there was a Gentile Christian party appealing toPaul and a Jewish Christian party appealing to Peter. Finally! however, Baur continued, a compromise was effected; the, Pauline party gave up what was really most distinctive in the; Pauline doctrine of justification, while the Petrine party re-linquished the demand of circumcision. The New Testamentdocuments, according to Baur, are to be dated in accordancewith the position that they assume in the con1lict; those docu-

f ments which take sides-which are strongly anti-Pauline or strongly a n t i - P e t r i n ~ a r e to be placed early, while thosewhich display a tendency toward compromise are to be placedlate, at the time when the con1lict was being settled. Suchwas the "tendency-criticism" of Baur. By that criticism theBook of Acts was dated well on in the second century, becauseit was thought to display a tendency toward c o m p r o m i s ~ an "irenic tendency." This tendency, Baur supposed, manifested itself in the Book of Acts in a deliberate falsificationof history; in order to bring about peace between the Petrineand the Pauline parties in the Church, the author of Actsattempted to s ~ w by a new account of the apostolic age thatPeter and Paul really were in perfect agreement. To that end,in the Book of Acts, Paul is Petrinized, and Peter is Paulinized;the sturdy independence of Paul, which actually kept him longaway from Jerusalem after his conversion, gives place, in Acts,to a desire of contact with the Jerusalem Church, whichbrought him early to Jerusalem and finally led him even toaccept for his Gentile converts, at the "Apostolic Council,"a portion of the ceremonial law. Peter, on the other hand, isrepresented in Acts as giving expression at the ApostolicCouncil to Pauline sentiments about the Law; and all throughthe book there is an elaborate and unhistorical parallelismbetween Peter and Paul.

The theory of Baur did not long maintain itself in its entirety. I t received a searching criticism particularly from A.Ritschl. The conffict of the apostolic age, Ritschl pointed


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INTRODVCTION 89out, was not a con1lict between Paul and the original apostles, 'but between all the apostles (including both Paul and Peter)the one side, and an extreme Judaizing party on the other; that con1lict did not continue throughout the second century;on the contrary, s ~ f i c ~ y Jewish Christianity soon ceasedto be i.n1luential, and the legalistic character ot the Old Catliolic Church of the end of the second century, in which Christianity was conceived of as a new law, was due not to anycompromise with the legalism of the Judaizera but to a naturalprocess of degeneration from Paulinism on purely Gentile ;Christian ground.The Tiibingen dating of the New Testament documents,moreever, has been abandoned under a more thorough investigation of early Christian literature. A study of patristicssoon rendered it impossible to string out the New Testamentboob anywhere throughout the second century in the interestof a plauaible theory of development. External evidence has !led to a muCh earlier dating of most of the boob than Baur'stheory required. The Tiibingen estimate of the Book of Acts,in particular, has for the most part been modified; the bookis dated much earlier, and it is no longer thought to be a partydocument written in the interests of a deliberate falsificationof history.Nevertheless, the criticism of Baur and Zeller, though nolonger accepted as a whole, is still infiuential; the comparisonof Acts and Galatiana, particularly in that which concernsthe Apostolic Council of Acts XV, is still often thought toresult unfavorably to the Book of Acts. Even at this point,however, a more favorable estimate of Acts has been gainingground. The cardinal principle of. Baur, to the efFect that Ithe major epistles of Paul should be interpreted entirely with- .out reference to the Book of Acts, is being called in question. .Such a method of interpretation, it may well be urged, is likelyto result in one-sidedness. I f the Book of Acts commendsitself at all as containing trustworthy information, it shouldbe allowed to cast light upon the Epistles. The account whichPaul gives in Galatians is not so complete as to render superfluoua any assistance which may be derived from an independent narrative. And as a matter of fact, no matter what principles of interpretation are held, the Book of Acts simply


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to TIm ORIGIN OF RAUL'S RELIGIONI mUit be Uled in i n t e r p r ~ n g the Epistles; without the outlineI given in Acts the Ep

Documents

Origen of Paul's Religion: Chapter 1