THE EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL
Although the Christian cannot regard the Epistles contained in the New
Testament as having quite the same importance as the Gospels which
record the life and sayings of his Divine Master, he must regard them
as having a profound significance. They deal with the creed and the
conduct of the Church with an inspired insight which gives them an
undying value, and they are marked by a personal affection which gives
them an undying charm. They lend, too, a most powerful support to the
historical evidence of the truth of Christianity. We have already
noticed that the earliest Gospel was probably not written before A.D.
62, while St. John's Gospel is probably as late as A.D. 85. But
several of the twenty-one Epistles in the New Testament are certainly
earlier than A.D. 62, and out of the whole number only the three by St.
John can be confidently placed at a later date than St. John's Gospel.
Now, these twenty-one Epistles assume the truth of the story contained
in the Gospels. They do more than this. For they prove that during
the lifetime of men who had personally known Jesus Christ, there were
large numbers of earnest men and women who were at home with the same
ideas as those which Christians have cherished until modern times.
Some of these ideas explain what we find in the Gospels. For instance,
the doctrine of the Atonement is more plainly expounded in the Epistles
than in the Gospels. This doctrine, together with those which concern
the Person of Jesus Christ, the Holy {117} Trinity, the sacraments, the
Church, and the ministry, could be shown to have existed about A.D. 60,
even if the Gospels had perished or were proved to be forgeries. The
indirect evidence which the Epistles give to the life and teaching of
our Lord is therefore of immense importance. If the infidel says that
these doctrines are mere theories, we can ask him how these theories
arose, and challenge him to produce a cause which so adequately
accounts for them as the incarnation of the Son of God.
The origin of "spiritual letters" or "epistles" was perhaps due to the
wisdom and originality of St. Paul. At any rate, there is nothing
improbable in this conjecture, nor need it draw us into any sympathy
with the recent attempts to use it as a means for discrediting those
Epistles in the New Testament which bear the names of other authors.
It is possible that the earliest Epistle is that of St. James, and we
have no means of telling whether St. Paul did or did not anticipate him
in writing Epistles. In any case, if St. Paul is not the pioneer, he
is the captain of epistle-writers. St. Cyprian, St. Jerome, St.
Bernard, and in modern times Archbishop Fenelon and Dr. Pusey, have
illustrated the power of making a letter the vehicle of momentous
truths. But on the greatest of them there has fallen only a portion of
the mantle of St. Paul.
We possess thirteen Epistles written by St. Paul. There is no real
reason for doubting the genuineness of any of them, and a remarkable
change has lately taken place in the manner in which the opponents of
orthodox Christianity have treated them. When the ingenious attempt
was made, sixty years ago, to prove that St. Paul invented a type of
Christianity which was not taught by Christ, it was held that only
Galatians, Romans, and 1 and 2 Corinthians were genuine. The other
Epistles attributed to St. Paul were said to be forgeries written after
St. Paul's death, and intended to act as certificates for the Catholic
faith of the 2nd century. Since then criticism has grown wiser. The
genuineness of Philippians and 1 Thessalonians was first conceded.
Then it became necessary to {118} admit the genuineness of Colossians
and Philemon; and 2 Thessalonians and Ephesians are now being placed in
the same list even by some extreme critics. In fact, the use made of
St. Paul's Epistles in the 2nd century, and the impossibility of
finding any one who had the genius to personate the great apostle, are
two things which have disabled fancy-criticism. The Epistles to
Timothy and Titus are still confidently rejected by some authors, but
this confidence is being undermined. Some special attention is given
to the question of their genuineness in this book.
The writings of St. Paul fall into four groups, each group being shaped
by something which is unmistakably novel and by something which it has
in common with the other groups.
I. A.D. 51. 1 and 2 Thessalonians.
II. A.D. 55-56. 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Romans.
III. A.D. 59-61. Colossians, Philemon, Ephesians, Philippians.
IV. A.D. 61-64. 1 Timothy, Titus, 2 Timothy.
St. Paul was in the habit of dictating his letters. In Rom. xvi. 22
occurs the name of Tertius, who was then acting as his secretary. But
St. Paul wrote the little letter to Philemon himself, and in Gal. vi.
11-18 we find a postscript which the apostle wrote in his own large
handwriting. Similar instances are found in 1 Cor. xvi. 21-24 and Col.
iv. 18, while in 2 Thess. iii. 17 he shows us that he sometimes made
these additions in order to protect his converts from being deceived by
forged letters written in his name.
In order to enter into the spirit of St. Paul's letters it is necessary
to understand his history, a brief outline of which will now be given.
Saul, who changed his name to Paul, was born at Tarsus in Cilicia, a
city which prided itself upon its good education. The language of the
city was Greek; Saul's father was a Jew and a Roman citizen. He was
trained at Jerusalem by {119} Gamaliel, a renowned Pharisee. The
future apostle was therefore born a member of the most religious race
in the world, spoke the language of the most cultivated race in the
world, and lived under the most masterly and fully organized
government. All these three influences left their mark on a soul which
was always impressible towards everything great and noble. But his
nature was not only impressible; it was endowed as well by God with a
strong pure heat which could fuse truths together into an orderly and
well-proportioned form, and purge away the falsehoods which clung to
truths. It is plain that he was not a Pharisee of the baser sort, even
when he believed that the Messiah was a pretender. Righteousness was
his ideal, and because he hated sin, a struggle raged between his
conscience and his lower instincts (Rom. vii. 7-25). He fiercely
persecuted the Christians, whom he regarded as traitors to their race
and their religion. On his way from Jerusalem to Damascus with a
warrant from the high priest to arrest the Christians, he was converted
(about A.D. 35) by a direct interposition of the risen Lord. Every
effort has been made by modern rationalists to explain this revelation
as either an imaginary vision or an inward light in his conscience.
The fact remains that St. Paul never speaks of it as a merely inward
reality, that he does not number his conversion among the ecstatic
states to which he was subject (2 Cor. xii. 1), and that he reckons the
appearance of Christ to himself as an outward appearance like the
appearances to the older apostles (1 Cor. xv. 5-8). We cannot get
behind the statements made by St. Paul and those made in Acts by his
friend, St. Luke. They show that he was met and conquered by Christ.
The appearance of Christ changed his whole career, transformed his
character, convinced him that Jesus was the Messiah, and that salvation
can only be obtained by faith in Him--that is, by a devoted adherence
to His Person and His teaching. After preaching Christ in Damascus, he
retired into the keen air and inspiring solitude of the Arabian desert.
{120} During this period the outline of his creed seems to have grown
clear and definite. It afterwards expanded and developed, as truly as
youth passes into manhood, but there is no evidence for any material
alteration having taken place after his return from Arabia. Many
Christians doubted the sincerity of his conversion, but St. Barnabas, a
conciliatory and kind evangelist, introduced him to St. Peter and St.
James at Jerusalem, A.D. 38. His life being threatened by the
Greek-speaking Jews, he departed for Tarsus. In due time he was
brought by St. Barnabas to aid the new mission to the Gentiles at
Antioch, a large and splendid city, admirably adapted for the first
propagation of the gospel among the heathen. In A.D. 46 he paid with
Barnabas a second visit to Jerusalem, taking thither a contribution
from Antioch to relieve the famine which raged there. In A.D. 47 he
went from Antioch in company with Barnabas on his first missionary
tour, visiting Cyprus and part of Asia Minor. On his return, A.D. 49,
he attended the Council at Jerusalem (Acts xv.; Gal. ii.), at which he
insisted that converts from paganism should not be required to submit
to circumcision and the other ceremonial rules of the Jewish Church.
Only once again has any Council of the Church had to discuss such a
burning and weighty question, and that once was at the Council of
Nicaea in 325, when it was determined to describe the fact that Jesus
is God in language which would admit of no possible mistake or
jugglery. At Jerusalem, in A.D. 49, the Church had to determine
whether it was sufficient for a man to be a Christian, or necessary for
him to become a Jew and a Christian simultaneously. Some Judaizing
Christians maintained the latter. Faithful to the teaching of our
Lord, who laid on no Gentile the necessity of adopting Judaism, the
Church decided that Gentile converts need not be circumcised.
In A.D. 49, soon after the Council at Jerusalem, St. Paul began a
second missionary journey, and crossed over into Europe, where he
founded several Churches, including those of Philippi and Thessalonica.
At Athens he seems to have made {121} but little impression, but at
Corinth, the busy and profligate centre of Greek commerce, he was more
successful. He stayed there for eighteen months, and during this stay
he wrote the Epistles to the Thessalonians. They are marked by the
attention given to _eschatology_, or doctrine of "the last things"--the
second coming of Christ, the resurrection of mankind, and the judgment.
This second journey closed with a visit to Jerusalem, and was followed
by an incident which shows that the apostle's long warfare with Judaism
was not over. The Judaizers had been defeated at the Council of
Jerusalem, and they were aware that the Gentiles were pouring into the
Church. So they attempted a new and artful plan for securing their own
predominance. They no longer denied that uncircumcised Christians were
Christians, but they tried to gain a higher status for the circumcised.
They asserted that special prerogatives belonged to the Messiah's own
people, and to the apostles whom He had chosen while He was on earth.
When St. Paul went from Jerusalem to Antioch in A.D. 52, St. Peter,
fearing to offend these Judaizers, was guilty of pretending to believe
that he agreed with them.[1] He refused to eat with Gentile
(uncircumcised) Christians. He thereby tried to compel the Gentiles to
"Judaize" (Gal. ii. 14), treating them as if they were an inferior
caste. St. Barnabas was carried away by St. Peter's example. St. Paul
then openly rebuked the leader of the apostles. It is on this incident
that F. C. Baur and the Tübingen school founded their fictitious
history of a doctrinal struggle between St. Paul and the original
apostles. The fundamental falsehood of this history lies in the fact
that there was no real difference of opinion between St. Peter and St.
Paul. The latter rebuked the former for "dissembling," _i.e._ for
acting on a special occasion in a {122} manner contrary to his
convictions and openly professed principles.
The Judaizing party not only tried to inoculate the Church with
Judaism, but strained every nerve to undermine the authority of St.
Paul. They said that he had no authority to preach Christ unless it
was derived through the Twelve, and they showed "letters of
commendation" (Gal. ii. 12; 2 Cor. iii. 1), to the effect that they
represented the first apostles and came to supply the defects of St.
Paul's teaching. With these opponents he was in conflict during his
third missionary journey, which began about August, A.D. 52. On this
journey he revisited Galatia and Phrygia, made a long stay at Ephesus,
and went to Macedonia and Greece. During this third missionary journey
he wrote 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, and Romans. It is hard to
determine the exact order in which they were written, as Galatians may
have been written before 1 Corinthians. These Epistles are the noblest
work of St. Paul. The persistent efforts of his opponents compel him
to defend both his principles and his character. Amid the perplexity
of the time, his clear and clarifying mind formulated Christian
doctrine so perfectly that he compels his readers to see what he sees.
This group of Epistles is mainly devoted to _soteriology_, or the
method by which God saves man. It contains abundant teaching about
God's purpose of saving us, the use of the Jewish law, the struggle
between our flesh and our spirit, the work of Jesus Christ in dying and
rising for us, the work of the Holy Spirit, and the morals and worship
of the Church. St. Paul's arguments are mainly addressed to believing
Christians, whom he wishes to preserve from Jewish or heathen error.
They are marked by the strongest light and shade. Nowhere does sin
appear more awful, and the love of God to undeserving man appear more
generous. At one moment the apostle writes as a logician, at another
as a mystic. Now he is stern, and now he is pathetic. In compass, in
variety, in depth, these four Epistles are great works of art, and all
the greater {123} because the writer esteems his intellectual powers as
nothing in comparison with the story of the Cross.
In May, A.D. 56, St. Paul was arrested at Jerusalem, after which he was
detained by the Roman procurator Felix for two years at Caesarea, and
then sent to Rome because he appealed to have his case tried by the
emperor. He arrived at Rome early in A.D. 59, and was imprisoned for
two years in his own hired house before his trial. During this
imprisonment he wrote the Epistles to the Colossians, Ephesians, and
Philippians, and the exquisite private letter to Philemon. In
Philippians there is a strong reprimand of the infatuation of trusting
in Jewish privileges, but it is plain from Colossians and Ephesians
that Gentile Christianity was already firmly established, and that in
Asia Minor the Judaizing heresies were becoming fainter and more
fanciful. St. Paul criticizes a Judaic Gnosticism, a morbid mixture of
Jewish ritual with that Oriental spiritualism which fascinated many
devotees in the Roman empire at this period. The Philippians do not
seem to have been infected with the same religious malaria as the
Christians who dwelt in the valley of the Lycus. But St. Paul in
writing to them, as to the Colossians and Ephesians, takes great pains
to show who Christ is and what our relation towards Him ought to be.
This group is therefore distinguished by its _Christology_.
St. Paul was released from his first imprisonment at Rome, though we
know no details of his release. He again resumed his missionary life,
and wrote the First Epistle to Timothy and that to Titus. According to
a tradition of very great antiquity, he visited Spain. But the changed
attitude of the Roman government towards the Christians soon cut short
his work. Earlier in his career the Roman officials had regarded the
new religion with easy though somewhat supercilious toleration. In 2
Thessalonians we find St. Paul apparently describing the Roman
authorities as the restraining power which hindered the malice of
antichristian Judaism from working revenge upon {124} the Church. At
Ephesus he had been personally protected from the mob by the men who
were responsible for the public worship of the Roman emperor. But
under Nero an active persecution of the Christians was set on foot, and
St. Paul was again imprisoned at Rome. During this last imprisonment
he wrote his Second Epistle to Timothy. This letter, like the First
Epistle to Timothy and that to Titus, deals specially with the
organization and ministry of the Church, and was intended to
consolidate the Church before the apostle's death. The martyrdom of
the apostle probably took place in A.D. 64. His tomb, marked by an
inscription of the 4th century, still remains at Rome in the church of
"St. Paul outside the walls," which stands near the scene of his
martyrdom. Unless the relics were destroyed by the Saracens who sacked
Rome in 846, they probably remain in this tomb. The festival of June
29, which in mediaeval times was kept in honour of St. Peter and St.
Paul, and which in our present English Prayer-book is wrongly dedicated
to St. Peter only, is probably not the day on which either of the
apostles suffered. It is the day on which their relics were removed
for safety to the catacombs in the time of the persecution of the
Christians by the Emperor Decius, A.D. 258.
[1] The above account places the dispute at Antioch before the third
missionary journey. Some writers of deserved repute place it in the
winter of A.D. 48, before the Council of Jerusalem.
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