estimate fairly the character of the man. During his whole life after
his conversion he was exposed not only to the hardships of travel,
sometimes in half-civilised districts, but to 'all the cruelty of the
fanaticism which rages like a consuming fire through the religious
history of the East from the slaughter of Baal's priests to the
slaughter of St. Stephen, and from the butcheries of Jews at Alexandria
under Caligula to the massacres of Christians at Adana, Tarsus, and
Antioch in the year 1909'--(Deissmann). It is one evil result of such
furious bigotry that it kindles hatred and resentment in its victims,
and tempts them to reprisals. St. Paul does speak bitterly of his
opponents, though chiefly when he finds that they have injured his
converts, as in the letter to the Galatians. Modern critics have
exaggerated this element in a character which does not seem to have been
fierce or implacable. He writes like a man engaged in a stern conflict
against enemies who will give no quarter, and who shrink from no
treachery. But the sharpest expression that can be laid to his charge is
the impatient, perhaps half humorous wish that the Judaisers who want to
circumcise the Galatians might be subjected to a severer operation
themselves (Gal. v. 12). The dominant impression that he makes upon us
is that he was cast in a heroic mould. He is serenely indifferent to
criticism and calumny; no power on earth can turn him from his purpose.
He has made once for all a complete sacrifice of all earthly joys and
all earthly ties; he has broken (he, the devout Jewish Catholic) with
his Church and braved her thunders; he has faced the opprobrium of being
called traitor, heretic, and apostate; he has 'withstood to the face'
the Palestinian apostles who were chosen by Jesus and held His
commission; he has set his face to achieve, almost single-handed, the
conquest of the Roman Empire, a thing never dreamed of by the Jerusalem
Church; he is absolutely indifferent whether his mission will cost him
his life, or only involve a continuation of almost intolerable hardship.
It is this indomitable courage, complete self-sacrifice, and
single-minded devotion to a magnificently audacious but not
impracticable idea, which constitute the greatness of St. Paul's
character. He was, with all this, a warm-hearted and affectionate man,
as he proves abundantly by the tone of his letters. His personal
religion was, in essence, a pure mysticism; one worships a Christ whom
he has experienced as a living presence in his soul. The mystic who is
also a man of action, and a man of action because he is a mystic, wields
a tremendous power over other men. He is like an invulnerable knight,
fighting in magic armour.
It is an interesting and difficult question whether we should regard the
intense moral dualism of the Epistle to the Romans as a confession that
the writer has had an unusually severe personal battle with temptation.
The moral struggle certainly assumes a more tragic aspect in these
passages than in the experience of many saintly characters. We find
something like it in Augustine, and again in Luther; it may even be
suggested that these great men have stamped upon the Christian tradition
the idea of a harsher 'clash of yes and no' than the normal experience
of the moral life can justify. But it is not certain that the first
person singular in such verses as 'O wretched man that I am! who shall
deliver me from this body of death?' is a personal confession at all. It
may be for human nature generally that he is speaking, when he gives
utterance to that consciousness of sin which was one of the most
distinctive parts of the Christian religion from the first. It does not
seem likely that a man of so lofty and heroic a character was ever
seriously troubled with ignominious temptations. That he yielded to
them, as Nietzsche and others have suggested, is in the highest degree
improbable. Even if the self-reproaches were uttered in his own person,
we have many other instances of saints who have blamed themselves
passionately for what ordinary men would consider slight transgressions.
Of all the Epistles, the Second to the Corinthians is the one which
contains the most intimate self-revelations, and few can read it without
loving as well as honouring its author.
We know nothing of the Apostle's residence at Jerusalem except the name
of his teacher. But it was at this time that he became steeped in the
Pharisaic doctrines which loamed the framework in which his earlier
Christian beliefs were set. It is now recognised that Pharisaism, far
from being the antipodes of Christianity, was rather the quarter where
the Gospel found its best recruits. The Pharisaic school contained the
greater part of whatever faith, loyalty and piety remained among the
Jewish people; and its dogmatic system passed almost entire into the
earliest Christian Church, with the momentous addition that Jesus was
the Messiah. A few words on the Pharisaic teaching which St. Paul must
have imbibed from Gamaliel are indispensable even in an article which
deals with Paul, and not with Paulinism.
The distinctive feature of the Jewish religion is not, as is often
supposed, its monotheism, Hebrew religion in its golden age was
monolatry rather than monotheism; and when Jahveh became more strictly
'the only God,' the cult of intermediate beings came in, and restored a
quasi-polytheism. The distinctive feature in Jewish faith is its
historical and teleological character. The God of the Jew is not natural
law. If the idea of necessary causation ever forced itself upon his
mind, he at once gave it the form of predestination. The whole of
history is an unfolding of the divine purpose; and so history as a whole
has for the Jew an importance which it never had for a Greek thinker,
nor for the Hellenised Jew Philo. The Hebrew idea of God is dynamic and
ethical; it is therefore rooted in the idea of Time. The Pharisaic
school modified this prophetic teaching in two ways. It became more
spiritual; anthropomorphisms were removed, and the transcendence of God
above the world was more strictly maintained. On the other hand, the
religious relationship became in their hands narrower and more external.
The notion of a covenant was defined more rigorously; the Law was
practically exalted above God, so that the Rabbis even represent the
Deity as studying the Law. With this legalism went a spirit of intense
exclusiveness and narrow ecclesiasticism. As God was raised above direct
contact with men, the old animistic belief in angels and demons, which
had lasted on in the popular mind by the side of the worship of Jahveh,
was extended in a new way. A celestial hierarchy was invented, with
names, and an infernal hierarchy too; the malevolent ghosts of animism
became fallen angels. Satan, who in Job is the crown-prosecutor, one of
God's retinue, becomes God's adversary; and the angels, formerly
manifestations of God Himself, are now quite separated from Him. A
supramundane physics or cosmology was evolved at the same time. Above
Zion, the centre of the earth, rise seven heavens, in the highest of
which the Deity has His throne. The underworld is now first divided into
Paradise and Gehenna. The doctrine of the fall of man, through his
participation in the representative guilt of his first parents, is
Pharisaic; as is the strange legend, which St. Paul seems to have
believed (2 Cor. xi. 3), that the Serpent carnally seduced Eve, and so
infected the race with spiritual poison. Justification, in Pharisaism as
for St. Paul, means the verdict of acquittal. The bad receive in this
life the reward for any small merits which they may possess; the sins of
the good must be atoned for; but merits, as in Roman Catholicism, may be
stored and transferred. Martyrdoms especially augment the spiritual
bank-balance of the whole nation. There was no official Messianic
doctrine, only a mass of vague fancies and beliefs, grouped round the
central idea of the appearance on earth of a supernatural Being, who
should establish a theocracy of some kind at Jerusalem. The righteous
dead will be raised to take part in this kingdom. The course of the
world is thus divided into two epochs--'this age' and 'the age to come.'
A catastrophe will end the former and inaugurate the latter. The
promised deliverer is now waiting in heaven with God, until his hour
comes; and it will come very soon. All this St. Paul must have learned
from Gamaliel. It formed the framework of his theology as a Christian
for many years after his conversion, and was only partially thrown off,
under the influence of mystical experience and of Greek ideas, during
the period covered by the letters. The lore of good and bad spirits (the
latter are 'the princes of this world' in I Cor. ii. 6, 8) pervades the
Epistles more than modern readers are willing to admit. It is part of
the heritage of the Pharisaic school.
It is very unlikely (in spite of Johannes Weiss) that St. Paul ever saw
Jesus in the flesh. But he did come in contact with the little Christian
community at Jerusalem. These disciples at first attempted to live as
strict members of the Jewish Church. They knew that the coming Messiah
was their crucified Master, but this belief involved no rupture with
Judaism. So at least they thought themselves; the Sanhedrin saw more
clearly what the new movement meant. The crisis came when numerous
'Hellenists' attached themselves to the Church--Jews of the Dispersion,
from Syria, Egypt, and elsewhere. A threatened rupture between these and
the Palestinian Christians was averted by the appointment of seven
deacons or charity commissioners, among whom Stephen soon became
prominent by the dangerously 'liberal' character of his teaching. Philo
gives important testimony to the existence of a 'liberal' school among
the Jews of the Dispersion, who, under pretext of spiritualising the
traditional law, left off keeping the Sabbath and the great festivals,
and even dispensed with the rite of circumcision. Thus the admission of
Gentiles on very easy terms into the Church was no new idea to the
Palestinian Jews; it was known to them as part of the shocking laxity
which prevailed among their brethren of the Dispersion. With Stephen,
this kind of liberalism seemed to have entered the group of 'disciples.'
He was accused of saying that Jesus was to destroy the temple and change
the customs of Moses. In his bold defence he admitted that in his view
the Law was valid only for a limited period, which would expire so soon
as Jesus returned as Messiah. This was quite enough for the Sanhedrin.
They stoned Stephen, and compelled the 'disciples' to disperse and fly
for their lives. Only the Apostles, whose devotion to the Law was well
known, were allowed to remain. This last fact, briefly recorded in Acts,
is important as an indication that the persecution was directed only
against the liberalising Christians, and that these were the great
majority. Saul, it seems, had no quarrel with the Twelve; his hatred and
fanaticism were aroused against a sect of Hellenist Jews who openly
proclaimed that the Law had been abrogated in advance by their Master,
who, as Saul observed with horror, had incurred the curse of the Law by
dying on a gibbet. All the Pharisee in him was revolted; and he led the
savage heretic-hunt which followed the execution of Stephen.
What caused the sudden change which so astonished the survivors among
his victims? To suppose that nothing prepared for the vision near
Damascus, that the apparition in the sky was a mere 'bolt from the
blue,' is an impossible theory. The best explanation is furnished by a
study of the Apostle's character, which we really know very well. The
author of the Epistles was certainly not a man who could watch a young
saint being battered to death by howling fanatics, and feel no emotion.
Stephen's speech may have made him indignant; his heroic death, the very
ideal of a martyrdom, must have awakened very different feelings. An
undercurrent of dissatisfaction, almost of disgust, at the arid and
unspiritual seminary teaching of the Pharisees now surged up and came
very near the surface. His bigotry sustained him as a persecutor for a
few weeks more; but how if he could himself see what the dying Stephen
said that he saw? Would not that be a welcome liberation? The vision
came in the desert, where men see visions and hear voices to this day.
They were very common in the desert of Gobi when Marco Polo traversed
it. 'The Spirit of Jesus,' as he came to call it, spoke to his heart,
and the form of Jesus flashed before his eyes. Stephen had been right;
the Crucified was indeed the Lord from heaven. So Saul became a
Christian; and it was to the Christianity of Stephen, not to that of
James the Lord's brother, that he was converted. The Pharisee in him was
killed.
The travelling missionary was as familiar a figure in the Levant as the
travelling lecturer on philosophy. The Greek language brought all
nationalities together. The Hellenising of the East had gone on steadily
since the conquests of Alexander; and Greek was already as useful as
Latin in many parts of the West. A century later, Marcus Aurelius wrote
his Confessions in Greek; and even in the middle of the third century,
when the tide was beginning to turn in favour of Latin, Plotinus
lectured in Greek at Rome. Christianity, within a few years after the
Crucifixion, had allied itself definitely with the speech, and
therefore inevitably with the spirit, of Hellenism. At no time since
have travel and trade been so free between the West of Europe and the
West of Asia. A Phrygian merchant (according to the inscription on his
tomb) made seventy-two journeys to Rome in the course of his
business-life. The decomposition of nationalities, and the destruction
of civic exclusiveness, led naturally to the formation of voluntary
associations of all kinds, from religious sects to trade unions;
sometimes a single association combined these two functions. The
Oriental religions appealed strongly to the unprivileged classes, among
which genuine religious faith was growing, while the official cults of
the Roman Empire were unsatisfying in themselves and associated with
tyranny. The attempt of Augustus to resuscitate the old religion was
artificial and unfruitful. The living movement was towards a syncretism
of religious ideas and practices, all of which came from the Eastern
provinces and beyond them. The prominent features in this new devotion
were the removal of the supreme Godhead from the world to a
transcendental sphere; contempt for the world and ascetic abnegation of
'the flesh'; a longing for healing and redemption, and a close
identification of salvation with individual immortality; and, finally,
trust in sacraments ('mysteries,' in Greek) as indispensable means of
grace or redemption. This was the Paganism with which Christianity had
to reckon, as well as with the official cult and its guardians. The
established church it conquered and destroyed; the living syncretistic
beliefs it cleansed, simplified, and disciplined, but only absorbed by
becoming itself a syncretistic religion. But besides Christians and
Pagans, there were the Jews, dispersed over the whole Empire. There were
at least a million in Egypt, a country which St. Paul, for reasons
unknown to us, left severely alone; there were still more in Syria, and
perhaps five millions in the whole Empire. In spite of the fecundity of
Jewish women, so much emphasised by Seeck in his history of the Downfall
of the Ancient World, it is impossible that the Hebrew stock should have
multiplied to this extent. There must have been a very large number of
converts, who were admitted, sometimes without circumcision, on their
profession of monotheism and acceptance of the Jewish moral code. The
majority of these remained in the class technically called
'God-fearers,' who never took upon themselves the whole yoke of the Law.
These half-Jews were the most promising field for Christian
missionaries; and nothing exasperated the Jews more than to see St. Paul
fishing so successfully in their waters. The spirit of propagandism
almost disappeared from Judaism after the middle of the second century.
Judaism shrank again into a purely Eastern religion, and renounced the
dangerous compromise with Western ideas. The labours of St. Paul made an
all-important parting of the ways. Their result was that Christianity
became a European religion, while Judaism fell back upon its old
traditions.
It is very unfortunate that we have no thoroughly trustworthy records of
the Apostle's earlier mission preaching. The Epistles only cover a
period of about ten years; and the rapid development of thought which
can be traced during this short time prevents us from assuming that his
earlier teaching closely resembled that which we find in the Letters.
But if, during the earlier period, he devoted his attention mainly to
those who were already under Jewish influence, we may be sure that he
spoke much of the Messiahship of Jesus, and of His approaching return,
these being the chief articles of faith in Judaic Christianity. This
was, however, only the framework. What attracted converts was really the
historical picture of the life of Jesus; his message of love and
brotherhood, which they found realised in the little communities of
believers; and the abolition of all external barriers between human
beings, such as social position, race, and sex, which had undoubtedly
been proclaimed by the Founder, and contained implicitly the promise of
an universal religion. We can infer what the manner of his preaching was
from the style of the letters, which were probably dictated like
extempore addresses, without much preparation. He was no trained orator,
and he thoroughly disdained the arts of the rhetorician. His Greek,
though vigorous and effective, is neither correct nor elegant. His
eloquence is of the kind which proceeds from intense conviction, and
from a thorough knowledge of Old Testament prophecy and psalmody--no bad
preparation for a religious teacher. If at times he argued like a Rabbi,
these frigid debates were as acceptable to ancient Jews as they are to
modern Scotsmen. And when he takes fire, as he deals with some vital
truth which he has lived as well as learned and taught, he establishes
his right to be called what he never aimed at being--a writer of genius.
Such passages as 1 Cor. xiii., Phil, ii., Rom. viii., rank among the
finest compositions in later Greek literature. Regarded merely as a
piece of poetical prose, 1 Cor. xiii. is finer than anything that had
been written in the Greek language since the great Attic prose-writers.
And if this was dictated impromptu, similar outbursts of splendid
eloquence were probably frequent in his mission-preaching. Their effect
must have been overwhelming, when reinforced by the flashing eye of the
speaker, and by the absolute sincerity which none could doubt who saw
his face and figure, furrowed by toil and scarred by torture.
In addressing the Gentiles, we may assume that he followed the customary
Jewish line of apologetic, denouncing the folly of idolatry--an aid to
worship which is quite innocent and natural in some peoples, but which
the Jews never understood; that he spoke much of judgment to come; and
especially that he contrasted the pure and affectionate social life of
the Christian brotherhood with the licentiousness, cruelty, injustice,
oppression, and mutual suspicion of Pagan society. This argument
probably struck home in very many 'Gentile' hearts. The old
civilisation, with all the brilliant qualities which make many moderns
regret its destruction, rested on too narrow a base. The woman and the
slave were left out, the woman especially by the Greeks, and the slave
by the Romans. Acute social inequalities always create pride, brutality,
and widespread sexual immorality. And when the structure which
maintained these inequalities is itself tottering, the oppressed classes
begin to feel that they are unnecessary, and to hope for emancipation.
When St. Paul drew his lurid pictures of Pagan society steeped in
unnatural abominations, without hope for the future, 'hateful and hating
one another,' and then pointed to the little flock of Christians--among
whom no one was allowed to be idle and no one to starve, and where
family life was pure and mutual confidence full, frank and seldom
abused--the woman and the slave, of whom Aristotle had spoken so
contemptuously, flocked into his congregations, and began to organise
themselves for that victory which Nietzsche thought so deplorable.
It is not necessary in this essay to traverse again the familiar field
of St. Paul's missionary journeys. The first epoch, which embraces about
fourteen years, had its scene in Syria and Cilicia, with the short tour
in Cyprus and other parts of Asia Minor. The second period, which ends
with the imprisonment in A.D. 58 or 59, is far more important. St. Paul
crosses into Europe; he works in Macedonia and Greece. Churches are
founded in two of the great towns of the ancient world, Corinth and
Ephesus. According to his letters, we must assume that he only once
returned to Jerusalem from the great tour in the West, undertaken after
the controversy with Peter; and that the object of this visit was to
deliver the money which he had promised to collect for the poor 'saints'
at Jerusalem. He intended after this to go to Rome, and thence to
Spain--a scheme worthy of the restless genius of an Alexander. He saw
Rome indeed, but as a prisoner. The rest of his life is lost in
obscurity. The writer of the Acts does not say that the two years'
imprisonment ended in his execution; and if it was so, it is difficult
to see why such a fact should be suppressed. If the charge against him
was at last dismissed, because the accusers did not think it worth while
to come to Rome to prosecute it, St. Luke's silence is more explicable.
In any case, we may regard it as almost certain that St. Paul ended his
life under a Roman axe during the reign of Nero.
'There is hardly any fact' (says Harnack) 'which deserves to be turned
over and pondered so much as this, that the religion of Jesus has never
been able to root itself in Jewish or even upon Semitic soil.' This
extraordinary result is the judgment of history upon the life and work
of St. Paul. Jewish Christianity rapidly withered and died. According to
Justin, who must have known the facts, Jesus was rejected by the whole
Jewish nation 'with a few exceptions.' In Galilee especially, few, if
any, Christian Churches existed. There are other examples, of which
Buddhism is the most notable, of a religion gaining its widest
acceptance outside the borders of the country which gave it birth. But
history oilers no parallel to the complete vindication of St. Paul's
policy in carrying Christianity over into the Græco-Roman world, where
alone, as the event proved, it could live. This is a complete answer to
those who maintain that Christ made no break with Judaism. Such a
statement is only tenable if it is made in the sense of Harnack's words,
that 'what Gentile Christianity did was to carry out a process which had
in fact commenced long before in Judaism itself, viz. the process by
which the Jewish religion was inwardly emancipated and turned into a
religion for the world.' But the true account would be that Judaism,
like other great ideas, had to 'die to live,' It died in its old form,
in giving birth to the religion of civilised humanity, as the Greek
nation perished in giving birth to Hellenism, and the Roman in creating
the Mediterranean empire of the Caesars and the Catholic Church of the
Popes. The Jewish people were unable to make so great a sacrifice of
their national hopes. With the matchless tenacity which characterises
their race they clung to their tribal God and their temporal and local
millennium. The disasters of A.D. 70 and of the revolt under Hadrian
destroyed a great part of the race, and at last uprooted it from the
soil of Palestine. But conservatism, as usual, has had its partial
justification. Judaism has refused to acknowledge the religion of the
civilised world as her legitimate child; but the nation has refused also
to surrender its life. There are no more Greeks and Romans; but the Jews
we have always with us.
St. Paul saw that the Gospel was a far greater and more revolutionary
scheme than the Galilean apostles had dreamed of. In principle he
committed himself from the first to the complete emancipation of
Christianity from Judaism. But it was inevitable that he did not at
first realise all that he had undertaken. And, fortunately for us, the
most rapid evolution in his thought took place daring the ten years to
which his extant letters belong. It is exceedingly interesting to trace
his gradual progress away from Apocalyptic Messianism to a position very
near that of the fourth Gospel. The evangelist whom we call St. John is
the best commentator on Paulinism. This is one of the most important
discoveries of recent New Testament criticism.