SUMMING-UP AND FORMULATION OF THE PROBLEM . . . [237]
INDEX . . . 251
ENDNOTES
PAUL AND HIS INTERPRETERS
[pg 001]
I
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD
_Hugo Grotius._ Annotationes in Novum Testamentum. 1641-1646.
_Johann Jakob Rambach._ Institutiones hermeneuticae sacrae. 1723.
_Siegmund Jakob Baumgarten._ Unterricht der Auslegung der heiligen
Schrift. (Instructions in the art of Expounding Holy Scripture.) 1742.
_Johann Christoph Wolf._ Curae philologicae et criticae. 1741.
_Johann August Ernesti._ Institutio interpretis Novi Testamenti. 1762.
(Eng. Trans., Biblical Interpretation of the New Testament, Edinburgh,
1832-1833.)
_Johann Salomo Semler._ Vorbereitung zur theologischen Hermeneutic.
(Introduction to Theological Hermeneutic.) 1760-1769.
Abhandlung von freier Untersuchung des Canons. (Essay on the free
Investigation of the Canon.) 1771-1775.
Neuer Versuch die gemeinnützige Auslegung und Anwendung des Neuen
Testaments zu befördern. (A New Attempt to Promote a Generally
Profitable Exposition and Application of the New Testament.) 1786.
Latin Paraphrases of the Epistles to the Romans (1769) and Corinthians
(1770, 1776).
_Johann David Michaelis._ Einleitung in die göttlichen Schriften des
Neuen Bundes. (Introduction to the Divine Scriptures of the New
Covenant.) 1750. (Eng. Trans. by H. Marsh, Cambridge, 1793.)
Übersetzung des Neuen Testaments. (Translation of the New Testament.)
1790.
Anmerkungen für Ungelehrte zu seiner Übersetzung des Neuen Testaments.
(Notes for Unlearned Readers on his Translation of the New Testament.)
1790-1792.
_Friedrich Ernst David Schleiermacher._ Über den sogenannten ersten
Brief des Paulus an den Timotheus. (On the so-called First Epistle of
Paul to Timothy.) 1807.
_Johann Gottfried Eichhorn._ Historisch-kritische Einleitung in das
Neue Testament. (Historical and Critical Introduction to the New
Testament.) 3 vols. 1814.
[pg 002]
_Gottlob Wilhelm Meyer._ Entwicklung des paulinischen Lehrbegriffs.
(The Development of the Pauline System of Doctrine.) 1801.
_Leonhard Usteri._ Entwicklung des paulinischen Lehrbegriffs. (The
Development of the Pauline System of Doctrine.) 1824.
_August Ferdinand Dähne._ Entwicklung des paulinischen Lehrbegriffs.
(The Development of the Pauline System of Doctrine.) 1835.
_Karl Schrader._ Der Apostel Paulus. 1830-1836.
_J. A. W. Neander._ Geschichte der Pflanzung und Leitung der
christlichen Kirche durch die Apostel. (History of the Planting and
Guidance of the Christian Church by the Apostles.) 1832. (Eng. Trans.
by J. E. Ryland, 1851.)
_W. M. Leberecht De Wette._ Erklärung der Briefe an die Römer,
Korinther, Galater und Thessalonicher. (Exposition of the Epistles to
the Romans (2nd ed., 1838), Corinthians, etc. (1841).)
_H. E. G. Paulus._ Des Apostels Paulus Lehrbriefe an die Galater- und
Römer-Christen. (The Apostle Paul’s Doctrinal Epistles to the Galatian
and Roman Christians.) 1831.
THE Reformation fought and conquered in the name of Paul. Consequently
the teaching of the Apostle of the Gentiles took a prominent place in
Protestant study. Nevertheless the labour expended upon it did not, to
begin with, advance the historical understanding of his system of
thought. What men looked for in Paul’s writings was proof-texts for
Lutheran or Reformed theology; and that was what they found.
Reformation exegesis reads its own ideas into Paul, in order to
receive them back again clothed with Apostolic authority.
Before this could be altered, the spell which dogma had laid upon
exegesis needed to be broken. A very promising beginning in this
direction was made by Hugo Grotius, who in his _Annotationes in Novum
Testamentum__(_2_)_ rises superior to the limitations of
ecclesiastical dogma. This work appeared in 1641-1646. The Pauline
Epistles are treated with especial gusto. The great Netherlander makes
it his business to bring out by patient study the simple literal
meaning, and besides referring to patristic exegesis, cites parallels
from Greek and Roman literature. He does not, however, show any
special insight into the peculiar character of the Pauline world of
thought.
[pg 003]
In the ensuing period the principle gradually became established that
exegesis ought to be independent of dogma. Pietism and Rationalism had
an equal interest in promoting this result. The accepted formula was
that Scripture must be interpreted by Scripture. This thought is
common ground to the two famous works on exegesis which belong to the
first half of the eighteenth century, the _Institutiones hermeneuticae
sacrae__(_3_)_ of Johann Jakob Rambach, which is written from the
stand-point of a moderate pietism, and Siegmund Jakob Baumgarten’s
rationalistically inclined “Instruction in the art of expounding Holy
Scripture.”_(_4_)_
On the soil thus prepared by pietism and rationalism it was possible
for a philologically sound exegesis to thrive. One of the most
important attempts in this direction is Johann Christoph Wolf’s _Curae
philologicae et criticae.__(_5_)_ This was regarded as authoritative
for several decades, and even later is frequently drawn on by
exegetes, either with or without acknowledgment. The merit of having
gained the widest recognition for the principles of philological
exegesis belongs to Johann August Ernesti, the reformer of the St.
Thomas’s School at Leipzig and the determined opponent of its famous
“Preceptor,” Johann Sebastian Bach. His _Institutio interpretis Novi
Testamenti_ appeared in 1762._(_6_)_ It is on the plan of the
“Hermeneutics” of Rambach and Baumgarten, and deals with grammar,
manuscripts, editions, translations, patristic exegesis, history and
geography as sciences ancillary to exegesis.
But Ernesti’s work suffices to show that the undogmatic philological
method did not in itself lead to any [pg 004] result. Its author is in
reality by no means free from dogmatic prepossessions, but he
skilfully avoids those questions which would bring him into conflict
with Church doctrine. In fact the use he makes of philology is more or
less formal. He does not venture to treat the books of the New
Testament without prepossession as witnesses from the literature of a
distant period, and to show the peculiar mould in which Christian
ideas are there cast in comparison with subsequent periods and with
the period for which he writes. He did not realise that the
undogmatic, philological method of exegesis must logically lead to a
method in which philology is the handmaid of historical criticism.
His great contemporary, Johann Salomo Semler, ventures to give
expression to this truth, and so becomes the creator of historical
theology. In his theoretical works on the Scriptures and on
exegesis—“Introduction to theological Hermeneutics”
(1760-1769),_(_7_)_ “Essay on the free Investigation of the Canon”
(1771-1775),_(_8_)_ “A new attempt to promote a generally profitable
Exposition and Application of the New Testament” (1786)_(_9_)_—the
Halle professor explains again and again what is to be understood by a
“historical” method of exegesis. He demands that the New Testament
shall be regarded as a temporally conditioned expression of Christian
thought, and examined with an unprejudiced eye. In making this claim
he does not speak as a [pg 005] disinterested representative of
historical science, but makes it in the name of religion. If religion
is to develop progressively and purify itself into an ethical belief,
the special embodiments which it has received in the past must not lay
the embargo of a false authority upon its progress. We must
acknowledge to ourselves that many conceptions and arguments, not only
of the Old Testament but also of the New, have not the same
significance for us as they had for the early days of Christianity. In
his work of 1786, Semler even demands that “for present day Christians
there should be made a generally useful selection from the discourses
of Jesus and the writings of the Apostles, in which the local
reference to contemporary readers shall be distinguished or
eliminated.”
This theory of historical exegesis is carried out in dealing with the
great Pauline Epistles. Semler points the way to the critical
investigation of the Apostle’s thought. He gives paraphrases of the
Epistle to the Romans and the Epistles to the Corinthians, and
attempts to make clear the content and the connection of thought by a
paraphrastic and expanded rendering of each individual verse._(_10_)_
Exegesis is no longer to be encumbered with a panoply of erudition; it
is no longer to be interpenetrated with homiletic and dogmatic
considerations, and to defer to the authority of the old Greek
expositors, who, “when it is a question of historical arguments, had
no better or clearer knowledge than we have ourselves.” It must let
the Scriptural [pg 006] phrases say openly and freely what they mean
in their literal sense, and devote itself simply to that
dispassionate, objective study of facts which has hitherto been too
much neglected.
The importance of the paraphrases does not however consist, as might
be supposed, in their exhibiting the distinctive character of the
Pauline trains of thought in comparison with the views of the other
New Testament writers. By his use of a paraphrastic rendering of the
text Semler puts an obstacle in the way of his gaining an insight into
the specifically Pauline reasoning, and unconsciously imports his own
logic into the Apostle’s arguments.
On the other hand, his brilliant powers of observation enable him to
call attention to some fundamental problems of literary criticism. He
is the first to point out that we do not possess the Pauline Epistles
in their original form, but only in the form in which they were read
in the churches. The canonical Epistle is therefore not, as a matter
of _a priori_ certainty, identical with the historical letter. It is
quite possible, he argues, that the letters as read in the churches
were produced by joining together, or working up together, different
letters, and also that written directions and messages, which
originally existed in a separate form, were attached in later copies
to the Epistles in order that no part of the heritage left by the
Apostle might be lost.
On the basis of considerations of this kind Semler arrives at the
result that the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of Romans did not
belong to the original Epistle. The sixteenth is, in his view, a
series of greetings which Paul—who, it is assumed, was writing from
Ephesus—gave to the bearers of the Epistle to be conveyed to the
churches which they would visit on their way through Macedonia and
Achaia. In the ninth chapter of 2 Corinthians there is preserved, he
thinks, a writing intended for another city in Achaia, which was only
later welded into the Epistle to the Corinthians. From the [pg 007]
fourteenth verse of the twelfth chapter of 2 Corinthians to the close
of the thirteenth chapter we have to assume the presence of a separate
writing, of later date than the original Second Epistle to the
Corinthians. Thus Semler takes the first steps upon the road of
literary hypothesis. Theology at first took little notice of these
investigations. In the third edition of his “New Testament
Introduction” (1777),_(_11_)_ the great Göttingen philologist and
theologian J. D. Michaelis treats the letters of the Apostle in a
quite uncritical spirit, and does not enter at all into the literary
problems; in his “Translation” and “Exposition” of the New
Testament_(_12_)_ he follows the old tracks and makes no attempt to
carry out the task which Semler had assigned to historical exegesis.
In general the eighteenth century, after Semler, contributed very
little to the investigation of Paulinism. Schleiermacher was the first
to take a step forward, when, in a letter to Gass, he expressed his
doubts as to the genuineness of I Timothy._(_13_)_
Shortly before the battle of Jena—so he recounts in the preface—he had
communicated his doubts to his friend, but had not got the length of
setting them forth in a reasoned argument. “The battle—though indeed
it ended all too quickly—the consequent unrest in the town, and even
in the house, the confused hurrying to and fro, the sight of the
French soldiers, which was interesting in so many ways . . . the still
incomprehensible blow which struck our University even before you
left, and the sad sight of the students saying their farewells and
taking their departure,—these were certainly not the surroundings [pg
008] in which to set up a critical judgment-seat. Although, on the
other hand, you would perhaps have been more ready then, when all
seemed lost, to give up a New Testament book, than you are now.” The
verbal promise then given but not fulfilled is now discharged in
writing.
Schleiermacher bases his argument against I Timothy upon 2 Timothy and
Titus. While the same general conceptions are present in the longer
letter as in the two shorter ones, they are not there found in the
natural connections in which they occur in the others. It makes the
impression of being a composite structure, and in its vocabulary, too,
shows remarkable differences from the remaining letters taken as a
whole.
Strictly speaking it was not Schleiermacher the critic, but
Schleiermacher the aesthete who had come to have doubts about 2
Timothy. The letter does not suit his taste. He fails to perceive
that, so far as the language goes, the two other letters diverge from
the rest of the Pauline Epistles in the same way as I Timothy, and
that they also show the same looseness and disconnectedness; only
that, in consequence of their smaller extent, it is not so striking.
And, most important of all, it escapes him that as regards their ideas
all three letters agree in diverging from the remainder of the Pauline
Epistles.
Schleiermacher’s omissions are supplied by Eichhorn in his well-known
Introduction._(_14_)_ He lays it down that the three Epistles are all
by the same author, and are all spurious. His criticism deals first
with the language and thought of the letters, which he shows to be
un-Pauline; then he argues that the implied historical situations
cannot be fitted into the life of the Apostle, as known to us from the
remaining letters and the Acts of the Apostles; finally, he points to
the unnaturalness of the relation [pg 009] between Paul and his
helpers as it is represented by these Epistles.
The Apostle, he points out, gives them in writing exhortations and
directions which on the assumption of a real personal acquaintance and
a long period of joint work with them are in any case unnecessary, and
become much more so from the fact that the letters look forward to an
early meeting. From this Eichhorn concludes that “some one else has
put himself in Paul’s place,” and he sees no possibility of the
success of any attempt to defend the genuineness of the Epistles
against the arguments which he has brought forward. In particular he
gives a warning against the seductive attempt to save the genuineness
of 2 Timothy by the assumption of a second imprisonment. No
hypothesis, he declares, can in any way help the Pastorals, since they
must be pronounced from internal evidence—because of their divergence
from the remaining Epistles—not to be by the Apostle. This was a long
step forward. The circle of writings which have come down under the
name of Paul had undergone a restriction which made it possible to
give an account of his system of thought without being obliged to find
a place in it for ideas which already have a quite early-Catholic
ring.
Ten years after Eichhorn’s literary achievement, in the year 1824, the
Swiss theologian Leonhard Usteri, a pupil of Schleiermacher’s,
published his “Development of the Pauline System of Doctrine,”_(_15_)_
which is generally regarded as the starting-point of the purely
historical study of Paulinism, the first attempt to give effect to the
demands of Semler._(_16_)_
Usteri wishes to show the subjective imprint and [pg 010] enrichment
which ordinary Christianity received at the hands of the Apostle, and
he sees in the Epistle to the Galatians the outline of his whole
doctrine. He does not, however, venture to give full recognition to
the idea of a real antithesis between the Pauline conceptions and
those of the primitive Apostles, and consequently is led to soften
down the peculiarities of the former so far as possible. The spirit of
Schleiermacher, which tended to level down everything of a historical
character, influences the book more than the author is aware._(_17_)_
A peculiar interlude in the investigation of Paulinism was due to the
Heidelberger H. E. G. Paulus._(_18_)_ He published, in the year 1831,
a study of the Epistles to the Galatians and Romans, which was in
reality an essay on the Apostle’s system of doctrine. The work is
undertaken entirely in the interests of a rationalism bent on opposing
the reaction to orthodoxy.
According to the arguments of Paulus it is not the case that the
letters speak of expiatory suffering and imputed righteousness. Paul
cannot have upheld “legality” as against “morality” and have
maintained an “unpurified conception of religion.” The “chief
sayings,” the characteristic terms, are to be given a purely moral
interpretation. The Apostle means that “faith in Jesus” must become in
us “the faith of Jesus,” and the narrower conception of righteousness
must be enlarged into the [pg 011] conception of “the righteousness of
God.” The “righteousness of God” betokens righteousness such as it
exists in God, and is demanded by Him in man’s spirit as its “true
good,” “the only real atonement which brings us into harmony with the
Deity.” Thus a proper interpretation enables us to discover in these
writings “the agreement between the Gospel and a rational faith.”
The book appeared two or three decades too late. The rationalism which
it represents had had its day. But there is something imposing in this
determined wresting of the Apostle’s views. It is parallel to that
which was practised by the Reformation. The latter interpreted the
whole of Paulinism by the passages on the atoning death, and ignored
the other thoughts in the Epistles. The Heidelberg rationalist starts
from the conceptions connected with the “new creature,” which were
later to be described as the ethical system of the Apostle, and
interprets everything else by them.
The fact that the two views—the only ones which endeavoured to grasp
Paulinism as a complete, articulated system—thus stand over against
each other antithetically is significant for the future. Critical
study in the course of its investigations was to come to a point where
it would have to recognise both views as justified, and to point out
the existence in Paul of a twofold system of doctrine—a juridical
system based on the idea of justification, and an ethical system
dominated by the conception of sanctification—without at first being
able to show how the two are interrelated and together form a unity.
[pg 012]
II
BAUR AND HIS CRITICS
_Ferdinand Christian Baur._ Die Christuspartei in der korinthischen
Gemeinde. (The Christ-party in the Corinthian Church.) Appeared in the
_Tübinger Zeitschrift für Theologie,_ 1831 and 1836. Über Zweck u.
Veranlassung des Römerbriefs (Purpose and occasion of Rom.), ib. 1836.
Die sogenannten Pastoralbriefe. (The so-called Pastoral Epistles.)
1835.
Paulus der Apostel Jesu Christi (1st ed., 1845; 2nd ed., 1866-67).
(Eng. Trans. by “A. P.” and A. Menzies, 1873-75.)
Beiträge zu den Briefen an die Korinther, Thessalonicher und Römer.
(Contributions to the elucidation of the Epistles to the Corinthians,
Thessalonians and Romans.) _Tübinger Jahrbücher für Theologie._
1850-57.
Vorlesungen über neutestamentliche Theologie. 1864. (Lectures on
New-Testament Theology.)
Vorlesungen über die christliche Dogmengeschichte. (Lectures on the
History of Dogma.) Vol. i., 1865.
_Albert Schwegler._ Das nachapostolische Zeitalter. 1846. (The
Post-Apostolic Age.)
_Carl Wieseler._ Chronologie des apostolischen Zeitalters. 1848. (The
Chronology of the Apostolic Age.) On the Pauline Epp., 225-278.
_Albrecht Ritschl._ Die Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche. (The
Origin of the Early Catholic Church.) 1st ed., 1850; 2nd ed., 1857.
_Gotthard Viktor Lechler._ Das apostolische und nachapostolische
Zeitalter. (The Apostolic and Post-Apostolic Age.) 1852. (Eng. Trans.
by A. J. K. Davidson, Edinburgh, 1886.)
_Richard Adalbert Lipsius._ Die paulinische Rechtfertigungslehre. (The
Pauline Doctrine of Justification.) 1853.
IN the fourth number of the _Tübinger Zeitschrift für Theologie_ for
the year 1831, F. C. Baur gave to the study of Paulinism a new
direction, by advancing the opinion that the Apostle had developed his
doctrine in complete opposition to that of the primitive Christian
community, and that only when this is recognised can we expect to
grasp the peculiar character of the Pauline ideas.
[pg 013]
The great merit of the Tübingen critic was that he allowed the texts
to speak for themselves, to mean what they said. On the ground of the
striking difference between Acts and Galatians regarding Paul’s
relation to the original Apostles, and in view of the divisions and
contentions which reveal themselves in the Epistles to the
Corinthians, Baur concludes that in the early days of Christianity two
parties—a Petrine party or party of the original Apostles, and a
Pauline party—stood opposed to one another, holding divergent views on
the subject of the redemption wrought by Christ.
In the gradual adjustment of these differences he sees the development
which led up to the formation of the early Catholic Church, and he
traces the evidence for this process in the literature. He thinks he
can show that the two parties gradually approached each other, making
concessions on the one side and the other, and finally, under the
pressure of a movement which was equally inimical to both of them—the
Gnosticism of the early part of the second century—they coalesced into
a single united Church.
The recognition of the character and significance of Gnosticism makes
it possible for Baur to introduce a new kind of criticism. Before him
it was only possible to arrive at the negative result that a writing
was not by the author to whom it was traditionally ascribed. Now,
according to him, it is possible to determine to what period it
belongs. It is only necessary to show what position it occupies in the
process of reconciliation of the two parties, and, especially, whether
it deals with speculative error. This Baur calls “positive” criticism.
He applies it in the first place to the Pastoral Epistles, and argues
that the heretics combated in them do not belong to primitive
Christianity but are representatives of the Gnostic movement of the
second century. By the “myths and genealogies” here mentioned are
meant the great speculative systems which are known from Church
history. The description given of the heretics is [pg 014]
intentionally couched in terms which are neither too general nor too
special, in order to sustain the fiction that the false doctrine
arising at this later period only revives a movement which had already
been attacked and defeated by Paul.
That neither the assumption of a second imprisonment, nor any other
possible or impossible hypothesis, can restore to the Pastorals their
lost genuineness is as firm a conviction with Baur as it was with
Eichhorn.
In the course of his study of the Pastoral Epistles the Tübingen
master had expressed the opinion that the criticism of the Pauline
writings would probably not “come to a halt” with these Epistles. The
results of his further study were offered ten years later (1845) in
the brilliantly written work, “Paul the Apostle of Jesus Christ.” He
here treats first the life and work, then the letters, and lastly the
system of doctrine. The result arrived at in his investigation of the
documents is that only the Epistles to the Galatians, Corinthians, and
Romans can be confidently used as sources. Compared with these four,
all the others must be classed as “anti-legomena,” “which does not at
all imply the assertion that they are not genuine, but only indicates
the opposition to which their claim to genuineness is in some cases
already exposed, in others, may be exposed in the future, since there
is not a single one of the smaller Pauline epistles against which, if
the four main epistles are taken as the standard, there cannot be
raised some objection or other.” There are strong grounds for
questioning the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians; those to the
Thessalonians and Philippians are to be suspected because of the small
amount of dogma they contain. Baur’s reason for taking up such a
critical attitude towards the “smaller epistles” is that he is bound
to see in the heritage which has come down to us from the Apostle,
writings “which belong to the history of the party which based itself
on his name, and refer to the relations of the various parties,” and
show us how Gentile Christianity [pg 015] softens down its principles
and its peculiarities in order to meet the Jewish Christianity, which
on its part was going through a similar process, in the unity of the
early Catholic Church.
This radical view was attacked on all sides. It gave rise to a kind of
reaction even within the sphere of scientific theology, and led to the
calling in question of results which the labours of Eichhorn had
brought into general acceptance. Thus Carl Wieseler prefaces his
detailed study on the date of composition of the Pauline letters with
the remark that he held all the thirteen letters which are attributed
to the Apostle in the Canon to be authentic.
The Apostle’s system of doctrine culminates, according to Baur’s
representation, in the doctrine of the Spirit. In the brilliant
disquisitions of this section it is not so much the historian who
speaks as the pupil of Hegel. Paulinism is in its own way an
announcement of the unity of the subjective spirit with the objective
spirit. It is only from this point of view that a consciousness of
freedom such as is found in the Apostle of the Gentiles can exist. His
doctrine is concerned with union with Christ and with God by faith,
from which comes Spirit. “Righteousness” is “the proper relation
towards God, to place men in which is the highest duty of all
religion.”
Baur does not enter into the details of the Pauline doctrine of
justification. Detail is in fact somewhat neglected in his treatment.
Strictly speaking, he only includes that which can be in some way or
other expressed in Hegelian thought-forms, and that in which Paulinism
may be exhibited as representing absolute religion. Everything else is
thrown into the background, and receives only a partial
appreciation—or depreciation—in a separate chapter entitled “A special
discussion of some subsidiary dogmatic questions.” The characteristic
stamp of the Pauline doctrine is largely obliterated. In particular,
Paul’s views about the “last things” and the angels are not allowed to
become disturbingly prominent. Baur does not, indeed, hesitate
practically to eliminate [pg 016] them. The angelology he dismisses
with the following remark: “Of the angels the Apostle says little in
the letters which we have here to take into consideration, and that
little not dogmatically, but only metaphorically and in current
popular phraseology.”
The Tübingen scholar, in fact, uses the language of Paul in order to
set forth an imposing philosophy of religion instinct with Hegelian
influence. He gives no authentic account of the Apostle’s thought.
Nevertheless this book breathes the spirit of Paul the prophet of
freedom more fully than almost any other which has been devoted to
him. That is what gives it its remarkable attractiveness.
A year after the appearance of Baur’s “Paulus”—in 1846—Albert
Schwegler published his work on the post-apostolic age._(_19_)_ The
founder of the Tübingen School had hitherto only, so to speak, hinted
at the phases of development by which the early Church grew up out of
the controversy between the two parties. Schwegler undertakes a more
detailed description, and in doing so draws the lines so sharply that,
along with the greatness of the construction, its faults become
obvious. He has no deeper knowledge of Paulinism to impart.
Schwegler’s work had made it apparent from what side the Tübingen
position was open to attack, and on this side Albrecht Ritschl
proceeded to attack it in his well-known work on the origin of the
early Catholic Church._(_20_)_ The first edition (1850) is primarily
directed against Schwegler only; in the second (1857) he develops his
opposition of [pg 017] principle to Baur. He offers proof that the
earliest literature is not dominated by the negotiations for a
compromise between the two parties which was postulated by the
Tübingen School, and at the same time he attacks the basis of the
whole hypothetical construction. Baur, he urges, must have formed a
false conception of Jewish Christianity and Gentile Christianity,
since, on his view, it cannot be explained what was the common element
that held the two together. Had they only, as the Tübingen School was
obliged to assume, had the external bond of profession of faith in
Christ, it would never be possible to explain why both parties felt
the need of approaching one another by mutual concessions until
finally they coalesced in a single united Church.
The extent of the doctrinal material common to both must, Ritschl
argues, have been much greater than Baur represents. He has not
discharged the first duty of a historian of the Apostolic age, for
this requires “that the points should be clearly shown in which Jewish
Christianity and Paulinism coincide.” Baur had only given a negative
description of the Apostle’s doctrine, because he never gives any hint
“that Paul in very essential points held views which were common also
to Jewish Christianity.”
The problem regarding the nature of the unity between Paulinism and
primitive Christianity is thus recognised and formulated.
But it was not so easy for Ritschl to say exactly what constituted the
common element of doctrine, the existence of which he postulated. That
is especially evident in the second edition of “The Origin of the
Early Catholic Church.” He is then only willing to admit an
“opposition of practice” between Paul and the original apostles; the
area of this opposition is so restricted that “the essential agreement
in the leading ideas laid down by Christ will be only the more clearly
evident.” But since in Paulinism little enough is to be found of the
“leading [pg 018] ideas laid down by Christ” the proof of the
“essential agreement” remains a pious aspiration.
The only solid fact which Ritschl is able to adduce is the expectation
of the parousia. He assumes that it formed a very important part of
the common doctrinal material, and inclines to believe that Paulinism
and Jewish Christianity agreed in an ideal-real expectation of the
Second Coming in order to make common cause against Chiliasm, though
the latter in its coarser form only appeared later.
But in thus recognising eschatology Ritschl did not take the matter
very seriously. He uses the eschatology, in fact, only in order to
score a dialectical point against Baur, who had taken too little
account of it. In Ritschl’s “Justification and Reconciliation,” where
he later on had occasion to give a positive description of Paulinism,
he avoided the faintest hint of any eschatological colouring of the
Apostle’s ideas.
Another work which is occupied with the question of the unity between
Paulinism and primitive Christianity is Lechler’s “Apostolic and
Post-Apostolic Age.”_(_21_)_ The work is a prize essay in answer to
the problem proposed by the Teylerian Society in Holland, as to what
constituted “the absolute difference between the doctrine and attitude
of the Apostle Paul and that of the other Apostles,” by which the
“so-called Tübingen School endeavours to justify its hostile treatment
of Christianity.” Lechler opposes his teacher, but is not able to make
any advance upon Ritschl in producing evidence of the common elements
in the two doctrinal systems.
[pg 019]
Among the works which controverted the Tübingen view of Paulinism a
prominent place belongs to an early work of Richard Adalbert Lipsius
on “the Pauline doctrine of justification.”_(_22_)_ Along with his
scientific purpose the author also pursues a practical aim. He puts
himself at the service of the anti-rationalistic reaction which aimed
at restoring the old evangelical ideas to a position of honour, but in
doing so did not grasp hands with the orthodoxy of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, but took as its starting-point the ideas which
it finds present in the New Testament. In giving an objective
presentation of the central Pauline doctrine of justification he
believes that he is offering to the Protestantism of his time a view
which it can adopt as its own.
For the Apostle of the Gentiles, he argues, justification is not a
purely legal, forensic act, but also an ethical experience. Faith is
an ethical attitude which produces an inward righteousness. What is
really effectual in redemption is the fellowship with Christ in life
and death. It is brought about by the Spirit of God and of Christ, who
unites himself with the believer and transforms his personality.
Lipsius is the first to recognise the two trains of thought in
Paulinism, and to remark that the one is based upon the juridical idea
of justification, while the other has its starting-point in the
conception of sanctification—of the real ethical new creation by the
Spirit. He does not, as had always previously been done, make
everything of the one and nothing of the other, but aims at showing
how they are brought together in the Apostle’s thought.
The importance of the eschatological passages does not escape him. He
assumes that the thought of the parousia gives an inner unity to the
Apostle’s ideas.
It is true that Lipsius did not succeed in fully discharging the task
which he laid upon himself. He weakens down one set of ideas in the
interests of the other, [pg 020] and solders the two together
externally by the use of skilfully chosen expressions; but it remains
his great merit that he was the first to recognise this duality in
Paul’s thought. Had he not been pursuing a dogmatic interest alongside
of his scientific investigations he would doubtless have come to still
closer quarters with the problem.
While his critics were at work Baur had not been idle. From 1850
onwards he published in the _Tübinger Jahrbücher für Theologie,_ which
had superseded the _Tübinger Zeitschrift für Theologie,_ a series of
separate investigations of the Pauline Epistles._(_23_)_ He had
resolved that the final results of his study of the Apostle of the
Gentiles, with which he had begun his work, and which throughout his
whole lifetime had been his favourite study, should be set forth in a
new edition of his Paulus. This was to be the crown of his work.
But it was not to be. Death snatched him away from his task when he
had only just cast the first part into its new shape. The second and
most important, which was to treat the “system of doctrine,” he did
not reach._(_24_)_
To a certain extent a substitute for what was thus lost was furnished
by the “Lectures on New Testament Theology,” published by the master’s
son in 1864._(_25_)_ The chapter on Paulinism is very striking in its
brevity and clearness, and shows a great advance on the work of 1845.
At that time Baur had examined and interpreted Paul’s [pg 021]
teaching by the light of the Hegelian Intellectualism. Now he tries to
grasp his ideas historically and empirically, and to describe them
accordingly.
He discusses successively the Pauline views on sin and flesh; law and
sin; faith in the death of Christ; law and promise; law and freedom;
the righteousness of faith; faith and works; faith and predestination;
Christology; baptism and the Lord’s Supper; the parousia of Christ.
Eschatology, which in the first edition was quite overlooked, receives
here abundant recognition. Baur admits that the Apostle fully shared
the faith of the primitive community in the nearness of the parousia,
and was at one with it in all the conceptions referring to the End.
The Pauline theology as thus empirically apprehended has no longer the
bold effectiveness of the speculatively constructed system of the year
1845. It becomes apparent in Baur, and increasingly evident in the
work of subsequent investigators, that the self-consistency and
logical concatenation of the system become obscured and disturbed in
proportion as progress is made in the exact apprehension of the
individual concepts and ideas.
[pg 022]
III
FROM BAUR TO HOLTZMANN
MONOGRAPHS UPON PAUL
_Adolf Hausrath._ Der Apostel Paulus (1865, 172 pp.; biographical. 2nd
ed., 1872, 503 pp.).
_Ernest Renan._ St. Paul (1869, 570 pp.; biographical and
theological).
_Auguste Sabatier._ L’Apôtre Paul (1870, theological). (E.T. by A. M.
Hellier, 1891.)
_Otto Pfleiderer._ Der Paulinismus (1873; 2nd ed., 1890; theological).
(E.T. by E. Peters, 1877.)
_Carl Holsten._ Das Evangelium des Paulus (1st pt., 1880; 2nd pt.,
1898).
NEW TESTAMENT INTRODUCTIONS
_Eduard Reuse._ Geschichte der heiligen Schriften Neuen Testamentes
(5th ed., 1874). (E.T. History of the Sacred Scriptures of the New
Testament, by E. L. Houghton. Edin. 1884.)
_Christian Karl von Hofmann._ Pt, ix. of “Die Heilige Schrift.” 1881.
_Heinrich Julius Holtzmann._ Einleitung in das Neue Testament. 1885.
_Bernhard Weiss._ (Same title.) 1886. (E.T. by A. J. K. Davidson,
1887).
_Frédéric Godet._ Introduction au Nouveau Testament. 1893.
_Adolf Jülicher._ Einleitung in das Neue Testament. 1894. (E.T. by J.
P. Ward, 1904.)
_Theodor Zahn._ (Same title.) 1897. (E.T. of 3rd ed. 1909).
WORKS ON NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY
_Eduard Reuss._ Histoire de la théologie chrétienne au siècle
apostolique. 3rd ed., 1864. (E.T. by A. Harwood, 1872.)
_Bernhard Weiss._ Lehrbuch der biblischen Theologie des Neuen
Testaments. 1st ed., 1868; 6th ed., 1895. (E.T. Edin. 1882.)
_Christian Karl von Hofmann._ Pt. xi. of “Die Heilige Schrift.” 1886.
_Willibald Beyschlag._ Neutestamentliche Theologie. 1891. 2nd ed.,
1896. (E.T. Edin. 1895.)
[pg 023]
GENERAL WORKS ON PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY
_Ernest Havet._ Le Christianisme et ses origines (4 vols., 1884).
_Karl von Weizsäcker._ Das apostolische Zeitalter. 1886. (E.T. The
Apostolic Age, 1894.)
_Otto Pfleiderer._ Das Urchristentum. 1887. (E.T. of 2nd. altered ed.,
see later.)
STUDIES ON SPECIAL POINTS
_Carl Holsten._ Zum Evangelium des Paulus und Petrus. 1868.
_Fr. Th. L. Ernesti._ Die Ethik des Apostels Paulus. 1868.
_Emmanuel Friedrich Kautzsch._ De Veteris Testamenti locis a Paulo
apostolo allegatis. 1869.
_Franz Delitzsch._ Paulus des Apostels Brief an die Römer in das
Hebräische übersetzt und aus Talmud und Midrasch erläutert. 1870. (The
Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans translated into Hebrew and
illustrated from Talmud and Midrash.)
_Hermann Lüdemann._ Die Anthropologie des Apostels Paulus. 1872.
_Albrecht Ritschl._ Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und
Versöhnung, vol. ii., 1874. (The Christian Doctrine of Justification
and Reconciliation.) (E.T. of vols. i. and iii. only).
_H. H. Wendt._ Die Begriffe Fleisch und Geist bei Paulus. 1878. (The
Meaning of the Terms Flesh and Spirit in Paul’s Writings.)
_Louis Eugène Ménégoz._ Le Péché et la redemption d’après St Paul.
1882.
_Eduard Grafe._ Die paulinische Lehre vom Gesetz. 1884. (The Pauline
Teaching about the Law.)
_Gustav Volkmar._ Paulus von Damaskus zum Galaterbrief. 1887. (Paul,
from Damascus to Galatians). A biographical study, with a critical
comparison between the data of Galatians and Acts.
_Alfred Resch._ Agrapha. Ausserkanonische Evangelienfragmente. 1888.
On the Question whether Sayings of Jesus have been preserved in Paul’s
Writings.
_Otto Everling._ Die paulinische Angelologie und Dämonologie. 1888.
_Johann Gloël._ Der Heilige Geist in der Heilsverkündigung des Paulus.
1888. (The Holy Spirit in Paul’s Preaching of Salvation.)
_Hermann Gunkel._ Die Wirkungen des Heiligen Geistes nach der
populären Anschauung der apostolischen Zeit und nach der Lehre des
Apostels Paulus. 1888. (The Manifestations of the Holy Spirit
according to the Popular View of the Apostolic Age and according to
the Teaching of Paul.)
_Eduard Grafe._ Das Verhältnis der paulinischen Schriften zur
Sapientia Salamonis. 1892. (The Relation of the Pauline Writings to
the Book of Wisdom.)
_Adolf Deissmann._ Die neutestamentliche Formel “in Christo Jesu.”
1892. (The New Testament Formula “in Christ Jesus.”)
_Richard Kabisch._ Die Eschatologie des Paulus in ihren Zusammenhängen
mit dem Gesamtbegriff des Paulinismus. 1893. (Paul’s Eschatology in
Relation to his General System.)
[pg 024]
_W. Brandt._ Die evangelische Geschichte und der Ursprung des
Christentums. 1893. (The Gospel History and the Origin of
Christianity.)
_Ernst Curtius._ Paulus in Athen. 1894.
_E. Bruston._ La Vie future d’après St Paul. 1894.
_Hans Vollmer._ Die alttestamentlichen Zitate bei Paulus. 1895.
_Ernst Teichmann._ Die paulinischen Vorstellungen von Auferstehung und
Gericht und ihre Beziehung zur jüdischen Apokalyptik. 1896. (The
Pauline Views of Resurrection and Judgment and their Relation to the
Jewish Apocalyptic.)
_Theodor Simon._ Die Psychologie des Apostels Paulus. 1897.
_Paul Wernle._ Der Christ und die Sünde bei Paulus. (The Christian and
Sin in Paul’s Writings.) 1897.
CRITICISM AND EXEGESIS
_Bruno Bauer._ Kritik der paulinischen Briefe. 1850-1851-1852.
_Christian Hermann Weisse._ Beiträge zur Kritik der paulinischen
Briefe. 1867. (Contributions to the Criticism of the Pauline
Epistles.)
_H. J. Holtzmann._ Kritik der Epheser und Kolosserbriefe. 1872. Die
Pastoralbriefe. 1880.
_Eduard Reuss._ Les Épîtres pauliniennes (“La Bible,” pt. iii.). 1878.
_Georg Heinrici._ Das erste Sendschreiben des Apostels Paulus an die
Korinther. 1880. Das zweite, etc. 1887.
_P. W. Schmiedel._ Auslegung der Briefe an die Thessalonicher und
Korinther in Holtzmann’s “Handkommentar.” 1891. (Exposition of the
Epistles to the Thessalonians and Corinthians in Holtzmann’s
“Handkommentar.”)
_R. A. Lipsius._ Auslegung der Briefe an die Galater, Römer und
Philipper in Holtzmann’s “Handkommentar.” 1891.
WORKS OF A GENERAL CHARACTER, OR DEALING WITH COGNATE SUBJECTS
_Emil Schürer._ Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte. 1873. From the 2nd
ed. (1886) onwards the work bears the title: Geschichte des jüdischen
Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi. (E.T. History of the Jewish People
in the time of Jesus Christ. Edin. 1885.)
_Karl Siegfried._ Philo von Alexandrien als Ausleger des alten
Testaments an sich selbst und nach seinem geschichtlichen Einfluss
betrachtet. 1875. (Philo of Alexandria as an Expositor of the Old
Testament, considered both in himself and in regard to his historical
influence.)
_Ferdinand Weber._ System der altsynagogalen palästinenschen
Theologie. 1880. The second edition (1897) bears the title Jüdische
Theologie auf Grund des Talmud und verwandter Schriften. (Jewish
Theology exhibited on the basis of the Talmud and allied writings.)
_W. Gass._ Geschichte der christlichen Ethik. 1881.
_Theobald Ziegler._ Geschichte der christlichen Ethik. 1886.
[pg 025]
_Edwin Hatch._ The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the
Christian Church (Hibbert Lectures for 1888).
_Theodor Zahn._ Der Stoiker Epiktet und sein Verhältnis zum
Christentum. 1894.
_Adolf Harnack._ Dogmengeschichte, 3rd ed., 1894. (E.T. History of
Dogma, 1894-1899). Die Chronologie der altchristlichen Literatur bis
Eusebius. Vol. i., 1897.
PROBLEMS many and various confronted theological science when it
attempted to carry forward Pauline studies from the position in which
they had been left by Baur.
It was needful to clear up once for all the questions of literary
criticism, to examine in detail the individual conceptions and trains
of thought, to make clear the unity and inner connexion of the system,
to show what rôle Paulinism had played in the development of early
Catholic theology, and how far it was at one with primitive
Christianity, and to solve the question whether the material employed
in its construction was of purely Jewish, or in part of Greek origin.
In regard to the literary question a certain measure of agreement was
in course of time attained. Baur had distinguished three classes of
Epistles. In the first he placed, as beyond doubt genuine, Galatians,
Corinthians, and Romans; Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians,
Thessalonians, and Philemon formed the second class, being considered
uncertain; the Pastoral Epistles formed the third class, and were
regarded as proved to be spurious.
The views of the Tübingen master regarding the first class and the
third were adopted by the majority of scholars of the next generation.
No doubts were raised against the great Epistles; the Pastoral
Epistles were rejected. Holtzmann, in his work on the Letters to
Timothy and Titus,_(_26_)_ supplied a detailed argument in favour of
this conclusion.
[pg 026]
Of the letters of the intermediate class, the first to the
Thessalonians and that to the Philippians were by many rehabilitated
as Pauline. The second to the Thessalonians was rejected with
increasing confidence. A special problem was presented by the letters
to the Colossians and Ephesians, both because of their evident mutual
relationship and particularly in regard to certain parts of the
Epistle to the Colossians which made a strong impression of
genuineness. Holtzmann offered a solution which gave general
satisfaction. He adopted the hypothesis that Colossians was based upon
a genuine Pauline letter which had been worked over by a later
hand._(_27_)_ The redactor he identified with the author of the
Epistle to the Ephesians.
While there was this general consensus in the critical camp, which was
ratified in Holtzmann’s “Introduction,”_(_28_)_ the most diverse
opinions on special points are found. Some attempts were made to save
the [pg 027] genuineness of the second Epistle to the Thessalonians.
For some, the Epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians are genuine
throughout and represent a later phase of the Pauline theology. Nor
were there lacking attempts of all kinds to rehabilitate the Pastoral
Epistles. Those who did not venture to defend them as wholes make a
point of retaining at least the “personal references.”
The presentation of the Pauline teaching was, however, hardly affected
by the literary divergences. Not even the most conservative of the
critics had the boldness to place all the letters which have come down
under the name of Paul on a footing of equality. Even those who
regarded the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians as genuine did
not fuse ideas of these Epistles with the system extracted from the
four main Epistles, but presented them separately; and any who were
not converted to the rejection of the Pastorals at all events took the
precaution to give a separate chapter to the Pauline theology of these
writings._(_29_)_ If only the personal references might be saved,
these Epistles were as completely excluded from the presentation of
the Pauline system as if they had been pronounced wholly spurious.
Thus it continued to be the case, as it had been with Baur, that,
generally speaking, only the four main epistles were taken into
account in describing the Pauline system. The only significant change
was that the epistle to the Philippians began to be put on the same
footing, and, with a few exceptions, scholars no longer hesitated to
regard as Pauline the conception of the pre-existence of Christ which
is expressed in the section on the incarnation and obedience unto
death. It was realised that the main epistles also presuppose this
view, even if they do not state it so explicitly.
There were, of course, as time went on, attempts to [pg 028] explain
the composition of the four main epistles and Philippians as arising
by the working up together in each single epistle of two or more
originals, but these were not of any real importance for the study of
the Pauline doctrine. It was only a carrying out of the task suggested
by Semler, when he pointed out that we have not got the letters in
their original form but only as prepared for public reading by the
early Church. But the constitution of the Pauline material is scarcely
affected by the attempts to reconstruct these originals. They have a
purely literary interest.
Theology, so far as it was occupied with the study of the Pauline
system, did not allow itself to be at all disquieted by the rejection
of the whole of the Epistles proposed by Bruno Bauer in his “Criticism
of the Pauline Letters.”_(_30_)_ Nor was its confidence shaken by the
hypothesis that the letters have been worked over to a very large
extent and in a very thoroughgoing fashion. Christian Hermann Weisse’s
“Contributions to the Criticism of the Pauline Epistles,”_(_31_)_
which appeared in 1867, where he sets forth the justification and the
principles of this method, scarcely attracted any attention, as was
indeed the case with almost all the theological work of this writer.
The elucidation of the details of the Pauline doctrine is vigorously
pursued. An empirical definition is attempted of the terms sin, law,
conscience, justification, redemption, election, and freedom. A
special interest attaches to the study of the terms flesh and spirit.
After Holsten had endeavoured to trace the significance of the word
flesh, Lüdemann—in a brilliant work published in 1872—endeavoured to
arrive at a clear idea of the Apostle’s anthropology and its place in
his doctrine of salvation.
There are, so runs his thesis, two conceptions of [pg 029] “flesh” in
Paul. The one agrees with the naive, simple Jewish linguistic usage,
and means only the natural being of man. The other is much more
precise and belongs to a dualistic system of thought. In it the flesh
is defined as the necessary cause of sin and corruption and as the
absolute antithesis to spirit. On close examination it appears that
not merely two conceptions of “the flesh” existing side by side, but
two different doctrines of man’s nature, and consequently two
different conceptions of redemption, are found in Paul.
According to the system which connects itself with the simpler,
broader conception of the flesh, sin springs from the freedom of the
will; the law is assumed to be inherently possible of fulfilment;
redemption consists in a judgment of acquittal pronounced by God which
has its ground solely in His mercy; righteousness is imputed; the act
which brings redemption consists in faith. This circle of ideas, which
forms a self-consistent whole, is described by Lüdemann as the
“Jewish-religious,” the “juridical-subjective,” doctrine of
redemption. It has its source in reflection on the death of Jesus.
The other system of ideas is defined as the “ethico-dualistic.” In
contradistinction to the former it makes use of an “objectively real”
conception of redemption. It presupposes the more precise, narrower
conception of “the flesh,” and regards sin as proceeding from it by a
natural necessity. The law is the ferment of sin; death the natural
outcome of the flesh. Redemption can therefore only consist in the
abolition of the flesh. It is based on the communication of the
Spirit, which produces in the man a new creature and a real
righteousness. The redemptive act takes place in baptism. The ideas of
this second system are based on the Lord’s resurrection.
The coexistence of a juridical and an ethical system of thought in
Paul had been held by others before Lüdemann. What he did, however,
was to follow out each separately into its details, and to endeavour
to prove that all the contradictions and obscurities which are to be
observed [pg 030] in the conceptions and statements of the Pauline
theology find their ultimate explanation in the coexistence of two
different doctrines of man’s nature and two different doctrines of
redemption.
Hitherto the doctrine of redemption which appears alongside of the
juridical had been described as “ethical.” He remarks that it is
conceived not merely ethically, but actually physically, and therefore
defines it as ethico-physical. Further, he is of opinion that the two
theories are not co-equal in importance. He holds that in the
ethico-physical “the real view of the Apostle” is set forth, which
only tolerates the other alongside of it, and more and more tends to
push it aside wherever in the discussion Paul can count upon a
thorough understanding of the real essence of the matter.
In the Epistles the development, he thinks, takes the following
course. The Letter to the Galatians knows only the primitive Jewish
system of thought with reference to Christ’s vicarious suffering and
righteousness by faith; it does not advance to the bolder realistic
doctrine of righteousness.
In the Epistles to the Corinthians, according to Lüdemann, the Apostle
does not make much use of dogma. “The less advanced position of the
church there may have been one cause of this.” But the fundamental
conceptions of the ethico-physical series of ideas begin to appear in
them. Later on they attain to “constitutive importance” and “force
their way into the leading dogmatic statements.” In the first four
chapters of Romans the old view still finds expression. From the fifth
onwards the new tenets are developed fully and clearly.
This second series of ideas is not Jewish but Greek. Lüdemann’s view
is that Paul, “in the attempt to give dogmatic fixity to the doctrine
of salvation, presses on beyond the horizon of the Old Testament
consciousness and is carried in the direction of Hellenism.”_(_32_)_
The latter [pg 031] offered him a clearly-thought-out doctrine of man,
in which the dominant idea was the antithesis of flesh and spirit, and
made it necessary for him to think out a physically real doctrine of
redemption.
Pfleiderer_(_33_)_ also works out the two series of ideas, separating
them scarcely less sharply than Lüdemann does. But he prefers to
describe the series which runs parallel to the juridical, not as
physico-ethical, but as mystico-ethical. Moreover, he does not admit
that the ethical series expresses Paul’s view more adequately than the
other. He is of opinion also that the two sets of conceptions held an
equal place in the consciousness of the Apostle from the first. By
logically thinking out the Jewish idea of the atoning death, Paul was
led—according to Pfleiderer—to the anti-Jewish conclusion that
redemption is for all mankind, and that the law is consequently
invalidated. With this view there is united another, the source of
which lies in the Hellenistic anthropology. This is that redemption
consists in the influence exercised by the Holy Spirit upon the
fleshly creatureliness, in consequence of which sin and death are
abolished. The beginning of this process is to be sought in the
resurrection of Jesus Christ. In the close connexion of the Pharisaic
and Hellenistic elements “lies the characteristic peculiarity of the
genuine Pauline theology, which can only be rightly understood when
these two sides of it both receive equal attention.”
That in Paulinism two lines of thought go side by side is recognised
by almost all the investigators of this period. But in the importance
assigned to each of them great divergences appear. Reuss makes the
juridical ideas entirely subordinate to the ethical; in Ménégoz the
former are more strongly emphasised than the latter. No one except
Pfleiderer holds them to be on an exactly equal [pg 032] footing. In
general the ethical set of ideas is regarded as the original creation
of the Apostle, and is assumed to represent the deepest stratum in his
thought. Accordingly, it is generally also held that the doctrine of
the abolition of the flesh by the Spirit comes to its full development
later than the other, which is based upon the atonement and imputed
righteousness. Lüdemann’s theory of a development within the Pauline
doctrine is adopted by the majority, though only in a less pronounced
form.
It should be mentioned that the first important attempt to prove the
existence of different phases in the thought and life of Paul was made
by Sabatier._(_34_)_ His work _L’Apotre Paul_ appeared in 1870, two
years before Lüdemann’s study. At first the Apostle held, according to
the French scholar, a simple doctrine which can be psychologically
explained from his rabbinic training and his conversion. At the time
of his great controversies he was compelled to work out for himself a
philosophy of history which would enable him to prove that the law was
only a passing episode in the history of salvation, and that
justification by faith had always lain in the purpose of God. This
doctrine takes a dominant position in the Epistles to the Galatians,
Corinthians, and Romans. In the letters written during his
imprisonment the Apostle advances to a speculative, gnostic
development of his ideas. The coexistence of the juridical and ethical
series of ideas does not receive the same prominence in Sabatier as in
the later writers, who were influenced by Lüdemann and Pfleiderer.
When all is said and done, there is in the works of this period much
assertion and little proof regarding the development within Paulinism.
One almost gets the impression that the assumption of different stages
of thought was chiefly useful as a way of escaping the difficulty
about the inner unity of the system. This [pg 033] problem is,
however, rather instinctively felt than clearly grasped. The scholars
of this period do not feel it incumbent upon them to trace out the
connexion in which these disparate sets of ideas must have stood in
the view of Paul. They show no surprise at his passing so easily from
the one to the other and arguing from each alternately, and they do
not ask themselves how he conceived the most general ultimate fact of
redemption which underlies both of them. They do not seek to arrive at
a really fundamental view of the essence of Paulinism.
Their method of procedure in their presentation of the doctrine is
itself significant. They do not trace its development from one
fundamental conception, but treat it under dogmatic _loci,_ as Baur
had done in his New Testament Theology. The scheme is more or less
closely based on that of Reformation dogmatics. It is therefore
assumed _a priori_ that the Pauline theology can be divided into
practically the same individual doctrines as that of Luther, Zwingli,
and Calvin. Really, however, a preliminary question arises whether
this arrangement of the material does not introduce a wrong grouping
and orientation into the Apostle’s system, and whether it does not
destroy the natural order and relative importance of the thoughts,
falsify the perspective, tear asunder what ought not to be disjoined,
and render impossible the discovery of the fundamental idea in which
all the utterances find their point of union. This procedure is
innocently supposed to be scientific; as a matter of fact it leads to
the result that the study of the subject continues to be embarrassed
by a considerable remnant of the prepossessions with which the
interpretation of Paul’s doctrine was approached in the days of the
Reformation.
It is not less prejudicial when others, as for example
Holsten,_(_35_)_ adopt an arrangement of the material suggested by
modern dogmatics. As the Pauline theology has, if possible, less
affinity with the latter than with the Reformation theology, the error
is almost more serious.
[pg 034]
In general these scholars are quite unconscious of the decisive
importance which attaches to the arrangement and articulation of the
material. It has, indeed, always been weakness of theological
scholarship to talk much about method and possess little of it.
Otto Pfleiderer, alone, is not entirely in this state of innocence. He
has an inkling that the usual way of approaching the subject is not
wholly free from objection. In the first edition of his Paulinism
(1873)_(_36_)_ he raises the question whether the “genetic method” is
not demanded by the task of tracing out the organic progress of the
development of dogma in its Pauline beginnings. Practical
considerations, however, determine him “to arrange the matter very
much according to the customary dogmatic _loci,”_ while, however, at
the same time giving as much attention as possible to the position of
the dogma in the Pauline system.” He fears that the carrying out of
the genetic principle would lead to many repetitions, and would make
it more difficult to get a general view of “the way in which the
separate doctrines were connected with their bases.”
In order to salve his conscience he gives at the beginning, “by way of
an introductory outline,” a sketch of the “organic development of the
Pauline gnosis from its single root.” This general view—it occupies
twenty-seven pages—is the most important part of the whole book. The
succeeding chapters treat of sin, flesh, character of the law, aim of
the law, Christ’s atoning death, Christ’s death as a means of
liberation from the dominion of sin, the resurrection of Christ, the
Person of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of God and heavenly
Christ, the appearing of Christ in the flesh, faith, justification,
sonship, the beginning and the progress of the new life, the Christian
Church, the Lord’s Supper, the election of grace, the parousia, and
the end of the world.
Lüdemann was prevented by the task which he had set himself from
adopting the division according to _loci._ [pg 035] His object was
only to investigate Paul’s conception of the fleshly man in its
relation to his doctrine as a whole. In this way he was led to arrange
the ideas in their natural order and, without strictly intending to do
so, to give a general account of Paulinism, which is almost entirely
free from the defective arrangement of other works, permits something
of the logical articulation of the Apostle’s circle of ideas to
appear, and certainly penetrates more deeply than the rest into the
Apostle’s world of thought.
As the works of Reuss, Weiss, Pfleiderer, Holsten, Renan, Sabatier,
Ménégoz, Weizsäcker, do not aim at understanding and showing the
development of this doctrine from a single fundamental thought, there
are no real divergences in the general view which they take of the
system. The differences of opinion with their predecessors which the
authors express in their text and notes relate, in point of fact, only
to details and minutiae, surprising as this may at first sight appear.
The plan and design of the system are in general everywhere the same;
the differences regard only the mixing and application of the colours,
and the question how far Greek influences are to be recognised.
In going through these works one after another, one is surprised to
observe how great is their fundamental resemblance. At the same time
there is something curiously “elusive” about them. At a given point
one might be inclined to think that one of the authors was formulating
a thought more clearly, or giving it more exclusive importance than
the others; and one is just about to note this as a special
characteristic of his view. A few pages later, however, or in a
following chapter, one finds additions or reservations which show that
he does not really think differently from the rest. The differences
lie not so much in the actual conception as in the literary
presentation, and in the manner in which the material, which is
essentially a whole, is parcelled out among the different _loci._
There is thus nothing to be [pg 036] gained by analysing the various
conceptions one by one and comparing them with one another. Since
there is no real difference of fundamental view, the comparison would
lose itself in endless and unessential detail.
To the general impression of monotony is to be added that of
complexity. At the end of each of these works one is inclined to
inquire whether the author really means to ask the reader to regard
what is here offered as representing a system of thought which once
existed in the brain of a man belonging to early Christianity, and was
capable of being understood by his contemporaries. All the arts of
literary presentation are employed to subtilise the conceptions, to
describe the thoughts with exactitude, and to bring connexion and
order into the chaos of ideas. But the result gives no satisfaction.
No real elucidation and explanation of Paulinism is attained. The
resulting impression is of something quite artificial.
The welcome which these authors’ works received from their
contemporaries shows that the latter saw in them an advance in the
knowledge of Paulinism. They felt them to be satisfactory. That only
means that the readers’ presuppositions and requirements lay within
the same limitations as those of the authors.
What had been the result arrived at? A description of the Pauline
doctrine, a remarkably detailed description, but nothing more. That
doubtless implied a certain progress. It did not, however, extend so
far as the authors and their readers assumed. Both innocently supposed
that in the description they possessed at the same time an
explanation—as though the descriptive anatomy of this organism
sufficed to explain its physiology. They were unconscious that they
had so far only looked at Pauline thought from without, and had never
gained any insight into the inner essence of the system.
In these works the Apostle’s statements are quoted one after another,
and developed in his own words. The authors think they have discharged
their task when they [pg 037] have so arranged the course of the
investigation that all important passages can be respectably housed.
The odd thing is that they write as if they understood what they were
writing about. They do not feel compelled to admit that Paul’s
statements taken by themselves are unintelligible, consist of pure
paradoxes, and that the point that calls for examination is how far
they are thought of by their author as having a real meaning, and
could be understood in this light by his readers. They never call
attention to the fact that the Apostle always becomes unintelligible
just at the moment when he begins to explain something; never give a
hint that while we hear the sound of his words the tune of his logic
escapes us.
What is his meaning when he asserts that the law is abolished by the
death of Jesus—according to other passages, by His resurrection? How
does he represent to himself the process by which, through union with
the death and resurrection of the Lord a new creaturehood is produced
in a man, in virtue of which he is released from the conditions of
fleshly existence, from sin and death? How far is a union possible
between the natural man, alive in this present world, and the
glorified Christ who dwells in heaven; and one, moreover, of such a
kind that it has a retrospective reference to His death? The authors
we have named do not raise questions of this kind. They feel no need
to trace out the realities which lie behind these paradoxical
assertions. They take it for granted that Paul has himself explained
his statements up to a certain point—so far, in fact, as this is
possible in the world of feeling to which religion belongs.
This self-deception is made the more easy for them by the fact that
they are accustomed to clothe their own religious views in Pauline
phraseology, and consequently they come to treat as the authentic
logic of Paul, arguments which they have unconsciously imported into
their account of his teaching. They fail to reckon with the
possibility that the original significance of his utterances [pg 038]
may rest on presuppositions which are not present to our apprehension
and conception. For the same reason they all more or less hold the
opinion that what they have to do with is mainly a psychological
problem. They assume that the Pauline system has arisen out of a
series of reflexions and conclusions, and would be as a whole clear
and intelligible to any one who could succeed in really thinking
himself into the psychology of the rabbinic zealot who was overpowered
by the vision of Christ on the road to Damascus.
The writer who goes furthest in this direction is Holsten. In his work
on the “Gospel of Paul and of Peter”_(_37_)_ he describes how Paul,
while he was persecuting the new faith, was, as a Jewish thinker,
occupied with the thought of the offence of the cross and the alleged
resurrection. While still a fanatical zealot “he constantly carried
with him in his consciousness the elements of the Messianic faith,
even though as negative and negated.” By the keenness of his
theological dialectic he was compelled to imagine what the alleged
facts would really signify if the belief of the disciples were
justified. The “principle of the Messianic faith” was, in him, “alive
in greater definiteness than even in the consciousness of the
followers of the Messiah whom he persecuted.” The Messiahship of Jesus
could not for him take its place as a hope and faith within the Jewish
system of thought and religious life, [pg 039] but necessarily implied
the destruction of what he had hitherto held to be true. Thus the
persecutor had in principle thought out for himself to its ultimate
consequences the revolution which would result from the acceptance of
the Messiahship of Jesus. And this he translated into word and deed
after he had experienced the vision on the Damascus road.
Other writers take as the starting-point for their psychological
arguments the passage in Romans vii., where Paul depicts the despair
of the man who recognises that the law, although it is spiritual and
was given with a view to life, can only in the fleshly man produce
sin, condemnation, and death. What we there read concerning the
struggle between the natural, powerful will of the flesh and the law,
is, they think, written from the point of view of the pre-Christian
consciousness of the Apostle. He had experienced this agony of soul,
and it was by this that the Jewish religious attitude had been broken
down in him. Therefore in his Gospel he does not desire to retain
anything from the faith of his fathers.
These two main lines of psychological theory are followed for a longer
or shorter distance in all the works of this period. Hand in hand with
this psychologising goes a tendency to modernisation. The scholars of
this period spiritualise Paul’s thought. The transformation varies in
extent for the different ideas. The statements about the atonement and
imputed righteousness are the least affected by it. What is
unintelligible in these is put down to the account of the Jewish
Rabbinic mode of thought in which Paul is supposed to be held
prisoner. On the other hand, the conceptions regarding union with
Christ in his death and passion, and the new life in Him through the
Spirit, are subjected to paraphrase and explanation until nothing of
the realistic sense is left remaining. The question is not faced why
Paul, if he wanted to say anything so “spiritual” and general as this,
should have adopted so exaggerated, paradoxical, and materialistic a
method of expression.
[pg 040]
Whatever remains unexplained after the psychologising, the
depotentiation, and modernisation, is referred to the peculiar
character of the religious experience which the Apostle is supposed to
have undergone in the vision on the Damascus road. What essential
difference there was between this appearance of the Lord and those
experienced by the other disciples is nowhere clearly worked out, not
even by Holsten, who makes the most extensive use of this vision. It
is simply taken for granted by them all that in the vision itself is
to be found the explanation, not only of Paul’s conversion, but also
in some way or other of his call to be a missionary to the Gentiles
and of the peculiar character of his doctrine.
All these accounts of his teaching agree in assuming that Paul’s
system of doctrine was in the main a purely personal creation of his
own, and is in some way to be explained by the special character of
his religious experience. The question whether in this way his
integral connexion with primitive Christianity is sufficiently
preserved receives but little attention. In none of these works is the
investigation of the doctrinal material common to Paul and his
opponents seriously taken in hand. The writers are content with the
affirmation that both parties took as their starting-point the fact of
the death and resurrection of Jesus, without entering into any
consideration of the question how far Paul’s reasonings, which they
refer back to his inner personal experience, reproduce generally
current ideas of primitive Christianity and simply carry them out to
their logical issue.
The question which Ritschl had formerly forced on the consideration of
Baur has therefore not been faced or solved. It is true the author of
“Justification and Reconciliation”_(_38_)_ thinks that he has not only
raised the question but also answered it. He undertakes to explain all
the Pauline doctrinal passages on the basis of [pg 041] Old Testament
conceptions. In this way he hopes to work out the Apostle’s real
conception of the atoning death of Jesus, and of “righteousness,” and
believes that these will then, since they have been gained from the
Old Testament, coincide with the primitive Christian views in all
essential points.
Speaking generally, Ritschl’s tendency is to make the differences
between Paulinism and primitive Christianity as small as possible, and
to find them, as he had already done in the “Origin of the early
Catholic Church,” not so much in his doctrine proper as in his
attitude to certain practical questions. Ritschl employs the
dialectical skill with which nature had richly endowed him to
transform and shade off the doctrine of the Apostle of the Gentiles
until it harmonises with the fundamental Christian teaching which he
assumes for the earliest period and finds necessary for his dogmatics.
He entirely depotentiates the juridical series of ideas. Moreover, he
refuses to admit that Paulinism constitutes a speculative system. He
assumes that the Apostle moved in a free, untrammelled fashion among
the various sets of ideas and felt no real need to combine them into a
unity.
In addition to Ritschl, Bernhard Weiss_(_39_)_ and Willibald
Beyschlag,_(_40_)_ in their New Testament Theologies, endeavour to
make clear the relations between Paul and primitive Christianity from
the stand-point of critical conservatism. In order to secure a broad
basis for the primitive form of apostolic doctrine, they pronounce I
Peter and the Epistle of James to be documents of the pre-Pauline
period.
The writer who makes things easiest for himself is Von
Hofmann._(_41_)_ For him there is no “Pauline system [pg 042] of
doctrine.” The Apostle never uttered anything that did not belong to
the common doctrine of Christianity, but “according to the difference
of the occasion” brought into prominence this or that aspect of the
saving acts of God or of the condition of salvation, and what he thus
brought forward, now under one designation now under another, he sets
forth now in this relation and now in that one. Therefore this writer,
who was vaunted by the orthodox as a brilliant opponent of Tübingen
errors, has no scruple in working up together the Pauline ideas along
with those of the other New Testament Epistles into a single whole,
which he offers as apostolic doctrine.
Another problem which is hardly apprehended in its full difficulty by
the scholars of this period is that of the total neglect in the
Pauline gospel of the proclamation of the kingdom of God and His
righteousness which Jesus committed to His followers. They seem to
feel no surprise at the fact that the Apostle, even where it would be
the most natural thing in the world, never appeals to the sayings and
commands of the Master. Many of them never touch on this question at
all.
Resch, however, in his collection of extra-canonical Gospel-fragments,
even undertakes to show that in the Pauline letters a whole series of
otherwise unrecorded sayings of Jesus are embodied, and defends the
hypothesis that the Apostle had taken them from a pre-canonical Gospel
which ranked for him as an authority of equal value with the Old
Testament. The enigma of the untraced quotation, “What eye hath not
seen, neither hath ear heard,” etc., in I Cor. ii. 9 ff., is solved by
referring the “as it is written” to the written Gospel on which Paul
draws._(_42_)_
It is curious that most of these authors believe that they reduce the
acuteness of the problem by pointing [pg 043] out in the Epistles as
many reminiscences of Synoptic sayings as possible. That, of course,
only makes the matter more complicated. If so many utterances of Jesus
are hovering before Paul’s mind, how comes it that he always merely
paraphrases them, instead of quoting them as sayings of Jesus, and
thus sheltering himself behind their authority?
As for those who have some inkling of the problem, their one thought
is to dispose of it as rapidly as possible, instead of first exposing
it in its full extent. Among them is Ritschl, who here employs all the
arts and artifices of his exegesis and dialectic. That Jesus and Paul
did not at bottom teach the same thing is to this undogmatic dogmatist
unthinkable.
In general the writers of this period are involved in the most curious
confusions regarding the problem of “Jesus and Paul.” They fail to
perceive that these two magnitudes are not directly comparable with
one another because they think of Paul in complete isolation, and not
as a feature of primitive Christianity. The differences and
oppositions which reveal themselves between the teaching of Jesus and
that of Paul exist also as between the teaching of Jesus and that of
primitive Christianity itself. The momentous development did not arise
first with Paul, but earlier, in the community of the first disciples.
Their “religion” is not identical with the “teaching of Jesus,” and
did not simply grow out of it; it is founded upon His death and
resurrection. The “new element” was not brought into Christianity by
Paul; he found it there before him, and what he did was to think it
out in its logical implications. The difference of teaching between
Paul and Jesus is not a difference between individuals, it is—in
almost its whole extent—due to the fact that the Apostle belongs to
primitive Christianity.
In its false statement of the problem of Jesus and Paul the
scholarship of the period after Baur shows that it has not yet
succeeded in understanding the Apostle of [pg 044] the Gentiles as a
phenomenon, an aspect, of primitive Christianity.
There is frequent mention, in all these studies, of the Jewish roots
of the Pauline thought. They attempt to explain his views, so far as
possible, from the materials given in the Law and the Prophets. Some
authors had been inclined to assume that in regard to his conception
of the Law he did not stand wholly upon Old Testament ground, in the
sense that he sometimes means by it a narrower ceremonial code of
temporary validity, and sometimes a universal ethical law which has
not been invalidated by the death of Christ. These confusions were put
an end to by a study of Edward Grafe._(_43_)_ He shows that Paul when
he speaks of the law, alike when he uses the article or does not use
it, always has in mind the whole legal code, and never varies from the
conviction that this has been set aside by the death and resurrection
of Christ.
That in Galatians the ritual aspect of the law, in Romans the ethical,
is the more prominent, does not alter this fact. Nor is the
consistency of the Apostle’s view annulled by the fact that in many
places he formulates the negative judgment quite definitely, while in
others he softens it by an admission of the historical and ethical
significance of the law.
That Paul’s thinking follows the lines of Old Testament conceptions is
self-evident. The only question is whether the motive forces which
make their appearance in his gospel are derived in some way or other
from the Old Testament Scriptures.
That is not the case. In working up the primitive Christian views he
does not have recourse to the ideas of the ancient Judaism. Nowhere
does Paul attach himself to these. He takes no ideas from the Old
Testament with a view to giving them a new development, [pg 045] but
uses only what he can take from it ready formed. His new discovery
rests on a different basis. The Law and the Prophets serve only to
supply him with the Scriptural arguments, positive and negative, of
which he stands in need.
On the essential nature of the distinctively Pauline world of thought
the Old Testament therefore throws no light. This negative result is
not, indeed, everywhere clearly formulated. There are some students of
Paulinism who simply ignore it. Heinrici, in the preface to his study
of 2 Corinthians (1887), ventures on the assertion that in Paul the
“spirit of Old Testament prophecy” triumphs over contemporary Judaism.
And he is not the only one who clings to the illusion that much help
is to be gained from the Old Testament for the understanding of the
Apostle’s world of thought. By way of proof they cite every possible
parallel, even the most remote. But the disproportion between the
amount of the material offered and the smallness of the result
established tells against them.
That Paul is a child of late Judaism only began to be generally taken
into account when its world of thought was made known to theology by
Schürer’s “History of New Testament Times,”_(_44_)_ and Weber’s
“System of Palestinian Theology in the Early Synagogues.”_(_45_)_ But
even after this most scholars shared a certain disinclination to
recognise a real connexion between the Apostle’s world of thought and
that of late Judaism. Heinrici, who in [pg 046] his study in the
Corinthian Epistles gives great attention to the question regarding
the source of his ideas, definitely denies that “the intellectual and
religious forces of Late Judaism exercised a dominant influence” on
the Apostle. He holds, like many others, that Paul, passing over his
own time, grasped hands with the classical Judaism of the prophets,
and that one source of his strength is to be found in this fact. This
prejudice is to be explained by the low estimation in which late
Judaism had always been held by theologians. It was identified,
without examination, on the one hand with “fantastic apocalyptic
views,” and on the other with a “soulless Rabbinism.”
The admission, however, that Paul in the principles of his exegesis
was in agreement with Rabbinism was made by theologians with
comparative readiness. This did not carry with it the surrender of
anything that had been much valued, since the verbal comparison and
contrast of passages which he practises, and the illogical and
fantastic reasoning which appears in his arguments, had always been
distasteful to theological science. It was therefore rather welcome to
it than otherwise, to find, in consequence of the increased knowledge
of parallel products of late Judaism, an explanation of a weakness
which did not properly harmonise with the greatness of this heroic
spirit, in the influences to which he had been subjected by reason of
his theological education._(_46_)_
Along with this was accepted the fact that, in common with his
contemporaries, he naively treats the Haggadic embellishments of Old
Testament stories as on the same footing with the Scripture itself.
His assumption that the Law was given by the angels (Gal. iii. 19),
and his reference to the rock that followed the children of Israel in
the wilderness and poured out water (I Cor. x. 4), are to be explained
from passages in the Rabbinic literature. [pg 047] No thoroughgoing
investigation was undertaken with a view to determining whether the
Rabbinic principles suffice to explain Paul’s method of scriptural
argument. In general the view prevails that his “typological” and
“spiritualising” _(pneumatisch)_ interpretation goes beyond what can
elsewhere be shown in Palestinian theology. It is true these two
methods of exegesis, going beyond the simple literal sense, are not
wholly unknown, but they only came to their full development in
contemporary Alexandrian Biblical scholarship. For this reason it is
proposed to assume that Paul had also received an influence from this
side.
As examples of Alexandrian exegesis are quoted the interpretation of
Hagar and Sarah as representing the earthly and the heavenly Jerusalem
(Gal. iv. 22 f.), that of the water-giving rock as representing Christ
(I Cor. x. 4), and the argument from the threshing oxen to the
preachers of the gospel (I Cor. ix. 9 ff.).
One of the greatest problems of the Pauline use of Scripture is not
mentioned in these works. It is assumed that the Apostle attached
special importance to proving the Messiahship of the crucified Jesus.
How then can we explain the fact that he never makes any use of the
passage about the Suffering Servant of the Lord in Isaiah liii? This
fact is the more surprising because it may be taken as certain that
the apologetic of the primitive Christian community gave this passage
a most prominent place in its plan of operations.
A scientific attempt to adduce from the Rabbinic literature
explanatory parallels to Pauline thought was made by Franz Delitzsch
in 1870 in connexion with his Hebrew translation of the Epistle to the
Romans._(_47_)_ The [pg 048] net result is not great. The parallels
adduced are so uncharacteristic that they throw no new light on the
Apostle’s ideas.
No further considerable attempts were made in this direction. Nor did
Weber’s “Theology of the Early Synagogue” lead to any other important
works being undertaken in that department. On the contrary, his sketch
of the Rabbinic world of ideas makes it apparent that Pauline thought
does not become any more intelligible by its aid than it is in itself,
even though one parallel or another may be unearthed. Moreover, it is
to be remarked that the discovery of such parallels would only become
of importance if proof could be given that they really date from the
beginning of the first century. Such proof is, however, quite
impossible.
Of the “Rabbinism” of Paul’s day we know practically nothing. Even the
earliest strata of the literature which is at our disposal were not
formed before the beginning of the third century A.D._(_48_)_ It
consists of a codification of tradition carried out by the later
Rabbinic scholasticism. How far it offers us a faithful representation
of the ideas and character of Rabbinic thought at the beginning of the
first century must remain an open question.
Even if Paul, in virtue of his dialectic and certain external
characteristics, belongs to the world which this literature reveals to
us, in regard to the content of his ideas and his creative force as a
thinker he is not to be understood by its aid. To register this fact
is, however, by no means to deny that he has his roots in the Jewish
theology of his time, but only to say that he shows no affinity as
regards the inner essence of his problems and [pg 049] ideas with what
a later age offers us as the Rabbinism of the first century. It is
possible, indeed it is in the highest degree probable, that many of
his ideas for which no “Rabbinic” parallels can be adduced,
nevertheless have their origin in the Jewish theology of his time. Who
is to guarantee that the later scholasticism has faithfully preserved
for us the Jewish theology which was contemporary with Christianity?
It may well have been more living in thought and more profound than
the men of the after-time could understand, or their tradition
preserve. The picture which they draw for us shows only a sun-scorched
plain, but this yellow, wilted grass was green and fresh once. What
did the meadows look like then?
It is to be remembered that the Apocalypse of Ezra, which shows in its
own way such depth, while it is derived from the Scribal theology of
the first century, is as little to be explained from what on the basis
of the later literature we think of as the Rabbinism of the period as
are the Pauline Epistles. Had this writing not been preserved, it
would never have occurred to anyone that at that time men belonging to
the circle of the Scribes had been tormented in this way by the
primary problems of religion, and had brought the questions arising
out of them into such close relations with eschatology.
Further, it is to be taken into account that Palestinian Scribism,
even though it was an independent entity, did not, at the time when it
has to be considered in connexion with Paul, exist in absolute
exclusiveness, but maintained relations with Jewish Hellenism. The
latter worked on a basis of ideas which it had in large measure taken
over from Rabbinism and held in common with the latter. This
relationship becomes in the case of Philo clearly apparent. With him
one can never tell where the “Rabbinist” ends and the Hellenist
begins. But if the theology of the Scribes stood in any kind of
relation with Jewish Hellenism, it cannot have been so poor in ideas
and unspiritual as it appears in the later tradition.
[pg 050]
Even the discourses of Jesus, in spite of the polemical picture which
they give of it, create the impression that He had to do with a
Rabbinism which was interested in really religious questions, even
though it showed itself incapable of rising to the height of the
simple piety to which His preaching of the Kingdom of God and the
repentance necessary thereto made its appeal.
It seems therefore probable that the Epistles of Paul and the
Apocalypse of Ezra, along with its satellite the Apocalypse of Baruch,
are witnesses to a Rabbinism, or a movement within its sphere, of
which the Rabbinic tradition which later became fixed in written form
gives us no information.
What should we know of the moving forces of the Reformation as they
manifest themselves in Luther’s works of the year 1521, if we were
dependent for our information on the Lutheran scholasticism of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? How would we think of the
Reformation as a whole if we possessed only these witnesses? With all
due respect to the vaunted faithfulness of Rabbinic tradition, which
after all we are not in a position to check, was it capable of
preserving the record of a period of living thought? Is an oral
tradition ever capable of doing so?
The historical examples in which we are able to test the tradition of
later generations by the reality which has subsequently come to light,
are calculated to shake our faith in the assumption that it can do so.
What did Beethoven’s time know of the achievements of the period of
Bach? Mention is made of the elaborate fugues which had their origin
at that time; but that the eighteenth century had produced choral
works of deep feeling and an elevation secure against change of
fashion, was entirely unknown to the second generation after Bach,
although there had been nothing to interrupt tradition.
Moreover, it ought not to be forgotten that we possess the history of
Judaism only in fragments. As regards the political events of the
first century we are [pg 051] comparatively well informed, but of the
religious movements we know little, and what does come to our
knowledge is so disconnected and self-contradictory that it cannot be
combined into a single picture. The Baptist, Jesus, Philo, Paul,
Josephus, and the authors of the Apocalypses of Ezra and Baruch cover
together about two generations. They are at first sight as entirely
different as if they belonged to widely separated periods.
The destruction of Jerusalem interrupts the continuity of development
of the Jewish people and of its thought. Its life is extinguished.
Hellenism dies out. There arises a Rabbinism which is no longer borne
on the tide of great national and spiritual movements. It becomes
ossified, and confines itself to mere unproductive commentating upon
the law. From the past its tradition takes only what lies within the
field of its own narrow interests. The problems and ideas which moved
the earlier, many-sided period no longer come into view, but fall into
as complete oblivion as if they had never occupied Jewish religious
thought.
The scholarship of the period after Baur is indeed far enough from
embarking on reflexions of this kind. It takes scarcely any notice of
what remains of the Late-Jewish non-Hellenistic literature. Even the
commentators make scarcely any use of the parallels to Pauline ideas
and conceptions which are found in Enoch, the Apocalypse of Baruch,
the Apocalypse of Ezra, and here and there in the Testaments of the
Twelve Patriarchs.
It is nothing less than astonishing that the close affinities with the
Apocalypse of Ezra do not receive any recognition. In this work there
are elaborate discussions of the problems of sin, the Fall of our
first parents, Election, the wrath, long-suffering, and mercy of God,
the prerogative of Israel, the significance of the law, the temporal
and the eternal Jerusalem, of the prospect of dying or surviving to
the Parousia, the tribulation of the times of the End, and the
Judgment. The close affinity between this writer and Paul strikes the
eye at once. [pg 052] Writers on Paulinism are, however, so obsessed
by the idea that the teaching of Paul is a “personal creation” that
they cannot bring themselves to accept the view that the religious
problems which struggle for solution in his letters had also occupied
his Jewish contemporaries or at least a section of them._(_49_)_
The claims of Late Judaism on Paul were therefore taken to be
discharged when his Rabbinic dialectic and exegesis, and to a certain
extent his eschatology also, had been ascribed to it.
The chapter on the future-hope which connected Paul on the one hand
with Judaism and on the other with primitive Christianity, is never
omitted in any account of his teaching given by the scholars of the
post-Baur period. In it is collected all that the Epistles have to say
regarding the parousia, the resurrection, the judgment, and the
Kingdom of the Last Times. The treatment, however, is by no means
thorough. Scarcely anywhere is there an attempt to arrange the
scattered notices in an orderly way and bring them into relation with
one another. It is taken for granted that they are inconsistent with
one another, as a necessary consequence of the fantastic character of
the material. That Paul may have had a clear plan of the events of the
End in which all his statements can find a place, is not taken into
account. These writers therefore set no limit to the admission of
inconsistencies, and draw a picture which is, to put it plainly,
meaningless.
So far, it occurs to no one that the want of connexion may perhaps
result from the fact that the separate [pg 053] statements have not
been carefully examined in regard to what they actually mean, and to
their mutual relations. It is taken as quite certain that the “simple”
eschatology of I Thessalonians is superseded by the more complicated
view of the Corinthian letters; and these in turn are not the last
stage in this “development” of the Apostle’s thought. No attempt is
made to get a clear idea in what order he thinks of the judgment and
the resurrection of the dead, or as to whether he holds that there is
one resurrection and one judgment, or a resurrection of the
“righteous,” and another besides, and whether he assumes this to be
accompanied by one judgment or two.
The authors regard with a certain amount of self-satisfaction the way
in which they have emphasised the importance given to the eschatology
by Paul. In the chapter devoted to it they have certainly emphasised
again and again, “with the utmost energy,” the fact that he really
“shared” the eschatological expectations of his time and admitted them
to an important place in his creed. The chapter in question, however,
only gets its turn after the whole “system of doctrine” has been
safely housed in the earlier chapters without seeking any aid from the
eschatology or even saying a word about it. As in the Church prayers
of to-day, one catches an echo of it only at the end. This means that,
when all is said and done, these writers regard it only as a kind of
annexe to the main edifice of Pauline doctrine. That is a fact which
their brave words about the importance attributed to it in their
account do not alter in the slightest. None of these students of
Paulinism asks himself whether there is an organic connexion between
the eschatological expectations and the system as such, and whether
the fundamental conceptions and concatenation of ideas are not somehow
or other conditioned by the hope of the final consummation. It is
simply taken as self-evident that eschatology can only form an
incidental chapter in Paul’s teaching.
[pg 054]
The most natural course to follow in the investigation would have been
to begin with the eschatology as the most general and
“primitive-Christian” element, and then to have tried to find a path
leading from here to the central doctrine of the new life in union
with the dying and resurrection of Christ. This course is nowhere
followed.
That is the more surprising as it is generally assumed that the
“missionary preaching” of the Apostle took an almost purely
eschatological form, and was scarcely distinguishable from the
primitive-Christian preaching of repentance, the judgment, and the
parousia. The point to examine would therefore have been precisely how
the “Pauline theology” grew out of the eschatology which Paul shared
with primitive Christianity. Instead of that, these writers begin with
the “doctrinal system,” and attach to that by way of appendix an
account of the eschatology. It here first becomes fully apparent what
a misfortune it was for Pauline study in the post-Baur period that it
kept to the method of presentation under _loci,_ and consequently
accorded eschatology, in principle, no greater importance for
Paulinism than it had had for Reformation theology.
Bernard Weiss, agreeing in this with Havet, lays strong emphasis on
the eschatology, and makes a beginning in the direction of an
intelligent presentation of Paulinism. Instead of beginning, like the
others, with the “doctrine of man,” or with “sin and the law,” he
first sets forth “the earliest preaching of Paul as Apostle of the
Gentiles,” which he makes to consist of nothing but the proclamation
of the judgment and the parousia. But having got this length, he does
not feel any need to point out the paths which lead from here to the
“teaching of the four great doctrinal and polemical epistles.” He
simply puts the two sections side by side, and even falls into the
inconsistency of devoting another chapter to the eschatology at a
later point. The doctrine of Paul consists therefore for these
scholars of a theology of the [pg 055] present and a theology of the
future which have no inner connexion with one another. It is indeed
cited as an achievement on his part that he turned the eye of faith
from the exclusive contemplation of the “hereafter” to take in the
present also. How he came to do so—he alone of this first Christian
generation—to point to present “blessings of salvation” in addition to
those of the future, is not explained. The co-existence of the two is
simply noted as a fact.
How far the scholars of this period were from taking the Pauline
eschatology seriously, is evident from the fact that they neglected to
enquire into its connexion with that of Late Judaism. Otto Everling,
who in 1888 took in hand to give an account of one of its main
features, its angelology and demonology, was not able to refer to any
previous work in this department._(_50_)_ A theologian to whom he
spoke of his design answered that “one ought not to examine the
birth-marks of a genius like the Apostle.”
Everling brings forward the passages which speak of Satan, the angels,
and the demons, one after another, and adduces parallels from Enoch,
the Ascension of Isaiah, the Wisdom of Solomon, the Book of Jubilees,
the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, and the Apocalypse of Baruch.
His review of the material shows in what a step-motherly fashion it
had been treated by previous commentators of all shades of opinion.
In the result it appears that the Pauline statements about angelology
and demonology have not sprung from his own imagination, but all have
their earlier analogues in the Late-Jewish theology, or at any rate
can be understood as inferences from the conceptions there laid down.
It further appears that his statements stand in systematic connexion
and mutually supplement one another.
In its main lines the Pauline doctrine of the angels shows us the
following picture. Spiritual beings who, in accordance with the
hierarchic arrangement adopted in [pg 056] Late-Jewish theology, are
divided into various classes, played a prominent part at the giving of
the law. From that time forward they acted as overseers of the chosen
people, and also as the real powers behind the gods of the heathen. By
the death and resurrection of Christ their power has been in principle
abolished, although it continues to be still in some way exercised
upon those who offer sacrifices to idols or submit themselves to the
law.
Believers in Christ, however, stand over against them as a class of
men who are liberated from their sway, and who possess a wisdom which
understands better than their own the great events in which the
history of the world is about to close.
These angelic existences feel that their domination is threatened, and
fight with all the weapons at their command. It is at their
instigation that the attempt is made to corrupt the Gospel by
legalism; all the difficulties which the Apostle encounters, all the
corporeal sufferings which he has to bear, are to be attributed to
them. It is on their account that women must be veiled when attending
the services of the Church, since otherwise they run the risk of
becoming the victims of their lust, as of old their mother Eve was
seduced by the devil. Most dangerous of all is their skill in
deception: Satan can disguise himself as an angel of light.
With the appearance of the Lord begins the decisive struggle which is
to lead to the destruction of these powers. They are to be delivered
up to judgment, to receive their sentence at the mouth of the saints,
whom, until the parousia, they have still the power to harass with
cunning and cruelty, though not to destroy.
“In its proper historical surroundings Christianity shows up in its
true majesty,” said Richard Rothe once. Everling drew from these
words, which he placed at the beginning of his book, courage to make a
thorough investigation of matters which had previously been timidly
avoided because of their strangeness.
How wide-reaching was the significance of his synthetic [pg 057] study
he had hardly realised. His intention was to depict clearly and in
vivid colours the imposingly fantastic Late-Jewish background of
Pauline theology. The theology of his time took the same view. It
accepted the offered gift somewhat constrainedly, but on the whole
gratefully enough. If it had the impression that the background as
thus restored, while no doubt “interesting,” was somewhat too glaring
and obtrusive, it remained confident that the “doctrinal system” which
it throws into relief is not otherwise affected by it. The
appendix-chapter on eschatology grows in size and acquires a certain
connectedness. But there seemed no reason to fear that it might grow
so vigorously as to overpower those into which the Pauline theology
proper is neatly parcelled out.
In reality, however, there was quite sufficient reason for anxiety.
Everling had shown that angelology and demonology were, as a matter of
fact, component parts of Paul’s cosmology. That they consequently also
entered into his fundamental conception of redemption was a point
which he had not especially emphasised. But the fact was written in
giant characters across his work. From the moment when Paul’s
statements regarding God, the devil, the angels, and the world are
apprehended in their organic connexion, it becomes abundantly evident
that for him redemption, in its primary and fundamental sense,
consists in a deliverance from the powers which have their abode
between heaven and earth. It is therefore essentially a future good,
dependent on a cosmic event of universal scope.
It at once becomes evident that the investigation of Paulinism must
take as its starting-point these ideas as being of the most general
character, and endeavour to show how the other statements regarding
redemption are derived from them. Theological science was thus forced
into the road which it had hitherto sedulously avoided. The deceptive
character of the division of Paulinism under _loci,_ by which it had
long been kept in [pg 058] an unhappy state of subservience to
Reformation and modern prejudices, now became apparent. But for all
that theology held to the old way and was determined to cast out
anyone who set foot upon the new. That is the explanation of the fate
which befel Richard Kabisch’s “Eschatology of Paul.”_(_51_)_ Kabisch
had been considering the plan of a work on the Pauline Ethic, and in
doing so had become aware that it was to a large extent conditioned by
the eschatological expectations. Thereupon he resolved to begin with a
preliminary study of the eschatology._(_52_)_
“Salvation,” so runs his argument, is thought of by Paul as
“deliverance” from judgment and destruction. “Justification” and
“reconciliation” are subservient to this deliverance and do not
describe a state of salvation independent of it. The spiritual goods
which are characterised by many theologians as the object of the
Apostle’s wrestling and striving are in reality only the anticipatory
first-fruits of the blessedness which the future has in store. This
blessedness consists in the believer’s being freed at the parousia
from the fleshly body in order to put on the heavenly robe of glory.
Thus eschatology is the foundation both of the dogmatics and ethics of
the Apostle.
Life and death are for him physical conceptions. Spiritual death and
spiritual life in the modern religious sense are unknown to him. Even
where, as in Rom. vi., he speaks of a dying and rising again which are
not accompanied by any change in the outward and visible existence of
the individual, he does not mean a spiritual dying and rising again
but, inconceivable as it may [pg 059] appear, a physical occurrence.
Everything spiritual goes back to something corporeal. That is true
also as regards the ethics. It is not from the consciousness of the
“ideal possession of eternal life” that he infers the duty of walking
in newness of life, but from the fact that one who shares the death of
Christ must also share His resurrection. Both events have reference to
the present. It is “a simple logical consequence” that we should walk
in accordance with this physical newness of life in order to show that
the fleshly, _sarkic,_ body has been put off.
The new life of which Paul speaks as a present spirit is therefore
based on the “repetition” of Christ’s bodily resurrection, which is
rendered possible by the _unio mystica_ with him. It guarantees to the
individual his indestructibility even though the corruptible world, to
which his fleshly corporeity belongs, falls a prey to destruction. The
believer will then have a part in the new world-substance.
Paul’s soul is therefore thrilled with the eager desire for life,
shaken with the dread of destruction. His faith, hope, and fear all
revolve about one centre—the abolition of corruption and the bestowal
of incorruption. His religion is a “will-to-live” in a large elemental
sense. He yearns for redemption from the creaturehood which is under
the sway of Satan and his powers, and from the body which they hold in
thrall. The moment in which the relative positions of the world of
spirits and the world of men are to be reversed, and a great final
renewal of all things is to be brought in—that moment cannot come
quickly enough for him. Therefore he seeks in some way to antedate it.
The future condition of existence is that of “glory.” It is
anticipated in the present life by the possession of the “Spirit”
which belongs essentially to the heavenly light substance.
Thus Kabisch endeavours to explain the Pauline doctrine of the Spirit
purely on the ground of the Late-Jewish metaphysic. A super-earthly
substance enters [pg 060] into the corporeity of those who in virtue
of the _unio mystica_ with Christ have entered into the experience of
His death and resurrection. It produces in them a new being, and gives
them a claim to the future perfected glory, and this while their
fleshly existence still continues to the outward eye unaltered.