pointed out and so described that their real eschatological essence
appears._(_53_)_ But Kabisch did not succeed in explaining them. In
what sense is a “repetition” in the believer of the dying and rising
again of Christ possible? How can it produce a reconstitution of their
creaturely being while their fleshly existence continues outwardly as
before? To these questions Kabisch gives no answer.
In the account of the eschatological events and their issue it is
shown that the blessings and anticipations referred to by Paul are
also present in the Late-Jewish theology. That the Apostle expresses
his views about the future world in disconnected fragments, apparently
distributed fortuitously through the text, does not show that it was
not clear and consistent in his own mind, but exactly the opposite.
The eschatological remarks come in so naturally and without appearing
to need [pg 061] explanation just because this whole set of
conceptions was to the Apostle so long familiar and self-explanatory,
that he can draw on it whenever he wishes as easily as an educated
European uses the multiplication table.
Strangely, however, Kabisch does not succeed in giving a clear and
simple picture of the order and relation of the final events
presupposed in the letters. He gets confused over the various
resurrections and judgments, and finds the sole way of escape in
attributing to the Apostle a resurrection of the righteous only, and
not a general resurrection in addition. In consequence he is forced to
the conclusion that the righteous enter the Kingdom without passing
through a judgment, and that what is meant by the judgment is always
the destruction of the wicked at the parousia.
That is to make the Apostle contradict not only Jewish apocalyptic,
but his own utterances, since it is certain that the Epistles
frequently make mention of believers appearing at the judgment.
The difficulties which Kabisch here encounters are significant. They
show that it is not possible to understand the Pauline statements
simply by the light of the Late-Jewish eschatology. What for the
Apostle composed a simple picture remains for the writer who
endeavours to describe his apocalyptic full of obscurities and
contradictions. It is as if one or two conceptions were lacking which
would have enabled him to “get out” his game of patience
satisfactorily.
It is true Kabisch has not done everything possible in order to attain
clearness. He has neglected to adduce for comparison the eschatology
of the Baptist and of Jesus, and to examine how far the Pauline
simplification of apocalyptic is here prefigured. He thus falls into
the universal but none the less unintelligible error of failing to
call the two most important witnesses to the Late-Jewish
eschatological expectations. Are they the less so because they belong
to the New Testament? Further, he neglects, as do all the other
writers, to consider what [pg 062] are the primary questions which the
theory of the events of the End had to answer.
What happens at the parousia to the non-elect? And what to the elect
who have not become believers because the Gospel message has not
reached them? The ultimate fate of these two classes of men can surely
not be the same? Do those who at the parousia do not enter into glory
suffer “death” or “destruction”? What is the relation between these
two conceptions?
According to I Cor. xv. 26, death is only to be vanquished at the end
of the Messianic kingdom. Is a general resurrection before that
conceivable? Does it follow as a consequence of this triumph over
death?
Since Kabisch does not raise these and similar questions, he does not
find the path which alone can lead to the understanding of the logic
of the events of the End. Undoubtedly, in the eschatology of a thinker
like Paul, all these problems must have been considered and thought
out. They form the implicit presuppositions which guarantee and make
clear the inner logic of his scattered and seemingly disconnected
statements.
Although he has not explained the paradoxes of the Pauline mysticism,
nor succeeded in making clear the ground-plan of his eschatology,
Kabisch’s book is one of the most striking achievements, not only in
the department of Pauline study, but in historical theology as a
whole. For the first time since Lüdemann’s investigation of the
Apostle’s doctrine of man, in 1872, the problem of the Pauline
doctrine of redemption receives a new formulation.
The two works show a curious analogy. Their authors have a
consciousness of the fact that the theology of the Apostle is a living
organism, and are preserved by some good genius from splitting it up
into Reformation or modern _loci._ They endeavour to grasp the
thoughts and connecting links of the doctrine of redemption from a
single point of view. Lüdemann makes the “anthropology” his
starting-point, Kabisch the eschatology. [pg 063] Both are led, almost
contrary to their intention, to give a general account of Paulinism.
Both see in the paradoxical statements about the abolition of the
flesh in the union with the death and resurrection of Christ the
centre of his doctrine; both arrive at the result that what is in view
is a really physical redemption.
In the explanation of the facts which they agree in observing they
diverge widely. Lüdemann claims the Pauline doctrine of redemption as
Hellenistic; Kabisch endeavours to understand it on the basis of Late
Judaism. Theological science cast out the innovator and held to the
conviction that the Apostle’s system of thought was Greek. It was
acknowledged that he had made the eschatology of the Apostle
intelligible; but in the attempt to pass from the eschatology to the
centre of the Apostle’s system of doctrine, contemporary scholarship
saw only an extreme onesidedness for which there was no justification
in the documents, which deserved neither examination nor refutation,
but simply rejection.
On what lines had theology developed and defended the theory of Greek
elements in Paulinism? In the first place, it is to be remarked that
in regard to the extent and importance of the influence which is
supposed to have been exercised, various groupings are to be observed
among the different writers. Pfleiderer, Holsten, Heinrici,_(_54_)_
Havet, and others see in Paulinism the actual first step in the
Hellenisation of Christianity. They assume, as Baur also had taken for
granted before them, that the ethical series of ideas, the series
dominated by the antithesis of flesh and spirit, is derived from Greek
influences.
Schmiedel,_(_55_)_ in his commentaries, and Harnack_(_56_)_ express
[pg 064] themselves with more reserve. According to the latter,
Hellenism, no doubt, “had its share” in Paul. The Apostle of the
Gentiles “prepared the way for the projection of the Gospel upon the
Graeco-Roman world of thought,” but he never gave to Greek ideas “any
influence upon his doctrine of salvation.” Lipsius,_(_57_)_ Bernhard
Weiss, and Weizsäcker do not take much account of borrowings from
Greek sources, but are concerned to explain Paul from and by himself
so far as possible.
It is not so easy as might be supposed to determine the attitude of
the various authors towards the problem of the Hellenic influence in
Paul. This is partly due to want of accuracy in the terminology.
“Hellenistic” is used to mean both Jewish-Hellenistic and Greek in the
strict sense. The authors frequently express themselves in such a way
that it is not obvious whether they mean the one, or the other, or
both together. Attempts to establish an accurate terminology, to
confine “Hellenistic” to the meaning “Jewish-Hellenistic,” and to use
Hellenic for Greek in the full sense, have not succeeded.
But the want of clearness is not wholly to be put down to the account
of the language; it is partly due to the mental attitude of the
writers. The problem really includes two questions. First, Was Paul
under the influence of Jewish Hellenism? Secondly, Did Greek thought
in itself, apart from the alliance into which it had entered with
Judaism, exercise any influence upon his views? Instead of keeping
these questions separate these writers constantly confuse them, and
assume that they have proved the existence of Greek ideas in the [pg
065] Apostle’s system of doctrine when they have only discussed his
relations with Jewish-Hellenism.
Sometimes one actually gets the impression that in this difficult
question they intentionally make their discussions a little obscure
and inconsistent, and are more concerned to conceal than to reveal
their views, in order not to lay themselves open to attack.
The discovery and the grouping of their opinions is therefore
associated with difficulties, and can never be carried out in a way
entirely free from objection. Fortunately the discussion and decision
of the question does not depend on drawing them up in three divisions,
each under the banner of its particular view, and so putting them
through their facings.
It suffices to note the fact that in the study of the subject from
Baur onward the greatly predominating opinion is that Paul was not
only influenced by Jewish Hellenism but also derived some of his ideas
directly from Greek thought. It is also safe to assert that of all the
writers in question—even though some of them take up an attitude of
reserve to Pfleiderer’s more thoroughgoing views, none of them denies
the influence of Jewish Hellenism on Paul. The difference between them
consists rather in the fact that some assume in addition to this what
may be called “free” Greek influence, while others are sceptical on
this point and think that the facts can be explained without this
assumption.
It is to be expressly remarked that the latter do not try to arrive at
an understanding of the essence of Paul’s thought by a different
method, but only to clothe the usual explanations in different words.
This is the case with Weizsäcker.
The well-known account of Paulinism in his “Apostolic Age”_(_58_)_
neither offers any new idea nor raises any new problem. Though he is
in some respects more cautious than Pfleiderer, because he feels the
difficulty of proving Greek influence more strongly than the latter,
in other [pg 066] respects he is less exacting than Pfleiderer with
his logical development of Baur’s ideas, since he is content with
explanations which do not satisfy Pfleiderer.
That Bernard Weiss in dealing with Pauline theology dispenses with the
assumption of Greek influence is due to the fact that his
investigation holds strictly to the lines of “Biblical theology,” and
on principle takes no account of anything beyond the borders of the
Canon.
It is interesting to note that both Weiss and Weizsäcker deliberately
avoid a discussion of Greek and Hellenistic influence on Paul, and
confine themselves to an objective account of Paul’s doctrine. Indeed,
it may be remarked that in the study of the subject between Baur and
Holtzmann the problem is never thoroughly discussed.
The question how far the alleged influences are proved or provable may
be held over for the present, and in the first place we may
interrogate Holsten, Pfleiderer and their followers as to what their
view really means, and what they think they can explain by means of
it.
At bottom the question turns on the antithesis of flesh and spirit. In
the clearly defined form in which this antithesis presents itself in
Paul, it is held that it must be regarded as Greek. This view had been
expressed by Lüdemann, who was the first to develop it clearly.
Independently of him, Holsten_(_59_)_ and Pfleiderer brought it into
general currency.
It is universally taken for granted that the dualism is derived from
Platonism. Whether Paul took it direct from Greek sources or from
Jewish Hellenism is not clearly explained. Lüdemann seems to assume
the former, Holsten to imply the latter; Pfleiderer is doubtless to be
understood in the sense that both possibilities have to be taken into
account, separately and in combination.
The psychological process is differently conceived by [pg 067] Holsten
and by Pfleiderer. The former holds that Greek ideas were already in
his pre-Christian period present to the mind of the Apostle, who had
been in touch with Jewish Hellenism, but they had as yet played no
part in his thinking. By his religious experience at the vision of
Christ on the Damascus road they were called into activity and helped
him to give form to his new knowledge. In this way Holsten thinks it
possible to understand Paulinism as both a personal creation of the
Apostle and at the same time a product of the influence of Greek
ideas. The emphasis lies, however, on the personal creation; the
influence of the Greek ideas is thought of as subsidiary.
For Pfleiderer the process was more largely determined from without.
Paul’s conversion creates as it were a void in his Jewish
consciousness. The thought-forms which he has hitherto used prove
incapable of dealing satisfactorily with the implications of his new
faith. So the Apostle is driven to have recourse to another system of
ideas. He no longer remains indifferent to the ideas which stream in
upon him from Jewish Hellenism and Greek thought. They become
significant to him; he allows them to exercise their influence upon
him. In this way there arises a remarkable duality in his thought.
Pharisaic and Hellenistic trains of ideas form two streams “which in
Paulinism meet in one bed without really coalescing.” By way of
conjecture Pfleiderer several times advances the suggestion that
Apollos the Alexandrian may have introduced the Apostle to the
Alexandrian Platonism.
Heinrici, again, in his commentaries on the Corinthian Epistles
suggests that the Apostle’s doctrine is a synthesis of elements taken
on the one hand from the Jewish prophets and on the other from Greek
thought._(_60_)_ Paul, he thinks, reached back beyond Late Judaism to
join hands with the ancient prophetism, and similarly rose [pg 068]
superior to Alexandrianism and drew direct from Greek thought. In both
cases what he seeks is an ethical force. That he possessed the insight
and the power to find this in the thought of the ancient world and to
apply it to the formation of a Christian system of thought was a great
spiritual achievement, pregnant with consequences for the future
development of Christianity.
One might have expected that these various views would be worked out
in detail. That is not the case. In the last resort none of these
writers gets beyond the general and simple assertion that the
antithesis of flesh and spirit is Greek. But even this is not further
explained by means of parallels from Greek literature. There is no
attempt to show in what sense Paul’s utterances become more
intelligible in the light of these analogies than they are in
themselves.
“The Greek dualism,” writes Holsten, “underlies all the decisive
elements of his thought, and makes itself apparent in a series of
individual traits.” Any one who goes through his work in the
expectation of finding evidence adduced in support of this statement
will be disappointed. It is as though the author had forgotten as he
went on writing what he had set out to do.
It is also matter for astonishment that no serious attempt is made to
extend the range of the Greek elements beyond the single antithesis of
flesh and spirit. The suggestion is no doubt met with that the
pessimism, the longing for death, and the ethical teaching of the
Apostle, belong essentially to the tone of thought prevalent in the
Hellenic world. But these remain mere _obiter dicta_ which are not
worked out in any way.
It is as though these writers one and all had an instinctive feeling
that their thesis, so long as it is kept quite general, has an
admirable air of credibility and admits of being nicely formulated,
but that when any attempt is made to follow it out into detail it
yields little in the way of tangible results. Paulinism is deceptive.
Its outward appearance is such that the assertion that [pg 069] here
Greek influences have been at work seems the most self-evident
possible, but when this has to be shown in detail it leaves the
investigator whom it has drawn on by its specious appearance
completely in the lurch.
The curious thing is that Holsten, Pfleiderer, and their followers do
not venture to formulate the unwelcome admission which may be read
between their lines, but keep up the game with one another as if
everything was going as well as heart could wish. They overdo their
air of unconcern, as though from an uncomfortable sense that they
might in the end lose confidence in their assertion, and so find
themselves unable to explain how Paul arrived at his dualistic
antithesis between flesh and spirit.
For this is what it all ultimately comes to. The assertion of Greek
influence is a kind of pillared portico behind which they construct
the edifice of Paulinism as they understand it. The style, however, is
only maintained as regards the front. What lies behind that is
styleless, neither Greek nor Jewish, without plan, without character,
without proportion. Those writers who wholly or partially dissent from
the assumption of Greek influences carry out the same plan with the
same materials, and with the same unconcern as regards the style. The
only difference is that they do not conceal it by building a special
façade in front of it, whether it be that, like Harnack, they have a
fuller sense of the difficulties, or, like Weiss and Weizsäcker,
persuade themselves that Paulinism, according to their construction of
it, looks sufficiently well as it is.
There is, however, one point on which Pfleiderer and his followers
think that they can point to definite results of the influence of
Greek ideas. They maintain that the Apostle’s eschatological
expectations have been transformed by them. This has reference to the
passage in 2 Cor. v. I ff. in which Paul gives expression to his
desire not to be “unclothed” but to be “clothed upon.” The natural
interpretation which is given by Bernard Weiss and others understands
the Apostle as speaking [pg 070] of his eager desire to experience the
parousia while still alive in the body, in order to share that
transformation in which “what is mortal will be swallowed up by life,”
and not to have to pass through a time of waiting in an intermediate
state of non-being or death.
Pfleiderer in his “Primitive Christianity” does not accept this
explanation, but maintains that this passage and two others—Phil. i.
21 f. and iii. 8 f._(_61_)_—imply a departure from the Pharisaic
eschatological hope in which the Apostle’s thought elsewhere moves. In
this later period of his life, represented by 2 Corinthians and
Philippians, he turns away—so runs the theory—from the primitive view
of an intermediate state of death, followed by a subsequent
resurrection, and comes to hold that his soul, immediately after his
departure, will pass into the presence of Christ in order to dwell
with Him. And Paul is more and more driven to adopt this view in
proportion as his life is daily exposed to greater danger, and he has
to reckon with the possibility of dying before the parousia takes
place. Under the pressure of this inward anxiety, guided by
Platonising Alexandrianism, illuminated by the Greek spirit, he
creates—we are still following Pfleiderer—a spiritualising hope of
future blessedness, which in the sequel becomes of the utmost value to
Gentile Christianity by enabling it to reconcile itself to the delay
of the parousia.
[pg 071]
Pfleiderer believes also that he can show the course of the
development by which the new conception was arrived at. In I
Thessalonians, he thinks, the Apostle still rested unquestioningly in
that notion of a corporeal resurrection which primitive Christianity
shared with Judaism. But in the explanations in I Cor. xv. the
influence of the Greek ideas becomes observable, while in 2
Corinthians and Philippians it becomes dominant.
This construction of the course of events is defended by Pfleiderer
and his followers—Holsten here stands apart—with fanatical energy, as
though they wished to make noise enough to distract attention from the
fact that they have so very little else to point to in the shape of
positive evidence of Greek influence in Paul.
What are the difficulties which are raised by the assumption of Greek
ideas in Paul’s doctrine? They are many and various, and they grow
greater in proportion as the new element in Paul is more strongly
emphasised. Take the problem of explaining the dualism of flesh and
spirit. It is assumed that this has been done when it has been
declared to be Greek. But in doing so a duality has been introduced
into Paul himself which creates many more difficulties than the
dualism it was invoked to solve.
The Apostle is made to think Judaically with one-half of his mind and
Hellenically with the other, and nevertheless is supposed to be
capable of being conceived as a single integral personality. In the
writings of Lüdemann and Holsten the difficulty does not yet appear in
its full magnitude. They understand by the Jewish element especially
the juridical series of ideas referring to the atonement and imputed
righteousness. Holsten is, moreover, in a specially favourable
position, because in the last resort he ascribes the origin of the
system not so much to the influence of Greek ideas as to the inward
experience on the Damascus road, which of course eludes analysis. If
they are thus referred exclusively to the separate but coexistent
juridical and mystical sets of [pg 072] ideas, a Jewish and a Greek
element can at need be thought of as in some way or other combined in
a single consciousness.
But for Pfleiderer the conception of the Jewish element has become
much more comprehensive and vital, because he appreciates the
significance of the eschatological ideas. The result of that is to
make the opposition which has to be recognised much more acute. And,
nevertheless, it must continue to be asserted that Paul was
unconscious of the inconsistencies!
If the difficulty could be got over by pointing to an opposition of
which the Apostle was conscious, and which he had made an effort to
reconcile, the position of the theory would be much more favourable.
But for that it would be a necessary condition that he should
somewhere have expressed the consciousness that he bore two souls
within his breast,_(_62_)_ and that the marks of compromise should
appear in his work as they do, for example, in that of Philo. That,
however, is not the case. He is conscious of no opposition, and steps
unconcernedly from the one world into the other, turns back again to
the first, and keeps on doing this over and over again. Where,
according to Pfleiderer’s view, he is venturing a leap over the abyss,
he has all the air of putting one foot calmly before the other on a
level road. We must, therefore, take it to be the case that he had not
the slightest inkling of the opposition.
This conclusion seems to negate psychology and render a historical
comprehension of the Apostle impossible, but Pfleiderer hardens his
heart and boldly accepts it. There remains, he says, “no alternative
but to admit that Paul kept the two different kinds of conceptions in
his consciousness side by side but unrelated, and jumped from one to
the other without being aware of the opposition between them.”
There is, however, a further complication in the [pg 073] question.
Pfleiderer holds that in 2nd Corinthians and Philippians a Greek
spiritualising future-hope has displaced the Jewish Pharisaic hope. In
the last period of his life, he maintains, the Apostle no longer
believes in a corporeal resurrection, but in a presence of the soul
with Christ which begins immediately after death.
But the new conception does not in fact displace the old, although it
is diametrically opposed to it. Pfleiderer has to admit that Paul,
even in the writings of the latest period, advances without misgiving
the doctrine of the “awakening of the whole man from the sleep of
death,” just as if the new doctrine of “the presence with the Lord
beginning immediately after death” were not in existence, although it
is the outcome of long years of mental struggle.
Pfleiderer, however, is prepared to accept even this portentous fact
also, and to go on contentedly believing that Paul lived in a kind of
mental twilight which is at once Jewish-eschatological and
Greek-spiritualistic. He expresses this euphemistically by speaking of
the Pauline eschatology as “hovering between the Pharisaic hope of the
here and the Greek hope of the hereafter.” The way to a scientific
understanding of Paulinism lies, therefore, for Pfleiderer through a
_credo quia absurdum._
By his assertions about 2 Cor. v. I ff. he had brought the assumption
of Hellenistic ideas in Paul into a dangerous position. Previously
when a student of the subject had stated it to be his view that the
sharp antithesis of flesh and spirit was Greek, there was no way in
which this belief could be countered. If he was, further, convinced
that the Apostle’s brain was so organised that he could at the same
time think consistently along two separate lines, Greek-spiritualistic
and Jewish-eschatological, without noticing their divergence and
without ever mingling the two sets of ideas, a mind accustomed to work
by the methods of historical criticism was similarly powerless against
views arrived at as if by revelation.
Pfleiderer, however, makes the mistake of referring [pg 074] to a
matter of fact when he asserts that the Apostle’s conception of a life
after death became Hellenised. Thereupon controversy about the Greek
element in Paul rages furiously over 2 Cor. v. I ff.—it was only now
that controversy had become possible. The simple wording of the
passage is against Pfleiderer, for its subject is not the soul’s being
“at home with Christ,” but the Apostle’s longing for the parousia.
Pfleiderer himself would never have arrived at his exposition had it
not been for the laudable desire to produce at last some tangible
example of the influence of Greek thought upon the Apostle’s ideas.
The point which Pfleiderer raised here was after all only a particular
case in relation to the general question whether a Hellenistic
influence is to be recognised in the Apostle’s conceptions of the
final state and the times of the End. It was in this wider aspect that
Kabisch dealt with the problem in his work on the Pauline eschatology.
His decision is in the negative. The much-discussed “development” of
the views of I Thessalonians into those of I Corinthians xv., and of
these again into those of 2 Corinthians and Philippians, is, he
maintains, a delusion. The conception of the things of the End is a
unity, and remains the same throughout.
To oppose this view Teichmann entered the lists._(_63_)_ In his
over-confident zeal he plays the part of Polos in Plato’s Gorgias.
He goes much further than Pfleiderer, and seeks to show that Greek
ideas actually superseded the whole Jewish Eschatology of Paul. In
consequence of the [pg 075] influx of new thoughts one antinomy after
another arises in the Apostle’s conception of the things of the End.
To trace out and exhibit these in detail is the goal of Teichmann’s
endeavour.
He arrives at the following conclusions:—In I Thessalonians Paul still
assumes that Christians will enter the kingdom of heaven with their
_earthly_ bodies. Not before I Corinthians xv. does he introduce the
idea of a “transformation.” He is then led to do so by the development
of the Greek doctrine of flesh and spirit. In the second Epistle to
the Corinthians he carries out this new conception to its logical
issue. “The compromise which he had attempted in I Cor. is abandoned,
and the result is that the conception of the resurrection of the dead
is set aside.” Along with the resurrection of the dead the Apostle
also strikes out from his programme of the future the parousia. “For
the expectation of the descent of Christ to earth he substitutes the
entry of the believer into the heavenly world. A resurrection of the
dead, a descent of Christ to earth, was now no longer necessary.”
Not only so, but the conception of the judgment is also abolished. In
the first place, Paul draws this inference “at least so far as
Christians are concerned.” That subsequently, in following out his
ideas, “he should also arrive at the conception of universal
blessedness, can in view of his universalism cause no surprise.” “As
all men were included in Christ at His resurrection, so all must
receive the Spirit, they must all be made alive.” The End does not,
therefore, mean blessedness for some and destruction for others, but
eternal life for all. But since eternal life depends on the possession
of the Spirit, it must be assumed that those who are not believers at
their death “come to faith in Christ in the period between the
parousia and the delivery of all authority into the hands of God, and
in consequence of this the Spirit is given to them.”
Teichmann professes to have demonstrated the [pg 076] Hellenisation of
the Pauline eschatology. What he actually shows is what it would have
become if it had really undergone Greek influence.
Not one of his “results” can be proved from the Apostle’s letters.
Where is there a single word to suggest that the Apostle abandoned the
conception of the judgment and that of predestination to life or to
damnation? Where does he ever speak of universal blessedness? Where
does he hint at the possibility that mankind as a whole is to be
converted to belief in Christ between the parousia and the delivery of
all authority into the hands of God, and will thereupon receive the
Spirit? What grounds are there for supposing that he gives up the idea
of the parousia as superfluous? In his zeal to discover antinomies and
trace developments, Teichmann forgets to take account of the most
elementary facts. He asserts, for instance, that in I Thessalonians
those who arise from the dead enter the kingdom of God in their
earthly bodies. But from the Jewish Apocalyptic and from the teaching
of Jesus it clearly appears that the resurrection included within
itself a transformation of this creaturely corporeity into a glorified
corporeity. It would not do for Teichmann to remember this. He is
bound, even where he represents the Apostle as still wholly under the
sway of Jewish conceptions, to bring him into an inconceivable
opposition to these in order that the transformation which is taught
in I Corinthians xv.—entirely in accordance with Jewish
eschatology—may be represented as derived from the Greek doctrine of
the Spirit.
Without intending it, he thus supplies the most brilliant refutation
of the theory of the Hellenisation of the Pauline eschatology. He
engaged battle on ground on which Pfleiderer and his school had
incautiously ventured forth in the heat of action, and he has to find
by experience that he is unable to make good a single position. A
Hellenisation of the eschatology is quite impossible to prove. Kabisch
turns out to have been right. The [pg 077] Apostle holds on this point
too vigorous and too clear a language.
But if that be so, the theory that the doctrine of flesh and spirit is
Greek is itself most seriously imperilled. Teichmann felt, and therein
he was more logical and consistent than the rest, that if there were
any Hellenistic ideas in Paulinism they must necessarily have attacked
and displaced the Jewish eschatology. Pfleiderer’s view that the two
could have subsisted side by side without—except in the case of 2
Corinthians v. I ff.—influencing and interpenetrating one another is
an untenable theoretical hypothesis. From the whole range of the
history of thought no analogy could be produced for this harmonious
coexistence of two different worlds of thought.
A further difficulty of the theory of the Hellenisation of Paulinism
arises from the fact that the Apostle’s views have to be more and more
spiritualised in proportion as the Greek element is emphasised.
Lüdemann, overpowered by the impression of the documents, had
expressly characterised the doctrine of redemption which is bound up
with the dualism of flesh and spirit as not ethical but physical.
Holsten and Pfleiderer do not venture to follow him in that. The
Platonism which they seek to discover in Paulinism cannot be brought
into connexion with a physical doctrine of redemption, but is thought
of as the antithesis of the “crude Jewish ideas.” The whole of the
mystical teaching about dying and rising again with Christ, about the
new creature and the influence of the Spirit, has therefore to be
spiritualised.
This brings them into conflict with the natural, literal meaning of
the Apostle’s statements, in which the materialistic character of his
conceptions maintains itself against all the arts of exegesis. The
interpretation given by Pfleiderer and his school deprives them of
their original meaning to an even greater extent than the modern
interpretation in general does.
Most unfortunately for those who seek to spiritualise Paul, his
doctrine of the Spirit in particular shows no [pg 078] trace of Greek
influence. As though from an apprehension that they might be deprived
of one of their most indispensable illusions, for thirty years after
Baur the students of Paulinism had neglected to deal with this
subject. At last in the year 1888 Gunkel undertook the task._(_64_)_
He investigates the influence of the Holy Spirit as conceived by the
popular view of the Apostolic age, and according to the doctrine of
the Apostle, and is obliged to come to the conclusion that a Greek
element in the latter is not to be assumed.
The Apostle, according to Gunkel’s exposition, takes over the
primitive Christian view and accepts it in all points. His own
doctrine merely represents an elevation, a development of what he
found already present. He introduces—I Cor. xii.-xiv.—an ethical
judgment and valuation of spiritual gifts, which was new to the
Christian community. While the latter had regarded “speaking with
tongues” as the highest manifestation of supernatural power, he puts
all the _charismata_ on a lower footing than love. He gives a further
development to the primitive Christian doctrine by attributing to the
influence of the Spirit a large number of the characteristics of the
Christian life which were not so regarded by the primitive community.
Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, kindness, faithfulness,
meekness, chastity are, according to Gal. v. 22, fruits of His power.
He generalises, therefore, in such a way that all Christian willing,
feeling, knowledge, hope, and action proceed from the _pneuma_, which
for the common view was only thought of in connexion with revelations
and miracles.
[pg 079]
There is a further point in which, according to Gunkel, Paul raises to
a higher level the view which he took over. By the possession of the
Spirit the primitive Church was made certain that the end of the
present age was at hand and the new age was about to dawn. For the
Apostle the temporal relation becomes an inner one. The Spirit is for
him the earnest of the coming kingdom of God. Already in the present
he calls into being the future life in believers and gives them the
certainty, and to some extent even the reality, of the life which is
about to dawn for them.
The Pauline doctrine of the Spirit is therefore simply a development
of the primitive Christian doctrine. That it was so long regarded as
Greek is due, according to Gunkel, to the fact that scholars never
examined it as a whole, but always confined themselves to the
discussion of the dualism of spirit and flesh. This prevents the
relation of the doctrine to the views of the primitive community, and
especially its relation to the doctrine of the future age, from
becoming apparent.
One very weighty theoretic objection to the admission of Greek
elements in Paulinism is passed over by its defenders in complete
silence. If the thoughts developed by the Apostle of the Gentiles had
grown up upon the soil of Hellenism, the original apostles and those
closely associated with them would certainly have been aware of this
and attacked them on that ground. From the records, however, as we
have them in the letters, it appears certain that they only reproached
him with his attitude towards the law, and found no other point to
object to in his teaching. The primitive Christian community at
Jerusalem accused him of keeping back something from his churches; it
did not discover anything new and essentially foreign in his thought.
In spite of the keenness of the struggle, it was never made a charge
against him that he had “heathenised” the Gospel. That shows how
completely out of the question the assumption of Greek influences was
for his [pg 080] opponents. But the fact that his contemporaries
discovered nothing of the kind in him forms a strong presumption
against any such theory when brought forward in later times.
The objection which arises from the side of the history of dogma tends
to the same result. Those who hold the theory of Greek elements in
Paul must, if they are to be consistent, assert that he pioneered a
path for the Gospel into the Hellenic world and prepared the way for
the early Greek theology. And they do so most emphatically. Pfleiderer
explains_(_65_)_ that the Greek Church-theology arose by the expulsion
from Paulinism of its specifically Jewish elements, and by the free
development of its “universally intelligible Hellenistic side.” The
noble Platonic idealism had a place in the doctrinal system of the
Apostle of the Gentiles, “and conferred on it its capacity to win the
Graeco-Roman world for Christianity.” “The understanding of Paulinism
is therefore a fundamental condition for the understanding of the
Early Church.” And all the adherents of the theory, whatever their
precise shade of opinion, express themselves to the same effect.
But the history of dogma holds a different language. It has to record
the fact, inconceivable as it may appear, that on the generations in
which Greek dogma was taking shape Paul exercised no influence
whatever. Even the external literary influence is very slight. If one
sets aside the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians it is not even
possible to speak of a deutero-Pauline literature. The Pastoral
Epistles and the second letter to the Thessalonians profess to be
written by the Apostle, but contain not a single thought which is
characteristic of his teaching. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, in 1
Clement, in the Epistle of Barnabas, in the writings of Ignatius, in
the works of Justin, expressions occur which show acquaintance with
the Epistles of Paul, and may have [pg 081] been influenced by him in
respect to their wording; but beyond that they show no trace of his
conceptions or his spirit.
The remarkable point, therefore, is that the post-Apostolic writers,
though they are acquainted with the works of the Apostle of the
Gentiles, make no real use of them. His ideas remain foreign,
lifeless, so far as they are concerned.
That is also shown by the fact that early Greek Church-theology is
quite independent of him. It is concerned with the incarnation and
resurrection of Christ and with regeneration; Paul’s speculations deal
with the death and resurrection of the Lord, and he never speaks of
regeneration. The underlying logic is in the two cases so different
that the representatives of Greek theology, even if they wished to do
so, could not appeal to the Apostle. No community of thought between
him and Justin is to be discovered.
Even Baur had to learn how little Greek theology attached itself to
Paul,_(_66_)_ although he wished to derive it from a compromise
between the Pauline and the Petrine Gospel. So long as he is carrying
out his theory on the lines of the history of the Church and its
literature, the mistake does not become so apparent, because the
universalism and freedom from the law which gradually establish
themselves are set down as Graeco-Pauline. In treating the history of
dogma, however, where he is dealing exclusively with the development
of the Greek conception of the Person of Christ and of the redemption
effected through Him, he can, as a matter of fact, make nothing of
Paul. He hardly mentions him.
What Baur was unwilling to acknowledge to himself, Harnack has
irrefutably proved._(_67_)_ According to his [pg 082] showing there is
no bridge leading from the Pauline Gospel to the doctrine of the Early
Greek Church. The “history of dogma,” strange as it may appear, only
begins after Paul. The forces which are there at work have not been
set in motion by him.
The same result is arrived at by Edwin Hatch in his work on Hellenism
and Christianity._(_68_)_ A trained philological scholar possessing
great knowledge of and insight into the late Greek and early Christian
literatures, he endeavours to describe in detail the process by which
Christianity became Hellenised. In doing so he does not find it
necessary to deal with Paul. For the points of contact which he finds
to exist between the two worlds no examples are to be discovered in
the letters of the Apostle of the Gentiles. Hatch’s observations lead
him to make the process of Hellenisation only begin with the second
century.
The history of dogma cannot, therefore, accept the suggestion that
Paul recast the Gospel in the moulds of Greek thought. The process
began later, and of its own motion. It did not derive its impulse from
a single great personality, but began gradually and on all sides. It
was the Greek popular mind as represented by the members of the
Gentile churches which Hellenised the Gospel for itself. Men like
Ignatius and Justin bring this work to a provisional completeness by
combining the current ideas into a primitive but in its own fashion
impressively clear and living system, and creating a connexion between
Christology, the conception of redemption and the doctrine of the
sacraments; the [pg 083] Fourth Evangelist carries this system of
doctrine back into the preaching of the historic Jesus. These men
received no kind of impulse from Paul. Of the work which he did they
make no use. They know it, but it seems as if it were impossible for
them to use it.
The recognition of the true state of the case begins when one gets rid
of the seemingly so natural but in reality unjustified assumption that
the universalism_(_69_)_ and freedom from the law for which Paul
fought his battles, imply a Hellenisation of Christianity and form the
Greek element in his doctrine.
Ritschl and Harnack, in opposing this assumption of Baur and his
successors, went to the other extreme. They maintained that
universalism and freedom from the law were purely practical and
separable views, which had, properly speaking, nothing to do with the
fundamental ideas of the doctrine of redemption. In this way they
succeeded, no doubt, in liberating the history of dogma from the
prejudices of the Tübingen school; but they did less justice to the
Apostle’s statements than those whom they were attacking, since on
every page of his writings he implies an actual connexion between his
doctrines and the practical views which he is defending. It is to be
noted that Ritschl and Harnack never clearly explain why Paul holds a
different view on these points from that of the primitive community.
Truth here appears as the synthesis of a thesis and antithesis.
Universalism and freedom from the law do in fact belong to the history
of dogma, but not in the way Baur thought. And they are in themselves
practical views, but at the same time they claim to be logically
derived from the system of doctrine. The presuppositions on which they
are based have nothing to do with Greek thought; it was purely by
systematically thinking out to its conclusions the primitive Christian
doctrine that Paul was led to his theories of the universal [pg 084]
destination of the Gospel and of emancipation from the law.
These are the facts as they lie clearly before us in the letters. But
to register them is not to explain them. How, exactly, do these
conclusions result from the logic of the primitive Christian belief as
rightly worked out in the Apostle’s mind? That is the form which the
question takes as the next stage, after Baur, Ritschl, and Harnack.
The negative result that the Pauline attitude in regard to these
points is not Greek is in any case established. And so too is the
other result that the creators of Greek dogma did not take him as
their starting-point, and cannot therefore have discovered anything
Hellenic in him. They had no consciousness that he had already
quarried and shaped the material which they needed for their edifice.
But if they did not recognise in him one who had made a beginning in
their direction, it is more than questionable whether modern
historical criticism is right in professing to find Greek elements in
him. If so, it must be supposed to have a better instinct for what is
Hellenic than the men who Hellenised Christianity.
In any case it has no right to talk at large about the significance of
Paulinism for Greek Christianity, as though the history of dogma was
not there to prove the contrary.
How do the Debit and Credit of the theory stand at this point? For the
credit side, it claims that the dualism of flesh and spirit is of
Greek origin, but it does not get beyond the general assertion. No
serious attempt has been made to demonstrate the existence of Greek
conceptions in the particular aspects of the doctrine, and to explain
the pessimism, the desire for death, and the ethical teaching of the
Apostle as derived from the non-Jewish world of thought. That the
Pauline universalism and doctrine of freedom from the law are directly
inspired by the Greek spirit it no longer has the right to assert.
[pg 085]
In a single instance its defenders venture to point to the influence
of Greek religious thought on the Apostle’s views. They seek to show
that his Jewish, eschatological conception of the future life and his
view of the events of the End were in time entirely transformed by it,
if not actually cancelled. But the attempt to prove this from the
documents has not been successful.
Meanwhile the following difficulties appear. The theory is obliged to
assume a dualism between Jewish and Greek elements in Paul, and to
assert that on the one hand he never allowed the two systems of
thought to coalesce, while on the other he never became conscious of
their disparity; it has to attribute to him a capacity for combining
contradictions, which allows him to maintain alongside of one another
a spiritualistic doctrine of immortality and a crudely materialistic
notion of resurrection without becoming aware of their
incompatibility; it is logically forced to the conclusion that he set
aside the Jewish eschatology, with its conceptions of judgment and
condemnation, in favour of a doctrine of universal blessedness,
whereas there is in the Epistles not a single hint pointing in this
direction; it is forced, in order to make his statements appear
“Platonic,” so to spiritualise them that the natural sense of the
words disappears; it must ignore the proved fact that his doctrine of
the spirit, when taken in its full compass and not confined to the
antithesis of spirit and flesh, is most naturally explained as a mere
development of the primitive Christian view; it must meet the
objection—which it never can do—that the original apostles never
discovered anything of an essentially foreign, Greek character in
Paul’s views; it must, when confronted with the history of dogma, bend
itself with what grace it may to the admission that Paulinism
exercised no influence upon the formation of early Greek theology, and
cannot therefore have been felt by the men who were concerned in that
process as itself representing a first stage in the Hellenisation of
Christianity.
[pg 086]
The theory therefore explains nothing, but creates difficulty upon
difficulty.
In view of this relation of its assets to its liabilities it would
have no alternative but to declare itself bankrupt, had it not
astutely refrained from keeping any accounts.
And so far we have considered the mere for and against. Even if the
balance had here inclined in favour of the theory, that would not have
proved anything. The ideas in question ought not to be considered as
Greek until it had been shown that they actually were so. But this
would require it to be shown that exactly corresponding ideas were to
be found in the preceding or contemporary Greek literature, and that
Paul betrayed some kind of acquaintance with this literature. The
possibility that it was a mere case of analogy would have to be
systematically excluded, so far as that is possible.
But such a method of proof has never been seriously contemplated by
the adherents of the theory. In going through their works one is
astonished to see how lightly they have treated their task. They have
never properly collected the material; it is much if here and there a
point is thoroughly considered.
The assumption of Greek elements in Paulinism appeared something so
self-evident, and indeed, if one desired to arrive at any
understanding of him, so necessary, that from the first it came
forward with an assurance which secured credit for it everywhere
without its needing to produce adequate guarantees.
When Lüdemann in the year 1872 worked out clearly the dualism of flesh
and spirit, he added, as a thing to be taken for granted, that it was
Greek in character. His successors show a similar absence of
misgiving.
In order to bring the question once for all to an issue, let us gather
up and put to the test, along with the poor fragments of attempted
proof, every consideration that can be cited in favour of the
assumption of Greek elements in Paulinism.
The Apostle was born and grew up in Tarsus, the [pg 087] “Athens of
Asia Minor” as Ernest Curtius has called it._(_70_)_ In his native
city, as Heinrici expresses himself, “rhetoric and Stoic philosophy
were to be met with in the market-place.”_(_71_)_
No limits are set to the estimate of what the child of the Diaspora
may have absorbed, retained, and laid up in his mind from the
intellectual life by which he was surrounded.
But just as large a place might be claimed for the contrary argument,
which would lay stress upon the exclusiveness of strictly Jewish
circles of the Diaspora in regard to the Greek culture by which they
were surrounded.
Neither argument proves anything. A thousand possibilities on the one
side do not produce a certainty any more than on the other.
The greater probability, however, is on the side of the assumption of
exclusiveness. Although he lived in the middle of Hellenism, it is
possible that Paul absorbed no more of it than a Catholic parish
priest of the twentieth century does of the critical theology, and
knew no more about it than an Evangelical pastor knows of theosophy.
The decision lies solely with his works.
The case is similar as regards the argument from his language. It is
inconceivable, so writers like Heinrici and Curtius urge, that a
language like Greek could be familiar to a man like Paul without
causing a flood of ancient conceptions and ideas to stream in upon
him. Heinrici, indeed, is prepared to decide the question on this
ground alone, and concludes his exposition of the Corinthian Epistles
with a close analysis of their vocabulary. This shows, he thinks, that
Greek concepts and expressions far outweigh in number and importance
the “specifically Christian” and those which show the influence of the
Old Testament or the language of the synagogue. [pg 088] But in
opposition to this, Schmiedel,_(_72_)_ a not less thorough
commentator, expresses himself as follows: “We must be on our guard
against concluding too hastily from the predominantly Hellenistic
character of Paul’s language to a Hellenistic mode of thought. With a
language of which one learns colloquially the current use, one does
not by any means necessarily assimilate all the thought-forms of which
it contains, so to speak, the geological record.”
Here too, therefore, one argument is balanced by another.
A fact which seems to carry us a little further is the Apostle’s
exclusive use of the Greek version of the Old Testament. In a detailed
study, of the year 1869, Kautzsch_(_73_)_ showed that out of
eighty-four quotations which occur in the Epistles thirty-four agree
exactly with the Septuagint, thirty-six show small deviations, and ten
depart from it more widely. Two others show a considerable difference,
without, however, throwing doubt upon the author’s acquaintance with
the wording of the ordinary translation; two others, again, from Job,
differ from it entirely.
This investigation was carried further by Hans Vollmer_(_74_)_ and
brought to a provisional conclusion. According to him the deviations
are to be explained by the fact that Paul did not use a single
complete recension of the LXX, but had recourse to different editions
for different books. In Job he had before him a version which shows
affinity with the later Jewish translations. To explain the remaining
peculiarities Vollmer brings forward a hypothesis. He is inclined to
assume that the Apostle used Greek Scriptural anthologies in which [pg
089] separate passages were collocated, or freely combined with one
another. In such collections—their existence is not
demonstrable—various versions were, he thinks, used promiscuously.
Perhaps the passage quoted as Scripture in I Corinthians ii. 9, which
is not traceable in the Old Testament,—“As it is written, what eye
hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart
of man, hath God prepared for them that love Him”—may be derived from
an anthology of this kind.
It is in any case certain that the Apostle always makes use of Greek
translations; and it is further certain that he argues from
peculiarities in their wording which for one who knew Hebrew, as he
also certainly did, must have been recognisable as mistranslations. He
therefore goes so far as to ignore the original.
Nevertheless these facts do not warrant us in drawing conclusions of a
too far-reaching character. If he wrote in Greek at all he could not
do otherwise than use the Greek translations which were familiar to
him, and in the synagogues of the Diaspora were regarded as
“authentic,” as the Vulgate is for the Latin Church according to the
decrees of the Council of Trent. That being so, it was out of the
question for him, in making quotations, to introduce renderings of his
own from the original.
In all historical cases of theological bilingualism the same fact is
to be observed. Scripture is never “personally” translated, but always
cited in accordance with a recognised version._(_75_)_
That Paul should turn to account the mistakes of the version need not,
in view of his exegetical principles, cause us any surprise. Whether
he forces his thought [pg 090] directly upon the original, or gets it
expressed by the Greek version, comes to much the same thing. The fact
that he adopts the errors of the LXX and finds his account in them
does not make him a Greek. It only shows that he belongs to the Jewish
Diaspora. But does this imply that he has his place in the
Jewish-Hellenistic movement?
This assumption is often taken as so self-evident that any examination
of it appears superfluous. The defenders of the theory of Greek
influence in Paul, therefore, feel themselves dispensed from this duty
and act accordingly.
Even those who, like Harnack, do not admit a more far-reaching direct
influence of Greek ideas upon the Apostle, do not feel any doubt about
his relations with Jewish Hellenism.
But the sceptics of the self-evident, with whom science can never
dispense, must dare to be tactless enough to put the question here
also, “What is really proved?” As we have to do with a characteristic
literature which lies before us with some measure of completeness, the
verdict cannot be difficult to arrive at.
Pfleiderer and his followers had all along asserted that Paul in his
eschatology and anthropology showed dependence on the Wisdom of
Solomon, which doubtless dates from the first century before Christ.
Others denied this. In an essay which appeared in 1892, Grafe sought
to sift the material and decide the question._(_76_)_
As “crucial” instances for the relationship he thinks the following
may safely be taken: Romans ix. shows affinity with Wisdom xii. and
xv. in regard to what is said of the Divine omnipotence and mercy; in
their references to heathen idolatry the two authors coincide in a
remarkable way; the views regarding the relationship of body and soul
which are implied in 2 Cor. v. I ff. find a parallel in Wisd. ix. 15,
where there is a reference to [pg 091] the earthly tabernacle which
weighs down the thinking soul. The facts do not, according to Grafe,
justify the conclusion that Paul is dependent on the pseudo-Salamonian
Book of Wisdom, but he does regard it as having been made highly
probable that the Apostle knew and had read the book.
It is not a clear “yes” that one hears in Grafe’s essay. When it is
quoted, however, by writers on Paulinism it gets a push towards the
positive side which makes it say exactly what Grafe did not venture to
assert.
Scarcely more productive is Vollmer’s cast of his net into the works
of Philo._(_77_)_ He thinks that, in view of the affinities pointed
out by him, “the acquaintance of the Apostle with the works of the
Alexandrian writer will have become less improbable to others besides
himself.”
But that is not the point at all. That Paul, a scholar of the
Diaspora, would have been aware of the existence of so important a
work as the Wisdom of Solomon, and would not have been wholly ignorant
of its contents, is really self-evident. And is it likely that none of
the writings of his older Alexandrian contemporary—Philo died probably
about the beginning of the forties—would have come to his knowledge?
On the contrary, the most probable assumption is that he was
acquainted with the whole of the earlier and later Hellenistic
literature. Whether this can be more or less clearly proved by certain
real or supposed parallels does not really matter.
The important point is that he does not use the ideas which are here
offered to him. Jewish-Hellenistic theology is so characteristic a
product that it can never [pg 092] be overlooked even where it is only
a subsidiary element. But in Paul no trace of it can be shown. Its
problems, its speculations regarding the Logos, Spirit, and Wisdom,
its ethics, do not interest him; he makes no use of its theories. On
the other hand he is concerned with eschatology and with the person of
the Messiah, which for it seem to have no existence.
The characteristic mark of Jewish Hellenism is that it brings the
different ideas into an external juxtaposition without effecting their
interpenetration. Whether it is a question of philosophical or other
writings, of problems of ethics, or of the doctrine of God and the
Divine administration of the world, the Greek element always shows up
plainly in contrast with the Jewish, and can be clearly recognised as
Platonic or Stoic. It is a case of mosaic work, better or worse
executed as the case may be.
Any one who proposes to show that Paul was influenced by Jewish
Hellenism ought, therefore, to begin by recognising that the union of
the two worlds of thought which is supposed to have taken place in him
is of an entirely different order from that found in other cases,
inasmuch as a real synthesis is effected, and the problems involved
are such as do not elsewhere occupy Jewish Hellenism, while on the
other hand those which interest it are here left out of account. How
much is left then by way of a common element?
Paul’s attitude towards Jewish Hellenism is one of indifference. From
his letters, written as they are in Greek, we should never learn that
in his time there existed a literature in which the old Jewish
theology, using the universal language of the period, entered into
discussion with Greek philosophy and religious thought, and formed an
external combination with them.
All the proofs which are offered of his acquaintance with this
literature only serve to render more unintelligible the fact that he
is not in the slightest degree influenced by it.
The phrase-making by which theologians of the [pg 093] post-Baur
period disposed of Paul’s independence in regard to Jewish
Hellenism—so far as they became aware of it—is quite inept. Heinrici,
as we have seen, maintained that he had risen superior to
Alexandrianism.
It is to be remarked that the theoretic question whether he was never
influenced by this movement, or whether the influence only ceased when
he became a Christian, must remain open. In the latter case he must
have put off along with what was specifically Jewish also what was
Jewish-Hellenistic. It would then belong to the things which,
according to Philippians, were formerly gain to him, but which now he
counted dross, and had cast aside in order to gain Christ.
This latter view is inherently possible if one is prepared to take
literally what the Apostle says about that radical breach with the
past to which we can apply no standard of measurement, and which we
are unable to conceive. But the other alternative—that he had never
been influenced by it—is the more probable.
Practically both come to much the same thing. We know only the
Christian Paul, and we find it to be a fact that in his letters no
specifically Jewish-Hellenistic conceptions are to be found.
The “self-evident” is therefore once more negated by the facts.
We may call attention to a curious parallel. _A priori_ the assumption
might appear justified that the Apostle of the Gentiles would have
taken from Jewish Hellenism material wherewith to Hellenise
Christianity. In reality he did not do so. _A priori_ it was to be
expected that the creators of Greek theology would have taken from
Paulinism material for the construction of their doctrines. In reality
they did not do so. The three points which it seemed would allow
themselves to be joined to form a triangle, lie, in reality, in
different planes, belong to different systems, and have no natural
relation to one another.
If Paul stands solitary, without receiving or exercising [pg 094]
influence, between these two factors in which Greek characteristics
are manifest, it follows that he does not exhibit their common
element. If he did not adopt Platonism and Stoicism in the convenient
compound which Jewish Hellenism had mixed ready for him, it is
antecedently little probable that he made use of the uncompounded
substances in the form in which they are to be met with in Greek life
and literature.
What are the possibilities of direct influences which have to be taken
into account?
It is to be remarked that Paul never gives the slightest hint that he
is making use of something which is familiar to and valued by the
Greeks in his churches. The Acts of the Apostles indeed pictures him
as a preacher who in the Areopagus at Athens takes as his
starting-point an inscription upon an altar, and quotes from the Greek
poet Aratus the pantheistic saying that men are of the Divine race
(Acts xvii. 28). But for this Paul, the author of Acts, must take, all
responsibility._(_78_)_
The Apostle of the Gentiles who is made known to us by the Epistles
wears a different aspect. In this sense he never became a Greek to the
Greeks. We find in him no trace of any high estimation of heathenism
and its thought. It is for him idolatry, nothing less nor more. His
estimate is purely negative.
He can therefore hardly have intentionally taken over anything from
Greek thought. It is possible, however, that he did so unconsciously.
The most obvious suggestion is to assume that this was the case in
regard to ethics. What he says in Rom. ii. about conscience, which in
the heathen takes the place of the law, might be based on ideas
derived from Greek rationalism. But on close examination what we find
here is not so much a positive valuation of natural ethical feeling,
but rather the creation for dialectic purposes of something to serve
as an analogue to the law. Paul’s [pg 095] purpose is to prove that
Jew and Greek are alike delivered over to sin; consequently the
position in the two cases, if an injustice on the part of God is not
to be suggested, must be made as similar as possible.
The assumption of Greek ideas here is rendered improbable by the fact
that Paul’s ethic as a whole is not to be explained as Hellenic.
Neither Gass nor Ziegler in their works on the history of Christian
ethics have ventured any attempt in this direction._(_79_)_ In general
the Pauline ethic has been little treated by the students of Paulinism
of the post-Baur period. The only monograph dedicated to the subject
took a form that was purely biblico-theological and without
interest._(_80_)_ It is interesting to note that Kabisch, when he
planned to work up the ethical material, found it necessary first to
deal with the eschatology. That does not suggest the presence of
Hellenic influences.
It has also been maintained with a certain confidence that the
pessimism of the Apostle is Greek, because it recalls the view of the
world which we find in the writings of Seneca and Epictetus.
Seneca was his contemporary. That the Apostle knew the works of this
writer is not held by any one to be proved._(_81_)_ Epictetus worked
at the end of the first century, [pg 096] was himself acquainted with
Christianity, and was doubtless influenced by it, even if
unconsciously._(_82_)_
All that could come into question, even as a possibility, is that the
Apostle might have adopted the same generally current ideas of his
period which are expressed by these two writers.
The expressions which are quoted as parallel have only an external
resemblance. They are not really analogous. The roots from which the
pessimism springs are entirely different in the two cases.
In the philosophers it is purely a result of reflection on the
conditions of the present life. Existence appears to Seneca a burden
which one may at any time cast off—by suicide. For Paul the present
world is evil because it is sinful, lies under the dominion of the
angel powers, and is subject to corruption. He judges it, not in
itself, but with reference to a new and perfect world which is soon to
appear. The idea of suicide does not enter into his thoughts, indeed
he dreads that he might be released from the present earthly existence
before the parousia occurs.
Seneca’s religion is resignation, Paul’s is enthusiasm. The two may
show verbal similarities, but no affinity of thought exists between
them.
Further, the anthropology and psychology_(_83_)_ of the Apostle are
claimed as Greek. Pfleiderer lays great stress upon this point. He
does not, however, offer any proofs.
What Paul has to say about man rests in the first place [pg 097] on
ordinary observation and is of a self-evident character. The special
features of his view which go beyond this are to be explained from
eschatology and not from Greek thought. Anthropology and psychology,
in the development which he gives them, have reference not to the
natural man but to the redeemed man, who is risen with Christ, endowed
with the Spirit, and already living in a supernatural condition. His
conception of the natural condition of man is determined by reference
to its actual abolition, and therefore has quite a different
orientation from that of the Greek thinkers.
How do matters stand in regard to the assertion that his system
contains Platonic elements?
What comes into question is not Platonism proper, but the religious
modification and popularisation of it which later on, in the third
century, came to completion in Neo-Platonism. What this philosophy has
in common with Paul is the general desire for deliverance from
corporeity. When it is more closely considered, however,
characteristic differences appear.
Platonism as a religion has to do with the deliverance of the soul
from its imprisonment in the body, Paul looks for the deliverance of
the whole human personality. In the one case the antithesis is between
soul and body, in the other between the supernatural body and the
corruptible flesh. Platonic religious feeling desires release from all
corporeity, what Paul hopes for is a different kind of materiality. He
believes in a resurrection, Platonism in mere immortality. For him the
fate of the individual is so bound up with cosmical, eschatological
events that the new state of existence can only result from a cosmical
revolution. Platonism knows nothing of a temporally conditioned
redemption of this kind, but represents it as coming to pass
immediately after death.
The materialism which is implicate in eschatology thus opposes a
barrier to the Platonising of Paul’s religious thought.
For his conception of spirit a parallel might be sought [pg 098] in
Stoicism, which teaches that a spiritual substance proceeding from God
permeates the universe, including corporeal organisms, and manifests
itself in man as the rational soul. Common to this philosophy and to
Paul is the material conception of spirit. But the differences which
it exhibits are of such a kind that there can be no question of the
Apostle’s dependence upon it. In the Stoic philosophy the spirit is
identical with the rational soul; in Paul it is introduced as
something new alongside of the latter, and ends by displacing it.
According to the philosophic conception it is active in the world from
all eternity; according to the doctrine of the Apostle it first
appears in the times of the End, and is only bestowed upon a limited
section of mankind. The one view is a pantheistic monism, the other is
a theistic dualism.
The Book of Wisdom and Philo are Stoic in their mode of thought, but
Paul is not so.
It is inconceivable how the Stoic _heimarmene_ can have been brought
into connexion with the Pauline doctrine of predestination.
The philosophic conception of fate thinks of the world-process as an
unbroken chain of cause and effect in which also the actions of living
beings have their place. Pauline foreordination is a pure will-act of
God, non-rational and non-moral, and has to do with the ultimate
issues of existence, not with the vicissitudes of life. To see a
connexion between the two doctrines of predestination is as
unjustifiable as it would be to identify the cosmic conflagration of
the Pauline eschatology with that of the Stoic theory.
Paulinism has, in general, a different spirit from that of the Stoa.
Its author is moved by the fear of death and corruption and yearns for
a new being. To the Stoic such ideas are, as “passion,” contemptible.
He reckons—as you may read in Marcus Aurelius—with the present world
as the only one there is, and with the present life as the only one
which he has to live.
[pg 099]
Whatever views and conceptions are brought up for comparison, the
result is always the same—that Paulinism and Greek thought have
nothing, absolutely nothing, in common. Their relation is not even one
of indifference, they stand opposed to one another. Had the Apostle
been influenced by Hellenism in any shape or form, he could never have
conceived his system in the way he did.
Nevertheless it is possible to understand how theology came to class
his doctrine as Greek. The mysticism which enters into it bears a
certain analogy to that which springs from Greek religious thought and
feeling. Since Judaism, itself guileless of any mysticism, produced
nothing of the kind, could not create out of itself anything of the
kind, the only possible alternative seemed to be to explain it as due
to Greek influences, and to explain the essential character of
Paulinism in accordance with this hypothesis.
But this road leads to an impasse. In this way it is possible only to
misinterpret the mysticism of the Apostle, not to understand it.
Critical theology is confronted with the at first apparently
inexplicable fact that there has arisen on Jewish-Christian soil a
system of thought which externally has all the air of being a twin
formation to that of Greek religious mysticism, but inwardly has
nothing whatever to do with it.
The actual result of the study of Paulinism in the post-Baur period is
therefore wholly negative, and it must become evident that it is so
the moment any one attempts to substitute references and proofs for
mere assertions. This the scholars of that period avoided doing; they
were prevented from making the attempt by the scientific instinct of
self-preservation.
[pg 100]
IV
H. J. HOLTZMANN
_Heinrich Julius Holtzmann._ Lehrbuch der Neutestamentlichen
Theologie. 1897. Vol. ii., 532 pp. On Paulinism, 1-225.
_William Wrede._ Über Aufgabe und Methode der sogenannten
Neutestamentlichen Theologie. (1897.) (On the Task and the Method of
the so-called New Testament Theology.)
HOLTZMANN’S “New Testament Theology” was eagerly awaited on all sides.
It was hoped that it would bring about a clearing of ideas such as had
been produced in regard to questions of criticism by his
“Introduction.”
In the new work the author follows the method which seemed to him to
have proved its usefulness in the former work. He lets every writer
who has dealt with the subject have his say at the appropriate place,
even though he runs the risk of not making his own opinion distinctly
heard amid the strife of tongues._(_84_)_
While in the “Introduction” the advantages of the method predominate,
in the “Theology” its disadvantages are conspicuous. The former work
dealt with a series of questions which are already formulated and can
be answered with a clear yes or no. There is therefore some sense in
taking the suffrages of the writers, living and dead. It leads up to a
verdict which in a certain sense [pg 101] may be given forth as the
objective result of the period under survey.
But when it is a question of the content of thought in the New
Testament writings, the questions are not so clearly formulated. The
continual hearing of opinions has not the same usefulness. On the
contrary, the account of the subject becomes thereby only the more
complicated and confused.
Here the result of Holtzmann’s threading his own view through those of
others is that neither the one nor the other stands out with any
clearness. Undoubtedly, he knows the literature as no one else does,
and has absorbed into his own mind and worked up all that it has to
offer. But a clear view of the state of opinion is what he does not in
the end succeed in conveying, since he intentionally omits to give a
sketch and criticism of the works cited and contents himself with
quoting passages from them.
This unfortunate atomistic method does not even allow the individual
problems to appear as clearly as would be desirable. In the post-Baur
study of Paulinism, various questions had come up one after another
which, taken together, form its fundamental problem. The most natural
procedure for one who intended to make critical use of the work
already done would have been to sketch these in their full extent and
then formulate them more exactly and exhibit their inner connexions.
But that is not the kind of treatment which Holtzmann aims at. He has
the feeling that this is no longer necessary, and agrees with
contemporary scholars in thinking that assured results have been
attained in sufficient number to admit of a simple positive account of
the system. In accordance with this view he feels it to be his duty to
act as a critical camera, focussing the views on his lens and
combining them into a picture.
One looks, therefore, in vain in his work for a fundamental statement
and solution of the problems. They are mentioned where they happen to
come up, and are [pg 102] there discussed in a fragmentary fashion. In
addition to this the author’s peculiarly subtle and delicately shaded
method of exposition has to be reckoned with. Any one who is not
familiar with it runs the risk of passing too lightly over these
passages and failing to appreciate the significance which Holtzmann
himself attaches to his remarks. What he intends to give is a
General-staff map of the results of investigation. The heights and
hollows are not shown as such, but represented by curves which are
only later to be carried out in relief.
Holtzmann does not stand above the post-Baur study of the subject, but
within it.
That is immediately evident from the fact that, speaking generally, he
takes as the plan of his exposition the scheme, partially
“Reformation,” partially modern, which the head of the Tübingen school
had used in his theology and left as a legacy to his successors. After
dealing with the doctrine of man, law, sin, and corruption, he
describes the “revolution” (conversion). Then follow Christology, the
work of redemption, and the Divine righteousness. The close is formed
by the chapters on the “ethical” material, the “mystical,” and
“eschatology.”
The difficulties and errors which are involved in this division of the
subject have not been escaped by Holtzmann any more than by others. At
every step it is evident how unnatural is an arrangement of the
material which leaves out of account the connexions inherent in the
system. How much art is expended on breaking off the thread at a given
moment, in order to take it up again in a later chapter! How many
unnecessarily fragmentary representations! How many annoying
repetitions! How many references forward and backward! Thus, for
example, what Paul has to say of redemption is not developed
connectedly but split up among a number of chapters. And the same
thing happens with regard to the doctrine of the death and
resurrection of Christ.
The division which he has taken over leads Holtzmann [pg 103] to
regard the Pauline teaching on redemption from the stand-point of the
Reformation doctrine. Involuntarily he always thinks either of the
individual man, or humanity, instead of the entity always present to
the mind of the Apostle, the group of the elect of the last
generation, who have been subjected to the influence of the death and
resurrection of Christ. He quotes the acute remark of
Schmiedel_(_85_)_ that “the men who had sought (and found) in Jesus
before His death forgiveness and peace of soul” are left out of
account by the Apostle, but he does not go further into the problem
which this suggests. The temporally conditioned character and the
general point of view of the Pauline doctrine of redemption is, owing
to the faulty division, practically overlooked.
Not less unfortunate is the plan on which the significance of the
death and resurrection of Christ is dealt with. Having begun with the
psychology of the natural man, and the man in process of conversion,
Holtzmann endeavours to explain the facts by which redemption is
conditioned from this starting-point. He asks what these two events,
the death and resurrection, signified for Jesus and what they
signified for the believers. Jesus is thereby proved to be the
Messiah; the influence upon believers is described on the basis of the
classical passages in the Epistles. But the inner connexion of the two
effects is not clear, and it is equally unintelligible wherein the
saving significance of the death and resurrection consists.
Holtzmann is, in fact, still straitly confined to the Reformation and
modern point of view, from which the twofold event of the death and
resurrection of Christ is considered by itself, in isolation, and an
attempt is made to get behind it by psychologising, and thus to
discover how, according to the statements of Paul, it produced a
complete change in God and man, and effected justification and
reconciliation. This attempt overlooks the fact that on the Apostle’s
view it is primarily a cosmic [pg 104] event which alters the
condition of the whole creation and introduces a new Age, and that
everything else is only a consequence of this fundamental effect.
As Holtzmann, like his predecessors, has thus omitted to consider the
most fundamental aspect of redemption as conceived by Paul, he is not
concerned to trace out the most general conception of the effect of
the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is as much as to say
that he, like the rest, is condemned to a mere descriptive treatment,
using Pauline phraseology, and is practically unable to give any
explanation.
This unfortunate result becomes apparent in regard to the question of
the Law. He is unable to make it in any way intelligible how Paul was
necessarily led, as a matter of reasoning, to the conviction that it
was no longer valid. In the last resort he can only appeal to the
unique character of the vision on the Damascus road. He assumes that
this “brought to an issue in the zealous Pharisee not only a
theoretic, but also an ethical crisis, terminating that painful
condition of inner division which Paul pictures out of his own inmost
consciousness when he speaks of the experiences which are associated
with subjection to the law.” “Previously,” he continues, “the Pharisee
had anxiously sought to conceal from himself, or to argue away, the
fact that the law was impossible of fulfilment, and was therefore no
way of salvation, but rather the contrary. There now rose upon this
melancholy scene, strewn with the shattered fragments of attempts to
gain righteousness, a new light streaming from the Christ, whom the
legalists had delivered to death, whereas His being raised again by
God guaranteed the actual presence of another way of salvation. Not
only did his former legal service appear to him a life of sin, his
Pharisaic rabbinism as foolishness, his attack upon the Messianic
community as enmity to God, but even in his inmost being a crisis had
taken place in consequence of which a tension, under which he had
hitherto groaned, had suddenly been relaxed.”
[pg 105]
How do we know that Paul when he was still a persecutor of the
Christians was suffering inward distress from his experiences of the
powerlessness of the law? How did the vision of Christ bring about the
resolution of this tension? How, exactly, did it reveal a way of
salvation by which the abolition of the law was implied?
In themselves the vision of Christ, and the law, have nothing to do
with one another. What Paul received in that moment was the conviction
of the Messiahship of Jesus. While other believers were content simply
to adopt this conviction, he proceeds to draw from it in some way or
other the conclusion that the law was henceforth invalidated. Whether
he did that at the moment or only later, we do not know. What is
certain is only that he does draw this conclusion, though it is not
contemplated either in the thoughts of Jesus or in those of the
primitive community.
How he came to draw it is not explained by Holtzmann, any more than by
the scholars of the post-Baur period generally. The assumption that
the Apostle experienced along with the vision an ethical crisis which
set him free from the law, is a psychological hypothesis about which
the letters have nothing whatever to say. It does not even prove what
it professes to prove. Exactly how the abrogation of the law is
supposed to be effected by the death and resurrection of Christ is not
obvious. It is to be remarked, too, that Paul always treats the
abolition of the law as a logical conclusion, not as a psychological
experience.
In other connexions, too, Holtzmann often has recourse to Holsten’s
expedient of taking what is unintelligible in the Apostle’s statements
as accounted for by the Damascus vision.
In this way the doctrine of the “new creature” is made to go back to a
“personal experience,” and “a perception so keen as to be apprehended
by the senses, of the destruction of the law of sin in the members.”
“The complex of new ethical powers, motives, duties, [pg 106] and aims
. . . which formed itself in him has as its centre the risen Christ
who had appeared to him in that moment as light, to be henceforth the
vital centre and the guiding star of his individual life. . . . Hence
the ‘new creation.’ It is a simple generalisation and application of
this personal experience to cover all analogous cases, since now all
baptized persons appear as, on the negative side, dead to sin, on the
positive side as walking in a ‘newness of life’ corresponding to the
resurrection.”
So Holtzmann. Paul, however, never speaks of his theory of the new
creature as if he were expressing by it the generalisation and
objectivation of an inner experience, but represents it as being
logically and actually involved in the death and resurrection of the
Lord for those who believe in him, and regards his own renewal as only
a special case of the general law which operates in all the believing
elect.
That is just the characteristic and unintelligible thing about
Paulinism, that its creator does not seem to have the faintest
consciousness of holding up his personal experiences as something to
be imitated, but presents his whole system as something that
immediately and objectively grows out of the facts, something which
can be examined by the higher, but in its own way logical
understanding from which “gnosis” is derived.
To treat his Damascus “experience” as a source of theoretic knowledge,
as is done by modern theology, in order to be dispensed from rendering
any account to ordinary or philosophic thought, would have been out of
the question for an unsophisticated mind such as his, and indeed for
the mental attitude of antiquity in general.
Of Paul’s objective statements Holtzmann always, in order to be able
to interpret them, makes something subjective.
This error in method—which he shares with scholars of the post-Baur
period generally—runs through the whole of his undertaking.
He frequently takes occasion to point to the element of [pg 107]
“gnosis” in the Apostle’s doctrine. At bottom, however, he is afraid
that his doctrine may be too much considered as an intellectual
construction. For that reason he provides a special section on “the
religious character of the doctrine.” “Paul’s world of thought,” he
there tells us, “is, to put it in a word, not merely a product of
intellection, it is antecedently to that a product of experience also;
in this it differs fundamentally from any of the artificially
excogitated gospels of Gnosticism proper. . . . The first condition
for any understanding of Paulinism is that we should not obscure the
volcanic character of its origin by any method which implies the
gradual addition of one grain of sand to another. The whole system of
doctrine means nothing more nor less than the way in which the Apostle
objectified to himself the fundamental decisive experience of his life
and theoretically explained its presuppositions and consequences. The
doctrine fits the experience with a theory.”
How, then, does Holtzmann know that Paul is not after all a Gnostic
pure and simple? The whole character of his system makes him appear
so. He himself claims to be one,_(_86_)_ and is quite unaware that his
doctrine is nothing more than the form given by the constructive
imagination to a personal experience.
He knows no distinction between “gnostic” and “religious.” What is
religious is for him gnostic, and what is gnostic, religious. Any one
who strictly distinguishes the two in him is modernising.
His mission to the Gentiles and his universalism are also, according
to Holtzmann, to be explained directly from the vision at his
conversion. The Christ who has won through to triumph by way of death,
so Holtzmann explains, implies for the Apostle the purification of the
Messianic idea from all the carnal elements which in Judaism still
cling to it. In the exalted Christ he sees [pg 108] also the head of
the Church gathered out from both Jews and Gentiles.
How, exactly, does the vision at the conversion carry with it the
elimination of the carnal elements which in Judaism cleave to the
Messianic idea? Paul, it is true, sees a glorified Person; but the
Jewish Son-of-Man Messiah also belongs to the supernatural world.
Further, universalism is provided for in the eschatology of Late
Judaism, and in that preached by Jesus, since it is assumed that among
those elected to the Kingdom of God others will be revealed who do not
belong to the people of Israel. Universalism is therefore involved in
the Jewish conception of the Messiah. Whereas, however, Late Judaism
and Jesus only represent it as realised in the coming supernatural
Age, Paul antedates it and affirms that distinctions are already
abolished in consequence of the death and resurrection of Jesus, and
infers from this the justification and the duty of preaching to the
heathen. The problem has therefore nothing to do with the
“purification of the Messianic idea,” and consists simply in the fact
that the Apostle assumes this universalism to be already applicable to
the present natural era, just as he also asserts that believers are
already in a condition of resurrection life.
Holtzmann is not much concerned to show the connexion of the Pauline
statements with Jewish theology and eschatology in order to arrive in
this way at a new formulation of the problems. In fact he clearly
betrays the tendency to make as little use as possible of eschatology
in explaining the Pauline system of doctrine.
Kabisch’s work is in the highest degree distasteful to him. He refers
to it only occasionally, and with reserve. It is true he cannot avoid
acknowledging that, “with all the exaggerations, monstrosities, and
inconsistencies which may be pointed out” in its emphasising of the
physical character of the conceptions and ideas associated with the
dualism of flesh and spirit, the work embodies a sound idea. But he
never so much as mentions that this [pg 109] insistance on the
“physical” is ultimately due to the fact that all the conceptions and
ideas are traced back to eschatology. Any one who is not already
acquainted with Kabisch’s fundamental idea will not learn it from
Holtzmann.
True to the Baur and post-Baur tradition, Holtzmann postpones the
chapter on eschatology to the end. That this arrangement does not
contribute to a satisfactory treatment of the ethics is not
surprising. The eschatological roots of the conception of
predestination discussed in this chapter, or of the designation of
believers as “saints” are hardly visible. That the most general
ethical maxims of the Apostle are conditioned by the expectation of
the nearness of the parousia, and that the ethical implications of the
mystical dying and rising again with Christ have also in the last
resort an eschatological orientation, is never fairly recognised.
Holtzmann finds himself, therefore, rather helpless when he has to
deal with points in which the eschatological character of Paul’s ethic
comes most clearly to light. In the directions given in I Corinthians
vii. about married and unmarried persons, about marrying or remaining
single, he finds a certain “hesitation.” In a quite general way, he is
willing to assume that “the so closely bounded view of the future
explains why in this and other departments there was no complete
development of the ethics.”
This halting estimate of the ethical significance of eschatology shows
that Holtzmann regards the Pauline ethical teaching from the modern
point of view.
He is bound to take this course with regard to eschatology because he
agrees with Pfleiderer and the rest in admitting a comprehensive
influence of Greek ideas upon Paul, and is well aware that a man
cannot serve two masters.
Even in the Apostle’s doctrine of man he finds a Hellenistic factor
alongside of the Jewish, and asserts that the “emphasis rests on the
former.” Wherever reference is made to the antithesis of flesh and
spirit [pg 110] he thinks that the influence of the Greek element is
manifest. By regarding sin as implicate in the empirical nature of man
“Paul abandons in principle the ultimate basis of the Jewish
philosophy and ethic.”
Greek, or to speak more precisely, Alexandrian, is the metaphysical
background of his conception of Christ. According to Holtzmann, Paul
never really goes back expressly to Daniel or the Apocalyptic Messiah.
His own special view grew up, Holtzmann thinks, out of speculations
allied to those of Philo about the two accounts of the creation and
the heavenly and earthly Adam. The primary point for him is “the
metaphysical hypothesis of the two classes of mankind” which stand
opposed to each other as the “psychic” and the “pneumatic” creation.
That the “subjective,” ethical interpretation of the work of
redemption is based on Hellenistic ideas is for Holtzmann
self-evident. It is not less certain for him that the idea of
predestination is “borrowed” from the Book of Wisdom, and consequently
“in one of the most conspicuous points of the Pauline world of thought
its Hellenistic origin” must be regarded as proved. That the idea of
predestination is inherent in eschatology, and that Jesus Himself
makes use of it, is not taken into account.
The doctrine of baptism “comes to base itself entirely on the
Hellenistic side of Paul’s theology.” In general, he transformed the
two sacred ceremonies of primitive Christianity after the analogy of
the Greek mystery-cults, and thus “opened up for the early Catholic
Church a way” into which it was forced by the natural progress of
events.
Holtzmann sees in Paul’s system of thought the first, but at the same
time a far-reaching Hellenisation of Christianity. The Apostle, so
runs his verdict, “by bringing Hellenistic forms of thought to bear
for the first time upon Christian conceptions, prepared the way for
the passing over of the latter from the Semitic to the Hellenic world,
and beyond this again to the modern world.”
[pg 111]
The influx of Greek ideas is thought of, as by Pfleiderer, as coming
through the intermediary channel of Jewish Hellenism. The question
whether any literary relationship to the latter can be detected in
Paul is dismissed in a few lines. Holtzmann admits that “no tangible
influence” of Philo’s writings is to be recognised. He is, however, of
opinion that Grafe has proved “with all the greater certainty” the
Apostle’s dependence on the Alexandrian Book of Wisdom.
Instead of giving a regular proof he confines himself, as his
predecessors had done, entirely to general considerations, which he
sums up in the following sentences “In any case Paul was by birth and
parentage a son of the Diaspora, and from his youth up breathed at any
rate at times a Greek atmosphere. His letters show, in regard to
vocabulary and rhetoric, sometimes even as regards tone of feeling and
mental attitude, not a few surprising affinities with Greek thought.
Some kind of communication from this side, and that not merely
occasional or accidental, one must certainly assume. The only question
which remains is in regard to the extent and intensity of this
Hellenistic, or even it may be Hellenic, admixture, which became
amalgamated with his Jewish scholasticism. This is certainly the point
on which depend all the problems which Pauline study is called on at
the present day to face. . . .”
With this the matter is disposed of—on the third page of the work!
Gunkel’s and Kabisch’s arguments to show that the doctrine of the
Spirit is intelligible apart from Greek influences, are left out of
account; that Hatch in his “Influence of Greek Ideas” had nothing to
say about any Hellenisation of the Gospel on the part of Paul is not
mentioned. On the contrary there follows a profession of faith in
Pfleiderer’s doctrine that Paul in the course of his career even
advanced to the Hellenisation of his eschatology. Holtzmann cheerfully
and courageously defends this theory to its ultimate consequences, and
holds that in Paul’s dread of being found unclothed [pg 112] (2 Cor.
v. 3) his national mode of feeling and a Greek mode of thought “are
combined in a fashion which no one would have dreamed of inventing.”
The usually so cautious scholar goes in this case unhesitatingly
forward. The difficulties which arise out of the assumed collocation
and opposition of Jewish and Greek ideas fascinate instead of alarming
him.
Here, as in some other points, Holtzmann betrays Kantian tendencies
and instincts, and is inclined to exhibit the problems as antinomies.
Paul’s system of teaching, as it had shaped itself in the course of
the study of the subject since Baur, appears to him a unique
formation, since in it are combined two worlds of thought and two
different sets of religious ideas which are supposed to hold each
other in equipoise and mutually interpenetrate one another. He takes
it to be his task to lay bare this remarkable construction in its
minutest details, and to show how the most diverse thoughts sometimes
conflict, sometimes stand in a state of tension, sometimes mutually
limit, and sometimes supplement each other. If he succeeds in making
clear the position and relation of the various strata of thought, the
system, he believes, will become intelligible.
This idea runs through his whole treatment of the subject, and gives
him courage to take over all the contradictions and compromises which
scholars from Baur onwards have discovered, and even to add new ones
in addition. He is especially interested in the questions regarding
the juridical and ethical sets of ideas, the relation of the “popular”
missionary preaching to the “system of doctrine,” the antithesis
between “theory” and “practice” in the ethics, and the inconsistencies
of the eschatology.
In these discussions there is much penetrating observation. The
picture, however, does not become clearer, but rather more confused.
His predecessors had done their best in their treatment of the subject
to conceal its fragmentary character, and [pg 113] when all was said
and done had been content to put in the foreground only a few leading
ideas, which could be brought under a single point of view. They
worked with perspective, light and shade. Holtzmann brings all the
detail into one line and places it under the same illumination. The
fact that the system becomes in this way much more complicated than it
had already been made by the scholarship of the period awakes in him
no misgivings, but increases his confidence, since he sees in it one
of those offences which needs must come.
Even the objection that so complicated a system of doctrine could not
have been understood in primitive Christian times does not alarm him.
He anticipates it by declaring that the actual contemporaries and
adherents of the Apostle could neither understand nor imitate him,
even if they had wished to do so. How, indeed, could they possibly
have done so! The whole of Paulinism is a “systematisation of the
Christ-vision” and a “generalisation” of that which the Apostle had
experienced in his own soul, and consequently ascribed to all who walk
in the same way as an experience which they must necessarily undergo.
“What this man with his unique spiritual endowment had experienced,
felt, and thought amid influences and surroundings which could only
once have arisen, could never be exactly in the same way experienced,
felt, and thought by any other man.”
Holtzmann, therefore, like Harnack, accepts the saying that no one
ever understood Paul, with the sole exception of Marcion . . . who
misunderstood him! It is not enough for him to regard the system, as
had been usual among scholars since Baur, as a personal creation of
the Apostle; he goes the whole way with Holsten in maintaining that
the personal creation was nothing else than the interpretation of a
unique personal experience.
But that is to admit that no connecting links between Paulinism and
primitive Christianity can be discovered; and does not that really
imply an abandonment of all attempt to explain the Apostle’s doctrine?
Is it [pg 114] understood at all if it is not understood in relation
to primitive Christianity?
What right has any one to assert that it was unintelligible to his
contemporaries? Paul confidently ascribes to them an understanding of
it. And how are we to explain the success which is evidenced by the
establishment of the Pauline churches and the victorious struggle for
freedom from the law? Can the least understood of all early Christians
have exercised the greatest influence? These fundamental questions are
not asked by Holtzmann. His confidence in the results already attained
left no room for them.
What he aimed at he has successfully accomplished. He has worked up
into one great symphony the themes and motifs of the Pauline
scholarship of the post-Baur period, a symphony such as he alone, at
once critic and artist, could have written. Even one who does not
allow himself to be carried away by it will again and again take up
the score with its subtle counterpoint and skilful instrumentation,
and always find in it new beauties.
Never was Holtzmann so impressive—this was to be observed even in his
lectures—as in his treatment of Paulinism. Here he could grip his
hearers, because he wished to do so—he who usually showed a certain
dread of allowing the feeling, the enthusiasm, which glowed in him, to
become perceptible when he was dealing with matters of scholarship.
The system as modelled by him lives because he has breathed his own
life into it. But it is not historic.
He thinks to sift out and preserve what is of permanent value in the
heritage left by Baur and his pupils, of whom he was proud to count
himself spiritually one. In reality he leads up to a declaration of
bankruptcy, and that especially in the powerful closing chapter
entitled “Retrospect and Prospect.”
Here he endeavours forcibly to combine into one whole the results of
Pfleiderer, Holsten, and Harnack.
From Pfleiderer he takes over the view of the [pg 115] wide-reaching
Greek influence in Paulinism, and from Holsten he takes the theory
that the system had its birth in the unique experience of the vision
of Christ on the way to Damascus.
Now these two views might at need be combined, though it is not quite
easy to show—and this difficulty is constantly coming to light in
Holtzmann—how what is in one aspect a purely subjective experience,
never exactly to be repeated by any other, appears in another aspect,
by a kind of miracle, as Greek religious thought, and thus becomes
universally intelligible.
But into this synthesis Holtzmann tries to introduce in addition
Harnack’s recognition that Paulinism had no part in the formation of
early Greek theology.
Now Holsten and Harnack again, on their part, might be combined. The
Pauline teaching, if it is referred to a unique personal experience,
might well remain for the Apostle’s contemporaries and successors a
book with seven seals.
But Pfleiderer and Holsten and Harnack cannot all be brought together.
If Paulinism was largely Greek, it must have had some influence. How
is it conceivable that Greeks should not have recognised and
understood the Greek spirit? The triumvirate planned by Holtzmann
cannot, therefore, be brought to pass, even if Holtzmann is regarded
as the connecting-link between Harnack and Pfleiderer. In defiance of
all the facts of the history of dogma the last-named must assert an
influence of the Pauline system upon the growth of Greek dogma, since
he sees in Paul the first step in the Hellenisation of Christianity.
Any one who shares his premisses must also draw his conclusions, and
Holtzmann is not bold enough to do that. He agrees with him in
asserting the Hellenic character of Pauline doctrine, in other
respects he bows to the facts of the history of dogma. But this means
that, however he may wrap it up in qualifying clauses, he is asserting
the impossible, namely, that Christianity [pg 116] as Hellenised by
Paul remained uninteresting and unintelligible to the Greeks.
The edifice which he constructs, therefore, breaks down from within,
even though he may be able for a time to maintain it in outward
appearance intact.
Thus there met in this universal critical spirit, which examined all
things and desired to do justice to all, Baur and the history of dogma
which took its rise from Ritschl and was opposed to Baur, and held a
new settlement of accounts. Once more it was made manifest that the
question of Paul’s relation to primitive Christianity on the one hand,
to early Greek dogma on the other, had not been solved, and that his
teaching therefore had not been understood.
[pg 117]
V
CRITICAL QUESTIONS AND HYPOTHESES
_Edward Evanson._ The Dissonance of the four generally received
Evangelists. (1792.)
_Bruno Bauer._ Kritik der Apostelgeschichte (1850). Kritik der
paulinischen Briefe (Galatians, 1850; I Corinthians, 1851; remaining
Epistles, 1852). Christus und die Cäsaren. Der Ursprung des
Christentums aus dem römischen Griechentum (1877). (Christ and the
Caesars. How Christianity arose out of the Graeco-Roman Civilisation.)
_Albert Kalthoff._ Die Entstehung des Christentums. 1904. (E.T. by J.
McCabe, The Rise of Christianity, 1907.)
__Allard Pierson.__ De Bergrede en andere synoptische Fragmenten. (The
Sermon on the Mount and other Synoptic Fragments.) 1878.
_A. Pierson and S. A. Naber._ Verisimilia. 1886.
_A. D. Loman._ Quaestiones Paulinae. (Theol. Tijdschrift, 1882; 1883;
1886—written in Dutch.)
_Rudolf Steck._ Der Galaterbrief. 1888.
_W. C. van Manen._ Paulus, 3 vols. Vol. i. deals with the Acts of the
Apostles (1890); vol. ii. with the Epistle to the Romans (1891); vol.
iii. with the Epistles to the Corinthians (1896). The criticism of the
Epistle to the Romans has been translated into German under the title
“Die Unechtheit des Römerbriefs,” by G. Schläger. 1906.
_M. Friedländer._ Das Judentum in der vorchristlichen griechischen
Welt. (Judaism in the pre-Christian Greek World.) 1897.
_J. Friedrich (Maehliss)._ Die Unechtheit des Galaterbriefs. (The
Spuriousness of the Epistle to the Galatians.) 1891.
_J. H. Scholten._ Historisch-kritische Bijdragen. (Contributions to
Historical Criticism.) 1882.
_G. Heinrici._ Die Forschungen über die paulinischen Briefe; ihr
gegenwärtiger Stand und ihre Aufgaben. (The Critical Study of the
Pauline Letters; its Present Position, and the Tasks which await it.)
1886.
_J. M. S. Baljon._ Exegetisch-kritische Verhandeling over den Brief
van Paulus aan de Galatiërs. (Exegetic and Critical Essay on the
Epistle of Paul to the Galatians.) 1889.
[pg 118]
_Wilhelm Brückner._ Die chronologische Reihenfolge, in welcher die
Briefe des Neuen Testaments verfasst sind. (The Chronological Order in
which the Epistles of the New Testament were written.) 1890.
_Carl Clemen._ Die Chronologie der paulinischen Briefe. 1893. Die
Einheitlichkeit der paulinischen Briefe. (The Integrity of the Pauline
Epistles.) 1894. Paulus, 2 vols., 1904.
_Christian Hermann Weisse._ Philosophische Dogmatik (3 vols., 1855;
1860; 1862). Beiträge zur Kritik der paulinischen Briefe.
(Contributions to the Criticism of the Pauline Epistles.) Brought out
by Sulze in 1867.
_J. M. S. Baljon._ De Text der Breven van Paulus. 1884.
_Daniel Völter._ Die Composition der paulinischen Hauptbriefe. (The
Composition of the chief Pauline Epistles.) 1890. Paulus und seine
Briefe. 1905.
_Friedrich Spitta._ Untersuchung über den Brief des Paulus an die
Römer. (Examination of the Epistle of Paul to the Romans—in his work,
Zur Geschichte und Literatur des Urchristentums, vol. iii., 1st half,
1901.)
THOSE critics who reject the Pauline letters as a whole profess to
have derived the impulse thereto from Ferdinand Christian Baur, to be
his true because logically consistent disciples, and to bear the same
relation to him as Schopenhauer did to Kant. This profession, which
has always filled the “legitimate” Tübingen school with indignation,
is in many points well founded.
Baur’s criticism was occupied with the _Corpus Paulinum_ which
remained after the exclusion of the Pastoral epistles. In the ten
remaining Epistles, which show a large degree of inner homogeneity, he
professed to discover differences on the basis of which some were to
be assigned to the Apostle, others to the school which took its rise
from him.
Once the rights of such a criticism are admitted, nothing can prevent
it from working itself out to its limit, and seeking to explain all
the Epistles as products of a school which went under Paul’s name.
The Tübingen master held that the Epistles to the Corinthians and that
to the Ephesians could not both be from the same hand. But the
differences between the former and the Epistle to the Galatians are in
their own way scarcely less great, if one considers that the violent
[pg 119] controversy about the law with which the latter is filled is
never mentioned in the others.
The letters to the Romans and to the Galatians, on the other hand,
deal partly with the same subjects, since they both treat of sin, law,
and justification by faith. Nevertheless they are far from coinciding.
For all their agreement in fundamental views they show remarkable
differences in detail. Is it, if this line of argument be followed,
after all so indubitably certain that the four main epistles are from
the same pen?
Is it certain that they are by Paul? Strictly examined, Baur’s
assumption that they are so rests only on tradition, which in respect
of the other letters he impugns. Has he then the right to rely on it
so confidently as regards the main epistles? In conformity with his
own principles he ought to have felt himself obliged to exercise
“positive criticism” here also, and would only have had the right to
regard them as Pauline after it had been proved that they really
belong to primitive Christian times and have the historical Apostle of
the Gentiles as their author.
The assumption of the genuineness of the four main epistles is by no
means so self-evident as it may seem to us in our simplicity. The Acts
of the Apostles know nothing of any literary activity of Paul. It is
only from Clement of Rome, Ignatius, and the Gnostics that we first
hear of his Epistles. Justin and the remainder of early Christian
literature are silent in regard to his writings. Supposing that the
first Epistle of Clement does not belong to the first century, the
earliest evidence for the Epistles comes from the second century. If
the Ignatian letters are not genuine, Marcion, about the middle of the
second century, is the first witness to an actual _Corpus paulinum_!
For any one who has to defend the ordinary view, the position is very
far from being favourable. So far as outward evidence goes it is
hardly more difficult to defend the theory that the letters originated
in an inner circle [pg 120] of Gnosticism and were gradually given out
under the name of Paul.