Thus the Pauline mission was not merely one manifestation of the
progress of oriental religion, and it was not merely a continuation
of the pre-Christian mission of the Jews; it was something new. But
if it was new in comparison with what was outside of Christianity,
was it not anticipated within Christianity itself? Was it not
anticipated by the Founder of Christianity, by Jesus Himself?
At this point careful definition is necessary. If all that is meant
is that the Gentile mission of Paul was founded altogether upon
Jesus, then there ought to be no dispute. A different view, which
makes Paul rather than Jesus the true founder of Christianity, will
be combated in the following pages. Paul himself, at any rate, bases
his doctrine of Gentile freedom altogether upon Jesus. But he bases
it upon what Jesus had done, not upon what Jesus, at least during
His earthly life, had said. The true state of the case may therefore
be that Jesus by His redeeming work really made possible the Gentile
mission, but that the discovery of the true significance of that
work was left to Paul. The achievement of Paul, whether it be
regarded as a discovery made by him or a divine revelation made to
him, would thus remain intact. What did Jesus say or imply, during
His earthly ministry, about the universalism of the gospel? Did He
make superfluous the teaching of Paul?
The latter question must be answered in the negative; attempts at
finding, clearly expressed, in the words of Jesus the full doctrine
of Gentile freedom have failed. It is often said that Jesus, though
He addressed His teaching to Jews, addressed it to them not as Jews
but as men. But the discovery of that fact (whenever it was made)
was no mean achievement. Certainly it was not made by the modern
writers who lightly repeat the assertion, for they have the benefit
of the teaching of Paul and of nineteen centuries of Christian
experience based upon that teaching. Even if Jesus did address not
the Jew as a Jew, but the man in the Jew, the achievement of Paul
in the establishment of the Gentile Church was not thereby made a
matter of course. The plain man would be more likely to stick at
the fact that however Jesus addressed the Jew He did address the
Jew and not the Gentile, and He commanded His disciples to do the
same. Instances in which He extended His ministry to Gentiles are
expressly designated in the Gospels as exceptional.
But did He not definitely command His disciples to engage in the
Gentile work after His departure? Certainly He did not do so
according to the modern critical view of the Gospels. But even if
the great commission of Matt. xxviii. 19, 20 be accepted as an
utterance of Jesus, it is by no means clear that the question of
Gentile liberty was settled. In the great commission, the apostles
are commanded to make disciples of all the nations. But on what
terms were the new disciples to be received? There was nothing
startling, from the Jewish point of view, in winning Gentile
converts; the non-Christian Jews, as has just been observed, were
busily engaged in doing that. The only difficulty arose when the
terms of reception of the new converts were changed. Were the
new converts to be received as disciples of Jesus without being
circumcised and thus without becoming members of the covenant people
of God? The great commission does not answer that question. It does
indeed mention only baptism and not circumcision. But might that
not be because circumcision, for those who were to enter into God's
people, was a matter of course?
In a number of His utterances, it is true, Jesus did adopt
an attitude toward the ceremonial Law, at least toward the
interpretation of it by the scribes, very different from what was
customary in the Judaism of His day. "There is nothing from without
the man," He said, "that entering into him can defile him: but the
things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man"
(Mark vii. 15). No doubt these words were revolutionary in their
ultimate implications. But there is no evidence that they resulted
in revolutionary practice on the part of Jesus. On the contrary,
there is definite reason to suppose that He observed the ceremonial
Law as it was contained in the Old Testament, and definite
utterances of His in support of the authority of the Law have been
preserved in the Gospels.
The disciples, therefore, were not obviously unfaithful to the
teachings of Jesus if after He had been taken from them they
continued to minister only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
If He had told them to make disciples of all the nations, He had
not told them upon what terms the disciples were to be received or
at what moment of time the specifically Gentile work should begin.
Perhaps the divine economy required that Israel should first be
brought to an acknowledgment of her Lord, or at least her obduracy
established beyond peradventure, in accordance with the mysterious
prophecy of Jesus in the parable of the Wicked Husbandmen,[5] before
the Gentiles should be gathered in. At any rate, there is evidence
that whatever was revolutionary in the life and teaching of Jesus
was less evident among His disciples, in the early days of the
Jerusalem Church. Even the Pharisees, and at any rate the people
as a whole, could find nothing to object to in the attitude of the
apostles and their followers. The disciples continued to observe
the Jewish fasts and feasts. Outwardly they were simply loyal Jews.
Evidently Gentile freedom, and the abolition of special Jewish
privileges, had not been clearly established by the words of the
Master. There was therefore still need for the epoch-making work of
Paul.
[5] Matt. xxi. 41, and parallels. This verse can perhaps hardly be
held to refer exclusively to the rejection of Jesus by the rulers;
it seems also to apply to a rejection by the people as a whole. But
the full implications of so mysterious an utterance may well have
been lost sight of in the early Jerusalem Church.
But if the achievement of Paul was not clearly anticipated in the
teaching of Jesus Himself, was it not anticipated or at any rate
shared by others in the Church? According to the Book of Acts,
a Gentile, Cornelius, and his household were baptized, without
requirement of circumcision, by Peter himself, the leader of the
original apostles; and a free attitude toward the Temple and the
Law was adopted by Stephen. The latter instance, at least, has
ordinarily been accepted as historical by modern criticism. Even
in founding the churches which are usually designated as Pauline,
moreover, Barnabas and Silas and others had an important part; and
in the founding of many churches Paul himself was not concerned.
It is an interesting fact that of the churches in the three most
important cities of the Roman Empire not one was founded by Paul.
The Church at Alexandria does not appear upon the pages of the New
Testament; the Church at Rome appears fully formed when Paul was
only preparing for his coming by the Epistle to the Romans; the
Church at Antioch, at least in its Gentile form, was founded by
certain unnamed Jews of Cyprus and Cyrene. Evidently, therefore,
Paul was not the only missionary who carried the gospel to the
Gentile world. If the Gentile work consisted merely in the
geographical extension of the frontiers of the Church, then Paul did
not by any means stand alone.
Even in the geographical sphere, however, his achievements must
not be underestimated; even in that sphere he labored far more
abundantly than any other one man. His desire to plant the gospel
in places where it had never been heard led him into an adventurous
life which may well excite the astonishment of the modern man. The
catalogue of hardships which Paul himself gives incidentally in the
Second Epistle to the Corinthians shows that the Book of Acts has
been very conservative in its account of the hardships and perils
which the apostle endured; evidently the half has not been told.
The results, moreover, were commensurate with the hardships that
they cost. Despite the labors of others, it was Paul who planted the
gospel in a real chain of the great cities; it was he who conceived
most clearly the thought of a mighty Church universal which should
embrace both Jew and Gentile, barbarian, Scythian, bond and free
in a common faith and a common life. When he addressed himself to
the Church at Rome, in a tone of authority, as the apostle to the
Gentiles who was ready to preach the gospel to those who were at
Rome also, his lofty claim was supported, despite the fact that
the Church at Rome had itself been founded by others, by the mere
extent of his labors.
The really distinctive achievement of Paul, however, does not
consist in the mere geographical extension of the frontiers of the
Church, important as that work was; it lies in a totally different
sphere--in the hidden realm of thought.[6] What was really standing
in the way of the Gentile mission was not the physical barriers
presented by sea and mountain, it was rather the great barrier of
religious principle. Particularism was written plain upon the pages
of the Old Testament; in emphatic language the Scriptures imposed
upon the true Israelite the duty of separateness from the Gentile
world. Gentiles might indeed be brought in, but only when they
acknowledged the prerogatives of Israel and united themselves with
the Jewish nation. If premonitions of a different doctrine were to
be found, they were couched in the mysterious language of prophecy;
what seemed to be fundamental for the present was the doctrine of
the special covenant between Jehovah and His chosen people.
[6] For what follows, compare the article cited in _Biblical and
Theological Studies_, pp. 555-557.
This particularism of the Old Testament might have been overcome
by practical considerations, especially by the consideration
that since as a matter of fact the Gentiles would never accept
circumcision and submit to the Law the only way to carry on the
broader work was quietly to keep the more burdensome requirements
of the Law in abeyance. This method would have been the method
of "liberalism." And it would have been utterly futile. It would
have meant an irreparable injury to the religious conscience; it
would have sacrificed the good conscience of the missionary and the
authoritativeness of his proclamation. Liberalism would never have
conquered the world.
Fortunately liberalism was not the method of Paul. Paul was not a
practical Christian who regarded life as superior to doctrine, and
practice as superior to principle. On the contrary, he overcame the
principle of Jewish particularism in the only way in which it could
be overcome; he overcame principle by principle. It was not Paul
the practical missionary, but Paul the theologian, who was the real
apostle to the Gentiles.
In his theology he avoided certain errors which lay near at
hand. He avoided the error of Marcion, who in the middle of the
second century combated Jewish particularism by representing the
whole of the Old Testament economy as evil and as the work of a
being hostile to the good God. That error would have deprived
the Church of the prestige which it derived from the possession
of an ancient and authoritative Book; as a merely new religion
Christianity never could have appealed to the Gentile world. Paul
avoided also the error of the so-called "Epistle of Barnabas,"
which, while it accepted the Old Testament, rejected the entire
Jewish interpretation of it; the Old Testament Law, according to
the Epistle of Barnabas, was never intended to require literal
sacrifices and circumcision, in the way in which it was interpreted
by the Jews. That error, also, would have been disastrous; it would
have introduced such boundless absurdity into the Christian use of
the Scriptures that all truth and soberness would have fled.
Avoiding all such errors, Paul was able with a perfectly good
conscience to accept the priceless support of the Old Testament
Scriptures in his missionary work while at the same time he rejected
for his Gentile converts the ceremonial requirements which the Old
Testament imposed. The solution of the problem is set forth clearly
in the Epistle to the Galatians. The Old Testament Law, according
to Paul, was truly authoritative and truly divine. But it was
temporary; it was authoritative only until the fulfillment of the
promise should come. It was a schoolmaster to bring the Jews to
Christ; and (such is the implication, according to the Epistle to
the Romans) it could also be a schoolmaster to bring every one to
Christ, since it was intended to produce the necessary consciousness
of sin.
This treatment of the Old Testament was the only practical solution
of the difficulty. But Paul did not adopt it because it was
practical; he adopted it because it was true. It never occurred to
him to hold principle in abeyance even for the welfare of the souls
of men. The deadening blight of pragmatism had never fallen upon his
soul.
The Pauline grounding of the Gentile mission is not to be limited,
however, to his specific answer to the question, "What then is the
law?" It extends rather to his entire unfolding of the significance
of the Cross of Christ. He exhibited the temporary character of the
Old Testament dispensation by showing that a new era had begun, by
exhibiting positively the epoch-making significance of the Cross.
At this point undoubtedly he had precursors. The significance of
the Cross of Christ was by no means entirely unknown to those who
had been disciples before him; he himself places the assertion that
Christ "died for our sins according to the Scriptures" as one of the
things that he had "received." But unless all indications fail Paul
did bring an unparalleled enrichment of the understanding of the
Cross. For the first time the death of Christ was viewed in its full
historical and logical relationships. And thereby Gentile freedom,
and the freedom of the entire Christian Church for all time, was
assured.
Inwardly, indeed, the early Jerusalem disciples were already free
from the Law; they were really trusting for their salvation not to
their observance of the Law but to what Christ had done for them.
But apparently they did not fully know that they were free; or
rather they did not know exactly why they were free. The case of
Cornelius, according to the Book of Acts, was exceptional; Cornelius
had been received into the Church without being circumcised, but
only by direct command of the Spirit. Similar direct and unexplained
guidance was apparently to be waited for if the case was to be
repeated. Even Stephen had not really advocated the immediate
abolition of the Temple or the abandonment of Jewish prerogatives in
the presence of Gentiles.
The freedom of the early Jerusalem Church, in other words, was
not fully grounded in a comprehensive view of the meaning of
Jesus' work. Such freedom could not be permanent. It was open to
argumentative attacks, and as a matter of fact such attacks were not
long absent. The very life of the Gentile mission at Antioch was
threatened by the Judaizers who came down from Jerusalem and said,
"Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be
saved." Practical considerations, considerations of church polity,
were quite powerless before such attacks; freedom was held by but a
precarious tenure until its underlying principles were established.
Christianity, in other words, could not live without theology. And
the first great Christian theologian was Paul.
It was Paul, then, who established the principles of the Gentile
mission. Others labored in detail, but it was he who was at the
heart of the movement. It was he, far more than any other one man,
who carried the gospel out from Judaism into the Gentile world.
The importance of the achievement must be apparent to every
historian, no matter how unsympathetic his attitude toward the
content of Christianity may be. The modern European world, what may
be called "western civilization," is descended from the civilization
of Greece and Rome. Our languages are either derived directly from
the Latin, or at any rate connected with the same great family. Our
literature and art are inspired by the great classical models. Our
law and government have never been independent of the principles
enunciated by the statesmen of Greece, and put into practice by
the statesmen of Rome. Our philosophies are obliged to return ever
anew to the questions which were put, if not answered, by Plato and
Aristotle.
Yet there has entered into this current of Indo-European
civilization an element from a very diverse and very unexpected
source. How comes it that a thoroughly Semitic book like the Bible
has been accorded a place in medieval and modern life to which the
glories of Greek literature can never by any possibility aspire? How
comes it that the words of that book have not only made political
history--moved armies and built empires--but also have entered into
the very fabric of men's souls? The intrinsic value of the Book
would not alone have been sufficient to break down the barriers
which opposed its acceptance by the Indo-European race. The race
from which the Bible came was despised in ancient times and it is
despised to-day. How comes it then that a product of that race
has been granted such boundless influence? How comes it that the
barriers which have always separated Jew from Gentile, Semite from
Aryan, have at one point been broken through, so that the current of
Semitic life has been allowed to flow unchecked over the rich fields
of our modern civilization?
The answer to these questions, to the large extent which the
preceding outline has attempted to define, must be sought in the
inner life of a Jew of Tarsus. In dealing with the apostle Paul we
are dealing with one of the moving factors of the world's history.
That conclusion might at first sight seem to affect unfavorably the
special use to which it is proposed, in the present discussion, to
put the examination of Paul. The more important Paul was as a man,
it might be said, the less important he becomes as a witness to the
origin of Christianity. If his mind had been a blank tablet prepared
to receive impressions, then the historian could be sure that what
is found in Paul's Epistles about Jesus is a true reflection of what
Jesus really was. But as a matter of fact Paul was a genius. It
is of the nature of genius to be creative. May not what Paul says
about Jesus and the origin of Christianity, therefore, be no mere
reflection of the facts, but the creation of his own mind?
The difficulty is not so serious as it seems. Genius is not
incompatible with honesty--certainly not the genius of Paul. When,
therefore, Paul sets himself to give information about certain
plain matters of fact that came under his observation, as in the
first two chapters of Galatians, there are not many historians
who are inclined to refuse him credence. But the witness of Paul
depends not so much upon details as upon the total fact of his
religious life. It is that fact which is to be explained. To say
merely that Paul was a genius and therefore unaccountable is no
explanation. Certainly it is not an explanation satisfactory to
modern historians. During the progress of modern criticism, students
of the origin of Christianity have accepted the challenge presented
by the fact of Paul's religious life; they have felt obliged to
account for the emergence of that fact at just the point when it
actually appeared. But the explanations which they have offered, as
the following discussion may show, are insufficient; and it is just
the greatness of Paul for which the explanations do not account. The
religion of Paul is too large a building to have been erected upon a
pin-point.
Moreover, the greater a man is, the wider is the area of his
contact with his environment, and the deeper is his penetration
into the spiritual realm. The "man in the street" is not so good an
observer as is sometimes supposed; he observes only what lies on
the surface. Paul, on the other hand, was able to sound the depths.
It is, on the whole, certainly no disadvantage to the student of
early Christianity that that particular member of the early Church
whose inner life stands clearest in the light of history was no mere
nonentity, but one of the commanding figures in the history of the
world.
But what, in essence, is the fact of which the historical
implications are here to be studied? What was the religion of Paul?
No attempt will now be made to answer the question in detail; no
attempt will be made to add to the long list of expositions of the
Pauline theology. But what is really essential is abundantly plain,
and may be put in a word--the religion of Paul was a religion of
redemption. It was founded not upon what had always been true, but
upon what had recently happened; not upon right ideas about God and
His relations to the world, but upon one thing that God had done;
not upon an eternal truth of the fatherhood of God, but upon the
fact that God had chosen to become the Father of those who should
accept the redemption offered by Christ. The religion of Paul was
rooted altogether in the redeeming work of Jesus Christ. Jesus for
Paul was primarily not a Revealer, but a Saviour.
The character of Paulinism as a redemptive religion involved a
certain conception of the Redeemer, which is perfectly plain on the
pages of the Pauline Epistles. Jesus Christ, Paul believed, was a
heavenly being; Paul placed Him clearly on the side of God and not
on the side of men. "Not by man but by Jesus Christ," he says at the
beginning of Galatians, and the same contrast is implied everywhere
in the Epistles. This heavenly Redeemer existed before His earthly
life; came then to earth, where He lived a true human life of
humiliation; suffered on the cross for the sins of those upon whom
the curse of the Law justly rested; then rose again from the dead by
a mighty act of God's power; and is present always with His Church
through His Spirit.
That representation has become familiar to the devout Christian, but
to the modern historian it seems very strange. For to the modern
historian, on the basis of the modern view of Jesus, the procedure
of Paul seems to be nothing else than the deification by Paul of a
man who had lived but a few years before and had died a shameful
death.[7] It is not necessary to argue the question whether in
Rom. ix. 5 Paul actually applies the term "God" to Jesus--certainly
he does so according to the only natural interpretation of his
words as they stand--what is really important is that everywhere
the relationship in which Paul stands toward Jesus is not the
mere relationship of disciple to master, but is a truly religious
relationship. Jesus is to Paul everywhere the object of religious
faith.
[7] H. J. Holtzmann (in _Protestantische Monatshefte_, iv, 1900, pp.
465f., and in _Christliche Welt_, xxiv, 1910, column 153) admitted
that for the rapid apotheosis of Jesus as it is attested by the
epistles of Paul he could cite no parallel in the religious history
of the race.
That fact would not be quite so surprising if Paul had been of
polytheistic training, if he had grown up in a spiritual environment
where the distinction between divine and human was being broken
down. Even in such an environment, indeed, the religion of Paul
would have been quite without parallel. The deification of the
eastern rulers or of the emperors differs _in toto_ from the Pauline
attitude toward Jesus. It differs in seriousness and fervor; above
all it differs in its complete lack of exclusiveness. The lordship
of the ruler admitted freely, and was indeed always accompanied by,
the lordship of other gods; the lordship of Jesus, in the religion
of Paul, was absolutely exclusive. For Paul, there was one Lord and
one Lord only. When any parallel for such a religious relationship
of a notable man to one of his contemporaries with whose most
intimate friends he had come into close contact can be cited in the
religious annals of the race, then it will be time for the historian
to lose his wonder at the phenomenon of Paul.
But the wonder of the historian reaches its climax when he remembers
that Paul was not a polytheist or a pantheist, but a Jew, to whom
monotheism was the very breath of life.[8] The Judaism of Paul's day
was certainly nothing if not monotheistic. But in the intensity of
his monotheism Paul was not different from his countrymen. No one
can possibly show a deeper scorn for the many gods of the heathen
than can Paul. "For though there be that are called gods," he says,
"whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many, and lords
many,) But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all
things, and we unto him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are
all things, and we by him." (I Cor. viii. 5, 6.) Yet it was this
monotheist sprung of a race of monotheists, who stood in a full
religious relation to a man who had died but a few years before; it
was this monotheist who designated that man, as a matter of course,
by the supreme religious term "Lord," and did not hesitate to apply
to Him the passages in the Greek Old Testament where that term was
used to translate the most awful name of the God of Israel! The
religion of Paul is a phenomenon well worthy of the attention of the
historian.
[8] Compare R. Seeberg, _Der Ursprung des Christusglaubens_, 1914,
pp. 1f.
In recent years that phenomenon has been explained in four different
ways. The four ways have not always been clearly defined; they have
sometimes entered into combination with one another. But they are
logically distinct, and to a certain extent they may be treated
separately.
There is first of all the supernaturalistic explanation, which
simply accepts at its face value what Paul presupposes about Jesus.
According to this explanation, Jesus was really a heavenly being,
who in order to redeem sinful man came voluntarily to earth,
suffered for the sins of others on the cross, rose from the dead,
ascended to the right hand of God, from whence He shall come to
judge the quick and the dead. If this representation be correct,
then there is really nothing to explain; the religious attitude of
Paul toward Jesus was not an apotheosis of a man, but recognition as
divine of one who really was divine.
The other three explanations are alike in that they all reject
supernaturalism, they all deny the entrance into human history of
any creative act of God, unless indeed all the course of nature be
regarded as creative. They all agree, therefore, in explaining the
religion of Paul as a phenomenon which emerged in the course of
history under the operation of natural causes.
The most widespread of these naturalistic explanations of the
religion of Paul is what may be called the "liberal" view. The name
is highly unsatisfactory; it has been used and misused until it
has often come to mean almost nothing. But no other term is ready
to hand. "Ritschlian" might possibly describe the phenomenon that
is meant, but that term is perhaps too narrow, and would imply a
degree of logical connection with the Ritschlian theology which
would not fit all forms of the phenomenon. The best that can be
done, therefore, is to define the term "liberal" in a narrower way
than is sometimes customary and then use it in distinction not only
from traditional and supernaturalistic views, but also from various
"radical" views, which will demand separate consideration.
The numerous forms of the liberal view differ from other
naturalistic hypotheses in that they attribute supreme importance
in the formation of the religion of Paul to the influence of the
real historic person, Jesus of Nazareth, and to the experience which
Paul had near Damascus when he thought he saw that person risen
from the dead. Jesus of Nazareth, according to the liberal view,
was the greatest of the children of men. His greatness centered in
His consciousness of standing toward God in the relation of son to
Father. That consciousness of sonship, at least in its purity, Jesus
discovered, was not shared by others. Some category was therefore
needed to designate the uniqueness of His sonship. The category
which He adopted, though with reluctance, and probably toward the
end of His ministry, was the category of Messiahship. His Messianic
consciousness was thus not fundamental in His conception of His
mission; certainly it did not mean that He put His own person into
His gospel. He urged men, not to take Him as the object of their
faith, but only to take Him as an example for their faith; not to
have faith in Him, but to have faith in God like His faith. Such was
the impression of His personality, however, that after His death
the love and reverence of His disciples for Him not only induced
the hallucinations in which they thought they saw Him risen from
the dead but also led them to attribute to His person a kind of
religious importance which He had never claimed. They began to make
Him not only an example for faith but also the object of faith. The
Messianic element in His life began now to assume an importance
which He had never attributed to it; the disciples began to ascribe
to Him divine attributes. This process was somewhat hindered in the
case of His intimate friends by the fact that they had seen Him
under all the limitations of ordinary human life. But in the case of
the apostle Paul, who had never seen Him, the process of deification
could go on unchecked. What was fundamental, however, even for
Paul, was an impression of the real person of Jesus of Nazareth;
that impression was conveyed to Paul in various ways--especially by
the brave and pure lives of Jesus' disciples, which had impressed
him, against his will, even when he was still a persecutor. But
Paul was a child of his time. He was obliged, therefore, to express
that which he had received from Jesus in the categories that were
ready to hand. Those categories as applied to Jesus constitute the
Pauline theology. Thus Paul was really the truest disciple of Jesus
in the depths of his inner life, but his theology was the outer
and perishable shell for the precious kernel. His theology was the
product of his time, and may now be abandoned; his religion was
derived from Jesus of Nazareth and is a permanent possession of the
human race.
Such in bare outline is the liberal view of the origin of Paulinism
and of Christianity. It has been set forth in so many brilliant
treatises that no one may be singled out as clearly representative.
Perhaps Von Harnack's "What is Christianity?"[9], among the popular
expositions, may still serve as well as any other. The liberal
view of the origin of Christianity seemed at one time likely
to dominate the religious life of the modern world; it found
expression in countless sermons and books of devotion as well as
in scientific treatises. Now, however, there are some indications
that it is beginning to fall; it is being attacked by radicalism
of various kinds. With some of these attacks it will not now be
worth while to deal; it will not be worth while to deal with
those forms of radicalism which reject what have been designated
as the two starting-points for an investigation of the origin of
Christianity--the historicity of Jesus and the genuineness of
the major epistles of Paul. These hypotheses are some of them
interesting on the negative side, they are interesting for their
criticism of the dominant liberal view; but when it comes to their
own attempts at reconstruction they have never advanced beyond the
purest dilettantism. Attention will now be confined to the work
of historians who have really attempted seriously to grapple with
the historical problems, and specifically to those who have given
attention to the problem of Paul.
[9] Harnack, _Das Wesen des Christentums_, 1900. (English
Translation, _What is Christianity?_, 1901.)
Two lines of explanation have been followed in recent years by those
who reject, in the interest of more radical views, the liberal
account of the origin of Paulinism. But these two lines run to a
certain point together; they both reject the liberal emphasis upon
the historic person of Jesus as accounting for the origin of Paul's
religion. The criticism of the customary view was put sharply by W.
Wrede in 1904[10], when he declared that Paul was no disciple of
Jesus, but a second founder of Christianity. The religious life of
Paul, Wrede insisted, was not really derived from Jesus of Nazareth.
What was fundamental for Paul was not the example of Jesus, but
His redeeming work as embraced in the death and resurrection,
which were regarded as events of a cosmic significance. The
theology of Paul--his interpretation of the death and resurrection
of Jesus--cannot, therefore, be separated from his religion; on
the contrary, it is in connection with the theology, and not in
connection with any impression of the character of Jesus, that the
fervor of Paul's religious life runs full and free. Theology and
religion in Paul, therefore, must stand or fall together; if one
was derived from extra-Christian sources, probably the other must
be so derived also. And such, as a matter of fact, Wrede concludes
is the case. The religion of Paul is not based at all upon Jesus of
Nazareth.
[10] Wrede, _Paulus_, 1904. (English Translation, _Paul_, 1907.)
Such, in true import, though not in word or in detail, was the
startling criticism which Wrede directed against the liberal account
of the origin of Paulinism. He had really only made explicit a type
of criticism which had gradually been becoming inevitable for some
time before. Hence the importance of his little book. The current
reconstruction of the origin of Christianity had produced a Jesus
and a Paul who really had little in common with each other. Wrede,
in his incomparably succinct and incisive way, had the courage to
say so.
But if Paulinism was not derived from Jesus of Nazareth, whence was
it derived? Here the two lines of radical opinion begin to diverge.
According to Wrede, who was supported by M. Brückner,[11] working
contemporaneously, the Pauline conception of Christ, which was
fundamental in Paul's religious thought and life, was derived from
the pre-Christian conception of the Messiah which Paul already had
before his conversion. The Messiah, in the thought of the Jews,
was not always conceived of merely as a king of David's line;
sometimes he was regarded rather as a mysterious, preëxistent,
heavenly being who was to come suddenly with the clouds of heaven
and be the judge of all the earth. This transcendent conception
which is attested by the Jewish apocalypses like the Ethiopic
Book of Enoch, was, Wrede maintained, the conception of the Jew,
Saul of Tarsus. When, therefore, Paul in his Epistles represents
Christ as preëxistent, and as standing close to the Supreme Being in
rulership and judgment, the phenomenon, though it may seem strange
to us, is not really unique; it is exactly what is found in the
apocalypses. What was new in Paul, as over against pre-Christian
Judaism, was the belief that the heavenly Messiah had already come
to earth and carried out a work of redemption. This belief was
not derived, Wrede maintained, from any impression of the exalted
moral character of Jesus; on the contrary, if Paul had really come
into any close contact with the historical Jesus, he might have
had difficulty in identifying Him so completely with the heavenly
Messiah; the impression of the truly human character of Jesus and
of His subjection to all the ordinary limits of earthly life would
have hindered the ascription to Him of the transcendent attributes.
Jesus, for Paul, merely provided the one fact that the Messiah had
already come to earth and died and risen again. Operating with that
fact, interpreting the coming of the Messiah as an act of redemption
undertaken out of love for men, Paul was able to develop all the
fervor of his Christ-religion.
[11] _Die Entstehung der paulinischen Christologie_, 1903; "Zum
Thema Jesus und Paulus," in _Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche
Wissenschaft_, vii, 1906, pp. 112-119; "Der Apostel Paulus als
Zeuge wider das Christusbild der Evangelien," in _Protestantische
Monatshefte_, x, 1906, pp. 352-364.
In very recent years, another account of the origin of Paulinism is
becoming increasingly prevalent. This account agrees with Wrede in
rejecting the liberal derivation of the religion of Paul from an
impression of the historical person of Jesus. But it differs from
Wrede in its view of the source from which the religion of Paul
is actually to be derived. According to this latest hypothesis,
Paulinism was based not upon the pre-Christian Jewish conception of
the Messiah, but upon contemporary pagan religion.
This hypothesis represents the application to the problem of
Paulinism of the method of modern comparative religion. About twenty
years ago that method began to be extended resolutely into the New
Testament field, and it has been becoming increasingly prevalent
ever since. Despite the prevalence of the method, however, and the
variety of its application, one great comprehensive work may now
fairly lay claim to be taken as summing up the results. That work is
the book of W. Bousset, entitled "Kyrios Christos," which appeared
in 1913.[12] It is perhaps too early as yet to estimate the full
importance of Bousset's work. But unless all indications fail, the
work is really destined to mark an epoch in the history of New
Testament criticism. Since the days of F. C. Baur, in the former
half of the nineteenth century, there has been no such original,
comprehensive, and grandly conceived rewriting of early Christian
history as has now appeared in Bousset's "Kyrios Christos." The
only question is whether originality, in this historical sphere, is
always compatible with truth.
[12] Compare also Bousset, _Jesus der Herr_, 1916.
According to Bousset, the historicity of Jesus is to be maintained;
Jesus was really a religious teacher of incomparable power. But
Bousset rejects much more of the Gospel account of Jesus' life than
is rejected in the ordinary "liberal" view; Bousset seems even to be
doubtful as to whether Jesus ever presented Himself to His disciples
as the Messiah, the Messianic element in the Gospels being regarded
for the most part as a mere reflection of the later convictions of
the disciples. After the crucifixion, the disciples in Jerusalem,
Bousset continues, were convinced that Jesus had risen from the
dead, and that He was truly the Messiah. They conceived of His
Messiahship chiefly under the category of the "Son of Man"; Jesus,
they believed, was the heavenly being who in their interpretation of
the Book of Daniel and in the apocalypses appears in the presence
of the supreme God as the one who is to judge the world. This
heavenly Son of Man was taken from them for a time, but they looked
with passionate eagerness for His speedy return. The piety of the
early Jerusalem Church was therefore distinctly eschatological; it
was founded not upon any conviction of a present vital relation to
Jesus, but on the hope of His future coming. In the Greek-speaking
Christian communities of such cities as Antioch and Tarsus, Bousset
continues, an important additional step was taken; Jesus there
began to be not only hoped for as the future judge but also adored
as the present Lord. He came to be regarded as present in the
meetings of the Church. The term "Lord," with the conception that
it represents, was never, according to Bousset, applied to Jesus in
the primitive Palestinian Church; it was first applied to Him in
Hellenistic Christian communities like the one at Antioch. And it
was there derived distinctly from the prevalent pagan religion. In
the type of religion familiar to the disciples at Antioch, the term
"Lord" was used to denote the cult-god, especially in the so-called
"mystery religions"; and the Antioch disciples naturally used the
same term to designate the object of their own adoration. But with
the term went the idea; Jesus was now considered to be present in
the meetings of the Church, just as the cult-gods of the pagan
religions were considered to be present in the worship practiced by
those religions. An important step had been taken beyond the purely
eschatological piety of the Jerusalem disciples.
But how about Paul? Here is to be found one of the boldest
elements in all the bold reconstruction of Bousset. Paul, Bousset
believes, was not connected in any intimate way with the primitive
Christianity in Palestine; what he "received" he received rather
from the Hellenistic Christianity, just described, of cities like
Antioch. He received, therefore, the Hellenistic conception of
Jesus as Lord. But he added to that conception by connecting the
"Lord" with the "Spirit." The "Lord" thus became present not only in
the meetings of the Church for worship but also in the individual
lives of the believers. Paulinism as it appears in the Epistles was
thus complete. But this distinctly Pauline contribution, like the
conception of the Lordship of Jesus to which it was added, was of
pagan origin; it was derived from the mystical piety of the time,
with its sharp dualism between a material and a spiritual realm
and its notion of the transformation of man by immediate contact
with the divine. Paulinism, therefore, according to Bousset, was a
religion of redemption. But as such it was derived not at all from
the historical Jesus (whose optimistic teaching contained no thought
of redemption) but from the pessimistic dualism of the pagan world.
The "liberal" distinction between Pauline religion and Pauline
theology, the attempt at saving Paul's religion by the sacrifice
of his theology, is here abandoned, and all that is most clearly
distinctive of Paulinism (though of course some account is taken of
the contribution of his Jewish inheritance and of his own genius) is
derived from pagan sources.
The hypothesis of Bousset, together with the rival reconstructions
which have just been outlined, will be examined in the following
discussion. But before they can be examined it will be necessary to
say a word about the sources of information with regard to the life
of Paul. No discussion of the literary questions can indeed here be
undertaken. Almost all that can be done is to set forth very briefly
the measure of agreement which has been attained in this field, and
the bearing of the points that are still disputed upon the subject
of the present investigation.
The sources of information about Paul are contained almost
exclusively in the New Testament. They are, first, the Pauline
Epistles, and, second, the Book of Acts.
Four of the Pauline Epistles--Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians,
and Romans--were accepted as certainly genuine by F. C. Baur,
the founder of the "Tübingen School" of criticism in the former
half of the nineteenth century. This favorable estimate of the
"major epistles" has never been abandoned by any number of
really serious historians, and three of the other epistles--1
Thessalonians, Philippians, and Philemon--have now been added to the
"homologoumena." Seven epistles, therefore, are accepted as genuine
to-day by all historians except a few extremists. Of the remaining
epistles, Colossians is accepted by the majority of investigators
of all shades of opinion, and even in the case of 2 Thessalonians
and Ephesians, the acceptance of the hypothesis of genuineness is
no longer regarded as a clear mark of "conservatism," these two
epistles being regarded as genuine letters of Paul by some even of
those who are not in general favorable to the traditional view of
the New Testament.
With regard to the Pastoral Epistles--1 and 2 Timothy and Titus--the
issue is more clearly drawn. These epistles, at least in their
entirety, are seldom regarded as genuine except by those who
adopt in general the traditional view of the New Testament and
the supernaturalistic conception of the origin of Christianity.
That does not mean that the case of the Pastoral Epistles is
desperate--certainly the present writer is firmly convinced that the
epistles are genuine and that a denial of their genuineness really
impoverishes in important respects our conception of the work of
Paul--but it does mean that with regard to these epistles the two
great contending views concerning the New Testament come into sharp
conflict; common ground, in other words, cannot here be found, as
in the case of the major epistles, between those who hold widely
divergent views as to the origin of Christianity.
It would be out of place in the present connection to discuss the
question of the genuineness of the Pastorals. That question is
indeed enormously important. It is important for the view which
is to be held concerning the New Testament canon; it is important
for any estimate of Christian tradition; it is important even for
a complete estimate of the work of Paul. But it is not directly
important for the question as to the origin of Paulinism; for all
the essential features of Paulinism, certainly all those features
which make Paulinism, upon naturalistic principles, most difficult
of explanation, appear plainly in the accepted epistles.
The question of the Book of Acts, on the other hand, is of vital
importance even for the present investigation. Even that question,
however, must here be dismissed with a word, though it is hoped that
light may be shed upon it by the whole of the following discussion.
Literary evidence of peculiar strength may be adduced in favor of
the view that the Book of Acts was really written, as tradition
affirms, by a companion of Paul. This evidence is based primarily
upon the presence in the book of certain sections where the
narrative is carried on in the first person instead of the third. It
is generally or even universally admitted that these "we-sections"
are the work of an eyewitness, an actual traveling companion of
Paul. But according to the common-sense view--according to the
first impression made upon every ordinary reader--the author of
the we-sections was also the author of the whole book, who when he
came in his narrative to those parts of the missionary journeys of
Paul where he had actually been present with the apostolic company
naturally dropped into the use of the first person instead of the
third. If this common-sense view be incorrect, then a later author
who produced the completed book has in the we-sections simply
made use of an eyewitness source. But this hypothesis is fraught
with the most serious difficulty. If the author of the completed
book, writing at a time long after the time of Paul, was in the
we-sections using the work of a companion of Paul, why did he not
either say that he was quoting or else change the "we" of the
source to "they." The first person plural, used without explanation
by a writer of, say, 100 A.D. in a narrative of the journeys of
Paul, would be preposterous. What could be the explanation of so
extraordinary a procedure?
Only two explanations are possible. In the first place, the author
may have retained the "we" with deceitful intent, with the intent
of producing the false impression that he himself was a companion
of Paul. This hypothesis is fraught with insuperable difficulty
and is generally rejected. In the second place, the author may
have retained the "we" because he was a mere compiler, copying
out his sources with mechanical accuracy, and so unable to make
the simple editorial change of "we" to "they." This hypothesis is
excluded by the striking similarity of language and style between
the we-sections and the rest of Luke-Acts, which shows that if
the author of the completed double work is in the we-sections
making use of a source written by some one else, he has revised
the source so as to make it conform to his own style. But if he
revised the source, he was no mere compiler, and therefore could not
have retained the first person plural which in the completed book
produced nonsense. The whole hypothesis therefore breaks down.
Such considerations have led a number of recent scholars--even of
those who are unable to accept the supernaturalistic account which
the Book of Acts gives of the origin of Christianity--to return to
the traditional view that the book was actually written by Luke the
physician, a companion of Paul. The argument for Lucan authorship
has been developed with great acumen especially by Von Harnack[13].
And on the basis of purely literary criticism the argument is
certainly irrefutable. It can be refuted, if at all, only through a
consideration of the historical contents of the book.
[13] _Lukas der Arzt_, 1906 (English Translation, _Luke the
Physician_, 1907); _Die Apostelgeschichte_, 1908 (English
Translation, _The Acts of the Apostles_, 1909); _Neue Untersuchungen
zur Apostelgeschichte und zur Abfassungszeit der synoptischen
Evangelien_, 1911 (English Translation, _The Date of the Acts and of
the Synoptic Gospels_, 1911).
Such attempts at refutation have not been lacking; the Lucan
authorship of Acts is still rejected by the great majority of those
who maintain the naturalistic view of the origin of Christianity.
The objections may be subsumed under two main heads. The Book of
Acts, it is said, is not the kind of book that could have been
written by a companion of Paul, in the first place because it
contains an account of miracles, and in the second place, because
it contradicts the Pauline Epistles, particularly in the account
which it gives of the relations between Paul and the Jerusalem
Church.
The former objection is entirely valid on the basis of any
naturalistic account of the origin of Christianity. Efforts have
indeed been made by Von Harnack, C. C. Torrey, and others, to
overcome the objection. Belief in miracles, it is said, was very
general in the ancient world; a miraculous interpretation could
therefore be placed upon happenings for which the modern man would
have no difficulty in discovering a natural cause. Luke was a child
of his time; even in the we-sections, Von Harnack insists, where the
work of an eyewitness is universally recognized, a supernaturalistic
interpretation is placed upon natural events--as, for example, when
Paul excites the wonder of his companions by shaking off into the
fire a viper that was no doubt perfectly harmless. Why, then, should
the presence of the supernatural in the rest of the book be used to
refute the hypothesis of the Lucan authorship, if it is not so used
in the we-sections?[14]
[14] Harnack, _Die Apostelgeschichte_, 1908, pp. 111-130 (English
Translation, _The Acts of the Apostles_, 1909, pp. 133-161).
This method of refuting the objection drawn from the presence of the
supernatural in Luke-Acts has sometimes led to a curious return to
the rationalizing method of interpretation which was prevalent one
hundred years ago. By that method of interpretation even the details
of the New Testament miracles were accepted as historical, but it
was thought that the writers were wrong in regarding those details
as miraculous. Great ingenuity was displayed by such rationalists
as Paulus and many others in exhibiting the true natural causes of
details which to the first observers seemed to be supernatural.
Such rationalizing has usually been thought to have received
its death-blow at the hands of Strauss, who showed that the New
Testament narratives were either to be accepted as a whole--miracles
and all--or else regarded as myths, that is, as the clothing of
religious ideas in historical forms. But now, under the impulsion of
literary criticism, which has led away from the position of Baur and
Strauss and back to the traditional view of the authorship and date
of the New Testament books, the expedients of the rationalizers have
in some cases been revived.
The entire effort of Von Harnack is, however, quite hopeless. The
objection to the Lucan authorship of Acts which is drawn from the
supernatural element in the narrative is irrefutable on the basis
of any naturalistic view of the origin of Christianity. The trouble
is that the supernatural element in Acts does not concern merely
details; it lies, rather, at the root of the whole representation.
The origin of the Church, according to the modern naturalistic
reconstruction, was due to the belief of the early disciples in the
resurrection of Jesus; that belief in turn was founded upon certain
hallucinations in which they thought they saw Jesus alive after
His passion. In such experiences, the optic nerve is affected not
by an external object but by the condition of the subject himself.
But there are limitations to what is possible in experiences of
that sort, especially where numbers of persons are affected and
at different times. It cannot be supposed, therefore, that the
disciples of Jesus thought they had any extended intercourse with
Him after His passion; momentary appearances, with possibly a few
spoken words, were all that they could have experienced. This view
of the origin of the Church is thought to be in accord with the
all-important testimony of Paul, especially in 1 Cor. xv. 3-8 where
he is reproducing a primitive tradition. Thus desperate efforts
are made to show that the reference by Paul to the burial of Jesus
does not by any means confirm the accounts given in the Gospels
of events connected with the empty tomb. Sometimes, indeed, in
recent criticism, the fact of the empty tomb is accepted, and then
explained in some naturalistic way. But at any rate, the cardinal
feature of the modern reconstruction is that the early Church,
including Paul, had a spiritual rather than a physical conception of
the risen body of Jesus; there was no extended intercourse, it is
supposed; Jesus appeared to His disciples momentarily, in heavenly
glory.
But this entire representation is diametrically opposed to the
representation in the Gospel of Luke and in the Book of Acts. If
there is any one writer who emphasizes the plain, physical character
of the contact between the disciples and their risen Lord, it
is the author of Luke-Acts. In proof, it is only necessary to
point to Acts x. 41, where it is said that the risen Jesus held
table-companionship with His disciples after He was risen from the
dead! But that is only one detail. The author of Acts is firmly
convinced that the contact of the risen Jesus with His disciples,
though not devoid of mysterious features, involved the absence of
the body of Jesus from the tomb and an intercourse (intermittent, it
is true, but including physical proofs of the most definite kind)
extending over a period of forty days. Nothing could possibly be
more directly contrary to what the current critical view regards as
the real account given in the primitive Jerusalem Church and by the
apostle Paul.
Yet on the basis of that modern critical view, Von Harnack and
others have maintained that the book in which so false an account is
given of the origin of the Church was actually the work of a man of
the apostolic age. It is no wonder that Von Harnack's conclusions
have evoked an emphatic protest from other naturalistic historians.
Luke was a close associate of Paul. Could he possibly have given an
account of things absolutely fundamental in Paul's gospel (1 Cor.
xv. 1-8) which was so diametrically opposed to what Paul taught?
He was in Jerusalem in 58 A.D. or earlier, and during years of
his life was in close touch with Palestinian disciples. Could he
possibly have given an account of the origin of the Jerusalem Church
so totally at variance with the account which that church itself
maintained? These questions constitute a complete refutation of Von
Harnack's view, when that view is taken as a whole. But they do not
at all constitute a refutation of the conclusions of Von Harnack
in the sphere of literary criticism. On the contrary, by showing
how inconsistent those conclusions are with other elements in the
thinking of the investigator, they make only the more impressive
the strength of the argument which has overcome such obstacles.
The objection points out the antinomy which exists between the
literary criticism of Von Harnack and his naturalistic account of
the origin of Christianity. What that antinomy means is merely that
the testimony of Acts to the supernatural origin of Christianity,
far from being removed by literary criticism, is strongly supported
by it. A companion of Paul could not have been egregiously mistaken
about the origin of the Church; but literary criticism establishes
Luke-Acts as the work of a companion of Paul. Hence there is some
reason for supposing that the account given in this book is
essentially correct, and that the naturalistic reconstruction of the
origin of Christianity must be abandoned.
The second objection to the Lucan authorship of Acts is based upon
the contradiction which is thought to exist between the Book of
Acts and the Epistles of Paul.[15] The way to test the value of a
historical work, it is said, is to compare it with some recognized
authority. With regard to most of the narrative in Acts, no such
comparison is possible, since there is no account parallel to
Acts by which it may be tested. But in certain places the Book
of Acts provides an account of events which are also narrated in
the isolated biographical parts of the Pauline Epistles--notably
in the first two chapters of Galatians. Here at last is found the
long-sought opportunity for comparison. And the comparison, it is
said, results unfavorably to the Book of Acts, which is found to
contradict the Epistle to the Galatians, not merely in details, but
in the whole account which it gives of the relation between Paul
and the Jerusalem Church. But if the Book of Acts fails to approve
itself in the one place where it can be tested by comparison with
a recognized authority, the presumption is that it may be wrong
elsewhere as well; in particular, it is quite impossible that a book
which so completely misrepresents what happened at a most important
crisis of Paul's life could have been written by a close friend of
the apostle.
[15] For what follows, compare "Jesus and Paul," in _Biblical and
Theological Studies_ by the Members of the Faculty of Princeton
Theological Seminary, 1912, pp. 553f.; "Recent Criticism of the Book
of Acts," in _Princeton Theological Review_, xvii, 1919, pp. 593-597.
This argument was developed particularly by Baur and Zeller and
their associates in the "Tübingen School." According to Baur, the
major epistles of Paul constitute the primary source of information
about the apostolic age; they should therefore be interpreted
without reference to any other source. When they are so interpreted,
they show that the fundamental fact of apostolic history was a
conflict between Paul on one side and the original apostles on the
other. The conflict, Baur maintained further, is particularly plain
in the Epistles to the Galatians and Corinthians, which emphasize
the complete independence of Paul with reference to the pillars
of the Jerusalem Church, and his continued opposition to the
efforts of Jewish Christians to bring the Gentiles into subjection
to the Jewish Law--efforts which must have been supported to some
extent by the attitude of the original apostles. This conflict,
Baur supposed further, continued up to the middle of the second
century; there was a Gentile Christian party appealing to Paul
and a Jewish Christian party appealing to Peter. Finally however,
Baur continued, a compromise was effected; the Pauline party gave
up what was really most distinctive in the Pauline doctrine of
justification, while the Petrine party relinquished the demand of
circumcision. The New Testament documents, according to Baur, are
to be dated in accordance with the position that they assume in
the conflict; those documents which take sides--which are strongly
anti-Pauline or strongly anti-Petrine--are to be placed early, while
those which display a tendency toward compromise are to be placed
late, at the time when the conflict was being settled. Such was the
"tendency-criticism" of Baur. By that criticism the Book of Acts
was dated well on in the second century, because it was thought to
display a tendency toward compromise--an "irenic tendency." This
tendency, Baur supposed, manifested itself in the Book of Acts in
a deliberate falsification of history; in order to bring about
peace between the Petrine and the Pauline parties in the Church,
the author of Acts attempted to show by a new account of the
apostolic age that Peter and Paul really were in perfect agreement.
To that end, in the Book of Acts, Paul is Petrinized, and Peter is
Paulinized; the sturdy independence of Paul, which actually kept
him long away from Jerusalem after his conversion, gives place,
in Acts, to a desire of contact with the Jerusalem Church, which
brought him early to Jerusalem and finally led him even to accept
for his Gentile converts, at the "Apostolic Council," a portion of
the ceremonial law. Peter, on the other hand, is represented in Acts
as giving expression at the Apostolic Council to Pauline sentiments
about the Law; and all through the book there is an elaborate and
unhistorical parallelism between Peter and Paul.
The theory of Baur did not long maintain itself in its entirety.
It received a searching criticism particularly from A. Ritschl.
The conflict of the apostolic age, Ritschl pointed out, was not a
conflict between Paul and the original apostles, but between all the
apostles (including both Paul and Peter) on the one side, and an
extreme Judaizing party on the other; that conflict did not continue
throughout the second century; on the contrary, specifically Jewish
Christianity soon ceased to be influential, and the legalistic
character of the Old Catholic Church of the end of the second
century, in which Christianity was conceived of as a new law, was
due not to any compromise with the legalism of the Judaizers but to
a natural process of degeneration from Paulinism on purely Gentile
Christian ground.
The Tübingen dating of the New Testament documents, moreover,
has been abandoned under a more thorough investigation of early
Christian literature. A study of patristics soon rendered it
impossible to string out the New Testament books anywhere throughout
the second century in the interest of a plausible theory of
development. External evidence has led to a much earlier dating
of most of the books than Baur's theory required. The Tübingen
estimate of the Book of Acts, in particular, has for the most
part been modified; the book is dated much earlier, and it is no
longer thought to be a party document written in the interests of a
deliberate falsification of history.
Nevertheless, the criticism of Baur and Zeller, though no longer
accepted as a whole, is still influential; the comparison of Acts
and Galatians, particularly in that which concerns the Apostolic
Council of Acts xv, is still often thought to result unfavorably
to the Book of Acts. Even at this point, however, a more favorable
estimate of Acts has been gaining ground. The cardinal principle
of Baur, to the effect that the major epistles of Paul should be
interpreted entirely without reference to the Book of Acts, is being
called in question. Such a method of interpretation, it may well be
urged, is likely to result in one-sidedness. If the Book of Acts
commends itself at all as containing trustworthy information, it
should be allowed to cast light upon the Epistles. The account which
Paul gives in Galatians is not so complete as to render superfluous
any assistance which may be derived from an independent narrative.
And as a matter of fact, no matter what principles of interpretation
are held, the Book of Acts simply must be used in interpreting
the Epistles; without the outline given in Acts the Epistles would
be unintelligible.[16] Perhaps it may turn out, therefore, that
Baur produced his imposing reconstruction of the apostolic age
by neglecting all sources except Galatians and the Corinthian
Epistles--and then by misinterpreting these.
[16] J. Weiss, _Urchristentum_, 1914, p. 107: "It is simply
impossible for us to erase it [the Book of Acts] so completely from
our memory as to read the Epistle to the Galatians as though we had
never known Acts; without the Book of Acts we should simply not be
able to understand Galatians at all."
The comparison of Acts and the Pauline Epistles will be reserved
for the chapters that deal with the outline of Paul's life. It will
there be necessary to deal with the vexed question of the Apostolic
Council. The question is vital for the present discussion; for if it
can really be shown that Paul was in fundamental disagreement with
the intimate friends of Jesus of Nazareth, then the way is opened
for supposing that he was in disagreement with Jesus Himself. The
question raised by Baur with regard to the Book of Acts has a most
important bearing upon the question of the origin of Paulinism.
All that can now be done, however, is to point out that the tendency
at the present time is toward a higher and higher estimate of
the Book of Acts. A more careful study of the Pauline Epistles
themselves is exhibiting elements in Paul's thinking which justify
more and more clearly the account which the Book of Acts gives of
the relations of Paul to Judaism and to Jewish Christianity.