Paul’s Testimony Considered
ENOUGH has perhaps been said to cause the reader to agree with the view
of St. Paul’s conversion taken above—that is to say, to make him regard
the conversion as mainly, if not entirely, due to the weight of evidence
afforded by the courage and consistency of the early Christians.
But, the change in Paul’s mind being thus referred to causes which
preclude all possibility of hallucination or ecstasy on his own part, it
becomes unnecessary to discuss the attempts which have been made to
explain away the miraculous character of the account given in the Acts.
I believe that this account is founded upon fact, and that it is derived
from some description furnished by St. Paul himself of the vision
mentioned, I. Cor. xv., which again is very possibly the same as that of
II. Cor. xii. For the purposes of the present investigation, however,
the whole story must be set aside. At the same time it should be borne
in mind, that any detraction from the historical accuracy of the writer
of the Acts, is more than compensated for, by the additional weight given
to the conversion of St. Paul, whom we are now able to regard as having
been converted by evidence which was in itself overpowering, and which
did not stand in need of any miraculous interference in order to confirm
it.
It is important to observe that the testimony of Paul should carry more
weight with those who are bent upon close critical investigation than
that even of the Evangelists. St. Paul is one whom we know, and know
well. No syllable of suspicion has ever been breathed, even in Germany,
against the first four of the Epistles which have been generally assigned
to him; friends and foes of Christianity are alike agreed to accept them
as the genuine work of the Apostle. Few figures, therefore, in ancient
history stand out more clearly revealed to us than that of St. Paul,
whereas a thick veil of darkness hangs over that of each one of the
Evangelists. Who St. Matthew was, and whether the gospel that we have is
an original work, or a translation (as would appear from Papias, our
highest authority), and how far it has been modified in translation, are
things which we shall never know. The Gospels of St. Mark and St. Luke
are involved in even greater obscurity. The authorship, date, and origin
of the fourth Gospel have been, and are being, even more hotly contested
than those of the other three, and all that can be affirmed with
certainty concerning it is, that no trace of its existence can be found
before the latter half of the second century, and that the spirit of the
work itself is eminently anti-Judaistic, whereas St. John appears both
from the Gospels and from St. Paul’s Epistles to have been a pillar of
Judaism.
With St. Paul all is changed: we not only know him better than we know
nine-tenths of our own most eminent countrymen of the last century, but
we feel a confidence in him which grows greater and greater the more we
study his character. He combines to perfection the qualities that make a
good witness—capacity and integrity: add to this that his conclusions
were forced upon him. We therefore feel that, whereas from a scientific
point of view, the Gospel narratives can only be considered as the
testimony of early and sincere writers of whom we know little or nothing,
yet that in the evidence of St. Paul we find the missing link which
connects us securely with actual eye-witnesses and gives us a confidence
in the general accuracy of the Gospels which they could never of
themselves alone have imparted. We could indeed ill spare either the
testimony of the Evangelists or that of St. Paul, but if we were obliged
to content ourselves with one only, we should choose the Apostle.
Turning then to the evidence of St. Paul as derivable from I. Cor. xv. we
find the following:
“Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto
you, which also ye have received and wherein ye stand. By which also ye
are saved if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have
believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I
also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the
Scriptures: and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day
according to the Scriptures; and that He was seen of Cephas, then of the
twelve: after that He was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of
whom the greater portion remain unto this present, but some are fallen
asleep. After that He was seen of James; then of all the Apostles. And
last of all He was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.”
In the first place we must notice Paul’s assertion that the Gospel which
he was then writing was identical with that which he had originally
preached. We may assume that each of the appearances of Christ here
mentioned had in Paul’s mind a definite time and place, derived from the
account which he had received and which probably led to his conversion;
the words “that which I also received” surely imply “that which I also
received _in the first instance_”: now we know from his own mouth (Gal.
i., 16, 17) that _after_ his conversion he “conferred not with flesh and
blood”—“neither,” he continues, “went I up to Jerusalem to them which
were Apostles before me, but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto
Damascus: then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see
(ιστορησαι) Peter, and abode with him fifteen days, but others of the
Apostles saw I none, save James the Lord’s brother.” Since, then, he
must have heard _some_ story concerning Christ’s reappearances before his
conversion and subsequent sojourn in Arabia, and since he had heard
nothing from eye-witnesses until the time of his going up to Jerusalem
three years later, it is probable that the account quoted above is the
substance of what he found persisted in by the Christians whom he was
persecuting at Damascus, and was at length compelled to believe. But
this is very unimportant: it is more to the point to insist upon the fact
that St. Paul must have received the account given I. Cor. xv., 3–8
within a very few years of the Crucifixion itself, and that it was
subsequently confirmed to him by Peter, and probably by James and John,
during his stay of fifteen days in Peter’s house.
This account can have been nothing new even then, for it is plain that at
the time of Paul’s conversion the Christian Church had spread far: Paul
speaks of _returning_ to Damascus, as though the writer of the Acts was
right as regards the place of his conversion; but the fact of there
having been a church in Damascus of sufficient importance for Paul to go
thither to persecute it, involves the lapse of considerable time since
the original promulgation of our Lord’s Resurrection, and throws back the
origin of the belief in that event to a time closely consequent upon the
Crucifixion itself.
Now Paul informs us that he was told (we may assume by Peter and James)
that Christ first reappeared _within three days of the Crucifixion_.
There is no sufficient reason for doubting this; and one fact of weekly
recurrence even to this day, affords it striking confirmation—I refer to
the institution of Sunday as the Lord’s day. We know that the observance
of this day in commemoration of the Resurrection was a very early
practice, nor is there anything which would seem to throw doubt upon the
fact of the first “Sunday” having been also the Sunday of the
Resurrection. Another confirmation of the early date assigned to the
Resurrection by St. Paul, is to be found in the fact that every instinct
would warn the Apostles _against_ the third day as being dangerously
early, and as opening a door for the denial of the completeness of the
death. The fortieth day would far more naturally have been chosen.
Turning now from the question of the date of the first reappearance to
what is told us of the reappearances themselves, we find that the
earliest was vouchsafed to St. Peter, which is at first sight opposed to
the Evangelistic records; but this is a discrepancy upon which no stress
should be laid; St. Paul might well be aware that Mary Magdalene was the
first to look upon her risen Lord, and yet have preferred to dwell upon
the more widely known names of Peter and his fellow Apostles. The facts
are probably these, that our Lord first shewed Himself to the women, but
that Peter was the first of the Apostolic body to see Him; it was natural
that if our Lord did not choose to show Himself to the Apostles without
preparation, Peter should have been chosen as the one best fitted to
prepare them: Peter probably collected the other Apostles, and then the
Redeemer shewed Himself alive to all together. This is what we should
gather from St. Paul’s narrative; a narrative which it would seem
arbitrary to set aside in the face of St. Paul’s character, opportunities
and antecedent prejudices against Christianity—in the face also of the
unanimity of all the records we have, as well as of the fact that the
Christian religion triumphed, and of the endless difficulties attendant
on the hallucination theory.
We conclude therefore that Paul was satisfied by sufficient evidence that
our Lord had appeared to Peter on the third day after the Crucifixion,
nor can any reasonable doubt be thrown upon the other appearances of
which he tells us. It is true that on the occasion of his visit to Peter
he saw none other of the Apostles save James—but there is nothing to lead
us to suppose that there was any want of unanimity among them: no trace
of this has come down to us, and would surely have done so if it had
existed. If any dependence at all is to be placed on the writers of the
New Testament it did not exist. Stronger evidence than this unanimity it
would be hard to find.
Another most noticeable feature is the fewness of the recorded
appearances of Christ. They commenced according to Paul (and this is
virtually according to Peter and James) immediately after the
Crucifixion. Paul mentions only five appearances: this does not preclude
the supposition that he knew of more, nor that the women who came to the
sepulchre had also seen Him, but it does seem to imply that the
reappearances were few in number, and that they continued only for a very
short time. They were sufficient for their purpose: one of preparation
to Peter—another to the Apostles—another to the outside world, and then
one or two more—but still not more than enough to establish the fact
beyond all possibility of dispute. The writer of the Acts tells us that
Christ was seen for a space of forty days—presumably not every day, but
from time to time. Now forty days is a mystical period, and one which
may mean either more or less, within a week or two, than the precise time
stated; it seems upon the whole most reasonable to conclude that the
reappearances recorded by Paul, and some few others not recorded,
extended over a period of one or two months after the Crucifixion, and
that they then came to an end; for there can be no doubt that St. Paul
conceived them as having ended with the appearance to the assembled
Apostles mentioned I. Cor. xv., 7, and, though he does not say so
expressly, there is that in the context which suggests their having been
confined to a short space of time.
It is perfectly clear that St. Paul did not believe that any one had seen
Christ in the interval between the last recorded appearance to the
eleven, and the vision granted to himself. The words “and last of all he
was seen also of me _as of one born out of due time_” point strongly in
the direction of a lapse of some years between the second appearance to
the eleven and his own vision. This confirms and is confirmed by the
writer of the Acts. St. Paul never could have used the words quoted
above, if he had held that the appearances which he records had been
spread over a space of years intervening between the Crucifixion and his
own vision. Where would be the force of “born out of due time” unless
the time of the previous appearances had long passed by? But if, at the
time of St. Paul’s conversion, it was already many years since the last
occasion upon which Christ had been seen by his disciples, we find
ourselves driven back to a time closely consequent upon the Crucifixion
as the only possible date of the reappearances. But this is in itself
sufficient condemnation of Strauss’s theory: that theory requires
considerable time for the development of a perfectly unanimous and
harmonious belief in the hallucinations, while every particle of evidence
which we can get points in the direction of the belief in the
Resurrection having followed very closely upon the Crucifixion.
To repeat: had the reappearances been due to hallucination only, they
would neither have been so few in number nor have come to an end so soon.
When once the mind has begun to run riot in hallucination, it is prodigal
of its own inventions. Favoured believers would have been constantly
seeing Christ even up to the time of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians,
and the Apostle would have written that even then Christ was still
occasionally seen of those who trusted in him, and served him faithfully.
But we meet with nothing of the sort: we are told that Christ was seen a
few times shortly after the Crucifixion, then _after a lapse of several
years_ (I am surely warranted in saying this) Paul himself saw Him—but no
one in the interval, and no one afterwards. This is not the manner of
the hallucinations of uneducated people. It is altogether too sober: the
state of mind from which alone so baseless a delusion could spring, is
one which never could have been contented with the results which were
evidently all, or nearly all, that Paul knew of. St. Paul’s words cannot
be set aside without more cause than Strauss has shewn: instead of
betraying a tendency towards exaggeration, they contain nothing whatever,
with the exception of his own vision, that is not imperatively demanded
in order to account for the rise and spread of Christianity.
Concerning that vision Strauss writes as follows:
“With regard to the appearance he (Paul) witnessed—he uses the same word
(ωφθη) as with regard to the others: he places it in the same category
with them only in the last place, as he names himself the last of the
Apostles, but in exactly the same rank with the others. Thus much,
therefore, Paul knew—or supposed—that the appearances which the elder
disciples had seen soon after the Resurrection of Jesus had been of the
same kind as that which had been, only later, vouchsafed to himself. Of
what sort then was this?”
I confess that I am wholly unable to feel the force of the above.
Strauss says that Paul’s vision was ecstatic—subjective and not
objective—that Paul thought he saw Christ, although he never really saw
him. But, says Strauss, he uses the same word for his own vision and for
the appearances to the earlier Apostles: it is plain therefore that he
did not suppose the earlier Apostles to have seen Christ in the same sort
of way in which they saw themselves and other people, but to have seen
him as Paul himself did, _i.e._, by supernatural revelation.
But would it not be more fair to say that Paul’s using the same word for
all the appearances—his own vision included—implies that he considered
this last to have been no less real than those vouchsafed earlier, though
he may have been perfectly well aware that it was different in kind? The
use of the same word for all the appearances is quite compatible with a
belief in Paul’s mind that the manner in which he saw Christ was
different from that in which the Apostles had seen him: indeed, so long
as he believed that he had seen Christ no less really than the others,
one cannot see why he should have used any other word for his own vision
than that which he had applied to the others: we should even expect that
he would do so, and should be surprised at his having done otherwise.
That Paul did believe in the reality of his own vision is indisputable,
and his use of the word ωφθη was probably dictated by a desire to assert
this belief in the strongest possible way, and to place his own vision in
the same category with others, which were so universally known among
Christians to have been material and objective, that there was no
occasion to say so. Nevertheless there is that in Paul’s words on which
Strauss does not dwell, but which cannot be passed over without notice.
Paul does not simply say, “and last of all he was seen also of me”—but he
adds the words “as of one born out of due time.”
It is impossible to say decisively that this addition implies that Paul
recognised a difference in kind between the appearances, inasmuch as the
words added may only refer to time—still they would explain the possible
use of [ωφθη] in a somewhat different sense, and I cannot but think that
they will suggest this possibility to the reader. They will make him
feel, if he does not feel it without them, how strained a proceeding it
is to bind Paul down to a rigorously identical meaning on every occasion
on which the same word came from his pen, and to maintain that because he
once uses it on the occasion of an appearance which he held to be
vouchsafed by revelation, therefore, wherever else he uses it, he must
have intended to refer to something seen by revelation: the words “as of
one born out of due time” imply the utterly unlooked for and transcendent
nature of the favour, and suggest, even though they do not compel, the
inference that while the other Apostles had seen Christ in the common
course of nature, as a visible tangible being before their waking eyes,
he had himself seen Him not less truly, but still only by special and
unlooked for revelation. If such thoughts were in his mind he would not
probably have expressed them farther than by the touching words which he
has added concerning his own vision. So much for the objection that the
evidence of Paul concerning the earlier appearances is impaired by his
having used the same word for them, and for the appearance to himself.
It only remains therefore to review in brief the general bearings of
Paul’s testimony as given I. Cor. xv., 1–8.
Firstly, there is the early commencement of the reappearances: this is
incompatible with hallucination, for the hallucination must be supposed
to have occurred when most easy to refute, and when the spell of shame
and fear was laid most heavily upon the Apostles. Strauss maintains that
the appearances were unconsciously antedated by Peter; we can only say
that the circumstances of the case, as entered into more fully above,
render this very improbable; that if Peter told Paul that he saw Christ
on the third day after the Crucifixion, he probably firmly believed that
he did see Him; and that if he believed this, he was also probably right
in so believing.
Secondly, there is the fact that the reappearances were few, and extended
over a short time only. Had they been due to hallucination there would
have been no limit either to their number or duration. Paul seems to
have had no idea that there ever had been, or ever would be, successors
to the five hundred brethren who saw Christ at one time. Some were
fallen asleep—the rest would in time follow them. It is incredible that
men should have so lost all count of fact, so debauched their perception
of external objects, so steeped themselves in belief in dreams which had
no foundation but in their own disordered brains, as to have turned the
whole world after them by the sheer force of their conviction of the
truth of their delusions, and yet that suddenly, within a few weeks from
the commencement of this intoxication, they should have come to a dead
stop and given no further sign of like extravagance. The hallucinations
must have been so baseless, and would argue such an utter subordination
of judgement to imagination, that instead of ceasing they must infallibly
have ended in riot and disorganisation; the fact that they did cease
(which cannot be denied) and that they were followed by no disorder, but
by a solemn sober steadfastness of purpose, as of reasonable men in
deadly earnest about a matter which had come to their knowledge, and
which they held it vital for all to know—this fact alone would be
sufficient to overthrow the hallucination theory. Such intemperance
could never have begotten such temperance: from such a frame of mind as
Strauss assigns to the Apostles no religion could have come which should
satisfy the highest spiritual needs of the most civilised nations of the
earth for nearly two thousand years.
When, therefore, we look at the want of faith of the Apostles before the
Crucifixion, and to their subsequent intense devotion; at their unanimity
at their general sobriety; at the fact that they succeeded in convincing
the ablest of their enemies and ultimately the whole of Europe; at the
undeviating consent of all the records we have; at the early date at
which the reappearances commenced,—at their small number and short
duration—things so foreign to the nature of hallucination; at the
excellent opportunities which Paul had for knowing what he tells us; at
the plain manner in which he tells it, and the more than proof which he
gave of his own conviction of its truth; at the impossibility of
accounting for the rise of Christianity without the reappearance of its
Founder after His Crucifixion; when we look at all these things we shall
admit that it is impossible to avoid the belief that after having died,
Christ _did_ reappear to his disciples, and that in this fact we have the
only intelligible explanation of the triumph of Christianity.