apocryphal writing of the second century before Christ, hoped for a
corporeal resurrection and a visible supremacy. Of seven sons, who, with
their mother, were barbarously executed because they refused to deny
their religion by eating swines' flesh, one declares: "The King of the
world shall raise us up who have died for his laws, into everlasting
life;" another, holding forth his hands (to be cut off), said
courageously, "These I had from heaven, and for his laws I despise them,
and from him I hope to receive them again." The next shouts: "It is good
being put to death by men, to look for hope from God, to be raised up
again by him; as for thee, thou shalt have no resurrection to life."
Finally, when all the seven have died heroically, with words of similar
import on their lips, the mother is put to death, having exhorted her
youngest born to faithfulness with the exhortation: "Doubtless the
Creator of the world who formed the generation of man, and found out the
beginning of all things, will also, of his own mercy, give you breath
and life again, as ye now regard not your own selves for his laws'
sake." The same book records the suicide of Razis: "One of the elders of
Jerusalem, a lover of his countrymen, and a man of very good report, who
for his kindness was called a Father of the Jews, for in former times he
had been accused of Judaism, and did boldly jeopard his body and life
with all vehemency for the religion of the Jews;" "choosing rather to
die manfully than to come into the hands of the wicked, to be abused
otherwise than beseemed his noble birth, he fell on his sword.
Nevertheless, while there was yet breath within him, being inflamed with
anger, he rose up, and though his blood gushed out like spouts of water,
and his wounds were grievous, yet he ran through the midst of the
throng, and, standing upon a steep rock, when as his blood was now
quite gone, he plucked out his bowels, and taking them in both his
hands, he cast them upon the throng, and calling upon the Lord of life
and spirit to restore him those again, he thus died."
The angel of the book of Daniel calls up a fairer vision: "Many of them
that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting
life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And they that be wise
shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many
to righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever."
Something like this, perhaps, was the anticipation of the Christ
sketched in the last chapter. The personal conception is shadowy. There
is nothing to indicate positively that he departed from the usual
opinion of a physical resurrection and a kingdom of heaven on earth, a
period of terrestrial happiness under the rule of Jehovah. The
declaration to the thief on the cross: "This day thou shalt be with me
in Paradise," belongs to a later tradition, corresponding to the ideas
of Paul. The parable of Dives and Lazarus must be assigned to the same
circle of doctrine. The saying respecting children, "Their angels always
behold the face of my father in heaven," conveys no more than the belief
in guardian spirits. The "angels" are not departed children, but the
watchers over the lives of living ones. The reply given to the
Sadducees, in Matt. XXII., "In the resurrection they neither marry, nor
are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven," implies
that the temporal condition of the Messiah's subjects will differ in
important respects from their present social estate, but does not
suggest a celestial locality for its organization; and the declaration
that follows: "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living,"
affirms merely that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are not annihilated, that
they are, or will be, alive; but how, where, or when, is left undecided.
The expression, "Thy kingdom come," in the paternoster, so different
from the latter petition: "May we come into thy kingdom," looks towards
an earthly paradise. The succeeding phrase, "Thy will be done on earth
as it is in heaven," points in the same direction. It is probable that
the Christ, living and expecting to live, contemplated the establishment
of his Messianic dominion in Palestine. After his death and
disappearance, the thoughts of his friends turned elsewhither, and with
an increasing steadiness, as his return was delayed, and the
probabilities of their going to him outweighed the probabilities of his
coming to them. The change of expectation was, it is likely, a gradual,
silent, and unperceived one, effected slowly, and not completed till a
new conception of the Christ supplanted the old one, and transformed
every feature of the Messianic belief. In less than twenty-five years
after the death of Jesus, this change was so far effected that it was
capable of full literary expression. The writings that publish it, are
the genuine letters of Paul, and other scriptures produced under the
inspiration of his idea.
VI.
PAUL'S NEW DEPARTURE.
There is reason to think, as we have said, that the first Messianic
impulse would have spent itself ineffectually in a few years, had not a
fresh impulse been given by a new conception of the Messiah. The Christ
outlined in the earliest literature of the New Testament would hardly
have founded a permanent church, or given his name to a distinct
religion. A new conception came, in due time, from an unexpected
quarter, through a man who was both Jew and Greek; Jew by parentage,
nurture, training and genius; Greek by birth-place, residence and
association; a man well versed in scripture, a pupil of approved rabbis,
familiar with the talmud, and deeply interested in talmudical
speculation; a Pharisee of the straitest sect; an enthusiast--yes, a
fanatic by temperament; on the other hand, a mind somewhat expanded by
intercourse with the people and the literature of other nations. Paul's
feeling on the "Christ question" was always intense. He made it a
personal matter, even in his comparative youth; distinguishing himself
by his zeal in behalf of correct opinion on the subject. He appears,
first, a young man, as a persecutor of the Jews who believed that the
Christ had actually come, and who were waiting for his return in clouds.
That idea seemed to him visionary and dangerous; he made it his business
to exterminate it by violence, if necessary. But the fury of his
demonstration proved his interest in the general idea. He was at heart a
Messianic believer, though not in that style. A Messianic believer he
continued to be, but to the end as little as at first, in that style. To
the ordinary belief he never was "converted;" his repudiation of it was
perhaps at no time less vehement than it was at the beginning; as his
own thought matured, his rejection of the faith he persecuted in his
youth, became it seems more deliberate, if less violent.
As he pursued one phase of the Messianic expectation, another aspect of
it burst upon him with the splendor of a revelation, and determined his
career. The man who had breathed fury against one type, became the
apostle of another. The same fiery zeal that blasted the one, warmed the
other into life. In the book of the "Acts of the Apostles," the first
martyr at whose stoning Paul assisted, bore the Greek name "Stephen,"
whence, as well as from other indications, it has been surmised by Baur
and others that he was a precursor of the future "Gentile party,"
pursued and slain by the "orthodox" on account of his infidelity to the
cause of Hebrew national exclusiveness. If this conjecture be admitted,
the deed Paul had abetted, may have been the immediate cause of his own
moral revulsion of feeling. The slain over-came the slayer. The dying
hand committed to the fierce bystander the torch it could carry no
further. The murdered Greek raised up the apostle to the Greeks, thus
avenging himself by sending his adversary to martyrdom in the same cause
for which he himself bled. In religious fervors such reactions have been
frequent.
For Paul was, from first to last, the same person, in no natural feature
of mind or character changed. His religious belief remained essentially,
even incidentally unaltered. A Pharisee he was born, and a Pharisee he
continued. The pharisaic doctrine of the resurrection was the corner
stone of his system, the beginning, middle and end of his faith, the
starting point of his creed. His conception of God was the ordinary
conception, unqualified, unmitigated, uncompromised. The divine
sovereignty never suffered weakening at his hands. One can hardly open
the epistle to the Jewish Christians in Rome, without coming across some
tremendous assertion of the absolute supremacy of God. Read the passage
in the first chapter, 20-26 verses; in the second chapter, 6-12 verses;
in the ninth chapter, 14-23 verses; in the eleventh chapter, first
verse and onward. Read 1 Corin., fifteenth chapter, 24-29 verses. The
old fashioned Jewish conception is expressed in language simply
revolting in its bald inhumanity. The views of Divine Providence set
forth in some of these sentences are anthropomorphitic to a degree that
is amazing in an intellectual man of his age and race. His discussions
of fate and free-will betoken the sternness of a dogmatic, rather than
the discernment of a philosophic, mind. His notion of history has the
narrowness of the national character. His ethics are taken from the law
of Moses, and not from the more benignant versions of it. The grandest
ethical chapter he ever wrote, the twelfth chapter of Romans, contains
no less than three instances of grave infidelity to the highest standard
of morality in his own scriptures. Rabbi Hillel said: "Love peace, and
pursue peace; love mankind, and bring them near the law. The moral
condition of the world depends on three things,--Truth, Justice, and
Peace." Paul says: "If it be possible, _so much as lyeth in you_, live
peaceably with all men," implying clearly that it might not always be
possible, and in such cases was not to be expected. The tacit proviso in
the phrase "so much as lyeth in you," discharges the obligation of its
imperative character; as if conscious that the duty might prove too much
for the moral power, he will not impose it. It is written in the
Talmud: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor; even if he be a criminal, and
has forfeited his life, practise charity towards him in the last
moments." Paul drops far below this when he bids his disciples, "Avenge
not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath" (make room for wrath
that is wrath indeed.) "For it is written, 'vengeance is mine; I will
repay, saith the Lord.'" Therefore (because the Lord's vengeance will be
more terrible than yours), "if thine enemy hunger, feed him: if he
thirst, give him drink; for in so doing, thou shalt heap coals of fire
on his head." That is, by showing kindness you will inflict on him
tenfold agony!
Such a disciple would not adorn the membership of a modern Peace
Society. The language ascribed to him in Ephesians bristles with
military metaphor; "Fight the good fight of faith," "The helmet of
salvation," "The sword of the Spirit," "Armor of light."
In the days of our own anti-slavery conflict, his dictum, "Slaves obey
your masters, in fear and trembling, in singleness of heart," was a
tower of strength and a fountain of refreshment to many an upholder of
the patriarchal system. The later Christians in the West could safely
justify their quiet toleration of the system of slavery in the Roman
Empire by the precepts of the foremost apostle. If the genuineness of
the epistle to Philemon could be maintained, the case would wear a
different look. But it is much more than doubtful whether even that
qualified humanity proceeded from his pen.
In our own generation the apostle is a serious stumbling block in the
way of "evangelical" women who are friendly to the aspirations of their
sex. He showed the most stubborn Hebrew principles on this subject.
"Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands"; "Let your women keep
silence in the churches; if they wish to learn anything, let them ask
their husbands at home; for it is a shame for women to speak in the
church." "It is permitted them to be under obedience." The Hindoo
scripture spoke better: "Where women are honored, there the deities are
pleased. Where they are dishonored there all religious acts become
fruitless."
How can the most conservative Republicans accept as teacher a man who
counsels religious men, in _proportion as they are religious_, to
surrender their full, unqualified, sincere allegiance to established
authorities because they are established, however despotic, ferocious
nay vile they may be; even to such despotisms as that of
Nero;--maintaining that resistance to such is equivalent to resisting
the ordinance of God?--giving this not as the counsel of prudence, but
as the dictate of conscience, thus proclaiming exemption from criticism
or assault, for inhuman tyrannies? Nothing short of this is inculcated
by the sweeping declaration: "Let every soul be subject to the higher
powers: for there is no power but of God; the established powers are
ordained of God." No doubt the bidding was given in view of a turbulent
or insurrectionary spirit among the Israelites in Rome, but it is given
without explanation or limit. It ratifies the divine right of kings:
sanctions the principle that might makes right. Paul was an enthusiast
for ideas; not a theologian, not a social reformer, but one whose zeal
was spent on doctrines. Prevailingly intellectual, his whole nature was
fused by the electric touch of a new thought.
Paul's acquaintance with the Talmud is evidenced by his writings. His
use of allegory, his fanciful analogies, his mystical interpretations,
his play on words, his passion for types and symbols, his ingenious
speculations on history and eschatology, betray his familiarity with
that curious literature. He found a mine of precious material in the
mythical Adam Caedmon, the progenitor, the prototype, the "federal head"
of the race, the man who was not a man but a microcosm, created by
special act from sifted clay; a creature whose erected head touched the
firmament, whose extended body reached across the earth; a being to whom
all save Satan did obeisance; who, but for his transgression, would have
enjoyed an immortality on earth; whose sin entailed on the human race
all the evils, material and moral, that have cursed the world; the
primordial man, who contained in himself the germs of all mankind;
whose corruption tainted the nature of generations of descendants. The
Talmud exhausts speculation on this prodigious personality. The doctrine
of the christian church for fifteen hundred years was not so much
colored as shaped by the rabbis who exercised their subtlety on this
tempting theme. Philo, a contemporary of Paul, is in no respect behind
the most imaginative in his conjectures on this sublime legend. That
Paul, a student of the Talmud, fell in with them, should excite no
surprise. That he added nothing is due probably to the fact that there
was nothing to add.
From the Talmud, also, and from other rabbinical writings, Paul derived
a complete angelology, a department of speculation in which the Jewish
literature after the captivity was exceedingly prolific--Metathron,
Sandalphon, Akathriel, Suriel, were familiar to his mind. It is a bold
suggestion made by Dr. Isaac M. Wise, the Hebrew rabbi fresh from the
Talmud,[1] that Metathron,--[Greek: meta thronon], near the throne,
called by eminent titles, "king of the angels," "prince of the
countenance," impressed Paul's imagination and was the original of his
Christ. Between this supreme angel, co-ordinate with deity and
spiritually akin to him, and the Christ of Paul's conception, the
correspondence seems to be too close to be accidental; so close,
indeed, that some, unable to deny or to confute it, are driven to
surmise that the first conception originated with the apostle. It is
more probable however, though not provable, that the rabbinical idea was
the earlier, and that the apostle took that as well as the Adam Caedmon
from the rabbis. The "prince of angels" precisely met his requirement as
a counter-vailing power to Adam, and supplied a ground for his theory of
the second Adam, the "living spirit," the "Lord from Heaven," the primal
man of a new creation, the first born of a new progeny, the originator
of a "law of life" which should check and counteract the "law of sin and
death." The second Man was the counterpart of the first.
[Footnote 1: Origin of Christianity, p. 335-341.]
He is a man, yet is he no man; his flesh is only "the likeness of sinful
flesh," liable to death, but not implicating the personality in dying.
He is the spiritual, heavenly, ideal man; celestial, glorious, image of
God, translucent, sinless, impeccable; pre-existent, of course; without
father or mother; an expression of divinity; a creator of new worlds for
the habitation of the "Sons of God." His birth is an entrance into
humanity from an abode of light. The mission of this transcendent being
is, in a word, to break the force of transmitted sin, and reverse the
destiny of the race. He imparts the principle of life, which is to
restore all things. A multitude of incidental points are involved in
this fundamental one, points of theology, anthropology, history,
ethics, metaphysics, that present no difficulty to one who has this key.
The long disquisitions on the Mosaic law, the discussions on the
privileges of the Hebrew race and the rights of other races were
necessary. The familiar doctrine of the resurrection derived fresh
interest from association with the general theory, inasmuch as it
supplied a ground-work for the expectation that the glorified One would
reappear; and the hypothesis of a "spiritual" body, ventured and fully
developed by the rabbis, even illustrated by analogies of the "corn of
wheat" which the apostle makes so much of in the fifteenth chapter of I.
Corinthians, supplied all else that was wanting to complete the scheme.
The Christ, being sinless, was held to be incorruptible; death had no
dominion over him, was in fact in his case, an "excarnation," the
preparation for an ascent to the realm of light he came from, and to his
seat at the right hand of his Father, instead of being a descent into
the region of darkness to which mortals are doomed. The doctrine of last
things follows from the doctrine of first things. They who are one with
Christ through faith share his deathlessness. If they die, it is merely
a temporary retirement, in which they await the coming of their Lord,
who will in his own time call them out of their prison house. The larger
number, however, were not, in the apostle's belief, destined to die at
all; but might look as he did, to be transfigured, by the putting off
of their vile bodies, and the putting on of glorious bodies like that
of the great forerunner. In his amplifications on this theme, Paul shows
little originality, and adds nothing important to the material lying
ready to his hand.
The advantage his scheme gave him as a preacher to the Gentiles is too
obvious to be dwelt on. As a Greek by birth and culture, he was
interested in the fate of other nations besides the Jews. A system of
religion adapted to the traditions and satisfactory to the hopes of a
peculiar people,--a national, exclusive religion in the benefits whereof
none but Jews might share, and from whose grace no lineal descendant of
Abraham could be excluded, did not commend itself to this man, half Jew,
half Greek. The faith that obtained his allegiance, and awoke his zeal
must possess a _human_ character by virtue of which its message could be
carried to all mankind. Such a faith his new theory of the Christ gave
him. He could say to his Greek friends: "This religion that I bring you
is no Hebrew peculiarity. Its Christ is no son of David, but a son of
God; its heaven is no Messianic kingdom in Judaea, but a region of light
above the skies; its principle is faith, not obedience to a ceremonial
or legal code; it dispenses entirely with the requirements of the law of
Moses; makes no account of sacrifices or priests; presumes on no
acquaintance with Hebrew scriptures, or reverence for Hebrew men;
questions of circumcision and uncircumcision are trivial and
impertinent. The religion of Christ addresses you as men, not as Jewish
men; it appeals to the universal sense of moral and spiritual infirmity,
and offers a moral and spiritual, not a technical deliverance; instead
of limiting, it will enlarge you; instead of binding, it will emancipate
you; its genius is liberty, through which you are set free from
ceremonialism, ritualism, dogmatism, moralism, and are made partakers of
a new intellectual life."
Not all at once did this scheme unfold itself before the apostle's
vision. Gradually it came to him as he meditated alone, or experimented
with it on listeners in remote places. Naturally, he avoided the
associations of the people he had persecuted, and the teachers they
looked up to. He had nothing to learn from them; he understood their
system and was dissatisfied with it, in short, rejected it. Their Jewish
Messiah, literal, national, hebraic, was not an attractive personage to
his mind. The promise of felicity in a Jewish kingdom of heaven was not
enchanting. The daily life of the believers in Jerusalem was formal,
unnatural, repulsive to one who had "walked large" in foreign cities and
realms of thought. The apostles, Peter, James, John, had nothing
important to tell him that he did not know already. The earthly details
of the life of Jesus might have interested him, but the interior
character and the human significance of the Christ were the main thing,
and these he may have thought himself more in the way of appreciating by
a temporary retirement to the depths of his own consciousness. Having
matured his thoughts, he did put himself in communication with the
original disciples, with what result is frankly stated in his letter to
the Galatians: "To those who seemed to be somewhat (what they were is no
concern of mine, God accepteth no man's person), but who in conference
added nothing to me, I did not give way, in subjection, no, not for an
hour." So heated he becomes, as he remembers this interview, that he can
scarcely write coherently about it. The two conceptions of the Christ
and his office were so far apart, that he did not, to his dying day,
form intimate relations with the teachers of the primitive gospel. They
taught an uncongenial scheme.
From the first, Paul's sphere of action was the Gentile world to which
his message was adapted. If his first appeal was addressed to Jews, it
was simply because Christianity, as he understood it, being an outgrowth
from Jewish thought, a development of Jewish tradition, should naturally
be more intelligible and more welcome to them than to people who had no
historical or literary preparation for it. But he took the broad ground
with them, and addressed his word to outsiders the moment stubbornly
dogmatical Jews declined to receive it on his terms. The attempt made
by the author of the "Acts of the Apostles," to show that Paul modified
or qualified his scheme to bring it into harmony with the older scheme
that he supplanted, fails from the circumstance that the writer discerns
no peculiarity in his theory of the Christ, and consequently misses
completely the ground of any antagonism.