Throughout the writings of St. Paul, his exactly cultivated mind is
scarcely less visible than his divinely inspired soul. Notwithstanding
his magnificent rebukes of human learning and philosophy, and his
sublime exaltation of the foolishness of God above the wisdom of men,
the Apostle of the Gentiles was no mean master of Gentile learning. His
three well-known quotations from Greek poets furnish direct evidence of
his acquaintance with Greek literature. He proclaimed the fatherhood of
God to the Athenians in the words of his countryman the poet Aratus
(Acts, xvii. 28.). He warns the Corinthians by a moral common-place
borrowed from the dramatist Menander (1 Cor. xv. 33.). He brings an
hexameter verse of a Cretan poet as a testimony to the bad character of
the Cretan people (Titus, i. 12.). I do not positively assert that I
have discovered a fourth quotation; I would merely inquire whether the
appearance in a Pauline epistle of a sentence which occurs in a treatise
of Aristotle, is to be regarded as a quotation, or as an accidental and
most singular identity of expression. In the _Politics_ (lib. III. cap.
8.), Aristotle, in speaking of very powerful members of a community,
says, "κατα δε των τοιουτων ουκ εστι νομος" ("but against such
there is no law"). In the Epistle to the Galatians (v. 23.), Paul, after
enumerating the fruits of the Spirit, adds, "against such there is no
law" ("κατα των τοιουτων ουκ εστι νομος"). The very same words
which the philosopher uses to express the exceptional character of
certain over-powerful citizens, the apostle borrows, or, at least,
employs, to signify the transcendent nature of divine graces. According
to Aristotle, mighty individuals are above legal restraint, against such
the general laws of a state do not avail: according to Paul, the fruits
of the Spirit are too glorious and divine for legal restraint; they
dwell in a region far above the regulation of the moral law.
While there is no possibility of demonstrating that this identity of
expression is a quotation, there is nothing to forbid the idea of this
sentence being a loan from the philosopher to the apostle. Paul was as
likely to be at home in the great philosophers, as in the second and
third-rate poets of Greece. The circumstance of Aratus being of his own
birth-place, Tarsus, might specially commend the _Phænomena_ to his
perusal; but the great luminary of Grecian science was much more likely
to fall within his perusal than an obscure versifier of Crete; and if he
thought it not unseemly to quote frown a comic writer, he surely would
not disdain to borrow a sentence from the mighty master of Stagira. The
very different employment which he and Aristotle find for the same words
makes nothing against the probability of quotation. The sentence is
remarkable, not in form, but in meaning. There is nothing in the mere
expression peculiarly to commend it to the memory, or give it proverbial
currency. I cannot say that it is a quotation; I cannot say that it is
not.
I am not aware that this quotation or identity of expression has been
pointed out before. Wetstein, who above all editors of the Greek
Testament abounds in illustrations and _parallel_ passages from the
classics, takes no notice of this _identical_ one. It is surely worth
the noting; and should anything occur to any of your correspondents
either to confirm or demolish the idea of quotation, I would gladly be
delivered out of my doubt. I should not think less reverently of St.
Paul in believing him indebted to Aristotle; I should rather rejoice in
being assured that one of the greatest spiritual benefactors of mankind
was acquainted with one of its chief intellectual benefactors.