Chapter VIII: Summing-Up and Formulation of the Problem . . . 237 (2)

It should be mentioned that the first important attempt to prove the existence of different phases in the thought and life of Paul was made by Sabatier._(_34_)_ His work _L’Apotre Paul_ appeared in 1870, two years before Lüdemann’s study. At first the Apostle held, according to the French scholar, a simple doctrine which can be psychologically explained from his rabbinic training and his conversion. At the time of his great controversies he was compelled to work out for himself a philosophy of history which would enable him to prove that the law was only a passing episode in the history of salvation, and that justification by faith had always lain in the purpose of God. This doctrine takes a dominant position in the Epistles to the Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans. In the letters written during his imprisonment the Apostle advances to a speculative, gnostic development of his ideas. The coexistence of the juridical and ethical series of ideas does not receive the same prominence in Sabatier as in the later writers, who were influenced by Lüdemann and Pfleiderer.

When all is said and done, there is in the works of this period much assertion and little proof regarding the development within Paulinism. One almost gets the impression that the assumption of different stages of thought was chiefly useful as a way of escaping the difficulty about the inner unity of the system. This [pg 033] problem is, however, rather instinctively felt than clearly grasped. The scholars of this period do not feel it incumbent upon them to trace out the connexion in which these disparate sets of ideas must have stood in the view of Paul. They show no surprise at his passing so easily from the one to the other and arguing from each alternately, and they do not ask themselves how he conceived the most general ultimate fact of redemption which underlies both of them. They do not seek to arrive at a really fundamental view of the essence of Paulinism.

Their method of procedure in their presentation of the doctrine is itself significant. They do not trace its development from one fundamental conception, but treat it under dogmatic _loci,_ as Baur had done in his New Testament Theology. The scheme is more or less closely based on that of Reformation dogmatics. It is therefore assumed _a priori_ that the Pauline theology can be divided into practically the same individual doctrines as that of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin. Really, however, a preliminary question arises whether this arrangement of the material does not introduce a wrong grouping and orientation into the Apostle’s system, and whether it does not destroy the natural order and relative importance of the thoughts, falsify the perspective, tear asunder what ought not to be disjoined, and render impossible the discovery of the fundamental idea in which all the utterances find their point of union. This procedure is innocently supposed to be scientific; as a matter of fact it leads to the result that the study of the subject continues to be embarrassed by a considerable remnant of the prepossessions with which the interpretation of Paul’s doctrine was approached in the days of the Reformation.

It is not less prejudicial when others, as for example Holsten,_(_35_)_ adopt an arrangement of the material suggested by modern dogmatics. As the Pauline theology has, if possible, less affinity with the latter than with the Reformation theology, the error is almost more serious.

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In general these scholars are quite unconscious of the decisive importance which attaches to the arrangement and articulation of the material. It has, indeed, always been weakness of theological scholarship to talk much about method and possess little of it.

Otto Pfleiderer, alone, is not entirely in this state of innocence. He has an inkling that the usual way of approaching the subject is not wholly free from objection. In the first edition of his Paulinism (1873)_(_36_)_ he raises the question whether the “genetic method” is not demanded by the task of tracing out the organic progress of the development of dogma in its Pauline beginnings. Practical considerations, however, determine him “to arrange the matter very much according to the customary dogmatic _loci,”_ while, however, at the same time giving as much attention as possible to the position of the dogma in the Pauline system.” He fears that the carrying out of the genetic principle would lead to many repetitions, and would make it more difficult to get a general view of “the way in which the separate doctrines were connected with their bases.”

In order to salve his conscience he gives at the beginning, “by way of an introductory outline,” a sketch of the “organic development of the Pauline gnosis from its single root.” This general view—it occupies twenty-seven pages—is the most important part of the whole book. The succeeding chapters treat of sin, flesh, character of the law, aim of the law, Christ’s atoning death, Christ’s death as a means of liberation from the dominion of sin, the resurrection of Christ, the Person of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of God and heavenly Christ, the appearing of Christ in the flesh, faith, justification, sonship, the beginning and the progress of the new life, the Christian Church, the Lord’s Supper, the election of grace, the parousia, and the end of the world.

Lüdemann was prevented by the task which he had set himself from adopting the division according to _loci._ [pg 035] His object was only to investigate Paul’s conception of the fleshly man in its relation to his doctrine as a whole. In this way he was led to arrange the ideas in their natural order and, without strictly intending to do so, to give a general account of Paulinism, which is almost entirely free from the defective arrangement of other works, permits something of the logical articulation of the Apostle’s circle of ideas to appear, and certainly penetrates more deeply than the rest into the Apostle’s world of thought.

As the works of Reuss, Weiss, Pfleiderer, Holsten, Renan, Sabatier, Ménégoz, Weizsäcker, do not aim at understanding and showing the development of this doctrine from a single fundamental thought, there are no real divergences in the general view which they take of the system. The differences of opinion with their predecessors which the authors express in their text and notes relate, in point of fact, only to details and minutiae, surprising as this may at first sight appear. The plan and design of the system are in general everywhere the same; the differences regard only the mixing and application of the colours, and the question how far Greek influences are to be recognised.

In going through these works one after another, one is surprised to observe how great is their fundamental resemblance. At the same time there is something curiously “elusive” about them. At a given point one might be inclined to think that one of the authors was formulating a thought more clearly, or giving it more exclusive importance than the others; and one is just about to note this as a special characteristic of his view. A few pages later, however, or in a following chapter, one finds additions or reservations which show that he does not really think differently from the rest. The differences lie not so much in the actual conception as in the literary presentation, and in the manner in which the material, which is essentially a whole, is parcelled out among the different _loci._ There is thus nothing to be [pg 036] gained by analysing the various conceptions one by one and comparing them with one another. Since there is no real difference of fundamental view, the comparison would lose itself in endless and unessential detail.

To the general impression of monotony is to be added that of complexity. At the end of each of these works one is inclined to inquire whether the author really means to ask the reader to regard what is here offered as representing a system of thought which once existed in the brain of a man belonging to early Christianity, and was capable of being understood by his contemporaries. All the arts of literary presentation are employed to subtilise the conceptions, to describe the thoughts with exactitude, and to bring connexion and order into the chaos of ideas. But the result gives no satisfaction. No real elucidation and explanation of Paulinism is attained. The resulting impression is of something quite artificial.

The welcome which these authors’ works received from their contemporaries shows that the latter saw in them an advance in the knowledge of Paulinism. They felt them to be satisfactory. That only means that the readers’ presuppositions and requirements lay within the same limitations as those of the authors.

What had been the result arrived at? A description of the Pauline doctrine, a remarkably detailed description, but nothing more. That doubtless implied a certain progress. It did not, however, extend so far as the authors and their readers assumed. Both innocently supposed that in the description they possessed at the same time an explanation—as though the descriptive anatomy of this organism sufficed to explain its physiology. They were unconscious that they had so far only looked at Pauline thought from without, and had never gained any insight into the inner essence of the system.

In these works the Apostle’s statements are quoted one after another, and developed in his own words. The authors think they have discharged their task when they [pg 037] have so arranged the course of the investigation that all important passages can be respectably housed.

The odd thing is that they write as if they understood what they were writing about. They do not feel compelled to admit that Paul’s statements taken by themselves are unintelligible, consist of pure paradoxes, and that the point that calls for examination is how far they are thought of by their author as having a real meaning, and could be understood in this light by his readers. They never call attention to the fact that the Apostle always becomes unintelligible just at the moment when he begins to explain something; never give a hint that while we hear the sound of his words the tune of his logic escapes us.

What is his meaning when he asserts that the law is abolished by the death of Jesus—according to other passages, by His resurrection? How does he represent to himself the process by which, through union with the death and resurrection of the Lord a new creaturehood is produced in a man, in virtue of which he is released from the conditions of fleshly existence, from sin and death? How far is a union possible between the natural man, alive in this present world, and the glorified Christ who dwells in heaven; and one, moreover, of such a kind that it has a retrospective reference to His death? The authors we have named do not raise questions of this kind. They feel no need to trace out the realities which lie behind these paradoxical assertions. They take it for granted that Paul has himself explained his statements up to a certain point—so far, in fact, as this is possible in the world of feeling to which religion belongs.

This self-deception is made the more easy for them by the fact that they are accustomed to clothe their own religious views in Pauline phraseology, and consequently they come to treat as the authentic logic of Paul, arguments which they have unconsciously imported into their account of his teaching. They fail to reckon with the possibility that the original significance of his utterances [pg 038] may rest on presuppositions which are not present to our apprehension and conception. For the same reason they all more or less hold the opinion that what they have to do with is mainly a psychological problem. They assume that the Pauline system has arisen out of a series of reflexions and conclusions, and would be as a whole clear and intelligible to any one who could succeed in really thinking himself into the psychology of the rabbinic zealot who was overpowered by the vision of Christ on the road to Damascus.

The writer who goes furthest in this direction is Holsten. In his work on the “Gospel of Paul and of Peter”_(_37_)_ he describes how Paul, while he was persecuting the new faith, was, as a Jewish thinker, occupied with the thought of the offence of the cross and the alleged resurrection. While still a fanatical zealot “he constantly carried with him in his consciousness the elements of the Messianic faith, even though as negative and negated.” By the keenness of his theological dialectic he was compelled to imagine what the alleged facts would really signify if the belief of the disciples were justified. The “principle of the Messianic faith” was, in him, “alive in greater definiteness than even in the consciousness of the followers of the Messiah whom he persecuted.” The Messiahship of Jesus could not for him take its place as a hope and faith within the Jewish system of thought and religious life, [pg 039] but necessarily implied the destruction of what he had hitherto held to be true. Thus the persecutor had in principle thought out for himself to its ultimate consequences the revolution which would result from the acceptance of the Messiahship of Jesus. And this he translated into word and deed after he had experienced the vision on the Damascus road.

Other writers take as the starting-point for their psychological arguments the passage in Romans vii., where Paul depicts the despair of the man who recognises that the law, although it is spiritual and was given with a view to life, can only in the fleshly man produce sin, condemnation, and death. What we there read concerning the struggle between the natural, powerful will of the flesh and the law, is, they think, written from the point of view of the pre-Christian consciousness of the Apostle. He had experienced this agony of soul, and it was by this that the Jewish religious attitude had been broken down in him. Therefore in his Gospel he does not desire to retain anything from the faith of his fathers.

These two main lines of psychological theory are followed for a longer or shorter distance in all the works of this period. Hand in hand with this psychologising goes a tendency to modernisation. The scholars of this period spiritualise Paul’s thought. The transformation varies in extent for the different ideas. The statements about the atonement and imputed righteousness are the least affected by it. What is unintelligible in these is put down to the account of the Jewish Rabbinic mode of thought in which Paul is supposed to be held prisoner. On the other hand, the conceptions regarding union with Christ in his death and passion, and the new life in Him through the Spirit, are subjected to paraphrase and explanation until nothing of the realistic sense is left remaining. The question is not faced why Paul, if he wanted to say anything so “spiritual” and general as this, should have adopted so exaggerated, paradoxical, and materialistic a method of expression.

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Whatever remains unexplained after the psychologising, the depotentiation, and modernisation, is referred to the peculiar character of the religious experience which the Apostle is supposed to have undergone in the vision on the Damascus road. What essential difference there was between this appearance of the Lord and those experienced by the other disciples is nowhere clearly worked out, not even by Holsten, who makes the most extensive use of this vision. It is simply taken for granted by them all that in the vision itself is to be found the explanation, not only of Paul’s conversion, but also in some way or other of his call to be a missionary to the Gentiles and of the peculiar character of his doctrine.

All these accounts of his teaching agree in assuming that Paul’s system of doctrine was in the main a purely personal creation of his own, and is in some way to be explained by the special character of his religious experience. The question whether in this way his integral connexion with primitive Christianity is sufficiently preserved receives but little attention. In none of these works is the investigation of the doctrinal material common to Paul and his opponents seriously taken in hand. The writers are content with the affirmation that both parties took as their starting-point the fact of the death and resurrection of Jesus, without entering into any consideration of the question how far Paul’s reasonings, which they refer back to his inner personal experience, reproduce generally current ideas of primitive Christianity and simply carry them out to their logical issue.

The question which Ritschl had formerly forced on the consideration of Baur has therefore not been faced or solved. It is true the author of “Justification and Reconciliation”_(_38_)_ thinks that he has not only raised the question but also answered it. He undertakes to explain all the Pauline doctrinal passages on the basis of [pg 041] Old Testament conceptions. In this way he hopes to work out the Apostle’s real conception of the atoning death of Jesus, and of “righteousness,” and believes that these will then, since they have been gained from the Old Testament, coincide with the primitive Christian views in all essential points.

Speaking generally, Ritschl’s tendency is to make the differences between Paulinism and primitive Christianity as small as possible, and to find them, as he had already done in the “Origin of the early Catholic Church,” not so much in his doctrine proper as in his attitude to certain practical questions. Ritschl employs the dialectical skill with which nature had richly endowed him to transform and shade off the doctrine of the Apostle of the Gentiles until it harmonises with the fundamental Christian teaching which he assumes for the earliest period and finds necessary for his dogmatics.

He entirely depotentiates the juridical series of ideas. Moreover, he refuses to admit that Paulinism constitutes a speculative system. He assumes that the Apostle moved in a free, untrammelled fashion among the various sets of ideas and felt no real need to combine them into a unity.

In addition to Ritschl, Bernhard Weiss_(_39_)_ and Willibald Beyschlag,_(_40_)_ in their New Testament Theologies, endeavour to make clear the relations between Paul and primitive Christianity from the stand-point of critical conservatism. In order to secure a broad basis for the primitive form of apostolic doctrine, they pronounce I Peter and the Epistle of James to be documents of the pre-Pauline period.

The writer who makes things easiest for himself is Von Hofmann._(_41_)_ For him there is no “Pauline system [pg 042] of doctrine.” The Apostle never uttered anything that did not belong to the common doctrine of Christianity, but “according to the difference of the occasion” brought into prominence this or that aspect of the saving acts of God or of the condition of salvation, and what he thus brought forward, now under one designation now under another, he sets forth now in this relation and now in that one. Therefore this writer, who was vaunted by the orthodox as a brilliant opponent of Tübingen errors, has no scruple in working up together the Pauline ideas along with those of the other New Testament Epistles into a single whole, which he offers as apostolic doctrine.

Another problem which is hardly apprehended in its full difficulty by the scholars of this period is that of the total neglect in the Pauline gospel of the proclamation of the kingdom of God and His righteousness which Jesus committed to His followers. They seem to feel no surprise at the fact that the Apostle, even where it would be the most natural thing in the world, never appeals to the sayings and commands of the Master. Many of them never touch on this question at all.

Resch, however, in his collection of extra-canonical Gospel-fragments, even undertakes to show that in the Pauline letters a whole series of otherwise unrecorded sayings of Jesus are embodied, and defends the hypothesis that the Apostle had taken them from a pre-canonical Gospel which ranked for him as an authority of equal value with the Old Testament. The enigma of the untraced quotation, “What eye hath not seen, neither hath ear heard,” etc., in I Cor. ii. 9 ff., is solved by referring the “as it is written” to the written Gospel on which Paul draws._(_42_)_

It is curious that most of these authors believe that they reduce the acuteness of the problem by pointing [pg 043] out in the Epistles as many reminiscences of Synoptic sayings as possible. That, of course, only makes the matter more complicated. If so many utterances of Jesus are hovering before Paul’s mind, how comes it that he always merely paraphrases them, instead of quoting them as sayings of Jesus, and thus sheltering himself behind their authority?

As for those who have some inkling of the problem, their one thought is to dispose of it as rapidly as possible, instead of first exposing it in its full extent. Among them is Ritschl, who here employs all the arts and artifices of his exegesis and dialectic. That Jesus and Paul did not at bottom teach the same thing is to this undogmatic dogmatist unthinkable.

In general the writers of this period are involved in the most curious confusions regarding the problem of “Jesus and Paul.” They fail to perceive that these two magnitudes are not directly comparable with one another because they think of Paul in complete isolation, and not as a feature of primitive Christianity. The differences and oppositions which reveal themselves between the teaching of Jesus and that of Paul exist also as between the teaching of Jesus and that of primitive Christianity itself. The momentous development did not arise first with Paul, but earlier, in the community of the first disciples. Their “religion” is not identical with the “teaching of Jesus,” and did not simply grow out of it; it is founded upon His death and resurrection. The “new element” was not brought into Christianity by Paul; he found it there before him, and what he did was to think it out in its logical implications. The difference of teaching between Paul and Jesus is not a difference between individuals, it is—in almost its whole extent—due to the fact that the Apostle belongs to primitive Christianity.

In its false statement of the problem of Jesus and Paul the scholarship of the period after Baur shows that it has not yet succeeded in understanding the Apostle of [pg 044] the Gentiles as a phenomenon, an aspect, of primitive Christianity.

There is frequent mention, in all these studies, of the Jewish roots of the Pauline thought. They attempt to explain his views, so far as possible, from the materials given in the Law and the Prophets. Some authors had been inclined to assume that in regard to his conception of the Law he did not stand wholly upon Old Testament ground, in the sense that he sometimes means by it a narrower ceremonial code of temporary validity, and sometimes a universal ethical law which has not been invalidated by the death of Christ. These confusions were put an end to by a study of Edward Grafe._(_43_)_ He shows that Paul when he speaks of the law, alike when he uses the article or does not use it, always has in mind the whole legal code, and never varies from the conviction that this has been set aside by the death and resurrection of Christ.

That in Galatians the ritual aspect of the law, in Romans the ethical, is the more prominent, does not alter this fact. Nor is the consistency of the Apostle’s view annulled by the fact that in many places he formulates the negative judgment quite definitely, while in others he softens it by an admission of the historical and ethical significance of the law.

That Paul’s thinking follows the lines of Old Testament conceptions is self-evident. The only question is whether the motive forces which make their appearance in his gospel are derived in some way or other from the Old Testament Scriptures.

That is not the case. In working up the primitive Christian views he does not have recourse to the ideas of the ancient Judaism. Nowhere does Paul attach himself to these. He takes no ideas from the Old Testament with a view to giving them a new development, [pg 045] but uses only what he can take from it ready formed. His new discovery rests on a different basis. The Law and the Prophets serve only to supply him with the Scriptural arguments, positive and negative, of which he stands in need.

On the essential nature of the distinctively Pauline world of thought the Old Testament therefore throws no light. This negative result is not, indeed, everywhere clearly formulated. There are some students of Paulinism who simply ignore it. Heinrici, in the preface to his study of 2 Corinthians (1887), ventures on the assertion that in Paul the “spirit of Old Testament prophecy” triumphs over contemporary Judaism.

And he is not the only one who clings to the illusion that much help is to be gained from the Old Testament for the understanding of the Apostle’s world of thought. By way of proof they cite every possible parallel, even the most remote. But the disproportion between the amount of the material offered and the smallness of the result established tells against them.

That Paul is a child of late Judaism only began to be generally taken into account when its world of thought was made known to theology by Schürer’s “History of New Testament Times,”_(_44_)_ and Weber’s “System of Palestinian Theology in the Early Synagogues.”_(_45_)_ But even after this most scholars shared a certain disinclination to recognise a real connexion between the Apostle’s world of thought and that of late Judaism. Heinrici, who in [pg 046] his study in the Corinthian Epistles gives great attention to the question regarding the source of his ideas, definitely denies that “the intellectual and religious forces of Late Judaism exercised a dominant influence” on the Apostle. He holds, like many others, that Paul, passing over his own time, grasped hands with the classical Judaism of the prophets, and that one source of his strength is to be found in this fact. This prejudice is to be explained by the low estimation in which late Judaism had always been held by theologians. It was identified, without examination, on the one hand with “fantastic apocalyptic views,” and on the other with a “soulless Rabbinism.”

The admission, however, that Paul in the principles of his exegesis was in agreement with Rabbinism was made by theologians with comparative readiness. This did not carry with it the surrender of anything that had been much valued, since the verbal comparison and contrast of passages which he practises, and the illogical and fantastic reasoning which appears in his arguments, had always been distasteful to theological science. It was therefore rather welcome to it than otherwise, to find, in consequence of the increased knowledge of parallel products of late Judaism, an explanation of a weakness which did not properly harmonise with the greatness of this heroic spirit, in the influences to which he had been subjected by reason of his theological education._(_46_)_

Along with this was accepted the fact that, in common with his contemporaries, he naively treats the Haggadic embellishments of Old Testament stories as on the same footing with the Scripture itself. His assumption that the Law was given by the angels (Gal. iii. 19), and his reference to the rock that followed the children of Israel in the wilderness and poured out water (I Cor. x. 4), are to be explained from passages in the Rabbinic literature. [pg 047] No thoroughgoing investigation was undertaken with a view to determining whether the Rabbinic principles suffice to explain Paul’s method of scriptural argument. In general the view prevails that his “typological” and “spiritualising” _(pneumatisch)_ interpretation goes beyond what can elsewhere be shown in Palestinian theology. It is true these two methods of exegesis, going beyond the simple literal sense, are not wholly unknown, but they only came to their full development in contemporary Alexandrian Biblical scholarship. For this reason it is proposed to assume that Paul had also received an influence from this side.

As examples of Alexandrian exegesis are quoted the interpretation of Hagar and Sarah as representing the earthly and the heavenly Jerusalem (Gal. iv. 22 f.), that of the water-giving rock as representing Christ (I Cor. x. 4), and the argument from the threshing oxen to the preachers of the gospel (I Cor. ix. 9 ff.).

One of the greatest problems of the Pauline use of Scripture is not mentioned in these works. It is assumed that the Apostle attached special importance to proving the Messiahship of the crucified Jesus. How then can we explain the fact that he never makes any use of the passage about the Suffering Servant of the Lord in Isaiah liii? This fact is the more surprising because it may be taken as certain that the apologetic of the primitive Christian community gave this passage a most prominent place in its plan of operations.

A scientific attempt to adduce from the Rabbinic literature explanatory parallels to Pauline thought was made by Franz Delitzsch in 1870 in connexion with his Hebrew translation of the Epistle to the Romans._(_47_)_ The [pg 048] net result is not great. The parallels adduced are so uncharacteristic that they throw no new light on the Apostle’s ideas.

No further considerable attempts were made in this direction. Nor did Weber’s “Theology of the Early Synagogue” lead to any other important works being undertaken in that department. On the contrary, his sketch of the Rabbinic world of ideas makes it apparent that Pauline thought does not become any more intelligible by its aid than it is in itself, even though one parallel or another may be unearthed. Moreover, it is to be remarked that the discovery of such parallels would only become of importance if proof could be given that they really date from the beginning of the first century. Such proof is, however, quite impossible.

Of the “Rabbinism” of Paul’s day we know practically nothing. Even the earliest strata of the literature which is at our disposal were not formed before the beginning of the third century A.D._(_48_)_ It consists of a codification of tradition carried out by the later Rabbinic scholasticism. How far it offers us a faithful representation of the ideas and character of Rabbinic thought at the beginning of the first century must remain an open question.

Even if Paul, in virtue of his dialectic and certain external characteristics, belongs to the world which this literature reveals to us, in regard to the content of his ideas and his creative force as a thinker he is not to be understood by its aid. To register this fact is, however, by no means to deny that he has his roots in the Jewish theology of his time, but only to say that he shows no affinity as regards the inner essence of his problems and [pg 049] ideas with what a later age offers us as the Rabbinism of the first century. It is possible, indeed it is in the highest degree probable, that many of his ideas for which no “Rabbinic” parallels can be adduced, nevertheless have their origin in the Jewish theology of his time. Who is to guarantee that the later scholasticism has faithfully preserved for us the Jewish theology which was contemporary with Christianity? It may well have been more living in thought and more profound than the men of the after-time could understand, or their tradition preserve. The picture which they draw for us shows only a sun-scorched plain, but this yellow, wilted grass was green and fresh once. What did the meadows look like then?

It is to be remembered that the Apocalypse of Ezra, which shows in its own way such depth, while it is derived from the Scribal theology of the first century, is as little to be explained from what on the basis of the later literature we think of as the Rabbinism of the period as are the Pauline Epistles. Had this writing not been preserved, it would never have occurred to anyone that at that time men belonging to the circle of the Scribes had been tormented in this way by the primary problems of religion, and had brought the questions arising out of them into such close relations with eschatology.

Further, it is to be taken into account that Palestinian Scribism, even though it was an independent entity, did not, at the time when it has to be considered in connexion with Paul, exist in absolute exclusiveness, but maintained relations with Jewish Hellenism. The latter worked on a basis of ideas which it had in large measure taken over from Rabbinism and held in common with the latter. This relationship becomes in the case of Philo clearly apparent. With him one can never tell where the “Rabbinist” ends and the Hellenist begins. But if the theology of the Scribes stood in any kind of relation with Jewish Hellenism, it cannot have been so poor in ideas and unspiritual as it appears in the later tradition.

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Even the discourses of Jesus, in spite of the polemical picture which they give of it, create the impression that He had to do with a Rabbinism which was interested in really religious questions, even though it showed itself incapable of rising to the height of the simple piety to which His preaching of the Kingdom of God and the repentance necessary thereto made its appeal.

It seems therefore probable that the Epistles of Paul and the Apocalypse of Ezra, along with its satellite the Apocalypse of Baruch, are witnesses to a Rabbinism, or a movement within its sphere, of which the Rabbinic tradition which later became fixed in written form gives us no information.

What should we know of the moving forces of the Reformation as they manifest themselves in Luther’s works of the year 1521, if we were dependent for our information on the Lutheran scholasticism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? How would we think of the Reformation as a whole if we possessed only these witnesses? With all due respect to the vaunted faithfulness of Rabbinic tradition, which after all we are not in a position to check, was it capable of preserving the record of a period of living thought? Is an oral tradition ever capable of doing so?

The historical examples in which we are able to test the tradition of later generations by the reality which has subsequently come to light, are calculated to shake our faith in the assumption that it can do so. What did Beethoven’s time know of the achievements of the period of Bach? Mention is made of the elaborate fugues which had their origin at that time; but that the eighteenth century had produced choral works of deep feeling and an elevation secure against change of fashion, was entirely unknown to the second generation after Bach, although there had been nothing to interrupt tradition.

Moreover, it ought not to be forgotten that we possess the history of Judaism only in fragments. As regards the political events of the first century we are [pg 051] comparatively well informed, but of the religious movements we know little, and what does come to our knowledge is so disconnected and self-contradictory that it cannot be combined into a single picture. The Baptist, Jesus, Philo, Paul, Josephus, and the authors of the Apocalypses of Ezra and Baruch cover together about two generations. They are at first sight as entirely different as if they belonged to widely separated periods.

The destruction of Jerusalem interrupts the continuity of development of the Jewish people and of its thought. Its life is extinguished. Hellenism dies out. There arises a Rabbinism which is no longer borne on the tide of great national and spiritual movements. It becomes ossified, and confines itself to mere unproductive commentating upon the law. From the past its tradition takes only what lies within the field of its own narrow interests. The problems and ideas which moved the earlier, many-sided period no longer come into view, but fall into as complete oblivion as if they had never occupied Jewish religious thought.

The scholarship of the period after Baur is indeed far enough from embarking on reflexions of this kind. It takes scarcely any notice of what remains of the Late-Jewish non-Hellenistic literature. Even the commentators make scarcely any use of the parallels to Pauline ideas and conceptions which are found in Enoch, the Apocalypse of Baruch, the Apocalypse of Ezra, and here and there in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs.

It is nothing less than astonishing that the close affinities with the Apocalypse of Ezra do not receive any recognition. In this work there are elaborate discussions of the problems of sin, the Fall of our first parents, Election, the wrath, long-suffering, and mercy of God, the prerogative of Israel, the significance of the law, the temporal and the eternal Jerusalem, of the prospect of dying or surviving to the Parousia, the tribulation of the times of the End, and the Judgment. The close affinity between this writer and Paul strikes the eye at once. [pg 052] Writers on Paulinism are, however, so obsessed by the idea that the teaching of Paul is a “personal creation” that they cannot bring themselves to accept the view that the religious problems which struggle for solution in his letters had also occupied his Jewish contemporaries or at least a section of them._(_49_)_

The claims of Late Judaism on Paul were therefore taken to be discharged when his Rabbinic dialectic and exegesis, and to a certain extent his eschatology also, had been ascribed to it.

The chapter on the future-hope which connected Paul on the one hand with Judaism and on the other with primitive Christianity, is never omitted in any account of his teaching given by the scholars of the post-Baur period. In it is collected all that the Epistles have to say regarding the parousia, the resurrection, the judgment, and the Kingdom of the Last Times. The treatment, however, is by no means thorough. Scarcely anywhere is there an attempt to arrange the scattered notices in an orderly way and bring them into relation with one another. It is taken for granted that they are inconsistent with one another, as a necessary consequence of the fantastic character of the material. That Paul may have had a clear plan of the events of the End in which all his statements can find a place, is not taken into account. These writers therefore set no limit to the admission of inconsistencies, and draw a picture which is, to put it plainly, meaningless.

So far, it occurs to no one that the want of connexion may perhaps result from the fact that the separate [pg 053] statements have not been carefully examined in regard to what they actually mean, and to their mutual relations. It is taken as quite certain that the “simple” eschatology of I Thessalonians is superseded by the more complicated view of the Corinthian letters; and these in turn are not the last stage in this “development” of the Apostle’s thought. No attempt is made to get a clear idea in what order he thinks of the judgment and the resurrection of the dead, or as to whether he holds that there is one resurrection and one judgment, or a resurrection of the “righteous,” and another besides, and whether he assumes this to be accompanied by one judgment or two.

The authors regard with a certain amount of self-satisfaction the way in which they have emphasised the importance given to the eschatology by Paul. In the chapter devoted to it they have certainly emphasised again and again, “with the utmost energy,” the fact that he really “shared” the eschatological expectations of his time and admitted them to an important place in his creed. The chapter in question, however, only gets its turn after the whole “system of doctrine” has been safely housed in the earlier chapters without seeking any aid from the eschatology or even saying a word about it. As in the Church prayers of to-day, one catches an echo of it only at the end. This means that, when all is said and done, these writers regard it only as a kind of annexe to the main edifice of Pauline doctrine. That is a fact which their brave words about the importance attributed to it in their account do not alter in the slightest. None of these students of Paulinism asks himself whether there is an organic connexion between the eschatological expectations and the system as such, and whether the fundamental conceptions and concatenation of ideas are not somehow or other conditioned by the hope of the final consummation. It is simply taken as self-evident that eschatology can only form an incidental chapter in Paul’s teaching.

[pg 054]

The most natural course to follow in the investigation would have been to begin with the eschatology as the most general and “primitive-Christian” element, and then to have tried to find a path leading from here to the central doctrine of the new life in union with the dying and resurrection of Christ. This course is nowhere followed.

That is the more surprising as it is generally assumed that the “missionary preaching” of the Apostle took an almost purely eschatological form, and was scarcely distinguishable from the primitive-Christian preaching of repentance, the judgment, and the parousia. The point to examine would therefore have been precisely how the “Pauline theology” grew out of the eschatology which Paul shared with primitive Christianity. Instead of that, these writers begin with the “doctrinal system,” and attach to that by way of appendix an account of the eschatology. It here first becomes fully apparent what a misfortune it was for Pauline study in the post-Baur period that it kept to the method of presentation under _loci,_ and consequently accorded eschatology, in principle, no greater importance for Paulinism than it had had for Reformation theology.

Bernard Weiss, agreeing in this with Havet, lays strong emphasis on the eschatology, and makes a beginning in the direction of an intelligent presentation of Paulinism. Instead of beginning, like the others, with the “doctrine of man,” or with “sin and the law,” he first sets forth “the earliest preaching of Paul as Apostle of the Gentiles,” which he makes to consist of nothing but the proclamation of the judgment and the parousia. But having got this length, he does not feel any need to point out the paths which lead from here to the “teaching of the four great doctrinal and polemical epistles.” He simply puts the two sections side by side, and even falls into the inconsistency of devoting another chapter to the eschatology at a later point. The doctrine of Paul consists therefore for these scholars of a theology of the [pg 055] present and a theology of the future which have no inner connexion with one another. It is indeed cited as an achievement on his part that he turned the eye of faith from the exclusive contemplation of the “hereafter” to take in the present also. How he came to do so—he alone of this first Christian generation—to point to present “blessings of salvation” in addition to those of the future, is not explained. The co-existence of the two is simply noted as a fact.

How far the scholars of this period were from taking the Pauline eschatology seriously, is evident from the fact that they neglected to enquire into its connexion with that of Late Judaism. Otto Everling, who in 1888 took in hand to give an account of one of its main features, its angelology and demonology, was not able to refer to any previous work in this department._(_50_)_ A theologian to whom he spoke of his design answered that “one ought not to examine the birth-marks of a genius like the Apostle.”

Everling brings forward the passages which speak of Satan, the angels, and the demons, one after another, and adduces parallels from Enoch, the Ascension of Isaiah, the Wisdom of Solomon, the Book of Jubilees, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, and the Apocalypse of Baruch. His review of the material shows in what a step-motherly fashion it had been treated by previous commentators of all shades of opinion.

In the result it appears that the Pauline statements about angelology and demonology have not sprung from his own imagination, but all have their earlier analogues in the Late-Jewish theology, or at any rate can be understood as inferences from the conceptions there laid down. It further appears that his statements stand in systematic connexion and mutually supplement one another.

In its main lines the Pauline doctrine of the angels shows us the following picture. Spiritual beings who, in accordance with the hierarchic arrangement adopted in [pg 056] Late-Jewish theology, are divided into various classes, played a prominent part at the giving of the law. From that time forward they acted as overseers of the chosen people, and also as the real powers behind the gods of the heathen. By the death and resurrection of Christ their power has been in principle abolished, although it continues to be still in some way exercised upon those who offer sacrifices to idols or submit themselves to the law.

Believers in Christ, however, stand over against them as a class of men who are liberated from their sway, and who possess a wisdom which understands better than their own the great events in which the history of the world is about to close.

These angelic existences feel that their domination is threatened, and fight with all the weapons at their command. It is at their instigation that the attempt is made to corrupt the Gospel by legalism; all the difficulties which the Apostle encounters, all the corporeal sufferings which he has to bear, are to be attributed to them. It is on their account that women must be veiled when attending the services of the Church, since otherwise they run the risk of becoming the victims of their lust, as of old their mother Eve was seduced by the devil. Most dangerous of all is their skill in deception: Satan can disguise himself as an angel of light.

With the appearance of the Lord begins the decisive struggle which is to lead to the destruction of these powers. They are to be delivered up to judgment, to receive their sentence at the mouth of the saints, whom, until the parousia, they have still the power to harass with cunning and cruelty, though not to destroy.

“In its proper historical surroundings Christianity shows up in its true majesty,” said Richard Rothe once. Everling drew from these words, which he placed at the beginning of his book, courage to make a thorough investigation of matters which had previously been timidly avoided because of their strangeness.

How wide-reaching was the significance of his synthetic [pg 057] study he had hardly realised. His intention was to depict clearly and in vivid colours the imposingly fantastic Late-Jewish background of Pauline theology. The theology of his time took the same view. It accepted the offered gift somewhat constrainedly, but on the whole gratefully enough. If it had the impression that the background as thus restored, while no doubt “interesting,” was somewhat too glaring and obtrusive, it remained confident that the “doctrinal system” which it throws into relief is not otherwise affected by it. The appendix-chapter on eschatology grows in size and acquires a certain connectedness. But there seemed no reason to fear that it might grow so vigorously as to overpower those into which the Pauline theology proper is neatly parcelled out.

In reality, however, there was quite sufficient reason for anxiety. Everling had shown that angelology and demonology were, as a matter of fact, component parts of Paul’s cosmology. That they consequently also entered into his fundamental conception of redemption was a point which he had not especially emphasised. But the fact was written in giant characters across his work. From the moment when Paul’s statements regarding God, the devil, the angels, and the world are apprehended in their organic connexion, it becomes abundantly evident that for him redemption, in its primary and fundamental sense, consists in a deliverance from the powers which have their abode between heaven and earth. It is therefore essentially a future good, dependent on a cosmic event of universal scope.

It at once becomes evident that the investigation of Paulinism must take as its starting-point these ideas as being of the most general character, and endeavour to show how the other statements regarding redemption are derived from them. Theological science was thus forced into the road which it had hitherto sedulously avoided. The deceptive character of the division of Paulinism under _loci,_ by which it had long been kept in [pg 058] an unhappy state of subservience to Reformation and modern prejudices, now became apparent. But for all that theology held to the old way and was determined to cast out anyone who set foot upon the new. That is the explanation of the fate which befel Richard Kabisch’s “Eschatology of Paul.”_(_51_)_ Kabisch had been considering the plan of a work on the Pauline Ethic, and in doing so had become aware that it was to a large extent conditioned by the eschatological expectations. Thereupon he resolved to begin with a preliminary study of the eschatology._(_52_)_

“Salvation,” so runs his argument, is thought of by Paul as “deliverance” from judgment and destruction. “Justification” and “reconciliation” are subservient to this deliverance and do not describe a state of salvation independent of it. The spiritual goods which are characterised by many theologians as the object of the Apostle’s wrestling and striving are in reality only the anticipatory first-fruits of the blessedness which the future has in store. This blessedness consists in the believer’s being freed at the parousia from the fleshly body in order to put on the heavenly robe of glory. Thus eschatology is the foundation both of the dogmatics and ethics of the Apostle.

Life and death are for him physical conceptions. Spiritual death and spiritual life in the modern religious sense are unknown to him. Even where, as in Rom. vi., he speaks of a dying and rising again which are not accompanied by any change in the outward and visible existence of the individual, he does not mean a spiritual dying and rising again but, inconceivable as it may [pg 059] appear, a physical occurrence. Everything spiritual goes back to something corporeal. That is true also as regards the ethics. It is not from the consciousness of the “ideal possession of eternal life” that he infers the duty of walking in newness of life, but from the fact that one who shares the death of Christ must also share His resurrection. Both events have reference to the present. It is “a simple logical consequence” that we should walk in accordance with this physical newness of life in order to show that the fleshly, _sarkic,_ body has been put off.

The new life of which Paul speaks as a present spirit is therefore based on the “repetition” of Christ’s bodily resurrection, which is rendered possible by the _unio mystica_ with him. It guarantees to the individual his indestructibility even though the corruptible world, to which his fleshly corporeity belongs, falls a prey to destruction. The believer will then have a part in the new world-substance.

Paul’s soul is therefore thrilled with the eager desire for life, shaken with the dread of destruction. His faith, hope, and fear all revolve about one centre—the abolition of corruption and the bestowal of incorruption. His religion is a “will-to-live” in a large elemental sense. He yearns for redemption from the creaturehood which is under the sway of Satan and his powers, and from the body which they hold in thrall. The moment in which the relative positions of the world of spirits and the world of men are to be reversed, and a great final renewal of all things is to be brought in—that moment cannot come quickly enough for him. Therefore he seeks in some way to antedate it.

The future condition of existence is that of “glory.” It is anticipated in the present life by the possession of the “Spirit” which belongs essentially to the heavenly light substance.

Thus Kabisch endeavours to explain the Pauline doctrine of the Spirit purely on the ground of the Late-Jewish metaphysic. A super-earthly substance enters [pg 060] into the corporeity of those who in virtue of the _unio mystica_ with Christ have entered into the experience of His death and resurrection. It produces in them a new being, and gives them a claim to the future perfected glory, and this while their fleshly existence still continues to the outward eye unaltered.

The great paradoxes of Paulinism are here for the first time clearly pointed out and so described that their real eschatological essence appears._(_53_)_ But Kabisch did not succeed in explaining them. In what sense is a “repetition” in the believer of the dying and rising again of Christ possible? How can it produce a reconstitution of their creaturely being while their fleshly existence continues outwardly as before? To these questions Kabisch gives no answer.