Chapter VIII: Summing-Up and Formulation of the Problem . . . 237 (6)

_Hermann Jakoby._ Neutestamentliche Ethik. (New Testament Ethics.)

1900. _Arthur Titius._ Der Paulinismus unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Seligkeit. (Paulinism with Special Reference to Final Salvation.)

_A. Drescher._ Das Leben Jesu bei Paulus. (The Life of Jesus in Paul’s Writings.)

_Karl Dick._ Der schriftstellerische Plural bei Paulus. (The Literary Use of the First Person Plural in Paul’s Writings.)

_Adolf Harnack._ Das Wesen des Christentums. (Translated under the title “What is Christianity?”)

1901. _Paul Wernle._ Die Anfänge unserer Religion. (Translated under the title “The Beginnings of Christianity.”)

1902. _Otto Pfleiderer._ Das Urchristentum, seine Schriften und Lehren. (Primitive Christianity, its Documents and Doctrines.) Second, revised and extended edition. (Translated, 4 vols., London, 1906-1911.)

_Paul Feine._ Jesus Christus und Paulus.

_G. F. Heinrici._ Das Urchristentum. (Primitive Christianity.)

1903. _Georg Hollmann._ Urchristentum in Corinth. (Primitive Christianity in Corinth.)

_Emil Sokolowski._ Die Begriffe Geist und Leben bei Paulus in ihrer Beziehung zu einander. (The Conceptions of “Spirit” and “Life” in Paul, in their Relations to one another.)

_Wilhelm Bousset._ Die Religion des Judentums im neutestamentlichen Zeitalter. (The Religion of Judaism in New Testament Times.) Die jüdische Apokalyptik, ihre religionsgeschichtliche Herkunft und ihre Bedeutung für das Neue Testament. (Jewish Apocalyptic: its Origin as indicated by Comparative Religion, and its Significance for the New Testament.)

[pg 152]

_Paul Volz._ Jüdische Eschatologie von Daniel bis Akiba. (Jewish Eschatology from Daniel to Akiba.)

_W. Heitmüller._ Taufe und Abendmahl bei Paulus. (Baptism and the Lord’s Supper in Paul’s Teaching.)

_Martin Brückner._ Die Entstehung der paulinischen Christologie. (How the Pauline Christology arose.)

1904. _Heinrich Weinel._ Paulus. (E. T. St. Paul: The Man and his Work, 1906.)

_Ernst von Dobschütz._ Die Probleme des apostolischen Zeitalters. (The Problems of the Apostolic Age.)

_Maurice Goguel._ L’Apôtre Paul et Jésus-Christ.

_Alfred Juncker._ Die Ethik des Apostels Paulus.

_William Wrede._ Paulus. (E. T. by E. Lummis, 1907.)

1905. _Hugo Gressmann._ Der Ursprung der israelitisch-jüdischen Eschatologie. (The Origin of the Israelitish-Jewish Eschatology.)

1906. _Paul Feine._ Paulus als Theologe. (Paul as a Theologian.)

_P. Kölbing._ Die geistige Einwirkung der Person Jesu auf Paulus. (The Spiritual Influence of the Person of Jesus upon Paul.)

_Eberhard Vischer._ Die Paulusbriefe. (The Pauline Epistles.)

_Wilhelm Karl._ Beiträge zum Verständnis der soteriologischen Erfahrungen und Spekulationen des Apostels Paulus. (Contributions towards the Understanding of the Soteriological Experiences and Speculations of the Apostle Paul.)

_W. Bousset._ Der Apostel Paulus.

1907. _Adolf Jülicher._ Paulus und Jesus.

_Arnold Meyer._ Wer hat das Christentum gegründet, Jesus oder Paulus? (Who founded Christianity, Jesus or Paul?)

_A. Schettler._ Die paulinische Formel “Durch Christus.” (The Pauline Formula “through Christ.”)

_J. Wellhausen._ Israelitische und jüdische Geschichte (6th ed.).

1908. _Carl Munzinger._ Paulus in Corinth.

_Hans Windisch._ Die Entsündigung des Christen nach Paulus. (The Purification of the Christian from Sin in Paul’s Teaching.)

_Reinhold Seeberg._ Dogmengeschichte. (History of Dogma.) 2nd edition.

_Wilhelm Walther._ Pauli Christentum, Jesu Evangelium.

1909. _Adolf Harnack._ Dogmengeschichte. 4th edition.

_Martin Dibelius._ Die Geisterwelt im Glauben des Paulus. (The World of Spirits according to Paul’s Belief.)

_Johannes Weiss._ Paulus und Jesus. (E. T. by H. T. Chaytor, 1909.) Christus: Die Anfänge des Dogmas. (Christ: The Beginning of Dogma. E. T. by V. D. Davis, 1911.)

_Johann Haussleiter._ Paulus.

_R. Knopf._ Paulus.

_W. Olschewski._ Die Wurzeln der paulinischen Christologie. (The Roots of Pauline Christologie.)

1910. _A. Schlatter._ Neutestamentliche Theologie.

[pg 153]

_R. Drescher._ Das Leben Jesu bei Paulus.

_Eberhard Vischer._ Der Apostel Paulus und sein Werk.

_Julius Schniewind._ Die Begriffe Wort und Evangelium bei Paulus (The Meaning of the Terms “Word” and “Gospel” in Paul’s Writings.)

1911. _Adolf Deissmann._ Paulus, eine kultur- und religionsgeschichtliche Skizze. (Paul, A Sketch with a Background of Ancient Civilisation and Religion.)

_Johannes Müller._ Die Entstehung des persönlichen Christentums der paulinischen Gemeinden. (How the personal Christianity of the Pauline Churches arose.)

THE dawn of the twentieth century found Pauline scholarship in a peculiar frame of mind. The criticism of the Ultra-Tübingen critics had not succeeded in disquieting it, nor Holtzmann in reassuring it.

That the problems by which Loman, Steck, and van Manen were tormented were mere cobwebs of the imagination was so completely taken for granted that in dealing with the Pauline teaching no further attention was paid to them. On the other hand, however, the problems previously recognised by critical scholarship had not been so completely solved by Holtzmann that they could be considered as done with.

The disquisitions in which in his “New Testament Theology” he resumed the results of the whole study of the subject since Baur, did not have the effect which he had expected. They were much discussed and much praised; the massive learning and wide reading, the art of the literary treatment and the subtlety of the dialectic compelled admiration. But behind all this chorus of appreciation, a certain sense of depression made itself felt. People were dismayed to find that Paulinism was so complicated, and that the web of Paul’s thought must be so delicately and cautiously handled if it was to be disentangled. Was the doctrine of the Apostle of the Gentiles really a product of such extremely intricate mental processes as it was here represented to be?

The process of disillusionment did not go so far as to lead to the calling in question of the fundamental view there offered. But results were not put forward with [pg 154] the same confidence as before; effort was directed rather to strengthen them by revision and correction.

It was in this frame of mind that Pfleiderer prepared the second edition of his “Primitive Christianity.”_(_118_)_ Whereas he had formerly taken for granted the influence of the Greek world upon Paul, as being something self-evident, he now feels obliged to offer proof of it, in a newly inserted chapter upon Hellenism, Stoicism, and Seneca, in order to arrive at the result . . . that his Greek education was in any case “a problematical possibility.” While he had previously held that the combination of the Alexandrian Platonic doctrine of immortality with eschatology was the great work accomplished by the Apostle of the Gentiles, he now is inclined to see a spiritualisation of the future-hope already prepared for in Judaism, and quotes the Apocalypse of Ezra and Jewish Hellenistic literature in testimony of this._(_119_)_

Fate willed that about the same time theology should be seized by the impulse of popularisation, and now found itself in the position of being obliged to offer assured, absolutely assured, results in reference to Paulinism. The most important works of this character are Paul Wernle’s “Beginnings of Christianity” and Heinrich Weinel’s “Paul.”_(_120_)_

[pg 155]

The efforts of these writers are directed to bring the author and his thoughts into close relations with our time. It is not his theology in its subtleties and its contradictions that they seek to grasp and to portray, but his religion—what lies behind the system and the formula. In this way they hope to escape many difficulties over which Holtzmann had laboured, and to be able to bring out the fundamental and intelligible elements which in him had been rather to seek.

Wernle makes Paul discourse in the character of the great missionary apologist; Weinel draws him as the preacher of the religion of inwardness, who as “Pharisee,” “Seeker after God,” “prophet,” “apostle,” “founder of the Church,” “theologian,” and “man,” was all things in one.

The lively portraiture, quite different from the conventional works on the subject, found a ready welcome, and incited others to imitation.

In consistently emphasising the apologetic aspect of Paul’s teaching Wernle brought up many ingenious ideas for discussion. Weinel, on his part, brought again to the consciousness of both theologians and laymen the poetic and emotional element in the Apostle’s world of ideas.

But they found no new way of grasping and understanding him.

They walk in a shady path which runs parallel to the main road. But its pleasantness is associated with certain dangers, which they themselves, and those who followed them, have not always escaped.

When earlier writers on the subject modernised, they did so unconsciously. Wernle and Weinel, however, do [pg 156] so on principle, and have no scruple about throwing light on what is obscure in Paulinism by the use of more or less appropriate catchwords of the most modern theology.

Not seldom they imagine they are explaining something when they are in reality only talking round the subject. In this way there enters into their treatment a kind of forced ingenuity, one might almost say flimsiness.

Their love of graphic description also sometimes becomes a temptation to them. They do not always remember to keep it within bounds, and sometimes allow themselves to fall into a kind of artificial naïveté. Wernle in particular delights to wield a pre-Raphaelite brush. He pictures the Apostle, for instance, in the evening at his inn, receiving visitors, exhorting and consoling them, weaving tent-cloth, busy with a letter, all at the same time. “Sometimes stones would come flying into the room as he was dictating—the Jews had set on the city mob to attack him. Many an abrupt transition in his letters may have had its origin in a violent interruption of this kind.”_(_121_)_

Feine and Titius begin with a critical examination of previous views. They are not in this wholly disinterested, being in search of a Paulinism which has more to offer to modern religion, as they apprehend it, than the one-sidedly historical post-Baur liberalism. The result is that while they show themselves free from many of the presuppositions and prejudices which are common to the others, they are at the same time not in a position to put Paulinism on a new historical basis. They agree [pg 157] in opposing the separation of Paulinism from Primitive Christianity which is practised by Holsten and Holtzmann. They refuse to be converted to the unsatisfactory view that Paulinism, as being a so unique personal creation, must have remained unintelligible even to Paul’s contemporaries. Before making up their minds to derive the whole of Paul’s doctrine from the vision at his conversion and the influence of Greek ideas, they propose to examine it in reference to the conceptions which connect it with Jesus, with primitive Christianity, and with Judaism.

Consequently they are loth to admit Greek elements and the resulting duality in the Apostle’s thought. Feine maintains that in the Apostle’s mind before his conversion, Greek ideas were only present in so far as they had already been adopted by Pharisaism. Titius “will not deny that there is a touch of Hellenism in the great Apostle,” but is far from seeking to explain the doctrine of flesh and spirit and the mysticism connected with the “new creation” purely from this point of view. On the other hand both of them assign a large part in the formation of Paul’s doctrine to his Jewish consciousness, and consequently are led to a comprehensive recognition of eschatology.

In his examination of the individual views Titius always takes the future-hope as his starting-point—indeed his book begins with chapters on God and eschatology. He shows that redemption, in the most general conception of it, is a liberation from the present evil world and a deliverance looking to the world which is to come, and that justification was originally bound up with the thought of the judgment at the parousia. Instead, however, of systematically carrying out the analysis in this fashion, he breaks off and begins to work up the historical material which he has brought to light on the lines of the problems, definitions, and distinctions of modern theology, because, as the very title of his book shows, he undertakes his investigation with a view [pg 158] to showing the significance of New Testament teaching for the present day. In order to portray the “religious life” he makes it a principle “not to hesitate to turn aside from the highway, to which the technical terms serve as sign-posts.” Thus he comes finally to discover everywhere that Paul clarified the doctrines which he took over and transformed them into ethico-religious teaching and subjective experience. From “the edifice of eschatologico-enthusiastic thought, most closely connected with it but unmistakable in its distinctive character,” he sees, to his satisfaction, “the spiritual life of the new religion” showing forth.

Here also, therefore, as with Wernle and Weinel, there is conscious and intentional modernisation, in order to discover the religion of Paul behind his theology.

One difference there is, however. The others brought to this undertaking a certain naïveté and enthusiasm which enabled them to see the modern and the historical the one in the other. Titius is an observer with a keen eye for the really historical. He holds past and present side by side but separate, and must apply a mighty effort of will and understanding and do violence to his feelings in order to bring them into connexion. Out of these inner pangs a book has come to the birth which in matters of detail is full of just and suggestive remarks, but as a whole is unsatisfactory.

The problem of the relation of Paul to Jesus stands for Titius and Feine as the foreground of the interest. Both hold the view that the connexion is a much closer one than criticism had hitherto been prepared to admit. The indifference which the Apostle professes regarding “Christ after the flesh” is not to be understood in the sense that he had no concern with His teaching. In his detailed monograph Feine endeavours to prove that Paul shows himself familiar with the words and thoughts of the historic Jesus, and in his eschatology, doctrine of redemption, ethics, attitude towards the law, and conception of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, only carries to a further [pg 159] point of development what is already present or fore-shadowed in the teaching of Jesus. Titius set himself the same task, and believes himself to have proved “to how great an extent the Apostle bases his views on the thoughts of Jesus, attaches himself to them, and further develops them.”_(_122_)_

This result is opposed by Maurice Goguel,_(_123_)_ who offers a thoroughgoing defence of the usual view. He is prepared to admit that Paul knew more of the life and teaching of Jesus than his Epistles show; but a fundamental difference in doctrine is, he thinks, not to be denied, and he finds that it consists in the fact that the one preaches “salvation,” the other the way of obtaining it. In his utterances about redemption through the death and resurrection of Christ, the parousia, Christology, Church and sacraments, Paul expresses, according to Goguel, views which go much beyond the horizon of the historical Jesus. A point of contact is only to be found in the simple ethical teaching. In reference to the law, Jesus prepared the way for what the Apostle of the Gentiles accomplished, without fully measuring the far-reaching consequences of his attitude.

The problem which theology since the time of Baur had always avoided now therefore came at last to discussion. Goguel’s essay did not indeed greatly elucidate the matter. That the thesis of Feine and Titius goes far beyond what the material warrants was not difficult to prove. On the other hand, it had, in justice, to be conceded to them that they had shown that there was [pg 160] something in common between the fundamental conceptions of Jesus and Paul on which sufficient stress had not previously been laid.

Goguel’s sharp antitheses are at first sight more convincing than the somewhat involved argument of Feine, because he has the direct evidence of the text on his side. The difficulty, however, immediately makes itself felt when he endeavours to make it intelligible exactly why Paul was forced to create new conceptions. He cannot point to any objective factors to account for this development, and is consequently reduced to explaining everything psychologically.

From this exceedingly complicated controversy one thing results with certainty, namely, that the problem, in the form in which it is stated, is an unreal one. The statement of the problem which is here presupposed leaves out of account the middle term, primitive Christianity.

The credit of having expressed this clearly, and thus put an end to the unprofitable wrangling about “Jesus and Paul” and “Jesus or Paul,” belongs to Harnack._(_124_)_ If, he writes in the 1909 edition of his “History of Dogma,” even in the first generation the religion of Jesus underwent a change, it must be said that it was not Paul who was responsible for this but the primitive Christian community. He is not, however, able to explain why the Apostle of the Gentiles goes still further than the primitive community.

The question of the peculiarly inconsistent attitude of the Apostle towards the law is not elucidated by Titius and Feine.

The ethics are treated in monographs by Jakoby and Juncker._(_125_)_ The former gives a detailed description. [pg 161] The latter tries to discover the fundamental principle, and naturally finds himself obliged to deal with the whole doctrine of redemption. In the method which he applies he recalls Titius. With historical insight he recognises, in his fine chapter upon the origin of the new life, that all the ethical conceptions of Paul are in one way or another of an eschatological and “physical” character. Later on he falls a victim to the temptation to modernise.

Thus he tries, for instance, to show that Paul did not think of the influence of the Spirit in man as analogous to a physical process, but, on the contrary, “regarded the feeling of thankful love towards God and Christ as the subjective root of the new way of life.” So that we find here, too, the dread of recognising anything objective in the Apostle’s views and the tendency, not indeed to fall into the “one-sidedly intellectual view,” but to bring into the foreground the “specifically religious estimate of the Apostle’s person and gospel.”

It is no accident that the scholars of this period are so anxious to distinguish between theology and religion. This expedient covers dismay and apprehension.

Meanwhile the study of Late Judaism had been going its own way. The further it advanced the more evident it became that this was the soil on which the theology of Paul had grown up. Holtzmann’s New Testament Theology had not availed to render theological science proof against the assaults which it was to experience in the next few years from this direction. The impression was too strong to be escaped. And when the results [pg 162] of the study were presented, with a certain provisional completeness, in Bousset’s powerful book on “Jewish Religious Life in New Testament Times,” it became certain that the apprehension had not been unfounded._(_126_)_

The naïve spiritualisation of the theology as practised by Holsten, Pfleiderer, and Holtzmann—by the latter no longer quite naïvely,—was over and done with._(_127_)_ The recognition of a “physical”_(_128_)_ aspect in Paul’s expectations of the future was no longer sufficient. It had to be [pg 163] admitted that his doctrine of redemption as a whole bore this character, and that the fundamental strain in his mysticism was not ethical but physical, as Lüdemann had declared as long ago as 1872 without suspecting the far-reaching consequences of his observation.

The only question now was how much had to be conceded to this alien system of thought which was endeavouring to draw Paul within its borders, and how much could be saved from it.

In this quandary theologians had recourse to the expedient of applying the distinction between “theoretical” (theological) and “religious” to the doctrine of the Apostle, as Holtzmann had already tried to do when he could no longer refuse to recognise its Gnostic, intellectualistic character.

The position became especially critical in view of the concessions which had to be made regarding the Pauline conception of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Up to this time, that chapter had given little trouble to theological science. It had been taken for granted that at bottom it could only be a question of symbolism. The doctrine of redemption on its ethical side found, it was thought, in the sacred ceremonies its cultual expression.

Holtzmann, too, in the section on “Mystical Conceptions”_(_129_)_ _(Mysteriöses)_ had still to all intents and purposes taken the same ground. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are, he explains, in the first place, acts of confession by which the death of the Lord is proclaimed. To this has to be added, in the case of the Lord’s Supper, the significance of a communion meal, and in the case of baptism the value of a symbolic act. It creates, according to Romans vi., a mystical fellowship with the buried and risen Christ. “The outward symbol of complete immersion signifies and represents the disappearance of the old, fleshly man, the coming forth out of the water represents the forthgoing of a new, spiritual man.”

Paul, Holtzmann thinks, puts the content of his [pg 164] “experience” into this ceremonial act, and thereby cuts it loose from the earlier view which had arisen from its connexion with John the Baptist. Strictly speaking, he transforms both the cultus-acts, by bringing his new conception of Christianity into connexion with them in order to give it cultual expression.

Probably—we are still following Holtzmann—he did this under the guidance of analogies which he found in the Mystery-religions of the period. The expressions which he uses at any rate remind us sometimes of the language which is associated with them. This, then, was the point from which the later transformation began. “It was, in fact, Paul who from an outlying, one might almost say a remote point of his system of thought, opened up for the early Catholic Church a road which it would, indeed, most probably have followed even without this precedent, which was given, as it were, merely incidentally and casually.”

It is interesting to observe precisely what views are intended to be excluded by these guarded explanations. Holtzmann is concerned to emphasise the view that baptism and the Lord’s Supper have in the Apostle’s doctrine a rather subordinate importance, and that they are not real sacraments but quasi-sacramental acts. He deliberately avoids the plain issue, on which after all everything really depends, whether baptism and the Supper effect redemption or only represent it.

But those who came after him were obliged to raise this question, and so far as they were willing to respect the documents were obliged to answer that the sacraments not only represent but effect redemption. Wernle remarks regretfully that the cultus-acts have in Paul a much greater importance than one would be inclined to expect, and that in certain passages he tolerates or even suggests “pagan” views. Weinel is obliged to admit that alongside of the religion of inwardness which he has discovered in the Apostle’s teaching, a sacramental religion, which is inherently opposed to it, from time to [pg 165] time appears. “Sometimes,” he writes, “it is faith that brings the Spirit, sometimes baptism, sometimes it is faith that unites with Christ, sometimes the Lord’s Supper.” Titius feels himself obliged to give up the symbolical interpretation of Romans vi., which for Holtzmann still forms a fixed datum, and admits that the atmosphere of this chapter is “supranaturalistic,” and that the baptism there referred to is a real baptism into the death of Christ and an equally real partaking in His resurrection. Feine, in _Jesus Christus and Paulus,_ insists that the sacramental character of the cultus-acts described by Paul should be universally acknowledged.

Heitmüller, in his work on “Baptism and the Lord’s Supper in Paul’s Writings,”_(_130_)_ gives the old and the new view side by side, and shows that it is the latter which alone is justified by the documents. The mystical connexion which in baptism and the Lord’s Supper is set up between the believer and Christ is a “physico-hyperphysical one,” and has as its consequence that the believer shares _realiter_ in the death and resurrection of Christ.

For the liberal conception of Paulinism this was a blow at the heart. If redemption is effected through the sacraments, these are no longer an “outlying point” in the Apostle’s doctrine, but lie at its centre. And at the same time the distinction between “theoretical” (theological) and “religious” is rendered impossible. A doctrine of redemption which is thus bound up with Mysteries which work in a physico-hyperphysical way is in its essence purely supernaturalistic._(_131_)_

[pg 166]

The courage of theological thinkers was put to a severe test. When Baur and his followers made their profession of faith in unbiassed free investigation they could have had no inkling that it would become so difficult for a later generation to remain true to this principle.

To give up the distinction between “theoretical” and religious and to follow a purely historical method meant, as things stood at the beginning of the twentieth century, to be left with an entirely temporally conditioned Paulinism, of which modern ways of thought could make nothing, and to trace out a system which for our religion is dead.

At this crisis theology encountered in William Wrede a candid friend who sought to keep it in the path of sincerity. His _Paulus,_ short and written in such a way as to be universally intelligible, appeared in the year 1904._(_132_)_

The “theology,” he writes, is in Paul not to be separated from the “religion.” His religion is through and through theological; his theology is his religion.

The theory which Holtzmann introduced in his “New Testament Theology,” and which Wernle, Weinel, Heitmüller, Titius, and the rest had developed, thus came to an untimely end before it had left its nonage. It survived only seven years.

And then the second expedient—that Paul had thought out no system, but just put down his thoughts in any kind of fortuitous order—is set aside. The framework of the doctrine of redemption, Wrede declares, is very closely articulated. Further, it is not really complicated, but is at bottom quite simple, if once we take account of the thought-material out of which it is constructed and take the most general conceptions as the starting-point.

Redemption—this is, according to Wrede, Paul’s train [pg 167] of thought—is not something which takes place in the individual as such, as the later Christian view was, but signifies a universal event in which the individual has a part.

It consists in the deliverance of mankind from the dominion of the powers which hold sway over this world. These powers have been destroyed by the death and resurrection of Jesus, as will become manifest at the parousia. Thus redemption is essentially an insurance for this future.

But it is even in the present real, though not visible. Christ is the representative of the human race. What happened to Him, happened to all.

“All men are therefore from the moment of His death set free, as He is Himself, from the hostile powers; and all are by His resurrection transferred into a condition of indestructible life.” The proof of this change is given by the Spirit. He represents in the redeemed the super-earthly life, as a “gift of the last times in which the powers of the world to come already exercise an influence upon the present existence.”

This wholly “objective” conception of redemption is, Wrede admits, for our modern modes of thought rather impersonal and cold. “It takes place in a way which is wholly external to the individual man, and the events seem, as it were, to be only enacted in Christ.”

Redemption is effected in the sacraments. “The ‘physical’ transformation is effected by physical processes.” Paul’s thought moves, therefore, among crude, unsubtilised conceptions.

His statements about justification by faith and about the law are based upon this fundamental view, and represent merely the “controversial teaching” to which he was forced in order to maintain the cause of freedom from the law.

The material of his world of thought was, therefore, Jewish. What was the transformation by which it became Christian?

[pg 168]

Paul’s conception of the Christ_(_133_)_ was fully formed before he came to believe in Jesus. At his conversion, by the vision on the road to Damascus, the only new element that he took up into his conception was that this heavenly being had temporarily assumed a human form of existence in order by His death and resurrection to redeem mankind and to bring in the new order of things. An influence of the teaching of Jesus upon the theology of the Apostle to the Gentiles is not to be recognised. Wrede makes the gap between the two as wide as possible, and insists that Paul’s gospel must be considered as independent of, and essentially different in character from, that of Jesus.

The Apostle’s adoption of the view that the end of the law had come, is, according to Wrede, partly due to his experiences at his conversion, partly to the exigencies of the mission to the Gentiles.

Of the value and the remarkable literary beauty of the book it is impossible to say too much. It belongs, not to theology, but to the literature of the world.

But one must not, in one’s admiration, forget justice. What is here set forth is not absolutely new. A view of a similar character, and more closely reasoned, had been put forward by Kabisch—Kabisch,_(_134_)_ whom theologians had passed over in complete silence, because they did not know what to make of him. Wrede does nothing else than to give to the presentation of the latter’s discoveries the advantage of his literary skill, while at the same time showing that the separation of “theory” (theology) and “religion” which had barred the way to their acceptance is not tenable. There is one thing which is to be regretted in Wrede’s book, and that is that the terse popular method of presentation forbids any detailed discussion of the problems. If the author had worked [pg 169] out his arguments thoroughly, and replied to his opponents and predecessors, he would have been obliged to face many questions which, as it was, did not force themselves upon him.

What are the points that remain obscure?

Wrede proposes to conceive the possibility of redemption in such a way that “mankind,” in view of Christ’s solidarity with the race by virtue of His earthly life, has a part in His death and resurrection. This view is, in this form, untenable. In Paul, salvation has not reference to mankind as a whole, but only to the elect. It is also questionable whether the idea of racial solidarity suffices to explain how the death and resurrection of Jesus can realise themselves in other men.

What is the basis of the mystical union with Christ? To this question Wrede has given no answer.

Then, too, the inconsistent attitude of Paul towards the law was not explained by him. He does not even succeed in showing how the Apostle arrived at the idea that the law was no longer valid. The suggestion that it was in part through his experience at his conversion, in part through the exigencies of the mission to the Gentiles, is a mere expedient. Unless it is possible to explain Paul’s attitude, with all its inner contradictions, as a logical and necessary conclusion from his system as a whole, it remains for us practically unexplained._(_135_)_

Again, Wrede gives no scheme of the events of the End, although such a scheme obviously belongs to the “system.”

It is not explained, either, how the death of Jesus can be interpreted at the same time as taking place for the forgiveness of sins. In general, the relation between the essential theology, as laid down in the mystical doctrine of redemption, and the “controversial doctrines” is not clear.

[pg 170]

In regard to the question of the relation of Paul to Jesus, Wrede holds that they lived in two wholly different worlds of thought. This is connected with his view that the Galilaean Master made no claim to the Messiahship, but was first raised to Messianic dignity after His death, and that this claim was then projected back into the Gospels in the form that Jesus had made His rank known to His disciples only, and had enjoined upon them to keep silence until after His death._(_136_)_ His preaching was, above all things, ethical. So far as concerns eschatology and the meaning to be attached to His death, the Apostle of the Gentiles received no impulse of a theological character from Him.

Paul, therefore, created something essentially new, which has, one might almost say, nothing to do with the thought of Jesus, and also goes far beyond the conceptions of primitive Christianity._(_137_)_

Thus for Wrede, as for Holsten and Holtzmann, the doctrine of Paul is an isolated entity without connexion in the past or influence upon the future. And he, too, finds himself unable to explain why the system thus remained without influence. That the “controversial theology,” with its insistence on the atoning death, lost its significance when the question of the law ceased to be actual may appear plausible. But why did the mystical doctrine of redemption get pushed aside instead of being further developed? Its presuppositions—if Wrede’s account of [pg 171] matters is correct—could hardly have been much altered in the next generation.

A valuable supplement in many respects to Wrede’s views is offered by Martin Brückner’s study of the origin of the Pauline Christology._(_138_)_

The author offers a detailed proof that the Pauline Christology arose by the insertion of the earthly episode of the incarnation, dying and rising again into the already present conception of a pre-existent heavenly Personality._(_139_)_ Incidentally he gives an admirably clear account of the Jewish eschatology and its formation._(_140_)_

He shows that the Jewish eschatology itself, in the Apocalypses of Ezra and Baruch, distinguished between the temporally limited Messianic Kingdom and the subsequent complete renewal of the world, and that, in conformity with this, two resurrections have to be recognised. One, in which only a limited number have a part, takes place at the appearance of the Messiah; the other, the general resurrection, only follows at the end of the intervening Kingdom. The scene of the latter was pictured, he thinks, by Paul, as by his Jewish predecessors, as the land of Palestine, with the New Jerusalem as its centre.

It is interesting to notice how Wrede and Brückner, without themselves remarking it, have refuted one of the weightiest objections of the Ultra-Tübingen critics. [pg 172] The latter had asserted that it was impossible that the process of deification of the Person of Jesus could have reached its completion within a few years, and had claimed for it at least two generations. Now, however, it is shown that it is not this process at all, but another, which could take place in a moment, which has to be considered, since it is only a question of the taking up of the episode of the incarnation, death, and resurrection into the already present and living conception of the Messiah.

The immediate effect of Wrede’s presentation of matters was that writers ventured more confidently to accept the “physical” view of the Pauline doctrine of redemption, and that the distinction between “theory” (theology) and religion, where writers could not make up their minds to do without it, was applied with moderation._(_141_)_

[pg 173]

But he did not succeed in forcing on a thorough revision of previous views. Harnack, for instance, in the 1909 edition of the “History of Dogma” stands by his account of 1893, unshaken._(_142_)_

Reinhold Seeberg_(_143_)_ undertook in 1908 a very interesting attempt to walk in new paths, but does not deal with Wrede and his problems. He holds to the view that the Apostle did not create “a unified system,” but that his thought moved amid a number of different sets of ideas, which for him were held together by “religion as an experience.”

This neglect of Wrede’s work does not mean anything; it was simply that the history of dogma could make nothing of his view. It is significant, however, that among those who accepted his view in substance, no one made the attempt to carry it to victory by a comprehensive presentation of it on an adequate scale.

The cause of this lies in the peculiar difficulties which lie concealed in the scheme which he sketched out.

The fact is that the “physical” element which is to be recognised in Paul’s doctrine is neither all of one piece nor wholly to be explained from Late Judaism. Strictly [pg 174] speaking, it takes three different forms, of which one is peculiar to the eschatology, another to the mystical doctrine of redemption, and the third to the sacraments.

The “materialism” of the conception of redemption which is directed towards the future has to do with super-earthly powers, with judgment, bodily resurrection and transformation.

Somewhat different is the “realism” of the mystical doctrine of the new creation, which asserts that believers here and now experience death and resurrection in fellowship with Christ, and so put on, beneath the earthly exterior which conceals it, a nature essentially immune from corruption.

Different from this conception again is the sacramental, inasmuch as it represents in some inexplicable fashion an externalisation of it. What, according to the mystical doctrine, seemed to take place by itself without being connected with an external act, is here to be thought of as the effect of eating and drinking, and cleansing with water. The sacramental conception is a magical conception.

Of these three varieties of the “physical,” only the first can be immediately explained from Late Judaism. For the two others it offers no analogy. Late Judaism remained true to its Judaic character in knowing nothing of either mysticism or sacraments.

On the other hand, these three varieties of the “physical” in Paul’s doctrine of redemption do not stand side by side unrelated, but seem to be somehow connected in such a way that the eschatological element dominates and supplies the basis of the other two. The most obvious procedure would have been to attempt to derive the mystical and sacramental conceptions from the eschatological, as being the root-conception.

A beginning in this direction had been made by Kabisch when he attempted to exhibit the connexion between eschatology and the mystical doctrine of the real dying and rising again with Christ._(_144_)_

[pg 175]

But in doing so he did not take into account the sacraments. It was just these, however, which seemed to make it _a priori_ impossible to explain Paulinism exclusively on the basis of Late Judaism. Therefore Wrede and his followers seek other sources. They try to explain the system, not solely from the side of eschatology, but from that of “Comparative Religion,” and hold that it betrays the influence not only of Late-Jewish but also of Oriental ideas generally, such as are found in the Mystery-religions.

No doubt the first question which here arises is whether the methods of Comparative Religion are essentially applicable to the explanation of Paulinism.

To apply the methods of Comparative Religion means to study the individual religions, not in isolation, but with the purpose of investigating the mutual influences which they have openly or covertly exercised on one another.

At bottom, therefore, it is a necessary outcome of the application of scientific methods generally, and it only received a special name because theological scholarship so long shut its doors against it.

Under this distinctive name the method attained to influence and honour in connexion with the critical study of the Old Testament and the Graeco-Oriental cults. In the former department of study it made an end of the prepossession that Judaism had developed entirely by its own inner impulses, and showed how much material of a generally Oriental character it had adopted. In particular it showed that Late-Jewish Apocalyptic is full of conceptions from the Babylonian and the Irano-Zarathustrian religions, and represents a combination of universal cosmological speculations with the future-hope of the ancient Jewish prophetism._(_145_)_

In the comparative study of the heathen religions it became apparent that the Mystery-religions, which [pg 176] entered on their conquering progress westwards about the same time as Christian Gnosticism, combined Greek religious feeling and a Greek cosmogony with Oriental cultus-ideas.

In both these cases it is a question of contacts and influences which were due to political and cultural relations, and produced their effect in the course of extended periods of time and under favourable historical circumstances. The method cannot simply be applied without more ado to the explanation of the ideas of an individual man, since most of its presuppositions would not here be valid. In the case of religions, syncretism can work its way in and develop; in the case of individuals it can only be recognised in a very limited degree. The taking over and remoulding of foreign conceptions is a process requiring numbers and time. The individual comes into question only so far as he is organically united with a community which is active in this way, and allows its instincts to influence him.

Paul belongs to Late Judaism. Whatever he received in the way of influences such as Comparative Religion takes account of came to him mainly through this channel. The suggestion that apart from this he might be personally and directly affected by “Oriental” influences calls for very cautious consideration. In particular we ought to be very careful to guard against raising this possibility to a certainty by general considerations regarding all that the child of the Diaspora might have seen, heard, and read. The question can only be decided by what we actually find in the Epistles.

It is further to be remarked that Late Judaism was no longer in his time so open to external influences that any and every kind of religious conception which was floating about anywhere in the Orient could necessarily impose itself on Paul’s mind through this medium. The period of assimilation was, speaking generally, at an end. The new material had been—before Paul’s day—worked up along with the old into a set of Apocalyptic conceptions, [pg 177] which, in spite of the elbow-room which the heterogeneous ideas necessarily claimed for themselves, did form a system, and appeared from without as relatively complete and self-sufficing. The Oriental material has been poured into Jewish moulds and received a Jewish impress.

A still further point is that any one whose thought moves in the Apocalyptic system created by the books of Daniel and Enoch is not so much exposed to, as withdrawn from, the action of free Oriental influence. He is already saturated with those elements in regard to receptivity which the Jewish mind possesses and the tendency to assimilation, and possesses it not as something foreign to himself but as Jewish. Apocalyptic tends to produce in him immunisation as against further syncretistic infection.

This assertion is susceptible of historical proof. Late Judaism stands, even before the beginning of our era, apart from the Oriental religious movements. And it continues unaffected by them. Not one of its representatives was concerned in the syncretistic movement. Philo seeks to rationalise Judaism by the aid of Platonico-Stoic philosophy, but he gives no place to the religious and cultural ideas by which he was surrounded in Egypt. It is as though they had no existence for him.

To apply the comparative method to Paul would, therefore, generally speaking, mean nothing more or less than to explain him on the basis of Late Judaism. Those who give due weight to the eschatological character of his doctrine and to the problems and ideas which connect it with works like the Apocalypse of Ezra are the true exponents of “Comparative Religion,” even though they may make no claim to this title. Any one who goes beyond this and tries to bring Paul into direct connexion with the Orient as such commits himself to the perilous path of scientific adventure.

Considerations of that kind were not taken into account by Wrede and his followers. But even if they had become conscious of the difficulties in the way of the application of the method to Paul, they could not have acted otherwise. [pg 178] In spite of all theoretical warnings this path had to be followed.

If once the mystical doctrine of the dying and rising again with Christ is recognised to be “physical,” and the view of baptism and the Supper to be sacramental, and if it is a further datum of the question that Late Judaism knows nothing of mysticism or sacraments; and if one is not content to assume that the Apostle has created or invented this non-Jewish element out of his inner consciousness; there is at first sight no alternative but to make the attempt to explain it from conceptions and suggestions which are supposed to have come into it from without, from some form or other of Oriental syncretism.

[pg 179]

VII

PAULINISM AND COMPARATIVE RELIGION

_Gustav Anrich._ Das antike Mysterienwesen in seinem Einfluss auf das Christentum. (The Ancient Mysteries in their Influence on Christianity.) 1894.

_Martin Brückner._ Der sterbende und auferstehende Gottheiland in den orientalischen Religionen und ihr Verhältnis zum Christentum. (The Saviour-God who dies and rises again in the Oriental Religions; and their Relation to Christianity.) 1908.

_Karl Clemen._ Religionsgeschichtliche Erklärung des Neuen Testaments. (An Explanation of the New Testament on the basis of Comparative Religion.) 1909.

_Franz Cumont._ Les Mystères de Mithra. 1899. (E. T. by T. J. McCormack, 1903.) Les Religions orientales dans le paganisme romain. 1906.

_Adolf Deissmann._ Licht vom Osten. 1908. (E. T. by L. R. M. Strachan, “Light from the Ancient East,” 1910.) Die Urgeschichte des Christentums im Lichte der Sprachforschung. (The Early History of Christianity in the Light of Linguistic Research.) 1910.

_Albrecht Dieterich._ Abraxas. 1891. Nekyia. 1893. Eine Mithrasliturgie. 1903.

_Arthur Drews._ Die Christusmythe. 1909. (E. T. by C. D. Burns.)

_Albert Eichhorn._ Das Abendmahl im Neuen Testament. (The Lord’s Supper in the New Testament.) 1898.

_Johannes Geffken._ Aus der Werdezeit des Christentums. (From the Formative Period of Christianity), 2nd ed., 1909.

_P. Gennrich._ Die Lehre von der Wiedergeburt . . in der dogmengeschichtlichen und religionsgeschichtlichen Betrachtung. (The Doctrine of Regeneration . . . from the point of view of the History of Dogma and of Comparative Religion.) 1907.

_Otto Gruppe._ Die griechischen Kulte und Mythen in ihrer Beziehung zu den orientalischen Religionen. (The Greek Cults and Myths in their Relation to the Oriental Religions), vol. i., 1887. Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte. (Greek Mythology and Comparative Religion), 2 vols., 1906.

_Hermann Gunkel._ Zum religionsgeschichtlichen Verständnis des Neuen Testaments. (Contributions to the Understanding of the New Testament from the point of view of Comparative Religion.) 1903.

[pg 180]

_Adolf Harnack._ Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten, vol. i., 1906. (E. T. by J. Moffatt, “The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries,” 2nd ed., 1908.)

_Hugo Hepding._ Attis, seine Mythen und sein Kult. (Attis, his Myths and Cultus.) 1903.

_W. Heitmüller._ Taufe und Abendmahl bei Paulus. (Baptism and the Lord’s Supper in Paul’s Teaching.) 1903.

Im Namen Jesu. Eine sprach- und religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zum neuen Testament, speziell zur altchristlichen Taufe. 1903. (In the Name of Jesus. A Study of the New Testament from the point of view of the History of Language and of Comparative Religion, with Special Reference to Early Christian Baptism.)

_Adolf Jacoby._ Die antiken Mysterienreligionen und das Christentum. (The Ancient Mystery-religions and Christianity.) 1910.

_Georg Mau._ Die Religionsphilosophie Kaiser Julians in seinen Reden auf König Helios und die Göttermutter. (The Emperor Julian’s Philosophy of Religion as shown in his Orations on King Helios and the Dea Mater.) 1908.

_Max Maurenbrecher._ Von Jerusalem nach Rom. (From Jerusalem to Rome.) 1910.

_Salomon Reinach._ Cultes, mythes et religions. (1905-1906-1908.)

Richard Reitzenstein. Poimandres. 1904.

Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen. Ihre Grundgedanken und Wirkungen. (The Hellenistic Mystery-Religions. Their fundamental Ideas and their Influence.) 1910.

_E. Rohde._ Psyche. 1894. 3rd ed. 1903, 2 vols.

_H. R. Roscher._ Lexikon der griechisch-römischen Mythologie. (Lexicon of Graeco-Roman Mythology.) 3 vols. 1884-1909.

_Ernst Eduard Schwartz._ Paulus. Charakterköpfe aus der antiken Literatur. (Character Sketches from Ancient Literature.) 1910.

W. B. Smith. Der vorchristliche Jesus nebst weiteren Vorstudien zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Urchristentums. (The pre-Christian Jesus, with other Preliminary Studies for a History of the Origin and Growth of Christianity.)

_Wilhelm Soltau._ Das Fortleben des Heidentums in der altchristlichen Kirche. (The Survival of Paganism in the Early Christian Church.) 1906.

_Hermann Usener._ Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen. (Studies in Comparative Religion.) 1889; 1899.

_Paul Wendland._ Die hellenistisch-römische Kultur in ihren Beziehungen zu Judentum und Christentum. (Hellenistic-Roman Civilisation in Relation to Judaism and Christianity.) 1907.

_Paul Wernle._ Die Anfänge unserer Religion. 1901. (E. T. by G. A. Bienemann, “The Beginnings of Christianity,” 1903.)

_Georg Wobbermin._ Religionsgeschichtliche Studien zur Frage der Beeinflussung des Urchristentums durch das antike Mysterienwesen. (Studies in Comparative Religion with reference to the Question of the Influence of the Ancient Mysteries on Primitive Christianity.) 1896.

[pg 181]

TO the Bonn philologist Hermann Usener belongs the credit of having been the first to bring the Comparative Study of the pagan religions as they existed at the beginning of the Christian era into contact with theological science._(_146_)_ In E. Rohde’s _Psyche_ the Greek and late-Greek conceptions regarding ghost-worship and immortality were introduced to a wider circle of readers.

A generally intelligible survey of the cults which come into question is offered by Franz Cumont in his work on the Oriental religions in Roman paganism._(_147_)_

It was Phrygia in Asia Minor which gave to the world the worship of Attis and the Dea Mater; from Egypt came that of Isis and Serapis; Syria supplied the great sun-god whom Heliogabalus and Aurelian, for reasons of [pg 182] state, proclaimed as the supreme divinity. The religion of Mithra is of Persian origin.

Of these cults, ancient literature, both pagan and Christian, has preserved some records, but it is only since discoveries of inscriptions and papyri have supplemented this information_(_148_)_ that any real understanding of the character and history of these religions has become possible.

The myth on which the worship of Cybele and Attis is based has been handed down in various and conflicting versions.

So much, however, is certain, that Attis, the beloved of the Dea Mater, was represented as having been killed by a boar sent by Zeus, or by the jealous goddess herself. Every year in the spring-time there took place at Pessinus the great orgiastic lamentation for him, which, however, ended with a joyful festival. It seems, therefore, as if a resurrection of the slain Attis was assumed to have taken place, although the myth had nothing to say about that, but only in some of the versions related that he was changed into an evergreen fir tree.

At bottom it is a form of nature-worship, which shows a close relationship with that of the Thracian Dionysus-Sabazios and with that of Adonis as worshipped at Byblos in Syria, and it has in some respects undergone modification due to contact with these. The primary idea underlying both myth and cultus is the decay and revival of vegetable life.

The worship of Cybele and Attis penetrated to Rome as early as the year 204 B.C. In the previous year the Sibylline books had given the oracle that Hannibal would not be driven out of Italy until the sacred stone from Pessinus was brought to Rome. This was done; [pg 183] and the Carthaginians vacated the country. The foreign divinities had a temple assigned to them on the Palatine. But when the Senate came to know of the orgiastic feast which was associated with their worship, it forbade the citizens to take part in it and placed the cult under strict control. Thus, in spite of its official recognition, it led a somewhat obscure existence until Claudius, by the public festival which he established for it—which lasted from the 15th to the 27th March—gave it a high position in public esteem.

In the deepening of its religious character which it underwent in becoming associated with Greek religious feeling of the decadence period, the worship of Attis was brought into connexion with the thought of immortality. In the “Agape,” in which the partakers were handed food in the “tympanon” and drink in the “cymbalon,” they were initiated as “mystae” of Attis and thereby became partakers of a higher life.

Mysteries were also celebrated in which a dying and rising again was symbolised; and there were others based upon the thought of a union with the divinity in the bridal chamber.

From the middle of the second century onward the “taurobolium” appears in connexion with the service of Cybele and Attis. This is a kind of blood-baptism. The “mystes” lies down in a pit, which is covered with boards. Through the interstices there trickles down on him the blood of a bull offered in sacrifice. The lamentation for the dead Attis sounds forth; the “mystes” applies it to himself. Then when the hymn of jubilation follows, he rises out of the grave as one who is now initiate and deified._(_149_)_

The process by which the worship of Attis was transformed into a mystery-religion which gave guarantees of immortality remains for the most part shrouded in obscurity. In view of the scantiness of our information [pg 184] we are thrown back upon hypothetical reconstruction for the details of the development and the significance of the mysteries._(_150_)_