Chapter VIII: Summing-Up and Formulation of the Problem . . . 237 (8)

The sacramental views of the Apostle have thus nothing primitive about them, but are rather of a “theological” character. Paul connects his mystical doctrine of redemption with ceremonies which are not specially designed with reference to it. It is from that fact, and not from a specially deep love for Mysteries, [pg 215] that the exaggeratedly sacramental character of his view of baptism and the Lord’s Supper results. It is in the last resort a question of externalisation, not of intensification.

It is therefore useless to ransack the history of religions for analogies to his conceptions. It has none to offer, for the case is unique. The problem lies wholly within the sphere of early Christian history, and represents only a particular aspect of the question of Paul’s relation to primitive Christianity. The fact is, he did not introduce the sacramental view into the sacred ceremonies, but found already existing a baptism and a Lord’s Supper which guaranteed salvation on grounds which were intelligible from early Christian doctrine. He, however, transformed the primitive view of salvation into the mystical doctrine of the dying and rising again in fellowship with Christ. Since the connexion between redemption and the sacraments was given _a priori_, he draws the inference that the sacraments effect precisely that wherein, according to his gnosis, the inner essence of redemption consists. How far they are appropriate to the effect which, on the ground of his mystical doctrine, he holds to take place, does not for him come into question.

In the sacraments the believer becomes partaker in salvation. Therefore, he concludes, in them that happens which constitutes redemption, namely, the dying and rising again with Christ.

Paul therefore takes the sacraments by storm. He does not theorise about the ceremony, but ascribes to it without more ado the postulated effect. That is not a procedure which could have been followed either by a Greek or by a modern mind.

Paulinism is thus a theological system with sacraments, but not a Mystery-religion.

This may be confirmed by a further observation. The Apostle occupies a strongly predestinarian stand-point. Those who are “called” inevitably receive salvation; those who are not, can never in any way obtain it. There [pg 216] is no analogue to this in the Mystery-religions. They can only conceive of election in the sense and to the extent of holding that there is a calling and predestination to the receiving of the initiation which confers immortality. And there are actually some beginnings of such a conception._(_179_)_

But Pauline predestination is quite different. It is absolute, and seems inevitably to abolish the necessity and meaning of the sacraments. Anyone who belongs to the number of the elect becomes _ipso facto_ partaker of the resurrection. At the end of all things a great company from the generations of long-past times will arise to life without ever having received baptism or partaken of the Lord’s Supper. That being so, what becomes of the sacraments? In what respect are they necessary?

A good deal of energy has been expended in seeking analogies from other religions for the Corinthian baptism for the dead; it would really have been much more to the point to enquire why baptism for the dead was considered desirable. If the dead are among the elect, they have no need of it; if not, they could not have inherited life, even if they had received the sacrament during their sojourn on earth. To what end, then, is this baptism for the dead?

The most important point to notice is that everywhere in the Pauline sacraments the eschatological interest breaks through. They effect, not re-birth, but resurrection. That which in the near future is to become visible reality, they make in the present invisibly real by anticipation. The Greek Mysteries are timeless. They reach back to primitive antiquity, and they profess to be able to manifest their power in all generations. In Paul the sacraments have temporal boundaries. Their power is derived from the events of the last times. They put believers in the same position as the Lord, in that they [pg 217] cause them to experience a resurrection a few world-moments before the time, even though this does not in any way become manifest. It is a precursory phenomenon of the approaching end of the world.

Separated from the eschatology, the Pauline sacraments would become meaningless and ineffectual. They are confined to the time between the resurrection of Jesus and His parousia, when the dead shall arise. Their power depends on the present, and also on the future, fact. In this sense they are “historically” conditioned.

While therefore in the Mystery-religions and in the Johannine theology the sacraments work of themselves, in Paul they draw their energy from a universal world-event, from which it is, as it were, transmitted.

It now becomes clear why the Apostle cannot describe as a “Re-birth” the condition brought about by baptism. The renewal consists in the fact that the coming resurrection-life is, for the short period which remains of the present course of the world, received by anticipation. Re-birth, on the other hand, implies an uneschatological system of thought in which the individual reckons more or less on a normal span of life, for which he seeks an inner divine being which shall subsist alongside of or above the earthly. It is only at a period when eschatology is falling into the background that the Greek conception of re-birth, such as is associated with the Mysteries, can supersede the old mystico-eschatological conception of the proleptic resurrection. Accordingly it presently appears in Justin and the Fourth Evangelist. From that point onwards baptism brings re-birth. In Paul it produced only an antedated dying and rising again.

The sacramental conception of the Apostle is therefore derived from an entirely different world of thought from that of the Mystery-religions.

It is a different question, however, in what relation his “physical”_(_180_)_ mysticism in itself, apart from the [pg 218] sacraments, bears to the world of ideas associated with the Greek Mystery-religions.

To this question Reitzenstein, the “pneumatic”_(_181_)_ among the students of Comparative Religion, devotes a careful study. He avoids conventional catchwords and rash conclusions, and endeavours to discover the conceptions and ideas which are common to both, and to follow them out in detail.

With this purpose he brings together everything which he can find in the language of the Mysteries and the Hermetic literature relating to such ideas as “service” and “military service” of God, “justification,” “pre-existence,” “gnosis,” “spirit,” “revelation,” “pneumatic,” “heavenly garment,” and “transformation.”

For the first time the material for a study of Paul from the point of view of Comparative Religion is brought together with a certain completeness, and the impression which it makes is very powerful. The theologian who reads these passages with an open mind will be lifted out of the ruts of conventional interpretation. It is as if a flood of new thought had streamed into the channels of ordinary exegesis, whether critical or otherwise, and swept away the accumulations of rubble.

Whether all the explanations are sound, and whether many expressions, such as _e.g._ “servant” and “prisoner” of Christ, and imagery—for example, that taken from the military life—could not be just as well explained directly as by the roundabout way of their use in the Mystery-religions, may be left an open question. What is certain is, that Reitzenstein has made an end of the cut-and-dried conception that Paul simply translated his theology from Jewish thought into Greek language, and proves that [pg 219] he knows the scope and exact application of the words of the religious vocabulary, and along with the terms and expressions has taken over suggestions for the presentation of his ideas. Without the possibilities and presuppositions supplied by the religious language of the Greek Orient it would have been more difficult for him to create his mysticism. He found in existence a tone-system in which the modulations necessary for the development of his theme offered themselves for his disposal._(_182_)_

Reitzenstein remarks with much justice that particular words and phrases do not of themselves prove very much, but that what is really of importance is the connexion of the passages. Are there sets of ideas in Paul which are allied with those of the Mystery-religions? What realities stand in the two cases behind the references to the mystical doctrine of the miraculous new creation of the man while in his living body?

The description and paraphrasing which commentaries and New Testament theologies bestow upon the Apostle’s assertions do not suffice for Reitzenstein. He wants to understand and come to grips with the thought, and to arouse in others the same discontent.

The possibility that the Pauline mysticism might be capable of being explained from within appears to him excluded. With all the reserve which he imposes upon himself he nevertheless believes himself to have proved that the central conception of “the deification and [pg 220] transfiguration of the living man is derived from the Mysteries.” The conviction of a miracle of transformation taking place in his own person, is, he pronounces, not Jewish. Therefore he thinks that Paul represents a kind of ancient Jewish prophetism modified by the influence of the Hellenistic Mystery beliefs.

The “history of the development” of Paul’s thought he conceives as follows: The influence of Greek mysticism, with which he had already a literary acquaintance, helped to prepare the way for that momentous inner experience which eventually caused a rupture between the Apostle and his ancestral religion. “This influence,” he thinks, “increased in the two years of solitary struggle for the working out of a new religion.” A renewed study of Greek religious literature became necessary “from the moment when the Apostle dedicated himself to, and began to prepare for, his mission to the _Ἕλληνες_.”

By the method which he applies, Reitzenstein is necessarily driven to adopt this far-reaching view. He makes no effort to take into the field of his argument the Late-Jewish eschatology, as preserved in the post-Danielic literature, in the discourses of Jesus, and the Apocalypses of Baruch and Ezra. Whatever is not self-explanatory, and cannot be explained from the Old Testament, is, according to him, derived from the world of thought associated with the Mystery-religions.

The proper procedure would really have been to examine the conceptions drawn from apocalyptic thought and those from the Mystery-religions independently, and then to decide which of them rendered possible the better explanation. The best way would have been for Reitzenstein to discuss the matter step by step with Kabisch, who had sought to derive the fundamental conceptions of the Pauline mysticism from eschatology.

The total neglect of eschatology forces him to some curious conclusions. After showing, in opposition to a canonised confusion of thought, that there is not the slightest connexion between Paul’s doctrine of the first [pg 221] and second Adam in I Cor. xv. 45-49 and Philo’s theory about the two accounts of the creation in Genesis, since in that case the pneumatic heavenly man would be the first, and the psychic earthly man the second,_(_183_)_ he comes to the conclusion that the view set forth in I Corinthians must have underlying it “the belief in a god ‘Anthropos,’” who came to be identified with Christ.

This hypothesis naturally suggests itself to Reitzenstein, because in _Poimandres_ he believes himself to have discovered a myth about Anthropos._(_184_)_ But is this, even if it were held to be proved, of such a character that the Pauline conception of the first and second Adam could without more ado be derived from it? Is the complicated hypothesis necessary?

Paul’s conception can be explained without the least difficulty on eschatological grounds. The first Adam brought mankind under the dominion of death. Christ is the Second Adam because He by His resurrection becomes the founder of a new race, which in virtue of that which has taken place in Him becomes partaker of an imperishable life, and acquires a claim to the future possession of the pneumatic heavenly body which He already bears. The Second Man comes from heaven because the pre-existent Christ, in order to become the founder of the “humanity of the resurrection,” must appear upon earth and assume fleshly corporeity. He is “life-giving spirit” because the _pneuma_ which goes forth from Him as the glorified Christ, works in believers as the power of the resurrection. This being so, what purpose is served by bringing in the very doubtful myths about the god Anthropos, especially as Paul, though he certainly thinks of his Second Adam as a heavenly being, never anywhere speaks of Him as God.

[pg 222]

This is typical of a series of similar cases._(_185_)_

On the other hand, it is just this one-sidedness which makes the charm and the significance of the book. Reitzenstein shows, both positively and negatively, how far the analogies from the Mystery-religions will take us. Ordinary theologians—since Kabisch had remained without influence—had simply designated as Greek everything which they could not understand from Late Judaism, and described as Late-Jewish whatever they could not understand as Greek. Reitzenstein, the—unconscious?—antipodes of Kabisch, would like to make an end of this simple game and compel people to choose one horn or other of the dilemma. Instead of entering on theoretic discussions, full of “not only, but also,” and “either . . . or,” he goes straight forward as far as he thinks he can feel firm ground under his feet, and has thus contributed, to an extraordinary degree, to the clearing up of the situation.

Contrary to his intention and conviction, however, the outcome is not positive but negative.

Like Dieterich and others, Reitzenstein takes it for granted that Paulinism makes use of the conception of Re-birth, and he feels that that is in itself a sufficient reason for not regarding it as a product of Judaism._(_186_)_

The assumption being unsound, all the discussions and arguments based on it fall to the ground. In particular, the fine parallels from the Hermetic literature must be given up. Further, it is not legitimate to treat the [pg 223] mysticism of the Mystery-religions and that of Paul as directly corresponding to one another. The former is a God-mysticism, the latter a Christ-mysticism. The resulting differences are greater than at first sight appears. In the Graeco-Oriental conception, what is in view is the “deification” of the individual man. As the divinity of the particular Mystery which is being celebrated is always thought of as the highest divinity, the mortal enters into union with the being of God as such.

The Pauline Christ, however, even though He is called the Son of God, is not God, but only a heavenly Being. The renewal which is effected by fellowship with Him is not a deification—the word never occurs in the Apostle’s writings—but only a transference into a state of super-sensuous corporeity, which has to do with a coming new condition of the world.

Greek thought is concerned with the simple antithesis of the divine world and the earthly world. Paulinism makes out of this duality a triplicity. It divides the super-earthly factor into two, distinguishing between God and the divine super-earthly, which is personified in Christ and made present in Him. God, and therein speaks the voice of Judaism, is purely transcendent. A God-mysticism does not exist for the Apostle—or, at least, does not yet exist. A time will come no doubt in the future, after the termination of the Messianic Kingdom, when God will be “all in all” (I Cor. xv. 28). Until then there is only a Christ-mysticism, which has to do with the anticipation of the super-earthly life of the Messianic Kingdom.

To treat Graeco-Oriental and Pauline mysticism as corresponding factors, is to perform a piece in two-four time and a piece in three-four time together, and to imagine that one hears an identical rhythm in both.

Another point of difference is that Graeco-Oriental mysticism works with permanent factors; the Pauline with temporal and changing ones. The Messianic-Divine drives out the super-earthly angelic powers which [pg 224] previously occupied a place between God and the world. It is in the very act of coming. But in proportion as it advances, there passes away not only the super-sensuous angelic element, but also the earthly and sensuous. Christ-mysticism depends upon the movement of these two worlds, one of them moving towards being, the other towards not-being, and it continues only so long as they are in touch with one another as they move past in opposite directions. The beginning of this contact is marked by the resurrection of the Lord, the end by His parousia. Before the former it is not yet possible to pass from one to the other, after the latter it is no longer possible. A mysticism which is thus bound up with temporal conditions can hardly be derived from the Greek timeless conceptions.

The act, moreover, by which the individual becomes partaker in the new being is in the two cases quite different. The Mystery-religions represent the “transfiguration” of the living being as effected by his receiving into himself a divine essence, by means of the gnosis and the vision of God. It is thus a subjective act. According to Paul’s teaching the “transfiguration” is not brought about by the gnosis and vision of God. These are rather the consequence of the renewal, the efficient cause of which is found, not in the act of the individual, and not in the inherent efficacy of the sacrament, but in a world-process. So soon as the individual enters by faith and baptism into this new cosmic process he is immediately renewed in harmony therewith, and now receives spirit, ecstasy, gnosis, and everything that these imply. What according to the Greek view is the cause, is for Paul the consequence. Thus, even though the conceptions show a certain similarity, they do not correspond, because they are connected with the central event of the mysticism in each case by chains which run in opposite directions.

A figure which exactly illustrates one’s meaning may claim pardon even for somewhat doubtful taste. In the Mystery-religions, individuals climb up a staircase step [pg 225] by step towards deification; in Paulinism they spring in a body into a lift which is already in motion and which carries them into a new world. The staircase is open to all; the lift can only be used by those for whom it is especially provided.

So far as Comparative Religion is concerned, therefore, the case is exactly the same in regard to the “physical” element in the mystical doctrine of redemption as it was in regard to that of the sacramental doctrine. On close examination the historico-eschatological character of the Pauline conception is in both cases so all-pervading that it invalidates any parallel with the Mystery-religions, and leaves them with nothing in common but the linguistic expression. The mystical and sacramental aspects of the “physical” element in redemption do not for him stand on the same footing with the eschatological, which is immediately given with the conceptions of transformation and resurrection, but must be in some way capable of being derived from it. Only when that is done will the Pauline doctrine of redemption be explained.

It is to be noted that Reitzenstein tries in vain to render intelligible either the connexion of the soteriological mysticism with the facts of the death and resurrection, or the fellowship which is therein presupposed between the believer and the Lord. In his exposition of Rom. vi. the parallels with the Mystery-religions force him into a wrong line, and compel him to think of the objective process as a subjective one. He assumes that everything becomes clear and simple if once the Apostle is understood to speak of a _voluntary_ dying, which is neither purely physical nor merely metaphysical, but is based upon the thought that we must not sin any more because we have taken upon us Christ’s person and lot, and have crucified our natural man.

But in Paul it is not a question of an act which the believer accomplishes in himself; what happens is that in the moment when he receives baptism, the dying and [pg 226] rising again of Christ takes place in him without any cooperation, or exercise of will or thought, on his part. It is like a mechanical process which is set in motion by pressing a spring. The minute force employed in pressing the spring bears no relation to that which thereon comes into play; only serves to release a set of forces already in existence.

In the Mystery-religions the thought is: We desire not to sin any more, therefore we will undergo initiation. Paul’s logic is the converse of this, and takes the objective form: Christ’s death and resurrection is effectually present in us; therefore, we are no longer natural men and cannot sin any more.

The whole distinction lies in the fact that the mysticism of the Apostle of the Gentiles is based on historico-eschatological events, whereas the Mystery-religions are in their nature non-historical. Where they make use of myths they use them in the last resort merely as pictures of that which the “mystes” performs or undergoes, not as events charged with a real energy, as the death and resurrection of Jesus are for Paul.

But the fact of the far-reaching outward and inward resemblances of language between the Graeco-Oriental and the Pauline mysticism are not affected by that. As though by a pre-established harmony in the history of religion, it came about that the mysticism which developed out of eschatology was able to find complete representation in the language of the Mystery-religions, and found there ready to its hand conceptions and expressions which facilitated, suggested, and in some cases were even indispensable to its fuller development.

Reitzenstein’s merit is that of having determined exactly and unmistakably the meaning of Paul’s language, and having at the same time shown that Jewish Hellenism and Greek philosophy had practically no part in him.

Of course, it is not possible to decide how much of this [pg 227] religious language Paul found already in existence, and how much he created for his purpose. It must not be forgotten that the Oriental Mystery-religions did not receive their complete development under Greek influence until a considerable time after the appearance of the Apostle of the Gentiles. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that he and they found in existence the same Greek religious vocabulary, laid hold of it, and perfected it.

One error of the students of Comparative Religion deserves particular mention, for it is typical. In consequence of the parallelism which they maintain between the Mystery-religions and Paulinism, they come to ascribe to the Apostle the creation of a “religion.”_(_187_)_ Nothing of the kind ever entered into his purpose. For him there was only one religion: that of Judaism. It was concerned with God, faith, promise, hope and law. In consequence of the coming, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, it became its duty to adjust its teachings and demands to the new era thus introduced, and in the process many things were moved from the shadow into the light and others from the light into the shadow. “Christianity” is for Paul no new religion, but simply Judaism with the centre of gravity shifted in consequence of the new era. His own system of thought is certainly for him no new religion. It is his belief, as fully known and worked out in its implications, and it professes to be nothing else than the true Jewish religion, in accord both with the time and with the Scriptures.

Another remark that has to be made is that the students of Comparative Religion are inclined to make an illegitimate use of the word eschatology when it suits their purpose. They think themselves justified in applying it wherever in the Mystery-religions there is mention of death, judgment, and life after death, but they forget that in doing so they are using it in a much more general sense than that which we have to reckon with in the Pauline [pg 228] doctrine. The term eschatology ought only to be applied when reference is made to the end of the world as expected in the immediate future, and the events, hopes, and fears connected therewith. The use of the word to designate the subjective future end of individuals, in connexion with which no imminent catastrophe affecting all mankind is in question, can only be misleading, since it creates the false impression—_exempla docent_—that the Pauline eschatology can be paralleled and compared with an eschatology belonging to the Mystery-religions. Of eschatology in the late Jewish or early Christian sense there is not a single trace to be found in any Graeco-Oriental doctrine._(_188_)_

Therefore, the Mystery-religions and Paulinism cannot in the last resort be compared at all, as is indeed confirmed by the fact that the real analogies both in the mysticism and the sacramental doctrine are so surprisingly few. Reitzenstein’s attempt has not succeeded in altering this result, but only in confirming it. What remains of his material when the circle of ideas connected with the thought of “re-birth” is eliminated, and the all-pervading eschatological character of the fundamental ideas and underlying logic of Paulinism are duly considered in making the comparison?

Finally, the question may be permitted, What would have been the bearing of the result if Dieterich and Reitzenstein had really proved the dependence of the Apostle’s doctrine upon the Mystery-religions? The simple declaration of the result would have been only [pg 229] the beginning of things, for immediately the problem whether, understood in this way, the Apostle’s doctrine could still have belonged to primitive Christianity would have arisen and called aloud for solution. The theory that Paul personally transformed the Gospel on the analogy of the Graeco-Oriental Mystery-religions is menaced by the same difficulties which previously brought about the downfall of the theory held by the Baur and post-Baur theology, that he Hellenised the Gospel. The hypothesis advanced by the students of Comparative Religion is only a special form of that general theory, and can do nothing to minimise the _a priori_ difficulties, or those raised by the history of dogma in connexion with it.

How does Paulinism as understood by Dieterich and Reitzenstein fit into the history of the development of Christianity?

If the Apostle during the first generation had introduced such a tremendous innovation as the Greek “physical” mysticism of redemption and the sacraments into primitive Jewish Christianity, could the latter have permitted this and continued to keep him in its midst? How was it possible for it to admit without a struggle, indeed unnoticed, something so entirely alien, and to raise no objections either to the Christology or to the mysticism or to the sacramental doctrine of the Apostle, but simply and solely to his attitude towards the law?

And how, on the other hand, could the later Hellenising theology pass over in silence the man who had been its precursor in uniting the conceptions of Graeco-Oriental religion with the Gospel? The inexplicable fact that Paulinism played no part in the subsequent development, but is left to lie unused and uncomprehended, becomes still more inexplicable if Dieterich and Reitzenstein are right. They assert that the Hellenising force did not issue from philosophy but from the Graeco-Oriental religious movement, and found expression in Paul not less than in the Johannine and early Greek theology. [pg 230] Why, then, are the results so different in the two cases that they have no kind of outer or inner relation to one another? If the same force is applied at different times to the same object and in the same line, can the resultant movement vary so much in direction? How is it possible that Paul represents a Hellenisation of Christianity which is so unique in character and so unnoticed by others? How could two different types of Greek transformation of the Gospel come into existence, and in such a way, moreover, that the second discovered nothing Hellenic in the first?

According to the theory of Dieterich and Reitzenstein, Paulinism ought to be detached from early Christianity and closely connected with Greek theology. The contrary is the case. It stands in undisturbed connexion with the former, whereas it shows no connexion whatever with the latter.

Any one who thinks of the Apostle’s doctrine as in any sense a Hellenisation of the Gospel, whether he owes allegiance to ordinary theology or to Comparative Religion, has gone over to the radicalism of the Ultra-Tübingen party, and must, like it, go forth with his Paul out of primitive Christianity into a later period, unless, indeed, as the Comparative method admits, he is prepared to consider the faith of the early Church as Graeco-Oriental, or Paul as the founder of Christianity.

In any case the hypothesis of a Hellenising of the Gospel in early Christianity carried out by Paul as an individual is a historic impossibility. From the dilemma, either early Christian or Greek, there is no escape, however one may twist and turn.

If the students of Comparative Religion had been better acquainted with the attempt of the Ultra-Tübingen critics, and had had a more accurate understanding of the difference between Paulinism and the Johannine and early Greek theology, they could hardly have retained the open-mindedness necessary to the commencement of their undertaking; for in that case they would have been [pg 231] forced to reflect on the inconvenient consequences of their possible victory.

Since they did not enter on such considerations it was difficult for them to do justice to Harnack. Here and there they took occasion to accuse him of being behind the times and reproach him with having given too much importance to the influence of philosophy in relation to the Hellenising of Christianity, and too little to that of the Mystery-religions. They are not wholly wrong in this. He does not give sufficient recognition to the “physical” and sacramental elements in Paulinism, and does not work out sufficiently fully the parallel between the Mystery-religions and the Johannine and early Greek theology. In laying the foundations of his history of dogma he is too exclusively interested in the development of the Christology, instead of starting from the curious complex of Christology, soteriology, and sacramental doctrine which is characteristic of the Pauline as well as of the Johannine and early Greek theology, and determines the course of the history of dogma.

But this somewhat one-sided view of primitive and early Christianity is far from affording the complete explanation of his attitude of reserve in regard to the results arrived at by the students of Comparative Religion. If he forms a low estimate of the influence of the Mystery-religions upon Paul and the earliest period of Christianity, he is led to that result by pressing considerations from the history of dogma, by which the consequences of the theory put forward by the students of Comparative Religion are made clear to him. Like Anrich, he recognised from the beginning the weaknesses of the theory, which remained hidden from the champions of the method.

It is not possible for any one who holds that Paulinism shows the influence of the Mystery-religions to stop half-way; he has to carry his conclusion back into primitive Christianity in general and to explain even the genesis of the new faith as due to syncretism. The latter [pg 232] stand-point is taken up by Hermann Gunkel_(_189_)_ and Max Maurenbrecher._(_190_)_

They hold that the belief in a redeemer-god, such as was present in Jewish Messianism, was also widely current in the Graeco-Oriental religions, and that subsequently, in consequence of the historic coming of Jesus, these two worlds of thought came into a contact which generated a creative energy. From the process thus set in motion primitive Christianity arose. This account of its genesis also explains, they think, why it goes much beyond the “teaching of Jesus” and the religious ideas which formed the content of Late Judaism, and includes mystical and sacramental beliefs.

The historic Jesus did not, according to Gunkel and Maurenbrecher, hold Himself to be the “Redeemer.” Therefore, the real origin of Christianity does not lie with Him but with the disciples. They, having been laid hold of by the power of His personality, and finding themselves compelled to seek a solution of the problem of His death, referred to Him the already existing myth of the Saviour-God, and thereby gave to the set of ideas which had hitherto only existed as such a point of historical attachment, both for Orientals and Jews. From this time forward the religious ideas which attached themselves in the one case and the other to the conception of a redeemer-god flowed into a common bed and formed the stream which, as Christianity, overflowed the world.

Maurenbrecher, who seeks to work out the hypothesis in rather fuller detail, holds that in Galilee, which in view of its history had certainly not always been a purely Jewish country, the Messianic idea and the non-Jewish belief in redemption were already present and had to some extent intermingled, and that it was, therefore, no accident that the new religion which after the death of Jesus took [pg 233] its rise in the revelation made to Peter should have gone forth from Galilee. The advantage, he goes on to explain, which the young Christianity possessed among a purely heathen population in comparison with the other competing Oriental religions, arises from the Jewish element, “which in consequence of the peculiar intermixture of which Christianity was the outcome had entered into the universal Oriental religion of redemption.” “Conversely, however, it was precisely the non-Jewish element in the Christian faith which for the Jews made this new religion a really new and higher stage of their religious life.”

This hypothesis is unable to recognise any unique character in Paul. What Dieterich and Reitzenstein claim for him, it finds already completely realised in the primitive community. The result is that Maurenbrecher hardly knows what to make of him, and emphasises his Jewish side much more strongly than his Graeco-Oriental aspect.

The solution of the problem worked out by Gunkel and Maurenbrecher is not based purely on Comparative Religion, but, as the latter writer justly points out, is a kind of synthesis between the views of liberal theology and that of its opponents. The fundamental idea comes from the latter; but in agreement with the former the existence of a historical Jesus is retained.

The retention of this remnant of critical history is, however, unnecessary and illogical. If the origin of Christianity essentially depends on the intermixture of an Oriental belief in a redeemer with the Jewish expectation of the Messiah, and, given a contact and interpenetration between the two, must necessarily have arisen, it is not obvious why the rôle of a historical Jesus should be—or whether it can be—retained in connexion with it.

In Gunkel and Maurenbrecher it is only a stop-gap, which is brought into a wholly external connexion with the growth of the new religion. They retain His coming as the phenomenon by which the contact of the two religious worlds is set up, but not as a fructifying element.

[pg 234]

There is no obvious reason for continuing to take into account this by no means indispensable auxiliary force. If the Oriental belief in a redeemer and the Jewish Messianic hope were inherently adapted to one another, and destined to produce by their fruitful union a new religion, then, after all, any kind of impulse, even a mere train of thought, might have set the process in motion. The assumption of the existence and the death of the Galilaean Rabbi becomes superfluous if once it ceases to supply the efficient cause for the arising of Christianity. Since Comparative Religion finds the latter in the mutual interpenetration of Jewish and Graeco-Oriental elements, it can get along just as well with myth as with the questionable history of the Synoptists. Such is the teaching of William Benjamin Smith,_(_191_)_ and Arthur Drews.

Both these writers make a rather extravagant use of the privilege of standing outside the ranks of scientific theology. Their imagination leaps with playful elegance over obstacles of fact and enables them to discover everywhere the pre-Christian Jesus whom their soul desires, even in places where an ordinary intelligence can find no trace of him.

Smith takes it for granted that the “Naasenes, whose origin goes back to the most remote antiquity, worshipped a Jesus as a divinity.” How Christianity grew out of this cult he does not tell us, but consoles us with the promise of later revelations. In the preface he betrays the fact that he is now only publishing “the first quarter of the evidence which he has collected,” and intends to go on quietly collecting and arranging his material “until [pg 235] the whole irresistible host can take the field together,” and further, that it is not the—inevitable—victory which is his main concern, but the stimulus imparted to others.

Drews_(_192_)_ does not play the amateur quite so completely, but endeavours on the basis of his belief in the pre-Christian Jesus to present a coherent picture of the way in which Christianity arose; and he makes Paul its creator. “The Jesus-faith,” so runs his thesis, “had long existed in numerous Mandaean sects in Western Asia, in many respects distinct from one another, before the belief in the Jesus-religion acquired a fixed form and its adherents became conscious of their religious _differentia_ and their independence of the official Jewish religion.” This ancient faith first meets us as a new religion in the letters ascribed to Paul. The citizen of Tarsus, trained as a Pharisee, heard of a sect-god named Jesus, and brought this conception into connexion with the belief in the death and resurrection of Adonis and the thought of the suffering “servant of the Lord” in Isaiah liii., and thus arrived at the idea that a god had appeared in human form, and had by his death and resurrection become the Redeemer, and had enabled men “to become God.” This was the birth-hour of Christianity. For a historic personality, “to serve, so to speak, as the living model for the God-man,” there was no need in order to produce this Jesus-religion, which then entered on its world-wide career of victory.

Drews’ thesis is not merely a curiosity; it indicates the natural limit at which the hypothesis advanced by the advocates of Comparative Religion, when left to its own momentum, finally comes to rest.

Paulinism, in the judgment of the adherents of this much-vaunted method, is to be regarded as a synthesis between primitive Christianity and the conceptions current in the Mystery-religions. If this be taken as the starting-point, it is necessary to proceed to the conclusion—since the synthesis cannot be conceived as [pg 236] accomplished by an individual—that Christianity itself is a product of syncretism. And if the constitutive factor in the new faith is seen in the combination of the Jewish Messianic expectation with a Graeco-Oriental belief in a redeemer-god who dies and rises again, the assumption of the existence of a historic Jesus who was not Himself touched by Hellenic ideas becomes a worthless subsidiary hypothesis. It becomes quite a natural step to leave it on one side and to regard the synthesis as either developing gradually, by an impersonal process, or as coming to birth in the brain of the author of the Pauline Epistles, who thus becomes the creator of early Christianity. Drews is justified in appealing to Gunkel, and asserting that he is only offering his ideas with a logically necessary correction.

Of course, every further logical step in this direction involves further sacrifice of historical understanding and an increasing necessity to indulge in imaginary constructions. But all these consequences are already present in germ in the mere assertion that Paul is to be understood from the Mystery-religions, even though those who maintain this view do not want to proceed any further than the facts which have to be explained seem to them to warrant. As between the students of Comparative Religion and Drews the relation is similar to that between the legitimate and illegitimate Tübingen schools. Here, too, the alternative lies between “scientific and inconsistent, and consistent and unscientific.” That means that an absolute antinomy appears between the logic of the attempted solution and that of the data of fact; which is as much as to say that the problem has been wrongly grasped, and that this way, whether it be followed for a certain distance only, or right to the end, can never lead to the goal of a satisfactory solution.

[pg 237]

VIII

SUMMING-UP AND FORMULATION OF THE PROBLEM

THE study of Paulinism has nothing very brilliant to show for itself in the way of scientific achievement. Learning has been lavishly expended upon it, but thought and reflection have been to seek.

Writers went to work with an almost inconceivable absence of plan, and wanted to offer solutions before they had made clear to themselves the scope of the problem. Instead of seeking a definite diagnosis, they treated the symptoms separately, with whatever means happened to come to hand.

It was inevitable, therefore, that the study of the subject should move along intricate and continually recrossing paths, and engage in long and devious wanderings, only, in some cases, to arrive back again at the point from which it started. That Paul’s doctrine of redemption was thought out on the lines of a physical nature-process had been asserted by Lüdemann as long ago as the year 1872. Nevertheless, theology hit on the plan of “spiritualising” it, and took very nearly thirty years to get back to this discovery.

The account which we have given of the history of the subject has revealed the structure of the problem and given it room to develop itself. The inner connexion of the questions determines in advance what the individual solutions can and cannot effect, and at the same time [pg 238] shows what must be provided for in any solution which professes to offer a really historical explanation.

To neglect this structure, this schematism of the problem is not permissible. It has not been independently invented and imposed from without upon the past history of research, but represents its actual results, and points the way for all subsequent attempts at a solution.

The problem consists in the two great questions: what Paul’s doctrine has in common with primitive Christianity, and what it has in common with Greek ideas.

It is complicated by the fact that our only information about the beliefs of the primitive Church comes from Paul. His writings are the first—and indeed the only—witnesses which we possess upon the point, since the First Epistle of Peter and the Epistle of James give us information at best about a non-Pauline, certainly not about a pre-Pauline Christianity.

The standard by which the primitiveness of Paul’s Christianity has to be measured and tested has, therefore, in the first place to be arrived at by the method of arguing backward from itself. Nevertheless, the difficulty is not so great as it appears when thus theoretically stated. The most general features of the earliest dogma can be found without difficulty in the Epistles. These consisted in the belief in the Messiahship of the Jesus who had died and risen again, and in the expectation of His parousia in the immediate future.

Moreover, the problem as a whole is simplified by the fact that the second of the fundamental questions has been clearly answered by the history of Pauline study. The answer is this: Paulinism and Hellenism have in common their religious terminology, but, in respect of ideas, nothing. The Apostle did not Hellenise Christianity. His conceptions are equally distinct from those of Greek philosophy and from those of the Mystery-religions.

The affinities and analogies which have been alleged cannot stand an examination which takes account of their real essence and of the different way in which the ideas [pg 239] are conditioned in the two cases. Neither Baur nor the theology which owes allegiance to him, nor the students of Comparative Religion, have succeeded in proving their assertions. It is also interesting to observe that those who undertake to explain Paul by the aid of the Graeco-Oriental Mystery-religions, entirely deny the philosophic Hellenism which a more conventional theological opinion has found in him; so that it is a case of Satan’s being driven out by Beelzebub. On the other hand, the Comparative study of Paulinism has the merit of having made an end of the “spiritualising” and “psychologising” which were practised for a whole generation.

The impossibility of anything in the nature of a Hellenic gospel being present in Paul appears from the fact, that every view of this kind when thought out in its logical implications must arrive at a point where it has to do violence to historical tradition. It became apparent that it is impossible for a Hellenised Paulinism to subsist alongside of a primitive Christianity which shared the Jewish eschatological expectations. One must either, as the Ultra-Tübingen critics did, transplant the Epistles and the doctrine from the primitive period to the second century, or, as some of the votaries of Comparative Religion have endeavoured to do, explain primitive Christianity as a product of Graeco-Oriental syncretism.

That only a very few investigators have drawn these inferences is not due to the fact that they are not justified. It was want of courage, of logical consistency, and of the necessary contempt for the rest of the facts which prevented them from making the venture. So they offered compromises, imposingly dressed out in words but inwardly untenable, and talked themselves and others into believing the impossible, namely, that a Hellenisation of the primitive Christian belief effected by Paul as an individual is really conceivable.

The half-and-half theories which represent Paulinism as consisting partly of Greek, partly of Jewish ideas, are [pg 240] in a still worse case than those which more or less neglect the former element. Encumbered with all the difficulties of the Hellenising theory they become involved in the jungle of antinomies which they discover or imagine, and there perish miserably.

The solution must, therefore, consist in leaving out of the question Greek influence in every form and in every combination, and venturing on the “one-sidedness” of endeavouring to understand the doctrine of the Apostle of the Gentiles entirely on the basis of Jewish primitive Christianity. That implies, in the first place, that the Pauline eschatology must be maintained in its full compass, as required by the utterances of the letters. But merely to emphasise it is not everything. The next point is to explain it. What was the scheme of the events of the End, and what answer was given by eschatological expectation to the fundamental questions which could not be avoided? Are there two resurrections or one; one judgment or two? Who are to rise again at the parousia? Does a judgment take place then? On whom is it held? What are its standards and its subject? Wherein do reward and punishment consist? What happens to the men of the surviving generation who are not destined to the Messianic kingdom? What is the relation between judgment and election? What is the fate of believers who are elect and baptised but who have fallen from grace by unworthy conduct? Can they lose their final blessedness, or are they only excluded from the Messianic kingdom? Does Paul recognise a general resurrection? If so, when does it take place? Is it accompanied by a judgment, or do only the elect rise again? When does the judgment take place at which the elect judge the angels?

Not until Pauline eschatology gives an answer to all the “idle” questions of this kind which can be asked will it be really understood and explained. And it must be somehow possible, by the discovery of its inner logic, to reconstruct it from the scattered statements in the documents. [pg 241] We have no right to assume that for Paul there existed in his expectation manifest obscurities, much less that he had overlooked contradictions in it.

Is there, then, any possibility of explaining the mystical doctrine of redemption and the sacramental teaching on the basis of the Jewish eschatological element?

The attempt is by no means so hopeless as it might seem in view of the general consideration that Judaism knew neither mysticism nor sacraments. It is not really a question of Judaism as such, but of apocalyptic thought, which is a separate and independent phenomenon arising within Judaism, and has special presuppositions which are entirely peculiar to it.

We saw in analysing the “physical” element in the doctrine of redemption and the sacraments that the conceptions connected therewith are conditioned by the underlying eschatology which everywhere shows through._(_193_)_ It needs no special learning to make this discovery. Any one who ventures to read the documents with an open mind and pays attention to the primary links of connexion will soon arrive at this conclusion. That Paul’s mystical doctrine of redemption and his doctrine of the sacraments belong to eschatology is plain to be seen. The only question is in what way, exactly, they have arisen out of it. The future-hope, raised to the highest degree of intensity, must somehow or other have possessed the power of producing them. If the impulse, the pressing need to which they were the response, is once recognised, then Paulinism is understood, since in its essence it can be nothing else than an eschatological mysticism, expressing itself by the aid of the Greek religious terminology.

Theoretically, too, it is possible to form an approximate idea how the intensified expectation of the future might take a mystical form. In apocalyptic thought sensuous and super-sensuous converge, in such a manner that the former is thought of as passing away into the latter. Thus [pg 242] there is present in it the most general presupposition of all mysticism, since it is the object of the latter to abolish the earthly in the super-earthly. The peculiarity of the mysticism which arises out of Apocalyptic is that it does not bring the two worlds into contact in the mind of the individual man, as Greek and medieval mysticism did, but dovetails one into the other, and thus creates for the moment at which the one passes over into the other an objective, temporally conditioned mysticism. This, however, is only available for those who by their destiny belong to both worlds. Eschatological mysticism is predestinarian.

That a mysticism of this kind existed before Paul is not known. It may be conjectured that the conditions under which it could develop were not present until after the death and resurrection of Jesus.

But sacramental tendencies already make their appearance in the future-hope which was to lead up to Christianity. The usual view is to the effect that Paul was the first to introduce the mystical element into baptism and the Lord’s Supper. There is nothing to prove that. How can we possibly tell that these ceremonies were previously purely symbolic acts? Any one who reads with an open mind the Synoptic accounts of John’s baptism must recognise that it was not only a symbol of purification on repentance, but is thought of as in some way or other guaranteeing salvation._(_194_)_ A transaction, however, which itself gives and effects such a result is to be regarded as a sacrament.

The manner in which Paul speaks of early Christian baptism and of the Lord’s Supper does not make the impression that he is asserting for the first time the effectual working of the ceremony; it is rather as if he took it for granted as something given and self-evident. This would agree with the observation noted above that the baptism of John, from which primitive Christian [pg 243] baptism was derived, was already thought of as a sacrament.

Whether the Lord’s Supper in the intention of Jesus Himself directly conveyed something to the partakers, or whether it only became a sacrament in primitive Christian times, must be left undecided.

That the intensified eschatological expectation should go so far as to produce sacramental conceptions is in itself intelligible. Those who stood on the threshold of the coming glory must have been eagerly anxious to gain an assurance that they themselves would be partakers therein and to obtain tangible guarantees of “deliverance” from the coming judgment. The conception of “marking out” and “sealing” plays in apocalyptic thought a very important part. Similar provisions are a characteristic product of any intense expectation of the future.

It is, therefore, highly probable that the Baptist, and primitive Christianity, created eschatological sacraments which, as already established and accredited, Paul had only to take over.

The bearing of these statements and considerations must be shown from the Epistles. How far it is possible to trace the genesis of the mysticism and the sacramental doctrine from the eschatological beliefs of the Apostle cannot be determined _a priori_. The one thing certain is that no other way of explanation is possible than that which leads from the circumference of his future-hope to the central idea of his “theology.” All other interpretations hang in the air.