# Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Paul (1.)

See also Paul the Apostle on Wikipedia; the 11th edition; and the disclaimer. Some of the margin notes were clipped in the page scans that this text derives from. When indecypherable, these are indicated by a "?".
PAUL
“SAUL, who is also (called) Paul,” was a “Hebrew of the Hebrews,” i.e., of pure Jewish descent unmixed with Gentile blood, of the tribe of Benjamin (Rom. xi. 1; 2 Cor. xi. 22; Phil. iii. 5). In the Acts of the Apostles it is stated that he was born at Tarsus in Cilicia (ix. 11, xxi. 39, xxii. 3); but in the 4th century there still lingered a tradition that his birthplace was Giscala, the last of the fortress-towns of Galilee which held out against Rome (Jerome, De vir. illustr. c. 5; Ad ? Philem. v. 23). The fact that he was called by two names a has been accounted for in various ways. Saul (the Aramaic form, used only as a vocative, and in the narratives of his conversion, Acts ix. 4, 17, xxii. 7, 13, xxvi. 14; elsewhere the Hellenized form, Σαῦλος) was a natural name for a Benjamite to give to his son, in memory of the first of Jewish kings; Paul is more difficult of explanation. It is first found in the narrative of the conversion of Sergius Paulus, the proconsul of Cyprus (Acts xiii. 9), and it has sometimes been supposed either that Paul himself adopted the name in compliment to his first Gentile convert of distinction (Jerome, Olshausen, Meyer, Ewald), or that the writer of the Acts intended to imply that it was so adopted (Baur, Zeller, Hausrath). Others have thought that it was assumed by Paul himself after the beginning of his ministry, and that it is derived from the Latin paulus in the sense either of “least among the apostles” (St Augustine) or “little of stature” (Mangold, with reference to 2 Cor. x. 10; Gal. iv. 13). But these and many similar conjectures may probably be set aside in favour of the supposition that he had a double name from the first, one Aramaic or Hebrew and the other Latin or Greek, like Simon Peter, John Mark, Simeon Niger, Joseph Justus; this supposition is confirmed by the fact that Paul was not an uncommon name in Syria and the eastern parts of Asia Minor (instances will be found in the Index Nominum to Boeckh's Corp. Inscr. Græc.). Whatever be its origin, Paul is the only name which he himself uses of himself, or which is used of him by others when once he had entered into the Roman world outside Palestine. The Acts speak of his having been a Roman citizen by birth (xxii. 28; cf. xvi. 17, xxiii. 27), a statement which also has given rise to several conjectures, because there is no clue to the ground upon which his claim to citizenship was based. Some modern writers question the fact, consider ing the statement to be part of the general colouring which the writer of the Acts is supposed to give to his narrative; and some also question the fact, which is generally ? considered to support it, of the appeal to the emperor. That he received part of his education at Tarsus, which was a
great seat of learning, is a possible inference from his use of some of the technical terms which were current in the Greek schools of rhetoric and philosophy; but, since the cultivation of a correct grammatical and rhetorical style was one of the chief studies of those schools, Paul's imperfect command of Greek syntax seems to show that this education did not go very far. That he received the main part of his education from Jewish sources is not only probable from the fact that his family were Pharisees, but certain from the whole tone and character of his writings. According to the Acts, his teacher was Gamaliel, who as the grandson of Hillel took a natural place as the head of the moderate school of Jewish theologians; nor, in spite of the objection that the fanaticism of the disciple was at variance with the moderation of the master, does the statement seem in itself improbable. A more important difficulty in the way of accepting the statement that Jerusalem was the place of his education is the fact that in that case his education must have been going on at the time of the preaching and death of Jesus Christ. That he had not seen Jesus Christ during His ministry seems to be clear, for a comparison of 1 Cor. ix. 1 with xv. 8 appears to limit his sight of Christ to that which he had at his conversion, and the “knowing Christ after the flesh” of 2 Cor. v. 16 is used not of personal acquaintance but of “carnal” as opposed to “spiritual” understanding; nor does the difficulty seem to be altogether adequately explained away by the hypothesis which some writers (e.g., Neander, Wieseler, Beyschlag) have adopted, that he was temporarily absent from Jerusalem at the times when Jesus Christ was there. Like all Jewish boys, he learnt a trade, that of tent-making; this was a natural employment for one of Cilician origin, since the hair of the Cilician goat was used to make a canvas (cilicia) which was specially adapted for the tents used by travellers on the great routes of commerce or by soldiers on their campaigns (cf. Philo, De anim. sacrif. idon., i. vol. ii. p. 238, ed. Mang.). Whether he was married or not is a question which has been disputed from very early times; his expressions in 1 Cor. vii. 8, ix. 5, were taken by Tertullian to imply that he was not, and by Clement of Alexandria and Origen to imply that he had once been, but that he had become a widower.
Inner and outer life as Pharisee. The beginning of his active life was doubtless like its maturity; it was charged with emotion. He himself gives a graphic sketch of its inner history. His conversion to Christianity was not the first great change that he had undergone. “I was alive without the law once” (Rom. vii. 9). He had lived in his youth a pure and guileless life. He had felt that which is at once the charm and the force of such a life, the unconsciousness of wrong. But,
while his fellow-disciples in the rabbinical schools had been content to dissect the text of the sacred code with a minute anatomy, the vision of a law of God which transcended both text and comment had loomed upon him like a new revelation. And with the sense of law had come the sense of sin. It was like the first dawn of conscience. He awoke as from a dream. “The commandment came.” It was intended to be “unto life,” but he found it to be “unto death”; for it opened up to him infinite possibilities of sinning: “I had not known lust except the law had said, Thou shalt not lust.” And the possibilities of sinning became lures which drew him on to forbidden and hated ground: “sin, finding occasion through the commandment, beguiled me and through it slew me” (Rom. vii. 7-11). This was his inner life, and no man has ever analysed it with a more penetrating and graphic power. In his outward life this sense of the law of God became to him an overpowering stimulus. The stronger the consciousness of his personal failure the greater the impulse of his zeal. The vindication of the honour of God by persecuting heretics, which was an obligation upon all pious Jews, was for him a supreme duty. He became not only a persecutor but a leader among persecutors (Gal. i. 14). What he felt was a very frenzy of hate; he “breathed threatening and slaughter,” like the snorting of a war-horse before a battle, against the renegade Jews who believed in a false Messiah (Acts ix. 1, xxvi. 11). His enthusiasm had been known before the popular outbreak which led to Stephen's death, for the witnesses to the martyr's stoning “laid down their clothes” at his feet (Acts vii. 58), and he took a prominent place in the persecution which followed. He himself speaks of having “made havoc” of the community at Jerusalem, spoiling it like a captured city (Gal. i. 13, 23); in the more detailed account of the Acts he went from house to house to search out and drag forth to punishment the adherents of the new heresy (viii. 3). When his victims came before the Jewish courts he tried, probably by scourging, to force them to apostatize (xxvi. 11); in some cases he voted for their death (xxii. 4, xxvi. 10). The persecution spread from Jerusalem to Judaea and Galilee (ix. 31); but Paul, with the same spirit of enterprise which afterwards showed itself in his missionary journeys, was not content with the limits of Palestine. He sought and obtained from the ecclesiastical authorities at Jerusalem letters similar to those which, in the 13th century, the popes gave to the “militia Jesu Christi contra hæreticos.” The ordinary jurisdiction of the synagogues was for the time set aside; the special commissioner was empowered to take as prisoners to Jerusalem any whom he found to belong to the sect known as “The Way” (Acts ix. 2, xxii. 4, xxiv. 14; it is possible that the phrase was used of Christians by themselves, like the phrase “The Cause” among some of the nonconforming churches of England). Of the great cities which lay near Palestine Damascus was the most promising, if not the only field for such a commission. At Antioch and at Alexandria, though the Jews, who were very numerous, enjoyed a large amount of independence and had their own governor, the Roman authorities would probably have interfered to prevent the extreme measures which Paul demanded. At Damascus, where also the Jews were numerous and possibly had their own civil governor (2 Cor. xi. 32), the Arabian prince Aretas (Haritha), who then held the city, might naturally be disposed to let an influential section of the population deal as they pleased with their refractory members.
Conversion to Christianity. On Paul's way thither an event occurred which has proved to be of transcendent importance for the religious history of mankind. He became a Christian by what he believed to be the personal revelation of Jesus Christ.
His own accounts of the event are brief, but they are at the same time emphatic and uniform. “It pleased God . . . to reveal His Son in me” (Gal. i. 16); “have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Cor. ix. 1); “last of all He was seen of me also as of one born out of due time” (1 Cor. xv. 8, where ὤφθη κἀμοί must be read in the sense of the parallel expressions ὤφθη Κηφᾷ, &c.; in other words, Paul puts the appearance to himself on a level with the appearances to the apostles after the resurrection). These accounts give no details of the circumstances. St Paul's estimate of the importance of such details was probably different from that which has been attached to them in later times. The accounts in the Acts of the Apostles are more elaborate; they are three in number, one in the continuous narrative, ix. 3-19, a second in the address on the temple stairs, xxii. 6-21, a third in the speech to Agrippa, xxvi. 12-18; they all differ from each other in details, they all agree in substance; the differences are fatal to the stricter theories of verbal inspiration, but they do not constitute a valid argument against the general truth of the narrative.
It is natural to find that the accounts of an event which lies so far outside the ordinary experience of men have been the object of much hostile criticism. The earliest denial of its reality is found in the Judaeo- Christian writings known as the Clementine Homilies, where Simon Magus, who is made to be a caricature of Paul, is told that visions and dreams may come from demons as well as from God (Clem. Hom., xvii. 13-19). The most important of later denials are those of the Tübingen school, which explain the narratives in the Acts either as a translation into the language of historical fact of the figurative expressions of the manifestation of Christ to the soul, and the consequent change from spiritual darkness to light (e.g., Baur, Paul, E.T., vol. i. p. 76; Zeller, Acts, E.T., vol. i. p. 289), or as an ecstatic vision (Holsten, Das Evangelium des Paulus, p. 65). But against all the difficulties and apparent incredibilities of the narratives there stand out the clear and indisputable facts that the persecutor was suddenly transformed into a believer, and that to his dying day he never ceased to believe and to preach that he had “seen Jesus Christ.”
His special mission. Nor was it only that he had seen Him; the gospel which he preached, as well as the call to preach it, was due to this revelation. It had “pleased God to reveal His Son in him” that he "might preach Him among the Gentiles" (Gal. i. 12, 16). He had received the special mark of God's favour, which consisted in his apostleship, that all nations might obey and believe the gospel (Rom. i. 5, cf. xii. 3, xv. 15, 16). He had been entrusted with a secret (μυστήριον) which had “been kept in silence through times eternal,” but which it was now his special office to make known (Rom. xi. 25, xvi. 25, 26; and even more prominently in the later epistles, Eph. i. 9, iii. 2-9, vi. 19; Col. i. 26, 27, iv. 3). This secret was that “the Gentiles are fellow-heirs, and fellow-members of the body, and fellow-partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” This is the key to all his subsequent history. He was the “apostle of the Gentiles,” and that “not from men, neither through man” (Gal. i. 1); and so thoroughly was the conviction of his special mission wrought into the fibres of his nature that it is difficult to give full credence to statements which appear to be at variance with it.
Of his life immediately after his conversion he himself
gives a clear account: “I conferred not with flesh and blood, neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went away into Arabia” (Gal. i. 16, 17). The reason of his retirement, whether it was to the Haurán (Renan) or to the Sinaitic peninsula (Holsten), is not far to seek. A great mental no less than a great bodily convulsion naturally calls for a period of rest; and the consequences of his new position had to be drawn out and realized before he could properly enter upon the mission-work which lay before him. From ? Arabia he returned to Damascus (Gal. i. 17), and there began not only his preaching of the gospel but also the long series of “perils from his own countrymen,” which constitute so large a part of the circumstances of his subsequent history (Acts ix. 23-25; 2 Cor. xi. 32, 33).
? It was not until “after three years,” though it is uncertain whether the reckoning begins from his conversion or from his return to Damascus, that he went up to Jerusalem; his purpose in going was to become acquainted with Peter, and he stayed with him fifteen days (Gal. i. 18). Of his life at Jerusalem on this occasion there appear to have been erroneous accounts current even in his own lifetime, for he adds the emphatic attestation, as of a witness on his oath, that the account which he gives is true (Gal. i. 20). The point on which he seems to lay emphasis is that, in pursuance of his policy not to “confer with flesh and blood,” he saw none of the apostles except Peter and James, and that even some years afterwards he was still unknown by face to the churches of Judaea which were in Christ.
? From Jerusalem he went “into the regions of Syria and Cilicia,” preaching the gospel (Gal. i. 21, 23). How much that brief expression covers is uncertain; it may refer only to the first few months after his departure from Jerusalem, or it may be a summary of many travels, of which that which is commonly known as his “first missionary journey” is a type. The form of expression in Gal. ii. 1 makes it probable that he purposely leaves an interval between the events which immediately succeeded his conversion and the conference at Jerusalem. For this interval, assuming it to exist, or in any case for the detail of its history, we have to depend on the accounts in Acts xi. 20-30, xii. 25 to xiv. 28. These accounts possibly cover only a small part of the whole period, and they are so limited to Paul's relations with Barnabas as to make it probable that they were derived from a lost “Acts of Barnabas.” This supposition would probably account for the fact that in them the conversion of the Gentiles is to a great extent in the background.
The chief features of these accounts are the formation of a new centre of Christian life at Antioch, and a journey which Paul, Barnabas, and for part of the way John Mark took through Cyprus and Asia Minor.
The first of these facts has a significance which has sometimes been overlooked for the history not only of Paul himself but of Christianity in general. It is that the mingling together, in that splendid capital of the civilized East, of Jews and Syrians on the one hand with Greeks and Romans on the other furnished the conditions which made a Gentile Christianity possible. The religion of Jesus Christ emerged from its obscurity into the full glare of contemporary life. Its adherents attracted enough attention to receive in the common talk and intercourse of men a distinctive name. They were treated, not as a Jewish sect, but as a political party. To the Greek equivalent for the Hebrew “Messiah,” which was probably considered to be not a title but a proper name, was added the
termination which had been employed for the followers of Sulla, of Pompey, and of Cæsar. It is improbable that this would have been the case unless the Christian community at Antioch had had a large Gentile element; and it is an even more certain and more important fact that in this first great mixed community the first and greatest of all the problems of early Christian communities had been solved, and that Jews and Gentiles lived a common life (Gal. ii. 12). What place Paul himself had in the formation of this community can only be conjectured. In the Acts he is less prominent than Barnabas; and, although it must be gathered from the Epistle to the Galatians that he took a leading part in the controversies which arose, still it is to be noted that he never elsewhere mentions Antioch in his epistles, and that he never visited it except casually in his travels. It may be supposed that from an early period he sought and found a wider field for his activity. The spirit of the Pharisees who “compassed sea and land to make one proselyte” was still strong within him. The zeal for God which had made him a persecutor had changed its direction but not its force. His conversion was but an overpowering call to a new sphere of work. It is consequently difficult to believe that he was content to take his place as merely one of a band of teachers elected by the community or appointed by the Twelve. The sense of a special mission never passed away from him. “Necessity was laid upon him” (1 Cor. ix. 16). Inferior to the Twelve in regard to the fact that he had once “persecuted the church of God,” he was “not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles” (2 Cor. xi. 5) in regard both to the reality and the privileges of his commission, and to the truth of what he preached (1 Cor. ix. 3-6; 2 Cor. iii. 1-6; Gal. i. 12). It is also difficult to believe that he went out with Barnabas simply as the delegate of the Antiochean community; whatever significance the laying on of hands may have had for him (Acts xiii. 3), it would be contrary to the tenor of all his writings to suppose that he regarded it as giving him his commission to preach the gospel.
Journey through Cyprus and Asia Minor. The narrative of the incidents of the single journey which is recorded in detail, and which possibly did not occupy more than one summer, has given rise to much controversy. Its general credibility is supported by the probability that in the first instance Paul would follow an ordinary commercial route, on which Jewish missionaries as well as Jewish merchants had been his pioneers. For his letters to his Gentile converts all presuppose their acquaintance with the elements of Judaism. They do not prove monotheism, but assume it.
According to the narrative, Paul and his companions went first to Cyprus, the native country of Barnabas, and travelled through the island from its eastern port, Salamis, to its capital, Paphos. At Paphos a Jewish sorcerer, Bar Jesus, was struck with blindness, and the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, was converted. From Cyprus, still following a common route of trade, they went into the south-east districts of Asia Minor, through Pamphylia to Antioch in Pisidia. At Antioch, on two successive Sabbaths, Paul spoke in the synagogue; the genuineness of the addresses which are recorded in the Acts has been disputed, chiefly because the second of them seems to imply that he “turned to the Gentiles,” not as a primary and unconditional obligation, but owing to the rejection of the gospel by the Jews. Expelled from Antioch, they went on to Iconium (where the apocryphal “Acts of Paul and Thekla” place the scene of that improbable but not ungraceful romance), and thence to Lystra, where the healing of a cripple caused the simple and superstitious Lycaonians to take them for gods. Their farthest point was the neighbouring town of Derbe, from whence they returned by the route
by which they had come to the sea-coast, and thence to Antioch in Syria.
But, although the general features of the narrative may be accepted as true, especially if, as suggested above, its basis is a memoir or itinerary not of Paul but of Barnabas, yet it must be conceded that this portion of the Acts has large omissions. It is difficult to believe that the passionate zeal of an apostle who was urged by the stimulus of a special call of Jesus Christ was satisfied, for the long period of at least eleven years, with one short missionary journey, and that, with the exception of a brief visit to Jerusalem (Acts xi. 30), he remained quietly at Tarsus or at Antioch (xi. 25, xiii. 1, xiv. 28). In this period must fall at least a portion of the experiences which he records in 2 Cor. xi. 24-27, and for which no place can be found in the interval between the conference at Jerusalem and the writing of that epistle. The scourging in the synagogues, the beating with the lictor's rods in the Roman courts, the shipwrecks, the “night and day in the deep,” the “perils of robbers,” and “perils in the wilderness” belong no doubt to some of the unrecorded journeys of these first years of his apostolic life. A more important omission is that of some of the more distinctive features of his preaching. It is impossible to account for his attitude towards the original apostles in his interview with them at Jerusalem (Gal. ii. 1-10) except on the supposition that before that interview, no less than after it, he was that which he had been specially called to be, the “apostle of the Gentiles” and the preacher of the “gospel of the uncircumcision.”
His relation to the Twelve. At the end of fourteen years, either from his conversion or from his visit to Peter at Jerusalem, the question of the relation of the communities which he had formed, and of the gospel which he preached, to the original Christian communities, and to the gospel of the Twelve, came to a crisis. His position was unique. He owed neither his knowledge of the gospel nor his commission to preach it to any human authority (Gal. i. 1, 11, 12). As Jesus Christ had taught and sent forth the Twelve, so had He taught and sent forth Paul. He was on equal terms with the Twelve. Until a revelation came to him he was apparently at no pains to co-operate with them. But between their respective disciples there was evidently a sharp contention. The Jewish party, the original disciples and first converts, maintained the continued obligation of the Mosaic law and the limitation of the promises to those who observed it; the Pauline party asserted the abrogation of the law and the free justification of all who believed in Jesus Christ. The controversy narrowed itself to the one point of circumcision. If the Gentiles were without circumcision members of the kingdom of God, why was the law obligatory on the Jews? If, on the other hand, the Gentiles had to be circumcised, the gospel had but a secondary importance. It seemed for a time as though Christianity would be broken up into two sharply-divided sects, and that between the Jewish Christianity, which had its seat at Jerusalem, and which insisted on circumcision, and the Gentile Christianity, which had its seat at Antioch, and which rejected circumcision, there would be an irreconcilable antagonism. It was consequently “by revelation” (Gal. ii. 2) that Paul and Barnabas, with the Gentile convert Titus as their “minister” or secretary, went to confer with the leaders among the original disciples, the “pillars” or “them who were of repute,” “James, and Cephas, and John.” He put the question to them: Was it possible that he was spending or had spent his labour in vain? (μήπως . . . ἔδραμον in Gal. ii. 2 form a direct question depending on ἀνεθέμην). He laid before them the “gospel of the uncircumcision.” They made no addition to it (Paul says of himself ἀνεθέμην, and of “them who were of
repute” οὐδὲν προσανέθεντο, Gal. ii. 2, 6), but accepted it as Paul preached it, recognizing it as being a special work of God, and as being on the same level of authority with their own (Gal. ii. 7-9). The opposition was no doubt strong; there were “false brethren” who refused to emancipate the Gentile world from the bondage of the law and there was also apparently a party of compromise which, admitting Paul's general contention, maintained the necessity of circumcision in certain cases, of which the case of Titus, for reasons which are no longer apparent, was typical. But Paul would have no compromise. From his point of view compromise was impossible. “Justification” was either “of faith” or “by the works of the law”; it was inconceivable that it could be partly by the one and partly by the other. And he succeeded in maintaining his position at all points. He received “the right hand of fellowship,” and went back to Antioch the recognized head and preacher of the “gospel of the uncircumcision.” With in his own sphere he had perfect freedom of action; the only tie between his converts and the original community at Jerusalem was the tie of benevolence. Jew and Gentile were so far “one body in Christ” that the wealthier Gentile communities should “remember the poor.”
Peter and Paul in Antioch. When Paul returned to Antioch Peter followed him, and for a time the two apostles worked in harmony. Peter “did eat with the Gentiles.” He shared the common table
at which the Jewish distinctions of meats were disregarded. He thereby accepted Paul's position. But when “certain came from James” he drew back. The position of James was probably that, even if the law had ceased to be valid as a means of justification, it was still valid as a rule of life. For reasons which are not apparent, possibly the wish not to break with the community at Jerusalem, not only Peter but Barnabas and the whole of the Jewish party at Antioch accepted that position, with its consequent obligation of separation from the Gentile brethren, not only in social life, but probably also in the partaking of the Lord's Supper. Paul showed that the position of Peter was illogical, and that he was self-convicted (κατεγνωσμένος ἦν, Gal. ii. 11). His argument was that the freedom from the law was complete, and that to attach merit to obedience to the law was to make disobedience to the law a sin, and, by causing those who sought to be justified by faith only to be transgressors, to make Christ a “minister of sin.” Obedience to any part of the law involved recognition of the whole of it as obligatory (Gal. v. 3), and consequently “made void the grace of God.”
The schism in the community at Antioch was probably never healed. It is not probable that Paul's contention was there victorious; for, while Paul never again speaks of that city, Peter seems to have remained there, and he was looked upon in later times as the founder of its church.
? But this failure at Antioch served to Paul as the occasion for carrying out a bolder conception. The horizon of his mission widened before him. The “fulness of the Gentiles” had to be brought in. His diocese was no longer Antioch, but the whole of the Roman empire. The years that followed were almost wholly spent among its great cities, “preaching among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph. iii. 8). He became the spiritual father of many communities, and he watched over them with a father's constant care. He gathered round him a company of faithful disciples, who shared with him his missionary work, and whom he sent sometimes to break new ground, sometimes to arrange disputes, sometimes to gather contributions, sometimes to examine and report. Of his travels, whether with them or alone, no complete record has been preserved; some of them are minutely described in the Acts, others within the same period are known only or chiefly from his epistles. In giving an account of them it is necessary to change to some extent the historical perspective which is presented in the Acts; for, in working up fragments of itineraries of Paul's companions into a consecutive narrative, many things are made to come into the foreground which Paul himself would probably have disregarded, and many things are omitted or thrown into the shade to which, from his letters, he appears to have attached a primary importance.
The first scene of his new activity, if indeed it be allowable to consider the conference at Jerusalem and the subsequent dispute at Antioch as having given occasion for a new departure, was probably the eastern part of Asia Minor, In Galatia. and more particularly Galatia. Some of it he had visited before; and from the fact that the Galatians, though they had been heathens (Gal. iv. 8), were evidently acquainted with the law, it may be inferred that he still went on the track of Jewish missionaries, and that here, as elsewhere, Judaism had prepared the way for Christianity. Of his preaching he himself gives a brief summary; it was the vivid setting forth before their eyes of Jesus as the crucified
Messiah, and it was confirmed by evident signs of the working of the Spirit (Gal. iii. 1, 5). The new converts received it with enthusiasm; he felt for them as a father; and an illness (some have thought, from the form of expression in Gal. iv. 15, that it was an acute ophthalmia) which came upon him (assuming this to have been his first visit) intensified their mutual affection. What we learn specially of the Galatians is probably true also of the other Gentiles who received him; some of them were baptized (Gal. iii. 27), they were formed into communities (Gal. i. 2), and they were so far organized as to have a distinction between teachers and taught (Gal. vi. 6).
In Macedonia. But an imperative call summoned him to Europe. The western part of Asia Minor, in which afterwards were formed the important churches of Ephesus, Colossæ, Hierapolis, and Laodicea, was for the present left alone. He passed on into Macedonia. The change was more than a passage from Asia to Europe. Hitherto, if Antioch be excepted, he had preached only in small provincial towns. Hence forward he preached chiefly, and at last exclusively, in the great centres of population. He began with Philippi, which was at once a great military post and the wealthy entrepôt of the gold and silver mines of the neighbouring Mount Pangæus. The testimony of the eye-witness whose account is incorporated in Acts xvi. 12-18 tells us that his first convert was a Jewish proselyte, named Lydia; and Paul himself mentions other women converts (Phil. iv. 2). There is the special interest about the community which soon grew up that it was organized after the manner of the guilds, of which there were many both at Philippi and in other towns of Macedonia, and that its administrative officers were entitled, probably from the analogy of those guilds, “bishops” and “deacons.”
In Europe, as in Asia, persecution attended him. He was “shamefully entreated” at Philippi (1 Thess. ii. 2), and according to the Acts the ill-treatment came not from the Jews but from the Gentile employers of a frenzied prophetess, who saw in Paul's preaching an element of danger to their craft. Consequently he left that city, and passing over Amphipolis, the political capital of the province, but the seat rather of the official classes than of trade, he went on to the great seaport and commercial city of Thessalonica. His converts there seem to have been chiefly among the Gentile workmen (1 Thess. iv. 11; 2 Thess. iii. 10-12), and he himself became one of them. Knowing as he did the scanty wages of their toil, he “worked night and day that he might not burden any of them” (1 Thess. ii. 9; 2 Thess. iii. 8). But for all his working he does not seem to have earned enough to support his little company; he was constrained both once and again to accept help from Philippi (Phil. iv. 16). He was determined that, whatever he might have to endure, no sordid thought should enter into his relations with the Thessalonians; he would be to them only what a father is to his children, behaving himself “holily and righteously and unblameably,” and exhorting them to walk worthily of God who had called them (1 Thess. ii. 10-12). But there, as elsewhere, his preaching was “in much conflict.” The Jews were actively hostile. According to the account in the Acts (xvii. 5-9), they at last hounded on the lazzaroni of the city, who were doubtless moved as easily as a Moslem crowd in modern times by any cry of treason or infidelity, to attack the house of Jason (possibly one of Paul's kinsmen, Rom. xvi. 21), either because Paul himself was lodging there, or because it was the meeting-place of the community. Paul and Silas were not there, and so escaped; but it was thought prudent that they should go at once and secretly to the neighbouring small town of Berœa. Thither, however, the fanatical Jews of Thessalonica pursued them; and Paul, leaving his companions Silas and Timothy at Berœa, gave
up his preaching in Macedonia for a time and went southwards to Athens.
At Athens. At The narrative which the Acts give of his stay at Athens Athens. Is one of the most striking, and at the same time one of the most difficult, episodes in the book. What is the meaning of the inscription on the altar? What is the Areopagus? How far does the reported speech give Paul's actual words? What did the Athenians understand by the Resurrection? These are examples of questions on which it is easy to argue, but which, with our present knowledge, it is impossible to decide. One point seems to be clear, both from the absence of any further mention of the city in Paul's writings and from the absence of any permanent results of his visit, that his visit was a comparative failure. It was almost inevitable that it should be so. Athens was the educational centre of Greece. It was a great university city. For its students and professors the Christianity which Paul preached had only an intellectual interest. They were not conscious of the need, which Christianity presupposes, of a great moral reformation; nor indeed was it until many years afterwards, when Christianity had added to itself certain philosophical elements and become not only a religion but a theology, that the educated Greek mind, whether at Athens or elsewhere, took serious hold of it. Of Paul's own inner life at Athens we learn, not from the Acts, but from one of his epistles. His thoughts were not with the philosophers but with the communities of Macedonia and the converts among whom he had preached with such different success. He cared far less for the world of mocking critics and procrastinating idlers in the chief seat of culture than he did for the enthusiastic artisans of Thessalonica, to whom it was a burning question of dispute how soon the Second Advent would come, and what would be the relation of the living members of the church to those who had fallen asleep. He would fain have gone back to them, but “Satan hindered him” (1 Thess. ii. 17, 18); and he sent Timothy in his stead “to comfort them as concerning their faith,” and to prevent their relapsing, as probably other converts did, under the pressure of persecution (1 Thess. iii. 2, 3).
At Corinth. From Athens he went to Corinth, the capital of the Roman province of Achaia, and the real centre of the busy life of Greece. It was not the ancient Greek city with Greek inhabitants, but a new city which had grown up in Roman times, with a vast population of mingled races, who had added to the traditional worship of Aphrodite the still more sensuous cults of the East. Never before had Paul had so vast or so promising a field for his preaching; for alike the filthy sensuality of its wealthy classes and the intense wretchedness of its half-million of paupers and slaves (τὴν βδελυρίαν τῶν ἐκεῖσε πλουσίων καὶ τῶν πενήτων ἀθλιότητα, Alciphr. iii. 60) were prepared ground upon which his preaching could sow the seed, in the one case of moral reaction, and in the other of hope. At first the greatness of his task appalled him: “I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling” (1 Cor. ii. 3). But he laid down for himself from the first the fixed principle that he would preach nothing but “Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Cor. ii. 2), compromising with neither the Jews, to whom “the word of the cross,” i.e., the doctrine of a crucified Messiah, was “a stumbling-block,” nor with the Gentile philosophers, to whom it was “foolishness” (1 Cor. i. 18, 23). It is probable that there were other preachers of the gospel at Corinth, especially among the Jews, since soon afterwards there was a Judaizing party; Paul's own converts seem to have been chiefly among the Gentiles (1 Cor. xii. 2). Some of them apparently belonged to the luxurious classes (1 Cor. vi. 11), a few of them to the influential and literary classes (1 Cor. i. 26); but the majority were from the lowest classes, the “foolish,”
the “weak,” the “base,” and the “despised” (1 Cor. i. 27, 28). And among the poor he lived a poor man's life. It was his special “glorying” (1 Cor. ix. 15; 2 Cor. xi. 10) that he would not be burdensome to any of them (1 Cor. ix. 12; 2 Cor. xi. 9, xii. 13). He worked at his trade of tent-making; but it was a hard sad life. His trade was precarious, and did not suffice for even his scanty needs (2 Cor. xi. 9). Beneath the enthusiasm of the preacher was the physical distress of hunger and cold and ill-usage (1 Cor. iv. 11). But in “all his distress and affliction” he was comforted by the good news which Timothy brought him of the steadfastness of the Thessalonian converts; the sense of depression which preceded it is indicated by the graphic phrase, “Now we live, if ye stand fast in the Lord” (1 Thess. iii. 6-8). With Timothy came Silas, both of them bringing help for his material needs from the communities of Macedonia (2 Cor. xi. 9; Acts xviii. 5; perhaps only from Philippi, Phil. iv. 15), and it was apparently after their coming that the active preaching began (2 Cor. i. 19) which roused the Jews to a more open hostility.
Of that hostility an interesting incident is recorded in the Acts (xviii. 12-16); but a more important fact in Paul's life was the sending of a letter, the earliest of all his letters which have come down to us, to the community which he had founded at Thessalonica. Its genuineness, though perhaps not beyond dispute, is almost certain. Part of it is a renewed exhortation to steadfastness in face of persecutions, to purity of life, and to brotherly love; part of it is apparently an answer to a question which had arisen among the converts when some of their number had died before the Parousia; and part of it is a general summary of their duties as members of a Christian community. It was probably followed, some months afterwards, by a second letter; but the genuineness of the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians has been much disputed. It proceeds upon the same general lines as the first, but appears to correct the misapprehensions which the first had caused as to the nearness of the Parousia.
After having lived probably about two years at Corinth Paul resolved, for reasons to which he himself gives no clue, to change the centre of his activity from Corinth to At Ephesus. Ephesus. Like Corinth, Ephesus was a great commercial city with a vast mixed population; it afforded a similar field for preaching, and it probably gave him increased facilities for communicating with the communities to which he was a spiritual father. It is clear from his epistles that his activity at Ephesus was on a much larger scale than the Acts of the Apostles indicate. Probably the author of the memoirs from which this part of the narrative in the Acts was compiled was not at this time with him; consequently there remain only fragmentary and for the most part unimportant anecdotes. His real life at this, time is vividly pictured in the Epistles to the Corinthians. It was a life of hardship and danger and anxiety: “Even unto this present hour we both hunger and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling-place; and we toil, working with our own hands; being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we endure; being defamed, we intreat; we are made as the filth of the world, the offscouring of all things even until now” (1 Cor. iv. 11-13). It was almost more than he could bear: “We were weighed down exceedingly, beyond our power, insomuch that we despaired even of life ” (2 Cor. i. 8). He went about like one condemned to die, upon whom the sentence might at any moment be carried out (2 Cor. i. 9). Once, at least, it seemed as though the end had actually come, for he had to fight with beasts in the arena (1 Cor. xv. 32); and once, if not on the same occasion, he was only saved by Prisca and Aquila, “who for his life laid down their own necks” (Rom. xvi. 4). But that which
filled a larger place in his thoughts than the “perils” of either the past or the present was the “care of all the churches.” He was the centre round which a system of communities revolved; and partly by letters, partly by sending his companions, and partly by personal visits, he kept himself informed of their varied concerns, and endeavoured to give a direction to their life.
? His most important relations were those with the communities of Asia Minor and of Corinth.
(A) It is probable that from Ephesus he went to the churches of Galatia. Before writing to the Galatians he had paid them at least two visits (Gal. i. 9, iv. 13), and, although it is conceivable that both visits may belong to his earlier journeys, yet the tone of his letter implies that no great interval had elapsed since his last visit (Gal. i. 6). The Acts mention that soon after his arrival at Ephesus he went to Syria, and returned “through the region of Phrygia and Galatia in order, stablishing all the disciples” (xviii. 23); and, although the motive which is assigned for that journey has been called in question, the journey itself is not inconsistent with the statements of his epistles. He appears to have been followed by vigorous opponents, who denied his authority as a Christian teacher, and who taught “another gospel” (Gal. i. 6, 7). He consequently wrote a letter, the Epistle to the Galatians, which, from its marked antithetical character, throws greater light upon the essential points of his preaching than any other which has come down to us. It is mainly directed to three points: first, to assert that what he preached had its origin in a direct revelation to himself, and was consequently of divine authority; secondly, to show that the blessings of the gospel were not limited to the seed of Abraham, but were given to all that believe; thirdly, to maintain that submission to the requirements of the law was not merely unnecessary, but an abandonment of the gospel. To this he adds the practical exhortation that they should not “use their freedom for an occasion to the flesh,” but “walk by the Spirit,” from whom their new life came.
It is also probable that during his stay at Ephesus several communities were formed in the western corner of Phrygia, in the valley of the Lycus, at Laodicea, Colossæ, and Hierapolis. If the testimony of the Epistle to the Colossians be accepted, they were formed, not by Paul himself, but by Epaphroditus (Col. i. 7, ii. 1, iv. 12, 13).
(B) His relations at this time with the community at Corinth may for the most part be clearly inferred from his epistles, but, since they are ignored in the Acts and since the words of the epistles are in some cases ambiguous, there are some points of comparative uncertainty. The following is the most probable account of them. (1) Corinth, soon after Paul left it, was visited by Apollos, who is described in the Acts as an Alexandrian Jew, “a learned man” and “mighty in the Scriptures ” (xviii. 24). Paul had “planted,” and Apollos “watered” (1 Cor. iii. 6); to the unrhetorical and unphilosophical gospel of the one was added the rhetorical and philosophical preaching of the other; they both preached in effect the same gospel, but between their followers there soon came to be a rivalry; and it is probably in contrast to Apollos that Paul subsequently protests that his own preaching was “not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (1 Cor. ii. 4). (2) It is probable that Paul then went to Corinth a second time; since his next visit was his third (2 Cor. xiii. 1, which, however, has sometimes been understood of an unfulfilled intention). (3) The Corinthians afterwards wrote to ask his advice on several points, viz., on marriage, on virgins, on things sacrificed to idols, on spiritual gifts, on the collection for the poor, and on his relations with Apollos (it is probable that the sections of Paul's letter which begin with the preposition περί, “concerning,” are the direct answers to the letter of the Corinthians). He also received news of the state of affairs at Corinth from the slaves of Chloe, who told him of the divisions in the community (1 Cor. i. 11), and from Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaicus, who not only gave him better news, but probably also brought him material help (1 Cor. xvi. 17). He probably also learnt something from Apollos, who
had come to him (1 Cor. xvi. 12). (4) He then sent Timothy to them (1 Cor. iv. 17, xvi. 10, 11), possibly by way of Macedonia, and with Erastus (Acts xix. 22). It has been thought that Timothy never reached Corinth (Neander, De Wette, Hausrath, partly on the ground that he would have been mentioned in 2 Cor. xii. 17); but, on the other hand, since his intended visit was mentioned in the first letter, his non-arrival would probably have been expressly accounted for in the second (Heinrici, Holtzmann). (5) Before Timothy reached Corinth Paul addressed to the Corinthians the first of the two letters which have come down to us. (6) Afterwards, possibly in consequence of the news which Timothy brought to him at Ephesus, he sent a second letter, which has not been preserved; this is an inference from 2 Cor. ii. 3, 4, vii. 8-12, where the description of a letter written “with many tears,” which made the Corinthians “sorry,” does not seem applicable to the existing 1 Cor. (Hausrath thinks that this intermediate letter is to be recognized in 2 Cor. x.-xiii.; but his hypothesis is rejected by Hilgenfeld, Beyschlag, Klöpper, Weizsäcker, Holtzmann, and others). (7) Then he sent Titus, probably with a view to the collection of alms for the poor Christians in Palestine (2 Cor. viii. 6, xii. 17, 18; 1 Cor. xvi. 1-3). (8) After this, without waiting for the return of Titus, he resolved to carry out the intention which he had for some time entertained, but which he had abandoned or postponed, of going again himself (1 Cor. xvi. 5, 6; 2 Cor. i. 15, 23; it may be noted that, while in the first epistle his intention was that which he actually carried out, viz., to go first to Macedonia and then to Corinth, in the second epistle the order of his intended route is altered).
An émeute which took place at Ephesus was, according to the Acts, the occasion if not the cause of his leaving that city; “a great door and effectual had been opened unto him” there (1 Cor. xvi. 9), and the growth of the new religion had caused an appreciable diminution in the trade of those who profited by the zeal of the worshippers at the temple (Acts xix. 23 to xx. 1). He went overland to Troas, where, as at Ephesus, “a door was opened unto him in the Lord” (2 Cor. ii. 12); but the thought of Corinth was stronger than the wish to make a new community. He was eager to meet Titus, and to hear of the In Macedonia again. effect of his now lost letter; and he went on into Macedonia. It is at this point of his life more than at any other that he reveals to us his inner history. At Ephesus he had been hunted almost to death; he had carried his life in his hand; and, “even when we were come into Macedonia, our flesh had no relief, but we were afflicted on every side; without were fightings, within were fears” (2 Cor. vii. 5). But, though the “outward man was decaying, yet the inward man was renewed day by day”; and the climax of splendid paradoxes which he wrote soon afterwards to the Corinthians (2 Cor. vi. 3-10) was not a rhetorical ideal, but the story of his actual life. But after Titus comes from Corinth. a time Titus came with news which gladdened Paul's heart (2 Cor. vii. 7). He had been well received at Corinth. The letter had made a deep impression. The admonitions had been listened to. The Corinthians had repented of their conduct. They had rid themselves of “him that did the wrong,” and Paul was “of good courage concerning them” (2 Cor. vii. 8-16). He then wrote the second of his extant letters to them, which was sent by Titus and the unknown “brother whose praise in the gospel is spread through all the churches,” and who had been elected by the churches to travel with Paul and his company (2 Cor. viii. 18, 19). It was probably in the course of this journey that he went beyond the borders of Macedonia into the neighbouring province of Illyricum At Corinth again. (Rom. xv. 19); but his real goal was Corinth. For the third time he went there, and, overcoming the scruples of his earlier visits, he was the guest of Gaius, in whose house the meetings of the community took place (Rom. xvi. 23).
Of the incidents of his visit no record remains; the Acts do not even mention it. But it was the culminating point of his intellectual activity; for in the course of it he wrote the greatest of all his letters, the Epistle to the Romans. And, as the body of that epistle throws an invaluable light upon the tenor of his preaching at this
time to the communities, among which that of Rome can hardly have been singular, so the salutations at the end, whether they be assumed to be an integral part of the whole or not, are a wonderful revelation of the breadth and intimacy of his relations with the individual members of those communities. But that which was as much in his mind as either the great question of the relation of faith to the law or the needs of individual converts in Collection of alms for Christian poor. the Christian communities was the collection of alms “for the poor among the saints that were at Jerusalem” (Rom. xv. 26). The communities of Palestine had probably never ceased to be what the first disciples were, communities of paupers in a pauperized country, and consequently dependent upon external help. And all through his missionary journeys Paul had remembered the injunction which had sealed his compact with “the three” (Gal. ii. 10). In Galatia (1 Cor. xvi. 1), among the poor and persecuted churches of Macedonia (Rom. xv. 26; 2 Cor. viii. 1-4), at Corinth, and in Achaia (1 Cor. xvi. 1-3; 2 Cor. viii. and ix.), the Gentiles who had been made partakers with the Jews in spiritual things had been successfully told that “they owed to them also to minister unto them in carnal things” (Rom. xv. 27). The contributions were evidently on a large scale; and Paul, to prevent the charges of malversation which were sometimes made against him, associated with himself “in the matter of this grace” a person chosen by the churches themselves (2 Cor. viii. 19-21, xii. 17, 18); some have thought that all the persons whose names are mentioned in Acts xx. 4 were delegates of their respective churches for this purpose.
He resolved to go to Jerusalem himself with this material testimony of the brotherly feeling of the Gentile communities, and then, “having no more any place” in Greece, to go to the new mission fields of Rome and the still farther West (Rom. xv. 23-25). He was not certain that his peace-offering would be acceptable to the Jewish Christians, and he had reason to apprehend violence from the Sets out for Jerusalem. unbelieving Jews. His departure from Corinth, like that from Ephesus, was probably hastened by danger to his life; and, instead of going direct to Jerusalem (an intention which seems to be implied in Rom. xv. 25), he and his companions took a circuitous route round the coasts of the Ægean Sea. His course lay through Philippi, Troas, Mitylene, Chios, and Miletus, where he took farewell of the elders of the community at Ephesus in an address of which some reminiscences are probably preserved in Acts xx. 18-34. Thence he went, by what was probably an ordinary route of commerce, to the Syrian coast, and at last he reached the Holy City.
The narrative which the Acts give of the incidents of his life there is full of grave difficulties. It leaves altogether in the background that which Paul himself mentions as his chief reason for making the visit; and it relates that he accepted the advice which was given him to avail himself of the custom of vicarious vows, in order to show, by his conformity to prevalent usages, that “there was no truth” in the reports that he had told the Gentiles “not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after the customs” (Acts xxi. 20-26). If this narrative be judged by the principles which Paul proclaims in the Epistle to the Galatians, it seems hardly credible. He had broken with Judaism, and his whole preaching was a preaching of the “righteousness which is of faith,” as an antithesis to, and as superseding, the “righteousness which is of the law.” But now he is represented as resting his defence on his conformity to the law, on his being “a Pharisee and the son of Pharisees,” who was called in question for the one point only that he believed, as other Pharisees believed, in the resurrection of the dead.
What colouring of a later time, derived from later controversies, has been spread over the original outline of the history cannot now be told. While on the one hand the difficulties of the narrative as it stands cannot be overlooked, yet on the other hand no faithful historian will undertake, in the absence of all collateral evidence, the task of discriminating that which belongs to a contemporary testimony and that which belongs to a subsequent recension. From this uncertainty the general concurrence of even adverse critics excepts the “we” section (Acts xxvii. 1, xxviii. 16); whoever may have been the author of those “we” sections, and whatever may be the amount of revision to which they have been subjected, they seem to have for their basis the diary or itinerary of a companion of Paul, and the account of the voyage contains at least the indisputable fact that Paul went to Rome.
But his life at Rome and all the rest of his history are enveloped in mists from which no single gleam of certain light emerges. Almost every writer, whether apologetic or sceptical, has some new hypothesis respecting it; and the number and variety of the hypotheses which have been already framed is a warning, until new evidence appears, against adding to their number. The preliminary questions which have to be solved before any hypothesis can be said to have a foundation in fact are themselves extremely intricate; and their solution depends upon considerations to which, in the absence of positive and determining evidence, different minds tend inevitably to give Genuineness of Pauline epistles. different interpretations. The chief of these preliminary questions is the genuineness of the epistles bearing Paul's name, which, if they be his, must be assigned to the later period of his life, viz., those to the Philippians, Ephesians, and Colossians, to Philemon, to Timothy, and to Titus. As these epistles do not stand or fall together, but give rise in each case to separate discussion, the theories vary according as they are severally thought to be genuine or false. The least disputed is the Epistle to Philemon; but it is also the least fruitful in either doctrine or biographical details. Next to it in the order of general acceptance is the Epistle to the Philippians. The Epistles to the Ephesians and to the Colossians have given rise to disputes which cannot easily be settled in the absence of collateral evidence, since they mainly turn partly on the historical probability of the rapid growth in those communities of certain forms of theological speculation, and partly on the psychological probability of the almost sudden development in Paul's own mind of new methods of conceiving and presenting Christian doctrine. The pastoral epistles, viz., those to Timothy and to Titus, have given rise to still graver questions, and are probably even less defensible.
Difficulties connected with later life. But, even if this preliminary question of the genuineness of the several epistles be decided in each instance in the affirmative, there remains the further question whether they or any of them belong to the period of Paul's imprisonment at Rome, and, if so, what they imply as to his history. It is held by many writers that they all belong to an earlier period of his life, especially to his stay at Cæsarea (Acts xxiv. 23, 27). It is held by other writers that they were all sent from Rome, and with some such writers it has become almost an article of faith that he was imprisoned there not once but twice. It is sometimes further supposed that in the interval between the first and second imprisonments he made his intended journey to Spain (Rom. xv. 24, which is apparently regarded as an accomplished fact by the author of the Muratorian fragment); and that either before or after his journey to Spain he visited again the communities of the Ægean seaboard which are mentioned in the pastoral epistles.
The place and manner and occasion of his death are not less uncertain than the facts of his later life. The
only fragment of approximately contemporary evidence is a vague and rhetorical passage in the letter of Clement of Rome (c. 5): “Paul . . . having taught the whole world righteousness, and having come to the goal of the West (ἐπὶ τὸ τέρμα τῆς δύσεως), and having borne witness (μαρτυρήσας) before the rulers, so was released from the world and went to the Holy Place, having become the greatest example of patience.” The two material points in this passage, (1) “the limit of the West,” (2) “having borne witness,” are fruitful sources of controversy. The one may mean either Rome or Spain, the other may mean either “having testified” or “having suffered martyrdom.” It is not until towards the end of the 2d century, after many causes had operated both to create and to crush traditions, that mention is made of Paul as having suffered about the same time as Peter at Rome; but the credibility of the assertion is weakened by its connexion in the same sentence with the erroneous statement that Peter and Paul went to Italy together after having founded the church at Corinth (Dionysius of Corinth, quoted by Eusebius, H. E., ii. 25). A Roman presbyter named Gaius speaks, a few years later, of the martyr-tombs of the two apostles being visible at Rome (quoted by Eusebius, l. c.); but neither this testimony nor that of Tertullian (De præser. 36, Scorp. 15, Adv. Marc. iv. 5) is sufficient to establish more than the general probability that Paul suffered martyrdom. But there is no warrant for going beyond this, as almost all Paul's biographers have done, and finding an actual date for his martyrdom in the so-called Neronian persecution of 64 A.D.
The chronology of the rest of his life is as uncertain as the date of his death. We have no means of knowing when he was born, or how long he lived, or at what dates the several events of his life took place. The nearest approach to a fixed point from which the dates of some events may be calculated is that of the death of Festus, which may probably, though by no means certainly, be placed in 62 A.D.; even if this date were certainly known, new evidence would be required to determine the length of time during which he held office; all that can or could be said is that Paul was sent to Rome some time before the death of Festus in 62 A.D. How widely opinions differ as to the rest of the chronology may be seen by a reference to the chronological table which is given by Meyer in the introduction to his Commentary on the Acts, and after him by Farrar, St Paul, vol. ii. p. 624.
? Of his personality he himself tells us as much as need be known when he quotes the adverse remarks of his opponents at Corinth: “his letters, they say, are weighty and strong; but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account” (2 Cor. x. 10). The Christian romance-writer elaborated the picture, of which some traits may have come to him from tradition: “a man small in stature, bald-headed, bow-legged, stout, close-browed, with a slightly prominent nose, full of grace; for at one time he seemed like a man, at another time he had the face of an angel” (“Acta Pauli et Theclæ,” c. 3, ap. Tischendorf, Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha, p. 41); and the pagan caricaturist speaks of him in similar terms, as “bald in front, with a slightly prominent nose, who had taken an aerial journey
into the third heaven” (pseudo-Lucian, Philopatris, c. 12). Some early representations of him on gilded glasses and sarcophagi still remain; accounts of them will be found in Smith and Cheetham, Dict. Chr. Ant., vol. ii. p. 1621; Schultze, Die Katakomben, Leipsic, 1882, p. 149. That he was sometimes stricken down by illness is clear from Gal. iv. 13 (some have thought also from 2 Cor. ii. 4); and at his moments of greatest exaltation “there was given to him a stake in the flesh . . . that he should not be exalted overmuch” (2 Cor. xii. 7). The nature of this special weakness has given rise to many conjectures; the most probable is that it was one of those obscure nervous disorders which are allied to epilepsy and sometimes mistaken for it.
Pseudonymous writings. Of the writings which are ascribed to him in the current lists of the canonical books of the New Testament, and also of the Epistle to the Hebrews, accounts will be found in separate articles under their respective titles. The writings which are ascribed to him outside the canon, and which are all unquestionably pseudonymous, are the following. (1) The Epistle to the Laodiceans. This is supposed to be the letter mentioned in Col. iv. 16; it has been recognized as apocryphal from early times (Jer., Catal. script. eccl., c. 5; Theodoret on Coloss. iv. 16, &c.), but it is found in many Latin MSS. of the New Testament. The text, which is a cento from genuine Pauline epistles, will be found, e.g., in Anger, Ueber den Laodicenerbrief, Leipsic, 1843; Lightfoot, Colossians, p. 274, who also gives a convenient summary of the views which have been held respecting the letter which is actually mentioned. (2) A Third Epistle to the Corinthians, i.e., the letter mentioned in 1 Cor. v. 9. This is found in an Armenian version, together with an equally apocryphal letter of the Corinthians to Paul; it has been several times printed, the best edition of it being that of Aucher, Armenian and English Grammar, Venice, 1819, p. 183. An English translation will be found in Stanley, Epistles of St Paul to the Corinthians, p. 593. (3) Letters between Paul and Seneca. These are first mentioned by Jerome, Catal. script. eccles., c. 12, and Augustine, Epist. 54(153), ad Macedonium, and have given rise to interesting discussions as to the possibility of personal relations having actually existed between the two men. The letters will be found in most editions of Seneca, e.g., ed. Hasse, vol. iii. 476; for the questions which have been raised concerning them reference may conveniently be made to Funk, “Der Briefwechsel des Paulus mit Seneca,” in the Theol. Quartalschr., Tübingen, 1867, p. 602, and Lightfoot, Philippians, p. 327. Besides these apocryphal letters there are several apocryphal works which profess to add to our information respecting his life; the most important of these are (1) The Acts of Peter and Paul, (2) The Acts of Paul and Thecla, (3) The Apocalypse of Paul; the first two are printed in Tischendorf's Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha, pp. 1, 40, the third in his Apocalypses Mosis, Esræ, Pauli, p. 34; all three will be found in an English version in The Apocryphal Gospels, Acts, and Revelations, translated by A. Walker, Edinburgh, 1870; an elaborate and trustworthy account of them will appear in the not yet completed work of R. A. Lipsius, Die apokryphen Apostelgeschichten und Apostellegenden.
Pauline Theology.
Difficulties attaching to his theology. The consideration of Paul's theology is rendered difficult by several circumstances. Some of these circumstances attach to the theology itself. (1) It has two elements, the logical and the mystical, which are seldom altogether separable from each other; it cannot be stated in a consecutive series of syllogisms, nor can any adequate view of it leave out of sight elements which belong to another order of thought than that within which the modern world ordinarily moves. (2) He belonged to an age in which abstract conceptions had a greater power over men's minds than they have now; the extreme tendency of that feature of his age is seen in Gnosticism, which not only gave abstract ideas an independent existence but endowed them with personality; and, although he was not a Gnostic, yet he lived at a time at which Gnosticism was conceivable, and some of his own expressions are not out of harmony with it. (3) Since he was in some instances attaching new meanings to words which were already in use, and since in such a case it is difficult for even the most rigidly logical writer to keep the new meaning entirely distinct from the old, it is natural to find that a writer of Paul's temperament, especially when writing as he did under different circumstances and to different classes of people, should sometimes use the same word in different senses. Other circumstances arise from the manner in which his theology
has been treated. (4) It has proved to be difficult for most writers to avoid attaching to some of the words which he uses, and which are also used by writers of other parts of the New Testament, ideas which may be true in themselves, and which were probably in the minds of those other writers, but which do not appear to have entered into Paul's own system of thought. (5) It has proved to be difficult for most writers to keep Paul's own ideas clear from their later accretions. Those ideas form the basis alike of Augustinianism, of Thomism, and of Lutheranism; and, since one or other of these systems of theology, or some modification of it, forms part of the education of most theological students, and is embodied in the catechism or confession with whose words, if not always with their meaning, every member of a Christian community is more or less familiar, it is not unnatural to find that almost all writers have approached the subject with a certain amount of prepossession in favour of some particular interpretation or combination of Paul's phrases. (6) Another kind of difficulty arises from the very limited extent to which it is possible to apply to his theology the method of comparison. If it were possible to recover a sufficient amount of current Palestinian theology for the purpose, any exposition of Paul's theology would begin by setting forth the main points of the system of ideas in which he was educated, and would proceed to show how far they were affected by the new elements which were introduced into that system by his conversion. Much light is thrown upon some points by the large knowledge of current Alexandrian theology which may be obtained from Philo; but, although Palestinian and Alexandrian theology had many elements in common, they seem to have differed most of all in those respects in which a knowledge of the former would have thrown light upon Paul. It becomes necessary, in the absence of most of the materials which would have been valuable for comparison, to content ourselves with putting together the predicates which he attaches to the several terms which he employs, with disentangling the winding threads of his arguments, and with endeavouring to ascertain what conceptions will best account for the several groups of his varying metaphors. The danger of stating the results of these processes in a systematic form is partly that, without the checks and side-lights which arc afforded by a knowledge of their antecedents and surroundings, any such statement is liable to have a false perspective, by making prominent that which was subordinate and giving to unimportant phrases a disproportionate value; and partly that Paul's own variety and complexity of expression reflect the variety and complexity of the spiritual truths with which he deals, and for which any single form of statement is inadequate.
Sin, the fundamental conception. The most fundamental conception, both historically in the development of Paul's own thought, and logically as the ground from which the rest of his theology may be deduced, is that of sin. The word is used sometimes to denote the actual doing of a wrong action, or the consciousness of having done it, and sometimes to denote the tendency to do such actions, or the quality of such actions in the abstract. This tendency or quality is conceived as a quasi-personal being, which dwells in men (Rom. vii. 20), which exercises dominion over them (Rom. v. 21, vi. 12, 14), to which they are slaves (Rom. vi. 13, 17 sq. , vii. 14), which pays them wages (Rom. vi. 23), which imposes its law upon them (Rom. vii. 23, 25, viii. 2), which keeps them shut up in prison (Gal. iii. 22), or which, in less metaphorical language, causes evil desires (Rom. vii. 8). It is not precisely defined, but, since it is the opposite of obedience (Rom. vi. 16), its essence may be regarded as disobedience. No such definition was at the time necessary, for neither in his belief in the existence of sin nor in his conception of its nature did he differ from the great mass of his countrymen. His peculiarity was that he both believed in its universality and made that fact of its universality the basis of his teaching. In the early chapters of the Epistle to the Romans he rests the proof of the fact on an appeal to common experience. But the proof is rather of rhetorical than of logical validity. It was easy in addressing a congregation of Gentiles to point to the general and deep depravity of the society which surrounded them, and in addressing Jews not only to show that they fell short of their own standard, but also to clench the argument by an appeal to Scripture, which declared that “there is none righteous, no not one” (Ps. xiv. 1; Rom. iii. 10; cf. Gal. iii. 22). But the general prevalence of depravity did not show its universality, and the appeal to Scripture was not convincing to a Gentile. These arguments are not further insisted on, and a more cogent proof is found in the fact of the universality of death; for it was a fixed Jewish belief that “God created man to be immortal” (Wisd. ii. 23), and the fact that all men died showed that all men sinned (Rom. v. 12). Nor was even this proof sufficient. What had to be shown, for the purposes of his further arguments, was not merely that sin was universal but that it was so inevitably. This is done by showing that sin is inseparable from human nature on two grounds, the relation of which to each other is neither clear in itself nor clearly explained by Paul. (1) The one is that mankind as a race were involved in the sin of Adam (Rom. v. 12-19; 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22). “Through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners” (Rom. v. 19) is
an alternative expression with “through the trespass of the one the many died” (Rom. v. 15). But as to the mode in which the “disobedience” or “trespass” of Adam affected the whole human race no information is given, and the question has been one of the chief puzzles of Christian theology in all ages. It is a point upon which, more than perhaps upon any other, light would be thrown by a fuller knowledge of contemporary Jewish theology (cf. Ecclesiasticus, xxv. 24, “of the woman came the beginning of sin and through her we all die”; the question is complicated by the mention of Adam in 1 Cor. xv. 47 as “of the earth, earthy,” and apparently corruptible by virtue of his earthy nature, without reference to his trangression). (2) The second ground is at once more prominent and more intelligible to a modern mind. It is that human nature consists of two elements, and that one of them, as Paul gathered from his own experience, which he took to be identical in this respect with the universal experience of mankind, is constantly suggesting sinful actions. Whether it does so because it is in itself essentially sinful, or because sin has effected a permanent lodgment in it, is a question which has been vigorously debated, and which is the more difficult of solution because some of Paul's expressions appear to favour the former view and some the latter. To this element of human nature he gives the name “flesh,” apparently including under it not only the material body but also, and more especially, the affections and desires which spring out of the body, such as love and hate, jealousy and anger; its tendency or “mind” (φρόνημα) is always in antagonism at once to the higher element or “spirit” (Gal. v. 17) and to the law of God, so that “they that are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. viii. 7, 8).
So far, in his conception of the dualism of human nature, of the inevitable tendency of the lower part to prevail over the higher, and of the consequent universality of wrongdoing, Paul did not differ from the majority of those who have at any time reflected either upon themselves or upon mankind. The idea of sin was common to him with the Stoics. But it was impossible for him to stop where the Stoics stopped, at the exhortation to men to live by the rule of what was highest in them, and so to “follow God.” For he was not a philosopher but a theologian; he was not a “citizen of the world” but a “Hebrew of the Hebrews.” God had stood to his race in an especially close relation; He had given it a code of laws, and that code of laws was to a Jewish theologian the measure not only of duty but of truth. How was the conception of the universality of sin consistent with the existence of “statutes” and “judgments, which if a man do he shall live in them” (Lev. xviii. 5, quoted in Rom. x. 5; Gal. iii. 12)? That statement of Scripture clearly implied, and most of his countrymen believed, that the perfect observance of the law was possible, and that so a man might be “righteous before God.”
His conception of the law. It was at this point that he broke off, not only from the majority of his countrymen, but from his own early beliefs. The thought came to him with the overwhelming power of a direct revelation, that the law not only had not been, but could not be, perfectly observed. In one sense he seems to have held even to the end of his life that there was “a righteousness that is in the law” (Phil. iii. 6). But in another and truer sense such a righteousness was impossible. “By the works of the law shall no flesh be justified” (Gal. ii. 16), and that not only in fact but of necessity. For the law went deeper than was commonly supposed. It touched not only the outer but also the inner life, and in doing so it inevitably failed from the very constitution of human nature. The existence in that nature of the “fleshly” element was of itself a constant breach of the law. The “mind,” the “inner man,” might delight in the law of God, but the “flesh,” even if it were not inherently sinful, was in perpetual “captivity to the law of sin.” And for this state of things the law had no remedy. On the one hand, it was external to men; it could not give them the force of a new life (ζωοποιῆσαι, Gal. iii. 21). On the other hand, the flesh was too strong for it (Rom. viii. 3). Its failure had been foreseen and provided for. The blessing of which, before the law, God had spoken to Abraham was to come, not by observance of the law, but as the result of “promise” on the part of God, and of “faith” on the part of men (Rom. iv. 13-14; Gal. iii. 11-18). And when the question naturally presented itself, Why, if the law was an inevitable and predestined failure, it had been given at all? two answers suggested themselves; the one was that “it was added because of transgressions,” i.e., probably to make men's sins and their failure to avoid them more apparent (Gal. iii. 19), since “through the law came the knowledge of sin” (Rom. iii. 20); the other was that the law came in “that the trespass might abound” (Rom. v. 20), and that so “through the commandment sin might
become exceeding sinful” (Rom. vii. 13; so 1 Cor. xv. 56, “the strength of sin is the law”). It was consequently a jailer and “tutor,” keeping men under restraint and discipline, until they were ready for that which God had purposed to give them in due time (Gal. iii. 23, 24).
For “in due season, when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son,” “in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin,” to do that which “the law could not do” (Rom. v. 6, viii. 3; Gal. iv. 4). This was a “free gift” of God (Rom. iii. 24, v. 15). The constant expression for it, and for the sum of the blessings which flow from it, is “grace” or “favour” (χάρις), a term which was already becoming specialized in an analogous sense in Hellenistic Greek (e.g., Wisd. iii. 9, iv. 15, “grace and mercy is to His saints”; Philo, vol. i. p. 102, ed. Mang., “the beginning of creation . . . is the goodness and grace of God”). Two corollaries followed from it; in the first place, the law, having failed, was superseded, and, so far from the performance of its requirements being necessary to ensure peace with God, “if ye receive circumcision, Christ will profit you nothing” (Gal. v. 2); in the second place, the distinction between Jew and Gentile was abolished, “for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. iii. 28).
? This was “the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts xx. 24), which it was his special mission to preach; he speaks of it sometimes as “my gospel” (Rom. ii. 16, xvi. 25), or the “gospel of the uncircumcision” (Gal. ii. 7), as well as in a special sense “the gospel of God” (Rom. i. 1, xv. 16; 2 Cor. xi. 7; 1 Thess. ii. 2, 8, 9), or “the gospel of Christ” (Rom. i. 9, xv. 19; 1 Cor. ix. 12, 18; 2 Cor. ii. 12, ix. 13, x. 14; Gal. i. 7; Phil. i. 27; 1 Thess. iii. 2; 2 Thess. i. 8), or “the gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Cor. iv. 4); and elsewhere he speaks of it as his special “secret” or “mystery” (Rom. xvi. 25; 1 Cor. ii. 1 [Codd. ℵ, A, C], and more emphatically in the later epistles, Eph. i. 9, iii. 3-9, vi. 19, Col. i. 26, 27; iv. 3).
? Of this gospel Christ is the beginning and the end: theology and Christology are blended into one. Sometimes He is represented as having been “sent forth” (Rom. viii. 3), or “set forth” (Rom. iii. 25), or “given up” (Rom. viii. 32), by God; sometimes, on the other hand, it is said that He “gave Himself” (Gal. i. 4), or “gave Himself up” (Gal. ii. 20; Eph. v. 2), or “made Himself poor” (2 Cor. viii. 9), or “emptied Himself” (Phil. ii. 7-8). The act by which He accomplished what He designed or was designed to do was His death on the cross (Rom. v. 6, 8, vi. 10, viii. 34, xiv. 15; 1 Cor. viii. 11, xv. 3; 2 Cor. v. 14, 15; Gal. ii. 21; 1 Thess. v. 10). The “blood” of Christ (Rom. iii. 25, v. 9; 1 Cor. xi. 25; Eph. i. 7, ii. 13; Col. i. [14], 20), the “cross” of Christ (1 Cor. i. 17; Gal. v. 11, vi. 12, 14; Phil. ii. 8, iii. 18; Eph. ii. 16; Col. i. 20, ii. 14), “Christ crucified” (1 Cor. i. 23, ii. 2; Gal. iii. 1), are therefore used as concise symbolical expressions for His entire work. The act by which the completion of that work was ratified and made manifest was His resurrection from the dead (Rom. i. 4; cf. Acts xiii. 33, 34, xvii. 31); hence “He was delivered up for our offences and raised again for our justification” (Rom. iv. 25). The resurrection is thus the guarantee of the truth of the gospel; without it there is no certainty that God has for given us; “if Christ be not risen then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain” (1 Cor. xv. 14). What quality there was in the death of Christ which gave it efficacy is probably indicated in Rom. v. 19, Phil. ii. 8, where it is spoken of as an act of “obedience.” The precise force of the expressions, “being made a curse for us” (Gal. iii. 13), “He made Him to be sin for us” (2 Cor. v. 21), which probably also refer to the efficacious quality of the death of Christ, is less obvious.
Christ's death. The death of Christ was a death on our behalf (ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν, Rom. v. 6, 8, viii. 32, xiv. 15; 1 Cor. i. 13 [Codd. ℵ, A, C], [v. 7], xi. 24; 2 Cor. v. 15; Gal. ii. 20, iii. 13; 1 Thess. v. 10 [Codd. ℵ, B]; cf. Eph. v. 25), or on behalf of our sins (1 Cor. xv. 3; Gal. i. 4 [Cod. B]), or on our account (περὶ ἡμῶν, 1 Cor. i. 13 [Codd. B, D]; 1 Thess. v. 10 [Codd. A, D]), or on account of our sins (Gal. i. 4 [Codd. ℵ, A, D]), or of sin in general (Rom. viii. 3), or because of us or our transgressions (διὰ τὰ παραπτώματα, δι’ αὐτόν, Rom. iv. 25; 1 Cor. viii. 11; cf. 2 Cor. viii. 9). These general expressions are expanded into more explicit statements in various ways; for the nature of the work which the death of Christ effected was capable of being regarded from several points of view, nor was any one metaphor or form of words adequate to express all its relations either to God or to mankind.
(1) The nature of Christ's work is sometimes expressed in language which is relative to the idea of sacrifice; and it is conceivable that, if the contemporary conception of sacrifice were better known to us, most of the other expressions would be found to be relative to the ideas which were connected by that of sacrifice (1 Cor. v. 7, “Christ our passover is sacrificed” [some MSS. add “for us”]; the uncertain expression ἱλαστήριον, Rom. iii. 25, probably belongs to
the same group of ideas; the expressions with ὑπέρ and περί, which have been quoted above, are sometimes regarded as being in all cases primarily sacrificial).
(2) It is sometimes expressed in language which is relative to the conception of sin as rebellion or enmity against God; what God effected through Christ was a reconciliation (καταλλαγή, Rom. v. 10, 11; 2 Cor. v. 18, 19), or peace (Rom. v. 1; Eph. ii. 14; hence the special force of the salutation “Grace to you and peace from God,” which is prefixed to every epistle).
(3) It is sometimes expressed in language which is relative to the idea of deliverance or “salvation” (σώζεσθαι, σωτηρία, Rom. i. 16, v. 9, and in all the epistles; ἀπολύτρωσις, Rom. iii. 24; 1 Cor. i. 30; Eph. i. 7; Col. i. 14). The idea was originally Messianic, and referred to national deliverance from foreign oppression; but it had been raised into a higher sphere of thought, that from which men are saved being conceived to be the “wrath” of God, i.e., His punishment of sin (Rom. v. 9).
(4) It is sometimes expressed in language which is relative to the idea of purchasing a slave (1 Cor. vi. 20, vii. 23, and probably Rom. xiv. 8, 9). That to which men were in bondage was the law (Gal. iv. 5), which cursed those who did not fully obey it (Gal. iii. 10, 13), or the “elements of the universe” (Gal. iv. 3, 9), i.e., the sun and stars and other material things (cf. Wisd. xiii. 2), which are spoken of in a later epistle as “principalities and powers” over which Christ “triumphed” by rising from the dead (Col. ii. 15). Hence, probably, Paul's own description of himself as the “slave of Jesus Christ” (Rom. i. 1).
(5) It is sometimes expressed in language which is relative to the conception of God as the supreme lawgiver and judge. Sin is regarded as affording ground for a charge (ἔγκλημα, cf. Rom. viii. 33) against the sinner, and, sin being universal, all the world was liable to the judgment of God (Rom. iii. 19). But it was possible for the Judge, for certain reasons which He considered valid, i.e., on account of the sufficient exhibition or declaration of His righteousness in the death of Christ, not to take account of the offences charged, but to acquit (δικαιοῦν) instead of pronouncing sentence of condemnation; by this acquittal the person acquitted was placed in the position of one against whom no charge existed (δίκαιοι κατασταθήσονται, Rom. v. 19); and, since the acquittal might be regarded in its different relations as a consequence of either the favour of God, or the death of Christ, or the trust in God which made it valid for the individual, men are said in various passages to be acquitted by God's favour (Rom. iii. 24), or by the blood of Christ (Rom. v. 9; cf. Gal. ii. 17), or by faith (Rom. iii. 28, v. 1; Gal. iii. 8, 24).
(6) It is sometimes expressed in language which is relative to the conception of a mystical union between Christ and the human race, or part of it, of such a kind that when He died men also died, and that when He rose again they also rose with Him (Rom. vi. 3-10; Gal. ii. 20; and also in the later epistles. Eph. ii. 5, 6; Col ii. 12, iii. 3).
Some of these expressions are occasionally combined; for example, the ideas of acquittal and reconciliation (Rom. v. 1; 2 Cor. v. 19), those of acquittal and deliverance (Rom. v. 9), and those of sacrifice, in which Christ is conceived as dying on men's behalf, and of mystical union in which they die with Him (2 Cor. v. 14). The facts both of their variety and of their combination afford a strong argument against treating any one mode of expression as though it stood alone and gathered up into a single metaphor the whole of the new relations of God to men.
Christ's work. The effect of Christ's work upon mankind is also expressed in various ways. Sometimes it is expressed under the form of an imparted attribute, sometimes under that of a new condition of life or a new relation to God. It is most frequently spoken of as (1) righteousness, or (2) life, or (3) sonship. (1) When spoken of as righteousness, it is sometimes said to have been given to men (Rom. v. 17); sometimes it is reckoned to them or placed to their account (Rom. iv. 6, 11; Gal. iii. 6); sometimes it is a power to which they have become, or ought to become, subject (Rom. vi. 18, x. 3); sometimes it is regarded as a quality which men already possess by virtue of Christ's death (Rom. v. 17); sometimes it is still to be attained (Rom. iv. 24, vi. 16; Gal. v. 5). (2) When spoken of as life, the conception also seems to vary between that of a life which men have already received, or into which they have already entered (Rom. vi. 4, viii. 10), and that of a life which is future (Rom. v. 17; Gal. vi. 8; cf. Col. iii. 3, 4, where it is conceived as being now
“hid with Christ in God,” to be manifested at His coming); and similarly sometimes men are regarded as having already died with Christ (Rom. vi. 6-11), and sometimes the Christian's life is regarded as a prolonged act of dying in the “mortification” of the “deeds of the body” (Rom. viii. 13; cf. Col. iii. 5). (3) When spoken of as sonship, the conception also varies between that of a perfected and that of a still future “adoption”; on the one hand “we have received a spirit of adoption” (Rom. viii. 15), so that we are “all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus” (Gal. iii. 26), and on the other hand we are still “waiting for the adoption, the deliverance of our body” (Rom. viii. 23).
For, although Christ died for all men (Rom. v. 18; 2 Cor. v. 14, 15; so in the pastoral epistles, 1 Tim. ii. 4, 6; Tit. ii. 11), it does not therefore follow that all men are at once in full possession of the benefits which His death made possible to them. Their righteousness Faith a state of mind. or life or sonship is rather potential than actual. It becomes actual by the co-operation of their own mind and will, that is, by the continuous existence in them of the state of mind called trust or “faith.” For this view of the place of trust or “faith” St Paul finds support, and may perhaps have found the original suggestion, in the Old Testament. Abraham had believed that God both could and would perform His promises, and this belief “was counted to him as righteousness” (Gen. xv. 6; Rom. iv. 3; Gal. iii. 6); Habakkuk had proclaimed that “the just shall live as a consequence of his faith” (Hab. ii. 4; Rom. i. 17; Gal. iii. 11); and another prophet had said, “whosoever believeth in Him shall not be put to shame” (Rom. ix. 33, x. 11). The object of this trust or faith is variously stated to be “Him that raised Jesus our Lord from the dead” (Rom. iv. 24; x. 9), “Him that justifieth the ungodly” (Rom. iv. 5), or “Jesus Christ” (Rom. iii. 22; Gal. ii. 16, &c.), or His “blood” (Rom. iii. 25 probably). Hence the statement, that the gospel is “the power of God unto salvation,” is limited by the condition “to every one that believeth” (Rom. i. 16). Hence, also, since this state of mind is that by which the death of Christ becomes of value to the individual, while he is said on the one hand to be acquitted or justified by Christ's blood (Rom. v. 9), he is said on the other hand to be acquitted or justified as a result of his faith (Rom. v. 1). Hence, also, the new relation of “righteousness” in which men stand to God,—while on the one hand it is “God's righteousness,” as being a relation which is established by His favour and not by their merit (Rom. i. 17, iii. 21, 22, v. 17), it is on the other hand a “righteousness which results from faith” (ἡ ἐκ πίστεως δικαιοσύνη, Rom. x. 6). From another point of view it is an act of obedience or state of submission (Rom. i. 5, vi. 16, 17, x. 16, xvi. 19, 26; 2 Cor. x. 5, 6), being the acceptance by men of God's free gift as distinguished from “seeking to establish their own righteousness,” i.e., to attain to a freedom from sin which their fleshly nature renders impossible (Rom. x. 3).
It is obvious that such a doctrine as that of acquittal from the guilt of wrongdoing by virtue of an act or state of mind, instead of by virtue of a course of conduct, is “antinomian,” not merely in the sense that it supersedes the law of Moses, but also because it appears to supersede the natural law of morality. It was no wonder that some men should infer, and even attribute to Paul himself the inference, “Let us do evil that good may come” (Rom. iii. 8). The objection was no doubt felt to be real, inasmuch as it is more than once stated and receives more than one answer. (1) One of the answers which Paul gives to it (Rom. vi. 15 sq.) is due to his conception of both sin and righteousness as external forces. He had regarded sinful acts as the effects of the dominion of a real power residing within men and compelling them to do its will. He now points out that, to those who believe, this dominion is at an end. The believer is not only acquitted from the guilt of sin, but also emancipated from its slavery. He has become a slave to righteousness or to God (Rom. vi. 18, 22). This is stated partly as a fact and partly as a ground of obligation (Rom. vi. 18, 19); and the disregard of the obligation, or “building up again those things which I destroyed,” brings a man again under the cognizance of God's law as a transgressor (Gal. ii. 18). (2) Another answer is due to the conception which has been mentioned above of the mystical union between Christ and mankind. This also is stated partly as a fact and partly as a ground of obligation. In one sense the believer has already died with Christ and risen with Him: “our old man was crucified with Him” (Rom. vi. 6), “they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh” (Gal. v. 24), “the life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Gal. ii. 20); so that on the one hand Christ is said to be in the believer (2 Cor. xiii. 5), and on the other hand the believer is said to be “in Christ.” Whichever mode of conceiving the Christian life be adopted, a life of sin is impossible to it: “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature” (2 Cor. v. 17), and the “new man” which thus comes
into being “is created after God in righteousness and true holiness” (Eph. iv. 24). In another sense this mystical dying with Christ and living with Him is rather an ideal towards which the believer must be continually striving; it affords a motive for his resisting the tendency to sin: “reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus our Lord; let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body” (Rom. vi. 11, 12). (3) A third answer, which, though less directly given, is even more constantly implied, is that faith is followed by, if it be not coincident with, an immediate operation of God upon the soul which becomes for it a new moral power. For, although in the “natural man” there is an element, “the flesh,” over which sin has such an especial dominion as to be said to dwell in it, there is also another element, the “mind” (νοῦς), or “spirit” (πνεῦμα), or “inner man” (ὁ ἔσω ἄνθρωπος), which is the slave, not of the “law of sin,” but of the “law of God.” Against this the flesh wages a successful war and “brings it into captivity to the law of sin” (Rom. vii. 22-25). The result is that the mind may become “reprobate” (ἀδόκιμος, Rom. i. 28; cf. Col. ii. 18, where the “mind” is so completely under the dominion of the flesh as to be called “the mind of the flesh”), or it may become defiled and ultimately lost (2 Cor. vii. 1; 1 Cor. v. 5). It is upon this part of man's nature that God works. By means of faith (Gal. iii. 14), or as a result of faith (Gal. iii. 2, v. 5), God gives and men receive His own Spirit (1 Thess. iv. 8) or the Spirit of Christ (Rom. viii. 10; Gal. iv. 6; Phil. i. 19). Some times the Spirit of God is said to “dwell in” them (Rom. viii. 9; 1 Cor. iii. 16), and once the closeness of the union is expressed by the still stronger metaphor of a marriage: “he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit” (1 Cor. vi. 17). This indwelling of, or union with, the Spirit is for the believer a new life; Christ has become for him “a life-giving spirit” (1 Cor. xv. 45); this is a fact of his spiritual nature which will in due time be manifest even in the quickening of his mortal body (Rom. viii. 11), but in the meantime it becomes, like the facts of emancipation from sin and of union with Christ, a ground of moral obligation. “If we live by the Spirit, by the Spirit also let us walk” (Gal. v. 25); and the freedom from spiritual death is conditional on the “mortifying of the deeds of the body” (Rom. viii. 13).
It will be evident that, although Paul nowhere defines his conception of faith, he did not conceive it as a mere intellectual assent; it was a complete self-surrender to God (Gal. ii. 20), and on its human side it showed its activity in the great ethical principle of “love,” which is the sum of a man's duties to his fellowmen (Gal. v. 6, 14).
Eschatological function of faith. But, as his conception of the effects of Christ's death, and of the nature of faith by which these effects are appropriated by the individual, has, so far as the present life is concerned, chiefly a moral aspect, and connects itself with practical duties, so, on the other hand, it comprehends the whole physical and spiritual being of man, and connects itself with his eschatology. The resurrection of Christ is not merely the type of moral resurrection from sin to holiness, but at once the type and the cause and the pledge of the actual resurrection of the body. “If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also that are fallen asleep in Jesus will God bring with Him” (1 Thess. iv. 14); “He which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also with Jesus” (2 Cor. iv. 14); “if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him” (Rom. vi. 8). Sometimes the new life of the body is viewed in relation to the mystical union of the believer with Christ: “we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus sake, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh” (2 Cor. iv. 11); and it follows from the conception of the “last Adam” as a “life-giving spirit” that, “as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly” (1 Cor. xv. 49; this will follow from the context, even if with most uncial MSS. we read “let us also bear”). Sometimes this new life is viewed as a result of the present indwelling of the Spirit: “if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, He that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies through” (or “because of”) “His Spirit that dwelleth in you” (Rom. viii. 11). This redemption or deliverance of the body from the “bondage of corruption” is the completion of the “adoption,” “the liberty of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. viii. 21, 23); but the nature of the new body is not clearly explained. Sometimes the language seems to imply that this mortal body will be “quickened” or “transformed” (Rom. viii. 11; Phil. iii. 21), and the analogy afforded is that of a seed which after being buried reappears in a new form (1 Cor. xv. 36, 37); sometimes, on the
other hand, it seems to be implied that the earthly body will be dissolved, and that what awaits us is a new body, “a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Cor. v. 1).
This change will come to all believers at the “advent” (παρουσία, 1 Cor. [i. 9, Cod. D.] xv. 23; 1 Thess. ii. 19, &c.), or “revelation” (ἀποκάλυψις, 1 Cor. i. 7; 2 Thess. i. 7), or “manifestation” (ἐπιφάνεια, 2 Thess. ii. 8, and afterwards in the pastoral epistles) of Jesus Christ. Some of them will have “fallen asleep in Christ,” in which state he seems to conceive that they are “at home with the Lord” (2 Cor. v. 8); and others, among whom, in the language of confident hope, he includes himself, will be still alive (1 Thess. iv. 15-17). For “the day of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. i. 8, v. 5; 2 Cor. i. 14, &c.) was conceived to be not far distant: “the night is far spent, the day is at hand” (Rom. xiii. 12), and “the mystery of lawlessness,” which was to be revealed before that day could come, was already at work (2 Thess. ii. 3-7). But the “day” itself is variously conceived; sometimes the eternal life of believers in and with Christ appears to begin at the very moment of the Advent (1 Thess. iv. 17), and hence the day is spoken of as “the day of deliverance” (Eph. iv. 30); but more frequently “the day of the Lord” is also the day of judgment (Rom. ii. 5, 16), according to the eschatological ideas which had for some time been current among the Jews; in it all men, believers and unbelievers alike, are represented as standing before the judgment-seat of God (Rom. xiv. 10) or of Christ (2 Cor. v. 10) to give account of themselves to God, and to receive the reward of the things done in the body, whether good or evil. There is a similar variety of view in regard to what will happen after the Advent. The language which is used sometimes leads to the inference that the destruction of the enemies of the cross will be immediately effected (2 Thess. i. 9, ii. 8), and sometimes to the inference, which was also in accordance with current eschatological ideas, that there will be a Messianic reign, during which Christ will “put all enemies under His feet” (1 Cor. xv. 25). And, while in some passages unbelievers or evildoers are said to be punished with “eternal destruction from the face of the Lord” (2 Thess. i. 9; cf. Rom. ii. 8, 9), the view elsewhere seems to be that “in Christ shall all be made alive,” the universality of the life in Christ being coextensive with the universality of the death in Adam (1 Cor. xv. 22).
It is difficult to reconcile these conceptions with one another, and still more so to reconcile some of them with other parts of Paul's doctrine of salvation, except perhaps on the hypothesis that even after his conversion many of the apocalyptic ideas which were current among his countrymen remained in his mind; this hypothesis is made the more probable by the fact that in the later and the probably post-Pauline epistles the apocalyptic elements are rare, and that the most definite eschatological statement which they contain is in full harmony with the conception of the believer's mystical union with Christ, “when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory” (Col. iii. 4).
Such are the main elements of Paul's soteriology. To most of the philosophical questions which have since been raised in connexion with it he neither gives nor implies an answer. It is possible that many of such questions did not even suggest themselves to him. The chief of all of them, that of the necessity of sacrifice, was probably axiomatic to a Jewish mind, and its place in Paul's system must be accepted with all the difficulties which such an acceptance involves. But there is one such philosophical question which even in Paul's time had begun to have a fascination for Oriental thinkers. What is the relation of free will to God? or in Relation of free will to God. other words, Is what men do the result of their own choice, or is it determined for them; and, if it be determined for them, how can God punish them as though they had been free (Rom. iii. 5, ix. 19)? The answer is given in the form of an antinomy, of which the thesis is the sovereignty of God and the antithesis the responsibility of men. The sovereignty of God is absolute. Instead of entertaining the objection which has since been raised, that God, having created rational and moral agents, has placed Himself under an obligation to deal with them as such, he makes the dependence of men upon God to be unconditioned, and the alleged rights of men as against God to be as non-existent as those of an earthenware vessel against the potter who has given it shape (Rom. ix. 20-21). Some men are “vessels of wrath fitted unto destruction,” some are “vessels of mercy . . . prepared unto glory” (Rom. ix. 22, 23); and God's dealings with them are as little conditioned by necessity as His original creation of them: “ He hath mercy on whom He will, and whom He will He hardeneth” (Rom. ix. 18). But, over against this view of God's sovereignty, and without any endeavour to reconcile the difficulties which suggest themselves, he places the fact of human responsibility. The purpose of God worked itself out in history, but not without men's co-operation. He had first “called” the Jews; and though, on the one hand, “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear” (Rom. xi. 8), yet, on the other hand, they were “a disobedient and gainsaying people” (Rom. x. 21), “seeking to establish their own righteousness,” and not subjecting themselves
“to the righteousness of God” (Rom. x. 3). God had now carried out another part of His purpose. He had “called” the Gentiles. In the earlier epistles Paul spoke of this calling as having been not only part of God's purpose, but also expressly announced from time to time by the prophets (Rom. ix. 25, 26, x. 20); but in the doubtful later epistles it is spoken of as a “mystery which hath been hidden from all ages and generations” (Col. i. 26), but now had been “made known through the church” “unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places” (Eph. iii. 9, 10). But as with the Jews so with the Gentiles, the divine call was not only a fact but also a ground of obligation. While, on the one hand, “we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them” (Eph. ii. 10), yet, on the other hand, the Ephesians are entreated to “walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called” (Eph. iv. 1). In the Epistle to the Romans a still further part of God's purpose is indicated. The salvation which had come to the Gentiles by the fall of the Jews was “to provoke them to jealousy” (xi. 11); as in time past the Gentiles “were disobedient to God but now have obtained mercy” by the disobedience of the Jews, “even so have these also now been disobedient, that by the mercy shown to you they also may now obtain mercy” (xi. 30, 31). And so not only would “the fulness of the Gentiles come in,” but also “all Israel shall be saved” (xi. 25, 26); “for God hath shut up all unto disobedience that He might have mercy upon all” (xi. 32).
The “called” or the “saints.” But, just as the apparent fatalism of the theory of absolute predestination without reference to works stands side by side with the obligation of men to “work out their own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. ii. 12), so this apparent universalism stands side by side with the fact that all men do not receive the gospel. Out of the mass of men some, whether Jews or Gentiles, are “called.” They constitute a separate class. As from one point of view they are the “called according to God's purpose” (Rom. viii. 28), or “called to be saints” (Rom. i. 7; 1 Cor. i. 2), or simply “called” (1 Cor. i. 24; it is to be noted that the expression does not occur in the later epistles), or “chosen” (Rom. viii. 33; Col. iii. 12), so, on the other hand, they are “they that believe” (Rom. iii. 22; 1 Cor. i. 21, xiv. 22; Gal. iii. 22; Eph. i. 19; 1 Thess. i. 7, ii. 10, 13; 2 Thess. i. 10); the call and the belief are complementary of each other, and therefore the terms are used as convertible (1 Cor. i. 21, 24). But the more frequent terms are those which came to Paul from his earlier associations. The Jews had known one another, and had spoken of themselves, in contrast to the rest of the world, as “brethren” (e.g., Deut. xv. 12, xvii. 15; Philo, ii. 285, ed. Mang.) or “saints” (e.g., Deut. xxxiii. 3; Dan. vii. 21). Paul applies these terms to the new “people of God”; they are “brethren” (e.g., Rom. i. 13, most commonly as a term of address), and “the saints” (e.g., Rom. xii. 13, xv. 25; 1 Cor. vi. 1). As such they are regarded as forming collectively a unity or society, which Paul, adopting a current Latinism, calls a “body” (corpus is frequently used in this sense; σῶμα is its Hellenistic translation in, e.g., the letter of Mark Antony in Joseph., Ant. Jud., xiv. 12, 3, τὸ τῆς Ἀσίας σῶμα). A more important and permanent application of the view that those who believed in Jesus took the place of the Jews, and stood to God in the same special relation in which the Jews had stood, was the use of the term “congregation” or “assembly” (Heb. qahal, which the LXX. renders by both συναγωγή and ἐκκλησία; in the Epistle of James (ii. 2) the former of these words is used of a particular Christian congregation; Paul uses the latter only, and the English translators render it invariably by “church”) to designate the mass of believers regarded as a unity. The use of the word ἐκκλησία in this sense in the undisputed epistles is rare,—probably only in 1 Cor. xv. 9, Gal. i. 13, in each of which passages it is qualified, as in, e.g., Deut. xxiii. 1, Nehem. xiii. 1, as “God's congregation.” But either towards the end of his life, or, according to many modern critics, only among his followers after his death, this conception of Christians as forming a congregation was idealized. The common metaphor of a “body” by which that congregation had been designated, and which had already been elaborated as indicative of the diversity of parts and functions in the several Christian communities (1 Cor. xii. 12-30), is elaborated in the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians as indicative of the relation of the aggregate of believers to Christ. They are conceived, not as forming a society which bears Christ's name, but as bearing to Him partly the relation which the several members of an organized body bear to the head (Eph. i. 22, iv. 15, 16; Col. i. 18, 24), and partly the relation of a wife to a husband (Eph. v. 23-32). In a phrase of difficult and doubtful meaning the congregation of Christians, or “church,” is spoken of as His “fulness” (πλήρωμα, Eph. i. 23), and the progress in Christian virtues is represented partly as the growth of an organism to its full stature (Eph. iv. 14-16; Col. ii. 19), and partly as the filling out or realization of that which is empty or imperfect (Eph. iii. 19; Col. i. 9).
Side by side with this conception of the “called” or “saints” as collectively forming a “body” or “congregation,” which was the Christian counterpart and fulfilment of the Jewish
“congregation,” was the fact that wherever the gospel was preached, especially in the great cities of the empire, the converts tended to Christian communities. form communities. Such communities, whether for religious or non-religious purposes, were among the commonest phenomena of the age. How far Paul himself encouraged the formation of such communities among his converts is uncertain; but many considerations lead to the inference that where they were so formed they were formed rather upon the Gentile than upon the Jewish model. Out of several names which were in current use to designate them, that which Paul used was common to both Gentile and Jewish communities, and it was also that which he continued to use in another sense to designate the whole body of Christians. Hence has arisen the confusion which pervades almost all Christian literature between the use of the word ἐκκλησία, or “church,” to denote the whole multitude of those who will be saved regarded as an ideal aggregate, and the use of the same word to denote a visible community of professing Christians in any one place or country.
The raison d'être of these communities was mutual help in the spiritual, the moral, and the outward life. Every member of a community had received the new life of the Spirit, and the diversities of character and opportunity which exist between man and man were conceived as diversities of manifestation (φανέρωσις) of the Spirit who lived within them, or, from another point of view, as diversities of gifts (χαρίσματα). “But to each one was given the manifestation of the Spirit to profit withal” (1 Cor. xii. 7). When the community met in assembly some of its members “prophesied,” preaching as though with a divine inspiration; some spoke in such ecstasy that their words seemed to be those of an unknown tongue and needed an interpreter; some taught again the lessons which they had learned from Paul; some hid “a psalm ”; some had “a revelation” (1 Cor. xiv. 26 sq.). Sometimes the aim was rather moral than spiritual “edification.” They exhorted one another, and “admonished” one another (Rom. xv. 14). Sometimes on points of practice they carried this “judging” of one another farther than Paul approved. The Christian liberty, which was no less a bond of union than the recognition of the new Christian law, was in danger of being overthrown; and more than once Paul thought it necessary to insist that they should not judge one another any more, but rather strive not to put a stumbling-block in each other's way (Rom. xiv. 10 sq.; 1 Cor. x. 25 sq. ). If, however, the offence of any member were gross and open, the assembly became a court of discipline. To the community at Corinth, which had been slow to recognize the necessity of being thus “children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation,” Paul wrote peremptorily “not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner” (1 Cor. v. 11). In one flagrant case they were bidden to “put away the wicked man from among themselves” (1 Cor. v. 13); but the right of the community to deal with such cases at their discretion was also recognized; for, when the guilty person had on his repentance been forgiven, or punished with a lesser punishment, instead of being expelled, Paul wrote again that the action of the majority was sufficient and had his approval (2 Cor. ii. 6, 10). But all such action was subordinated to the general rule, which is repeated in many forms, “let all that ye do be done in love” (1 Cor. xvi. 14). A not less prominent aim of these communities was mutual help in the material and outward life. Some of their members were necessitous or sick; and the duty of helping all such was discharged partly by giving contributions to the common fund and partly by distributing it. Sometimes also the members of other communities came as strangers, travelling as men did, “quorum cophinus fœnumque supellex” (Juvenal, iii. 14, of Jews). For such men, who probably brought, as in later times, letters of recommendation from one community to another (2 Cor. iii. 1), there was an ungrudging hospitality; and not long afterwards, if not in Paul's own time, it was a necessary qualification for a widow who wished to be placed as such on the roll of the community that she should not only have “used hospitality” but also herself have "washed the feet" of the tired travellers as they came in (1 Tim. v. 10). In Thessalonica, where the community was probably both poor and small, it seems probable that the members worked together at common trades, making contributions to a common fund and sharing a common table. It was natural that some should presume on the goodness of their brethren, and try to share the latter without making contributions to the former. Paul made a special rule that this should not be the case, and he himself, though he had the right to exemption, yet, for the sake of example, would not “eat bread for nought at any man's hand, but in labour and travail worked night and day” that he might not burden the slender resources of the brethren (2 Thess. iii. 8; 1 Thess. ii. 9).
In such communities, where the “gift” of each member was used for the common good, organization had not the importance which it had in an ordinary secular society. All work which the members of the community did for one another, including that which was done by the apostle himself, was a “ministry” (διακονία), and every one who did such work was, so far forth, a “minister” (διάκονος). The
names which ultimately came to be appropriated by special officers, appointed to do delegated work, were at first common to the whole body of members. As is natural in all communities, there were some who devoted themselves to the work with especial zeal; and the most rudimentary form of organization is found at Thessalonica, where certain persons are spoken of as devoting themselves to the special works of “labouring,” i.e., probably attending to the material needs of the poorer brethren, “admonishing,” i.e., probably bringing back erring brethren to the right way, and “presiding,” or more probably (though the word is of uncertain meaning) “acting as protector,” like a Roman “patronus,” against oppression from without. The community are enjoined to recognize such persons, “and to esteem them very highly in love for their work's sake” (1 Thess. v. 12, 13). In a similar way at Corinth, where the democratical character of the community is even more apparent, Paul beseeches the brethren to “be in subjection” to those who had “set themselves to minister unto the saints” (1 Cor. xvi. 15, 16). But this recognition of the special zeal of certain members was very far from being a recognition or appointment of officers as such. The functions which came in time to be regarded as giving those who discharged them an exceptional status, were only regarded as “gifts,” resembling in kind and not surpassing in excellence those of the other members of the community. In the Epistle to the Romans, “he that ruluth” (or “protecteth”) is in the same rank as “he that giveth” and “he that exhorteth” (Rom. xii. 8); and in the First Epistle to the Corinthians “helps” and “governments” are not prominent above “miracles,” “healings,” and “divers kinds of tongues” (1 Cor. xii. 28). It is not until the later period, and probably also the different circumstances, of the Epistle to the Philippians that officers are found with definite titles, and probably also with a distinct status; Paul there writes “to all the saints . . . with the bishops and deacons” (Phil. i. 1). Still later, in the Epistle to the Ephesians, it seems probable that those who are spoken of as “apostles,” “prophets,” “evangelists,” “pastors and teachers,” are distinct from the great body of the community (Eph. iv. 11, 12). But it is to be noted that in no certainly authentic epistle does Paul make any mention of “presbyters.” The view of Grotius and Vitringa that the “church” took the place of the “synagogue” seems, as far as the Pauline communities are concerned, to have little foundation. Those communities had a much closer resemblance to the Greek and Roman associations in the midst of which they grew; they stood side by side with the Jewish communities, but distinct from them, as “the churches of the Gentiles” (Rom. xvi. 4).
Baptism. Admission to the community, or at least to full membership of the community, seems to have been effected by the rite of baptism: “in one spirit were we all baptized into one body” (1 Cor. xii. 13). So important was this form of admission conceived to be that when a believer died before baptism another appears to have been baptized vicariously for him (1 Cor. xv. 29). It was a baptism “into Christ Jesus” (Rom. vi. 3; “into Christ,” Gal. iii. 27), a phrase which must probably be interpreted by the analogous expressions in 1 Cor. i. 13, 15, to mean that the name of Jesus Christ alone was used (that the name of the Trinity was not invariably used in early times is clear from St Ambrose, De Spiritu Sancto, i. 3). But in the teaching of the apostle baptism was more than an initiatory rite, and baptism “into Christ Jesus” had for him a special significance. The immersion of the body in water was a “being buried with Christ,” and that not only symbolically but in a real, though mystical, sense; the rising out of the water was in a similar sense an actual rising with Christ into a new life, “that, like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life” (Rom. vi. 4, where the word ζωῆς, “life,” must be taken in its customary sense of actual or physical, not metaphorical or moral, life). It was otherwise expressed as the “putting on” of Christ, i.e., the being endowed with His nature (Gal. iii. 27, where the same word is used as in 1 Cor. xv. 53, “this mortal must put on immortality”). In the later form of Paul's doctrine an analogy was drawn between baptism and circumcision (Col. ii. 11, 12), the point of the analogy apparently being, not merely that each was an initiatory rite, but that, as in circumcision there was a “putting off” of a part of the body, so in baptism the whole “body of the flesh” was destroyed and the “new man” put on. There was the further significance in the rite that by baptism “into one body” the distinctions of race were obliterated. The baptized became “one man in Christ Jesus,” so that there could no longer be either Jew or Greek, bond or free, male or female (Gal. iii. 28; cf. 1 Cor. xii. 13). The differences between the several members were merely the differences of functions which result from the diversity of parts in an organic whole; and thereby the foundations of a world-wide society were laid.
The Lord's Supper. The most significant act of the community when it met together was the common meal. Like the members of most contemporary associations, the members of the Christian communities dined together. This common meal was a sacred meal; it was “the Lord's Supper”; it continued and commemorated the Paschal supper at which the Lord had bidden His disciples to eat the bread which was
His body, and to drink of the cup which was the “new covenant in His blood,” in remembrance of Him; it thereby “proclaimed the Lord's death till He come” (1 Cor. xi. 24-26). Possibly owing to the double sense of the word κοινωνία, viz., “partaking,” and “sharing in common,” two views seem to be mingled together in the signficance which Paul attached to the rite. The one is that, as in “Israel after the flesh” “they which eat the sacrifices” had “communion with the altar,” and as those who partook of the heathen sacrifices had “communion with demons” (i.e., with the false gods to whom the sacrifices were offered), so to those who “partook of the table of the Lord” the “cup of blessing” was “a participation in the blood of Christ” and the “bread which we break” was “a participation in the body of Christ” (1 Cor. x. 16-21). The other view is that in thus partaking in common of the “body of Christ” the members of the community realized and consolidated their unity; “seeing that it is one bread, we who are many are one body” (1 Cor. x. 17). Both views must be regarded in relation to his conception of the mystical union of Christ with those who were baptized into His name, and of their consequent union with one another.
Literature.—The literature which bears upon St Paul is so extensive that a complete account of it would be as much beyond the compass of this article as it would be bewildering to its readers. The books which are here mentioned are the more important modern books which, without being in all cases conclusive or satisfactory, will enable a student to learn the nature of the main questions which have been raised. I. Life:—Neander, Geschichte der Pflanzung u. Leitung der christlichen Kirche durch die Apostel (vol. i., 4th ed., Hamburg, 1847, Eng. tr. in Bohn's Standard Library); Baur, Paulus der Apostel Jesu Christi (Leipsic, 1845, Eng. tr. in Theological Translation Fund Library); Renan, Les Apôtres (Paris, 1866), and Saint Paul (1869); Krenkel, Paulus der Apostel der Heiden (Leipsic, 1869); Hausrath, Der Apostel Paulus (2d ed., Heidelberg, 1872), and art. “Paulus,” in Schenkel's Bibel-Lexicon; Straatmann,
Paulus de Apostel van Jezus Christus (Amsterdam, 1874); Beyschlag, in Riehm's Handwörterb. des bibl. Alterthums; W. Schmidt, in Herzog's Realencykl. (2d ed.); and, in English, Conybeare and Howson, The Life and Epistles of St Paul; Farrar, The Life and Work of St Paul; Lewin, The Life and Epistles of St Paul. Detailed discussions of most of the important points will also be found in books upon the Acts of the Apostles ; e.g., in Overbeck's edition of De Wette's Kurzgefasstes exegetisches Handbuch (Leipsic, 1870 ; the Introduction is translated and prefixed to the translation of Zeller's Die Apostelgeschichte in the Theological Translation Fund Library); Wendt's edition of Meyer's Kritisch-exegetisches Handbuch (Göttingen, 1880); and K. Schmidt, Die Apostelgeschichte (vol. i., Erlangen, 1882, the best modern book on the apologetic side). II. Theology:—The books which first opened up the study of St Paul's theology in distinction from that of other writers of the New Testament were Usteri's Die Entwickelung des paulinischen Lehrbegriffs (Zurich, 1824, 6th ed. 1851), and Dahne's book with the same title (Halle, 1835). The most important books on the subject which have since appeared (in addition to some of those which have been mentioned above) are Ritschl, Die Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche (2d ed., Bonn, 1857); Reuss, Histoire de la théologie chretienne au siècle apostolique (Strasburg, 3d ed., 1864); Holsten, Zum Evangelium des Paulus u. Petrus (Rostock, 1S68), and Das Evangelium des Paulus dargestellt (part i., Berlin, 1880); Pfleiderer, Der Paulinismus (Leipsic, 1873, Eng. tr. in the Theological Translation Fund Library); Sabatier, L'apôtre Paul (2d ed., Paris, 1881); Menegoz, Le Peché et la Redemption d'après S. Paul (Paris, 1882); Ernesti, Die Ethik des Apostels Paulus (3d ed., Göttingen, 1882). English literature is singularly deficient in works on St Paul's theology, as distinguished from the philological and archæological questions which arise out of his life and epistles; almost the only important contributions to the subject are contained in the essays appended to Jowett's Epistles of St Paul to the Thessalonians, Galatians, and Romans (2d ed., 1859). Further information as to the literature of the subject, and especially as to the numerous monographs and magazine-articles on special points, will be found in the books which deal with New Testament literature in general; especially, for the older literature, Credner, Einleitung in das N. T. (Halle, 1836), and, for more recent literature, Reuss, Die Geschichte der heiligen Schriften N. T.'s (4th ed., Brunswick, 1874); Mangold's edition of Bleek's Einleitung in das N. T. (Berlin, 1875); Hilgenfeld, Historische-kritische Einleitung in das N. T. (Leipsic, 1875); Weiss, Lehrbuch der biblischen Theologie des N. T.'s (3d ed., 1880, Eng. tr. in Clark's Foreign Theological Library). (E. Ha.)
* ↑ It was an Ebionite slander that he was not a Jew at all, but a Greek (Epiphan., Hær., xxx. 16).
* ↑ For a clear and concise summary of the points of agreement and difference between the three accounts, reference may be made to an article by F. Zimmer, “Die drei Berichte der Apostelgeschichte über die Bekehrung des Paulus,” in Hilgenfeld's Zeitschr. f. wissensch. Theol., 1882, p. 465 sq.
* ↑ A different account of this visit to Jerusalem is given in Acts ix. 26-30, xxvi. 20; the account of the trance in the temple, Acts xxii. 17-21, is in entire harmony with Paul's own words.
* ↑ Few passages of the New Testament have been more keenly Conference at Jerusalem. debated of late years than the accounts of this conference at Jerusalem in Acts xv. 4-29 and Gal. ii. 1-10. The only writers of eminence in recent times who think that the two accounts refer to separate events are Caspari, who identifies the visit to Jerusalem mentioned in Gal. ii. 1-10 with that of Acts xi. 30, xii. 25, and Wieseler, who identifies it with that of Acts xviii. 21, 22; both theories are chronologically impossible. Almost all writers agree in thinking that the two accounts refer to the same event, but no two writers precisely agree as to the extent to which they can be reconciled. (1) The differences between them were first insisted on by Schwegler, Das nachapostolische Zeitalter, 1845, vol. i. 116; then by Zeller, Die Apostelgeschichte, E.T., vol. ii. 8; Baur, Paulus, E.T., vol. i. 109; Hilgenfeld, Der Galaterbrief, 1852, p. 52, and in his Einleitung in das Neue Testament, 1875, p. 227, &c.; Krenkel, Paulus, 1869, p. 62; Lipsius, s.v. “ Apostelkonvent,” in Schenkel's Bibel-Lexikon, 1868, vol. i. 194; Overbeck, in his edition of De Wette's Apostelgeschichte, 1870, p. 216; Pfleiderer, Paulinismus, 1873, E.T., vol. ii. 5 and 234, and also in his “Paulinische Studien,” in the Jahrb. f. prot. Theol., 1883, No. 2; Weizsäcker, in the Jahrb. f. deutsche Theol., 1873, p. 191; Hausrath, Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte, 2d ed. , vol. iii. 151, vol. iv. 249; Holsten, Zum Evangelium des Paulus und Petrus, pp. 241, 292, Das Evangelium des Paulus, p. 143; Holtzmann, “Der Apostelconvent,” in Hilgenfeld's Zeitschr. f, wissensch. Theol., 1882 p. 436, 1883 p. 129 (to which articles the writer is indebted for several of the references here given). (2) The harmony of the two accounts is maintained, mostly in opposition to the above-named writers, by Neander, Gesch. d. Pflanzung, 5th ed., 1862, p. 158; Ewald, Gesch. d. Volkes Israel, 3d ed., 1868, vol. vi. 470; Ritschl, Ent. d. altkath. Kirche, 2d ed., 1857, p. 128; Lechler, Das apostol. u. nachapostol. Zeitalter, 2d ed., 1857, p. 397; Baumgarten, Die Apostelgeschichte, 2d ed., 1859, i. 461; Pressensé, Hist. des trois premiers siècles, 2d ed., 1868, vol. i. 457; Weiss, Lehrb. d. bib. Theol. (des N.T.), 2d ed., 1873, p. 141; Schenkel, Das Christusbild der Apostel, 1879, p. 38; K. Schmidt, s.v. “Apostel-Konvent,” in Herzog's Real-Encyklopädie, 2d ed., vol. i. 575; Lightfoot, Galatians, p. 123; Wendt, in his edition of Meyer's Apostelgesch., 1880, p. 311; Sieffert, in Meyer's Brief an die Galater, 1880, p. 84, &c.; Zimmer, Galaterbrief und Apostelgeschichte, 1882; Nösgen, Comm. über die Apostelgeschichte, 1882, p. 287. (3) A compromise between the two accounts is attempted by Renan, St Paul, 1869, p. 81; Reuss, Die Gesch. d. heil. Schr., N.T., 5th ed., 1874, p. 57; Keim, “Der Apostelconvent,” in his Aus dem Urchristenthum, 1878, p. 64; Grimm, “Der Apostelconvent,” in Studien u. Kritiken for 1880, p. 405. The main points of difficulty in the two accounts are these. (1) The Acts say that Paul went up by appointment of the brethren at Antioch; Paul himself says that he went up “by revelation.” (2) In the Acts Paul has a subordinate position; in his own account he treats with “the three” on equal terms. (3) In the Acts Peter and James are on Paul's side from the first; in Galatians they are so only at the end of the conference, and after a discussion. (4) The Acts make the conference result in a decree, in which certain observances are imposed upon the Gentiles; Paul himself expressly declares that the only injunction was that they “should remember the poor.”
* ↑ The most important instance of this is probably the almost entire omission of an account of his relations with the community at Corinth; one of his visits is entirely omitted, another is also omitted, though it may be inferred from the general expression “he came into Greece” (xx. 2); and of the disputes in the community, and Paul's relations to them, there is not a single word.
* ↑ It has been customary to give this visit to Syria a factitious importance by representing it as constituting the point of division between the second and the third missionary journeys. But the arrangement of Paul's active life into “missionary journeys” is artificial and unsatisfactory. The so-called “first missionary journey” is, as has been pointed out above, only a single episode in at least eleven years of work; and, even if it be allowed that the conference at Jerusalem constitutes a sufficiently important epoch in his life to warrant a break in his biography, there is no solid reason whatever for fixing upon this particular visit to Syria as constituting such an epoch. If the latter part of his biography be broken up into chapters at all, it would be much more useful to divide it according to the centres at which he settled from time to time, and from which his activity radiated, Corinth, Ephesus, Cæsarea (probably), and Rome.
* ↑ The Martyrium Pauli in Zacagni, Coll. mon. vet. eccl., Rome, 1698, p. 535, gives not only details but an exact date, viz., 29th June 66 A.D.; the day has been adopted by the Latin Church as the common anniversary of St Peter and St Paul. All the early evidence which bears upon the point has been collected by Kunze, Præcipua patrum ecclesiasticorum testimonia quæ ad mortem Pauli apostoli spectant, Göttingen, 1848.
* ↑ The literature of the subject is extensive; the most convenient summary of the discussions, for English readers, will be found in the introduction to Meyer's Commentary, which is mentioned above, and of which there is an English translation.
* ↑ See Krenkel, “Das körperliche Leiden des Paulus,” in the Zeitschr. f. wissensch. Theol., 1873, p. 238; and for various views, Lightfoot, Galatians, p. 188; Farrar, St Paul, vol. i., Excurs. x. p. 652.
* ↑ It must be noted that there appears to be a constant interchange in his mind between the conception of the Mosaic law and the ideal conception of law in the abstract; but it is difficult to maintain that the two conceptions may always be distinguished by the presence or absence of the Greek article. 1 Cor. ix. 20, Phil. iii. 5, seem of themselves sufficient to make such a distinction untenable, but the contrary view is maintained in an excellent discussion of the point by Dr Gifford, “Introduction to the Epistle to the Romans,” p. 41 sq., in the Speaker's Commentary on the New Testament.
* ↑ This view of the death of Christ in the economy of redemption is so constant and integral a part of Paul's teaching as to outweigh and set aside the inference which some writers have drawn from Rom. viii 3, that the “sending” of Christ—i.e., His incarnation—was itself sufficient for the end in view.
* ↑ This word seems to have lost its etymological sense of “ransoming,” and to have connoted only “deliverance,” e.g., in the LXX., Dan. iv. 29(31), Nebuchadnezzar speaks of ὁ χρόνος τῆς ἀπολυτρώσεως μου, “the time of my deliverance”; in Irenæus, i. 9, 5, it is used of the dismissal of the spectators in a theatre.
* ↑ It is difficult to estimate the mischief which has been caused by the fact that justificare was adopted from early times as the translation of δικαιοῦν, and the consequent fact that a large part of Western theology has been based upon the etymological signification of justificare rather than upon the meaning of its Greek original. One of the clearest instances of the meaning of δικαιοῦν in Biblical Greek is LXX. Exod. xxiii. 7, οὐ δικαιώσεις τὸν ἀσεβῆ ἕνεκεν δώρων, “thou shalt not acquit the wicked man for bribes.”
* ↑ “Faith” is not defined by Paul, but his use of the term so nearly resembles Philo's as to be explicable by it. With Philo it is the highest form of intellectual conviction, being more certain than either that which comes from the senses or that which comes from reasoning; cf., e.g., De præmiis et pœnis c. 5, vol. ii. p. 412, ed. Mang.
* ↑ The relation of νοῦς to πνεῦμα has been much discussed; among contemporary theologians Holsten and Weiss deny the existence of a πνεῦμα in the natural man, Lüdemann and Pfleiderer allow it. It is certain that the two words are used in the same sense by Philo; and it is most probable that they are also so used by Paul. One of many proofs is that in quoting Isa. xl. 13 in 1 Cor. ii. 13 he adopts νοῦν from the LXX. as the translation of רוּחַ (whereas πνεῦμα is the more usual translation), and proceeds to use the phrase νοῦν χριστοῦ for πνεῦμα χριστοῦ, which the argument requires, and with which it must be identical.