The Pauline theology, a study of the origin and correlation of the doctrinal teachings of the Apostle Paul

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Preface

Tue Apostolic Age must always possess a peculiar interest for the student of Christian history and theology. In the study of that period we come into contact with the men who, filled with love for Christ and with zeal for his truth and kingdom, so largely shaped the life of the early Church, and left their impress upon Christianity for subsequent ages. The most noteworthy example of such a moulding influence, in both its immediate and its remote effects, is found in the apostle Paul. The native qualities of the man, the remarkable transformation by which he was changed from a persecutor into a champion of the gospel, and his great achievements as a preacher and writer, —all unite to invest his career with exceptional interest and importance.

The constantly increasing literature which treats of the apostle’s life and theology, or of special problems connected with his teaching, attests the unfailing interest with which the modern world regards the man and his work. Whether his teaching is thought to have been grossly perverted in the Church, as by Mr. Matthew Arnold; or is held to vill PREFACE have been unduly influential, especially among Protestants, as by M. Renan, —he still continues to be studied with the closest attention by exegetes, historians, theologians, and literati of all shades of opinion, as the master-mind of his age and the pioneer par éminence in Christian thought.

The aim which I have set before me in this volume has been to inquire into the genesis of Paul’s leading thoughts, so far as their origin may be the subject of historical inquiry, to define critically their content and relation to each other, and thus to present a systematic account of his teaching upon the great themes which he considers. Not every topic which finds place in his epistles has been made the subject of discussion. I trust, however, that no important topic, none which is essential in the organism of his thoughts, has been overlooked. The study, it is hoped, will afford the reader some aid in determining how far that set of convictions which he so firmly cherished and defended may be regarded as furnishing the materials for a theological system. The effort has been made to discriminate between that which Paul may be shown by strict exegesis to have taught and those inferences which may be thought to be involved in his affirmations,

The references to the literature of the subject which are given throughout the volume may serve to indicate, in a general way, my obligations to other writers on the Pauline Theology. Apart from critical helps

PREFACE ix in the study of the epistles of Paul, I am most largely indebted to four authors, — Neander, whose work on The Planting and Training of the Christian Church, although not in all points abreast of recent criticism, has been of the greatest service in opening to me the spiritual depths of the apostle’s thoughts; Weiss, whose Biblical Theology of the New Testament, with its severe exegetical method, I have always found useful, especially in regard to intricate questions of interpretation ; Pfleiderer, whose treatise Der Paulinismus (as also his later work entitled, Das Urchristenthum) I have studied with the keenest interest. Der Paulinismus is the most stimulating treatise which I have ever read on the subject; and none has given me more assistance, although, as will be seen, I have differed often and widely from its conclusions. It gives me pleasure thus to acknowledge my continued obligation to the distinguished scholars, Professors Weiss and Pfleiderer, whose instruction I enjoyed in former years. It remains to mention the treatise of Professor Lipsius, of Jena, Die paulinische Rechtfertigungslehre, u. 8. W., which I have carefully read and should have more frequently quoted had I not been informed that the author has modified, in important respects, the views therein expressed. Whether one concurs with the positions taken by him in this volume or not, it cannot but

1 Lehrbuch der biblischen Theologie des Neuen Testaments. 5 Auflage. Berlin, 1888.

x PREFACE be profitable to read so skilful a piece of exegesis and so discriminating an analysis of Paul’s religious conceptions.

In quoting Neander’s Planting and Training of the Christian Church, I have referred to both the English (Bohn) and the American editions of Ryland’s translation. The American edition by Dr. E, G, Robinson (which is a careful revision of the English edition) is decidedly preferable. The references to Weiss’s Biblical Theology are to the fifth German edition, and I refer to sections and subdivisions, rather than to pages, for the convenience of those who may wish to consult the translation (made from the third edition). Where the notation is not the same in the original and in the translation, I have added references to the volume and page of the latter. Pfleiderer’s Der Paulinismus is cited from the revised (second) edition, unless it is otherwise indicated, and corresponding references to the English translation (made from the first edition) are added.

T have appended to this volume a select bibliography — omitting the familiar works on the Life of Paul — which, while making no claim to completeness, will guide the student to the literature which he will be likely to find most directly useful in the study of Paul’s thoughts.

I wish to express my obligation to my colleagues Professors George P. Fisher and Frank C. Porter, who have given me many useful suggestions respect-

PREFACE xi ing the subjects which I have discussed, and have kindly assisted me in the correction of the proofsheets.

I offer this work to the public in the hope that it may contribute to a clearer understanding, and to a more cordial reception, of the truths to the defence and propagation of which the great apostle devoted his life.

YaLe UNIVERSITY, Dec. 1, 1891.

CHAPTER I. THe CONVERSION OF PAUL AND ITs RELA- TION TO HIS MIssIoN AND THEOLOGY

II. Pavr’s Styte anp Moprs or THoucut III. Tue SHaprne Forces oF Paut’s TEACHING IV. Tue Sources oF PAvuLIneE Doctrine V. Tue Doctrine or Gop .

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IX. Tue Doctrine or REDEMPTION ... . X. ‘Tue Docrrine OF JUSTIFICATION. .« «© « Oe DEO MRISTIAN ES DINE) 0 5) 2 7s ci obeys XII. Tue Docrrine or THE CHURCH ... .- XIII. Tue Pavrine Escoatotogy .... -

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369 373 377

CHAPTER I

THE CONVERSION OF PAUL AND ITS RELATION TO HIS MISSION AND THEOLOGY

No man exercised so powerful an influence upon the thought and life of the early Church as the apostle Paul. This fact is, no doubt, due in large part to his native enthusiasm and energy. Throwing his whole soul into any cause which he espoused, he proved as vigorous and efficient in the character of a champion as he had formerly been in that of a persecutor of Christianity. The intellectual gifts of the apostle were also highly y favorable to his influence. He took a clear and strong hold upon principles. He defined his convictions sharply, cherished them intensely, and carried them out consistently in action. His mind, by nature and education conscientious and religious, was especially adapted to define the characteristic truths of Christianity, defend them from the errors which threatened to corrupt them, and give them currency and prevalence in the Christian world. 1

But neither the apostle’s dialectic power nor his native executive abilities suffice to explain his unexampled influence and services. His own language expressly refutes such an explanation. His work is not a mere achievement of human powers, the triumph of genius, or the sweeping success of fiery enthusiasm. There lies at the basis of his conception of his mission and of his entire religious consciousness an intense conviction of a divine call to his work and of a divine equipment for it. He is a called japostle (Rom. i. 1), set apart to the work of winning ‘the Gentiles to faith in Christ; his commission is from above (Gal. i. 12); he describes himself as ‘apprehended by Christ (Phil. iii. 12). His native endowments were elevated and directed by a revelation of Christ which contained for him at once the call to his mission and the perpetual inspiration for its accomplishment.

We must therefore penetrate beneath these more obvious sources of power in the apostle Paul, and seek the explanation of his thought and work in the sphere of religious conviction and experience. To attribute his spiritual history to the play within himself of religious emotion and conscientious scruples is either to misunderstand him, or is equivalent to charging him with wholly misunderstanding himself. It has in modern times become common to explain the conversion of Paul as a psychological process, treating the threefold narrative of it in the Acts of the Apostles as the objective form which the experience assumed in his mind, or as the development of Christian tradition. Baur and Strauss sought to explain his conversion as a change which was gradually brought about in his mind by reflection upon the arguments by which the Christians endeavored to, prove the Messiahship of Jesus, and by the moral impres sions produced by the language and temper of the dying Stephen.! With this explanation Baur did not, however, remain satisfied, and he later confessed that no psychological or dialectic analysis can unfold the secret of Paul’s conversion.2 Later writers, such as Holsten and Pfleiderer,® following, in general, the lines marked out by Baur, present a more detailed account of the process through which Paul passed, and make the starting-point of the change not so much a moral impression as a slowly maturing intellectual conviction that the Christian way of attaining righteousness was after all the true one. This conviction was developed, according to Pfleiderer, by reflection upon the Pharisaic expectation of the near advent of the Messiah, upon the fact that his coming presupposed a righteous people which

1 Baur, Paulus, i. 68 sq. Strauss, Leben Jesu fir d. deutsche Volk, p. 33.

8 See, for example, Holsten, Die Christusvision des Paulus u. s. w.,in Zum Evangelium des Paulus u. des Petrus, p. 65 sq. ; Pfleiderer, Paulinismus, p. 7 sq. (Eng. tr.i. 11 sq.). For a detailed analysis and acute critique of Pfleiderer’s theory, see an article by Prof. A. B. Bruce on Paul’s Conversion and the Pauline Gospel, in the Presbyterian Review for October, 1880, p. 652 sq.

the law-system seemed powerless to secure, and upon the confident assertion by the Christians of the objective resurrection of Jesus. These ideas combined to suggest a new solution of the problem of religion which accorded in a remarkable manner with the Christian teaching. It needed but the ecstasy which Paul calls his revelation, and which he regarded as an objective manifestation to him of the risen Jesus, to confirm his mind in this new view of the way of salvation by divine grace through trust in the Crucified and Risen One. The method of this reflection is thus sketched: “What if perhaps the Messianic righteousness, which the Pharisee postulated as the condition of the Messiah’s kingdom, were not to be understood at all in the ordinary sense of a human fulfilling of the law, but consisted in a gift of God which could be procured in no other way than through the new means of salvation which was offered by the Messiah’s atoning death?” 1

This type of theory finds in the process of Paul’s conversion the germs of his whole doctrine. The crisis is reached in the very midst of his persecuting activity, during which, however, he was affected by scruples as to the correctness of his course, and on this account strove the harder to stifle the growing conviction of the truth of Christianity by intensifying his outward opposition to it. On this view there must have been a considerable period during which he was halting and doubting. Whatever the nature

1 Paulinismus, p. 12 (Eng. tr. i. 12).

THE .-INVERSION OF PAUL 5 of the event that happened on the way to Damascus, or whether there really was any such objective occurrence as is related, the turning-point in his career merely marks the logical result of increasing dissatisfaction with himself and his course as a Pharisee, and of deepening impressions concerning the truth of Christianity.

It is obvious that if this explanation is correct, we must suppose that when the crisis was reached, Saul had already formed an opinion, more or less clearly defined, that faith in Jesus, and not the performance of deeds of obedience to the law, was the true way of attaining salvation. His most characteristic tenet, —the germ-truth which enfolded his whole system, — that faith and not works is the principle of salvation, was wrought out by him in reflection upon the facts concerning the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the truth of which the Christians alleged, and upon the Old Testament proofs by which they were wont to support these claims. Thus Paul’s conversion is regarded not as an abrupt beginning, but as marking a gradual inward transformation of opinion and feeling. If this is true, then we may find already present in this event, awaiting but development and application to life, those characteristic convictions and forces which suffice to explain the apostle’s career. j

It is certainly an interesting and commendable feature of this mode of explanation that it seeks to find some inner connection between Paul’s conversion and his life before and after it. It is a psychological impossibility that his conversion should have been due to external causes alone, and should have had no internal point of contact with the course of his previous life up to the moment of its occurrence. It is inconceivable that an external miracle alone should have transformed a man of Saul’s fiery temper and firmness of conviction from a Pharisee into a Christian, if indeed such a miracle can in any case be conceived of as by itself effecting an inner spiritual revolution.! The problem is to detect and define this point of connection. It will first be proper to inquire whether the subtle and ingenious psychological theories which have been referred to can be successfully applied.

We possess in the Acts of the Apostles three detailed narratives of the conversion of Paul,— one by the writer, Luke (chap. ix.), and two by Paul himself (chaps. xxil., xxvi.). These chapters, together with certain allusions to the subject and to his spiritual history in Paul’s epistles, constitute our only documentary evidence for determining the nature of the event and its relation to the development of his inner life. The picture which these narratives present to our view is not obscured by the minor differences which exist among the three accounts, but is a clear and vivid one. The zealous persecutor and

1 Cf. Neander, Planting and Training, Bohn ed. i. 89; Am. ed. p- 91.

2 In Acts xxvi. the interview with Ananias is omitted; in chapter xxii. it is narrated, but the occasion of Ananias’s going to

THE CONVERSION OF PAUL “f his companions, equipped with a commission from the Sanhedrin, are arrested in their journey across the desert toward Damascus by a supernatural appearance to them of the glorified Christ. This revelation was accompanied by external phenomena which dazzled the senses and profoundly impressed the mind of Saul. To this experience, and to no other cause or occasion, he uniformly refers his conversion. It marked the crisis of his life. This fact is not altered even on the view that his experience was really a vision, —a clear and convincing inner view of the exalted Messiah. Upon this hypothesis, as well as upon the ordinary view, the revelation of Christ to the soul of the persecutor remains the efficient cause of the transformation.!_ Whether he was converted

Saul is not stated; in chapter ix. the Lord is represented as speaking to him and bidding him go, and it is affirmed that at the same time Saul had a vision of his coming. In chap. xxii. the address is considerably more extended than in chap. ix. Minor points of difference have been noted ; for example, in ix. 7 we are told that Saul’s companions heard the voice, but saw no man, while in xxii. 9, it is said that they saw the light, but heard not the voice of him who spake. The discrepancy is sometimes resolved by translating fxovoay (xxii. 9) “understood,” —an admissible rendering. The constant factors in all accounts are, the light from heaven, the voice of Jesus, Saul’s answer, and the solemn charge commissioning Paul to bear the name of Christ to the Gentiles. Even if the differences be regarded as irreconcilable, it is an unwarranted procedure in criticism to reject the common matter of the various narratives and deny their historical character, upon the ground of such incidental variations in the traditions in which a great and mysterious experience has been preserved. ’ Cf. Weiss, The Life of Christ, iii. 410, 411.

by an inward vision of Christ, a manifestation in the spiritual sphere only, or by a revelation accompanied by supernatural light and voices, is a question which, while it affects the historical character of the narratives in Acts, does not essentially concern the problem of the relation of the experience on the way to Damascus to his spiritual history. Whatever importance may attach to external phenomena in the case, it is certain that chief emphasis must be laid upon that disclosure of Christ as the enthroned King which, whatever its method, was made to his spirit. It was the manifestation of the risen Lord in this aspect of it upon which Paul, no doubt, laid chief emphasis,— the amoxdduis év euoi (Gal. i. 16) to which he referred back as the decisive cause of his conversion and the effective inspiration of his mission as a preacher. !

Does Paul, in his allusions to his conversion, contemplate this revelation of Christ to him as the initial point of his change of life? There can be no doubt that the three narratives assume this to be the case. Up to this moment he is depicted as a persecutor,

1 Tt should be added that the expression éy éuol gives no warrant for discrediting the testimony of the narratives in Acts to the occurrence of external events upon the occasion in question. The only proper inference from this expression is that in thinking of his conversion as a divinely effected transformation Paul lays chief stress on the inward revelation of Christ to him. But this he would do in any case, since his conversion, by whatever events attended, would be primarily connected with his new view of the person of Christ, and not with any outward circumstances.

bent upon the extermination of the Christians. No hint is anywhere given that he had any scruple or hesitation as to the justification of his course. The only expression which can be adduced as indicating such scruple on his part is that of the heavenly voice: “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for chee to kick against the goad ” (Acts xxvi. 14). These words are thought by some to imply that Saul was engaged in a conflict with his conscience, which, like a goad, was urging him toward an opposite course of action. But the figure of the goad, both in itself and in its use, more appropriately refers to forces outside oneself, as to the will or efforts of another, than to the subjective state of hesitancy from scruple. Most interpreters accordingly agree that the meaning here is: It is vain and ineffectual for you to resist my will and purpose regarding the progress of my Church. This interpretation alone harmonizes with the statement in the same account of his conversion: “J verily thought with myself that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth” (Acts xxvi. 9). He avows before the Jewish council that he had lived in all good conscience until that day (Acts xxiii. 1). It is true that he blames himself severely for his career as a_persecutor (1 Cor. xv. 9); the memory of it gives him a sense of unworthiness to bear the name of an apostle, and he counts the conversion of such a persecutor

1 So Pfleiderer, Urchristenthum, p. 36. Also: The Influence of the Apostle Paul on the Development of Christianity, p. 29.

a miracle of grace. But that career appeared so hateful to him only after he became a Christian ; he does not intimate that it had appeared so in the least previous to his becoming a Christian. His ignorance during his persecution is regarded as affording a certain mitigation of his guilt, and as a reason for his obtaining mercy; but he expressly couples it with the unbelief in the blindness of which his work of persecution was carried on (1 limes iy 713).3

There is thus no hint of any hesitation in his course, or of any gradually changing convictions regarding the claims of Jesus; all the testimony which bears upon the subject implies the contrary. He was, to the end of his course as a persecutor, firm, persevering, and conscientious in his efforts to exterminate Christianity. His statements in Galatians (chap. i.), which give the fullest account of the origin and authentication of his apostolic office, confirm indirectly, though not less clearly, the same conclusion. He did not receive his gospel — whose central principle was salvation by faith in Christ — from any human source, but “through revelation of Jesus Christ” (i. 12). He then alludes to his persecutions of the Christians in the zeal and intensity of which he had surpassed others (verses 18, 14). He implies that during this time he was inaccessible to

1 JT am here assuming the genuineness of 1 Timothy. This disputed subject receives brief consideration in a subsequent chapter.

the action of any human agencies which could have resulted in his acceptance of the gospel; “but,” he adds, “ when it was the good pleasure of God . . . to reveal his Son in me that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I conferred not,” etc. (verses 15, 16). As a persecutor his life was closed to human influences; it was only when God made a signal revelation of his Son in him that his course was changed.! That by the “revelation” here spoken of is meant that unveiling of Christ to his inner eye which occurred in the experience on the road to Damascus, is rendered probable by his mentioning it in connection with other definite events. After that revelation, he says, he did not go up to Jerusalem, but went into Arabia and returned to Damascus. Additional probability is lent to this conclusion by the definite way in which he speaks of the appearance of Christ to him, classing it among those to the original apostles (1 Cor. xv. 8), and by the way in which he connects his apostleship with his having seen the Lord (1 Cor. ix. 1). This appearance and this sight of Christ can only refer to the event which happened near Damascus. Therefore to this event the apostle definitely refers back as the initial point of his apostleship, the occasion on which a special disclosure of Christ to him accomplished what no human force could have done, —his transformation from an ardent persecutor to an equally zealous Christian apostle.

2 Cf. Weiss, Introduction to the New Testament, i. 153 (§ 18, 2).

If, then, no place can be vindicated in Paul’s history for a gradual change of opinion regarding the Messiahship of Jesus, the question arises, what is that point of connection between the revelation made to him and his own inner spiritual life which it seems necessary to find in order to relieve the change of its otherwise magical appearance, and without which it seems impossible that any external manifestation to him should have been at the same time an inward revelation of truth to his spirit ?

In Rom. vii. 7-25 the apostle describes a certain inner conflict of principles under the first person. It can hardly be doubted that this description refers,

», either directly or indirectly, to his own life. The description is of one who under the operation of "ine Old Testament law has been awakened to a sense of his sin and of his need of forgiveness and renewal. The picture is drawn in order to obviate the objection to the previous argument that since the law cannot justify, but only intensifies the consciousness

of sin, it must itself be sinful. To this the apostle replies by a concrete representation of the service which the law renders in disclosing their sinfulness to men and thereby preparing them to accept the way

of salvation offered through Christ. When the law comes and lays upon them its demands, men become aware of their failure to meet the divine requirements, and their real sinfulness, of which they had before been unconscious, is disclosed to them. Thus arises a conflict in the soul between the moral purpose to keep the law and the hindering power of sin, which is now seen to exert itself with fearful energy. Two opposing laws seek to control the life ,— the “law of the mind” (6 véuos tod voos, verse 23), the right moral intention and purpose, and “the law of sin which is in the members” (6 vouos THs dpuaptias o @v év Tots pédeow), the natural impulses and passions. The latter triumphs, and the soul cries out, “ Who shall deliver me?” (verse 24), when the joyous answer comes, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (verse 25).

This narrative reflects Paul’s own moral history. He had passed through this moral struggle, and experienced this sense of defeat in his best aspirations. It was only the manifestation of Christ in his true character as the Saviour from overmastering sin that terminated the conflict and brought harmony and peace into his life. I believe that it is in the experience thus depicted that we are to find the point of contact between his sudden conversion and his previous career. This inner conflict, with its resulting sense of failure and sin, was, in an important sense, a preparation for his conversion, and made the revelation of Christ to him productive of a radical change in his disposition and conduct. The anxiety and unrest which sprang from his unavailing efforts to find a sense of security and peace through deeds of legal obedience deepened the yearnings of his spiritual nature, intensified the sense of his own ill-desert before God, and thus negatively, at least, prepared his mind to welcome, if not to seek, some new ground of hope. The passage in no way intimates that the course of his thought during this unhappy experience went so far as to lead him to turn to Christ for a possible solution of his difficulty. To suppose that this was the case would be contrary to the true interpretation of the passage previously considered, and without warrant in the chapter under review. Christ appears on the scene only when the struggle has ended in Saul’s defeat and despair. The law holds its devotee, throughout the whole conflict and at the end, with an unrelaxed hand. There is an increasingly intense realization of its binding force and of the necessity of obeying it in order to be saved; but the more this is felt, the more clearly is the failure felt, and the more unconquerable does the power of sin appear. No doubt is entertained that obedience to the law is necessary; no other way of terminating the conflict is discerned. It rages on until the soul is full of misery and despair, when Christ is seen in his glorified character. As soon as he is known as the true Messiah and Deliverer, a new way of life at once opens to the soul. The conflict in the field of law has been found to be a hopeless one; it must be given up. A new principle, that of faith, must supplant that of legal obedience. Sin renders impossible the perfect obedience which the law requires, and thus the door of human merit through works of righteousness is shut;

that of self-surrender to be saved by God’s grace — that is, the way of faith — alone remains.!

It should be borne distinctly in mind that this inner conflict was not between efforts to be saved by the law, and doubts stimulated by Christian teaching as to the correctness of this method, but between these efforts and the power of sin which doomed them to failure. It implies, therefore, no scruple regarding obedience to the law as the true and only way of salvation, much less any hesitation regarding his conduct as a persecutor, but only anxiety, fear, and

1 No writer has urged more forcibly than has Neander the objections to the naturalistic explanation of Saul’s conversion, on the one side, and the necessity of connecting it with his mental and spiritual history, on the other. He has not, however, discussed the bearing of Rom. vii. on the subject. His allusion to it leaves little doubt that his view of it is similar to that here presented. He says that we should view his conversion as “an inward transaction in Paul’s mind, a spiritual revelation of Christ to his higher self-consciousness; and in this light we may view the experiences which he had in his conflict with himself while a Pharisee . . . as forming a preparation by which his heart was rendered capable of receiving those internal revelations of the Redeemer.” — Planting and Training, Bohn ed. i, 86; Am. ed. p. 87.