CHAPTER XII.

THE FATE OF PAUL.

OF the other writings of the second strata of the New Testament, none approaches even from afar to the importance of the Fourth Gospel, which it would not be too much to say has influenced the world’s history by its Pauline transformation of the picture of Jesus. But yet it is significant, too, how the Apostle Paul and the twelve are adapted in these later writings to the Catholicism of the turn of the century. In St Paul’s case the Acts and the Pastoral epistles which are based upon it have to be considered.

In these writings Paul appears as the great missionary to the heathen, the opponent of the Jews, the ecclesiastical organizer. The Paul of history was all this most decidedly—only after a somewhat different fashion, and he was something else besides. The first point which is everywhere emphasized is that Paul became a Christian from being a persecutor of the Christians, and right from the midst of this 280 persecution. Three times the story of his conversion is repeated in the Acts. It was a striking example for this later generation how God can turn the heart even of an enemy of the faith. Thus, then, it serves the Church as one of the most impressive stories of a conversion, but not as that which it really was to St Paul—the genesis of his gospel and his apostleship. It is indeed remarkable how completely the impression of his independence has been lost, and how marked the tendency is, on the contrary, to attach the convert firmly to the old tradition. Ananias, a pious Jewish Christian in Damascus, baptizes him and introduces him to the Christians in that town. Being not long after expelled thence, he comes to Jerusalem, where Barnabas brings him to the apostles and he associates with them. The work of Ananias appears so important to the author that he twice gives us a detailed account of it. Nothing is omitted that could serve to establish an unbroken chain of apostolic tradition. As Luke in all probability read the Epistle to the Galatians containing St Paul’s own account, one can here see how the Epistles of St Paul were read—in a devotional and ecclesiastical spirit, as was only right and fair, about in the same way as they were read up to the days of the great F. C. Baur of Tübingen. But it is instructive to notice that our authors go still further in their friendly disposition towards the old tradition, for they evidently delight in assigning great prominence to the strong Jewish tradition in St Paul. In the judgment of the Acts, St Paul was not to be blamed but rather congratulated on having been a pious Pharisee from his youth up. Does he not notice 281 in the case of Ananias himself how, judged by Jewish conceptions, he had been a devout observer of the law? The Pharisees are the men of hope; even as a Christian St Paul feels himself related to them. What else is Christianity but Judaism with its hopes fulfilled? The Christian is the true pious Jew, and therefore, as a Pharisee, Paul was on the surest road that led to Christianity. He only lacked the knowledge that in Jesus the Messiah had already come. And therefore he can say that he has served God from his forefathers in a pure conscience, as though no breach in his religious relation had ever taken place; and therefore he can praise Timothy for having been educated by his grandmother and mother in the true Jewish piety that was based upon the Scriptures. The revolutionary has been here transformed into the regular conservative. This is quite in accordance with Catholic modes of thought. For Catholicism can endure no revolution. All the dangerous elements in St Paul have been suppressed.

The picture that is drawn of St Paul is altogether based upon this conception. Everything great and original, the apostleship that is of revelation, the new gospel of Christian liberty, the conflict with the twelve, the great controversy with the judaizers, has completely disappeared or has been smoothed away past recognition. Peter, not Paul, is the first missionary to the Gentiles; Paul does not go to heathen lands till he and Barnabas are sent by the congregation of Antioch. Even now he will not go to the Gentiles in the first instance, and it is only the opposition of the Jews that drives him to it. 282 Then a division of opinion certainly does arise over the question of the circumcision of the Gentile Christians. The recollection of this was evidently too firmly imprinted in men’s minds for our author to omit all mention of it. But the only use he makes of it is, first, to afford Peter and James an opportunity for the proclamation of the universal scope of the Gospel on the basis of the faith that alone confers blessing, while Paul gives an account of his missionary journeys and takes no part in the debate; and next to refer the origin of the so-called decree of the apostles to a solemn moment in the history of the Church. Again, one asks oneself in amazement, can this man have read the Epistle to the Galatians, seeing that he thus transforms the great controversialist and champion of liberty into a harmless participant in the missionary meeting at Jerusalem? And yet this letter was read by the Church in later ages as well, and with the solitary exception of Marcion, no one noticed anything. Naturally, then, the unedifying quarrel with Peter at Antioch, and the great Jewish counter-mission, together with Paul’s opposition to it, were passed over altogether; why should we preserve these unpleasant pages in history? Every edifying method of treating history understands the art of silence in such cases.

The picture which the book of the Acts draws of St Paul is even thus a mighty one. Something of the magic charm of the first Christian mission, with all its new outlook, its surprises, its obstacles and victorious progress, accompanies all the journeys of the apostle. Rich, invaluable material here lay to hand in the so-called “we-source,” the travel-journal 283 of a companion. From this we learn, amongst other things, that St Paul did really first turn to the Jews in order to get access to the Gentiles. Here our author found a foundation for his theory that it was in every case and always the unbelief of the Jews that was the occasion of the mission to the heathen, and that as a matter of fact it was against their will that the missionaries were led by God to take up their new task. It was an apologetic theory, formed to meet the Jewish reproach of the frivolous abandonment of the religion of their fathers, while at the same time it satisfied the Catholic consciousness which furthered the retention of the old tradition as long as possible. There are other instances, too, where valuable pieces of information appear in a special light, owing to the author’s special method of selection. The circumcision of Timothy, the vow in Corinth and afterwards in Jerusalem, are not necessarily inventions, but the mention of them spoils the picture of the apostle, if all features of complete emancipation from the law are omitted. But what is one to say to the theology which is ascribed to St Paul in the speeches to the Gentiles and in his controversies with the Jews? Here we see the change produced by the ecclesiastical position in the case of a man who sincerely meant to be a disciple of St Paul. He has, of course, grasped St Paul’s fundamental thought that Jesus was the Saviour of the world, and that faith in Him carries with it the promise of eternal life. As far as this foundation is concerned, he is a true follower of the apostle. But in the arguments that he produces to convince the Jews he differs altogether from St 284 Paul. It is no longer the question of the law, the proof of the impossibility of the fulfilment of the law, the arousing of the feeling of despair that leads to faith in Jesus as the Redeemer, but the Jewish theology of the Messiah, the proof of the fulfilment of the prophecies in Christ. The only subject of controversy between St Paul and the Jews is whether Jesus is the Messiah according to the Scriptures, and whether the Messiah had to die and rise again. This is exactly the way in which John tries to arouse faith in Jesus. And hereby, surely, the Pauline preaching is deprived of all its deep dramatic and personal elements, and is clothed instead in the dress of an altogether trivial scholastic theology. And this comes about without any special fault on the part of the author himself. It is simply due to the entire change in the position of affairs: the dogmatic controversy with the Jews now occupies the foreground. It is only like a faint recollection of old times that we occasionally hear that St Paul was really persecuted by the Jews because of his abandonment of the law.

The account that is given us of the oldest form of Christian life in the Pauline congregations is exceedingly scanty. There is no trace, for instance, of any attempt to draw upon the rich treasures of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. Nor should we ever have imagined, had we possessed the Acts alone, that such a thing as the enthusiasm of the early Christians ever existed in the Pauline congregations. The more significant, therefore, is the selection of the few details which the author does impart to us: the appointment of the elders, the 285 last instructions to the deputation from Miletus with the warning against the false teachers. But it is just these few details of ecclesiastical organization which the book of the Acts presents that form the connecting link with the Pastoral epistles which present us with a Paul who does nothing but regulate the constitution of the Church and combat the false teachers. The Paul of the Acts and not of the Epistles is the starting-point here, in spite of the little difference that the bishops now claim that reward for their labours which the speech at Miletus had bidden them forego. Nor is it very edifying to see the great destroyer of Jewish ecclesiasticism and the creator of free communities subject to nothing but the Spirit, here exalted as the first example of the clever ecclesiastic.

The theology of the Pastoral epistles is built upon the foundation of the Pauline soteriology, but goes further in a Catholic direction than St John. Faith in Jesus comes, as ever, first and foremost; it accepts the free grace of God which came down to us in the expiatory death of Jesus. But then love, righteousness, patience, and, generally speaking, good works, must at once be added to faith, if we are to attain to the right kind of piety. There is no mention of the Spirit in this connection except—and this is significant—when speaking of baptism. Otherwise the Spirit is confined to the officials. John would surely scarcely have written this. And in like manner predestination is much more clearly abandoned than in St John. It depends upon a man’s own self whether he become a vessel to honour or dishonour, whether he purge himself or 286 not. The Church is the great house full of saints and sinners. Here, too, we have a sign that the age of early enthusiasm is past.

But in spite of all this it is a practical, an excellent conception of Christianity, one which would by no means discredit even St Paul himself. The author knows exactly what the Church of his age needs above all else in order to be steered safely through all perils and dangers. But as he would have had too little authority had he written merely in his own name, he assumes the authority of the aged apostle. Some few short notes of St Paul to his younger missionary associates may very likely have been known to him, and may have helped him to clothe his thoughts in a skilful dress, but at the very beginning of the Second Epistle to Timothy he has abandoned his rôle, and the greater part of these letters is, after all, his own addition.

The transformation of St Paul into a Catholic ecclesiastic in the Acts and the Pastoral epistles was far from being attended by the important consequences which resulted from the exaltation of St John over the Synoptic Gospels. A man who served the Church with such devotion as St Paul had done, cannot object if she added some touches to the original picture in order to adapt it for her use in later times. And yet the world was thus deprived of some of the best and greatest elements in the apostle’s character. It could no longer look back upon the picture of a man who trusted in God and conscience alone, and thence derived the gigantic strength to overthrow traditions and authorities in vested with the sanctity of centuries.

And now the ecclesiastical teachers had only one task left at the end of the first century: that was to fill up the gap between Jesus and St Paul, to give a picture of the apostles which should fit that of the Paulinized Jesus and the Catholicized St Paul. The first part of the Acts and the “Catholic Epistles” complete this task. It was rendered exceedingly easy by the fact that no older written historical documents (composed in a different spirit) existed in the case of the twelve apostles as they did in the case of Jesus and St Paul, but, at most, all manner of oral traditions, which had no other object than that of glorification. For the belief was already firmly established that all that the Church possessed, both in matters of doctrine and of organization, came down from the apostles, and through them from Jesus. It is on the basis of this faith that the author of the Acts composes his book, but at the same time he describes the lives of the apostles from a point of view which was entirely foreign to them—that of a gradual transition of the gospel from the Jews to the Gentiles. First of all the risen Lord gives the plan of the mission: Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, unto the uttermost parts of the earth. Then the feast of Pentecost brings us the first anticipated realization of the furthest aims of the missionaries, when the representatives of all nations listen to the preaching of Peter concerning Jesus the Messiah.

At first, however, the scene of their missionary activity is confined to Jerusalem, until the increasing severity of the persecutions of the Jews culminates in the first martyrdom and causes the 288 majority of the Christians, not the apostles, to take to flight. Now the way is open for the extension that was anticipated in the plan of the missions prefixed to the book. In a nicely-ordered succession, the conversion of the Samaritans—that is to say, the half Jews—is followed by that of the proselyte from Ethiopia, still an adherent of the Jewish religion, and next by that of the first Gentile, whose alms and prayers, however, approach him very nearly to the Jews; then comes the foundation of the first Gentile Christian Church at Antioch, and finally the great mission to the Gentiles. The history of the earliest Christian missions could not have taken place in accordance with a better-ordered programme; this is the more wonderful, as it was no carefully premeditated plan on the part of the leaders which led them along this road, but simply the force of historical circumstances. In such a gradual development of the mission to the Gentiles there was no room for any really serious conflicts to arise, and this is the point that appears to our author to be of the greatest importance. The conversion of the first Gentile is sanctioned by such a mass of divine revelations that the only result of resistance to it is to manifest this divine sanction still more clearly. But no reader can fail to derive the impression that had not the great Paul possessed the courage, the fearlessness of consequences, and the pertinacity of the revolutionary, his little conservative successors and disciples would still all be sitting to-day on the benches of the synagogue.

The author of the Acts, of course, filled up this 289 outline of the progress of Christian missions—as he imagined them to have taken place—with a varied series of pictures from the missionary life. A large amount of space is assigned to the speeches. They all reflect the author’s theology, and after all, this is their best feature—that every trace of artificial archaism is wanting in them. We do not get the old genuine Paulinism with its antithetical abruptness in this portion of the book either. Only St Paul’s main thought, that belief in Jesus the Redeemer is the sole source of salvation, is the foundation of every speech. As a rule the stumbling-block of the death of Jesus stands in the foreground; it is removed by the testimony of the resurrection and by the proof that both the death and the resurrection of the Messiah had been prophesied in the Old Testament. Next, the author is very fond of dwelling upon the history of the Old Testament as a whole, and of interpreting it from a Christian standpoint as a preparation for the history of Christ, thereby depriving the Jews of the possession of it and handing it over to the Christians. It is the first martyr, the man condemned for his apostasy, who at his trial gives the Jews the most detailed account of the history of the patriarchs and of Moses, with which they had been perfectly familiar from their childhood. The object is to convince the reader of St Stephen’s conservative attitude and of his strict faith in the Scriptures. From all this we can learn a great deal as to the Catholic theology in this the earliest period of its growth, but nothing at all as to the views of the earliest Christians.

The glorification, however, and canonization of the 290 apostles by the Church, which is undertaken in these same first chapters of the Acts, came to be of great importance to all later times. In the gospels, especially in St Mark’s, the oldest, the apostles fare badly enough: their most striking characteristic is their shortsightedness and obtuseness, their inability to understand Jesus. Jesus is represented in St Mark as great and mysterious really at the cost of the apostles. Here St Matthew and St Luke have already considerably toned down the picture in their editions. But now, in the Acts, St Luke bids us only look at the bright side. It is upon the apostles first and foremost that the Holy Ghost descended. Since then they are no longer men like ourselves, but God’s voices. What they speak is God’s word, and what they order God’s commandment. And this applies just to the twelve, for it was immediately before Whit Sunday that they again attained to their full number. Thus constituted they are the highest authority in the Church next to Jesus. As such they institute the seven, they superintend the new mission to the Samaritans, and pronounce the great decision as to the question of the law in the council of the apostles at Jerusalem. Now, it is instructive to notice that these three instances of the exercise of their official power by the whole body of the apostles are historically untrustworthy. We have St Paul’s contradictory report as to the council at Jerusalem. In the account given of St Philip in the eighth chapter every reader can feel that the original tradition celebrated Philip as the apostle to the Samaritans, and that only a later hand added the apostolic 291 sanction with the artificial distinction that Philip indeed could baptize, but only an apostle could impart the Holy Spirit. In the account of the choice of the seven, we have a similar adaptation of the Hellenistic tradition with the object of exalting the apostles. Hence we learn that the author of the Acts applies his idea of the authority and significance of the apostolic body to traditions which knew nothing whatever about it.

But apart from this, the whole conception of the increased power and perfection of the apostles since the day of Pentecost contradicts all that we know of the actual conduct of the apostles. As a matter of fact they were men filled with an intense love for Jesus and possessed of the courage of martyrs, but they were also exceedingly shortsighted in the face of every divinely ordained change in the position of affairs. They greatly increased St Paul’s difficulties through their want of clearness and decision, through their unyielding passive resistance to his progressive tendencies. Pray, where was the Holy Ghost in St Peter when he played the hypocrite with the Jewish Christians at Antioch? Surely we have here an altogether untrue picture as the result of the bright colours which have been laid on in the ecclesiastical and devotional interests. Nowhere does our author present us with any really valuable historical information regarding the acts of these twelve apostles, which is sufficient proof that we are here concerned rather with dogma than with historical recollections.

In like manner the meagre description of the life 292 of the congregation, based as it is upon very scanty information, transfers the author’s ideals to the old time. One such ideal is the pious frequent at ion of the Temple by the first Christians; he may have a subsidiary object—to stop the calumnies of the Jews, but he would scarcely emphasize the point as he does, if he did not himself find the practice edifying. The “being in the house of God” is for him too a part of true Christian piety. Another of his ideals is the community of property, which, without further ado, he asserts to have prevailed generally in the earliest age, although the old documents from which he derived his knowledge of this subject contradict him in this point. He was here carried along by a current of his age with which we are already familiar in Hermas and the pseudo-Clementines, and which may also have been met with in certain social strata outside of the Church.

And thus he sheds a golden light upon the first age of the saints, which is to be a bright example to all later generations while they realize the distance that separates the present from this glorious past. Such a description, the product of faith and enthusiasm, can be justified even if its historical value is very small. But it is fortunate for us that in the Synoptical traditions and in the epistles of St Paul we can recognize the features of another picture which is less ideal, less harmonious, but on the other hand infinitely fresher and more vigorous, fuller of contradictions—in one word, more natural.

When once the original apostles were acknowledged as the highest authority for the Gentile Churches, it was very natural that the wish should 293 arise to receive letters from them addressed to the Gentile Christian congregations. The origin of the First Epistle of St Peter has not yet been explained; only one thing is clear: we have here an altogether Pauline letter which nowhere claims to have been written by St Peter and which yet bears St Peter’s name at the commencement. It is no specially theological writing; its object is to encourage the Christians of Asia Minor in the State persecutions which are now beginning, and to urge them to retain a firm hold on the Christian ideal of life. But it is just this, its practical tendency, which makes it a valuable document for the simple lay theology at the end of the first century. It is a conception of Christianity such as Clement of Rome presupposes in his letter. But familiarity with St Paul’s epistles has here brought about an even closer adherence to Pauline diction. Christ, grace, faith—these are the foundations of Christianity. The threefold formula even appears: chosen by God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit, reconciled by Christ. The struggle against Jewish legalism is altogether past and yet Paul’s main dogma still remains, that redemption is through God’s grace alone. And in the sacrificial death of Jesus this grace has become visible and tangible for us; whilst Jesus’ resurrection gives wings to our hope. This grace of God then draws near to lost man in the word of the Gospel, which awakens faith, and in baptism brings about regeneration. On this foundation the Christian is to continue building in obedience, patience, hope and love until he attains to the promise. Now, it is not difficult to discover many points in which the author 294 of the First Epistle of St Peter diverges from St Paul and betrays a tendency to interpret his epistles in a Catholic sense. St Paul is for him only one source of his piety and his thoughts. Another equally important source is the scriptural piety of the Jews of the dispersion. It is especially in the far less important place assigned to the Spirit and to the decay of enthusiasm that one recognizes the divergence between the two ages. And yet, in spite of all, we have here a Christianity that is altogether dominated by St Paul. When Luther reckoned the First Epistle of St Peter by the side of St John and the Epistles of St Paul as belonging to the core and centre of all the Scriptures, then he showed an entire appreciation of the facts of the case. Starting from St Paul, the epistle is altogether intelligible; starting from Jesus, this is by no means the case. And hence we are also exempted from the necessity of all further inquiry as to the apostolic author.

The writings of the end of the first century lead us everywhere to the same result. The theology of the New Testament is Catholicized Paulinism. Paul is everywhere the starting-point. It is his gospel that now speaks to us out of the words of Jesus and the original apostles. As he drove the Judaists out of the Gentile Church so he has impressed upon it the stamp of his spirit for all time. By the side of his all-powerful influence none other could have existed. But his victory was very considerably furthered by the eminently ecclesiastical character of his theology with its motto, “Extra Christum, extra ecclesiam, nulla salus,” shining in large letters above it. To this day it remains an impressive sight for us, 295 how the great weighty thoughts of this one man force their way through in the whole of the great Gentile Church. And yet it is not the entire, the original, the genuine Paul who gained the victory, not Paul in all his unconfined freedom. Even upon Paul tradition laid its mighty hand as it worked on in silence and anonymity. Much that was of the highest importance to him personally was laid aside and forgotten, because it no longer suited the needs of another age; so, for instance, almost the entire anti-Jewish theology with its antithesis—the law or Christ. Other things, such as the great enthusiasm, the theology of the Spirit, fell into disrepute because the Gnostics took possession of them, and they were finally confined within the narrow limits of the sacraments and ecclesiastical offices. Their place is taken by new factors, such as the ecclesiastical constitution, the orthodox faith, which now acquire importance; or an emphasis is laid upon freedom, the commandments, and good works, which was foreign to St Paul himself. Finally, his picture is so entirely painted over and hidden away by the Acts and the Pastoral epistles that the Church of the following centuries knows the genuine Paul as little as it knows the genuine Jesus.

One and the same process has operated in the New as well as the Old Testament. Both books contain that which is most original, the greatest and the deepest moments in the course of the long history of God’s dealings with men: there we have the great prophets from Amos to Jeremiah; here the Jesus of the Synoptic tradition, and the Paul of the genuine epistles. But in both instances these everlasting 296 treasures are combined and bound up with the writings of men of a very different stamp, very ordinary men, often enough entirely abandoned by the prophetic spirit, and thereby their influence has been impaired. The significance of the New Testament consists essentially in this, that it alone hands down to us the words of Jesus and His apostle—for whence else could we obtain them?—and at the same time obscures them for all times and so still for us. It was the greatest event in the past history of Christianity when Luther from his own experience once more discovered the true Paul, and thereby liberated one-half of Christianity from the prison-house of Catholic tradition. Since then free Protestant science has been engaged in the work of rediscovering the true Jesus, and thus far things are as they were of old, thanks above all to the dominion exercised by the New Testament, the inheritance of the infant Catholic Church.