Chapter 21

The distinctive feature of the Jewish religion is not, as is often supposed, its monotheism, Hebrew religion in its golden age was monolatry rather than monotheism; and when Jahveh became more strictly 'the only God,' the cult of intermediate beings came in, and restored a quasi-polytheism. The distinctive feature in Jewish faith is its historical and teleological character. The God of the Jew is not natural law. If the idea of necessary causation ever forced itself upon his mind, he at once gave it the form of predestination. The whole of history is an unfolding of the divine purpose; and so history as a whole has for the Jew an importance which it never had for a Greek thinker, nor for the Hellenised Jew Philo. The Hebrew idea of God is dynamic and ethical; it is therefore rooted in the idea of Time. The Pharisaic school modified this prophetic teaching in two ways. It became more spiritual; anthropomorphisms were removed, and the transcendence of God above the world was more strictly maintained. On the other hand, the religious relationship became in their hands narrower and more external. The notion of a covenant was defined more rigorously; the Law was practically exalted above God, so that the Rabbis even represent the Deity as studying the Law. With this legalism went a spirit of intense exclusiveness and narrow ecclesiasticism. As God was raised above direct contact with men, the old animistic belief in angels and demons, which had lasted on in the popular mind by the side of the worship of Jahveh, was extended in a new way. A celestial hierarchy was invented, with names, and an infernal hierarchy too; the malevolent ghosts of animism became fallen angels. Satan, who in Job is the crown-prosecutor, one of God's retinue, becomes God's adversary; and the angels, formerly manifestations of God Himself, are now quite separated from Him. A supramundane physics or cosmology was evolved at the same time. Above Zion, the centre of the earth, rise seven heavens, in the highest of which the Deity has His throne. The underworld is now first divided into Paradise and Gehenna. The doctrine of the fall of man, through his participation in the representative guilt of his first parents, is Pharisaic; as is the strange legend, which St. Paul seems to have believed (2 Cor. xi. 3), that the Serpent carnally seduced Eve, and so infected the race with spiritual poison. Justification, in Pharisaism as for St. Paul, means the verdict of acquittal. The bad receive in this life the reward for any small merits which they may possess; the sins of the good must be atoned for; but merits, as in Roman Catholicism, may be stored and transferred. Martyrdoms especially augment the spiritual bank-balance of the whole nation. There was no official Messianic doctrine, only a mass of vague fancies and beliefs, grouped round the central idea of the appearance on earth of a supernatural Being, who should establish a theocracy of some kind at Jerusalem. The righteous dead will be raised to take part in this kingdom. The course of the world is thus divided into two epochs--'this age' and 'the age to come.' A catastrophe will end the former and inaugurate the latter. The promised deliverer is now waiting in heaven with God, until his hour comes; and it will come very soon. All this St. Paul must have learned from Gamaliel. It formed the framework of his theology as a Christian for many years after his conversion, and was only partially thrown off, under the influence of mystical experience and of Greek ideas, during the period covered by the letters. The lore of good and bad spirits (the latter are 'the princes of this world' in I Cor. ii. 6, 8) pervades the Epistles more than modern readers are willing to admit. It is part of the heritage of the Pharisaic school.

It is very unlikely (in spite of Johannes Weiss) that St. Paul ever saw Jesus in the flesh. But he did come in contact with the little Christian community at Jerusalem. These disciples at first attempted to live as strict members of the Jewish Church. They knew that the coming Messiah was their crucified Master, but this belief involved no rupture with Judaism. So at least they thought themselves; the Sanhedrin saw more clearly what the new movement meant. The crisis came when numerous 'Hellenists' attached themselves to the Church--Jews of the Dispersion, from Syria, Egypt, and elsewhere. A threatened rupture between these and the Palestinian Christians was averted by the appointment of seven deacons or charity commissioners, among whom Stephen soon became prominent by the dangerously 'liberal' character of his teaching. Philo gives important testimony to the existence of a 'liberal' school among the Jews of the Dispersion, who, under pretext of spiritualising the traditional law, left off keeping the Sabbath and the great festivals, and even dispensed with the rite of circumcision. Thus the admission of Gentiles on very easy terms into the Church was no new idea to the Palestinian Jews; it was known to them as part of the shocking laxity which prevailed among their brethren of the Dispersion. With Stephen, this kind of liberalism seemed to have entered the group of 'disciples.' He was accused of saying that Jesus was to destroy the temple and change the customs of Moses. In his bold defence he admitted that in his view the Law was valid only for a limited period, which would expire so soon as Jesus returned as Messiah. This was quite enough for the Sanhedrin. They stoned Stephen, and compelled the 'disciples' to disperse and fly for their lives. Only the Apostles, whose devotion to the Law was well known, were allowed to remain. This last fact, briefly recorded in Acts, is important as an indication that the persecution was directed only against the liberalising Christians, and that these were the great majority. Saul, it seems, had no quarrel with the Twelve; his hatred and fanaticism were aroused against a sect of Hellenist Jews who openly proclaimed that the Law had been abrogated in advance by their Master, who, as Saul observed with horror, had incurred the curse of the Law by dying on a gibbet. All the Pharisee in him was revolted; and he led the savage heretic-hunt which followed the execution of Stephen.

What caused the sudden change which so astonished the survivors among his victims? To suppose that nothing prepared for the vision near Damascus, that the apparition in the sky was a mere 'bolt from the blue,' is an impossible theory. The best explanation is furnished by a study of the Apostle's character, which we really know very well. The author of the Epistles was certainly not a man who could watch a young saint being battered to death by howling fanatics, and feel no emotion. Stephen's speech may have made him indignant; his heroic death, the very ideal of a martyrdom, must have awakened very different feelings. An undercurrent of dissatisfaction, almost of disgust, at the arid and unspiritual seminary teaching of the Pharisees now surged up and came very near the surface. His bigotry sustained him as a persecutor for a few weeks more; but how if he could himself see what the dying Stephen said that he saw? Would not that be a welcome liberation? The vision came in the desert, where men see visions and hear voices to this day. They were very common in the desert of Gobi when Marco Polo traversed it. 'The Spirit of Jesus,' as he came to call it, spoke to his heart, and the form of Jesus flashed before his eyes. Stephen had been right; the Crucified was indeed the Lord from heaven. So Saul became a Christian; and it was to the Christianity of Stephen, not to that of James the Lord's brother, that he was converted. The Pharisee in him was killed.

The travelling missionary was as familiar a figure in the Levant as the travelling lecturer on philosophy. The Greek language brought all nationalities together. The Hellenising of the East had gone on steadily since the conquests of Alexander; and Greek was already as useful as Latin in many parts of the West. A century later, Marcus Aurelius wrote his Confessions in Greek; and even in the middle of the third century, when the tide was beginning to turn in favour of Latin, Plotinus lectured in Greek at Rome. Christianity, within a few years after the Crucifixion, had allied itself definitely with the speech, and therefore inevitably with the spirit, of Hellenism. At no time since have travel and trade been so free between the West of Europe and the West of Asia. A Phrygian merchant (according to the inscription on his tomb) made seventy-two journeys to Rome in the course of his business-life. The decomposition of nationalities, and the destruction of civic exclusiveness, led naturally to the formation of voluntary associations of all kinds, from religious sects to trade unions; sometimes a single association combined these two functions. The Oriental religions appealed strongly to the unprivileged classes, among which genuine religious faith was growing, while the official cults of the Roman Empire were unsatisfying in themselves and associated with tyranny. The attempt of Augustus to resuscitate the old religion was artificial and unfruitful. The living movement was towards a syncretism of religious ideas and practices, all of which came from the Eastern provinces and beyond them. The prominent features in this new devotion were the removal of the supreme Godhead from the world to a transcendental sphere; contempt for the world and ascetic abnegation of 'the flesh'; a longing for healing and redemption, and a close identification of salvation with individual immortality; and, finally, trust in sacraments ('mysteries,' in Greek) as indispensable means of grace or redemption. This was the Paganism with which Christianity had to reckon, as well as with the official cult and its guardians. The established church it conquered and destroyed; the living syncretistic beliefs it cleansed, simplified, and disciplined, but only absorbed by becoming itself a syncretistic religion. But besides Christians and Pagans, there were the Jews, dispersed over the whole Empire. There were at least a million in Egypt, a country which St. Paul, for reasons unknown to us, left severely alone; there were still more in Syria, and perhaps five millions in the whole Empire. In spite of the fecundity of Jewish women, so much emphasised by Seeck in his history of the Downfall of the Ancient World, it is impossible that the Hebrew stock should have multiplied to this extent. There must have been a very large number of converts, who were admitted, sometimes without circumcision, on their profession of monotheism and acceptance of the Jewish moral code. The majority of these remained in the class technically called 'God-fearers,' who never took upon themselves the whole yoke of the Law. These half-Jews were the most promising field for Christian missionaries; and nothing exasperated the Jews more than to see St. Paul fishing so successfully in their waters. The spirit of propagandism almost disappeared from Judaism after the middle of the second century. Judaism shrank again into a purely Eastern religion, and renounced the dangerous compromise with Western ideas. The labours of St. Paul made an all-important parting of the ways. Their result was that Christianity became a European religion, while Judaism fell back upon its old traditions.

It is very unfortunate that we have no thoroughly trustworthy records of the Apostle's earlier mission preaching. The Epistles only cover a period of about ten years; and the rapid development of thought which can be traced during this short time prevents us from assuming that his earlier teaching closely resembled that which we find in the Letters. But if, during the earlier period, he devoted his attention mainly to those who were already under Jewish influence, we may be sure that he spoke much of the Messiahship of Jesus, and of His approaching return, these being the chief articles of faith in Judaic Christianity. This was, however, only the framework. What attracted converts was really the historical picture of the life of Jesus; his message of love and brotherhood, which they found realised in the little communities of believers; and the abolition of all external barriers between human beings, such as social position, race, and sex, which had undoubtedly been proclaimed by the Founder, and contained implicitly the promise of an universal religion. We can infer what the manner of his preaching was from the style of the letters, which were probably dictated like extempore addresses, without much preparation. He was no trained orator, and he thoroughly disdained the arts of the rhetorician. His Greek, though vigorous and effective, is neither correct nor elegant. His eloquence is of the kind which proceeds from intense conviction, and from a thorough knowledge of Old Testament prophecy and psalmody--no bad preparation for a religious teacher. If at times he argued like a Rabbi, these frigid debates were as acceptable to ancient Jews as they are to modern Scotsmen. And when he takes fire, as he deals with some vital truth which he has lived as well as learned and taught, he establishes his right to be called what he never aimed at being--a writer of genius. Such passages as 1 Cor. xiii., Phil, ii., Rom. viii., rank among the finest compositions in later Greek literature. Regarded merely as a piece of poetical prose, 1 Cor. xiii. is finer than anything that had been written in the Greek language since the great Attic prose-writers. And if this was dictated impromptu, similar outbursts of splendid eloquence were probably frequent in his mission-preaching. Their effect must have been overwhelming, when reinforced by the flashing eye of the speaker, and by the absolute sincerity which none could doubt who saw his face and figure, furrowed by toil and scarred by torture.

In addressing the Gentiles, we may assume that he followed the customary Jewish line of apologetic, denouncing the folly of idolatry--an aid to worship which is quite innocent and natural in some peoples, but which the Jews never understood; that he spoke much of judgment to come; and especially that he contrasted the pure and affectionate social life of the Christian brotherhood with the licentiousness, cruelty, injustice, oppression, and mutual suspicion of Pagan society. This argument probably struck home in very many 'Gentile' hearts. The old civilisation, with all the brilliant qualities which make many moderns regret its destruction, rested on too narrow a base. The woman and the slave were left out, the woman especially by the Greeks, and the slave by the Romans. Acute social inequalities always create pride, brutality, and widespread sexual immorality. And when the structure which maintained these inequalities is itself tottering, the oppressed classes begin to feel that they are unnecessary, and to hope for emancipation. When St. Paul drew his lurid pictures of Pagan society steeped in unnatural abominations, without hope for the future, 'hateful and hating one another,' and then pointed to the little flock of Christians--among whom no one was allowed to be idle and no one to starve, and where family life was pure and mutual confidence full, frank and seldom abused--the woman and the slave, of whom Aristotle had spoken so contemptuously, flocked into his congregations, and began to organise themselves for that victory which Nietzsche thought so deplorable.

It is not necessary in this essay to traverse again the familiar field of St. Paul's missionary journeys. The first epoch, which embraces about fourteen years, had its scene in Syria and Cilicia, with the short tour in Cyprus and other parts of Asia Minor. The second period, which ends with the imprisonment in A.D. 58 or 59, is far more important. St. Paul crosses into Europe; he works in Macedonia and Greece. Churches are founded in two of the great towns of the ancient world, Corinth and Ephesus. According to his letters, we must assume that he only once returned to Jerusalem from the great tour in the West, undertaken after the controversy with Peter; and that the object of this visit was to deliver the money which he had promised to collect for the poor 'saints' at Jerusalem. He intended after this to go to Rome, and thence to Spain--a scheme worthy of the restless genius of an Alexander. He saw Rome indeed, but as a prisoner. The rest of his life is lost in obscurity. The writer of the Acts does not say that the two years' imprisonment ended in his execution; and if it was so, it is difficult to see why such a fact should be suppressed. If the charge against him was at last dismissed, because the accusers did not think it worth while to come to Rome to prosecute it, St. Luke's silence is more explicable. In any case, we may regard it as almost certain that St. Paul ended his life under a Roman axe during the reign of Nero.

'There is hardly any fact' (says Harnack) 'which deserves to be turned over and pondered so much as this, that the religion of Jesus has never been able to root itself in Jewish or even upon Semitic soil.' This extraordinary result is the judgment of history upon the life and work of St. Paul. Jewish Christianity rapidly withered and died. According to Justin, who must have known the facts, Jesus was rejected by the whole Jewish nation 'with a few exceptions.' In Galilee especially, few, if any, Christian Churches existed. There are other examples, of which Buddhism is the most notable, of a religion gaining its widest acceptance outside the borders of the country which gave it birth. But history oilers no parallel to the complete vindication of St. Paul's policy in carrying Christianity over into the Græco-Roman world, where alone, as the event proved, it could live. This is a complete answer to those who maintain that Christ made no break with Judaism. Such a statement is only tenable if it is made in the sense of Harnack's words, that 'what Gentile Christianity did was to carry out a process which had in fact commenced long before in Judaism itself, viz. the process by which the Jewish religion was inwardly emancipated and turned into a religion for the world.' But the true account would be that Judaism, like other great ideas, had to 'die to live,' It died in its old form, in giving birth to the religion of civilised humanity, as the Greek nation perished in giving birth to Hellenism, and the Roman in creating the Mediterranean empire of the Caesars and the Catholic Church of the Popes. The Jewish people were unable to make so great a sacrifice of their national hopes. With the matchless tenacity which characterises their race they clung to their tribal God and their temporal and local millennium. The disasters of A.D. 70 and of the revolt under Hadrian destroyed a great part of the race, and at last uprooted it from the soil of Palestine. But conservatism, as usual, has had its partial justification. Judaism has refused to acknowledge the religion of the civilised world as her legitimate child; but the nation has refused also to surrender its life. There are no more Greeks and Romans; but the Jews we have always with us.

St. Paul saw that the Gospel was a far greater and more revolutionary scheme than the Galilean apostles had dreamed of. In principle he committed himself from the first to the complete emancipation of Christianity from Judaism. But it was inevitable that he did not at first realise all that he had undertaken. And, fortunately for us, the most rapid evolution in his thought took place daring the ten years to which his extant letters belong. It is exceedingly interesting to trace his gradual progress away from Apocalyptic Messianism to a position very near that of the fourth Gospel. The evangelist whom we call St. John is the best commentator on Paulinism. This is one of the most important discoveries of recent New Testament criticism.

In the earliest Epistles--those to the Thessalonians--we have the naïve picture of Messiah coming on the clouds, which, as we now know, was part of the Pharisaic tradition. In the central group the Christology is far more complex. Besides the Pharisaic Messiah, and the records of the historical Jesus of Nazareth, we have now to reckon with the Jewish-Alexandrian idea of the generic, archetypal man, which is unintelligible without reference to the Platonic philosophy. Philo is here a great help towards understanding one of the most difficult parts of the Apostle's teaching. We have also, fully developed, the mystical doctrine of the Spirit of Christ immanent in the soul of the believer, a conception which was the core of St. Paul's personal religion, and more than anything else emancipated him from apocalyptic dreams of the future. We have also a fourth conception, quite distinct from the three which have been mentioned--that of Christ as a cosmic principle, the instrument in creation and the sustainer of all his in the universe. We must again have recourse to Philo and his doctrine of the Logos, to understand the genesis of this idea, and to the Fourth Gospel to find it stated in clear philosophical form. In this second period, these theories about the Person of Christ are held concurrently, without any attempt to reconcile or systematise them. The eschatology is being seriously modified by the conception of a 'spiritual body,' which is prepared for us so soon as our 'outward man' decays in death. The resurrection of the flesh is explicitly denied (1 Cor. xv. 50); but a new and incorruptible 'clothing' will be given to the soul in the future state. Already the fundamental Pharisaic doctrine of the two ages--the present age and that which is to come--is in danger. St. Paul can now, like a true Greek, contrast the things that are seen, which are temporal, with the things that are not seen, which are eternal. The doctrine of the Spirit as a present possession of Christians brings down heaven to earth and exalts earth to heaven; the 'Parousia' is now only the end of the existing world-order, and has but little significance for the individual. These ideas have not displaced the earlier apocalyptic language; but it is easy to see that the one or the other must recede into the background, and that the Pharisaic tradition will be the one to fade.

The third group of Epistles--Philippians, Colossians, and Ephesians--are steeped in ideas which belong to Greek philosophy and the Greek mystery-religions. It would be impossible to translate them into any Eastern language. The Rabbinical disputes with the Jews about justification and election have disappeared; the danger ahead is now from theosophy and the barbarised Platonism which was afterwards matured in Gnosticism. The teaching is even more Christocentric than before; and the Catholic doctrine of the Church as the body of Christ is more prominent than individualistic mysticism. The cosmology is thoroughly Johannine, and only awaits the name of the Logos.

This receptiveness to new ideas is one of the most remarkable features in St. Paul's mind. Few indeed are the religious prophets and preachers whose convictions are still malleable after they have begun to govern the minds of others. St. Paul had already proved that he was a man who would 'follow the gleam,' even when it called him to a complete breach with his past. And the further development of his thought was made much easier by the fact that he was no systematic philosopher, but a great missionary who was willing to be all things to all men, while his own faith was unified by his strength of purpose, and by the steady glow of the light within.