Chapter VIII: Summing-Up and Formulation of the Problem . . . 237 (1)

INDEX . . . 251

ENDNOTES

PAUL AND HIS INTERPRETERS

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I

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

_Hugo Grotius._ Annotationes in Novum Testamentum. 1641-1646.

_Johann Jakob Rambach._ Institutiones hermeneuticae sacrae. 1723.

_Siegmund Jakob Baumgarten._ Unterricht der Auslegung der heiligen Schrift. (Instructions in the art of Expounding Holy Scripture.) 1742.

_Johann Christoph Wolf._ Curae philologicae et criticae. 1741.

_Johann August Ernesti._ Institutio interpretis Novi Testamenti. 1762. (Eng. Trans., Biblical Interpretation of the New Testament, Edinburgh, 1832-1833.)

_Johann Salomo Semler._ Vorbereitung zur theologischen Hermeneutic. (Introduction to Theological Hermeneutic.) 1760-1769.

Abhandlung von freier Untersuchung des Canons. (Essay on the free Investigation of the Canon.) 1771-1775.

Neuer Versuch die gemeinnützige Auslegung und Anwendung des Neuen Testaments zu befördern. (A New Attempt to Promote a Generally Profitable Exposition and Application of the New Testament.) 1786.

Latin Paraphrases of the Epistles to the Romans (1769) and Corinthians (1770, 1776).

_Johann David Michaelis._ Einleitung in die göttlichen Schriften des Neuen Bundes. (Introduction to the Divine Scriptures of the New Covenant.) 1750. (Eng. Trans. by H. Marsh, Cambridge, 1793.)

Übersetzung des Neuen Testaments. (Translation of the New Testament.) 1790.

Anmerkungen für Ungelehrte zu seiner Übersetzung des Neuen Testaments. (Notes for Unlearned Readers on his Translation of the New Testament.) 1790-1792.

_Friedrich Ernst David Schleiermacher._ Über den sogenannten ersten Brief des Paulus an den Timotheus. (On the so-called First Epistle of Paul to Timothy.) 1807.

_Johann Gottfried Eichhorn._ Historisch-kritische Einleitung in das Neue Testament. (Historical and Critical Introduction to the New Testament.) 3 vols. 1814.

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_Gottlob Wilhelm Meyer._ Entwicklung des paulinischen Lehrbegriffs. (The Development of the Pauline System of Doctrine.) 1801.

_Leonhard Usteri._ Entwicklung des paulinischen Lehrbegriffs. (The Development of the Pauline System of Doctrine.) 1824.

_August Ferdinand Dähne._ Entwicklung des paulinischen Lehrbegriffs. (The Development of the Pauline System of Doctrine.) 1835.

_Karl Schrader._ Der Apostel Paulus. 1830-1836.

_J. A. W. Neander._ Geschichte der Pflanzung und Leitung der christlichen Kirche durch die Apostel. (History of the Planting and Guidance of the Christian Church by the Apostles.) 1832. (Eng. Trans. by J. E. Ryland, 1851.)

_W. M. Leberecht De Wette._ Erklärung der Briefe an die Römer, Korinther, Galater und Thessalonicher. (Exposition of the Epistles to the Romans (2nd ed., 1838), Corinthians, etc. (1841).)

_H. E. G. Paulus._ Des Apostels Paulus Lehrbriefe an die Galater- und Römer-Christen. (The Apostle Paul’s Doctrinal Epistles to the Galatian and Roman Christians.) 1831.

THE Reformation fought and conquered in the name of Paul. Consequently the teaching of the Apostle of the Gentiles took a prominent place in Protestant study. Nevertheless the labour expended upon it did not, to begin with, advance the historical understanding of his system of thought. What men looked for in Paul’s writings was proof-texts for Lutheran or Reformed theology; and that was what they found. Reformation exegesis reads its own ideas into Paul, in order to receive them back again clothed with Apostolic authority.

Before this could be altered, the spell which dogma had laid upon exegesis needed to be broken. A very promising beginning in this direction was made by Hugo Grotius, who in his _Annotationes in Novum Testamentum__(_2_)_ rises superior to the limitations of ecclesiastical dogma. This work appeared in 1641-1646. The Pauline Epistles are treated with especial gusto. The great Netherlander makes it his business to bring out by patient study the simple literal meaning, and besides referring to patristic exegesis, cites parallels from Greek and Roman literature. He does not, however, show any special insight into the peculiar character of the Pauline world of thought.

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In the ensuing period the principle gradually became established that exegesis ought to be independent of dogma. Pietism and Rationalism had an equal interest in promoting this result. The accepted formula was that Scripture must be interpreted by Scripture. This thought is common ground to the two famous works on exegesis which belong to the first half of the eighteenth century, the _Institutiones hermeneuticae sacrae__(_3_)_ of Johann Jakob Rambach, which is written from the stand-point of a moderate pietism, and Siegmund Jakob Baumgarten’s rationalistically inclined “Instruction in the art of expounding Holy Scripture.”_(_4_)_

On the soil thus prepared by pietism and rationalism it was possible for a philologically sound exegesis to thrive. One of the most important attempts in this direction is Johann Christoph Wolf’s _Curae philologicae et criticae.__(_5_)_ This was regarded as authoritative for several decades, and even later is frequently drawn on by exegetes, either with or without acknowledgment. The merit of having gained the widest recognition for the principles of philological exegesis belongs to Johann August Ernesti, the reformer of the St. Thomas’s School at Leipzig and the determined opponent of its famous “Preceptor,” Johann Sebastian Bach. His _Institutio interpretis Novi Testamenti_ appeared in 1762._(_6_)_ It is on the plan of the “Hermeneutics” of Rambach and Baumgarten, and deals with grammar, manuscripts, editions, translations, patristic exegesis, history and geography as sciences ancillary to exegesis.

But Ernesti’s work suffices to show that the undogmatic philological method did not in itself lead to any [pg 004] result. Its author is in reality by no means free from dogmatic prepossessions, but he skilfully avoids those questions which would bring him into conflict with Church doctrine. In fact the use he makes of philology is more or less formal. He does not venture to treat the books of the New Testament without prepossession as witnesses from the literature of a distant period, and to show the peculiar mould in which Christian ideas are there cast in comparison with subsequent periods and with the period for which he writes. He did not realise that the undogmatic, philological method of exegesis must logically lead to a method in which philology is the handmaid of historical criticism.

His great contemporary, Johann Salomo Semler, ventures to give expression to this truth, and so becomes the creator of historical theology. In his theoretical works on the Scriptures and on exegesis—“Introduction to theological Hermeneutics” (1760-1769),_(_7_)_ “Essay on the free Investigation of the Canon” (1771-1775),_(_8_)_ “A new attempt to promote a generally profitable Exposition and Application of the New Testament” (1786)_(_9_)_—the Halle professor explains again and again what is to be understood by a “historical” method of exegesis. He demands that the New Testament shall be regarded as a temporally conditioned expression of Christian thought, and examined with an unprejudiced eye. In making this claim he does not speak as a [pg 005] disinterested representative of historical science, but makes it in the name of religion. If religion is to develop progressively and purify itself into an ethical belief, the special embodiments which it has received in the past must not lay the embargo of a false authority upon its progress. We must acknowledge to ourselves that many conceptions and arguments, not only of the Old Testament but also of the New, have not the same significance for us as they had for the early days of Christianity. In his work of 1786, Semler even demands that “for present day Christians there should be made a generally useful selection from the discourses of Jesus and the writings of the Apostles, in which the local reference to contemporary readers shall be distinguished or eliminated.”

This theory of historical exegesis is carried out in dealing with the great Pauline Epistles. Semler points the way to the critical investigation of the Apostle’s thought. He gives paraphrases of the Epistle to the Romans and the Epistles to the Corinthians, and attempts to make clear the content and the connection of thought by a paraphrastic and expanded rendering of each individual verse._(_10_)_ Exegesis is no longer to be encumbered with a panoply of erudition; it is no longer to be interpenetrated with homiletic and dogmatic considerations, and to defer to the authority of the old Greek expositors, who, “when it is a question of historical arguments, had no better or clearer knowledge than we have ourselves.” It must let the Scriptural [pg 006] phrases say openly and freely what they mean in their literal sense, and devote itself simply to that dispassionate, objective study of facts which has hitherto been too much neglected.

The importance of the paraphrases does not however consist, as might be supposed, in their exhibiting the distinctive character of the Pauline trains of thought in comparison with the views of the other New Testament writers. By his use of a paraphrastic rendering of the text Semler puts an obstacle in the way of his gaining an insight into the specifically Pauline reasoning, and unconsciously imports his own logic into the Apostle’s arguments.

On the other hand, his brilliant powers of observation enable him to call attention to some fundamental problems of literary criticism. He is the first to point out that we do not possess the Pauline Epistles in their original form, but only in the form in which they were read in the churches. The canonical Epistle is therefore not, as a matter of _a priori_ certainty, identical with the historical letter. It is quite possible, he argues, that the letters as read in the churches were produced by joining together, or working up together, different letters, and also that written directions and messages, which originally existed in a separate form, were attached in later copies to the Epistles in order that no part of the heritage left by the Apostle might be lost.

On the basis of considerations of this kind Semler arrives at the result that the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of Romans did not belong to the original Epistle. The sixteenth is, in his view, a series of greetings which Paul—who, it is assumed, was writing from Ephesus—gave to the bearers of the Epistle to be conveyed to the churches which they would visit on their way through Macedonia and Achaia. In the ninth chapter of 2 Corinthians there is preserved, he thinks, a writing intended for another city in Achaia, which was only later welded into the Epistle to the Corinthians. From the [pg 007] fourteenth verse of the twelfth chapter of 2 Corinthians to the close of the thirteenth chapter we have to assume the presence of a separate writing, of later date than the original Second Epistle to the Corinthians. Thus Semler takes the first steps upon the road of literary hypothesis. Theology at first took little notice of these investigations. In the third edition of his “New Testament Introduction” (1777),_(_11_)_ the great Göttingen philologist and theologian J. D. Michaelis treats the letters of the Apostle in a quite uncritical spirit, and does not enter at all into the literary problems; in his “Translation” and “Exposition” of the New Testament_(_12_)_ he follows the old tracks and makes no attempt to carry out the task which Semler had assigned to historical exegesis. In general the eighteenth century, after Semler, contributed very little to the investigation of Paulinism. Schleiermacher was the first to take a step forward, when, in a letter to Gass, he expressed his doubts as to the genuineness of I Timothy._(_13_)_

Shortly before the battle of Jena—so he recounts in the preface—he had communicated his doubts to his friend, but had not got the length of setting them forth in a reasoned argument. “The battle—though indeed it ended all too quickly—the consequent unrest in the town, and even in the house, the confused hurrying to and fro, the sight of the French soldiers, which was interesting in so many ways . . . the still incomprehensible blow which struck our University even before you left, and the sad sight of the students saying their farewells and taking their departure,—these were certainly not the surroundings [pg 008] in which to set up a critical judgment-seat. Although, on the other hand, you would perhaps have been more ready then, when all seemed lost, to give up a New Testament book, than you are now.” The verbal promise then given but not fulfilled is now discharged in writing.

Schleiermacher bases his argument against I Timothy upon 2 Timothy and Titus. While the same general conceptions are present in the longer letter as in the two shorter ones, they are not there found in the natural connections in which they occur in the others. It makes the impression of being a composite structure, and in its vocabulary, too, shows remarkable differences from the remaining letters taken as a whole.

Strictly speaking it was not Schleiermacher the critic, but Schleiermacher the aesthete who had come to have doubts about 2 Timothy. The letter does not suit his taste. He fails to perceive that, so far as the language goes, the two other letters diverge from the rest of the Pauline Epistles in the same way as I Timothy, and that they also show the same looseness and disconnectedness; only that, in consequence of their smaller extent, it is not so striking. And, most important of all, it escapes him that as regards their ideas all three letters agree in diverging from the remainder of the Pauline Epistles.

Schleiermacher’s omissions are supplied by Eichhorn in his well-known Introduction._(_14_)_ He lays it down that the three Epistles are all by the same author, and are all spurious. His criticism deals first with the language and thought of the letters, which he shows to be un-Pauline; then he argues that the implied historical situations cannot be fitted into the life of the Apostle, as known to us from the remaining letters and the Acts of the Apostles; finally, he points to the unnaturalness of the relation [pg 009] between Paul and his helpers as it is represented by these Epistles.

The Apostle, he points out, gives them in writing exhortations and directions which on the assumption of a real personal acquaintance and a long period of joint work with them are in any case unnecessary, and become much more so from the fact that the letters look forward to an early meeting. From this Eichhorn concludes that “some one else has put himself in Paul’s place,” and he sees no possibility of the success of any attempt to defend the genuineness of the Epistles against the arguments which he has brought forward. In particular he gives a warning against the seductive attempt to save the genuineness of 2 Timothy by the assumption of a second imprisonment. No hypothesis, he declares, can in any way help the Pastorals, since they must be pronounced from internal evidence—because of their divergence from the remaining Epistles—not to be by the Apostle. This was a long step forward. The circle of writings which have come down under the name of Paul had undergone a restriction which made it possible to give an account of his system of thought without being obliged to find a place in it for ideas which already have a quite early-Catholic ring.

Ten years after Eichhorn’s literary achievement, in the year 1824, the Swiss theologian Leonhard Usteri, a pupil of Schleiermacher’s, published his “Development of the Pauline System of Doctrine,”_(_15_)_ which is generally regarded as the starting-point of the purely historical study of Paulinism, the first attempt to give effect to the demands of Semler._(_16_)_

Usteri wishes to show the subjective imprint and [pg 010] enrichment which ordinary Christianity received at the hands of the Apostle, and he sees in the Epistle to the Galatians the outline of his whole doctrine. He does not, however, venture to give full recognition to the idea of a real antithesis between the Pauline conceptions and those of the primitive Apostles, and consequently is led to soften down the peculiarities of the former so far as possible. The spirit of Schleiermacher, which tended to level down everything of a historical character, influences the book more than the author is aware._(_17_)_ A peculiar interlude in the investigation of Paulinism was due to the Heidelberger H. E. G. Paulus._(_18_)_ He published, in the year 1831, a study of the Epistles to the Galatians and Romans, which was in reality an essay on the Apostle’s system of doctrine. The work is undertaken entirely in the interests of a rationalism bent on opposing the reaction to orthodoxy.

According to the arguments of Paulus it is not the case that the letters speak of expiatory suffering and imputed righteousness. Paul cannot have upheld “legality” as against “morality” and have maintained an “unpurified conception of religion.” The “chief sayings,” the characteristic terms, are to be given a purely moral interpretation. The Apostle means that “faith in Jesus” must become in us “the faith of Jesus,” and the narrower conception of righteousness must be enlarged into the [pg 011] conception of “the righteousness of God.” The “righteousness of God” betokens righteousness such as it exists in God, and is demanded by Him in man’s spirit as its “true good,” “the only real atonement which brings us into harmony with the Deity.” Thus a proper interpretation enables us to discover in these writings “the agreement between the Gospel and a rational faith.”

The book appeared two or three decades too late. The rationalism which it represents had had its day. But there is something imposing in this determined wresting of the Apostle’s views. It is parallel to that which was practised by the Reformation. The latter interpreted the whole of Paulinism by the passages on the atoning death, and ignored the other thoughts in the Epistles. The Heidelberg rationalist starts from the conceptions connected with the “new creature,” which were later to be described as the ethical system of the Apostle, and interprets everything else by them.

The fact that the two views—the only ones which endeavoured to grasp Paulinism as a complete, articulated system—thus stand over against each other antithetically is significant for the future. Critical study in the course of its investigations was to come to a point where it would have to recognise both views as justified, and to point out the existence in Paul of a twofold system of doctrine—a juridical system based on the idea of justification, and an ethical system dominated by the conception of sanctification—without at first being able to show how the two are interrelated and together form a unity.

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II

BAUR AND HIS CRITICS

_Ferdinand Christian Baur._ Die Christuspartei in der korinthischen Gemeinde. (The Christ-party in the Corinthian Church.) Appeared in the _Tübinger Zeitschrift für Theologie,_ 1831 and 1836. Über Zweck u. Veranlassung des Römerbriefs (Purpose and occasion of Rom.), ib. 1836. Die sogenannten Pastoralbriefe. (The so-called Pastoral Epistles.) 1835.

Paulus der Apostel Jesu Christi (1st ed., 1845; 2nd ed., 1866-67). (Eng. Trans. by “A. P.” and A. Menzies, 1873-75.)

Beiträge zu den Briefen an die Korinther, Thessalonicher und Römer. (Contributions to the elucidation of the Epistles to the Corinthians, Thessalonians and Romans.) _Tübinger Jahrbücher für Theologie._ 1850-57.

Vorlesungen über neutestamentliche Theologie. 1864. (Lectures on New-Testament Theology.)

Vorlesungen über die christliche Dogmengeschichte. (Lectures on the History of Dogma.) Vol. i., 1865.

_Albert Schwegler._ Das nachapostolische Zeitalter. 1846. (The Post-Apostolic Age.)

_Carl Wieseler._ Chronologie des apostolischen Zeitalters. 1848. (The Chronology of the Apostolic Age.) On the Pauline Epp., 225-278.

_Albrecht Ritschl._ Die Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche. (The Origin of the Early Catholic Church.) 1st ed., 1850; 2nd ed., 1857.

_Gotthard Viktor Lechler._ Das apostolische und nachapostolische Zeitalter. (The Apostolic and Post-Apostolic Age.) 1852. (Eng. Trans. by A. J. K. Davidson, Edinburgh, 1886.)

_Richard Adalbert Lipsius._ Die paulinische Rechtfertigungslehre. (The Pauline Doctrine of Justification.) 1853.

IN the fourth number of the _Tübinger Zeitschrift für Theologie_ for the year 1831, F. C. Baur gave to the study of Paulinism a new direction, by advancing the opinion that the Apostle had developed his doctrine in complete opposition to that of the primitive Christian community, and that only when this is recognised can we expect to grasp the peculiar character of the Pauline ideas.

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The great merit of the Tübingen critic was that he allowed the texts to speak for themselves, to mean what they said. On the ground of the striking difference between Acts and Galatians regarding Paul’s relation to the original Apostles, and in view of the divisions and contentions which reveal themselves in the Epistles to the Corinthians, Baur concludes that in the early days of Christianity two parties—a Petrine party or party of the original Apostles, and a Pauline party—stood opposed to one another, holding divergent views on the subject of the redemption wrought by Christ.

In the gradual adjustment of these differences he sees the development which led up to the formation of the early Catholic Church, and he traces the evidence for this process in the literature. He thinks he can show that the two parties gradually approached each other, making concessions on the one side and the other, and finally, under the pressure of a movement which was equally inimical to both of them—the Gnosticism of the early part of the second century—they coalesced into a single united Church.

The recognition of the character and significance of Gnosticism makes it possible for Baur to introduce a new kind of criticism. Before him it was only possible to arrive at the negative result that a writing was not by the author to whom it was traditionally ascribed. Now, according to him, it is possible to determine to what period it belongs. It is only necessary to show what position it occupies in the process of reconciliation of the two parties, and, especially, whether it deals with speculative error. This Baur calls “positive” criticism.

He applies it in the first place to the Pastoral Epistles, and argues that the heretics combated in them do not belong to primitive Christianity but are representatives of the Gnostic movement of the second century. By the “myths and genealogies” here mentioned are meant the great speculative systems which are known from Church history. The description given of the heretics is [pg 014] intentionally couched in terms which are neither too general nor too special, in order to sustain the fiction that the false doctrine arising at this later period only revives a movement which had already been attacked and defeated by Paul.

That neither the assumption of a second imprisonment, nor any other possible or impossible hypothesis, can restore to the Pastorals their lost genuineness is as firm a conviction with Baur as it was with Eichhorn.

In the course of his study of the Pastoral Epistles the Tübingen master had expressed the opinion that the criticism of the Pauline writings would probably not “come to a halt” with these Epistles. The results of his further study were offered ten years later (1845) in the brilliantly written work, “Paul the Apostle of Jesus Christ.” He here treats first the life and work, then the letters, and lastly the system of doctrine. The result arrived at in his investigation of the documents is that only the Epistles to the Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans can be confidently used as sources. Compared with these four, all the others must be classed as “anti-legomena,” “which does not at all imply the assertion that they are not genuine, but only indicates the opposition to which their claim to genuineness is in some cases already exposed, in others, may be exposed in the future, since there is not a single one of the smaller Pauline epistles against which, if the four main epistles are taken as the standard, there cannot be raised some objection or other.” There are strong grounds for questioning the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians; those to the Thessalonians and Philippians are to be suspected because of the small amount of dogma they contain. Baur’s reason for taking up such a critical attitude towards the “smaller epistles” is that he is bound to see in the heritage which has come down to us from the Apostle, writings “which belong to the history of the party which based itself on his name, and refer to the relations of the various parties,” and show us how Gentile Christianity [pg 015] softens down its principles and its peculiarities in order to meet the Jewish Christianity, which on its part was going through a similar process, in the unity of the early Catholic Church.

This radical view was attacked on all sides. It gave rise to a kind of reaction even within the sphere of scientific theology, and led to the calling in question of results which the labours of Eichhorn had brought into general acceptance. Thus Carl Wieseler prefaces his detailed study on the date of composition of the Pauline letters with the remark that he held all the thirteen letters which are attributed to the Apostle in the Canon to be authentic.

The Apostle’s system of doctrine culminates, according to Baur’s representation, in the doctrine of the Spirit. In the brilliant disquisitions of this section it is not so much the historian who speaks as the pupil of Hegel. Paulinism is in its own way an announcement of the unity of the subjective spirit with the objective spirit. It is only from this point of view that a consciousness of freedom such as is found in the Apostle of the Gentiles can exist. His doctrine is concerned with union with Christ and with God by faith, from which comes Spirit. “Righteousness” is “the proper relation towards God, to place men in which is the highest duty of all religion.”

Baur does not enter into the details of the Pauline doctrine of justification. Detail is in fact somewhat neglected in his treatment. Strictly speaking, he only includes that which can be in some way or other expressed in Hegelian thought-forms, and that in which Paulinism may be exhibited as representing absolute religion. Everything else is thrown into the background, and receives only a partial appreciation—or depreciation—in a separate chapter entitled “A special discussion of some subsidiary dogmatic questions.” The characteristic stamp of the Pauline doctrine is largely obliterated. In particular, Paul’s views about the “last things” and the angels are not allowed to become disturbingly prominent. Baur does not, indeed, hesitate practically to eliminate [pg 016] them. The angelology he dismisses with the following remark: “Of the angels the Apostle says little in the letters which we have here to take into consideration, and that little not dogmatically, but only metaphorically and in current popular phraseology.”

The Tübingen scholar, in fact, uses the language of Paul in order to set forth an imposing philosophy of religion instinct with Hegelian influence. He gives no authentic account of the Apostle’s thought. Nevertheless this book breathes the spirit of Paul the prophet of freedom more fully than almost any other which has been devoted to him. That is what gives it its remarkable attractiveness.

A year after the appearance of Baur’s “Paulus”—in 1846—Albert Schwegler published his work on the post-apostolic age._(_19_)_ The founder of the Tübingen School had hitherto only, so to speak, hinted at the phases of development by which the early Church grew up out of the controversy between the two parties. Schwegler undertakes a more detailed description, and in doing so draws the lines so sharply that, along with the greatness of the construction, its faults become obvious. He has no deeper knowledge of Paulinism to impart.

Schwegler’s work had made it apparent from what side the Tübingen position was open to attack, and on this side Albrecht Ritschl proceeded to attack it in his well-known work on the origin of the early Catholic Church._(_20_)_ The first edition (1850) is primarily directed against Schwegler only; in the second (1857) he develops his opposition of [pg 017] principle to Baur. He offers proof that the earliest literature is not dominated by the negotiations for a compromise between the two parties which was postulated by the Tübingen School, and at the same time he attacks the basis of the whole hypothetical construction. Baur, he urges, must have formed a false conception of Jewish Christianity and Gentile Christianity, since, on his view, it cannot be explained what was the common element that held the two together. Had they only, as the Tübingen School was obliged to assume, had the external bond of profession of faith in Christ, it would never be possible to explain why both parties felt the need of approaching one another by mutual concessions until finally they coalesced in a single united Church.

The extent of the doctrinal material common to both must, Ritschl argues, have been much greater than Baur represents. He has not discharged the first duty of a historian of the Apostolic age, for this requires “that the points should be clearly shown in which Jewish Christianity and Paulinism coincide.” Baur had only given a negative description of the Apostle’s doctrine, because he never gives any hint “that Paul in very essential points held views which were common also to Jewish Christianity.”

The problem regarding the nature of the unity between Paulinism and primitive Christianity is thus recognised and formulated.

But it was not so easy for Ritschl to say exactly what constituted the common element of doctrine, the existence of which he postulated. That is especially evident in the second edition of “The Origin of the Early Catholic Church.” He is then only willing to admit an “opposition of practice” between Paul and the original apostles; the area of this opposition is so restricted that “the essential agreement in the leading ideas laid down by Christ will be only the more clearly evident.” But since in Paulinism little enough is to be found of the “leading [pg 018] ideas laid down by Christ” the proof of the “essential agreement” remains a pious aspiration.

The only solid fact which Ritschl is able to adduce is the expectation of the parousia. He assumes that it formed a very important part of the common doctrinal material, and inclines to believe that Paulinism and Jewish Christianity agreed in an ideal-real expectation of the Second Coming in order to make common cause against Chiliasm, though the latter in its coarser form only appeared later.

But in thus recognising eschatology Ritschl did not take the matter very seriously. He uses the eschatology, in fact, only in order to score a dialectical point against Baur, who had taken too little account of it. In Ritschl’s “Justification and Reconciliation,” where he later on had occasion to give a positive description of Paulinism, he avoided the faintest hint of any eschatological colouring of the Apostle’s ideas.

Another work which is occupied with the question of the unity between Paulinism and primitive Christianity is Lechler’s “Apostolic and Post-Apostolic Age.”_(_21_)_ The work is a prize essay in answer to the problem proposed by the Teylerian Society in Holland, as to what constituted “the absolute difference between the doctrine and attitude of the Apostle Paul and that of the other Apostles,” by which the “so-called Tübingen School endeavours to justify its hostile treatment of Christianity.” Lechler opposes his teacher, but is not able to make any advance upon Ritschl in producing evidence of the common elements in the two doctrinal systems.

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Among the works which controverted the Tübingen view of Paulinism a prominent place belongs to an early work of Richard Adalbert Lipsius on “the Pauline doctrine of justification.”_(_22_)_ Along with his scientific purpose the author also pursues a practical aim. He puts himself at the service of the anti-rationalistic reaction which aimed at restoring the old evangelical ideas to a position of honour, but in doing so did not grasp hands with the orthodoxy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but took as its starting-point the ideas which it finds present in the New Testament. In giving an objective presentation of the central Pauline doctrine of justification he believes that he is offering to the Protestantism of his time a view which it can adopt as its own.

For the Apostle of the Gentiles, he argues, justification is not a purely legal, forensic act, but also an ethical experience. Faith is an ethical attitude which produces an inward righteousness. What is really effectual in redemption is the fellowship with Christ in life and death. It is brought about by the Spirit of God and of Christ, who unites himself with the believer and transforms his personality.

Lipsius is the first to recognise the two trains of thought in Paulinism, and to remark that the one is based upon the juridical idea of justification, while the other has its starting-point in the conception of sanctification—of the real ethical new creation by the Spirit. He does not, as had always previously been done, make everything of the one and nothing of the other, but aims at showing how they are brought together in the Apostle’s thought.

The importance of the eschatological passages does not escape him. He assumes that the thought of the parousia gives an inner unity to the Apostle’s ideas.

It is true that Lipsius did not succeed in fully discharging the task which he laid upon himself. He weakens down one set of ideas in the interests of the other, [pg 020] and solders the two together externally by the use of skilfully chosen expressions; but it remains his great merit that he was the first to recognise this duality in Paul’s thought. Had he not been pursuing a dogmatic interest alongside of his scientific investigations he would doubtless have come to still closer quarters with the problem.

While his critics were at work Baur had not been idle. From 1850 onwards he published in the _Tübinger Jahrbücher für Theologie,_ which had superseded the _Tübinger Zeitschrift für Theologie,_ a series of separate investigations of the Pauline Epistles._(_23_)_ He had resolved that the final results of his study of the Apostle of the Gentiles, with which he had begun his work, and which throughout his whole lifetime had been his favourite study, should be set forth in a new edition of his Paulus. This was to be the crown of his work.

But it was not to be. Death snatched him away from his task when he had only just cast the first part into its new shape. The second and most important, which was to treat the “system of doctrine,” he did not reach._(_24_)_

To a certain extent a substitute for what was thus lost was furnished by the “Lectures on New Testament Theology,” published by the master’s son in 1864._(_25_)_ The chapter on Paulinism is very striking in its brevity and clearness, and shows a great advance on the work of 1845. At that time Baur had examined and interpreted Paul’s [pg 021] teaching by the light of the Hegelian Intellectualism. Now he tries to grasp his ideas historically and empirically, and to describe them accordingly.

He discusses successively the Pauline views on sin and flesh; law and sin; faith in the death of Christ; law and promise; law and freedom; the righteousness of faith; faith and works; faith and predestination; Christology; baptism and the Lord’s Supper; the parousia of Christ.

Eschatology, which in the first edition was quite overlooked, receives here abundant recognition. Baur admits that the Apostle fully shared the faith of the primitive community in the nearness of the parousia, and was at one with it in all the conceptions referring to the End.

The Pauline theology as thus empirically apprehended has no longer the bold effectiveness of the speculatively constructed system of the year 1845. It becomes apparent in Baur, and increasingly evident in the work of subsequent investigators, that the self-consistency and logical concatenation of the system become obscured and disturbed in proportion as progress is made in the exact apprehension of the individual concepts and ideas.

[pg 022]

III

FROM BAUR TO HOLTZMANN

MONOGRAPHS UPON PAUL

_Adolf Hausrath._ Der Apostel Paulus (1865, 172 pp.; biographical. 2nd ed., 1872, 503 pp.).

_Ernest Renan._ St. Paul (1869, 570 pp.; biographical and theological).

_Auguste Sabatier._ L’Apôtre Paul (1870, theological). (E.T. by A. M. Hellier, 1891.)

_Otto Pfleiderer._ Der Paulinismus (1873; 2nd ed., 1890; theological). (E.T. by E. Peters, 1877.)

_Carl Holsten._ Das Evangelium des Paulus (1st pt., 1880; 2nd pt., 1898).

NEW TESTAMENT INTRODUCTIONS

_Eduard Reuse._ Geschichte der heiligen Schriften Neuen Testamentes (5th ed., 1874). (E.T. History of the Sacred Scriptures of the New Testament, by E. L. Houghton. Edin. 1884.)

_Christian Karl von Hofmann._ Pt, ix. of “Die Heilige Schrift.” 1881.

_Heinrich Julius Holtzmann._ Einleitung in das Neue Testament. 1885.

_Bernhard Weiss._ (Same title.) 1886. (E.T. by A. J. K. Davidson, 1887).

_Frédéric Godet._ Introduction au Nouveau Testament. 1893.

_Adolf Jülicher._ Einleitung in das Neue Testament. 1894. (E.T. by J. P. Ward, 1904.)

_Theodor Zahn._ (Same title.) 1897. (E.T. of 3rd ed. 1909).

WORKS ON NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY

_Eduard Reuss._ Histoire de la théologie chrétienne au siècle apostolique. 3rd ed., 1864. (E.T. by A. Harwood, 1872.)

_Bernhard Weiss._ Lehrbuch der biblischen Theologie des Neuen Testaments. 1st ed., 1868; 6th ed., 1895. (E.T. Edin. 1882.)

_Christian Karl von Hofmann._ Pt. xi. of “Die Heilige Schrift.” 1886.

_Willibald Beyschlag._ Neutestamentliche Theologie. 1891. 2nd ed., 1896. (E.T. Edin. 1895.)

[pg 023]

GENERAL WORKS ON PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY

_Ernest Havet._ Le Christianisme et ses origines (4 vols., 1884).

_Karl von Weizsäcker._ Das apostolische Zeitalter. 1886. (E.T. The Apostolic Age, 1894.)

_Otto Pfleiderer._ Das Urchristentum. 1887. (E.T. of 2nd. altered ed., see later.)

STUDIES ON SPECIAL POINTS

_Carl Holsten._ Zum Evangelium des Paulus und Petrus. 1868.

_Fr. Th. L. Ernesti._ Die Ethik des Apostels Paulus. 1868.

_Emmanuel Friedrich Kautzsch._ De Veteris Testamenti locis a Paulo apostolo allegatis. 1869.

_Franz Delitzsch._ Paulus des Apostels Brief an die Römer in das Hebräische übersetzt und aus Talmud und Midrasch erläutert. 1870. (The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans translated into Hebrew and illustrated from Talmud and Midrash.)

_Hermann Lüdemann._ Die Anthropologie des Apostels Paulus. 1872.

_Albrecht Ritschl._ Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung, vol. ii., 1874. (The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation.) (E.T. of vols. i. and iii. only).

_H. H. Wendt._ Die Begriffe Fleisch und Geist bei Paulus. 1878. (The Meaning of the Terms Flesh and Spirit in Paul’s Writings.)

_Louis Eugène Ménégoz._ Le Péché et la redemption d’après St Paul. 1882.

_Eduard Grafe._ Die paulinische Lehre vom Gesetz. 1884. (The Pauline Teaching about the Law.)

_Gustav Volkmar._ Paulus von Damaskus zum Galaterbrief. 1887. (Paul, from Damascus to Galatians). A biographical study, with a critical comparison between the data of Galatians and Acts.

_Alfred Resch._ Agrapha. Ausserkanonische Evangelienfragmente. 1888. On the Question whether Sayings of Jesus have been preserved in Paul’s Writings.

_Otto Everling._ Die paulinische Angelologie und Dämonologie. 1888.

_Johann Gloël._ Der Heilige Geist in der Heilsverkündigung des Paulus. 1888. (The Holy Spirit in Paul’s Preaching of Salvation.)

_Hermann Gunkel._ Die Wirkungen des Heiligen Geistes nach der populären Anschauung der apostolischen Zeit und nach der Lehre des Apostels Paulus. 1888. (The Manifestations of the Holy Spirit according to the Popular View of the Apostolic Age and according to the Teaching of Paul.)

_Eduard Grafe._ Das Verhältnis der paulinischen Schriften zur Sapientia Salamonis. 1892. (The Relation of the Pauline Writings to the Book of Wisdom.)

_Adolf Deissmann._ Die neutestamentliche Formel “in Christo Jesu.” 1892. (The New Testament Formula “in Christ Jesus.”)

_Richard Kabisch._ Die Eschatologie des Paulus in ihren Zusammenhängen mit dem Gesamtbegriff des Paulinismus. 1893. (Paul’s Eschatology in Relation to his General System.)

[pg 024]

_W. Brandt._ Die evangelische Geschichte und der Ursprung des Christentums. 1893. (The Gospel History and the Origin of Christianity.)

_Ernst Curtius._ Paulus in Athen. 1894.

_E. Bruston._ La Vie future d’après St Paul. 1894.

_Hans Vollmer._ Die alttestamentlichen Zitate bei Paulus. 1895.

_Ernst Teichmann._ Die paulinischen Vorstellungen von Auferstehung und Gericht und ihre Beziehung zur jüdischen Apokalyptik. 1896. (The Pauline Views of Resurrection and Judgment and their Relation to the Jewish Apocalyptic.)

_Theodor Simon._ Die Psychologie des Apostels Paulus. 1897.

_Paul Wernle._ Der Christ und die Sünde bei Paulus. (The Christian and Sin in Paul’s Writings.) 1897.

CRITICISM AND EXEGESIS

_Bruno Bauer._ Kritik der paulinischen Briefe. 1850-1851-1852.

_Christian Hermann Weisse._ Beiträge zur Kritik der paulinischen Briefe. 1867. (Contributions to the Criticism of the Pauline Epistles.)

_H. J. Holtzmann._ Kritik der Epheser und Kolosserbriefe. 1872. Die Pastoralbriefe. 1880.

_Eduard Reuss._ Les Épîtres pauliniennes (“La Bible,” pt. iii.). 1878.

_Georg Heinrici._ Das erste Sendschreiben des Apostels Paulus an die Korinther. 1880. Das zweite, etc. 1887.

_P. W. Schmiedel._ Auslegung der Briefe an die Thessalonicher und Korinther in Holtzmann’s “Handkommentar.” 1891. (Exposition of the Epistles to the Thessalonians and Corinthians in Holtzmann’s “Handkommentar.”)

_R. A. Lipsius._ Auslegung der Briefe an die Galater, Römer und Philipper in Holtzmann’s “Handkommentar.” 1891.

WORKS OF A GENERAL CHARACTER, OR DEALING WITH COGNATE SUBJECTS

_Emil Schürer._ Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte. 1873. From the 2nd ed. (1886) onwards the work bears the title: Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi. (E.T. History of the Jewish People in the time of Jesus Christ. Edin. 1885.)

_Karl Siegfried._ Philo von Alexandrien als Ausleger des alten Testaments an sich selbst und nach seinem geschichtlichen Einfluss betrachtet. 1875. (Philo of Alexandria as an Expositor of the Old Testament, considered both in himself and in regard to his historical influence.)

_Ferdinand Weber._ System der altsynagogalen palästinenschen Theologie. 1880. The second edition (1897) bears the title Jüdische Theologie auf Grund des Talmud und verwandter Schriften. (Jewish Theology exhibited on the basis of the Talmud and allied writings.)

_W. Gass._ Geschichte der christlichen Ethik. 1881.

_Theobald Ziegler._ Geschichte der christlichen Ethik. 1886.

[pg 025]

_Edwin Hatch._ The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church (Hibbert Lectures for 1888).

_Theodor Zahn._ Der Stoiker Epiktet und sein Verhältnis zum Christentum. 1894.

_Adolf Harnack._ Dogmengeschichte, 3rd ed., 1894. (E.T. History of Dogma, 1894-1899). Die Chronologie der altchristlichen Literatur bis Eusebius. Vol. i., 1897.

PROBLEMS many and various confronted theological science when it attempted to carry forward Pauline studies from the position in which they had been left by Baur.

It was needful to clear up once for all the questions of literary criticism, to examine in detail the individual conceptions and trains of thought, to make clear the unity and inner connexion of the system, to show what rôle Paulinism had played in the development of early Catholic theology, and how far it was at one with primitive Christianity, and to solve the question whether the material employed in its construction was of purely Jewish, or in part of Greek origin.

In regard to the literary question a certain measure of agreement was in course of time attained. Baur had distinguished three classes of Epistles. In the first he placed, as beyond doubt genuine, Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans; Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, Thessalonians, and Philemon formed the second class, being considered uncertain; the Pastoral Epistles formed the third class, and were regarded as proved to be spurious.

The views of the Tübingen master regarding the first class and the third were adopted by the majority of scholars of the next generation. No doubts were raised against the great Epistles; the Pastoral Epistles were rejected. Holtzmann, in his work on the Letters to Timothy and Titus,_(_26_)_ supplied a detailed argument in favour of this conclusion.

[pg 026]

Of the letters of the intermediate class, the first to the Thessalonians and that to the Philippians were by many rehabilitated as Pauline. The second to the Thessalonians was rejected with increasing confidence. A special problem was presented by the letters to the Colossians and Ephesians, both because of their evident mutual relationship and particularly in regard to certain parts of the Epistle to the Colossians which made a strong impression of genuineness. Holtzmann offered a solution which gave general satisfaction. He adopted the hypothesis that Colossians was based upon a genuine Pauline letter which had been worked over by a later hand._(_27_)_ The redactor he identified with the author of the Epistle to the Ephesians.

While there was this general consensus in the critical camp, which was ratified in Holtzmann’s “Introduction,”_(_28_)_ the most diverse opinions on special points are found. Some attempts were made to save the [pg 027] genuineness of the second Epistle to the Thessalonians. For some, the Epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians are genuine throughout and represent a later phase of the Pauline theology. Nor were there lacking attempts of all kinds to rehabilitate the Pastoral Epistles. Those who did not venture to defend them as wholes make a point of retaining at least the “personal references.”

The presentation of the Pauline teaching was, however, hardly affected by the literary divergences. Not even the most conservative of the critics had the boldness to place all the letters which have come down under the name of Paul on a footing of equality. Even those who regarded the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians as genuine did not fuse ideas of these Epistles with the system extracted from the four main Epistles, but presented them separately; and any who were not converted to the rejection of the Pastorals at all events took the precaution to give a separate chapter to the Pauline theology of these writings._(_29_)_ If only the personal references might be saved, these Epistles were as completely excluded from the presentation of the Pauline system as if they had been pronounced wholly spurious.

Thus it continued to be the case, as it had been with Baur, that, generally speaking, only the four main epistles were taken into account in describing the Pauline system. The only significant change was that the epistle to the Philippians began to be put on the same footing, and, with a few exceptions, scholars no longer hesitated to regard as Pauline the conception of the pre-existence of Christ which is expressed in the section on the incarnation and obedience unto death. It was realised that the main epistles also presuppose this view, even if they do not state it so explicitly.

There were, of course, as time went on, attempts to [pg 028] explain the composition of the four main epistles and Philippians as arising by the working up together in each single epistle of two or more originals, but these were not of any real importance for the study of the Pauline doctrine. It was only a carrying out of the task suggested by Semler, when he pointed out that we have not got the letters in their original form but only as prepared for public reading by the early Church. But the constitution of the Pauline material is scarcely affected by the attempts to reconstruct these originals. They have a purely literary interest.

Theology, so far as it was occupied with the study of the Pauline system, did not allow itself to be at all disquieted by the rejection of the whole of the Epistles proposed by Bruno Bauer in his “Criticism of the Pauline Letters.”_(_30_)_ Nor was its confidence shaken by the hypothesis that the letters have been worked over to a very large extent and in a very thoroughgoing fashion. Christian Hermann Weisse’s “Contributions to the Criticism of the Pauline Epistles,”_(_31_)_ which appeared in 1867, where he sets forth the justification and the principles of this method, scarcely attracted any attention, as was indeed the case with almost all the theological work of this writer.

The elucidation of the details of the Pauline doctrine is vigorously pursued. An empirical definition is attempted of the terms sin, law, conscience, justification, redemption, election, and freedom. A special interest attaches to the study of the terms flesh and spirit. After Holsten had endeavoured to trace the significance of the word flesh, Lüdemann—in a brilliant work published in 1872—endeavoured to arrive at a clear idea of the Apostle’s anthropology and its place in his doctrine of salvation.

There are, so runs his thesis, two conceptions of [pg 029] “flesh” in Paul. The one agrees with the naive, simple Jewish linguistic usage, and means only the natural being of man. The other is much more precise and belongs to a dualistic system of thought. In it the flesh is defined as the necessary cause of sin and corruption and as the absolute antithesis to spirit. On close examination it appears that not merely two conceptions of “the flesh” existing side by side, but two different doctrines of man’s nature, and consequently two different conceptions of redemption, are found in Paul.

According to the system which connects itself with the simpler, broader conception of the flesh, sin springs from the freedom of the will; the law is assumed to be inherently possible of fulfilment; redemption consists in a judgment of acquittal pronounced by God which has its ground solely in His mercy; righteousness is imputed; the act which brings redemption consists in faith. This circle of ideas, which forms a self-consistent whole, is described by Lüdemann as the “Jewish-religious,” the “juridical-subjective,” doctrine of redemption. It has its source in reflection on the death of Jesus.

The other system of ideas is defined as the “ethico-dualistic.” In contradistinction to the former it makes use of an “objectively real” conception of redemption. It presupposes the more precise, narrower conception of “the flesh,” and regards sin as proceeding from it by a natural necessity. The law is the ferment of sin; death the natural outcome of the flesh. Redemption can therefore only consist in the abolition of the flesh. It is based on the communication of the Spirit, which produces in the man a new creature and a real righteousness. The redemptive act takes place in baptism. The ideas of this second system are based on the Lord’s resurrection.

The coexistence of a juridical and an ethical system of thought in Paul had been held by others before Lüdemann. What he did, however, was to follow out each separately into its details, and to endeavour to prove that all the contradictions and obscurities which are to be observed [pg 030] in the conceptions and statements of the Pauline theology find their ultimate explanation in the coexistence of two different doctrines of man’s nature and two different doctrines of redemption.

Hitherto the doctrine of redemption which appears alongside of the juridical had been described as “ethical.” He remarks that it is conceived not merely ethically, but actually physically, and therefore defines it as ethico-physical. Further, he is of opinion that the two theories are not co-equal in importance. He holds that in the ethico-physical “the real view of the Apostle” is set forth, which only tolerates the other alongside of it, and more and more tends to push it aside wherever in the discussion Paul can count upon a thorough understanding of the real essence of the matter.

In the Epistles the development, he thinks, takes the following course. The Letter to the Galatians knows only the primitive Jewish system of thought with reference to Christ’s vicarious suffering and righteousness by faith; it does not advance to the bolder realistic doctrine of righteousness.

In the Epistles to the Corinthians, according to Lüdemann, the Apostle does not make much use of dogma. “The less advanced position of the church there may have been one cause of this.” But the fundamental conceptions of the ethico-physical series of ideas begin to appear in them. Later on they attain to “constitutive importance” and “force their way into the leading dogmatic statements.” In the first four chapters of Romans the old view still finds expression. From the fifth onwards the new tenets are developed fully and clearly.

This second series of ideas is not Jewish but Greek. Lüdemann’s view is that Paul, “in the attempt to give dogmatic fixity to the doctrine of salvation, presses on beyond the horizon of the Old Testament consciousness and is carried in the direction of Hellenism.”_(_32_)_ The latter [pg 031] offered him a clearly-thought-out doctrine of man, in which the dominant idea was the antithesis of flesh and spirit, and made it necessary for him to think out a physically real doctrine of redemption.

Pfleiderer_(_33_)_ also works out the two series of ideas, separating them scarcely less sharply than Lüdemann does. But he prefers to describe the series which runs parallel to the juridical, not as physico-ethical, but as mystico-ethical. Moreover, he does not admit that the ethical series expresses Paul’s view more adequately than the other. He is of opinion also that the two sets of conceptions held an equal place in the consciousness of the Apostle from the first. By logically thinking out the Jewish idea of the atoning death, Paul was led—according to Pfleiderer—to the anti-Jewish conclusion that redemption is for all mankind, and that the law is consequently invalidated. With this view there is united another, the source of which lies in the Hellenistic anthropology. This is that redemption consists in the influence exercised by the Holy Spirit upon the fleshly creatureliness, in consequence of which sin and death are abolished. The beginning of this process is to be sought in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In the close connexion of the Pharisaic and Hellenistic elements “lies the characteristic peculiarity of the genuine Pauline theology, which can only be rightly understood when these two sides of it both receive equal attention.”

That in Paulinism two lines of thought go side by side is recognised by almost all the investigators of this period. But in the importance assigned to each of them great divergences appear. Reuss makes the juridical ideas entirely subordinate to the ethical; in Ménégoz the former are more strongly emphasised than the latter. No one except Pfleiderer holds them to be on an exactly equal [pg 032] footing. In general the ethical set of ideas is regarded as the original creation of the Apostle, and is assumed to represent the deepest stratum in his thought. Accordingly, it is generally also held that the doctrine of the abolition of the flesh by the Spirit comes to its full development later than the other, which is based upon the atonement and imputed righteousness. Lüdemann’s theory of a development within the Pauline doctrine is adopted by the majority, though only in a less pronounced form.