Chapter VIII: Summing-Up and Formulation of the Problem . . . 237 (3)

In the account of the eschatological events and their issue it is shown that the blessings and anticipations referred to by Paul are also present in the Late-Jewish theology. That the Apostle expresses his views about the future world in disconnected fragments, apparently distributed fortuitously through the text, does not show that it was not clear and consistent in his own mind, but exactly the opposite. The eschatological remarks come in so naturally and without appearing to need [pg 061] explanation just because this whole set of conceptions was to the Apostle so long familiar and self-explanatory, that he can draw on it whenever he wishes as easily as an educated European uses the multiplication table.

Strangely, however, Kabisch does not succeed in giving a clear and simple picture of the order and relation of the final events presupposed in the letters. He gets confused over the various resurrections and judgments, and finds the sole way of escape in attributing to the Apostle a resurrection of the righteous only, and not a general resurrection in addition. In consequence he is forced to the conclusion that the righteous enter the Kingdom without passing through a judgment, and that what is meant by the judgment is always the destruction of the wicked at the parousia.

That is to make the Apostle contradict not only Jewish apocalyptic, but his own utterances, since it is certain that the Epistles frequently make mention of believers appearing at the judgment.

The difficulties which Kabisch here encounters are significant. They show that it is not possible to understand the Pauline statements simply by the light of the Late-Jewish eschatology. What for the Apostle composed a simple picture remains for the writer who endeavours to describe his apocalyptic full of obscurities and contradictions. It is as if one or two conceptions were lacking which would have enabled him to “get out” his game of patience satisfactorily.

It is true Kabisch has not done everything possible in order to attain clearness. He has neglected to adduce for comparison the eschatology of the Baptist and of Jesus, and to examine how far the Pauline simplification of apocalyptic is here prefigured. He thus falls into the universal but none the less unintelligible error of failing to call the two most important witnesses to the Late-Jewish eschatological expectations. Are they the less so because they belong to the New Testament? Further, he neglects, as do all the other writers, to consider what [pg 062] are the primary questions which the theory of the events of the End had to answer.

What happens at the parousia to the non-elect? And what to the elect who have not become believers because the Gospel message has not reached them? The ultimate fate of these two classes of men can surely not be the same? Do those who at the parousia do not enter into glory suffer “death” or “destruction”? What is the relation between these two conceptions?

According to I Cor. xv. 26, death is only to be vanquished at the end of the Messianic kingdom. Is a general resurrection before that conceivable? Does it follow as a consequence of this triumph over death?

Since Kabisch does not raise these and similar questions, he does not find the path which alone can lead to the understanding of the logic of the events of the End. Undoubtedly, in the eschatology of a thinker like Paul, all these problems must have been considered and thought out. They form the implicit presuppositions which guarantee and make clear the inner logic of his scattered and seemingly disconnected statements.

Although he has not explained the paradoxes of the Pauline mysticism, nor succeeded in making clear the ground-plan of his eschatology, Kabisch’s book is one of the most striking achievements, not only in the department of Pauline study, but in historical theology as a whole. For the first time since Lüdemann’s investigation of the Apostle’s doctrine of man, in 1872, the problem of the Pauline doctrine of redemption receives a new formulation.

The two works show a curious analogy. Their authors have a consciousness of the fact that the theology of the Apostle is a living organism, and are preserved by some good genius from splitting it up into Reformation or modern _loci._ They endeavour to grasp the thoughts and connecting links of the doctrine of redemption from a single point of view. Lüdemann makes the “anthropology” his starting-point, Kabisch the eschatology. [pg 063] Both are led, almost contrary to their intention, to give a general account of Paulinism. Both see in the paradoxical statements about the abolition of the flesh in the union with the death and resurrection of Christ the centre of his doctrine; both arrive at the result that what is in view is a really physical redemption.

In the explanation of the facts which they agree in observing they diverge widely. Lüdemann claims the Pauline doctrine of redemption as Hellenistic; Kabisch endeavours to understand it on the basis of Late Judaism. Theological science cast out the innovator and held to the conviction that the Apostle’s system of thought was Greek. It was acknowledged that he had made the eschatology of the Apostle intelligible; but in the attempt to pass from the eschatology to the centre of the Apostle’s system of doctrine, contemporary scholarship saw only an extreme onesidedness for which there was no justification in the documents, which deserved neither examination nor refutation, but simply rejection.

On what lines had theology developed and defended the theory of Greek elements in Paulinism? In the first place, it is to be remarked that in regard to the extent and importance of the influence which is supposed to have been exercised, various groupings are to be observed among the different writers. Pfleiderer, Holsten, Heinrici,_(_54_)_ Havet, and others see in Paulinism the actual first step in the Hellenisation of Christianity. They assume, as Baur also had taken for granted before them, that the ethical series of ideas, the series dominated by the antithesis of flesh and spirit, is derived from Greek influences.

Schmiedel,_(_55_)_ in his commentaries, and Harnack_(_56_)_ express [pg 064] themselves with more reserve. According to the latter, Hellenism, no doubt, “had its share” in Paul. The Apostle of the Gentiles “prepared the way for the projection of the Gospel upon the Graeco-Roman world of thought,” but he never gave to Greek ideas “any influence upon his doctrine of salvation.” Lipsius,_(_57_)_ Bernhard Weiss, and Weizsäcker do not take much account of borrowings from Greek sources, but are concerned to explain Paul from and by himself so far as possible.

It is not so easy as might be supposed to determine the attitude of the various authors towards the problem of the Hellenic influence in Paul. This is partly due to want of accuracy in the terminology. “Hellenistic” is used to mean both Jewish-Hellenistic and Greek in the strict sense. The authors frequently express themselves in such a way that it is not obvious whether they mean the one, or the other, or both together. Attempts to establish an accurate terminology, to confine “Hellenistic” to the meaning “Jewish-Hellenistic,” and to use Hellenic for Greek in the full sense, have not succeeded.

But the want of clearness is not wholly to be put down to the account of the language; it is partly due to the mental attitude of the writers. The problem really includes two questions. First, Was Paul under the influence of Jewish Hellenism? Secondly, Did Greek thought in itself, apart from the alliance into which it had entered with Judaism, exercise any influence upon his views? Instead of keeping these questions separate these writers constantly confuse them, and assume that they have proved the existence of Greek ideas in the [pg 065] Apostle’s system of doctrine when they have only discussed his relations with Jewish-Hellenism.

Sometimes one actually gets the impression that in this difficult question they intentionally make their discussions a little obscure and inconsistent, and are more concerned to conceal than to reveal their views, in order not to lay themselves open to attack.

The discovery and the grouping of their opinions is therefore associated with difficulties, and can never be carried out in a way entirely free from objection. Fortunately the discussion and decision of the question does not depend on drawing them up in three divisions, each under the banner of its particular view, and so putting them through their facings.

It suffices to note the fact that in the study of the subject from Baur onward the greatly predominating opinion is that Paul was not only influenced by Jewish Hellenism but also derived some of his ideas directly from Greek thought. It is also safe to assert that of all the writers in question—even though some of them take up an attitude of reserve to Pfleiderer’s more thoroughgoing views, none of them denies the influence of Jewish Hellenism on Paul. The difference between them consists rather in the fact that some assume in addition to this what may be called “free” Greek influence, while others are sceptical on this point and think that the facts can be explained without this assumption.

It is to be expressly remarked that the latter do not try to arrive at an understanding of the essence of Paul’s thought by a different method, but only to clothe the usual explanations in different words. This is the case with Weizsäcker.

The well-known account of Paulinism in his “Apostolic Age”_(_58_)_ neither offers any new idea nor raises any new problem. Though he is in some respects more cautious than Pfleiderer, because he feels the difficulty of proving Greek influence more strongly than the latter, in other [pg 066] respects he is less exacting than Pfleiderer with his logical development of Baur’s ideas, since he is content with explanations which do not satisfy Pfleiderer.

That Bernard Weiss in dealing with Pauline theology dispenses with the assumption of Greek influence is due to the fact that his investigation holds strictly to the lines of “Biblical theology,” and on principle takes no account of anything beyond the borders of the Canon.

It is interesting to note that both Weiss and Weizsäcker deliberately avoid a discussion of Greek and Hellenistic influence on Paul, and confine themselves to an objective account of Paul’s doctrine. Indeed, it may be remarked that in the study of the subject between Baur and Holtzmann the problem is never thoroughly discussed.

The question how far the alleged influences are proved or provable may be held over for the present, and in the first place we may interrogate Holsten, Pfleiderer and their followers as to what their view really means, and what they think they can explain by means of it.

At bottom the question turns on the antithesis of flesh and spirit. In the clearly defined form in which this antithesis presents itself in Paul, it is held that it must be regarded as Greek. This view had been expressed by Lüdemann, who was the first to develop it clearly. Independently of him, Holsten_(_59_)_ and Pfleiderer brought it into general currency.

It is universally taken for granted that the dualism is derived from Platonism. Whether Paul took it direct from Greek sources or from Jewish Hellenism is not clearly explained. Lüdemann seems to assume the former, Holsten to imply the latter; Pfleiderer is doubtless to be understood in the sense that both possibilities have to be taken into account, separately and in combination.

The psychological process is differently conceived by [pg 067] Holsten and by Pfleiderer. The former holds that Greek ideas were already in his pre-Christian period present to the mind of the Apostle, who had been in touch with Jewish Hellenism, but they had as yet played no part in his thinking. By his religious experience at the vision of Christ on the Damascus road they were called into activity and helped him to give form to his new knowledge. In this way Holsten thinks it possible to understand Paulinism as both a personal creation of the Apostle and at the same time a product of the influence of Greek ideas. The emphasis lies, however, on the personal creation; the influence of the Greek ideas is thought of as subsidiary.

For Pfleiderer the process was more largely determined from without. Paul’s conversion creates as it were a void in his Jewish consciousness. The thought-forms which he has hitherto used prove incapable of dealing satisfactorily with the implications of his new faith. So the Apostle is driven to have recourse to another system of ideas. He no longer remains indifferent to the ideas which stream in upon him from Jewish Hellenism and Greek thought. They become significant to him; he allows them to exercise their influence upon him. In this way there arises a remarkable duality in his thought. Pharisaic and Hellenistic trains of ideas form two streams “which in Paulinism meet in one bed without really coalescing.” By way of conjecture Pfleiderer several times advances the suggestion that Apollos the Alexandrian may have introduced the Apostle to the Alexandrian Platonism.

Heinrici, again, in his commentaries on the Corinthian Epistles suggests that the Apostle’s doctrine is a synthesis of elements taken on the one hand from the Jewish prophets and on the other from Greek thought._(_60_)_ Paul, he thinks, reached back beyond Late Judaism to join hands with the ancient prophetism, and similarly rose [pg 068] superior to Alexandrianism and drew direct from Greek thought. In both cases what he seeks is an ethical force. That he possessed the insight and the power to find this in the thought of the ancient world and to apply it to the formation of a Christian system of thought was a great spiritual achievement, pregnant with consequences for the future development of Christianity.

One might have expected that these various views would be worked out in detail. That is not the case. In the last resort none of these writers gets beyond the general and simple assertion that the antithesis of flesh and spirit is Greek. But even this is not further explained by means of parallels from Greek literature. There is no attempt to show in what sense Paul’s utterances become more intelligible in the light of these analogies than they are in themselves.

“The Greek dualism,” writes Holsten, “underlies all the decisive elements of his thought, and makes itself apparent in a series of individual traits.” Any one who goes through his work in the expectation of finding evidence adduced in support of this statement will be disappointed. It is as though the author had forgotten as he went on writing what he had set out to do.

It is also matter for astonishment that no serious attempt is made to extend the range of the Greek elements beyond the single antithesis of flesh and spirit. The suggestion is no doubt met with that the pessimism, the longing for death, and the ethical teaching of the Apostle, belong essentially to the tone of thought prevalent in the Hellenic world. But these remain mere _obiter dicta_ which are not worked out in any way.

It is as though these writers one and all had an instinctive feeling that their thesis, so long as it is kept quite general, has an admirable air of credibility and admits of being nicely formulated, but that when any attempt is made to follow it out into detail it yields little in the way of tangible results. Paulinism is deceptive. Its outward appearance is such that the assertion that [pg 069] here Greek influences have been at work seems the most self-evident possible, but when this has to be shown in detail it leaves the investigator whom it has drawn on by its specious appearance completely in the lurch.

The curious thing is that Holsten, Pfleiderer, and their followers do not venture to formulate the unwelcome admission which may be read between their lines, but keep up the game with one another as if everything was going as well as heart could wish. They overdo their air of unconcern, as though from an uncomfortable sense that they might in the end lose confidence in their assertion, and so find themselves unable to explain how Paul arrived at his dualistic antithesis between flesh and spirit.

For this is what it all ultimately comes to. The assertion of Greek influence is a kind of pillared portico behind which they construct the edifice of Paulinism as they understand it. The style, however, is only maintained as regards the front. What lies behind that is styleless, neither Greek nor Jewish, without plan, without character, without proportion. Those writers who wholly or partially dissent from the assumption of Greek influences carry out the same plan with the same materials, and with the same unconcern as regards the style. The only difference is that they do not conceal it by building a special façade in front of it, whether it be that, like Harnack, they have a fuller sense of the difficulties, or, like Weiss and Weizsäcker, persuade themselves that Paulinism, according to their construction of it, looks sufficiently well as it is.

There is, however, one point on which Pfleiderer and his followers think that they can point to definite results of the influence of Greek ideas. They maintain that the Apostle’s eschatological expectations have been transformed by them. This has reference to the passage in 2 Cor. v. I ff. in which Paul gives expression to his desire not to be “unclothed” but to be “clothed upon.” The natural interpretation which is given by Bernard Weiss and others understands the Apostle as speaking [pg 070] of his eager desire to experience the parousia while still alive in the body, in order to share that transformation in which “what is mortal will be swallowed up by life,” and not to have to pass through a time of waiting in an intermediate state of non-being or death.

Pfleiderer in his “Primitive Christianity” does not accept this explanation, but maintains that this passage and two others—Phil. i. 21 f. and iii. 8 f._(_61_)_—imply a departure from the Pharisaic eschatological hope in which the Apostle’s thought elsewhere moves. In this later period of his life, represented by 2 Corinthians and Philippians, he turns away—so runs the theory—from the primitive view of an intermediate state of death, followed by a subsequent resurrection, and comes to hold that his soul, immediately after his departure, will pass into the presence of Christ in order to dwell with Him. And Paul is more and more driven to adopt this view in proportion as his life is daily exposed to greater danger, and he has to reckon with the possibility of dying before the parousia takes place. Under the pressure of this inward anxiety, guided by Platonising Alexandrianism, illuminated by the Greek spirit, he creates—we are still following Pfleiderer—a spiritualising hope of future blessedness, which in the sequel becomes of the utmost value to Gentile Christianity by enabling it to reconcile itself to the delay of the parousia.

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Pfleiderer believes also that he can show the course of the development by which the new conception was arrived at. In I Thessalonians, he thinks, the Apostle still rested unquestioningly in that notion of a corporeal resurrection which primitive Christianity shared with Judaism. But in the explanations in I Cor. xv. the influence of the Greek ideas becomes observable, while in 2 Corinthians and Philippians it becomes dominant.

This construction of the course of events is defended by Pfleiderer and his followers—Holsten here stands apart—with fanatical energy, as though they wished to make noise enough to distract attention from the fact that they have so very little else to point to in the shape of positive evidence of Greek influence in Paul.

What are the difficulties which are raised by the assumption of Greek ideas in Paul’s doctrine? They are many and various, and they grow greater in proportion as the new element in Paul is more strongly emphasised. Take the problem of explaining the dualism of flesh and spirit. It is assumed that this has been done when it has been declared to be Greek. But in doing so a duality has been introduced into Paul himself which creates many more difficulties than the dualism it was invoked to solve.

The Apostle is made to think Judaically with one-half of his mind and Hellenically with the other, and nevertheless is supposed to be capable of being conceived as a single integral personality. In the writings of Lüdemann and Holsten the difficulty does not yet appear in its full magnitude. They understand by the Jewish element especially the juridical series of ideas referring to the atonement and imputed righteousness. Holsten is, moreover, in a specially favourable position, because in the last resort he ascribes the origin of the system not so much to the influence of Greek ideas as to the inward experience on the Damascus road, which of course eludes analysis. If they are thus referred exclusively to the separate but coexistent juridical and mystical sets of [pg 072] ideas, a Jewish and a Greek element can at need be thought of as in some way or other combined in a single consciousness.

But for Pfleiderer the conception of the Jewish element has become much more comprehensive and vital, because he appreciates the significance of the eschatological ideas. The result of that is to make the opposition which has to be recognised much more acute. And, nevertheless, it must continue to be asserted that Paul was unconscious of the inconsistencies!

If the difficulty could be got over by pointing to an opposition of which the Apostle was conscious, and which he had made an effort to reconcile, the position of the theory would be much more favourable. But for that it would be a necessary condition that he should somewhere have expressed the consciousness that he bore two souls within his breast,_(_62_)_ and that the marks of compromise should appear in his work as they do, for example, in that of Philo. That, however, is not the case. He is conscious of no opposition, and steps unconcernedly from the one world into the other, turns back again to the first, and keeps on doing this over and over again. Where, according to Pfleiderer’s view, he is venturing a leap over the abyss, he has all the air of putting one foot calmly before the other on a level road. We must, therefore, take it to be the case that he had not the slightest inkling of the opposition.

This conclusion seems to negate psychology and render a historical comprehension of the Apostle impossible, but Pfleiderer hardens his heart and boldly accepts it. There remains, he says, “no alternative but to admit that Paul kept the two different kinds of conceptions in his consciousness side by side but unrelated, and jumped from one to the other without being aware of the opposition between them.”

There is, however, a further complication in the [pg 073] question. Pfleiderer holds that in 2nd Corinthians and Philippians a Greek spiritualising future-hope has displaced the Jewish Pharisaic hope. In the last period of his life, he maintains, the Apostle no longer believes in a corporeal resurrection, but in a presence of the soul with Christ which begins immediately after death.

But the new conception does not in fact displace the old, although it is diametrically opposed to it. Pfleiderer has to admit that Paul, even in the writings of the latest period, advances without misgiving the doctrine of the “awakening of the whole man from the sleep of death,” just as if the new doctrine of “the presence with the Lord beginning immediately after death” were not in existence, although it is the outcome of long years of mental struggle.

Pfleiderer, however, is prepared to accept even this portentous fact also, and to go on contentedly believing that Paul lived in a kind of mental twilight which is at once Jewish-eschatological and Greek-spiritualistic. He expresses this euphemistically by speaking of the Pauline eschatology as “hovering between the Pharisaic hope of the here and the Greek hope of the hereafter.” The way to a scientific understanding of Paulinism lies, therefore, for Pfleiderer through a _credo quia absurdum._

By his assertions about 2 Cor. v. I ff. he had brought the assumption of Hellenistic ideas in Paul into a dangerous position. Previously when a student of the subject had stated it to be his view that the sharp antithesis of flesh and spirit was Greek, there was no way in which this belief could be countered. If he was, further, convinced that the Apostle’s brain was so organised that he could at the same time think consistently along two separate lines, Greek-spiritualistic and Jewish-eschatological, without noticing their divergence and without ever mingling the two sets of ideas, a mind accustomed to work by the methods of historical criticism was similarly powerless against views arrived at as if by revelation.

Pfleiderer, however, makes the mistake of referring [pg 074] to a matter of fact when he asserts that the Apostle’s conception of a life after death became Hellenised. Thereupon controversy about the Greek element in Paul rages furiously over 2 Cor. v. I ff.—it was only now that controversy had become possible. The simple wording of the passage is against Pfleiderer, for its subject is not the soul’s being “at home with Christ,” but the Apostle’s longing for the parousia. Pfleiderer himself would never have arrived at his exposition had it not been for the laudable desire to produce at last some tangible example of the influence of Greek thought upon the Apostle’s ideas.

The point which Pfleiderer raised here was after all only a particular case in relation to the general question whether a Hellenistic influence is to be recognised in the Apostle’s conceptions of the final state and the times of the End. It was in this wider aspect that Kabisch dealt with the problem in his work on the Pauline eschatology. His decision is in the negative. The much-discussed “development” of the views of I Thessalonians into those of I Corinthians xv., and of these again into those of 2 Corinthians and Philippians, is, he maintains, a delusion. The conception of the things of the End is a unity, and remains the same throughout.

To oppose this view Teichmann entered the lists._(_63_)_ In his over-confident zeal he plays the part of Polos in Plato’s Gorgias.

He goes much further than Pfleiderer, and seeks to show that Greek ideas actually superseded the whole Jewish Eschatology of Paul. In consequence of the [pg 075] influx of new thoughts one antinomy after another arises in the Apostle’s conception of the things of the End. To trace out and exhibit these in detail is the goal of Teichmann’s endeavour.

He arrives at the following conclusions:—In I Thessalonians Paul still assumes that Christians will enter the kingdom of heaven with their _earthly_ bodies. Not before I Corinthians xv. does he introduce the idea of a “transformation.” He is then led to do so by the development of the Greek doctrine of flesh and spirit. In the second Epistle to the Corinthians he carries out this new conception to its logical issue. “The compromise which he had attempted in I Cor. is abandoned, and the result is that the conception of the resurrection of the dead is set aside.” Along with the resurrection of the dead the Apostle also strikes out from his programme of the future the parousia. “For the expectation of the descent of Christ to earth he substitutes the entry of the believer into the heavenly world. A resurrection of the dead, a descent of Christ to earth, was now no longer necessary.”

Not only so, but the conception of the judgment is also abolished. In the first place, Paul draws this inference “at least so far as Christians are concerned.” That subsequently, in following out his ideas, “he should also arrive at the conception of universal blessedness, can in view of his universalism cause no surprise.” “As all men were included in Christ at His resurrection, so all must receive the Spirit, they must all be made alive.” The End does not, therefore, mean blessedness for some and destruction for others, but eternal life for all. But since eternal life depends on the possession of the Spirit, it must be assumed that those who are not believers at their death “come to faith in Christ in the period between the parousia and the delivery of all authority into the hands of God, and in consequence of this the Spirit is given to them.”

Teichmann professes to have demonstrated the [pg 076] Hellenisation of the Pauline eschatology. What he actually shows is what it would have become if it had really undergone Greek influence.

Not one of his “results” can be proved from the Apostle’s letters. Where is there a single word to suggest that the Apostle abandoned the conception of the judgment and that of predestination to life or to damnation? Where does he ever speak of universal blessedness? Where does he hint at the possibility that mankind as a whole is to be converted to belief in Christ between the parousia and the delivery of all authority into the hands of God, and will thereupon receive the Spirit? What grounds are there for supposing that he gives up the idea of the parousia as superfluous? In his zeal to discover antinomies and trace developments, Teichmann forgets to take account of the most elementary facts. He asserts, for instance, that in I Thessalonians those who arise from the dead enter the kingdom of God in their earthly bodies. But from the Jewish Apocalyptic and from the teaching of Jesus it clearly appears that the resurrection included within itself a transformation of this creaturely corporeity into a glorified corporeity. It would not do for Teichmann to remember this. He is bound, even where he represents the Apostle as still wholly under the sway of Jewish conceptions, to bring him into an inconceivable opposition to these in order that the transformation which is taught in I Corinthians xv.—entirely in accordance with Jewish eschatology—may be represented as derived from the Greek doctrine of the Spirit.

Without intending it, he thus supplies the most brilliant refutation of the theory of the Hellenisation of the Pauline eschatology. He engaged battle on ground on which Pfleiderer and his school had incautiously ventured forth in the heat of action, and he has to find by experience that he is unable to make good a single position. A Hellenisation of the eschatology is quite impossible to prove. Kabisch turns out to have been right. The [pg 077] Apostle holds on this point too vigorous and too clear a language.

But if that be so, the theory that the doctrine of flesh and spirit is Greek is itself most seriously imperilled. Teichmann felt, and therein he was more logical and consistent than the rest, that if there were any Hellenistic ideas in Paulinism they must necessarily have attacked and displaced the Jewish eschatology. Pfleiderer’s view that the two could have subsisted side by side without—except in the case of 2 Corinthians v. I ff.—influencing and interpenetrating one another is an untenable theoretical hypothesis. From the whole range of the history of thought no analogy could be produced for this harmonious coexistence of two different worlds of thought.

A further difficulty of the theory of the Hellenisation of Paulinism arises from the fact that the Apostle’s views have to be more and more spiritualised in proportion as the Greek element is emphasised. Lüdemann, overpowered by the impression of the documents, had expressly characterised the doctrine of redemption which is bound up with the dualism of flesh and spirit as not ethical but physical. Holsten and Pfleiderer do not venture to follow him in that. The Platonism which they seek to discover in Paulinism cannot be brought into connexion with a physical doctrine of redemption, but is thought of as the antithesis of the “crude Jewish ideas.” The whole of the mystical teaching about dying and rising again with Christ, about the new creature and the influence of the Spirit, has therefore to be spiritualised.

This brings them into conflict with the natural, literal meaning of the Apostle’s statements, in which the materialistic character of his conceptions maintains itself against all the arts of exegesis. The interpretation given by Pfleiderer and his school deprives them of their original meaning to an even greater extent than the modern interpretation in general does.

Most unfortunately for those who seek to spiritualise Paul, his doctrine of the Spirit in particular shows no [pg 078] trace of Greek influence. As though from an apprehension that they might be deprived of one of their most indispensable illusions, for thirty years after Baur the students of Paulinism had neglected to deal with this subject. At last in the year 1888 Gunkel undertook the task._(_64_)_ He investigates the influence of the Holy Spirit as conceived by the popular view of the Apostolic age, and according to the doctrine of the Apostle, and is obliged to come to the conclusion that a Greek element in the latter is not to be assumed.

The Apostle, according to Gunkel’s exposition, takes over the primitive Christian view and accepts it in all points. His own doctrine merely represents an elevation, a development of what he found already present. He introduces—I Cor. xii.-xiv.—an ethical judgment and valuation of spiritual gifts, which was new to the Christian community. While the latter had regarded “speaking with tongues” as the highest manifestation of supernatural power, he puts all the _charismata_ on a lower footing than love. He gives a further development to the primitive Christian doctrine by attributing to the influence of the Spirit a large number of the characteristics of the Christian life which were not so regarded by the primitive community. Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, kindness, faithfulness, meekness, chastity are, according to Gal. v. 22, fruits of His power. He generalises, therefore, in such a way that all Christian willing, feeling, knowledge, hope, and action proceed from the _pneuma_, which for the common view was only thought of in connexion with revelations and miracles.

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There is a further point in which, according to Gunkel, Paul raises to a higher level the view which he took over. By the possession of the Spirit the primitive Church was made certain that the end of the present age was at hand and the new age was about to dawn. For the Apostle the temporal relation becomes an inner one. The Spirit is for him the earnest of the coming kingdom of God. Already in the present he calls into being the future life in believers and gives them the certainty, and to some extent even the reality, of the life which is about to dawn for them.

The Pauline doctrine of the Spirit is therefore simply a development of the primitive Christian doctrine. That it was so long regarded as Greek is due, according to Gunkel, to the fact that scholars never examined it as a whole, but always confined themselves to the discussion of the dualism of spirit and flesh. This prevents the relation of the doctrine to the views of the primitive community, and especially its relation to the doctrine of the future age, from becoming apparent.

One very weighty theoretic objection to the admission of Greek elements in Paulinism is passed over by its defenders in complete silence. If the thoughts developed by the Apostle of the Gentiles had grown up upon the soil of Hellenism, the original apostles and those closely associated with them would certainly have been aware of this and attacked them on that ground. From the records, however, as we have them in the letters, it appears certain that they only reproached him with his attitude towards the law, and found no other point to object to in his teaching. The primitive Christian community at Jerusalem accused him of keeping back something from his churches; it did not discover anything new and essentially foreign in his thought. In spite of the keenness of the struggle, it was never made a charge against him that he had “heathenised” the Gospel. That shows how completely out of the question the assumption of Greek influences was for his [pg 080] opponents. But the fact that his contemporaries discovered nothing of the kind in him forms a strong presumption against any such theory when brought forward in later times.

The objection which arises from the side of the history of dogma tends to the same result. Those who hold the theory of Greek elements in Paul must, if they are to be consistent, assert that he pioneered a path for the Gospel into the Hellenic world and prepared the way for the early Greek theology. And they do so most emphatically. Pfleiderer explains_(_65_)_ that the Greek Church-theology arose by the expulsion from Paulinism of its specifically Jewish elements, and by the free development of its “universally intelligible Hellenistic side.” The noble Platonic idealism had a place in the doctrinal system of the Apostle of the Gentiles, “and conferred on it its capacity to win the Graeco-Roman world for Christianity.” “The understanding of Paulinism is therefore a fundamental condition for the understanding of the Early Church.” And all the adherents of the theory, whatever their precise shade of opinion, express themselves to the same effect.

But the history of dogma holds a different language. It has to record the fact, inconceivable as it may appear, that on the generations in which Greek dogma was taking shape Paul exercised no influence whatever. Even the external literary influence is very slight. If one sets aside the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians it is not even possible to speak of a deutero-Pauline literature. The Pastoral Epistles and the second letter to the Thessalonians profess to be written by the Apostle, but contain not a single thought which is characteristic of his teaching. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, in 1 Clement, in the Epistle of Barnabas, in the writings of Ignatius, in the works of Justin, expressions occur which show acquaintance with the Epistles of Paul, and may have [pg 081] been influenced by him in respect to their wording; but beyond that they show no trace of his conceptions or his spirit.

The remarkable point, therefore, is that the post-Apostolic writers, though they are acquainted with the works of the Apostle of the Gentiles, make no real use of them. His ideas remain foreign, lifeless, so far as they are concerned.

That is also shown by the fact that early Greek Church-theology is quite independent of him. It is concerned with the incarnation and resurrection of Christ and with regeneration; Paul’s speculations deal with the death and resurrection of the Lord, and he never speaks of regeneration. The underlying logic is in the two cases so different that the representatives of Greek theology, even if they wished to do so, could not appeal to the Apostle. No community of thought between him and Justin is to be discovered.

Even Baur had to learn how little Greek theology attached itself to Paul,_(_66_)_ although he wished to derive it from a compromise between the Pauline and the Petrine Gospel. So long as he is carrying out his theory on the lines of the history of the Church and its literature, the mistake does not become so apparent, because the universalism and freedom from the law which gradually establish themselves are set down as Graeco-Pauline. In treating the history of dogma, however, where he is dealing exclusively with the development of the Greek conception of the Person of Christ and of the redemption effected through Him, he can, as a matter of fact, make nothing of Paul. He hardly mentions him.

What Baur was unwilling to acknowledge to himself, Harnack has irrefutably proved._(_67_)_ According to his [pg 082] showing there is no bridge leading from the Pauline Gospel to the doctrine of the Early Greek Church. The “history of dogma,” strange as it may appear, only begins after Paul. The forces which are there at work have not been set in motion by him.

The same result is arrived at by Edwin Hatch in his work on Hellenism and Christianity._(_68_)_ A trained philological scholar possessing great knowledge of and insight into the late Greek and early Christian literatures, he endeavours to describe in detail the process by which Christianity became Hellenised. In doing so he does not find it necessary to deal with Paul. For the points of contact which he finds to exist between the two worlds no examples are to be discovered in the letters of the Apostle of the Gentiles. Hatch’s observations lead him to make the process of Hellenisation only begin with the second century.

The history of dogma cannot, therefore, accept the suggestion that Paul recast the Gospel in the moulds of Greek thought. The process began later, and of its own motion. It did not derive its impulse from a single great personality, but began gradually and on all sides. It was the Greek popular mind as represented by the members of the Gentile churches which Hellenised the Gospel for itself. Men like Ignatius and Justin bring this work to a provisional completeness by combining the current ideas into a primitive but in its own fashion impressively clear and living system, and creating a connexion between Christology, the conception of redemption and the doctrine of the sacraments; the [pg 083] Fourth Evangelist carries this system of doctrine back into the preaching of the historic Jesus. These men received no kind of impulse from Paul. Of the work which he did they make no use. They know it, but it seems as if it were impossible for them to use it.

The recognition of the true state of the case begins when one gets rid of the seemingly so natural but in reality unjustified assumption that the universalism_(_69_)_ and freedom from the law for which Paul fought his battles, imply a Hellenisation of Christianity and form the Greek element in his doctrine.

Ritschl and Harnack, in opposing this assumption of Baur and his successors, went to the other extreme. They maintained that universalism and freedom from the law were purely practical and separable views, which had, properly speaking, nothing to do with the fundamental ideas of the doctrine of redemption. In this way they succeeded, no doubt, in liberating the history of dogma from the prejudices of the Tübingen school; but they did less justice to the Apostle’s statements than those whom they were attacking, since on every page of his writings he implies an actual connexion between his doctrines and the practical views which he is defending. It is to be noted that Ritschl and Harnack never clearly explain why Paul holds a different view on these points from that of the primitive community.

Truth here appears as the synthesis of a thesis and antithesis. Universalism and freedom from the law do in fact belong to the history of dogma, but not in the way Baur thought. And they are in themselves practical views, but at the same time they claim to be logically derived from the system of doctrine. The presuppositions on which they are based have nothing to do with Greek thought; it was purely by systematically thinking out to its conclusions the primitive Christian doctrine that Paul was led to his theories of the universal [pg 084] destination of the Gospel and of emancipation from the law.

These are the facts as they lie clearly before us in the letters. But to register them is not to explain them. How, exactly, do these conclusions result from the logic of the primitive Christian belief as rightly worked out in the Apostle’s mind? That is the form which the question takes as the next stage, after Baur, Ritschl, and Harnack.

The negative result that the Pauline attitude in regard to these points is not Greek is in any case established. And so too is the other result that the creators of Greek dogma did not take him as their starting-point, and cannot therefore have discovered anything Hellenic in him. They had no consciousness that he had already quarried and shaped the material which they needed for their edifice.

But if they did not recognise in him one who had made a beginning in their direction, it is more than questionable whether modern historical criticism is right in professing to find Greek elements in him. If so, it must be supposed to have a better instinct for what is Hellenic than the men who Hellenised Christianity.

In any case it has no right to talk at large about the significance of Paulinism for Greek Christianity, as though the history of dogma was not there to prove the contrary.

How do the Debit and Credit of the theory stand at this point? For the credit side, it claims that the dualism of flesh and spirit is of Greek origin, but it does not get beyond the general assertion. No serious attempt has been made to demonstrate the existence of Greek conceptions in the particular aspects of the doctrine, and to explain the pessimism, the desire for death, and the ethical teaching of the Apostle as derived from the non-Jewish world of thought. That the Pauline universalism and doctrine of freedom from the law are directly inspired by the Greek spirit it no longer has the right to assert.

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In a single instance its defenders venture to point to the influence of Greek religious thought on the Apostle’s views. They seek to show that his Jewish, eschatological conception of the future life and his view of the events of the End were in time entirely transformed by it, if not actually cancelled. But the attempt to prove this from the documents has not been successful.

Meanwhile the following difficulties appear. The theory is obliged to assume a dualism between Jewish and Greek elements in Paul, and to assert that on the one hand he never allowed the two systems of thought to coalesce, while on the other he never became conscious of their disparity; it has to attribute to him a capacity for combining contradictions, which allows him to maintain alongside of one another a spiritualistic doctrine of immortality and a crudely materialistic notion of resurrection without becoming aware of their incompatibility; it is logically forced to the conclusion that he set aside the Jewish eschatology, with its conceptions of judgment and condemnation, in favour of a doctrine of universal blessedness, whereas there is in the Epistles not a single hint pointing in this direction; it is forced, in order to make his statements appear “Platonic,” so to spiritualise them that the natural sense of the words disappears; it must ignore the proved fact that his doctrine of the spirit, when taken in its full compass and not confined to the antithesis of spirit and flesh, is most naturally explained as a mere development of the primitive Christian view; it must meet the objection—which it never can do—that the original apostles never discovered anything of an essentially foreign, Greek character in Paul’s views; it must, when confronted with the history of dogma, bend itself with what grace it may to the admission that Paulinism exercised no influence upon the formation of early Greek theology, and cannot therefore have been felt by the men who were concerned in that process as itself representing a first stage in the Hellenisation of Christianity.

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The theory therefore explains nothing, but creates difficulty upon difficulty.

In view of this relation of its assets to its liabilities it would have no alternative but to declare itself bankrupt, had it not astutely refrained from keeping any accounts.

And so far we have considered the mere for and against. Even if the balance had here inclined in favour of the theory, that would not have proved anything. The ideas in question ought not to be considered as Greek until it had been shown that they actually were so. But this would require it to be shown that exactly corresponding ideas were to be found in the preceding or contemporary Greek literature, and that Paul betrayed some kind of acquaintance with this literature. The possibility that it was a mere case of analogy would have to be systematically excluded, so far as that is possible.

But such a method of proof has never been seriously contemplated by the adherents of the theory. In going through their works one is astonished to see how lightly they have treated their task. They have never properly collected the material; it is much if here and there a point is thoroughly considered.

The assumption of Greek elements in Paulinism appeared something so self-evident, and indeed, if one desired to arrive at any understanding of him, so necessary, that from the first it came forward with an assurance which secured credit for it everywhere without its needing to produce adequate guarantees.

When Lüdemann in the year 1872 worked out clearly the dualism of flesh and spirit, he added, as a thing to be taken for granted, that it was Greek in character. His successors show a similar absence of misgiving.

In order to bring the question once for all to an issue, let us gather up and put to the test, along with the poor fragments of attempted proof, every consideration that can be cited in favour of the assumption of Greek elements in Paulinism.

The Apostle was born and grew up in Tarsus, the [pg 087] “Athens of Asia Minor” as Ernest Curtius has called it._(_70_)_ In his native city, as Heinrici expresses himself, “rhetoric and Stoic philosophy were to be met with in the market-place.”_(_71_)_

No limits are set to the estimate of what the child of the Diaspora may have absorbed, retained, and laid up in his mind from the intellectual life by which he was surrounded.

But just as large a place might be claimed for the contrary argument, which would lay stress upon the exclusiveness of strictly Jewish circles of the Diaspora in regard to the Greek culture by which they were surrounded.

Neither argument proves anything. A thousand possibilities on the one side do not produce a certainty any more than on the other.

The greater probability, however, is on the side of the assumption of exclusiveness. Although he lived in the middle of Hellenism, it is possible that Paul absorbed no more of it than a Catholic parish priest of the twentieth century does of the critical theology, and knew no more about it than an Evangelical pastor knows of theosophy.

The decision lies solely with his works.

The case is similar as regards the argument from his language. It is inconceivable, so writers like Heinrici and Curtius urge, that a language like Greek could be familiar to a man like Paul without causing a flood of ancient conceptions and ideas to stream in upon him. Heinrici, indeed, is prepared to decide the question on this ground alone, and concludes his exposition of the Corinthian Epistles with a close analysis of their vocabulary. This shows, he thinks, that Greek concepts and expressions far outweigh in number and importance the “specifically Christian” and those which show the influence of the Old Testament or the language of the synagogue. [pg 088] But in opposition to this, Schmiedel,_(_72_)_ a not less thorough commentator, expresses himself as follows: “We must be on our guard against concluding too hastily from the predominantly Hellenistic character of Paul’s language to a Hellenistic mode of thought. With a language of which one learns colloquially the current use, one does not by any means necessarily assimilate all the thought-forms of which it contains, so to speak, the geological record.”

Here too, therefore, one argument is balanced by another.

A fact which seems to carry us a little further is the Apostle’s exclusive use of the Greek version of the Old Testament. In a detailed study, of the year 1869, Kautzsch_(_73_)_ showed that out of eighty-four quotations which occur in the Epistles thirty-four agree exactly with the Septuagint, thirty-six show small deviations, and ten depart from it more widely. Two others show a considerable difference, without, however, throwing doubt upon the author’s acquaintance with the wording of the ordinary translation; two others, again, from Job, differ from it entirely.

This investigation was carried further by Hans Vollmer_(_74_)_ and brought to a provisional conclusion. According to him the deviations are to be explained by the fact that Paul did not use a single complete recension of the LXX, but had recourse to different editions for different books. In Job he had before him a version which shows affinity with the later Jewish translations. To explain the remaining peculiarities Vollmer brings forward a hypothesis. He is inclined to assume that the Apostle used Greek Scriptural anthologies in which [pg 089] separate passages were collocated, or freely combined with one another. In such collections—their existence is not demonstrable—various versions were, he thinks, used promiscuously. Perhaps the passage quoted as Scripture in I Corinthians ii. 9, which is not traceable in the Old Testament,—“As it is written, what eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, hath God prepared for them that love Him”—may be derived from an anthology of this kind.

It is in any case certain that the Apostle always makes use of Greek translations; and it is further certain that he argues from peculiarities in their wording which for one who knew Hebrew, as he also certainly did, must have been recognisable as mistranslations. He therefore goes so far as to ignore the original.