Paul Wernle · 17 of 30

Chapter XIII. Jesus Brought to the Gentiles. · Part 2

Two preliminary observations are necessary to obviate any unfairness in the comparison.

1. St. Paul had to do with Gentiles, not with Jews. He cannot presuppose the high average of morality which Jesus merely purified, simplified, and set free from all impediments. A great part of his task consists in bringing his converts to the point where Jesus found His disciples from the very first. He cannot effect anything without lowering the standard to a certain extent. He is obliged, e.g., to attach greater value to outer deeds and respectability than to thoughts, even though he himself has exactly the same opinion as Jesus about the inner motive. In the next place, he is confronted with a whole mass of new ethical problems with which Jesus was not acquainted. The whole domain of social ethics, the state, the family, slavery, woman’s position—all directly concern him, for it must now be decided whether these forms and institutions have any meaning for Christians. Whether St. Paul’s solution is the right one may be doubted. At any rate he creates new values.

2. Jesus’ claim concerned the individual simply and solely. St. Paul has the Christian Churches in view. There is a Christian form of worship, Christian discipline, the beginnings of ecclesiastical law, all of them things which did not exist in Jesus’ time. Thus, whilst Jesus detached the individual as far as possible from his surroundings and left him to his own resources, St. Paul looks upon the duties which a man owes to the fellowship as the highest. This necessarily implies certain ecclesiastical claims even though they be reduced to a minimum.

Hence the simple division which was obviously sufficient for Jesus’ demand is no longer quite suitable for St. Paul’s. Jesus placed men in their right relation to the three realities: to themselves, their neighbour, and God. Everything else either completely vanished or receded into comparative insignificance by the side of these three realities. Three other problems have come to be of primary importance for St. Paul: the position of the Christian to the world; his duty to the Church; public worship. The same three realities, as in Jesus' case, lie at the basis of these problems, and yet there has been of necessity a certain shifting of interest. The comparison with Jesus is facilitated if from the very first we take this shifting of the problems into account.

The position to the world is the first and most urgent problem. The Christians come forth from this world where the demons bear sway and idolatry and immorality prevail. What is to be avoided as heathenish and sinful? What is necessary for the support of life? What is left to the free decision of the individual conscience? Can laws for all be set up? And what do they embrace?

St. Paul’s solution of these difficult problems cannot but excite our highest admiration.

He starts from that which is obviously wicked, from downright vices, which are not to be tolerated in the Church. Idolatry, immorality of every kind, theft, drunkenness, are not to occur amongst Christians, were it but for the reason that they would thereby compromise themselves in the eyes of the world. Under the same category come, furthermore, party divisions, strife and bickering. Thence he goes down to the roots of these vices in the sins of thought and word. Impure desires, low words, anger, envy and jealousy, blasphemy, lying, all that proceeds from the flesh and not from the Spirit, is to be torn out and put away. Thus far the law can be set up for all. But are the limits thereby laid down beyond which lies the kingdom of the good, and of that which is permitted?

No, it is only when we have reached the individual conscience that we come to the decisive point. All that does not proceed from faith is sin. Whatever the conscience does not forbid is good. The conscience is individual, free, and only liable to give reckoning to God. But the matter is not settled with this proclamation of the freedom of conscience. Who can deny that the conscience of the masses of the Gentile converts is anything but degraded and darkened? How indistinct, in such cases, are the boundaries between conscience, bad habits, and caprice! The aim is the transformation and education of this conscience till it attains to Christian standards. The ‘nous,’ the practical reason itself, must be changed step by step, that it may be entirely weaned from its former worldly standards and may become capable of understanding God’s will, that which is good, pleasing and perfect. This comes to pass through the influence of the Christian community, and yet only on condition that the individual himself works at the purifying and deepening of his moral sense. The Christian has therefore never attained completeness in his relation to the world, but is always in the midst of a process of growth and development. He knows that he has always a number of problems set before him which only he, the individual, can solve, and which no written laws can prescribe.

The man who reached the height of these principles—higher than these there are none—did not only personally renounce the part of lawgiver in favour of free development of the Churches, but he saved Christianity itself from the fate of ever lasting immobility by setting up a code of laws. A religion like that of Islam is stereotyped for all time through its sacred book of laws, both from an ecclesiastical, social, and political point of view. Thanks to the Apostle Paul, Christianity is bound to no other law than that of the Christian conscience. To attain to this point of view, and still more, to maintain it, called for a courageous faith which perhaps no other man possessed in that age.

But did St. Paul himself remain quite true to his own principles in the advice that he gave and in his exhortations? The step between the setting up of a principle and its application in concrete instances is difficult enough, especially in the early days of any movement. In every case we have our highest authority in the principles which the apostle himself has laid down, even if his exhortations in the concrete case are opposed to them.

Great emphasis is laid in the epistles upon the duty of the renunciation of this world, and that with good reason: “Be not conformed to this world”; and “set your minds on the things that are above, for your citizenship is in heaven”; “seek the things that are above, not the things that are below”; “I am crucified unto the world and the world to me.” In expressions such as these the world is entirely identified with the kingdom of wickedness. But the heathen world, with which St. Paul was most intimately acquainted, was just that and exactly that. One need but think for a moment of cities such as Corinth, Ephesus, and Rome. To break with these heathen surroundings with their manners and customs, their superstition, with their laxity of public opinion, was a Christian’s first and foremost duty. The very first act of the new life was to become completely different even in mere external matters to one’s immediate surroundings. And as the power of custom was forever thwarting the new ideal, a constant struggle with custom—i.e. the world—was inevitable. St. Paul declares, too, in so many words that denial of the world means for him the struggle against sin. To die to sin, to be no longer the slave of sin, to crucify the flesh with its lusts and its desires—that was what bidding farewell to the world implied. Now, since the heathen religion and immorality were the chief representatives of sin and exercised at the same time the most powerful influence in public and private life was the art of that age much else than a public exhibition of immorality? It can easily be imagined that the domain into which the Christian was prohibited from entering was a very wide one. And, besides, there was the belief that it was the demons who were at work in all this wicked world, in the religious ceremonies and in the crimes, whereby a secret dread and horror were mingled with the purely moral hatred. No ultimate victory, no mere continuance even of early Christianity, had been possible without this great and powerful factor, fantastic though it was at times—renunciation of the world and constant struggle against it. The fiery winged words, especially the great battle-cry in the letter to the Ephesians, prove the apostle to have grasped the real position of affairs, and do him all honour. Wherever he could he thoroughly swept out all the heathen filth and dirt without listening to any terms, without even a thought of a compromise. It is to St. Paul that Christianity owes its aggressive courage, its boldness in the destruction of all idols. And yet it was none other than St. Paul himself who prevented the exaggeration of this renunciation into asceticism or into a dualistic speculation. “There is nothing secular but what is sinful”—i.e. what the Christian conscience calls sin—that is the limit: not a step further. In spite of all demons the old saying remains true: “The earth is the Lord’s and all the fulness thereof.” St. Paul did not set up the statement that all is of God as a speculative principle but as a practical maxim, and by it the things of this world are to be judged. “I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean of itself, save that to him who accounteth anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean.” And on this the apostle’s great sayings are founded: “All things are yours—even the world,” and “All things are lawful.” When one reflects upon the situation of the first Christians, they are indeed sufficient to excite one’s amazement. In every crisis of his missionary labours St. Paul adhered firmly to these principles. As against the Judaizing party he rescues the freedom with which Christ has set us free. Against the ascetics at Rome, who imagined themselves compelled by religious scruples to forgo meat and wine, he takes up the defence of the ‘strong’ brethren. It is right to use everything for which one can give God thanks. He rejects the doctrines of the ascetics of Colossae—“Touch not, taste not, handle not”—as commandments of men, and proclaims instead the principle of liberty. “Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.”

The question concerning meats offered to idols presented the greatest difficulty of all, since it entered more deeply than any other into the every day life of the converts. Every invitation to a meal, every purchase in the market, might bring the Christian into contact with this meat. The argument that by eating such meat one entered into communion with the demons to whom it was offered, made an impression albeit a transitory one—even upon St. Paul himself. But the real reason for abstinence is love alone, regard for the conscience of the weak brother. The individual is free even in this case to regulate his own conduct. If he can thank God for his meat, no man can condemn him. On one occasion a saying of the apostle’s was misunderstood: he was supposed to have meant that a Christian was not allowed to consort any more with whoremongers, usurers, and idolaters. St. Paul emphatically protested against this misinterpretation of his words by the characteristic statement, “other wise you would have to leave this world.” The Christian must take up his position in the world and remain therein, for God has made it, and it belongs to God. So, then, in spite of his call to renunciation, St. Paul represents with reference to the world the standpoint, not of the Pharisees but of Jesus, to which he merely gave a fuller application and a clearer definition.

To describe the duties which a man owes towards himself, St. Paul is fond of using the word ‘sanctification,’ and, in fact, generally speaking, words derived from the language of ritual. Here one can trace the influence of St. Paul’s early training in the school of the Scribes. Jesus makes no use whatever of the Pharisaic terminology of sacred and profane. The opposite of ‘holy’ is not wicked, but unclean, unconsecrated; and the application to the world without, instead of to one’s own heart, is only too easily made. It is not difficult to find reminiscences in St. Paul’s writings of the earlier Jewish phraseology—this, e.g., that it is especially the members, the body, i.e., the external, that is to be sanctified rather than the heart above all else. Sanctification is therefore, as in later Christian literature, something that is strictly limited. It consists in avoiding the sins of the flesh, and in repressing sensuality. If we recall the few facts that we know as to the past history of the Christian converts, e.g., at Corinth, and remember the difficult position in which they were placed in the world in which they lived then, we can easily realize that sanctification, in the narrow sense of the word, was bound to constitute the first task of the Christian life. A higher morality can only grow up where the individual has attained the mastery over his lower, his animal impulses. Hence the following sentence stands at the head of all the rest of the apostle’s exhortations to the Thessalonians: “This is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication.” The first sign that one is to look for in the newly baptized Christian is that he no longer follows his lusts, but has nailed them for good to the Cross. So again in the great exhortation in the Epistle to the Romans: the presenting of our bodies as a sacrifice to God—i.e., their sanctification—is placed before everything else. A passage in the First Epistle to the Corinthians shows us that this duty was by no means regarded as a matter of course. The Christians at Corinth must have been heard reasoning somewhat as follows: As complete liberty is granted in matters of food, seeing that the belly perishes, so sexual intercourse, too, is one of the adiaphora, for the whole body is doomed to corruption. The abhorrence which this reasoning excited in St. Paul, and the number of arguments which he employed against it, prove to us how serious he considered the danger to be. For the Greeks, religion was almost entirely a matter of ceremonial. The apostle’s main object, therefore, was to show them that self-discipline in the ordinary everyday life—and especially chastity—was a part of religion itself, and that without the fulfilment of this preliminary condition they could have no share in redemption or in communion with God. The immense emphasis that was thus laid upon sanctification naturally led to a certain narrowing of the Christian conception of duty as a whole. That which in the teaching of Jesus appears merely as a part, and not even a very prominent part, of the Christian ideal, seems to be the one thing needful in many passages in St. Paul’s writings. But such concentration was an absolute necessity. Here was the most dangerous enemy. The full impetus of the attack must be directed against him, and he must be completely routed, and then the way to the higher stages of Christian morality would be rendered possible. In Jewish writings of a moral character we find exactly the same emphasis laid upon the same duty. St. Paul is here working for the education of the masses. He has to raise them up out of the mire and filth of the world to the level of the morality of the Gospel. And by the side of these exhortations we read those beautiful words to the Philippians: “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honourable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” The man who sets up so exalted and comprehensive an ideal is far from expending all his moral force in the struggle against sensuality.

As we pass on to consider St. Paul’s relation to social institutions, it is surprising to find in what favourable terms he speaks of the State, and that, too, when Nero sat on the throne. The difference between Jesus and His apostle is very striking in this point. For Jesus living in Palestine, the State is naturally regarded as a foreign power resting upon brute force and oppression. For Paul, the Roman citizen, it is the great empire of peace, which enables him to exercise his calling as missionary without let or hindrance, and more than once protects him and his congregations from the Jews and the rabble. Thus he calls the State the great minister of God for good. It receives all its power from God Himself. It is none other than the State that will for a season restrain Antichrist, and thereby render the undisturbed expansion of Christianity possible. It is very probable that we have here the after-effects of important doctrines of the Pharisees, dating from a time when politics and religion were unfortunately intermingled. Had it not been for his own fortunate experience, however, he would not have given them the powerful expression which he did. But one must be very careful not to confuse this optimistic religious view of the State with anything like patriotic feeling. St. Paul sought his own fatherland, and that of all Christians, in heaven, and that not only after his imprisonment at Home. Hence, too, the duties of the Christian to the State are practically all included in the paying of taxes and the rendering of the outer marks of obedience. The Lord of the Christians is after all not the Caesar at Home, but Jesus in heaven, whose speedy return shall put an end even to the Roman empire. If we look at the 13th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans carefully, there is no perceptible trace of political thinking, or even of political interest. The only matter that is of importance from the point of view of the world’s history is that even before the great struggle between Church and State broke out, Christians are forbidden under all circumstances to engage in revolution. That is not much, but it saved the Church.

St. Paul regards the organization of human society, the relation of master and slave, as something divinely ordained and admitting of no reform. There is no thought of the abolition of slavery, or of equality at least between Christian slaves and their masters. God calls the one to be a slave and the other to be a master: hence one can serve Him in either relation. The only result of any attempt to change this social order would be a state of uncertainty and danger. Hence the slave, even if liberated, had better make no use of his manumission. The real reason for this indifference to the existing order is not only the hope that the end of the world is near at hand—and with that, of course, all else will end—but also the feeling that these social differences neither directly further nor hinder one’s development, but that they are beneficial or injurious according to the use which the Christian makes of them. And, besides, it must not be forgotten that modern slavery is a very different thing from ancient. The modern feelings of misery and wretchedness which we associate with slavery were then unknown. And yet St. Paul is not the man simply to leave things as he found them. In the passages relating to the duties of domestic life which are to be found in the later letters and in the Epistle to Philemon we have the first brief but promising attempts to Christianize the relationship of master and slave. If the Christian master and the Christian slave will ever remember their responsibility to their heavenly Master, then a new spirit is bound by degrees to find an entrance. The Christian master is to look upon his former runaway slave who now returns of his own free will as his “brother beloved.” Instead of severing the existing relationships without substituting anything better for them, simply in order to proclaim a merely negative result—the freedom from bondage—the apostle endeavours to Christianize the social order of his day.

How different, again, are the problems which Jesus. and His apostle respectively had to solve with regard to marriage and the family. Apart from the frivolous practice of divorce which He abolished, Jesus could reckon upon a condition of affairs that was at bottom sound. St. Paul, on the contrary, finds himself compelled to start from the very beginning, to lay the foundations on which later a healthy family life could be built. That he did this is sufficient of itself to prove that he was more than an ascetic. It would be well for us to read the descriptions of the apostles in the later “Acts,” how they travel among the heathen populations making it their main object to separate man and wife by setting up the standard of an absolute continence.

There was no more decided opponent of asceticism on this point than the author of the first letter to the Corinthians, who enjoins their marital duties upon husband and wife, and warns them against a dangerous continence. He speaks of these matters in the down right way of old times without any appearance of prudery, which is very different from our fastidious treatment of these subjects. In a world full of crime, uncleanness, and sordidness of every kind he recognized his vocation in the education of the masses to the ideals of honourable marriage and constant fidelity. Perhaps he demanded too little: obedience of the women, love of the men—more the passages in the letters do not contain: but then this little contained, after all, all that was important, and on this foundation a new and healthy life could be built up. He likewise commended in a few brief and wise words the education of their children to Christian fathers and mothers, and to the former the duty of obedience. Taking it all in all, we have in St. Paul an educator with a thoroughly healthy understanding for all that was necessary and wholesome.

But, then, is there not the celebrated chapter in the First Epistle to the Corinthians? Here, surely, we have the words of a monk and an enthusiast.

First of all, “the present distress” and the “shortness of the time” have to a certain extent shifted his point of view. He here strikes a note which reminds one of the apocalypse in St Mark xiii.: “Woe to them that are with child and that give suck in those days.” But there are also echoes of thoughts of Jesus Himself. Just as Jesus uplifts His voice in warning against the light-heartedness with which as before, in the days of Noah, so once more before the end of the world—they “were marrying and giving in marriage,” St. Paul likewise fights against the fettering of the soul in the presence of eternity: “they that have wives . . . . as though they had none.” That can be understood by reference to the teaching of Jesus. But then, further: the unmarried man can care for the Lord better than the married; marriage dulls a man’s sense to higher things. As though this aptitude for the higher life were especially noticeable in bachelors and unmarried women! Paul was not married. He had his calling as an apostle, which entirely engrossed him. He forgot that when, while writing these words, he fancied all unmarried men like himself. The principal reason, however, is yet to come: there is something unclean in marriage; only the unmarried woman can be holy both body and soul—i.e., marriage defiles. Hence celibacy and virginity are higher and better than marriage. Hence it is better to remain a widow than marry again. Marriage is a compromise between entire chastity and the weakness of the flesh: it is better than prostitution, and in comparison therewith not sinful but good. Thus writes the Rabbi in Paul, to whom the natural no longer appears clean. These sentences—the ideal in its entirety set up for all alike—do not stand on the level of the Gospel.

This will occasion no surprise to anyone who knows how difficult it is for a man to escape entirely from the influence of his past. On the contrary, it is surprising how one with such ideals, and starting from such premises, could write so exceedingly wisely, soberly, and with such entire self-suppression as St Paul in 1 Cor. vii. It is in this very chapter that he enjoins upon husband and wife their mutual duties, that he approves of mixed marriages, and would allow divorce if the heathen husband or wife so wish it. He allows marriage to virgins and to widows. He recommends it, if it must be, to those that are spiritually betrothed. The very man who has just presupposed that marriage is in a sense polluting, even though he has not said so in so many words, declares that the heathen husband is sanctified by consorting with the Christian wife; for the children surely are holy. And nowhere else but in this passage does St. Paul subordinate his own word, as advice or opinion, to the word of Jesus, which is a command. It may, therefore, be maintained with perfect justice that St. Paul consistently and zealously fulfilled his task of educating the heathen masses, sunken as they were in unnatural vice and frivolity, to a healthy and faithful family life, and that in spite of his favourite ideas, which smacked of the Rabbi and the ascetic. The spirit of Jesus completely dominated, not indeed his thoughts, but his acts in his missionary calling.

The apostle’s prescription regarding the head-dress to be worn by women during divine service belongs to the reform of manners properly so called. The difference between St. Paul and Jesus is here again especially noticeable. In Jesus case we have only the three great realities by the side of which all details disappear. His gaze is directed upon eternity. St. Paul regulates a special case—woman’s dress—insisting upon it with the greatest urgency, and marshals a whole array of reasons in support of the position. But the rule which the apostle lays down is intended to counteract woman’s mistaken aim to be man’s equal in everything; and then, in the midst of the strangest statements, we are surprised by the assertion of the essential equality of the two sexes: “Nevertheless, neither is the man without the woman, nor the woman without the man in the Lord. For as the woman is of the man (in Paradise) even so is the man also by the woman (since then), but all things of God.” It was just the exaggerated emphasis which the apostle had laid upon the inferiority and subordination of woman that compelled him to reflect and make this correction.

In regulating the intercourse with the unbelievers, St. Paul sets up the simple principles of friendliness, peacefulness, and love, even towards slanderers and persecutors, and so remains true to the example of Jesus: “Provide things honest in the sight of all men. If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. As long as we have time let us do good to all men.” He often bids his converts think of what their heathen neighbours will be likely to say. Consideration for them should be a spur to every individual to press on towards perfection. The only passage in which he issues a curt command to be entirely separate from the servants of Beliar (quoting Old Testament texts in support of what he says), is so entirely without connection with its context that its genuineness has rightly been called in question. All that we know else of the apostle is the very opposite of anxious timidity. The Christian may associate fearlessly with sinners as long as his conscience does not suffer hurt.

We have thus examined the Christian’s position towards the world from every point of view. On its progress from the little villages round about the Sea of Galilee, out into the great world and into the great cities, Christianity encountered a number of new tasks and problems, the solution of which tested the power of Jesus' spirit. St. Paul was the first great leader in this forward march. The new religion is indebted to him for its boldness, for its undaunted faith, for its energy in saving the good seed and in pulling out the weeds in every new ground that was sown.

The second principal task which St. Paul had to take in hand was the regulation of the care of the community. Jesus had not founded any organized community, and had given His commandment of love of one’s neighbour the widest possible extension by especially including one’s enemies. The brotherhood of believers became the real sphere for the exercise of this love of one’s neighbour, both for the first Christian society and for St. Paul. Thereby, no doubt, the commandment of Christ was narrowed. The aim of the Christian mission is, it is true, ever more and more to include the whole world in the community. But, as a matter of fact, there is a clearly defined boundary line between the world and the community, and this is often only too plainly visible. The love of one’s brother no longer means the love for every human being, who is my brother, but love for the Christian alone. The word φιλαδελφια is used amongst Christians since St. Paul’s time in this narrower sense, but so it had already been used in the Jewish congregations. There is indeed an approximation on the part of the Christian to the Jewish communities, for in both alike, sanctification and love of the brethren are accounted the highest virtues. But this concentration was again necessary and beneficial for Christianity. If words and feelings were to be turned into deeds, then this vague and undefined love had to crystallize into love of the community—the love, e.g., of a Corinthian convert for all his townsmen was in any case an empty phrase, that for his fellow Christians might at least be genuine; and, besides, St. Paul was always careful to see that the duty of love beyond the limits of the congregation was brought home to his disciples.