Paul Wernle · 21 of 30

Chapter XV> The Pauline Soteriology. · Part 2

On the other hand, his metaphysical pessimism impels him to accept a theory which brings the powers of nature on the scene, and maintains that flesh and sin have been overcome in the tragedy of Jesus’ death. Seeing that men have been described by him as under the dominion of evil powers of nature, there is no room for a purely ethical solution. Somehow or other these natural powers must be vanquished and rendered innocuous by the death of Christ. This St Paul really did maintain, but never in a very convincing fashion.

As a matter of fact these theories are concerned with the other-worldly character of Christianity. That beautiful passage in Colossians: “Seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God . . . . your life is hid with Christ in God,” tells us what is St Paul’s object. The Christian is to have his gaze turned towards the future with eager longing and zeal for righteousness; he is even now to be a citizen of the heavenly country. Here St Paul quite coincides with Jesus, only that Jesus points to the kingdom of heaven that lies in front, while St Paul goes back to the resurrection of Jesus and bases his argument upon that fact. In the apostle’s insistence on the beginning of the Christian’s new life even here and now, we may find a further parallel to the belief which Jesus entertained—it is true, only for a time—in the actual commencement of the kingdom of heaven. And yet, even here we can trace the prejudicial influence of St Paul’s apologetic interest. He is compelled to derive postulates from this one fact to which nothing corresponds in reality. It is, to be sure, nothing to be wondered at that he to whom the appearance was vouchsafed should exaggerate the value of Jesus’ resurrection. Nevertheless it was a misfortune for the new religion, and in contradiction with the progressive spirit of Jesus, that the one miracle in the past thereby became the foundation for Christianity.

The Son of God who came down from Heaven.

St Paul was not acquainted with the historic Christ during His life here on earth. He merely heard men speak of Him. He thus became familiar with all manner of instances of His love, humility, and kindness, and apparently he told his Greek converts of them. These, however, did not form the basis of his theology. The most important element in that are the titles. The knowledge of the titles and of their value compensates for the lack of personal knowledge. How could it be otherwise? If one knows Jesus oneself, all titles are inadequate; if one does not, then one just extracts from the titles all that is capable of extraction.

St Paul had three titles from which to choose—all three had been commonly used of Jesus in the earliest Christian community: Messiah, Son of Man, Son of God.

The title of Messiah—the Greeks said Christ—is naturally retained by St Paul, were it but for the Jews’ sake. He employs the word in the old eschatological sense, as the Lord of the kingdom of heaven that is at hand, and also, with but little of its original meaning, as a mere title of Jesus. He nowhere attaches any new signification to it. He himself awaits the advent of Messiah, earnestly looks forward to the day of Messiah, and considers all Christians to be living in expectation of Messiah’s revelation. His idea of the Messiah is that of the apocalypses. He conquers Antichrist and vanquishes Beliar; doubtless He is surrounded by all the hosts of heaven just as He is represented in the apocalyptic pictures. And he likewise expects the judgment of Messiah when God shall grant Him to sit upon His judgment-seat. But this Jesus that is yet to come is of almost less importance for St Paul than the Jesus who has come already. Besides thus looking forward into the future we find him—more and more frequently—looking back upon the Cross and the Resurrection. Besides, he feels that the word Christ has a strange sound for Greek ears, and conveys no clear meaning. He therefore introduces two Greek titles in its stead: Lord and Saviour. The word Lord is introduced as an equivalent for Messiah into the official formulae used at baptism; Jesus the Lord, no longer Jesus the Christ. Such is the shortest of these formulas. The word Saviour, or helper, is intended to explain to the Christians what they are to expect in the coming Messiah: the eschatological sense still largely prevails. He is not yet the Saviour upon earth. Now, as both Lord and Saviour were attributes universally applied to gods and kings, both these titles introduced by St Paul came to be the means, contrary to his intention, of separating Jesus altogether from the Messianic picture and of bringing Him nearer to the dignity of the Godhead.

The second title—Son of Man—St Paul abandoned, as it could only have denoted Jesus’ human descent for the Greeks—quite contrary to the sense of the Hebrew word. But instead he calls Jesus the ‘Man.’ It is possible that he intended this as the right Greek translation of the oldest title. “The man from heaven” would then be the last reminiscence of the passage in Daniel where the “Son of man is expected from heaven.”

Unfortunately we cannot determine with sufficient certainty whether St Paul, in making use of his idea of the heavenly man or second man, started from the title, Son of Man, that was used in the primitive community. For in any case he created something new and original, whatever the preliminary stages may have been. The abrupt break of continuity with the national Christology and the conception of Jesus’ world-wide mission are both revealed in this title. Jesus appears to be so great to St Paul that He can only be compared with the first man, the father of the human race. Where Adam fell back He goes forward, and He recovers what Adam lost. So Jesus is assigned His place in the world’s history, the division of which into the period before and the period after Christ, dates from this magnificent conception of St Paul’s. Nowhere else is the universality and novelty of Christianity expressed as simply as here. Only we must remember that it is ideas and not facts with which we are now concerned. It is not the historical Jesus who is compared with Adam, but the ideal man with the sinner.

Besides, St Paul himself frequently varied these thoughts. In one place you will find the whole contrast is made to consist in the difference of natures: Adam earthly, Jesus heavenly. In another, in the difference of the act: Adam disobeyed, Jesus was obedient. The explanation is that on each occasion he is pursuing a different aim. In order to bring out clearly the sequence of the present and the future world, he contrasts the lower and the higher nature of the two prototypes. But when he wishes to guarantee the certainty of the life eternal to the Christians, he demonstrates that equally important consequences for their descendants have resulted from the deeds of these two progenitors.

But how are we the descendants of Christ? There is no answer. Neither does the comparison of the consequences hold good. Adam’s descendants died; Christ’s followers die also. At bottom, then, no very great service is rendered by this comparison. It dazzles one at first, but cannot be carried out. It is a brilliant idea entertained by St Paul for a time but afterwards abandoned. The meaning of Jesus cannot be clearly expressed by changing and playing with such antitheses.

There remains yet one title—the Son of God as the centre of Pauline theology. The word ‘Son of God’ had already been used by the earliest community, but in a very harmless sense. It denoted Jesus as the favourite of God, His confidant, knowing His ways better than anyone else. In the 2nd Psalm, too, the words “This day have I begotten thee “denote the divine election and nothing more. St Paul gives the words Son of God an altogether new and mythical sense; for the Greeks alas it was only too intelligible. The Son of God is a heavenly being who has been with God from before the ages. He is more than man, for He became man. It is not impossible that rabbinical doctrines as to intermediate beings supported St Paul in this thesis. It is, at any rate, very much like the Rabbis, when from the passage in Scripture, “God created man after His own image,” St Paul drew the conclusion that a separate being, “the image of God,” must therefore already have been in existence in heaven, and that this “image of God” was none other than the Son. But St Paul’s experience, the vision of Christ, was the decisive factor. As he here saw Jesus as a heavenly being in glory, so he had to picture Him to himself as existing from the beginning of time. The faith in this Son of God that descended from heaven is a consequence of the vision of the Son of God in heaven. By means of his vision St Paul became the creator of the new Christology, which drew its inspiration, not from history, but from something above it—from a mythical being, and which won over the heathen for this very reason.

But what is the relation of the Jesus of history to this Son of God? St Paul’s thesis is an exceedingly surprising one, but it bears the stamp of a man of genius. “The Son of God became a man such as we are, that we men might become sons of God as He is.” Thus the leading theme had been furnished for the whole long history of Christology.

St Paul used the words “man such as we are” in a very strict sense indeed. Jesus had been born of a woman. He had taken upon Himself our physical nature. He died on the Cross and was buried. He even died of weakness and to pay the debt of sin. Had the Docetae then existed they would have found no more determined opponent than the apostle himself. For the death on the Cross, which was their chief rock of offence, was the apostle’s glory. If he occasionally uses the equivocal expression, ‘homoioma,’ picture or likeness, then he would merely say that the Son of God, who is originally of a different nature, now became such as we are. Neither, however, does the later doctrine of the twofold nature—the opinion that in Christ Jesus a heavenly being was united to a human find any support in St Paul. Jesus, while upon earth, was for him a man, not a man and Son of God, first flesh then spirit, not both together. One thing only separates Jesus from all other men, His sinlessness, which has of necessity to be postulated for the theory of sacrifice. With this one exception nothing separates Him from ourselves. However often He may be set up as our pattern, nothing is ever said of a special spiritual organization, or of a second nature.

Doubtless this whole point of view is a myth from beginning to end, and cannot be termed anything else. It was as a myth, as a story of a God who had descended from heaven, that the Greeks immediately accepted it. And yet the form of the myth is, it must be granted, Jewish. God is in no wise drawn down into the world of sensible human phenomena; the thought of an incarnation of the Deity would be pure blasphemy for St Paul. It is not God but the Son of God alone who thus descends into this world. But the personal life of the historical Jesus does not exist for this theory.

The way in which St Paul, however, imparts an ethical meaning to his myth is very admirable. The coming down of the Son of man to a life of service and obedience forms the pattern of our humility and sacrifice. The whole of the great Christological passage in the letters to the Philippians has an ethical and practical purpose. But how much more simply did Jesus teach His disciples the lesson of humility by the example of His life upon earth without any mythological background! As everywhere, St Paul finally reaches the thought of Jesus, but here in so dangerous and roundabout a fashion that the Jesus of history is completely smothered up by the myth of the heavenly Son of God.

Paul and Jesus.

The Cross, the Resurrection, the Son of God who descended from heaven—these are the three great innovations of the Pauline Christology. In the Gospel of Jesus they are almost entirely wanting, yet St Paul’s object is to express evangelical thoughts by means of them. The comparison between the Master and the disciple is especially instructive:—

1. Jesus.—God is our Father, and has been always and everywhere. He showers down His love upon us by the gifts of food and raiment, by abundant pardon, by deliverance from the evil, by the promise of the kingdom that is to come. All that Jesus does and says is meant to confirm man’s faith in the love of God the Father.

Paul.—In the Cross of Jesus God gives the whole world a proof of His pardon and His love. Without that there is no certainty of the atonement. Only he that believes in the Cross has the true God.

So speaks the ecclesiastical apologist according to the principle that outside of the Church—that is, the community of those that believe in the Cross—there is no salvation.

2. Jesus.—The kingdom of God is at hand. It is to be the aim of the disciples’ longing, and is to give them strength for a new life in righteousness. Jesus leads His disciples onwards till they can walk in the light of eternity.

Paul.—The Resurrection of Jesus is the proof that the world to come is already beginning. Even now the Christian is risen with Jesus and has entered into life eternal.

So speaks the apologist, who is bound to give palpable proofs for the promised realities, and thereby confuses facts and postulates.

3. Jesus.—Through His teaching and His example He redeems men, so that they become the children of God, and lifts them up to a life of love and humility.

Paul.—The Son of man came down from heaven upon earth so that we might have a pattern in His self-humiliation, and through Him become the children of God.

So speaks the apologist, who himself knew not Jesus, for whom therefore the mythical picture had to effect that which the impression made by Jesus wrought in the earlier disciples.

The consequences of the great innovation were boundless. Jesus was presented to the Greeks in the shape of a mythical drama. Once again they had a new myth, and that, too, derived from the immediate present. And this conquered the world. The simple teaching of Jesus of Nazareth had never been able thus to win its way to victory, for the world was not yet ripe to receive the impression of a great personality by itself. That which was great and redemptive in Jesus had to suffer itself to be wrapped up in the heavy coverings of dogma; even in St Paul it lives and works mightily therein. In spite of all, it must be deemed fortunate that Jesus was preached to the world by St Paul. After all, side by side with the thoughts about Him came the Master Himself.

The Salvation of the Faithful.

After preaching the crucified and risen Son of God, St Paul’s next step in the course of his missionary labours was to gather the faithful into communities, to purify their life in common, and so to regulate it that it might become a haven for the individual and the means of his salvation. Passing now to theory, we find the doctrine of the salvation of the faithful built up upon these facts. Here, too, the foundation is formed by St Paul’s experience both of his own nature, and especially of his missionary communities; but it is only after revision in the interests of Church defence that the theory is completed as we now have it.

St Paul had himself been converted by the appearance of the risen Lord. He had felt an entire breach of continuity with the past, the death of his former life, a changed estimate of all values, of all frames of mind. But at the same time he felt the growth of a new life within himself since that meeting with Christ. Powers burst forth into being, of the existence of which he had had no previous knowledge. He himself began to speak with tongues, to behold visions, to catch glimpses of the world beyond. So powerfully did he feel the nearness of God that he was compelled to fall upon his knees and to cry out “Abba, Father.” Peace and joy, blessedness, freedom from all anxious care, took up their abode within him. The contest against all the powers of evil seemed no longer so terrible. Victory was at hand. He felt himself to be more than human—a giant, a hero: “I can do all things through Him that strengtheneth me.” All this called for an explanation, and Paul, in accordance with the whole of his psychology, could only find it in the ‘Spirit’ which had miraculously been imparted to him.

The experience he had gathered in the course of his missionary work seemed to him to point in the same direction. Here he saw the servants of sin, the scum and offscouring of mankind, carried away by a passion ate religious enthusiasm from the very moment that he began to preach, and often even strengthened so as to overcome their sins. Many were the miracles that he witnessed among his converts—manifestations of power, such as the healing of diseases, the speaking with tongues, prophecies, but also miracles of conversion. All this could proceed from nothing but the Spirit, especially because of the frequent ecstatic accompaniments. But here the value of the communities was far more evident than in St Paul’s own case, who had become a Christian without any ecclesiastical instrumentality. Permanent converts were to be found only within the communities. Like stars in the world, so these Christian congregations shone along the shores of the Mediterranean. Here was a visible and palpable proof that the coming world was very near at hand.

Both these factors, the personal experience as well as the results of the missionary journeys, must be remembered if one would understand the doctrine of redemption. But the third factor—the apologetic motive is not long in making its influence felt. The results of experience are universalized and completed. The ecclesiastical interest acquires clear expression for the first time in a theory concerning the value of the Church as an organized body. The word ‘ekklesia’ is of course but little mentioned as yet, but all the more is said of Faith, of the Spirit, of Baptism, which together constitute the Church. But at the same time even the most determined apologist cannot shut his eyes to the imperfection of the communities and of the redemption by means of them. The patch work character of the whole of this earnest of the world to come is only too evident. Hence the theory concerning the postulates for the future world succeeds the theory concerning the experiences in the present; the doctrine of salvation by the Church is followed by eschatology.

The Theory of the Experiences.

St Paul recognizes as the root of the Christian’s new life a single definite force: the Spirit of God or of Christ. This force does not work directly, but only through the means of grace. The inner means is faith; the outer are the Word, the Church and the Sacraments. Now, though the Spirit works upon men through these media an entire change of the inner and outer man is seldom effected: there are. obstacles in the way. Such obstacles are the flesh, the sin that still remains, suffering and death. The Christian’s duty is to endeavour to overcome these obstacles. He actually does this partly through faith and moral effort, partly through hope in the coming perfection. Thus the theory of the experiences leads on quite naturally to the theory of the postulates for the future world. Such, then, is the arrangement of the following section.

i.

The power that effects the believer’s salvation is the Spirit. Although St Paul occasionally speaks of the Spirit as though it were matter—e.g., the outpouring of the Spirit—yet he regards it usually as distinctly a force. As such it is included under the strict law of natural causation, only that it is a cause of a higher order. Like all forces, it can only be described by its effects.

The effects of the Spirit are exceedingly manifold, and range from the extraordinary to the normal, from the miracle to ordinary virtue.

First of all come the physical effects—the ‘forces’ in the general sense of the word. According to the popular conception there is not merely one Spirit, but as many Spirits as there are manifestations of force. One Spirit causes the speaking with tongues, another the interpretation thereof, another prophecy, another healing. St Paul himself writes of the Spirits in three passages of the first letter to the Corinthians. He there speaks of the Corinthians as “eagerly seeking for spirits,” each desiring to gain as many as possible for himself. We should to-day speak of these phenomena as the elementary effects of the religious impulse in the psychical and physical domain. St Paul himself was a master in glossolaly, more than all the Corinthians. No wonder that many caught fire at his enthusiasm. Such experiences are contagious. But little was wanting to make the whole of the Christian Church resemble a company of madmen. The apostle now, however, proceeded to allay the excitement, and that by summary measures. First of all he gathered all these different spirits under one heading: they are the various manifestations of the one Spirit of God. His object in so doing was to put an end to all jealousy and envy. The same Spirit gives to each one severally as He will. In the next place he sternly represses the wildest and least intelligible expression of this enthusiasm—the speaking with tongues—compares it with prophecy, and assigns a higher place to the latter because the understanding has a share in it and the whole Church is thereby benefited. That was a reversion of the order of precedence in the community. The undue exaltation of an egoistic mysticism was thereby effectually prevented. But finally, he places even prophecy itself far beneath love, “the more excellent way,” which is alone eternal: the doing of the simplest Christian duties is of greater value, in his sight, than the most exceptional gifts of insight and foresight. For all that, he allows a certain value to all those manifestations of the Spirit—they, too, are divine. At Thessalonica he went so far as to take up arms in defence of prophecy against mockers and doubters. His object is just this, that the Christians should learn to find their way out of enthusiasm and the extraordinary into plain and sober everyday life. And this object is best served by his insertion of 1 Cor. xiii. in the midst of his dissertation on spiritual gifts.

To quench this exaggerated spiritual exaltation St Paul places the exact opposite of speaking with tongues at the head of the gifts of the Spirit, viz., the word of wisdom and the word of knowledge. As he is speaking of nothing but extraordinary things, he must, in the first place, mean a speaking of God and the Divine which appears suddenly and unexpectedly, like a revelation, and surprises all that listen. The lightning thought of wisdom reveals the presence of the Spirit. But that is not all. St Paul teaches that the whole body of Christian knowledge, all those thoughts the possession of which constitutes the preeminence of Christians over Jews and Gentiles, can be traced to the Spirit. Every Christian teacher may boldly step forth with the claim that he is bringing an inspired message, and every layman who calls Jesus Lord speaks under the impulse of the Spirit. This is the point from which the representation of the Pauline gnosis will have to start. Two things are especially important in this derivation of knowledge from the Spirit. In the first place, the chasm between the supernatural and the natural has been bridged. Not only the welling forth of revelation, but the permanent spiritual outfit which should belong to every Christian, are to be ascribed to the working of the Spirit. At the same time, however, Christian is contrasted with all non-Christian knowledge as some thing wonderful and higher. Here we have the origin of the sharp division in later times between the knowledge of the natural man and the faith of the Church. The same man who rejects miracles in the popular sense of the word proclaims the miraculous character of the new theology all the more loudly.

St Paul sounds the deepest depths when he brings the life of prayer into connection with the Spirit. Prayer as he describes it in Rom. viii. is still very closely related to the talking with tongues. The understanding can go no further. Because we know not how we ought to pray all the more does the Spirit work. He comes to our aid, with sighings that cannot be uttered. But God, that reads the hearts of men, knows what the Spirit means. St Paul is here thinking of no ordinary prayer—no Lord’s Prayer even. He is thinking of moments of deepest emotion, such as came over him and others, prostrating them and casting them into a state of blessedness either of silence or finding utterance in sighs. Those are the moments when the immediate contact of the soul’s inmost being with the ultimate source of all things is experienced. That which he here calls Spirit is the mysterious background of our personality, inaccessible to all our science, working beyond our consciousness. But St Paul does not confine the Spirit’s activity to these rare moments of exaltation. Every prayer that a Christian utters beginning with the name of Father proceeds from the Spirit. In every real prayer there is a communion of the human soul with God. Then the Spirit of God testifies to our spirit that we are the children of God. Then the love of God is poured forth in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. Then are we ‘driven,’ that is, we feel a higher power coming over us, and then we experience a feeling of joyful gladness, surest token of God’s presence. All these sentences have an enthusiastic ring about them; they betray their origin in a great time of storm and stress. Yet some of this enthusiasm every Christian in every age is bound to carry with him into his every-day life. Without that certainty which the Spirit gives us that we are God’s children, it is impossible to ascend the steep and rugged road that leads from this world to the next.

The most important sphere, however, of the Spirit’s operations has yet to be mentioned. St Paul conquered the whole of life for the Spirit and thence derived all moral action and every virtue in our possession. The extraordinary is once more the starting-point. A charism—a gift of grace—is in reality the altogether exceptional privilege of quite extraordinary persons. Just as there are only certain people who can prophesy or teach, so there are others who alone understand the difficult task of serving, of presiding, of ministering to the poor, because they have been specially endowed by the Spirit with these gifts. This or that individual Christian can be joyful, or patient, or chaste in especially difficult circumstances where perhaps every other would have given up the struggle. The reason of that must be that the Spirit gave him the power and the endurance. Originally, as in the previous instance, it was the different spirits of joy, patience, etc. In every case heroic and extraordinary states of thought and feeling are originally conceived to be the surest signs of the Spirit’s presence. But from this somewhat narrow starting-point St Paul draws wider and wider circles which gradually extend over the whole of life: 1 Cor. xiii., Rom. xii., Gal. v., are proofs of this. At first only heroic manifestations of love were conceived of as the workings of the Spirit. St Paul leads his Corinthian converts to look upon love as that power in life which is intended to dominate and transform all that is common and every-day. At first gifts were only ascribed to abnormal persons. St Paul leads the Romans to conceive of all Christian feelings and acts, be they great or small, as the effects of grace. It is not the excitation of this or that feeling which is to originate from the Spirit, but the inspiration of the whole life. So radical and complete is the change that owing to St Paul the words ‘in the Spirit’ or ‘through the Spirit,’ which originally denoted an ecstatic condition, came to mean the same thing as the Christian life. Here the Spirit is naturally no longer conceived of as a force that comes and goes, but as a Christian’s permanent and abiding possession. And yet how we are reminded again all at once of the previous popular stages of the conception! St Paul’s ‘gifts’ are simply a theological word for the spirits of the earlier age, only they are no longer external beings, but faculties and talents immanent in the soul. The strictly causal conception of the Spirit, leading to determinism, is likewise retained from the earlier form of the belief. When the Spirit works there is no room for the free agency of man. St Paul never suffered this determinism to have any practical consequences, though there was no escape from the logical results of the whole theory.