Part 3 (1/2)

The other questions related to church meetings for the ”Lord's supper”

and the exercise of ”spiritual gifts.” They give opportunity for the development of Paul's n.o.ble doctrine of unity through loving service (xi. 2--xiv. 40). The doctrinal section of 1st Corinthians concludes with a full statement of Paul's doctrine of the resurrection body (called forth by Greek objections to the Jewish). From the items of business at the close we learn that ”the collection for the saints” has been under way some time already ”in Galatia,” and that Paul hopes, after pa.s.sing through Macedonia, to join the delegation which is to carry the money to Jerusalem (xvi. 1-6).

As it turned out Paul actually followed the itinerary outlined in 1st Cor. xvi. 1-6, but not until after distressing experiences. Timothy, sent (by way of Macedonia, Acts xix. 22) as Paul's representative (iv.

17; xvi. 10 f.), was unable to restore order. The opposition to Paul's apostolic authority, treated almost contemptuously in ix. 1-14, grew to alarming proportions. Paul received so direct and personal an affront (either on a hasty visit undertaken in person from Ephesus, or in the person of Timothy) that he despatched a peremptory ultimatum, whose effect he is anxiously waiting to hear when 2nd Corinthians opens with Paul driven out from Ephesus, a refugee in Macedonia (_c._ 55). It is highly probable that the disconnected section appended between 2nd Cor.

ix. 15 and the Farewell, is taken from this ”grievous” letter written ”out of much affliction and anguish of heart with many tears” (2nd Cor.

ii. 1-4; vii. 8-16); for it was not only a peremptory demand for punishment of the offender, but also a letter of forced self-commendation. Paul cannot have written in self-commendation on more than one occasion, and he promises not to repeat this in iii. 1 ff. We may take 2nd Cor. x.-xiii., then, as representing the ”grievous” letter.

The opposition emanates from Judaizers who say they are ”of Christ,” and may therefore be identical with those of 1st Cor. i. 12. But it has grown to proportions which for a time made Paul despair of the church's loyalty. t.i.tus' arrival in Macedonia with news of their restored obedience had been an inexpressible relief (ii. 5-17; vii. 8-16). It remains only to set his 'ministry of the new covenant' once more in contrast with the Mosaic 'ministry of condemnation and death,' including further elucidation of the doctrine of the resurrection body (iii.

1--vi. 10) and to urge generosity in the matter of the collection (chh.

viii.-ix.).

The somewhat disordered, but unmistakably genuine material of 2nd Corinthians was probably given out as a kind of residuum of Pauline material long after our 1st Corinthians had been put in circulation, perhaps when renewed strife had caused the church in Rome to intervene through Clement (95), who quotes 1st Corinthians, but shows no knowledge of 2nd Corinthians. The correspondence is not only invaluable to the church for its paean of love as the invincible, abiding gift of the Spirit (1st Cor. xiii.) and its sublime eulogy of the ”ministry of the new covenant,” but instructive in the highest degree to the historian.

Almost every aspect of Paul's work as missionary, defender of his own independent apostles.h.i.+p and gospel, guide and instructor of developing Gentile-Christian thought, and ardent commissioner for peace with the apostolic community in Syria, is here set forth. The best exposition of the history is the doc.u.mentary material itself, and conversely.

Romans was written during the peaceful winter at Corinth (55-56) which followed these weeks of tormenting anxiety in Macedonia (Acts xx. 1-3).

Paul feels that he has carried the gospel to the very sh.o.r.es of the Adriatic (xv. 19). He is on the point of going to Jerusalem with his great 'offering of the Gentiles,' and has already fixed his eye on Rome and ”Spain”! Just as before the First Missionary Journey he forestalled opposition by frankly laying his gospel before the Pillars, so now he lays it before the church in Rome, but most delicately and tactfully, not as though a.s.suming to admonish Christians already ”filled with all knowledge and able to admonish one another” (xv. 14), but ”that I with you may be comforted in you, each of us by the other's faith” (i. 12).

Thus the Epistle is an eirenicon. For Rome was even more than Ephesus had been, a preoccupied territory, though a metropolis of Paul's mission-field. Most of the church are Paul's sympathizers, but there are many of the 'weak,' who may easily be 'offended.' The letter repeats and enlarges the argument of Galatians for the gospel of Grace, carrying back the promise to Abraham to its antecedent in the fall of Adam, whereby all mankind had pa.s.sed under the domination of Sin and Death.

The function of the Law is again made clear as bringing men to consciousness of this bondage, till it is done away by (mystical) death and resurrection with Christ. In the adoption wrought by the Spirit the whole creation even, groaning since Adam's time under 'vanity,' is liberated in the manifestation of the sons of G.o.d. Jesus, glorified at the right hand of G.o.d, is the firstfruits of the cosmic redemption (Rom.

i.-viii.). Such is Paul's theory of 'evolution.' It is followed by a vindication of G.o.d in history. Rom. ix.-xi. exhibits the relation of Jew and Gentile in the process of the redemption. Israel has for the time being been hardened that the Gentiles may be brought in. Ultimately their very jealousy at this result will bring them also to repentant faith.

Paul's sublime exposition of his view of cosmic and historic redemption is followed (as in all the Epistles) by a practical exhortation (chh.

xii.-xiv.), the keynote of which is unity through mutual forbearance and loving service. It repeats the Corinthian figure of the members in the body, and the Galatian definition of the 'law of Christ.' Special application is made to the case of the scrupulous who make distinctions of days and of meats. Here, however (xiv. 1--xv. 13), there is no longer need to resist a threatened yoke. Only tenderness and consideration are urged for the over-scrupulous ”brother in Christ.” It was in this spirit that Paul and his great company of delegates from the churches of the Gentiles went up to Jerusalem (Acts xx. 4--xxi. 17).

CHAPTER IV

PAUL AS PRISONER AND CHURCH FATHER

The second period of Paul's literary career begins after an interval of several years. This interval is covered indeed, so far as the great events of the Apostle's personal story are concerned, by the last nine chapters of Acts, but exceedingly obscure as respects the fortunes of his mission-field and the occasion for the group of Epistles which come to us after its close. It is barely possible that a fragment or two from the so-called Pastoral Epistles (1st Timothy, 2nd Timothy, t.i.tus), which seem to be compiled long after Paul's death on the basis of some remnants of his correspondence, may have been written shortly after the arrest in Jerusalem and ”first defence.” In 2nd Tim. iv. 11-18 a journey is referred to from Troas by way of Ephesus which coincides in many respects with that of Acts xx. If the fragment could be taken out from its present setting it might be possible to identify the two; for it is clear from the forecast of Acts xx. 25, 38 that Paul never did revisit this region. The grip of Rome upon her troublesome prisoner was not relaxed until his martyrdom, probably some considerable time before the ”great mult.i.tude” whom Nero condemned after the conflagration of 64.

However, until a.n.a.lysis can dissect out with greater definiteness the genuine elements of the Pastoral Epistles, they cannot be used to throw light upon the later period of Paul's career. A historical background has indeed been created to meet their requirements--a release of Paul, resumption of missionary activities on the coasts of the aegean, renewed imprisonment in Rome and ultimate martyrdom. But this has absolutely no warrant outside the Pastorals themselves, and is both inconsistent with Acts and open to criticism intrinsically. The story thus created of a release, _second_ visitation of the Greek churches, and _second_ imprisonment must, therefore, be regarded as fict.i.tious, and the Pastoral Epistles in their present form as products of the post-Pauline age.

It is our task to trace the development among the Greek churches of Christianity conceived as a ”revelation of G.o.d in Christ,” alongside of its development in the 'apostolic' church, until the period of 'catholic' unity and the completed canon. Upon this development the story of Paul's personal fortunes in Acts throws but little light. We merely see that his great peace-making visit to Jerusalem was suddenly interrupted by his arrest in the temple, while engaged in an act of wors.h.i.+p undoubtedly intended by him to demonstrate his willingness in the interest of unity to ”become as under the Law to them that are under the Law.” After this his great delegation from the Gentile churches must have scattered to their homes. Paul remained a prisoner for two years in Caesarea, and after an adventurous journey covering the ensuing autumn and winter (59-60), spent two more years in less rigid confinement at Rome. We need no hint from his request in 2nd Tim. iv. 13 for ”books and parchments” to infer that the years of forced seclusion in Caesarea were marked by study and meditation; but narrative and inference together convey but little of what we mainly desire to know: the course of religious development in the Pauline churches, as a background for the literature.

On the other hand recent research into religious conditions in the early Empire has removed the princ.i.p.al objections to the authenticity of Philippians, Philemon, Colossians, and even Ephesians. We are far from being compelled to come down to the time of the great Gnostic systems of the second century to find a historical situation appropriate to this group of letters purporting to be written by Paul from his captivity.

Indeed they exhibit on any theory of their origin a characteristic and legitimate development of the Pauline gospel of Son s.h.i.+p by the Spirit of Adoption abolis.h.i.+ng the dispensation of Law. It is a development almost inevitable in a conception of 'the gospel' formed on Greek ideas of Redemption, if we place in opposition to it a certain baser type of superst.i.tious, mongrel Judaism, revealed in the Epistles themselves, repeatedly referred to in Acts, and now known to us by a ma.s.s of extraneous doc.u.mentary material.

The new disturbers of the churches' peace revealed in the Epistles of the Captivity are still of Jewish origin and tendency; but at least in the region of Colossae (in the Lycus Valley, adjacent to southern Galatia) the issue is no longer that between Law and Grace, but concerns the nature and extent of the Redemption. The trouble still comes from a superst.i.tious exaltation of the Mosaic revelation; but those whom Paul here opposes do not ”use the Law lawfully,” frankly insisting on its permanent obligation as the will of G.o.d for all sons, unaffected by the Cross. It is now admitted to be an ”ordinance of angels”; but the observance of it is inculcated because man's redemption can only come through conciliation of these higher beings. Mystical union with superhuman Powers is to be promoted by its observances. This superst.i.tion is neither purely Jewish, nor purely Greek. It is composite--h.e.l.lenistic. Judaism is imitated in the superst.i.tious reverence for the Law; but the conception of Redemption leaves behind every thought of national particularism and is openly individualistic.

The redemption sought is that of the individual soul from the limitations of humanity, and doubtless the name of Jesus played an important role in the emanc.i.p.ation, as in the exorcisms of the sons of Sceva (Acts xix. 13 f.); only it was not ”above every name.”

But even Jewish apocalypses such as _Enoch_ and _Baruch_ with all their superst.i.tious angelology and demonology manage somehow to cling to the ancient Jewish faith in the primacy of man, and Paul in like manner upholds against the theosophists the doctrine of the believer's Son s.h.i.+p and joint-heirs.h.i.+p with Christ. In fact the Adoption, Redemption and Inheritance accorded in the gift of the Spirit are to his mind gifts so great and exalted as to make it a ”gratuitous self-humiliation” to pay homage, in Mosaic or other ceremonial, to ”angels,” ”princ.i.p.alities,” or ”powers.” In Christ we already have a foothold in the heavenly regions.

We were foreordained in his person to be ”heirs” ”before the foundation of the world.” His resurrection and ascension ”to the right hand of G.o.d”

partic.i.p.ated in by us through ”the Spirit” was a ”triumph” over the 'Elements' and 'Rulers.' They should be beneath the Christian's feet in feeling, as they soon will be in reality.

This exalted doctrine of Christ's Son s.h.i.+p as compared with the mere temporary authority of ”angels and princ.i.p.alities and powers,” secures to the Epistles of the Captivity their well-deserved t.i.tle of ”Christological”; for they lay the foundation for all later doctrines of the Logos or Word. It is well to realize, however, that the doctrine is in origin and meaning simply a vindication of the divine dignity of manhood.

An idea of outward conditions at the time of writing may be gained from the two Epistles of the group most universally admitted to be genuine, Philemon and Philippians. Both are written from captivity, almost certainly in Rome, because the writer is expecting, if released, to revisit the aegean coasts, which was not Paul's expectation in Caesarea.

But there is a wide difference between the two as respects the circ.u.mstances presupposed. The tone of Philemon is hopeful, sprightly, even jocose. Paul is in company with a group of ”fellow-workers” which significantly includes ”Mark,” as well as two companions of the voyage to Rome, ”Aristarchus” of Thessalonica, and ”Luke” (Acts xxvii. 2).