Part 1 (1/2)
Critical Examination of the Life of St. Paul.
by Boulanger.
INTRODUCTION.
EPISTLE DEDICATORY TO M. L. N.
Sir, In our last conversation you appeared to me, very much smitten with St. Paul and his works; you recommended me to reperuse his writings; a.s.suring me that I should there find arguments well calculated to shake incredulity and confirm a Christian in his faith.
Although the actions of this celebrated Apostle, related in the Acts, and his doctrine contained in his Epistles, were already perfectly known to me, yet to conform myself to your desires, and give you proofs of my docility, I have again read those works, and I can a.s.sure you that I have done it with the greatest attention. You will judge of that yourself, by the reflections I send you; they will at least prove to you that I have read with attention. A superficial glance is only likely to deceive us or leave us in error. The pa.s.sions and the prejudices of men prevent them from examining with candour, and from their indolence they are often disgusted with the researches necessary for discovering truth; that has also been with so much care veiled from their eyes: but it is in vain to cover it, its splendour will sooner or later s.h.i.+ne forth; the works of enthusiasm or imposture, will always end by betraying themselves. As for the rest, read and judge. You will find, I think, at least, some reasons for abating a little from that high opinion, that prejudice gives us of the Apostle of the Gentiles, and of the religious system of the Christians, of which St. Paul was evidently the true architect. I am not ignorant that it is very difficult to undo at one blow the ideas to which the mind has been so long accustomed; but whatever may be your judgment it will not alter the sentiments of friends.h.i.+p and attachment which are due to the goodness of your heart.
I am, &c, &c.
CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL
CHAPTER I. Is the Conversion of St. Paul a proof in favour of the Christian Religion?
Many theologians would make us regard the miraculous conversion and apostles.h.i.+p of St. Paul as one of the strongest proofs of the truth of Christianity. But in viewing the thing closely it appears that this conversion, far from proving any thing in favour of this religion, invalidates the other proofs of it, in fact, our doctors continually a.s.sure us that the Christian religion draws its strongest proofs from the prophecies of the Old Testament, whilst there is not in fact a single one of these prophecies that can be literally applied to the Messiah of the Christians. St. Paul himself willing to make use of these oracles of the Jewish nation to prove the mission of Christ, is obliged to distort them, and to seek in them a mystical, allegorical, and figurative sense. On the other side, how can these prophecies made by Jews and addressed to Jews, serve as proofs of the doctrine of St.
Paul, who had evidently formed the design of altering, or even of destroying, the Jewish religion, in order to raise a new system on its ruins? Such being the state of things, what real connection, or what relation, can there be between the religious system of the Jews, and that of St. Paul? For this Apostle to have had the right of making use of the Jewish prophecies, it would have been necessary that he should have remained a Jew; his conversion to Christianity evidently deprived him of the privilege of serving himself, by having recourse to the prophecies belonging to a religion that he had just abandoned, and the ruin of which he meditated. True prophecies can only be found in a divine religion, and a religion truly divine, can neither be altered, reformed, nor destroyed: G.o.d himself, if he is immutable, could not change it.
In fact, might not the Jews have said to St. Paul, ”Apostate that you are! you believe in our prophecies, and you come to destroy the religion founded upon the same prophecies. If you believe in our oracles, you are forced to believe that the religion which you have quitted is a true religion and divinely inspired. If you say, that G.o.d has changed his mind, you are impious in pretending that G.o.d could change, and was not sufficiently wise, to give at once to his people a perfect wors.h.i.+p, and one which had no need of being reformed. On the other side, do not the reiterated promises of the Most High, confirmed by paths to our fathers, a.s.sure us, that his alliance with us should endure eternally? You are then an impostor, and, according to our law, we ought to exterminate you; seeing that Moses, our divine legislator, orders us to put to death, whoever shall have the temerity to preach to us a new wors.h.i.+p, even though he should confirm his mission by prodigies. The G.o.d that you preach is not the G.o.d of our fathers: you say that Christ is his son; but we know that G.o.d has no son. You pretend that this son, whom we have put to death as a false prophet, has risen from the dead, but Moses has not spoken of the resurrection; thus your new G.o.d and your dogmas are contrary to our law, and consequently we ought to hold them in abhorrence.” In short these same Jews might have said to St. Paul: ”You deceive yourself in saying, that you are the disciple of Jesus, your Jesus was a Jew, during the whole of his life he was circ.u.mcised, he conformed himself to all the legal ordinances; he often protested that he came to accomplish, and not to abolish the law; whilst you in contempt of the protestations of the Master, whose Apostle you say you are, take the liberty of changing this holy law, of decrying it, of dispensing with its most essential ordinances.”
Moreover the conversion of St. Paul strangely weakens the proof that the Christian religion draws from the miracles of Jesus Christ and his Apostles. According to the evangelists themselves the Jews were not at all convinced by these miracles. The transcendant prodigy of the resurrection of Christ, the wonders since wrought by some of his adherents did not contribute more to their conversion. St. Paul believed nothing of them at first, he was a zealous persecutor of the first Christians to such a degree, that, according to the Christians, nothing short of a new miracle, performed for him alone, was able to convert him; which proves to us that there was, at least, a time when St. Paul did not give any credit to the wonders that the partisans of Jesus related at Jerusalem.
He needed a particular miracle to believe in those miracles, that we are obliged to believe in at the time in which we live, without heaven operating any new prodigy to demonstrate to us the truth of them.
CHAPTER II. Opinions of the first Christians upon the Acts of the Apostles, and upon the Epistles and Person of St. Paul.
It is in the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles of St. Paul, that we find the details of his life and the system of his doctrine; but, how can we be certain of the authenticity of these works, whilst we see many of the first Christians doubt and reject them as apocryphal? We find, in fact, that from the earliest period of the church, entire sects of Christians, who believed that many of the Epistles published under the name of this Apostle, were not really his. The Marcionites were confident that the gospels were filled with falshoods, and Marcion, their head, pretended that his gospel was the only true one.
The Manicheans, who formed a very numerous sect at the commencement of Christianity, rejected as false, all the New Testament, and produced other writings, quite different, which they gave as authentic. The Corinthians, as well as the Marcionites, did not admit the Acts of the Apostles. The Encrat.i.tes and the Severians did not adopt either the Acts or the Epistles of St. Paul. St. John Chrysostom in a homily, which he has made upon the Acts, says, that in his time (that is to say, towards the end of the fourth century) many men were ignorant not only of the name of the author, or of the collector of these Acts, but even did not know this work. The Valentinians, as well as many other sects of Christians accused our scriptures of being filled with errors, imperfections, and contradictions, and of being insufficient without the a.s.sistance of traditions; this is a fact that is attested to us by St.
Irenaeus. The Ebionites or Nazarenes, who, as we shall soon see, were the first Christians, rejected all the Epistles of St. Paul, and regarded him as an impostor and hypocrite.
It will not fail being said to us, that we ought not to rely on the testimony of heretics; but I shall reply, that in the matter in question, their testimony is of the same weight as that of the orthodox, seeing that all the different sects consider themselves as orthodox, and have treated their adversaries as heretics. How shall we unravel the truth if we do not hear both parties? By what signs shall we know those on whom we ought to rely? Shall we cede the cause without examining their adversaries, to writers who utter to us falshoods without number, who contradict each other, who are never agreed amongst themselves, and whose discordant writings are nevertheless produced as proofs of what they advance? In any other subject such a conduct would seem to betray a partiality or even insincerity: but in religious matters, every thing is fair, and there is no necessity of being so nice.
However that may be, it does not follow that because one sect has received or rejected a work, that the work itself is either true or false; there cannot be otherwise than, a diversity of opinions between persons of different parties; their testimony ought to have equal weight, until the partisans of one sect, have been convicted of being greater cheats and liars, than those of the other. If we pay no regard to the authority of heretics, it is because they have not had sufficient power to enforce their opinions. It is power or weakness which makes orthodoxians or heretics: the last are always those who have not power enough to make their opinions current.
What course shall we then pursue to discover on which side is the truth?
An impartial man will no more expect to find it in one party than in another, thus the testimony of the one can have no greater weight than that of the other in the eye of an unprejudiced man.
This granted, we cannot rely on the authority of Christian traditions which vary in all sects, and we shall be reduced to recur solely to reason, especially when we find that the works, which are to-day regarded as authentic, have in other times been considered as suppositious, or apocryphal, by some very ancient sects of Christians, and that the works and writings, then regarded as apocryphal, have since been adopted as true.
It appears that in the ancient churches, they read at once the works that we now regard as true, and those that now-pa.s.s for suppositious, in such sort, that there is reason to believe they were then held to possess equal claim to authenticity: it is, at least, very, difficult to demonstrate the contrary in the present time. Some churches have attributed the same authority to false or doubtful writings as to true.