J. Gresham Machen

“ The more important Paul was as a man, it might be said, the less important he becomes as a witness to the origin of Christianity. If his mind had been a blank tablet prepared to receive impressions, then the historian could be sure that what is found in Paul's Epistles about Jesus is a true reflection of what Jesus really was. But as a matter of fact Paul was a genius. It is of the nature of genius to be creative. May not what Paul says about Jesus and the origin of Christianity, therefore, be no mere reflection of the facts, but the creation of his own mind? ”

“ The fatherhood of God in Paul is not something to be argued about or defended; it is altogether a matter of course. But it has not lost, through repetition, one whit of its freshness. The name "Father" applied to God in Paul is more than a bare title; it is the welling up of the depths of the soul. "Abba, Father" on the lips of Paul's converts was exactly the same, not only in form but also in deepest import, as the word which Jesus first taught His disciples when they said to Him, "Lord, teach us to pray." ”

“ Genius is not incompatible with honesty—certainly not the genius of Paul. When, therefore, Paul sets himself to give information about certain plain matters of fact that came under his observation, as in the first two chapters of Galatians, there are not many historians who are inclined to refuse him credence. But the witness of Paul depends not so much upon details as upon the total fact of his religious life. It is that fact which is to be explained. To say merely that Paul was a genius and therefore unaccountable is no explanation. ”

“ The fundamental difficulty in explaining the origin of Paulinism will never disappear by being ignored; it will never yield to compromises of any kind. It will disappear only when Jesus is recognized as being really what Paul presupposes Him to be and what all the Gospels represent Him as being—the eternal Son of God, come to earth for the redemption of man, now seated once more on the throne of His glory, and working in the hearts of His disciples through His Spirit, as only God can work. ”

“ For the Gospels, taken as a whole, present a Jesus like in essentials to that divine Lord who was sum and substance of the life of Paul. The Jesus of the Gospels is no mere prophet, no mere inspired teacher of righteousness, no mere revealer or interpreter of God. He is, on the contrary, a supernatural person; a heavenly Redeemer come to earth for the salvation of men. So much is usually being admitted to-day. Whatever may have been the real facts about Jesus, the Gospels present a supernatural Jesus. This representation is contained not merely in one of the Gospels ”

“ As determined by the Homeric poems, the religion of Greece was a highly developed polytheism of a thoroughly anthropomorphic kind. The Greek gods were simply men and women, with human passions and human sins—more powerful, indeed, but not more righteous than those who worshiped them. Such a religion was stimulating to the highest art. Anthropomorphism gave free course to the imagination of poets and sculptors. There is nothing lifeless about the gods of Greece; whether portrayed by the chisel of sculptors or the pen of poets, they are warm, living, breathing, human figures. ”

“ It is no doubt true that even here the Messiah is no ordinary human being; he destroys his enemies, not by the weapons of warfare and not by the help of Israelitish armies, but by the breath of his mouth. Yet the local, earthly character of the Messiah's reign—what may even be called, perhaps, its political character—is more clearly marked than in the apocalypses. Also there is stronger emphasis upon the ethical qualities of the Messianic king; the righteousness of his people is celebrated in lofty terms, which, however, do not exclude a strong element of Jewish and Pharisaic particularism. ”

“ The contradiction is produced by His Messianic consciousness. The human Jesus of modern liberalism, the pure and humble teacher of righteousness, the one who kept His own person out of His message and merely asked men to have faith in God like His faith—this Jesus of modern liberalism thought that He was to come with the clouds of heaven and be the instrument in judging the earth! If Jesus was pure and unselfish and of healthy mind, how could He have applied to Himself the tremendous conception of the transcendent Messiah? By some the problem is avoided. ”

“ It was one thing to offer a new faith and a new cult as simply one additional way of obtaining contact with the Divine, and it was another thing, and a far more difficult thing (and in the ancient world outside of Israel an unheard-of thing) , to require a man to renounce all existing religious beliefs and practices in order to place his whole reliance upon a single Saviour. Amid the prevailing syncretism of the Greco-Roman world, the religion of Paul, with the religion of Israel, stands absolutely alone. ”

“ But Paul belongs with Jesus, on the same side of the gulf. In his ethic there is no formalism, no triviality, no casuistry—there is naught but "love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control." What has become of all the rest? Was it removed by the genius of Paul? It is strange that two such men of genius should have arisen independently and at the same time. Or was the terrible plus of Pharisaic formalism and triviality burned away from Paul when the light shone around him on the way to Damascus and he fell at the feet of the great Teacher? ”

“ The religion of Paul, in other words, is a religion of redemption. Jesus, according to Paul, came to earth not to say something, but to do something; He was primarily not a teacher, but a Redeemer. He came, not to teach men how to live, but to give them a new life through His atoning death. He was, indeed, also a teacher, and Paul attended to His teaching. But His teaching was all in vain unless it led to the final acceptance of His redemptive work. Not the details of Jesus' life, therefore, but the redemptive acts of death and resurrection are at the center of the religion of Paul. ”

“ The Judaism of Paul's day was certainly nothing if not monotheistic. But in the intensity of his monotheism Paul was not different from his countrymen. No one can possibly show a deeper scorn for the many gods of the heathen than can Paul. "For though there be that are called gods," he says, "whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many, and lords many,) But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we unto him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him." ”

“ Religion in Paul does not exist apart from theology, and theology does not exist apart from religion. Christianity, according to Paul, is both a life and a doctrine—but logically the doctrine comes first. The life is the expression of the doctrine and not vice versa. ”

“ The relation of Paul to Christ is a relation of love; and love exists only between persons. It is not a group of ideas that is to be explained, if Paulinism is to be accounted for, but the love of Paul for his Saviour. And that love is rooted, not in what Christ had said, but in what Christ had done. He "loved me and gave Himself for me." There lies the basis of the religion of Paul; there lies the basis of all of Christianity. That basis is confirmed by the account of Jesus which is given in the Gospels, and given, indeed, in all the sources. It is opposed only by modern reconstructions. ”

“ Even before the fall of the Greek city-state, little communities of the worshipers of eastern gods had established themselves here and there in Greece; and in other parts of the world the barriers against religious propaganda were even less effective. In the Hellenistic age such barriers were almost everywhere broken down. When any religion ceased to be an affair of the nation, when it could no longer count on the devotion of the citizens or subjects as such, it was obliged, if it desired to subsist, to seek its devotees through an appeal to the free choice of individuals. ”

“ The race from which the Bible came was despised in ancient times and it is despised to-day. How comes it then that a product of that race has been granted such boundless influence? How comes it that the barriers which have always separated Jew from Gentile, Semite from Aryan, have at one point been broken through, so that the current of Semitic life has been allowed to flow unchecked over the rich fields of our modern civilization? ”

“ At first sight there might seem to be a parallel between the Pauline doctrine of the flesh and the Greek doctrine of the evil of matter, which appears in the Orphic sects, then in Plato and in his successors. But the parallel breaks down upon closer examination. According to Plato, the body is evil because it is material; it is the prison-house of the soul. Nothing could really be more remote from the thought of Paul. According to Paul, the connection of soul and body is entirely normal, and the soul apart from the body is in a condition of nakedness. ”

“ Liberalism would never have conquered the world.
Fortunately liberalism was not the method of Paul. Paul was not a practical Christian who regarded life as superior to doctrine, and practice as superior to principle. On the contrary, he overcame the principle of Jewish particularism in the only way in which it could be overcome; he overcame principle by principle. It was not Paul the practical missionary, but Paul the theologian, who was the real apostle to the Gentiles. ”

“ But in attributing the conversion of Paul altogether to the experience on the road to Damascus, are we not heaping up into one moment what must of very necessity in conscious life be the work of years? Is it conceivable that ideas should have been implanted in the mind of a person not by processes of acquisition but mechanically as though by a hypodermic syringe? ”

“ But on the whole, the picture of Paul making a study of paganism in preparation for his life-work is too modern to be convincing. It may seem natural to those modern missionaries who no longer regard Christianity as a positive religion, who no longer insist upon any sharp break on the part of the converts with their ancestral ways of thinking, who are perfectly content to derive help from all quarters and are far more interested in improving political and social conditions in the land for which they labor than they are in securing assent to any specific Christian message. ”

“ But what is perhaps the most important feature of the religion of the Hellenistic age has not yet been mentioned. It is found in the widespread desire for redemption. In the golden age of Greece men had been satisfied with the world. Who could engage in gloomy questionings, who could face the underlying problem of evil, when it was possible to listen with keen appreciation to an ode of Pindar or to a tragedy of Æschylus? The Greek tragic poets, it is true, present in terrible fashion the sterner facts of life. ”

“ The establishment of that fact has been a notable achievement of Wrede and Bousset. But if what is essential in Paulinism was not derived from Jesus, whence was it derived? It was not derived, as Wrede believed, from the pre-Christian apocalyptic notions of the Messiah; for the apocalyptic Messiah was not an object of worship, and not a living person to be loved. It was not derived from pagan religion, in accordance with the brilliant hypothesis of Bousset; for pagan influence is excluded by the self-testimony of Paul, and the pagan parallels utterly break down. ”

“ The student who will first read Tractates I and XIII for himself will probably be surprised when he is told (for example by Reitzenstein) that here is to be found the spiritual atmosphere from which Paulinism came. For there could be no sharper contrast than that between the fantastic speculations of the Poimandres and the historical gospel of Paul. Both the Poimandres and Paul have some notion of a transformation that a man experiences through a divine revelation. But the transformation, according to Paul, comes through an account of what had happened but a few years before. ”

“ Paul was interested in salvation from the guilt of sin no whit less than in salvation from the power of sin, in justification no whit less than in the "new creation." Indeed, it is a great mistake to separate the two sides of his message. There lies the root error of the customary modern formula for explaining the origin of the Pauline theology. According to that formula, the forensic element in Paul's doctrine of salvation, which centers in justification, was derived from Judaism, and the vital or essential element which centers in the new creation was derived from paganism. ”

“ But the glorious achievements of the Greek genius were followed by lamentable failure. There was failure in political life. Despite the political genius of Athenian statesmen, Athens soon lay prostrate, first before her sister states and then before the Macedonian conqueror. There was failure in intellectual life. The glorious achievements of Athenian art were followed by a period of decline. Poets and sculptors had to find their inspiration in imitation of the past. Human nature, once so proud, was obliged to confess its inadequacy ”

“ Moreover, there was little place for the mystical element in religion. The gods of Greece were in some sort, indeed, companionable figures; they were similar to men; men could understand the motives of their actions. But there was no way in which companionship with them could find expression. There was a time, indeed, when the gods had come down to earth to help the great heroes who were their favorites or their sons. But such favors were not given to ordinary mortals. The gods might be revered, but direct and individual contact with them was for the most part not to be attained. ”

“ The lordship of the ruler admitted freely, and was indeed always accompanied by, the lordship of other gods; the lordship of Jesus, in the religion of Paul, was absolutely exclusive. For Paul, there was one Lord and one Lord only. When any parallel for such a religious relationship of a notable man to one of his contemporaries with whose most intimate friends he had come into close contact can be cited in the religious annals of the race, then it will be time for the historian to lose his wonder at the phenomenon of Paul. ”

“ He was correct in his central contention—Paul was no true disciple of the "liberal Jesus." If Jesus was what the liberal theologians represent Him as being—a teacher of righteousness, a religious genius, a guide on the way to God—then not Jesus but Paul was the true founder of historic Christianity. For historic Christianity, like the religion of Paul, is a religion of redemption. ”

“ The transplanting of the gospel to Antioch was accomplished not by any ordinary Jews of the Dispersion, but by those Jews of the Dispersion who had lived at Jerusalem and had received their instruction from the intimate friends of Jesus. Is it likely that such men would so soon forget the impressions that they had received, and would transform Christianity from a simple acceptance of Jesus as Messiah with eager longing for His return into a cult that emulated the pagan cults of the surrounding world by worship of Jesus as Lord? ”

“ Paul himself had of course enjoined upon his converts the necessity of leading a true moral life. If when the original apostles were urged by the Judaizers to impose upon the Gentile converts the requirements of the ceremonial Law, they responded, "No; the only requirements to be imposed upon the Gentiles are that they refrain from deadly sins like idolatry, murder and fornication," that decision constituted merely a most emphatic confirmation of Paul's gospel of freedom. ”

“ Why should the risen Christ give to His apostle detailed information which could be obtained perfectly well by ordinary inquiry from the eyewitnesses? Such revelation would be unlike the other miracles of the Bible. God does not rend the heaven to reveal what can be learned just as well by ordinary word of mouth. But this interpretation is equally unsatisfactory from the naturalistic point of view. Did Paul really suppose the risen Christ to have given him all this detailed information about the night of the betrayal and the rest? ”

“ The First Epistle to the Corinthians is a magnificent refutation of such a caricature. That Epistle represents Paul as a pastor of souls, unsurpassed in his insight into the practical problems of his converts, unsurpassed in the tact with which he applied great principles to special circumstances. But the same characteristics appear everywhere in Paul. Everywhere Paul is the true friend, the true patriot, and the true man; everywhere he exhibits that careful attention to detail, that careful recognition of special relationships, which is lacking in genuinely mystical piety. ”

“ No attempt indeed should be made to underestimate the community of interest which binds all redemptive religions together and separates them sharply from all others. Common recognition of the fundamental evil of the world is a far closer bond of union than agreement about the details of conduct. Gautama under the tree of knowledge in India, seeking in ascetic meditation for freedom from the misery of existence, was inwardly far nearer to the apostle Paul than is many a modern liberal preacher who loves to read the sixth chapter of Ephesians in Church. ”