Pauline theology

“ So vital is this word to Paul's religious doctrine that all Pauline theology and controversy has centred in it and battled round it. "To have faith in Christ means to be attached to Christ, to embrace Christ, to be identified with Christ"—but how? Paul answers, "By dying with Him." All his teaching amounts to this, and it is enough. WePg 223 must die with Christ to the law of the flesh, live with Christ to the law of the mind. To live with Christ after death is to rise with Him. It implies Resurrection. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The same is true of the great religious teachers; they give us themselves. They communicate to us, in a measure, their own exalted spirituality. The Pauline theology, or the theology which has been deduced from the teachings of Paul, may not be true as a proposition in Euclid is true, but the sentiment which animated Paul, his religious fervor, his heroic devotion to a worthy cause, were true, were real, and this is stimulating and helpful. Shall we make meat and drink of sacred things? Shall we value the Bible only for its literal, outward truth? ”

“ Where injury used to be met with reviling and insult retorted in worse insult, the men of the new life will be found “forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave” them. Here we touch the spring of Christian virtue, the master motive in the [300] apostle’s theory of life. The cross of Jesus Christ is the centre of Pauline ethics, as of Pauline theology. The sacrifice of Calvary, while it is the ground of our salvation, supplies the standard and incentive of moral attainment. It makes life an imitation of God. ”

“ People tell us, 'Your modern theology is not in the Gospels.' And they say to us, as if they had administered a knockdown blow, 'We stick by Jesus, not Paul.' Well, as I said, I do not admit that there is no 'Pauline' teaching in the Gospels, but I do confess there is not much. ”

“ It is indeed a strong and virile Christianity which Paul and the other apostles proclaim. It is no magic spell they seek to exert. They are convinced that there is that in {67} the mind of man which is ready to respond to a thoughtful Gospel. If men will only give their unprejudiced minds to God's Word, it is able to make them 'wise unto salvation.' It would lead us beyond the scope of this chapter to consider the peculiar Pauline significance of faith. ”

“ When we forget Christ's exaltation in our study of His earthly life—when we are so preoccupied, it may even be so fascinated, with what He was, that we forget what He is—when, in other words, a pious historical imagination takes the place of a living religious faith—that victorious consciousness is lost, and in a most essential point the image of the Lord is not reproduced in the believer. This is why the Pauline point of view—if indeed it is to be called Pauline, and not simply Christian—is essential. ”

“ But what is perhaps most significant of all for the establishment of the Pauline teaching about the Person of Christ is that Paul everywhere stands in a religious attitude toward Jesus. He who is thus the object of religious faith is surely no mere man, but a supernatural Person, and indeed a Person who was God. ”

“ And the Pauline doctrine appeals with far more immediate power to human consciousness, especially to that third of mankind whom a fervid enthusiastic mind renders little accessible to the cold solemnities of duty. And, finally, if we are insensible to the grandeur of St. Paul's teaching as to the universality of the Gospel, it is not more because it is entangled with the question of Jew and Gentile, than because the sentiment has become the common atmosphere of Christendom, and we feel not its freshness, because it blows not on us as a breeze, but only as our breath of life. ”

“ But Paulinism especially has had an immeasurable and blessed influence on the whole course of the history of dogma, an influence it could not have had, if the Pauline Epistles had not been received into the canon. Paulinism is a religious and Christocentric doctrine, more inward and more powerful than any other which has ever appeared in the Church. It stands in the clearest opposition to all merely natural moralism, [pg 136] all righteousness of works, all religious ceremonialism, all Christianity without Christ. ”

“ All the arguments in favour of the Pauline authorship of the third Gospel and of the Acts are satisfied by the almost universally accepted view, that these two works [362] were written by a companion of the Apostle, who was thoroughly familiar with his modes of thought and expression.
The preaching of this Gospel of the Resurrection and the Incarnation had caused the Apostle (as he here tells us) to suffer much evil, as if he had done much evil, even to the extent of a grievous imprisonment. He is bound as a malefactor; but his Gospel “is not bound,” because it is “the word of God.” ”

“ There is one point of contact between the Pauline and the Johannean conceptions, on the differences between which so much exaggeration has been expended: to both the inmost essence of the Christian life is union to Christ, and abiding in Him. If we are Christians, we are in Him, in yet profounder sense than creation lives and moves and has its being in God. We are in Him as the earth with all its living things is in the atmosphere, as the branch is in the vine, as the members are in the body. ”

“ After all, then, Christianity was not less noble than Plutarch's lives; it was more noble. There was to be a contest; yet not each man contending for his own soul, but for good against evil. A Christian was not a mercenary fighting for reward, nor a slave fighting for fear of stripes, but a free soldier fighting out of loyalty to Christ and to humanity.
But what about the doctrine of the Atonement, Justification by Faith, and the other Pauline doctrines? ”

“ The later Psalms prove this beyond dispute, and the advanced view which brings the bulk of the Psalter down to the post-exilic period only emphasises the more this aspect of pre-Christian Judaism. In Christianity of course the ideal was made infinitely more accessible: and it received in the Pauline doctrine, the Evangelical doctrine, of Justification by Faith a form, which more than any other human [143] teaching has made unselfish devotion to God a common aim. ”

“ Our theologians are, however, so strongly convinced of it a priori—that the Pauline representation of Christ actually arose from the figure of Jesus wandering on earth—that even M. Brückner confesses, in the preface to his work, that he had been “himself astonished” (!) at the result of his inquiry—the independence of the Pauline [209] representation of Christ from the historical personality, Jesus.72
Christianity is a syncretic religion. It belongs to those multiform religious movements which at the commencement of our era were struggling with one another for the mastery. ”

“ He will have an authority derived from the manifestations of signs and wonders. These had accompanied Jesus' own career, and now, by grace of His endowment of His disciples with the Spirit, [Pg 49] they will be repeated by their hands. The 'apostolic' gospel is thus primarily historical. The Pauline gospel centres at the other pole of religious conviction. It is primarily psychological. For Paul the immediate effect of the revelation of God's Son "in" him is an irresistible impulse to relate his own soul's experience. ”

“ There can hardly be a doubt that the definiteness and vividness of the Pauline theory of a future life contributed very largely to the rapid spread of the Christian religion; nor can it be doubted that to the desire to be holy like Jesus, in order to escape death and live with Jesus, is due the elevating ethical influence which, even in the worst times of ecclesiastic degeneracy, Christianity has never failed to exert. Doubtless, as Lessing long, ago observed, the notion of future reward and punishment needs to be eliminated in order that the incentive to holiness may be a perfectly pure one. ”

“ It has been shown that neither the group of Pauline conceptions which centers around the new birth (or, as Paul calls it, the new creation) nor the Pauline teaching about the sacraments was derived from the mystery religions. The third element of Paulinism which is thought to have come from pagan religion is found in the Pauline conception of Christ and of the work of Christ in redemption. This contention is connected especially with the name of Bousset [222] , who is, however, supported in essentials by a considerable number of contemporary scholars. ”

“ Moreover, the author explicitly refers to the apostolic age as already past, and to the fulfilment of the Pauline prediction (1 Tim. iv. 1 sqq.) of the advent of heresy (v. 17 seq.) . The Pauline doctrine of “grace” has been perverted to lasciviousness, as by the heretics whom Polycarp opposes (Ep. Polyc. vii.) , and this doctrine is taught for “hire” (vv. 11, 12, 16; cf. 1 Tim. vi. 5) . The unworthy “shepherds” (v. 12; cf. Ezek. xxxiv. 8; John x. 12 seq.) live at the expense of their flocks, polluting the “love-feasts,” corrupting the true disciples. ”

“ The Pauline Christ is a metaphysical principle, and his incarnation only one in idea, an imaginary element of his religious system. The man Jesus is in Paul the idealised suffering servant of God of Isaiah and the just man of Wisdom an intermediate stage of metaphysical evolution, not an historical personality. When we admit this, we remove the chief obstacle that has hitherto prevented theologians from studying seriously the question of the spuriousness of the Pauline Epistles. ”

“ The critics who declared that no apostle believed Christ to be more than an ideal or half-divine man, and said that St. John's writings are forgeries of the 2nd century, described the doctrine of Colossians as a transition from the true Pauline doctrine to the doctrine of the Logos contained in the fourth Gospel. But St. Paul states nothing about Christ in this Epistle which is not implied in earlier Epistles. He only makes fresh statements of truth in view of fresh errors. ”

“ Those who are condemned at the judgment can have no part in this completion of the resurrection, cannot enter the heavenly kingdom, but must be "punished with everlasting destruction from the presence and glory of the Lord," that is, as we suppose is signified, be thrust into the under world for evermore. As unessential to our object, we have omitted an exposition of the Pauline doctrine of the natural rank and proper or delegated offices of Christ in the universe ”

“ It has been the scheme of the Christian church, and of all the other invented systems of religion, to hold man in ignorance of the Creator, as it is of government to hold him in ignorance of his rights. The systems of the one are as false as those of the other, and are calculated for mutual support. The study of theology as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles ”

“ The writer who, in spite of the direct testimony of Paul himself could represent the apostle to the Gentiles as acting under the direction of the disciples at Jerusalem, and who puts Pauline sentiments into the mouth of Peter, would certainly have been capable of unwarrantably giving a Pauline turn to the teachings of Jesus himself. We are therefore, as a last resort, brought back to the first gospel, which we find to possess, as a historical narrative, far stronger claims upon our attention than the second and third. ”

“ In short, the king publicly gave his licence to Paulinus to preach the Gospel, and renouncing idolatry, declared that he received the faith of Christ: and then he inquired of the high priest who should first profane the altars and temples of their idols, with the enclosures that were about them, he answered, "I; for who can more properly than myself destroy those things which I worshipped through ignorance, for an example to all others, through the wisdom which has been given me by the true God?" ”

“ Certainly the Pauline teaching is far more highly developed than the teaching of the Old Testament. But the Old Testament provides the starting-point. The "flesh" in Paul, when it is used in its developed, ethical sense, does not mean the material nature of man; it includes rather all that man receives by ordinary generation. The contrast between "flesh" and "Spirit" therefore is not the contrast between matter and spirit; it is a contrast between human nature, of which sin has taken possession, and the Spirit of God. ”

“ Luke proves that Jesus Christ Himself taught the Pauline doctrine that man is saved by faith; and yet not by an empty faith, but by "faith working through love" (Gal. v. 6) . In this Gospel Jesus is especially the Refuge of sinners, and the teaching of our Lord may be best described by the happy phrase which records His address in the synagogue of Nazareth: "words of grace."
It is important to notice that in no Gospel do we find such an especial sympathy shown for the poor. ”

“ Perhaps there are other ways of conceiving men, and other aspects in which God can come to them as their Saviour; but the Pauline Gospel has proved itself, and will always prove itself anew, the Gospel for the sinful, who know the misery of condemnation and despair. Mere pardon, as it has been called, may be a meagre conception, but it is that without which no other Christian conception can exist for a moment. ”