025. THE FOUR GREAT EPISTLES OF PAUL

THE FOUR GREAT EPISTLES OF PAUL In the four great Epistles of Paul we have even earlier witnesses than the Gospel according to Mark, for these Epistles were composed before Mark put the gospel story into written form. Paul indeed wrote at a time when there were still living a multitude of persons who had seen Jesus and who could contradict any erroneous account of him. Yet Paul asserts Christ’s resurrection as an indubitable fact, the one fact indeed upon which Christianity itself was based. Not only is this greatest of miracles declared, but it is made comprehensible by Paul’s teaching with regard to our Lord’s divinity and incarnation. In Paul we have already the germs of the Logos-doctrine of John’s Gospel. The Epistle to the Philippians tells us that before the incarnation Christ was in the form of God; the Epistle to the Colossians tells us that it was he through whom the universe was made and upheld. Though the Epistle to the Hebrews is not directly from Paul’s hand, it only sets forth the substance of Paul’s doctrine when it expressly gives to Christ the name of God. Nor is there in all these utterances any evidence that such doctrine was new. They declare only what was matter of common faith in the days of the apostles. When we come to John’s Gospel, therefore, we find in it the mere unfolding of truth that for substance had been in the world for at least sixty years. That the beloved disciple, after a half-century of meditation upon what he had seen and heard of God manifest in the flesh, should have penetrated more deeply into the meaning of that wonderful revelation is not only not surprising,—it is precisely what Jesus himself foretold. Our Lord had many things to say to his disciples, but then they could not bear them. He promised that the Holy Spirit should bring to their remembrance both himself and his words, and should lead them into all the truth. And this is the whole secret of what are called accretions to original Christianity. So far as they are contained in Scripture, they are inspired discoveries and unfoldings, not mere speculations and inventions. They are not additions but elucidations, not vain imaginings but correct interpretations. If the Platonizing philosophy of Alexandria assisted in this genuine development of Christian doctrine, then the Alexandrian philosophy was a providential help to inspiration. The microscope does not invent; it only discovers. Paul and John did not add to the truth of Christ; their philosophical equipment was only a microscope which brought into clear view the truth that was there already. Human reason does impose its laws and forms upon Scripture and upon the universe, but in so doing it only interprets their real meaning.