03. Additional Note to Chapter II: The Pauline Eschatology and Hellenism

Additional Note to Chapter II THE PAULINE ESCHATOLOGY AND HELLENISM

Among those influences which in some form or other have contributed to the shaping of St Paul’s Conceptions of the Last Things, various competent theologians have included that of Hellenism. And there is nothing in the nature of the situation to preclude such a possibility. The century in which St Paul wrote was one famous for the popularising of philosophical doctrines.

In all the chief centres of civilisation throughout the Roman empire, the philosophical lecturer was a familiar figure. His knowledge was often superficial enough, but it became a fashion to attend his prelections, and if he proved a lively and elegant speaker he might count on a large audience. Hence the favourite ideas of Platonism, of the Stoa, of Epicurus, were in circulation widely.

At least, every person who pretended to be educated must have had a superficial acquaintance with them. It might be imagined, no doubt, that this condition of popular thought would not affect the Jews, the members of the Diaspora, found in every province of the imperial dominions. They were famed for their exclusiveness.

Their one bond of union as a people was their attachment to the religion of their fathers. They prided themselves on their isolation. But their cosmopolitan experience began to tell on their nationalistic prejudices. Even around their own Synagogues, the focus of their life and worship, a fringe of Gentiles had gathered, attracted by the Jewish Monotheism, which met a strong craving of that age, and eager to learn more of that purer morality which stood in so sharp a contrast to their own social environment.

Through special circumstances such as these, and the more vague and general influence of the Zeit-Geist, they were compelled, however reluctantly,1 [Note: See, e.g., Menzel, Der griech. Einfluss auf Predigeru. Weisheit Salomos, 1889.] to enlarge their horizon, and admit into their thought speculations which had sprung from a foreign source.

But there were thinkers here and there who showed no such reluctance, who yielded themselves cordially to this growing Hellenic influence, who assimilated the doctrines of Plato and the Stoics so far as loyal Jews could assimilate them, and in their own fashion bridged the cleft between Judaism and Hellenism.

These writers mainly belonged to the famous school of Alexandria, a stronghold of Jewish life and influence; their best known representatives are Philo and the author of the Book of Wisdom. It is impossible for us here to examine Philo’s Eschatology. But, speaking broadly, it is genuinely Greek in character, assimilating Platonic influences in the most conspicuous fashion, departing wholly, for example, from the expectation of a quickening of the complete personality in a future life.

This latter deviation rests on his belief that the body is entirely antagonistic to the soul. But this antagonism he ascribes, not to the fact that the body is material, but that it is merely phenomenal, and so transient, in contrast to the “world of eternal ideas amid which reason lives.”1 [Note: See Drummond, Philo, ii. p. 297.] “It is not possible,” he says, “while dwelling in the body and the mortal genus, to hold communion with God” (Leg. Alleg. iii. 14).

As might be expected, he spiritualises all the common eschatological ideas. “The true Hades is the life of the wicked man exposed to vengeance with uncleansed guilt, obnoxious to every curse” (Congr. Erud.

Gr. 11). The death which is his wages is “to live always dying, and to endure, as it were, death deathless and unending.” It is “to be haunted with unmingled grief and fear” (Praem. et Poen. 12). The virtuous, on the other hand, shall leave behind them the strife and necessity and corruption of the lower world, and come to the Unbegotten and Eternal, the city of God, the mystical Jerusalem which signifies the vision of peace (Somn. ii. 38; Quis rer. div. her. 58).2 [Note: We take the translations from Drummond’s invaluable work (ii. pp. 322, 323).] These extracts suffice to show how completely the spirit of Hellenic philosophy has penetrated this remarkable Jewish thinker.

The same influences assert themselves, although less prominently, in the Wisdom of Solomon.3 [Note: Its close connection with the Wisdom-literature of the Old Testament has not been sufficiently recognised in current discussions. For a similar contact between Judaism and Greek philosophy, see the marked traces of Stoic influence in the discourse on the Devout Reason as Mistress of the Desires, in 4 Maccabees.] Several of the stable elements in Jewish Eschatology remain side by side with those which are purely Hellenistic, and so irreconcilable positions are held simultaneously. Thus there appears, e.g., the notion of a Day of Judgment; but how this is combined with the unquestionable teaching of the book, that the souls of the righteous, immediately after death, appear in the presence of God and enter perfect blessedness, there is no indication.

In any case, the conception of immortality is wholly spiritual. This book is of special interest for our discussion, inasmuch as an intimate relationship has been assumed between it and St Paul. Indeed, it may be said that the Hellenistic Judaism of Alexandria has usually been regarded as the main instrument in bringing the apostle into contact with Hellenism, for we may leave out of account the far-fetched theory of Teichmann that St Paul became acquainted with Greek ideas by means of the apocalyptic literature.

If this close connection can be established, it would be reasonable to expect further traces of the effect of Greek speculation on the apostle’s thinking. An interesting monograph has been written on the subject by Prof. E. Grafe in Abhandlungen … C. von Weizsäcker gewidmet. Grafe finds proofs of St Paul’s dependence on Wisdom, not merely in thought, but even in language.

In 1 Corinthians 2:1-16, for example, in agreement with Pfleiderer (Urchristentum, pp. 161, 257), he compares verses 8, 10, 11 with Wisd. 9:7, 2:9 with 7:28, 2:10 with 7:27, 2:14 with 9:14, 2:15 with 9:11, 2:16 with 9:13 (p. 278). It appears to us, that unless one came to the passages prepared to find parallels, the correspondences would scarcely appeal to him. Take, e.g., the famous statement of 1 Corinthians 2:14 : ψυχικὸς δὲ ἄνθρωπος οὐδέχεται τὰ τοῦ πνεύματος τοῦ θεοῦ· μωρία γὰρ αὐτῷ ἐστιν, καὶ οὐ δύναται γνῶναι, ὅτι πνευματικῶς ἀνακρίνεται.

Its companion passage runs thus: λογισμοὶ γὰρ θνητῶν δειλοί, καὶ ἐπισφαλεῖς αἱ ἐπίνοιαι ἡμῶν, Wisd. 9:14. It is hard to see wherein the kinship lies. St Paul’s words refer to a great principle of the spiritual life: the Wisdom-passage is one of those general maxims with which the Book of Proverbs has made us familiar.

Grafe finds corroboration for the parallelism in the repeated occurrence of σοφία in 1 Corinthians 2:1-16 and in chaps. 7 and 9 of Wisdom, with which the comparison is made. But the apostle’s introduction of σοφία is entirely due to its antithesis, μωρία, “folly,” the term by which the cultivated Greeks described the preaching of the Cross. They demand a Gospel which shall be σοφία, suiting their intellectual presuppositions.

St Paul has a σοφία to preach, namely, God’s wonderful redemptive purpose, whose profound depths can be set before those who are mature. The σοφία of Wisd. 7 and 9. is identical with that of Proverbs 8:1-36, the auxiliary of God in creation, that genuine knowledge, that moral insight personified, which forms the basis of all true life. The Book of Proverbs would supply an equally relevant parallelism.

Grafe identifies the σοφία of St Paul with the πνεῦμα ἅγιον which occasionally occurs in Wisdom (p. 278). There is certainly much force in this equation, but the remarkable conception of Proverbs 8:1-36 seems, in our judgment, to approach even nearer the Pauline idea of the πνεῦμα. In any case, the intimate relation between σοφία and the Divine πνεῦμα has its roots entirely in the Old Testament, where the Spirit of God is the principle of all the highest phenomena of moral and intellectual life.

Grafe further points out that the idea of the body as a σκῆνος, tent, for the soul (2 Corinthians 5:1, Wisd. 9:15), “is a fundamental thought of Alexandrian philosophy.” But our exposition of the Pauline passage reveals the essential contrast of thought underlying their respective uses of the term. It is strange to find so careful a student of St Paul as Prof. Grafe asserting (p. 276) that for the belief in immediate fellowship with Christ after death, “the apostle has found a conception which helps him in the spiritualistic hope of the Alexandrians” (he compares Php 1:23 with Wisd. 3:1-3, 6:20). To begin with, the passage quoted says nothing about immediate fellowship with Christ after death:1 [Note: See chap. v. pp. 272-273.] if it did, the apostle, in accordance with his central conception of the Resurrection and its accompaniments, must have conceived it on totally different lines from the “spiritualistic hopes of the Alexandrians.” But the feature in Paulinism which is supposed to reveal most plainly the influence of Hellenic thought is his conception of the antithesis between σάρξ and πνεῦμα.

The significance of the antithesis, as our chapter on the Resurrection shows, lies at the very basis of the profoundest portion of his Eschatology. If the apostle has shaped his ideas under the guidance of Greek speculation at this point, it must be admitted that a foreign element has penetrated deep into his thinking. The question is, Does St Paul hold a dualistic conception of human nature?

Does he believe that matter, flesh (σάρξ) is essentially evil, that the human consciousness is defiled for the very reason that it is clothed in a material form? This is asserted, among others, by Holsten, who finds in St Paul the contrast between the wholly sensual nature of mortal flesh and the pure essence of the eternal Spirit (see, e.g.,Paulin. Theol. pp. 80-84); by Holtzmann, who, however, supplies a hint towards the true understanding of the problem when he says: “Like his ethic,1 [Note: The italics are ours.] this new (i.e. pneumatic) Eschatology is built upon the Hellenistic antithesis of flesh and spirit” (N.T.

Theol. ii. p. 195); and by Prof. Percy Gardner, “Put in the form in which it appears in Romans, the doctrine of the evil flesh is one familiar to students of ancient religion as one of the main tenets of the mysteries in later Greece” (Historic View, p. 224). What are the facts? To begin with, St Paul was no metaphysician.

We never find in him any attempt at a theoretical solution of the great problems of the world. True to his Old Testament basis, his statements about flesh and spirit must be understood wholly in the light of his own practical relation to God. When we examine them from that standpoint, it is easy to discover that they are for him matters of religious experience.

His meaning is made plain by such a statement as that of Romans 8:7 : “The mind of the flesh is hostile to God, for it is not subjected to the law of God, nor can it be. They that are in the flesh (ἐν σαρκί) cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, inasmuch as (εἴπερ) the Spirit of God dwelleth in you.” This is not metaphysics.

This is a contrast between the actual condition of human nature, untouched by the Divine power, and the nature as directly influenced from above. It is the bodily nature, as he has discovered it in himself, continually biassed towards sin, which he places in antithesis to that Divine, supernatural might, which alone is able to rescue it from the thraldom of evil. How little ground there is for attributing to St Paul the metaphysical theory that the flesh is inherently evil, is evident from such an affirmation as that of Galatians 2:20, “No longer do I live, but Christ lives in me; but what I at present live in the flesh (ἐν σαρκί), I live by faith, faith in the Son of God,” etc. The fact of the matter is that σάρξ may be translated “body” as correctly as “flesh.” It was used in that sense, even in Greek philosophical circles, at the time when St Paul wrote (see Zeller, Theol.

Jahrbücher, 1852, pp. 293-297). But in the case of the apostle, for whom the relation of life to God was the supreme interest, it was wholly natural, when he thought of man as distinguished from God, to describe him as “flesh,” in contrast to “spirit.” And thus the distinction easily passed into an opposition; for man, as he had discovered in his personal experience, was under the sway of sin and could not break its yoke, apart from the aid of the Spirit, who is the Divine, supernatural Agent. Plainly, therefore, the antagonism of which the apostle is conscious between σάρξ and πνεῦμα is a moral and not a metaphysical antagonism, and it is one discovered, not by the path of speculation, but from the humiliating experiences of actual life.1 [Note: It is worth observing, in passing, that St Paul recognises the presence of evil in spirits, who have no share in the flesh at all (cf.Ephesians 2:2), while Christ, who was sent “in the likeness of the flesh of sin” (i.e. in the likeness of human flesh, human nature, which, as a fact of experience, is sinful), was without sin (see Müller, Doct. of Sin, i. pp. 346-348).] Siebeck, writing as a historian of psychology, well expresses the facts when he says: “In no passage do the Pauline psychological views deny their Hebrew origin.… As in Plato, the circumstance that God’s being was conceived ethically had the consequence that its dialectic antithesis, matter, receded into the position of ‘evil,’ so also in Paul the flesh becomes, on the ground of that natural antithesis to the moral contrasted pole of the Divine Spirit, the bearer of sin and weakness” (Geschichte d. Psychol. 1^ter Th. 2^te Abth., p. 311).

If any further evidence were needed, it might be found in St Paul’s central conception of the Resurrection, in which all his arguments are directed to the establishing, not of a break between the present and the future life, but of “an organic link between the temporal and the eternal,” that link whose existence has been demonstrated for him by his own experience of the risen Christ, in whom the human and the divine are perfectly united in the σῶμα τῆς δόξης αὐτοῦ (Php 3:21). But while firmly controverting the presence of any philosophical dualism, the result of Hellenic or Hellenistic influence, in the foundations of St Paul’s eschatological thought, we would by no means deny the appearance in his writings of many spiritual tendencies which associate him with the deepest currents of contemporary Greek philosophy. Yet it is, in most cases, a kinship independently reached.

If they agree in a lofty conception of God, which sets in bold relief the imperfections of human life; if they are both conscious of a conflict between good and evil in the human soul, which can nevertheless be surmounted by a communion of man with the Divine; if they are at one in exalting the spiritual life as that alone worth living, because it is the pathway to the true goal of existence,1 [Note: See an admirable paragraph in Titius, pp. 286, 287.] -their agreement should not be traced to any direct interchange of ideas. The fulness of the time had come. The most earnest minds of ancient Hellenism were groping towards the same vision which for the Christian apostle had made all things new.