02. I. Had Paul a Philosophy?

I. Had Paul a Philosophy?

It is a difficult, perhaps an impossible, task to describe in the stages of its growth the way in which Paul had learned to contemplate the world around him and above him. Yet we must attempt to do so. Every one who thinks about a great philosopher must attempt to understand the steps by which his philosophy gradually assumed its mature form. To understand the thought of another is to understand the way of its growth. Accordingly the different influences which helped to mould Paul’s mind will most readily become clear, if we try to conceive his thought in its origin and development. My aim is to state an unprofessional opinion in the common terms of the present day, neither philosophical nor theological, but such terms as one who is neither a philosopher nor a theologian can use. I try to express the thoughts which gradually took shape in my mind as I traversed year after year the paths which Paul trod in Asia Minor. The scenery exercises a strong influence on those who become familiar with it; and one who is always thinking about Paul has (or thinks that he has) his mind insensibly tuned into harmony with Paul’s, as he goes along the same road. The modern traveller in a railway train has no such experience, and never learns what the influence of scenery is. He has no time to see it, while he is hurried past it to gaze for a moment on a new scene, which in its turn rapidly fades away to the rear. (This section was written before Dr. Adolf Deissmann had performed the two train journeys, which helped him to write his new work on St. Paul, and was printed more than a year before that work had been published. As example of the distorting influence of knowledge acquired by a railway journey I quote from p. 18: “At the present day it would be possible, on horseback and then with the railway, to get from Colossae to Ephesus in case of need. At any rate in 1909 I did the journey from Ephesus to Laodicea, which is near Colossae, and back again in two days (13 and 15 March).” Such geographical remarks only darken the subject: one can do much better at home with a map. I find with sorrow that I am in such marked disagreement with Dr. Deissmann’s views about Paul’s whole attitude and intellectual endowment: see Preface.) He can hear no voice, for nature cannot speak amid the noise, of the train.

Very different is it when one travels after the old slow fashion for two or even three successive days straight towards one of those lofty peaks, which watch like beacons and guides over the great plain of South Galatia, and at last sees the details of the beautiful mountain grow distinct and take separate form, as one comes within a few miles of the city over which it keeps guard. One thinks of the feelings in Paul’s mind, as he was travelling from Cilicia, and first descried far ahead the great mountain which stands high above Derbe. To the Christian teacher that lofty peak marked the place where lay the nearest of his Churches; to the Roman it indicated the bounds of Galatic Lycaonia and of the Roman Empire in which his work lay. It is not of picturesqueness or aesthetic charm that one thinks in such a scene. There is a vague consciousness of this; but the thought that fills one’s mind is the memory of history and human life. The mountain now stands sentinel over two or three tiny and dying Turkish villages, and one very small village of refugees from Roumelia. The present surroundings speak only of decay; yet it is life, not death, that is suggested to the traveller’s mind; but the life and the thought thus suggested He in the past and the future, not in the present. One then understands, as one hears the voice of nature, why the mountain is still called the Pilgrim Father (Hadji Baba); it is the divinely appointed landmark to guide the traveller and the pilgrim; it was the direct gift of God, and is in every age regarded as one of the seats of the divine and gracious power that guards the land.

Paul did not talk sentimentally about the beauty of the mountain or the scenery. No one would dare to speak after such patronising fashion in a scene like that; to do so would be felt as sacrilegious. One is thankful and grateful for the awe and the guidance. But just as it happened, when Paul, travelling by the Way of the Sea, (According to the early and the only good tradition Kaukab was the scene of his Conversion. Modern dragomans, guiding their tourists along the usual modern route from Damascus to the source of the Jordan, point out the scene on that road, along which Paul did not go and where no tradition places it. The Catholic pilgrims are taken to a place close to Damascus on the east: this scene was chosen when Kaukab was unsafe for pilgrims owing to the terror of the Druses. There can be no doubt that Paul would travel along by the Way of the Sea (i.e. the Sea of Tiberias), and that the scene must be sought on that road. Kaukab is the point on that road where the traveller from the south reaches the crest of a slight ridge and comes into view of Damascus.) reached the slight ridge of Kaukab, and saw for the first time the prospect of Damascus open before his eyes, and contemplated the scene of his self-chosen work, an emotional storm affected him in which his mind was raised above its ordinary level to contemplate the Divine truth, so in some minor degree was it when the same man, hurrying towards the Galatian cities after his letter to reclaim the lost, came within sight of the mountains that showed where Derbe lay, and watched them hour after hour and day after day, as he went onwards to his work among them.

We are all asking the same great questions, and have been doing so through the centuries. Paul is one of those who, in trying to answer those questions, have gripped the heart of mankind. He has been hated by many, but always has been believed in by countless thousands, and his influence grows with the progress of time. No apology, therefore, is needed for the attempt to state what Paul means to one who has been nurtured amid the European Universities of the nineteenth century, and then has wandered for many years along the Pauline roads with Paul in his hands. Every great poet and prophet and religious teacher, while he speaks first of all to the men of his own age, has a message for all time. His message is never antiquated, because he has penetrated beneath the surface to the great principles of life and the great forces that sweep through history and make the world’s life. This message, however, has to be reinterpreted by each age for itself in terms of its own life; and, as I might almost say, it has to be reinterpreted by every man for his own self in terms of his own life.

Paul has left to us no formal statement of his religious-philosophical position, such as would satisfy the modern undergraduate, who seeks for a degree with highest honours in the University. We have nothing from his hand even remotely approaching the character of a “Student’s Manual of the Religion of Paul”. The Apostle was far too much immersed in affairs, even had the requirements and curiosity of moderns been within his range of vision. The urgent calls of the moment were always pressing upon him, and he could never satisfy himself that he was sufficiently responding to the calls: we were afflicted on every side: without were fightings, within were fears”: and again, “beside those things that are without, there is that which presseth upon me daily, anxiety for all the churches: who is weak, and I am not weak? who is made to stumble, and I burn not?” (2 Corinthians 7:5;2 Corinthians 11:28.)

Hence he wrote only occasional letters regarding special difficulties that occurred among his friends and converts. All his Epistles were real letters from a man to his friends, discussing the affairs of the moment and giving advice. The letter to the Romans comes nearest to the character of a formal exposition: among the Roman Church he had only a few personal friends; (That the last chapter of Romans is a misplaced fragment of a letter to the Ephesians (as a common modern theory maintains) is an idea which tends to distort one’s view of the situation in the Imperial world and in the Church generally at that time. The importance of that chapter lies in the picture that it conveys of the constant motion which was going on in the early Pauline Churches. The facilities for travelling and for trading were fully used by the Christians, and it was largely among the travelling classes that Paulinism struck its roots. In itself the chapter, however, has no bearing on the teaching of Paul.) and little or no special knowledge of the conditions in that varied congregation appears in the Epistle.

Even that letter, however, is not a complete or formal treatise explaining his own opinions. It is rather a generalisation of his experience among his other Gentile Churches, the expression in a more systematic fashion of the advice and teaching which he had found most urgently required among them — rather homiletic than philosophic.

Yet every statement which he makes in any of his letters expresses the judgment of a man who had thought out for himself a certain system of philosophy and religion — who had not merely accepted a doctrine taught him by others, but had, while accepting this doctrine, brought it into relation with his own mind and experience and made it part of his independent and original thought. In this doctrine Paul had found what was needed in order to perfect his own life; and he had meditated on it until his whole past history and the whole history of his own race and of the world became to him a unity, as the gradual unfolding and manifestation of the will of God. Hence he judged every question that was submitted to him by his followers, and solved every difficulty which they had to meet, on the general principles into which he had thought himself and by which he lived. In attempting to understand the way in which this system of thought and these principles of judgment had gradually developed themselves within Paul’s mind so as entirely to recreate and mould his personality — as he says, “it is no longer I, but Christ liveth in me” (Galatians 2:20.) — we cannot hope for aid by discovering any stages of development within the range of Paul’s own letters. His position was settled, and his system was already complete, before he was finally ordered to go forth unto the Gentiles, This call took place on his second visit to Jerusalem, which is briefly described in Acts 11:30, Acts 12:25. The call is not mentioned at that point by Luke, but is implied in Acts 13:2, Galatians 2:9; the manner is described in . Paul then recognised the call; it was accepted as the Divine will by Peter, James and John (Galatians 2:9); and it was acted on by the congregation in Antioch, which sent forth Paul and Barnabas to the work (Acts 13:3).

There had indeed been earlier intimations given to him of his future work, but not such clear intimations that he understood them and obeyed them. (The final intimation, which led to immediate action, took place on his second visit to Jerusalem (Galatians 2:1f.), and is described by himself inActs 22:17-21. This seems to be the right and necessary placing of that vision; but in this place I must simply presume the view which is required in order to understand properly the work and life of Paul.) He was not ready for them, and therefore failed to understand and to obey them. Later, when he looked back over his life, he saw that there had been such earlier intimations of his destiny, which he had failed to comprehend, because his system of thought and the basis of his religious position had not been fully systematised in his mind. He had been groping towards the light, but had not yet reached it. The first intimation was, certainly, obscure: it was conveyed indirectly, not directly (Acts 9:15, Acts 22:10), and the terms were not very definite (Acts 22:15); but Paul, after he had at last heard and understood the clearer command, perceived that the same duty had been intimated to him from the first. The very fact that now at last he understood the true nature of the call showed that he was fully prepared to answer it. The recognition of the right way to put the question of career leads one on to answer the question. The answer is already implicit in rightly formulating the question. That is the truth of science, as well as of life. To know how to put the right question marks the creative man in science as in life. The beginner can neither put the right question, nor rightly set about the solution of the complicated general problem. No development, therefore, in the religious position of Paul can be traced in the letters. His religious thought is as complete in the first as in the last. (In Section LI it is pointed out that the earliest of his letters is Galatians not 1 Thessalonians. Galatians is quite mature in its teaching, but Thessalonians was written to very immature correspondents, who could not have comprehended a letter like Galatians.) The apparent differences between them in regard to the expression of his teaching are due to two causes.

(1) He had to adapt his teaching both to the special needs and to the varying power of comprehension among his pupils. He had to solve the pressing difficulties of the moment, and he had to speak to them in language that they could understand. It was necessary to raise those pagans to a higher moral platform before they could even comprehend many of the requirements of morality as Paul understood it. Their judgment had been distorted, and needed to be straightened. The Jews around him started on a far higher moral standard, and could feel needs and be conscious of sin as the pagans could not. You must talk of mathematical principles in very different ways to an untaught and to a moderately well-trained learner; and so it is with moral principles, as any intelligent missionary among a rude or a savage race can bear witness.

Paul had to create the consciousness of the sin and the need, before he could guide rightly the ignorant gropings after “Salvation,” (All men in the Aegean lands were seeking for “Salvation,” and making prayers and vows for it, but wherein it lay they knew not. Such votive stelaeὑπὲρ σωτηρίαςare remarkably common.) which were everywhere manifest in the pagan world. Hence he came among the ignorant Corinthians “not with verbal or philosophic skill, setting forth the mystery [i.e. the deeper and more complicated explanation of the nature] of God”. He used no “persuasive words of wisdom”. He blazoned before them in simple description “the [Divine] Spirit and the power” thereof It was only “among the mature that he used philosophic-religious language”. (1 Corinthians 2:1-6.) He would not, in modern parlance, have talked to an ordinary audience of “the teleology of the finite consciousness”. A deep truth underlies those words, but that way of expressing the truth must be reserved for an audience in a University, highly trained in philosophic terminology: it conveys no meaning to the uneducated man. Hence the letters to the Ephesians or Colossians, who had already been trained and practised in Christian thought, are more philosophic and mystic in language than the Corinthian letter. Yet in all his letters the same philosophy, the same religion, and the same mysticism lie below the surface.

Again to Timothy, a Christian of long standing and experience, yet himself a simple nature without higher philosophic training or innate power, a special mode of presenting the advanced and practical teaching was appropriate.

(2) Paul learned much about the best way of approaching the pagan world. In method of presentation of his message, and in the line of attack on the Roman world (as a stage in the attack on the entire world of man), there is a distinct development, which is however already almost fully completed in the Corinthian letters.

Still, with all the difficulties of the task clearly in mind we essay it simply because we must. Paul insistently presses on the minds of men, and we cannot get clear of him.