XXVIII. The Saint as King In the view of Paul the world lay round man like a sea of storm and vicissitude, in which each human being lived his life staggering onward from one danger to another, no sooner free from one trouble than involved in another. Everything was fleeting, changeable, constantly varying. Yet, in the words which have already been quoted, (Quoted in Section X from Steffen, Zft. f. d. N.T. Wissensch. 1901, ii. p. 124, after Kennedy, St. Paul’s Conception of the Last Things, p. 6.) Paul “sighed as scarcely any other has done beneath the curse of the transiency of all that is earthly”.
It was perfectly true, but it was not the whole truth, to say that for the Christian and saint the world around was just as evanescent, as incalculable, and as unintelligible, as it was for the sinner. The salvation which he had already gained did not lie in this human life. Although he was remade, re-created, re-constituted, in Johannine phrase born again, yet human life continued to be as much as ever for him a stormy sea; he was “afflicted on every side, fightings around, fears in the mind”; and apart from all external discomforts, there was the more wearing anxiety for his converts and the sympathy with and participation in the troubles of every individual and of every congregation. (2 Corinthians 7; compare 11:28.) The Stoic ideal of the truly wise man, the true philosopher, who was wholly superior to fate and to his surroundings, calm and unruffled amid whatever tempests howled around him, absolutely untroubled by the troubles which overwhelmed others — an ideal which in different expressions was characteristic of later Greek philosophy generally, — Paul did not approve. His heart became only more open to suffer with others, and more intensely sympathetic with their trials, as he progressed in life: “Who is weak, and I am not weak? who is caused to stumble, and I burn not?” The philosophic ideal of passionlessness and Ataraxia was infinitely remote from his mind. The relief for which he sighed did not lie in that direction.
There was, however, a peace attainable in another direction. “The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control.” (Galatians 5:22.) The peace which is thus gained lies at the opposite pole from Ataraxia. Through infinite sympathy with suffering comes freedom from suffering. One is thus brought face to face with another of the Pauline apparent self-contradictions: by going infinitely far in one direction you find yourself at the opposite pole. Yet this is a truth of nature and of physical law. A modern poet who believed himself to be absolutely anti-Christian, although his attitude towards the world and the emotions of his heart had been made possible only through centuries of Christian teaching, expresses in a striking antithetic form a truth that is similar and illuminative. It is, as he says, the nature of the True and the Good that, the more it is divided, it is just the more multiplied, so that each subdivision is larger than the original whole; but Evil, the more it is divided and participated in by others, becomes less, until it may thus be entirely eliminated from the world. That, says the poet, is the hope of the future, which alone makes life endurable for those who comprehend the horror and the deterioration and ruin of the world around us.
Mind from its object differs most in this:
Evil from good; misery from happiness; The baser from the nobler; the impure And frail from what is clear and must endure.
If you divide suffering or dross, you may Diminish till it is consumed away;
If you divide pleasure and love and thought, Each part exceeds the whole; and we know not How much, while any yet remains unshared. Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared.
Shelley, “Epipsychidion”. The thought is not that of Paul; but it is the expression from a wholly different standpoint of a similar moral principle and an “eternal law” (The phrase is Shelley’s in the immediate context.). Its antithetic expression aids in the understanding of Paul’s expression, yet its carefully balanced antitheses are the very opposite of Paul’s style. In Paul the antitheses are not balanced against one another: they are the outcome of different moods and frames of mind, stated at different times, and rarely brought intentionally into juxtaposition.
Thus, after all, the Stoic ideal of the wise man is realised through Paulinism, but in a different direction by voyaging over the sea of life to the opposite shore. That the Stoic paradox, “the wise man is the king,” was not very far distant from Paul’s mind is probable. “If by the trespass of one man death was king through the one, much more shall they that receive the abundant gift of grace and of righteousness be kings in life through the one Jesus Christ.” (Romans 5:17.) We have preferred to translate “be king” rather than “reign,” as this comes nearer the root idea of the Greek verb, and also because it shows a certain lingering of the Greek philosophic ideal in Paul’s mind. Paul’s thought is Hebrew, essentially and fundamentally, right through from beginning to end; and yet it has risen through Judaism to a higher level and a nobler stage, so that Hellenism was capable of being ennobled to harmonise with it. Paul’s essentially Hebraic religion was expressed by him in forms and language which might be comprehended by the Greek mind; and he was able to express it in such forms and words, because he had been brought up amid the surroundings of a Hellenised Tarsus and had shared in the society and the education of a Graeco-Roman life. This is the perfection of missionary teaching, to make intelligible an alien religion to a foreign people, not by diluting it or by transforming it, not by watering it down or by assimilating it to the thought habitual to the foreign mind, but by stating it in the most complete and uncompromising form, yet in such a way that it is possible for the foreign hearer to rise towards it along his habitual line of thinking.
There is a plane to which all perfectly natural and honest thought can be raised. On that plane Pauline teaching is expressed. No truth is inconsistent with such teaching. Paul emphatically states and maintains that in the Gentile thought there was truth, even the highest, indeed the sole kind of truth, viz., truth about the character of God and man’s relation to Him: “Gentiles, having not law, are law unto themselves, in that they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness in accordance, and their reasonings in inmost meditation accusing or else defending,” (Romans 2:14f. The above translation appears to give the true sense. The American Revision properly disconnects this from 2:16 (which Westcott and Hort closely connect). There is no reference to the judgment day (as the punctuation of the two great English editors would imply), but to meditation by thoughtful pagans over their conduct, 2:13 is continued by 2:16, while 2:14 and 15 are parenthetic. The true connection is disguised both in the Authorised and in the Revised Version.) as they weigh their own action in silent thinking about right and wrong. In such a passage as this Paul had in mind the teaching, and possibly the actual lectures, of Athenodorus of Tarsus and similar philosophic teachers. A philosophy which could teach what is quoted from Athenodorus rested on a good foundation: it was fundamentally true, and could be developed into hearty sympathy with Paulinism, if only it developed freely and naturally.
I should not hesitate to see in 2 Timothy 2:12, “If we suffer with Him, we shall also be king along with Him,” a later influence of the thought in Romans as it had remained always in Paul’s heart. The expression in that passage is an echo of Romans 6:8, “But if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him”; but the thought is modified by the idea of kingship which was in Paul’s mind a few verses earlier, Romans 6:14 and Romans 6:17. The form which Paul chooses was intelligible to the Greeks, because they had always before them the philosophic principle that the truly good man “is a King”. Paul raises this principle to a higher level, but keeps the phrase. The passage in Timothy is not a quotation made by some later Paulinist from a church hymn which had been taken phrase by phrase out of Paul: it is a fresh expression of Paul’s own favourite thoughts in slightly varying phraseology. (Although neither the English nor the American Revision favours the view, yet in 11, “Faithful is the saying,” is an emphatic adjunct to the impassioned statement of verse 10.) The influence of Greek thought on Paul, though real, is all purely external. Hellenism never touches the life and essence of Paulinism, which is fundamentally and absolutely Hebrew; but it does strongly affect the expression of Paul’s teaching. Further, it lends to Paulinism the grace and the moderation, the sense of where to stop and how to avoid overstating, which is natural to Paul. It gives to him also that strong sense of the joy of the Divine life, which he expresses most emphatically to the Philippians, “Rejoice always,” and to the Galatians, (SeeGalatians 5:12, quoted on p. 558.Php 3:1;Php 4:4;Php 2:18.) but which is characteristic of him everywhere, even amid his equally strong sense that the Divine life is an unceasing strain and a struggle against trial after trial, which taxed his powers daily to the utmost. Paulinism is essentially Hebrew; but it is Hebraism exalted to a higher level and a richer content. Hence many learned Jews deny that the letters of Paul are the work of a Hebrew, and assert that no Hebrew could have spoken so. What Paul added to the old Hebrew thought is the element that specially fitted it to reach the European and especially the Greek world; but this addition was not Greek, or derived in any way from Greek philosophy, though it answers the questions of that philosophy. It was the true and proper development of Hebrew religion to its highest standard, and not a syncretism of Hebraic and Greek elements. Yet it was attained in the process of answering the great questions which had been raised by the contact of Judaism with the Graeco-Roman world.
