04. III. Is Paul’s Philosophy Convincing?
III. Is Paul’s Philosophy Convincing? Is the system of the Pauline thought of such a nature as to convince the reader, to overpower and lead captive his judgment? That question might be asked. In reply we ask: has there ever been a system of philosophy that convinced the world, and dominated the intellect of men? The aim of philosophy is not to convince and to lead captive, but to make men think; it ought to stimulate independent thought, and not to rule or dominate the mind. In the modern schools there is no philosopher of the past or the present who is not constantly a subject of criticism. Many modern lecturers on philosophy give to all their prelections on any great thinker the form of an exposition of his errors and an indication of what he ought to have said and written.
Paul is not convincing in the sense of the above question. He requires much from the reader or the hearer. His subject is always, from first to last, the nature and the life and the death of Christ. This is, after all, a thing that cannot be explained or expressed in words. The nature, the position of Jesus Christ in the world, His relation to man and to God, remains and must always remain beyond the power of man to conceive or to describe. He remains unintelligible to the human mind, above it on a different plane; and yet He is the most powerful, the most tremendous, the most creative and epoch-making fact in the life of mankind. Human history culminates with Him, and takes a new start from Him. The being of Jesus must be appreciated, not merely as an intellectual fact, but as related to the entire nature of man. It is a force, a power, an impulse, that must sway the mind of the reader or hearer; otherwise he cannot follow or understand Paul. The demand that Paul makes on his readers is enormous. They have to bring half of the whole; otherwise the whole is almost naught to them. They may appreciate the beauty of the thought, sometimes even the rhythm of the language and the extraordinary ability of the exposition; but, after all, that is next to nothing, unless they supply the power to live and the will to believe. A word of explanation, to prevent misunderstanding of my purpose. When I speak of the Christianity of Paul I assume that what he taught was the teaching of Jesus expressed in a form that should be intelligible to the pagan world, and that his doctrine was not a sophisticated development out of it. This religion, as Jesus and as Paul taught it, is the religion of an educated people — educated in moral as well as intellectual power to understand and comprehend. It presupposes a high standard of mind, and requires the capacity of thinking and moving on a lofty plane, not merely morally, but also intellectually. To say that this religion is pitched on a high moral plane is of course admitted by all as obviously and necessarily true. The only question is whether it does not pitch its moral demand too high. Is it not asking too much when it requires that we live the right and the Divine life? Who shall live the Divine life? There have been, and there are, men and women who can die the Divine death, either as the martyr true to principle, or as the devotee who cuts himself off from the world and lives the life of death to the world. But Christianity demands that we live the Divine life in the world and amid its activities. Who shall succeed in doing this? Who can do this? Who can purify his heart and his thought?
Others say, “You shall not do evil”. Christ says, “You shall not think evil”. Who dare hope that such a doctrine of life can be successful in its appeal to men, and especially to savage races and degraded people? The rapidity with which Mohammedanism often succeeds in raising savage tribes to a higher moral level is contrasted with the much slower influence exercised by Christian missionaries in similar cases. Should we not be contented with the lower level and the rapid elevation to that lower level?
History has returned the answer. The extension of Mohammedanism over a savage people is usually marked by a sudden great moral elevation followed by a long gradual deterioration. An ideal which can be realised cannot satisfy human need. The ideal must ever remain in front tempting the eagerness of man to strive onwards towards it. If it can be attained, it is imperfect. The ideal which is above man is Divine: when it is attained in this world it is no longer Divine.
Man cannot acquiesce in anything short of the Divine and the perfect. The lesson of history is that Christianity is right, because its ideal cannot be attained by man; and Islam is wrong because its ideal can be and has been attained. The teaching of life is: Strive after the difficult, for the easy is valueless. The Divine alone is real and lasting: all else is illusion and transitory: the true life of man is a never-ending struggle towards the unattainable.
Christianity makes an equally great demand on the intellect. It calls for the highest and the deepest insight: it imperiously demands at the outset the ability to distinguish between the true and the false, and the readiness to sacrifice the false and to cleave to the true. What are the fundamental propositions of Paulinism, the axioms on which Paul builds up his philosophy? These are two; and of these two axioms the second is merely the complete statement of what is involved in the first. The first axiom is this: “God is”; the second axiom is, “God is good”. The first is valueless except through the second. When you say that “God is,” your axiom is useless, if the God whose existence you assert is not the true and real God. As Moses declared to the people, so says Paul: “I set before you life and death: choose life”. In that alternative is contained the grand choice in this world. Every man must choose. If you choose a God, whose issue is death, you are not choosing God: you are choosing the unreal: you are following after an illusion. Paul makes, and Christianity makes, this enormous and supreme demand that you must be able to distinguish truth from falsehood and reality from illusion. He does not try to prove these axioms, he does not attempt to demonstrate the necessity of this initial step. He boldly assumes that “God is the living and real God,” and that his hearers recognise and admit this, and that only the foolish and the blind are ignorant of the truth.