28-A few last words

A few last words When I was a schoolmaster (and they were very happy days, as all schoolmasters find them) there was no department of my work which pleased me more than the teaching of the New Testament. The ‘fly in the ointment’ was the necessity of examination; for I was very well aware it was almost certain that that test would not be conducted on lines such as I myself approved. The difficulty was this; that it would have been wholly possible, in many cases, for a boy to make half marks without knowing his text at all; for a good half of the questions always dealt with ‘introduction.’ One had to know-that is, the boys had-not what the Apostle said himself, but what some one else said about him. This I could not believe to be right. For me, the one object was, so far as I could compass it, to make my pupils understand as of infinitely larger importance the Apostle’s own pronouncements. The longer one reads St Paul, the harder one seems to find it to be absolutely sure of his meaning in any section. Still a student must be unfortunate beyond the common, who cannot carry away many definite ideas from careful perusal. As one reads the familiar words of an Epistle like ‘Romans’ again and again and again, it comes ever more home to one, that though he writes in Greek and cites the Greek Old Testament, he is really at bottom a ‘Hebrew.’ A great gulf separates his whole method from that with which we became familiarised in the days when our minds were given to the lucid writers of Hellas. It is when he is definitely arguing that he carries his readers least with him. Of their kind, no doubt, his arguments are very excellent: but it happens not to be the kind in which we ourselves have been trained.

Therefore we love him best when he leaves all logical processes far behind, and discarding ‘reason,’ as such, surrenders himself entirely to a species of intuition. It is in his dithyrambic vein when the tide of inspiration is flowing strong and free that he is for modern minds far most convincing. When I first gave my mind to the task of investigating what he says about justification, I was led in that direction by a conviction that English readers are greatly led astray by terminology. My desire was to show any readers I might get that nothing could be done in the way of understanding the dogmatic ideas in St Paul till the reader had grasped two things, the Pauline outlook for one, the Pauline vocabulary for another.

It was for me of very deep interest to discover that somehow or other, starting merely from the Apostle’s own statements, I had worked back to what appears to have been his natural mentality. ‘Natural’ I mean in the sense of what would have come to him from training and from environment. This was brought home to me by reading a little essay of Professor Kennett, entitled ‘Hebrew Conceptions of Righteousness and Sin.’ There I found that the interpretation, which had forced itself on my mind from the study of the Pauline text of ‘Galatians’ and of ‘Romans’-say as to the meaning of ‘righteousness’-corresponds almost completely with Israelitish conceptions. It is decidedly comforting to a mere ‘Hellenist’ like myself to discover that his views on the meaning of δικαιοσύνη, as expressing a desirable status, are substantially in line with established Hebrew teaching. A perusal of the essay mentioned will demonstrate that it is so. For the rest, quite apart from definite mistakes in interpretation, of this passage or of that, I feel sure my readers will say. Why did you not throw your ideas about the Pauline dogmatic on this head into Essay form? My answer is very simple, Because I could not. ‘Paulinism’ is not a system; it is rather an attitude. You cannot ‘formulate’ it-at least I hold so strongly-but you can ‘feel’ it. Only if you are to ‘feel’ it, you have first to master the structure of the shrine that houses the spirit; and that shrine is the text itself. If anyone should say, What in your opinion is the teaching of St Paul? I should answer ‘Read and see.’ This little and trivial book is an attempt to make such reading more easy and more profitable. One more question maybe will suggest itself, Why have you roamed so far? Why deal with all the chapters from 1 to 11? Ah! that is just the difficulty. With St Paul, when you once begin, you simply cannot stop. His vivid personality, his own overpowering interest in that of which he discourses, carry you on from point to point. And so it comes about that you only cease to follow when he ceases to go before. It is for that reason I could not pause till the whole of the doctrinal section of ‘Romans’ was, more or less, covered. Those on whom the spell has fallen, will not blame me for that. They will recognise the fact that the apostolic writings cannot be chopped up into lengths; they must necessarily be taken, each letter, as a whole. With the end of the doctrinal section reached we may fairly say claudite jam rivos pueri-and alas! the meadows may have drunk too much already.