PAUL AND JESUS 14.5
preaching. "For I delivered unto you among the first things," he says, "that which I also received." The word "received" here certainly designates information obtained by ordinary word of mouth, not direct revelation from the risen Christ; and the content of what was "received" fixes the source of the information pretty definitely in the fifteen days which Paul spent with Peter at Jerusalem. It is almost universally admitted that 1 Cor. xv. 3ff. contains the tradition of the Jerusalem Church with regard to the death and resurrection of Jesus.
The comparison with 1 Cor. xv. 1-11 thus exhibits the danger of interpreting the Epistle to the Galatians in one-sided fashion. If Galatians stood by itself, the reader might suppose that at least the resurrection of Christ, the central fact of Paul's gospel, was founded, in Paul's preaching, upon Paul's own testimony alone. In Galatians Paul says that his gospel was not derived from men. But his gospel was grounded upon the resurrection of Christ. Surely, it might be said, therefore, he based at least the resurrection not at all upon the testimony of others but upon the revelation which came to him from Christ. Is it possible to conceive of the author of Galatians as appealing for the foundation of his gospel to the testimony of Peter and the twelve and other brethren in the primitive Church — to the testimony of exactly those men whose mediatorship he is excluding in Galatians? Yet as a matter of fact, that is exactly what Paul did. That he did so is attested not by the Book of Acts or by any source upon which doubt might be cast, but by one of the accepted epistles. The Epistle to the Galatians must always be interpreted in the light of 1 Cor. xv. 1-11.
What then does Paul mean in Galatians when he says that he received his gospel directly from Christ.'' The answer is perfectly plain. He does not mean that when he drew near to Damascus on that memorable day he knew none of the facts about Jesus; he does not mean that after that day his knowledge of the facts was not enriched by intercourse with Jesus' friends. What Jesus really gave him near Damascus was not so much the facts as a new interpretation of the facts. He had known some of the facts before, but they had filled him with hatred. The Galilean prophet had cast despite upon the Law; He had broken down the prerogatives of Israel; it was blasphemous.
moreover, to proclaim a crucified malefactor as the Lord's Anointed. Paul had known the facts before; he had known them only too well. Now, however, he obtained a new interpretation of the facts; he obtained that new interpretation not by human intermediation, not by reflection upon the testimony of the disciples, not by the example of the holy martyrs, but by revelation from Jesus Himself. Jesus Himself appeared to him. He might have appeared in anger, to destroy him for his unspeakable sin. Instead, He appeared in love, to call him into fellowship and into glorious service, to commission him as apostle of the One whose Church he had laid waste. That is what Paul means when he says that he received his gospel directly from the risen Christ.
The truth is, it never occurred to Paul to regard the bare facts about Jesus as constituting a "gospel"; it never even occurred to Paul to reflect upon all the sources of information about the facts. To us the sources of information about Jesus are limited: therefore they are searched out and numbered and weighed. But to Paul the sources of information were so numerous that they could not be catalogued. It never occurred to him to regard with supreme gratitude the particular source from which he derived any particular bit of information about Jesus any more than we regard with special gratitude the newspaper from which we derive our knowledge of current events. If one newspaper had not printed the news, others would have done so; the sources of information are so numerous that we do not reflect upon them. So it was in the case of Paul's information about Jesus. Bare detailed information about the words and deeds of Jesus did not in Paul's mind constitute a "gospel"; they constituted only the materials upon which the gospel was based. When he says, therefore, that he did not receive his gospel from men he does not mean that he received no information from Peter or Barnabas or Mark or James or the five hundred brethren who had seen the risen Lord. What he does mean is that he himself was convinced of the decisive fact — the fact of the resurrection — not by the testimony of these men, but by the divine interposition on the road to Damascus, and that none of these men told him how he himself was to be saved or what he was to say to the Gentiles about the way of salvation. Materials for the proof of his gospel might come to him from ordinary sources of information, but his gospel itself was given to him directly by Christ.
Thus Paul does not directly attest any indifference on his part toward tradition about the life of Jesus. But is not such indifference revealed by the extreme paucity of references in the Pauline Epistles to what Jesus said and did.f*
In answer to this question it must be admitted that direct citations in the Pauline Epistles of words of Jesus, and direct references to the details of Jesus' life, are surprisingly few. In 1 Cor. vii. 10, Paul appeals to a command of the Lord about divorce, and carefully distinguishes such commands from what he himself is saying to the Corinthians (verses 12, 25). In 1 Cor. ix. 14, he calls attention to an ordinance of the Lord to the effect that they that proclaim the gospel should live of the gospel. In these passages it cannot be doubted that the commands of "the Lord" are commands that Jesus gave during His earthly ministry; they are certainly not commands given to Paul by the risen Christ. For the words which Paul himself wrote to his churches, by virtue of his apostolic authority, themselves constituted commands of the Lord in the broad sense, in that the authority of the Lord was behind them (1 Cor. xiv. 37); here, therefore, when such apostolic commands are distinguished from commands of the Lord, the commands of the Lord must be taken in a narrower sense. They can only be commands given by Jesus during His earthly ministry.^
These passages show that Paul was in the habit of distinguishing what Jesus said on earth to His disciples from what the risen Lord said to him directly by revelation. They show, moreover, that Paul was in possession of a fund of information about the words of Jesus. It may be a question why he did not draw upon the fund more frequently; but at any rate, the fund was there.
In 1 Thess. iv. 15, the assurance that those who are alive at the Parousia shall not precede those that have died is grounded in a word of the Lord ("For this we say to you in a word of the Lord").^ Here again the "word of the Lord" is probably to be regarded as a word which Jesus spoke while He was on earth, rather than as a revelation made by the risen
Lord directly to Paul. If this interpretation be correct, then this passage contains another incidental reference to a fund of information about the words of Jesus.
Most important of all, however, is the report of the institution of the Lord's Supper in 1 Cor. xi. 23ff. The report is introduced by the words, "For I received from the Lord that which also I delivered unto you." What does Paul mean by the expression "received from the Lord".'' Does he mean that the information was given him directly by the risen Christ, or that he received it by ordinary word of mouth from the eyewitnesses.'' The former interpretation has been favored in the first place by some who occupy a strictly supernaturalistic point of view, to whom therefore it does not seem strange that the risen Christ should give to His apostle even detailed information about past events; it has also been favored by some who start from naturalistic presuppositions, and, regarding Paul as a mystic and a visionary, seek to separate him as far as possible from historical tradition about Jesus. But from either of these two points of view the interpretation is unsatisfactory. Why should the risen Christ give to His apostle detailed information which could be obtained perfectly well by ordinary inquiry from the eyewitnesses.'' Such revelation would be unhke the other miracles of the Bible. God does not rend the heaven to reveal what can be learned just as well by ordinary word of mouth. But this interpretation is equally unsatisfactory from the naturalistic point of view. Did Paul really suppose the risen Christ to have given him all this detailed information about the night of the betrayal and the rest.? How could such a visionary experience be explained.f* The only possible answer, on naturalistic presuppositions, would be that the vision merely made use of materials which were already in Paul's mind; Paul already had information from the eyewitnesses about the Supper, but after he had forgotten whence he had received the information it welled up again from his subconscious life in the form of a vision. This explanation involves a psychological absurdity. The area of Paul's consciousness was not so limited as it is represented in modern reconstructions as being. If Paul received information from the eyewitnesses about what Jesus said and did on the night of the betrayal, we can be sure that he remembered the information and remembered where he had got it. It was not necessary for him to receive it all over again in a vision.
There are therefore serious a priori objections against finding in the words "received from the Lord" in 1 Cor. xi. 23 a reference to direct revelation. But this interpretation is not really favored by the words as they stand. The word "from," in the clause "I received from the Lord," is not the only word used for "from" after the word "received"; this word seems to indicate not the immediate but the ultimate source of what is received. •*■ Furthermore, the word "received" ^ in 1 Cor. xv. 3 certainly refers to ordinary information obtained from eyewitnesses; it is natural therefore to find a similar usage of the word in 1 Cor. xi. 23. It is natural to interpret one passage after the analogy of the other. In 1 Cor. XV. 3fF. Paul is certainly appealing to ordinary tradition; probably, therefore, he is also doing so in 1 Cor. xi. 23fF. The report of the institution of the Lord's Supper is thus to be added to those passages which contain definite citations of the words of Jesus.
This report also belongs with those passages in the Epistles which attest knowledge of the details of Jesus' life. It is sometimes said that Paul is interested only in two facts about Jesus, the death and the resurrection. Yet in 1 Cor. xi. 23 he refers even to such a detail as the betrayal, and fixes the time of its occurrence — "the night in which He was betrayed." Other details about the life of Jesus may be gleaned from the Epistles. Jesus, according to Paul, was a Jew, He was descended from David, He was subject to the Mosaic Law, He had brothers, of whom one is named, He carried on a ministry for the Jews (Rom. xv. 8). With regard to the crucifixion and resurrection, moreover, Paul was interested not merely in the bare facts themselves; he was also interested in the details connected with them. Thus in 1 Cor. xv. 4 he mentions the burial of Jesus as having formed a part of his fundamental missionary preaching; and he also gives in the same connection an extended list of appearances of the risen Christ. It is possible that when Paul writes to the Galatians that Jesus Christ crucified had been pictured or placarded before their eyes (Gal. iii. 1), he is referring, not merely to the forcibleness with which the one fact of Christ's death was proclaimed in Galatia, but also to the vividness with which the story was told in detail. So vivid was the story of the crucifixion as Paul told it in Galatia that it was as though the Galatians had before their eyes a great picture of Jesus on the cross.
Moreover, the references of Paul to Jesus' life concern not merely details; some of them also attest warm appreciation of Jesus' character. The character of Jesus is indeed, according to Paul, exhibited primarily by the great central act of love by which He came to earth to die for the salvation of men. In Phil. ii. 5ff., the unselfishness of Christ, which is held up for imitation by the Philippian Christians, is found no doubt primarily in the incarnation and in the Cross; in Gal. ii. 20, the love of Christ, upon wliich the faith and the gratitude of believers are based, is found in the one great fact of Christ's death ("who loved me and gave himself for me"). But there are also passages in the Epistles which show that Paul was impressed with the character of Jesus not only as it was manifested by the incarnation and by the atoning death, but also as it appeared in the daily life of Jesus throughout His earthly ministry. The plainest of such passages, perhaps, are 2 Cor. x. 1 and Rom. xv. 2, 3. When Paul speaks of the meekness and gentleness of Christ, he refers evidently to the impression which Jesus made upon His contemporaries; and when he says that Christ "pleased not himself" but bore reproaches patiently, he is evidently thinking not only of the gracious acts of incarnation and atonement but also of the conduct of Jesus from day to day. In 2 Cor. viii. 9 ("though He was rich yet for your sakes He became poor"), although the reference may be primarily to the poverty of any human life as compared with the glories of the preexistent Christ, yet the peculiar choice of words is probably due to the details of Jesus' life of hardship; Paul would hardly have spoken in this way if Jesus while He was on earth had lived in the magnificence of an earthly kingdom. Even in Phil. ii. 7, though the "form of a servant" refers primarily to human existence as distinguished from the glories of heaven, yet there seems to be also an impression of the special humility and poverty of Jesus' earthly life; and the Cross is put as the climax of an obedience which appeared also in Jesus' life as a whole (verse 8). Back of these passages there lies warm appreciation of Jesus' character as it appeared in the days of His flesh. Imitation of Christ (1 Thess. i. 6; 1 Cor. xi. 1) had its due place in the life and teaching of Paul, and that imitation was founded not only upon one act, but upon many acts, of the Lord. When Paul speaks of his own life of constant self-sacrifice, in which he seeks not his own comfort but the salvation of others, as being led in imitation of Christ (1 Cor. x. 32-xi. 1), he has before his mind the lineaments of just that Jesus who is known to us in the Gospels — that Jesus who had not where to lay His head, who went about doing good, and who preached the gospel to the poor.
Thus the paucity of references in the Pauline Epistles to the teaching and example of Jesus has sometimes been exaggerated. The Epistles attest considerable knowledge of the details of Jesus' life, and warm appreciation of His character. Undoubtedly, moreover, Paul knew far more about Jesus than he has seen fit, in the Epistles, to tell. It must always be remembered that the Epistles do not contain the missionary preaching of Paul; they are addressed to Christians, in whose case much of the primary instruction had already been given. Some things are omitted from the Epistles, therefore, not because they were unimportant, but on the contrary just because they were fundamental; instruction about them had to be given at the very beginning and except for special reasons did not need to be repeated. Except for certain misunderstandings wliich had arisen at Corinth, for example, Paul would never have set forth in his Epistles the testimony by which the fact of the resurrection of Jesus was established; yet that testimony, he says, was fundamental in his missionary preaching. If it were not for the errorists at Corinth we should never have had the all-important passage about the appearances of the risen Christ. It is appalling to reflect what far-reaching conclusions would in that case have been drawn by modem scholars from the silence of Paul. So it is also with the account of the institution of the Lord's Supper in 1 Cor. xi. 23ff. That account is inserted in the Epistles only because of certain abuses which had happened to arise at Corinth. Elsewhere Paul says absolutely nothing about the institution of the Supper; indeed, in the Epistles other than 1 Corinthians he says nothing about the Supper at all. Yet the Lord's Supper was undoubtedly celebrated everywhere in the PauHne churches, and no doubt was grounded everywhere in an account of its institution. Thus the resurrection appearances and the institution of the Lord's Supper, despite the fact that they were absolutely fundamental in Paul's teaching, appear each only once in the Epistles. May there not then have been other things just as prominent in Paul's teaching which are not mentioned at all? These two things are mentioned only because of the misunderstandings that had arisen with regard to them. Certain other things just as important may be omitted from the Epistles only because in their case no misunderstandings had happened to arise. It must always be remembered that the Epistles of Paul are addressed to special needs of the churches. It cannot be argued, therefore, that what is not mentioned in the Epistles was not known to the apostle at all.
Thus the incidental character of Paul's references to the life and teaching of Jesus shows clearly that Paul knew far more than he has seen fit in the Epistles to tell. The references make the impression of being detached bits taken from a larger whole. When, for example, Paul says that the institution of the Lord's Supper took place on the night in which Jesus was betrayed, he presupposes on the part of his readers an account of the betrayal, and hence an account of the traitor and of his position among the apostles. So it is in other cases where Paul refers to the life and teaching of Jesus. The references can be explained only as presupposing a larger fund of information about the words and deeds of Jesus. Unquestionably Paul included in his fundamental teaching an account of what Jesus said and did.
Indeed, if he had not done so, he would have involved himself in absurdity. As J. Weiss has pointed out with admirable acuteness, a missionary preaching which demanded faith in Jesus without telling what sort of person Jesus was would have been preposterous.^ The hearers of Paul were asked to stake their salvation upon the redeeming work of Jesus. But who was this Jesus.? The question could scarcely be avoided. Other redeemers, in the pagan religion of the time, were protected from such questions; they were protected by the mists of antiquity; investigations about them were obviously out of ' J. Weiss, Das alteste Evangelkim, 1903, pp. 33-39.
place. But Paul had given up the advantages of such vagueness. The redeemer whom he proclaimed was one of his own contemporaries, a Jew who had lived but a few years before and had died the death of a criminal. Investigation of this Jesus was perfectly possible; His brothers, even, were still alive. Who was He then.'' Did He suffer justly on the cross.'' Or was He the Righteous One? Such questions could hardly be avoided. And as a matter of fact they were not avoided. The incidental references in the Epistles, scanty though they are, are sufficient to show that an account of the words and deeds of Jesus formed an important part of the teaching of Paul.
The presumption is, therefore, that Paul was a true disciple of Jesus. He regarded himself as a disciple; he was so regarded by his contemporaries; he made use of Jesus' teaching and example. But is this presumption justified? Was it the real Jesus whom Paul followed? The question can be answered only by a comparison of what is known about Paul with what is known about Jesus.
But at the very beginning of the comparison, a fundamental difficulty arises. How may Jesus be known? Paul is known, through his own letters. But how about Jesus? The sources of information about Jesus are the four Gospels. But are the Gospels trustworthy?
If they are trustworthy, then it will probably be admitted that Paul was a true disciple of Jesus. For the Gospels, taken as a whole, present a Jesus like in essentials to that divine Lord who was sum and substance of the life of Paul. The Jesus of the Gospels is no mere prophet, no mere inspired teacher of righteousness, no mere revealer or interpreter of God. He is, on the contrary, a supernatural person; a heavenly Redeemer come to earth for the salvation of men. So much is usually being admitted to-day. Whatever may have been the real facts about Jesus, the Gospels present a supernatural Jesus. This representation is contained not merely in one of the Gospels; it is contained in all of them. The day is past when the divine Christ of John could be confronted with a human Christ of Mark. On the contrary, Mark and John, it is now maintained, differ only in degree; Mark as well as John, even though it should be supposed that he does so less clearly and less consistently, presents a Jesus similar in important respects to the divine Redeemer of the Epistles of Paul.-^
Thus if Paul be compared with the Jesus of the Gospels, there is full agreement between the two. The Jesus of all the Gospels is a supernatural person; the Jesus of all the Gospels is a Redeemer. "The Son of Man," according to the shortest and if modem criticism be accepted the earliest of the Gospels, "came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his hfe a ransom for many" (Mk. x. 45). But it is not necessary to depend upon details. The very choice of material in the Gospels points to the same conclusion; the Gospels like the Epistles of Paul are more interested in the death of Jesus than in the details of His Ufe. And for the same reason. The Gospels, like the Epistles of Paul, are interested in the death of Jesus because it was a ransom from sin.
But this similarity of the Jesus of the Gospels to the Christ of the Pauline Epistles has led sometimes, not to the recognition of Paul as a disciple of Jesus, but to the hypothesis that the Gospels are dependent upon Paul. If the Gospels are introducing into their picture of Jesus elements derived not from the real Jesus but from the mythical Christ of the Epistles, then of course they will display similarity to the Epistles; but such similarity will scarcely be very significant. In comparing the Epistles with the Gospels, the historian wiU then be comparing not Paul with Jesus, but Paul with Paul.
If, therefore, Paul is to be compared with Jesus, it is said, those elements which are derived from Paul must first be separated from the Gospels. Even after this separation has been accomphshed, however, there remains in the Gospel picture of Jesus a certain amount of similarity to the Pauline Christ; it is generally admitted that the process by which Jesus was raised to the position of a heavenly being was begun before the appearance of Paul and was continued in some quarters in more of less independence of him. Thus if Paul is to be compared with the real Jesus, as distinguished from the Christ of Christian faith, the historian, it is said, must first separate from the Gospel picture not merely those details which were derived distinctly from Paul, but also the whole of the supernatural element.^ Mere literary criticism wiU not accomplish the task; for even the earliest sources which can be distinguished in the Gospels seem to lift Jesus above the level of ordinary humanity and present Him not merely as an example for faith but also as the object of faith.^ Even in the earliest sources, therefore, the historian must distinguish genuine tradition from dogmatic accretions; he must separate the natural from the supernatural, the believable from the unbelievable; he must seek to remove from the genuine figure of the Galilean prophet the tawdry ornamentation which has been hung about him by naive and unintelligent admirers.
Thus the Jesus who is to be compared with Paul, according to the modern naturalistic theory, is not the Jesus of the Gospels; he is a Jesus who can be rediscovered only through a critical process within the Gospels. And that critical process is very difficult. It is certainly no easy matter to separate natural and supernatural in the Gospel picture of Jesus, for the two are inextricably intertwined. In pulling up the tares, the historian is in danger of pulling up the wheat as well; in the removal of the supernatural elements from the story of Jesus, the whole of the story is in danger of being destroyed. Certain radical spirits are not afraid of the consequence; since the Jesus of the Gospels, they say, is a supernatural person, He is not a real person; no such person as this Jesus ever lived on earth. Such radicalism, of course, is absurd. The Jesus of the Gospels is certainly not the product of invention or of myth; He is rooted too deep in historical conditions; He towers too high above those who by any possibility could have produced Him. But the radical denials of the historicity of Jesus are not without interest. They have at least called attention to the arbitrariness with which the separation of historical from unhistorical has been carried on in the production of the "liberal Jesus."
But suppose the separation has been completed; suppose the historical Jesus has been discovered beneath the gaudy colors which had almost hopelessly defaced His portrait. Even then
" For what follows, see, in addition to the paper mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, "History and Faith," in Princeton Theological Review, xiii, 1915, pp. 337-351.
the troubles of the historian are not at an end. For this historical Jesus, this human Jesus of modern liberalism, is a monstrosity; there is a contradiction at the very center of His being. The contradiction is produced by His Messianic consciousness. The human Jesus of modern liberalism, the pure and humble teacher of righteousness, the one who kept His own person out of His message and merely asked men to have faith in God like His faith — this Jesus of modern liberalism thought that He was to come with the clouds of heaven and be the instrument in judging the earth! If Jesus was pure and unselfish and of healthy mind, how could He have applied to Himself the tremendous conception of the transcendent Messiah.'' By some the problem is avoided. Some, like Wrede, deny that Jesus ever presented Himself as the Messiah; others, like Bousset, are at least moving in the same direction. But such radicalism cannot be carried out. The Messianic element in the consciousness of Jesus is rooted too deep in the sources ever to be removed by any critical process. It is established also by the subsequent development. If Jesus never thought Himself to be the Messiah and never presented Himself as such, how did His disciples come to regard Him as the Messiah after His death.'' Why did they not simply say, "Despite His death, the Kingdom of God is coming.'"' Why did they say rather, "Despite His death, He is the Messiah?" ^ They could only have done so if Jesus had already presented Himself to them as Messiah when He had been with them on earth.
In recent criticism, such radicalism as that which has just been discussed is usually avoided. The presence of the Messianic element in the consciousness of Jesus cannot altogether be denied. Sometimes, indeed, that element is even made the determining factor in all of Jesus' teaching. So it is with the hypothesis of "consistent eschatology" of A. Schweitzer and others.^ According to that hypothesis Jesus expected the Kingdom of God to come in a catastrophic way in the very year in which he was carrying on His ministry in Galilee, and all His teaching was intended to be a preparation for the great catastrophe. Even the ethic of Jesus, therefore, is thought to have been constructed in view of the approaching end of the world, and is thus regarded as unsuitable for a permanent world order. This hypothesis not only accepts the Messianic consciousness of Jesus, but in one direction at least it even exaggerates the implications of that consciousness.
Usually, however, this extreme also is avoided, and the historian pursues, rather, a policy of palliation. Jesus did come to regard Himself as the Messiah, it is said, but He did so only late in His ministry and almost against His will. When He found that the people were devoted to sin, and that He alone was fighting God's battle, He came to regard Himself as God's chosen instrument in the establishment of the Kingdom. Thus He had a tremendous consciousness of a mission. But the only category in which He could express that consciousness of a mission was the category of Messiahship. In one form, indeed, that category was unsuitable; Jesus would have nothing to do with the political aspirations associated with the expected king of David's line. But the expectation of the Messiah existed also in another form; the Messiah was sometimes regarded, not as a king of David's line, but as the heavenly Son of Man alluded to in Daniel and more fully described in the Similitudes of Enoch. This transcendent form of Messiahship, therefore, was the form which Jesus used. But the form, it is maintained, is a matter of indifference to us, and it was not really essential to Jesus; what was really essential was Jesus' consciousness of nearness to God.
Such palliative measures will not really solve the problem. The problem is a moral and psychological problem. How could a pure and holy prophet of righteousness, one whose humility and sanity have made an indelible impression upon all subsequent generations — how could such a one lapse so far from the sobriety and sanity of His teaching as to regard Himself as the heavenly Son of Man who was to be the instrument in judging the world? The difficulty is felt by all thoughtful students who proceed upon naturalistic principles. There is to such students, as Heitmiiller says, something almost uncanny about Jesus. ^ And the difficulty is not removed by putting the genesis of the Messianic consciousness late in Jesus' life. Whether late or early, Jesus did regard Himself as the Messiah, did regard Himself as the one who was to come with the clouds of heaven. There lies the problem. How ' Heitmiiller, Jesus, 1913, p. 71.
could Jesus, with His humility and sobriety and strength, ever have lapsed so far from the path of sanity as to assume the central place in the Kingdom of God?
Here, again, radical minds have drawn the logical conclusions. The Messianic consciousness, they say, is an example of megalomania; Jesus, they say, was insane. Such is said to be the diagnosis of certain alienists. And the diagnosis need cause no alarm. Very likely it is correct. But the Jesus who is being investigated by the alienists is not the Jesus of the New Testament. The liberal Jesus, if he ever existed, may have been insane. But that is not the Jesus whom the Christian loves. The alienists are investigating a man who thought he was divine and was not divine; about one who thought He was divine and was divine they have obviously nothing to say.
Two difficulties, therefore, face the reconstruction of the liberal Jesus. In the first place, it is difficult to separate the natural from the supernatural in the Gospel picture of Jesus; and in the second place, after the separation has been accomplished, the human Jesus who is left is found to be a monstrosity, with a contradiction at the very center of His being. Such a Jesus, it may fairly be maintained, could never have existed on earth.
But suppose He did exist, suppose the psychological impossibilities of His character be ignored. Even then the difficulties of the historian are not overcome. Another question remains. How did this human Jesus ever come to give place to the superhuman Jesus of the New Testament.'' The transition evidently occurred at a very early time. It is complete in the Epistles of Paul. And within Paul's experience it was certainly no late development; on the contrary it was evidently complete at the very beginning of his Christian life; the Jesus in whom he trusted at the time of his conversion was certainly the heavenly Christ of the Epistles. But the conversion occurred only a very few years, at the most, after the crucifixion of Jesus. Moreover, there is in the Pauline Epistles not the slightest trace of a conflict between the heavenly Christ of Paul and any "other Jesus" of the primitive Jerusalem Church; apparently the Christ of Paul was also the Christ of those who had walked and talked with Jesus of Nazareth. Such is the evidence of the Epistles. It is confirmed by the Gospels. Like Paul, the Gospels present no mere teacher of righteousness, but a heavenly Redeemer. Yet the Gospels make the impression of being independent of Paul. Everywhere the Jesus that they present is most strikingly similar to the Christ of Paul; but nowhere — not even where Jesus is made to teach the redemptive significance of His death (Mk. x. 45) — is there the slightest evidence of literary dependence upon the Epistles. Thus the liberal Jesus, if he ever existed, has disappeared from the pages of history; all the sources agree in presenting a heavenly Christ. How shall such agreement be explained.''
It might conceivably be explained by the appearances of the risen Christ. If, at the very beginning of the Church's life, Jesus appeared to His disciples, after His death, alive and in heavenly glory, it is conceivable that that experience might have originated the lofty New Testament conception of Jesus' person. But what in turn caused that experience itself? On naturalistic principles the appearances of the risen Christ can be explained only by an impression which the disciples already had of the majesty of Jesus' person. If they had listened to lofty claims of Jesus like those which are recorded in the Gospels, if they had witnessed miracles like the walking on the water or the feeding of the five thousand, then, conceivably, though not probably, they might have come to believe that so great a person could not be holden of death, and this belief might have been sufficient, without further miracle, to induce the pathological experiences in which they thought they saw Him alive after His passion. But if the miraculous be removed from the life of Jesus, a double portion of the miraculous must be heaped up upon the appearances. The smaller be the Jesus whom the disciples had known in Galilee, the more unaccountable becomes the experience which caused them to believe in His resurrection. By one path or another, therefore, the historian of Christian origins is pushed off from the safe ground of the phenomenal world toward the abyss of supernaturalism. To account for the faith of the early Church, the supernatural must be found either in the life of Jesus on earth, or else in the appearances of the risen Christ. But if the supernatural is found in one place, there is no objection to finding it in both places. And in both places it is found by the whole New Testament.
Three difficulties, therefore, beset the reconstruction of the "liberal Jesus." In the first place, it is difficult to disengage His picture from the miraculous elements which have defaced it in the Gospels; in the second place, when the supposed historical Jesus has been reconstructed, there is a moral contradiction at the center of His being, caused by His lofty claims; in the third place, it is hard to see how, in the thinking of the early disciples, the purely human Jesus gave place without the slightest struggle to the heavenly Christ of the Pauline Epistles and of the whole New Testament.
But suppose all the difficulties have been removed. Suppose a human Jesus has been reconstructed. What is the result of comparing that human Jesus with Paul.'' At first sight there seems to be nothing but contradiction. But closer examination discloses points of agreement. The agreement between Jesus and Paul extends even to those elements in the Gospel account of Jesus which are accepted by modern naturalistic criticism.
In the first place, Jesus and Paul present the same view of the Kingdom of God. The term "kingdom of God" is not very frequent in the Epistles; but it is used as though familiar to the readers, and when it does occur, it has the same meaning as in the teaching of Jesus. The similarity appears, in the first place, in a negative feature — ^both in Jesus and in Paul, the idea of the Kingdom is divorced from all political and materialistic associations. That fact may seem to us to be a matter of course. But in the Judaism of the first century it was far from being a matter of course. On the contrary, it meant nothing less than a revolution in thought and in life. How did Paul, the patriot and the Pharisee, come to separate the thought of the Kingdom from political associations.'' How did he come to do so even if he had come to think that the Messiah had already appeared.? How did he come to do so unless he was influenced in some way by the teaching of Jesus.'' But the similarity is not merely negative. In positive aspects also, the Kingdom of God in Paul is similar to that which appears in the teaching of Jesus. Both in Jesus and in Paul, the implications of entrance are ethical. "Or know ye not," says Paul, "that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Cor. vi. 9). Then follows, after these words, as in Gal. v. 19-21, a long list of sins which exclude a man from participation in the Kingdom. Paul is here continuing faithfully the teaching of Him who said, "Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Finally both in Jesus and in Paul the Kingdom appears partly as present and partly as future. In the above passages from Galatians and 1 Corinthians, for example, and in 1 Cor. xv. 60, it is future; whereas in such passages as Rom. xiv. 17 ("for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit"), the present aspect is rather in view. The same two aspects of the Kingdom appear also in the teaching of Jesus; all attempts at making Jesus' conception thoroughly eschatological have failed. Both in Jesus and in Paul, therefore, the Kingdom of God is both transcendent and ethical. Both in Jesus and in Paul, finally, the coming of the Kingdom means joy as well as judgment. When Paul says that the Kingdom of God is "righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost," he is like Jesus not merely in word but in the whole spirit of the message; Jesus also proclaimed the coming of the Kingdom as a "gospel."
In the second place, Paul is like Jesus in his doctrine of the fatherhood of God. That doctrine, it will probably be admitted, was characteristic of Jesus; indeed the tendency in certain quarters is to regard it as the very sum and substance of all that Jesus said. Certainly no parallel to Jesus' presentation of God as Father has been found in extra-Christian literature. The term "father" is indeed applied to God here and there in the Old Testament. But in the Old Testament it is usually in relation to the people of Israel that God is thought of as Father rather than in relation to the individual. Even in the Old Testament, it is true, the conception of the fatherhood of God is not without importance. The consciousness of belonging to God's chosen people and thus being under God's fatherly care was immensely valuable for the life of the individual Israelite; it was no mere product of an unsatisfying state religion like the religions of Greece or Rome. There was preparation in Old Testament revelation, here as elsewhere, for the coming of the Messiah. In Jewish literature outside of the Old Testament, moreover, and in rabbinical sources, the conception of God as Father is not altogether absent.^ But it appears comparatively seldom, and it lacks altogether the true content of Jesus' teaching. Despite all ' Bousset, Die Religion des Judentums, 2te Aufl., 1906, pp. 432-434.
previous uses of the word "father" as applied to God, Jesus was ushering in a new era when He taught His disciples to say, "Our Father which art in heaven."
This conception of the fatherhood of God appears in Paul in just the same way as in Jesus. In Paul as well as in Jesus it is not something to be turned to occasionally; on the contrary it is one of the constituent elements of the religious life. It is no wonder that the words, "God our Father," appear regularly at the beginnings of the Epistles. The fatherhood of God in Paul is not something to be argued about or defended; it is altogether a matter of course. But it has not lost, through repetition, one whit of its freshness. The name "Father" applied to God in Paul is more than a bare title; it is the welling up of the depths of the soul. "Abba, Father" on the lips of Paul's converts was exactly the same, not only in form but also in deepest import, as the word which Jesus first taught His disciples when they said to Him, "Lord, teach us to pray."
But the fatherhood of God in Paul is like the teaching of Jesus in even more definite ways than in the fervor of the religious life which it evokes. It is also like Jesus' teaching in being the possession, not of the world, but of the household of faith. If, indeed, the fatherhood of God in Jesus' teaching were like the fatherhood of God in modern liberalism — a relationship which God sustains toward men as men — then it would be as far removed as possible from the teaching of Paul. But as a matter of fact, both Paul and Jesus reserved the term Father for the relation in which God stands to the disciples of Jesus. One passage, indeed (Matt. v. 45; Luke vi. 35), has been quoted as making God the Father of all men. But only by a strange misinterpretation. It is strange how in the day of our boasted grammatico-historical exegesis, so egregious an error can be allowed to live. The prejudices of the reader have triumphed here over all exegetical principles; a vague modernism has been attributed to the sternest, as well as most merciful. Prophet who ever walked upon earth. When Jesus says, "Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you; that ye may be sons of your Father who is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust," He certainly does not mean that God is the Father of all men both evil and good.
God cares for all, but He is not said to be the Father of all. On the contrary, it may almost be said that the very point of the passage is that God cares for all although He is not the Father of all. That it is which makes Him the example for those who are to do good not merely to friends or brothers but also to enemies.
This interpretation does not mean that God does not stand toward all men in a relation analogous to that of a father to his children; it does not mean that He does not love all or care for all. But it does mean that however close may be the relationship which God sustains to all men, the lofty term Father is reserved for a relationship which is far more intimate still. Jesus extends to all men those common blessings which the modem preacher sums up in the term "fatherhood of God"; but He extends to His own disciples not only those blessings but infinitely more. It is not the men of the world — not the "pub^ licans," not the "Gentiles" — ^who can say, according to the teaching of Jesus, "Our Father which art in Heaven." Rather it is the little group of Jesus' disciples — ^which little group, however, aU without exception are freely invited to join.
So it is exactly also in the teaching of Paul. God stands, according to Paul, in a vital relation to all men. He is the author of the being of all; He cares for all; He has planted His law in the hearts of all. He stands thus in a relation toward all which is analogous to that of father to child. The Book of Acts is quite in accord with the Epistles when it makes Paul say of all men, "For we are also His offspring." But in Paul just as in Jesus the lofty term "Father" is reserved for a more intimate relationship. Paul accepts all the truth of natural religion; all the truth that reappears in the vague liberalism of modem times. But he adds to it the truth of the gospel. Those are truly sons of God, he says, who have been received by adoption into God's household, and in whose hearts God's Spirit cries, "Abba, Father."
There was nothing narrow about such a gospel; for the door of the household of faith was opened wide to all. Jesus had died in order to open that door, and the apostle went up and down the world, enduring peril upon peril in order to bring men in. There was need for such service, because of sin. Neither in Jesus nor in Paul is sin covered up, nor the necessity of a great transformation concealed. Jesus came not to reveal to men that they were already children of God, but to make them God's children by His redeeming work.
In the third place, Paul is like Jesus in presenting a doctrine of grace. Of course he is like the Jesus of the Gospels; for the Jesus of the Gospels declared that the Son of Man came to give His life a ransom for many. But He is even like the Jesus of modern reconstruction. Even the liberal Jesus taught a doctrine of grace. He taught, it for example, in the parables of the laborers in the vineyard and of the servant coming in from the field. In those two parables Jesus expressed His opposition to a religion of works, a religion which can open an account with God and seek to obtain salvation by merit.-' Salvation, according to Jesus, is a matter of God's free grace; it is something which God gives to whom He will. The same great doctrine really runs all through the teaching of Jesus; it is the root of His opposition to the scribes and Pharisees; it determines the confidence with which He taught His disciples to draw near to God. But it is the same doctrine, exactly, which appears in Paul. The Paul who combated the legalists in Galatia, like the Jesus who combated the scribes and Pharisees, was contending for a God of grace.
Let it not be objected that Jesus maintained also the expectation of a judgment. For in this particular also He was followed by Paul. Paul also, despite his doctrine of grace, expected that the Christians would stand before the judgmentseat. And it may be remembered in passing that both in Jesus and in Paul the judgment-seat is a judgment-seat of Christ.
In the fourth place, the ethical teaching of Paul is strikingly similar to that of Jesus. It is necessary only to point to the conception of love as the fulfilling of the law, and to the substitution for external rules of the great principles of justice and of mercy. These things may seem to us to be matters of course. But they were not matters of course in the Jewish environment of Paul. Similarity in this field between Jesus and Paul can hardly be a matter of chance. Many resemblances have been pointed out in detail between the ethical
* Compare W. Morgan, The Religion and Theology of Paul, 1917, p. 155: "The essential import of Paul's doctrine [of justification by faith]' is all contained in the two parables of the Pharisee and the publican and the servant coming in from the field,"
teaching of Jesus and that of Paul. But the most important is the one which is most obvious, and which just for that reason has sometimes escaped notice. Paul and Jesus, in their ethical teaching, are similar because of the details of what they say; but they are still more similar because of what they do not say. And they are similar in what they do not say despite the opposition of their countrymen. Many parallels for words of Jesus may have been found in rabbinical sources. But so much more, alas, is also found there. That oppressive plus of triviality and formalism places an impassable gulf between Jesus and the Jewish teachers. But Paul belongs with Jesus, on the same side of the gulf. In his ethic there is no formalism, no triviality, no casuistry — there is naught but "love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control." What has become of all the rest.? Was it removed by the genius of Paul.'' It is strange that two such men of genius should have arisen independently and at the same time. Or was the terrible plus of Pharisaic formalism and triviality burned away from Paul when the light shone around him on the way to Damascus and he fell at the feet of the great Teacher.''
Points of contact between Jesus and Paul have just been pointed out in detail, and the list of resemblances could be greatly increased. The likeness of Paul to Jesus extends even to those features which appear in the Jesus of modem liberalism. What is more impressive, however, than all similarity in detail is the similarity in the two persons taken each as a whole. The Gospels are more than a collection of sayings and anecdotes; the PauHne Epistles are more than a collection of reasoned discussions. In the Gospels, a person is revealed, and another person in the Epistles. And the two persons belong together. It is impossible to establish that fact fully by detailed argument any more than it is possible to explain exactly why any two persons are friends to-day. But the fact is plain to any sympathetic reader. The writer of the Pauline Epistles would have been at home in the company of Jesus of Nazareth.
What then was the true relation between Paul and Jesus.? It has been shown that Paul regarded himself as a disciple of Jesus, that he was so regarded by those who had been Jesus' friends, that he had abundant opportunity for acquainting himself with Jesus' words and deeds, that he does refer to them occasionally, that he could have done so oftener if he had desired, that the imitation of Jesus found a place in his life, and that his likeness to Jesus extends even to those elements in Jesus' life and teaching which are accepted by modem naturalistic criticism as authentic. At this point the problem is left by the great mass of recent investigators. Wrede is thought to be refuted already; the investigator triumphantly writes his Q. E. D., and passes on to something else.
But in reality the problem has not even been touched. It has been shown that the influence of Jesus upon Paul was somewhat greater than Wrede supposed. But that does not make Paul a disciple of Jesus. The true relationships of a man are determined not by things that lie on the periphery of his life, but by what is central ^ — central both in his own estimation and in his influence upon subsequent generations. And what was central in Paul was certainly not the imitation of Jesus. At that point, Wrede was entirely correct; he has never really been silenced by the chorus of protest with which his startling little book was received. It is futile, therefore, to point to the influence of Jesus upon Paul in detail. Such a method may be useful in correcting exaggerations, but it does not touch the real question. The plain f a -t remains that if imitation of Jesus had been central in the life of Paul, as it is central, for example, in modern liberalism, then the Epistles would be full of the words and deeds of Jesus. It is insufficient to point to the occasional character of the Epistles. No doubt the Epistles are addressed to special needs; no doubt Paul knew far more about Jesus than in the Epistles he has found occasion to tell. But there are passages in the Epistles where the current of Paul's religious life runs full and free, where even after the lapse of centuries, even through the dull medium of the printed page, it sweeps the heart of the sympathetic reader on with it in a mighty flood. And those passages are not concerned with the details of Jesus' earthly life. They are, rather, the great theological passages of the Epistles — the second chapter of Galatians, the fifth chapter of 2 Corinthians, and the eighth chapter of Romans. In these chapters, religion and theology are blended in a union which no critical •Wrede, Pauhis, 1904, p. 93 (English Translation, Paul, 1907, p. 161).
analysis can ever possibly dissolve; these passages reveal the very center of Paul's life.
The details of Jesus' earthly ministry no doubt had an important place in the thinking of Paul. But they were important, not as an end in themselves, but as a means to an end. They revealed the character of Jesus; they showed why He was worthy to be trusted. But they did not show what He had done for Paul. The story of Jesus revealed what Jesus had done for others: He had healed the sick; He had given sight to the blind; He had raised the dead. But for Paul He had done something far greater than all these things — for Paul He had died.
The religion of Paul, in other words, is a religion of redemption. Jesus, according to Paul, came to earth not to say something, but to do something; He was primarily not a teacher, but a Redeemer. He came, not to teach men how to live, but to give them a new life through His atoning death. He was, indeed, also a teacher, and Paul attended to His teaching. But His teaching was all in vain unless it led to the final acceptance of His redemptive work. Not the details of Jesus' life, therefore, but the redemptive acts of death and resurrection are at the center of the religion of Paul. The teaching and example of Jesus, according to Paul, are valuable only as a means to an end, valuable in order that through a revelation of Jesus' character saving faith may be induced, and valuable thereafter in order that the saving work may be brought to its fruition in holy living. But all that Jesus said and did was for the purpose of the Cross. "He loved me," says Paul, "and gave Himself for me." There is the heart and core of the religion of Paul.
Jesus, according to Paul, therefore, was not a teacher, but a Redeemer. But was Paul right.'' Was Jesus really a Redeemer, or was He only a teacher? If He was only a teacher, then Paul was no true follower of His. For in that case, Paul has missed the true import of Jesus' life. Compared with that one central error, small importance is to be attributed to the influence which Jesus may have exerted upon Paul here and there. Wrede, therefore, was exactly right in his formulation of the question. Paul regarded Jesus as a Redeemer. If Jesus was not a Redeemer, then Paul was no true follower of Jesus, but the founder of a new religion. The liberal theologians have tried to avoid the issue. They have pointed out exaggerations; they have traced the influence of Jesus upon Paul in detail; they have distinguished religion from theology, and abandoning the theology of Paul they have sought to derive his religion from Jesus of Nazareth. It is all very learned and very eloquent. But it is also entirely futile. Despite the numerous monographs on "Jesus and Paul," Wrede was entirely correct. He was correct, that is, not in his conclusions, but in his statement of the question. He was correct in his central contention — Paul was no true disciple of the "liberal Jesus." If Jesus was what the liberal theologians represent Him as being — a teacher of righteousness, a religious genius, a guide on the way to God — then not Jesus but Paul was the true founder of historic Christianity. For historic Christianity, like the religion of Paul, is a religion of redemption.
Certainly the separation of religion from theology in Paul must be abandoned. Was it a mere theory when Paul said of Jesus Christ, "He loved me and gave Himself for me"? Was it merely theological speculation when he said, "One died for all, therefore all died; and he died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto him who for their sakes died and rose again".'' Was it mere theology when he said, "Far be it from me to glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ".'' Was this mere theological speculation.'' Surely not. Surely it was religion — warm, living religion. If this was not true religion, then where can religion ever be found.? But the passages just quoted are not passages which deal with the details of Jesus' life; they are not passages which deal with general principles of love and grace, and fatherliness and brotherliness. On the contrary, they deal with just the thing most distasteful to the modem liberal Church; they deal with the atoning death of the Lord Jesus Christ, by which He took our sins upon Him and bare them in His own body on the tree. The matter is perfectly plain. Religion in Paul does not exist apart from theology, and theology does not exist apart from rehgion. Christianity, according to Paul, is both a life and a doctrine — but logically the doctrine comes first. The life is the expression of the doctrine and not vice versa. Theology, as it appears in Paul, is not a product of Christian experience, but a setting forth of those facts by which Christian experience has been produced. If, then, the theology of Paul was derived from extra-Christian sources, his religion must be abandoned also. The whole of PauHnism is based upon the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. Thus Paul was a true follower of Jesus if Jesus was a divine Redeemer, come from heaven to die for the sins of men; he was not a true follower of Jesus if Jesus was a mere revealer of the fatherhood of God. Paulinism was not based upon a Galilean prophet. It was based either upon the Son of God who came to earth for men's salvation and still holds communion with those who trust Him, or else it was based upon a colossal error. But if the latter alternative be adopted, the error was not only colossal, but also unaccountable. It is made more unaccountable by all that has been said above, all that the liberal theologians have helped to establish, about the nearness of Paul to Jesus. If Paul really stood so near to Jesus, if he really came under Jesus' influence, if he really was intimate with Jesus' friends, how could he have misinterpreted so completely the significance of Jesus' person; how could he have substituted for the teacher of righteousness who had really lived in Palestine the heavenly Redeemer of the Epistles.? No satisfactory answer has yet been given. In the relation between Jesus and Paul the historian discovers a problem which forces him on toward a Copernican revolution in all his thinking, which leads him to ground his own salvation and the hope of this world no longer in millions of acts of sinful men or in the gradual progress of civilization, but simply and solely in one redemptive act of the Lord of Glory.