The Origin of Paul's Religion. John Gresham Machen

seen Him, the process of deification could go on unchecked. What was fundamental, however, even for Paul, was an impression of the real person of Jesus of Nazareth; that impression was conveyed to Paul in various ways—especially by the brave and pure lives of Jesus' disciples, which had impressed him, against his will, even when he was still a persecutor. But Paul was a child of his time. He was obliged, therefore, to express that which he had received from Jesus in the categories that were ready to hand. Those categories as applied to Jesus constitute the Pauline theology. Thus Paul was really the truest disciple of Jesus in the depths of his inner life, but his theology was the outer and perishable shell for the precious kernel. His theology was the product of his time, and may now be abandoned; his religion was derived from Jesus of Nazareth and is a permanent possession of the human race.

      Such in bare outline is the liberal view of the origin of Paulinism and of Christianity. It has been set forth in so many brilliant treatises that no one may be singled out as clearly representative. Perhaps Von Harnack's "What is Christianity?"[9], among the popular expositions, may still serve as well as any other. The liberal view of the origin of Christianity seemed at one time likely to dominate the religious life of the modern world; it found expression in countless sermons and books of devotion as well as in scientific treatises. Now, however, there are some indications that it is beginning to fall; it is being attacked by radicalism of various kinds. With some of these attacks it will not now be worth while to deal; it will not be worth while to deal with those forms of radicalism which reject what have been designated as the two starting-points for an investigation of the origin of Christianity—the historicity of Jesus and the genuineness of the major epistles of Paul. These hypotheses are some of them interesting on the negative side, they are interesting for their criticism of the dominant liberal view; but when it comes to their own attempts at reconstruction they have never advanced beyond the purest dilettantism. Attention will now be confined to the work of historians who have really attempted seriously to grapple with the historical problems, and specifically to those who have given attention to the problem of Paul.

      Two lines of explanation have been followed in recent years by those who reject, in the interest of more radical views, the liberal account of the origin of Paulinism. But these two lines run to a certain point together; they both reject the liberal emphasis upon the historic person of Jesus as accounting for the origin of Paul's religion. The criticism of the customary view was put sharply by W. Wrede in 1904[10], when he declared that Paul was no disciple of Jesus, but a second founder of Christianity. The religious life of Paul, Wrede insisted, was not really derived from Jesus of Nazareth. What was fundamental for Paul was not the example of Jesus, but His redeeming work as embraced in the death and resurrection, which were regarded as events of a cosmic significance. The theology of Paul—his interpretation of the death and resurrection of Jesus—cannot, therefore, be separated from his religion; on the contrary, it is in connection with the theology, and not in connection with any impression of the character of Jesus, that the fervor of Paul's religious life runs full and free. Theology and religion in Paul, therefore, must stand or fall together; if one was derived from extra-Christian sources, probably the other must be so derived also. And such, as a matter of fact, Wrede concludes is the case. The religion of Paul is not based at all upon Jesus of Nazareth.

      Such, in true import, though not in word or in detail, was the startling criticism which Wrede directed against the liberal account of the origin of Paulinism. He had really only made explicit a type of criticism which had gradually been becoming inevitable for some time before. Hence the importance of his little book. The current reconstruction of the origin of Christianity had produced a Jesus and a Paul who really had little in common with each other. Wrede, in his incomparably succinct and incisive way, had the courage to say so.

      But if Paulinism was not derived from Jesus of Nazareth, whence was it derived? Here the two lines of radical opinion begin to diverge. According to Wrede, who was supported by M. Brückner,[11] working contemporaneously, the Pauline conception of Christ, which was fundamental in Paul's religious thought and life, was derived from the pre-Christian conception of the Messiah which Paul already had before his conversion. The Messiah, in the thought of the Jews, was not always conceived of merely as a king of David's line; sometimes he was regarded rather as a mysterious, preëxistent, heavenly being who was to come suddenly with the clouds of heaven and be the judge of all the earth. This transcendent conception which is attested by the Jewish apocalypses like the Ethiopic Book of Enoch, was, Wrede maintained, the conception of the Jew, Saul of Tarsus. When, therefore, Paul in his Epistles represents Christ as preëxistent, and as standing close to the Supreme Being in rulership and judgment, the phenomenon, though it may seem strange to us, is not really unique; it is exactly what is found in the apocalypses. What was new in Paul, as over against pre-Christian Judaism, was the belief that the heavenly Messiah had already come to earth and carried out a work of redemption. This belief was not derived, Wrede maintained, from any impression of the exalted moral character of Jesus; on the contrary, if Paul had really come into any close contact with the historical Jesus, he might have had difficulty in identifying Him so completely with the heavenly Messiah; the impression of the truly human character of Jesus and of His subjection to all the ordinary limits of earthly life would have hindered the ascription to Him of the transcendent attributes. Jesus, for Paul, merely provided the one fact that the Messiah had already come to earth and died and risen again. Operating with that fact, interpreting the coming of the Messiah as an act of redemption undertaken out of love for men, Paul was able to develop all the fervor of his Christ-religion.

      In very recent years, another account of the origin of Paulinism is becoming increasingly prevalent. This account agrees with Wrede in rejecting the liberal derivation of the religion of Paul from an impression of the historical person of Jesus. But it differs from Wrede in its view of the source from which the religion of Paul is actually to be derived. According to this latest hypothesis, Paulinism was based not upon the pre-Christian Jewish conception of the Messiah, but upon contemporary pagan religion.

      This hypothesis represents the application to the problem of Paulinism of the method of modern comparative religion. About twenty years ago that method began to be extended resolutely into the New Testament field, and it has been becoming increasingly prevalent ever since. Despite the prevalence of the method, however, and the variety of its application, one great comprehensive work may now fairly lay claim to be taken as summing up the results. That work is the book of W. Bousset, entitled "Kyrios Christos," which appeared in 1913.[12] It is perhaps too early as yet to estimate the full importance of Bousset's work. But unless all indications fail, the work is really destined to mark an epoch in the history of New Testament criticism. Since the days of F. C. Baur, in the former half of the nineteenth century, there has been no such original, comprehensive, and grandly conceived rewriting of early Christian history as has now appeared in Bousset's "Kyrios Christos." The only question is whether originality, in this historical sphere, is always compatible with truth.

      According to Bousset, the historicity of Jesus is to be maintained; Jesus was really a religious teacher of incomparable power. But Bousset rejects much more of the Gospel account of Jesus' life than is rejected in the ordinary "liberal" view; Bousset seems even to be doubtful as to whether Jesus ever presented Himself to His disciples as the Messiah, the Messianic element in the Gospels being regarded for the most part as a mere reflection of the later convictions of the disciples. After the crucifixion, the disciples in Jerusalem, Bousset continues, were convinced that Jesus had risen from the dead, and that He was truly the Messiah. They conceived of His Messiahship chiefly under the category of the "Son of Man"; Jesus, they believed, was the heavenly being who in their interpretation of the Book of Daniel and in the apocalypses appears in the presence of the supreme God as the one who is to judge the world. This heavenly Son of Man was taken from them for a time, but they looked with passionate eagerness for His speedy return. The piety of the early Jerusalem Church was therefore distinctly eschatological; it was founded not upon any conviction of a present vital relation to Jesus, but on the hope of His future coming. In the Greek-speaking Christian communities of such cities as Antioch and Tarsus, Bousset continues, an important additional step was taken; Jesus there began to be not only