The Foundation of St. Paul's Religion. John Gresham Machen

the ordinary limits of hallucinations. Weiss has therefore merely pointed out an additional psychological difficulty in explaining the experience of Paul as an hallucination, a difficulty which, on naturalistic principles, may have to be removed by the assumption that Paul had seen Jesus before the passion. But if Jesus really appeared to Paul in such a way as to be able to answer his questions, then it is not necessary to suppose that Paul recognized Him. The failure of Paul to recognize Jesus (according to the narrative in Acts) does not indeed positively exclude such previous acquaintance; the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, for example, also failed to recognize the Lord, though they had been acquainted with Him before. But, at any rate, if the supernaturalistic view of Paul's conversion be accepted, the experience sheds no light whatever upon any previous personal acquaintance with Jesus.

      Thus there is no clear evidence for supposing that Paul saw Jesus before the passion. At the same time there is no evidence to the contrary, except the evidence that is to be found in the silence of the Epistles.

      The argument from silence, precarious as it is, must here be allowed a certain amount of weight. If Paul had seen Jesus before the crucifixion, would not so important a fact have been mentioned somewhere in the Epistles? The matter is by no means absolutely clear; a brief glimpse of Jesus in the days of His flesh would perhaps not have seemed so important to Paul, in view of the richer knowledge which came afterwards, as it would seem to us. The silence of the Epistles does, however, render improbable any extended contact between Paul and Jesus, particularly any active opposition of the youthful Paul toward Jesus. Paul was deeply penitent for having persecuted the Church; if he had committed the more terrible sin of having helped bring the Lord Himself to the shameful cross, the fact would naturally have appeared in his expressions of penitence. Even if Paul did see Jesus in Palestine, then, it is highly improbable that he was one of those who cried out to Pilate, "Crucify him, crucify him!"

      One thing, however, is certain. If Paul never saw Jesus in Palestine, he certainly heard about Him. The ministry of Jesus caused considerable stir both in Galilee and in Jerusalem. These things were not done in a corner. The appearance of Jesus at the last Passover aroused the passions of the multitude, and evidently caused the deepest concern to the authorities. Even one who was indifferent to the whole matter could hardly have helped learning something of the content of Jesus' teaching, and the main outline of the story of His death. But Paul, at least at a time only a very few years after the crucifixion, was not indifferent; for he was an active persecutor. If he was in Palestine at all during the previous period, his interest probably began then. The outlines of Jesus' life and death were known to friend and foe alike, and certainly were not unknown to Paul before his conversion, at the time when he was persecuting the Church. It is only a woeful lack of historical imagination which can attribute to Paul, even before his conversion, a total ignorance of the earthly life of Jesus.

      The opposite error, however, is even more serious. If Paul before his conversion was not totally ignorant of Jesus, on the other hand his knowledge only increased his opposition to Jesus and Jesus' followers. It is not true that before the conversion Paul was gradually coming nearer to Christianity. Against any such supposition stands the explicit testimony of the Epistles.

      Despite that testimony, various attempts have been made to trace a psychological development in Paul which could have led to the conversion. Paul was converted through a vision of the risen Christ. According to the supernaturalistic view that vision was a "vision," not in any specialized meaning of the word, but in its original etymological meaning; Paul actually "saw" the risen Lord. According to the modern naturalistic view, which rejects any direct creative interposition of God in the course of nature, different in kind from His works of providence, the vision was produced by the internal condition of the subject, accompanied perhaps by favorable conditions without—the heat of the sun or a thunder storm or the like. But was the condition of the subject, in the case of Paul, really favorable to a vision of the risen Christ? If the vision of Christ was an hallucination, as it is held to be by modern naturalistic historians, how may the genesis of this pathological experience be explained?

      In the first place, a certain basis for the experience is sought in the physical organism of the subject. According to the Epistles, it is said, the apostle was subject to a recurrent malady; this malady is spoken of in 2 Cor. xii. 1–8 in connection with visions and revelations. In Gal. iv. 14, where it is said that the Galatians did not "spit out" when the apostle was with them, an allusion is sometimes discovered to the ancient custom of spitting to avoid contagion. A combination of this passage with the one in 2 Corinthians is thought to establish a diagnosis of epilepsy, the effort being made to show that "spitting out" was particularly prevalent in the case of that disease. The visions then become an additional symptom of the epileptic seizures.[32]

      But the diagnosis rests upon totally insufficient data. The visions are not regarded in 2 Corinthians as part of the buffetings of the angel of Satan; on the contrary, the two things are sharply separated in Paul's mind; he rejoices in the visions, but prays the Lord that the buffetings may cease. It is not even said that the visions and the buffetings came close together; there is no real basis for the view that the buffetings consisted in nervous exhaustion following the visions. In Gal. iv. 14, the "spitting out" is probably to be taken figuratively, and the object is "your temptation in my flesh." The meaning then is simply, "You did not reject me or spue me out"; and there is no allusion to the custom of "spitting out" for the purpose of avoiding contagion. It is unnecessary, therefore, to examine the elaborate argument of Krenkel by which he sought to show that epilepsy was particularly the disease against which spitting was practised as a prophylactic measure.

      There is therefore absolutely no evidence to show that Paul was an epileptic, unless the very fact of his having visions be thought to furnish such evidence. But such a use of the visions prejudges the great question at issue, which concerns the objective validity of Paul's religious convictions. Furthermore, the fact should always be borne in mind that Paul distinguished the visions very sharply from the experience which he had near Damascus, when he saw the Lord. The visions are spoken of in 2 Corinthians apparently with reluctance, as something which concerned the apostle alone; the Damascus experience was part of the evidence for the resurrection of Christ, and had a fundamental place in the apostle's missionary preaching. All efforts to break down this distinction have failed. The apostle regarded the Damascus experience as unique—not a mystery like the experiences which are mentioned in 2 Corinthians, but a plain, palpable fact capable of being understood by all.

      But if the Damascus experience is to be regarded as an hallucination, it is not sufficient to exhibit a basis for it in the physical weakness of the apostle. Even if Paul was constitutionally predisposed to hallucinations, the experience of this particular hallucination must be shown to be possible. The challenge has often been accepted by modern historians. It is maintained that the elements of Paul's new conviction must have been forming gradually in his mind; the Damascus experience, it is said, merely brought to light what was really already present. In this way, the enormous disparity between effect and cause is thought to be removed; the untold benefits of Paulinism are no longer to be regarded as due to the fortunate chance of an hallucination, induced by the weakness of the apostle and the heat of the desert sun, but rather to a spiritual development which the hallucination merely revealed. Thus the modern view of Paul's conversion, it is thought, may face bravely the scorn of Beyschlag, who exclaimed, when speaking of the naturalistic explanation of Paul's vision, "Oh blessed drop of blood … which by pressing at the right moment upon the brain of Paul, produced such a moral wonder."[33] The drop of blood, it is said, or whatever may have been the physical basis of the Damascus experience, did not produce the wonders of the Pauline gospel; it merely brought into the sphere of consciousness a psychological process which had really been going on before.

      The existence of such a psychological process, by which the apostle was coming nearer to Christ, is sometimes thought to receive documentary support in one verse of the New Testament. In Acts xxvi. 14, the risen Christ is represented as saying to Paul, "It is hard for thee to kick against the goads." According to this verse, it is said, Paul had been resisting a better conviction, gradually forming in his mind, that the disciples might be right about Jesus and he might be wrong; that, it is said, was the goad which was really driving him. He had indeed been resisting vigorously; he had been stifling his doubts by more and more feverish activity in persecution.