BOOK  II.  The Witness of S. Paul.

Chapter  VIII – S. Paul’s List of the Witnesses

      It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of the list of the witnesses of the Resurrection given by S. Paul in 1 Cor. 15.  The passage is as follows: “And that He appeared to Cephas; then to the twelve; then He appeared to above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain until now, but some are fallen asleep; then He appeared to James; then to all the apostles; and last of all, as unto one born out of due time, He appeared to me also.” [1 Cor. 15:5–8.]

      Ι.  We propose to analyse the passage at some length.  And first, the general character of the list.

      1. Its genuineness may be considered practically undisputed.  With rare exceptions, this is recognised by critics of all schools. [Van Manen rejected it, but his successor at Leyden observes: “I am quite unable to share my predecessor’s view on this point” (K. Lake, p. 37 n).  Schmiedel accepts it even with enthusiasm.—Hastings, “Dict. B.”]

      2. The passage is a tradition, received by S. Paul, and not original.  “That which I also received.” [1 Cor. 15:5–8.]  It was not his own compilation.  It is natural to compare this tradition with the Eucharistic tradition reported in 1 Cor. 11:23.  “I received of the Lord that which I also delivered unto you” is remarkably akin to “I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received.”  From what source were these traditions derived?  There is no real ground in either case for assuming that they were received in any supernatural way; although this view has the support of writers of widely opposing schools. [I.e. Clemen (“Paulus,” i. 64), Pfleiderer and Cornely.  The latter says: “Immediate a Domino, hominis ministerio non interveniente.”]

      That S. Paul did not derive this by direct communication with the glorified Lord is, it is sometimes thought, suggested (1) by the simple parallel between “I received” and “I delivered unto you”; [Bachmann in Zahn’s “Kommentar.”] (2) by the absence of any words qualifying the expression “I received”; [“Jesus the Messiah,” ii. 625; cf. Knowling, “Testimony of S. Paul,” 222.] (3) by the distinction between this “I received” and the one Appearance of Christ to S. Paul.” [Bachmann in Zahn’s “Kommentar.”]

      The channel from which S. Paul received this tradition must have been the elder apostles.  It is natural to connect a tradition, in which S. Peter’s name stands first, with S. Peter himself.  S. Paul visited Jerusalem three years after his conversion, and went expressly to visit, or to “become acquainted with” (R. V. Margin) S. Peter.  The word for visit is ίστορησαι, which, says Edersheim, “implies a careful and searching inquiry on his part.” [“Jesus the Messiah,” ii. 625; cf. Knowling, “Testimony of S. Paul,” 222.]  “Est-ce une conjecture trop hasardée de supposer que, durant cette visite de quinze jours qu’il fit à Pierre à Jérusalem, après sa conversion, it l’a soigneusement interrogé sur la vie de leur maitre commun?  Le terme du moins dont Paul se sert (Gal. 1:18, ίστορησαι Κηφαν) ne le donne-t-il pas à penser?” [Sabitier, “L’Apôtre Paul,” p. 66.]  “Since S. Paul, as he assures us, undertook this journey for the express purpose of seeing Kephas, it is a reasonable conjecture that he earnestly desired to learn from him the details of the story of the Resurrection.” [“Cambridge Theol. Essays,” 392.]

      We are not, indeed, told the subjects of their conversations; but it is incredible that they did not confer about the Resurrection.  This is more than a precarious inference.  For the whole situation requires that S. Paul or S. Peter conferred together on the main principles of the Christian Religion. [Cf. Bp. Chase in “Cambridge Theol. Essays,” p. 392.]  Thus, Prof. Κ. Lake recognises that the passage probably represents, at least in part, “the tradition which” S. Paul “had found in the Church at his conversion, or at his first visit to Jerusalem.” [“The Resurection of Jesus Christ,” p. 41.]  It may confidently be said that the tradition summarises the experience of the community at Jerusalem.  But the tradition is not connected only with S. Peter.  At the same visit he saw S. James. [Gal. 1:19.]  S. Paul had been in personal contact with several chief witnesses of the Resurrection, and with members of the Jerusalem circle of faith.  He had visited Jerusalem again with Barnabas.  [Ib. 1.]  He knew S. Mark.  He saw on this occasion not only S. James and S. Peter, but also S. John. [Ib. 9.]  He must have seen many other of the original believers.  When he writes “I laid before them the Gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, but privately before them who were of repute,” [Ib. 2.] he distinguishes between public conference and private consultation: both of these must have made him very familiar with the convictions of the Mother Church. [Cf. Knowling, “Testimony,” p. 222–3.]  Thus, the tradition here given rests on very intimate knowledge of the witnesses of the elder apostles.  We should also observe the strong similarity in tone and confidence between the tradition of the Eucharist and that of the Resurrection.  As Dr. Sanday [“Outlines,” p. 173–4.] remarks: “in the same precise and deliberate manner in which he had rehearsed the particulars of the Last Supper, S. Paul enumerates one by one the leading Appearances of the Lord after the Resurrection.”

      3. The passage is a summary and not a narrative.

      It is difficult to see how this brief summary was ever mistaken for an exhaustive evidential account of the proofs of Christ’s Resurrection.  The bare list which S. Paul has given is totally insufficient for such a purpose, and no one would be more fully aware of this than himself.  The traditional statement here given is almost as condensed as it possibly could be; it is nothing more than the headings of instructions on the witnesses of the Resurrection.  Only their names or numbers are given.  Neither place nor any detail is added.  Surely there never existed a list with less claim to the title of exhaustive enumeration of the evidence, or full array of all the apostle knew.

      4. Moreover, the tradition was not being now given to the Corinthians in this letter for the first time.  “I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received.”  He is not now instructing them in facts and principles with which they are not already familiar.  He is reminding them of a traditional list which they had already received.  These were clearly the heads of instructions previously given.  The Corinthians themselves would be able to fill up from memory the outline here repeated. [See Clemen, “Paulus” i. 64.]  Indeed it is just this consideration which makes the list intelligible.  If the Corinthians had never heard of it before, S. Paul must have expanded the information here condensed.  Did he never tell his converts the story of his own conversion?

      5. Again, the tradition is given rather for the sake of completeness than with an apologetic purpose.

      The significance of the list of the Appearances depends partly upon the situation in the Church at Corinth. The apostle’s argument shows that the Corinthian Christians did not deny the Resurrection of Christ. They committed themselves to the illogical combination of assent to Christ’s Resurrection with rejection of the Resurrection of the dead. Accordingly, S. Paul’s design was to demonstrate their inconsequence; which he does on the basis of their belief in Christ’s Resurrection. There was, therefore, no necessity that he should give the evidence for Christ’s Resurrection, as if he were endeavouring to secure belief in it. That he gives the evidence, in any form, at all, is rather due to the apostle’s systematic mind, and his love of teaching fundamental principles. It was natural to summarise the names or numbers of the principal witnesses in the briefest possible manner before advancing to the doctrinal discussion which was the real purpose of this great chapter.

      6. If, then, the passage be a tradition which S. Paul received and did not compose, inferences drawn from it as to distinctions between his ideas and those of the Galilean apostles, or as to the limits of his knowledge about the Appearances, or as to his intentions in omitting the evidence of the women, or in making no mention of the empty grave, are manifestly valueless.  They all originate in misconceptions of the paragraph’s nature.

      7. But when was the list composed?  The date is not hard to fix approximately.  If we take Clemen’s chronology of S. Paul’s career, his conversion was in 31; his first visit to Jerusalem (to see Peter), 34; his first letter to Corinth, 56.  If, as is highly probable, he obtained the list during his visit to S. Peter, then he had had it in his possession for twenty-two years, and it was compiled before the year 34; that is within three years of the Resurrection itself.  So early a formation of the list is not at all unlikely; for it would naturally arise in mission preaching.  The Resurrection must have been challenged from the very first.  Even apart from the Petrine sermons in the Acts, it is self-evident that the Resurrection must have been the fundamental theme of the apostolic deliverances.  Without it they could not conceivably gain attention to the assertion that one condemned and crucified was nevertheless the Christ.  A summary, therefore, of the principal witnesses becomes one of the first requirements of the Christian Church.

      8. The next inquiry concerns the unity of the passage. Did S.  Paul receive the whole contents as a tradition?  Certainly not the record of the Appearance to himself.  Nor the description of the greater part of the 500 surviving.  But whether the remainder, that is the five Appearances, is all part of the original tradition has been, and still is, disputed.  On the one hand the construction of the passage is such that S. Paul does not actually assert that the entire list has been transmitted to him.  “I delivered unto you first of all ... that He appeared to Cephas; then to the Twelve.”  At this point comes a break.  The words, “then He appeared to above five hundred brethren at once” (etc.), either begins a second list, or continues the old tradition.  We cannot, some think, be certain whether S. Paul found these later statements in the list, or himself appended them.  On the other hand, the implied idea, although not the construction of the sentence, would seem to be that S. Paul is here appealing to the common tradition.  And it seems unlikely that that tradition should only consist after all of two witnesses out of five.  Moreover S. Paul distinctly asserts the identity of his statement with that of the senior apostles: “Whether it were I or they, so we preach, and so ye believe.”  This claim would seem to preclude the notion that S. Paul had added two-thirds of the list on his own authority.  That he should add his own experience seems natural.  It seems probable that all the other testimony is what he has received.  It may be easy to lay too much stress on the break in the construction of the sentence.  This is not so unusual in S. Paul.  Or is it possible that the break in construction is intended to separate the Appearances on the Third Day from those at a later date?

      That S. Luke only mentions, in addition to the Emmaus story, the Appearances to S. Peter and to the Eleven, is no real reason for inferring that the remainder of S. Paul’s list formed no part of the ordinary catechetical instruction. [Cf. Cornely.]  No doubt S. Luke would be familiar with S. Paul’s list, but so he was also with the conclusion of S. Mark’s Gospel, and yet, so critics tell us, he did not follow it.

      ΙΙ.  From these general considerations on the list of witnesses we may advance to the doctrine of the passage.

      1. The definite contents of the tradition which S. Paul delivered to the Corinthians are: Christ’s Death and Burial and Resurrection.

      The Christian message is formulated as follows: It was (a) received by S. Paul as the apostolic tradition; and (b) transmitted by him to the Corinthians [See Meyer, in loc., and Heinrici.] as of fundamental importance (first of all).

      The substance of the message is threefold.  (1) The death of Christ, as redemptive, and in accordance with Scripture.  (2) The Burial of Christ.  (3) The Resurrection, also in accordance with Scripture.

      S. Paul further declares that his own proclamation on these matters is identical with these of the elder apostles. (verse 11).

      Died—was buried—hath been raised—and appeared.  It does not say that He appeared the third day; but it does say He was raised the third day.  The implication is that He was known to have risen the third day because that was the day on which He appeared.

      2. Both the Death and the Resurrection are here connected with the ancient Scriptures.  Of the former it is said, that “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures”: of the latter, that “He hath been raised on the Third Day according to the Scriptures.”  Thus, the religious value of Jesus’ death is described as an inference from Scripture.  Is it meant, the question has been asked, that the Resurrection on the Third Day is similarly a Scriptural inference?  But surely we have no right to say that the value of Christ’s death was simply determined for the early Christians by the Old Testament.  Its value was determined by the Resurrection.  It was also confirmed by the Scripture.  But the religious value could not be founded on the Scripture in the absence of the Resurrection.  Similarly, the Resurrection on the Third Day is, as the subsequent list of Appearances suggests, primarily an apostolic testimony, and subordinately a Scriptural suggestion.  Indeed the difficulty of ascertaining any evidence from the Old Testament upon which to base the Resurrection of the Messiah on the Third Day, of itself disposes critics to admit that the Third Day must rest upon some other foundation, and that the connection with prophecy was an afterthought. [K. Lake, p. 30.]

      Moreover, S. Paul is here delivering a tradition: “I delivered unto you that which I also received.”  What he says of the Resurrection is not a Scriptural exposition, but a tradition from the witnesses; Scripture may confirm the tradition, but did not create it. [Cf. Loofs, p. 10.]

      Undoubtedly this relation of the Death and Resurrection of Christ to the ancient Scriptures involves large principles as to the religious development of mankind.  If Israel was providentially entrusted with certain religious conceptions which find their complete realisation in Christianity, it would be natural that hints, at least, of Redemption and Resurrection should occur in the sacred writings.  It ought to be quite obvious that such hints can only be employed as an argument against the historic occurrences by those who maintain a rationalistic theory of Christian origins.

      3. The mention of the Third Day can never be rightly considered as a bare inference from Scripture statements.  The early date at which this tradition was produced is alone decisive of this point.  A list published within three years of the event could scarcely invent the date and impose it on the tradition.  It has been truly said that this mention of the Third Day suggests chronological security, and establishes a historical reality.  It also leads us naturally to the list of the Appearances which confirm the same reality in another aspect. [Bachmann, p^. 435.]

        ΙΙΙ.  Our third division of this analysis is concerned with the witnesses.

      1. And first as to their order.  This is undoubtedly chronological.  It is not said that the first Appearance among the apostles was to S. Peter; but he is mentioned first.  And that the following Appearances are in order of time is shown by the language—“then to the Twelve; then he appeared to above 500 ... then ... to James; then to all the apostles.”  Compare verse 23 – “each in his own order: Christ the first fruits; then they that are Christ’s at His coming.  Then cometh the end.”  S. Augustine indeed suggests that the reason why S. Paul does not say “He was seen first of Kephas” is because it would be inconsistent with the fact that our Lord appeared first to the women. [“De Consensu Εvv.”  iii.  71 and 85.]  But whether S. Paul knew of the Appearance to the women we cannot tell.

      2. Next, the number of the Appearances.

        It is remarkable that while S. Matthew only records two Appearances (that to the women and that to the Eleven), and S. Luke three (that to Peter, that to the two disciples, and that to the Eleven), and even S. John, including the Appendix, only four: St. Paul’s summary gives five Appearances to the senior apostles besides that to himself. [Cf. Loofs.]  And yet S. Paul’s list is by many years the earlier.  We remind ourselves that it was probably composed between 31 and 34; if we are correct in assuming the unity of the list.  In any case a list, recorded at least some twenty years before the earliest of the Gospels, is more extensive than any of the later narratives.  This is suggestive of later restraint.

      3. Then again the list is evidently official.  The character of the witnesses is that they are the apostolic representatives of the community.  Is it fanciful to see a connection with S. Peter’s idea of an apostle as fundamentally a witness of the Resurrection?  We may safely say that the apostles were included within the 500.  If so, the evidence is in every case official.  This, in itself, would explain the omission of the women.  They were not constituted official representatives of the community.  Accordingly, S. John, who gives the Appearance to S. Mary Magdalene, does not include her in the enumeration. [Cf. S. John 21:14.]  It is, of course, quite possible that S. Paul had never heard of S. Mary Magdalene.  But S. Peter would require no introduction to the Corinthian Church, or indeed anywhere in Christendom; but more especially when the claim “I am of Kephas” had been unduly emphatic.

      And S. James, the Lord’s brother, head of the Church at Jerusalem, stood in every way personally and officially, as one of the greatest authorities in Christendom.

      An official record of the Mother Church would naturally make much of the testimony of S. Peter and S. James.

      4. As to the locality where these five Appearances occurred, there is nothing in the list to help us.  It is the record of the community at Jerusalem, but not necessarily of experiences happening exclusively there.  That Jerusalem should be one of the localities is a natural suggestion for a Jerusalem official record.  But nothing can be said for certain, except that Galilaean experiences may quite naturally be included.  The general belief is that the Appearance to the 500 happened there.  This is the general belief, partly on the ground that the collection of so large a number of disciples would be easier in Galilee; but whatever be the probability of this suggestion, there is no certainty about it. [Cf. B. Chase in “Camb. Theol. Essays,” p. 396.]  Beyschlag thinks that the Appearances to Peter and to the Twelve certainly, and apparently also that to all the apostles, are a Jerusalem series; while that to the 500 and more, and that to St. James are Galilaean; because our Lord had not probably so many disciples in Jerusalem, and S. James had his home in Galilee. [In “Stud. und Krit.,” 1899, p. 529.]

        IV.  Next as to the five Appearances separately.

      1. “He appeared to Cephas.”

      As S. Paul’s list assigns to S. Peter the privilege of being the first apostle who received the Risen Lord, S. Luke’s Gospel also does the same.

      Whether the text in S. Luke be read in the ordinary form of an Appearance to the two disciples at Emmaus, and another separate Appearance to S. Peter; [S. Luke 24:34.] or whether the text be read, as in Codex Bezae, identifying the unnamed Emmaus disciple with S. Peter, in neither case is it conclusive that S. Paul did not know the Emmaus narrative.  He may not have known of it.  But the mention of S. Peter by himself is easily explicable from his official importance.  If the ordinary reading of the text be accepted, is there anything in the narrative to show that the Appearance to S. Peter followed that at Emmaus?  May it not have preceded? [Resch, “Paulinismus,” p. 366.]

      2. “Then to the Twelve.”  It is generally said that this was a technical phrase, [E.g. Godet, in loc.] not designed to indicate the exact number present, but the body officially so-called.  The official title of the apostolic body is still preserved, notwithstanding Judas’ suicide: so that there was no need for the Vulgate correction, undecim.  Nor is there any need to distinguish between the Appearance to the Ten, in the absence of S. Thomas, or to the Eleven a week later.  Both these may well be included in the official designation of the Twelve.  On the other hand, both the existing ending of S. Mark, [16:14.] and S. Matthew, [28:16.] and S. Luke, [24:33.] speak of the Eleven disciples.  S. John speaks of the Twelve, e.g. “Thomas, one of the Twelve.” [20:24.]  S. Luke then agrees with S. Paul in setting together the Appearance to Peter and that to the apostolic body; but differs from S. Paul in calling them the Eleven (which, numerically, on that occasion, according to S. John, they were not) rather than the Twelve (which officially they were).

      3. “Then He appeared to above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain until now, but some are fallen asleep.”

      Unless criticism is disposed to locate this Appearance in Jerusalem it ought never to have objected, against the five hundred, the one hundred and twenty of Acts 1:15.  It seems almost certain that this Appearance must be located in Galilee.  Is this the meeting anticipated in the promise that He would go before them into Galilee?  If the gathering happened in the northern province no difficulty can exist from the numerical point of view.  Our Lord may well have had a far greater number of adherents there.  And certainly the manifestation to so large a number, in which the apostles must have been included, would place this occurrence in the front rank of the evidence.

      Can this Appearance to the five hundred and more be identified with any Gospel narrative?  This has been both affirmed and denied.

      Its identity with the Appearance on a mountain in Galilee of S. Matthew (28:16–20) has been maintained by many.  Bishop Chase holds that “though the identification of the two Appearances cannot be proved, there is much to be said in favour,” “and nothing, so far as he can see, against the supposition.” [Bishop Chase, “Cambridge Theological Essays,” p. 396–7.  Resch thinks the identification “not impossible,” “Paulinismus,” p. 367.]  Bishop Gore supports the identification.

        On the other hand, among recent commentators on Corinthians, Cornely denies the identity, and Bachmann does the same.

      We know too little, however, to feel quite secure.  There are certainly difficulties.  For while in S. Paul it is an appearance before more than five hundred persons; in S. Matthew we can only infer that any one was present besides the apostles from the sentence, “but some doubted.”  Moreover, S. Paul can appeal to more than five hundred who believed: S. Matthew admits the presence of some who doubted.  But the appeal to five hundred believing, without acknowledging that some doubted, would perhaps be a scarcely accurate use of the evidence.  The identification can probably never be more than a conjecture. [Bachmann rejects it.  1 Korintherbrief, p. 437 n.]

      The Appearance to the more than five hundred suggested to S. Paul the comment that the majority of these witnesses were still living when he incorporated the tradition in his Epistle.  At the date of writing, the list was not a record of persons who could not be approached.  The number of living witnesses was impressive.  A German critic [Arnold Meyer.] has applied the methods of statistics to S. Paul’s assertion, to ascertain whether “the greater part” of five hundred persons would on an average probably survive after such an interval.  It does not appear that S. Paul’s statement is disturbed by the calculations.

      4. “Then He appeared to James.”  Considering the commonness of the name, the person here alluded to must have been a very distinguished individual.  At the time when S. Paul was writing the one bearer of this name who stood out prominently in Christendom was James, the Lord’s brother, head of the Church at Jerusalem.  A special value attached to the testimony of S. James; owing to the fact that he was not one of the Twelve, and that the Lord’s brethren, doubtless including S. James, were totally unable to realise the true character of Christ’s personality and mission while He was on earth. [Cf. S. Mark 3:21; S. John 7:5.]  They habitually stood aloof, and occasionally even interfered.  However, after the Ascension, the historian groups together in the Christian community the apostles with the holy women, and the mother of the Lord, “and with His brethren.”  S. James in particular is found presiding over the Jerusalem Church within a few years of the Ascension; and there he continues during the whole course of the narrative.  That which changed him from an opponent to a disciple is contained in the sentence “then He appeared to James.”  The whole history of a spiritual conflict and of an intellectual conversion lies behind these words.  And if the history is not revealed to us, we may be certain it was known to the writer of this sentence.  The facts were easily ascertainable by his contemporaries; and his long tenure of office in Jerusalem carried his living witness down to a still later generation.

      S. Paul undoubtedly derived this information direct from S. James himself during the fortnight’s visit to Jerusalem (Gal. 1:18).  “It is surely impossible to doubt that during the fortnight spent at Jerusalem he received from those two primary witnesses Kephas and James, whom alone he mentions by name among those who had seen the Lord, the facts which he records as to the Resurrection itself.” [“Cambridge Theol. Essays,” p. 392.]  There is quite especial significance in the testimony which S. Paul heard from S. James as to our Lord’s Resurrection.  James, as the brother of the Lord and as head of the Jerusalem Mother-Church, had for foreign Churches an authority not inferior to that of the Twelve.  Moreover his testimony had especial value from the circumstances of his previous unbelief; while the deep sanctity of his character profoundly impressed his contemporaries.

      The Appearance to S. James is mentioned here only in the N.T.  There is, however, an extra-canonical account of it in the fragment of the Gospel of the Hebrews given by S. Jerome. [De Vir. Illust. 2.]  If the chronological order is observed and if the Appearance to the five hundred took place in Galilee, it would seem clear that the Appearance to S. James did not occur on Easter Day.  Would it not naturally belong to Galilee?

        5. “Then to all the apostles.”  The title apostle is here used in its wider meaning.  “S. Paul never confines the term απόστολοι to the Twelve (although this restricted meaning appears elsewhere in the NT.), and he here distinguishes clearly an Appearance to Twelve from an Appearance to the apostles.  The manifestations in this list being set down in chronological order, it is not fanciful to identify the incident to which S. Paul refers here with the manifestation of Christ before the Ascension.” [“Church Q. Review,” Jan., 1906, p. 330.]

      The Appearance to all the apostles is considered by some identical with that in the Acts which terminated in the Ascension.

      6. It remains to compare the Appearance to S. Paul with those to the earlier apostles.  It is clear that S. Paul considered the nature of his experience to be identical in character with the experience of the other apostles.  Now this is a fact which it is obviously possible to utilise in opposite ways.  Either it will be said that S. Paul’s theology and the accounts of his conversion show that anything like material solidity of the Appearance at Damascus is incredible: and therefore it will be inferred that the Appearances to the earlier apostles must have been correspondingly shadowy and unsubstantial.  Or else it will be possible to invert the argument, and to urge that since the Appearances to the earlier apostles were evidently of a solid and tangible nature, that to S. Paul near Damascus must have been of a similar kind.

      No adequate answer to this can be given without a full discussion of S. Paul’s conception of the Risen Body.  But we do not believe the accounts of his conversion exclude the idea that S. Paul “saw anything of the nature of a material form.” [K. Lake,  p. 34.]  Bachmann argues that the term “He appeared” (ώφθη) can only signify actual assurance of bodily Resurrection. [Bachmann, 1 Korintherbrief, p. 437.]

      And finally it is important to note that S. Paul’s list does not contain a single testimony to the actual Resurrection from the grave.  It is exclusively testimony to Appearances which took place after He was risen.  Like the evangelists, S. Paul’s list does not suggest that any human eye beheld Jesus rise.  It was left for an Apocryphal Gospel to invent such a scene. [Cf. “Cambridgc Theological Essays,” p. 332.]

Chapter  IX – The Personal Testimony of S. Paul to

Christ’s Resurrection

(The Documents)

      We now approach the most important because the most direct of all the evidence to the Resurrection.  S. Paul has given us not only the list of the witness of other men: he adds his personal experience.

        I.  Before we come to the testimony of his own letters we must take the record of the historian.  Of the three accounts of S. Paul’s conversion which S. Luke has given in the Acts, the first is the historian’s own narrative in the course of the events; the second is the report of a speech delivered by S. Paul in Hebrew (Acts 21:40) to the Jewish throng on the ascent to the Pretorium; the third is the report of another speech delivered by S. Paul in Greek (as is evident from Acts 26:14: I heard a voice speaking unto me and saying in the Hebrew tongue) before his accusers.

      1. The first account is connected by the historian with S. Stephen’s death, at which S. Paul was present.  Upon the martyrdom follow two results: the dispersion of believers, and the persecuting activity of Saul. [Acts 7:58; 8:3, 4–40.]  The latter is traced along the road toward Damascus.  Then follow in order, suddenly the light from heaven, the fall to the ground, the heavenly voice, S. Paul’s question and the reply, the injunction to go into the city where his duty will be told him.  The companions of S. Paul’s journey are described as standing speechless, hearing the voice, but beholding no man.  This last statement implies that S. Paul himself beheld our Lord; [Goguel.] an implication confirmed by the subsequent announcement of S. Barnabas to the Church at Jerusalem, that S. Paul “had seen the Lord in the way.” [Acts 9:27.]  Upon this follows the mission of Ananias, and the baptism of S. Paul in Damascus.

      2. The second account [Ib. 22.] is the speech, delivered in Aramaic, to the Jewish throng.  Here, after a few details as to his antecedents, education, and zeal for Judaism, S. Paul describes how, on his persecuting mission, as he drew near to Damascus, about noon, suddenly there shone from heaven a great light.  He fell to the ground, the voice, the words, are as in the first account; except that here S. Paul asks, “What shall I do, Lord?”  The effect upon his companions is differently worded; “they that were with me beheld indeed the light, but they heard not the voice of Him that spake to me.”  The sending of Ananias is also described as in the first account; but his message to S. Paul is much fuller, including the announcement of a mission to the world, and an injunction to be baptised.  It is important that S. Paul is represented in this speech as giving a much fuller account of Ananias’ words than the historian himself records.  The speech concludes with a reference to a vision experienced in Jerusalem, which is clearly distinguished as differing in kind from his experience at his conversion. [Ib. 17 ff.]

      3. The third account of the conversion is that given by S. Paul before Festus and Agrippa, evidently delivered in Greek. [Ib. 26.]  Here he describes his Pharisaic training; and appeals to Agrippa to explain why a Jew should judge Resurrection incredible.  He explains his own former antipathy to Christianity, and describes his treatment of Christians: how he voted for their death, strove to make them blaspheme against Jesus Christ and was “  exceedingly mad against them.”  Then comes the Damascus journey, the light from heaven at midday, “above the brightness of the sun,” experienced not only by himself, but also by his companions.  Not only he but they also fell to the earth.  The vision is described as his own experience.  It is not said whether his companions heard it or not.  It addressed him in the Hebrew language.  The proverbial expression “it is hard for thee to kick against the goad” is recorded here only in the three accounts.  But the sending of Ananias, mentioned in the first and second accounts, is altogether omitted here; and the words there ascribed to him are here ascribed to Christ, and are given in a form more matured, while nothing is said of S. Paul being baptised.  Here only S. Paul adds that he was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.  His speech continues with a brief account of his Gospel: that, in accordance with the Old Testament predictions, he announced “how that the Christ must suffer, and how that He first by the resurrection of the dead should proclaim light both to the people and to the Gentiles.”  At this point Festus interrupted him.

      It is memorable that on neither occasion was S. Paul allowed to bring his speech to a natural end.

      Possessing three accounts of the same event criticism naturally desires to know in what manner they are related.

      There is a closer similarity between the first and second. accounts than between any other two. [Cf. Goguel, p. 47.]  In both the first and second the manifestation is said to have come suddenly; (9:3; 22:6): in both the blinded convert is described as “led by the hand” (9:8; 22:11); in both the incident of Ananias is related (9:10 ff.; 22:12 ff.); in both S. Paul’s baptism is told.  In the first the historian connects the conversion with S. Stephen’s death; in the second S. Paul himself mentions the same: while in the third account Ananias disappears and S. Stephen is not named.

      1. The variations in detail in the three accounts have been forcibly indicated by many critics: [E.g. Baur, Zeller, Pfleiderer.] the only question is, admitting their existence, what is the reasonable inference to be drawn from them ? The principal variations are:

      (1) The effect of the Appearance upon S. Paul’s companions.  In the first account they are described as “hearing the voice, [R. V. Margin, sound.] [ακούοντες μεν της φωνης] but beholding no man.” [Acts 9.]  In the second S. Paul says “I ... heard a voice saying unto me [ήκουσα φωνης λεγούσης μοι] Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?” while of his companions S. Paul says they “beheld indeed the light, but they heard not the voice of Him that spake to me” [την δε φωνην ουκ ήκουσαν του λαλουντός μοι]. [Ib. 22:9.]  They heard the voice: they heard not the voice.  This is sometimes harmonised by the distinction observed by the historian between hearing the sound [ακούειν της φωνης] and hearing the message conveyed [ακούειν την φωνην].  In the third account S. Paul says “I heard a voice [ήκουσα φωνην] [Ib. 26:14.] saying unto me... Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?”  Zeller’s criticism on attempts to harmonise these is: “ακούειν is supposed to mean in 9 ‘hearing’; in 22 ‘understanding’; whereas in 9 it is said ακούοντες της φωνης, which in case of need might mean understanding the voice; on the contrary 22, την φωνην ουκ ήκουσαν which it is impossible to translate except as, they did not hear.” [Zeller on Acts, 1, 286.]  The real point however is, supposing a contradiction to exist, what is its bearing on the main issue of the narrative?

      (2) The second variation is in the account of Ananias.  In the first account Saul is bidden to arise and go into the city where it shall be told him what he must do.  So also in the second account.  The instruction is then left to be given by Ananias.  But in the third account the instruction is given by the Lord Himself, and no mention is made of Ananias.  The German classical scholar Blass [Acta Apostolorum] considers that the historic order is maintained in the first and second accounts: for S. Paul’s astonishment would naturally suggest that expositions of his mission were given at a later time, and by other persons.  But whatever may be thought of Blass view, we may well agree with his conclusion that it really matters very little whether Ananias actually said these words, or whether they came to S. Paul another way.  They do not affect the main issue.  The whole incident of Ananias is separable from the main event, and is indeed omitted by S. Paul in the third account.  At the same time this separability of the Ananias incident does not invalidate its historic character, or render it in the least degree uncertain.  Although it is no part of the main event, in the sense that the Appearance of the glorified Christ was in itself complete, yet it cannot be omitted without detriment to the social aspect of religion.  It has indeed been insinuated that the Ananias incident was invented to keep up appearances, and to prevent the excessive isolation of S. Paul from the older community.  But this is a criticism which has no solid basis.

      If S. Paul held, as many critics think, that the community rather than the individual is the subject of Justification, [Cf. Sanday and H., ‘Romans’] then clearly his own conversion could only be completed by his incorporation into the Body of Christ.  The work of Ananias for the converted Saul is but the social correlative to the individual experience.  But yet, of course, whether both sides of his religion should always be mentioned whenever he told the story of his conversion is another matter.

      Moreover, the work of Ananias, as representing the Christian community, gives exactly the necessary balance to S. Paul’s isolated individuality: because it supports and confirms his personal experience by the tradition of the Church, and by its knowledge of the earthly ministry of our Lord.

      (3) The variations as to the mention of S. Paul’s mission to others are certainly curious.  In the first account the mission of S. Paul is mentioned by our Lord in a dream to Ananias; [Acts 9:15.] but not by Ananias, nor by our Lord, to S. Paul himself.  In the second account Ananias makes the announcement to S. Paul. [Ib. 22:15.]  In the third account [Ib. 26:16, 17.] our Lord Himself imposes the mission upon S. Paul. Whichever of these three forms be regarded as closest to the original occurrence, it is clear that, in any case, S. Paul considered his Apostleship a direct commission from our Lord. It is not unnatural that many critics attach the highest value to the last account. [Cf. Feine, ‘N. T. Theol.’ p. 261.]

      Sabatier’s judgment on these divergencies commends itself for its sobriety.  Their explanation lies in their insignificance, [Sabatier, ‘ L’Apôtre P.’ p. 42.] says Sabatier.  They do not really affect the reality of the fact.  They belong to the circumference of the narrative.  They are concerned rather with the subjective impression which the fact is said to have made upon the bystanders than with anything else.  And the report of these impressions on S. Paul’s companions may easily have varied, because the impressions themselves may well have varied also.  If there be any relationship between revelation and receptiveness, if apprehension varies from man to man, then these external differences, these diversities on the fringe of the central fact, are primarily what a true psychology would lead us to expect.  So far from undermining the central assertion, they rather confirm it.

      “The verbal agreements,” says a critic, “are so close that the interdependence of the three is assumed by most scholars.  The account in chap. 26 is the simplest of the three, and bears marks of originality over against the others; and as it occurs in a setting whose vividness and verisimilitude are unsurpassed, it is altogether likely that the author found it in his sources, and that it constituted the original upon which, with the help of oral tradition, he wrote the other accounts.” [McGiffert, ‘Hist. Christianity Apost. Age,’ p. 120.]

      It has been observed that “from a literary point of view the writer of the Acts is singularly bold in giving, within the brief compass of his book, three accounts of the conversion, two of them forming parts of the speeches of S. Paul.  To tell and to re-tell a tale for the sake of doing so – that is, that it may be presented from different points of view – is a literary device on which none can venture but a writer conscious of great dramatic power.  And no one will maintain that the repetition of this episode in the Acts is the tour de force of a consummate artist.  Nor, again, does the supposition that the author wished to utilise the versions of the history given in different documents, even if on general grounds we accepted this account of his sources of information, explain the repetition.  The fitness of the three accounts to the several occasions is a sufficient refutation of the theory which regards them as excerpts from different writings.  The simplest explanation is, I believe, confirmed by repeated study of these three chapters of the Acts.  In the proper place in the Book S. Luke gives the circumstantial account; which he had received, perhaps, for the purpose of the history, from S. Paul himself.  In the later chapters he reproduces his remembrances, aided doubtless by his own written memoranda.” [Chase, ‘Credibility of Acts,’ p. 69.]

      Bishop Chase urges that “the variations between different accounts contained in a single book are pro tanto the sign of a truthful record.  The writer at least has not forced his materials into harmony.  The really important divergences in this case are explained by the difference between a circumstantial narrative and a rhetorical appeal.” [Ib. p. 70.]

It is hopeful to find one of the most recent critical writers fully recognising the relative unimportance of the variations; and speaking of the three accounts as “containing slightly varying details”; while “yet in the essential point there is the same impression throughout.” [Weinel, ‘S. Paul,’ p. 77, 1906.]

      A passage in the records of S. Paul’s conversion much criticised of late is the verse in the third report: “I heard a voice saying unto me in the Hebrew language, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?  It is hard for thee to kick against the goad.” [Acts 26:14.]  Some critics declare that the proverb is a Greek but not a Hebrew expression. [Blass questions it; Arnold Meyer boldly rejects it.]  Clemen even thinks that the proverb was suppressed in the first and second accounts as being unintelligible to Hebrews.  This does not explain why it was left in the third account.

      There is an interesting note of Bengel on the passage.  “Syriacum adagium notat Lightfoot.” [On Acts 9:5.  Lightfoot observes that the proverb would be, in Syriac,

קשא חו לך למכעטו לועקםא  .  It is well known that כעט signifies to kick, cf. Deut. 32:55, and 1 Sam. 2:29.  J. Lightfoot, ‘Exercitatiοns on Acts.’  Works, Vol. viii. 431.  Pitman’s Edition, 1823.]  This is only what we should expect.  It would be strange if an agricultural people had no knowledge of such a proverb.  An ox goad [םלםך] is mentioned in the Hebrew Scripture (Judges 3:31).  It occurs again in Ecclus. 38:25 “How can he get wisdom that holdeth the plough, and that glorieth in the goad, that driveth oxen ....”  It was not a very large step from this to a proverbial utterance.  And whether the use of it elsewhere among the Hebrews were discoverable or not, at any rate it could not be unintelligible to them.

      Even if the Hebrew proverbial phrases contained no such expression, it is of course possible that S. Paul, who in the speech specially notes that the communication was made to him in the Hebrew tongue, is giving a Greek equivalent for the actual phrases of the voice from heaven.  After all, does the message from heaven consist in the words or in the idea?

      At any rate, this proverb stands in the third account, which is theologically the most mature. [Cf. Goguel, p. 51.]

      The saying, “it is hard for thee to kick against the goad,” does not imply that S. Paul had suffered from misgivings, [Pfleiderer, ‘Die Entstehung des Christenthums,’ p. 35. 1905.] still less that he consciously opposed the will of God.  The ox which resents the goad has no misgivings as to the superiority of the course which it desires to pursue.  S. Paul, like the ox, was resisting the better way; he, like the ox, did not know it to be the better way.  That this interpretation is correct is confirmed by the whole drift of the Lucan narratives and by S. Paul’s distinct assertions in his letters.  His self-judgment was that he “did it ignorantly in unbelief.”  And the large majority of modern interpreters agree with this. [Cf. Feine, ‘Th. N.T.,’ p. 262.]

      The Lucan narratives leave no uncertainty as to S. Paul’s psychological condition.  The change is sudden, and wholly unexpected. [Acts 9:3, 22:6.]  S. Paul has no idea who the heavenly Person manifested can be.  The question, “Why persecutest thou Me?” has not rebuked an uneasy conscience already filled with grave suspicions.  The heavenly Person is compelled to assert His identity with Jesus of Nazareth before S. Paul can understand.  Moreover, the effect of the announcement is to leave him “trembling and astonished.” [Acts 9:6.]  Thus the whole experience finds him unprepared.  No single sentence can be fairly interpreted to contradict the general evidence of the narratives that the conversion was not the outcome of misgivings but wholly unexpected.  “I verily thought within myself that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth:” [Acts 26:9.] “it was my deliberate and conscientious conviction.” [Stevens, ‘Pauline Theology,’ p. 17.]

      2. Beyond the differences in these three accounts of S. Paul’s conversion there are certain main statements in which their agreement is complete.  The accounts agree that S. Paul fully approved the extermination of Christians; [Acts 8:1, 22:4, 26:10.] that he did not find in the Holy City sufficient scope for his persecuting zeal, and therefore extended his efforts to other places; [Acts 9:1, 22:5, 26:11.] that this was the outcome of his devotion to the law, without a shadow of a doubt or hesitation; that on the way to Damascus he believed himself to have heard the voice of the glorified Jesus; [Acts 9:4, 22:7, 26:14.] that so far from anticipating the vision, he did not know who the speaker was, until it was explained to him; [Acts 9:5, 22:8, 26:15.] in every passage S. Paul asks “Who art thou, Lord?”

      The whole impression of the incident in the three narratives of the Acts is, suddenness, unexpectedness, objectivity, convincingness.  Now, S. Luke was S. Paul’s companion.  It cannot be that this impression does not reflect S. Paul’s own belief. [Οn the three accounts in Acts of S. Paul’s conversion see Blass, ‘Acta Apostolorum’; Chase, ‘Credibility’; Knowling, ‘Testimony of S. Paul’; Wendt, ‘Αροstelgeschichte’ (1899); Clemen, ‘Paulus’; Goguel, ‘L’Αpôtre Paul et Jésus-Christ’ (1904).]

      The historian of S. Paul’s conversion is perfectly clear in his view of the objective nature of the Appearance near Damascus.  He reports a number of dreams and visions, but distinguishes them with remarkable clearness from this experience of S. Paul.  And we can scarcely forget that as a physician S. Luke was necessarily a student of mental states.  He is well aware that there is an indefinable borderland in which the patent cannot distinguish accurately, at the time at least, between objective reality and subjective imagination.  He could report of S. Peter an occasion when “he wist not that it was true what was done by the angel, but thought he saw a vision.” [Acts 12:9.]  The objective nature of the Appearance was proved by the actual experience of escape from the prison.  But there is no reason to suppose that S. Luke considered that S. Peter’s vision when “he fell into a trance” and beheld “the heavens opened, and a certain vessel descending, as it were a great sheet let down by four corners upon the earth,” [Acts 10:11.] was anything else than a subjective experience or a dream.  Peter is represented as “much perplexed in himself what the vision which he had seen might mean. [Acts 10:17.]  “In a trance,” he says, “I saw a vision.” [Acts 11:5.]

      With similar care and penetration S. Luke evidently distinguishes between S. Stephen’s vision of Christ, and Christ’s appearance to S. Paul outside Damascus.  The latter is clearly thought as external in a way that the former is not.  No suggestion of impressions shared by bystanders occurs       in S. Stephen’s vision.  So when S. Luke records of S. Paul that the “night following, the Lord stood by him, and said, be of good cheer,” [Acts 23:11.] this again is clearly an example of a dream; not of an outward manifestation like the Damascus experience.

      II.  From the historian’s report we pass to S. Paul’s own letters.  It must be owned that what we find is at first disappointing.  In all the apostle’s courageous self-revealing it is strange that he has not given us any account of his own conversion.  That it must have held a frequent place in his mission preaching seems certain.

      1. Its absence from the Epistles to the Corinthians seems only accountable on the supposition that they had heard it already from his own lips.  It would have been so natural to introduce it in his great instruction on the Resurrection.  Introduce it, of course, he does: but only in the brief sentence, “Last of all He appeared to me also.”  It is really on reflection very striking to observe how S. Paul here subordinates his personal experience to the witness of the elder apostles; how clearly he sees things in proportion, and sets his own evidence in its historic place after theirs.  There is nothing obtrusive or self-assertive.  Only, behind this brief mention must lie his converts’ familiarity with the facts.

      2. Another reference is in the words “Am I not an apostle? have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” [1 Cor. 9:1.]  It may be considered practically certain that whether S. Paul had seen Jesus during the ministry or not, that is not the experience contemplated here. [So Pfleiderer, ‘Urchristentum,’ i. 60.]  The appeal is certainly to a seeing in which the apostleship was conferred upon him. [Sabatier, ‘L’Αρôtre P.,’ p. 45.]  The occasion must be the hour of his conversion.  And the importance of this is considerable.  It has been questioned whether the Acts describes S. Paul as seeing a visible manifestation of our Lord.  That he saw a splendour of light, that he heard a voice, are both asserted.  But that he saw a person can only be inferred indirectly from the experience of his companions who are described as “hearing the voice, but beholding no man” (Acts 9:7).

      However, that this indirect inference is correct is clear from the passage under consideration: “Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?”  And it is deeply significant that this “seeing” Jesus is to S. Paul the ground of his apostolic mission.  It was a “seeing” as real and as objective as any seeing experienced by Peter and the other apostles.  S. Paul has been as directly commissioned by our Lord in person as any other apostle.  All this throws great light on S. Paul’s conviction of the objective character of the Damascus Appearance of Christ.

      3. There is a third reference in the Galatians, where the peculiar method of his reception of the Gospel is explained.  “I make known to you, brethren, as touching the Gospel which was preached by me, that it is not after man.  For neither did I receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came to me through revelation of Jesus Christ.” [Gal. 1:11, 12.]

      S. Paul affirms that his doctrine is not “after man” (κατα άνθρωπον); not of merely human character.  And the reason is that it is not of merely human origin.  He did not receive it from man (παρα ανθρώπου).  It came to him direct from the highest of sources, “through revelation of Jesus Christ.”  And to explain the circumstances under which he received it, S. Paul gives the Galatians a brief autobiographical account, describing his intellectual and religious condition at the period when this revelation came.  “For ye have heard of my manner of life in time past in the Jews’ religion; how that beyond measure I persecuted the Church of God, and made havock of it: and I advanced in the Jews’ religion beyond many of mine own age among my countrymen, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers.” [Gal. 1:13, 14.]

      S. Paul represents himself as surpassing his Jewish contemporaries in devotion to Judaism.  His whole heart and energies were concentrated in loyal adherence to the traditions of his fathers.  His view of the Church was that its suppression was a sacred duty.  He opposed it with all his force, and was most successful in his destructive labours.

      There is not the shadow of a hint that doubt or misgiving as to the nature of the Church, or the rectitude of his persecuting zeal, ever disturbed his mind during that critical period.  On the contrary, the picture which he has drawn represents an undivided purpose, enthusiasm for the one religion manifested in suppression of the other.  Without hesitation, without uncertainty, he acts just as a man would act if convinced of the truth of Israel and the falsity of Christianity.  “But,” he continues, when it was the good pleasure of God, Who ... called me through His grace, to reveal His Son in me ... I conferred not with flesh and blood.”

      The implication obviously is that he was absorbed in his activities against the Church until the hour of his conversion.  The change from the one religion to the other was clearly abrupt.  The notion of a long period of suspense and intellectual struggle, terminating ultimately in exchange of faith, is absolutely foreign to S. Paul’s self-consciousness.  His conversion was unforeseen; by himself above all.  It was an act of God.  The Divine grace which originally set him in the confines of Israel now transferred him to the Christian Church.  The general drift of the passage conveys the idea of receptivity on the part of S. Paul, and action on the part of God.  His conversion is the work of force exerted from without and from above.

      That the reference is to his conversion is clear, and is indirectly confirmed by the closing words of the section: “And again I returned to Damascus.”  Thus S. Paul identifies the experience with a definite locality; one, moreover, which had not been previously mentioned in the letter.  This casual allusion to Damascus suggests that the Galatians were familiar with the facts of S. Paul’s conversion, and could fill in the details for themselves.

      This Galatian passage includes indeed the statement, “When it was the good pleasure of God ... to reveal His Son in me”; and critics have at times inferred that the revelation to S. Paul was therefore purely inward and subjective.

      Certainly S. Paul here asserts the inward character of the revelation of Christ.  We ought not to explain “in me” as if it was “to me.”  The Damascus experience was an illumination within the innermost depths of his being.  It would be indeed difficult to exaggerate the vastness of this inward revelation.  But this inward character of Christ’s revelation to S. Paul does not contradict the outward reality of the Appearances.  Outward and inward revelations are correlative not contradictory.  It was the outward which created the inward.  The objective reality explains the subjective impression.  The outward revelation was the condition of the inward; essential to it, yet valueless without it.  The outer revelation separated from the inward would have left S. Paul much in the same spiritual state as the companions of his journey.  But this does not mean that the revelation within can dispense with the appeal from without.  It is gratifying to note that certain critics of the negative school acknowledge that S. Paul’s expression in this place “by no means necessarily contradicts the external character of the Appearances.” [Meyer, ‘Auferstehung,’ p. 186.]  “It would be a serious mistake to infer from the passage,” says another, [Goguel, p. 82.  Cf. Sabatier, p. 44.] “that the Appearances of the Risen Christ constituted merely a psychological and subjective phenomenon.”

      So explained, the words “to reveal His Son in me,” agree with the entire drift of the passage.

      Indeed this Galatian passage ought never to have been adduced as if it emphasised inward reflection to the exclusion of outward revelation.  Perception, as Mill pointed out long ago, consists in observation and inference.  “In almost every act of our perceiving faculties, observation and inference are intimately blended.  What we are said to observe is usually a compound result of which one-tenth may be observation and the remaining nine-tenths inference.” [Mill’s ‘Logic,’ ii. 182.]

      S. Paul’s Gospel was partly revelation, partly reflection on the same.  The revelation was that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ.  This revelation was the experience at his conversion.  But it does not follow that the entire system of his teaching was also at the same time reached.  That was a matter of reflection. [Steven, ‘Pauline Theol.,’ 73.]

      4. To these may be added a later utterance from the Pastoral Epistles where the apostle humbly expresses his thankfulness at having been allowed to work for Christ.  “I thank Him that enabled me, even Christ Jesus our Lord, for that He counted me faithful, appointing me to His service; though I was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: howbeit I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.” [1 Tim. 1:12–13.]  Here the one extenuating feature in his opposition to the Church is that it was conscientious.  Could S. Paul have written the words, “I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief,” if he had been torn by dreadful doubts and divided in mind which religion was the true?

      The sentiments of this passage harmonise completely with those ascribed to S. Paul in the third account of his conversion in the Acts.  “I verily thought with myself, that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth.” [Acts 26:9.]

      III.  If the characteristics of S. Paul’s conversion in the Acts and in his own Epistles be compared together, two considerations immediately strike us.  The one is their general and substantial agreement; the other their complete independence.  Certainly from whatever source the historian derived his narratives of the conversion, he could not have been much assisted by the fragmentary allusions of S. Paul’s letters.  Was S. Luke familiar with these letters?  Sabatier thinks not.  But even if he knew them, they could not tell him the details of the conversion.  Yet the Epistles supplement what the Acts narrate.  They confirm the general features of the conversion: its suddenness, its externality, the absence of misgiving and doubt, the inward illumination.

Chapter  X – Non-Christian Interpretations of S. Paul’s Conversion

      At this point it may be advisable to recall in outline the history of non-Christian interpretation of the conversion of S. Paul.

      1. It is natural to begin with Baur, the founder of the Tubingen critical school, whose influence was certainly second to none.  Writing in 1845, Baur attacked the problem, Whether the appearance of Jesus to S. Paul is to be considered as an external or an internal occurrence?  [Baur, ‘Paul,’ i. 65.]  Baur’s main maxim is that S. Paul being the only witness for the objective reality of the Appearance, his testimony shows merely that he believed that he saw.  But we cannot get beyond his subjective belief to an assurance of its objective reality.  “However firmly the apostle may have believed that he saw the form of Jesus actually and, as it were, externally before him, his testimony extends merely to what he believed he saw.” [Ib. p. 67.]  What is certain is the apostle’s belief that Jesus, after He had appeared to the apostles and the other believers, so at last had visibly manifested Himself to him.  But if there is no certainty of the objective nature of the Appearance, is there any objective certainty about the words which S. Paul believed he heard spoken?  To this question Baur replies that if we had only the first account in the Acts (9), which says that S. Paul’s companions also heard the voice, we should answer in the affirmative; but since a later account (22:9) says that they did not hear it, our answer will not be on documentary but on psychological grounds.  “Now,” says Baur – passing from his assertion that the objective Appearance is critically uncertain to an assertion that it was certainly not objective “there can be no doubt that, just as little as the Appearance of Jesus was a real and outward one, so little could the words which Paul thought he heard have been outwardly audible.  As he believed that he saw Jesus without an outward visible objective form of Jesus being there, so he might believe that he heard words which were for him only and not for others, that is to say, not outwardly and objectively audible.  This connection between seeing and hearing can be very well explained on psychological grounds.” [Baur, ‘Paul.’ i. 67.]  Words, suggests Baur, what are they but the clothes of ideas?  The imagined becomes the seen, and the seen becomes the heard.  He then ventures on the further proposition that the historian’s assertion that the Appearance had any effect on S. Paul’s companions was a legendary inference from the experience of S. Paul.  Since S. Paul himself was similarly affected, it was natural to suppose that an objective Appearance could not altogether be without effect on the companions of the person so affected.

      In propounding this theory, Baur set aside the older rationalistic contention that a flash of lightning suddenly struck the apostle, and laid him and his companions senseless on the ground.  This, says Baur decisively, “is really mere hypothesis; and as it not only has no foundation in the text, but is also in manifest contradiction with the meaning of the author, we shall make no further mention of it here.” [Ib. p. 68.]

      Baur’s emphatic rejection of the rationalistic view undoubtedly, owing to his great influence, did much to render such theories obsolete.

      It was the fortune of Baur to live sufficiently long to feel the hopeless inadequacy of his own subjective explanation of S. Paul’s conversion.  While in his earlier work [1845] Baur wrote, “who can venture to say that such a change in the religious and spiritual life of the apostle may not have been developed from his inner life in a simply natural manner? or who will venture to make the assertion that even the most sudden transition from one extreme to another lies outside the pale of psychological possibility?” – in his later work [1853] he wrote in a very different strain: “We cannot call his conversion, his sudden transformation from the most vehement opponent of Christianity into its boldest preacher, anything but a miracle; and the miracle appears all the greater when we remember that in this revulsion of his consciousness he broke through the barriers of Judaism, and ran out of the particularism of Judaism into the universal idea of Christianity.  Yet, great as this miracle is, it can only be conceived as a spiritual process; and this implies that some step of transition was not wanting from the one extreme to the other.  It is true that no analysis, either psychological or dialectical, can detect the inner secret of the act in which God revealed His Son in him.” [Baur, “Ch. Hist. of the first three Centuries,’ i. 47.]

      2. This last sentence of Baur created a perfect panic in the German critical circles.  Did the head of the Tübingen school really mean to abandon the attempt to solve the problem of S. Paul’s conversion?  But to leave the problem unsolved was to leave an opening for the possible return of the supernatural.  Accordingly many arose to achieve what Baur despaired of achieving.  One of the ablest of these was Holster, who wrote a very remarkable analysis, philosophical, psychological, critical, of the incident outside Damascus.  It was far more searching and complete than the work of Baur.  Taking Baur’s admission of failure as his text, Holsten took refuge in Baur’s earlier maxim that S. Paul’s testimony is only proof of all he believed that he saw; and that we cannot pass from subjective certainty to objective reality.  Then Holsten marshalled all the considerations of the apostle’s temperament, education, contemporary notions, to support the theory of subjective vision.

      Nevertheless Holsten admitted that S. Paul would not have accepted this explanation of his own experience.  That S. Paul believed in the objective reality of his vision of Christ, is, says Holsten, indisputable.  The critical problem is whether S. Paul’s own subjective belief was objectively true.  Holsten also acknowledged that the Acts of the Apostles is fully aware of the distinction, indeed sharply distinguishes, [‘Zum Evangelium des Paulus und der P.,’ p. 33.] between physical and visionary reality: and while it considers all the later appearances of Christ to S. Paul as merely visions, it considers the appearance outside Damascus not as visionary but as physical reality.

      The theories of Baur and Holsten were criticised again and rejected by the great expositor Meyer, on the ground of their complete departure from the data of the New Testament.

      “The conversion of Saul,” says Meyer, “does not appear (on an accurate consideration of the three narratives, which agree in the main points), to have had the way psychologically prepared for it by scruples of conscience as to his persecuting proceedings.  On the contrary, Luke represents it in the history at one passage and Paul himself in his speeches [22 and 26; cf Gal. 1:14, 15, Phil. 3:12.] as in direct and immediate contrast to his vehement persecuting zeal, amidst which he was all of a sudden intellectually arrested by the miraculous fact from without... .

      “Moreover, previous scruples and increased struggles are a priori in the case of a character so pure (at this time only erring), firm, and ardently devoted as he also afterwards continued to be, extremely improbable: he saw in the destruction of the Christian Church only a fulfillment of duty and a meritorious service for the glory of Jehovah. [22:3; cf. Gal. 1:14, Phil. 3:6; Meyer, Acts 9. ed. iv. tr.]

      Meyer further affirms that the critical school of Baur started from the postulates of pantheistic rationalism, and the negation of a miracle.

      “In consequence of this, indeed, they cannot prove the conversion of Paul otherwise than under the notion of an immanent process of his individual mental life.” [Meyer, Acts 9.]

      4. After the criticisms of Baur and Holsten came the negative labours of Strauss.

      Strauss’s view of S. Paul’s conversion is as follows: We are asked to “think of the excitement into which he, the zealot for the hereditary institutions of Judaism (Gal. 1:14), must have been brought by the threatening progress of the growing Christianity.  He saw, at that time, what he held most dear and most holy endangered; a spiritual tendency appeared to be spreading unchecked, making of secondary consideration precisely that which was to him the most important thing of all, the strict observance of all Jewish laws and customs, and which opposed in the most hostile manner that party especially to which he had attached himself with all the fiery zeal of his nature.  Now we might indeed suppose that out of such mental emotions, a visionary Moses or Elias might at last have started rather than an Appearance of Christ; but only when the other side of the question is left out of consideration.  The result showed that the satisfaction which Paul thought to find in his Pharisaic zeal for righteousness was not of a tranquilising character.  This was evident, even at that time, from the passionate disquietude, the zealous precipitancy of his conduct.  On the different occasions on which he came in contact with the new believers in the Messiah, when first, in the character, as we must suppose, of a disputatious dialectician as he was, he argued with them (cf. Acts 9:29), then entered their assemblies, haled them away prisoners, and helped to bring them to trial, he could not fail to find himself on a disadvantageous footing with them in this respect.  The fact on which they relied, on which they built the whole of their faith as differing from their hereditary Judaism, was the Resurrection of Jesus.  Had he been a Sadducee it would have been easy for him to combat this asserted fact, for the Sadducees recognised no resurrection whatever (Acts 23:7).  But Paul was a Pharisee, believed therefore in the resurrection, not indeed to happen until the end of time; but that in a particular case, the case of a holy man, it might have happened exceptionally even earlier – this supposition from the point of view of Jewish notions at that time created no difficulty.  He must, therefore, in the case of Jesus, have relied principally upon the fact that it could not be assumed to have happened to him, because he was not a holy man, but on the contrary, a false teacher, an impostor.  But in the presence of the believers in Jesus, this may have become every day more doubtful to him.  They considered it not only publicly honourable to be as convinced of His resurrection as they were of their own life, but they showed also a state of mind, a quiet peace, a tranquil cheerfulness, even under suffering, which put to shame the restless and joyless zeal of their persecutor.  Could He have been a false teacher, who had adherents such as these? could that have been a mendacious pretence which gave such rest and serenity?  On the one hand he saw the new sect, in spite of all persecutions, nay, in consequence of them, extending their influence wider and wider around them; on the other, as their persecutor, he felt that inward tranquility growing less and less which he could observe in so many ways in the persecuted.  We cannot therefore be surprised if in hours of despondency and inward unhappiness he put to himself the question: Who, after all, is right, thou or the crucified Galilean about whom these men are so enthusiastic?  And when he had once got as far as this, the result, with his bodily and mental characteristics, naturally followed in an ecstasy in which the very same Christ, who up to this time he had so passionately persecuted, appeared to him in all the glory of which his adherents spoke so much, showed him the perversity and folly of his conduct, and called him to come over to His service.” [Strauss, ‘New Life of Jesus,’ i. 419, 420 (1865).]

      “ In the passage 1 Cor. 15:8 all that he says of himself is that the Risen Christ had appeared or been made visible to him.  In another passage he asks, Did I not see Jesus Christ our Lord? (1 Cor. 9:1), where without doubt he means the same appearance.  “In that passage, lastly, in which he enters more fully than elsewhere upon the description of all that he has done and that had happened to him, he only says that it had pleased God (Gal. 1:13–17) to reveal His Son in him that he might preach Him among the heathen.  Taking these different expressions together, we have on the one hand the conviction of the apostle that he had seen Jesus, and we may add this much from the narrative in the Acts, that he thought he had heard Him, heard words proceeding from His lips.  Paul thought that on other occasions also it had been vouchsafed to him to hear words of this kind from the upper regions.  It cannot be the appearance we are now speaking of, but must have been another subsequently, when in the 2nd Epistle to the Corinthians (12:1 ff.) he speaks of a man who fourteen years before was caught up into the third heaven.... [Strauss, ‘New Life,’ i. 416.]  “But when he adds whether in the Lord, he cannot tell ... we see that he was not without consciousness of the difficulty of establishing the real nature of the fact in appearances of the kind.  And when, on the other hand, in ... Galatians he describes what he had seen and done as the effect of revelation of God in him, he lays the main stress on the internal element, conscious of the seeing and hearing of Christ as accompanied by the rising up within his mind of the true kinship of Him as the Son of God.  It is certain that in doing so he considered the ascended Christ as really and externally present, the appearance as in the full sense an objective one; but he is far from saying anything to prevent us (as certain pictures in the narrative of the Acts might do, if we were obliged to take them in the strictly historical sense) from being of a different opinion, and considering the appearance as one merely subjective, as a part of the inward life of the soul.” [Ib. 417.]

      This theory of Strauss was rejected by Hermann Fichte [‘Vermischte Schriften,’ ii. 164.] on the following grounds.  First, that while S. Paul had certainly heard of the disciples’ belief in our Lord’s Resurrection, prior to his own conversion, and had witnessed the effect of their belief; yet even if these facts had awakened doubt, it is contrary to all the laws of psychology on the origin of visions, that they should develop out of a condition of doubtful misgivings.  Secondly, that all the conditions were absent for producing a subjective vision of Christ.  Such visions require a previous conception of Christ and also belief in Him.  It is on the ground of existing faith, and not in its absence, that such visions could arise.  But none of this existed in the case of S. Paul.  And, thirdly, the inferences of Strauss are in direct contradiction [‘Vermischte Schriften,’ ii. 166.] to the self-consciousness of S. Paul as attested not only by the Acts, but by his own Epistles.  His own representation of his mental state at the period is that of conscious rectitude; undisturbed by the least shadow of doubt that in suppressing the advocates of the Christian faith he is doing God’s will.

      Strauss’s account of S. Paul’s conversion moves with serene indifference over the fact of the Pauline Epistles.  The clearness of the picture is indisputable; but it is wholly unrelated to history.  The idea that S. Paul, being a Pharisee, could easily credit the accelerated resurrection of a particularly holy man, simply ignores the entire problem that Jesus claimed to be the Messiah; that S. Paul understood this; and that the reconciliation of that claim with the Crucifixion was for a Pharisee inconceivably difficult.  The faith and firmness of the believers in Jesus was certainly equalled by the faith and firmness of S. Paul in the opposite belief.  Their serenity was contrasted with his lack of peace; but the inference to a religious mind was not that the fault was in his religion but rather in himself.  The annals of persecution do not suggest vacillation of the persecutor as a result of firmness in the persecuted.

      Strauss provoked a fiercer opposition than other rationalising critics.  This was probably due not only to his conclusions but also to his tone and style as a controversialist in religion.  He deserves, however, the credit of having (1) demolished the older rationalistic explanation of the grave of Christ; (2) stated, with a frankness which leaves nothing to be desired, the alternative that the Resurrection must either be explained within the limits of the natural, or else the whole supernatural Christianity must be accepted; (3) pushed relentlessly to its final result the question whether he and the school to which he belongs had any claim whatever to the name of Christian, and acknowledged that they had not. [See Straus, ‘Old Faith and New.’]

      5. Another interpretation may be mentioned here which, although far shallower than the efforts of Strauss, has its interest as being the conversion of S. Paul according to a modern Jew.  “His nervous temperament and imaginative nature,” says Graetz, “dispelled all doubts, and he believed firmly and truly that Jesus had made himself manifest to him.

      “And later he said of the vision which had appeared.  If it were in the flesh I know not, if it were supernatural I know not; God knoweth.  He was carried up beyond the third Heaven.  This is not very lucid evidence as to a fact which was actually supposed to have happened.  Legend has adorned this conversion, which was of such great importance to Christianity, in a fitting manner....  With the certainty that he had actually beheld Jesus another doubt was banished from Saul’s mind, or a different Messianic point of view was revealed to him.  Jesus certainly died, or rather was crucified, but, as He appeared to Saul, He must have risen from the dead; He must be the first who had been brought to life again, and had therefore confirmed the fact that there would be a Resurrection, which fact had been a matter of contention between the various schools.” [Graetz, ‘Hist. of the Jews,’ ii. 227.]

      6. Once more the problem was undertaken by Pfleiderer, who was, with distinct reservations, an independent disciple of Βaur [See ‘Hibbert Lectures,’ 1885, ρ. 8.  (‘Urchristenthum,’ ed. 2, 1902.]  That S. Paul “was fully convinced of the objective reality of the Appearance of Christ with which he was favoured,” was to Pfleiderer, “beyond doubt.” [Ib. p. 33.]  Yet he qualifies this by S. Paul’s words, “it pleased God to reveal His Son in me “(Gal. 1:16).  Pfleiderer does not appear to realise that inward and outward may well be supplementary and are not mutually exclusive.  He says truly enough that “those who look upon the conversion of Paul as a miracle in the strictest sense of the word, are unable, nevertheless, to dispense altogether with a psychological preparation for it; inasmuch as otherwise the conversion would have to be regarded as a direct and immediate, that is, magical act of God, in which the soul of Paul would have succumbed to an alien force: which would be a view wholly opposed to the genius of Christianity, and in direct contradiction to the apostle’s own definition of faith as an act of moral obedience.” [Pfleiderer, ‘Hibbert Lectures,’ p. 34.]  This is certainly true: but here again psychological preparation does not exclude objective appearances; nor can preparedness or receptiveness for a manifestation be made to do duty as a substitute for that manifestation.  Pfleiderer’s own theory may be called an elaboration of what he considers to be meant by the words “it is hard for thee to kick against the goad.”  This goad, what was it?  Here is Pfleiderer’s reply.

      “In what else can it have consisted than in the painful doubt as to the lawfulness of his persecutions of the Christians – in the doubt, therefore, whether the truth was really on his side, and not rather, after all, on the side of the persecuted disciples of Christ?  But how was it possible that a doubt like this should arise in the soul of the fanatical Pharisee?”  Pfleiderer answers that the persecuted Christians supplied the incentive.  Their joyful courage “necessarily affected favourably the tender soul of Paul, and pressed upon him the question whether men who could die so gladly for their faith could really be blasphemous; whether a faith which produced such heroism could be called a delusion.”  Moreover, he heard the theological defence made by Christians.  And here Pfleiderer imagines how the persecuted answered S. Paul’s objections. “If he urged ‘cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree,’ the crucified Jesus died under the curse of God; they met him with the passage of Isaiah in which there is said of the Servant of God ... He was wounded for our transgressions and smitten for our sins; the punishment was laid on Him that we might have peace, and by His wounds we are healed.  And that this significance of the death of Jesus as a vicarious means of propitiation did not fail to produce an impression on the Pharisee Paul, is in the highest degree probable, inasmuch as it certainly fell in with the prevailing view of the theology of the Pharisees, in which the unmerited sufferings of the righteous generally were regarded as an atonement for the sins of their families and their nation.”  Pfleiderer is, however, compelled by facts to follow this up with a very significant admission: “This theology, it is true, had not been in the theology of the Pharisees applied to the Messiah, because the practice of bearing and suffering generally did not find a place in their ideal of the Messiah.  But after the Christians had once given to the passages of Isaiah the Messianic interpretation, no valid objection could be brought against it from the Pharisaic standpoint.”  Thus S. Paul, as a Pharisee, is not only expected to accept the Christian interpretation of a text against his own deeply rooted conviction, to abandon an interpretation which, according to the Acts, he still retained after his conversion, but also to revise his theology into agreement with this new interpretation!  And all this chiefly because he sees the courage of the persecuted.  Is this the estimate of S. Paul’s character which his letters suggest?

      Pfleiderer then goes on to explain that S. Paul’s doubts increased.  “How heavily must this doubt weigh upon the tender conscience of Paul!  If previously, in the excitement and commotion of action in Jerusalem, he succeeded in getting rid of his doubts, now on the lonely road to Damascus they would the more irresistibly await him, and penetrate as goads his soul.  How he will have prayed for a solution of the enigma, for a satisfaction of his doubt!”  Now we are constrained to interrupt the quotation to observe that if any importance is to be attached to the documents there is not the slightest trace of this state of mind.  These prayers for the solution of the enigma are invented by the critic.  They are assuredly not discoverable in the N.T.  Pfleiderer continues: “That the crucified Jesus might be the Messiah was shown by the Scriptures; but by what sign should Paul know that he really was the Messiah?  The faith of the disciples was based on the fact that they had seen Jesus as the risen Lord who had been raised to God’s right hand; and Paul could perceive by the glorified countenance of the dying Stephen how sacred that conviction was to them.  Could this conviction be a lie or a delusion?  But if it was true, then – such must have been Paul’s inference – God Himself had taken the side of the Crucified One.... “ [Ib. p. 46.]  The next point is to assume that the image of the Crucified became more and more impressive in this particular aspect as possibly raised to God’s right hand.  “While his contending thoughts were being agitated concerning this crucial point, the image of the crucified Jesus, as Stephen had seen it at his death, presented itself with increasing distinctness prominently before Paul’s inward vision.”  It is admitted that “that image might be very unlike the Pharisaic ideal of the Messiah,” yet it is affirmed that “it had, nevertheless, unmistakable points of kinship with ideal creations of the Jewish and Hellenistic speculation, which were well known to the theologian Paul.” [‘Pfleiderer, ‘ Hibbert Lectures,’ p. 40.]

      Accordingly the conclusion is reached: “It appears to me that we are in a position to perceive fully the mental condition and circumstances from which the vision of Paul can be psychologically explained: an excitable nervous temperament, a soul which had been violently agitated and torn by the most terrible doubts;” [we can scarcely fail to observe here how the doubts have become intensified in process of description] “a most vivid phantasy, occupied with the awful scenes of persecution on the one hand, and on the other by the ideal image of the celestial Christ; in addition, the nearness of Damascus, with the urgency of a decision, the lonely stillness, the scorching and blinding heat of the desert – in fact, everything combined to produce one of those ecstatic states in which the soul believes that it sees those images and conceptions which profoundly agitate it, as if they were phenomena proceeding from the outward world.” [Ib. p. 43.]

      And yet, after all this imaginative work which seems to represent the conversion as caused by a self-generated vision, Pfleiderer ends with a quite unexpected and somewhat enigmatic reference to God as the real cause of the change: “However, whether we are satisfied with this psychologically explained vision, or prefer to regard an objective Christophany in addition as being necessary to explain the conversion of Paul, it remains in either case certain that it was God who in the soul of Paul caused a light to shine to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” [Ib. p. 43.]

      Does this mean that the vision was divinely created?  If so, it opens out towards the whole apostolic interpretation of Christ’s work.  It transfers the matter from S. Paul’s subjective belief to the realm of objective realities.

      7. This series of criticisms, from Baur to Pfleiderer, with their attempt to establish a subjective vision theory, give peculiar interest to Sabatier’s brilliant sketch, and show its especial importance.  Sabatier drew the critics back to S. Paul’s own statements.  He had no difficulty in showing that these speculative accounts owed what plausibility they possessed chiefly to their systematic neglect of S. Paul’s self-consciousness as revealed in his letters.

      “It is a point,” urged Sabatier, “of the utmost importance to observe that Paul knows absolutely nothing of any progressive stages or gradual process in his conversion to the Gospel.  He looked back to it throughout his life as a sudden overwhelming event, which surprised him in the full tide of his Judaic career, and drove him, in spite of himself, into a new channel.  He was vanquished and subdued by main force (Phil. 3:12).  He is a conquered rebel, whom God leads in triumph in face of the world (2 Cor. 2:14).  If he preaches the Gospel, he cannot make any boast of doing so; he was compelled to preach it, under a higher necessity which he had no power to resist.  There he stands: a slave in chains! (1 Cor. 9:15–18).” [Eng. transl., p. 61.]

      This, urged Sabatier, is the general impression.  And this is enhanced by special passages.  S. Paul “regards his conversion as a sudden occurrence, an event sharply defined and associated with certain external circumstances of time and place.”  The personal intervention of Jesus, the neighbourhood of Damascus, the association of the apostolic call with the manifestation of the Risen One, are all signs of the external and objective nature of the occurrence.

      Perhaps it is needless to insist further upon this point, since Baur and others acknowledge that S. Paul believed firmly in the objective character of the Appearance.  As to Baur’s contention that we cannot deduce the objective reality from the subjective belief in its reality, Sabatier replies: “Unquestionably criticism may push its demands in this way to a point at which of necessity any positive proof becomes impossible.  This style of reasoning tends to nothing less than the destruction of all historical certainty; for, in point of fact, history depends on nothing else than subjective and individual testimony.”

      To Holsten’s suggestion that S. Paul’s conversion was only one of a series of ecstatic visions, such as he mentions in 2 Cor. 12:1–9, Sabatier’s reply is effective.  He claims truly enough that the passage “shows that [S.] Paul, so far from comparing the manifestation of Christ to him at his conversion with the visions he afterwards enjoyed, laid down an essential difference between them.”  S. Paul “does violence to his feelings in making known this private aspect of his life.  At the fifth verse he is checked by this repugnance, this sacred modesty, and suddenly takes quite the opposite course.  Instead of glorying in his privileges, he will only glory in his infirmities.  The visions referred to in this passage, it would seem, he had never previously related; and just as the insults of his enemies were on the point of compelling him to do so, he checks himself and again drops the veil over these mysteries of his spiritual life.  His ecstasies and visions do not belong to his ministry, and are not for others, only for God and himself: είτε γαρ εξέστημεν, Θεω είτε σωφρονουμεν υμιν (2 Cor. 5:13).  But so far from speaking of his conversion in the manner in which he speaks of his visions, Paul shows neither reluctance nor embarrassment in describing it; it was one of the staple subjects of his preaching.”  Moreover, S. Paul had had many visions: but the Appearance at Damascus is distinctly marked off as different in kind.  For when S. Paul in the list of the witnesses wrote “last of all He appeared to me also,” this “last of all” terminates the series.  Sabatier asks: “How could this marked distinction have arisen, except from the conviction that the Appearances of the Risen Lord had a real and objective character, such as the spiritual visions of ecstasy did not possess?”

      The distinction here drawn by Sabatier between the Appearance near Damascus and the visions of S. Paul is, of course, not new; [Loofs, Beyschlag, ‘Stud. und Krit.’] but it is admirably expressed.  It deserves more attention than it has received.

      “These considerations,” Sabatier concludes, “it seems to us, deprive the vision-hypothesis of all exegetical support.  And we must not forget that the question of Saul’s conversion is not to be explained as a mere isolated fact.  It is attached to the question of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and bound up inseparably with it.  The solution we give to the former of these remarks depends upon that of the latter.  Anyone who accepts the Saviour’s Resurrection would hardly find it worth while to question His appearance to this apostle.  But the critic who, before entering on the question, is absolutely persuaded that there is no God, or that if there is, He never intervenes in human history, will doubtless set aside both facts, and would have recourse to the vision-hypothesis, were it ever so improbable.  The problem is thus carried from the field of history into that of metaphysics, whither we must not pursue it.” [Ib. p. 67.]

      8. Another, a quite recent picture of S. Paul’s conversion, is that by Weinel.  To his mind the clue to the mystery is found in “Paul’s uneasy conscience.”  “He, half a renegade, a frequent backslider, to whom the law was sin, was going to Damascus to slaughter more Christians.  He was going to bind and slay in behalf of that same law that oppressed him, whose claim he doubted;” [?] “ the law that sentenced him to death!  Deeper and deeper the iron goad entered into his soul.  What if the law were not given as a savour of life unto life?  What if after all they were right, in whose torture-twisted faces he had seen the great triumphant joy he himself lacked, and which was evidently the fruit of faith in the risen Lord?  Yes; he had experienced the ‘power of His Resurrection’ more than once in the case of these people.  If it were true!  Had the great deliverance really happened?  These martyrs had said they saw the crucified Son of Man and the heavens opened!  If only he could have positive proof of it: he with his bleeding heart sore!  His soul cried aloud to God.”

      “According to the Acts it was mid-day when Saul approached Damascus.  The land lay outstretched, dazzling in a scorching heat which hovered over the plain.  At this mysterious hour of a southern day there lay over all Nature a soft stillness which appealed strongly to the soul.  Then, all at once, all this quivering, dazzling brilliance was outshone by a blinding light from heaven!  A more than human countenance beams upon his entranced eye: everything around him is bathed in the supernatural radiance.  Christ the Risen One is at his side!  Terror, pain, and sorrow succeed one another in his soul, and a jubilant joy that such a vision is vouchsafed him.  Suddenly he feels the great thing, the wonderful thing, coming to him: Christ has taken up His abode in his heart: a new and infinite sense of strength floods all his being.  The man who a moment ago was under sentence of death, he lives, he lives for ever!  ‘I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me!  If a man is in Christ, he is a new creature.  Old things are passed away, all things are become new.’  The good in him had conquered.  With a strong hand his God had snatched him from the way of persecution.  His strong and truth-loving soul could not lose itself in lies and fanaticism.” [Weinel, ‘S. Paul,’ p. 84.]

      “What sort of vision was it in which Paul beheld the Son of God in the light out of heaven on the way to Damascus?  The answer to the question will vary according to a man’s conception of the universe.” [Ib. p. 80.]

      This description is infinitely less convincing than that, for instance, of Pfleiderer.  The analysis is more superficial.  It starts on a misconception of S. Paul’s relation to the law, and what he meant by law.  Whatever criticism may say, S. Paul never doubted the claim of Law.  His reverence for its moral ideals steadily deepened to the end of his days.  Then the whole stress is laid on the emotional effect of the martyrdoms.  But here again, neither the Acts nor the Epistles support the view that the martyrdoms awakened the least misgiving in his mind.  Then the sentiment of the poetic description of the “soft stillness” which “lay over all nature” at “this mysterious hour,” and “appealed strongly to the soul,” is inadequate to account for a tremendous intellectual and theological change.  S. Paul is reduced to a very inferior type of character.  It seems quite forgotten – at least it could not be discovered from the picture – that we were contemplating the experience of one of the greatest intellects the world has seen.  The picture is unconvincing because the intellect is not allowed its rights.  The deeply rooted Jewish traditional beliefs, ingrained into his very constitution, about the Messiah, about Death, about Crucifixion, are here all simply ignored.  The picture of S. Paul’s soul crying aloud to God for positive proof of Christ’s Resurrection: what claim has this to be viewed as history when it contradicts all the documentary evidence we possess?  If it is permissible to rewrite the documents this way, there is surely no conclusion that ingenuity may not reach.  On the other hand, Weinel distinctly recognises that this conversion was the work of God.

      All these explanations are shipwrecked ultimately on S. Paul’s own consciousness of the conversion as wrought upon him from without, and from above, independently of his wishes and against his prior convictions.

Chapter  XI – The Christian Interpretation Of S. Paul’s Conversion

      We may now attempt to analyse for ourselves the religious experience known to us as S. Paul’s conversion.  Reaction from descriptions of it as simply accounted for by self-generated visions has led Christian apologists not infrequently to maintain that it was entirely due to an objective supernatural intervention for which S. Paul was totally unprepared.  But this reaction is surely extreme.  No objective manifestation can avail without subjective preparedness.  Indeed this truth nay partly explain why the occurrence meant one thing to S. Paul and another to the companions of his journey.  The difference does not imply that the Appearance was only within.  It implies that men differ in their receptiveness and capacity for interpretation.  Preparedness then there must have been: and so far as critical writers demand it, their contention is just.  The apologists have been one-sided as well as their opponents.  There are many elements in the conversion to be considered.

      1. First may be placed S. Paul’s personal moral struggles.  It has been very commonly assumed that we possess in Romans 7 an autobiographical account of S. Paul’s moral experience in the period prior to his conversion.  There are two inquiries which this assumption raises: first, whether the passage refers to an unregenerate or a regenerate condition; and secondly, whether it relates the personal experience of S. Paul.  With regard to the first of these, the great mass of Greek and Latin expositors [See Cornely, p. 356.] alike agree in viewing it as a description of the unregenerate condition, the state of the natural man.  But if the reference be to the regenerate condition, it must in any case apply to the unregenerate also.  For if the powerlessness of moral law to get itself obeyed by its own inherent forces is the experience of the converted, it must assuredly be the experience of the unconverted also.  Indeed it may be said that since the ineffectiveness of moral law lies in the weakness of human nature, it cannot be confined to any period of human life but must apply throughout.  But it must apply more especially to the period when the weakness existed without the corresponding Christian strength.  With regard to the second inquiry, whether the passage related to S. Paul’s own struggles, it is generally felt that the contrast drawn in Romans 7 between the demands of the law and man’s inability to fulfill them is too pathetic, too searching, too personal, not to contain the utterance of personal experience.  The exceeding bitter cry in it is evidently wrung from a personal anguish; the fervour of the closing thanksgiving is evidently the expression of a personal faith.  It is generally felt that this must represent the apostle’s own experience, and that it points to a time prior to his conversion. [On the other hand see Feine, ‘Theologie d. N.T.,’ 263.]

      Here, then, it has been suggested, we find in S. Paul an inward dissatisfaction with his own religion which necessarily disposed him to look for aid elsewhere.

      Before attempting to determine the value of this suggestion we must look closer into S. Paul’s estimate of the law.  His estimate is that through the moral law comes the knowledge of sin.  It is the nature of moral injunctions that they do not strengthen the will.  Nay, prohibition increases desire.  This is not the fault of the moral ideal.  The higher it is the more certainly it produces this result.  It is a ministration of condemnation, a ministration of death.  The moral ideal is holy and good and true; but the fault lies in the weakness of mankind.  Thus the discrepancies between ideal and achievement increase.  Deliverance is impossible by mere command: for what human nature requires is not more knowledge but strength.

      Thus S. Paul expresses the profoundest reverence for the moral law.  If it does not succeed in getting itself realised, that is only because, under the existing conditions of human nature, the human response is so feeble.  Clearly, he who thinks this way will be more disposed for self-condemnation than for rejection of a law which he reveres.  It was not dissatisfaction with his religion that S. Paul felt as a Pharisee, but rather dissatisfaction with himself.  Moreover the negative inability of moral commands to secure their own fulfillment is a very different thing from the truth and power of some other opposing system.  It may dispose a man to listen: it cannot prove its worth.  Indeed it has been said that “the apparent suddenness of S. Paul’s conversion was due to the tenacity with which he held on to his Jewish faith, and his reluctance to yield to conclusions which were merely negative.” [Sanday and Headlam, ‘Romans,’ p. 187.]  But although we cannot find in S. Paul’s moral dissatisfaction the cause of his conversion to the Christian faith, it may contain a disposing element; it suggests an open mind.  It may indicate that inward preparedness which would enable him to respond to an external appeal by a moral act of self-surrender.

      2. Α second point of view is the possible effect of intellectual reflection on the contents of Christianity.  S. Paul must evidently have known a good deal of the Christian message before his conversion.  His arguments with opponents could scarcely have been few.  He must have heard their reasons, and listened to their self-defence.  He did not become a persecutor of Christians without knowing what Christians taught.  Saul the Pharisee knew that the followers of Jesus asserted His Resurrection.  What effect the thought had upon him may be impossible to ascertain: it cannot be right to say, as some have done [E.g. Beyschlag.] that it had no effect whatever.  That he did not believe the report of course is clear.  But so active and systematic a mind could scarcely fail to consider, prior to his conversion, what the theological consequences of such an assertion would be, supposing it to be true.  He could hardly fail at least to realise that a Jesus who had risen awakened very different reflections from a Jesus who remained in the grave.  Without supposing these thoughts to have exercised much conscious influence over him, they may have affected him more than he was aware.  They may have contributed to prepare him, in some degree, for the crisis which was coming. [Cf. Hοlsten, p. 48.]  But whatever was his knowledge of Christianity prior to his conversion this cannot explain the origin of his gospel; for that would be “at variance with his own self-testimony, for the express aim of his account in Gal. 1 is to show that his whole attitude to Christianity previous to the occurrence at Damascus excluded the possibility of any human influence in the forming of his gospel.” [B. Weiss ‘Bibl. Th. N.T.,’ i. 278.]

      3. Thirdly, there was the joyous courage, the religious peace of the persecuted, so strikingly contrasted with the persecutor’s own unrest.  The unearthly beauty of Stephen’s dying face, the spirituality of it all produced a violent reaction in the persecutor’s sensitive soul.  It haunted him on the journey toward Damascus, and filled him with feelings of strong revulsion against the sickening scenes of persecution in which he would be soon once more engaged.  Thus it rendered him a fit subject for the great experience.

      Certainly the episode of Stephen cannot have been without effect.  The moral impression upon Saul the Pharisee of Stephen’s faith in Jesus’ Resurrection and exaltation may be easily exaggerated.  The Pharisee knew that sincerity may be mistaken.  He was familiar with a zeal for God not according to knowledge.  But still the fact remained that Stephen certainly possessed a serene assurance of peace with God to which the Pharisee, in spite of all his passionate yearnings and efforts, was a stranger.  Whence came that peace?  Was it illusion?  The serenity of Stephen’s faith, the unearthly dignity of his death, may have produced a deep impression on one so sensitive.  But it did not prove the error of his own position nor the truth of the other.  Nor was there anything in S. Stephen’s speech to convince him.  Since the aim of that speech was to show that Israel’s habitual rejection of light only received another and a crowning illustration in their rejection of Jesus, it must have seemed to Saul an assumption of the very matter which had to be proved.  For where was the demonstration that Israel had done wrong in rejecting Jesus of Nazareth?  To such an intellect as that of Saul so situated the attempted historic parallel must have been entirely ineffective.  And S. Stephen gave no exposition of Christian principles, or grounds for their acceptance.

      As to the revulsion of feeling produced by scenes of persecution, the annals of persecution do not endorse it.  When did an inquisitor cease because of the horror of his work?  A modern believer could say that an auto-da-fé would be the death of him, but modern antipathy to inflicting suffering cannot necessarily be read back into the Pharisee of the apostolic age.

      In any case the witness of S. Paul’s self-consciousness in the Acts and Epistles is that he did it ignorantly in unbelief; that he verily thought within himself that he ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth; that he was only zealous for the traditions of his fathers; that the only difference between himself and his Jewish contemporaries lay in the extra vehemence and firmness of his zeal.  That he had misgivings and doubts caused by the martyr deaths – of this there is not in all his self-revealings the shadow of a hint.

      4. The chief obstacle to S. Paul’s conversion lay in his Jewish conception of the Christ.  This is what many rationalistic explanations of the conversion fail to understand.  They assume that transition from the Jewish to the Christian idea of Messiah could be easily made.  It becomes important, therefore, to realise what the main characteristics of the Jewish conception were.  There were numerous variations in the last two pre-Christian centuries, as the Apocalyptic Book of Enoch [Cf. Charles’ Edit. pp. 30, 31.] shows.  And distinction must be made between the Apocalyptic theories and the conceptions of the Prophets.  But if we may take Schürer’s [‘Hist. of Jewish people in the time of Christ,’ div. ii. vol. 2, ρ. 160.  Cf. Stanton, ‘Jewish and Christian Messiah.’] ‘Analysis of the Messianic Hope,’ the main features of Jewish belief appear as follows: “The Messiah was thought of as a human king and ruler, but as one endowed by God with special gifts and powers.”  The Messianic Kingdom is to be set up in the Holy Land. [Schürer, p. 168.]  For which purpose Jerusalem itself must first be renovated.  The dispersed of Israel would share in the Messianic Kingdom, and for this purpose would return to Palestine. [p. 169.]  Thus the kingdom of glory will be established in Palestine, and the Messiah will preside over it as King. [p. 170.]  And when the heathen see the quiet and peace of God’s people, they will of themselves come to reason; will praise and celebrate the only true God, and send gifts to His temple, and walk after His laws. [p. 172.]  Thus the Kingdom will become universal.  Wealth, prosperity, longevity will increase among men. [p. 173.]  And these external blessings are but results of the increased sanctity of the Kingdom of Messiah. [p. 174.]  Then the deceased Israelites will come forth out of their graves to enjoy with the living the happiness of Messiah’s reign. [p. 175.]

      Schürer raises the inquiry whether the Jewish conception included the idea of a suffering Messiah. [p. 184; iv. Ezra, 7:28–29]  A prediction in the fourth book of Ezra affirmed that the Messiah would die after reigning 400 years; but this has evidently nothing in common with the idea of an atoning death.  The whole drift of the Jewish conception would not appear to have much place for a suffering Messiah.  Yet in early Christian times the Jews admitted that the Messiah must suffer; [See Justin, ‘M. Dial.’ 68–89.] but even then atoning suffering is not recognised, and his death by crucifixion is distinctly rejected.

      Schürer’s conclusion is: “In not one of the numerous works discovered by us have we found even the slightest allusion to an atoning suffering of Messiah.  That the Jews were far from entertaining such an idea is abundantly proved by the conduct of both the disciples and opponents of Jesus.  Accordingly it may well be said that it was on the whole quite foreign to Judaism in general.” [Schürer, p. 187.  Matt. 16:22, Luke 18:34, 24:21, John 12:34.]

      With this conclusion Prof. Stanton agrees: “The idea of the Messiah’s sufferings is not found in any Jewish document up to the close of the first century.” [‘Jewish and Christian Messiah,’ p. 123.]

      It is of course difficult to be sure that any general outline of the Jewish conception of Messiah accurately represents the opinion of an individual, more particularly of an individual so exceptional in his religious gifts: but if the main features of Schürer’s view were entertained by S. Paul as a Pharisee, belief in the Crucified Jesus as the Messiah must have required the very strongest causes.  However spiritual S. Paul’s idea of the function of the Messiah might be, the kingdom of his belief must have been localised in Jerusalem.  The political element, however subordinated to the higher, could not have been left out.  His conception must have been that of a divinely appointed king of the dynasty of David, whose function was the establishment of a kingdom of glory in Palestine, having its capital at Jerusalem, no doubt religious in intention, but yet earthly in form.  Over that kingdom so established it would be the function of the Messiah to preside, and Israel would flourish in perfect fulfillment of the temple services, and in obedience to the Hebrew law, a really sanctified and holy people; while all the world of powers would be reduced to respectful submission, and would then share the blessings and privileges of Israel’s supremacy.  No doubt this conception varied from mind to mind, in proportion to the spirituality and depth of the individual Jew who believed it: but the singular mixture of material advantages with spiritual blessings, of religious fervour with national fanaticisms, probably pervaded each individual view, from the most ignorant zealot up to the most cultivated member of the chosen race.

      Now when, with these conceptions in his mind, Saul of Tarsus heard that Jesus of Nazareth was asserted to be the Christ, his whole soul revolted against the proposition. [Cf. Knowling, ‘Testimony,’ pp. 192–3.]  The idea of a suffering Messiah, suffering even to death, was during the lifetime of Jesus an inconceivable representation even to His own disciples.  It could not be accepted for an instant without abandoning the entire orthodox conception of the Messiah’s kingdom and rule.  A Christ in failure and defeat, abandoned, helpless, dead, was thereby declared not to be the Christ at all.  To the mind of S. Paul a claim that Jesus was the Christ was simply wrecked against the stubborn fact that He was dead.

      But it was not only Jesus’ death, it was the peculiar form of His death which must have been to the Pharisee unspeakably abhorrent.  It stood in flat contradiction to his whole traditional religious outlook.  We Christians have so long contemplated the Cross in the glory of the Resurrection that we easily fail to realise what that form of death must have implied to a devout and sincere Jew.  To him it could only be the emblem of Divine rejection.  The words, – “cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree” [Deut. 21:23.] – were not so easily dismissed, or held inapplicable, as certain rationalistic writers suppose.  For Christians to persuade S. Paul that the passage did not include Jesus of Nazareth assumes a faith in Jesus which S. Paul did not possess.  The Pharisee’s estimate of such attempts has been very forcibly and truly described in the following terms:

      “To a Jew the Cross was infinitely more than an earthly punishment of unutterable suffering and shame; it was a revelation that on the crucified there rested the extreme malediction of the wrath of God.  The idea was no theological refinement.  It could not but be present to the mind of every Jew who knew the Law.” [Chase, ‘Credibility of Acts,’ p. 149.]  It was this which led the Jew to formulate that dreadful expression, “Anathema to Jesus,” 1 Cor. 12:3.  It was this which led the Jew to describe Him as הַתָּלוּי the hanged One – “Here was a public, an impressive, a final attestation of what Jesus of Nazareth was in the sight of God.  Here was an end.” [Ib.]  The death of Jesus appeared to Saul of Tarsus as a Divine retribution on a blasphemous claim.  God had thereby rejected the daring assertion of the Nazarene.

      No doubt Saul the Pharisee had heard the disciples of the Nazarene declare that their Master had risen from the dead.  But this he simply refused to believe.  He discredited their story, no doubt largely because it would require so vast a revolution in his own ideas.  An invisible Christ enthroned elsewhere regardless of Jerusalem was all too strange and foreign a conception to his education and personal convictions.  He saw nothing but delusion in it all, and most dangerous menaces against the holy nation and its hopes.

      Consequently there was only one attitude legitimate towards all who dared to propagate the fictions of this upstart faith.  Saul turned upon them with all the fierceness and fanaticism of which a Jew is capable.  As he says himself, “he was exceedingly mad against them.” [Acts 26:11.]  But he did it with the utmost conscientiousness.  He set himself on principle to stamp the heresy out.  Extermination in Jerusalem was not sufficient to satisfy his zeal.  He persecuted them even unto strange cities.  He hunted out the refugees.  And this was the spirit in which he started on that memorable journey to Damascus.

      A vision of Jesus in glory could never arise out of a Pharisee’s conception of the Christ.  It could not be produced by resection on the fact of a Jesus rejected, condemned, crucified, and buried.  If, in the case of the elder apostles, there was the memory of Jesus’ character and personality to help them, no such experiences sustained S. Paul.  It is not really probable that S. Paul had ever seen Jesus during His ministry. [Although Clemen and a few others maintain it.]  There was nothing to help S. Paul to abandon his inherited presuppositions.  For a vision of Jesus in glory would mean a complete inversion of the Pharisee’s messianic ideas.  He would be required to forsake his expectation of Israel’s earthly supremacy.  He would have to substitute the notion of an invisible Messiah for a Messiah enthroned in Jerusalem.

      5. We have found it repeatedly asserted that the idea of Resurrection, being familiar to a Pharisee, could be applied by S. Paul without difficulty to the case of Jesus Christ: all that would be necessary would be to anticipate, in the case of an exceptionally holy man, an experience destined to be universal at the end of the world.  This assertion pays very small attention to the religious meaning which the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth must have for S. Paul, supposing him to accept it.  It would not be the mere exceptional experience of an exceptional man: it would be the consummation of Israel’s development, the experience of the Messiah.  But the Resurrection of the Messiah formed no part of the orthodox tradition.

      6. The elaborate description of S. Paul’s doubts, in Pfleiderer’s account, is quite impressive, as we watch them intensifying in volume, until at last the Pharisee is discovered praying to be delivered, and is in a sort of agony of despair.  All this is impressive until we read S. Paul’s Epistles.  But then we are constrained to ask, Where in the world is the evidence?  All that Pfleiderer has described depends on a questionable exposition of the words: “it is hard for thee to kick against the goads.” [Acts 26:14.]  But even supposing the exposition were correct, that S. Paul was beset with painful doubts whether he was right in persecuting Christians, why should it follow that the persecutor should immediately imagine himself to deserve a vision of Jesus? and a vision placing him on a level with the highest officials of the Christian community.  But, as we have already seen, this interpretation of the words is more than questionable.

      7. As to the attempt to place S. Paul’s conversion among his subjective visions Sabatier’s reply is so admirable that there seems no need for further discussion.  Yet the importance of the subject is so great, and the plausibility of the Vision theory so attractive, that it may be well to reconsider it.  We have already considered the Visions in the Acts.  We now consider those mentioned in S. Paul’s Epistles. “I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord.  I know a man in Christ, fourteen years ago (whether in the body, I know not; or whether out of the body, I know not; God knoweth), such a one caught up even to the third heaven.  And I know such a man (whether in the body, or apart from the body, I know not; God knoweth), how that he was caught up into Paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.” [2 Cor. 12:1–4.]

      Now here we notice (1) that the reference to time – fourteen years – shows that it is not the conversion of which S. Paul is thinking. [On this point Holtzmann agrees with Meyer.]  The conversion was twenty years before.

      (2) That S. Paul’s religious experiences were of different kinds.  He is conscious that this was so.  He draws a distinction between them.  Where he is not sure of their character he says so.  This is a ground for confidence.

      (3) That the substance of the visions and revelations was unutterable; personal, not for the world; an incommunicable experience; rapt, mystical.  Thus it differs absolutely in character from the experience at the conversion, which was obviously not incommunicable, nor intended for himself exclusively.  The experience at the conversion was personal, but yet official.  The experience of these visions was not official.

      (4) To be the recipient of such visions does not disqualify from being also recipient of external appearances.

      (5) S. Paul treats the two classes of experiences in opposite ways.  The Appearance at the conversion he proclaims, and bases upon it his apostolic authority: the visions he treasures in reserve and reticence.  He also identifies the Appearance outside Damascus with the Appearance to the elder apostles; it is similar in kind.  But he never sets his visions in such relationship.

      The conclusion that the Appearance to S. Paul outside Damascus was objective and divinely created is justified by the impossibility of adequately accounting for the facts in any other way.  We group together the critical statements of Baur, that “no analysis, either psychological or dialectical, can detect the inner secret of the act in which God revealed His Son to him”; and of Pfleiderer, that “it remains in either case certain that it was God who in the soul of Paul caused a light to shine”; and of Sabatier that “the critic who, before entering on the question, is absolutely persuaded that there is no God, or that if there is, He never intervenes in human history, will doubtless set aside both facts” [i.e. the Resurrection of Christ and His Appearance to S. Paul], “and would have recourse to the vision-hypothesis, were it ever so improbable.  The problem is thus carried from the field of history into that of metaphysics, whither we must not pursue it.”  It is acknowledged, then, that critical explanations are inadequate; that the religious explanation does account for all the facts; that the real ground of belief or denial of the objective character of the Appearance to S. Paul lies behind criticism in the fundamental presuppositions of men.

      “What sort of vision was it,” asks Weinel, “in which Paul beheld the Son of God in the light out of heaven on the way to Damascus?  The answer to the question will vary according to a man’s conception of the universe; I say conception of the universe, meaning nothing about faith or religion.  The question has no existence for faith.  Faith knows that what happened happened in any case, because God chose to work it then: whether Paul really beheld Jesus in the light, or whether it was merely a visionary sight.  It is a question of our conception of the universe, in so far as it brings us face to face with the problem: Do we admit the possibility of appearances of persons from another world to the sensual vision? or do we uphold the theory of a world in unbroken conformity to law?” [Weinel, ‘S. Paul,’ p. 80.]

      Here, then, belief in the external nature of S. Paul’s conversion is said to depend on scientific principles.  But Sabatier’s remarks are none the less correct, that it must also depend on religious principles, or belief in God.  Weinel – who writes as a convinced believer in God – is well aware of this.  “Those who are unable to see the hand of God in the gift He makes us of such strong and truth-loving souls as this Pharisee, and in His dealings with body and soul in a man, let not such minds imagine they will discover the Divine in the Damascus miracle!” [p. 84.]

      This is a suggestion which leads much further than Weinel himself sees his way to go.  If God is responsible for S. Paul’s conversion, certain tremendous inferences must of necessity follow as to the value of that Religion and that Resurrection to the belief in which God converted him.

      8. After all these considerations it seems mere bathos to descend to discussions on peculiarities of S. Paul’s temperament, emotional and physical.  To make S. Paul’s theology the product of excitable nerves and atmospheric effects is a view in which Renan did his best; but it is discredited.  To account for S. Paul’s conversion as an epileptic seizure seems absolutely to ignore the intellectual depth and systematic completeness of the whole theology connected with it.

      The criticism of Professor James upon this theory, which he characterises as “medical materialism,” [‘Varieties of Religious Experience,’ p. 13.] is of particular value owing to its author’s independent standpoint.  He reminds its advocates that “scientific theories are organically conditioned just as much as religious emotions are.  The dependence of mind on body is as true of the sceptic as it is the believer.”  “To plead the organic causation of a religious state of mind, then, in refutation of its claim to possess superior spiritual value, is quite illogical and arbitrary, unless we have already worked out in advance some psycho-physical theory connecting spiritual values in general with determinate sorts of physiological change.  Otherwise none of our thoughts and feelings, not even our scientific doctrines, not even our dis-beliefs could retain any value as revelations of the truth, for every one of them without exception, flows from the state of their possessor’s body at the time.” [Ib. p. 14.]  Professor James indeed himself speaks of “hallucinatory or pseudo-hallucinatory luminous phenomena, phantasms, to use the term of the psychologists”: and goes on to declare his belief that “Saint Paul’s blinding heavenly vision seems to have been a phenomenon of this sort.” [Ib. p. 251.]  But this by no means implies a denial of its heavenly origin.  The suddenness of a conversion may be due, speaking within the purely human limits, to activities within the subliminal consciousness.  And this accounts for elements otherwise inexplicable.  This is Professor James’s theory.  But he is careful expressly to affirm that the Divine element is not at all thereby omitted, still less denied.  “If you,” he writes, “being orthodox Christians, ask me as a psychologist whether the reference of a phenomenon to a subliminal self does not exclude the notion of the divine presence of the Deity altogether, I have to say frankly that as a psychologist I do not see why it necessarily should.  The lower manifestations of the subliminal, indeed fall within the resources of the personal subject; his ordinary sense-material, inattentively taken in and subconsciously remembered and combined, will account for all his visual automatisms.  But just as our primary wide-awake consciousness throws open our senses to the touch of things material, so it is logically conceivable that if there be higher spiritual agencies that can directly touch us, the psychological condition of their doing so might be our possession of a subconscious region which alone should yield access to them.  The hubbub of the waking life might close a door which in the dreamy subliminal might remain ajar or open.” [James, ‘Varieties of Relig. Exp.,’ p. 242.]

      Thus, then, once more, the nature of S. Paul’s conversion must depend ultimately on belief in God.  Concede that a personal Deity exists, and the phenomenon outside Damascus, with its apostolic explanation, becomes scientifically admissible and perfectly credible.

      “It seems to me,” says Kaftan, “manifest that the historical tradition is simpler and more intelligible if we abide by the old conception which, agreeing with the consciousness of S. Paul, sees in his Conversion a miracle of God.” [Kaftan, ‘Zur Dogmadik, Zeitschrift für Τ. and Κ.,’ 1904, p. 279.]

Chapter  XII – The Changes in S. Paul’s Theology Caused by His Conversion

      The changes in S. Paul’s theology caused by the Appearance of the Risen Jesus outside Damascus were of course exceedingly great.  We have already acknowledged that so penetrating and logical a mind must have seen even before his conversion what the theological consequences must be, at least in part, if the reported Resurrection of Jesus were really true.  But in the period following his conversion S. Paul evidently thought these thoroughly out.  The priceless autobiographical fragment preserved in the Galatian letter enables us to form a clear conception of the apostle in solitude.

      “But when it was the good pleasure of God ... to reveal His Sοn in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood; neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me, but went away into Arabia.” [Gal. 1:15.]

      The Appearance of the Risen Jesus to S. Paul was at once a revelation from without and a revelation within; an external revelation of a Being in heavenly glory, an inward revelation in the region of theological truth.  While these two ought never to have been put in opposition as alternatives, the former being the cause of the latter, it is also true that the former is valueless without the latter, true also that the chief revelation was within; and that S. Paul’s spiritual greatness lay in his power to interpret the Appearance granted to him.  The statement “God revealed His Sοn in me,” would not exclude the statement “God revealed His Son to me”; any more than the inward excludes the outward, or enables man to dispense with it.

      To enable S. Paul to reflect and realise and think out the implications of the Appearance of Jesus in glory the essential thing was solitude.  That this was his own feeling his words make plain.  He “conferred not with flesh and blood”: took no counsel with other men.  Nor did he go up to Jerusalem, [On the reconciliation of S. Luke’s statements with S. Paul’s, see Stanton, ‘The gospels as Historical Documents,’ ii. 243.] to the official representatives of the Church, those who were apostles before him.  The implication is that his own apostleship rendered that superfluous.  What he needed was silence and thought.  Away in some solitude of Arabia he accustomed the eyes of his spirit to the glory of this new religious light.

      I.  We must of course be careful not to make psychological analysis a substitute for documentary evidence; but the main lines of S. Paul’s reflection are obvious enough when the statement of his own epistles are compared with his pre-Christian standpoint as a Pharisee.  The Appearance of Jesus in glory created, then, the following changes in S. Paul’s theology:

      1. In the first place it compelled him to recognise that Jesus was after all the Messiah.  S. Paul knew well that this was what the Christian community claimed.  But it conflicted with all the Pharisee’s Messianic ideals, and with the best Jewish Scriptural exegesis of the period.  Moreover, it must have seemed intrinsically worthless, because a Christ such as the Christians maintained was incapable of discharging the functions traditionally inseparable from the office of Messiah.  Schirer’s analysis of the contemporary Jewish Messianic hope has shown us conclusively how monstrous, and altogether incredible the identification of Jesus with the Christ must have been to a Pharisee of that tine.  But, nevertheless, this identification had now to be made.  It was forced upon S. Paul by the Appearance of Jesus in glory.  But this identification required him to transfigure his whole conception of the Christ.  Hitherto his Messianic ideal, like that of his contemporaries, had included political liberation, social success, national supremacy, and the visible establishment of a kingdom of glory in Jerusalem, over which the Christ was to preside in person, encircled by His chief officials.  Whatever spiritual element the Messianic conception retained it was pervaded by elements of an inferior kind.  For these half-nationalised notions he must now substitute the spiritual ideal of an invisible Christ; a Christ not resident in Jerusalem, or on the earth at all, but glorified in the heavenly sphere.  Acceptance of this new transfigured conception of the Christ was nothing less than a revolution in S. Paul’s thought.  Hitherto he had regarded Jesus of Nazareth as self-convicted of failure, conclusively refuted by the facts of his own experience, cursed and abhorred of God as well as man, demonstrated by His crucifixion to be the very opposite of what He claimed.  Now he reverences this same Jesus as God’s chosen, God’s exalted, God’s Christ.

      That S. Paul in after years was acutely conscious of the distance he had travelled from his Pharisaic conception of the Messiah is shown in the words: “Wherefore we henceforth know no man after the flesh: even though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know Him so no more.” [2 Cor. 5:16.]  It is not the knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth which S. Paul has here in view, but as Neander reminded us, of the official Christ.  The apostle’s earlier Jewish half political ideal of Christ has been revolutionised into a purely spiritual conception of the glorified Lord.  There is thus all the difference between the two ideals which lies in the contrast between after the flesh and after the spirit.

      2. If S. Paul’s identification of Jesus with the Christ was the first theological outcome of his solitary reflection, this conclusion could not stand alone.  A second inquiry necessarily followed.  In what relation does this glorified Jesus stand to the generality of men?  What is the meaning of this His exaltation?  Why is He in the heavenly sphere?  This inquiry obviously brought with it a moral revelation.  The glory possessed by Jesus in the heavenly sphere could be no official splendour irrespective of personal moral worth.  None could stand where S. Paul saw Jesus stand, unless possessing moral elevation over the sinful masses of mankind.  Whether S. Paul had heard already from Christians of the sinless perfectness of Jesus we cannot tell.  But in any case such uplifting out of earth’s conditions must certify moral uniqueness.  Here is one who, although He is human, can approach and enter and share the glory of God?  He is human, yet held back by no moral infirmities such as shame and baffle the best of men.  These reflections would have profound significance to S. Paul, with his overmastering sense of discord between ideal and achievement; between God’s law and human will; rendering God’s acceptance of him and his peace with God the unsolved problem of his religion.  Here was One in whom these conflicts did not exist: One who, as revealed in glory, was manifested to be in such union with God as nothing but sinlessness can secure.  The exalted Jesus is unique in humanity.  S. Paul will describe Him afterwards as “Him who knew no sin”: [2 Cor. 5:21.] as “the second Man” who is “of heaven”; [1 Cor. 15:47.] which is to say, Sinless Perfection, and ideal of Humanity.

      3. These great positions led to a third.  S. Paul was compelled to inquire, What is the meaning of Jesus’ death?  Till now S. Paul explained it as a divine retribution on a blasphemous claim: it was God’s refutation of the daring assertions of the Nazarene.  Jesus had undoubtedly been to S. Paul as to the Pharisees generally, “that Deceiver.”  Old Testament precedent would suggest that sacrilegious hands had been laid by the Prophet of Galilee on the highest Jewish office; and that God had broken out upon Him, vindicating the sanctity of a mission which was not designed for Him.  This interpretation was confirmed for the Pharisee by the peculiar horror of Jesus’ death.  The solemn imprecation had haunted S. Paul: “Cursed is every one that hangeth upon a tree.” [Deut. 21:23; Gal. 3:13.]  It was an evildoer’s death.  From this conclusive evidence there appeared to be no escape.  But, satisfactory as this theory, and this exegesis, had seemed to S. Paul before his conversion, the Appearance of Jesus in glory had now swept these misconstructions away.  S. Paul must find a new interpretation.  Jesus could not be accepted as the Christ in spite of His death, on the ground that He rose.  The death could not be a mere scandal and enigma, tolerated for the Resurrection’s sake, and then ignored and buried in oblivion as soon as possible.  It could not be hushed up.  It could not be meaningless.  It must have its own intrinsic worth.  Jesus must be valued not only because He rose, but therefore also because He died.  For this death was the death of God’s Christ.  An accident, therefore, it could not be.  A mere victory of worldly force over religious excellence – that was hopelessly inadequate, simply because it left God out.  The splendour of Divine approval manifestly rested upon that Cross: otherwise Jesus would not be where now He is.  Somehow the Death of Jesus was God’s will.  The Resurrection of Jesus as related to His Death was the Divine response to the Death, and the explanation also to mankind of its meaning.  The submission of Jesus to Death was now shown to be part of the Divine ministry of grace, an offering accepted by God.  The Resurrection showed the death to possess a power and validity affecting the divine relations with mankind. [Cf. Graetz in ‘Stud. end Krit.,’ 1895, 798.]

      But how?  Death, as S. Paul and his contemporaries believed, was the wages of sin.  But, in this case, whose sin?     Certainly not that of Christ.  The exalted Messiah in the heavenly glory manifestly knew no sin.  What, then, could cause His death?  The Crucifixion and the Death must have been on account of others. [Cf. Immer, Theologie des Neuen Τestamentes,’ 209.]  The reality and the horror of it could not be, must not be explained away.  They had a dreadful meaning commensurate with their mystery.  “Him Who knew no sin,” God “made to be sin on our behalf,” [2 Cor. 5:21.] He “became a curse for us.” [Gal. 3:13.] The result being that” Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law.”

      Thus the profound reality of the death, the solemn denunciation of the prophet, and the sinless perfection of Jesus are blended in one harmonious synthesis: due recognition being given to each apparently conflicting element in the complex problem of the Death of the Messiah.  It would greatly help us to understand the situation did we know when the conception of the suffering Messiah was first derived from Isaiah 53.  We find it later in the Apostolic teaching. [E.g. 1 S. Peter.]  The question we cannot answer is whether S. Paul realised it during his Arabian solitude.  But we can clearly see how the Redemption doctrine of the chief Pauline letters developed on the foundation already described.  The death of Jesus becomes understood as the divinely appointed means for the reconciliation of the world.  The sacrificial conception is introduced.  Jesus, the Christ, is also the Redeemer of Mankind.

      4. One more and last inquiry lay before S. Paul.  The supernatural glory of the exalted Christ compelled the apostle to lift his mind into the eternal sphere.  It forced him to ask: In what relation does this exalted Being stand to the Father in Heaven?  In relation to Israel Jesus is the Christ, that is to say, its religious consummation.  In relation to the human ideal Jesus is its fulfillment.  In relation to the union of God and Humanity, Jesus is the Redeemer, the Propitiation, the Reconciliation.  Thus in each separate sphere as it is contemplated Jesus is the crown and realisation of the entire development.  He is in each respect the consummation of God’s eternal design.  But what is He in relation to the Father in Heaven?  Did He begin His existence here?  Or did He not pre-exist?  Did Heaven admit Him as a stranger? or acknowledge Him as its Lord?  Was not the Christ, the Sinless, the Redeemer, first in the thoughts of God?  And not merely first in God’s thoughts, as all ideal anticipations precede their own actualised existence, but first in the real living proximity to the Father?  Is He anything less than God’s Son, and that in the highest of all senses?  S. Paul’s habitual use of the term Son of God is “not Messianic but metaphysical.” [Immer, ‘Theologie des Neuen Testamentes, p. 273; cf. Rom. 1:4, Rom. 8:3; Gal 4:4.]  Thus he reaches the ultimate conclusion of Christian thought.  The glory in which S. Paul beheld Jesus was also His original estate.  He was rich, and for our sakes became poor.  He is nothing less than the essential equal of the Father.

      Here then we have the outline of S. Paul’s theology.  Jesus is the Christ; the sinless ideal of Humanity; the Reconciler of God and Man; the equal of the Father.  Four stupendous conclusions ; stupendous indeed, yet required by the central fact: the Death of Jesus seen in the glory of His Resurrection.  This is the basis of S. Paul’s entire Christianity.  What he knew was Jesus’ death interpreted by the glory of His heavenly exaltation.  Such was S. Paul’s experience.  That his thoughts developed is undoubtedly true.  In his later letters they received matured expression.  The solitary reflections in Arabia may have left ample room for further thought.  But here was their foundation.  Substantially his gospel was now already complete.  It consisted of the Death interpreted by the Resurrection.

      It is not suggested that this interpretation of the experience outside Damascus occupied the three years between the conversion and the visit to Jerusalem.  No definite period can be assigned.  Nor is it possible to determine such inner revelations by mere intervals of time.  The point is not the duration, but that the conversion was followed by a period of reflection.  Kaftan thinks that so far from requiring three years’ solitary reflection, S. Paul was ready to begin to preach the very next day after his conversion: [Ζeitschrift für Τ. andd K.,’ 1904, p. 287.] meaning that the main points of his Gospel were instantaneously clear; that the subject was rather a religious experience than a theological scheme.  That S. Paul did soon preach, and at Damascus, is what the Acts imply.  But there is no necessary contradiction between this and the need for reflection.  At any rate, that S. Paul did think out independently the theological consequences of the Resurrection of Jesus is abundantly certain.

      Hence the Resurrection was not, and could not be, for S. Paul one among many dogmas, so much as the foundation of his religious experience.  The distinctively Christian truth was Jesus and the Resurrection.

      One main result of S. Paul’s conversion was intellectual: it changed his theology.  It gave him new knowledge.  But his condition after conversion would be wholly misunderstood were he conceived as the speculative theologian absorbed in systematic constructions, like a schoolman of the middle ages.  It is true that he must have drawn the great dogmatic inferences from his experience outside Damascus.  All the main conclusions already mentioned form fundamental portions of his Gospel.  But at the same time his experience was by no means merely intellectual: it was also personal and religious.  The great conceptions analyzed were no mere abstractions; no mere dogmas applicable here or there to persons who might see their beauty and feel their force.  They were directly applicable to himself.  They were parts of a religion experimentally verified.  He had not only thought but felt.  The change was not merely in his theological ideas, but also in himself, in his inner religious state.

      For of this man it is emphatically true that his mind was set on righteousness.  Whether before his Damascus experience or after it, he had a passion for rectitude.  Fulfillment of the law had been his one desire.  If the main characteristic of his nature was neither philosophic nor aesthetic nor political, but religious, he embodied and concentrated that characteristic.  He had consciously surpassed his colleagues in the effort to achieve the moral standard of the Pharisee: but, precisely through the depth of his moral sincerity, he had been unable to look with complaisance on the results of his endeavours.  As we have already seen, the painful and irremovable contradiction between ideal and achievement made the notion of justification, or acceptance with God, on the ground of his merits, hopeless and impossible.  And while this neither proved Judaism at fault, nor Christianity in the right, nor was able to create his faith, it undoubtedly formed part of his receptiveness for the new.  And when the Resurrection forced him to believe the fact of Jesus’ exaltation to Divine glory, then the personal religious value of the great fact was felt to satisfy the deepest needs of his nature.

      If we could by an effort of historical imagination throw ourselves back into the position of an unconverted Pharisee of the first century, surely a whole world of force and meaning would be created by the thought that the Messiah was come!  It is hard to realize what that would mean for a Jew.  And then, again, the sinless Christ!  For us the terms are too familiar to be appreciated.  But to S. Paul in solitude, immediately after the Appearance, the Resurrection revealed the sinless Christ as God’s great gift to mankind.  It was a new creation.  It began the new era.  Here was the ideal of humanity already realized.  It signified achievement.  It signified power.  And together with achievement and power was promise.  For this embodiment of perfection in humanity, this realization of all that S. Paul had aspired to and failed to win, this manifested Sonship with God, and union with God, which the Pharisee’s religious nature craved after, felt himself created for, yet unable to obtain – was a prophecy and an anticipation of a state to be formed by Christ in other men.  The representative character of Christ’s experience came home to S. Paul’s soul with mystic significance.  Christ was the firstfruits.  Christ was the Second Man.  Humanity itself was already mystically dead and risen with Christ.  When Christ died humanity mystically died also; and when Christ rose humanity also mystically rose.  And this mystic anticipation was now to become progressively and individually realized in mankind.  The Messianic kingdom already existed on the earth.  And those brought within its precincts experienced already the powers of the world to come.  Old things had passed away.  All things had become new.  He found himself translated into the kingdom of God’s dear Son.  And this community was the special subject of the Divine love which was experienced individually by each admitted within it.  In place of the proud Pharisaic reliance on his own merits for acceptance with God, the going about to establish his own righteousness, a task whose futility the painful yearning of the years had proved – there was substituted now the humble and thankful reliance on acceptance already in Christ, conditionally on the Christ becoming ultimately formed in him.  Thus justification was not the independent act of self-reliant individualism, but an acceptance in Christ, not for what man is, but for what by grace he is to become.  The representative Man is to reproduce Himself in individual men.  And S. Paul experiences within himself spiritual forces hitherto unknown.  He is “in Christ” – that profound and Pauline phrase, although by no means exclusively Pauline, yet employed by him some hundred times more frequently than in all the remainder of the New Testament. [See Deissmann, ‘Bible Studies.’]

      The power of a new life invigorates him.  It is the Spirit of Christ of which he is the conscious recipient.  He is in Christ; and to be in Christ is to be a new creature.  He has found the solution of the hitherto insoluble problem of his religious existence.  He is justified.  He is in union with God.  The solution is not merely theoretical but experimental.  Therefore the trouble of his soul is rolled away.  Of himself he can do nothing: but he can do all things through Christ who strengthens him.  He lives, yet no longer he: it is Christ who lives in him.

      Thus he obtained in Christ that acceptance with God which was otherwise unobtainable.  Doubtless the sense of sinfulness was still there: but it no longer obstructed justification.  Discrepancy between ideal and achievement was also still there: but he was already accepted in anticipation of the Paul that was to be; and he already experienced the powers by which that anticipation would be actualized.  Thus while his pre-Christian state extorted the despairing cry, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me?” his Christian experience found expression in exultation.  The fervour of the first Christian joy still glows in the word “I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”  Thus the exalted Christ was the Divine solution of S. Paul’s religious needs.  It provided him with new moral force, and filled him with a profound sense of religious peace.

      It is this conception of the death of Christ as deliverance, which caused the manifestation outside Damascus to become for S. Paul a ground of joy rather than of rebuke and terror.  The mere sight of the exalted Christ whom he had rejected, whose followers he had attempted to suppress, whose Name he had vilified, was calculated to fill the persecutor’s mind with every emotion of dread and consternation.  To realize that he had fought against God, however ignorantly, and that the outcome of all his Jewish privilege and enlightenment had been failure to recognize the Messiah when He appeared, must have filled a sensitive spirit with bitter humiliation and shame.  He must have condemned himself and believed that God condemned. [Cf. Μ’Giffert, ‘Mist. Christ, Apost. Age,’ p. 128.]

      And yet this is evidently not the emotion which predominates in his soul.  There is an extraordinary confidence and joy.  Partly, no doubt, because the revelation was itself reassuring: for the exalted Christ did not appear merely to condemn.  Partly because the commission is entrusted him to go and proclaim the truth which he has received.  But also, and perhaps above all, because this conception of justification by the death of the Christ corresponded with the deepest wants of his religious nature.

      Thus S. Paul’s theology was as remote as possible from a mere speculative system by which conceivably the life of the theologian might remain unaffected.  It was, every bit of it, a personal religious experience.  The biographical and the theological intertwine, interpenetrate.  He could put no other construction than he did on the fact of the Resurrection.  But it was no mere theory.  He could not have written as he did, had he not personally felt and known.  His theology was also his experience.

      But to say that S. Paul’s Arabian reflections were religious and personal is not to deny that they were also intellectual and theoretical.

      The curious tendency of many critics [E.g. Kaftan in his reply to Holsten, see ‘Zeitschrift für T. und K.’ 1904, p. 285.] is to force into alternative explanations what are really correlative aspects of the case.  If the obvious fact be remembered that S. Paul combines in marvellous degree profound spirituality with dialectic acuteness, the intellectual theory and the religious experience will no longer be set in opposition.

      But S. Paul’s experience outside Damascus had also a third, an official significance.  Not only did it bring him within the sphere of the forces of the Risen Life, by incorporating him into the Body of Christ, and so making him recipient of the Spirit of Christ; but it gave him an authority and a commission within the same.  It did not, as he conceived it, merely constitute him a humble member of the community; it conferred official function upon him.  “Am I not an apostle?” he asks, “have I not seen Jesus Christ?”  He is perfectly well aware that “all are not apostles.”  But he is of that number.  And the authority bestowed has made him an official equal with the original Twelve.  The Twelve themselves could confer no mission upon him which he did not already possess.

      II.  The process by which the elder apostles achieved their Christian principles was very different from that of S. Paul.  Their doctrine was not an inference from a single fact.  Their faith was not simply founded on the Resurrection; however important the aid which that central occurrence afforded them.  Their convictions concerning Jesus of Nazareth were the outcome of companionship with Him.  They arrived at their dogmatic conclusions through the influence of His personality.  No doubt, when their faith was shaken by the Master’s Death, the Resurrection rendered continued assurance in His assertions possible.  But it did so not by creating the sole foundation, but rather by restoring the balance.  Behind it, or beside it were the moral facts of the life and character of Jesus, and the whole impression of His work and His claim.

      The striking essay of Du Bose on the Gospel in the Gospels suggests that the impression of the personality of Jesus on the apostolic circle may be described by an ascending scale of the possible meanings of the term Son of God.  First, there is the lowest sense the term can bear.  Jesus is Son of God in a sense possible for every human being.  In virtue of His pure humanity He is adopted into the relation of Sonship with the Father.  He recognizes in all other men their potential Sonship with God, and calls on them to make it actual.  Jesus at first appears to His disciples as God’s Son in this lowest sense: identical in kind with their own capabilities, however different in degree.  But it is that difference in degree which grows upon them more and more.  They come to realize that Jesus is God’s Sοn, as the Sinless Man, the flawless ideal, the embodiment of perfect human sonship in word, work, and will to the Father in Heaven.  This is the first circle of ideas in discipleship: the first stage in the self-revelation of Jesus to the Twelve.  A very large element of the Gospel portraiture falls within this first circle.

      But there is a considerable element left out.  It is evident that the term Son of God is claimed and ascribed in a second and quite different meaning.  Jesus is Son of God in an official, a Messianic sense.  Where, for instance, the Marcan narrative makes S. Peter answer the question, “Whom do men say that I am,” with the brief sentence, “Thou are the Christ”; the later Synoptic narrative is, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” [S. Matt. 16:16.]  Does the latter clause explain the former, or does it add a new idea?  That is the question which criticism debates.  If the Marcan narrative conveys the substance of S. Peter’s reply, then “Son of God” is here equivalent to “the Christ.”  When the High Priest asks at the trial “Art Thou the Christ the Son of the Blessed,” a similar criticism can be made.  In any case a considerable circle of Gospel ideas is concerned with Sonship in the Messianic or official sense.

      But here we reach the third and highest meaning of the term Son of God.  Just as the adoptive sense includes a considerable element of the Gospels, yet leaves much of the evidence outside its range, so does the official sense minimize this residuum, yet by no means absorb it.  There is another Gospel use of the term, neither adoptive nor official, but more penetrating than either, transcending both.  This is illustrated in the great Synoptic passage:

“All things have been delivered unto me of my Father:

And no one knoweth the Sοn save the Father;

Neither doth any know the Father save the Son,

And he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him.” [S. Matt. 11:27.]

      Here then we have the process by which the elder apostles reached their Creed.  It is based on innumerable incidents.  It is the outcome of a gradual self-revealing.  Stage after stage the three great ascending conceptions of Sonship with God are slowly grasped and understood.  From the adoptive sense to the official, from the official to the personal and essential, the disciples advance.  First within the limits of the strictly human, and in a sense conceivable of all.  Secondly, still within the limits of the strictly human, but in a sense unique.  And finally, transcending all human limits, in a sense unique and incommunicable, in the very highest of all possible senses the term can bear.

      III.  We have indicated S. Paul’s experience of the exalted Christ, and the original apostles’ experience of the historical Jesus.  The question next to be considered is, “What knowledge did S. Paul possess of the historical Jesus, and from what sources did he derive it?”

      1. It has been a common assertion that S. Paul’s interest in the exalted Christ rendered him comparatively or altogether indifferent to the historical Jesus; and that he knew exceedingly little of the biographical details.  Recent study of the Epistles has, however, led to a different conclusion.  Weinel indeed asserts that Jesus can scarcely be said to have existed for S. Paul as a human being. [Weinel, ‘S. Paul,’ p. 314.]  But Weinel qualifies this assertion with the remark that S. Paul “became acquainted with the outlines of the life of Jesus from the disciples themselves; and though his religion is everywhere in touch with the risen, living Lord, yet we find clear traces everywhere of his acquaintance with those memoirs of Jesus which afterwards assumed a definite shape in our Gospels.” [Weinel, ‘S. Paul,’ p. 317.]  “There is,” as has been truly said, “a vast amount of undeveloped biographical material in the background of S. Paul’s thought.”  “He obviously took pains,” says another, “to learn the utterances of Jesus on all important questions.  When he had not this to go upon he says so openly.” [Hausrath, vol. iii.  Cf. Holtzmann, ‘Hand-Commentar,’ i. 23.]

      Α recent critic has subjected S. Paul’s epistles to a careful study from this point of view, [Feine, ‘Jesus Christus und Paulus,’ 1902, pp. 45, 93.  All the following examples are from Feine.] and shows how very considerable S. Paul’s biographical knowledge of Jesus really was.  S. Paul is eager to have the authority of the actual instructions of Jesus on matters of doctrinal and moral moment.  “This we say unto you by the word of the Lord,” introduces his doctrine of the future state. [1 Thess. 4:15.]  The right of the ministry to be maintained by the Church is determined on the ground “even so did the Lord ordain.” [1 Cor. 9:14.]  In the problem of the marriage relationship S. Paul appeals to Jesus’ utterance when such utterance can be found, and gives his own apostolic advice when it cannot. [1 Cor. 7:10–12, contr. verse 25.]  “Now concerning virgins I have no commandment of the Lord; but I give my judgment as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful.”  So, again, Feine points out how S. Paul insists on the observance of the traditions. [2 Thess. 2:15; 1 Cor. 11:2; 1 Thess. 4:2.]  If S. Paul “knows and is persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean of itself,” [Rom. 14:14.] is not this a reminiscence of the saying given in S. Matt. 15:2?  If he rules that honour and obedience should be accorded in right proportion where they are due, [Rom. 13:1–7.] is not this derived from the saying, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” [S. Matt. 22:22.]  If S. Paul enjoins the Christian to mortify his members upon the earth, [Col. 3:5.] is not this equivalent in thought, if varied in expression, to the Gospel idea of plucking out an eye and cutting off a hand? [S. Mark 5:29.]

      But beyond these similarities in instructions is S. Paul’s conception of the character of our Lord.  The humility of Christ is for S. Paul overwhelmingly revealed in that supremest conceivable act of condescension whereby He came down to earth from heaven; [Contrast Weinel’s strange remarks in ‘S. Paul,’ p. 316.] yet for S. Paul that humility was progressively revealed under human conditions, since Jesus “being found in fashion as a man, humbled Himself becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross.” [Phil. 2:8.]  Thus S. Paul estimates the characteristic humility of Jesus’ earthly career.  The apostle could appeal to “the meekness and gentleness of Christ”; [2 Cor. 10:1; cf. J. Weis, ‘Paulus and Jesus,’ p. 10.] to the “sweet-reasonableness,” as it has been interpreted, of Jesus’ life among mankind.  He can call upon his converts to follow his example so far as he follows the example of Christ.  What else is the great ideal of love in 1 Cor. 13 but a summary of the character and life of Jesus on earth?

      In addition to all this S. Paul knew of Jesus’ Davidic origin, and of His baptism.  The command to baptize, he not only knew, but obeyed.  He knew that our Lord proclaimed the Kingdom of God, and shows that this great conception had powerfully impressed him.  He knew of the night in which the Lord was betrayed; of the institution of the Eucharist and what took place at it; of the principal witnesses of the Resurrection, their names, and the order in which their experience came.  He knew of the mission of the apostles as direct from Christ in person.

      The great critic Baur went so far as to affirm that “He who could speak so decidedly and in such detail about matters of fact in the Gospel history as the apostle does (1 Cor. 11:23; 15:8) could not have been unacquainted with the rest of its chief incidents.” [Baur, ‘Paul’, i. 94.  With this statement quite recent writers agree, e.g. Jülicher, ‘Paulus und Jesus,’ p. 5; and J. Weiss, ‘P. und J.’ p. 12.]

      2. Such was S. Paul’s knowledge of the historical Jesus.  We have now to ask, from what sources was it derived?  There are only three sources from which such knowledge of the biographical details could be derived: either it must have come from personal experience, or from supernatural revelation, or from ordinary tradition and instruction.

      (1) As to personal experience:

      Whether S. Paul had ever seen our Lord during the ministry has been disputed.  The critic Keim [‘Jesus of Nazara’ and J. Weiss, “J. and P.’] maintained that it must have been the case.  But the majority of recent writers maintain the contrary; [E.g. Feine, ‘Jesus Christ and Paulus,’ pp. 93 and 350.] while others feel uncertain. [E.g. O. Holtzmann, ‘ Leben Jesu,’ p. 6.]  We may agree with Pfleiderer [Urchristentum,’ i. 68.] that the question cannot be indisputably determined.  The passage “even though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know Him so no more,” [2 Cor. 5:16.] affords no suggestion either way.  It is concerned with knowledge of Christ after the flesh, not in the flesh.  And a knowledge of Christ after the flesh is possible to those who never saw him in the flesh.  It is the antithesis to knowledge of Christ after the Spirit.  What S. Paul contrasts is the estimate of Christ formed by the natural man and that formed by the spiritual.  He is contrasting his own convictions in the period before and the period after his conversion. [Cf. Sabatier, ‘ L’Apôtre P.’ p. 57.]  If S. Paul had been present in Jerusalem during the trial of our Lord, it is difficult to suppose that he would not have taken part ; and then some trace would surely remain, either in the historian’s narrative, or in S. Paul’s Epistles.  Considering his penitent allusions to his persecution of Christians, and in particular his reference to S. Stephen, it seems incredible that there would be no confession of the fact had he been among those who condemned Jesus Christ.  If he had had any connection with the crowd who shouted “Crucify” the self-reproach of after years would have left some trace upon his pages. [Batiffol, ‘Revue du Clergé français,’ 15 March, 1910, p. 660.]  But even if S. Paul had known Jesus in the flesh, it seems certain that there was no prolonged and intimate knowledge. [Cf. Goguel, p. 14.]  For all practical purposes he had never known Him.  He had no knowledge which could affect his theological conclusions.

      (2) That he derived it from supernatural revelation has been maintained; chiefly on the ground of 1 Cor.11:26, “I received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, how that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread “ (etc.).  But even those most inclined to this interpretation must admit that it can never be decisive.  The passage must always be open to the opposite solution.  There is no possibility of refuting those who affirm that “I have received of the Lord” does not mean by direct revelation. [E.g. Beyschlag, ‘NT. Theol.’ i. 19.]  We have no right to assume miracles when natural explanations suffice.  The supernatural revelation of detailed historic incidents raises more problems than it solves.  Nor does any one assert that this method accounts for all the biographical facts with which S. Paul was acquainted.  And the theory is founded on a form of expression which need not imply what is deduced from it.

      (3) We come then to the third alternative: S. Paul acquired this knowledge from tradition.  He derived it from the Christian Community.  S. Paul distinctly asserts that his apostolic authority was not derived through the elder apostles but direct from Jesus Christ; that the elder apostles “imparted nothing” to him in the way of apostolic mission; and that as to the substance of his Gospel he neither received it from men nor was he taught it, but it came to him through revelation of Jesus Christ. [Gal. 1:12.]  But these assertions of independence, alike as to his apostolic commission and as to the substance of his message, are perfectly compatible with deriving instruction as to the historical details of the Lord’s life in the ordinary way. [Cf. Feine, ‘Jesus Christus und Paulus,’ p. 60.]

      S. Paul’s Christian knowledge at this period was not confined to his experience near Damascus.  We do not know what first roused his opposition against the Church, or when it began; but he must have had his reasons, and those reasons imply some knowledge of Christian doctrines.  He must have heard much of Christian facts and principles during his arguments with believers in them, during his opposition at the trials of Christians, during the persecutions which he inflicted upon them.  If he consented to Stephen’s death the implication is that he disapproved his teaching, [Batiffol, ‘Revue du Clergé français,’ 1910, p. 655.] and had listened to his defence.  And although he would not gather much Christian doctrine from S. Stephen’s speech yet the strenuousness of his opposition shows that he realized the fatal character of Christianity as seen from a Jewish point of view.  So eager and impetuous a mind would certainly avail itself of its opportunities of acquiring information.  In truth it is not too much to say that his argumentative disposition must hare provoked retort, and hare elicited further details on Christian ideas.  He was also now himself a recipient of baptism at the hands of Ananias.  He had continued “certain days with the disciples which were at Damascus.” [Acts 9:19.]  And it is natural to suppose that he must have conversed with them.  Would he not hear some facts of the life of Christ, some practices of Christian religion?  Would he not find the Eucharist enacted?  Would he not himself be called to participation?

      To this must be added that three years after his conversion S. Paul went up to Jerusalem and spent a fortnight with S. Peter.  It is natural to suppose that the conversations between them included details of the life of Christ.  It has been said, indeed, that this was not the purpose of S. Paul’s visit, and that a fortnight was not very long for detailed information.  At the same time it seems morally impossible that the words and works of Jesus were excluded from the conversation.  S. Peter must have been eager to explain his own religious experience.  S. Paul must have been eager to hear it.  The very word he uses in describing his visit – ιστορησαι Κηφαν – is suggestive of conference, [Batiffol, ‘Revue du Clergé français,’ 1910, p. 654.  See above on S. Paul’s list of witnesses.] of the interchange of ideas.  That S. Paul on this occasion obtained the list of witnesses of the Resurrection, which he afterwards taught his converts, and incorporated still later in his first letter to the Corinthians possesses a very high degree of probability.  When he wrote that the Risen Lord “appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve,” he is surely recording facts from S. Peter himself during this visit to Jerusalem.

      That such converse happened seems a necessity of the historical imagination.  S. Peter and S. Paul have met.  They are both recipients of a marvellous and different experience.  Both of them declared the fact fully in public to crowds of people.  And neither of them spoke of it to each other!  Is that credible?  Yet S. Paul afterwards produced a list with S. Peter’s name at the head.

      Thus S. Paul’s visit to Jerusalem, and his acquaintance with the original community, must have immensely enriched his knowledge of the historical Jesus.  It is, of course, also possible that S. Paul derived information either then or afterwards from written sources as to the teaching of our Lord. [So Batiffol.]

      3. But while the senior apostles and the community at Jerusalem were able to enrich S. Paul with precious gifts of detail as to the earthly character and words and doings of Jesus, they were unable to impart to his gospel any fundamental principle, or doctrine of salvation which he did not already grasp and hold as firmly as themselves.  His essential Christianity was not their gift to him, nor was it received from any human tradition.  “ I neither received it from men, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.”  It was immediate, personal, direct.  It was the outcome of his own unique experience, and the product of his spiritual insight on the data of the exalted Nazarene.

      Thus the conference between S. Paul and S. Peter manifested profound agreement in the fundamental principles of the Christian Faith.  That there were practical diversities of opinion the subsequent history shows; but these diversities had nothing to do with their Christology.  “Paul’s doctrine of the nature of Christ,” says Weizsäcker, “was not afterwards, so far as we know, attacked or disputed.”  There was substantial identity between the Petrine and Pauline Churches.

      IV.  This fundamental agreement between S. Peter and S. Paul on the substance of Christianity is profoundly important in more directions than one.

      1. It possesses an obvious essential significance.  Some recent critics consider that S. Paul was afflicted with a weak sense of historic reality. [Pfleiderer’s ‘ Primitive Christianity,’ i. 109.]  His speculative tendencies led him to idealize without the restraint of sober fact.  They wish that he had exhibited less confidence in the validity of his spiritual intuitions, and a greater interest in historic detail.  It would be better, they say, if after his conversion he had conferred with flesh and blood, and “got the older apostles to give him exact information.”

      Now, if S. Paul had complied with these conditions, he would have destroyed precisely that which gives him individual worth.  He would have become merged as a subordinate in the older school, possessing no distinct individuality of testimony apart from theirs.  But what he did was to mature his thoughts alone, after his unique experience, and then compared his independent conclusions with those of the Twelve.  And the whole point is that their conclusions and his agreed.  The validity of his spiritual intuitions may be disputed in Germany today, but it was acknowledged in Jerusalem by the very men who possessed the exact detailed information.  If “Paul’s doctrine of the nature of Christ was not afterwards so far as we know attacked or disputed,” [Weizsäcker] this is a fact of enormous significance.  The exact historical information was certainly given to S. Paul, as the knowledge implied and suggested in his Epistles shows.  But it was not given until his speculative intellect had thought his own experience out.  This was not a drawback: it was a positive gain.  It means that S. Peter and S. Paul represent two methods of approaching truth: the method of induction from innumerable instances; and the method of inference from a single central fact.  The one had reached his conclusions through the details of the earthly life; the other from the heavenly glory reflected back upon the death. [Thus for instance, “with the Twelve the sinlessness of Jesus is an induction from the facts of His life: with S. Paul a deduction from the exalted glory.”  B. Weiss, “Bibl. Theol.” i. 403.]  Two lines of experience conveyed, and yielded the same conclusions.  The “exact information” was given; but so far from correcting the spiritual intuitions, it confirmed them.

      The method of induction from multiplied facts may be more congenial to minds of a certain training than the method of inference from a central incident. But surely S. Paul was right. For if the crucified Jesus was the exalted Christ, then the very secret of the Divine will must be involved in this experience. “ Here then,” as a critic [Hausrath, iii. 78.] said long ago, “the true secret of human salvation was to be sought, not in the teaching of Jesus but in His death.”

      And thus it is not loss, but gain, when the two methods are found to issue in the same result.  So far from complaining because S. Paul worked out his conclusions alone, it would be well to be grateful for the contributions of another method in an independent and powerful mind.  If their methods differed, their conclusions agreed; and S. Paul knew that he had the solid weight of a united Christendom behind him when he wrote, “So, then, whether it were I or they, so we preach, and so ye believed.”

      Moreover, it may be asked whether disparagement of spiritual intuition is wise on the part of any believer in a personal Deity?  Does not all such belief involve a venture of faith which partakes of the nature of spiritual intuition?  Are there not certain experts in religion as well as in other spheres?  Men of whose power to see it may be truly said that they “are worth ten thousand of us.” [2 Sam. 18:3.]  Was not S. Paul such a one?  If speculative theology is at a discount today, and the historical critical school dominant over the metaphysical, as a quite natural but probably temporary reaction from overconfidence in human reason, yet it is impossible for any truly balanced religious theory to ignore the function of spiritual intuition.  Disparagement of its worth can only be regarded as an exaggeration and as an extreme.  The avenues to truth are more than one.  And they who believe that the Almighty spake sometime in visions unto His saints must also believe that it is not largeness of mind which disparages spiritual intuition.

      Spiritual intuitions may indeed require to be confirmed.  They must be based on real foundations.  But S. Paul’s intuitions do not stand alone.  The possession of the historical knowledge did but confirm him.

      To say that “the Jesus of Paul is a subjective construction, a combination of logic and pharisaic metaphysics applied to certain actual facts,” [Guignebert, “Manuel,” p. 344.] is only to make a criticism to which every religious belief without exception is liable.  S. Paul’s inferences may be called a subjective construction in the same sense that any belief in God may be so described.  All religious belief is due to human thought applied to certain actual facts.  If such subjective construction is invariably incapable of reaching truth, then, of course, S. Paul’s inferences and all other religious inferences fail.  But if this assumption prove too much, if we are not prepared for universal scepticism, then the validity of S. Paul’s inferences must be determined on other grounds – whether the description of them as “pharisaic metaphysics” is adequate or conclusive of their worthlessness will obviously depend on very large assumptions.

      Thus if S. Paul is occasionally presented in an extreme modern school as a speculative theologian unconcerned with facts, and elaborating an ideal of a heavenly Messiah quite apart from historical reality and concrete earthly existence, this is entirely to misconceive his spirit.  S. Paul is no Greek philosopher; he is Jewish to the core of his nature.  He is no metaphysician concerned with ideas, but a Jew concerned with facts and persons.  He possessed a philosophy of history, and had no conception of religion as disengaged from history: much the contrary.  He built his inferences on the foundation of historic occurrences, in the absence of which his whole conceptions disappear. [Cf. Windisch, “Der Geschichtliche Jesu.  Theologische Rundschau,” 1910, p.172.]

      Everything shows, it has been said, [Guignebert, “Manuel,” p. 287.] that his Hellenic instruction did not advance beyond an elementary stage.  Nothing about him suggests the learned man.  His qualities for literature are proverbial phrases.  He shows no acquaintance with Greek philosophy.  He writes in Greek, but he thinks in Aramaic.

      2. The fact is that many of the modern criticisms on S. Paul’s method proceed on a different conception of the essence of Christianity.  If Christianity consists merely in repetition of the teaching of Jesus then S. Paul’s method of speculative inference from the exalted Christ to a whole series of dogmatic conceptions about Him would be wholly indefensible.  And in this case the elder apostles must have treated S. Paul as apostles had to be treated.  They must have taken him unto them, “and expounded unto him the way of God more carefully.”  In which case he never could have said about his gospel, “I neither received it from man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.”  To assert his independence of other men’s instructions would then have been impossible.  He would in fact have been constrained to acknowledge that the chief contents of his Gospel were derived from the community at Jerusalem.  That he did not receive his doctrine from men, that he was not taught it by the ordinary channels of human instruction, means that Christianity does not consist in the details of Christ’s career.  It has been said reproachfully that “hardly anything remains in S. Paul of the actual Jesus whose charm had attracted peaceful Galilee,” [Ib. 344.] and that “such inquiries as: Where was He born, how long did He live, what did He preach, find no answer in S. Paul.” [Holtzmann, “Hand-Commentar,” i. 16.]  Perfectly true.  But this only shows that S. Paul’s conception of the essence of Christianity was not that accepted by some of his modern critics.  Hints and implications scattered throughout his letters prove a knowledge of the historic Jesus possessed yet left unutilized.  He manifestly knew far more than he repeated.  If he never appeals to the miracles of our Lord; never relates one parable, not even that of the Prodigal Son, wherein some of our contemporaries affirm all Christianity can he found; never, with a few significant exceptions, quotes one of Christ’s sayings: these omissions are certainly deliberate.  It cannot be because he did not know.  He knew many details, yet he did not build his Christianity upon them.  The solution plainly is that he did not consider our Lord as a teacher like one of the Prophets.  He did not consider the Gospel to consist in anything that Jesus said.  If the Crucified Jesus was the exalted Christ, the whole interest must centre in His exaltation, and in His death seen in the glory of the same.  The Messiah was to S. Paul no mere instructor: He was the Mediator between God and man.  Christianity was to him the religion of redemption.  It was inseparable from a definite Christology.

      If the Pauline theology is not a development of the words of Jesus, but an inference from the fact of a crucified and exalted Messiah ; it is because these central facts determined Jesus not as a teacher merely or chiefly: but, above all this, as the Mediator between God and man. [Cf. Hausrath, iii. 79.]  To complain that the rich contents of the life of Christ are by S. Paul entirely sacrificed to two facts, namely the Cross and the Resurrection, [Wernle, “Beginnings,” i. 187.] is to assume that Jesus is not the redeemer of the world.  Such regrets are perfectly natural to those who occupy this ground.  But then S. Paul believed in the Resurrection.  Does it not occur to a critic that, like S. Paul, he too would make much of this event if he believed in it.  Can it really be said that if the Resurrection is true S. Paul laid too much stress upon it?  Is it fair, after denying what he believed, to reproach him for realizing its importance?

      Thus it is true, and wonderfully significant, that S. Paul nowhere founds the main principles of his theology on a saying of Jesus Christ. [Goguel, p. 98.]  He nowhere appeals for his conception of Jesus Christhood, or His sinlessness, or His redemptive work, or His divinity, to any verbal claim which the Son of Man made during His ministry.  All this is perfectly natural.  They did not lie within his own experience.  He had arrived at the dogmatic conclusions another way.

      He could determine, therefore, not to know anything among his hearers save Jesus Christ and Him crucified; and this, not because he was afflicted with a weak sense of historical reality, but because he had a strong sense of relative value and religious proportion.

      It has been observed that S. Paul comparatively seldom designates our Lord by the earthly name of “Jesus”; the usual designation being “Christ.”  Whereas the former word appears less than 20 times, the latter appears more than 200. [Cf. Feine, “Theologie des Neuen Testaments,” 1910, p. 344.]  The two words are also often combined together.  For S. Paul, Jesus is the Exalted Christ; and his thoughts dwelt on the existence before and after the earthly career, rather than on the earthly career itself, which indeed derives its whole value and meaning as seen in the aspect of eternity.  This was a natural result of the circumstances of S. Paul’s conversion.  The Appearance of the Heavenly Christ gave a boundless amplitude to his theology, and led him to dwell on these earthly aspects, the Passion, the Death, the Resurrection, which had in the deepest sense, a universal meaning.  The Eternal Christ, –the Pre-existent, the Post-existent, with the interval of the earthly experience illumined and rendered significant by the descending from and returning to the heavenly realm –this is the object of S. Paul’s devotion.  “S. Paul,” says Dean Robinson, [“Commentary on Ephesians,” p. 23.] “had a message peculiarly his own –and that message dealt not with the earthly Jesus so much as with the heavenly Christ.  In the heavenly sphere his message lies.  “Henceforth,” he says, “know ye no man after the flesh: yea, if we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him (so) no more.”  The Death, the Resurrection, the Ascension – these are to him the important moments of the life of Christ; they are the ladder that leads upwards from “Christ after the flesh” to “Christ in the heavenly sphere” – the exalted, the glorified, the reigning Christ; the Christ yet to be manifested as the consummation of the purpose of God.  And if S. Paul looked beyond the earthly life of the Lord in one direction, he looked beyond it also in another.  To his thought “the Christ” does not begin with the historical “Jesus.”  The Christ is eternal in the past as well as in the future.  The earthly life of Jesus is a kind of middle point, a stage of humiliation, for a time.  “Being rich, He became poor”; “being in the form of God ... He humbled Himself, taking the form of a servant, coming to be in the likeness of men.”  That stage of humiliation is past: “God hath highly exalted Him”: we fix our gaze now on “Jesus Christ, ascended and enthroned.”

Chapter  XIII – The Historical Jesus And The Pauline Christ

      The recent controversy in Germany on the relation of S. Paul to Jesus of Nazareth has produced a remarkable series of works by Wrede, Kaftan, Jtilicher, and Johannes Weiss.  They are, for the believer in our Lord’s Divinity, painful reading.  But they show some consequences of the attempt to explain S. Paul’s conversion and theology within the limits of the purely natural.  The peculiarity of this series of works is that, unlike the ordinary German productions, they are thrown into eminently readable and popular form, and have circulated by thousands.

      Wrede [Wrede, “Paulus,” p. 84.] asks how the Pauline conception of the Christ originated.  For those who, like S. Paul himself, see in Jesus an unearthly Divine Being there is, Wrede admits, no problem at all.  But for those who regard Jesus as a purely human historical personality, the contrast between such a Jesus and the Pauline Divine Son of God_, is hopelessly inconceivable.  The interval between the death of Jesus and this creation of S. Paul was very brief.  There was not time for the purely earthly figure of the Nazarene to assume Divine proportions.  That this Christ-conception should be the impression made by Jesus of Nazareth, Wrede admits has been often said, but he cannot credit it.  S. Paul had never seen Jesus during his earthly career.  His sole interest in the life of Jesus was in that which put an end to it, namely the Death.

      Indeed the Jesus in whom S. Paul is interested is not a historical person but a super-historical conception of the other world.  The ideal which S. Paul has drawn is not the apotheosis of the earthly Jesus.  The submission, humility, obedience, which he ascribes to the Christ is not the conduct of a person on earth; but the quality manifested in the other world, by consent to incarnation.  Thus it does not originate in the impression produced by the character of Jesus of Nazareth.  This heavenly ideal of the Christ is, Wrede declares, a speculative theory accepted by S. Paul prior to his conversion.  His conversion consisted in his fusing that speculative theory into union with the Jesus of history.  Wrede insinuates that this identification of the heavenly Christ with the earthly Jesus was only possible precisely because of S. Paul’s ignorance of the Jesus of the Galilean days.  If he had sat at table with Jesus in Capernaum he could never have identified Him with the creation of the world.

      These daring assertions, unhappily the last utterances of an able critic, are too much for Julius Kaftan, who replied in a work entitled, “Jesus and Paul”.  Kaftan submitted that while no critic can altogether escape from subjectivity, we must broadly distinguish between that which is historic and that which commends itself to the modern mind.  This distinction he complains that Wrede has not observed.  Now, urges Kaftan, the tendency of the modern mind is to emphasize by means of comparative religions the similarities and analogies between Christianity and earlier forms of faith, until scarcely anything is left as distinctively Christian and original.  This method is to Kaftan an abuse.  Valuable as the comparative study of religions is, such an employment of it calls attention to superficial resemblances while it misses the deep and fundamental differences.  After all, says Kaftan, the primitive form of Christianity is original.  It is no mere confluence of pre-existing elements.  Attach what importance we will to analogies, influences, and likenesses, yet, when all is said, they do not constitute Christianity, nor can it be explained by them.  Beneath all these is the substance and the spirit of the religion.  Kaftan allows that the form of S. Paul’s expression is necessarily characterized by his antecedents and his age, which may be called the variable robe of an unchanging truth; there is a mythological element in all human speech: but beneath these are the distinctive principles.  And Kaftan contends that Wrede has not understood what in the historical Jesus those distinctive principles are; and consequently that the contradictions which he sees between the ideals of Jesus and those of S. Paul are the product of his own misleading applications.

      The fundamental principle of S. Paul is the inability of simple man to secure communion with God.  That can only come as a gift, and not as a reward.  It can only come through our relation with Jesus Christ.  This is the meaning of his doctrine of Justification.  To this must be added that such communion so received as a gift must be by grace morally maintained.

      But this fundamental principle of S. Paul is also the fundamental principle of Jesus Christ.  Kaftan declares that, if the identity between the parable of the Prodigal Son and the Pauline doctrine of Justification by faith appears a paradox, that is merely because critics regard S. Paul as a speculative theologian concerned for knowledge, rather than one personally concerned in the religious realization of peace between the sinner and his God.

      That the apostolic preaching of the Crucified and Risen Christ goes beyond the simple contents of the preaching of Jesus is due, urges Kaftan, simply to the fact that between the two lay the Death and the Resurrection.  The danger which beset the infant community was lest it should waste its force in fantastic apocalyptic expectations of the speedy return of the Lord; and, although sharing in that belief, no one so completely advanced the work of Jesus, on the Master’s own lines, as the great apostle S. Paul.  And that he did this was a consequence of the Death and Resurrection, and not of abstract speculations on heavenly ideals.  Thus, through S. Paul the Gospel of Jesus acquired a world position, in true development, and not in contradiction to its spirit.

      Kaftan’s reply was followed by a criticism from the pen of Jülicher. [Jülicher, “Paulus and Jesus.”]  Jülicher contended that Wrede was right in method, but wrong in his use of it.  Undoubtedly the sum and substance of the Gospel of S. Paul was the message of the Cross; the Death of the Christ, in union with His Resurrection.  And Jülicher agrees with Wrede that the Pauline heavenly Christ is not to be discovered in the teaching of Jesus: although at the same time he considers that Wrede has exaggerated.  The historical Jesus according to Jülicher, who, of course, excludes the fourth Gospel from the discussion, never mentioned His own pre-existence, nor the substitutional effectiveness of His sacrificial Death.  On the other hand, Jülicher recognises that the first Christian community must have substantially agreed with S. Paul’s doctrine of acceptance through Christ; for we find no protest raised by other believers against the Pauline ideal of the Messiah.  Nor is it true, according to Jülicher, that S. Paul confines himself to speculation on a heavenly ideal of the Christ.  His whole doctrine originates in the Resurrection of the Man of Golgotha.  And the whole outcome of his vision near Damascus is the identification of the crucified Jesus with the Heavenly Christ.  Moreover, urges Jülicher, the Gospel of S. Matthew shows that the primitive community accepted the idea of the universal authority of the exalted Christ.  The words “all authority is given unto Me in heaven and earth” are identical in thought with the Pauline doctrine of the heavenly Christ.  Nor was S. Paul so indifferent to the earthly career of Jesus as some have imagined.

      His doctrine of the gift by grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, his contrast between the one man’s disobedience and the obedience of the one, [Rom. 5:15, 18, 19.] “leaves room for the whole contents of the Gospel history.”  And S. Paul must have reached the thought of the exalted Christ’s pre-existence, even though it had never crossed his mind as a Jew.  If the Almighty permitted the death of the Messiah, His Son: then must this death be an essential element in the world’s redemption.  And it would not be easy to explain it as anything else than a ransom for many.  The passage which the first Evangelist considers as the final utterance of Jesus to His disciples, “Lo, I am with you always even unto the end of the world,” is the clearest statement of the indissoluble communion of life between the risen Son of God, and those who believe in Him; but it agrees with the Pauline thought that believers are dead with Christ and risen with Him; that they live in Christ, and are justified by the power of the blood of Christ.  It is undeniable that we find astonishingly little in S. Paul of the actual sayings and actions of Jesus of Nazareth.  Everything in S. Paul is about the Christ and His redemptive work.  Probably, thinks Jülicher, S. Paul knew very little during his persecuting period of the words of Jesus, or of the majesty of His character.  The Appearance to him outside Damascus was wholly unexpected.  It is childish to ask how S. Paul recognized Jesus in the exalted Christ.  Jülicher considers that the recognition was the necessary product of S. Paul’s own thoughts.  This assertion, however, has not carried conviction.  It is part of that ill-fated endeavour to explain S. Paul’s conversion without any real act of Christ.  Jülicher is on safer ground when he urges that the historic Jesus could not be an indifferent matter to the mind of S. Paul.  An apostle of Christ, who was not interested in the earthly career of the Messiah, is, says Jülicher, a purely modern conception; it is not the S. Paul of history.  S. Paul’s cooperation with other evangelists, such as Barnabas and Mark, excludes the possibility that he could have continued ignorant of the Gospel incidents.  The Christianity of S. Paul developed on the ground of the primitive community at Jerusalem.  He himself calls attention to their substantial identity. [1 Cor. 15:11.]  There is indeed a fundamental difference, says Jülicher, between Jesus and S. Paul.  Jesus is the lawgiver: S. Paul only an interpreter.  Between the work of the two lay the death on the Cross.  This, says Jülicher, did not belong to the Gospel of Jesus, but it was the whole substance of the Gospel of S. Paul.  Here then Jülicher recognizes a contradiction.  He agrees with Wrede.  According then to Jülicher, Jesus Himself forms no part of the substance of the Gospel.  It is a message of the kingdom of God.  That Jesus Himself is the King escapes Jülicher’s attention.  Did not Jesus then claim to be the Messiah?  Jülicher considers that the point of interest had changed between the days of Jesus’ ministry and the days of S. Paul’s conversion. [An interval of at the most a very few years.]  No longer were the absorbing questions, Whether it was lawful to pluck ears of corn on the Sabbath, or whether a sympathetic Samaritan was better than a self-centred Pharisee.  Now the question was whether the crucified Jesus was the Messiah.  This S. Paul now affirmed; and worked out to its final results, with all his logical power and energy of character.  What then is, according to Jülicher, the conclusion of the whole matter?  It is this.  Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God.  But this kingdom of God is not to be identified with the Church, which Jesus did not found.  The Church is rather founded on the Pauline doctrine that the death of Jesus is the redemption of man.  Jülicher then suggests that it is useless to speculate whether, if Jesus had not been crucified, but died in old age some thirty or forty years later, the religion of Jesus would have taken the place now occupied by the theology of the Cross.  Very likely, thinks Jülicher, Jesus Himself would have severed His religion from Judaism, and the name of S. Paul would have become lost in the multitude of individuals who endeavoured to extend it.  History, however, has gone another way: apparently to Jülicher’s regret.  And Jesus owes His world historical significance to His martyr-death.

      Has, then, S. Paul pushed the religion of Jesus out, and substituted for it the religion of the Christ?  He has certainly made a new beginning.  But Jülicher will not allow that S. Paul’s work replaced the other.  S. Paul has not set his theology in the place of the religion of Jesus, but surrounded it with his own.

      Upon this series followed the discussion by Johannes Weiss.  Weiss does not consider that the difference between the teaching of Jesus and that of S. Paul is explained by saying with Kaftan that the Death and Resurrection lay between.  In the religion of S. Paul Jesus Himself is the central object of veneration.  But Weiss acknowledges with Kaftan and Jülicher that this was also the standpoint of the primitive Christian community.  He thinks that Wrede would have answered that in that case the alteration in the religion of Jesus began before the conversion of S. Paul.  And here Weiss adds a very remarkable statement.  Primitive Christianity was, at any rate in part, a Christ-religion, that is, a religion whose central object was the exalted Christ.  This type of religion, he adds, has prevailed down the centuries as the essentially Christian: and there are countless Christians today who neither know nor desire any other form of faith.  They live in intimate communion with “the Lord”; and He is the object of their prayers.  But there are also in modern German Christianity those who pass beyond Jesus and centre their devotion in the Father.  Both these types of religions coexist in the German Church.  It were to be wished, adds Weiss, that they tolerated one another more.  His private hope, however, is that the newer theology will ultimately prevail over the traditional.  “But as a historian,” Weiss admits, “I am bound to say that it is far remote from the dominant early Christian outlook, and from the doctrine of S. Paul.”

      Thus then, according to Weiss, the religion which devotes itself to the exalted Christ is not created by S. Paul. This conception of Christianity began in the primitive community before S. Paul was converted. And to dispel it from the modern mind it is necessary to postulate two assumptions : first, that the whole historic development of Christianity started from a wrong central object ; and secondly, that both S. Paul and the primitive community misinterpreted Jesus, and that in an interpretation in which they were both agreed.

      Weiss, however, is sure that Wrede is wrong in regarding Christianity as a collection of ideas already in vogue whether in Jewish, Hellenic, or Oriental circles.  There may have been a pre-Christian Christology as well as a pre-Christian eschatology.  But, at any rate, whatever previously prevailing ideas Christianity has adopted, it has reset them, and, so to say, crystallized them in a system of its own.  It has reformed them on the ground that the fullness of the time was come.  It has gathered them on the basis of a certain event; and that event is the Resurrection of Jesus.

      But according to Weiss the disciples’ belief in the Resurrection was the product of the impress of Jesus’ personality upon them.  But, if this is the explanation, what is to be said of the case of S. Paul?  How can his faith in the exalted Christ be the outcome of personal influence which he never experienced?  Here is, as Weiss perceives, the central difficulty.  Are we to talk of a spiritual influence of Jesus upon S. Paul?  Here are the difficulties attendant upon the naturalistic explanations of S. Paul’s experience outside Damascus.  How, asks Weiss, [J. Weiss, “Paulus and Jesus”, 1909, p. 16.] did S. Paul know that the Appearance outside Damascus represented Jesus of Nazareth?  Weiss disagrees entirely with Jülicher.  The question Jülicher pronounced childish.  It still only sounds childish, answers Weiss, from the standpoint of a supernatural faith.  The answer, of course, of religion is that of the Acts; that the Form which appeared explained His own identity.  “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.”  No difficulty exists.  But from the purely naturalistic point of view, to give a psychologically intelligible account of the experience is very difficult indeed.  If the Appearance which he saw assumed the guise of a superhuman form in heavenly glory, what possible connection could it have with the earthly circumstances of the Nazarene?  In the case of S. Peter, says Weiss, the experience of visions of the Risen Master was quite different; for it was founded on intimate knowledge of the features of Jesus.  A self-generated vision of those features, constructed by means of the past, and projected into the present, is for one of S. Peter’s antecedents psychologically conceivable within the limits of the purely natural.  But for S. Paul, if he had never seen Jesus or known Him personally, the materials for such psychological reconstruction were wanting.  How could he possibly identify the vision of a glorified Figure with the Jesus whom he had never known?  S. Paul could not recognize features which he had never seen.  Are we to assume that the marks of the Passion existed in the glorified Figure, identifying this superhuman unearthly Being with the Jesus of history?  Weiss thinks the suggestion desperate.  Whether Weiss’s difficulty will be a difficulty or not to others, and whatever solution they may profess, is not for the moment our concern.  The interest is that according to one of the ablest of modern critics the explanation of the Damascus-incident within the limits of the merely “historical” seems impossible.  His own solution is that S. Paul must have seen Jesus during the earthly ministry.  Pages accordingly are devoted to maintaining what, on the whole, modern critics reject, that S. Paul did actually see Him and that he says as much. [This is rested on a wholly debatable exposition of 2 Cor. 5:16.]

      I.  These are notable instances of the trend of much recent German critical theology.

      1. The first and most obvious remark is their agreement that if the orthodox belief in the Person of Jesus is held there is no critical problem left.  S. Paul’s interpretation and the historical Jesus in that case agree.  But it is assumed that this belief cannot be true, it is asserted, for instance, that if S. Paul had sat at table with the Jesus of the Galilean Lake he could not possibly have depicted Him as the heavenly Christ.  Now that assertion is pure assumption.  It is not justified by historical criticism.  The business of criticism cannot be to form a priori decisions on the inferences which an individual might have drawn if he had experienced something which did not occur.  This is speculation and not history.  Indeed it is clear that procedures of this kind are really the outcome of the critics’ theological presuppositions.  For it is obviously open to any man to assert that if S. Paul had sat at table with Jesus of Nazareth he would still have formed substantially the same conclusions about Him that he did.  And this assertion may be confirmed by the fact that Galilean disciples who had that experience placed substantially the same interpretation upon Jesus as did S. Paul.  Primitive history does not show us two contradictory religions: one in which the Father alone was worshipped; another in which the Son shared in that worship; a Theocentric and a Christocentric religion, struggling for supremacy.  There is no such conflict seen.  S. Paul’s interpretation and that by the community of Jerusalem were substantially the same.  S. Paul received from the Church the tradition that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.  He did not invent this conception ; he received it.  And in it is contained the essential difference between a Prophet and a Redeemer.

      2. Α second reflection on the foregoing discussion is that it raises the question: What is meant by the historical Jesus?  What are precisely the documents to which critical attention is confined?  For, of course, it must make all the difference what are accepted as the credible sources of information.  Now the whole Johannine literature is ruled out.  The Synoptic literature is by no means accepted: the extent of its acceptance varying in different cases.  Even the earliest tradition, the Marcan narrative, is criticized by Johannes Weiss, and rejected in some important passages; as when our Lord says that He came to give his life a ransom for many.  This is rejected as influenced by the Pauline conception.  The only thing suggested in support of this is that the Gospel was composed later than the Pauline letters.  But that this passage was influenced by Pauline teaching there is literally no proof whatever.  There is every reason to suppose, precisely from the vagueness of its form, that S. Mark found it in the sources from which his Gospel was composed.  And at any rate criticism is bound to allow full room for this possibility.  A theory is easily proved by discrediting passages which point the other way.  But the process is not conducive to historic truth.

      3. Again, if the historic Jesus made no exceptional claims, did not draw the faith of individuals to Himself, or assert Himself to be the Christ and the Judge of mankind, then there is nothing to account for the disciples’ belief in His Resurrection, or for their assent to the Pauline doctrine of the exalted Christ as a faithful presentation of His personality.  The more the historical Jesus is depressed and reduced to the levels of ordinary mankind, or even of mere prophetic supereminence, the more impossible it is to explain the origin of the disproportionate and portentous apotheosis to which the men who knew Him best consented and contributed.  A German critic [Feine, “Theol. Ν.T.,” 202.] naturally observes that the excellence of John Baptist and his prophetic sublimity never moved his disciples to affirm his exaltation to the right hand of God, or that he would judge mankind.  Although King Herod himself prompted the idea that John Baptist had risen from the dead, it was not possible to induce his disciples to accept this interpretation of his disastrous death.  To the oldest disciples, says Feine, the Jesus Whom they accompanied along the villages of Galilee, and the heavenly Being exalted at God’s right hand, were one and the same.  Therefore it will never satisfy fact to say with Wrede that S. Paul’s conception of the exalted Christ was due to his ignorance.  Jülicher’s reminder that the words, “all authority is given unto Me in heaven and earth,” are part of the Synoptic tradition, and identical in substance with the Pauline interpretation, is most opportune.  Negative criticism is therefore entangled in the following difficulties: if moral excellence made its possessor the centre of the religion, how did S. John Baptist escape a similar treatment?  If the moral excellence of Jesus was infinitely superior than that of the unworldly prophet, then this superiority is itself a phenomenon which requires to be explained.  Either Jesus claimed to be the Messiah or He did not.  If He did not, their ascription of the office to Him is unaccountable: if He did, the disaster of His death must have seemed to refute it.  There is nothing in these opinions to induce in the disciples a belief in His Resurrection, or that His death was the ground of the Salvation of man.  Faith in His teaching is not so easily convertible into faith in His Person.  Between the idea that Jesus taught the truth about the Father, and the idea that Jesus Himself by His death is the reconciliation of the world, there lies an abyss: which, however, the primitive community as well as S. Paul found the means to cross.  Unless the elements of the doctrine of the redemptive nature of His work lay in the teaching of Jesus, this transition is psychologically inexplicable.

      4. If we may take the first Epistle of S. Peter as substantially representing S. Peter’s mind, and that of the primitive community with him, we find that the personality of Jesus has led the disciple to a Christology and a Soteriology.  The striking features of this Epistle are that it adopts a standpoint peculiarly appropriate to S. Peter’s personal experience, suggests lines of thought independent of S. Paul, yet demonstrates substantial agreement in placing a redemptive value on Jesus’ death.  It has often been observed [Cf. e.g. B. Weiss, “Bibl. Theol.”] how peculiarly appropriate to the experience of an original apostle it is to describe himself as “begotten again unto a living hope by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” [1 Peter 1:3 ; cf. 5:1.]  Certainly no terms could better express the contrast between the apostolic condition before and after it.  It transferred them out of a state of depression and despair into a state of living hope.  This is the utterance of one to whom the Resurrection was not a speculative inference from the character of a dead person, but an unexpected fact which showed the past in a different light.

      Christ then, according to this Epistle, works for humanity not so much by what He said as by what He is. His value is rested upon His sinless character. [2:22.]  That is the basis of His redemptive work. He is compared with the suffering servant of Isaiah 53.  “Who His own self bare our sins in His Body upon the tree,” and “by Whose stripes ye were healed.” [2:24.  Cf. Titius, “Seligkeit”, iv. 165.]  This suffering of Christ was “for sins”; it was once for all; it was vicarious, “the righteous for the unrighteous”; and the purpose of it was “that He might bring us to God.” [3:18.]  Thus the Christian who, prior to conversion, was “going astray like sheep,” [2:25.] “unrighteous”, [3:18.] and in “darkness”, [1:9.] is now “redeemed with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot; even the blood of Christ”; [1:18, 19.] is now “sprinkled with the blood” [1:2.] of this sacrificial offering; is now in God’s “marvellous light” [2:9.], and in a condition described as “Salvation”. [1:5, 9, 10.]

      And this Redeemer Himself has experienced resurrection, which is the work of God, [1:21; 3:21.] and includes exaltation to God’s right hand.  And here significantly, as in his sermon in the Acts, S. Peter views the rejection of Christ by men and His exaltation by the Father as the fulfillment of the prophetic words: “the stone which the builders rejected, the same was made the head of the corner.” [2:7.]

      Here, then, all through the Epistle, it is the person, and it is the work: Christology and Redemption are the writer’s two main themes.  If this letter bears any real relation to S. Peter’s mind, then this interpretation of the significance of Jesus of Nazareth must imply some teaching heard during the ministry supporting and confirming it.

      5. Of course there is a difference, a very great and startling difference, between the Jesus of the earliest Gospel tradition and the Pauline Christ.

      Most significant, as illustrating that difference, is S. Paul’s infrequent use of the earthly name Jesus (some 17 times), contrasted with his constant use of the heavenly title Christ, (some 200 times), together with the title “the Lord” (some 130 times). [Cf. Feine, “Τh. Ν.Τ.”, 344.]

      It is also startling at first to reflect that Christendom owes the doctrine of Redemption to S. Paul rather than to the words of Jesus.

      These facts are not disputed.  The question is, What is the true explanation?  Recognizing the facts, do they require the rationalistic solution?

      II. Assuming the Pauline interpretation of Jesus to be true, it may be said at once that the differences between the teaching of our Lord and that of S. Paul must have exhibited precisely the general characteristics which we actually find.

      For on the assumption that the historical Jesus is what S. Paul declared Him to be, it is obvious that the teaching of Jesus during His ministry would be beset with the gravest difficulties.

      1. There would be the difficulties caused by His hearers.  For they were not, at any rate at first, in a receptive state.  All the prevailing religious terminology required to be detached from inferior meanings, to be cleansed and refined, and filled with deeper contents, before it could become an adequate vehicle for His instructions.  Otherwise His words would be spoken in one sense, and understood in another.  The great terms, the Messiah, the Son of Man, the Son of David, the Son of God, were all liable to serious misconstruction, until His hearers came to realize that He did not utter them in the popular sense.  Hence the embarrassment, the reticence and reserve, which are obvious features of the Master’s teaching.  Hence the half-sad, half-reproachful question: How is it that ye do not understand?

      We find, moreover, on their side a very evident reluctance to abandon their old conceptions in favour of the new thoughts which He gave them.  His announcement of unpalatable truths were met sometimes with open remonstrance, at others with bewilderment, at others with silent dislike.  All this complicated the work of instruction very seriously.  On their own confession they were constantly in an unteachable frame of mind.  Now it is impossible for criticism to say to what extent the disciples’ unreceptiveness put restraint upon Christ’s self-revelation, and limited His teaching.  As it was, He clearly said many things which were unintelligible at the time.  How many things were left unsaid, because to say them would do more harm than good?  If He could not do many mighty works in certain places because of the local unbelief, a similar obstruction must have thwarted His words.

      Moreover the disciples’ unreceptiveness at the time must have crippled Him in another way.  For if, as S. Paul’s conception of Him implies, our Lord was engaged in a process of self-revelation, we have to remember that self-revelation is not achieved merely by words.  This is exactly what criticisms of the difference between Jesus’ teaching and S. Paul’s teaching constantly ignore.  They assume that everything He has to reveal about Himself can be revealed in so many sentences.  But self is revealed by silence just as truly as by speech; by what a man does not say just as truly as by what he says.  Self is declared or betrayed in a thousand subtle indefinable ways.  A man may be known by his look, by his attire, his laughter, his gait, by his changeful bearing under the perpetually varying conditions of the daily career.  The man himself cannot put all these into words.  They would not give the same impression if he did.  It was impossible even for Jesus Christ to reveal Himself exclusively by His utterances.  The cast of His character was manifested through a far more subtle way than any mere verbal process.

      2. There was a second restraint on the teaching of Jesus caused by the nature of His mission: if He is what S. Paul believed Him to be, then the mission of Jesus was not merely to give instruction either about Himself or about His work.  His mission was not so much to enlighten as to redeem.  If “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself,” then Christ came not so much to preach the Gospel as so to live that there might be a Gospel to preach. [Dr. Dale, of Birmingham.]

      Now those who consider the teaching of Jesus irreconcilable with that of S. Paul do so on the assumption that Jesus was a prophet and nothing more.  But this is a dogmatic interpretation of His Person, which, of course, necessitates the result reached, because it virtually assumes it in its presuppositions.  It ought, however, to be self-evident that if the main function of our Lord was redemption, then the difference between the historical Jesus and the Pauline Christ is explained.  If Jesus had come to work rather than to talk, to save by self-sacrifice rather than to enlighten by prophetic instruction, the phenomena fall at once into natural position.

      3. A third restraint on the teaching of Jesus was caused by the fact that He spoke in anticipation of events not yet achieved.  If critics are found who even doubt whether our Lord could speak of the Church before it existed, they ought not to demand our Lord, at the same time, to deliver, before the event, everything He had to teach.

      It is quite true that the teaching on Redemption which the Gospels ascribe to our Lord is meagre compared with that of S. Paul.  But it is one thing to explain the Death after it has occurred; it is another thing to explain it beforehand, and to men who rebelled against the idea that it could ever happen.  Is not the difference in the teaching precisely what we might expect, if our Lord was what S. Paul maintained?

      It was naturally left for the apostolic age, after the Death was achieved, to place the true interpretation on its meaning.  And this was chiefly wrought through the spiritual insight of S. Paul.

      The objection that if Jesus of Nazareth was what S. Paul believed, He must have declared Himself substantially in the terms of the Pauline Christology and Soteriology, is an objection which fails to realize the historic situation.  Such completed self-declaration was not possible.  The unreceptiveness of the disciples, the nature of Christ’s mission, the very period of incompleteness in which the instructions were given, all alike combine to render such a demand unreasonable..

Chapter  XIV – The Resurrection In The Acts

      Having traced the process by which the elder apostles and S. Paul came independently to their belief in our Lord’s Resurrection, having also followed them where their fundamental agreement was ascertained, the next step is to analyze their teaching on the Resurrection in their early mission instructions.  Examples both of the preaching of S. Peter and also of S. Paul on critical occasions are given in the Acts of the Apostles at considerable length.  Our purpose is to analyze these instructions separately.  First those of S. Peter, and then those of S. Paul.

      A.  The mission instructions of S. Peter may be grouped in four main sections: the Whitsuntide Sermon, the addresses connected with healing the cripple at the beautiful gate, the speech before the Sanhedrim at his second arrest, and the instruction of Cornelius.

      I.  S. Peter’s teaching on our Lord in the Whitsuntide Sermon falls at once into easily marked divisions.

      1. First, as to Jesus life.  His mission was Divine.  This was attested by his works, which are triply characterized, as manifestations of power, as objects of attention, and as symbols of great ideas.  Appeal is made to the Jews themselves to acknowledge the justice of this account.  But Jesus of Nazareth was dead.  It might, therefore, seem useless to reopen the question now.

      2. Accordingly, S. Peter advances, secondly, to give his interpretation of that Death.  He declared it to be at once divinely ordained, and also a national crime.  Jesus of Nazareth was “delivered up,” that is, to death, “by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.”  S. Peter has come to understand that suffering and death are part of the mission of the Messiah; and that what he deprecated, as a horrible disaster, was nevertheless the will of God.  The disciple has spiritualized his Messianic ideas.  The death of Jesus was not the mere triumph of worldly force over moral worth.  It was providentially designed.  But, on the other hand, it was a national crime.  The Jewish nation availed themselves of pagan instruments to secure this brutal and appalling result.

      This interpretation of the Death, as an act of Providence, and a human sin, is given by S. Peter in a sentence of extraordinarily pictorial vividness and force.  But it certainly required to be supported by the strongest proof.

      3. What, then, is the proof that this interpretation of the Death is true?  S. Peter’s answer is, the Resurrection.  “Whom God raised up.”  It was this alone which rendered such an interpretation possible: which indeed compelled this interpretation to be made.  S. Peter himself would clearly have been unable, like his contemporaries, to place such construction upon the Death in the absence of this certifying fact of the Resurrection.

      But if the Resurrection explained the Death, upon what foundation did the Resurrection itself repose?  Where was the proof of it?

      4. “Because,” answered S. Peter, “it was not possible that He should be holden of Death.”  This impossibility of our Lord’s continuance in death might have been founded on His moral perfection, or on His Divine personality. [Cf. S. John 5:26.]  But the reason which S. Peter gave is because it was predicted.  He appeals to Scripture.  The familiar language of the sixteenth Psalm,

            “Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades.

            Neither wilt Thou give Thy Holy One to see corruption.”

was certainly not fulfilled in David’s case.  His tomb was there among the sepulchres of the Kings.  His body assuredly saw corruption.  But, urged S. Peter, this prophetic anticipation, unverified in the experience of David, was in reality a reference to the experience of the Messiah.  Accordingly the Resurrection of the Messiah was a conception required by Old Testament teaching.  S. Peter set this exposition first.  For if his hearers can be convinced that Scripture postulates the Resurrection of Messiah, they will be prepared to be reconciled with the historic application.

      5. Now such Resurrection, S. Peter affirmed, has been experienced by Jesus of Nazareth.  The language of the Psalmist, inapplicable to David, is an accurate description of what has happened in Jesus’ case.  His soul was not left in Hades.  His flesh did not see corruption.  That this Resurrection of Jesus is an actual fact is the witness of the entire apostolic community: “whereof we all are witnesses.”  They can certify it, individually and collectively, from their own experience.  If S. Peter alone formulates this testimony, he does so in the consciousness that it would be endorsed by the whole body of his associates.

      6. Hereupon follow, finally, the conclusions which the fact of the Resurrection of Jesus entails.  They are three.  First, that Jesus is by the right hand of God exalted.  Resurrection does not merely certify survival of the experience of death.  It is life in a glorified state.  And, secondly, with this idea of exaltation, goes the idea of power.  The exalted Jesus is the recipient of the promised Spirit, and the source of the new spiritual powers bestowed upon mankind.  And, thirdly, the great conclusion is reached that the Jesus whom the Jews had crucified was divinely constituted to the dignity of Christhood, and of Lordship or dominion over men.

      This is further emphasized when, in response to his hearers’ inquiry what they ought to do, S. Peter implores them to “repent and to be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ.”  Here the personal and official names are, for the first time, blended in the familiar Christian way.

      This first Christian Sermon suggests the following important considerations.

      1. It is wholly and entirely founded on the Resurrection.  Not merely is the Resurrection its principal theme, but if that doctrine were removed there would be no doctrine left.  For the Resurrection is propounded as being (1) the explanation of Jesus’ death; (2) prophetically anticipated as the Messianic experience; (3) apostolically witnessed; (4) cause of the outpouring of the Spirit, and thus accounting for religious phenomena otherwise inexplicable; and (5) certifying the Messianic and Kingly position of Jesus of Nazareth.  Thus the whole series of arguments and conclusions depends for stability entirely upon the Resurrection.  Without the Resurrection the Messianic and Kingly position of Jesus could not be convincingly established.  Without it the new outpouring of the Spirit would continue a mystery unexplained.  Without it the substance of the apostolic witness would have disappeared.  All that would be left of this instruction would be the Messianic exposition of Psalm 16: and that, only as a future experience of a Messiah who had not yet appeared.  The Divine Approval of Jesus as certified by His works would also remain: but apparently as an approval extended only to His life; a life ending like that of any other prophet whom the nation refused to tolerate any longer.  Thus the first Christian sermon is founded on the position of Jesus as determined by His Resurrection.

      2. Secondly, S. Peter’s proof of the Lord’s Resurrection is not strictly founded upon prophecy, but on the evidence of fact, which came within his own apostolic experience.  His argument from the Prophetic Psalm was designed to convince the Jews that Resurrection was a scripturally predicted portion of the Messiah’s experience.  But whether any such Resurrection had actually taken place was not a question of prophecy at all: it was a question of fact; and entirely separable.  It would be perfectly possible to accept S. Peter’s interpretation of the Psalm, and yet to deny that it had been actually fulfilled.  Whether Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah must depend upon the question whether the Messiah’s experiences had been fulfilled in Him; whether, above all, He had or had not risen from the dead.  S. Peter’s exposition of the Psalm suggests that he is propounding a new idea, not that he is repeating an accepted exegetical commonplace.  His personal faith in Jesus’ Resurrection did not begin with the prophecy, and advance thence to the fact.  Its fulfillment in Jesus was the thing to be demonstrated, not assumed.  Indeed it seems quite clear that the fact of Jesus’ Resurrection created this interpretation of the Psalm.  It is an exposition after the event and not before it.  The object of his exposition is to show that apostolic experience is in conformity with Scriptural anticipation of the Messiah.

      3. In the third place, it ought to be noted that the dogmatic limitations of this first sermon are very remarkable.  Not a word is said of our Lord’s Divinity: indeed nothing which transcends the strictly Messianic.  And perhaps more significant still: this first apostolic sermon contains no reference to Redemption.  The exalted Jesus is described as recipient of the Spirit, and the cause of the new spiritual endowments of the Apostolic circle; He is assigned dominion over men, although whether that dominion is national or worldwide is not asserted: but no further distinctively Christian doctrine is proclaimed.  That is to say, that the Sermon is confined to the most primitive circle of Christian ideas.  It manifestly belongs to the earliest type of development.  It does not reproduce the stage of Christian thought which had been reached when the Acts was written.  It is a sermon which would have been difficult to invent by one familiar with the Pauline conceptions.  It is peculiarly appropriate to the circumstances, and bears the mark of intrinsic probability.  It suggests that the author of the Acts is here incorporating an early report.  Its dogmatic limitations are evidential.

      II.  Next to the Whitsuntide Sermon are grouped the instructions connected with the healing of the cripple at the Beautiful Gate. [Acts 3 and 4.]

      Α.  In his speech to the people S. Peter diverts attention from himself to the true source of the miracle.

      1. He then condemns in a few severe sentences the attitude of the Jews toward our Lord, as perpetrated in spite alike of the heathen magistrate’s protest, and His own moral character.  They “denied the Holy and Righteous One.”  This appeal to the sinlessness of Our Lord is absent from the Whitsuntide Discourse, but is exactly what we should expect to find from a companion of the days of the Son of Man.  One may almost wonder that the appeal to the moral evidence does not occupy a larger space in S. Peter’s mission instructions.  But even here it is rather an appeal to notorious facts than a testimony to the influence of the personality of Jesus upon himself.  To say “Ye denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted unto you, and killed the Prince of Life,” is doubtless primarily a contrast between the character of Jesus and the treatment He received [Cf. B. Weiss, “Bibl. Theol.” i. 175.]: but it is far more than a contrast between innocence and guilt. Its emphatic completeness means the ascription of actual sinlessness to the Person so described.

      2. In solemn contrast with this conduct of the Jews, S. Peter sets the act of God in the Resurrection of Jesus; which he affirms to be attested by the apostolic evidence, and also by the miracle confronting them.

      3. He then discovers some extenuation for the Jewish treatment of Jesus, as an act of ignorance both on their part, and on that of their rulers.  But he nevertheless claims that in all this the Messianic predictions have been divinely fulfilled.

      4. He appeals to them, accordingly, to repent of their conduct towards our Lord, as he had also appealed at Whitsuntide: adding, however, the new and remarkable thought that such repentance will conduce to the speedy return of the Messiah, “that so there may come seasons of refreshing from the presence of our Lord; and that He may send the Christ who hath been appointed for you, even Jesus: Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things.”

      5. Accordingly S. Peter claims that they stand at the beginning of a new era.  The prophets “told of these days.”  And he concludes with the assurance that “unto your first God, having raised up His Servant, sent Him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from your iniquities.”

      1. Here, again, in this sermon, as at Whitsuntide, the whole discourse is founded on our Lord’s Resurrection.  It is true that the fact of the Resurrection is here greatly condensed, and rested exclusively on the apostolic witness, and that its consequences are differently drawn out; but it is the Resurrection which really dominates all.  “The God of our fathers hath glorified His Servant Jesus” (13);. “Whom God raised from the dead” (15); of which fact the apostles are the witnesses (15): here is the substance of the announcement.

      2. On the other hand, together with this central Christian deliverance, the general limitations of the apostle are very remarkable.

      Most striking is S. Peter’s appeal to the Jews to repent of their treatment of Jesus “that so there may come seasons of refreshing from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send the Christ.”  This expectation of the speedy return of the Messiah, evidently to be hoped for as likely within a brief interval, conditionally on the Jews’ repentance, is deeply significant.  It is a view which no one writing after the fall of Jerusalem would have invented.  Like the Whitsuntide Sermon the passage belongs distinctly to an undeveloped stage of Christian thought.  On reflection it is felt to be peculiarly appropriate to the circumstances of S. Peter’s experience; and it may be confidently asserted that it is not the way in which he would have expressed himself at a later time.

      Equally remarkable is the sentence “ Unto you first, God having raised up His Servant sent Him to bless you.  Bengel called this phrase “ praevium indicium de vocatione gentium.”  But Peter shared the standpoint of his nation.  On this passage Bishop Chase observes: “In the speeches which S. Peter is represented in the earlier chapters of the Acts as addressing to the people and to the rulers the great destiny of the Gospel is barely hinted at....  There is nothing to show that his horizon is wider than the horizon of the prophets. ... [Chase, “Credibility of the Acts,” p. 59.]  Once and once only in those earlier speeches of S. Peter does a sense of the wider field of blessing certainly appear; and it appears in the form of insistence on the prerogative of the Jew.  The promise of the blessing through Abraham’s seed to all the world prefaces the assurance: ‘Unto you first, God having raised up His Servant sent Him to bless you.’” [Ib. p. 60.  Acts 3:26; cf. S. Mark 7:27.]

      These theological limitations Bishop Chase considers “signs of a true and faithful portraiture.”

      This popular address in Solomon’s portico ended in the apostle’s arrest by Sadducean influence.  The Sadducees were pained at hearing men “proclaim in Jesus the resurrection from the dead.”  Thus the hearers are deeply conscious that the Resurrection is the centre of S. Peter’s teaching.

      B.  Hereupon the apostolic witness is transferred from the crowd to the great Council of the nation; before which S. Peter reiterates the same principal ideas: [Acts 4:10 ff.]

      1. The Crucifixion of Jesus by the Jews;

      2. His Resurrection by God;

      3. His power manifested in the miracle of healing;

      4. His exaltation to supreme authority in spite of His rejection by the Jewish builders ;

      5. His unique relation to men as the source of their salvation.

      Two reflections are suggested by this teaching:

      1. It should be noticed here that, as at Whitsuntide, the Resurrection is not viewed merely as a past event, but as the solution of present religious phenomena.  It is the Resurrection which accounts for the cripple’s restoration to health; just as it is the Resurrection which explained the spiritual gifts at Whitsuntide.  Christ’s Resurrection does not appear to the apostles in the aspect of a completed fact so much as of a power extended into the present, and pervading the whole religious experiences of the Church.

      2. What did S. Peter mean when he told the Jewish ruler that “in none other is there Salvation”? [Acts 4:12.]  To this question the reply has been given that “The word salvation as S. Peter uses it is still coloured by the lower associations of national aspiration – deliverance, restoration, unity; it is the divine gift of perfect soundness, vouchsafed to a nation wearied by disaster, and torn by internal strife.  Such salvation, such deliverance, Messiah was to bring.  But on the other hand, the word, as S. Peter uses it, is already being transplanted into the spiritual sphere; already it speaks of blessings corresponding to the needs of every part of our nature, the full sum of all the divine activities and gifts which meet the case of the sinful man.” [Chase, “Credibility of Acts,” p. 132.]

      ΙΙΙ.  The third main incident in the preaching of S. Peter is his address before the Sanhedrim when he was arrested after his escape from prison. [Acts 5:30–32.]

      1. Here S. Peter insists on the supreme obligation of obedience to God, in spite of human orders to the contrary;

      2. Obedience to that God which had caused the Resurrection of Jesus, whom the Jews “slew hanging Him on a tree”;

      3. Who by Resurrection had also effected the exaltation of Jesus “to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel and remission of sins.”

      4. And this doctrine and fact S. Peter rests on the double witness of the Apostolic Community, and of the Holy Spirit “Whom God bath given to them that obey Him.”

      The address is brief; possessing its own characteristics; rising out of the circumstances; exhibiting the same fundamental message, and similar Jewish limitations.  At the basis of all is the Resurrection, which has three results: (1) it condemns the conduct of the Jew towards Jesus; (2) it exalts; Jesus Himself to supreme authority and redemptive power; (3) it imposes the duty of obedience to the God of their fathers Who has wrought this exaltation.  But the scope of this redemptive work is only extended by S. Peter here to Israel.  No hint is given of the Gentile world.  And while obedience to this revelation is rewarded by the gift of the Holy Spirit, the solemn implication is that this gift is withheld from those who disobey.  The great thought is here expressed that the Community of the Resurrection is the sphere of the Spirit’s activity.

      IV.  To these instructions by S. Peter must be added, finally, his teaching of Cornelius. [Acts 10:38–43.]

      Here S. Peter for the first time places the title “Jesus Christ” in the forefront of his message.  At Whitsuntide it was the conclusion of his speech that Jesus was the Christ. [Cf. Acts 5:42 and 3:20.]  Elsewhere it was mentioned in connection with baptism, [Acts 2:38, 10:48.] and in a formula of healing. [Acts 3:6, 4:10.]  But here S. Peter begins with it.  It is significant that this should be the case where he is addressing, by invitation, a friendly and well-disposed circle of hearers, who are in a teachable frame of mind.  Here also S. Peter announces at once that the subject of his message is “Lord of all.”  Thus he propounds the great doctrines which form the substance of his instruction.  If this method of procedure had been adopted at Whitsuntide the instruction might have came to an untimely end.  On that occasion S. Peter reserved the great dogmatic announcement to the end; and slowly built up step by step his teaching.  Each method was adapted to the circumstances.  There is an air of historic veracity in both.

      After this introduction of his conclusions, the apostle then falls back, as he did in the Whitsuntide Sermon, on the earthly name, Jesus of Nazareth, and gives a brief summary of His activity from the purely human point of view: “how that God anointed Him with the Holy Ghost and with power; Who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed with the devil; for God was with Him.” [Acts 10:38.]  This is the superficial first aspect of the life as it appeared to any ordinarily observant Jew or pagan.  S. Peter claims also to possess personal knowledge of the whole public career.  Then came the Death: “Whom also they slew, hanging Him on a tree.” [Cf. Acts 5:30.]

      And here S. Peter begins his proclamation of the Resurrection.

      1. “Him God raised up on the third day.”  Here, for the first time, the third day is mentioned in  the apostolic preaching.  It is noteworthy that the third day is greatly emphasized in the Gospel of S. Luke, [S. Luke 24:21–46.] which is connected with the Jerusalem appearances; and also that S. Luke ascribes this announcement to the head of the Jerusalem Community.

      2. To this S. Peter adds that the manifestations of the Risen Lord were not granted to the entire people, but only to divinely selected apostolic witnesses.

      3. Further, that these witnesses not only saw Him but did eat and drink with Him after He rose from the dead.”  It is worthy of notice that S. Luke, who ascribes this most materialistic evidence of physical identity to S. Peter in the Acts, gives the account of the incident in the Gospel, [S. Luke 24:41–43.] and is the only Evangelist who does so.

      4. Further, that the Lord, clearly after He was risen, gave the apostles instructions to proclaim Him as Judge of mankind.  Meyer considers that this is a saying of the Risen Master not elsewhere recorded. [In loc. S. Matt. 28:20 and Acts 1:8 are quite different.]

      5. Finally, that this announcement of forgiveness of sins through Jesus of Nazareth is supported by the teaching of “all the prophets.”  This offer is to “everyone” that accepts Him.  The universality of the Gospel message is here perhaps suggested. [Cf. Acts 10:34.]

      The instruction of Cornelius consists of two pictures, or rather a background and a foreground of the same, remarkably contrasted.  In the background is the earthly Jesus, in the foreground the heavenly Christ.  This contrast is habitual with S. Peter.  He sets elsewhere the sharp antithesis: “Whom ye crucified, Whom God raised.” [Acts 4:10; cf. Acts 3:14, 15.]  But here in the instruction of Cornelius this contrast is developed with unexampled vividness.  There is first the background of Jesus of Nazareth, with His beneficent ministrations to human needs, going about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed; [Acts 10:38.] ending in His death, by hanging on a tree.  Then, secondly, on this background, which could only suggest a divinely gifted Prophet, not in the least the promised and expected Messiah, is set the glorious announcement of Resurrection.  This includes exaltation to authority over the consciences of men, the final judgeship of human character, the prerogative of the forgiveness of sins.  The lowliness of the former, the grandeur and unearthliness of the latter, makes this contrast exceedingly powerful and awakening.  If the thought is virtually the same as in previous sermons, it is differently presented.  But of course that which makes the contrast possible, that which is the sum and substance of the message, is the Resurrection.

      B.  The Pauline series of instructions in the Acts include first the sermon in the Synagogue of Pisidian Antioch; secondly the speech at Athens, and thirdly the addresses in Palestine.  In addition are the two accounts of his own conversion, which will be omitted here, having been already treated separately.

      Ι.  The main lines of S. Paul’s address in the Synagogue of Pisidian Antioch were as follows:

      1. After tracing the history of Israel from Moses to the time of David, he affirms that the promises made to David were fulfilled in his line, namely, in Jesus, who was also the subject of S. John Baptist’s Mission (16–25).

      2. He then appealed to his hearers to realize the momentous value of the person of Jesus.  Being far remote from the sacred soil, he described the conduct of these “dwellers in Jerusalem”: their ignorant want of penetration; listening periodically to the language of their prophets, yet incapable of understanding them; blindly fulfilling their sacred books by condemning Him.  This S. Paul enforced with historic detail.  Their inability to find an adequate pretext for His death; their request to Pilate, who is mentioned by name; the taking down from the Cross; the burial: all these are recorded by S. Paul, almost with the precision of an Evangelist (16–29).

      3. Then comes the distinctive declaration: the Resurrection.  They “laid Him in a tomb; but God raised Him from the dead.”  This is the antithesis already familiar in the sermons of S. Peter.  “Ye ... killed the Prince of life Whom God raised from the dead.” [Acts 3:15.]  “Whom ye crucified, Whom God raised.” [Acts 4:10.]  “The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, Whom ye slew.” [Acts 5:30.]  “Whom they also slew, hanging Him on a tree, Him God raised up the third day.” [Acts 10:39–40.]  These are S. Peter’s witness.  That of S. Paul propounds a similar antithesis.

      4. This assertion of the Resurrection is then rested on the Apostolic evidence.  And this with remarkable peculiarities.  S. Paul omits all reference to his own experience.  He appeals exclusively to the testimony of the elder disciples.

      (a) S. Paul mentions the period during which the apostolic experience lasted: it was extended over “many days.”  The form of the statement is striking.  It looks original.  For the historian himself described the period as “forty days:” [Acts 1:3.] yet here he leaves the less definite expression.  Surely because he found it in the record of the speech.

      (b) S. Paul also mentions the place where the experience occurred.  It was the testimony of “those who came up with Him from Galilee to Jerusalem.”  The speaker seems to confine attention here to experiences in Jerusalem.  It is noteworthy that S. Luke also in his Gospel does the same.  We remember that the list of witnesses in 1 Cor. 15 is derived from the community in Jerusalem.  The suggestion is that S. Paul locates the Easter Appearances in that neighbourhood.  [Resch confirms this, “Paulinismus”, p. 368.]

      (c) Consequently the recipients of this experience are naturally now constituted “His witnesses unto the people.”  Why S. Paul omits his own experience we may not be able to determine.  Certainly it was not for the strange reason assigned by Paley that “the testimony of those who had conversed with Jesus after His Resurrection in the ordinary and natural way of human perception” was “the most direct and satisfactory proof”. [Paley, Sermon vi; works, iv. 304.]  As if S. Paul disparaged the method of his own experience, or thought it other in kind from theirs!  Considering also that he made it the subject of two mission sermons in the Acts, and set it in the same list with the elder apostles’ experience in the first Corinthian letter.

      5. To strengthen the apostolic evidence, S. Paul next appeals to Scripture evidence (32–37).  The Divine constitution of Jesus (to the Messianic office) “that He raised up Jesus” – raised up, in the sense of appointed or ordained, is founded on the 2nd Psalm, “Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee.”  And the Divine upraising of Jesus from the dead, involving as it does perpetuity of life, “Now no more to return to corruption,” is founded on the 16th Psalm: “Thou wilt not suffer Thy Holy One to see corruption.”  The contrast between the experience of David and that of Jesus is clearly shown.

      6. And finally the conclusion is reached, in an application of the doctrinal results involved in this fact of the Resurrection.  This is expressed under the terms of forgiveness and of justification.  The Resurrection here, as with S. Peter, is not merely historic and past, but involving present spiritual results of the most momentous character.  Especially remarkable are the words: “And by Him every one that believeth is justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses.”  And then S. Paul finishes with a solemn warning against the danger of rejecting Divine announcements.

      This report of S. Paul’s sermon in the synagogue has been criticized as “plainly an imitation of that of Stephen, and of the Petrine discourses in the first part of the Acts, and therefore scarcely derived from the tradition of a hearer.” [A. Weiss, ‘ Bibl. Theol.’ i. 280.]

      1. So far as concerns S. Stephen’s speech, a resemblance in S. Paul’s utterances would only show that the incidents of that trial and martyrdom made a profound impression on the persecutor.  There is a marked tendency in men to repeat, perhaps half unconsciously, phrases and arguments heard in their more impressionable hours.  It is not uncommon in preachers to betray an influence which some of their hearers may be able to trace.  If the resemblance between these two discourses were great, it might just as reasonably represent the fact and not the historian’s fancy.

      But is the resemblance more than superficial?  “Both sermons,” says Bishop Chase, “open with a review of the ancient history of Israel.  But here all similarity between the two speeches ends.  The range and the motive of the reference to the past in the two utterances are wholly different.  S. Stephen was mainly concerned to insist that the earliest crises of revelation were concerned with places outside the sacred soil of the Holy Land, and to show that the rejection of Jesus the Messiah and of His witnesses had its prototype in Israel’s rejection of Moses, the divinely-appointed deliverer and law-giver.  S. Paul traces the outline of the history in order to prove that in earlier deliverances, as now in the redemption wrought by Jesus the Messiah, all was the direct outcome of the divine working.” [Chase, “Credibility”, p. 182.]

      2. Secondly, as to the resemblance between this synagogue sermon and the Petrine discourses.  It is a curious feature in S. Paul’s sermon, and certainly unexpected, that it should include so remarkable a quantity of biographical detail.  His mention of John the Baptist, and report of his teaching ; his reference to Pilate, and the Jewish influence over him; the taking down from the Cross, the laying in a tomb: all these could only be traditional for S. Paul; they would come more naturally from S. Peter’s personal experience.  A careful analysis, however, seems to show that S. Peter’s knowledge of the details of our Lord’s life, as reported in the Acts, is more varied than that of S. Paul.  It is nevertheless unexpected.  Bishop Chase indeed argues that S. Paul in this sermon ascribes the burial of our Lord to His enemies; [Acts 13:29.] that possibly S. Paul did not know the facts; and that we should be startled if the statement occurred in a sermon by S. Peter.  But this is a question of interpretation which, to say the least, is uncertain.  We can scarcely wonder that criticism expresses surprise at this Pauline elaboration of biographical detail, so different as it is to the practice of his Epistles.

      But it should be noticed that the description of the Jewish treatment of our Lord is in S. Paul’s sermon much more critical than in S. Peter’s, and also tinged with a truly Pauline irony. [Acts 13:27: “fulfilled them by condemning Him.”]  It is further marked by a frankness and unreserve natural in criticisms delivered at a distance from the scene of the events.  We can hardly imagine that S. Paul would have delivered it in Jerusalem.  It contains details omitted by S. Peter, and unnecessary in a speech delivered in Jerusalem, but quite naturally inserted by one speaking in another country.  Thus S. Peter in Jerusalem does not mention the duration of the apostolic experiences of the Resurrection; nor does he give any hint of the locality where the Risen Lord appeared.  S. Paul does both: the Risen Lord “was seen for many days,” and by those who “came up with Him from Galilee to Jerusalem.”  These touches show either very remarkable historic imagination on the part of S. Luke in thus transferring material and adapting it from one speaker and set of circumstances to another – or else, fidelity to the records in his possession.

      3. Then comes the fact that both S. Paul and S. Peter appeal to the passage, “Thou wilt not give Thy Holy One to see corruption.”  Their treatment of it is, however, different. S. Paul places the apostolic witness to the fact of the Resurrection first, and the exposition of Scripture afterwards: in S. Peter this order is reversed.  S. Peter’s speech is in manner more tentative, conciliatory, and cautious: [Cf. Acts 2:29.] whereas S. Paul’s speech is somewhat characteristically aggressive, solemn, menacing. [Cf. Acts 13:40, 41, 27, 28.]  S. Paul adds also a passage from the 2nd Psalm, “Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten Thee,” giving a characteristically mystic reference to the Divine mission of Jesus Christ.  S. Peter says nothing of this.  S. Paul’s exposition of the 16th Psalm is confined to the sentence, “Thou wilt not give Thy Holy One to see corruption”, referring it conclusively to the body of Christ: whereas S. Peter quotes the passage at considerable length, referring to the soul in Hades, as well as to the body in the grave. [Cf. 1 S. Peter 3:18, 19.]  S. Paul confines attention to the parallel between the Psalmist’s language and the bodily experience of our Lord; S. Peter goes much further, and ascribes to David a prophetic insight into the future experiences of his greater Son.  S. Paul again states quite definitely what S. Peter only implies (although, of course, this whole argument requires the implication) that David “was laid with his fathers and saw corruption.”  So Peter dwells on the exaltation and the power of the Risen Lord “Whose flesh did not see corruption.”  S. Paul dwells on the thought of the Risen Lord’s continued life; He was “no more to return to corruption.” [Acts 2:31–32, and 13:34.]  Bishop Chase suggests that S. Paul’s idea, in this last phrase, is precisely the same as that in Romans 6:9: “Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death no more hath dominion over Him.”

      4. The conclusions drawn from the Resurrection are characteristically different in the sermons of S. Peter and of S. Paul.  S. Peter’s conclusions are that the exaltation of Jesus accounts for the recent outpouring of spiritual gifts, and that Jesus is enthroned in Messianic dignity and dominion.  S. Paul’s conclusion is to the manward results of forgiveness and justification; including an eminently Pauline statement of justification through Christ, contrasted with the powerlessness of the Mosaic Law to secure such blessed gifts.  “Peter never spoke like this,” said Chrysostom long ago.  And recent German criticism practically acknowledges as much.  “Such discourses,” says Harnack, “can only have been composed by a missionary practiced in the work of evangelization ... Whether S. Paul’s doctrine is here correctly reproduced, or whether theologoumena are to be found in the book which differ from those of the Pauline theology, is a matter of indifference – he who wrote this passage was a near disciple of S. Paul.” [Harnack, “Luke the Physician”, p. 19 n.]

      Doubtless many will go much further and affirm that the Pauline doctrine is here correctly reproduced.  But, even were it otherwise, the passage which ascribes such thought to him is evidently the work of one conscious of S. Paul’s distinctive ideas.

      Attention should also be paid to the note of warning and of menace which runs through the sermons of S. Paul while it is absent from those of S. Peter.  S. Peter’s tone is gentler. [Acts 10:28, 29, 34, 35.]  He finds extenuating circumstances for the behaviour of the Jews. [Acts 2:17.]  He pleads and entreats. [Acts 2:23, 25, 26.]  He indicates the blessings of belief rather than the penalties of rejection. [Acts 5:32.]

      But S. Paul in the Synagogue [Acts 13:40, 41.] ends with a downright threat, “Beware therefore, lest that come upon you which is spoken in the prophets; behold, ye despisers, and wonder and perish.”  So again it is to the Athenians.  He proclaims “the approaching judgment of the world, supported by the fact that God has already appointed a man who will execute this judgment, and that He has given the strongest reason to believe in it by raising Him up from the dead.  Upon this message S. Paul bases his demand that they will repent....  Their fate in the judgment will depend upon their attitude to this demand; for God is willing to overlook the past as the time of ignorance.” [B. Weiss, “Bibl. Theology”, i. 293.]  Thus, says Bernhard Weiss, it was not the promising but only the threatening aspect of the work of Christ which could, in the first place, be set before the Gentiles if they were to be startled out of their sinful life.  But it is not the Gentile only, it is also the Jew, whom S. Paul treats in this appallingly solemn way.  His latest utterance in Rome is similar. [Acts. 28:25 ff.]

      Thus S. Luke maintains consistently throughout his entire series of reports the distinctive character of the two apostles.

      It is difficult not to be impressed with a sense that we have here a historian’s fidelity to the facts, and a profound appreciation of the peculiarities of S. Peter and S. Paul.

      While the invention of speeches for their principal personages was an ordinary proceeding among ancient historians, such inventions, even if escaping manifest anachronisms, do not attain such psychological and religious distinctness as to be consistently appropriate throughout to each individual character, and to that alone.  There is something very impressive in the absence of Pauline qualities from S. Peter’s sermon, and their presence in the speeches assigned to S. Paul.  Surely here we are confronted with a genuine reporter.

      Note that S. Paul in his address in the Synagogue of Pisidian Antioch (Acts 13.) appeals, like S. Peter, to the 16th Psalm, but in describing the Resurrection does not appeal to his own experience outside Damascus, but to the witness of the original apostles (verse 31).  “He was seen many days of them which came up with Him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are His witnesses unto the people.”

      “S. Paul here allows to those who were apostles before him an office in which he could not himself share.  They were the primary witnesses of the Resurrection; for they, unlike S. Paul, held converse with the Risen Lord among the familiar scenes of earth.” [Chase, “Credibility of Acts”, p. 185.]

      With the Synagogue address in Antioch may be grouped the very brief report of the Synagogue address in Thessalonica, [Acts 17:1.] that S. Paul “reasoned with them from the Scriptures, opening and alleging (1) that it behoved the Christ to suffer; (2) and to rise again from the dead; and (3) that this Jesus, whom, said he, I proclaim unto you is the Christ.” [Acts 17:3.]  The reminiscence of our Lord’s words on the Emmaus road is evident: [S. Luke 24:26.] “Behoved it not the Christ to suffer these things, and to enter into His glory?”  The Divine necessity of the Passion and of the Resurrection and Exaltation are the theme in both.  To this S. Paul adds the identification of Jesus of Nazareth with the Christ.

      II.  The second reference to the Resurrection in S. Paul’s Mission addresses was at Athens (Acts 17).  The reference is exceedingly brief.  But it is the culmination of his teaching there.  He declared that God “hath appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He hath ordained; whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead” (31).

      A new conception makes its appearance here.  Our Lord is certified by the Resurrection to be the Judge of the human race.  The inferences drawn from the fact before a Jewish audience would of course have been quite unintelligible here.  And there is a remarkable contrast between the systematic and coherent speeches of S. Peter in Jerusalem or of S. Paul in Pisidian Antioch, and this address before the pagan circle in Athens.  There is something tentative and inconsequent about the latter.  The Resurrection is introduced at the end of the speech ; but it cannot be said to be a natural, still less an inevitable conclusion.  It is additional, not inferential.  And the statement produced apparently but little conciliating effect.

      Yet there is something very significant in the mere mention of this doctrine at Athens.  S. Paul was not unaware that no doctrine would be less acceptable to the philosophic mind; and he might, for prudential reasons, have selected another theme.  The introduction of such a doctrine into circumstances eminently unfavourable, might seem to be a failure of that insight and versatility with which we know the apostle was usually endowed to a most exceptional degree.  His deliberate selection in this instance of a theme unfavourable to his design surely illustrates remarkably his sense of its fundamental character.  It could not, consistently with faithfulness to his message, be possibly left out.  Bearing in mind what he said about the Resurrection of Christ in 1 Cor. 15, we can well understand why he taught it even in Athens.  The fact was that S. Paul had no message without it.  He had nothing else to teach.  He founded Christianity upon it.

      At the same time it is clear that S. Paul was not allowed sufficient time to develop his doctrine of the Resurrection of Jesus before the men of Athens.  We have an interrupted speech, terminated by manifest impatience and ridicule.  Consequently the announcement of the fact is left suspended in air without the support of the reasons on which the apostolic witness reposed.  We cannot tell how the instruction would have finished: or whether he would have given an account of his own experience.

      III.  We now reach the series of instructions given by S. Paul in Palestine. [Acts 22; 23:6–8; 24:15–21.  The accounts of his conversion are here omitted, having been separately considered.]  Before the Sanhedrim he claims that the whole charge against him is really due to his advocacy of the doctrine of the Resurrection of the dead.  Doubtless this statement was at that crisis diplomatic.  It divided his opponents hopelessly and drew the entire force of the Pharisees on his side.  But the statement must not be adduced as a mere instance of apostolic versatility.  It indicated a basis of unity for the larger portion of the nation; and sought to insist on truth which Jews and Christians held to a considerable degree in common.  Doubtless the Jewish and the Christian ideas of Resurrection greatly differed, and yet there was agreement within the difference.  And upon this S. Paul insisted.

      The same doctrine is repeated before Felix at Caesarea. [Acts. 24:15–21.]  But here, before Felix, the general doctrine of Resurrection is brought forward, while no reference is made to the Resurrection of our Lord.  This was made inevitable by the course which events had taken.  The dispute had assumed the form of Pharisee versus Sadducee at Jerusalem; and S. Paul claimed acquittal at Caesarea on the ground that to condemn his doctrine of Resurrection would be virtually to condemn the whole body of the Pharisees.

      At the same time it is quite clear that the distinctively Christian doctrine of the Resurrection of our Lord was not left out by S. Paul during his judicial examinations.  For when Felix’ successor, Festus, described the fact to Agrippa, he summarized the case as connected with certain questions of the Jews’ religion, “and of one Jesus, who was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive” (Acts 25:19).  Evidently, therefore, Festus was aware that S. Paul taught our Lord’s Resurrection, and not only taught it, but made it so central in his religion, that this was the only doctrine which impressed itself on the Roman official’s mind.  This group of S. Paul’s Palestinian instructions on the Resurrection of Christ ends with the recital before Agrippa of the incident near Damascus. [Acts 24.]  Here S. Paul appeals to the Jewish belief in Resurrection in general: as calculated to remove antecedent prejudice against belief in the Resurrection of Christ in particular.  “Why is it judged incredible with you, if God doth raise the dead?” (8).  And this last recorded instruction of S. Paul ends with the most graphic statement of his position: “Having therefore obtained the help that is from God, I stand unto this day testifying both to small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses did say should come; how that the Christ must suffer, and how that He first by the Resurrection of the dead should proclaim light both to the people and to the Gentiles” (23).

      In coupling together the Passion with the Resurrection, S. Paul removes the stumbling block of the Cross from the way of his Jewish hearers.  The Passion and Death of the Messiah would be for them the insuperable difficulty, as it was originally for S. Paul himself.  He here declares that the progress of the Christ through suffering to glory is the real teaching of the prophets.  The popular interpretation was imperfect: being founded exclusively on those passages which made for the Christ’s glory, while ignoring those which spoke of His humiliation and sufferings.

      And here, with this statement of Resurrection doctrine within Jewish limits, well calculated to conciliate Jewish thought, S. Paul’s witness in the Acts concludes.

      If we attempt to summarize his doctrine of Christ’s Resurrection and its results, we may say that S. Luke represents him as teaching that:

      1. Christ’s Resurrection was the work of God (Acts 13:30).

      2. It was certified by the apostles who saw Him during a considerable period after His Resurrection in Jerusalem (Acts 13:31).

      3. It was endorsed by the Psalms (Acts 13:33 ff., 24:22, 23).

      4. It is the means of man’s forgiveness and justification (Acts 13:38, 39).

      5. It certifies the position of our Lord as Judge of the human race (Acts 17:31).

      6. It is a doctrine which harmonizes with Jewish belief in Resurrection (Acts 23:6), and ought not to be incredible to believers in a living God (Acts 26:8).

      7. It throws light on the dealings of God with mankind (Acts 26:23).

      C.  Our analysis of the mission preaching of S. Peter and S. Paul leads to several observations on their unity and their difference.

      1. The speeches of S. Peter and S. Paul in the Acts show characteristic differences, corresponding to the differences in the process by which they came to believe.  There must, of course, necessarily be general similarity in first announcements given to the uninstructed.  The main object both for S. Peter and for S. Paul was to demonstrate to the Jews the Messiahship of Jesus.  The Resurrection was necessarily the main proof of this position.  But yet there are differences in their respective points of view.  There are thoughts in S. Peter’s speeches which could scarcely be found in S. Paul’s.  To say that Jesus of Nazareth was “a man approved of God” to the Jews, “by mighty works and wonders and signs,” [Acts 2:22.] was natural for S. Peter: it would not have been so natural for S. Paul.  To describe Jesus as “the Holy and Righteous One” [Acts 3:14.] is evidently to witness to personal impressions gathered during the period of companionship.  It is a direct judgment upon Christ’s character; not an inference from His Resurrection.  This also suits S. Peter’s experience, but not S. Paul’s.  To describe Jesus as One Whom “God anointed” “with the Holy Ghost and with power”; as One “Who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil,” [Acts 10:38.] is another direct reminiscence of the earthly ministry.  For S. Paul such a statement could only be indirect and traditional.

      It is further instructive to notice the constant historic allusion, and biographical detail, as to our Lord’s earthly career, found in the Sermons of S. Peter: that Jesus was given over by the Jews into pagan hands and crucified through their instrumentality; [Acts 2:23.] that He was divinely attested by His works of power; [Acts 2:22.] that Pilate disapproved the Jewish treatment of our Lord and had determined to release Ηim; [Acts 3:13.] that the Jews brought pressure to bear on Pilate, “denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted” [Acts 3:14.] them; that Jesus was sinless and perfect; [Ib.] that the Jewish nation and rulers alike acted under moral blindness; [Acts 3:17.] that Jesus was the Stone which the builders rejected and yet divinely constituted the Head Stone of the Corner; [Acts 4:11.] that the immediate preparation for Jesus was the baptism of S. John; [Acts 10:37.] that Jesus of Nazareth “went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed with the devil”; [Acts 10:38.] that they ate and drank with Him after His Resurrection; [Acts 10:41.] that He charged them to proclaim Him as the Judge of mankind. [Acts 10:42.]

      2. The Sermons of S. Peter betray no Pauline tendencies.  Yet the historian S Luke was a disciple of S. Paul.  His own Pauline tendencies are unmistakable: however true it may be that he did not penetrate into the depth of the mind of the Apostle to the Gentiles.  Now this absence of Pauline phrase and thought in the Sermon of S. Peter has led a critic to observe: “we are drawn to consider that these discourses formed part of an early Jerusalem chronicle, and that even if they do not reproduce S. Peter’s actual words, they reflect throughout the main lines of the first apostles’ preaching.” [M Goguel, “L’Apôtre Paul et J. C.,” p. 24.]

      3. While the significance of the Resurrection is drawn out in various directions, the significance of the Death of Jesus is left comparatively undeveloped.

      The death of Jesus is viewed as a Jewish crime. [Acts 2:23; 3:13–15; 5:30.]  It was a work of Jewish ignorance.  But this is not a theological explanation.  It was part of the eternal design. [Acts 2:23.]  This is theology.  But no account is given of its redemptive effect.  It was divinely predicted that the Christ would suffer. [Acts. 3:18.]  But why these sufferings should occur, and what their results would be, S. Peter leaves among the unsolved mysteries.

      These early apostolic instructions quickly pass from the horror of the death to the splendour of the Resurrection.  This was natural for two reasons; partly for the scandal which the death created in the ordinary Jewish hearer; and partly because it was the Resurrection which endowed our Lord with new powers for aiding mankind.  Without the theology of the Resurrection there could be no theology of the Death.

      4. We have absolutely no right to say that this comparatively meagre instruction on the meaning of the death of Christ represents the existing stage of the apostles’ own development.  It was surely rather due to the exigencies of their work; to the unpreparedness of their hearers; to the necessity of establishing the claim of Jesus; to the necessity of removing the impression which the death itself must create until understood in the light of the Resurrection.  These were mission sermons: elementary thoughts for the uninstructed.  We should expect to find that the difference would be very great between these sermons and S. Paul’s Epistles.  We may fully accept the statement of Bernhard Weiss that “the fuller knowledge which S. Paul had received is reserved for the more thorough instruction of believers.  His initiatory mission preaching did not require it; nor could he communicate it, seeing that its presuppositions were still awanting in the case of his hearers.” [B. Weiss, “Bibl. Theol.” i. 299.]  We must remember that the doctrine that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures is a truth which S. Paul tells the Corinthians he has received: received that is, as a tradition from the community over which S. Peter presided.  “The inference,” says Weizsäcker, “is indisputable; the primitive Church already taught and proved from Scripture that the death of Jesus exerted a saving influence in the forgiveness of sins.” [Weizäcker, “Apost. Age,” i. 131.]  It was left for the matured reflection of S. Paul to enlighten the Christian Church with the deeper aspect of redemptive truth.  It was not in the mission preaching but within the precincts of the community of faith that S. Paul declared that “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself”; [2 Cor. 5.] “being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus; Whom God set forth to be a propitiation through faith by His blood.” [Rom. 3:24, 25.]  This profound elaborated conception of the truth was appropriate to the circle of belief: it would be no proper passage for the discourses in the Acts.

      5. From the standpoint of historical evidence it must be confessed that the primitive instructions in the Acts are disappointing.  They are indeed highly satisfactory in the fact that they show no tendency whatever to embroider, or invent narratives about the Resurrection.  But they can in the nature of things only represent a very small part of the apostolic teaching.  The inquiries of Jewish hearers must have led to lengthy explanations of historic evidence which lies behind such a phrase as “we are witnesses of these things.”  The instructions in the Acts can only be outlines highly condensed.  Such a phrase as “to Him bear all the prophets witness” (Acts 10:43) must surely have raised inquiries, or itself represents further instructions.  More especially such a sentence as “gave Him to be manifest not to all the people, but unto witnesses that were chosen before of God, even to us, who did eat and drink with Him after He rose from the dead” (Acts 10:40, 41), must have provoked such interest in the first hearers, as it does in ourselves, to ask the apostle, if only we could be answered, to tell us more.  That such details were given may be considered certain.

      More especially when it is remembered that, as they stand, S. Peter’s instructions on the Resurrection seem more concerned with the theological importance than with the establishment of the fact.  No announcement is made by S. Peter of the details either of his own or of any other apostle’s experience of the Risen Lord.  S. Paul, on the other hand, twice over relates the whole story of the Lord’s appearing to him.

      No list of the Appearances is given in the speeches in the Acts, nor is there one in the speeches of S. Paul.  Yet we know that he was in possession of such a list.  And it is quite natural that the exigencies of teaching which led very early to the composition of such a list should have led also to its public mention in instructions.  Or was it intended rather for the use of those within the Church?

      Thus the recorded evidence of the Resurrection is much less than the evidence actually received.  But the unrecorded evidence was not really lost.  It went to form the primitive community, and was stamped upon the mind of the Church of Jerusalem.  The evidence for Christ’s Resurrection is by no means exclusively documentary.  It is also institutional.  It was embodied in the convictions and constitution of the Universal Church.

      According to the Acts, the Resurrection is the substance of the preaching both of S. Peter and of S. Paul.  Notwithstanding the intimate knowledge possessed by the former of the parables and sayings of Jesus, it is not these which constitute the message of the Galilean apostle any more than of the apostle of the Gentiles.

      6. The genuineness of the Pauline utterances in the Acts was challenged more than half a century ago in the amazing statement of Baur [“Paulus.”] that the Paul of the Acts of the Apostles was an entirely different person from the Paul of the Epistles.  This opinion the critic Resch has recently pronounced an extravagant judgment. [Resch, “Paulinismus,” p. 500, 1904.]  Resch reminds us that S. Paul’s contemporaries were conscious of a marked distinction between his letters and his speeches.  “His letters, they say, are weighty and strong; but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account.” [2 Cor. 10:10.]  At the end of a most exhaustive word-study in the Pauline letters and speeches, Resch’s conclusion is that the deeper we penetrate into the Acts of the Apostles the more impressive becomes the identity of the S. Paul therein depicted with the S. Paul of the Epistles. [“Paulinismus,” p. 500.]  Resch collects nearly sixty resemblances in word or phrase between the Pauline speeches in the Acts, and S. Paul’s Epistles.  Of these, six are words not found elsewhere in the New Testament.  Many of the resemblances taken separately may not seem particularly convincing.  But when we read in the Acts “it was necessary that the word of God should first be spoken to you” (Acts 13:46), and in the Epistles “to the Jew first” (Rom. 1:16); or, “gold and silver and stone” (Acts 17:29) compared with “gold, silver, costly stones” (1 Cor. 3:12); or, “serving the Lord with all lowliness of mind” (Acts 20:19) compared with “doing service as unto the Lord” (Eph. 6:7), and “with all lowliness” (Eph. 6:2); or, “the defence which I now make unto you” (Acts 22:1) compared with “my defence to them that examine me is this” (1 Cor. 9:3); or, “far hence unto the Gentiles” (Acts 22:21) compared with “ye that once were far off” (Eph. 2:13); or, “I am a Pharisee” (Acts 23:6) compared with “as touching the law, a Pharisee” (Phil. 3:5); or, “so serve I the God of our fathers” (Acts 24:14) compared with “God whom I serve from my forefathers “ (2 Tim. 1:3); we may feel the force of Resch’s conclusions.

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