(«) Earlier Paulinism. — Among the influences from the pre-Christian stage of St. Paul's life which bore upon the shaping of his theology by far the most important was his experience as a Jew, and to this it would, in the present writer's opinion, be hardly possible to ascribe too much. He was profoundly conscious of belonging to that race to which pertained 'the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises' (Ro 9''), and to which were entrusted the oracles of God. With these oracles he was so familiar that, as he spoke or wrote, quotations from every part of them flowed unbidden to his tongue or pen. He often goes on arguing at great length in the very words of the O'i'. AH his thinking is steeped in the spirit of the prophets, and all his own experiences appear to him the continuation and fulfilment of those of the fathers of his race.
He studied the OT not only with the devoutness of a Jew but with the learning of a Rabbi ; and, unless we are to suppose that inspiration obliter- ated altogether his own jiersonality, it must be recognized that he made use of Rabbinical modes of thinking and arguing when he came to expound Christian ideas. Of this consideration use has been made, in recent times, to relieve Christianity of responsibility for certain of the Pauline notions,.
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these being set down to liis pre-Cliristian liabits of tlioviglit and, consequently, ileductod from tlio revelation through St. Paul attributed to the Sj)irit of (ioil. Tliis is a convenient way of getting rid of a number of dillieulties which have long puzzled ortlKulox interpreters, especially in the Apostle's use of (juotalious from the OT. But the idea requires delicate handling. There are those who would apply it even to the teaching of our Lord Himself; and, when it is applied to St. I'aul to the extent of treating as a fragment of negligible Kabbinism such a saying of hi.s as ' Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf ; that we might become the righteousness of God in him ' (2 Co 5-'), tlie proceeding is on a level with that of a Roman Catholic who places so much confidence in the modern theory of the develop- ment of doctrine that he is able to regard a practice of Ins Church, which is the very reverse of that found in the NT, as a legitimate outcome from apostolic teaching.
Whether St. Paul's language and ideas were due, in any considerable degree, to the classical culture which he may have picked up in his youth at Tarsus or in his subsequent wanderings through the world, is a question about which scholars have difl'ered widely ; but recent opinion tends rather towards an atlirmative reply. In his imagery a inominent place is held by references to the stadium and the training of athletes. Does this imply that he frequented the games, and expected his converts to do so ? or may these references be due to some stolen pleasures of his boj'hood ? It is certain that his most recurrent conception of heathenism was as a concrete embodiment of sin ; and when, as he frequently does, he breaks out into lengthy enumerations of sins, this is to be traced to the pressure on his spirit of the pagan atmosphere by which lie felt himself oppressed wherever he moved.
The bearing of the teaching of Jesus on the teach- ing of St. Paul is one of the most important ques- tions of modem theology. Can Christ's doctrine of the Kingdom of God in the Synoptists and of eternal life in St. John be identitied with St. Paul's doctrines of the righteousness of God and union with Christ? It is quite certain that St. Paul must have claimed this, had the question been submitted to him in this form. But the form in which he was challenged was rather that of the conformity of his doctrine with the views of the original apostles, it being assumed that these could prove the identity of their own teaching with that of their Master. Peine {NT Theoloffie, 1910, p. 200 ff.) has dwelt with emphasis on the influence exerted on St. Paul by the testimony of the Church, as it existed before he came on the scene. Especially on the two cardinal points of the Deity of Christ and His atoning death does this scholar hold St. Paul's convictions to have been identical with those held unanimously by believers in general before him. But, however true and however im- portant it may be that the beliefs of the primitive Church on these two great truths coincided with those of St. Paul, yet the manner in which he arrived at these convictions was too original and personal to allow us to speak of them as derived from any mundane source.
The su])reme influence was undoubtedly the con- version itself ; and not a few of the best inter- ])retersof St. Paul's thinking have treated hisentire system as a deduction from this single event. The opportunity for leisure and reflexion, during the three years in Arabia, to think out the implications of this experience, must, however, be taken into account in estimating the result ; and then the pro- vocation of the controversy with the Judaizers came in, to give point and sharpness to all his ideas.