156
PAUL
PAUL
There may be more in these sufrpestious than conservative scholars are yet disposed to allow. The scene of St. Paul's activity was the synapogue ; and in the synagogues, wherever he went, he en- countered two elements — a Jewish and a Gentile. To us the former is easily intelligible : we are aware hoth of the difficulty felt liy Jews in accept- ing the Christian message and of the arguments by which they could be led to believe that Jesus was the Christ. But it was among the Gentiles that the missionary obtained his most numerous suc- cesses, and not infrequently he turned away from the Jews altogether and devoted himself exclu- sively to the Gentiles. It has not been sufficiently considered how there happened to be so many of such proselytes or how they were so open to the influences brought by St. Paul. Some of them had accepted the Jewish religion in its entirety, but probably the majority had only contracted a habit of attendance at the synagogue. Even this, however, betokens that they were persons in whom the religious instinct was strong, and the religious cravings of many may have sought satisfaction elsewhere before coming to the synagogue. If the story could be fully told, it is not unUUely that to many of them some other religion had rendered the same service as the Law did to Jews, being a ' schoolmaster ' to bring them to Christ.
Now, what is alleged is that in these Oriental cults there were elements bearing a striking re- semblance to certain features of Paulinism. The worshippers sought escape from the world through absorption in the deity in a manner bearing some likeness to union with Christ in the Pauline theology ; and mystical rites were practised having a certain analogy with the Christian sacraments.
All this may amount to no more than the fact that in all religions, the Christian included, there are certain common aspirations as well as certain forms of ritual. There is no clear statement any- where in St. Paul's writings implying that he looked upon heathens as having been led to Christ through their own religions in the same way as Jews had been led to Him through theirs. His tone is, on the contrary, one of disparagement and condemnation, and he speaks of their previous religious condition as something from which they needed to be delivered. The nearest approach to a more sympathetic view of heathenism is in the speech on Mars' Hill, in wliich there is an indica- tion of an education of the human race, as well as of the Jews, for Christianity. It is contended, indeed, that, in the Epistles of the Imprisonment, he has paid to the cults in question the compliment of adopting their phraseology on a large scale ('fullness,' 'mystery,' 'perfect,' 'gnosis,' 'revela- tion,' 'new man,' 'God-saviour,' etc.) without re- ferring to them by name. But Kennedy, in St. Paul and the Mystery-RcHijions, has proved (especi- ally in chs. iv. and v.) that both the words and ideas to which a heathen origin is attributed go back to the OT and the LXX ; and, when they can be found there, it is useless to go further aheld. The evidence that the notions attributed to the wor- shippers of Mithra, Osiris, and Dionysus were actually held by them is frequently very slender ; and there is great need for the publication of a corpus of the texts relied on as a whole, in order that it may be seen how far we are dealing with serious facts. Too often the writers of this school create, though unintentionally, the impression, not that these cults were providential preparations for Christ, but that Christianity is no better than one of them, as fantastic and as futile.
It is certain, at all events, that both the sacra- ments were practised in the Church before St. Paul became a Christian ; and both can vindicate their institution by the Founder of Christianity
Himself, who, besides, imitated them from parallel rites in the older dispensation ; and St. Paul's doctrine of union with Christ can claim the same authoritative derivation. The mysticism of St. Paul is almost identical with that of St. John ; and in St. John it is put into the mouth of Jesus Himself. Everyone remembers the parable of the Vine and the Branches. Because St. John wrote later than St. Paul, the Johannine theology is usually treated as a development from the Pauline. But the dependence was the opposite way. What- ever may have been the origin of the Gospel of St. John, the tradition contained in it is much older than the composition of the book ; and, if it h.as in any considerable degree preserved the deeds and the words of our Lord, the Knowledge of these must have been in possession of the Church at the period when St. Paul was first ascertaining the contents of the Evangel. He may have obtained the report from the lips of St. John himself, with whom he was at that time in contact ; but what St. John knew was the common property of the Church long before it was committed to writing. This is the true origin of the most distinctive part of St. Paul's theology, which never in him reaches the same elevation as in the writings of St. John. Though, for instance, as has been mentioned above, St. Paul invented a whole series of images to set forth the intimacy and vitality of the connexion with Christ, he never rose to the height of sublim- ity reached by Jesus, when, in the intercessory prayer of Jn 17, He compared the union between Himself and His disciples to that of Father and Son in the Holy Trinity.