THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
letters are used as a whole to determine the Pauline cast of thought and turns of style, in order to test certain letters which have been brought into serious question whether Paul can have written them or no. In the second place, the procedure is identical with the method used to determine the genuineness of certain dialogues of Plato or treatises of Aristotle. The Platonic corpus or the Aristotelian corpus gives the standard or canon by which the student judges the dialogues or treatises in question. The present situation is similar, since the process is that of testing one or another alleged part in the light of the whole.
The facts in the apostle's life that deeply concern the student of the Pauline epistles are these: (1) He was born in Tarsus, of a distinguished and wealthy family. His father had possessed himself of Roman citizenship. (2) He went up to Jerusalem to complete his education. He
5. Paul's Personality.
'studied under Gamaliel (Acts xxii. 3); ' This would indicate that through his teacher he was open to liberal Judaism and so to Hellenism. But Acts ix. 1-2 and Gal i. 14 also indicate that he was a zealous Jew of the Pharisaic type. Probably, like some other men of genius, he did not clearly know himself, and so was drawn both ways. (3) He was an ardent persecutor of Christianity (Acts viii. 1, ix. 1-5; I Cor. xv. 9). (4) He was converted in an altogether extraordinary way. No great man ever underwent so violent and sudden a change. It is a striking testimony to his strength of will that his religious experience did not drive him into the ranks of the religiously insane. (5) The mental consequences of his conversion were twofold. The death of Jesus had struck at the heart of Jewish Messianism. Paul had shared the violent antipathy to it. His conversion, by the law of recoil, carried the death of the Messiah down to the roots of his being (I Cor. ii. 2). The popular Messianism, so far as he was concerned, went into bankruptcy (II Cor. v. 16). The other result was that the institutes of Judaism and Rabbinism became either adiaphora or worse (Gal. iv. 9). The practical motives, though unacknowledged, may have been as strong as the religious and nationalistic motive. Saul was a brilliant candidate for the honors of the rabbinate. But the new prophetism, which was the soul of the society of Jesus (cf. Peter's sermon in Acts ii.) threatened the entire rabbinical establishment with ruin. The magnificent corporation of scholars and lawyers and exegetes, with all the vested interests both religious and social which they represented, was brought in peril. Saul the persecutor belonged to the school of Ezra, and Ezra's program was separatism. The prohibition of mixed marriages, the prohibition of table fellowship, these are the significant milestones in the advance of Ezra's policy. In Paul's time the program of Ezra had practically triumphed. Pharisaism was substantially synonymous with vital Judaism. The Maccabean war had brought the Pharisaic party and platform into the clear light of day. Another great war, the war with Rome, would soon demonstrate that the heirs of Ezra held the power of the keys in Israel. This, then, was the total result of Paul's conversion. The program of Ezra became un-
timely, the institutes of Pharisaic Judaism were thrown on the scrap-heap. The other prime factor in Paul's mental development was his experience as a missionary. As a missionary to his own people he was for the most part a failure. He was too radical in his views. His failure here may have been a part of the reason for his assent to the decision (Gal. ii. 9) dividing the missionary field. Shut up to the Gentile world, by a splendid stretch of the imagination he took the whole empire for his province (Rom. xv. 19, 24). He discovered the meaning and value of his Roman citizenship. The empire as a divinely ordained institution dawned upon him (Rom. xiii. 1-6). Thus the two parts of the world he was to deal with in his thought were shaped and placed beside each other. His mind played between and over two historical magnitudes, the Empire and Israel. Finally, he was of an acutely sensitive temperament. His nervous system was finely organized; and possibly his " thorn " or " stake " in the flesh (II Cor. xii. 7; see I., 2, sup.) was some nervous disease. He received quick and deep impressions, which he organized, not after the method of the philosopher or the systematic theologian, but under the spur of necessity and the pressure of occasions.
2. First Group: The earliest Pauline letters we possess were to the church at Thessalonica. Whether the apostle wrote earlier letters which have been lost is, possibly, an unanswerable question, though the fact that in I Thess. there is an order of thought, . _ _ an arrangement of material that per-
Balonians" s*s*s through all the Pauline letters save Galatians, I Timothy, and Titus may seem to suggest an experienced hand. But so far as data go, I Thessalonians is the earliest Pauline letter. It was written from Corinth or its neighborhood (I Thess. hi. 1-6), in the course of the second missionary journey and not very long after the apostle had left Athens. Critical opinion regarding the letter has on the whole been very favorable. The fundamental characteristics of I Thessalonians are
(1) A lively and insistent monotheism. Paul was the first great Jew since the exile to visit the polytheist in his own home. Jewish orthodoxy became in him a prophetic passion for the divine unity.
(2) An intense and lively belief in the parousia. Altogether, I Thessalonians gives an insight into the apostle's mind which seems to bring him fairly close to the primitive Christian type of belief and emotion. This is interestingly illustrated by two specific positions. First, the belief in the resurrection of Christ is here inseparable from the belief in the second coming: the masterhood of Christ is expressed in terms of the divine control over history. But later on, as in Rom. i. 4, the resurrection is taken as the installation of Christ in his divine sonship. Secondly, the trilogy of I Corinthians xiii. 13 (faith, hope, love) here appears in its first edition, faith, love, hope (I Thess. i. 3). The absence of the characteristic Pauline doctrines from the letter has been made much of by those who deny its genuineness. But this is due to an alliance between subjective Protestantism and critical methods. Protestantism, taking justification by faith to be an article on which the Church stands or falls, has frequently