THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
separate character until the parousia should solve all problems. But history had something to say on this subject. At Antioch table fellowship between Jewish and Gentile Christians became the order of the day. But James of Jerusalem was right in feeling that this was a breach of the concordat. It involved the existence of a single church to which the distinctive tenets of Judaism were adiaphora. It completely undid the program of Ezra. Hence the men who came from James opposed the idea of table fellowship (Gal. ii. 12). Here began the first precipitation of the great issue. Jewish Christianity, honestly believing that the Pauline policy involved the ruin of its plan for the conversion of Israel, set istelf to undo Paul's work. It threw the concordat (Gal. ii. 7-9) to the winds. Invading Paul's own field, it assailed his standing as an apostle and sought to undermine the edifice of Catholic Christianity which he was building. This attack identified Paul's person with the Gospel he was preaching, and consequently joined forces with his temperamental tendency to self-consciousness. He could not separate his defense of his apostolic dignity from the defense of Catholic Christianity. Ranke has finely said of Alexander the Great that his life was one of the rare cases in which universal history became identical with a biography. Paul's life is a similar case. Paul's person and the supreme issue in the field of religion were identified and could not be separated. Hence to an extraordinary degree he was driven to clear self-knowledge and to a deep study of the necessary foundations for his great theme and work, the religious equality of Jew and Gentile. The theme of I Thessalonians still remains the supreme thought. But its implications now for the first time come into the light of broad day.
The letters to the Corinthian, Galatian, and Roman churches, then, constitute a group by themselves. As regards their sequence, they are so closely related that no arrangement can be conclusive. But the logical internal arrangement seems to be (1) The Corinthian letters, (2) Galatians, (3) Romans. And so long as no solid external argument can be brought against it, this may be accepted as a good working hypothesis. The group differs widely from I Thessalonians. Paul, as a prince of missionaries, gave his whole attention to the work in hand. In the Thessalonian letters he was in quickening contact with heathenism. In the quadrilateral he is at close quarters with Judaizing Christianity, fighting for his life and honor. So the mental situation is fundamentally different; and the apostle's thought changes accordingly.
I Corinthians was written near the end of Paul's stay in Ephesus, and was occasioned by party divisions in the Corinthian church. The congregation had grown rapidly. At the same time it was close to a large colony of Jews (Acts xviii.) who were in
constant connection with Jerusalem.
Here were all the elements of trouble.
As to the number of parties that appeared in the congregation, whether three or four, the discussion still continues. The writer of this article believes that there were four, and that the " Christian party " was made up of those who banked upon the connection with the mother-church
2. I Corinthians.
of Christendom, the congregation of Jerusalem. They appealed to that visible and tactual genealogy of religious ideas which is so potent with the average man, and also seem to have made much of eschatologic visions and of the glossolalia (see Speaking with Tongues), two related phenomena that were characteristic of Jerusalemitic Christianity. I Corinthians is not so much a letter as epistolary jottings. Various questions of morals and discipline are taken up, without regard to their connection with each other. None the less, the letter has a real unity of its own, a deep emotional unity underlying its fragmentary details. The theme of chaps, i.-iv. is the unity of the local congregation. That theme returns in chaps, viii.-x., connecting itself with the discussion of the Lord's Supper in xi. 17-34; and in chaps, xii.-xv., the discussion of the charismata, it gets complete control of the writer's mind. It is to be noted that in xiii. 13 the trilogy assumes its second and final shape — faith, hope, love. The reason is that the supreme task of the new religion is now clearly in view. It developed the average man to the limit of his spiritual and moral powers but kept him within the congregation, made him an individual free from individualism.
II Corinthians was written from Macedonia. Paul had planned to go direct from Ephesus to Corinth. He had changed his mind, and his detractors
_T p . at Corinth took this, as they took all " thians " ^s acti°ns> m the most ungenerous way. Paul, they said, was a variable person (i. 15-18), not a man of his word. The way in which Paul works out his defense (i. 18-23) represents the rich body of Christology in the epistle. It is a pastor's theology, intimate with specific needs and concrete situations. Perhaps more clearly than any other letter, this illustrates the apostle's habit of mind. It has been strongly urged that it is really two distinct letters stitched together by the Pauline editor, chaps, x.-xiii. constituting a letter by themselves (" four-chapter letter "). A good deal can be said for this thesis. It is difficult to keep from feeling the abrupt change from the self-possession and the joy of chaps, i.-ix. to the intense personal passion and mental strain of the chapters in question. But it is, perhaps, an excessive capitalization of this certainty to cut the four chapters out, for Paul did not cast his letters at one pouring (cf. the two letters constituting Philippians). Yet these four chapters are a distinct literary unit, so close to Galatians in emotional color that the student of introduction may well study them together. In the body of II Corinthians the divergence of Christianity from Mosaism is the main question. In these chapters that issue becomes identified with Paul's person. Opening with the characteristic " I myself " (cf. Rom. vii. 25) and possibly with the " Christ party " in plain view, the apostle, with noble shame, brags his opponents down, seeking to silence these " make-believe apostles " (xi. 13), the arrogant Judaizing Christians from Jerusalem.
The Galatian letter may have been written either from Macedonia or Achaia. In any case, it is close to II Corinthians x.-xiii. in thought and emotion. Paul received from members of his spiritual household news of a serious crisis among the