THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
4. Ephesians.
Colossians-Ephesians. (4) The first period of Gnosticism was Jewish Christian. Cerinthus, a systematic docetist, appeared as early as the last decade of the first century. When it is considered that Gnosticism was a practical religious view before it became a speculative system, it does not seem an excessive strain on historical evolution to find its beginnings twenty-five years after Paul had preached his first sermon to the Gentiles. Christianity, superbly inspirational and organizing, had great precipitating power. Besides, the Pauline churches, outposts of Christ in a vast heathen world, were wide open to danger from Jewish- Christian mysticism. And Paul, a born pastor and church-builder, had a keen scent for danger.
Colossians, if it stood alone, could take care of itself. It is on Ephesians, therefore, that the burden of the defense falls. Here the main battle must be fought. The difficulties are serious. The letter, if Paul wrote it, can not have been addressed to the Ephesians. But this does not explain the almost completely impersonal character of a letter coming from a man so ebulliently personal as Paul. It is almost entirely doctrinal and systematic. " Holy apostles " in hi. 3 has a strong second-century sound. To ascribe knowledge regarding the great mystery of human unity to "all the apostles " is un-Pauline, by the quadrilateral test-stone. Yet there are strong grounds for belief in the epistle's genuineness. The Pauline type of sentence abounds (i. 3-14, 15-23, hi. 1-7, 14-19, iv. 11-16, etc.). The epistle is flushed full of prophetic feeling and consciousness. The conception of the Church is not ecclesiastical (contrast I Timothy and Ignatius), but intensely prophetic. Moreover, it is inherently related to the Pauline doctrine of election (cf. Rom. viii. 28-30) and the conception of the Church as the body of Christ (I Cor. xii., xiv.; Rom. xiii.). The view of the ministry (iv. 11-16) is prophetic and pastoral (contrast I Timothy). The letter thrills with the sense of the supreme mystery, the unity of Jew and Gentile (ii. 11-iii. 13; cf. Rom. xi. 25-36). History does not duplicate great experiences. The quadrilateral vein crops out in a natural way (ii. 1-10), quite unlike the pseudepigraphist. The body of the letter, if taken outside the heroic period of the Apostolic Age, creates difficulties more serious than those now besetting it. Finally, the fact that the mental movement from I Thessalonians to Ephesians presents a mental autobiography as continuous and unique as the body of Aristotle's thinking starts a presumption in favor of Ephesians. The final judgment seems likely to be a compromise. Ephesians is a Pauline letter more or less colored by later feeling.
The little letter to Philemon might well have hoped to escape suspicion, so human is it, so simple and charming. Yet scholars of deserved repute take it to be a Paulinizing allegory. Surely the allegorist who could do this thing so subtly was a master. The mystic who, by deep thinking, has reduced the things that do appear to a diaphanous veil of things that are, would be apt to have a good deal to say. Would he say it in this simple fashion and with such praiseworthy brevity? May it not be questioned
whether, if this letter had not had the critical misfortune to find itself within the sacred canon any such charge would ever have been brought against it?
5. The Pastorial Epistles: The question whether the apostle was released from imprisonment presses the conclusion that knowledge of the Apostolic A"e
1. The Re- is scanty and ful1 of SaPs- But the belease from lief in a second imprisonment is gain- Prison. in§ ground. And if full allowance is made for the nature of the evidence, it seems to yield a favoring probability. The Pastoral Epistles contain at least a nucleus of genuine Pauline material which it is difficult to place within the frame of the apostle's life as Acts records it. The long-vexed phrase in I Clement v (" the bounds of the west " to which the apostle came), taken in its context, must be overcharged with rhetoric, if it is to mean Rome, rather than Spain. The Phoebe letter, unquestionably Pauline, demands a situation lying beyond the bounds of Acts. The Phoebe letter (Rom. xvi. 1-16) was written from Corinth or Cenchrea, its eastern seaport. It is a document of high value. The apostle's genius for friendship, for deep and many-sided intimacies, shines out in it. It also throws a bright light upon the social stratum from which Christianity in Rome made its most numerous recruits (I Cor. i. 26). A large majority of those addressed were slaves or freedmen belonging to the immense aristocratic establishments of imperial Rome.
The Pastoral Epistles, since the beginning of critical study, have steadily lost ground. The best „ _ _. that some fairly conservative scholars othv " can say ^or them to-day is that the case against them is not closed. The difficulties besetting I Timothy appear to be insuperable. The fixed order of thought in Paul's letter- writing is broken (i. 3). The apostle, because of his splendid belief in the capacity of man for God and his delight in spiritual beginnings, was wont to go forward from the salutation to praise of his readers and thanksgiving (e.g., I Thess. i. 2 sqq.; Rom. i. 8 sqq.). The one exception is Galatians; but the reason for this exception is found in Paul's attitude toward the Galatians at the time of writing. In I Timothy no such reason exists. Timothy was the most intimate member of his spiritual household. Yet the letter plunges straight into business. Joined to this is the fact that the personal element is a colorless minimum. Timothy himself is hardly more than a homiletic personification (vi. 11-21) to which is addressed an ordination sermon. In i. 3 is what looks like a distinct reference to II Corinthians i. 15-17, and ii. 12-13. If I Timothy is genuine, it places itself in the time and mood of the quadrilateral and so becomes a psychological impossibility. Or else in its behalf there must be assumed a later journey from Ephesus into Macedonia exactly parallel. It is true that the Phcebe letter and the reference in the letter to Titus (iii. 12) to Nicopolis (probably in Epirus) make this possible. But in the face of other considerable possibilities no right exists to capitalize this possibility. The letter is full of intention; there is no hint of the casual. Herein it resembles Galatians