everywhere the motive of His work, and always His test of discipleship is ethical. "By their fruits ye shall know them." His own life was presented as the ideal of man, and the path to the ultimate goal lay through personal loyalty and obedience. This strong ethical feeling is not confined to the Synoptics. Other portions of the New Testament exhibit the same feature. A very slight examination of the Epistles of St. Peter, of St. James, and of the writings of St. John, reveals the fact that they are largely occupied with the practical side of Christianity. But when we approach the writings of St. Paul we perceive at once a distinct change of atmosphere, and we are apparently introduced into a region of speculative. theology. The difference of atmosphere must be freely conceded, although its significance has been greatly overstated. A marked contrast is perceptible, so we are told, between the teaching of Jesus and that of Paul. There is little in the apostolic epistles of the ethical quality of the Sermon on the Mount. New ideas and new terms are introduced in the epistles of which no hint is given in the gospels. Jesus, the ethical teacher, is at a great remove from Paul the theologian. The one lays stress The Master is con on character, the other on doctrine. cerned with the conditions of life and conduct, the disciple is occupied with the elaboration of dogma. This view, especially advocated in recent years, has of course its measure of truth. But in the form in which it is too often expressed it does serious injustice to an important and too much neglected aspect of the work and teaching of the great apostle. That Paul was pre-eminently a theologian will not be denied. His was the profound intellect which developed and shaped the great cardinal doctrine of Christianity. L He is the Church's prime authority on the doctrine of Sin, the Sacrifice of Christ, and Justification by Faith. His epistles are undoubtedly the mine whence the great dogmatic thinkers have derived their materials for the elaboration of their theology. The mind of Paul was of vast mental range and subtlety. He was just the instrument which the new faith needed to consolidate and unify its various elements in view of the intellectual conflict which it was called upon to wage not only with the philosophy of the Gentile world, but also with the reactionary element in the traditions of the Jewish people. Paul was the man for the hour. The immediate and clamant necessity was a thinker of broad massive make to sketch the first outline of Christian truth, to gather up all that the Lord had already uttered through His life and teaching, and to interpret, in view of the breadth and variety of human needs, the value and import of the Incarnation, Death and Resurrection of Jesus the Christ. But it would be a mistake to conclude that because the apostle was pre-eminent in the domain of dogma he was distinguished in no other fields. As a matter of fact the true theologian is always something more. The genuine thinker is a maker of life, and the doctrine which has no relation to character is sterile and dead. Paul combined in a manner rarely paralleled in history speculative acumen with practical talent. Though an unwearied writer with a decided literary instinct and a distinct liking for the elaboration of speculative ideas, there was in Paul nothing of the recluse. He was at the very storm-centre of the great world's surging life. In him all its dumb need and pain and sorrow found voice, "Desperate tides of the whole great world's anguish He was practical alike by nature, by the necessities of the situation, and by the inward propulsion of a Christlike pity. He proved himself an indefatigable organiser and an untiring traveller. Every gift of intellect and imagination as well as all his stores of knowledge and experience were subordinated and consecrated to one great end the unveiling to the world for which He died of the unsearchable riches of the crucified and risen Lord. The intensely practical character of the Pauline epistles is apt to be lost sight of on account of their frequently polemical character. From the very nature of the case they are largely apologetic. One main object is to justify and commend a new view of the world and of life. The difficulties in conception and nomenclature which naturally arose in introducing a new and revolutionary faith involved at once a conflict with philosophical ideas already in vogue, and the elucidation of principles which lay at the basis of the religion and life he sought to inculcate. But in spite of the necessarily speculative attitude of a great part of the Pauline teaching, we cannot for a moment mistake its distinctively ethical character. The whole religious superstructure rests upon moral assumptions. Its last appeal is to the universality of human experience. Its great and distinctive ideas—Sin, Righteousness, Law, Works-are not mere abstract dogmas, but really ethical conceptions which obtain their whole significance from their bearing on life and conduct. His writings cannot be regarded as systematic treatises. They are strictly letters, the form and contents of which arose out of the special conditions and requirements of the communities or the individuals to whom they were addressed. They have all the glow and warmth of personal experience, and while they contain truths of universal interest, they are coloured and shaped by the circumstances which called them forth. Paul scarcely ever deals with merely abstract thoughts or discusses problems of purely theoretic or academic interest. Every question has a personal background, and though he is prone to lift the discussion up to the general and deal with principles rather than details, his thought has usually some particular case or concrete example for its starting-point, nor does he close his epistle without focussing the truth in a series of precepts concerning practical morality. No one, indeed, can read these epistles without feeling that their author was more interested in men than in thoughts, and more concerned about character than creed. Life is everywhere his theme, and he is more anxious to reconcile men to God than to construct a theodicy. A supreme ethical interest dominates the man and his life-work, and even the epistles which are distinctively doctrinal are chiefly concerned with principles upon which character ultimately depends. The prime object of the Epistle to the Romans is to explain the nature of righteousness, and if the apostle takes pains to establish the doctrine of Justification by Faith, it is to make men feel that it is not only worth their while but within their power to attain to righteousness. "It would be truer," says Edward Caird, "to say that the ethical principle of St. Paul begot the theological than that the theological begot the ethical." Nor in this respect is it just to contrast the teaching of Christ with that of St. Paul. Both have an ethical purpose. Both lay the emphasis on character. The great words of Christ are also the great words of Paul. The latest attempt to overthrow the view predominant 1 Evolution of Religion, vol. ii. p. 202. in modern theology that Paul loyally and consistently espoused and developed the teaching of Jesus is that of Wrede, whose startling statements have already called forth an army of hostile critics.2 "Paul," says Wrede, "is far more widely removed from Jesus than Jesus Himself is removed from the noblest form of Jewish piety." "The picture of Jesus' life and work did not determine the character of the Pauline theology." It is nothing to Wrede that Paul regarded himself as a disciple of Jesus, and so far from believing himself to be an innovator, repeatedly claims to have the mind of Christ. The teaching of Jesus," says Wrede, "is directed entirely to the individual personality. Man is to submit his soul to God's will without reserve. Hence the preaching of Jesus is imperative." "The central point with Paul is a divine and superhuman action manifested in a historical fact, or in a complex of divine actions which open to mankind a salvation prepared for man. He who believes these divine acts-the Incarnation, Death and Resurrection of a divine being-can obtain salvation." In other words, Wrede affirms that the standpoints of the Master and the apostle are opposed, and the condition of salvation is in each case entirely different. With Jesus the condition was merely human, with Paul it was divine. According to Christ it was simply a matter of personal decision; according to Paul it was a superhuman act done for man, and to be accepted by faith. The supernatural element which was everything to Paul meant nothing for Jesus. We are very far from admitting that the assumptions of Wrede, so airily 1 Paulus. "Kölbing, The Spiritual Influence of the Man Jesus upon Paul; Kaftan, Jesus and Paul; Jülicher, Paul and Jesus; and Joh. Weiss, Paul and Jesus. |