Saturday, March 29, 2008

Issues in Hermeneutics- Higher Critics: entry #3

The following article in full appeared in the Protestant Reformed Theological Journals of April and November, 1990, and April and November, 1991. Prof. Herman C. Hanko is professor in the Protestant Reformed Seminary in Grandville, Michigan.

Higher Critical Views in Hermeneutics

We must say something concerning various theories which have been proposed in Hermeneutics, if for no other reason than that it will help us to see what others have done to destroy any proper interpretation of God's Word, so that we may avoid these evils like the plague.

All views of higher criticism have their roots in modern philosophy.

Modern philosophy, beginning with Descartes, was rationalistic; i.e., it appealed to the human mind as the standard and arbiter of the truth. In reaction to the synthesis philosophy of the Scholastics, it made a distinction between philosophy and theology. Philosophy was the domain of reason; theology was the domain of faith. Philosophy answered the basic questions of the universe, of man and of his ability to know; theology dug its material out of the Bible.

The earlier philosophers of the modern period maintained, at least outwardly, their orthodoxy and did their philosophizing in a separate area from their theologizing. They held, as it were, to two bodies of truth: one acquired from their reason as it probed the mysteries of the universe, the other acquired through a study of Scripture. It was hoped that the two would never conflict, that in fact philosophy could serve as a bulwark for theology, a foundation for faith, a rational justification for biblical truth. But conflict between the two did not overly bother them.2

This could not continue. It was a false dichotomy in knowledge. The questions of philosophy concerned ultimate things necessarily involving theological questions. And most of the time the conclusions of reason were in direct conflict with the theology of Scripture. And so some kind of solution had to be found. No man can, ultimately, live with such conflicts and be serious about what he believes.

The philosophers began, therefore, to turn their attention to theological matters. But the viewpoint, the perspective, the approach was one of reason, for the philosophers were committed to the autonomy of human reason. Whether these were the continental rationalistic philosophers or the empiricists of England, reason was the criterion of truth. That which met the standards of man's reason could be accepted; that which failed the test of man's reason had to be rejected. And it was inevitable that as efforts were made to square theology with philosophy, philosophers would turn their attention to Scripture and the doctrine of inspiration.

The sad part of all this is that their views found ready acceptance in the church. The insidious influence of rationalism devastated the church, partly because these rationalists professed orthodoxy in matters of faith, and partly because the church itself had in the latter part of the 17th and in the 18th centuries entered a period of dead orthodoxy which made them vulnerable to rationalism.

A few of these early ideas are worth mentioning.

Deism, which arose chiefly in England but spread to the continent, spoke of the universe as a closed system, operating under its own laws. It was, so to speak, a mechanism created by a divine Creator much like a watch-maker manufactures a watch which is able to run by itself after it is wound. So God created the universe with its own laws by which it operated so that no longer was any divine interference necessary. All the phenomena of creation could be explained in terms of the laws by which it ran.

It is evident that this excludes much of the Christian faith. The Deists attacked Scripture's accuracy, therefore, in the historical facts and the miracles of which Scripture spoke, for they were incompatible with the assumptions of Deism. It is not hard to see that the theistic evolutionists, if such they may be called, are basically deistic in their reliance upon scientific observations as an explanation for the origin of the universe.

Also in the 18th century a school of thought arose which posited the notion of a natural religion. Leibnitz and Christian Wolff spoke of such a natural religion which was independent of Scripture and based upon scientific observation and proof. It was a religion, not formulated by a study of Scripture, but simply expressing what elements of deity were to be found in a study of the universe. Lessing in Germany carried this idea a bit further and spoke of the fact that all religions in the world were evidences of this natural religion and thus have value for us today. And Herder included in the history of this natural religion, the Bible which recorded the ancient religions of the Jewish people especially. The evil of this position was that it denied the truth of revelation and refused to believe that the origin of the religion of the Jewish people and the church had its origins in divine revelation.

Immanuel Kant, the influential German philosopher from Koningsburg, had more influence on higher criticism than any other individual. He spoke of the human intellect as being limited in its acquisition of knowledge by time and space so that it was incapable of knowing anything at all beyond this present creation and the time and space which bound it. He was an intellectual agnostic and ruled out any knowledge of spiritual things. Yet, although he pushed God out of the front door of the universe, he attempted to drag God back in through the back door. He spoke of the fact that all men could know God through the "Thou shalt" of God's moral law. The result of this was the notion that religion is nothing but morality. The incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, e.g., is nothing more than the personalization of the moral idea as it is in God. And the church is a moral society to train men to live morally upright lives. Scripture is not the written record of God's revelation but a lesson in morals which has come down to us from ancient peoples in their own superstitious beliefs.

Hegel and Schleiermacher followed these ideas of Kant to a certain extent. Hegel was a philosophical idealist and a theological pantheist. In his thinking. Christ was nothing but the highest God-consciousness which could be found among men. History is the absolute being of God relativized in creation and returning to the absolute. Consciousness is the highest reality, God coming to consciousness in man and especially in the Lord Jesus Christ. Schleiermacher held that God is essentially unknowable to the mind, but comes to be known through the feelings, particularly the feeling of dependence. Man has an indestructible sense of dependence upon a higher being, and this is essentially all religion. Inspiration is really holiness which comes through contact with the one holy Being. Scripture is a divine-human book which is the best of all Christian writings, but a product of the church in past years and of the general spirit in the church which arises from a collective consciousness of God. No longer must Scripture be considered of divine origin; it is only divine insofar as it expresses the sense of divinity in the church as the community of believers in every age made a record of their experiences in religion as they expressed their dependence upon a higher Being.

From all these notions which prevailed in the 18th century, it soon became necessary to explain how Scripture could include in its records of miracles and supernatural events. How was it, e.g., that the church came to believe that Christ, was born of a virgin that He suffered and died for sin, and that He arose again from the dead? David Frederick Strauss set about explaining that. He studied under both Hegel and Schleiermacher and wrote his Das Leben Jesu (The Life of Christ) in 1835. In this influential book he set forth what became known as the mythical theory of biblical interpretation. The church expressed her faith in the form of myths as being an acceptable mode of speaking, conducive to conveying their beliefs to the age in which they lived. That which is miraculous in Scripture is nothing but a mythological way of expressing one's faith. Christ was, therefore, a mere man who wanted to reform his nation. Gradually He became persuaded that He was the Messiah of which the Old Testament Scriptures had spoken. At first He was alarmed at the thought, but gradually He came to accept it with such fervency that He was willing to die for it. So He was a man of such high moral caliber that He was willing to give His life for what He believed.

Two important schools arose during this same period. The first was the Tubingen School of F.C. Baur. Concentrating especially on the New Testament, it explained the New Testament in terms of basic differences between the Pauline and Petrine parties in the church. The Petrine party stood for close reliance upon the Old Testament laws, while the Pauline party wanted a newer and more radical doctrine. The whole history of the apostolic church was to be interpreted in terms of this conflict and its final resolution. The result was that each book of the New Testament was examined closely to determine what role each played in the conflict. And, quite understandably, most of Paul's epistles were rejected as being authored by the apostle to the Gentiles. It is not difficult to see that such an interpretation of Scripture has nothing to do with its divine origin.

The other school was the Graf-Kuenen-Welhausen School which concentrated especially on the Old Testament. Special attention was given to the Pentateuch; its Mosaic authorship was denied; and it was explained as basically the work of editors who put it together from four separate documents which had survived many hundreds of years of Israel's history. These documents were called by the letters, J, E, D, and P. 3

These views laid the groundwork for all of modern Hermeneutics.

Monday, March 24, 2008

Issues in Hermenuetics- The Need for Hermenuetics: entry #2

The following article in full appeared in the Protestant Reformed Theological Journals of April and November, 1990, and April and November, 1991. Prof. Herman C. Hanko is professor in the Protestant Reformed Seminary in Grandville, Michigan.

From a certain point of view, the child of God needs no instruction in Hermeneutics. If Hermeneutics is the science of biblical interpretation, it follows from the very nature of Scripture itself that no formal instruction is necessary for a regenerated saint to be able to understand what God is saying in His Word. Countless saints over the centuries have read the Word of God without ever knowing the first thing about Hermeneutics, without even having heard the word. They have read Scripture, understood what God was saying to them with stark clarity, and have taken that Word into their hearts.

It is true that we teach Hermeneutics in Seminary as a required course for prospective ministers of the gospel. Students are obligated to learn the principles of biblical interpretation and to apply them to Scripture. But if they, with their acquired learning, think that by these studies they have gained an edge on God's people, they are sadly mistaken.

It has always been a principle of the Protestant Reformation over against Roman Catholicism that Scripture is easy to understand. Objectively, Scripture is perspicuous, i.e., clear and understandable by anyone who is able to read. Subjectively, the truth of the priesthood of all believers means that all God's people have the Spirit of truth in their hearts to lead them into all truth. Any child of God, therefore, is able to understand God's Word. It makes no difference what his age, education, or station in life is, he can know what the Spirit says to the church. He has no need of anyone telling him in a formal classroom setting what the principles of Hermeneutics are.

Why then talk about Hermeneutics at all? It seems redundant. And, let it be clearly stated that, in a sense, instruction in Hermeneutics is redundant. The child of God, led by the Spirit, knows, as it were instinctively, intuitively, without being able to give an account of it, what the Scriptures teach. If you should ask him what a given passage means, he will be able to tell you. If you should pursue the matter further and inquire of him how it is that he can understand the Bible, what principles of Hermeneutics he has applied to his study, he will not usually be able to tell you. The Bible is, from that point of view, like any other book. If he can read anything written in the language which he speaks, he can read the Bible. If he can understand what is being conveyed by the tongue he uses, he can understand what the Bible says. The Bible means what it says. The literal meaning of God's Word is the correct one, as we are wont to say.

All this does not mean that the Scriptures are not inexhaustible in their truth. They surely are. The perspicuity of Scripture, as we shall notice, does not mean that Scripture is shallow and devoid of content. Perspicuity is part of the wonder of the miracle of Scripture. This can be easily illustrated. One of the simplest passages of Scripture is Luke 2:7: "And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn." While a very little child is able to understand this passage of Scripture without difficulty, at the same time no theologian has ever been able to plumb its depths, and more books than can be counted have been written concerning this profound truth of the birth of Christ.

Why then do we study Hermeneutics?

The answer is a very limited one. All Hermeneutics really does is crystallize, systematize, and articulate principles which are intuitive to every child of God. When a child of God hears, perhaps for the first time, what the principles of Hermeneutics are, his response ought to be (and will be, if the Hermeneutics is correct), "I knew that all the time." It makes clear and brings to consciousness that which has all along been assumed. Hermeneutics has nothing new to say, no new thing to communicate, no new insights to give information to a man who has been a serious student of holy Scripture.

This is humbling -- as it ought to be. A mastery of a course in Hermeneutics does not give a man a position of superiority over God's people. It does not give him insights into Scripture which the man in the pew cannot gain on his own with careful and diligent attention to God's Word. It does not set him apart in a class by himself, as a possessor of a body of knowledge which God's saints cannot acquire without the same formal course. It does not put in his possession a key to unlock the treasure house of Scripture, which key no one else has who has not taken his postgraduate courses. If he thinks it does, he doesn't belong on the pulpit. He possesses an arrogance which makes him unfitted to be a teacher in Israel.

Every minister of the Word, even if he has gained a top grade in his course in Hermeneutics, had better listen to what God's people say when they tell him of their own understanding of God's Word. They will have something worthwhile to say, something that he can learn, something that will enrich his own understanding of what God has to reveal to the church.

This is especially true when we consider that so often the minister does his exegetical work in the ivory tower of his study and makes his work of explaining the Scriptures the object of intense intellectual activity. The people of God speak of what God's Word has meant to them in their life and calling. The Holy Spirit has sealed the truth upon their hearts in the distresses and sufferings of life. They know, know in a way which only a minister who lives with them, prays with them, suffers with them, can know. They know together, within the communion of the saints as they admonish each other, help each other along the difficult pathway of this life, and join together in praises to the God of their salvation.

Monday, March 17, 2008

Issues in Hermeneutics- Introduction: entry #1

The following article in full appeared in the Protestant Reformed Theological Journals of April and November, 1990, and April and November, 1991. Prof. Herman C. Hanko is professor in the Protestant Reformed Seminary in Grandville, Michigan.

INTRODUCTION

Perhaps no single issue has dominated the agenda of the Reformed and Presbyterian church world today more than the issue of Hermeneutics. This is not only because various methods of interpretation have been proposed in the last few decades which have more or less made concessions to higher criticism, but many other issues which the church has faced are rooted to Hermeneutical approaches to Scripture. Evolutionism vs. Creationism, homosexuality, marriage and divorce, women in ecclesiastical office -- all these issues and more are at bottom hermeneutical. The answers which theologians and ecclesiastical assemblies have given to these questions have depended upon how Scripture is to be interpreted. The door has been opened wide to every heresy within the church; evolutionism has become almost the only way to teach science; women have been ordained into the offices of minister, elder, and deacon; homosexuality has been condoned and homosexuals have not only been permitted church membership, but have even been ordained into office; and all this has happened on the basis of specific and concrete theories of hermeneutics. The way in which one interprets the Scriptures has determined one's position in all these matters.

In many, if not most, seminaries in the country higher critical views of Scripture are taught, whether these seminaries stand in the Reformed or in the Presbyterian tradition. Concessions of every conceivable sort have been made to higher criticism and defended even by those who claim to hold to the doctrine of infallible inspiration.

And that is the root of the matter. One's hermeneutics is, after all, determined finally by the view one takes of inspiration. How did the Bible come into existence? That it is the Word of God almost no one within the mainstream of evangelical thought will deny. That God used men to write the Scripture is also too obvious from Scripture itself to contradict. But when the question arises concerning the relation between God's work and His use of men in writing the Scriptures, there is a great deal of disagreement. The larger the role given to the human instruments, the more reliance one places on higher criticism with its various techniques.

And yet one cannot help but gain the impression that the debate, in the final analysis, is not a debate over various techniques in Hermeneutics; one cannot escape the conclusion that not even the doctrine of inspiration is the real point at issue. One is constantly led to the conviction that when all else is said and done, the issue is a profoundly spiritual one. That is, the debates, while swirling around academic discussions concerning a proper biblical Hermeneutics and concerning the truth of inspiration, carry with them spiritual implications. By this I mean that the debate is finally one concerning the authority of Scripture.

Now that in itself is something of an academic question, of course. But the point is that when one begins to speak of the authority of Scripture, one is confronted with the fact that Scripture is unlike any other book. It does not come to us for verification. It does not present its case to be examined on evidence outside itself as to whether or not it ought to be believed. It is not a text on the philosophy of history which presents startling views on how one must explain history, views which are open to examination and questioning. It is the Word of God which comes to man with the "Thus saith the Lord." It carries with it the authority of the sovereign God Himself before which all men are required to bow in humility. Upon this hangs the issues of heaven or hell. It is this spiritual question which is the basic and underlying issue at stake. Will you bow humbly before the authority of God? To a certain extent, hermeneutical issues are smoke screens to cover the more basic issue. Or, to put it differently, various theories are proposed in the field of Hermeneutics and inspiration to escape the compelling and inescapable authority of the Word of God.

Our chief purpose in writing about these things is a positive one. Although some attention will have to be paid to modern higher critical views of Scripture, we are concerned about presenting principles of Hermeneutics which can be used by the child of God in studying God's holy Word.

This latter is important. If modern theories of hermeneutics are to be used in the study of Scripture, Scripture is effectively taken out of the hands of God's people as a book incapable of being understood except by those who are adept at applying, e.g., literary-historical criticism to biblical interpretation. This is a great evil and has been, at least in part, the cause of a disinterest in Bible studies among those who sit in the pew. Quite reasonably the people of God argue that if expertise is required to understand the Word of God, there is little point in taking the time and dissipating the energy required to turn to God's Word themselves. They are better off leaving these esoteric matters in the hands of the experts. If, e.g., Genesis 1 does not mean what it says, why read it to begin with? But this is a denial of the great Reformation truth of the priesthood of all believers.

Our intention of being primarily positive sets up some limitations in this study. Although we shall have to say some things about the doctrine of inspiration, we do not intend to examine this question in detail.1 Further, although we shall have a few things to say about modern theories of Hermeneutics, we do nor intend either to describe them in detail or analyze them completely. Insofar as we describe and discuss them, we do so only to demonstrate what such theories have done to Scripture's inspiration and to proper Hermeneutics.

There are many things which need badly to be said. If others would rise and say them, these articles would not have to be written. But the ecclesiastical press is strangely silent on these matters, and, insofar as they are discussed at all, they seem to be inadequate to answer the stinging attacks of higher criticism. Only occasionally and then from unexpected places can one find what is an acceptable answer to higher criticism and what constitutes a Hermeneutics which the man in the pew is able to use. It is in the interests of helping the man in the pew that we turn to this subject.

God's Word is a lamp unto our feet and a light upon our path. This is the song of the Psalmist in Psalm 119:105. Every child of God, whether a small child or an aged patriarch, whether a parent weighed down with the responsibilities of the home or a student studying in a college, whether a saint caught in the throes of persecution or battling false doctrine and the onslaughts of the evil one -- every child of God sings this song of the Psalmist triumphantly and joyously. If he cannot sing it. his life is reduced to despair. He must have the confidence to take God's Word with him wherever he goes, whether it be to the graveyard or his work place. He must be comforted when others seek to snatch God's Word from his hands. He must rest assured that he can understand the Bible as well as any theologian, for "the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him" (I John 2:27).

May God's people everywhere be persuaded that God's Word is truly the light they need on life's pathway, that it shines clearly and brightly for them, that no one need teach them, and that walking in the way of that Word there is joy and peace.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

New name, same historical revisionism

The following article was posted on Founders.org by Tom Ascol

On December 21, 2007 Ergun Caner sent me an announcement about the name change of Liberty Theological Seminary to Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary. I gave it only passing notice. From all that I know, Liberty may be the finest Fundamentalist seminary around and I don't care how many times they extract and reinsert the name "Baptist" on their letterhead.

When Caner became dean of the seminary in 2004 he took the name "Baptist" out. The rationale given for reinserting it I found mildly amusing, but again, not worth much more than a raised eyebrow. He wrote,
[S]ince 2004, much has changed, both here at Liberty University and in the Southern Baptist Convention. Too many schools have Baptist in their name but not in their doctrine. Some have drifted into liberalism and cultural relativism; still others remain orthodox, but have drifted toward non-Baptist reformed doctrine and cultural isolationism. For us, this was our line in the sand. We want to build bridges to a lost world without burning the bridges of our doctrinal heritage. We are putting Baptist back in our name, and taking back a term that has been misused [emphasis added].
He further explained their vision:
We want to train students from across the evangelical spectrum, in the classic Baptistic stance of our Anabaptist tradition and Sandy Creek revivalistic heritage.
I remember thinking at the time that if Caner is the one defining the "classic Baptist stance" of our heritage at Liberty then any student there who wants an accurate understanding of Baptist history should definitely make sure he has access to the internet so he can verify what he is taught by reading primary sources that are now readily available online.

I was content to keep these thoughts to myself and had forgotten about them until Wednesday night. While sitting in the Newark airport due to weather-related flight delays I took the time to listen to an interview with Caner conducted by Wes Kenney over at SBC Today. It is a very good interview. Kenney does a good job of raising issues pertinent to Southern Baptist life in a very brief span. The whole interview lasts about 17 minutes. I encourage you to listen to it.

Some of what Caner says is encouraging and informative, such as the story of his conversion and the account of how Dr. Falwell "tricked" him into becoming the Dean of the seminary at Liberty in 2004. He describes the recent transitions of leadership at Liberty University and Thomas Road Baptist Church how smoothly they have been due to Falwell's clear instructions that his sons were to take over responsibilities upon his death.

Caner then explains the reason behind the recent reversion to including "Baptist" in Liberty's name.
I am a classic Sandy-Creeker-Anabaptist-history-Baptist and there just didn't seem to be a voice for that on the east coast. There is a great [voice for this view] in Southwestern Seminary....But on the east coast we had guys building bridges toward Geneva.
This is an obvious slap at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary's co-sponsorship with Founders Ministries of the Building Bridges conference last November (get the audio here). I suppose this means that I could claim to have a hand in the renaming of the largest Fundamentalist seminary in the world. :-)

Commenting on the Building Bridges: Southern Baptists and Calvinism Conference, Caner commends Malcolm Yarnell for doing a "masterful job of defining the rest of us," by which he means those who are not part of the "small" and "tiny" portion of the SBC that are not committed to the doctrines of grace but who are the "stump-winders"(?) and "saw-dust-trail boys."

Dr. Caner both hates and misrepresents historic Calvinism. He is concerned with the undeniable resurgence of evangelical Calvinism among Baptists. I can certainly understand that and have no quarrel with his desire to debate renounce it. I do regret, however, that he consistently handles the historical data so poorly.

He can call himself a "Sandy-Creeker," but at some point he must deal with the abundant evidence that within the Sandy Creek, Separate Baptist tradition there is a significant regard for Calvinistic doctrines. Even his mentor, Dr. Paige Patterson, publicly acknowledged this fact in the dialogue he held with Dr. Mohler at the 2006 Southern Baptist Pastors' Conference.

Caner further muddies the waters and exposes both a pugilistic demeanor and untrustworthy historical assessments when he makes this observation about the current resurgence of Calvinism in the SBC:
The whole fight started when they started saying, " ...we've always been Calvinists, both strands [presumbably he means both Charleston and Sandy Creek traditions]." That's a lie. That's not just a misstatement. That's just an outright historical fallacy....To say that ... Southern Baptists have always been in one way or another, Calvinists, is not only short-sited, it is just poor theology and poor history.

First, who is fighting? There are some in the SBC who are drooling for a fight over Calvinism. That tends to be endemic to certain strands of Fundamentalism. Without some boogeyman to battle they are without a raison d'etre. I am hopeful that a growing number of Southern Baptists are seeing through this tendency to demonize those with whom we disagree and not allow those who are itching for a fight to dominate the denominational dialogue. That was a large part of the motivation for the Building Bridges conference.

Second, who has ever said that Southern Baptists have always been Calvinists? This is a very unhelpful misstatement at best and gross misrepresentation at worst. Of course Southern Baptists have not always been Calvinists in a universal sense. No one believes that. But the evidence overwhelmingly indicates that this convention was founded by those who affirmed the sovereignty of God's grace in salvation.

Timothy George has noted that each of the 293 delegates who met in Augusta, Georgia in 1845 to establish the Southern Baptist Convention came from churches or associations that embraced the Chaleston/Philadephia/Second London Baptist Confession of Faith. Caner may not like this fact, but it will take more than gratuitous assertions to make it go away.

The final excerpt from Caner's interview illustrates the cautions that one ought to have in following his historical assessments. When asked about whether Calvin would approve the so-called 5 points of Calvinism, Caner made the following historical gaffes while trying to distinguish Calvin from the Calvinists.
During the life of Calvin a guy named Amyraut...Moise Amyraut said Calvin believed in general atonement. And his fiercest opponent was Theodore Beza, the guy who took over for Calvin.
So historian Caner would have us believe that Amyraut disagreed with Calvin during Calvin's lifetime and was fiercely opposed by Beza. Calvin (1509-1564) died 32 years before Amyraut was born and Beza (1519-1605) died when Amyraut was 11. Those must have been some fierce debates between the octogenarian Beza and the pre-adolescent Amyraut!

It was Shakespeare who wrote, "What's in a name? that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." In the final analysis I do not care much whether an educational institution calls itself Baptist or not. What matters to me is that those who lead and teach in such institutions be honest with their subjects and not try to rewrite history simply because they don't like the way it happened.

Monday, March 10, 2008

Liberty Baptist Seminary and “Building Bridges”

Following is an entry posted on Ergun Caner's site on August 9th, 2007. Caner was then the president of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary.

Press Release 12/18/2007

GOING BACK TO THE OLD SCHOOL WITH A NEW MISSION:
LIBERTY SEMINARY RESTATES ITS BAPTIST HERITAGE AND NAME

In an era when denominational identification is anathema, the Liberty Theological Seminary has retrofitted its name to the Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary. The irony is the man who lead the seminary to take Baptist out of the name is also the one who lobbied to reinsert it, the President of the Seminary, Dr. Ergun Mehmet Caner. Last week, Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. agreed, and the announcement was made during the Seminary Christmas Banquet on Friday, December 14, 2007. The following is taken from Dr. Caner’s address:
“When I became President of the seminary at Liberty University three years ago, I was compelled by Dr. Jerry Falwell to shake things up. With enrollment on the mountain approaching 10,000 resident students, the seminary was the smallest of the eight schools of the university. The name change served notice to the larger Christian community that we were willing to do anything for the sake of the mission, short of changing our doctrine. We did not change our doctrine one whit. In fact we redoubled our commitment to the vision of the Seminary’s founding in 1973- soul winning, church planting and cultural confrontation with the Gospel. Changing the name was just one small component in our overall strategy. It obviously worked. We have had three straight years of growth and have doubled our residential enrollment to over 400 in the seminary.
“However, since 2004, much as changed, both here at Liberty University and in the Southern Baptist Convention. Too many schools have Baptist in their name but not in their doctrine. Some have drifted into liberalism and cultural relativism; still others remain orthodox, but have drifted toward non-Baptist reformed doctrine and cultural isolationism. For us, this was our line in the sand. We want to build bridges to a lost world without burning the bridges of our doctrinal heritage. We are putting Baptist back in our name, and taking back a term that has been misused.
“We want to train students from across the evangelical spectrum, in the classic Baptistic stance of our Anabaptist tradition and Sandy Creek revivalistic heritage. These doctrines include:
• The inerrancy of Scripture
• General atonement
• Free church polity and pastoral authority
• Missions obsession
• Imminent return of Christ
It just made sense, following the vision of our founder and the new chancellor, to proudly state that we are Baptist with a capital “B.” Since 1525, the word Baptist has meant something and it still does at Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary.”

Sunday, March 9, 2008

Justification by Abraham Kuyper

The following article is courtesy of Reformation Ink

ABRAHAM KUYPER, THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT, 1900, Page 354

Being justified freely by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus."--Rom. iii. 24

The Heidelberg Catechism teaches that true conversion consists of these two parts: the dying, of the old man, and the rising again of the new. This last should be noticed. The Catechism says not that the new life originates in conversion, but that it arises in conversion. That which arises must exist before. Else how could it arise? This agrees with our statement that regeneration precedes conversion, and that by the effectual calling the newborn child of God is brought to conversion.

We now proceed to consider a matter which, though belonging to the same subject and running parallel with it, yet moves along an entirely different line, viz., justification.

In the Sacred Scripture, justification occupies the most conspic. uous place, and is presented as of greatest importance for the sinner: "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus" (Rom. iii. 24). "Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. v. i); "Who was delivered for our offenses and raised again for our justification" (Rom. iv. 25); "Who of God is made unto us from God, wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption" (1 Cor. i. 30).

And not only is this so strongly emphasized by Scripture, but it was also the very kernel of the Reformation, which puts this doctrine


ABRAHAM KUYPER, THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT, 1900, Page 355

of "justification by faith" boldly and clearly in opposition to the "meritorious works of Rome." "justification by faith" was in those days the shibboleth of the heroes of faith, Martin Luther in the van.

...Through the grace of God, our people did not go so far astray; and where the Ethicals, largely from principle, surrendered this point of doctrine, the Reformed did and do oppose them, admonishing them with all energy, and as often as possible, not to merge justification in sanctification.

Regarding the question, how justification differs, on the one hand, from "regeneration," and, on the other, from "calling and conversion," we answer that justification emphasizes the idea of right.

Right regulates the relations between two persons. Where there is but one there is no right, simply because there are no relations to regulate. Hence by right we understand either the right of man in relation to man, or the claim of God upon man. It is in this last sense that we use the word right.

The Lord is our Lawgiver, our judge, our King. Hence He is absolutely Sovereign: as Lawgiver determining what is right; as judge judging our being and doing; as King dispensing rewards and punishments. This sheds light upon the difference between justification and regeneration. The new birth and the call and conversion have to do with our being, as sinners or as regenerate men; but justification with the relation which we sustain to God, either as sinners or as those born again.

Apart from the question of right, the sinner may be considered


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as a sick person, who is infected and inoculated with disease. After being born again he improves, the infection disappears, the corruption ceases, and he prospers again. But this concerns his person alone, how he is, and what his prospects are; it does not touch the question of right.

The question of right arises when I see in the sinner a creature not his own, but belonging to another. Herein is all the difference. If man is to me the principal factor, so that I have nothing else in view but his improvement and deliverance from misery, then the Almighty God is in this whole matter a mere Physician, called in and affording assistance, who receives His fee, and is discharged with many thanks. The question of right does not enter here at all. So long as the sinner is made more holy, all is well. Of course, if he is made perfect, all the better. Clearly understanding, however, that man belongs not to himself, but to another, the matter assumes an entirely different aspect. For then he can not be or do as he pleases, but another has determined what he must be and what he must do. And if he does or is otherwise, he is guilty as a transgressor: guilty because he rebelled, guilty because he transgressed.

Hence when I believe in the divine sovereignty, the sinner appears to me in an entirely different aspect. As infected and mortally ill, he is to be pitied and kindly treated; but considered as belonging to God, standing under God, and as having robbed God, that same sinner becomes a guilty transgressor.

This is true to some extent of animals. When I lasso a wild horse on the American prairies for training, it never enters my mind to punish him for his wildness. But the runaway in the city streets must be punished. He is vicious; he threw his rider; he refused to be led and chose his own way. Hence he needs to be punished.

And man much more so. When I meet him in his wild career of sin, I know that he is a rebel, that he broke the reins, threw his rider, and now dashes on in mad revolt. Hence such sinner must, be not only healed, but punished. He does not need medical treatment alone, but before all things he needs juridical treatment.

Apart from his disease a sinner has done evil; there is no virtue in him; he has violated the right; he deserves punishment. Suppose, for a moment, that sin had not touched his person, had not corrupted him, had left him intact as a man, then there would have


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been no need of regeneration, of healing, of a rising again, of sanc. tification; nevertheless he would have been subject to the ven. geance of justice.

Hence man's case in relation to his God must be considered juridically. Be not afraid of that word, brother. Rather insist that it be pronounced with as strong an emphasis as possible. It must be emphasized, and all the more strongly, because for so many years it has been scorned, and the churches have been made to believe that this "juridical" aspect of the case was of no importance; that it was a representation really unworthy of God; that the principal thing was to bring forth fruit meet for repentance.

Beautiful teaching, gradually pushed into the world from the closet of philosophy: teaching that declares that morality included the right and stood far above the right; that "right" was chiefly a notion of the life of less civilized ages and of crude persons, but of no importance to our ideal age and to the ideal development of humanity and of individuals; yea, that in some respects it is even objectionable, and should never be allowed to enter into that holy and high and tender relation that exists between God and man.

The fruit of this pestilential philosophy is, that now in Europe the sense of right is gradually dying of slow consumption. Among the Asiatic nations this sense of right has greater vitality than among us. Might is again greater than right. Right is again the right of the strongest. And the luxurious circles, who in their atony of spirit at first protested against the "juridical" in theology, discover now with terror that certain classes in society are losing more and more respect for the "juridical" in the question of property. Even in regard to the possession of land and house, and treasure and fields, this new conception of life considers the "juridical" a less noble idea. Bitter satire I You who, in your wantonness, started the mockery of the "juridical" in connection with God, find your punishment now in the fact that the lower classes start the mockery of this "juridical" in connection with your money and your goods. Yea, more than this. When recently in Paris a woman was tried for having shot and killed a man in court, not only did the jury acquit her, but she was made the heroine of an ovation. Here also other motives were deemed more precious, and the "juridical" aspect had nothing to do with it.

And, therefore, in the name of God and of the right which He


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has ordained, we urgently request that every minister of the Word, and every man in his place, help and labor, with clear consciousness and energy, to stop this dissolution of the right, with all the means at their disposal; and especially solemnly and effectually to restore to its own conspicuous place the juridical feature of the sinner's relation to his God. When this is done, we shall feel again the stimulus that will cause the soul's relaxed muscles to contract, rousing us from our semi-unconsciousness. Every man, and especially every member of the Church, must again realize his juridical relation to God now and forever; that he is not merely man or woman, but a creature belonging to God, absolutely controlled by God; and guilty and punishable when not acting according to the will of God.

This being clearly understood, it is evident that regeneration and calling and conversion, yea, even complete reformation and sanctification, can not be sufficient; for, although these are very glorious, and deliver you from sin's stain and pollution, and help you not to violate the law so frequently, yet they do not touch your juridical relation to God.

When a mutinous battalion gets into serious straits, and the general, hearing of it, delivers them at the cost of ten killed and twenty wounded, who had not mutinied, and brings them back and feeds them, do you think that that will be all? Do you not see that such battalion is still liable to punishment with decimation? And when man mutinied against his God, and got himself into trouble and nearly perished with misery, and the Lord God sent him help to save him, and called him back, and he returned, can that be the end of it? Do you not clearly see that he is still liable to severe punishment? In case of a burglar who robs and kills, but in making his escape breaks his leg, and is sent to the hospital where he is treated, and then goes out a cripple unable to repeat his crime, do you think that the judge would give him his liberty, saying: "He is healed now and will never do it again"? No; he will be tried, convicted, and incarcerated. Even so here. Because by our sins and transgressions we have wounded ourselves, and made ourselves wretched, and are in need of medical help, is out guilt forgotten for this reason?

Why, then, are such undermining ideas brought among the people? Why is it that under the appearance of love a sentimental Christianity is introduced about the "dear Jesus," and "that we are


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so sick," and "the Physician is passing by," and that "it is, oh I so glorious to be in fellowship with that holy Mediator"?

Are our people really ignorant of the fact that this whole representation stands diametrically opposed to Sacred Scripture-opposed to all that ever animated the Church of Christ and made it strong? Do they not feel that such a feeble and spongy Christianity is a clay too soft for the making of heroes in the Kingdom of God? And do they not see that the number of men who are drawn to the "dear Jesus" is much smaller now than that of the men who formerly were drawn to the Mediator of the right, who with His precious blood hath fully satisfied for all our sins?

And when it is answered, "That is just what we teach; reconciliation in His blood, redemption through His death! It is all paid for us! Only come and hear our preaching and sing our hymns!" then we beseech the brethren who thus speak to be serious for a moment. For, behold, our objection is not that you deny the reconciliation through His blood, but that, by being silent on the question of God's right, and of our state of condemnation, and by being satisfied when the people "only come to Jesus," you allow the consciousness of guilt to wear out, you make genuine repentance impossible, you substitute a certain discontent with oneself for brokenness of heart; and thus you weaken the faculty to feel, to understand, and to realize what the meaning is of reconciliation through the blood of the cross.

It is quite possible to bring about reconciliation without touching the question of the right at all. By some misunderstanding two friends have become estranged, separated from, and hostile to each other. But they may be reconciled. Not necessarily by making one to see that he violated the rights of the other; this was perhaps never intended. And even if there was some right violated, it would not be expedient to speak of the past, but to cover it with the mantle of love and to look only to the future. And such reconciliation, if successful, is very delightful, and may have cost both the reconciled and the reconciler much of conflict and sacrifice, yea, prayers and tears. And yet, with all this, such reconciliation does not touch the question of right.

In this way it appears to us these brethren preach reconciliation. It is true that they preach it with much warmth and animation even; but-and this is our complaint-they consider and present it as an enmity caused by whispering, misunderstanding, and


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wrong inclination, rather than by violation of the right. And, in consequence, their preaching of reconciliation through the blood of the cross no longer causes the deep chord of the right to vibrate in men's souls; but it resembles the reconciliation of two friends, who at an evil hour became estranged from each other.


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Our Status (Volume 2, Chapter 31)

"And he believed in the Lord: and be counted it to him for righteousness. --Gen. xv. 6.

The right touches a man's status. So long as the law has not Proven him guilty, has not convicted and sentenced him, his legal status is that of a free and law-abiding citizen. But as soon as his guilt is proven in court and the jury has convicted him, he passes from that into the status of the bound and law-breaking citizen.

The same applies to our relation to God. Our status before God is that either of the just or of the unjust. In the former, we are not condemned or we are released from condemnation. He that is still under condemnation occupies the status of the unjust.

Hence, and this is noteworthy, a man's status depends not upon what he is, but upon the decision of the proper authorities regarding him; not upon what he is actually, but upon what he is counted to be.

A clerk in an office is innocently suspected of embezzlement, and accused before a court of law. He pleads not guilty; but the suspicions against him carry conviction, and the judge condemns him. Now, though he did not embezzle, is actually innocent, he is counted guilty. And since a man does not determine his own status, but his sovereign or judge determines it for him, the status of this clerk, although innocent, is, from the moment of his conviction, that of a law- breaker. And the contrary may occur just as well. In the absence of convicting evidence the judge may acquit a dishonest clerk, who, although guilty and a law-breaker, still retains his status of a law-abiding and honest citizen. In this case he is dishonorable, but he is counted honorable. Hence a man's status depends not upon what he actually is, but what he is counted to be.

The reason is, that man's status has no reference to his inward being, but only to the manner in which he is to be treated. It would be useless to determine this himself, for his fellow citizens would


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not receive it. though he asserted a hundred times, "I am an honorable citizen," they would pay no attention to it. But if the judge declares him honorable, and then they should dare to call him dishonorable, there would be a power to maintain his status against those who attack him. Hence a man's own declaration can not obtain him a legal status. He may fancy or assume a status of righteousness, but it has no stability, it is no status.

This explains why, in our own good land, a man's legal status as a citizen is determined not by himself, but solely by the king, either as sovereign or as judge. The king is judge, for all judgment is pronounced in his name; and, although the judiciary can not be denied a certain authority independent of the executive, yet in every sentence it is the king's judicature which pronounces judg. ment. Hence a man's status depends solely upon the king's decision. Now the king has decided, once for all, that every citizen never convicted of crime is counted honorable. Not because all are honorable, but that they shall be counted as such. Hence so long as a man was never sentenced, he passes for honorable, even though he is not. And as soon as he is sentenced, he is considered dishonorable, though he is perfectly honorable. And thus his status is determined by his king,; and in it he is accounted not according to what he is, but what his king counts him to be. Even without the judiciary, it is the king who determines a man's state in society, not according to what he is, but what the king counts him to be.

A person's sex is determined not by his condition, but by what the registrar of vital statistics in his register has declared him to be. If by some mistake a girl were registered as a boy, and therefore counted as a boy, then at the proper time she would be summoned to serve in the militia, unless the mistake were corrected, and she be counted to be what she is. It may be a pretended, and not the real, child of the rich nobleman in whose name it is registered. And yet it makes no difference whose child it really is, for the state will support it in all its rights of inheritance, because it passes for the child of that nobleman, and is counted to be his legitimate child.

Hence it is the rule in society that a man's status is determined not by his actual condition, nor by his own declaration, but by the sovereign under whom he stands. And this sovereign has the power, by his decision, to assign to a man the status to which, according to his condition, he belongs, or to put him in a status where he does not belong, but to which he is accounted to belong.


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This is the case even in matters where mistakes are out of the question. At the time of the king's death and of the pregnancy of his widow, a prince or princess is counted to exist, even before he or she is born. And, accordingly, while the child is still a nursing babe, it is counted to be the owner of large possessions, even though these possessions may be entirely lost, before the child can hear of them. And so there are a number of cases where standing, and condition, without anybody's fault or mistake, are entirely different; simply because it is possible that a man be in a state into which he has not yet grown.

The king alone can determine his own status; if it pleases him to register to- morrow incognito, as a count or a baron, he will be relieved from the usual royal honors.

We have elaborated this point more largely, because the Ethicals and the Mystics have got our poor people so bitterly out of the habit of reckoning with this counting, of God. The word of Scripture, "Abraham believed, and it was counted to him for righteousness," is no longer understood; or it is made to refer to the merit of faith, which is Arminian doctrine.

The Holy Spirit often speaks of this counting of God: "I am counted with them that go down into the pit"; "The Lord shall count them when He writeth up the peoples"; "And it was counted unto Phineas for righteousness unto all generations, forevermore." So it is said of Jesus, that "He was counted [numbered] with the transgressors"; of Judas that "he was counted with the eleven"; of the uncircumcision which keeps the law, that "it shall be counted unto him for circumcision"; of Abraham that "his faith was counted unto him for righteousness"; of him "that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly," that "his faith is counted unto him for righteousness"; and of the children of the promise that "they are counted for the seed."

It is this very counting that appears to the children of this present age so incomprehensible and problematic. They will not hear of it. And, as Rome at one time severed the tendon of the Gospel, by merging justification in sanctification, mixing and identifying the two, so do people now refuse to listen to anything but an Ethical justification, which is actually only a species of sanctification. Hence God's counting, counts for nothing. It is not heeded. It has no worth nor significance attached to it. The only question is


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what a man is. The measure of worth is nothing else but the worth of our personality.

And this we oppose most emphatically. It is a denial of justification in toto; and such denial is essentially mutiny and rebellion against God, a withdrawing of oneself from the authority of one's legal sovereign.

All those who consider themselves saved because they have holy emotions, or because they think themselves less sinful, and profess to make progress in sanctification-all these, however dissimilar they may be in all other things, have this in common, that they insist on being), counted according to their own declaration, and not according to what God counts them to be. Instead of leaving, as dependent creatures, the honor of determining their status to their sovereign King, whose they are, they sit as judges to determine it themselves, by their own progress in good works.

And not only this, but they also detract from the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, and from the reality of the guilt for which He satisfied. He who maintains that God must count a man according to what he is, and not according to what God wills to count him, can never understand how the Lord Jesus could bear our sins, and be a "curse" and "sin" for us. He must interpret this sinbearing in the sense of a physical or Ethical fellowship, and seek for reconciliation not in the cross of Jesus, but in His manger, as many actually do in these days.

And as they thus make the actual bearing of our guilt by the Mediator unthinkable, so they make inherited guilt impossible.

Assuredly, they say, there is inherited stain, taken in a Manichean sense, but no original guilt. For how could the guilt of a dead man be counted unto us? It is evident, therefore, that by this thoughtless and bold denial of the right of God, not only is justification disjointed, but the whole structure of salvation is robbed of its foundation.

And why is this? Is it because the human consciousness can not conceive the idea of being counted according to what we are not? Our illustrations from the social life show that men readily understand and daily accept such a relation in common affairs. The deep cause of this unbelief lies in the fact that man will not rest in God's judgment concerning him, but that he seeks for rest in his own estimate of himself; that this estimate is considered a safer shield than God's judgment concerning him; and that, instead


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of living with the reformers by faith, he tries to live by the things found in himself.

And from this men must return. This leads us back to Rome; this is to forsake justification by faith; this is to sever the artery of grace. Much more than in the political realm must the sacred principle be applied to the Kingdom of heaven, that to our Sovereign King and judge alone belongs the prerogative, by His decision, absolutely to determine our state of righteousness or of unrighteousness.

The sovereignty which reposes in an earthly king is only borrowed, derived, and laid upon him; but the sovereignty of the Lord our God is the source and fountainhead of all authority and of all binding force.

If it belongs to the very essence of sovereignty, that by the ruler's decision alone the status of his subjects is determined, then it must be clear, and it can not be otherwise than that this very authority belongs originally, absolutely, and supremely to our God. Whom He judges guilty is guilty, and must be treated as guilty; and whom He declares just is just, and must be treated as just. Before He entered Gethsemane, Jesus our King declared to His disciples: "Now are ye clean through the word which I have spoken unto you." And this is His declaration even now, and it shall forever remain so. Our state, our place, our lot for eternity depends not upon what we are, nor upon what others see in us, nor upon what we imagine or presume ourselves to be, but only upon what God thinks of us, what He counts us to be, what He, the Almighty and just judge, declares us to be.

When He declares us just, when He thinks us just, when He counts us just, then we are by this very thing His children who shall not lie, and ours is the inheritance of the just, although we lie in the midst of sin. And in like manner, when He pronounces us guilty in Adam, when in Adam He counts us subject to condemnation, then we are guilty, fallen, and condemned, even though we discover in our hearts nothing but sweet and childlike innocence.

In this way alone it must be understood and interpreted that the Lord Jesus was numbered with the transgressors, although He was holy; that He was made sin, although He was the living Righteousness; and that He was declared a curse in our place, although He was Immanuel. In the days of His flesh He was numbered with transgressors and sinners, He was put in their state, and He was treated accordingly.


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as such the burden of God's wrath came upon Him, and as such. His Father
forsook Him, and gave Him over to bitterest death. lit, the Resurrection alone He
was restored to the status of the righteous, and thus He was raised for our
justification.

Oh, this matter goes so deep! When to the Lord God is again ascribed His sovereign prerogative to determine a man's status. then every mystery of Scripture assumes its rightful place; but when it is not, then the entire way of salvation must be falsified.

Finally, if one should say: "An earthly sovereign may be mistaken, but God can not be; hence God must assign to every man a status which accords with his work"; then we answer: "This would be so, if the omnipotent grace of God were not irresistible." But since it is, you are not esteemed by God according to what you are, but you are what God esteems you to be.

What is Covenant Theology? by J. Ligon Duncan

The following article is courtesy of fpcjackson.org.

Covenant theology is the Gospel set in the context of God’s eternal plan of communion with his people, and its historical outworking in the covenants of works and grace (as well as in the various progressive stages of the covenant of grace). Covenant theology explains the meaning of the death of Christ in light of the fullness of the biblical teaching on the divine covenants, undergirds our understanding of the nature and use of the sacraments, and provides the fullest possible explanation of the grounds of our assurance.

To put it another way, Covenant theology is the Bible’s way of explaining and deepening our understanding of: (1) the atonement [the meaning of the death of Christ]; (2) assurance [the basis of our confidence of communion with God and enjoyment of his promises]; (3) the sacraments [signs and seals of God’s covenant promises — what they are and how they work]; and (4) the continuity of redemptive history [the unified plan of God’s salvation]. Covenant theology is also an hermeneutic, an approach to understanding the Scripture — an approach that attempts to biblically explain the unity of biblical revelation.

When Jesus wanted to explain the significance of His death to His disciples, He went to the doctrine of the covenants (see Matthew 26, Mark 14, Luke 22, 1 Corinthians 11). When God wanted to assure Abraham of the certainty of His word of promise, He went to the covenant (Genesis 12, 15, and 17). When God wanted to set apart His people, ingrain His work in their minds, tangibly reveal Himself in love and mercy, and confirm their future inheritance, He gave the covenant signs (Genesis 17, Exodus 12, 17, and 31, Matthew 28, Acts 2, Luke 22). When Luke wanted to show early Christians that Jesus’ life and ministry were the fulfillment of God’s ancient purposes for His chosen people, he went to the covenants and quoted Zacharias’ prophecy which shows that believers in the very earliest days of ‘the Jesus movement’ understood Jesus and His messianic work as a fulfillment (not a ‘Plan B’) of God’s covenant with Abraham (Luke 1:72-73). When the Psalmist and the author of Hebrews want to show how God’s redemptive plan is ordered and on what basis it unfolds in history, they went to the covenants (see Psalm 78, 89, Hebrews 6-10).

Covenant theology is not a response to dispensationalism. It existed long before the rudiments of classical dispensationalism were brought together in the nineteenth century. Covenant theology is not an excuse for baptizing children, nor merely a convention to justify a particular approach to the sacraments (modern paedocommunionism and baptismal regenerationism). Covenant theology is not sectarian, but an ecumenical Reformed approach to understanding the Bible, developed in the wake of the magisterial Reformation, but with roots stretching back to the earliest days of catholic Christianity and historically appreciated in all the various branches of the Reformed community (Baptist, Congregationalist, Independent, Presbyterian, Anglican, and Reformed). Covenant theology cannot be reduced to serving merely as the justification for some particular view of children in the covenant (covenant successionism), or for a certain kind of eschatology, or for a specific philosophy of education (whether it be homeschooling or Christian schools or classical schools). Covenant theology is bigger than that. It is more important than that.

“The doctrine of the covenant lies at the root of all true theology. It has been said that he who well understands the distinction between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace, is a master of divinity. I am persuaded that most of the mistakes which men make concerning the doctrines of Scripture, are based upon fundamental errors with regard to the covenant of law and of grace. May God grant us now the power to instruct, and you the grace to receive instruction on this vital subject.” Who said this? C.H. Spurgeon — the great English Baptist preacher! Certainly a man beyond our suspicion of secretly purveying a Presbyterian view of the sacraments to the unsuspecting evangelical masses.

Covenant theology flows from the trinitarian life and work of God. God’s covenant communion with us is modeled on and a reflection of the intra-trinitarian relationships. The shared life, the fellowship of the persons of the Holy Trinity, what theologians call perichoresis or circumincessio, is the archetype of the relationship the gracious covenant God shares with His elect and redeemed people. God’s commitments in the eternal covenant of redemptive find space-time realization in the covenant of grace.

J. Ligon Duncan III, PhD
Senior Minister, First Presbyterian Church

Saturday, March 8, 2008

Jesus & Paul by J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937)

The following article is courtesy of Reformation Ink

BIBLICAL AND THEOLOGICAL STUDIES, 1912, Page 547

The Apostle Paul is the greatest teacher of the Christian Church. True, he has not always been fully understood. The legalism that he combatted during his lifetime soon established itself among his converts, and finally celebrated a triumph in the formation of the Catholic Church. The keen edge of his dialectic was soon blunted. But however his ideas may have been injured in transmission, they were never altogether destroyed. Much was forgotten; but what remained was the life of the Church. And the great revivals were revivals of Paulinism. Protestantism—in its practical piety as well as in its theology—was simply a rediscovery of Paul.

Yet Paul has never been accepted for his own sake. Men have never come to him for an independent solution of the riddle of the universe. Simply as a religious philosopher, he is unsatisfactory; for his philosophy is rooted in one definite fact. He has been listened to not as a philosopher, but as a witness—a witness to Jesus Christ. His teaching has been accepted only on one condition— that he speak as a faithful disciple of Jesus of Nazareth.

The question of the relation between Jesus and Paul is therefore absolutely fundamental. Paul has always been regarded as the greatest disciple of Jesus. If so, well and good. The Christian Church may then go forward as it has done before.


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But in recent years there is a tendency to dissociate Paul from Jesus. A recent historian has entitled Paul "the second founder of Christianity." If that be correct, then Christianity is facing the greatest crisis in its history. For—let us not deceive ourselves—if Paul is independent of Jesus, he can no longer be a teacher of the Church. Christianity is founded upon Christ and only Christ. Paulinism has never been accepted upon any other supposition than that it reproduces the mind of Christ. If that supposition is incorrect—if Paulinism is derived not from Jesus Christ, but from other sources—then it must be uprooted from the life of the Church. But that is more than reform—it is revolution. Compared with that upheaval, the reformation of the sixteenth century is as nothing.


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At first sight, the danger appears to be trifling. The voices that would separate Paul from Jesus have been drowned by a chorus of protest. In making Paul and not Jesus the true founder of Christianity, Wrede is as little representative of the main trend of modern investigation as he is when he eliminates the Messianic element from the consciousness of Jesus. Measured by the direct assent which he has received, Wrede is a negligeable quantity. But that is but a poor measure of his importance. The true significance of Wrede's "Paul" is that it has merely made explicit what was implicit before. The entire modern reconstruction of primitive Christianity leads logically to Wrede's startling pronouncement. Modern liberalism has produced a Jesus who has really but little in common with Paul. Wrede has but drawn the conclusion. Paul was no disciple of the liberal Jesus. Wrede has merely had the courage to say so.

This essential harmony between Wrede and his opponents appears even in some of the criticisms to which he has been subjected. No doubt these criticisms are salutary. They fill out omissions, and correct exaggerations. But they obscure the issue. In general, their refutation of Wrede amounts to little more than this— Paul's theology is abandoned, in order to save his religion. His theology, it is admitted, was derived from extra-Christian sources; but in his practical piety he was a true disciple of Jesus. Such a distinction is thoroughly vicious; it is contradicted in no uncertain tones by the Pauline Epistles. Where is it that the current of Paul's religious experience becomes overpowering, so that even after the lapse of centuries, even through the dull medium of the printed page, it sweeps the heart of the sympathetic reader on

with it in a mighty flood? It is not in the ethical admonitions. It is not in the discussions of the practical problems of the Christian life. It is not even in the inspired encomium of Christian love. But it is in the great theological passages of the epistles—the second chapter of Galatians, the fifth chapter of Second Corinthians, the fifth to the eighth chapters of Romans. In these passages, the religious experience and the theology of Paul are blended in a union which no critical analysis can dissolve. Furthermore., if it is impossible


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to separate Pauline piety and Pauline theology in the life of Paul himself, it is just as impossible to separate them in the life of the Church of today. Thus far, at least, all attempts at accomplishing it have resulted in failure. Liberal Christianity has sometimes tried to reproduce Paul's religion apart from his theology. But thus far it has produced nothing which in the remotest degree resembles the model.

In determining whether Paul was a disciple of Jesus, the whole Paul must be kept in view—not the theology apart from the warm religious life that pulses through it, and not the religious emotion apart from its basis in theology. Theology apart from religion, or religion apart from theology—either is an empty abstraction. The religion and the theology of Paul stand or fall together. If one is derived from Jesus, probably the other is also.

In discussing the relation between Jesus and Paul, it is better to begin with Paul. For, in the first place, Paul is more easily known than Jesus. That will be admitted on all sides. Jesus wrote nothing; all the extant records of his words are the reports of others. The trustworthiness of the records of his life is at present a matter of dispute. Yet even if the most favorable estimate of the Gospel narratives be adopted, Jesus remains far more incomprehensible than Paul. Indeed it is just when the Gospel picture is accepted in its entirety that the sense of mystery in the presence of Jesus becomes most overpowering.

For the life of Paul, on the other hand, the historian is in possession of sources which are not only trustworthy, but universally admitted to be trustworthy. At least seven of the Pauline Epistles—1 Thessalonians, Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans, Philippians, and Philemon—are now assigned by all except a few extremists to Paul himself; and the critical doubts with regard to three of the others are gradually being dispelled. In general, the disputed epistles are not of fundamental importance for determining the relation of Paul to Jesus. Colossians, perhaps, forms the only exception, and it is just Colossians that is most commonly accepted as Pauline. All the characteristic features of Paul's thinking appear within the homologoumena; and it is the characteristic features alone


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which can determine the general question whether Paul was a disciple of Jesus.

With regard to the book of Acts as a source for the study of Paul, there is more difference of opinion; and the difference is of more importance for the question now in hand. But three remarks can be made. In the first place, those sections of Acts where the first person plural is used are universally regarded as the work of an eye-witness. In the second place, the framework—the account of external events in the life of Paul—is for the most part accepted. In the third place, the tendency of recent criticism is decidedly towards a higher estimate of the general representation of Paul. The conciliatory attitude toward the Jews, which the book of Acts attributes to Paul, is no longer regarded as due altogether to an "irenic" purpose on the part of the historian.

The sources for the life of Paul are insufficient, indeed, for a complete biography. For the period up to the conversion, the extant information is of the most general kind, and after the conversion some fifteen years elapse before anything like a connected narrative can be constructed. Even from the years of the so-called missionary journeys, only a bare summary has been preserved, with vivid, detailed narratives only here and there. Finally, the close of Paul's life is shrouded in obscurity. But what the sources lack in quantity they make up in quality. Paul was gifted with a remarkable power of self-revelation, which has been exercised in his epistles to the fullest extent. Free from self-centred vanity, without the slightest indelicacy, without a touch of morbid introspection, he has yet revealed the very secrets of his heart. Not only the exquisite delicacy of feeling, the fine play of affection, the consecrated anger, the keen practical judgment are open before us, but also the deepest springs of the tremendous religious experience. The Pauline Epistles make Paul one of the best-known men of history. We might be able to account, in an external way, for every day and hour of his life, and yet not know him half so well.

As thus revealed, Paul is comprehensible. With all his greatness, almost immeasurably exalted as he is above the generality of mankind, he yet possesses nothing which any man might not conceivably possess. Starting from the common


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misery of sin, he attained to a peace with God, which, again, has been shared by humble Christians of all ages. His commission as apostle exceeds in dignity and importance that of other disciples of Christ, but does not free him from human limitations. It was Christ's strength which was made perfect in weakness. In all essential features, the religious experience of Paul may be imitated by every Christian. Jesus, on the other hand, is full of mystery. Of course the mystery may be ignored. It is ignored by Wrede, when he denies to Jesus the consciousness of his Messiahship. But even by the most thorough-going modern naturalism, that is felt to be a desperate measure. The Messianic consciousness is rooted too deep in the sources ever to be removed by historical criticism. That Jesus lived at all is hardly more certain than that he thought himself to be the Messiah. But the Messianic consciousness of Jesus is a profound mystery. It would be no mystery if Jesus were an ordinary fanatic or unbalanced visionary. Among the many false Messiahs who championed their claims in the first century, there may well have been some who deceived themselves as well as others. But Jesus was no ordinary fanatic—no megalomaniac. On the contrary, he is the moral ideal of the race. His calmness, unselfishness, and strength have produced an impression which the lapse of time has done nothing to obliterate. It was such a man who supposed himself to be the Son of Man who was to come with the clouds of heaven! Considered in the light of the character of Jesus, the Messianic consciousness of Jesus is the profoundest of problems. It is true, the problem can be solved. It can be solved by supposing that Jesus' own estimate of his person was true—by recognizing in Jesus a supernatural person. But the acceptance of the supernatural is not easy. For the modern mind it involves nothing short of a Copernican revolution. And until that step is taken, the person of Jesus cannot be understood. Paul, on the other hand, is more easily comprehended. To a certain extent, his religious experience can be understood, at least in an external way, even by one who supposes it to be founded not on truth but on error. Paul, therefore, may perhaps be a stepping-stone on the way to a comprehension of Jesus.


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In the first place, then, the investigation of the relation between Jesus and Paul should begin with Paul rather than with Jesus, because Paul is, if not better known than Jesus, at least more easily known. In the second place, Paul should be studied before Jesus just because he lived after Jesus. If the object of the investigation were Jesus and Paul, taken separately, then it would be better to begin with the earlier rather than with the later of the two; but since it is the relation between Jesus and Paul that is to be studied, it is better method to begin with Paul. For the investigator need not rely merely on a comparison of Jesus and Paul. If Paul was dependent upon Jesus, the fact may be expected to appear in direct statements of Paul himself, and in the attitude of his contemporaries toward him. Did Paul feel himself to be an innovator with respect to Jesus; and was he regarded as an innovator by the earlier disciples of Jesus?

The latter question, at any rate, cannot be answered offhand. There were undoubtedly some men in the primitive church who combatted Paul in the name of conservatism. These were the Judaizers, who regarded Paul's doctrine of Christian freedom as a dangerous innovation. The Jewish law, they said, must be maintained even among Gentile Christians. Faith in Christ is supplementary to it, not subversive of it. Were the Judaizers justified in their conservatism? Were they right in regarding Paul as an innovator? What was the relation between these Judaizers and the original apostles, who had been disciples of Jesus in Galilee? These are among the most important questions in apostolic history. They have divided students of the New Testament into hostile camps. F. C. Baur supposed that the relation between Judaizers and original apostles was in the main friendly. The original apostles, though they could not quite close their eyes to the hand of God as manifested in the successes of Paul, belong nevertheless inwardly with the Judaizers rather than with Paul. The fundamental fact of apostolic history is a conflict between Paul and the original apostles, between Gentile Christianity and Jewish Christianity. The history of early Christianity is the history of the development and final adjustment of that conflict. The Catholic Church of the close of the second century is the result


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of a compromise between Pauline Christianity and the Christianity of the original apostles. This reconstruction of early Christian history was opposed by Albrecht Ritschl. According to Ritschl, the conflict in the apostolic age was not between Paul and the original apostles, but between apostolic Christianity—including both Paul and the original apostles—on the one side, and Judaistic Christianity—the Christianity of the Judaistic opponents of Paul—on the other. Specifically Jewish Christianity exerted no considerable influence upon the development of the Church. The Old Catholic Church of the close of the second century was the result not of a compromise between Jewish Christianity and Gentile Christianity, but of a natural process of degeneration from Pauline Christianity on purely Gentile Christian ground. The Gentile Christian world was unable to understand the Pauline doctrine of grace. Christianity came to be regarded as a new law—but that was due, not to the rehabilitation of the Mosaic law as a concession to Jewish Christianity, but to the tendency of the average man toward legalism in religion. As against Baur, Harnack belongs with Ritschl. Like Ritschl, he denies to Jewish Christianity any considerable influence upon the development of the Catholic Church. The Church Of 200, A.D. owes its difference from Paul, not to a compromise with Jewish Christianity, but to the intrusion of Greek habits of thought.

If Baur was correct, then Paul was probably no true disciple of Jesus. For Baur brought Paul into fundamental conflict with the men who had stood nearest to Jesus. But Baur was not correct. His reconstruction of apostolic history was arrived at by neglecting all sources except the epistles to the Galatians and Corinthians and then misinterpreting these. He failed to do justice to the "right hand of fellowship" (Gal. 2:9) which the pillars of the Jerusalem Church gave to Paul. And the account of Paul's rebuke of Peter in Antioch, apparently the strongest evidence of a conflict between Paul and the original apostles, is rather to be regarded as evidence to the contrary. For Paul rebukes Peter for hypocrisy- -not for false opinions, but for concealing his correct opinions for fear of men. In condemning his practice, Paul approves his principles. Peter had therefore been in fundamental agreement with Paul.


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As for the Judaizers in Corinth, their opinions are as uncertain as their relation to the original apostles. It is not certain that they combatted Paul's doctrine of justification by faith, and it is not certain that they had any kind of endorsement from the original apostles. Surely the apostles were not the only ones who could have given them "letters of recommendation" (2 Cor. 3:1).

Baur's thesis, then, was insufficiently grounded. One fact, however, still requires explanation—the appeal of the Judaizers to the original apostles against Paul. It is not enough to say simply that the appeal of the Judaizers was a false appeal. For if the original apostles were as Pauline as Paul himself, it is difficult to see why they should have been preferred to Paul by the anti-Pauline party. Surely the original apostles must have given the Judaizers at least some color of support; otherwise the Judaizers could never have appealed to them. Until this appeal is explained, Baur remains unrefuted. But the explanation is not difficult to find. It was the life, not the teaching, of the original apostles which appeared to support the contentions of the Judaizers. The early Christians in Jerusalem continued to observe the Jewish law. They continued in diligent attendance upon the Temple services. They observed the feasts, they obeyed the regulations about food. To a superficial observer, they were simply pious Jews. Now, as a matter of fact, they were not simply pious Jews. They were relying for salvation not really upon their observance of the law, but solely upon their faith in the crucified and risen Christ. Inwardly, Christianity was from the very beginning no mere continuation of Judaism, but a new religion. Outwardly, however, the early church was nothing more than a Jewish sect. And the Judaizers failed to penetrate beneath the outward appearance. Because the original apostles continued to observe the Jewish law, the Judaizers supposed that legalism was of the essence of their religion. The Judaizers appealed to the outward practice of the apostles; Paul, to the deepest springs of their religious life. So long as Christianity was preached only among Jews, there was no acute conflict. True Christians and mere Jewish believers in the Messiahship of Jesus were united by a common observance of the Mosaic law. But when Christianity began to


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transcend the bounds of Judaism, the division became apparent. The apostles, true disciples of Jesus, attested their own inward freedom by accepting the outward freedom of the Gentiles; the Judaizers, false brethren privily brought in, insisted upon the observance of the law as necessary to salvation.

Paul, then, was not the founder of universalistic Christianity. In principle, Christianity was universalistic from the very beginning. In principle, the first Christians in Jerusalem were entirely free from the Judaism with which they were united outwardly by observance of the Temple ritual. If Paul was not the founder of universalistic Christianity, what was he? What was his peculiar service to the Church? It was not the mere geographical extension of the frontiers of the Kingdom. That achievement he shares with others. Paul was perhaps not even the first to preach the Gospel systematically to Gentiles. That honor belongs apparently to certain unnamed Jews of Cyprus and Cyrene. The true achievement of Paul lies in another sphere—in the hidden realm of thought. When Christianity began to be offered directly to Gentiles in Antioch, the principles of the Gentile mission had to be established once for all. Conceivably, of course, the Gentile mission might have got along without principles. The leaders of the church at Antioch might have pointed simply to the practical necessities of the case. Obviously, the Gentile world, as a matter of fact, would never accept circumcision, and would never submit to the Mosaic law. Consequently, if Christianity was ever to be anything more than a Jewish sect, the requirements of the law must quietly be held in abeyance. Conceivably, the leaders of the church at Antioch might have reasoned thus; conceivably they might have been "practical Christian workers" in the modern sense. But as a matter of fact, the leader of the church at Antioch was the Apostle Paul. Paul was not a man to sacrifice principle to practical necessity.

What was standing in the way of the Gentile mission was no mere Jewish racial prejudice, but a genuine religious principle. Jewish particularism was part of the very essence of the Jews' religion. The idea of the covenant between God and his chosen people was fundamental in all periods of Judaism. To have offered the Gospel to uncircumcised Gentiles simply because


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that was demanded by the practical necessities of the case, would have meant to a Jew nothing less than disobedience to the revealed will of God. It would have been an irreparable injury to the religious conscience. Particularism was not a prejudice, but a religious principle. Therefore it could be overcome only by a higher principle. Its abrogation needed to be demonstrated, not merely assumed. And that was the work of Paul.

The original apostles, through their intercourse with Jesus upon earth, and their experience of the risen Lord, had in principle transcended Jewish particularism. Inwardly they were free from the law. But they did not know that they were free. Certainly they did not know why they were free. Stich freedom could not be permanent. It sufficed for the Jewish Church, so long as the issue was not clearly drawn. But it was open to argumentative attack. It could never have conquered the world. Christian freedom was held by but a precarious tenure, until its underlying principles were established. Christianity could not exist without theology. And the first great Christian theologian was Paul.

In championing Gentile freedom, then, in emphasizing the doctrine of salvation by faith alone, Paul was not an innovator. He was merely making explicit what had been implicit before. He was in fundamental harmony with the original apostles. And if he was in harmony with the most intimate disciples of Jesus, the presumption is that he was in harmony with Jesus himself.

If the harmony between Paul and the original apostles was preserved by Paul's conception of Christian freedom, it was preserved even more clearly by his view of the person of Christ. just where modern radicalism is most confident that Paul was an innovator, Paul's contemporaries were most confident of his faithfulness to tradition. Even the Judaizers had no quarrel with Paul's conception of Christ as a heavenly being. In the Epistle to the Galatians, where Paul insists that he received his apostleship. not from men but directly from Christ, he does so in sharp opposition to the Judaizers. Paul says, "not by man, but by Christ"; the Judaizers said, "not by Christ but by man." But if so, then the Judaizers, no less


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than Paul, distinguished Christ sharply from men, and placed him clearly on the side of God. If Paul can prove that he received his apostleship directly from Christ, then he has already proved that he received it directly from God. Apparently, it never occurred to him that his opponents might accept the former proposition and deny the latter. For the Judaizers as well as for Paul, God and Christ belong together. In 2 Cor. 11:4, it is true, Paul hints that his opponents are preaching another Jesus. If that passage stood alone, it might mean that the Judaizers differed from Paul in their conception of the person of Christ. But if there had been such a difference, it would surely have appeared more clearly in the rest of the Corinthian epistles. If the Judaizers had taught that Jesus was a mere man, son of David and nothing else, surely Paul would have taken occasion to contradict them. So dangerous an error—an error so completely subversive of Paul's deepest convictions—could not possibly have been left unrefuted. The meaning of the passage is quite different. It was the Judaizers themselves, and not Paul, who said that their Jesus was another Jesus. "Paul", they said to the Corinthians, "has not revealed the Gospel to you in its fulness (2 Cor. 4:3, 11:5). Paul has had no close contact either with Jesus himself, or with the immediate disciples of Jesus. Paul has preached but an imperfect gospel. We, on the other hand, can offer you the true Jesus, the true Spirit, and the true gospel. Do not listen to Paul. We alone can give you fully authentic information. "In reality, however, the Judaizers had nothing new to offer. Paul had been no whit behind "the pre-eminent apostles." He had made the full gospel plain and open before them (2 Cor. 11:5-6). If Paul's gospel was hidden, it was hidden only from those who had been blinded by the god of this world (2 Cor. 4:4). The "other Jesus" of the Judaizers existed only in their own inordinate claims. They preached the same Jesus as did Paul—only their preaching was marred by quarrelsomeness and pride. They preached the same Jesus; but they had not themselves come into vital communion with him. In that they differed from Paul.

It is not until the Epistle to the Colossians that Paul is compelled to defend his conception of the person of Christ. And


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there he defends it not against a conservative, naturalistic view of Jesus as a merely human Messiah, but against Gnostic speculation. With regard to the person of Christ, Paul appears everywhere in perfect harmony with all Palestinian Christians. In the whole New Testament there is not a trace of a conflict. That is a fact of tremendous significance. For Paul's conception of the supernatural Christ was formed not later than five years after the crucifixion of Jesus. There is every reason to believe that it was formed at the conversion. With regard to this matter, there is no evidence of a development in Paul's thinking. One passage, 2 Cor. 5:16, has occasionally been regarded as such evidence. But only by palpable disregard of the context. When Paul says, "Even if we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him so no longer," he cannot possibly mean that for a time after his conversion he regarded Christ simply as a human, Jewish Messiah. For the point of the whole passage is the revolutionary change wrought in every Christian's life by the death of Christ. It is clearly the appropriation of that death—that is, conversion—and not some subsequent development of the Christian life which brings the transition from the knowledge of Christ after the flesh (whatever that may be) to the higher knowledge of which Paul is now in possession. The revelation of God's Son (Gal. 1:16) on the road to Damascus clearly gave to Paul the essential elements of his Christology. What is more, that Christology must have formed from the very beginning the essence of his preaching. The "Jesus" whom he preached in the Damascan synagogues was also Christ—his Christ. That he preached in Damascus is directly attested only by the book of Acts, but, as has been observed by some who entertain rather a low estimate of Acts, it is implied in 2 Cor. 11:32-33. What could have caused the persecution of Paul except Christian activity on his part? If the book of Acts is correct, Paul preached also in Jerusalem only three years after his conversion. Yet the churches of Judea glorified God in him. If there was opposition to his heavenly Christ, such opposition has left no trace. Yet Paul had been in direct consultation with Peter. There is every reason to believe, therefore, that from the very beginning, the exalted Christology of Paul was accepted by the


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Jerusalem Church. The heavenly Christ of Paul was also the Christ of those who had walked and talked with Jesus of Nazareth.

By his contemporaries, then, Paul was regarded not as the founder of a new religion, but as a disciple of Jesus. That testimony may be overthrown by contrary evidence. But there is a strong presumption that it is correct. For among those who passed judgment upon Paul were included the most intimate friends and disciples of Jesus. Their estimate of Paul's relationship to Jesus can be rejected only under the compulsion of positive evidence. Those who knew Jesus best accepted Paul as a disciple of Jesus like themselves.

Thus, by his contemporaries, Paul was not regarded as an innovator with respect to Jesus. Did he regard himself as such?

Put in this form, the question admits of but one answer. "It is no longer I that live," says Paul, "but Christ that liveth in me. Christ, for Paul, was absolute Lord and Master. But this "Christ" whom Paul served was identified by Paul with Jesus of Nazareth. Of that there can be no manner of doubt. Moreover, even in his estate of humiliation, Christ was regarded by Paul as Lord. It was "the Lord of glory" (1 Cor. 2:8) who was crucified. The right of the earthly Jesus to issue commands was for Paul a matter of course. That is proved beyond question even by the few direct references which Paul makes to words of Jesus. So much is almost universally admitted. That Paul regarded himself as a disciple of Jesus can be denied by no one. The difference of opinion appears when the question is formulated in somewhat broader terms. Do the Pauline Epistles themselves, even apart from a comparison with the words of Jesus, furnish evidence that Paul was not, as he supposed, a disciple of Jesus, but the founder of a new religion?

In favor of the affirmative, two considerations have been adduced.

In the first place, in the Epistle to the Galatians Paul himself insists upon his independence of tradition. He received his gospel directly from Christ, not through any human agency. Even after he had received his gospel, he avoided all contact


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with those who had been apostles before him. He conferred not with flesh and blood. Paul received his gospel, then, by revelation from the risen Christ, not by tradition from the earthly Jesus. But the earthly Jesus was the historical Jesus. In exalting his direct commission from the heavenly Christ, Paul has himself betrayed the slenderness of his connection with Jesus of Nazareth.

In the second place, the same low estimate of historical tradition appears throughout the epistles, in the paucity of references to the words and deeds of Jesus. Apparently Paul is interested almost exclusively in the birth and death and resurrection. He is interested in the birth as the incarnation of a heavenly being, come for the salvation of men; and in the death and resurrection as the great cosmic events by which salvation was obtained. But for the details of the life of Jesus he displays but little interest. His mind and fancy are dominated by a vague, mysterious, cosmic personification, not by a definite historical person—by the heavenly Christ, not by Jesus of Nazareth.

The latter of these two arguments can be established only by exaggeration and by misinterpretation—by exaggeration of the paucity of references in Paul to the life of Jesus, and by misinterpretation of the paucity that really exists. In the first place, Paul displays far greater knowledge than is sometimes supposed, and in the second place, he possesses far greater knowledge than he displays. The testimony of Paul to Jesus has been examined many times—it will not be necessary to traverse the ground again. The assertion that the details of the life of Jesus were of little value for Paul is contradicted in no uncertain terms by such passages as 2 Cor. 10:1 and Rom. 15:3. When Paul urges as an example to his readers the meekness and gentleness of Christ, or his faithfulness in bearing reproaches in the service of God, he is evidently thinking not primarily of the gracious acts of the incarnation and passion, as in Phil. 2:5ff., and 2 Cor. 8:9, but of the character of Jesus as it was exhibited in his daily. life on earth. Such expressions as these attest not merely knowledge of Jesus but also warm appreciation of his character. The imitation of Jesus (1 Cor. 11:1) had its due place in the ethical life of Paul. Direct commands


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of Jesus are occasionally quoted, and Paul is fully conscious of the significance of such commands (1 Cor. 7:10, 12, 25). In 1 Cor 11: 23ff., he quotes in full the words of Jesus instituting the Lord's Supper, and incidentally shows that he is acquainted with the exact circumstances under which the words were spoken ("the night in which he was betrayed").

The incidental character of Paul's references to the life of Jesus itself suggests that he knew far more than he chooses to tell. The account of the institution of the Lord's Supper, for example, would never have found a place in the epistles except for certain abuses which had sprung up in Corinth. Yet Paul says that he had already "delivered over" that account to the Corinthians. It had formed part of his elementary preaching. And it displays intimate knowledge of detail. That one example is sufficient to prove not only that Paul knew more than he tells in the epistles, but also that what is omitted from the epistles formed part of the essential elements of his preaching. It is omitted not because it is unimportant, but on the contrary because it is fundamental. Instruction about it had to be given at the very beginning, and did not often have to be repeated. The hint supplied by such passages as the account of the Lord's Supper in 1 Cor. 11:23ff. is only supplementary to weighty a priori considerations. A missionary preaching that included no concrete account of the life of Jesus would have been preposterous. The claim that a crucified Jew was to be obeyed as Lord and trusted as Saviour must surely have provoked the question as to what manner of man this was. It is true that the gods of other religions needed to be described only in general terms. But Christianity had dispensed with the advantages of such vagueness. It had identified its God with a Jew who had lived but a few years before. Surely the tremendous prejudice against accepting a crucified criminal as Lord and Master could be overcome only by an account of the wonderful character of Jesus. The only other resource is an extreme supernaturalism. If the concrete figure of the crucified one had no part in winning the hearts of men, then the work must have been accomplished by a magical exercise of divine power—working out of all connection with the mind and heart. That is not the supernaturalism of Paul. When Paul writes to the


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Galatians that Jesus Christ crucified was placarded before their eyes, he refers to something more than a dogmatic exposition of the atonement. The picture of the crucified one owed part of its compelling power to the conviction that the death there portrayed was the supreme act of a life of love.

It is already pretty clear that the first chapter of Galatians cannot mean that Paul had a contempt for Christian tradition. When Paul says that he received his gospel by direct revelation from Jesus Christ, he cannot mean that he excluded from his preaching what he had received by ordinary word of mouth from the eye-witnesses of the life of Jesus. He cannot mean even that his proof of the resurrection of Jesus was based solely upon his own testimony. That inference, at least, would be very natural if Gal. 1 stood alone. But it is refuted in no uncertain terms by 1 Cor. 15:3-7. In this passage the appearances of the risen Christ to persons other than Paul are reviewed in an extended list, and Paul distinctly says that this formed a part of his first preaching in Corinth. So not even the fact of the resurrection itself was supported solely by the testimony of Paul. On the contrary, Paul was diligent in investigating the testimony of others.

The first chapter of Galatians, therefore, bears a very different aspect when it is interpreted in the light of the other Pauline epistles. Paul does not mean that all his information about Jesus came from the risen Christ. In all probability, Paul knew the essential facts in the life of Jesus even before he became a Christian. Since he was a persecutor of the Church, he must have had at least general information about its founder. The story of the life and death of the Galilean prophet must have been matter of common knowledge in Palestine. And after the conversion, Paul added to his knowledge. It is inconceivable that during the brief intercourse with Peter, for example, the subject of the words and deeds of Jesus was studiously avoided. Such an unnatural supposition is by no means required by the actual phenomena of the epistles. That has been demonstrated above. The true reason why Paul does not mention his knowledge of the life of Jesus as part of the basis of his faith, is that for him such factual knowledge was a matter of course. For us it is not a matter


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of course, because many centuries stand between us and the events. For us, painful investigation of sources is necessary in order that we may arrive even at the bare facts. Indeed, it is just the facts that need to be established in the face of the sharpest criticism. But for Paul, the facts were matter of common knowledge; it was the interpretation of the *facts which was in dispute. Paul was living in Jerusalem only a very few years at the latest after the crucifixion of Jesus. The prophet of Nazareth had certainly created considerable stir in Jerusalem as well as in Galilee. These things were not done in a corner. The general outlines of the life of Jesus were known to friend and foe alike. Even indifference could hardly have brought forgetfulness. But Paul was not indifferent. Before his conversion, as well as after it, he was interested in Jesus. That was what made him the most relentless of the persecutors.

The bare facts of the earthly life of Jesus did not, therefore, constitute in Paul's mind a "gospel." Everyone knew the facts—the Pharisees as well as the disciples. The facts could be obtained through a thousand channels. Paul did not reflect as to where he got them. Before the conversion, he heard the reports of the opponents of Jesus, and the common gossip of the crowds. After the conversion, there were many eye-witnesses who could be questioned—perhaps in Damascus and even in Arabia as well as in Jerusalem. It never occurred to Paul to regard himself as a disciple of the men who merely reported the facts, any more than the modem man feels a deep gratitude to the newspaper in which he reads useful information. If that particular paper had not printed the news, others would have done so. The sources of information are so numerous that no one of them can be regarded as of supreme importance. For us, the sources of information about the life of Jesus are limited. Hence our veneration for the Gospels. But Paul was a contemporary of Jesus; the sources of his information about Jesus were so numerous that they could not be counted.

Thus, when Paul says that he received his gospel from the risen Christ, he does not mean that the risen Christ revealed to him the facts of the life of Jesus. He had known the facts


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before—only they had filled him with hatred. What he received at his conversion was a new interpretation of the facts. Instead of continuing to persecute the disciples of Jesus, he accepted Jesus as living Lord and Master. Conceivably, the change might have been wrought through the preaching of the disciples; Paul might have received his gospel through the ministrations of Peter. But such was not the Lord's will. Suddenly, on the road to Damascus, Jesus called him. Paul had heard, perhaps, of the call of the first disciples; he had heard of those who left home and kindred to follow the new teacher. He had heard only to condemn. But now it was his turn. Jesus called, and he obeyed. Jesus, whom he knew only too well—destroyer of the Temple, accursed by the law, crucified, dead and buried—was living Lord. Jesus called him—called him not merely to revering imitation of the holy martyr, not merely to a new estimate of events that were past, but to present, living communion with himself. Jesus himself, in very presence, called him into communion, and into glorious service. That, and that only, is what Paul means when he says that he received his gospel not from man but by revelation of Jesus Christ.

Neither by Paul himself, therefore, nor by the original apostles was Paul regarded as an innovator with reference to Jesus. On the contrary he regarded himself and was regarded by others as a true disciple. The presumption is that that opinion was correct. For both Paul himself, and the early Christians with whom he came into contact were contemporaries of Jesus, and had every opportunity to know him. If Paul had detected any fundamental divergence between his own teaching and that of Jesus of Nazareth, then he could not have remained Jesus' disciple. Unless, indeed, the conversion was supernatural. But the conversion was not supernatural if it left Paul in disharmony with Jesus. For it purported to be wrought by Jesus himself. If supernatural, the conversion could not have left Paul in disharmony with the historical Jesus, because it was wrought by an appearance of Jesus; if not supernatural, it would have been insufficient to make Paul regard himself as a disciple of one with whom he didnot agree. That the original apostles had every opportunity


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for knowing the historical Jesus requires no proof. Yet undoubtedly they accepted Paul as a disciple.

The presumption thus established in favor of regarding Paul as a true disciple of Jesus could be overthrown only by positive divergence, established by an actual comparison of Jesus with Paul. At the very outset of such comparison, a serious difficulty is encountered. How is Jesus to be investigated? Paul we know, but what is the truth about Jesus? It will not do, it is said, to accept the Gospel picture in its entirety: For the Gospels were written after Paul, and have been affected by Pauline thinking. To a certain extent, therefore, it is no longer the historical Jesus which the Gospels describe, but the Pauline Christ. To compare Paul with the Gospels, therefore, is to compare not Paul with Jesus, but Paul with Paul. Naturally the comparison establishes coincidence, not divergence; but the result is altogether without value.

This objection was applied first of all to the Fourth Gospel. The Fourth Gospel was written undoubtedly many years after the Pauline Epistles. And undoubtedly it exhibits a remarkable harmony with Pauline thinking. The Pauline Christ is here made to appear even in the earthly life of Jesus. In this respect, it is said, the Gospel is more Pauline than Paul himself. Paul had done justice to the human life of Jesus by distinguishing sharply between the humiliation and the exaltation of Christ. Jesus had become Son of God in power only at the resurrection. In the Fourth Gospel, on the other hand, the heavenly Christ appears in all his glory even on earth. Furthermore, the new birth of John 3 is identical with the Pauline conception of the new life which the Christian has by sharing in the death and resurrection of Christ. Even the Pauline doctrine of the sacrificial death of Christ, though not prominent in the Fourth Gospel, appears in such passages as John 1:29 and 3:14-15.

The objection could be overcome only by an examination of the Fourth Gospel, which would far transcend the limits of the present discussion. The Fourth Gospel will therefore here be left out of account. It should be remarked, however, in passing, that dependence of the Fourth Gospel upon Paul has by no means been proved. A far-reaching similarity in ideas


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may freely be admitted. But in order to prove dependence, it is necessary to establish similarity not only of ideas, but also of expression. And that is conspicuously absent. Even where the underlying ideas are most clearly identical, the terminology is strikingly different—and not only the bare terminology but also the point of view. The entire atmosphere and spirit of the Fourth Gospel is quite distinct from that of the Pauline Epistles. That is sufficient to disprove the hypothesis of dependence of the Gospel upon Paul. The underlying similarity of thought, when taken in connection with the total dissimilarity of expression, can be explained only by dependence upon a common source. And that source can hardly be anything but Jesus Christ.

Provisionally, however, the Fourth Gospel will be left out of account. That can be done with the greater safety, because it is now universally agreed that the contrast between the Fourth Gospel and the Synoptics is not an absolute one. The day is past when the divine Christ of the Gospel of John could be confronted with a human Christ of Mark. Historical students of all shades of opinion have now come to see that Mark as well as John (though, it is believed, in a lesser degree) presents an exalted Christology. The charge of Pauline influence, therefore, has been brought not only against John, but also against the earlier Gospels. Hence, it is maintained that if Paul be compared even with the Jesus of the Synoptics, he is being compared not with the historical Jesus, but with a Paulinized Jesus. Obviously such comparison can prove nothing

If the Synoptic Gospels were influenced by Paul, then there is extant not a single document which preserves a pre-Pauline conception of Christ. That is a very remarkable state of affairs. The original disciples of Jesus, those who had been, intimate with him on earth, those from whom the most authentic information might have been expected, have allowed their account of the life of Jesus to be altered through the influence of one who could speak only from hearsay. Such alteration would certainly fall within the lifetime of many of the eyewitnesses. For the Gospel of Mark is generally admitted to have been written before 70, A.D. It is conceivable that the Pauline conception might thus have gained the ascendancy


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over the primitive conception. But it is hardly conceivable that it could have done so without a struggle, and of struggle there is not a trace. In the supposed Pauline passages in the Synoptic Gospels, the writers are quite unaware that one conception is being replaced by another. And the Pauline Epistles themselves, as has already been observed, presuppose a substantial agreement between Paul and the Jerusalem Church with regard to the person of Christ. This remarkable absence of struggle between the Pauline conception and the primitive conception can be explained only if the two were essentially the same. Only so could the Pauline conception have been accepted by the Jerusalem Church, and permitted to dominate subsequent Christianity. This conclusion is supported by the positive evidence, which has recently been urged, for example by Harnack, for a pre- Pauline dating of the Synoptic Gospels—that is, for dating them at a time when the Pauline! Epistles, even if some of them had already been written, could not have been collected, and could not have begun to dominate the thinking of the Church at large. The affinity between the Christology of Paul and the Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels does not prove the dependence of the Gospels upon Paul. For the Christology of Paul was also, in essentials, the Christology of the primitive Christian community in Jerusalem.

The transition from the human Jesus to the divine Christ must be placed therefore not between the primitive church and Paul, but between Jesus and the primitive church. A man, Jesus, came to be regarded as a divine being, not by later generations, who could have been deceived by the nimbus of distance and mystery, but almost immediately after his death, by his intimate friends, by men who had seen him subject to all the petty limitations of daily life. Even if Paul were the first witness to the deification of Jesus, the process would still be preternaturally rapid. Jesus would still be regarded as a divine being by a contemporary of his intimate friends-and each deification would be no mere official form of flattery, like the apotheosis of the Roman emperors, but would be the expression of serious conviction. The process by which the man Jesus was raised to divine dignity within a few years of his death would be absolutely unique. That has been recognized


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even by men of the most thorough-going naturalistic principles. The late H. J. Holtzmann, who may be regarded as the typical exponent of modern New Testament criticism, admitted that for the rapid apotheosis of Jesus, as it appears in the thinking of Paul, he was unable to cite any parallel in the religious history of the race. In order to explain the origin of the Pauline Christology, Bruckner and Wrede have recourse to the Jewish Apocalypses. The Christology of Paul was formed, it is said, before his conversion. He needed only to identify the heavenly, pre-existent Christ of his Jewish belief with Jesus of Nazareth, and his Christology was complete. But that explanation does not help matters. Even if it be accepted to the fullest extent, it explains only details. It explains why, if Jesus was to be regarded as a divine being, he was regarded as just this particular kind of divine being. But it does not explain how he came to be regarded as a divine being at all. And that is what really requires explanation. One might almost as well say that the deification of a man is explained if only it be shown that those who accomplished such deification already had a conception of God. The apotheosis of Jesus, then, is remarkable, even if it was due to Paul. But it becomes yet a thousand fold more remarkable when it is seen to have been due not to Paul, but to the intimate friends of Jesus of Nazareth. Indeed, the process is so remarkable that the question arises whether there is not something wrong with the starting-point. The end of the process is fixed. It is the super-human
Christ of Paul and of the primitive church. If, therefore, the process is inconceivable in its rapidity, it is the starting-point which becomes open to suspicion. The starting-point is the purely human Jesus. A suspicion arises that he
never existed. If indeed any early Christian extant document gave a clear, consistent account of a Jesus who was nothing more than a man, then the historian might be forced to regard such a Jesus as the starting-point for an astonishingly


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rapid apotheosis. But as a matter of fact, no such document is in existence. Even those writers who represent Jesus most clearly as a man, represent him as something more than a man, and are quite unconscious of a conflict between the two representations. Indeed the two representations appear as two ways of regarding one and the same person. If, therefore, the purely human Jesus is to be reconstructed, he can be reconstructed only by a critical process. That critical process, in view of the indissolubly close connection in which divine and human appear in the Synoptic representation of Jesus, becomes, to say the least, exceedingly difficult. And after criticism has done its work, after the purely human Jesus has been in some sort disentangled from the ornamentation which had almost hopelessly defaced his portrait, the critic faces another problem yet more baffling than the first. How did this human Jesus come to be regarded as a super-human Jesus even by his most intimate friends? There is absolutely nothing to explain the transition except the supposed appearances of the risen Lord. The disciples had been familiar with a Jesus who placed himself on the side of man, not of God, who offered himself as an example of faith, not as the object of faith. And yet, after his shameful death, this estimate of his person suddenly gave place to a vastly higher estimate. That is bare supernaturalism. It is supernaturalism stripped of that harmony with the laws of the human mind which has been preserved even by the supernaturalism of the Church. In its effort to remove the supernatural from the life of Jesus, modern criticism has been obliged to heap up a double portion of the supernatural upon the Easter experience of the disciples. If the disciples had been familiar with a supernatural Jesusa Jesus who forgave sin as only God can, a Jesus who offered himself not as an example of faith but as the object of faith, a Jesus who substantiated these his lofty claims by wonderful command over the powers of nature-then conceivably, though not probably, the impression of such a Jesus might have been sufficient to produce in the disciples, in a purely natural way, the experiences which they interpreted as appearances of the risen Lord. But by eliminating the supernatural in the life of the Jesus whom the disciples had known, modern criticism


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has closed the way to this its only possible psychological ex-planation of the Easter experience. In order to explain the facts of primitive Christianity, the supernatural must be retained at least either in the life of Jesus of Nazareth or else in the appearances of the risen Lord. But of course no one 'will stop with that alternative. If the supernatural be accepted in either place, then of course it will be accepted in both places. If Jesus was really a supernatural person, then his resurrection and appearance to his disciples was only what was to be expected; if the experience of the disciples was really an appearance of Jesus, then of course even in his earthly life he was a supernatural person. The supernaturalism of the Church is a reasonable supernaturalism; the supernaturalism into which modern criticism is forced in its effort to avoid supernaturalism, is a supernaturalism unworthy of a reasonable God. In ,order to explain the exalted Christology of the primitive church, either the appearance of the risen Christ or the Easter experience of the disciples must be regarded as supernatural. But if either was supernatural then there is no objection against supposing that both were.

The similarity of the exalted Christology of the Synoptic Gospels to the Christology of Paul is therefore no indication of dependence upon Paul. For the Christology of Paul was in essence the Christology of the primitive church; and the Christology of the primitive church must have found its justification in the life of Jesus. Furthermore, comparison of Pauline thinking with the teaching of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels will demonstrate that the harmony between Jesus and Paul extends even to those elements in the teaching of Jesus which are regarded by modern criticism as most characteristic of him. For example, the fatherhood of God, and love as the fulfilling of the law. The conception of God as father was known, it is true, in pre-Christian Judaism. But Jesus brought an incalculable enrichment of it. And that same -enrichment appears in Paul in all its fullness. In the earliest extant epistle (1 Thess. 1:1) and throughout all the epistles, the fatherhood of God appears as a matter of course. It requires no defence or elaboration. It is one of the commonplaces of Christianity. Yet it is not for Paul a mere matter


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of tradition, but a vital element in his religious life. It has not, through familiarity, lost one whit of its freshness. The cry, "Abba, Father", comes from the very depths of the heart. Hardly less prominent in Paul is the conception of love as the fulfilling of the law. "The whole law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.'" "And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing." In the epistles, it is true, Paul is speaking usually of love for Christian brethren. But simply because of the needs of the churches. The closeness of the relationship with fellow-Christians had sometimes increased rather than diminished the tendency towards strife and selfishness. The epistles are addressed not to missionaries, but to Christians of very imperfect mold, who needed to be admonished to exhibit love even where love might have seemed most natural and easy. On account of the peculiar circumstances, therefore, Paul speaks especially of love for fellow-Christians. But not to the exclusion of love for all men. Never was greater injustice done than when Paul is accused of narrowness in his affections. His whole life is the refutation of such a charge—his life of tactful adaptation to varying conditions, of restless energy, of untold peril and hardship. What was the secret of such a life? Love of Christ, no doubt. But also love of those for whom Christ died—whether Jew or Greek, circumcision or uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond or free.

The fatherhood of God, it is true, does not mean for Paul that God is pleased with all men, or that all men will receive the children's blessing. And Christian love does not mean obliteration of the dividing line between the Kingdom and the world. But these limitations appear at least as clearly in Jesus as in Paul. The dark background of eternal destruction, and the sharp division between the disciples and the world are described by Jesus in far harsher terms than Paul ever ventured to employ. It was Jesus who spoke of the outer darkness and the everlasting fire, of the sin that shall not be forgiven either in this world or in that which is to come; it was Jesus who said, "If any man cometh unto me, and hateth not his


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own father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple."

These examples might be multiplied; and they should be supplemented by what has been said above with regard to Paul's appreciation of the character of Jesus. Jesus of Nazareth, as he is depicted for us in the Gospels, was for Paul the supreme moral ideal. But that does not make Paul a disciple of Jesus. Be it spoken with all plainness. Imitation of Jesus, important as it was in the life of Paul, was overshadowed by something else. All that has been said about Paul's interest in the earthly life of Jesus, about his obedience to Jesus' commands, about his reverence for Jesus' character, cannot disguise the fact that these things for Paul are not supreme. Knowledge of the life of Jesus is not for Paul an end in itself but a means to an end. The essence of Paul's religious life is not imitation of a dead prophet. It is communion with a living Lord. In making the risen Christ, not the earthly Jesus, the supreme object of Paul's thinking, modern radicalism is perfectly correct. Paul cannot be vindicated as a disciple of Jesus simply by correcting exaggeration—simply by showing that the influence upon him of the teaching and example of Jesus was somewhat greater than has been supposed. The true relationships of a man are to be determined not by the periphery of his life, but by what is central—central both in his own estimation and in his influence upon history. But the centre and core of Paulinism is not imitation of the earthly Jesus, but communion with the risen Christ. It was that which Paul himself regarded as the very foundation of his own life. "If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature." "It is no longer I that live, but Christ that liveth in me." It was that which planted the Pauline gospel in the great cities of the Roman Empire; it was that which dominated Christianity, and through Christianity has changed the face of the world.

The tremendous difference between this communion with the risen Christ and mere imitation of the earthly Jesus has sometimes been overlooked. In the eagerness to vindicate Paul as a disciple of Jesus, the essential feature of Paulinism


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has been thrust into the background. It is admitted, of course, that in Paul's own estimation the thought of Christ as a divine being, now living in glory, was fundamental. But the really important thing, it is said, is the ethical character that is attributed to this heavenly being. Paul's heavenly Christ is the personification of self-denying love. But whence was this attribute derived? Certainly not from the Messiah of the Jewish Apocalypses. For he is conceived of as enveloped in mystery, as hidden from the world until the great day of his revealing. The gracious character of Paul's heavenly Christ could only have been derived from the historical Jesus. Perhaps directly. The character of the historical Jesus, as it was known through tradition, was simply attributed by Paul to the heavenly being with whom Jesus was identified. Or perhaps indirectly. The heavenly Christ was for Paul the personification of love, because Paul conceived of the death of Christ as a supreme act of loving self-denial. But how could Paul conceive thus of the death of Christ? Only because of the loving spirit of Jesus which appeared in the disciples whom Paul persecuted. It was therefore ultimately the character of the historical Jesus which enabled Paul to conceive of the crucifixion as a loving act of sacrifice; and it was this conception of the crucifixion which enabled Paul to conceive of his heavenly Christ as the supreme ideal of love. Of course, for Paul, owing to his intellectual environment, it was impossible to submit himself to this ideal of love, so long as it was embodied merely in a dead teacher. The conception of the risen Christ was therefore necessary historically in order to preserve the precious ideal which had been introduced into the world by Jesus. But we of the present day can and must sacrifice the form to the content. The glorious Christ of Paul derives the real secret of his power over the hearts of men not from his glory, but from his love.

Such reasoning ignores the essence of Paulinism. It represents Paulinism as devotion to an ideal. If that were granted, then perhaps all the rest might follow. If Paulinism is simply imitation of Christ, then perhaps it makes little difference whether Christ be conceived of as on earth or in heaven, as a dead prophet or a living Lord. Past or present, the ideal,


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as an ideal, remains the same. But Paulinism is not imitation of Christ, but communion with Christ. That fact requires no proof. The epistles are on fire with it. The communion is, on the one hand, intensely personal—it is a relation of love. With Christ Paul can hold colloquies of the most intimate kind. But, on the other hand, the communion with Christ transcends human analogies. The Lord can operate on the heart and life of Paul in a way that is impossible for any human friend. Paul is in Christ and Christ is in Paul. The relation to the risen Christ is not only personal, but also religious. But if Paulinism is communion with Christ, then quite the fundamental thing about Christ is that he is alive. It is sheer folly to say that this Pauline Christ-religion can be reproduced by one who supposes that Christ is dead. Such a one can envy the poor sinners in the Gospels who received from Jesus healing for body and mind. He can admire the great prophet. When, alas, shall we find another like him? He can envy the faith of others. But he cannot himself believe. He cannot hear Jesus say, "Thy faith hath made thee whole."

When Paulinism is understood as fellowship with the risen Christ, then the disproportionate emphasis which Paul places upon the death and resurrection of Christ becomes intelligible. For these are the acts by which fellowship has been established. To the modern man, they seem unnecessary. By the modern man fellowship with God is taken as a matter of course. But only because of an imperfect conception of God. If God is all love and kindness, then of course nothing is required in order to bring us into his presence. But Paul would never have been satisfied with such a God. His was the awful, holy God of the Old Testament prophets—and of Jesus. But for Paul the holiness of God was also the holiness of Christ. Communion of sinful man with the holy Christ is a tremendous paradox, a supreme mystery. But the mystery has been illumined. It has been illumined by the cross. Christ forgives sin not because he is complacent towards sin, but because of his own free grace he has paid the dreadful penalty of it. And he has not stopped with that. After the cross came the resurrection. Christ rose from the dead into a life of glory


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and power. Into that glory and into that. power he invites the believer. In Christ we receive not only pardon, but new and glorious life.

Paul's interpretation of the death and resurrection is not to be found in the words of Jesus. But hints of it appear, even in the Synoptic discourses. "The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many" (Mk. 10:45). Modern criticism is inclined to question the authenticity of that verse. But if any saying of Jesus is commended by its form, it is this one. The exquisite gnomic form vindicates the saying to the great master of inspired paradox. Even far stronger, however, is the attestation of the words which were spoken at the last supper. Indeed these are the most strongly attested of all the words of Jesus; for the Synoptic tradition is here supplemented by the testimony of Paul; and the testimony of Paul is also the testimony of the tradition to which he refers. That tradition must be absolutely primitive. But the words which Jesus spoke at the last supper designate the death of Jesus as a sacrifice. And why should the idea of vicarious suffering be denied to Jesus? It is freely accepted for his disciples and for Paul. They interpreted the death of Jesus as a sacrifice for sin, because, it is said, the idea was current in Judaism of that day. But if the idea was so familiar, surely Jesus was more susceptible to it than were his disciples. They had an external conception of the Kingdom, he regarded the Kingdom as spiritual; they exalted power and worldly position, he insisted upon self-denial. Was it then the disciples, and not Jesus, who seized upon the idea of vicarious suffering? Surely if Jesus anticipated his death at all, he would naturally regard it as a sacrificial death. And to eliminate altogether Jesus' foreknowledge of his death involves extreme skepticism. Aside from the direct predictions, what shall be done with Mk. 2:20: "But the days will come when the bridegroom shall he taken from them, and then will they fast in that day"? If Jesus expected the Kingdom to be established before his death, then he was an extreme fanatic, who could not even discern the signs of the times. The whole spirit of his life is opposed


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to such a view. Even during his life, Jesus was a suffering servant of Jehovah.

Nevertheless, the teaching of Jesus about the significance of his death is not explicit. It resembles the mysterious intimations of prophecy rather than the definite enunciation of fundamental religious truth. That fact must be admitted; indeed, it should be insisted upon. The fundamental Pauline doctrine—the doctrine of the cross—is only hinted at in the words of Jesus. Yet that doctrine was fundamental not only in Paul, but in the primitive church. Certainly it has been fundamental in historic Christianity. The fundamental doctrine of Christianity, then, was not taught definitely by Jesus of Nazareth. As a teacher, therefore, Jesus was not the founder of Christianity. He was the founder of Christianity not because of what he said, but because of what he did. The Church revered him as its founder only because his death was interpreted as an event of cosmic significance. But it had such significance only if Jesus was a divine being, come to earth for the salvation of men. If Jesus was not a supernatural person, then not only Paulinism but also the whole of Christianity is founded not upon the lofty teaching of an inspired prophet, but upon a colossal error.

Paul was a disciple of Jesus, if Jesus was a supernatural person; he was not a disciple of Jesus, if Jesus was a mere man. If Jesus was simply a human teacher, then Paulinism defies explanation. Yet it is powerful and beneficent beyond compare. judged simply by its effects, the religious experience of Paul is the most tremendous phenomenon in the history of the human spirit. It has transformed the world from darkness into light. But it need be judged not merely by its effects. It lies open before us. In the presence of it, the sympathetic observer is aghast. It is a new world that is opened before him. Freedom, goodness, communion with God, sought by philosophers of all the ages, attained at last! The religious experience of Paul needs no defense. Give it but sympathetic attention and it is irresistible. But it can be shared as well as admired. The relation of Paul to Jesus Christ is essentially the same as our own. The original apostles had one element in their religious life which we cannot share the memory of;


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their daily intercourse with Jesus. That element, it is true, was not really fundamental, even for them. But it appears to be fundamental; our fears tell us that it was fundamental. But in the experience of Paul there was no such element. Like ourselves he did not know Jesus upon earth-he had no memory of Galilean days. His devotion was directed simply and solely to the risen Saviour. Shall we follow him? We can do so on one condition. That condition is not easy. To fulfil it, we must overcome our most deep-seated convictions. We must recognize in Jesus a supernatural person. But unless we fulfil that condition, we can never share in the religious experience of Paul. When brought face to face with the crisis, we may shrink back. But if we do so, we make the origin of Christianity an insoluble problem. In exalting the methods of scientific history, we involve ourselves hopelessly in historical difficulty. In the relation between Jesus and Paul, we discover a problem, which, through the very processes of mind by which the uniformity of nature has been established, forces us to transcend that doctrine-which pushes us relentlessly off the safe ground of the phenomenal world toward the abyss of supernaturalism-which forces us, despite the resistance of the modern mind, to make the great venture of faith, and found our lives no longer upon what can be procured by human effort or understood as a phase of evolution, but upon him who has linked us with the unseen world, and brought us into communion with the eternal God.


This article was made available on the internet via REFORMATION INK (www.markers.com/ink). Refer any correspondence to Shane Rosenthal: ReformationInk at mac.com (connect and write as @mac.com -- when I connect them I get a lot of junk mail). ÿÿÿ