## CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

The character of Paulinism as a redemptive religion involved a certain conception of the Redeemer, which is perfectly plain on the pages of the Pauline Epistles. Jesus Christ, Paul believed, was a heavenly being; Paul placed Him clearly on the side of God and not on the side of men. "Not by man but by Jesus Christ," he says at the

beginning of Galatians, and the same contrast is implied everywhere in the Epistles. This heavenly Redeemer existed before His earthly life; came then to earth, where He lived a true human life of humiliation; suffered on the cross for the sins of those upon whom the curse of the Law justly rested; then rose again from the dead by a mighty act of God's power; and is present always with His Church through His Spirit.

That representation has become familiar to the devout Christian, but to the modern historian it seems very strange. For to the modern historian, on the basis of the modern view of Jesus, the procedure of Paul seems to be nothing else than the deification by Paul of a man who had lived but a few years before and had died a shameful death.1 It is not necessary to argue the question whether in Romans 9:5 Paul actually applies the term "God" to Jesus—certainly he does so according to the only natural interpretation of his words as they stand—what is really important is that everywhere the relationship in which Paul stands toward Jesus is not the mere relationship of disciple to master, but is a truly religious relationship. Jesus is to Paul everywhere the object of religious faith.

That fact would not be quite so surprising if Paul had been of polytheistic training, if he had grown up in a spiritual environment where the distinction between divine and human was being broken down. Even in such an environment, indeed, the religion of Paul would have been quite without parallel. The deification of the eastern rulers or of the emperors differs in toto from the Pauline attitude toward Jesus. It differs in seriousness and fervor; above all it differs in its complete lack of exclusiveness. The lordship of the ruler admitted freely, and was indeed always accompanied by, the lordship of other gods; the lordship of Jesus, in the religion of Paul, was absolutely exclusive. For Paul, there was one Lord and one Lord only.

When any parallel for such a religious relationship of a notable man to one of his contemporaries with whose most intimate friends he had come into close contact can be cited in the religious annals of the race, then it will be time for the historian to lose his wonder at the phenomenon of Paul.

But the wonder of the historian reaches its climax when he remembers that Paul was not a polytheist or a pantheist, but a Jew, to whom monotheism was the very breath of life.1 The Judaism of Paul's day was certainly nothing if not monotheistic. But in the intensity of his monotheism Paul was not different from his countrymen. No one can possibly show a deeper scorn for the many gods of the heathen than can Paul. "For though there be that are called gods," he says, "whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many, and lords many,) But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we unto him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him." (1 Corinthians 8:5, 6.) Yet it was this monotheist sprung of a race of monotheists, who stood in a full religious relation to a man who had died but a few years before; it was this monotheist who designated that man, as a matter of course, by the supreme religious term "Lord," and did not hesitate to apply to Him the passages in the Greek Old Testament where that term was used to translate the most awful name of the God of Israel! The religion of Paul is a phenomenon well worthy of the attention of the historian.

In recent years that phenomenon has been explained in four different ways. The four ways have not always been clearly defined; they have sometimes entered into combination with one another. But they are logically distinct, and to a certain extent they may be treated separately.

There is first of all the supernaturalistic explanation, which simply accepts at its face value what Paul presupposes about Jesus. According to this explanation, Jesus was really a heavenly being, who in order to redeem sinful man came voluntarily to earth, suffered for the sins of others on the cross, rose from the dead, ascended to the right hand of God, from whence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead. If this representation be correct, then there is really nothing to explain; the religious attitude of Paul toward Jesus was not an apotheosis of a man, but recognition as divine of one who really was divine.

The other three explanations are alike in that they all reject supernaturalism, they all deny the entrance into human history of any creative act of God, unless indeed all the course of nature be regarded as creative. They all agree, therefore, in explaining the religion of Paul as a phenomenon which emerged in the course of history under the operation of natural causes.

The most widespread of these naturalistic explanations of the religion of Paul is what may be called the "liberal" view. The name is highly unsatisfactory; it has been used and misused until it has often come to mean almost nothing. But no other term is ready to hand. "Ritschlian" might possibly describe the phenomenon that is meant, but that term is perhaps too narrow, and would imply a degree of logical connection with the Ritschlian theology which would not fit all forms of the phenomenon. The best that can be done, therefore, is to define the term "liberal" in a narrower way than is sometimes customary and than use it in distinction not only from traditional and supernaturalistic views, but also from various "radical" views, which will demand separate consideration.

The numerous forms of the liberal view differ from other naturalistic hypotheses in that they attribute supreme importance in the formation of the religion of Paul to the influence of the real historic person, Jesus of Nazareth, and to the experience which Paul had near Damascus when he thought he saw that person risen from the dead. Jesus of Nazareth, according to the liberal view, was the greatest of the children of men. His greatness centered in His consciousness of standing toward God in the relation of son to Father. That consciousness of sonship, at least in its purity, Jesus discovered, was not shared by others. Some category was therefore needed to designate the uniqueness of His sonship. The category which He adopted, though with reluctance, and probably toward the end of His ministry, was the category of Messiahship. His Messianic consciousness was thus not fundamental in His conception of His mission; certainly it did not mean that He put His own person into His gospel. He urged men, not to take Him as the objects of their faith, but only to take Him as an example for their faith; not to have faith in Him, but to have faith in God like His faith. Such was the impression of His personality, however, that after His death the love and reverence of His disciples for Him not only induced the hallucinations in which they thought they saw Him risen from the dead but also led them to attribute to His person a kind of religious importance which He had never claimed. They began to make Him not only an example for faith but also the object of faith. The Messianic element in His life began now to assume an importance which He had never attributed to it; the disciples began to ascribe to Him divine attributes. This process was somewhat hindered in the case of His intimate friends by the fact that they had seen Him under all the limitations of ordinary human life. But in the case of the apostle Paul, who had never seen Him, the process of deification could go on unchecked. What was fundamental, however, even for Paul, was an impression of the real person of Jesus of Nazareth; that

impression was conveyed to Paul in various ways—especially by the brave and pure lives of Jesus' disciples, which had impressed him, against his will, even when he was still a persecutor. But Paul was a child of his time. He was obliged, therefore, to express that which he had received from Jesus in the categories that were ready to hand. Those categories as applied to Jesus constitute the Pauline theology. Thus Paul was really the truest disciple of Jesus in the depths of his inner life, but his theology was the outer and perishable shell for the precious kernel. His theology was the product of his time, and may now be abandoned; his religion was derived from Jesus of Nazareth and is a permanent possession of the human race.

Such in bare outline is the liberal view of the origin of Paulinism and of Christianity. It has been set forth in so many brilliant treatises that no one may be singled out as clearly representative. Perhaps Von Harnack's "What is Christianity?"1, among the popular expositions, may still serve as well as any other. The liberal view of the origin of Christianity seemed at one time likely to dominate the religious life of the modern world; it found expression in countless sermons and books of devotion as well as in scientific treatises. Now, however, there are some indications that it is beginning to fall; it is being attacked by radicalism of various kinds. With some of these attacks it will not now be worth while to deal; it will not be worth while to deal with those forms of radicalism which reject what have been designated as the two starting-points for an investigation of the origin of Christianity—the historicity of Jesus and the genuineness of the major epistles of Paul. These hypotheses are some of them interesting on the negative side, they are interesting for their criticism of the dominant liberal view; but when it comes to their own attempts at reconstruction they have never advanced beyond the purest dilettantism. Attention will now be confined to the work of historians who have really attempted seriously to grapple with the

historical problems, and specifically to those who have given attention to the problem of Paul.

Two lines of explanation have been followed in recent years by those who reject, in the interest of more radical views, the liberal account of the origin of Paulinism. But these two lines run to a certain point together; they both reject the liberal emphasis upon the historic person of Jesus as accounting for the origin of Paul's religion. The criticism of the customary view was put sharply by W. Wrede in 19042, when he declared that Paul was no disciple of Jesus, but a second founder of Christianity. The religious life of Paul, Wrede insisted, was not really derived from Jesus of Nazareth. What was fundamental for Paul was not the example of Jesus, but His redeeming work as embraced in the death and resurrection, which were regarded as events of a cosmic significance. The theology of Paul—his interpretation of the death and resurrection of Jesus— cannot, therefore, be separated from his religion; on the contrary, it is in connection with the theology, and not in connection with any impression of the character of Jesus, that the fervor of Paul's religious life runs full and free. Theology and religion in Paul, therefore, must stand or fall together; if one was derived from extra- Christian sources, probably the other must be so derived also. And such, as a matter of fact, Wrede concludes is the case. The religion of Paul is not based at all upon Jesus of Nazareth.

Such, in true import, though not in word or in detail, was the startling criticism which Wrede directed against the liberal account of the origin of Paulinism. He had really only made explicit a type of criticism which had gradually been becoming inevitable for some time before. Hence the importance of his little book. The current reconstruction of the origin of Christianity had produced a Jesus and

a Paul who really had little in common with each other. Wrede, in his incomparably succinct and incisive way, had the courage to say so.

But if Paulinism was not derived from Jesus of Nazareth, whence was it derived? Here the two lines of radical opinion begin to diverge. According to Wrede, who was supported by M. Brückner,1 working contemporaneously, the Pauline conception of Christ, which was fundamental in Paul's religious thought and life, was derived from the pre-Christian conception of the Messiah which Paul already had before his conversion. The Messiah, in the thought of the Jews, was not always conceived of merely as a king of David's line; sometimes he was regarded rather as a mysterious, preëxistent, heavenly being who was to come suddenly with the clouds of heaven and be the judge of all the earth. This transcendent conception which is attested by the Jewish apocalypses like the Ethiopic Book of Enoch, was, Wrede maintained, the conception of the Jew, Saul of Tarsus. When, therefore, Paul in his Epistles represents Christ as preëxistent, and as standing close to the Supreme Being in rulership and judgment, the phenomenon, though it may seem strange to us, is not really unique; it is exactly what is found in the apocalypses. What was new in Paul, as over against pre-Christian Judaism, was the belief that the heavenly Messiah had already come to earth and carried out a work of redemption. This belief was not derived, Wrede maintained, from any impression of the exalted moral character of Jesus; on the contrary, if Paul had really come into any close contact with the historical Jesus, he might have had difficulty in identifying Him so completely with the heavenly Messiah; the impression of the truly human character of Jesus and of His subjection to all the ordinary limits of earthly life would have hindered the ascription to Him of the transcendent attributes. Jesus, for Paul, merely provided the one fact that the Messiah had already come to earth and died and risen again. Operating with that fact, interpreting the coming of the

Messiah as an act of redemption undertaken out of love for men, Paul was able to develop all the fervor of his Christ-religion.

In very recent years, another account of the origin of Paulinism is becoming increasingly prevalent. This account agrees with Wrede in rejecting the liberal derivation of the religion of Paul from an impression of the historical person of Jesus. But it differs from Wrede in its view of the source from which the religion of Paul is actually to be derived. According to this latest hypothesis, Paulinism was based not upon the pre-Christian Jewish conception of the Messiah, but upon contemporary pagan religion.

This hypothesis represents the application to the problem of Paulinism of the method of modern comparative religion. About twenty years ago that method began to be extended resolutely into the New Testament field, and it has been becoming increasingly prevalent ever since. Despite the prevalence of the method, however, and the variety of its application, one great comprehensive work may now fairly lay claim to be taken as summing up the results. That work is the book of W. Bousset, entitled "Kyrios Christos," which appeared in 1913.1 It is perhaps too early as yet to estimate the full importance of Bousset's work. But unless all indications fail, the work is really destined to mark an epoch in the history of New Testament criticism. Since the days of F. C. Baur, in the former half of the nineteenth century, there has been no such original, comprehensive, and grandly conceived rewriting of early Christian history as has now appeared in Bousset's "Kyrios Christos." The only question is whether originality, in this historical sphere, is always compatible with truth.

According to Bousset, the historicity of Jesus is to be maintained; Jesus was really a religious teacher of incomparable power. But

Bousset rejects much more of the Gospel account of Jesus' life than is rejected in the ordinary "liberal" view; Bousset seems even to be doubtful as to whether Jesus ever presented Himself to His disciples as the Messiah, the Messianic element in the Gospels being regarded for the most part as a mere reflection of the later convictions of the disciples. After the crucifixion, the disciples in Jerusalem, Bousset continues, were convinced that Jesus had risen from the dead, and that He was truly the Messiah. They conceived of His Messiahship chiefly under the category of the "Son of Man"; Jesus, they believed, was the heavenly being who in their interpretation of the Book of Daniel and in the apocalypses appears in the presence of the supreme God as the one who is to judge the world. This heavenly Son of Man was taken from them for a time, but they looked with passionate eagerness for His speedy return. The piety of the early Jerusalem Church was therefore distinctly eschatological; it was founded not upon any conviction of a present vital relation to Jesus, but on the hope of His future coming. In the Greek-speaking Christian communities of such cities as Antioch and Tarsus, Bousset continues, an important additional step was taken; Jesus there began to be not only hoped for as the future judge but also adored as the present Lord. He came to be regarded as present in the meetings of the Church. The term "Lord," with the conception that it represents, was never, according to Bousset, applied to Jesus. in the primitive Palestinian Church; it was first applied to Him in Hellenistic. Christian communities like the one at Antioch. And it was there derived distinctly from the prevalent pagan religion. In the type of religion familiar to the disciples at Antioch, the term "Lord" was used to denote the cult-god, especially in the so-called "mystery religions"; and the Antioch disciples naturally used the same term to designate the object of their own adoration. But with the term went the idea; Jesus was now considered to be present in the meetings of the Church, just as the cult-gods of the pagan religions were considered

to be present in the worship practiced by those religions. An important step had been taken beyond the purely eschatological piety of the Jerusalem disciples.

But how about Paul? Here is to be found one of the boldest elements in all the bold reconstruction of Bousset. Paul, Bousset believes, was not connected in any intimate way with the primitive Christianity in Palestine; what he "received" he received rather from the Hellenistic Christianity, just described, of cities like Antioch. He received, therefore, the Hellenistic conception of Jesus as Lord. But he added to that conception by connecting the "Lord" with the "Spirit." The "Lord" thus became present not only in the meetings of the Church for worship but also in the individual lives of the believers. Paulinism as it appears in the Epistles was thus complete. But this distinctly Pauline contribution, like the conception of the Lordship of Jesus to which it was added, was of pagan origin; it was derived from the mystical piety of the time, with its sharp dualism between a material and a spiritual realm and its notion of the transformation of man by immediate contact with the divine. Paulinism, therefore, according to Bousset, was a religion of redemption. But as such it was derived not at all from the historical Jesus (whose optimistic teaching contained no thought of redemption) but from the pessimistic dualism of the pagan world. The "liberal" distinction between Pauline religion and Pauline theology, the attempt at saving Paul's religion by the sacrifice of his theology, is here abandoned, and all that is most clearly distinctive of Paulinism (though of course some account is taken of the contribution of his Jewish inheritance and of his own genius) is derived from pagan sources.

The hypothesis of Bousset, together with the rival reconstructions which have just been outlined, will be examined in the following discussion. But before they can be examined it will be necessary to

say a word about the sources of information with regard to the life of Paul. No discussion of the literary questions can indeed here be undertaken. Almost all that can be done is to set forth very briefly the measure of agreement which has been attained in this field, and the bearing of the points that are still disputed upon the subject of the present investigation.

The sources of information about Paul are contained almost exclusively in the New Testament. They are, first, the Pauline Epistles, and, second, the Book of Acts.

Four of the Pauline Epistles—Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Romans—were accepted as certainly genuine by F. C. Baur, the founder of the "Tübingen School" of criticism in the former half of the nineteenth century. This favorable estimate of the "major epistles" has never been abandoned by any number of really serious historians, and three of the other epistles—1 Thessalonians, Philippians, and Philemon—have now been added to the "homologoumena." Seven epistles, therefore, are accepted as genuine to-day by all historians except a few extremists. Of the remaining epistles, Colossians is accepted by the majority of investigators of all shades of opinion, and even in the case of 2 Thessalonians and Ephesians, the acceptance of the hypothesis of genuineness is no longer regarded as a clear mark of "conservatism," these two epistles being regarded as genuine letters of Paul by some even of those who are not in general favorable to the traditional view of the New Testament.

With regard to the Pastoral Epistles—1 and 2 Timothy and Titus—the issue is more clearly drawn. These epistles, at least in their entirety, are seldom regarded as genuine except by those who adopt in general the traditional view of the New Testament and the supernaturalistic

conception of the origin of Christianity. That does not mean that the case of the Pastoral Epistles is desperate—certainly the present writer is firmly convinced that the epistles are genuine and that a denial of their genuineness really impoverishes in important respects our conception of the work of Paul—but it does mean that with regard to these epistles the two great contending views concerning the New Testament come into sharp conflict; common ground, in other words, cannot here be found, as in the case of the major epistles, between those who hold widely divergent views as to the origin of Christianity.

It would be out of place in the present connection to discuss the question of the genuineness of the Pastorals. That question is indeed enormously important. It is important for the view which is to be held concerning the New Testament canon; it is important for any estimate of Christian tradition; it is important even for a complete estimate of the work of Paul. But it is not directly important for the question as to the origin of Paulinism; for all the essential features of Paulinism, certainly all those features which make Paulinism, upon naturalistic principles, most difficult of explanation, appear plainly in the accepted epistles.

The question of the Book of Acts, on the other hand, is of vital importance even for the present investigation. Even that question, however, must here be dismissed with a word, though it is hoped that light may be shed upon it by the whole of the following discussion.

Literary evidence of peculiar strength may be adduced in favor of the view that the Book of Acts was really written, as tradition affirms, by a companion of Paul. This evidence is based primarily upon the presence in the book of certain sections where the narrative is

carried on in the first person instead of the third. It is generally or even universally admitted that these "we-sections" are the work of an eyewitness, an actual traveling companion of Paul. But according to the common-sense view—according to the first impression made upon every ordinary reader—the author of the we-sections was also the author of the whole book, who when he came in his narrative to those parts of the missionary journeys of Paul where he had actually been present with the apostolic company naturally dropped into the use of the first person instead of the third. If this common-sense view be incorrect, then a later author who produced the completed book has in the we-sections simply made use of an eyewitness source. But this hypothesis is fraught with the most serious difficulty. If the author of the completed book, writing at a time long after the time of Paul, was in the we-sections using the work of a companion of Paul, why did he not either say that he was quoting or else change the "we" of the source to "they." The first person plural, used without explanation by a writer of, say, 100 A.D. in a narrative of the journeys of Paul, would be preposterous. What could be the explanation of so extraordinary a procedure?

Only two explanations are possible. In the first place, the author may have retained the "we" with deceitful intent, with the intent of producing the false impression that he himself was a companion of Paul. This hypothesis is fraught with insuperable difficulty and is generally rejected. In the second place, the author may have retained the "we" because he was a mere compiler, copying out his sources with mechanical accuracy, and so unable to make the simple editorial change of "we" to "they." This hypothesis is excluded by the striking similarity of language and style between the we-sections and the rest of Luke-Acts, which shows that if the author of the completed double work is in the we-sections making use of a source written by some one else, he has revised the source so as to make it conform to his

own style. But if he revised the source, he was no mere compiler, and therefore could not have retained the first person plural which in the completed book produced nonsense. The whole hypothesis therefore breaks down.

Such considerations have led a number of recent scholars—even of those who are unable to accept the supernaturalistic account which the Book of Acts gives of the origin of Christianity—to return to the traditional view that the book was actually written by Luke the physician, a companion of Paul. The argument for Lucan authorship has been developed with great acumen especially by Von Harnack1 And on the basis of purely literary criticism the argument is certainly irrefutable. It can be refuted, if at all, only through a consideration of the historical contents of the book.

Such attempts at refutation have not been lacking; the Lucan authorship of Acts is still rejected by the great majority of those who maintain the naturalistic view of the origin of Christianity. The objections may be subsumed under two main heads. The Book of Acts, it is said, is not the kind of book that could have been written by a companion of Paul, in the first place because it contains an account of miracles, and in the second place, because it contradicts the Pauline Epistles, particularly in the account which it gives of the relations between Paul and the Jerusalem Church.

The former objection is entirely valid on the basis of any naturalistic account of the origin of Christianity. Efforts have indeed been made by Von Harnack, C. C. Torrey, and others, to overcome the objection. Belief in miracles, it is said, was very general in the ancient world; a miraculous interpretation could therefore be placed upon happenings for which the modern man would have no difficulty in discovering a natural cause. Luke was a child of his time; even in the

we-sections, Von Harnack insists, where the work of an eyewitness is universally recognized, a supernaturalistic interpretation is placed upon natural events—as, for example, when Paul excites the wonder of his companions by shaking off into the fire a viper that was no doubt perfectly harmless. Why, then, should the presence of the supernatural in the rest of the book be used to refute the hypothesis of the Lucan authorship, if it is not so used in the we-sections?1

This method of refuting the objection drawn from the presence of the supernatural in Luke-Acts has sometimes led to a curious return to the rationalizing method of interpretation which was prevalent one hundred years ago. By that method of interpretation even the details of the New Testament miracles were accepted as historical, but it was thought that the writers were wrong in regarding those details as miraculous. Great ingenuity was displayed by such rationalists as Paulus and many others in exhibiting the true natural causes of details which to the first observers seemed to be supernatural. Such rationalizing has usually been thought to have received its death- blow at the hands of Strauss, who showed that the New Testament narratives were either to be accepted as a whole—miracles and all— or else regarded as myths, that is, as the clothing of religious ideas in historical forms. But now, under the impulsion of literary criticism, which has led away from the position of Baur and Strauss and back to the traditional view of the authorship and date of the New Testament books, the expedients of the rationalizers have in some cases been revived.

The entire effort of Von Harnack is, however, quite hopeless. The objection to the Lucan authorship of Acts which is drawn from the supernatural element in the narrative is irrefutable on the basis of any naturalistic view of the origin of Christianity. The trouble is that the supernatural element in Acts does not concern merely details; it

lies, rather, at the root of the whole representation. The origin of the Church, according to the modern naturalistic reconstruction, was due to the belief of the early disciples in the resurrection of Jesus; that belief in turn was founded upon certain hallucinations in which they thought they saw Jesus alive after His passion. In such experiences, the optic nerve is affected not by an external object but by the condition of the subject himself. But there are limitations to what is possible in experiences of that sort, especially where numbers of persons are affected and at different times. It cannot be supposed, therefore, that the disciples of Jesus thought they had any extended intercourse with Him after His passion; momentary appearances, with possibly a few spoken words, were all that they could have experienced. This view of the origin of the Church is thought to be in accord with the all-important testimony of Paul, especially in 1 Corinthians 15:3–8 where he is reproducing a primitive tradition. Thus desperate efforts are made to show that the reference by Paul to the burial of Jesus does not by any means confirm the accounts given in the Gospels of events connected with the empty tomb. Sometimes, indeed, in recent criticism, the fact of the empty tomb is accepted, and then explained in some naturalistic way. But at any rate, the cardinal feature of the modern reconstruction is that the early Church, including Paul, had a spiritual rather than a physical conception of the risen body of Jesus; there was no extended intercourse, it is supposed; Jesus appeared to His disciples momentarily, in heavenly glory.

But this entire representation is diametrically opposed to the representation in the Gospel of Luke and in the Book of Acts. If there is any one writer who emphasizes the plain, physical character of the contact between the disciples and their risen Lord, it is the author of Luke-Acts. In proof, it is only necessary to point to Acts 10:41, where it is said that the risen Jesus held table-companionship with His

disciples after He was risen from the dead! But that is only one detail. The author of Acts is firmly convinced that the contact of the risen Jesus with His disciples, though not devoid of mysterious features, involved the absence of the body of Jesus from the tomb and an intercourse (intermittent, it is true, but including physical proofs of the most definite kind) extending over a period of forty days. Nothing could possibly be more directly contrary to what the current critical view regards as the real account given in the primitive Jerusalem Church and by the apostle Paul.

Yet on the basis of that modern critical view, Von Harnack and others have maintained that the book in which so false an account is given of the origin of the Church was actually the work of a man of the apostolic age. It is no wonder that Von Harnack's conclusions have evoked an emphatic protest from other naturalistic historians. Luke was a close associate of Paul. Could he possibly have given an account of things absolutely fundamental in Paul's gospel (1 Corinthians 15:1–8) which was so diametrically opposed to what Paul taught? He was in Jerusalem in 58 A.D. or earlier, and during years of his life was in close touch with Palestinian disciples. Could he possibly have given an account of the origin of the Jerusalem Church so totally at variance with the account which that church itself maintained? These questions constitute a complete refutation of Von Harnack's view, when that view is taken as a whole. But they do not at all constitute a refutation of the conclusions of Von Harnack in the sphere of literary criticism. On the contrary, by showing how inconsistent those conclusions are with other elements in the thinking of the investigator, they make only the more impressive the strength of the argument which has overcome such obstacles. The objection points out the antinomy which exists between the literary criticism of Von Harnack and his naturalistic account of the origin of Christianity. What that antinomy means is merely that the testimony of Acts to

the supernatural origin of Christianity, far from being removed by literary criticism, is strongly supported by it. A companion of Paul could not have been egregiously mistaken about the origin of the Church; but literary criticism establishes Luke-Acts as the work of a companion of Paul. Hence there is some reason for supposing that the account given in this book is essentially correct, and that the naturalistic reconstruction of the origin of Christianity must be abandoned.

The second objection to the Lucan authorship of Acts is based upon the contradiction which is thought to exist between the Book of Acts and the Epistles of Paul.1 The way to test the value of a historical work, it is said, is to compare it with some recognized authority. With regard to most of the narrative in Acts, no such comparison is possible, since there is no account parallel to Acts by which it may be tested. But in certain places the Book of Acts provides an account of events which are also narrated in the isolated biographical parts of the Pauline Epistles—notably in the first two chapters of Galatians. Here at last is found the long-sought opportunity for comparison. And the comparison, it is said, results unfavorably to the Book of Acts, which is found to contradict the Epistle to the Galatians, not merely in details, but in the whole account which it gives of the relation between Paul and the Jerusalem Church. But if the Book of Acts fails to approve itself in the one place where it can be tested by comparison with a recognized authority, the presumption is that it may be wrong elsewhere as well; in particular, it is quite impossible that a book which so completely misrepresents what happened at a most important crisis of Paul's life could have been written by a close friend of the apostle.

This argument was developed particularly by Baur and Zeller and their associates in the "Tübingen School." According to Baur, the

major epistles of Paul constitute the primary source of information about the apostolic age; they should therefore be interpreted without reference to any other source. When they are so interpreted, they show that the fundamental fact of apostolic history was a conflict between Paul on one side and the original apostles on the other. The conflict, Baur maintained further, is particularly plain in the Epistles to the Galatians and Corinthians, which emphasize the complete independence of Paul with reference to the pillars of the Jerusalem Church, and his continued opposition to the efforts of Jewish Christians to bring the Gentiles into subjection to the Jewish Law— efforts which must have been supported to some extent by the attitude of the original apostles. This conflict, Baur supposed further, continued up to the middle of the second century; there was a Gentile Christian party appealing to Paul and a Jewish Christian party appealing to Peter. Finally however, Baur continued, a compromise was effected; the Pauline party gave up what was really most distinctive in the Pauline doctrine of justification, while the Petrine party relinquished the demand of circumcision. The New Testament documents, according to Baur, are to be dated in accordance with the position that they assume in the conflict; those documents which take sides—which are strongly anti-Pauline or strongly anti-Petrine—are to be placed early, while those which display a tendency toward compromise are to be placed late, at the time when the conflict was being settled. Such was the "tendency- criticism" of Baur. By that criticism the Book of Acts was dated well on in the second century, because it was thought to display a tendency toward compromise—an "irenic tendency." This tendency, Baur supposed, manifested itself in the Book of Acts in a deliberate falsification of history; in order to bring about peace between the Petrine and the Pauline parties in the Church, the author of Acts attempted to show by a new account of the apostolic age that Peter and Paul really were in perfect agreement. To that end, in the Book

of Acts, Paul is Petrinized, and Peter is Paulinized; the sturdy independence of Paul, which actually kept him long away from Jerusalem after his conversion, gives place, in Acts, to a desire of contact with the Jerusalem Church, which brought him early to Jerusalem and finally led him even to accept for his Gentile converts, at the "Apostolic Council," a portion of the ceremonial law. Peter, on the other hand, is represented in Acts as giving expression at the Apostolic Council to Pauline sentiments about the Law; and all through the book there is an elaborate and unhistorical parallelism between Peter and Paul.

The theory of Baur did not long maintain itself in its entirety. It received a searching criticism particularly from A. Ritschl. The conflict of the apostolic age, Ritschl pointed out, was not a conflict between Paul and the original apostles, but between all the apostles (including both Paul and Peter) on the one side, and an extreme Judaizing party on the other; that conflict did not continue throughout the second century; on the contrary, specifically Jewish Christianity soon ceased to be influential, and the legalistic character of the Old Catholic Church of the end of the second century, in which Christianity was conceived of as a new law, was due not to any compromise with the legalism of the Judaizers but to a natural process of degeneration from Paulinism on purely Gentile Christian ground.

The Tübingen dating of the New Testament documents, moreover, has been abandoned under a more thorough investigation of early Christian literature. A study of patristics soon rendered it impossible to string out the New Testament books anywhere throughout the second century in the interest of a plausible theory of development. External evidence has led to a much earlier dating of most of the books than Baur's theory required. The Tübingen estimate of the

Book of Acts, in particular, has for the most part been modified; the book is dated much earlier, and it is no longer thought to be a party document written in the interests of a deliberate falsification of history.

Nevertheless, the criticism of Baur and Zeller, though no longer accepted as a whole, is still influential; the comparison of Acts and Galatians, particularly in that which concerns the Apostolic Council of Acts 15, is still often thought to result unfavorably to the Book of Acts. Even at this point, however, a more favorable estimate of Acts has been gaining ground. The cardinal principle of Baur, to the effect that the major epistles of Paul should be interpreted entirely without reference to the Book of Acts, is being called in question. Such a method of interpretation, it may well be urged, is likely to result in one-sidedness. If the Book of Acts commends itself at all as containing trustworthy information, it should be allowed to cast light upon the Epistles. The account which Paul gives in Galatians is not so complete as to render superfluous any assistance which may be derived from an independent narrative. And as a matter of fact, no matter what principles of interpretation are held, the Book of Acts simply must be used in interpreting the Epistles; without the outline given in Acts the Epistles would be unintelligible.1 Perhaps it may turn out, therefore, that Baur produced his imposing reconstruction of the apostolic age by neglecting all sources except Galatians and the Corinthian Epistles—and then by misinterpreting these.

The comparison of Acts and the Pauline Epistles will be reserved for the chapters that deal with the outline of Paul's life. It will there be necessary to deal with the vexed question of the Apostolic Council. The question is vital for the present discussion; for if it can really be shown that Paul was in fundamental disagreement with the intimate friends of Jesus of Nazareth, then the way is opened for supposing

that he was in disagreement with Jesus Himself. The question raised by Baur with regard to the Book of Acts has a most important bearing upon the question of the origin of Paulinism.

All that can now be done, however, is to point out that the tendency at the present time is toward a higher and higher estimate of the Book of Acts. A more careful study of the Pauline Epistles themselves is exhibiting elements in Paul's thinking which justify more and more clearly the account which the Book of Acts gives of the relations of Paul to Judaism and to Jewish Christianity.