PROFESSOR PFLEIDERER ON "PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY."* [SECOND NOTICE.] IN criticising the
work of Professor Pfleiderer, it is difficult to know where to begin. The doubtful positions are so numerous, and the questionable principles so many, that we are at a loss, and. above all, we must be brief. We shall take these points, then :—(1.) The alleged Hellenism of the Apostle Paul. (2.) The relation of Paul's teaching to the historical books. (3.) Pfleiderer's account of the Resurrection. We shall not touch on the numerous questions of Introduction which Pfleiderer has raised. No one is in agreement with him on these topics. The tendency of criticism is all the other way at present. His dicta on the date of the various books of the New Testament are subjective and arbitrary. While it cannot be said that there is a consensus of opinion on the date and authorship of these books. yet the drift of opinion is evidently towards assigning an earlier date than was allowed a few years ago.
(1.) As regards the alleged Hellenism of the Apostle Paul, is there anything in his theology, as that theology is set forth in his Epistles—in those acknowledged by Pfleiderer—which cannot be explained from Hebrew sources ? Is it needful to go beyond the history and the literature of Israel, in the Hebrew and Greek forms of it, in order to explain the circle of ideas in which the theology of Paul moves ? To take a crucial instance, is it necessary to go to Greek sources in order to find the germ of the Christain doctrine of the resurrection of the dead ? We believe not. If we take the doctrine of immortality as set forth by Paul in the fifteenth chapter of I. Corinthians, and compare it with the Platonic doctrine, we shall find the difference to be immense. There is a fundamental contrast between the highest pagan idea of man, and that which is set forth in the teaching of Christ and his Apostles. We may here borrow from Principal Edwards :—
"In Plato the body is the antithesis of the soul, as the source of all weakness is opposed to what alone is capable of independence and goodness. St. Paul does not recognise this contrariety. With him, soul is not, as in Plato, prior to body. He, we cannot doubt, would have rejected Plato's doctrine that the body is related to the soul as the actual to the ideal, inasmuch as the body also has an ideal of perfection which it will at length attain. Neither would he have said with Aristotle that the soul itself is that ideal or entelechy of the body. He teaches in common with Plato that body and soul are distinct substances ; but he would also agree with Aristotle that they do not subsist independently of one another. Soul is not prior to body, but neither can it survive the body. Even when separated by death, they are not less than before parts of the man, and continue to exist in some kindof inter- dependence. The New Testament says nothingof the philosopher's problem of the soul's immortality. Not a trace of the arguments of the Phsedo can be detected in Paul's Epistles. But he teaches a nobler doctrine,—that an endless life awaits man after death, a life in which body as well as soul will at the last partake."— (Edwards an First Corinthians, pp. 386-87.)
If the doctrine of Paul on this great topic is based on his belief in the bodily resurrection of Christ, and if it can be explained without reference to Hellenism, or to the Platonic doctrine of immortality, then the chief source and main buttress of Pfleiderer's theory utterly fails him. Whatever the theology of Paul may be, it is plain that it is not derived from Hellenism. Take the Pauline description of the Christ, and gather together all that Paul says of him in his Epistles to the Romans, Corinthians. Galatians, and Philippians, and there is nothing in these descriptions to constrain us to think either of the Alexandrian school, or of heathen philosophy. That the Christ whom Paul describes is not merely the Messiah of the Jews, is quite true ; but we need not go further than the Scriptures of the Old Testament and the actual life of Christ, to find the germ of the Pauline doctrine of the Christ. At the same time, it may be remarked that the denial of the Pauline authorship of Ephesians and Colossians by Pfleiderer is both arbitrary and unnecessary. For the doctrine of the Christ in Paul's acknow- ledged Epistles differs in no essential particular from the doctrine of the Ephesians and Colossians.
(2.) Professor Pfleiderer uses the allegorical method in two ways. He uses it himself to allegorise the plain statements of Paul, and thus to make Paul's testimony to facts somewhat doubtful. In truth, we have abundance of Pauline ideas and Pauline doctrines, but we do not have many facts. Facts
* as Tfrehristenthum : seine Schriften nod Lehven im geschichtlichen Zusammenhang. Besehrieben von Otto Pfleiderer, Dr. iind Prof. d. Theol. an d. Univereitat, Berlin. Berlin Druck and Vorla7 von Ooorg Reimer. BM.
are rather troublesome to theories, and often refuse to fit into them. To unbiassed readers of the Pauline Epistles, it seems possible to gather from them a number of facts regarding Christ and his work, as well as doctrines based on these facts. But in the work before us, Paulinism is looked at mainly, if not exclusively, as a system of ideas. Paul did believe that in his doctrine he was simply stating and enforcing the facts about Christ. Pfleiderer leaves us in considerable doubt as to whether Paul had any facts to go on.
Pfleiderer has, however, a second illustration of the alle- gorical method,—or, rather, of the allegorical method inverted. The allegorical method usually lays hold of a story like that of Hagar, and finds in it all kinds of subtle meanings. It is useful to explain away troublesome facts. Pfleiderer's illus- tration inverts this way. He would have us to believe that the Evangelists took the ideas of Paul and translated them into the semblance of fact. As we have already said, Mark was, according to Pfleiderer, able to accomplish something in this direction. But he was quite outshone by Luke. Luke, in the Professor's opinion, was able to translate Paul's abstract sentence, "God sent forth his Son, made of a, woman," into the concrete story of the birth of Christ. Do we think we have traces of fact, say, in the story of the Centurion at Capernanm, or the raising of the widow's son at Nain.? This also is only part of Luke's artistic work. He has taken it from the story of Elisha, and transferred it, with the necessary changes, to the life of Our Lord. Sometimes the advc- cates of the Johannine authorship of the Fourth Gospel point to the passage in which Christ speaks of the things hidden from the wise and prudent and revealed unto babes, as showing something of the Johannine style. This, however, according to Pfleiderer, is not so ; it is a raflection of a Pauline passage. in I. Cor. The appearance of Jesus Christ to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, is expressly said to be an allegory founded on the manifestation of Christ to Paul on the way to Damascus. We might go on to cite example on example of this poor kind of work. Sometimes we wonder whether it is seriously meant. But gravely and seriously it is put forward by the man who tells us in the preface of this work, "Die Geschicte ist die Wahrheit welche Gott gemacht hat, das Dogma ist die Wahrheit welche Menschen machen." What wonderful people these Evangelists must have been, to take a doctrinal statement or an Old Testament prophecy, and weave. it into a lifelike story which shall be taken by many genera- tions for historical truth! If this were possible, then the greatest poets are not Homer nor Shakespeare, but the Evangelists. Seriously, however, is not this kind of work the reductio ad absurdum of the theory ? Where did Paul get his facts, or his beliefs about the life of Christ ? Is it not simpler, more historical, more likely, that the resemblance between the facts of the Gospels and the ideas of Paul is to be explained by the priority of the former,—that Paul's conceptions were ruled by the facts, not vice versa Pfleiderer has fallen into the old Hegelian error which led Baur astray,—viz., the con- ception that ideas (Begone) can make history. He has overlooked the chief factor in the origin of Christianity, the Creative Personality of the Lord Jesus Christ. If the per- sonality of Christ set forth in the New Testament be real and. true, Christianity is intelligible, and may be understood ; but not otherwise. We venture to think that Professor Pfleiderer will not persuade one person of the probability of his hypothesis.
(3.) His account of the Resurrection. Pfleiderer here, too, lays great stress on Paul, and on the fact that Paul ranks his own vision of the risen Lord with that direct perception of him which the other disciples were said to have had on different occasions after the Resurrection. He tries to make this manifestation of Christ to Paul a vision, like the other visions which Paul speaks of. These visions are acknowledged to be something quite distinct from an affection of the outward senses. Thus, the conclusion follows that all the so-called appearances of the risen Christ are subjective visions. It is to be observed, however, that Paul distinguishes the sight which he had of Jesus, from visions. He has put ib in a category by itself. That one interview stood by itself. We also remark that the long psychological account given by Pfleiderer of Paul's state of mind, and the notion that Paul was trying to drown the rebukes of conscience, is a pure fiction, contradicted by Paul's own statements and by all the. facts of the case. Even in the case of Paul, we are able to. affirm the objective reality of the manifestation of Christ
Then much more so in the case of the elder Apostles. As for Pfleiderer's objection that the conception is unvollziehbar, well, that is a matter of opinion. It is not so incredible as the theory which would base the whole of Christianity on a subjective vision or an illusion. It may be possible to sup- pose that one man deluded himself, but bow could he persuade other people to see what he supposed he had seen ? The materials necessary for illusion were not present. The dis- ciples were in a state of great depression. They were utterly sad, and soon we find them exultant. The inter- views with the risen Christ are set down in a brief, calm, businesslike way. Pfleiderer would have to explain how so many people came to be deceived, why the number of recorded appearances are so few, and why they ceased within so short a period. Is there a case of an actual appearance of Jesus on the earth after the brief period and the few instances recorded by Paul and the Evangelists ? Professor Pfleiderer will have something more to do than to say. Mivollziehbar, or to lay stress on alleged contradictions in the narratives, or to manufacture conditions of mind on the part of the Disciples, ere he can destroy the belief in the risen Christ. As for ourselves, .we have learnt utterly to distrust the psychological discussions which are constantly being urged in this relation. We do not believe that the Disciples were prepared to expect a resurrection. The popular impression regarding the possibility of a return of Elias, or Jeremiah, or one of the prophets, was an expectation of a return to life as it is lived here on the earth, and bears no resemblance to the actual Christian faith in the risen Lord. This is unique, altogether singular, and the belief can only be accounted for on the assumption that what is believed actually did happen. The faith has followed the fact, and rests on it.
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