All Sorts and Conditions of Men
St. Paul The Man
PROFESSOR FOAKES-JACKSON has given us a portraiture of the Apostle Paul that is human and genuine, and a picture of the
world of Judaism and of the Roman Empire in which he worked that is clear in outline and vivid in detail. Not a page flags in interest in this volume ; and there is room for it, even amidst the multitudinous literature in which age after age— and no age more assiduously than the present—has examined, analysed, and, alas ! systematized the motives, activities and doctrines of the great Convert of Damascus.
If, at the end, we feel stimulated rather than satisfied, if we feel that about this man, so attractive, so courteous, yet at times so impetuous and irascible, there remains something untold, or beyond the telling, we are not sure that the writer will consider that his task has been undertaken in vain. There are always such men in the pages of history, on whom the last word can never be said. Just as the verdict has been pro- nounced, and the case settled, they, like Paul, citizens of the wide world, appeal to its Caesar of after-thought, or of a fresh impartiality, and the whole Process begins anew.. " Heard after sentence ? Yea ; And to the end of time." However broad or limited their stage, they have in common this strange power of provocative appeal, and we discuss Socrates and Plotinns, Becket and Cromwell, Napoleon and Lincoln tire- lessly. But there is a special peculiarity with regard to St.
Paul. As in his life-time, so now he seems at the moment to be the centre of a busy throng of friends, and at another almost deserted. Although the foremost figure in the Apostolic age, most of the churches of which he was the master-builder soon decayed, and his theology suffered eclipse from Alex- andrianism. Then his mighty champion, Augustine, arose and built up a Paulinism on which he carved his own name as architect. Yet the Middle Ages and the Schoolmen were content to neglect a good deal of the achievement till Luther once more recalled the attention of Europe to the name and fame of Paul.
Since the Reformation, Protestant theology and scholarship have almost ceaselessly occupied themselves with the doctrines and personality of the man of whom, among all the earliest disciples of Christ, we certainly know most, and on whose teaching modern research tells us the greater part of the New Testament was founded. For, as Dr. Foakes-Jackson reminds us in his too brief chapter on St. Paul's doctrine, the Third Gospel, the Acts, the Epistle to the Hebrews and, perhaps, the First Epistle of Peter, "are the work of men who belonged to his school," while the Fourth Gospel and 1 John "emanate from an author who understood Paul even better than some of his most intimate followers." As regards the Petrinc and Johannine writings, we should hesitate to put the case so un- reservedly, for 1 Peter seems to bear traces of many personal allusions, and, though the germs of the Johanninc Logos- doctrine are plainly discernible in the authentic Pauline writings, yet the intermediate link of the Ephesian Epistle must be reckoned with as coining between. Still, in any case, " the influence Paul exercised upon Christian thought iS ahnost immeasurable."
We are glad that, despite such a statement, Dr. Foakcs- Jackson will make no concessions to those who would affirm that Christianity and " what is usually called Paulinism " are one and the same thing, or that Paul was the real founder of the Faith. On this point he is bluntly uncompromising. " It is profoundly untrue to say that Paul made Jesus, or even gave Milian importance He would not otherwise have had. It is a literal fact that Jesus made Paul, and the greatness of the disciple is one of the chief miracles wrought by the Master."• By *hat means that miracle was worked and that greatness attained it is the purpose of this biography to describe.
The author considers, in the first place, St. Paul's status and education amongst the Jews. Dr. Foakes-Jackson holds strongly that he was a Hellenistic Jew, or rather Israelite, a member of the reel-speaking Dispersion. Of his master
Gamaliel very little is known, and in the tone of the latte4 intervention in Acts v. there is a startling anachronism. But the story proves good will between the Pharisees and the early Christian Church, and Paul was a Pharisee, and later showed' by a sudden outburst before the Sadducean Council his pridç. in the fact. One thesis in this work, indeed, is that " Paul never completely broke with his Pharisaism, but was only anti-legalistic for his Gentile converts." In any case, the Ilellenists hounded on the first persecution of the Hellenist Stephen, who, they thought, was betraying their whole position in the Judaistic world, and Paul, always impulsive, sided with them, but never as an agent of the High Priest. There is a good deal in this contention which is difficult to work out : we only indicate it, and note the ability of the argument.
The idea that Paul was a Hellenist brings us directly to the problem of the Greek Mystery-Cults. Was Paul influenced by them in his sacramental teaching ? No, is Dr. Foakcs- Jackson's verdict : he differs from Dean Inge's statement that "Paul was willing to take the first step, and that a long one, towards the paganizing of Christianity," and thinks that the atmosphere of the Mystery-religions pervaded the Chord: at a later date than that of the Apostle. Here lie is in lin( with, perhaps, the most recent view of a very vexed question Of the relations between Peter and Paul we get rather less than we looked for, though it is noted that somehow, after at Paul's multifarious labours, Peter retained, and still retains in the eyes of the Church, priority of position. The extraor- dinary parallelism in Acts between the experiences of the bee Apostles, the two visions and calls, the imprisonments, miracles, raisings from the dead, once so fruitful a subject for German criticism, all this is glanced at, but quickly dis- missed. Not so the apparent divergencies in the Luean and Pauline accounts of the first years after the Conversion, which receive a very full and interesting analysis.
How far was St. Paid a man of culture and of conscious style in his speeches and letters ? Not very far, is the answer : the eloquence, when it occurs, is spontaneous and unstudied the Greek not always immaculate. Of course, the address on 1.Mars' Hill, where the Apostle quotes from Aratus and Cleanthes, will occur to every reader. But Dr. Foakes- Jackson is very guarded here. He is not sure that the scene at Athens was the description of an eye-witness : Paul's alleged distress at witnessing idols, when to him " an idol was nothing," and no defamation of the goddess Artemis at Ephesus was afterwards alleged, as well as Paul's reticence in alluding to Jesus, militate against the trustworthiness of the account. On the other hand, we should have thought the sarcastic Athenian summing up of Paul as "a seed-picker;' and the confusion in the Athenian mind as to two gods-- Jesus and " Anastasis "—whom Paul was supposed to preach, to be life-like touches.
This is a volume which, by its freshness, its graphic power, its constant suggestiveness of thought, is certain to command close study. We hope many will read its presentation of the character and career of a great saint, who, precisely because he was not a normal man," was also one of the world's great
a
men.
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