Athens,
but treason against the emperor {laesa majcslas). Thus at Thessalonica Paul had experience of the imperial system as Coatroatlag rival to his gospel of the sovereignty of God and of the Imperial Wis Christ, the true king of humanity. Yet it is Cult. doubtful if he was thinking of this ' when he wrote
to his converts touching " the mystery of lawlessness, " working towards its final conflict with the divine principle also at work in the world. He seems in the whole passage (2 Thess. ii. 3-12) to view the empire in its positive aspect as a system of law and order rather than in its idolatry of its official head, the incarnation of worldly success and power; and he alludes to both emperor and empire (6 seq.) as the force at present restraining " the mystery of lawlessness " (avofila.). This phrase itself suggests something more abnormal than the world principle latent in paganism, such as " the apostasy " of God's own people, the Jewish nation, as once before under Antiochus Epiphanes the prototype of " the man of lawlessness " seated in " the temple of God " (v. 4), of whom the late emperor Caligula might well seem a forerunner. Even so monstrous an issue of Jewish refusal of God's truth, in His Messiah, would be but the climax of so unhallowed an alliance as that which existed at Thessalonica between Jewish unbelief and paganism, seeing that the former was using the very Messianic idea itself to stir up the latter against the followers of Jesus (Acts xvii. 7; cf. I Thess. ii. 15 seq.). Paul and Silas withdrew by night, and began work in Beroea, a small city of Thessaly, in the hope of returning when excitement had subsided. But Jewish intriguers from Thessalonica stirred up the populace with the old charges, and Paul, as the prime actor, was forced to retire, first to the coast (whence he may have thought of a secret visit to Thessalonica, i Thess. ii. 18; cf. iii. 5), and then by sea to Athens.
At Athens he was consumed with anxiety, and sent word to Silas and Timothy to join him with fresh news about his " orphans " in the faith. While waiting, however, he felt compelled by the signs of idolatry on every hand to preach his gospel. He began discussing in the synagogue with the Jews and their circle, and also in the Agora, after the manner of the place, in informal debate with casual listeners. The scope of his doctrine, the secret of right living, was such as to attract the notice of the Epicureans and Stoics. But its actual contents seamed to them a strange farrago of familiar Greek phrases and outlandish talk about a certain "Jesus" and some power associated with him styled " the Resurrection." To clear up this, the latest intellectual novelty of the Athenian quidnuncs, they carry him off to " the Areopagus, " probably the council, ^ so called after its original place of meeting on Mars Hill. This body seems still to have had in some sense charge of religion and morals in Athens; and before it this itinerant " sophist " seemed most hkely to make his exact position plain. A mark of authenticity is the very fruitlessness of his attempt to adapt the gospel of Jesus to Greek " wisdom." One only of his audience, a member of the Areopagus, seems to have been seriously impressed. The real effect of the episode was upon Paul himself and his future ministry among typical Greeks.
Before Timothy's return Paul had moved on to Corinth, where he was to win success and to find material for such experiences, both when present and absent, as developed the whole range of his powers of heart and mind, (see Corinthians, Epistles to the). Corinth was more typical of the Graeco-Roman world, than any other city, certainly of those visited by Paul. In addition to its large Jewish colony, it had Oriental elements of other kinds, especially mystic and ecstatic cults; and its worship of Venus under semi-oriental attributes added to the general sensuahty of the moral atmosphere. Over all was a veneer of Greek intellect and polish;
^ As Sir W. M. Ramsay argues in his Cities of St Paul, pp. 425 429-
2 This is the view favoured by archaeologists like Ernst Curtius Expositor, vii. 4. 436 sqq.) and Sir W. M. Ramsay. On the whole it suits the narrative better than the view which regards the Hill of Ares simply as a good spot for one of those rhetorical " displays " in which Athenians delighted.
Coriatb.
for in its way Corinth prided itself on its culture no less than did Athens. No wonder that Paul's first feeling in this microcosm was one of utter impotence. It was " in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling, " though in dauntless faith, that he began a most fruitful ministry of a year and a half. His guiding principle was to trust solely to the moral majesty of the gospel of the Cross, declared in all simphcity as to its form (1 Cor. ii. sqq.), not heeding its first impression upon the Jew of intolerable humiliation, and on the Greek of utter folly (i. 18 sqq.). Most gladly then would he preach in such a way that " faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God" (ii. 5); " that no flesh should glory before God " (i. 29). How central this was to his gospel, especially as it defined itself over against Greek self-sufficiency of intellect, may be seen from his whole conception of the " spiritual " man in his letters to Corinth (esp. i Cor. ii. i-iv. 7). Before his great work there began, Paul gained two fresh fellow-workers, whose share in parts at least of his later ministry was very great, Aquila, a Jew of Pontus, and his talented wife PrisciUa. Probably they were already Christians, and as they too were tent-makers Paul shared their home and their work. That he was often in straitened circumstances is proved by his having to accept aid from Macedonia (2 Cor. xi. 9; cf. Phil. iv. 15). On the arrival of Silas and Timothy from that quarter, he began to preach with yet more intensity, especially to the Jews (xviii. 5). A breach with the synagogue soon followed. The definite turning to the Gentiles met with much success, and Paul was encouraged by a night vision to continue in Corinth for more than a year longer. An attempt of the Jews (cf . i Thess. ii. 1 5 seq; 2 Thess. iii. I seq.) to use Gallio, the new proconsul of Achaia, as a tool against him, not only failed but recoiled upon themselves.
It was during his first winter at Corinth, a.d. 51-52, ^ that he wrote his earliest extant missionary letters (see above for Galatians). Paul wrote not as a theologian but as the pirst prince of missionaries. His gospel was always in Missionary essence the same; but the form and perspective Letters. of its presentation varied with the training, mental and moral, of his hearers or converts. It was no abstract, rigid system, presented uniformly to all. This warns us against hasty inferences from silence, in judging of Paul's own thought at the time represented by any epistle, and so limits our attempt to trace progress in his theology. But it bears also on our estimate of him as a man and an apostle, full of sympathy for others and asking from them only such faith as could be real to them at the time.
His Thessalonian converts had met with much social persecution. The bulk belonged to the working class (iv. 11, 2 Thess. iii. 10-12); and Paul must have endeared himself to them by sharing their lot and plying his own manual industry (Acts xviii. 3). However hard his double toil of teacher and tent maker might be, no sordid suspicions, such as his Jewish foes were ready to suggest (i Thess. ii. 9; 2 Thess. iii. 8), should gain any colour from his conduct. He would be to his converts as a father, and an embodiment of the new Christian ethics which he pressed upon his spiritual children as the essential " fruit of the Spirit, " and also as a demonstration of the Gospel to " them that were without " (i. 7-12; cf. i. 6, iv. i seq.).
The special perspective of his first two epistles is affected by the brevity of his stay at Thessalonica and the severity of persecution there. Owing to the latter fact the Parousia, as a vindication of their cause, so near as reasonably to influence conduct (v. 11), had naturally been prominent in his teaching among them. So in these epistles he deals with it more fully than elsewhere (iv. 13 sqq.); and the moral fruits of the new life in the Spirit are here enjoined in a very direct manner (iv. 1-8).
We need not suppose that Paul himself or his assistants used a set of rules as elaborate as the " Two Ways " (of Life and Death)
This date (and so Ramsay's chronology from this point) is confirmed by a fresh inscription showing that Gallio was proconsul from 52-53 (spring), rather than 51-52; see Expositor for May 1909, pp. 467-469.
