moralism on the other. It was his own experience as a passionate
seeker after righteousness which gave him the key to that reinterpretation
of Jesus the Christ as at once moral ideal, master motive
and immanent principle of life at work in the soul by the Spirit
which was peculiarly his own and may be styled his ethical mysticism.
This was his main contribution to Christianity; and as depending
on his personal experience, it was bound up closely with his
personality — a fact which makes his direct influence, while intense,
yet rather limited in its area of appeal.
At the root of Paul's nature lay the Hebrew capacity for personal devotion to the Divine as moral perfection, to an unf)ounded degree. It found its object in a concrete form, stirring both imagination and affections, in Jesus the Christ, " the image of the invisible God " whose spiritual glory man was created to reflect. This instinct for ideal devotion seems never to have been diverted, even for a season, into a single human channel, in the love of woman, p'rom his early youth his soul was preoccupied by a passion for God and His will in His people. This he came to regard as a special divine gift or vocation (i Cor. vii. 7), imposing on its possessor, in the face of the world's needs (cf. 29-31), a higher duty than could be fulfilled within the conditions of the closest of human relations (32-35). But the tenderness and chivalrous self-sacrifice which found no vent in the ordinary channel came to pour itself forth in an absorbing love for his churches, which were to him as his own spouse, though his aim was rather to " present them as a pure virgin to Christ " (2 Cor. xi. 2). This educated his human affections, and softened the outlines of a nature inflexibly loyal to principle and absorbed with the divine aspect of life. Thus it was through " the love of Christ " constraining him to look at all, as it were, through Christ's eyes, that Paul came to love men even to the point of a self-forgetfulness that seemed to some hardly sane (2 Cor. v. 13-16"; cf. Mark iii. 21, " He is beside himself
). So too his proud, strong-willed spirit gradually put on
" the meekness and conciliatoriness of Christ " to such a degree that during the Corinthian troubles his critics contrasted the vigour of his letters with the seeming feebleness of his outward bearing (2 Cor. X. I, 10).
There is no good evidence that his presence was physically weak or unimpressive, even if his stature was small, as tradition has it (see above; cf. Acts xiv. 12). Nor is there any sign that he bore habitual traces of those periodic attacks of some nervous affection allied to epilepsy, ' but apparently not involving loss of consciousness — to which, as dating from a certain overpowering trance about 42-43, he refers in 2 Cor. xii. 7 sqq. These were most humiliating while they lasted (cf. Gal. iv. 14). But they seem not to have drained his vigour even for great and constant labours of body and mind. His energy indeed was portentous, as he himself felt, when he traced it to the divine power " energizing mightily " in him (i Cor. xv. 10, Col. i. 29), and that most effectively when he felt weakest in himself (2 Cor. xii. 9 seq.).
Not only had Paul a super normal spiritual force, marked by a rare combination of religious inspiration and reasoning power, which made him impressive both as speaker and writer, he had also a genius for adaptation to varied mental conditions, due partly to his Hellenistic training, but also to the fact [that his message was one not of the letter but of spirit and power (cf. 2 Cor. iii. 4 sqq.). This showed itself as tact in relation to individuals and special audiences, and as statesmanlike breadth of view in handling large problems of principle, such as were constantly emerging in relation to the Jewish and Gentile types of Christianity, and again as to the Christian attitude to the pagan state (Rom. xiii. i sqq.). He combined grasp with vital flexibility in a degree which made him the prince of missionaries. He was the prophet in the originality of his message; he was the theologian in the reflective interpretation which he gave to it, in terms derived mainly from a profound knowledge of Jewish thought, liberalized by contact with another world, the Graeco-Roman; but above all he was the missionary in the attitude in which he stood to his gospel and to men as its subjects. There was in him nothing doctrinaire: to that, along with the legal attitude, he had been crucified with Christ, for both belonged to " the rudiments of the world " of sense (i Cor. xiii. 8 sqq.; 2 Cor. x. 4 seq.; Col. ii. 20 seq.; Phil. iv. 7). Accordingly he was great as an organizer of a new order among his Gentile churches, where much was left to local instinct informed by the one Spirit, while yet he jealously cared for such unity in usages as seemed needful to the embodiment of the one life of the Spirit in all, Jew and Gentile ahke (i Cor. iv. 17, xv. 33, 36). In particular he showed his Christian largeness in his exertions to keep in communion the two sections of Christ's people, to the point of risking his life for this end.
In his more personal relations he had the power of feeling and inspiring friendship of the noblest order, a comradeship " in Christ which fills his letters with delightful touches of loyal affection and trust, even of playfulness on occasion (Philem.). He was a man of heart, with rapid alternations of mood, with nothing of the Stoic
See Lightfoot, Galatians, pp. 183 sqq., who cites King Alfred as a parallel; and Hastings's Did. Bible, iii. 701. Sir W. M. Ramsay, St Paul the Traveller, pp. 94 sqq., prefers " a species of chronic malarial fever, " connecting it specially with the attack mentioned in Gal. iv. 13 sqq.
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in his self-mastery, which was an acquired grace, rooted in the " peace of God " (Phil. iv. 7, 10-13). Indeed it was in his impetuous, choleric temperament that there lurked " the last infirmity " of his soul, which at times betrayed him into vehemence of expression (Acts xxii. 4 seq.) and a sweeping harshness of judgment (cf. 2 Cor. vii. 8 seq.), especially where he had detected disingenuous conduct in those who were interfering with his work for Christ or imputing base motives to himself, like the judaizers in Galatia and t'orinth (cf. Phil. iii. 2). As to the charge of egoism, based on the emphasis he lays on his own person as medium of Christ's mind and will, it can hold only so far as Paul can be shown to do this gratuitously, and not really in the interests of his vocation. By this latter standard alone can an apostle be judged. Paul is careful, moreover, to distinguish his ordinary and his vocational self (2 Cor. xii. 5), as well as what he says as quoting Christ, as speaking qua apostle (i Cor. vii. 10, 12), and again as simply one found " faithful " (ib. 25). Such is not the way of egoists or fanatics.
In his Epistles Paul found a fitting vehicle for his personality, whereby to speak not only to his own age but also to kindred souls all down the ages, so coming to spiritual life again and again, when buried under convention and tradition. For the letter is the most spontaneous form of writing, nearest in nature to conversation, and leaving personality most free. No doubt Paul's letters followed current forms (cf. G. A. Deissmann, Bible Studies, 1901, ch. i.). But he transfigured what he used by the new fullness of meaning infused into address, salutation, final messages and benediction. His letters are indeed " the life-blood of a noble spirit, " poured forth to nourish its spiritual offspring (cf. i Thess. ii. 7 seq.). They are data for his Life and form incidentally an immovable critical basis for historical Christianity, on which the hyper criticism of Van Manen and others (see Ency. biblica, s.v. " Paul ) can make no real impression. On the other hand, as the sources of our knowledge of " Paulinism, " they impose by their very form certain limits to our effort to reduce his thought to system. Canon R. J. Knowling's Witness of the Epistles (1892) and The Testimony of St Paul to Christ (1905) contain full summaries of all bearing on Paul's epistles. The history of the collection of Paul's letters into a corpus styled " The Apostle, " for reading in Christian worship, is very significant, so far as we can trace it. The reference in 2 Pet. iii. 15 seq. would be of high value, were the date of 2 Pet. itself not so doubtful. The first definite notice we possess of a canon of Pauline epistles is that of the ultra-Pauline Marcion, who used ten Pauline epistles (c. 140). Certain apocryphal Pauline epistles appeared in early times, beginning with one To the Alexandrines, forged in the interests of Marcionism (Canon Murat), and an exchange of letters between the Corinthians and Paul, originally part of the Acta Pauli (ed. C. Schmidt, pp. 145-160). For the forged correspondence between Paul and Seneca, see Lightfoot, Philippians, pp. 329-333.
II. Paulinism. — Of recent years the ambiguity lurking in this term, as used to describe Paul's teaching as a whole, has been fully realized, and efforts have been made to distinguish what is distinctive and essential from what is traditional in form and relative in importance. For Paul, if " the first Christian theologian, " was no systematic theologian. His mind was fundamentally Semitic. It seized on one truth at a time, penetrating to the underlying principle with extraordinary power and viewing it successively from various sides. But, unlike a Greek thinker, he did not labour to reduce the sum of his principles to formal harmony in a system. In the absence of such critical testing of his thought by Paul himself, we must observe his relative emphasis and the varying causes of this, whether personal conviction or externa! occasion. Even when this is done it still remains to ask how much represents direct spiritual vision, due to " revelation, " and how much traditional forms of thought or imagination, adopted by him as the most natural vehicle of expression occurring to his mind in a given mental environment. That Paul himself was conscious of the limitations here implied, is clear from what he says in i Cor. xiii. 9 sqq. as to the transience of the conceptions used by himself and others to body forth divine ideas and relations. After all, his was the theology of a prophet rather than a philosopher. Hence we have to distinguish what may be styled " personal Paulinism, " the generalization of his own religious experience, from his apologetic exposition of it over against current Pharisaic Judaism if largely in its terms and also from the speculative setting which it took on in his mind, as his experience enlarged and the thoughts of his converts suggested fresh points of view.
It is mainly in this last sphere that development is traceable in Paulinism. Some idea of its nature and extent has already been given in connexion with Paul's life. If one must attempt
