Paulinism

PAULINISM Of recent years the ambiguity lurking in this term, used to de scribe Paul's teaching as a whole, has been realized. 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 prin ciples to formal harmony in a system. Hence we must observe his relative emphasis, and the varying causes of this, whether personal conviction or external 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 natural vehicle of expres sion occurring to his mind in a given mental environment. That Paul himself was largely conscious of the limitations here im plied, is clear from what he says in 1 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 gen eralization of his own religious experience, from his apologetic exposition of it over against current Pharisaic Judaism and largely in its terms, and also from the speculative setting which it took on in his mind, as his experience enlarged.

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 connection with Paul's life. In order to grasp the Pauline "system" as a whole, it is best to take the form in which it appears in the Epistle to the Romans, and then supplement it with tne fresh perspective in which it appears in "Ephesians," and with the more personal expression of it in Philippians, instead of constructing an amalgam from the whole range of his epistles taken promiscuously.

Specific Paulinism.

The keystone of all is the Christ of God, the glorified Christ who appeared to Paul at his conver sion, and in the rays of whose heavenly glory the earthly life of Jesus of Nazareth was ever seen. Here, as elsewhere, the mode of Paul's conversion determined his whole perspective. It differen tiated his emphasis from that of the older Judaeo-Christianity, which always started from the earthly manifestation, while it looked fixedly forward to the future manifestation in glory. To Paul the glorified Jesus or spirit-Christ (I Cor. xv. 45; 2 Cor. 18) of his vision became "the Christ mystical" of lasting, present Christian faith and experience. In union with Him the believer was already essentially "saved," because possessed of Christ's spirit of Sonship (Rom. viii. 9, 14-17, 30), although his redemp tion was not complete until the body was included, like the soul, in the penetrating "life" of the Spirit (viii. 23-25, 10 seq.). Ac cordingly he shifted the centre of gravity in Christian faith de cisively from the future aspect of the Kingdom, to the present life of righteousness enjoyed by believers through "the first fruits of the Spirit" in them. Here lay his great advance on Judaeo-Christianity, with its preponderant eschatological em phasis and a more external conception of Jesus as Jewish Mes siah and of relation to Him. To this mode of thought Christ was not the very principle of the new filial righteousness. In a word, while Judaeo-Christianity only implicitly transcended legalism, Paulinism did so explicitly, thus safeguarding the future. For Paul's religion was Christocentric in a sense unknown before. Compared with this, his distinctive attitude of soul to Christ, the exact metaphysical conception he formed of Christ's pre existence was secondary and conditioned by inherited modes of thought. His own specific contribution was his consciousness of Christ's complete religious efficacy, which marked Him as essen tially Divine, the Son of God in the highest sense conceivable.