Pauls Life

But Jewish jealousy was soon aroused, particularly by the loss of their converts; and in alliance with the rabble of the market place, it was able once more to cut short the preachers' work. The charge made had a serious ring, since it involved not only danger to public order but treason against the emperor and the imperial cult (laesa niajestas). On the other hand, Paul himself, in alluding (2 Thess. ii. 3-12) to both emperor and empire (6 seq.) as the force at present restraining "the mystery of lawless ness" (avopla), seems to see the beginnings of "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"—in so unhallowed an alliance as that which existed at Thessalonica between Judaism and pagan ism. For the former was using the very Messianic idea itself to stir up the latter against the followers of Jesus (Acts xvii. 7). Paul withdrew to Beroea, in Thessaly, and then by sea to Athens.

At Athens he soon drifted, after the manner of the place, into informal debate with casual listeners in the Market-place (Agora). 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 content seemed to them a strange farrago of Greek phrases and outlandish talk about a certain "Jesus" and some power associated with him styled "the Resurrection"; and Paul's attempt to lead up to his gospel by the natural theology of monotheism missed its mark. The real effect of the episode was upon Paul himself and his future methods among typical Greeks.

Paul soon moved on to Corinth, where he was to win success and 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 visited by Paul. No wonder that Paul's first feeling was one of utter impotence. It was "in weakness, and in fear, and in much trem bling," 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 simplicity as to its form (I Cor. ii. I sqq.), not heeding its first impression upon the Jew of intolerable humiliation, and on the Greek of utter folly (i. 18 sqq.). Before his great work 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 Priscilla. Probably they were already Christians ; and as they, too, were tent-makers Paul shared their home and their work. Ere long there came the usual breach with the synagogue. 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. It was during his first winter at Corinth, A.D. 51-52, that Paul wrote his earliest extant missionary let ters—to the Thessalonians (and perhaps Galatians). He wrote

not as a theologian but as the prince of missionaries. His gospel was always in essence the same ; but the form and perspective of its presentation varied with the training, mental and moral, of his hearers or converts. It was no abstract, rigid system. This warns us against hasty inferences from silence, and so limits our attempt to trace progress in his theology. It bears also on our estimate of him as a man and an apostle, asking from men only such faith as could be real to them at the time. 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 early return (Parousia) of Christ, as a vindication of their cause so near as reasonably to influence conduct (I Thess. iv. II), had naturally been prominent in his teaching among them. Further, the moral fruits of the new life in the Spirit are here enjoined in a very direct manner (iv. 1-8).

Paul as Ethical Teacher.

What was distinctive of Paul's ethical teaching was the intimate way in which he, like his Master, infused precepts with the spirit in which and by which they were to be realized, as varied aspects of the ideal of love to God and man. He was supremely concerned with the dynamic of conduct, as to which his own experience made him the most inspiring of teachers and the greatest interpreter of the mind of Christ. The master motive on which he relied for all, was the imitation of Christ in a peculiarly inward sense. To the believer Christ was no mere external example, but was already within him as the principle of his own new moral being, in virtue of indwelling "holy Spirit," the Spirit of Christ. Christian righteousness was inspired virtue. Here lay the new "power" so characteristic of the Gospel (Rom. i. 16), a motive adequate to the enhanced moral ideal in Christ. The wonder of it was that this power annulled the moral past, giving the once vicious an equal free dom with the "virtuous." To this sovereign, emancipating in fluence of God's holy Spirit, antagonizing "the flesh" and all its works, Paul confidently entrusted his converts for "sanctifica tion" or progressive transformation (Gal. iii. 3, v. 16 sqq.) into "the image of Christ," the full actuality of the type already latent in Christian faith. Such teaching is implicit in the Thessalonian letters; but it is explicit in the Epistle to the Galatians. But how would it be taken by raw Gentiles, say in Corinth, untutored to self-denial, in things whether of sense or spirit ? That their egoism often perverted Paul's libertarianism into an apology for liber tinism, in keeping with current habits, as well as for selfish individ ualism in the use of intellect or even "gifts of the Spirit," may be gathered from his letters to Corinth. What here concerns us, however, is the splendidly positive way in which Paul met such abuses, not by falling back upon legalism as a "safeguard" against licence, but by reapplying the laws of spirituality.