CHAPTER XVI PAUL’S GOSPEL

In contrasting Epictetus with Paul to the disadvantage of the former, I was far from imagining that the latter had unloosed the knot of the origin of sin. But at all events he recognised the existence of the knot. Epictetus ignored it, or failed to recognise it. He spoke in the same breath of God’s ordaining “vice and virtue, winter and summer,” as though God’s appointing that some men shall be bad caused him no more difficulty than His appointing that some days shall be cold.

Paul, on the other hand, treated death as though it were a curse in the intention of Satan, but a blessing (or step towards blessing) through the controlling will of God. He also spoke of a spiritual body rising out of the dead earthly body, as flower and fruit rise out of the decaying seed. I did not at first feel sure what he meant by this. Flower and fruit resemble seed in that they can be touched. Did Paul mean that the spiritual body resembled the earthly body in being tangible, besides being more beautiful? I thought not. It seemed to me possible that a person in the flesh, dying, might become a person in the spirit, living for ever. A man’s actions and sufferings, sown in the transient flesh, might after death become part of the flower of the imperishable spirit, the real man, the spiritual body. That, I thought, was what Paul meant. This belief I found also stimulative to well-doing, according to the saying of Paul himself, “I press on, if by any means I may attain to the resurrection of the dead.” Moreover I remembered the “angel of Satan” appointed for Paul to keep him from pride, and how he prayed against it, and received a[144] revelation “My grace is sufficient for thee.” If prayer and strength were brought about for Paul by an “adversary” of prayer, might not righteousness be brought about for the human race by the “adversary” of righteousness? I did not myself at that time believe in the existence of such an “adversary”; but Paul’s belief seemed to me not unreasonable.

This turned me to other passages in the epistles concerning “Satan,” or the “angels of Satan,” or “principalities and powers.” And I contrasted them with what Epictetus had said, “All things are full of Gods and daemons,” meaning good daemons. Once more, the words of Epictetus seemed the nobler. But were they true? What did they amount to in fact? Nothing except “wisdom of word,” calling the four elements “friends”! Thus in the end—though very slowly and reluctantly—I was brought, first, to understand, and then to favour, Paul’s opinion, namely, that so far as we can see the truth in the “enigma” of the “mirror” of this world, there is being waged a battle of good against evil, order against disorder, light against darkness, life against death.

What Isaiah said concerning the stars and God’s “leading them forth” gave me some help, just when I was thinking about the “conflict between light and darkness.” For how, I thought, does God bring forth the stars except through the hand of His angel of darkness? Yet we, men, mostly speak of “darkness” as an enemy. And so, in a sense, it often is. Yet it is revealed in the aspect of a servant of God when besides bringing us the blessing of rest and sleep it leads forth the hosts of glories that (except for darkness) would never have been perceived. So, darkness brings God’s greatness to light. Paul certainly predicted that the same truth would hereafter be recognised about death and about the apparent disorder of Nature, and her “groanings and travailings”; and it seemed to me that he extended the same doctrine even to sin.

The result was that I found myself content to accept—in a manner, and provisionally—what Paul said about “Satan” and about “principalities” and at the same time what he said to the effect that all things are from God and through God and to God, and, “For them that believe, all things work together for[145] good.” In my judgment, it was better—yes, and more reasonable, in Paul’s sense of the word “reason”—to feel that I was in the Universe fighting a real fight against evil but looking up to God as my Helper, than to feel that there was no evil or enemy for me anywhere except in myself, and no friend either. So in the end I said, “Better to have been under the curse of death with Paul, if the curse may lead to a supreme blessing of life eternal in the presence of the Father, than to pass out of life with Epictetus, without any experience of curse at all, as so much earth, air, fire and water, into the nominal friendship of Gods and daemons!”

In allowing myself thus to be led away by my new Jewish teacher I was not influenced by his letters alone, but by legends and traditions—to some of which he referred—in the Hebrew histories, visions, and prophecies. Some of these taught, predicted, prefigured, or suggested that, while man and the brute forces of man and nature blindly imagine that they are moving the wheel of the universe, God alone is really moving it, and is using them to move it, towards His own decreed and foreordained purpose.

To the most beautiful of all such visions I was drawn by these words of Paul, “Know ye not what the scripture saith of Elijah?” Here a marginal note in my MS. referred me to the whole story, how Elijah, having slain with the sword the adversaries of God, was himself forced to flee from the sword of King Ahab, to Mount Horeb or Sinai, where the Law had once been given to Israel amid lightnings and thunders. And here the prophet was taught that God is not in the principalities of Nature, not in the tempest or fire or earthquake, but in “the still small voice.” This agreed with a passage in Isaiah concerning the Deliverer, “He shall not cry aloud.” In comparison with these and other similar poems and prophecies, the best things that the Greeks have written began to appear to me like mere “wisdom of word.”

As regards the time when Paul’s “good news” or “gospel” of “the righteous judgment” of God was to be fulfilled, I gathered that the judgments of God had been revealed to the[146] apostle as having been working from the beginning of the world—seen, as it were, through openings in a veil—in the deluge, in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, in the punishment of the Egyptians for persecuting Israel, in the punishments of Israel during and after the Exodus, and especially in their captivity and the destruction of their temple. But he seemed to believe that he had received also some special revelation about a judgment to fall upon the Jews, or upon all mankind, as soon as the gospel had been proclaimed to the world, but not before.

His language, however, varied. To the Philippians he spoke as though he were in doubt whether to desire to depart and to be with Christ, or to “remain in the flesh” for the sake of his converts. This shewed that he contemplated the possibility of his dying before the Lord’s coming. And this was made still clearer in some of his sayings to Timothy, such as “I have fought the good fight,” if taken with their contexts. But to the Thessalonians he wrote somewhat differently. It appeared that certain of them were grievously disappointed because some of their brethren had died before the Lord’s coming. Paul wrote to console them, saying that they, too—that is the dead brethren—would be raised up. “We that are alive,” he said, “shall in no wise precede them that are fallen asleep”—as though he anticipated that, on the day of the Coming, the greater number of the brethren, and he among them, would be still “alive.”

From several of these passages, and from similar words in the prophets, I gathered that, had he lived long enough to witness it, Paul would have considered the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus to have been a “day of the Lord” or “day of judgment.” But he was assured that the greatest day of all would not arrive till the sins of mankind had come to a head. Also it appeared to me that Paul did not profess to know when the last “judgment” would come to pass, and that he, like other Christians, at first expected it to come soon, and afterwards changed his mind.

Summing up the results of my study, I found that Paul’s[147] gospel appeared to be good news in a double aspect, first outside us, then inside us. First, it said that man was made by a perfectly good God to be, in the end, perfectly good, but was allowed by the Maker to fall into imperfection, through Satan, as a step towards perfection. This could be seen in the history of God’s judgments from the beginning, but most of all in the fact that the Son of God, having been sent into the world as a son of David, for the salvation of all the nations of the earth, and having been killed by the Jews, had been raised from the dead to save and judge mankind in righteousness. Secondly, it said that there was in every human being a faculty of faith in the goodness and love and righteous judgments of God, and that this faith, when fixed on the Saviour, enabled men to receive His spirit of righteousness and His love, to await His judgments, and to lead a life of righteousness on earth followed by an immortality of blessedness in heaven.

Comparing this with the gospel of Epictetus I could not but feel that Paul’s was far more helpful, but also more difficult to believe. Yet it was not incredible. Epictetus himself recognised in Socrates some traces of a power to frame men to his own will. If Socrates the Athenian, and Diogenes the Sinopian, and others, whom God called “His own sons,” had this power in some degree, in proportion to their possession of a share of the divine Logos, why might not Jesus the Jew be regarded as possessing this power to the fullest extent, having the fulness of the Logos so that he could succeed where Socrates and Diogenes and Epictetus failed?

I write here “Jesus the Jew,” to shew that, at that time, I did not know that Jesus was called the Nazarene, nor had I any notion that he was born otherwise than naturally “of the seed of David.” But I clearly perceived that Paul placed Jesus far above all patriarchs and prophets. Also I think (but am not quite sure) that I already understood Paul to believe that the Son of God was Son from the beginning of the world, before taking flesh as “the seed of David”—but not in any miraculous way. About this point I did not employ my thoughts. The question for me was, Had this Jesus the power[148] attributed to him by Paul’s gospel—to conform men to himself? I was obliged to answer, “Yes, with some men.” For the epistles had long ago compelled me to give up the notion that the Christians were a vicious, immoral, and rebellious sect. It was clear to me that they were above the average in morality. And as for Paul himself, I felt sure that Jesus had exerted this power over him, and, through him, over vast multitudes in various nations.

Now, too, having a clearer conception of Paul’s gospel, I began to understand better something that had perplexed me a good deal on the first reading—I mean Paul’s description to the Galatians of the course he took immediately after his conversion. I had expected that he would have said something to this effect, “You Galatians are revolting from my gospel. But it is the true gospel. I have told you the truth about all Christ’s words and deeds. It is true that I did not know Him—or hear Him, or even see Him—in the flesh. But after I was converted, I took great pains to ascertain as soon as possible, from those who had known Him in the flesh, all that He did and said. I wrote down these traditions at once, and read them again and again till I knew them by heart. These are the traditions I gave you.” This is what I had expected Paul to say. But what I found him actually saying to the Galatians was this: “I make known unto you brethren, as to the gospel preached by me, that it is not on any human footing, nor did I receive it from any human being, nor was I taught it as teaching, but [it came to me] through revelation of Jesus Christ.”

What he meant by “gospel” was—I now perceived—not Christ’s teaching before the resurrection, but His teaching after the resurrection. And this included an unfolding of the will of God as revealed in the scriptures and in all the history of Israel. This appeared in what followed. The Galatians all knew (he said) how bitterly he had persecuted the Christians. For he had been a most bigoted and bitter zealot of strict Judaism. But, said he, “When it pleased God to reveal His Son in me that I might preach His good tidings among the nations, straightway I conferred not with flesh and blood, nor[149] went I up to Jerusalem to those that were apostles before me, but I went away to Arabia.” Afterwards (but not in this context) he spoke of “Mount Sinai in Arabia.” Sinai being the place where Moses received the revelation of the old Law, and where Elijah, too, received the revelation of the “still small voice,” I had assumed (at the time of reading the epistle) that Paul went to Mount Sinai in Arabia that he also might receive his revelation of the new Law of Christ. Perhaps, however, it merely meant that he wished to be alone. If so, I was wrong. But it does not seem to me, even now, wrong to infer that, all through that sojourn in Arabia, Paul was in communion with that same Jesus Christ, who had recently appeared to him, and who had converted him from an enemy into a friend.

The same Galatian letter described Paul as not going up to Jerusalem till “three years” had elapsed. Even then he remained only “fifteen days” in Jerusalem, and saw (as I gathered) only one or two of the apostles, and did not go up again till “after the space of fourteen years.” All these details about time he appeared to add, not out of any jealousy of the older apostles, but to shew that he did not attach importance to the things that Christ had said “in the flesh,” before death, in comparison with the things that He had said after death, “being raised up according to the spirit of holiness.” And who could be surprised at this? The things that Christ said after death, when He had been “defined as Son of God from the resurrection of the dead”—how should not these be more deeply impressed upon the mind of the hearers, and also be most deep and spiritual in themselves, being reserved till the disciples were spiritually prepared to receive them?

So the gospel of Paul resolved itself into this, that God, having decreed from the beginning that men should love Him as Father and one another as brethren, had sent His Son into the world to enable them to do this, by dying for them, and by imparting to them His Spirit. The Son dictated no code of laws to obey. All that He asked was faith in Himself as the Son of God, dying for men, and victorious over sin and death. This seemed simple, but its simplicity did not deceive me into[150] imagining that I believed it. “That is all that is needed,” said I, as I closed the volume of the epistles; “but it is more than I possess, or can possess. Paul’s gospel is not a message but a person. It is, as he says somewhere, ‘Christ, dwelling in the heart through faith.’ I feel no such indwelling. In the gospel of Epictetus I am neither able nor willing to believe. I might perhaps be willing, but I am not able, to believe in the gospel of Paul.”