Autobiographical Reminiscences

I have said that the record of St. Paul’s spiritual experience embraces directly those sixteen years from the writing of 1st Thcssalonians to the writing of 2d Timothy. But indirectly it embraces a great deal more. Did it not embrace more, a great part of Paul’s life would be to us an unknown land. By the time we meet with him in the First Epistle to the Thessalonians he is already no longer young. He has had behind him a great history, which has left its marks upon him, and made him what he is. What is that history? Have we any record that can help to bridge the blank space between the hour in which he first accepted Christ and the hour in which he appears upon the scene as the prominent actor in the development of Christ’s religion? Even if we intended to avail ourselves of the narrative in the Acts, we would find little light upon this question. In that narrative the brilliant beginning of the spiritual life of Paul is followed almost instantaneously by a period of eclipse and silence. The man who on the plains of Damascus is seen illuminated by the fire of heaven disappears immediately from our view, and

Autobiographical Eeminiscenses. 21

is lost for a time amid the shadows. We meet with him for the first time at Antioch, but Antioch is clearly not his beginning. There is a period of silence in the background which requires to be accounted for, and which is necessary to explain the present attitude of the man. How is that silence to be broken? Where shall we find the materials for filling up the blank between the day of Damascus and the days of Antioch? It cannot be supposed that Saul of Tarsus emerged in the twinkling of an eye from the attitude of an uncompromising Jew to the position of an unbending Gentile; such a transition would be as contrary to spiritual as it would be to natural evolution. We feel instinctively that, in the Christian development of St. Paul, Jerusalem must have a place before Antioch. We feel that, wherever and whenever the desiderated record shall be discovered, it shall be the record of an experience rather Jewish than Gentile, and separated by no very violent convulsion from the experience of his former days. The record which shall break the silence will be one which shall exhibit Paul the apostle at the slightest possible remove from Saul of Tarsus, and shall reveal in the features of the incipient Christian the transmitted lineaments of the developed Jew.

Is such a source of knowledge attainable? I believe that it is. It cannot, as we have seen, be derived from the narrative of the Acts; there is here a break in the history. But there is another direction from which information may be sought — those very letters of St. Paul which belong to $ comparatively late stage of his outward life. It will be found that these letters, emerging as they do from the apostle’s days of middle age, have yet in them that autobiographical stamp which is the characteristic of letters in general. Written to serve a particular and a present purpose, they yet from time to time throw back a retrospective light. If they contain flashes premonitory of the future, they equally exhibit gleams illuminative of the past. The apostle almost unconsciously takes us into his confidence, and tells us what has been his previous experience. There are many great writers who are able from beginning to end to preserve a strict im personality; one would never know from Shakespeare that he had ever been a child or a boy. But Paul is not one of these. Completely absorbed as he is in the study of that which is impersonal, he is yet unable to conceal that there was a time when he understood and spake as a child. Ever and anon in the very heart of his most abstruse discussions there open glimpses of perspective which cast back a light on his past development. If we can succeed in collecting and combining these, if we can conceive any plausible scheme which would account for their chronological order, we shall arrive at a very probable history of that portion of Paul’s life which is at present wrapped in silence. We cannot, indeed, on a matter of this sort, expect to reach demonstrative evidence; we must be content to allow some margin for the play of the historical imagination. But we shall at all events have a working hypothesis which, in the absence of any better guide.

Autobiographical lieminiscenses. 23

may serve as a solution of much that is now obscure.

The first of these autobiographical reminiscences is one which brings Paul before us in an attitude quite unique in apostolic history. Every disciple who embraced Christianity made a transition from an old into a new life; to this extent there is nothing peculiar in the experience of St. Paul. But St. Paul himself tells us that his adoption of Christianity was distinguished from that of the other apostles by the fact that, in embracing it, he made a transition not merely from the old into the new, but from the persecutor into the partisan, — “For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am.”1 Here is a biographical reminiscence of far-reaching value, not so much for its own sake as for the inferences which are to be deduced from it. St. Paul declares that he occupied a unique attitude in relation to the other apostles. The question which naturally suggests itself is, Why? Looking back from the standpoint of our present knowledge, we should certainly not have imagined, had we not been told, that there had been any difference between the pre-Christian experience of Paul and the pre-Christian experience of his colleagues. Nor, even after we have been told, is it at first sight very easy to account for the difference. Why should the original attitude of Paul towards Christianity have been more hostile than the original attitude of Peter or John or Thomas? There is nothing in the character of Paul which would lead us to expect that he should have manifested any hostility to the name of Jesus; everything the reverse. It is not too much to say that there is a greater inherent congruity between the character of Paul and the life of Jesus than there is between the life of Jesus and the first historical pictures of the character of John. If there ever was a man who, from a human point of view, might have been expected to sympathise with Jesus of Nazareth, that man was Saul of Tarsus. Unlike almost every other of the original disciples, the beginning of his Christain experience exhibited the promise and potence of a sacrificial life. Here, almost alone in the records of early Christianity, we are brought into contact with a man who does not begin by asking an equivalent for the service on which he is about to enter. We see him from the very outset consenting to leave all and follow Jesus, without ever once asking the question “What, then, shall we have?” We are impressed in him with the paramount and dominating presence of that sense of duty which is the perpetual foe of self-interest. It never occurs to him to weigh the consequences of the step he is taking; it never enters into his mind to measure the earthly loss by a possible earthly gain. All he knows’ is that he has heard a voice calling him, and that he has no choice but to obey. He surrenders himself to privation, pain, poverty, for the sake of love, and in so surrendering himself he manifests the ripest fruit of the sacrificial life which had yet been given to the world. Is it conceivable that such a man should, a few hours before, have been manifesting a personal hostility to the character of one who, considered from a purely human aspect, was so preeminently and markedly the counterpart of his own soul?

I answer, it is not. But I ask, Is there anything in the circumstances of the case which warrants us to conceive such a thing? Is the history of Saul of Tarsus the history of a man who was converted from antagonism to the character of Jesus? There is not a particle of evidence that in the mind of Saul there ever existed such an antagonism. The opposition in his mind was not to the character but to the name or claim of Jesus. How much he had learned of the narrative of Christ’s earthly life we can never know, but the very fact of the silence on this point is strongly confirmatory of the notion that the narrative of Christ’s earthly life was not the ground of his antipathy. His antipathy rested on something which was posthumous, on the claim set up by the disciples to the Messianic dignity of their departed Lord. Why that claim should have been repulsive to him we shall presently see; but mean time I wish to direct attention to the marked contrast which this view of the matter interposes between the experience of the unconverted Paul and the experience of the unconverted Peter, Thomas, and John. When we speak of the comparative antipathy of Saul and the other apostles, do we sufficiently consider their comparative difficulties? Do we sufficiently bear in mind that the starting-point of Saul was quite different from the starting-point of the other apostles? Saul began precisely where they ended; their inner room was only his threshold. The starting-point of Saul was the recognition of Jesus as Messiah; but the recognition of Jesus as Messiah was a comparatively late stage in the progress of the primitive apostles. No man can read dispassionately the Gospel narrative, and not be impressed with the fact that the first approach of Jesus to His disciples was personal and not official. The day is far spent before He asks them the question, “Whom do men say that I am; whom say ye that I am?” Before He asked that question He had already called them, charged them, organised them, set them apart for their mission. His aim was to attract them, not to His greatness but to Himself; or rather it was to lead them to a recognition of His greatness through a knowledge of Him self. Accordingly the great question was suppressed, postponed. Men were called at the outset not to the recognition of a doctrine, but to the acceptance of a life. They were not asked to believe something about Jesus, but to believe in Jesus Himself. The inquiry, who He was and whence He came, was designedly kept in abeyance. The disciple was desired to contemplate nothing but the man, to keep his eye persistently fixed upon that which was earthly and human. Step by step, unconsciously to himself, he was attracted into an atmosphere of love from which it was impossible for him to escape. Before he knew it he was already taken captive, already made to feel that the presence of the Master

Autobiographical Reminiscences. 2T

was a vital element in his joy. And when at last the Messianic claim was put forth, — when at last the crucial question came, “Whom say ye that I am?” the disciple had been so fortified by his past draught of love that, in spite of the recognised difficulties of such a confession, he was able with confidence to say, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

I say, ’ in spite of the recognised difficulties of Buch a confession.’ For it must be acknowledged that the claim of Jesus to be the Messiah was based upon the very ground which to the popular mind of Judca constituted the refutation of such a claim, — the bearing of the cross. That the Son of man, be cause He was Son of man, should be a special sufferer; that the Messiah, by the very reason of His sinlessness, should be a peculiar subject of sorrow; that He in whom the heavenly Father delighted should, just on the ground of that delight, be exposed to a more than ordinary share of human ills, — was a paradox which the mind of the Jewish nation was quite unable to realise. In the view of that nation the mark of Divine sonship was the exemption from sorrow; the token of heavenly favour was the possession of a path through ways of earthly pleasantness. It had become a settled point in the national consciousness that the good man must be the prosperous man — that the perfect man must be the most prosperous of all. Very startling, therefore, must have sounded the announcement which, according to St. Matthew,1 was

i Matt. xvi. 21.

made immediately after the proclamation of Jesus as Messiah — “that He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed.” That it was startling is manifest from the sequel. Peter cries out, “Be it far from Thee, Lord: this shall not be unto Thee,” and receives in return the withering rebuke, “Get thou behind me, Satan.” Shall it be asked why an expression of natural affection should have met with so vigorous a repulse? The answer is plain. It was not an expression of natural affection; it was the expression of an intellectual dogma — the dogma that suffering is incompatible with Messiahship. What excited the indignation of Jesus was the sight of a rock on which the ship must inevitably have foundered, if the movement had not been counteracted by the anchorage in a previous love, — a love founded on human relations, and fostered by personal companionship. The truth is, Peter had here very nearly reached that degree, and had altogether reached that ground of antagonism which was afterwards so signally manifested in the opposition of Saul of Tarsus. If Saul’s antipathy was more bitter, we know why. It was because in his case there was no refuge in a previous love. Saul had to struggle with the diffi- - culty of the Messianic claim without &ny aid from the memory of a past companionship. He had to begin where the other disciples ended, and precisely at that point where the other disciples stumbled. What prevented their stumbling from becoming a fall was the memory of their Christian past; Saul of

Tarsus had no such past, and therefore he had no such memory. He was called to take his start from the point of offence, and to walk backward into the paths of pleasantness. He had to begin with the cross, and thence retrace his steps toward the human scenes of Galilee. I cannot but think that there is an autobiographical reminiscence of this in the words written at a future day, ’ i I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus.” * Why should he put the Christ before the Jesus? Manifestly because he knew the Christ before the Jesus, because he was called to behold Him as the Messiah ere he was allowed to see Him as the man. The earliest object presented to his gaze was precisely that object which had repelled the gaze of the first disciples; he was required to receive the crucified Messiah before he was permitted to behold the Prophet of Nazareth.

Now the question arises, Have we any record preserved of Paul’s state of mind at this juncture? Have we anywhere throughout his writings an indication given of the difficulty which the Christian problem presented to his own heart? I think we have. I believe there is one passage which, although not professedly autobiographical, has yet all the force of an autobiographical reminiscence, and opens up a vista of perspective into the days of his pre-Christian struggle. The words to which I allude are the well-known declaration, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel: for it is the power of God unto sal vation to every one that believeth.”2 The famili-

1 Phil. in. 8. 2 Rom. 1. 16.

arity of the passage prevents us, I think, from seeing its peculiarity. Why should Paul say, “I ain not ashamed of the Gospel?” Why should he use a negative instead of a positive? Why should he be content with asserting the mere absence of a sense of disgrace, when he might have been expected to exult in a sense of triumphant glory? Is not the reason clear? Is it not plain that Paul deprecates any feeling of shame concerning Christianity, because he has a distinct remembrance of the time when Christianity did present itself to his mind as a thing to be ashamed of? He remembers that the Gospel of Christ originally came before him in a garb of extreme humility, and in an attitude which excited his contempt as a son of Israel — an attitude which impelled him to say, i I would be ashamed to belong to such a company.’ And if we ask what awakened this sense of contempt, the answer is found in this very passage. When Paul says, * ‘I am not ashamed of the Gospel: because it is power,” he means to imply that he was at one time ashamed of it from believing it to be weakness. His objection to recognise Jesus as the Messiah originated in the fact that the cross of Jesus was contrary to the current ideal of greatness.

I have already pointed out the strong analogy that subsisted between the Roman empire and the Jewish theocracy. Paul was a member of both. He was environed by the traditions of his nation, and he was surrounded by the atmosphere of imperialism. Both ran directly counter to the recognition of a regal claim which was based essentially on a power of infinite stooping. Alike to the Roman and to the Jew, the ideal of universal dominion was the pre eminence attained by becoming the master of men. The pre-eminence claimed by Christianity was on precisely the opposite ground; the Son of man was to be the servant of all. The thought came to Paul not only as a novelty, but as an incongruity. I know very well that he could have found it in certain passages of the Old Testament. In after-years no one wondered so much as he at his failure to discover an idea lying in the very heart of his own scriptures; he could only attribute his obtuseness to the blindness produced by materialism, or what he calls “the god of this world.” * None the less, it remains true that neither he nor his countrymen ever did discover it while they remained Jews. The prophetic indications of a connection between suffering and glory were foreign to the heart of the nation, and repugnant to her historical traditions; and to believe that God would manifest Himself through sorrow, exposed a man to very much the same reproach which is now experienced by any one who holds the crude belief in a Divine manifestation through chairs and tables. The reproach of early Christianity was analogous to the reproach of modern spirit-rapping — it was believed to indicate a weakness on the part of the worshipper. Above all, the idea of death was held to be incongruous and incompatible with Divine manifestation. The Jew resembled the Greek in his horror of death, yet the difference was equal to the resemblance. The

i 2 Cor. iv. 4.

Greek’s horror of death was a physical aversion; that of the Jew was based upon a moral shaine. The Greek revolted from everything which imperilled the pleasures of life, and therefore his revolt from death was prompted by natural fear. The Jew, on the other hand, was at no time immersed in the luxuries of life; the whole tenor of his religion was in favour of abstinence and self-denial. If he had believed death to be a part of the originally prescribed course of nature, — in other words, of the original will of God, he would have accepted it stoically if not resignedly. But he believed it to be something abnormal, irregular, disconnected with the first plan of nature. It was to him the penalty imposed for a violated law, and as such he feared it. He saw in it the shadow that eclipsed the face of God”, and therefore the valley of his own humiliation. The Jew feared death for the same reason that the Brahman feared life — because he believed it to be a state of separation from the Deity; the entrance into a land of shades, illusions, dreams. He never associated his greatest men with the thought of death; Enoch escaped it, Elijah passed it by, Moses had a hidden grave, Samuel was seen to rise again. To the son of Israel, morality was inseparable from immortality; the sting of death was sin.

Now we have Paul’s own words for the assertion that he was in a very pronounced sense a scion of his race. He tells us that in him there was a peculiar meeting of national associations. l ‘If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more: circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee.” * Every expression of this autobiographical statement is intended to suggest the idea that the mind of Paul was imbued with a sense of the necessary connection between physical power and Messianic glory. He was of the stock of Israel — a lineal descendant of the man who, as a token of conquering strength, was declared to be a prince with God. He was of the tribe of Benjamin — a member of that community which had produced the first Jewish king, the king whose name he himself bore. He was a Pharisee — a follower of that sect which measured everything by its external results, and estimated the rewards of virtue by its triumphs in the face of the world. Such a man, hedged round on every side by the traditions of the past, must on every side have been repelled by the spectacle of the cross of Jesus. He was required to accept Jesus precisely at that point where his national characteristics were assailed. He was required to acknowledge as Messiah one whom he believed to be dead; as a scion of the stock of Israel, as a member of the tribe of Benjamin, as a follower of the sect of the Pharisees, he was bound to repudiate such a claim. The one marvel is not his original opposition, but his subsequent conversion. The problem is not to account for Saul’s virulence in comparison with the other disciples, but for the fact that, with such ground for a comparatively great antagonism, he should ultimately have manifested a faith and love and zeal to which the other disciples in their ripest moments never attained.

It is true, Paul ultimately came to the conclusion that the sacrificial life of the Gospel had in it that very element which had attracted him in Judaism — the element of power. But the very expression in which he announces this discovery is significant. He says “it is the power of God to every one that believeth” He means to say that the beauty of the building is quite apparent when a man has once got inside the house. But this implies that in the view of Paul there was a discrepancy between the inside and the outside appearance. The passage, in fact, has all the force of a biographical note, and throws back a light upon Paul’s original relation to Christianity. It virtually tells us that he found in the inside precisely the opposite of what he expected to find — power instead of weakness. We can readily understand how such a discovery should have formed a bond of constancy to Christianity after he had once embraced it, but the problem still remains unsolved why he should have embraced it at all. The secret of Christianity’s sacrificial power lay, according to Paul, in the interior of the building. It could not, therefore, have been its sacrificial power which drew Paul from the outside. We want to know, not what kept him in, but what let him in; not what enabled him to remain steadfast to his discipleship, but what originally made him a discipJe-He now stands before us in the exterior of the building, and to his eye the edifice looks so repulsive and uninviting that he cannot bear to enter it. There is a stone before the door which is to him a rock of offence — the stone which originally lay on the sepulchre of Jesus. He cannot accept as his Messiah one who, in the sight of men, has passed through the ordeal of death, and been laid in an earthly grave. Who shall roll away the stone from the door? Who shall remove the preliminary prejudice which to Paul bars the threshold? Who shall reconcile to him the claim of Jesus to be the Messiah with the undoubted and notorious fact that He “has been evidently set forth crucified.”?1

Now let us try to dismiss from our minds any thought of documentary evidence. Let us, in the meantime, ignore the knowledge that we have any subsequent record of the immediate cause of Paul’s conversion. Let us confine ourselves strictly to the fact that he has been confronted by these two seemingly incongruous elements — the claim of Jesus to Messiahship, and the consciousness that Jesus had been crucified. The question is, In what direction could a solution of the problem be found whereby Paul could accept the Messiahship of Jesus in spite of the fact of His crucifixion? I have no hesitation in saying that there was only one possible direction in which such a result could be found. If Paul accepted Christ at all, he could only do so on the ground of a belief that, in spite of the crucifixion, Christ was still alive. In the very nature of the case Paul was bound to be the apostle of immortality. Circumstanced as he was, it was not possible for

i Gal. ill. l.

36 Spiritual Development of St. PaiU.

him to be a Christian in any form except on the basis that Christ was risen. I am not prepared to say that the same holds true for the other apostles. They did not originally come to the Christ but to the Jesus. Their first approach to the Son of man was not on the ground of His Messiahship, but on the ground of His humanity. They were drawn to Him not by an exhibition of His power, but by a vision of His gentleness, by a sight of His human sympathy. Such an expression, independent as it was of Messianic manifestations, could not have been affected by the contradiction of these manifestations. Even though the death of Jesus had been to the first apostles the closing scene of all, even though the shadow of the grave had to them never been eclipsed by the vision of His immortality, there is no improbability in the thought that a Christian community might have been founded on the basis of His humanity alone; what the sacrificial life of Buddha has done, the sacrificial life of Jesus well might do. But Paul did not originany approach Christ as a man. What he was called to behold was not a human life, but a Messianic claim, and a Messianic claim in behalf of one who had been carried to the grave. Into the portal of the grave Paul could not enter to meet with Jesus. The conception of death was incompatible with the conception of Messiah. Had he known Jesus as a man, he would have reverenced Him as a man, and his reverence would not have been eclipsed even by the shadow of death. But he was called to know Him first and foremost as a Divine manifestation, and with such a recognition the shadow of death was at variance. Before Paul could even approach Christianity, he required to see that shadow superseded. To make him a Christian, it was necessary that, first of all, the thought of death should be annulled by the vision of immortality, and that beyond the heights of Calvary there should be discerned the sunlit peaks of Olivet.

All this, I say, might be gathered from the nature of the case irrespective altogether of documentary evidence. But when we turn to the documentary evidence our expectation is wonderfully confirmed. We leave out of account the narrative of the Acts, yet perhaps nowhere is the narrative of the Acts more strikingly corroborated than in the view that Paul’s Christian experience began with the vision of Christ’s immortality. When he is speaking to that nation which of all others reverenced most the idea of physical strength, he bases Christ’s claim to its recognition on the fact that He had triumphed over death, that He was l i declared to be the Son of God with power, by the resurrection from the dead.” l When he is speaking to the same nation of the ground of his Christian confidence, he again lays the main stress on the vision of Christ’s immortality, “who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God.” 2 But to my mind the passage on this subject which of all others most trenchantly illustrates Paul’s position is his remarkable aspiration contained in his letter

i Rom. 1. 4. 8 Bom. vlil. 34.

to the church of Philippi, * ’ that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellow ship of His sufferings.”! I have called it a remarkable aspiration, because it seems to invert the natural order. Why did not Paul say, “that I may know Him, and the fellowship of His sufferings, and the power of his resurrection”? Is not this the historical arrangement in which the events of the life of Jesus actually presented themselves? Undoubtedly it is. But it is not the order in which the events of the life of Jesus presented themselves to Paul’s experience; that which was last, to him came first. The passage has a biographical ring in it. It tells us that Christ had come to the man of Tarsus in the inverted order of His own life. To the primitive disciples the Christian revelation had presented itself in its natural and historical orderfirst the Man, then the fellowship with His sufferings, and, last of all, the power of His resurrection. To Paul the Christian revelation presented itself in exactly the opposite arrangement; it began with the crown, and it went back to the cross. Paul’s vision rested first of all on that which was supernatural and superhuman, and he had thence to retrace his steps into that which was earthly and historical; he began with the “power of the resurrection,” he passed next into “fellowship with the sufferings,” and he ended with the recognition of that which identified Christ with humanity. His spiritual life was in one sense a progress from Damascus to Galilee; it had to find its terminus where that of Peter and John had found its beginning. Its goal was to be the discovery of that perfect bond of humanity which bound the heart of the disciple to the heart of the Master, and in reaching that discovery it attained the completion of its journey precisely where the first apostles had begun.

We have now arrived at a definite point, and a very important point — the beginning. We have reached a spot which we can make the starting-place of Paul’s Christian experience. We have found that in the nature of the case it was necessary that Paul should begin with the vision of Christ’s immortality; his very conception of the Jewish Messiah made it imperative that, at the outset, he should see the form of Jesus dissociated from the trappings of the grave. We have seen that this expectation is confirmed by documentary evidence, and precisely by that documentary evidence which in such a case is of the greatest value — the personal testimony of Paul himself. Here, then, is a centre from which we may legitimately take our departure. Independently altogether of the narrative in the Acts, and from the simple testimony of St. Paul’s own autobiographical recollections, we have been driven to the conclusion that the beginning of his Christian experience was a vision of the exalted Christ. It by no means follows, however, that his vision of the exalted Christ was reached through a sense of personal exaltation. The peculiarity of Paul’s experience lies in the fact that he came to the recognition of Christ’s glory by passing through a phase of individual depression. Whether literally or metaphorically, we are bound to accept the statement that by him the golden gates were first seen through dimmed eyes. We have no need to travel beyond the testimony of his own epistles, nor beyond those epistles whose testimony is most unquestioned, in order to recognise the fact that the beginning of Christian experience was to him the beginning of struggle. Saul oi Tarsus exhibits no struggle; Paul the apostle on the very threshold meets us as a man of conflict. From that hour when his eye first rested on the immortal glory of Christianity, he seems to have awakened to the perception of his own natural weakness and nothingness; the period of the exalting revelation was the period of the depressing thorn. It is from this stage, and not from any pre-Christian stage, that we must date the opening of that great spiritual battle which he himself describes as the war between the spirit and the flesh. The exaltation to the third heavens and the buffeting influence of the thorn are the respective parents of these two subsequent tendencies which contended within him as the inner and the outer man — tendencies which, when reconciled in one direction, broke out anew in another, and were only lulled to rest in the mature ripeness of a peaceful old age. A consideration of the initial movement of these tendencies in the heart of Paul will engage our attention in the following chapter.