Paul's Third Struggle and Its Result

I have said that when Paul speaks of having besought the Lord thrice for the removal of his thorn, he seems to me to indicate that the struggles of his spiritual life had divided themselves into three distinct and successive classes. The first class consisted of the conflicts of the missionary — the struggles of the prospective apostle of the Gentiles to overcome the barrier of his own humiliation. The second embraced the conflicts of the man — the wakening in the human heart of the sense of its own sin by reason of its very contact with a higher and a holier life. One other class still remained to complete the good fight in which the human spirit had to engage ere it could finish its course with joy. Hitherto its struggles had all been with itself; it was now to enter into battle with others. Its previous warfare had arisen from the contrast between its own light and its own darkness; its remaining strife was to arise from beholding its actual light imputed to motives of darkness.

I have called the first struggle Arabian, because it took place under the shadows of Sinai. I have called the second Antiochian, because it found its initiative movement contemporaneously with the time when Antioch began to be the second centre of the Christian Church. I shall call the third Galatian, because it seems to have had its beginning and to have experienced its fiercest hour in connection with that Church of Galatia to which the apostle dictated one of his epistles.

It will be observed that these three struggles exhibit the progress of Paul’s mind through three different spheres. The Arabian conflict brought him into contact with the contrast between himself and the Divine life. The Antiochian conflict brought him into contact with the contrast between the higher and the lower nature within himself. The Galatian conflict was to bring him into contact with the contrast between himself and others. In the first instance, his struggle arose from contemplating his own darkness in comparison with the light of God. In the second instance it arose from contemplating the darkness of one part of his nature in comparison with another side which had been illuminated by the Divine Spirit. In the third instance, it was to arise from hearing the light which was in him itself called darkness, from being confronted with opposition and with obloquy, not in those respects in which he was blameworthy, but precisely in those aspects of his character wherein he had experienced the renewing effects of grace.

This third conflict, then, came neither from God nor from his own nature, but from the malice of his contemporaries. It marked the earliest division in the Christian camp, the first moment in which there began to appear any difference of tendency among the followers of the Cross. Hitherto the community of Christians had refused to regard itself as a dissent from the faith of Judaism. Judaism had looked upon it as a dissent, but the Christian community had taken a different view. The only difference between the followers of Christ and the followers of the ancient worship had up to this time been, that the. former had proclaimed the realisation of what to the latter was still only a hope. In such a claim there was no heresy. It was perfectly competent for a Jew at any time to say that he recognised in the world the presence of the looked-for Messiah. The recognition might be a mere fancy, and in any case it would be necessary to subject the statement to the test of examination; but the statement in itself was in no sense adverse to the spirit of Judaism, and in no sense disqualified a man for being a member of its communion. Accordingly, we are not surprised that the first followers of Jesus did not regard themselves as the less Jews because they were Christians. It might even be said for them, and be claimed by them, that they were Jews in a peculiar sense, — that they were animated by a patriotic zeal to see the realization of the national hope, and to hasten the advent of the national glory. Whatever opposition they encountered from the mass of their countrymen, it was originally an opposition in no sense connected with any charge of disloyalty to the faith of their fathers. They were opposed at first on grounds political rather than

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religious, and even while objects of secular suspicion, were allowed to retain their place in the membership of the Jewish synagogue.

But it was a very different matter when the Christian community began to modify the worship of the past. To say that the Messiah had come was not in itself a heresy; it was a thing to be determined by evidence. But to say that because the Messiah had come there was no longer any need for circumcision, was to strike at the very roots of the old religion. When the Christian community called in question the doctrine of circumcision, it turned the opposition against itself into a new channel. It was not possible any longer to regard it as a Jewish sect; it assumed the aspect of a separate religion. It was inevitable that it should be so. From a Jewish point of view, no one can wonder at the horror with which the movement against circumcision was received by those who still retained the desire to be ranked as members of the Church of Israel. The case may be paralleled by imagining a section within the Church of England who should profess to dispense with the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, on the ground that Christianity had opened the way to a more inward and a more mystical communion. The Church of England is vastly tolerant of different shades of religious belief within ier own pale — more tolerant than any other Church in Christendom. But it is safe to say that, in such a case as this, there would not be one dissentient voice as to the judgment which ought to be pronounced; High, Low, and

Broad Church alike would unite in demanding that the adherents of this new tenet should be forced to leave the fold. And why? Because this ceremony of communion involves something more than a doc trine. The doctrine which it involves might be had without it. But it constitutes, itself, the essential bond of church membership — the badge which distinguishes those inside from those outside the pale. So was it in even a more pronounced sense with the ceremony of circumcision. If the Lord’s Supper is the badge of fellowship with the Church, circumcision was the badge of fellowship alike with the Church and with the State; it was that which distinguished the Jew both in religion and in politics from the inhabitants of all other lands. It had, no doubt, a doctrinal bearing; it symbolised the sacrificial surrender of the soul to God. But it was not its doctrine which made it indispensable; that could have existed in its absence. It was the fact that it constituted to the Jewish nation the ground of its political and religious communion, which placed the man who should violate it in the position of one who had committed treason against his country.

That man was Paul. It was destined that he should be the first to whom the task should be committed of exposing the inadequacy of circumcision to constitute the life of a religious system. It is not surprising that on Paul should have fallen all the odium which such a task involved. His opposition to the doctrine of circumcision was not only the first step in the final rupture between Christianity and Judaism, it was the initial movement in the rending of that robe of the Master which had hitherto been seamless. It revealed for the first time the discords which already lay latent within the heart of Christendom. It separated the army of the “Captain of salvation” into two great camps, which, however closely they might join together against a common enemy in time of war, were ever to be in mutual antagonism in the season of outward peace. From the very beginning Paul had recognised that he had a mission to the Gentiles, but he did not recognise at the beginning that his mission to the Gentiles was to lead through any other than the old familiar way. Under the shadows of Sinai he had begun to breathe a freer and a more salubrious atmosphere — the atmosphere of patriarchal times, but it was still the native air of Israel. He had realised the universality of that promise which had made Abraham the medium of blessing to all the families of the earth, but it had never occurred to him that this blessing should come through any other door than the old gate of circumcision. Now for the first time, he had burst the barriers of that gate, had become, in an absolute sense, the apostle of the Gentiles. He had recognised the truth not only that the Gentile should have the Gospel preached equally with the Jew, but that he should be allowed to receive the Gospel through his own natural channels. He might obtain the patriarchal privilege without subjection to the patriarchal conditions, might be reckoned a child of Abraham without undergoing the ceremony of circumcision. The result was that Paul immediately became the mark for general obloquy throughout the theocratic community. Not only did Christianity pass into a more distinctive opposition to Judaism, but within the pale of Christianity itself there arose the internecine strife between a Judaic and a Gentile principle. Upon Paul, as the representative of the Gentile principle, the weight of the recrimination fell. That recrimination was bitter and deep, and its sting lay in the fact that it attacked the apostle in what he believed to be his strong points. It was on the ground of an apostolic call that he had ventured to form and to follow an independent personal opinion; it was natural, above all things, that the earliest assault should be made precisely on this claim to apostleship. Accordingly, the first attack on Paul was directed against the very fact of his mission. He had claimed to have received a call through as direct a communion with the Master as had been enjoyed by the earliest disciples. Where was the evidence for such communion? He had based it upon a vision; what proof was there that the vision was a reality? It was not in vision that the Master had appeared to them. Their apostolic call had been founded on a communion which had manifested itself in an intercourse with the man Christ Jesus, which had received the proof of its reality from the sound of a human voice and the touch of a living hand. But here was a man who professed to have obtained his mission from a voice that had passed away from earth, to have been impelled by the touch of a hand that had vanished from the human scene. How could such a profession be substantiated?

What evidence was there that it was not a dream or a delusion, the offspring of madness, or the creature of imagination? It was the call to a new gospel, a gospel which cut at the roots of all that had been cherished by ancient Israel; surely such a call must be supported by irresistible and incontrovertible evidence — evidence resting upon a higher and a more impregnable ground than the uncorroborated visions of an individual soul.

From this doubt as to the accuracy of Paul’s observation, the transition was easy to a disparagement of his character. Had his actual life been harmonious with his apostolic claim? Had his conduct in the outward world tallied with his professed ex perience of an inward illumination? If it had not done so, there was no need of further argument; his mission was at once disproved and discredited. Accordingly, the next attack on Paul was directed not so much against his opinions as against his personality. Instead of examining the historical circumstances under which he professed to have received his vision, his Judaic adversaries confronted what appeared to them to be the imperfections of his apostolic character. No one can read the Epistle to the Galatians, and the two epistles to the Corinthians, without being impressed with the fact that the life of the apostle was being subjected to a severe and an unjust criticism. In three directions we find that his ministerial character is assailed. It is assailed in respect of its power; insinuations are ventilated that his letters express a more authoritative tone than is borne out by his actual presence.

It is assailed in respect of its motives; suggestions are made that he is using his apostolic claim for the sake of obtaining a livelihood. It is assailed in respect of its consistency; assertions are spread abroad that he himself has not been uniform in his repudiation of the doctrine of circumcision, but that in practice he has veered about like the changes of the wind.

It is to meet these charges mainly that the epistles to Galatia and Corinth are written. It is in these that he claims the signs of an apostle, and appeals for corroboration to the testimony of his converts. It is in these that he asserts the unselfishness of his motives, and declares how, in the midst of ministerial work, he has laboured for his daily livelihood by the toil of his own hands. It is in these that he maintains the uniform consistency of his practice, and appeals in confirmation of that consistency to the persecutions he had never ceased to suffer. Reading between the lines of these epistles, we see a retrospective light cast back on the intermediate years between his letter to the Church of Galatia and his letter to the Church of Thessalonica. In his epistles to the Thessalonians there is as yet no note of internecine war. The only struggle which there manifests itself is the conflict between the soul and the present world — a conflict which drives the apostle to seek his hope in another and a future world. But here Paul’s foes are those of his own household, and the attack directed against him is an attack not against his weakness but against the points in his life which were really strong.

We are led, therefore, to the conclusion that this third struggle in the spiritual experience of St. Paul must have had its origin at a period subsequent to the writing of the epistles to the Thessalonians, and previous to the writing of those to the Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans. It ushers us, accordingly, into a new and distinct epoch of Paul’s spiritual history. It is at this stage that, in my opinion, we are to seek for the third of those occasions in which, according to his own testimony, he besought the Lord for the removal of his thorn. For it must be evident, even on the most superficial view, that in this attack upon his apostolic pretensions, the sense of his physical defect must have returned to him with redoubled force and with intensified pain. He claimed to be possessor of apostolic power. Might not his enemies point to his thorn, and say, “Physician, heal thyself.” If he had been given the power to cure others, why did he carry in his own body the marks of dilapidation and disease? The signs of an apostle were the possession of healing gifts, alike over body and mind. Was it reasonable to suppose that a man who possessed such gifts would himself be in a condition of corporeal weakness, would himself require the aid of those very bodily ministrations which it was his special prerogative to alleviate and remove? Was not the very fact of such bodily weakness a conclusive and irrefragable proof that Paul did not possess those powers which he professed to wield, and that the heavenly vision on which he based his apostolic claim had existed only in the dream of his own imagining?

Such was, undoubtedly, the reasoning of Paul’s enemies. It is not too much to say that never before had his thorn cost him such pain. Not even under the shadows of Arabia had it brought to him so much bitterness. Under the shadows of Arabia its sting consisted in awakening the memories of past evil; here, for the first time, its sting was turned against that in Paul which was really good. His thorn was no longer an attack merely upon that which needed penalty and expiation, it was an attack on that which marked the growth of a new life. We have evidence from the second group of his epistles how keenly he had felt this sting. We have evidence that in this third and final struggle, there was revealed to Paul’s own mind how much of the human element was still left within him. He had imagined that, by fixing his thoughts entirely upon a future world, and seeking to forget the present hour, he could emancipate himself from all earthly annoyances. That imagination was now proved to be a dream. The attack on Paul’s character, the attack on that part of his character which he felt to have been purified, roused again all his interest in the passing hour. It showed him that the Thessalonian standpoint was as yet impossible. He could not find rest from the present by merely surrendering himself to a hope of the future; the present was a fact, the future was an idea, and the fact was stronger than the idea. Men recriminated him in the actual world;

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he could not keep down his indignation by simply telling himself that there was another world coming in the future. If there was to be a refuge from present evil, it could only be found in present good. To emancipate himself from earthly annoyances by simply cherishing the faith that the earth and all therein would by-and-by be burned up, was to com fort himself by a mere negation; it was to conquer his annoyances by suppressing the cause of them. There was clearly a higher state possible — to conquer them while their cause yet remained. Hitherto he had only cherished the hope of putting them down; the highest course was to rise above them without putting them down. That goal could not be reached by the Thessalonian method; he felt so now in his deepest experience. He might still cherish the hope of the advent of a better world, but that hope could not be the immediate source of his strength. The immediate source of his strength must be an im mediate good, something which could be realised here and now. If he was to reach an asceticism which would lift him above the world’s sting, he must reach it not by seeing in the dim future the coming of another world, but by an instantaneous translation into some higher and heavenly life.

It was while meditating on this theme that there came into the mind of Paul a new and a great thought — a thought which was to transform his whole spiritual experience, and to make him, in his own words, * * a new creature.” He had been anxious to prove that he possessed the signs of an apostle; but were the signs of an apostle the ultimate evidence of Christian power? Were there not signs lying behind the apostolic? Was not the ultimate evidence of Christian power the possession of higher marks than those which designated apostleship — the marks of the Lord Jesus? And were not the marks oi the Lord Jesus precisely those credentials which he, of all men, could reproduce? His enemies slighted him because he was the possessor of a thorn; but had not the Master a whole crown of thorns? Was not the life of the Son of man essentially a life of sorrows? wras not His greatest miracle the power to bear these sorrows? Why should this element have been altogether overlooked by those who laid claim to Christian apostleship? Men seemed to think that the only miracles of the Divine life were miracles of action; did they not forget that the Divine life itself was a miracle of bearing? If he, Paul, could succeed in a reproducing that life, if he could succeed in repeating, in his own experience, the patience, the gentleness, and the resignation with which the Son of man bore His cross, would he not furnish -by the very possession of his thorn a higher proof of apostleship than could ever be given to the world by the mere spectacle of its removal?

And here it was that there burst upon the mind of Paul a new prospect of emancipation from the troubles of earth. In the epistles to the Thessalonians his only solace had been the hope that there would come in the future, and perhaps in the near future, an advent of the Lord which would produce a change in earthly conditions. The hope now dawned upon him that this change might come not in the future but in the present, that, instead of needing to wait for it, he might at this very moment be translated into a new atmosphere, made the recipient of a higher life. He had been looking forward to the time when he should be caught up to meet the Lord in the air; might not his spirit be caught up now? Was the presence of the Master limited to an hour of death — either the death of the individual or the death of the world? Was there no possibility of being ushered into union with the life of Christ until the silver cord was loosed and the golden bowl was broken? Could the spirit of man not be translated into the upper air while yet it was environed in this tabernacle of clay? If the Son of man Himself had spoken of dwelling in heaven even while He was yet on earth, might not His followers also be in heaven while yet they trod the earthly scene? In a word, might not a disciple of Jesus be lifted without death into close and immediate communion with the life of God, be translated in his higher nature into an existence separate from and above the world, and made a citizen of the heavenly state whilst yet in human form he inhabited the sphere of men?

Such was Paul’s question. The answer to it was the close of his third great struggle, the response to his final petition that his thorn might depart from him. That answer was immediate. Paul seemed to find in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the goal after which he had been striving for long and weary years. Even in the solitudes of Arabia he had found no permanent rest from his thorn. He had only rested there under a sense of the overwhelming power of God, under a conviction that God’s power might be perfected through the very instrumentality of his physical weakness. But here he was able to take a higher flight, to reach a deeper rest. There had burst upon him the con viction that the Divine power of Christianity was itself simply the strength to sustain weakness, that the earthly glory of the Master had mainly consisted in His ability to support with unmurmuring love the weight of a bitter thorn. And the thought entered into the mind of Paul that he, by the very fact of his suffering, might be united to Christ. The thought entered into his heart that the very physical weakness which seemed to deny the truth of his apostolic claim might become the vehicle for lifting him into the immediate presence of the Master. His cross was a reproach amongst men; what if it should raise him into the life of God? He felt that it had so raised him. He felt that, instead of needing to wait for the advent of heaven to earth, he himself had already made his advent from earth into heaven. He had been translated without seeing death. He had been borne aloft into the third heaven. He had been carried up into the very bosom of the Master and made to lie upon His breast. He had been allowed to anticipate the second advent, to enter here on earth into the fellowship, the communion, the citizenship of the life everlasting. And the gate by which he had entered in was just the despised gate of his own sufferings, just the avenue of his thorn. The hand by which he had clasped the Messiah was the pierced hand which made him the byword of his contemporaries; the door by which he had approached the presence of the Divine life was precisely that battered, mutilated door which in the view of his countrymen precluded him from any share in that presence. In a deeper sense than ever before, God had now said to his soul, ’ My strength is made perfect in your weakness.”

Here, then, is a new stage of Paul’s spiritual experience. He is no longer merely waiting for Christ’s second advent; he has gone himself to meet it. He is no longer solacing himself with the thought that a time is coming when he shall be lifted above the present world; he is solaced with the conviction that he has been lifted above the present world already. The epoch through which we are passing in St. Paul’s spiritual history is that period extending from the writing of the epistles to the Thessalonians to the writing of the letter to the converts of the world’s metropolis. The materials for estimating its character will be found in the epistles to the Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans. The attitude of Paul in all these writings is the attitude of a man who has emancipated himself from the cares of the present world by a process of spiritual asceticism; so far, the letters to the Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans are in harmony with those to the

Thcssalonians. But the difference lies here: the asceticism in the epistles to the Thessalonians is the asceticism of a man who looks forward to a coming heaven; that of the four later epistles is the asceticism of a man who believes himself to have already entered into heaven and to have left the present world actually behind. That this is the character of these later letters it would not be difficult to prove. It would be very easy to draw up from each of them a catalogue of passages corroborative of the assertion that Paul’s attitude to mundane things is that of one who looks down upon a surmounted standpoint. I shall, indeed, hereafter show that in the latest of the letters — that to the Romans — there are already discernible the traces of a further transition, the foreshadowings of a subsequent stage of development. Nevertheless, the general tone of these four epistles is the same, and, as I have said, nothing could be easier than to prove it by quotations. I think, however, that in this instance there is a more excellent way. I be lieve the best method will be to take up the points in these epistles in which the spiritual nature of Paul exhibits a development from his previous standpoint, and to consider in what respect his attitude towards current opinion has undergone a change of posture. It will be found that in no case has his later stage denied or falsified the old. It will be found that the new culture has exhibited itself not in the way of negation but by the process of supplement, not by destroying the ancient landmarks but by filling up that which is behind. No doubt, when we fill up that which is behind, we have altered the aspect of all our former view; the discovery of one hidden feature of a landscape may transform to our mind the whole scene. None the less does it remain true that the transformation has been effected not by elimination but by increase, not by pulling down but by building up. To a more detailed consideration of this subject we shall revert in the next chapter.