The Books of the New Testament

by Leighton Pullan

E.

From A.D. 52 to 56.

St. Paul's Third Missionary Journey: xviii. 23-xxi. 16.—Paul revisits Galatia and Phrygia; Apollos, a converted {115} Jew, defends Christianity at Corinth (xviii. 23-28). Paul stays at Ephesus, great riot (xix.). Roman officials tolerant to Christianity, craftsmen whose pockets are affected show violence. Journey to Macedonia and Greece, Paul at Troas, Eutychus' fall and cure, journey to Miletus where Paul meets the presbyters of Ephesus (xx.). Voyage to Tyre and Caesarea (xxi. 1-16).

F.

From A.D. 56 to 61.

St. Paul arrested at Jerusalem, imprisoned at Caesarea, voyage to Rome: xxi. 17-xxviii. 31.—Paul visits James and the presbyters, the Jews try to kill him, he is rescued and taken to the castle (xxi. 17-40). His speech to the Jews, is removed by the chief captain (xxii.). His speech before the Jewish Council, is taken to Caesarea (xxiii.). Appears before the procurator Felix (xxiv.). Appears before the procurator Festus, appeals to the emperor, speaks before Agrippa (xxv., xxvi.). Roman officials still tolerant, but obliged to interfere. The voyage and shipwreck (xxvii.). Paul at Melita (xxviii. 1-10). He journeys to Rome and expounds the gospel at Rome, where the Jews had not previously heard anything against him. He preaches the kingdom of God for two years (xxviii. 11-31).

Similar Characteristics of St. Luke's Gospel and Acts.—Among such are the continued interest in Samaritans (Acts i. 8; viii. 5-25) John the Baptist (Acts i. 22; x. 37; xiii. 24; xviii. 25; xix. 3), women (Acts i. 14; ix. 36; xii. 12; xvii. 4), the poor (Acts ii. 45; iii. 3; iv. 32; ix. 39, etc.). In both books Christ is specially called "Lord," and is the great Prophet (Luke vii. 16, 39; xxiv. 19-27; cf. Acts iii. 22; vii. 37), also the suffering "Servant" (Luke xxiv. 36, 45; cf. Acts iii. 13, 18; iv. 27; viii. 32). Notice, too, in both books the long reports of prayers and speeches.

[1] The "we sections" contain 97 verses. They are xvi. 10-17, xx. 5-15; xxi. 1-18, xxvii. 1-xxviii. 16.

[2] See Rev. Sir John C. Hawkins, Bart., M.A., Horae Synopticae.

[3] See Lightfoot, Commentary on Galatians.

[4] The reader is referred to Dr. Gore, The Church and the Ministry, p. 234 f. (fourth edition).

[5] Encyclopaedia Biblica, vol. i. p. 49.

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CHAPTER VIII

THE EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL

Although the Christian cannot regard the Epistles contained in the New Testament as having quite the same importance as the Gospels which record the life and sayings of his Divine Master, he must regard them as having a profound significance. They deal with the creed and the conduct of the Church with an inspired insight which gives them an undying value, and they are marked by a personal affection which gives them an undying charm. They lend, too, a most powerful support to the historical evidence of the truth of Christianity. We have already noticed that the earliest Gospel was probably not written before A.D. 62, while St. John's Gospel is probably as late as A.D. 85. But several of the twenty-one Epistles in the New Testament are certainly earlier than A.D. 62, and out of the whole number only the three by St. John can be confidently placed at a later date than St. John's Gospel. Now, these twenty-one Epistles assume the truth of the story contained in the Gospels. They do more than this. For they prove that during the lifetime of men who had personally known Jesus Christ, there were large numbers of earnest men and women who were at home with the same ideas as those which Christians have cherished until modern times. Some of these ideas explain what we find in the Gospels. For instance, the doctrine of the Atonement is more plainly expounded in the Epistles than in the Gospels. This doctrine, together with those which concern the Person of Jesus Christ, the Holy {117} Trinity, the sacraments, the Church, and the ministry, could be shown to have existed about A.D. 60, even if the Gospels had perished or were proved to be forgeries. The indirect evidence which the Epistles give to the life and teaching of our Lord is therefore of immense importance. If the infidel says that these doctrines are mere theories, we can ask him how these theories arose, and challenge him to produce a cause which so adequately accounts for them as the incarnation of the Son of God.

The origin of "spiritual letters" or "epistles" was perhaps due to the wisdom and originality of St. Paul. At any rate, there is nothing improbable in this conjecture, nor need it draw us into any sympathy with the recent attempts to use it as a means for discrediting those Epistles in the New Testament which bear the names of other authors. It is possible that the earliest Epistle is that of St. James, and we have no means of telling whether St. Paul did or did not anticipate him in writing Epistles. In any case, if St. Paul is not the pioneer, he is the captain of epistle-writers. St. Cyprian, St. Jerome, St. Bernard, and in modern times Archbishop Fenelon and Dr. Pusey, have illustrated the power of making a letter the vehicle of momentous truths. But on the greatest of them there has fallen only a portion of the mantle of St. Paul.

We possess thirteen Epistles written by St. Paul. There is no real reason for doubting the genuineness of any of them, and a remarkable change has lately taken place in the manner in which the opponents of orthodox Christianity have treated them. When the ingenious attempt was made, sixty years ago, to prove that St. Paul invented a type of Christianity which was not taught by Christ, it was held that only Galatians, Romans, and 1 and 2 Corinthians were genuine. The other Epistles attributed to St. Paul were said to be forgeries written after St. Paul's death, and intended to act as certificates for the Catholic faith of the 2nd century. Since then criticism has grown wiser. The genuineness of Philippians and 1 Thessalonians was first conceded. Then it became necessary to {118} admit the genuineness of Colossians and Philemon; and 2 Thessalonians and Ephesians are now being placed in the same list even by some extreme critics. In fact, the use made of St. Paul's Epistles in the 2nd century, and the impossibility of finding any one who had the genius to personate the great apostle, are two things which have disabled fancy-criticism. The Epistles to Timothy and Titus are still confidently rejected by some authors, but this confidence is being undermined. Some special attention is given to the question of their genuineness in this book.

The writings of St. Paul fall into four groups, each group being shaped by something which is unmistakably novel and by something which it has in common with the other groups.

I. A.D. 51. 1 and 2 Thessalonians.

II. A.D. 55-56. 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Romans.

III. A.D. 59-61. Colossians, Philemon, Ephesians, Philippians.

IV. A.D. 61-64. 1 Timothy, Titus, 2 Timothy.

St. Paul was in the habit of dictating his letters. In Rom. xvi. 22 occurs the name of Tertius, who was then acting as his secretary. But St. Paul wrote the little letter to Philemon himself, and in Gal. vi. 11-18 we find a postscript which the apostle wrote in his own large handwriting. Similar instances are found in 1 Cor. xvi. 21-24 and Col. iv. 18, while in 2 Thess. iii. 17 he shows us that he sometimes made these additions in order to protect his converts from being deceived by forged letters written in his name.

In order to enter into the spirit of St. Paul's letters it is necessary to understand his history, a brief outline of which will now be given.

Saul, who changed his name to Paul, was born at Tarsus in Cilicia, a city which prided itself upon its good education. The language of the city was Greek; Saul's father was a Jew and a Roman citizen. He was trained at Jerusalem by {119} Gamaliel, a renowned Pharisee. The future apostle was therefore born a member of the most religious race in the world, spoke the language of the most cultivated race in the world, and lived under the most masterly and fully organized government. All these three influences left their mark on a soul which was always impressible towards everything great and noble. But his nature was not only impressible; it was endowed as well by God with a strong pure heat which could fuse truths together into an orderly and well-proportioned form, and purge away the falsehoods which clung to truths. It is plain that he was not a Pharisee of the baser sort, even when he believed that the Messiah was a pretender. Righteousness was his ideal, and because he hated sin, a struggle raged between his conscience and his lower instincts (Rom. vii. 7-25). He fiercely persecuted the Christians, whom he regarded as traitors to their race and their religion. On his way from Jerusalem to Damascus with a warrant from the high priest to arrest the Christians, he was converted (about A.D. 35) by a direct interposition of the risen Lord. Every effort has been made by modern rationalists to explain this revelation as either an imaginary vision or an inward light in his conscience. The fact remains that St. Paul never speaks of it as a merely inward reality, that he does not number his conversion among the ecstatic states to which he was subject (2 Cor. xii. 1), and that he reckons the appearance of Christ to himself as an outward appearance like the appearances to the older apostles (1 Cor. xv. 5-8). We cannot get behind the statements made by St. Paul and those made in Acts by his friend, St. Luke. They show that he was met and conquered by Christ. The appearance of Christ changed his whole career, transformed his character, convinced him that Jesus was the Messiah, and that salvation can only be obtained by faith in Him—that is, by a devoted adherence to His Person and His teaching. After preaching Christ in Damascus, he retired into the keen air and inspiring solitude of the Arabian desert. {120} During this period the outline of his creed seems to have grown clear and definite. It afterwards expanded and developed, as truly as youth passes into manhood, but there is no evidence for any material alteration having taken place after his return from Arabia. Many Christians doubted the sincerity of his conversion, but St. Barnabas, a conciliatory and kind evangelist, introduced him to St. Peter and St. James at Jerusalem, A.D. 38. His life being threatened by the Greek-speaking Jews, he departed for Tarsus. In due time he was brought by St. Barnabas to aid the new mission to the Gentiles at Antioch, a large and splendid city, admirably adapted for the first propagation of the gospel among the heathen. In A.D. 46 he paid with Barnabas a second visit to Jerusalem, taking thither a contribution from Antioch to relieve the famine which raged there. In A.D. 47 he went from Antioch in company with Barnabas on his first missionary tour, visiting Cyprus and part of Asia Minor. On his return, A.D. 49, he attended the Council at Jerusalem (Acts xv.; Gal. ii.), at which he insisted that converts from paganism should not be required to submit to circumcision and the other ceremonial rules of the Jewish Church. Only once again has any Council of the Church had to discuss such a burning and weighty question, and that once was at the Council of Nicaea in 325, when it was determined to describe the fact that Jesus is God in language which would admit of no possible mistake or jugglery. At Jerusalem, in A.D. 49, the Church had to determine whether it was sufficient for a man to be a Christian, or necessary for him to become a Jew and a Christian simultaneously. Some Judaizing Christians maintained the latter. Faithful to the teaching of our Lord, who laid on no Gentile the necessity of adopting Judaism, the Church decided that Gentile converts need not be circumcised.

In A.D. 49, soon after the Council at Jerusalem, St. Paul began a second missionary journey, and crossed over into Europe, where he founded several Churches, including those of Philippi and Thessalonica. At Athens he seems to have made {121} but little impression, but at Corinth, the busy and profligate centre of Greek commerce, he was more successful. He stayed there for eighteen months, and during this stay he wrote the Epistles to the Thessalonians. They are marked by the attention given to eschatology, or doctrine of "the last things"—the second coming of Christ, the resurrection of mankind, and the judgment.

This second journey closed with a visit to Jerusalem, and was followed by an incident which shows that the apostle's long warfare with Judaism was not over. The Judaizers had been defeated at the Council of Jerusalem, and they were aware that the Gentiles were pouring into the Church. So they attempted a new and artful plan for securing their own predominance. They no longer denied that uncircumcised Christians were Christians, but they tried to gain a higher status for the circumcised. They asserted that special prerogatives belonged to the Messiah's own people, and to the apostles whom He had chosen while He was on earth. When St. Paul went from Jerusalem to Antioch in A.D. 52, St. Peter, fearing to offend these Judaizers, was guilty of pretending to believe that he agreed with them.[1] He refused to eat with Gentile (uncircumcised) Christians. He thereby tried to compel the Gentiles to "Judaize" (Gal. ii. 14), treating them as if they were an inferior caste. St. Barnabas was carried away by St. Peter's example. St. Paul then openly rebuked the leader of the apostles. It is on this incident that F. C. Baur and the Tübingen school founded their fictitious history of a doctrinal struggle between St. Paul and the original apostles. The fundamental falsehood of this history lies in the fact that there was no real difference of opinion between St. Peter and St. Paul. The latter rebuked the former for "dissembling," i.e. for acting on a special occasion in a {122} manner contrary to his convictions and openly professed principles.

The Judaizing party not only tried to inoculate the Church with Judaism, but strained every nerve to undermine the authority of St. Paul. They said that he had no authority to preach Christ unless it was derived through the Twelve, and they showed "letters of commendation" (Gal. ii. 12; 2 Cor. iii. 1), to the effect that they represented the first apostles and came to supply the defects of St. Paul's teaching. With these opponents he was in conflict during his third missionary journey, which began about August, A.D. 52. On this journey he revisited Galatia and Phrygia, made a long stay at Ephesus, and went to Macedonia and Greece. During this third missionary journey he wrote 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, and Romans. It is hard to determine the exact order in which they were written, as Galatians may have been written before 1 Corinthians. These Epistles are the noblest work of St. Paul. The persistent efforts of his opponents compel him to defend both his principles and his character. Amid the perplexity of the time, his clear and clarifying mind formulated Christian doctrine so perfectly that he compels his readers to see what he sees. This group of Epistles is mainly devoted to soteriology, or the method by which God saves man. It contains abundant teaching about God's purpose of saving us, the use of the Jewish law, the struggle between our flesh and our spirit, the work of Jesus Christ in dying and rising for us, the work of the Holy Spirit, and the morals and worship of the Church. St. Paul's arguments are mainly addressed to believing Christians, whom he wishes to preserve from Jewish or heathen error. They are marked by the strongest light and shade. Nowhere does sin appear more awful, and the love of God to undeserving man appear more generous. At one moment the apostle writes as a logician, at another as a mystic. Now he is stern, and now he is pathetic. In compass, in variety, in depth, these four Epistles are great works of art, and all the greater {123} because the writer esteems his intellectual powers as nothing in comparison with the story of the Cross.

In May, A.D. 56, St. Paul was arrested at Jerusalem, after which he was detained by the Roman procurator Felix for two years at Caesarea, and then sent to Rome because he appealed to have his case tried by the emperor. He arrived at Rome early in A.D. 59, and was imprisoned for two years in his own hired house before his trial. During this imprisonment he wrote the Epistles to the Colossians, Ephesians, and Philippians, and the exquisite private letter to Philemon. In Philippians there is a strong reprimand of the infatuation of trusting in Jewish privileges, but it is plain from Colossians and Ephesians that Gentile Christianity was already firmly established, and that in Asia Minor the Judaizing heresies were becoming fainter and more fanciful. St. Paul criticizes a Judaic Gnosticism, a morbid mixture of Jewish ritual with that Oriental spiritualism which fascinated many devotees in the Roman empire at this period. The Philippians do not seem to have been infected with the same religious malaria as the Christians who dwelt in the valley of the Lycus. But St. Paul in writing to them, as to the Colossians and Ephesians, takes great pains to show who Christ is and what our relation towards Him ought to be. This group is therefore distinguished by its Christology.

St. Paul was released from his first imprisonment at Rome, though we know no details of his release. He again resumed his missionary life, and wrote the First Epistle to Timothy and that to Titus. According to a tradition of very great antiquity, he visited Spain. But the changed attitude of the Roman government towards the Christians soon cut short his work. Earlier in his career the Roman officials had regarded the new religion with easy though somewhat supercilious toleration. In 2 Thessalonians we find St. Paul apparently describing the Roman authorities as the restraining power which hindered the malice of antichristian Judaism from working revenge upon {124} the Church. At Ephesus he had been personally protected from the mob by the men who were responsible for the public worship of the Roman emperor. But under Nero an active persecution of the Christians was set on foot, and St. Paul was again imprisoned at Rome. During this last imprisonment he wrote his Second Epistle to Timothy. This letter, like the First Epistle to Timothy and that to Titus, deals specially with the organization and ministry of the Church, and was intended to consolidate the Church before the apostle's death. The martyrdom of the apostle probably took place in A.D. 64. His tomb, marked by an inscription of the 4th century, still remains at Rome in the church of "St. Paul outside the walls," which stands near the scene of his martyrdom. Unless the relics were destroyed by the Saracens who sacked Rome in 846, they probably remain in this tomb. The festival of June 29, which in mediaeval times was kept in honour of St. Peter and St. Paul, and which in our present English Prayer-book is wrongly dedicated to St. Peter only, is probably not the day on which either of the apostles suffered. It is the day on which their relics were removed for safety to the catacombs in the time of the persecution of the Christians by the Emperor Decius, A.D. 258.

[1] The above account places the dispute at Antioch before the third missionary journey. Some writers of deserved repute place it in the winter of A.D. 48, before the Council of Jerusalem.

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CHAPTER IX

1 AND 2 THESSALONIANS

THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PAUL THE APOSTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS

[Sidenote: The Author.]

Among all schools of thought there has been an increasing conviction that this Epistle is genuine. It was included in Marcion's Apostolicon, or list of Pauline writings, it is contained in the Muratorian Fragment, it is quoted by the great Fathers of the close of the 2nd century, and is found in the Old Latin and Peshitta Syriac versions of the New Testament. The earnest and affectionate tone of the Epistle is thoroughly Pauline, and the argument that it is not genuine because it does not contain the same pronounced anti-Jewish teaching as we find in Romans is precarious, though it has seemed to some sceptics to be convenient. The argument might be turned in the opposite direction. For it would be just as reasonable to say that the absence of anti-Jewish doctrine proves that the Epistle was written before the great conflict with the semi-Christian Jews began, as to say that it proves that it was written by a forger after the conflict was over. One paragraph in the Epistle points decisively to an early date. In iv. 13-18 we find that some Thessalonians were under the delusion that it would be an exceptional thing for a Christian to die before the second coming of our Lord, and that those who did so die would miss some of the felicity appointed for the rest. Such a delusion must have been dispelled at a very early date. Moreover, the {126} comfort which St. Paul administers to those who are agitated by this notion gives us the idea that he expected Christ to return in his own lifetime. In this respect he writes to the Thessalonians something very different from what he writes in his later Epistles (Phil. i. 21-24; 2 Tim. iv. 6), or even in 2 Cor. v. 1. We need not be surprised that God left the great apostle in ignorance of an event which it is not given even to the angels to understand (Matt. xxiv. 36). But a forger, living after the apostle's death, would not be at all likely to represent his hero as falling into such a mistake.

[Sidenote: To whom written.]

Thessalonica, the modern Saloniki, was the capital of part of Macedonia, situated in the middle of the bend of the Thermaic Gulf, and not far from Mount Olympus, the snow-clad home of the gods of Greece. It was a busy mercantile town, and in ready communication with Italy, as the great road called Via Egnatia passed through its walls. It contained then, as now, a considerable number of Jews among its inhabitants. In Christian times it became a great ecclesiastical centre, and was influential in the conversion of the Slavs and Bulgarians. It is still famous for its splendid Byzantine churches, though the finest have long since been converted into mosques by the Turks.

The Church was planted there by St. Paul on his second missionary journey, in A.D. 50 (Acts xvii.). He preached first to the Jews, and after his third visit to the synagogue he was rejected by the Jews, and he turned to the Gentiles. Some of these Thracian Gentiles were converts to Judaism, but they were people whose character could be trusted. In the mean time his Philippian converts twice sent aid to him (Phil. iv. 16). Previous to this the apostle had been earning his own bread, no doubt by tent-making. St. Paul was forced to leave Thessalonica in consequence of a riot stirred up by the Jews. He visited it again before his last journey to Jerusalem in A.D. 56.

1 Thess. i. 9 shows that the majority of the Christians had {127} been Gentile idolaters, though there were a few of Jewish blood. It was among the sturdy people of Macedonia that St. Paul won his steadiest recruits for Christ. Here, as in the letter to Philippi, we find that he uses words of more than ordinary affection. These converts are to St. Paul his "joy and crown" (1 Thess. ii. 19; Phil. iv. 1). He compares his relation with them to that of a nurse with her own children (1 Thess. ii. 7). When he wrote to the Corinthians he displayed his Macedonians as brilliant examples of Christian liberality and Christian loyalty (2 Cor. viii. 1-5). In this passage he alludes to their poverty, and these Epistles show that they had to work for their bread. They were exposed to bitter and continuous persecution from Jews, who were capable of inciting the roughs of the town to set on St. Paul (Acts xvii. 5).

[Sidenote: Where and when written.]

The Epistle was written from Corinth on the occasion of St. Paul's first visit there. When St. Paul had to leave Beroea in A.D. 50, Silas and Timothy remained (Acts xvii. 14, 15; xviii. 5). He sent for them to meet him at Athens, and when they had come, he despatched Timothy to Thessalonica (1 Thess. iii. 2). In October A.D. 50, St. Paul arrived at Corinth from Athens: Timothy and Silas rejoined him at Corinth, and the letter was written soon afterwards, probably early in A.D. 51.

[Sidenote: Character and Contents.]

The immediate cause of the Epistle was the arrival of Timothy with news from Thessalonica. The apostle's reasons for writing were: (a) to calm and encourage the converts whom he had so abruptly left; (b) to urge them to perform their ordinary duties. They had fallen into a state bordering on religious hysteria. Quite determined to be true to Christ, they had been demoralized by the strain of facing constant hostility. They had begun to take excessive interest in unfulfilled prophecy and eschatological speculation. The result was that individuals had become careless as to the performance of simple duties.

The apostle comforts the Thessalonians by reminding them {128} of the happiness and reality of their own spiritual experience. He wishes them to see plainly the working of God both in his own preaching of the gospel and their acceptance of it. On the one hand, he gladly recognizes the faith, charity, hope, and constancy under persecution: the story of their conversion, as it had been known everywhere, has won many friends for the Faith (i.). On the other hand, St. Paul is aware that his own conduct has not been unworthy of an apostle. Probably to vindicate himself against Jewish calumnies, he declares that his ministry at Thessalonica was bold, pure, honest, and gentle. Moreover, he did not quarter himself upon his converts; he worked with his hands, and was just and fatherly (ii. 1-12).

After a thanksgiving for the manner in which they received the word of
God, he speaks of his eager wish to see his friends again. He had sent
Timothy that he might comfort them, and Timothy has returned with glad
tidings. He prays for their establishment in holiness (ii. 13-iii. 13).

He goes on to exhort them to avoid impurity and work quietly, and then he speaks of the eschatological difficulties. The Thessalonians wondered whether the Christians already dead would miss a share in the joy of Christ's second coming. St. Paul replies that those who are alive at Christ's appearing will have no advantage over the dead (iv. 15). On the contrary, the dead will rise first, and then the living Christians will be caught up together with them to meet the Lord. The day will come with surprise, and will terrify the unprepared (iv. 1-v. 3).

He then calls them to watchfulness and sobriety. There follows an exhortation to obey the clergy, and the early date of the Epistle is again suggested by the fact that the titles which are used in his later epistles are not given to the clergy of Thessalonica. The existence of an order of prophets seems implied (v. 20). The Epistle has a special blessing for these troubled Christians who look so wistfully for "the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."

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