As I read on, I saw that this kind of “faith” was regarded by Paul as the foundation of all righteousness. He quoted scripture thus, “Abraham had faith in God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness.” Then I remembered that he had quoted the same passage in writing to the Galatians, in order to prove to them that the seed of Abraham did not obtain righteousness by doing the works prescribed in the code of Moses, but by following in the faith of their forefather. Now this faith, in the case of Abraham, had seemed to me at first of a narrow and selfish nature:—“God will keep His promise to me, God will give me a child in my old age.” But Paul shewed that the promise concerned “all the nations of the earth,” and that Abraham was not selfish in his faith—any more than in his pleading with God for such righteous people as might be in Sodom and Gomorrah when he said, “Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?” This faith in God’s truth and righteous judgments was at the bottom of Paul’s gospel, and Paul taught that it was at the bottom of all righteousness both of Jews and Gentiles.
But here came a great difficulty and obstacle in the way of faith, because, when men departed from God’s righteousness, God Himself (so Paul taught) departed from them for a time, allowing them to do the unrighteousness that was in their hearts and to judge unjustly. For this cause (according to Paul) God introduced Law into the world, and especially the Law of Moses. The Law was brought in to represent His righteousness in a poor rough fashion, until the time should come when He would send into the world the real righteousness or justice, the real judge or spirit of judgment. Such a judge (according to Paul’s gospel) was Jesus Christ, judging the world already to some extent, but destined to judge it in complete righteousness, “in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men according to my gospel,” said Paul, “through Jesus Christ.”
At this point came the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, enabling Paul to say, “Wait, and you will see justice done”; whereas Epictetus was forced to say, in effect, “Justice will never be done,”—not at least what a plain man would call justice—“since the justice of this life was, is, and will be, oppression, and no second life is ever to exist.”
The only passage in which Epictetus (as far as I could recollect) described a good judge, was one in which the philosopher was supposed to hold a dialogue with the Censor, or Judge, of Nicopolis. The man was an Epicurean; and Epictetus, after representing him as boasting that he was “a judge of the Greeks,” and that he could order imprisonment or flogging at his discretion, replied that this was coercing, not judging. “Shew us,” said he, “the things that are unprofitable for us and we shall avoid them. Make us passionate imitators of yourself, as Socrates made men of himself. He was really a ruler of men. For he, above all others, so framed men that they subordinated to him their inclinations, aversions, and impulses.”
This seemed to me, at first, a fine ideal of a spiritual judge. I contrasted it with Paul’s picture of the Lord as Judge taking vengeance in fire upon His enemies; and Epictetus seemed to have the advantage. But on consideration it appeared that Epictetus was confusing his hearers by passing suddenly from a judge to a ruler. According to his own account elsewhere, Socrates did not persuade a thousandth part of those to whom he addressed himself. On the other hand Paul distinguished two aspects of Christ. In one, He appeared as constraining His subjects to love Him and to become “passionate imitators” of Him. In the other, He appeared as a judge, making the guilty shrink from their own guilt, and feel pain at their own sin, when the light of judgment reveals them to themselves. Paul spoke of “fire” according to the metaphors of the scriptures. He appeared to be describing the Supreme Judge as destroying the evil while purifying the good—as fire may destroy some things but purify others.
This was not the only occasion when the gospel of Epictetus seemed to me—not at first, but upon full consideration—inferior to the gospel of Paul in recognising facts fairly and fully. For example, Paul, in the epistle I was now reading, adopted the ancient Jewish tradition that death came into the world as a result of the sin of the first man Adam. According to this view, death was a “curse.” Now Epictetus appeared to be directly attacking this doctrine when he spoke as follows, “If I knew that disease had been destined to come upon me at this very moment, I would rush towards it—just as my foot, if it had sense, would rush to defile itself in the mire. Why are ears of corn created? Is it not that they may be parched and ripened? And are they to be parched and ripened, and yet not reaped? Surely, then, if they had sense, the ears of wheat ought not to pray never to be reaped. Nay, this is nothing short of a curse upon wheat—never to be reaped! So you ought to know that it is nothing short of a curse upon men, not to die. It is all the same as not being ripened—not to be reaped.”
How much finer, thought I at first, is this doctrine of Epictetus than the doctrine of Paul! And how superstitious is that Hebrew story about a serpent, causing death to fall upon man as a curse from God! But coming back to the matter again after I read some way in the epistle, and thinking over what “death” meant to Epictetus and what it meant to Paul, I began to waver. For Epictetus thought that “death” meant being dissolved into the four elements. And how was this like “being ripened and reaped”? When corn is reaped, men get good from it. But when I am “reaped,” that is to say, distributed into my four elements, who will get any good from that? So, once more, the gospel of Epictetus, as compared with the gospel of Paul, seemed to be deficient not only in power but also in directness and clearness of statement.
It reminded me of the saying of Paul when he said that God sent him to preach the gospel “not in wisdom of word lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect.” “Wisdom of word” appeared to mean “calling old facts by new names without revealing any new truth.” So far as I could understand the gospel of Epictetus, his language about my being “ripened and reaped” was like that other earlier promise that I should find “friends” in the four elements when I passed into them in the dissolution of death. It was all “wisdom of word.”