The Chief End of Man

by George Spring Merriam

Paul's theology is in one sense a passage in a long chapter of pseudo-science. It is one of a series of attempts to explain the universe from a starting-point of fable. These have been the accompaniment—sometimes as help, sometimes as obstacle—of a spiritual life far deeper than the stammering language they found. And it is to be noted that Paul himself when at his best rises above his theology or forgets it. The words of his which have lodged deepest in the world's heart are the vital precepts of conduct, and the utterances of love and hope. In one matchless passage, he celebrates "charity"—simple human love—as the one sufficient, supreme, and eternal good.

Some misconceptions in his philosophy became the fruitful seeds of mischievous harvests. One such seed was the ambiguous sense of "faith"—the confusing of intellectual credence with moral fidelity. This misconception—which underlies much of the New Testament—was an almost inevitable incident of a religion generated as this was. Christianity based itself, in its own theory, on the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead. This was offered as a basis for the whole appeal which the church made to the world. Thus Belief—or Credulity—usurped the place among the virtues which of right belongs to Truth.

Another misconception lay in the use of "flesh," the antithesis of "spirit," as the name of the evil principle. Paul indeed uses "the flesh" in no restricted sense of merely sensual sin. With him it equally includes all other forms of wrong, like malevolence and pride and self-seeking. But the nomenclature and the way of thought which it reflected put a stigma on the whole physical nature of man. In that stigma lay the germ of asceticism, hostility to marriage, depreciation of some vital elements of man's nature.

Paul's conception of the church never was fully realized. He expected to see the whole body of believers filled with a "holy spirit," a divine-human inspiration, which should of itself guide them into all truth and duty. Outward law or doctrine there needed none, beyond the acceptance of Christ as God's son who had lived and died and risen. Accept that, and the divine spirit would be given you. No need then of circumcision or sacrifice, of Sabbath or fast, of written code or human ruler. The saint is free from all law but that of love; the company of saints needs no control or guidance but that.

The beautiful ideal shattered itself against a stubborn fact. Love of Christ did not guide his followers into all truth, or into harmony with each other. Paul's life was half spent in a bitter contest with men who loved Christ as well as he did. His epistles are full of the struggle with that great party of Christ's followers who called him a heretic and sought to win away his converts. Suppose any one had asked him: "You say the spirit of Christ will guide his followers into all truth,—why does it not guide these Christian Jews and you into so much of truth as will make you friends instead of foes?"

Paul was hoping too much. The new impulse in the world—sublime, beautiful, full of power and promise—was by no means sufficient to lead the world straight and sure to harmonious perfection. There was no such gift of "the spirit" as to supersede all search, all struggle, all human leadership and human groping. That hope was almost as exaggerated as the expectation—with which in Paul's mind it mingled—of Christ's bodily return. The road to be traveled by mankind was still long and arduous.

Any complete history of the early church must deal largely with the stubborn and bitter contest between the Jewish and Pauline parties,—the champions of the law and the champions of liberty. That contest gave its stamp to the epistles of Paul, and was indeed their most frequent occasion. At a later time the attempt to harmonize the two parties seems to have given birth to the book of Acts, in which history mixes with fiction. But we are here concerned only with such features of the history as made the most vital and permanent contributions to religion, and for this purpose we need only specify the Epistle to the Ephesians.

This epistle opens the heart of the early church. It assumes to be written by Paul, but there are some indications that this name was borrowed by the real author. This assumption of a great name, so common in this age, as in the books of Daniel, Wisdom of Solomon, Enoch, and others, marks a timidity, a deference to authority of the past. Only the greatest, like Jesus and Paul, dared to speak in their own name.

Primarily the epistle is a plea for unity between Jewish and Gentile Christians,—broadening into an appeal for unity between all classes and individuals, an appeal for purity and holiness, in the name of Christ the head. Occasional sentences and phrases will sufficiently show its tenor and spirit.

"That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God."