The Origin of Paul's Religion

by J. Gresham Machen

These momentous assertions, which lie at the very basis of Bousset's hypothesis, are summed up in the elimination from Jerusalem Christianity of the title "Lord" as applied to Jesus. This elimination of the title "Lord" of course involves a rejection of the testimony of Acts. The Book of Acts contains the only extant narrative of the early progress of Jerusalem Christianity. And so far as the designations of Christ are concerned, the early chapters of the book have usually been thought to produce an impression of special antiquity and authenticity. These chapters apply the title "Lord" to Jesus; the words in Acts ii. 36, "God has made him both Lord and Christ," have often been regarded as especially significant. But to Bousset, in view of his opinion about the Book of Acts as a whole, the elimination of this testimony causes no difficulty.

But how does Bousset know that the primitive Jerusalem Church did not apply the term "Lord" to Jesus? The principal argument is derived from an examination of the Synoptic Gospels. The title "Lord," as applied to Jesus, Bousset believes, appears only "on the margin" (as it were) of the Gospel tradition; it does not appear as one of the primitive elements in the tradition. But since it does not appear firmly fixed in the Gospel tradition, it could not have formed a part of Christian belief in the community where the Gospel tradition was formed. The community where the Gospel tradition was formed was the Jerusalem Church. Therefore the title Lord as applied to Jesus did not form part of the belief of the Jerusalem Church. Such, in bare outline, is the argument of Bousset.

An examination of that argument in detail would far transcend the limits of the present discussion.[223] But certain obvious remarks can be made.

In the first place, it is not perfectly clear that the title Lord appears only in secondary elements of the Gospel tradition. Certainly it must be granted to Bousset that the instances where the word "Lord" appears in the vocative case do not necessarily involve any recognition of the lofty title "Lord" as belonging to Jesus; for the word could be used in direct address in the presence of any person to whom respect was to be paid. Nevertheless, in some of the passages the word does seem to be more than a mere reverential form of address. Bousset himself admits that such is the case at least in Matt. vii. 21, "Not every one who says unto me Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven," and his opinion that this passage is secondary as compared with Lk. vi. 46 is insufficiently grounded. The cases in the Gospels where the title is used absolutely are not very numerous, and they occur chiefly in the Gospel of Luke. But the estimate of them as secondary depends of course upon certain critical conclusions about the relationships of the Synoptic Gospels. And it is doubtful whether Bousset has quite succeeded in refuting the argument which can be derived from Mk. xii. 35-37 (and parallels), the passage about David's son and David's Lord. Bousset himself uses this passage as an important testimony to the belief of the early Jerusalem Church, though he does not regard it as representing a genuine saying of Jesus. Yet here Jesus is made to call attention to the fact that David called the Messiah "Lord." If this passage represents the belief about Jesus of the primitive Jerusalem Church, what stronger testimony could there be to the use in that church of the title "Lord" as applied to Jesus? Bousset avoids the difficulty by calling attention to the fact that the Old Testament passage (Ps. cx. 1) is here quoted not according to the original but according to the Septuagint translation. In the original Hebrew, says Bousset, there was a distinction between the word "Lord" as applied to God and the word "Lord" as applied to the other person who is referred to; the Hebrew has, "Jahwe said to my Lord (adoni)." Thus that second person, according to the Hebrew, can be regarded as a human individual, and all that is meant by the term "Lord" as used of him by David is that he stood higher than David. Bousset seems to think that this explanation destroys the value of the passage as a witness to the use in the Jerusalem Church of the religious term "Lord" as applied to Jesus. But such is by no means the case. For if the Messiah (Jesus) was higher than David, so that David could call Him Lord, then Jesus must have occupied some very lofty position. If David could call Him Lord, would the title be refused to Him by humble members of the Jerusalem Church? On Bousset's interpretation the passage may not directly attest the use of the title by the Jerusalem Church, but it does seem to presuppose it. It may also be questioned whether Bousset has succeeded in getting rid of Mk. xi. 3, as a witness to the title Lord as applied to Jesus in the Jerusalem Church.

But does the infrequency of the use of the title "Lord" in the Gospels necessarily indicate that that title was not prevalent in the primitive Jerusalem Church? It must be remembered that the title "Christ," which was of course applied to Jesus by the Jerusalem Church, is also very infrequent in the Gospels. Why should the infrequency in the Gospel use of one title be regarded as an argument against the use of that title in the Jerusalem Church, when in the case of the other title no such argument can possibly be set up? Bousset is ready with his answer. But the answer is entirely inadequate. The title "Christ," Bousset says, was an eschatological title; it referred to a dignity which in the belief of the Jerusalem Church Jesus was not to attain until His coming in glory. Therefore it could not readily be applied to Jesus in the accounts of His earthly ministry. Hence in the case of that title there was a special obstacle which hindered the intrusion of the title into the Gospel tradition. But in the case of the title "Lord," there was no such obstacle; therefore the non-intrusion of that title into the Gospel tradition requires a special explanation; and the only possible explanation is that the title was not used in the Jerusalem Church.

It would be difficult to crowd into brief compass so many highly debatable assertions as are crowded together in this argument. Was the title "Christ" a purely eschatological title? It is not a purely eschatological title in Paul. It is not really a purely eschatological title anywhere in the New Testament. At any rate, Bousset is here adopting a conception of the Messiahship of Jesus which is at best problematical and is rejected by men of the most widely divergent points of view. And did the title "Lord" designate Jesus especially as the present Lord of the Church, rather than as the one who was finally to usher in the Kingdom? Was Jesus in the belief of the early Church the "coming" Christ any more than He was the "coming" Lord; and was He the present Lord any more than He was the present Christ? These questions cannot be answered with absolute certainty. At any rate, even if Bousset can point to a larger proportion of eschatological interest in the one title than that which appears in the other, yet such a distinction is relative only. And it still remains true that if the infrequency of the title "Christ" in the Gospels does not indicate the non-existence of that title in the Jerusalem Church, the infrequency of the title "Lord" in the Gospels is not any more significant.

With regard to the title "Son of Man," Bousset makes a remark somewhat similar to that which he makes about the title "Christ." The title "Son of Man," he says, was eschatological; therefore it could not be introduced into the narrative part of the Gospels. But it will always remain one of the paradoxes of Bousset's theory that according to Bousset the title "Son of Man," which (except in Acts vii. 56) appears in the tradition only in the words of Jesus, and never as the title used when men spoke about Jesus, should be supposed to have been the characteristic title used in speaking about Jesus in the Jerusalem Church. If the belief of the Jerusalem Church about Jesus was so exclusively a Son-of-Man dogma, as Bousset supposes it was, and if that church was so little concerned with historical fact, it seems somewhat strange that the title, "Son of Man," has not been allowed, despite its eschatological character, to intrude into the Gospel narrative. Another hypothesis will always suggest itself—the hypothesis that Jesus really used the title, "Son of Man," in a somewhat mysterious way, in speaking about Himself, and that the memory of the fact that it was His own special designation of Himself has been preserved in the curious limitation of the use of the title in the New Testament. In that case, in view of the accuracy thus established with regard to one title, the testimony of the Gospels with regard to the other title, "Lord," cannot lightly be rejected.

But the evidence for the use of the title "Lord" in the primitive Jerusalem Church is not contained merely in the Gospels. Other evidence appears in the Pauline Epistles.

The most obvious fact is that Paul himself uses the term as the characteristic title of Jesus. And it is equally evident that he did not invent this usage. Evidently it was a continuation of a usage which prevailed before he began his work. So much is fully admitted by Bousset. But whence did Paul derive the usage? Or rather, supposing that he began his own use of the title at the moment of the conversion, in accordance with the representation in Acts ("Who art thou, Lord?"), whence did he derive his assumption that the title was already in use? The most obvious view is that he assumed the title to be already known because it was in use in the early Jerusalem Church. The matter-of-course way in which Paul applies the title "Lord" to Jesus has always, until recently, been taken as indicating that the title had been prevalent from the very beginning of the Church's life.

But at this point appears one of the most important features of Bousset's theory. Paul derived the title "Lord," Bousset believes, from those who had been Christians before him; but he derived it, not from the Jerusalem Church, but from the Christian communities in such cities as Antioch, Tarsus, and perhaps Damascus. It is in these communities, therefore, that the genesis of the title "Lord," as applied to Jesus, is to be placed.