The Origin of Paul's Religion

by J. Gresham Machen

But there was a far stronger reason for the application of the Greek term "Lord" to Jesus than that which was found in its general currency among Greek-speaking peoples. The religious use of the term was not limited to the pagan cults, but appears also, and if anything even more firmly established, in the Greek Old Testament. The word "Lord" is used by the Septuagint to translate the "Jahwe" of the Hebrew text. It would be quite irrelevant to discuss the reasons which governed the translators in their choice of this particular word. No doubt some word for "Lord" was required by the associations which had already clustered around the Hebrew word. And various reasons may be suggested for the choice of "kyrios" rather than some other Greek word meaning "lord."[233] Possibly the root meaning of "kyrios" better expressed the idea which was intended; perhaps, also, a religious meaning had already been attached to "kyrios," which the other words did not possess. At any rate, whatever may have been the reason, "kyrios" was the word which was chosen. And the fact is of capital importance. For it was among the readers of the Septuagint that Christianity first made its way. The Septuagint was the Bible of the Jewish synagogues, and in the synagogues the reading of it was heard not only by Jews but also by hosts of Gentiles, the "God-fearers" of the Book of Acts. It was with the "God-fearers" that the Gentile mission began. And even where there were Gentile converts who had not passed at all through the school of the synagogue—in the very earliest period perhaps such converts were few—even then the Septuagint was at once used in their instruction. Thus when the Christian missionaries used the word "Lord" of Jesus, their hearers knew at once what they meant. They knew at once that Jesus occupied a place which is occupied only by God. For the word "Lord" is used countless times in the Greek scriptures as the holiest name of the covenant God of Israel, and these passages were applied freely to Jesus.

This Septuagint use of the term "Lord," with the application of the Septuagint passages to Jesus, which appears as a matter of course in the Epistles of Paul, was of vastly more importance for the early Christian mission than the use of the term in the pagan cults. And it sheds vastly more light upon the original significance of the term as applied to Jesus. But the pagan usage is interesting, and the exhibition of it by Bousset and others should be thankfully received. An important fact has been established more and more firmly by modern research—the fact that the Greek word "kyrios" in the first century of our era was, wherever the Greek language extended, distinctly a designation of divinity. The common usage of the word indeed persisted; the word still expressed the relation which a master sustained toward his slaves. But the word had come to be a characteristically religious term, and it is in the religious sense, especially as fixed by the Septuagint, that it appears in the New Testament.

Thus it is not in accordance with New Testament usage when Jesus is called, by certain persons in the modern Church, "the Master," rather than "the Lord." Sometimes, perhaps, this usage is adopted in conscious protest against the New Testament conception of the deity of Christ; Jesus is spoken of as "the Master," in very much the way in which the leader of a school of artists is spoken of as "the Master" by his followers. Or else the word means merely the one whose commands are to be obeyed. But sometimes the modern fashion is adopted by devout men and women with the notion that the English word "Lord" has been worn down and that the use of the word "Master" is a closer approach to the meaning of the Greek Testament. This notion is false. In translating the New Testament designation of Jesus, one should not desire to get back to the original meaning of the word "kyrios." For the Greek word had already undergone a development, and as applied to Jesus in the New Testament it was clearly a religious term. It had exactly the religious associations which are now possessed by our English word "Lord." And for very much the same reason. The religious associations of the English word "Lord" are due to Bible usage; and the religious associations of the New Testament word "kyrios" were also due to Bible usage—the usage of the Septuagint. The Christian, then, should remember that "a little learning is a dangerous thing." The uniform substitution of "the Master" for "the Lord" in speaking of Jesus has only a false appearance of freshness and originality. In reality it sometimes means a departure from the spirit of the New Testament usage.

Accordingly, Bousset has performed a service in setting in clear relief the religious meaning of the word "Lord." But he has not succeeded in explaining the application of that word to Jesus.

Further difficulties, moreover, beset Bousset's theory. The term "Lord" as applied to Jesus, and the religious attitude toward Jesus expressed by the term, arose, according to Bousset, in the meetings of such communities as the one at Antioch, and under the influence of pagan conceptions. But of course Bousset's explanation of the origin of Paulinism has not yet been completely set forth. Paulinism is something far more than an ecstatic worship of a cult-god; the personal relation to Christ dominates every department of the apostle's life.

Bousset recognizes this fact. The religion of Paul, he admits, is something far more than the religion which was expressed in the meetings of the Antioch Church. But he supposes that the other elements of Paul's religion, far-reaching as they are, had at least their starting-point in the cult. Here is to be found one of the least plausible elements in the whole construction. Bousset has underestimated the individualistic character of Paul's religion. At least he has not succeeded in showing that the Pauline life "in Christ" or "in the Lord" was produced by development from ecstatic experiences in the meetings of the Antioch Church.

But if the individualistic religion of Paul was developed from the "cult," how was it developed? How shall the introduction of the new elements be explained? Bousset has attacked this problem with great earnestness. And he tries to show that the religion of Paul as it appears in the Epistles was developed from the cult religion of Antioch by the identification of "the Lord" with "the Spirit," and by the generalizing and ethicizing of the conception of the Spirit's activity.

The Pauline doctrine of the Spirit, Bousset believes, was derived from the pagan mystical religion of the Hellenistic age. Quite aside from the matter of terminology—though the contentions of Reitzenstein are thought by Bousset to be essentially correct—the fundamental pessimistic dualism of Paul was based, according to Bousset, upon that widespread type of thought and life which appears in the mystery religions and in the Hermetic writings. According to this pessimistic way of thinking, salvation could never be attained by human nature, even with divine aid, but only by an entirely new beginning, produced by the substitution of the divine nature for the old man. By the apostle Paul, Bousset continues, this supernaturalism, this conception of the dominance of divine power in the new life, was extended far beyond the limits of the cult or of visionary experiences; the Spirit was made to be the ruling principle of the Christian's life; not only prophecy, tongues, healing, and the like, were now regarded as the fruit of the Spirit, but also love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control. But this Pauline extension of the Spirit's activity, Bousset insists, did not involve the slightest weakening of the supernaturalism which was characteristic of the original conception; the Spirit that produced love, joy, peace, had just as little to do with the human spirit as the Spirit that caused men to speak with tongues. And the supernaturalism which here appears in glorified form was derived, Bousset concludes, from the mystical pagan religion of the Hellenistic age.

This contention has already been discussed, and the weakness of it has been pointed out. The Pauline doctrine of the Spirit was not derived from contemporary paganism. But the exposition of Bousset's theory has not yet been finished. The Spirit whose activities were extended by Paul into the innermost recesses of the Christian's life was identified, Bousset says, with "the Lord" (2 Cor. iii. 17). This identification exerted an important influence upon both the elements that were brought together; it exerted an important influence upon the conception both of "the Lord" and of "the Spirit." If "the Lord" was identified, or brought into very close relation, with the Spirit, and if the Spirit's activity extended into the whole of life, then "the Lord" could no longer be for Paul merely the cult-god who was present in the meetings of the Church. On the contrary, He would have to be present everywhere where the Spirit was present—that is, He would have to be that in which the Christian lived and moved and had his being. Thus Paul could form the astonishing phrase "in Christ" or "in the Lord," for which Bousset admits that no analogy is to be found in pagan religion. On the other hand, the conception of the Spirit, Bousset believes, was necessarily modified by its connection with "the Lord." By the identification with an actual person who had lived but a few years before, "the Spirit" was given a personal quality which otherwise it did not possess. Or, to put the same thing in other words, the Pauline phrase "in the Lord" is not exactly the same in meaning as the phrase "in the Spirit"; for it possesses a peculiar personal character. "This remarkable mingling of abstraction and personality," says Bousset, "this connection of a religious principle with a person who had walked here on the earth and had here suffered death, is a phenomenon of peculiar power and originality."

At this point, Bousset is in danger of being untrue to the fundamental principles of his reconstruction; he is in danger of bringing the religion of Paul into connection with the concrete person of Jesus. But he detects the danger and avoids it. It must not be supposed, he says, that Paul had any very clear impression of the characteristics of the historical Jesus. For if he had had such an impression, he never could have connected Jesus with an abstraction like the Spirit. All that he was interested in, then, was the fact that Jesus had lived and especially that He had died.