The Origin of Paul's Religion

by J. Gresham Machen

Yet these bare facts are thought to have been sufficient to impart to Paul's notion of the Spirit-Lord that peculiar personal quality which arouses the admiration of Bousset! The truth is, Bousset finds himself at this point face to face with the difficulty which besets every naturalistic explanation of the genesis of Paul's religion. The trouble is that a close connection of Paul with the historical Jesus is imperatively required by the historian in order to impart to Paul's relation to Christ that warm, personal quality which shines out from every page of the Epistles; whereas, on the other hand, a wide separation of Paul from the historical Jesus is just as imperatively required in order that Paul might not be hampered by historical tradition in raising Jesus to divine dignity and in bringing Him into connection with the Spirit of God.

Modern criticism has wavered between the two requirements; it tries to preserve the rights of each. Bousset is more impressed by the second requirement; Wernle, his opponent, is more impressed by the former.[234] But both are equally wrong. There is really only one way out of the difficulty. It is an old way and a radical way. But the world of scholarship may come back to it in the end. The fundamental difficulty in explaining the origin of Paulinism will never disappear by being ignored; it will never yield to compromises of any kind. It will disappear only when Jesus is recognized as being really what Paul presupposes Him to be and what all the Gospels represent Him as being—the eternal Son of God, come to earth for the redemption of man, now seated once more on the throne of His glory, and working in the hearts of His disciples through His Spirit, as only God can work. Such a solution was never so unpopular as it is to-day. Acceptance of it will involve a Copernican revolution in many departments of human thought and life. But refusal of such acceptance has left an historical problem which so far has not been solved.

At one point, Bousset admits, the religion of Paul was based upon an historical fact. It was based upon the death of Jesus. But the Pauline interpretation of the death of Jesus was derived, Bousset believes, in important particulars from contemporary pagan religion; the Pauline notion of dying and rising with Christ was formed under the influence of the widespread pagan conception of the dying and rising god. This assertion has become quite common among recent scholars; material in support of it has been collected in convenient form by M. Brückner.[235] But as a matter of fact, the evidence in support of the assertion is of the feeblest kind.

The review of Hellenistic religion which was attempted in Chapter VI revealed, indeed, the fact that certain gods, especially Attis, Adonis, and Osiris, were represented first as dying and then as being resuscitated. The similarity of these figures to one another may perhaps be explained by the hypothesis that all of them were originally vegetation gods, whose death and resuscitation represented the withering of vegetation in the autumn and its renewal in the spring. At first sight, the parallel between these gods and Jesus may seem striking. Jesus also was represented as dying and as coming back to life again. But what is the significance of the parallel? Can it mean that the entire New Testament story of the death and resurrection of Jesus was derived from these vegetation myths? Such has been the conclusion of certain modern scholars. But of course this conclusion is absurd, and it is not favored by Bousset. The essential historicity of the crucifixion of Jesus under Pontius Pilate and of the rise of the belief in His resurrection among His intimate friends stands too firm to be shaken by any theory of dependence upon pagan myth. Thus the argument drawn from the parallel between the New Testament story and the pagan myth of the dying and rising god proves too much. If it proves anything, it proves that the New Testament story of the resurrection was derived from the pagan myth. But such a view has not been held by any serious historians. Therefore it will have to be admitted that the parallel between the belief that Adonis and Osiris and Attis died and rose again, and the belief that Jesus died and rose again was not produced by dependence of one story upon the other. It will have to be recognized, therefore, that a parallel does not always mean a relationship of dependence. And if it does not do so at one point, perhaps it does not do so at others.

But Bousset will insist that although the New Testament story of the death and resurrection of Jesus was not originally produced by the pagan myth, yet the influence of the pagan conception made itself felt in the interpretation which Paul placed upon the story. Paul believed that the Christian shared the fate of Christ—died with Christ and rose with Christ. But a similar conception appears in the pagan religions. The classical expression of this idea appears in the oft-quoted words reported by Firmicus Maternus, "Be of good courage, ye initiates, since the god is saved; for to us there shall be salvation out of troubles."

But it must be remembered that the testimony of Firmicus Maternus is very late, and that the evidence for the prevalence of the conception in the early period is somewhat scanty. The confident assertions of recent writers with regard to these matters are nothing short of astonishing. Lay readers are likely to receive the impression that the investigator can reconstruct the conception of a dying and rising god, and of the share which the worshipers have in the death and resurrection, on the basis of some vast store of information in the extant sources. As a matter of fact, nothing of the sort is the case. The extant information about the conception in question is scanty in the extreme, and for the most part dates from long after the time of Paul.

It would be going too far, indeed, to assert that the conception of the dying and rising god, with its religious significance, was not in existence before the Pauline period. An ancient Egyptian text, for example, has been quoted by Erman, which makes the welfare of the worshiper depend upon that of Osiris: "Even as Osiris lives, he also shall live."[236] Very likely some such conceptions were connected also with the mourning and subsequent rejoicing for Attis and Adonis. But if the conception was existent in the pre-Pauline period, it by no means follows that it was common. Certainly its prevalence has been enormously exaggerated in recent years. Against such exaggerations, J. Weiss—who surely cannot be accused of any lack of sympathy with the methods of comparative religion as applied to the New Testament—has pertinently called attention to 1 Cor. i. 23. Christ crucified, Paul says, was "to the Gentiles foolishness."[237] That does not look as though the Gentiles among whom Paul labored were very familiar with the notion of a dying god. If the contentions of Brückner were correct, if the conception of the dying god were as common in Paul's day as Brückner supposes, the Cross would not have been "to the Gentiles foolishness"; on the contrary, it would have seemed to the Gentiles to be the most natural thing in the world.

But even if the early prevalence of the conception of a dying and rising god, with its religious significance, were better established than it is, the dependence of Paul upon that conception would by no means be proved. For the Pauline conception is totally different. One difference, of course, is perfectly obvious and is indeed generally recognized—the Pauline Christ is represented as dying voluntarily, and dying for the sake of men. He "loved me," says Paul, "and gave himself for me." There is absolutely nothing like that conception in the case of the pagan religions. Osiris, Adonis, and Attis were overtaken by their fate; Jesus gave His life freely away. The difference is stupendous; it involves the very heart of the religion of Paul. How was the difference caused? Whence was derived the Pauline conception of the grace of Christ? Was it derived from Jesus Himself? Was it derived from the knowledge which Paul had of the character of Jesus? The supposition might seem to be natural. But unfortunately, from the point of view of Bousset, it must be rejected. For if Paul had had any knowledge of Jesus' real character, how could he ever have supposed that Jesus, a mere man, was the heavenly Lord?

Another difference is even more fundamental. The death and resurrection of the pagan gods was a matter of the cult; the death and resurrection of the Pauline Christ was a fact of history. It has been observed in the review of Hellenistic religion that the cults in the pagan religions were much more firmly fixed than the myths; in the opinion of modern scholars, the myths were derived from the cults rather than vice versa. So in the case of the "dying and rising gods," one is struck above all things with the totally fluid character of the myths. The story of Attis, for example, is told in many divergent forms, and there does not seem to have been the slightest interest among the Attis worshipers for the establishment of any authentic account of the death and resurrection of the god. Particularly the "resurrection" of the god appears in the myths of Attis, Adonis, and Osiris scarcely at all. The real death and resurrection occurred only in the cult. Every year in March, the Attis-worshipers at Rome first saw the god lying dead as he was represented by the fir-tree, and then rejoiced in his resurrection. The death and resurrection were hardly conceived of as events which had happened once for all long ago. They were rather thought of as happening at every celebration of the festival.

The Pauline treatment of the death and resurrection of Christ is entirely different. By Bousset, indeed, the difference is partly obscured; Bousset tries to show that the Pauline conception of the dying and rising of the believer with Christ was derived from the celebration of the sacraments. But there could be no more radical error. What is plainest of all in the Epistles is the historical character of the Pauline message. The religion of Paul was rooted in an event, and the sacraments were one way of setting forth the significance of the event. The event was the redemptive work of Christ in His death and resurrection.