The origin of "spiritual letters" or "epistles" was perhaps due to the wisdom and originality of St. Paul. At any rate, there is nothing improbable in this conjecture, nor need it draw us into any sympathy with the recent attempts to use it as a means for discrediting those Epistles in the New Testament which bear the names of other authors. It is possible that the earliest Epistle is that of St. James, and we have no means of telling whether St. Paul did or did not anticipate him in writing Epistles. In any case, if St. Paul is not the pioneer, he is the captain of epistle-writers. St. Cyprian, St. Jerome, St. Bernard, and in modern times Archbishop Fenelon and Dr. Pusey, have illustrated the power of making a letter the vehicle of momentous truths. But on the greatest of them there has fallen only a portion of the mantle of St. Paul.
We possess thirteen Epistles written by St. Paul. There is no real reason for doubting the genuineness of any of them, and a remarkable change has lately taken place in the manner in which the opponents of orthodox Christianity have treated them. When the ingenious attempt was made, sixty years ago, to prove that St. Paul invented a type of Christianity which was not taught by Christ, it was held that only Galatians, Romans, and 1 and 2 Corinthians were genuine. The other Epistles attributed to St. Paul were said to be forgeries written after St. Paul's death, and intended to act as certificates for the Catholic faith of the 2nd century. Since then criticism has grown wiser. The genuineness of Philippians and 1 Thessalonians was first conceded. Then it became necessary to {118} admit the genuineness of Colossians and Philemon; and 2 Thessalonians and Ephesians are now being placed in the same list even by some extreme critics. In fact, the use made of St. Paul's Epistles in the 2nd century, and the impossibility of finding any one who had the genius to personate the great apostle, are two things which have disabled fancy-criticism. The Epistles to Timothy and Titus are still confidently rejected by some authors, but this confidence is being undermined. Some special attention is given to the question of their genuineness in this book.
The writings of St. Paul fall into four groups, each group being shaped by something which is unmistakably novel and by something which it has in common with the other groups.
I. A.D. 51. 1 and 2 Thessalonians.
II. A.D. 55-56. 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Romans.
III. A.D. 59-61. Colossians, Philemon, Ephesians, Philippians.
IV. A.D. 61-64. 1 Timothy, Titus, 2 Timothy.
St. Paul was in the habit of dictating his letters. In Rom. xvi. 22 occurs the name of Tertius, who was then acting as his secretary. But St. Paul wrote the little letter to Philemon himself, and in Gal. vi. 11-18 we find a postscript which the apostle wrote in his own large handwriting. Similar instances are found in 1 Cor. xvi. 21-24 and Col. iv. 18, while in 2 Thess. iii. 17 he shows us that he sometimes made these additions in order to protect his converts from being deceived by forged letters written in his name.
In order to enter into the spirit of St. Paul's letters it is necessary to understand his history, a brief outline of which will now be given.
Saul, who changed his name to Paul, was born at Tarsus in Cilicia, a city which prided itself upon its good education. The language of the city was Greek; Saul's father was a Jew and a Roman citizen. He was trained at Jerusalem by {119} Gamaliel, a renowned Pharisee. The future apostle was therefore born a member of the most religious race in the world, spoke the language of the most cultivated race in the world, and lived under the most masterly and fully organized government. All these three influences left their mark on a soul which was always impressible towards everything great and noble. But his nature was not only impressible; it was endowed as well by God with a strong pure heat which could fuse truths together into an orderly and well-proportioned form, and purge away the falsehoods which clung to truths. It is plain that he was not a Pharisee of the baser sort, even when he believed that the Messiah was a pretender. Righteousness was his ideal, and because he hated sin, a struggle raged between his conscience and his lower instincts (Rom. vii. 7-25). He fiercely persecuted the Christians, whom he regarded as traitors to their race and their religion. On his way from Jerusalem to Damascus with a warrant from the high priest to arrest the Christians, he was converted (about A.D. 35) by a direct interposition of the risen Lord. Every effort has been made by modern rationalists to explain this revelation as either an imaginary vision or an inward light in his conscience. The fact remains that St. Paul never speaks of it as a merely inward reality, that he does not number his conversion among the ecstatic states to which he was subject (2 Cor. xii. 1), and that he reckons the appearance of Christ to himself as an outward appearance like the appearances to the older apostles (1 Cor. xv. 5-8). We cannot get behind the statements made by St. Paul and those made in Acts by his friend, St. Luke. They show that he was met and conquered by Christ. The appearance of Christ changed his whole career, transformed his character, convinced him that Jesus was the Messiah, and that salvation can only be obtained by faith in Him—that is, by a devoted adherence to His Person and His teaching. After preaching Christ in Damascus, he retired into the keen air and inspiring solitude of the Arabian desert. {120} During this period the outline of his creed seems to have grown clear and definite. It afterwards expanded and developed, as truly as youth passes into manhood, but there is no evidence for any material alteration having taken place after his return from Arabia. Many Christians doubted the sincerity of his conversion, but St. Barnabas, a conciliatory and kind evangelist, introduced him to St. Peter and St. James at Jerusalem, A.D. 38. His life being threatened by the Greek-speaking Jews, he departed for Tarsus. In due time he was brought by St. Barnabas to aid the new mission to the Gentiles at Antioch, a large and splendid city, admirably adapted for the first propagation of the gospel among the heathen. In A.D. 46 he paid with Barnabas a second visit to Jerusalem, taking thither a contribution from Antioch to relieve the famine which raged there. In A.D. 47 he went from Antioch in company with Barnabas on his first missionary tour, visiting Cyprus and part of Asia Minor. On his return, A.D. 49, he attended the Council at Jerusalem (Acts xv.; Gal. ii.), at which he insisted that converts from paganism should not be required to submit to circumcision and the other ceremonial rules of the Jewish Church. Only once again has any Council of the Church had to discuss such a burning and weighty question, and that once was at the Council of Nicaea in 325, when it was determined to describe the fact that Jesus is God in language which would admit of no possible mistake or jugglery. At Jerusalem, in A.D. 49, the Church had to determine whether it was sufficient for a man to be a Christian, or necessary for him to become a Jew and a Christian simultaneously. Some Judaizing Christians maintained the latter. Faithful to the teaching of our Lord, who laid on no Gentile the necessity of adopting Judaism, the Church decided that Gentile converts need not be circumcised.