The Cradle of the Christ: A Study in Primitive Christianity

by Octavius Brooks Frothingham

In the days of our own anti-slavery conflict, his dictum, "Slaves obey your masters, in fear and trembling, in singleness of heart," was a tower of strength and a fountain of refreshment to many an upholder of the patriarchal system. The later Christians in the West could safely justify their quiet toleration of the system of slavery in the Roman Empire by the precepts of the foremost apostle. If the genuineness of the epistle to Philemon could be maintained, the case would wear a different look. But it is much more than doubtful whether even that qualified humanity proceeded from his pen.

In our own generation the apostle is a serious stumbling block in the way of "evangelical" women who are friendly to the aspirations of their sex. He showed the most stubborn Hebrew principles on this subject. "Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands"; "Let your women keep silence in the churches; if they wish to learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home; for it is a shame for women to speak in the church." "It is permitted them to be under obedience." The Hindoo scripture spoke better: "Where women are honored, there the deities are pleased. Where they are dishonored there all religious acts become fruitless."

How can the most conservative Republicans accept as teacher a man who counsels religious men, in proportion as they are religious, to surrender their full, unqualified, sincere allegiance to established authorities because they are established, however despotic, ferocious nay vile they may be; even to such despotisms as that of Nero;—maintaining that resistance to such is equivalent to resisting the ordinance of God?—giving this not as the counsel of prudence, but as the dictate of conscience, thus proclaiming exemption from criticism or assault, for inhuman tyrannies? Nothing short of this is inculcated by the sweeping declaration: "Let every soul be subject to the higher powers: for there is no power but of God; the established powers are ordained of God." No doubt the bidding was given in view of a turbulent or insurrectionary spirit among the Israelites in Rome, but it is given without explanation or limit. It ratifies the divine right of kings: sanctions the principle that might makes right. Paul was an enthusiast for ideas; not a theologian, not a social reformer, but one whose zeal was spent on doctrines. Prevailingly intellectual, his whole nature was fused by the electric touch of a new thought.

Paul's acquaintance with the Talmud is evidenced by his writings. His use of allegory, his fanciful analogies, his mystical interpretations, his play on words, his passion for types and symbols, his ingenious speculations on history and eschatology, betray his familiarity with that curious literature. He found a mine of precious material in the mythical Adam Cædmon, the progenitor, the prototype, the "federal head" of the race, the man who was not a man but a microcosm, created by special act from sifted clay; a creature whose erected head touched the firmament, whose extended body reached across the earth; a being to whom all save Satan did obeisance; who, but for his transgression, would have enjoyed an immortality on earth; whose sin entailed on the human race all the evils, material and moral, that have cursed the world; the primordial man, who contained in himself the germs of all mankind; whose corruption tainted the nature of generations of descendants. The Talmud exhausts speculation on this prodigious personality. The doctrine of the christian church for fifteen hundred years was not so much colored as shaped by the rabbis who exercised their subtlety on this tempting theme. Philo, a contemporary of Paul, is in no respect behind the most imaginative in his conjectures on this sublime legend. That Paul, a student of the Talmud, fell in with them, should excite no surprise. That he added nothing is due probably to the fact that there was nothing to add.

From the Talmud, also, and from other rabbinical writings, Paul derived a complete angelology, a department of speculation in which the Jewish literature after the captivity was exceedingly prolific—Metathron, Sandalphon, Akathriel, Suriel, were familiar to his mind. It is a bold suggestion made by Dr. Isaac M. Wise, the Hebrew rabbi fresh from the Talmud,[1] that Metathron,—[Greek: meta thronon], near the throne, called by eminent titles, "king of the angels," "prince of the countenance," impressed Paul's imagination and was the original of his Christ. Between this supreme angel, co-ordinate with deity and spiritually akin to him, and the Christ of Paul's conception, the correspondence seems to be too close to be accidental; so close, indeed, that some, unable to deny or to confute it, are driven to surmise that the first conception originated with the apostle. It is more probable however, though not provable, that the rabbinical idea was the earlier, and that the apostle took that as well as the Adam Cædmon from the rabbis. The "prince of angels" precisely met his requirement as a counter-vailing power to Adam, and supplied a ground for his theory of the second Adam, the "living spirit," the "Lord from Heaven," the primal man of a new creation, the first born of a new progeny, the originator of a "law of life" which should check and counteract the "law of sin and death." The second Man was the counterpart of the first.

He is a man, yet is he no man; his flesh is only "the likeness of sinful flesh," liable to death, but not implicating the personality in dying. He is the spiritual, heavenly, ideal man; celestial, glorious, image of God, translucent, sinless, impeccable; pre-existent, of course; without father or mother; an expression of divinity; a creator of new worlds for the habitation of the "Sons of God." His birth is an entrance into humanity from an abode of light. The mission of this transcendent being is, in a word, to break the force of transmitted sin, and reverse the destiny of the race. He imparts the principle of life, which is to restore all things. A multitude of incidental points are involved in this fundamental one, points of theology, anthropology, history, ethics, metaphysics, that present no difficulty to one who has this key. The long disquisitions on the Mosaic law, the discussions on the privileges of the Hebrew race and the rights of other races were necessary. The familiar doctrine of the resurrection derived fresh interest from association with the general theory, inasmuch as it supplied a ground-work for the expectation that the glorified One would reappear; and the hypothesis of a "spiritual" body, ventured and fully developed by the rabbis, even illustrated by analogies of the "corn of wheat" which the apostle makes so much of in the fifteenth chapter of I. Corinthians, supplied all else that was wanting to complete the scheme. The Christ, being sinless, was held to be incorruptible; death had no dominion over him, was in fact in his case, an "excarnation," the preparation for an ascent to the realm of light he came from, and to his seat at the right hand of his Father, instead of being a descent into the region of darkness to which mortals are doomed. The doctrine of last things follows from the doctrine of first things. They who are one with Christ through faith share his deathlessness. If they die, it is merely a temporary retirement, in which they await the coming of their Lord, who will in his own time call them out of their prison house. The larger number, however, were not, in the apostle's belief, destined to die at all; but might look as he did, to be transfigured, by the putting off of their vile bodies, and the putting on of glorious bodies like that of the great forerunner. In his amplifications on this theme, Paul shows little originality, and adds nothing important to the material lying ready to his hand.

The advantage his scheme gave him as a preacher to the Gentiles is too obvious to be dwelt on. As a Greek by birth and culture, he was interested in the fate of other nations besides the Jews. A system of religion adapted to the traditions and satisfactory to the hopes of a peculiar people,—a national, exclusive religion in the benefits whereof none but Jews might share, and from whose grace no lineal descendant of Abraham could be excluded, did not commend itself to this man, half Jew, half Greek. The faith that obtained his allegiance, and awoke his zeal must possess a human character by virtue of which its message could be carried to all mankind. Such a faith his new theory of the Christ gave him. He could say to his Greek friends: "This religion that I bring you is no Hebrew peculiarity. Its Christ is no son of David, but a son of God; its heaven is no Messianic kingdom in Judæa, but a region of light above the skies; its principle is faith, not obedience to a ceremonial or legal code; it dispenses entirely with the requirements of the law of Moses; makes no account of sacrifices or priests; presumes on no acquaintance with Hebrew scriptures, or reverence for Hebrew men; questions of circumcision and uncircumcision are trivial and impertinent. The religion of Christ addresses you as men, not as Jewish men; it appeals to the universal sense of moral and spiritual infirmity, and offers a moral and spiritual, not a technical deliverance; instead of limiting, it will enlarge you; instead of binding, it will emancipate you; its genius is liberty, through which you are set free from ceremonialism, ritualism, dogmatism, moralism, and are made partakers of a new intellectual life."

Not all at once did this scheme unfold itself before the apostle's vision. Gradually it came to him as he meditated alone, or experimented with it on listeners in remote places. Naturally, he avoided the associations of the people he had persecuted, and the teachers they looked up to. He had nothing to learn from them; he understood their system and was dissatisfied with it, in short, rejected it. Their Jewish Messiah, literal, national, hebraic, was not an attractive personage to his mind. The promise of felicity in a Jewish kingdom of heaven was not enchanting. The daily life of the believers in Jerusalem was formal, unnatural, repulsive to one who had "walked large" in foreign cities and realms of thought. The apostles, Peter, James, John, had nothing important to tell him that he did not know already. The earthly details of the life of Jesus might have interested him, but the interior character and the human significance of the Christ were the main thing, and these he may have thought himself more in the way of appreciating by a temporary retirement to the depths of his own consciousness. Having matured his thoughts, he did put himself in communication with the original disciples, with what result is frankly stated in his letter to the Galatians: "To those who seemed to be somewhat (what they were is no concern of mine, God accepteth no man's person), but who in conference added nothing to me, I did not give way, in subjection, no, not for an hour." So heated he becomes, as he remembers this interview, that he can scarcely write coherently about it. The two conceptions of the Christ and his office were so far apart, that he did not, to his dying day, form intimate relations with the teachers of the primitive gospel. They taught an uncongenial scheme.

From the first, Paul's sphere of action was the Gentile world to which his message was adapted. If his first appeal was addressed to Jews, it was simply because Christianity, as he understood it, being an outgrowth from Jewish thought, a development of Jewish tradition, should naturally be more intelligible and more welcome to them than to people who had no historical or literary preparation for it. But he took the broad ground with them, and addressed his word to outsiders the moment stubbornly dogmatical Jews declined to receive it on his terms. The attempt made by the author of the "Acts of the Apostles," to show that Paul modified or qualified his scheme to bring it into harmony with the older scheme that he supplanted, fails from the circumstance that the writer discerns no peculiarity in his theory of the Christ, and consequently misses completely the ground of any antagonism.

This is written in the persuasion that the "Acts of the Apostles" is not trustworthy as history; has in fact no historical intent, but belongs to the class of writings that may be called conciliatory, or mediatorial, designed to bring opposing views together, to heal divisions, and smooth over rough places. By pulling hard at both ends of the string, dragging Peter towards Paul, and Paul towards Peter, ascribing to both the same opinions, imputing to both the same designs, and passing both through the same experiences, the author would make his readers believe that they stood on the same foundation. The grounds of the opinion above stated cannot be given here; but there are grounds for it, and solid ones, as any one may discover who will take the pains to look at Edward Zeller's essay on the "Acts," or any other argument from an unprejudiced point of view. The conclusion may be arrived at, however, by a shorter process, namely, by taking Paul's Christology as given by himself in his own letters, and then considering how completely it is excluded from the book. It seems to the present writer nothing less than certain, as plain as any point of literary criticism can be, that the "Acts of the Apostles" is not to be relied on for information respecting the life and opinions of the apostle Paul. In this opinion writers belonging to very different schools of religious philosophy, Mackay, for example, and Martineau, are cordially agreed. This must henceforth be regarded as one of the points established. The firmer the apprehension of Paul's peculiarity, the stronger is the conviction that the description of his conduct in the book of "Acts" must be fanciful. If he tells the truth, as there is no reason to doubt, the unknown author of the "Acts" romances.