Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Bible" to "Bisectrix" / Volume 3, Slice 7

by Various

(α) The Growth of a Christian Literature. 1. The Pauline Epistles.—The Bible of Jesus and His disciples was the Old Testament. And both Jesus and His disciples were to all appearance content with this. It was probably two full decades after the death of Christ before there were any specifically Christian writings at all. The first generation of Christians was not given to writing. There was not only no obvious reason why it should write, but there was a positive reason why it should not write. This reason lay in the dominant attitude of Christians, which was what we call “eschatological.” The first generation of Christians lived in the daily expectation that Christ would return from heaven. The truth is, that not only were Christians expecting (as we say) the Second Coming of the Messiah, but what they expected was the Coming. The Messiah, as all Jews conceived of Him, was a superhuman being; and His First Coming as a man among men did not count as really Messianic. The whole first generation of Christians looked intently for His Coming in power and great glory, which they believed to be near at hand. In such a state of mind as this there was no motive for seeking permanence by writing. Men who imagined that they might at any moment be caught up to meet the Lord in the air were not likely to take steps for the instruction of the generations that might come after them.

Hence the first Christian writings were no deliberate product of theologians who supposed themselves to be laying the foundation of a sacred volume. They were not an outcome of the dominant tendencies of the time, but they arose rather in spite of them, in the simplest way, just from the practical needs of the moment.

It was thus that St Paul came to write his two epistles to the Thessalonians, the oldest Christian documents that we possess. By this time he was launched on his missionary labours; he had founded a number of churches, and he was going on to found others. And these earliest epistles are just the substitute for his personal presence, advice which he took occasion to send to his converts after he had left them. There are a few indications that he had sent similar communications to other churches before, but these have not been preserved. Indeed the wonder is—and it is a testimony to the strength of the impression which St Paul left upon all with whom he came into contact—that these missionary letters of his should have begun to be preserved so soon.

Both Epistles to the Thessalonians have for their object to calm somewhat the excited expectations of which we have spoken.

The first Epistle hits exactly the prominent features in the situation, when it reminds the Thessalonians how they had “turned unto God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven,” who would deliver them from the wrath to come (1 Thess. i. 9, 10). The turning from idols was of course peculiar to the Gentile communities, but the waiting for the Messiah from heaven was common to all Christians, whatever their origin. In this we may take the epistle as typical of the state of the whole Church at the time. And there is another important passage which shows why, in spite of its natural and occasional character, the epistle exhibits the germs of that essential quality which caused all the books of the New Testament to be so highly estimated. The apostle again reminds his readers how they had received his preaching “not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God,” which showed its power by the way in which it took hold of those who believed in it (1 Thess. ii. 13). The reference is of course primarily to the spoken word, but the written word had the same qualities as the spoken. It was the deep impression made by these which prepared Christians generally to accept the apostolic writings as inspired, and therefore sacred. There is no greater mistake than to suppose that the estimate formed by the early Church of its Bible was a merely arbitrary verdict imposed by an external authority; it was the expression, and the natural expression (though following certain prescribed lines), of its real sense of the value and fundamentally divine origin of the writings which it treasured.

Nearest in character to the Thessalonian Epistles are the two to Corinth, which have perhaps an interval of a year and a half between them. When 1 Corinthians was written, the attitude of the Church was still strongly eschatological (1 Cor. i. 7, 8, iii. 13-15, vii. 26, 29-31, xv. 25, 26, 51-54, xvi. 23). The thoughts of men were still set upon the near approach of the end, the troublous times that would issue in the break-up of the existing order and the return of Christ to introduce a new era. There was no idea of constructing a systematic theology; Christ was still the Jewish Messiah, and His Coming was conceived of as the Jews conceived of the coming of the Messiah, as a great supernatural event transforming the face of things and inaugurating the reign of God. In view of this approaching revolution, both the Church and the world were regarded as living from hand to mouth. It was useless to attempt to found permanent institutions; everything was provisional and for the moment. And yet, even under these conditions, some practical arrangements had to be made. The epistle is taken up with matters of this kind; either the apostle is reproving disorders and abuses actually existing in the Church, and almost sure to exist in a young community that had just adopted a novel method of life and had as yet no settled understanding of the principles involved in it; or else he is replying to definite questions put to him by his converts. In all this the epistle is still a genuine letter, and not a treatise. It only rises from time to time above the level of a letter, through the extraordinary penetration, force, enthusiasm and elevation of feeling that the apostle throws into his treatment of more or less ordinary topics. He can never rest until he has carried up the question of the moment to some higher ground of faith or conduct. It is in this incidental and digressive way that we get the description of the Gospel in i. 18-ii. 16; of the Christian ministry in chs. iii., iv.; of the principle of consideration for others in ch. ix.; of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper in chs. x., xi.; of Christian love in ch. xiii.; of the Resurrection and its consequences in ch. xv.

2 Corinthians is even more a product of the situation: it is even more taken up with personal relations. No epistle sheds more light on St Paul’s character as a man—so mobile, so tactful, so tender and affectionate, and yet so statesmanlike and so commanding. If doctrinal utterances occur from time to time, they are in every case incidental and unpremeditated.

The development of doctrine in St Paul’s epistles is due in part to the gradual subsiding of the eschatological temper, but even more to the growth of controversy. A crisis had arisen in Galatia owing to the invasion of the churches, which St Paul had founded there, by reactionary Jews. This called forth a letter[53] from St Paul, who felt himself compelled to grapple at close quarters with teaching which he saw cut at the very root of his own. He was thus led both to clear up for himself and to state for the sake of others his whole conception of soteriology—his answer to the question how was man to be set right before God. That was a large part, and at the moment the most crucial part, of the whole problem of religion.

Two or three years later (c. A.D. 55-56) St Paul was bent on paying a visit to Rome. He was not going there straight, but to Jerusalem first. He knew that he could only do this at the imminent peril of his life. It seemed very doubtful whether he would accomplish his desire. And therefore he took the opportunity to send to the Romans what is really a summing up, not of the whole of Christianity, but of that side of Christianity which the preceding controversy had brought into special relief. He states his case as part of a larger question still—a question that inevitably became pressing at that particular time—as to the entire religious relation of Jew and Gentile.

These years of shock and conflict could not fail to have marked effect upon the shaping of definite Christian doctrine. They drew attention away from the future to the present, and to the past as leading up to the present. They compelled a man like St Paul to theorize: thought was driven inward; it was made to search for foundations, to organize itself and knit together part with part. And the impulse thus given continued. It showed itself strongly in the epistles of the next group, especially Ephesians and Colossians. These epistles took their form at once from a natural progression of thought and from a new phase of controversy, a sort of Gnosticizing theory, or theories, which perverted Christian practice and impaired the supremacy of Christ by placing other beings or entities by His side. The apostle meets this by renewed emphasis on the central position of Christ; and he at the same time carries a step farther his conception of the unity of the Church, as embracing both Jew and Gentile. The predominance of this somewhat recondite teaching gave to these epistles even more the character of treatises, which in the case of Ephesians is further enhanced by the fact that it is probably a circular letter addressed not to a single church but to a group of churches. Philemon is of course a pure letter, and Philippians mainly so, the Pastorals, as their name implies, contain advice and instructions to the apostle’s lieutenants, Timothy and Titus, in the temporary charge committed to them of churches that the apostle could not visit himself.