An analysis of religious belief

by viscount John Russell Amberley

That these objections are well founded might be proved by reference to a picture (drawn either by Paul himself or by some one who assumed his name) of the conduct of young widows. Having to consider the question what widows may properly be supported by the charity of the Church, this writer refuses to admit any of them to the number of pensioners until they are sixty years old, apparently on the ground that they cannot be trusted to give up flirting altogether before they have reached that age. Young widows are to be rejected, for when they have begun to wax wanton against Christ, they wish to marry; a damnable tendency, but one which it is so hopeless to get rid of, that the best thing they can do is to marry, to have children, and manage their households. Otherwise they will gad about gossiping and tale-bearing from house to house; not only idle, but mischievous (1 Tim. v. 9-15). So that the ideal conception of unmarried persons caring only to please the Lord had at least no application to Christian widows.

While recommending celibacy, Paul is careful not to encourage breach of promise of marriage. If a man thinks he is behaving unhandsomely towards his betrothed, who is passing the flower of her age, he may marry her: he is not doing wrong. Nevertheless, if he feel no necessity for a sexual relation, and resolve to keep her a virgin, he does well. So then marriage is good, but celibacy is better (1 Cor. vii. 36-38).

Notwithstanding these views, Paul, or at least the Pauline Christian who wrote the first Epistle to Timothy, by no means contemplates a celibate clergy. It is specially enumerated among the qualifications of a bishop that he is to be a good manager of his household, keeping his children well in order; for (it is argued) if a man cannot rule his own house, how will he be able to take care of the Church of God? The only limitation placed upon the bishops is that they are not to be polygamists. They, as well as the deacons, are to keep to a single wife (1 Tim. iii. 1-5).

Notwithstanding his general preference for celibacy, Paul recognizes certain reasons as sufficing to excuse the establishment of a sexual relation, and it is important to note what, in the apostle's judgment, these reasons are. Now it is remarkable that he seems to perceive no consideration whatever in favor of the matrimonial condition but its ability to satisfy the sexual appetite. To avoid fornication a man is to have his own wife; if people cannot restrain themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn. Those who marry are not guilty of sin, although they will have trouble in the flesh (1 Cor. vii. 2, 9, 28). Such a view of the functions of matrimony as this is simply degrading. It treats it as exactly equivalent to prostitution in the uses it fulfills, and as differing only in the durability of the connection. But if the whole object of the connection is merely to gratify passion, its greater durability is but a questionable advantage. For exactly as marriage is recommended "to avoid fornication," so divorce might often be recommended to avoid adultery. A union of which the main purpose is to give a convenient outlet to desire, had better be broken when it ceases to fulfill that office to the satisfaction of both the parties. It is strange that Paul should seem to have no conception whatever of the intellectual or moral advantages to be derived from the sympathetic companionship of one of the opposite sex. Perhaps his age presented him with scarcely any examples of marriages in which that companionship was carried into the higher fields of human thought or action. Yet he might still have acknowledged something more in the emotion of love than a special condition of the human body. Christianity has done much to raise the character of marriage, but not one of its achievements in that respect can be credited to the writings of its chief apostle.

Such being the grounds on which the matrimonial bond was to be contracted, it was natural that when contracted, the relation of the parties to each other should not be one of a very exalted order. Paul has, in fact, little of moment to recommend under the second head (that of the character of these relations) except the subjection of women, and on this he is certainly emphatic enough. Wives are to submit themselves to their own husbands: husbands are to love their wives (Col. iii. 18, 19.—Eph. v. 22, 25). An extraordinary reason is given in one epistle (possibly indeed not written by Paul) for requiring women to learn with subjection, and forbidding them to teach, or usurp authority over men. It is that Adam was formed first, and Eve after him, and that Adam was not deceived, but Eve was (1 Tim. ii. 11-14). Scarcely less absurd than this is the argument (and again I must note that it occurs in an epistle of doubtful authenticity) that the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is of the Church, and that just as the Church is subject to Christ, so must wives be subject to their husbands. And as Christ loved the Church, so are husbands to love their wives, considering them as equivalent to their own bodies, which they cannot hate (Eph. v. 22-33)—although it did not appear that when man became "one body" with a prostitute he was therefore to love her. These views of the duty of submission on the part of wives are not indeed surprising in that early age, for they have continued to the present day. The writer of these epistles is only chargeable with not being in advance of his fellow-men. It required all the genius of Plato, whom not even the greatest apostle could approach, to foreshadow for women a position of equality which they are but now beginning to attain.

Besides these rules there is another laid down by Paul for the conduct of married parties which evinces his strong common sense. Husbands and wives are mutually to render one another their "due." They have not absolute power over their own bodies. They must not therefore defraud one another of conjugal rights, unless for a short time with a view to fasting and prayer, and then only with mutual consent (1 Cor. vii. 3-5). Paul therefore would have given no sanction to that very questionable form of asceticism in which husbands deserted their wives, or wives their husbands, to pursue their own salvation, regardless of the happiness of their unfortunate consorts. All such persons he would have bidden to return to the more indisputable duties of the marriage-bed.

Such a doctrine, however, to make it properly applicable to practice, would require to be supplemented by a doctrine of divorce; otherwise there is no provision for the case of an invincible repugnance arising in one of the parties towards the other, or in both towards each other. And this brings me to the third head of the apostle's teaching; his views on the disruption of the marriage-tie. Here he has little to say except that the wife is not to quit her husband, or that, if she do, she must remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband; and that the husband is not to put away his wife. In cases where one is a Christian and the other not, they are not absolutely under bondage: they may separate, though it does not appear that they may marry again. But the apostle strongly advises them to keep together, in the hope that the believing member of the couple may save the other (1 Cor. vii. 10-16). It is plain from this summary that the apostle, no more than his Master, faces the real difficulties of the question of divorce. For the case of unhappy unions, except in the single instance of the one party being a Christian, he has no provision whatever. It is remarkable, however, that he several times intimates in the course of this chapter that he is not speaking with the authority of Christ, but simply expressing his personal opinions; a proviso which looks as if he himself were unwilling to invest these views with full force of the sanction they would otherwise have derived from his apostolical commission.

There is another subject on which the opinions expressed by Paul are open to considerable comment—the resurrection of the dead. In a chapter which for its beauty and its eloquence is unparalleled in the New Testament, he discusses the Christian prospect of another life. Had he confined himself to rhetoric I should have been contented simply to admire, but he has unfortunately mingled argument with poetic vision in a very unsatisfactory manner. In the first place, he attempts to deduce the resurrection of the dead from the resurrection of Christ. If, he contends, there be no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen; our preaching is vain, and so also is your faith (1 Cor. xv. 12-20). He fails to perceive that the resurrection of Christ—a man whose whole life, according to him, was full of prodigies—could be no guarantee for the resurrection of any other individual whatever. Christ had already been restored to life in a manner in which no other person had ever been restored. His body had been reanimated after two days, before it had had time to suffer decomposition, and that without the intervention of any other person, competent like Christ himself, to perform a miracle. How then could so unprecedented an occurrence warrant the expectation of the reanimation of those who had been long dead, and whose bodies had suffered decomposition? Plainly there is here a palpable non sequitur. Christ might be raised without this fact involving a general resurrection; and a general resurrection might happen without Christ having been raised. Further on he makes a still more amazing blunder. Answering a supposed antagonist, who puts the natural question, "With what body are the dead raised?" he exclaims, "Fool! that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die;" (1 Cor. xv. 36.) implying that he conceived the change undergone by seed dropped into the ground to resemble the death of the human body. Now it is needless to point out that the organic processes constituting physical life do not cease in the grain which (as he says) grows up into wheat or some other corn; and that if they did cease, that "body that shall be," which he compares to the bodies of men in their expected resurrection, never would appear at all. The grain, in short, would not grow. An adversary, had he been on the alert, might have retorted upon Paul (borrowing his own courteous phraseology): "Idiot! that which thou sowest is not quickened if it die." Such a retort would have been completely crushing. Another very fatal mistake of Paul's is the contention that if the dead do not rise, we have no reason to do anything but enjoy the passing hour. "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die" (1 Cor. xv. 32). Nothing can be more dangerous than such language as this; for if a man bases his moral system upon the belief in a future life, the destruction of that belief will involve the destruction of his moral system. It is founding the more certain upon the less so; universal conceptions upon special ones; that which is essential to human existence upon the doctrines of a particular creed held only by a portion of the human race. The argument is a favorite one with theologians, because it enlists in favor of the doctrine of a future state all the strong attachment by which we cling to principles of morals. None the less is it illegitimate, and it ought to be sternly rejected.

Next in beauty to this eloquent description of the future state of man may be reckoned the extremely fine chapter on brotherly love in the same epistle. Brotherly love, according to Paul, never fails, though intellectual gifts, such as prophecies, tongues, and knowledge, will pass away. Hope, faith, and brotherly love are joined together by him as a trinity of virtues which "now abide;" but the greatest of these is brotherly love (1 Cor. xiii).

Scattered about in the writings of this apostle there are also some admirable maxims of conduct, extremely similar in tone to those of Jesus. Thus, he tells his fellow-Christians to be kindly affectioned one to another; to bless those that persecute them—to bless and not to curse; to return no man evil for evil; give food to a hungry enemy and drink to a thirsty one; and generally, not to be overcome by evil, but to overcome evil by good (Rom. xii. 10-21.—1 Thess. v. 15). It were much to be wished that he himself had remembered these beneficent rules of conduct in the case of Alexander the coppersmith, who he says did him "much evil," and concerning whom he utters the significant prayer that the Lord may reward him according to his works (2 Tim. iv. 14).