When the argument which we are now discussing was first advanced long ago by Celsus, Origen had no better refutation than, after admitting the fact that Jesus was not after his resurrection seen as before publicly and by all men, to take refuge in the belief that the passage of Paul regarding his appearances contains wonderful mysteries which, if understood, would explain why Jesus did not show himself after that event as he had done before it.(1)
We must now proceed to show that the vision of Paul is satisfactorily explained by the same hypothesis.(2) We have already proved that there is no evidence of any value that Paul's conversion was due to his having seen Jesus in a manner which he believed to be objective and supernatural. To represent the arch persecutor Paul transformed in a moment, by a miraculous vision of Jesus, into the Apostle of the Gentiles was highly characteristic of the author of
1 Contra Cels., ii. 63. It is curious that, in an earlier
chapter, Origen, discussing the question of Celsus,—whether
any one who had been actually dead had ever risen with a
real body, says that if Celsus had been a Jew who believed
that Elijah and Elisha had raised little children he could
not have advanced this objection. Origen adds that he thinks
the reason why Jesus appeared to no other nation but the
Jews was, that they had become accustomed to miracles, and
could, by comparing the works of Jesus and what was told of
him with what had been done before, recognize that he was
greater than all who had preceded him. ii. 57.
Acts, who further represents Paul as immediately preaching publicly in Damascus and confounding the Jews. Widely different is the statement of Paul. He distinctly affirms that he did not communicate with flesh and blood, nor went he up to Jerusalem to them which were Apostles before him, but that he immediately went away into Arabia. The Fathers delighted in representing this journey to Arabia as an instance of Paul's fervour and eagerness to preach the Gospel in lands over which its sound had not yet gone forth. There can be no doubt, however, we think, that Paul's journey to Arabia and his sojourn there were for the purpose of reflection.(1) It is only in legends that instantaneous spiritual revolutions take place. In sober history the process is more slow and progressive. We repeat that there is no evidence which can at all be accepted that Paul's conversion was effected by a vision, and that it is infinitely more probable that it was, so to say, merely completed and crowned by seeing Jesus; but, at the same time, even if the view be held that this vision was the decisive circumstance which induced Paul at once to resign his course of persecution and embrace Christianity, our argument is not materially affected. In any case, much silent, deep, and almost unconscious preparation for the change must long before have proceeded in the mind of Paul, which was finally matured in the Arabian waste. Upon no view that is taken can this be excluded; upon every ground of common sense, experience, and necessary inference, it must be admitted.
Indifference is the only great gulf which separates opinions. There was no stolid barrier of apathy between Saul of Tarsus and belief in the Messiah-ship of Jesus. In persecuting Christianity, Paul proved two things: the earnestness and energy of his convictions, and the fact that his attention was keenly directed to the new sect. Both points contributed to the result we are discussing. Paul's Judaism was no mere formalism. It was the adoption, heart and soul, of the religion of his people; which was to him no dead principle, but a living faith stimulating that eager impetuous character to defend its integrity with "fire and sword." He did not, like so many of his countrymen, turn away with scorn from the followers of the despised Nazarene and leave them to their delusion; but turned to them, on the contrary, with the fierce attraction of the zealot whose own belief is outraged by the misbelief of others. The earnest Jew came into sharp collision with the earnest Christian. The earnestness of each was an element of mutual respect. The endurance and firmness of the one might not melt the bigoted resolution of the other, but it arrested his attention and commanded his unconscious sympathy. Just so would the persecutor have endured and resisted persecution; so, subsequently, he actually did meet it. And what was the main difference between the persecutor and the persecuted? It consisted in that which constituted the burden of the apostolic preaching: the belief that "this was the Christ." The creed of the new sect at least was not complicated. It was little more at that time than a question of identity, until Paul himself developed it into an elaborate system of theology.
In this question of identity, however, there was comprised a vast change of national ideas. To the devout Jew,—looking for the hope of Israel, yearning and praying for the advent of that Son of David who was to sit upon the throne of his fathers, restore the fortunes of the people, drive out the heathen and subdue the nations again to the yoke of Israel, establishing the worship of Jehovah in its purity and turning the Gentiles to the service of the God of Gods,—it was an abhorrent thought that the lowly peasant who had died a shameful death on Golgotha should be represented as the Messiah, the promised King of the Jews. Still there was something sufficiently startling in the idea to excite reflection. A political aspirant, who pretended to play the part, and after some feeble attempt at armed insurrection had been crushed by the heel of the Roman, could not have attracted attention. In that, there would have been no originality to astonish, and no singularity to require explanation. This man, on the contrary, who was said to be the Messiah, assumed no earthly dignity; claimed no kingdom in this world; had not even a place to lay his head; but ended a short and unambitious career as the teacher of a simple but profound system of morality by death on a cross. There was no vulgar imitation here. This was the reverse of the Messiah of the Jews. In spite of so much dissimilarity, however, there was in the two parties a fundamental agreement of belief. The Jew expected the Messiah; the Christian believed he had now come. The Messiah expected by the Jew was certainly a very different Saviour from the despised and rejected Jesus of Nazareth, but at the root of the
