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PAUL

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Originally appearing in Volume V20, Page 955 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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PAUL  , " the Apostle of the Gentiles," the first See also:

great See also:Christian missionary and theologian . He holds a See also:place in the See also:history of See also:Christianity second only to that of the Founder himself . It was no See also:accident that one who has been styled " the second founder of Christianity " was See also:born and bred a Pharisee: Rather it was through See also:personal See also:proof of the limitations of legal Judaism that he came to distinguish so clearly between it and the See also:Gospel of See also:Christ, and thereby to See also:present Christianity as the universal See also:religion for See also:man as man, not merely a See also:sect of Judaism with proselytes of its own . For this, and nothing less, was the issue involved in the problem of the relation of Christianity to the Jewish See also:Law; and it was Paul who settled it once and for all . A See also:modern See also:Jew has said, " Jesus seems to expand and spiritualize Judaism; Paul in some senses turns it upside down." The See also:reason of this contrast is their respective attitudes to the Law as the See also:heart of Judaism . Jesus seems never to have breathed the See also:atmosphere of Rabbinic religion) . Hence his was a purely See also:positive reinterpretation of the spirit of Old Testament religion as a whole . His attitude to the Law was one of habitual dutifulness to its ordinances, combined with See also:sovereign freedom towards its See also:letter when the interests of its spirit so required (cf . F . J . A . See also:Hort, Judaistic Christianity, See also:chap. ii.) .

To this the See also:

primitive apostles and their converts in the See also:main adhered, without seeing far into their See also:Master's principle in the See also:matter; nor did they feel any great straitening of the spirit by the letter of the See also:Mosaic, rather than the Rabbinic Law . But with Paul it was otherwise . As See also:Saul the Pharisee he had taken the Mosaic T1-torah as divine Law in the strictest sense, demanding perfect inner and See also:outer obedience; and he had relied on it utterly for the righteousness it was held able to confer . Hence when it gave way beneath him as means of salvation—See also:nay, plunged him ever more deeply into the See also:Slough of Despond by bringing See also:home his inability to be righteous by doing righteousness—he was driven to a revolutionary attitude to the Law as method of See also:justification . " Through (the) Law " he " died unto (the) Law," that he " might live unto See also:God " (Gal. ii . 19) . By this experience not only Pharisaic Judaism, but the legal principle in religion altogether, was turned " upside down " within his own soul; and of this fact his teaching and. career as an apostle were the outcome . But Paul had in him other elements besides the Jewish, though these See also:lay latent till after his See also:conversion . As a native and See also:citizen of See also:Tarsus, he had points of contact with See also:Greek culture and sentiment which help to explain the sympathy and tact with which he adapted his See also:message to the Greek . As a See also:Roman citizen likewise, conscious of membership in a See also:world-wide See also:system of law and See also:order which overrode See also:local and racial See also:differences, he could realize the See also:idea of a universal religious See also:franchise, with a law and order of its own . Both these factors in his training contributed to the moulding of Paul the missionary statesman . In his mind the conception of the See also:Church as something See also:catholic as the Roman See also:Empire first took shape; and through his wonderful labours the See also:foundations of its actual realization were firmly laid .

In giving some See also:

account of this man and of his teaching, we shall expound the latter mainly as it emerges in the course of his personal career . Method.—Paul's own Ietters are our, See also:critical basis, as F . C . Baar and the See also:Tubingen school made clear once for all . The See also:book of Acts and other See also:sources of See also:information are to be used only so far as they 1 This, since the full success of the Maccabaean reaction more than a See also:century before, was determined by the Pharisaic notion of the Law, as a rigorous and technical method of attaining " righteousness " before God by correctness of religious conduct . But this ideal represented only one stream of the religion of the See also:original Chasidim, or " pious ones " of the See also:Psalms (see See also:ASSIDEANS) . The simpler See also:form in which their piety lived on in less See also:official circles, was that amidst which See also:John the Baptist and Jesus himself were reared . It breathes in the more popular literature of edification represented by the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, as well as in See also:Luke i., ii . are compatible with the letters,l as our only strictly contemporary documents . If our results to-See also:day are far more positive than those of the Tubingen critics, this is due partly to the larger number of letters now generally acknowledged as Paul's (some eight or ten), and partly to a See also:fuller knowledge both of Judaism and the Graeco-Roman world . These are seen to have embraced more varieties of religious thought and feeling than used to be assumed . The " particularist " tendency in Judaism was more limited than See also:Baur supposed; while there was even a pre-Christian See also:gnosticism, both Jewish and non-Jewish .

Albrecht See also:

Ritschl in his Altkath . Kirche (2nd ed., '857) did much to break through the hard-and-fast categories of the school in which he was trained, and in particular showed that See also:Gentile Christians generally were far from Pauline in their modes of conceiving either Law or Gospel . See also:Chronology.—This has been discussed by See also:Sir W . M . See also:Ramsay in Pauline and Other Studies (1907), and by C . H . See also:Turner in See also:Hastings's Dict. of the See also:Bible (See also:article " Chronology of New Test.") . Their results agree in the main for the See also:period when precision first becomes possible, viz. between Paul's first missionary See also:journey and his arrival in See also:Rome . Here Turner antedates Ramsay by a See also:year throughout . C . Clemen, in his See also:Paulus i . 349-410, reaches rather different results .

The pi4ot of the whole is See also:

Festus's See also:succession to See also:Felix as See also:procurator, which Turner places in 58 and Ramsay in 59, while they agree in excluding 56 (See also:Blass and See also:Harnack), 57 (See also:Bacon), 6o (See also:Lightfoot, Zahn), as well as yet earlier and later extremes (Clemen argues for 61) . On the chronology from Paul's conversion down to the See also:Relief visit (Acts xi . 30), c . 45-47, hardly two scholars agree; but on the whole the tendency is to put his conversion rather earlier than was formerly usual . I . Paul's See also:Life.— " Saul, who is also Paul," was " a See also:Hebrew, of See also:Hebrews " born, i.e. of strict Jewish origin, and of the tribe of See also:Benjamin (Phil. iii . 5; cf . 2 See also:Cor . Xi . 22) . Yet, as his See also:double name suggests, he was not reared on Jewish See also:soil but amid the See also:Dispersion, at Tarsus in See also:Cilicia, the son of a Roman citizen (Acts xxii . 28; cf. xvi .

37, See also:

xxiii . 27) . " Saul," his Jewish name, was a natural one for a Benjamite to See also:bear, in memory of See also:Israel's first See also:king . " Paul " was his name for the non-Jewish world, according to a usage seen also in John See also:Mark, See also:Simeon See also:Niger, &c . Paulus was not an uncommon name in See also:Syria and eastern See also:Asia Miner (see the See also:Index nominum in Boeckh's Corp . inscr. graec.), and was a natural one for the son of a Roman citizen . See also:Ramsey develops this point suggestively (Pauline and Other Studies, p . 65) . "It is as certain that he had a Roman name and spoke the Latin See also:language as it is that he was a Roman citizen . If, for example's See also:sake, we could think of him some- times as See also:Gaius See also:Julius Paulus—to give him a possible and even not improbable name—how completely would our view of him be transformed . Much of what has been written about him [as a narrow, one-sided Jew] would never have been written In Tarsus. if Luke had mentioned his full name." Nor would much of the same sort have been written, if the influences due to his Tarsian citizenship 2 (xxi . 39), viewed in the See also:light of the habits of Jewish life in Asian cities, had been kept in mind .

Tarsus, it seems, was peculiarly successful " in producing an amalgamated society in which the See also:

Oriental and Occidental spirit in unison attained in some degree to a higher See also:plane of thought and See also:action " (id., The Cities of St . Paul, 89) . Accordingly it is natural that Paul's letters should bear traces of Hellenic culture up to the level of a man of liberal See also:education . Whether he went beyond this to a first-See also:hand study of See also:philosophy, particularly of the Stoic type for which Tarsus as a university was famous, is open to question .3 In any See also:case Paul had learnt, when he wrote his epistles, to value Greek " See also:wisdom " at its true See also:worth—the suggestiveness and sanity of its best thoughts, The method which reverses this relation, using the " we " passages of Acts to discredit the epistles of Paul (as well as the See also:rest of Acts), is a See also:mere tour de force, which has received artificial See also:vogue by See also:incorporation in the See also:Encyclopaedia Biblica, and to a less degree in the See also:external and partial article " Saul of Tarsus " in the Jewish Encyclopaedia . The essential See also:harmony of the epistles and Acts has been shown afresh by A . Harnack, See also:Die Apostelgeschichte (1908) . 2 Probably as member of the Jewish " tribe " dating from the Seleucid See also:colony planted there in 171 B.C . (Ramsay) . 3 The main difficulty in deciding on this, as on other points of contact between Paul and See also:Hellenism, is the fact that he certainly got many of his Greek ideas through the See also:medium of Judaeo-Greek or Hellenistic literature, like the Wisdom of See also:Solomon (cf . See also:Romans i . 18-ii. fin.) . It is clear from the way in which he uses the Greek Bible, even where it diverges wrongly from the original, that he was reared on it rather than on the Hebrew textbut at the same See also:time its inadequacy to meet the deeper longings of the human spirit .

Above all he See also:

felt the See also:mental and moral shallowness of the verbal " show of wisdom " which marked current philosophical See also:rhetoric . Thanks to his letters, we can form some idea of the See also:character and strength of the See also:element in Paul's See also:early life due to Judaism . Looking back, he says (Phil. iii . 4-7), " If any other man thinketh to have confidence in the flesh, I yet Jewish Training . more . Circumcised the eighth day, . . a Hebrew of Hebrews; as touching the Law, a Pharisee; as touching the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless . Howbeit what things were gain to me, these have I counted loss for Christ." He came indeed to regard such inherited advantages as in themselves things of " the flesh," natural rather than spiritual (vv . 4, 9) . Yet as advantages, tending to awaken the spirit's thirst for God, he did esteem them, seeing in them See also:part of the preparation vouchsafed by divine See also:providence to himself (Gal . 1 . '5) .

Upon the " See also:

advantage of the Jew," as " entrusted with the oracles of God " (Rom. iii.' seq.), he dwells in Rom. ii . 17 in a way suggestive of his own youthful attitude to " the name of a Jew." Thus we may imagine the eager boy in Tarsus, as developing, under the instructions of a See also:father strictly loyal to the Law, and under the teaching of the See also:synagogue, a typical Jewish consciousness of the more serious and sensitive order . A See also:good See also:deal depends on the See also:age at which the See also:young Saul passed from Tarsus to See also:Jerusalem and the school of See also:Gamaliel . If he felt his vocation as teacher of the Law at the earliest possible age, this great See also:change may have Jerusalem. come soon after his fifteenth year, when Rabbinic studies might begin . This would well See also:accord with the likelihood that he never married . But in any case we must not exaggerate the contrast involved, since he came from a Pharisaic home and passed to sit at the feet of the See also:leader of the more liberal Palestinian Rabbinism . The transition would simply accentuate the legal element in his religious life and outlook . Nor was it mere personal See also:acceptance with God that floated before his soul as the See also:prize of such earnestness . The end of ends was a righteous nation, worthy the fulfilment of the divine promises . But this too could come only by obedience to the Law . Thus all that the young Pharisee cared for most hung upon the Law of his fathers . Outwardly he obtained the See also:goal of legal blamelessness as few attained it; and for a time he may have felt a measure of self-See also:satisfaction .

But if so, a day came when the inner meaning of the Law, as extending to the See also:

sphere of See also:desire and See also:motive, came home to him in stern See also:power, and his See also:peace fled (Rom. vii . 9) . For See also:sin in his inner, real life was unsubdued; nay, it seemed to grow ever stronger, See also:standing out more clearly and defiantly as insight into the moral life See also:grew by means of the Law . To the Law he had been taught to look for righteousness . In his experience it proved but the means to " knowledge of sin," without a corresponding impulse towards obedience . Not only did it make him realize the latent possibilities of evil desire (" the evil heart," Fetzer hara), it also made him aware of a subtler evil, the reaction of self-will against the demands of the Law . While one element was in abiding harmony with the will of God, the other was in equal sympathy with " the law of sin." Could the Law achieve the separation, making the moral See also:person " die " to " the flesh " and so See also:escape its sway ? No, answered Saul's experience: the Law rather adds power to sin as self-will (' Cor. xv . 56; Rom. vii . 13) . Whence then is deliverance to come ? It can only come with the Messianic age and through See also:Messiah .

The Law would reign inwardly as outwardly, being " written on the heart " as promised in prophecy . - So may we conceive the position reached by Saul, though not with full consciousness, before he came into contact with Christianity . But as yet he did not realize that "through the Law he had died to the Law" (Gal . Fn moons as ii . '9), much less the logical bearing of this fact upon to Jesus. the nature and See also:

function of the Law . How then would the message, " Jesus is the Messiah," strike such a man ? It would seem a blasphemous See also:caricature of things most sacred . It is doubtful whether he had heard Jesus Him-self (2 Cor. v . 16 has perhaps another meaning) . He may even have been absent from Jerusalem in the first days of apostolic See also:preaching, possibly as a See also:rabbi in Tarsus . But if so, his ardent nature soon brought him on the See also:scene, in time at least to hear See also:Stephen and take part against him (Acts vii . 58, 6o) .

If the See also:

simple message of the first witnesses, that one whose life and preaching were largely out of harmony with the Law as Saul understood it, had in fact been raised from the dead by Israel's God and so vindicated—to the condemnation of that See also:generation of God's See also:people—if this seemed to Saul mere madness, what was he to say to Stephen's views as to the Law and the people of the Law, both past and present ? (see STEPHEN) . Stephen could not be right in the views which still divided them . Perish the thought ! Perish too all those who upheld the crucified Nazarene, the accursed of the Law ! For His See also:death could mean but one of two things . Either He was accursed of God also, or—awful alternative, yet inevitable to Saul's logical mind—the Law relative to which He was accursed was itself set aside . Saul turned from the See also:suggestion as too shocking to his See also:pride alike in his people and in its divine Law, for him seriously to consider its alleged See also:credentials—the Resurrection, and the supernatural power and goodness of Him whose claims it was held to confirm . Why stay to weigh the See also:evidence of Galilean See also:common folk (Am-ha-aretz), themselves lax in their observance of Thorah, when over against it stood the whole See also:weight of immemorial See also:prescription, and the deliberate See also:judgment of the custodians of the Law as to this man as " a deceiver " ? No doubt they were self-deceived fanatics . But the See also:logic of the See also:movement had at length declared itself through the mouth of Stephen, and weak See also:toleration must be abandoned . So Saul was driven to persecute, driven by his acute sense of the See also:radical issue involved, and perhaps hoping to find relief Sau/the from his own See also:bitter experience in such zeal for the Persecutor .

Law . Yet the goading of unsatisfied intuitions did not cease . We may even suspect that Stephen's philosophy of Israel's history had made an impression on him, and was undermining his confidence in the See also:

infallibility of his nation's religious authorities . If mistaken before, why not again ? This granted possible, all turned on the evidence as to the Resurrection of the crucified See also:Prophet of See also:Nazareth . Yet though the joyous mien of His followers, even when confronted with death, seemed to betoken a good See also:conscience before God which could hardly fail to impress him, Saul felt the status of the Law to be too See also:grave an issue to depend on the probabilities of human testimony . So he plunged on, in devotion to what still seemed the cause of God against impugners of His Thorah, but not without his own doubts . He was, in fact, finding it " hard to kick against the goad " (Acts See also:xxvi . 14) plied in his deeper consciousness, as he followed his inherited and less personal beliefs . He was, in language which he later applied to his compatriots, loth to " submit himself to the righteousness of God " (Rom. x . 3), when it came in a manner humbling to. his feelings . Still he was in the main honest (r Tim. i .

13), and the hindrances to his belief were exceptional . See also:

Direct personal experience on the point on which all hinged, the alleged divine vindication of Jesus as Messiah following on the legal condemnation by the See also:national authorities, was needful to open up a clear exit from his religious impasse . It was at this critical point in his inner history that, as he neared See also:Damascus on a See also:mission of persecution, there was granted The See also:vision him—as he believed ever after in the See also:face of all at vamas- See also:challenge—a vision of Jesus, in risen and glorified ens. humanity, as See also:objective as those to the original witnesses with which in i Cor. xv. he classes it . As to the sense in which this vision, so momentous in its issues, may be regarded as " objective," the following points deserve See also:notice . On the one hand it is generally agreed (i) that Paul distinguished this See also:appearance of the risen Jesus from his other " visions and revelations of the See also:Lord," such as he refers to in 2 Cor. xii. t sqq., and classed it with those to the Twelve and others which first created the belief that Jesus had been " raised from the dead "; (2) thatthis belief included for Paul a transformed or spiritualized See also:body (cf. the See also:note of time, " on the third day," and the See also:argument in i Cor. xv . 12 sqq., 35 sqq.), his own vision of which seems to See also:colour his conception of the Resurrection body generally (Phil. iii . 2I, though he had certain traditional notions on the subject to start with; cf . 2 Cor. v. i sqq. with Apoc . See also:Baruch, xlix. li., representing Jewish belief about A.D . 70-See also:ion, and see Dr R . H . See also:Charles's ed.) .

On the other hand, analogies furnished by religious See also:

psychology, including a sudden vision amid light and the See also:hearing of a See also:voice as accompaniments of religious crisis in certain cases, affect our ability to take Saul's consciousness in the matter as a simple transcript of objective facts . There is indeed reason to believe that the dazzling light was such a fact, if it blinded Saul temporarily (Acts ix . 8–19) and affected his companions (xxii . 9, xxvi . 14) . But beyond this See also:physical prelude to his vision we cannot go critically . Thus the nature of the connexion between the light as an objective antecedent, and the vision subjective to Saul himself, remains doubtful on the plane of history . It is possible to penetrate further only by the aid of faith, with or without speculations based on certain psychical facts more and more establishing themselves to scientific minds . Religious faith, dwelling on the unique issues of the vision in the history of Christianity and arguing from effects to a cause as real as themselves, tends to postulate the objectivity which Saul himself asserts . Some do so in an See also:absolute sense, in spite of the differences between Saul's experience and that of his companions (Acts ix . 7, xxii . 9) .

Others confine the objectivity to a divine See also:

act, producing by See also:special action on Saul's See also:brain a vision not due simply to the antecedents in himself . Thus it was not merely subjective, a mere vision in the sense of See also:hallucination, but an objective vision or genuine See also:revelation of the real, as Paul claimed . Such an objective-subjective revelation, being in this but a special form of what is involved in any real divine revelation, accords in See also:general with modern See also:research as to See also:telepathy and phantasms of distant or deceased persons . But, after all, the main point for Paul's religious history—as well as the basis of all theories of the vision—is the question as to the degree of discontinuity between his thought before and after the event . On this Paul is clear and emphatic; nor can we here go behind the evidence of one whose writings prove him a master in introspective reflection . " There was no possibility that he should by any See also:process of mere thinking come to realize the truth " as to Jesus, so rooted were the prejudices touching things divine which barred the way (see Ramsay, Pauline and Other Studies, p. i8) . Important as is the question as to the nature of the vision which changed Saul's career, it is its spiritual content which bears most upon the See also:story of his life . Jesus n sin was,! in spite of all, God's Messiah, His Righteous co See also:tent.ul One, His Son, the type and ideal of righteousness in man, through spiritual See also:union with whom like righteousness was to be attained, if at all . In a flash Saul's personal problem as to acceptance with God and victory over sin was changed . It became simply a question how spiritual union with the Messiah was to come about . He had vanquished and " condemned sin in the flesh " by His perfect obedience (Rom. viii . 3, v .

19), of which the See also:

Cross was now seen to be the crowning act . As for the Law as means of justification, it was superseded by the very fact that Messiah had realized His righteousness on another principle altogether than that of " See also:works of the Law," and had in consequence been crucified by its action, as one already dead to it as a dispensational principle . This meant that those See also:united to Him by faith were themselves sharers in His death to the Law as dispensational raster and See also:judge, and so were quit of its claims in that new moral world into which they were raised as sharers also in His Resurrection (Rom. vi. i–vii . 6) . Henceforth they " lived unto God " in and through Messiah, by the self-same Spirit by which He had lived the sinless life (viii . 9) . Here we have at once Paul's See also:mysticism and his distinctive gospel in germ, though the full working out in various directions came only gradually under the stimulus „All Things of circumstances . But already the old regime New. had dissolved . His first act was to make explicit, through See also:confession and See also:baptism, his submission and See also:adhesion to Jesus as Messiah implicit in his cry from the ground, " What shall I do, Lord ? " Thereby he formally " washed away his sins " (Acts xxii. i6; cf . Rom. x . 9) .

Then with new-born See also:

enthusiasm he began boldly to proclaim in the synagogues of Damascus that Jesus, whose followers he had come to See also:root out, was verily the Messianic Son of God (ix . 20; cf . Matt. xvi. i 6) . Yet ere See also:long he himself felt the need for quiet in which to think 20 out the theory of his new position . He withdrew to some secluded spot in the region See also:south of Damascus, then vaguely called See also:Arabia (Gal. i . 17) . See also:Chief among the problems pressing for reinterpretation in the light of his See also:recent Neheory w ence was the place of the Law in God's counsels . T-of the Law . While the Law could condemn, warn and in some degrees restrain the sinner from overt sins, it could not redeem or See also:save him from the love of sin . In a word, it could not " give life " (Gal. iii . 21) . Hence its direct remedial action was quite secondary .

Its See also:

primary effect, and therefore divine purpose, was to drive men humbly to seek God's See also:grace . It " shut up all unto (realized) disobedience, that God might have See also:mercy upon all " (Rom. xi . 32; Gal. iii . 22) . Thus the place of the Law in God's counsels was episodic . The radical See also:egoism of the natural man could be transcended, and self-glorying excluded, not by the law, with its " law (principle) of works," but by the "law of faith " (Rom. iii . 27) . In See also:fine, the function of the Law was secondary, preparatory, temporary . The reign of the Law closed when its See also:work in shutting up men to faith in Christ-the perfect form of faith, that of conscious sonship—was accomplished . It had a high place of See also:honour as a See also:dispensation for a limited end and time; but its day was over when Jesus accepted crucifixion at its hands, and so passed on as the inaugurator of a new dispensation marked by a final relation between man and God, the filial, the Spirit of which was already in the See also:hearts of all Christian believers (Gal. iii . 23–iv . 7) .

Thus the Cross of Jesus was the satisfaction of the claims of Law as a dispensation or divinely sanctioned method, which had to be honoured even in the act of being transcended, " that God might be just (i.e. dispensationally consistent), while justifying the believer in Jesus " on a fresh basis (Rom. iii . 26) . Such a view did but " establish the Law " (v . 31) within its own proper sphere, while pointing beyond it to one in which its final aim found fulfilment . Here lay the revolutionary element in Paul's thought in relation to Judaism, turning the latter " upside down " and marking his gospel off from the form in which Judaeo- tts a Christians had hitherto apprehended the salvation verssa ! Yalue . in Jesus the Christ . It was the result of profound insight, and, historically, it saved Christianity from being a mere Jewish sect . But as it was conditioned by recoil from an overdriven use of the Law in the circles in which Saul was trained, so there was something one-sided in its emphasis on the pathological workings of the Law upon human nature in virtue of sinful egoism . Saul was the See also:

pioneer who secured mankind for ever against bondage to religious legalism . He it was who first detected that specific See also:virus generated by Law in the " natural man," and also discovered the sovereign antidote provided in Christ . Nor is it as though Paul, even in those apologetic writings which present his antitheses to Law in the sharpest form, had the Jewish Thorah exclusively in view .

He deals with it rather as the classic ,type of law in religion: it is really law qua law, even the unwritten law in conscience, as determining man's relations to God, that he has in mind in his psychological See also:

criticism of its tendencies in the human soul (see Sanday and Headlam, on Rom. ii . 12 seq.): Nitimur in vetitum cupimusque negata." This is too often overlooked by his Jewish critics . Paul felt nothing but reverence for the Thorah in what he took to be its proper place, as secondary to faith and subordinate to Christ . In See also:short, Paul first perceived and set forth the principle of See also:inspiration to God-likeness by a personal ideal in place of obedience to an impersonal Law, as See also:condition of salvation . The former includes the latter, while safeguarding the filial quality of religious obedience . The above seems to meet part of the criticism directed by modern See also:Jews against Paul's theory of the Law . Other criticisms (cf . C . G . See also:Montefiore, Jewish Quarterly See also:Review, vi . 428–474, xiii . 161–217) may just be noted .

If Paul supports his theory by See also:

bad Scripture exegesis, that is a common Rabbinic failing . If it be said that it is monstrous to hold that God gave the Law mainly for another end than the ostensible one, viz. to See also:lead to life by obedience, this holds so far; but one cannot exclude from the divine purpose the negative effect, viz. promotion of self-knowledge in sinful man and the breakingdown of his self-confidence, conditions essential to a mature filial relation between man and God . Nor did Paul deny the positive or directly beneficent, though limited, function of the Law, so far as it was viewed in the light of the grace of God, as by prophets, psalmists, and others who " walked humbly with God," not as meriting His approval as of right by " works of law." But, See also:objects the modern Jew, the notion of Rabbinic Judaism as generally tainted by " legalism " in any such sense, is a mere figment of Paul's . Nevertheless it is unproven and improbable that Paul unfairly represents the prevailing tendency in the Pharisaic Judaism of his own day as "legalistic " in the bad sense . He is really the one extant See also:witness upon the point, as just defined, if we except certain apocalyptic writings (whose evidence modern Jews are anxious to See also:discount), like the See also:Apocalypse of Baruch and 4 See also:Ezra, the latter of which suggests that already the humbling effect of the See also:capture of Jerusalem was being felt . Finally the same liberal Jew who complains that Paul turns Judaism " upside down " by his See also:doctrine of the Law, cites with approval his words, " There is no distinction between Jew and Greek," and adds, " Not till St Paul had written did the prophetic universalism attain its goal." Surely there is a vital connexion between these le o things . " Universalism " was the true issue of the higher tendency in Hebraism, as seen in certain of Israel's prophets . But it was attained only through Jesus of Nazareth; and historically the main See also:link between His supra-legal universalism and its actual outcome in the Christian Church was the ex-Pharisee Saul, with_ his See also:anti-legal gospel . Saul's conversion See also:left Jesus the Christ as central to his new world as the Law had been to his old . All; was summed up in Christ, and Him crucified . This was to him the essence of Christianity as distinct from Judaism. of Pa The Christ ul . As, to the Jew, life was lived under the Law or in it as native element, so the Christian life was " in Christ " as element and law of being .

Christ simply replaced the Law as form and medium of relations between God and man . In this Paul went far beyond the older apostles, whose simpler attitude to the Law had never suggested the problem of its dispensational relation to Messiah, though in fact they relied on Messiah alone for justification before God . The logic of this, as Paul later urged it on See also:

Peter of See also:Antioch (Gal. ii . 15 sqq.), they did not yet perceive . To him it was clear from the first . But the contrast goes farther . The very form in which Jesus was known to Saul by direct experience, namely, as a spiritual being, in a body already glorified in virtue of a regnant " spirit of' holiness "—revealed by the Resurrection as the essence of His See also:personality (Rom. i . 4)—determined all his thought about Him . To this even Jesus' earthly life, real as it was, was subordinate . Paul was not indifferent to Jesus' words and deeds, as helping to bring home in detail the spirit of Him who by resurrection was revealed as the Son of God; but apart from insight into His redemptive work, knowledge of these things was of little religious moment . The extent of Paul's knowledge of the See also:historical Jesus has been much debated . Few think that the had seen Jesus in the flesh; some even deny that he knew or cared for more than the See also:bare facts to which he alludes in his epistles-the Davidic See also:birth, the institution of the Supper, the Death and Resurrection .

But beyond his See also:

express appeals to precepts of " the Lord " in r Cor. vii. ro, ix . 14 (cf . Rom. iii . 14), he " shows a marked insight into the character of Jesus as it is described in the Gospels " (see 2 Cor . X. r; cf . Phil. ii . 5–8) . The sources of such knowledge were no doubt oral, e.g: Peter (Gal. i . 18), See also:Barnabas, Mark, as well as collections of Jesus' words, along with connected incidents in His life, used in catechesis . Thus Saul's attitude to Jesus was fixed by his own experience . The varied theoretic e