The Origin of Paul's ReligionMachen, J. Gresham (John Gresham)
Religion
The Origin of Paul's Religion
Machen, J. Gresham (John Gresham)
Bible. Epistles of Paul -- Theology; Paul, the Apostle, Saint
This contention has already been discussed, and the weakness of it
has been pointed out. The Pauline doctrine of the Spirit was not
derived from contemporary paganism. But the exposition of Bousset's
theory has not yet been finished. The Spirit whose activities were
extended by Paul into the innermost recesses of the Christian's
life was identified, Bousset says, with "the Lord" (2 Cor. iii.
17). This identification exerted an important influence upon both
the elements that were brought together; it exerted an important
influence upon the conception both of "the Lord" and of "the
Spirit." If "the Lord" was identified, or brought into very close
relation, with the Spirit, and if the Spirit's activity extended
into the whole of life, then "the Lord" could no longer be for
Paul merely the cult-god who was present in the meetings of the
Church. On the contrary, He would have to be present everywhere
where the Spirit was present--that is, He would have to be that in
which the Christian lived and moved and had his being. Thus Paul
could form the astonishing phrase "in Christ" or "in the Lord,"
for which Bousset admits that no analogy is to be found in pagan
religion. On the other hand, the conception of the Spirit, Bousset
believes, was necessarily modified by its connection with "the
Lord." By the identification with an actual person who had lived
but a few years before, "the Spirit" was given a personal quality
which otherwise it did not possess. Or, to put the same thing in
other words, the Pauline phrase "in the Lord" is not exactly the
same in meaning as the phrase "in the Spirit"; for it possesses
a peculiar personal character. "This remarkable mingling of
abstraction and personality," says Bousset, "this connection of a
religious principle with a person who had walked here on the earth
and had here suffered death, is a phenomenon of peculiar power and
originality."
At this point, Bousset is in danger of being untrue to the
fundamental principles of his reconstruction; he is in danger of
bringing the religion of Paul into connection with the concrete
person of Jesus. But he detects the danger and avoids it. It must
not be supposed, he says, that Paul had any very clear impression
of the characteristics of the historical Jesus. For if he had had
such an impression, he never could have connected Jesus with an
abstraction like the Spirit. All that he was interested in, then,
was the fact that Jesus had lived and especially that He had died.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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