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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 49

The Epistles [Series on Beliefs About the Bible No. 7]

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Unity Pulpit, Boston

Vol. 4. No. 23.

George H. Ellis, Boston: 141 Franklin Street.

1883.
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The Epistles*

As We come from the Old Testament to the New, we notice that there are four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles that lead the list of those books that have come to be regarded as canonical. It is worthy your note, in passing, that the Acts of the Apostles does not treat in any general way of the doings of the twelve apostles, but only concerns itself with certain passages in the life chiefly of Peter and Paul. The significance of that I shall refer to later.

As I wish to treat of the New Testament in a general way, in the order of time, rather than the order in which the publishers have happened to place the books, I pass by the Gospels and the Acts and come to the Epistles; for you are probably aware of the fact that nearly all the Epistles, the principal ones most certainly, were written some time before any of the Gospels were brought into their present condition.

When the First Epistle was written, which was probably the first Epistle of Paul to the Church in Thessalonica, Jesus had been dead but about twenty years. That is, the people were then about as far away from his time as we are from the time of Abraham Lincoln, and, of course, there would be a great many persons alive who had either seen Jesus, or who had seen somebody that had seen him,—enough to keep alive and fresh the traditions of the principal events in his life, the principal phases of his doctrine, and the generally believed account of his death. We must bear in mind, however, all the way through, that these early churches did not believe that Jesus was really dead, but only that he had been withdrawn into the heavens for a page 4 little time, whence he was to return again in the clouds, accompanied by an innumerable retinue of angels, to raise the dead, to judge the world, and to usher in the new kingdom of God which he was to establish here upon earth. I refer to this only to show you the general intellectual and religious atmosphere of the time when these Epistles were written.

There is another point to be noted. You will find that these letters are written to the Church in Philippi, to the Church in Ephesus, to the Church in Galatia, to the Church in Rome, etc. That is, and this is the point, the first churches, as we should naturally expect, were organized in the great cities scattered over the Roman Empire, the principal centres of intellectual life and thought. I refer to this, so as to bring you into sympathy with the natural growth of these churches, that you may see how, under ordinary human laws, they happened to be what they were.

In process of time, those who rejected the claims of Chris-tianity came to be called pagans and heathen. Did you ever think why? The word "pagan" is from a Latin word paganus, which means a villager. The word "heathen" is simply heath-men, men who lived out on the heath, peasants. This suggestion is mainly interesting, as I think, because it lets us into the secret, which is true to-day just as it was then, that any new movement always finds its first footing in the town, where thought is most active, where opinions are most fluent, where it is easier to get a hearing for a new idea, and where a new thought first finds lodgement in the minds and activities of men. However sturdy and noble and grand the country may be in the make-up of its moral fibre, yet it is always a little behind the town. Just as last year's fashions are this year's fashions in the country, so the intellectual and religious fashions follow this same law: they start in the centre of intellectual activity, and then spread slowly toward the country.

These churches, then, these new organizations, were dotted here and there over the Roman Empire in the great centres page 5 of commercial and intellectual activity. They were not, as yet, between 50 and 60 A.D., when the first Epistles were written, very numerous, very large, or very powerful.

These little Churches were simply made up of the few men who had accepted the claims of the new Messiah, and who, while they were waiting for his immediate return,—for both Jesus and Paul taught explicitly that he was to come back before that generation had entirely passed away,—would naturally place little emphasis on the affairs of this world. It is not strange, therefore, that they established practical communism, selling their houses and lands, just as in modern times Millerites have done, believing that the world was coming to an end in three, five, or ten years. What was the use of laying out schemes of business, plans for the regeneration of this world, social or political improvements? What was the use of being troubled, if Caesar was a tyrant and was ruling the world? What was the use of mourning about these things? So Paul tells them not to be troubled, for the time is short, and the end is at hand. Therefore, they sold their property, and tried to make one another as comfortable as possible, establishing these little brotherhoods in the great centres of activity, and then, laboring and doing their daily duty as best they could, awaited the coming of the kingdom of God with its heavenly magnificence and glory. In the face of a belief like that, of course it would not occur to any one to write any Gospels. What did they want of Gospels? The people who were living already knew about Jesus, and some of them were to live until he came again. So they did not take the trouble to make any record of his life and teachings at that time.

But you will see how naturally the Epistles arose. Here were these churches, perplexed on every hand by practical questions. They had just come out of heathenism. In those days, if you were to dine with a heathen, the chances were that he would go through some religious ceremony preceding the feast, to consecrate the animal that he was to have for his dinner. It was a very vital question, then, whether the page 6 new churches were to be permitted to attend such feasts, and eat the meat that had been offered to idols; whether in so doing they became accomplices in idolatry. You remember how often Paul refers to this. They questioned, also, whether it was necessary to keep the Mosaic law, and they looked to their leaders for answers. Those who had seen, Jesus, or who had received traditions of him from others' lips, could have him for guidance in this matter; but others did not know just what they were required to believe, and all sorts of practical questions would naturally spring up while they were waiting for his second coming. It was to answer these difficulties and to solve these practical problems that the Epistles came to be written.

We must remember another thing. It is absurd for anybody to suppose that Paul or Peter or James, or any of the writers of the Epistles, ever had the slightest idea that these letters would become a part of a book, to be referred to as a standard of belief and doctrine eighteen hundred years after that time. And this absurdity appears in what I have already stated, that they expected the world to come to an end before the people who wrote the letters were dead. They expected Jesus to come again to earth, and reign again as their king, for at least a thousand years. This idea is still thrilling and throbbing through parts of the New Testament, especially the Apocalypse, or the Book of Revelation. It is all on tiptoe with this upward and onward looking for the coming of the Lord. When Jesus should come, there would be no reason, and almost no need, of any - book to announce his will; for he himself would be the living king, dispensing his own law and executing his own judgments.

These letters, then, were simply temporary and local expedients to meet the exigencies of that time. If you read them carefully in the light of that idea, you will find nearly all your perplexities solved. It is not my purpose to go into minute criticism of one Epistle after another. Instead of any textual criticism, I wish to give some general ideas for page 7 which they stand; but it is worth my while to point out first one or two significant facts concerning a few of them.

Take the little Epistle of Jude; Jude says that he was the brother of James. He was not himself an apostle, but, perhaps, the brother of an apostle. There is one thing in that little letter which of itself is sufficient to forever render absurd any claim for the entire infallibility of the Bible. I have spoken to a great many orthodox ministers concerning it, who had never had their attention called to it. I spoke to you last Sunday concerning the Book of Enoch,—a wild, crude, unreliable, apocalyptic book, written within a hundred years of the time of Christ. Jude quotes it as being the work of the old patriarch, "the seventh from Adam." Here is a palpable blunder.

The Epistle of James was written apparently to offset Paul's doctrine of the justification by faith. James evidently thought Paul was pushing that too far. He said it was well enough to have faith, but you must supplement faith and manifest the reality of that faith by works, or it becomes dead and fruitless. This was the first general contribution to the seething discussion of the age.

There is no occasion for me to say anything concerning the three Epistles of John, except that there is no reason to suppose John the Apostle wrote them. Neither need I detain you with a special reference to the epistles known as the Epistles of Peter. The second certainly was not written by him, and it is doubtful about the first; but it makes little difference to us.

Concerning the Epistle to the Hebrews, ordinarily called the work of Paul, there is hardly a scholar in the world who thinks that Paul wrote it. It devotes itself to an endeavor to justify Christianity to those who had come out from the Jewish Church. It shows how the old dispensation was preparatory to Christianity; that every thing prefigured it; that it represented the symbol and shadow of which Christianity is the substance and reality. This, you will see, must have met a very pressing need or want at that time, when page 8 one of the most important and practical questions of the Jew was whether, when he became a Christian, he was false to the old and divine dispensation which had been given to his fathers.

I wish now to confine myself entirely to the attitude and work of Paul. Paul is the great name in historic Christianity, second only in rank and dignity to that of Jesus, and not even second to him in the power which he has exerted over thought. Instead, however, of going into a general examination of the Epistles, I want, in some general, graphic way, to give you Paul's attitude toward the universe, to set forth the scheme which he held, and which he made a vital power in the development of civilization. There is no man in all the past ages more alive to-day than Paul, or who is having more to do with men that have never thought very much about it, and who have least appreciated the significance of the work which he wrought.

It is not necessary for my purpose that I should discuss all the questions that have been mooted by the critics as to whether he wrote all the Epistles that have passed under his name. It does not make any special difference to our consideration, for those doctrines which he did hold are taught in the Epistles which are undoubtedly his.

In the first place, then, in order to understand this Pauline doctrine, you must remember that he was a grand, sturdy, unfaltering believer in predestination of the most cast-iron sort. No man who ever lived has taught it more explicitly and clearly than he. God is the absolute sovereign, and he has a right through all the eternities to do whatever he will; and puny, short-sighted man has no right to question it. This is the attitude of Paul. God has a perfect right, to use his figure, to take one lump of clay, and make a vase to hold flowers in the parlor: he has a right to take another lump, and make a coarse, crude pot for use in the kitchen; and neither lump has a right to say anything about it one way or the other. He has a right to make one man for one use, and another for another,—to predestinate one to sue- page 9 cess and glory, to predestinate another to failure and disaster; and these have no right to question either the wisdom or justice of the dispensation. But, in justice to Paul; I wish you to note that the outcome of his doctrine is quite different from that of Calvin and modern Orthodoxy.

The next great doctrine of Paul is his uncompromising, unhesitating acceptance of the legend that teaches the fall of man. Adam, the first man, stood as the earthly head of humanity up to his time. The doctrine of the "federal headship," as it has come to be called in theology, is undoubtedly a Pauline doctrine. Man, with Adam at the head up to the time of the birth of Christ, had been simply a disastrous failure. In Adam, all died; through Adam came sin; through Adam came sorrow; through Adam came all the disasters that have ever afflicted poor, suffering humanity. Paul, of course, had none of the means of knowledge at the disposal of any intelligent man in the modern world. He did not know, therefore, that death had reigned not only since Adam and over all his descendants, but for some thousands and millions of years before Adam was ever thought of. He did not know that suffering and pain had been in existence, not only among men, but in the animal world for millions of years. If he had, he would have had no more faith in the doctrine of the fall than I have. But Paul believed in the federal headship of Adam; that he was the representative and leader of the world up to that time, and that, under his headship, the world had been a failure. Naturally, then, he turned to some scheme of recovery. He desired to find some way in which this long failure could be turned into success. He desired to find some method, a part of the secret council and fore-knowledge of God,—for not only the fall, but the redemption was part of the predestination of Paul,—by which a new order of things could be instituted, and the world be ultimately crowned with success.

Here, then, we are led to consider Paul's view of Christ. There is another thing also, at the outset, to which I wish to call your careful attention; for people seem to read the Bible page 10 in a blindfold and sleepy way, if they read it at all,—never tanking of comparing part with part, or treating it as they would treat any other book, or as they should, if they wish to learn anything from it. I was taught in this way myself. I was taught to read so many verses as so much religious duty accomplished, so many square inches of Bible, so much goodness. Thus, people read the Bible, never using their brains and common sense about it.

We need now to consider Paul's attitude toward Christ,—toward Christ, not toward Jesus; for it is hardly too much to say that Paul made no account of the personal Jesus whatever. I want to make that distinction clear. Paul does not have anything to say about Jesus. The only time he quotes his words is when he gives the story of the Last Supper, and, in another place, where he quotes a saying from Jesus that does not appear in the Gospels. He does not anywhere say anything about what Jesus did. He has not a hint anywhere of any miraculous conception. He speaks of no miracles in the modern sense of that word. He only refers in a general way to signs and wonders. But he believed that "speaking with tongues," that incoherent gibberish and babbling, was a miracle, so you can understand what he meant when he spoke of signs and wonders. He says nothing about his raising people from the dead or feeding the multitude. Yet you must remember that he stood nearest to Jesus of all who wrote of him in the New Testament. It is strange that he should not allude to these things in all of his Epistles. There is not a trace of his having any personal love for Jesus, the man. He says, frankly and distinctly, that he never saw him, except in a vision; and he makes so little account of these things that, when he comes up to Jerusalem and talks over the condition of the early Church with the apostles, he says they had nothing to tell him that he cared anything about,—to use his own phrase, they added nothing to him. He refers to the apostles very slightingly, "those who seemed to be somewhat," to be pillars. He speaks of them with hardly dis page 11 guised antagonism and irony, and he was in antagonism with them the most of his life. You see how little account he makes of the historic Jesus. What does he make account of? Of the theologic Christ as standing for a part of the scheme of the divine economy in the salvation of the world.

There are three distinct stages of progress very perceptible in Paul's writings, as illustrating three stages of growth in his mind concerning the doctrine of Christ. In the first place, he is converted to the belief that Jesus is the Messiah. But he does not stop there. We find at the last that he had risen to the belief that Jesus was a pre-existent being; that he was the angel Messiah; that he was the first-born of every creature; that he was the beginning of the creation of God, and only less than God himself. But the great thing that he believed, whether he called him Messiah or pre-existent angel or head of the Church, was that Jesus was the head of a new and rejuvenated humanity.

I have told you what Paul believed about Adam, that he was the head of the race that was a failure. Over against Adam, the old man, he sets Christ, the new man, revealed from heaven as the new head of the new humanity. This is the most significant thing in the whole belief of Paul, so far as his doctrine of Christ is concerned. He was the head of the new order of humanity. Those who became engrafted into the Church, those who became followers and disciples of Christ, put off the old idea of Adam, sloughed off their whole association with the old and false order of humanity, and became members of this new race,—the redeemed and renovated Church of God. This is the doctrine of Paul concerning Christ.

I said, a little while ago, that the predestination taught by Paul had a far different outcome for the history of this world from that taught by Calvin and the orthodox churches of the day. He teaches that the fall of man and the redemption are parts of the one divine plan of him who, as a sovereign, works his eternal will. But he held so grand a conception page 12 of God that he believed it is a part of this sovereign will that the world ultimately, this whole groaning, travailing, weeping, and crying creation, shall be redeemed. So he teaches that the Jews were rejected and outcast only as a temporary thing, only as the occasion of the bringing in of the Gentiles. He teaches that, when by and by the Gentiles are all brought in, then the Jews also are to be reclaimed; and then, under Christ, there is no longer to be any Jew or Greek, any civilized or barbarian. They are all to be one as parts of, this new humanity. Christ is to be the head of it, and all the world is to be brought into one under his headship. Then, at the last, Christ is to deliver up the kingdom to the Father, and God is to be all and in all.

Ultimately, then, Paul was both a Universalist and a Unitarian; for, although he teaches the pre-existence of this Christ, he teaches plainly his subordination to God, and, as the final outcome of everything, that he is to give up the kingdom to the one God, and all men are to be part of this kingdom. This is the outcome of Paul's doctrine of predestination.

I have left to the last that which is the grandest work that Paul wrought,—a work as grand as that which almost any man has ever wrought in the history of humanity.

I said in the beginning that there were two factions in the early churches. It was inevitable that there should be. Here were these Jews who had been taught and trained for ages into the belief that the Mosaic dispensation was not only divine, but eternal; that, on the basis of this, a new kingdom, after the type of the kingdom of David, was to be established, and the Jews were to rule over the world forever. But here comes in a new claimant, a new Messiah, as those who accepted the Messianic doctrine believed. And here comes Paul, organizing churches all over the Roman Empire, and saying that this divine dispensation of Judaism is obsolete and outgrown. It is very natural that it should require some time to accept so strange a doctrine as that. James said, the old first church at Jerusalem said, all the page 13 apostles said, You must also keep the law of Moses, or you cannot be saved. They sent their emissaries after Paul all over the Roman Empire, because they regarded him as the most dangerous heretic of the age. They felt that he was trying to do good, but that he was teaching false doctrine in saying that it was not necessary to keep the law of Moses. After a while, they found that they had to compromise, and they said, You do not have to keep all, but there are certain things you must keep; and, for a long time, they still clung to the idea of the shadow after they had given up the substance. It was ages before they gave up the notion that a Jewish Christian was not better than a Gentile one. They believed that there was an advantage in having been born in the Jewish religion. This was the origin of the great division in the Church, with Peter at the head on the one hand, and Paul at the head on the other. For a great many years, this discussion rent the Church in twain and almost threatened its existence. You find traces of it throughout the New Testament, one party hitting at the other, and that in turn striking back; Paul striking hard blows on one side, and Peter returning them on the other.

The Acts of the Apostles is a very late book. It was written after this warfare between the two churches had practically died out. It was a sort of compromise, written by somebody who wanted to unite these two factions. You will notice a strange parallelism between the sayings and doings of Paul and Peter in this book. If, in one chapter, Paul is represented as doing something wonderful, you will find Peter doing as strange a thing in the next. This book is evidently written for the express purpose of healing over this division in the Church and doing justice to both sides.

But, now, what is the point of the grand work that Paul did? If it had not been for Paul, we might not have had an historic Christianity. We should certainly have had a very different one, and not so good a one as that which we have had. It would have been impossible for the early apostles to have forced upon the Roman Empire not only a belief in page 14 Jesus and a belief in Christ, but also the practice of all the ritual of the Jews. If they had attempted that, the whole effort would have broken down, and Christianity would have been merely a new sect of Judaism confined to a few followers. But Paul, with his views, felt that the hour of the Mosaic ritual had struck. The past had been a failure, or at most only a type, a shadow leading on to Christ, the head of the new humanity. And so he said : The works of the law, that neither you nor your fathers could keep, are dead rubbish, to be swept away. So he dispensed with sacrifices and the Jewish Sabbath, and it may be noted he did not say anything about any other. You need not pay any attention to the laws of Moses, he said. They are all gone by. They are only a shadow leading to Christ; and, now that Christ has come, everything is summed up in faith in him. And so arose Paul's doctrine of justification by faith. He became the liberator of the world, and we are to rank him as hardly second among the great men who have snapped the shackles that have bound the freedom of the human race. Paul broke off this enclosing shell of Moses, and set civilization free. This doctrine of justification by faith was the weapon with which he did it; for he said: Whether you are Jew or Gentile, it does not make any difference. Only appropriate and incorporate into your own life the life of this new Christ. Do it by faith. If you believe and accept, you are a part of this new dispensation of God. And so Jew and Gentile, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, no matter who, any man who accepted Christ, became a part of this new kingdom of heaven; and thus all the petty, worrying, wearing, exacting, ritualistic ceremonies of the Jews were abolished at one stroke. Paul's belief in salvation by faith was not a mere petty intellectual assent to an idea. It was with him a believing in something all over, in such dead earnest that you are ready to give your life for it, just as you business men believe in a thing so that you are ready to risk a fortune on it. Faith is not merely saying yes when somebody announces a proposition. It is a belief that drags a whole page 15 train of character and consequences after it. That is Paul's belief in justification by faith.

How broad that was, and what power of freedom it had in it, was proved again in the sixteenth century. The Christian Church, under the Catholic power, had become nothing more nor less than a worse Judaism, with ritual and ceremonial,—everything except character, manliness, and force,—when Luther rose; and the weapon with which he broke the chains of modern Europe was Paul's old grand doctrine. I am not sure that we are done with that weapon yet. It does not belong by any patent right to Orthodoxy. Paul forged the weapon. Paul tried its temper and proved its power. Then, it lay rusting and waiting for a thousand years, until Luther proved strong enough to wield it, and once more to fight again the battle for human freedom. And, though it be put away in its armory, it will be called for again and again. For this doctrine means simply going right deep down to the heart of humanity, and saying that which you believe with your whole heart, and are willing to put your life into, it is that which makes you what you are.

This, then, is the service which Paul rendered to the world; and it is hints of this service which are scattered all through these Epistles, and which will make them in all coming time, whatever theory of the Bible may go up or down, of inestimable value to those who care to know the history of humanity.

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