Page:EB1911 - Volume 20.djvu/1018

Rh Rome,

" against Caesar, " i.e. treason of one sort or another. Though the others weighed with a procurator like Felix (anxious to humour the Jews cheaply) sufficiently to keep Paul (in the absence of bribes) in prison for two years, it was the last class of charge that was most dangerous, especially when once the case was transferred from the provincial court to the appeal court at Rome. The last words of Agrippa, " This man could have been set at liberty had he not appealed to Caesar, " are probably recorded with a touch of tragic irony.

But what of Paul himself during the two years at Caesarea? Though he must have been in correspondence with his churches, at least through messengers, nothing from his pen Pauiat jj^g reached us. We can only infer from epistles written later how much this period contributed to his reflective Ufe. The outlook was indeed stimulating to thought. Near at hand Judaea was sliding rapidly down the incline of lawlessness and fanatical resentment of Roman rule, towards a catastrophe which to Paul's eye, trained by Jewish Apocalyptic to regard certain things as signs of the days of Antichrist, would seem to betoken the prelude of the Parousia itself. Then, farther afield, the growing confederacy of Messiah's churches was stepping into the place vacated by " Israel after the flesh, " as the people ready for God's Messiah.

The journey to Rome calls for no detailed notice (see Ramsay, St Paul the Traveller). Its main interest for us is the impression of nobility, courage and power which Paul conveyed to the centurion Jidius and his fellow-passengers generally; while the enthusiasm of the eyewitness' himself visibly reaches its chmax as dangers thicken and Paul rises above them all. At last Italy is reached, and Paul is met by detachments of " brethren " from Rome, who came as far as thirty and forty miles to welcome him; " whom when Paul saw, he thanked God and took courage." From Paul's letters, however, we gather that if he looked for sympathy from the Roman Christians, he looked largely in vain. Whilst some welcomed and most regarded him as indeed a champion of the Gospel whose fearless testimony even in bonds emboldened many, including the judaizing section who wished him no good, to preach Jesus more openly than before; few, if any, really showed him brotherly love or cared for the interests of Christ outside Rome that were still on his heart (Phil. i. 12-17, ii. 21). Such absorption in their own local affairs struck Paul as strangely un-Christian in spirit, and added disappointment to his irksome confinement, chained as he was by one wrist to a praetorian soldier night and day. Yet he rose above it all. Only let " Christ be magnified " in his body, whether by life or death. Then should he not be ashamed, come what might.

The letter which makes us aware how things lay is Philippians, the most devotional of all his writings and the most Christlike. The Epistle i^ is the perfect expression of personal " Pauhnism " to Philip- in his maturer and more positive manner. It flows plans. fjQijj jjis heart as joyful thanks for tokens of

continued mindfulness of him recently received from his old Philippian friends through Epaphroditus, one of their number. Touched and filled with spiritual joy the more that, save for his own personal circle, love was so scant around him, he turns to comfort his friends in their sorrow for him, out of the stores of Divine consolation received through his own fresh sense of need (cf. 2 Cor. i. 3 sqq.). " Rejoice in the Lord " is its recurring note. Here we get the word of the hour, both for Paul and for his converts. The date of Philippians is an open question, English scholars tending to place it early, whUe most foreign scholars put it late in the " two years " of Acts. The present writer would place it last of those written during the first year, i.e. last of all save 2 Timothy.

Of the remaining imprisonment epistles, the beautiful little note to Philemon touching his slave Onesimus casts fresh light on Paul " the Christian gentleman, " by its humour and perfect

That he regarded Paul as endowed with superhuman powers, both of premonition and of healing (as in Malta), is evident, even if in his mind, like that of most ancients, " the line between the miraculous and the providential quite vanishes away " — as B. W. Bacon says (Story oj St Paul, p. 214) relative to xxviii. 3-5, comparing also the case of Eutychus' " insensibility." But if so, why not apply this to the earthquake at Philippi also?

considerateness of tone. The two larger ones do not seem at first sight to reflect his personality so much as his Letters to life as the father of churches, and the way in Asian which he extended the lines of his gospel so as to (^^urcbes. bear on problems raised by ever fresh reactions upon it of the old traditions amid which his Asian converts stiU Mved. Both aspects really blend; for the epistles are addressed to churches which were feehng certain effects of the seeming calamity that had overtaken him whom they in some sense regarded as their founder, and aim at raising them to the writer's own higher standpoint (Eph. iii. 13, vi. 19-22; Col. ii. i seq., iv. 8 seq.). It was just here that many of his Asian converts hesitated. They did not realize the all-sulEciency of Christ in the moral sphere; and they viewed their relations with the invisible world of ultimate or heavenly realities in keeping with this fact. They traced the hand of beings belonging to the supernal spheres in their earthly experiences of weal and woe. Hence they dreamed of supplementing what they derived from Christ by help from other spiritual beings. To judge from Colossians (see s.v.) it was largely along the lines of Jewish thought (cf. the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs), modified by Greek and other Pagan ideas, that this tendency operated. For at Colossae at least it issued in observance of ritual rules connected with the protection of good angels against evil ones, as taught by a sort of theosophy, probably basing itself on a legendary handhng of pre-Mosaic Bible history in particular (cf. the Pastorals). Paul does not discuss how far " guardian angels " have any function left them in view of the all-sufficiency of Christ and His Spirit for beUevers. He obviously (Eph. vi. 11 sqq.) believed in the reality of angelic foes, because this hypothesis explained for him certain moral phenomena; but he had really stripped angelic helpers of all functions necessary to the Christian. Perhaps he was not sufficiently Interested in the matter to think it out fully.

How does Paul deal with this situation of depressed faith and hope as to the power of Christ to confer all needful to the perfecting of the Christian's life on earth, in spite of the hostile forces, visible and invisible? All they need, he says, is to hold fast the Gospel which has already done so much for them — annulling the special privileges of the Jew, and quickening them as Gentiles " dead in sins " and under the full sway of the powers of Ul, into a life of filial access to God as Father. Of Christ's abihty to achieve God's purpose in all things, the wonderful progress of His Church " in all the world " is already witness (Col. i. 8, 23). Looking then to these things, visible to Christian gnosis based on spiritual experience, there is no cause for depression at the sufferings endured for Christ's sake by Christians, and least of all at his own. Both in Colossians and " Ephesians " (really a circular epistle to churches in Asia, including those of the Lycus valley and perhaps most of the Seven Churches of the Apocalypse (see Ephesians), he lays stress on " love, which is the bond of perfectness, " and on " unity of the Spirit, " as the atmosphere of Ufe worthy the vocation he describes in inspiring terms.

In this respect, as in nearly every other, these epistles exhibit marked affinity with the next group claiming to come from Paul's pen, the so-called Pastoral Epistles, the The Ethical supposed " moralism " of which is often urged Emphasis in against their authenticity. In both cases the Paul' slater development is quite natural in Paul the missionary, ^P'*""as it answers to growing defects among his churches in the sphere of conduct. Such errors, while twofold in effect, alike sprang from a defective sense for ethics as the essential form of piety (i Tim. vi. 3-11; 2 Tim. iii. 5; cf. Jas. i. 27) flowing from Christian faith. A merely intellectual faith, instead of the genuinely Pauhne type, involving enthusiastic moral devotion to Christ, tended in practice either to a negative and ritual piety, as at Colossae, or to moral laxity. The latter was sometimes defended on a dualistic theory of " flesh "and" spirit, " as two realms radically opposed and moraOy independent.^

Of this we have a hint in the " empty words " alluded to in Eph. v. 6 (perhaps also iv. 14), probably of the same sort as in