[Index] [Previous] [Next]
3.2 - A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age
The Christianity of Paul
The Thinker and Religious Devotee
But Paul was not simply a Jewish scholar; he was a profound, original, and independent thinker. In spite of his rabbinic training, which was certainly not calculated to encourage intellectual boldness and self-reliance, he was always alive to the teachings of his own intuition and experience, fearless in following their leading, quick to adjust traditional notions to the truth thus learned.
There was nothing loose or slipshod, nothing vague and unformed in his thinking. His mental processes were close, compact, and vigorous, his vision clear and keen, his grasp firm.
He could not be content with half-truths, or with truths half understood. He must view them in their completeness, determine their bearing, yield them their due weight and influence. He never confounded essentials and non-essentials, or lost sight of the main point in his interest in side issues.
The great principles upon which his life was based stood out always clear before his mind, and gave form and direction to all he thought and said and did.
But Paul was not only a scholar and a thinker; he was a religious devotee, concerned not simply to know, but to do , the will of God, and not simply to observe the divine law himself, but to secure its observance by others as well.
Even before his conversion, he desired to be not merely a rabbi, but a missionary; to devote his life to the propagation of true righteousness and to the overthrow of everything which in any way interfered with its advance, and which in any way hindered the people from giving themselves undividedly to the practice of the law.
There can be little doubt that he was one of those who were looking forward to the coming of the promised Messianic kingdom, and that he believed with the best spirits of his age that its establishment depended upon the piety of God’s chosen people.
He took religion very seriously, and he wished others to do the same. It was no light matter to him. It outweighed everything else and controlled all his thinking, feeling, and acting.
The ordinary conformity to the law with which most of his contemporaries contented themselves, and upon which they complacently rested their hope of salvation, did not satisfy him. The contempt with which he regarded their easy-going ways appears in the strong words he uses in Gal. 5:3, and 6:13.
Though he had studied under the elder Gamaliel, whose spirit seems to have been more liberal and tolerant than most of his compeers, [Acts 22:3, 5:34 sq. On Rabbi Gamaliel the elder, so-called to distinguish him from his grandson Rabbi Gamaliel the younger] Paul himself grew up a Pharisee of the most bigoted and zealous type. His natural character reveals itself in the zeal with which he put his principles into practice. The most marked features in that character were singleness of purpose and intensity of temper.
What he believed, he believed with all his heart; what he did, he did with all his might. There was nothing passive, lukewarm, or indifferent about him in any of his relations.
The whole man was in every conviction and in every act. There was no dissipation of energy, no scattering of forces.
Whether as a Pharisee or as a Christian, he was dominated by a single aim, and he threw himself into its accomplishment with an earnestness which could brook no opposition, and with an abandon which admitted no though of self-interest.
With all his originality, freshness, and depth of thought, he was essentially a man of one idea, willing to sacrifice everything to it, willing to die in its behalf. He was of the stuff that martyrs are made of, and he would have died as readily at the hand of Antiochus Epiphanes as he did at the hand of Nero.
Used by permission of the publisher.
[Index] [Previous] [Next]