Two Lines and finished Christian thinking. They were written at a time when his gospel had been introduced into all the world (Col. i, 6, 23) as a working and vitalizing power. The time would seem to have come, therefore, for a final and rounded summary of this message of truth, suited alike to Gentiles and Jews, and in forms which should utilize Greek habits of thought as well as Jewish. The occasion of these letters was the report of a tendency in the church at Colosse to desert the simplicity of their faith and become involved in the confused and mystic philosophies of which Asia Minor was full. With his letter to this church he sent also another letter intended for all the churches of the region, and setting forth the same ideas in rather more systematic and less controversial terms the letter which we now know as the Epistle to the Ephesians.1 Both letters are rather more involved and difficult in style than his earlier ones, owing partly to the more abstruse philosophies which it was his aim to correct and simplify, and partly to the apostle's vehemence in setting forth a vividly realized truth. Both letters reveal, too, the supreme subject of St. Paul's meditation during this period of enforced leisure. It was the person of Christ: his unique rank in creation (cf. Col. i, 15, 16) and his unique value for the believer's life; or, as he expresses the whole idea, "the unsearchable riches of Christ" (Eph. iii, 8). In the exposition of this subject he reaches a height far beyond what his Jewish thinking has given him data for. In two main lines we may trace this matter of St. Paul's later thinking and its advance on his earlier. I. We have seen how, in pursuance of the Jewish expectation of a coming kingdom and world-judgment, he viewed Jesus as the risen and ascended Lord under whose spiritual direction men were now living, in the belief that he would 1 See note on Ephesians, p. 630. soon come again in person as the fully enthroned Messiah. This is essentially the view of the primitive church, when it first started as a Jewish sect. St. Paul's later thought of Christ, however, is of a Being far more intimately related to creation and manhood; a Being described as "the firstborn of all creation" (Col. i, 15), through whom all things are created, to whom all ranks of being owe their life, and in whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily (Col. ii, 9). Of all things in heaven and earth Christ is the Head and Chief. This the apostle squarely maintains, going so far, indeed, as to call him "the image of the invisible God" (Col. i, 15), without actually calling him Deity. He is led to declare this view by the fact that the churches to whom he is writing are speculating on an elaborate philosophy of creation in which Christ is virtually lost in a host of spiritual beings, rank over rank, between man and God. The word "fullness" (plerōma), which he uses of Christ, is one of the current terms of this philosophy, which he thus defines and adapts. He is encountering the earlier stage of a philosophy which later caused much confusion in the church under the name of gnosticism. St. Paul's object in thus dealing with it is not so much to deny or oppose it as so to simplify the terms of the Christian faith that men's speculations may not dissipate it in a mystic cloudland of theory. He warns the Colossians against worshiping a hierarchy of angels (Col. ii, 18), without holding the Head of all, who alone is worthy of their homage (cf. Eph. vi, 12). 2. We have seen how St. Paul, in writing to those who have been Jews, struggles with the sense of sin and a broken law, and views Christ as a Saviour who atones and insures the resurrection from death. In these latter epistles, however, he views Christ not merely as an atoning Sacrifice or as a Lord working over and for us, but as an energizing Spirit within. Christ is really, in the last analysis, our own manhood made complete. We are related to him, therefore, as members of the human body are related to the head from which they receive wisdom and direction (Eph. iv, 12; Col. ii, 19; cf. 1 Cor. xii, 12-18). And so there is scope for all the varieties of function which men of different talents and temperaments may be fitted for; while deeply underneath they are in entire spiritual harmony through their Head, making up one solidarity of manhood, which can be gauged by nothing short of "a fullgrown man," according to "the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" (Eph. iv, 13). This he calls "the mystery, . . . which is Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col. i, 27); using the term "mystery' as it is familiar to Greek minds (cf. Eph. iii, 3; vi, 19), from the Eleusinian and other mysteries of their religion. Christianity also has its esoteric element, its mystery; but its distinction is that what has long been hidden and occult is now revealed (Col. i, 26); a mystery whose secret may become the possession of all men who will accept it. III. FROM JEWISH TO CHRISTIAN IDIOM We have noted how St. Paul, in his great work with the Gentiles, translated his inherited Jewish ideas into Christian values for their sakes, and how at a later stage he did a similar service to them in their Greek ways of thinking. In this kind of work he was not alone, nor was it for Gentiles only that such transformation of Jewish ideas had to be made. For believers also whose antecedents were Jewish, and whose literary heritage had been, as it still was, only the Old Testament, an important duty of the early Christian writers was to expound Old Testament usages, types, symbols, and principles in the light of the new Christian faith, or, as here expressed, to make transition from Jewish to Christian idiom. This was done in order to make the great body of the sacred literature available for present and permanent uses. It is thus expressed by St. Paul: "For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that through patience and through comfort of the scriptures we might have hope" (Rom. xv, 4). Several prominent epistles, addressed not to particular churches or individuals but to the Christian world in general, embody this endeavor. I Hebrews, and the Fulfillment of Types. It may be noted that the quoted passages in 'the gospels, the Acts, and St. Paul's epistles are detached passages taken mostly from the Psalms and the Prophets. These parts of Scripture, as being probably those in most familiar use, are also copiously drawn upon in the Epistle to the Hebrews; which, indeed, is fuller of quotations and allusions than any other Scripture book. Beyond this, however, and as its most distinctive trait, the epistle founds itself on a whole line of the old literature. That line is the one with which every Jew is familiar; the one, indeed, by which he sets the most store. It is the line which embodies the Mosaic law, the ritual services of the Temple, and the providentially ordered course of history. The writer's aim is to show that the distinctive ideas underlying the Hebrew history and worship - ideas of the ministry of angels, of the rest in the promised land as secured by Moses and Joshua, of the high-priesthood with its duties, of the most holy place, of the whole system of ritual and sacrifice - are merely types and symbols of something to come and, therefore, in themselves unfinal. The perfect fulfillment and clarifier of all these is Christ, who is superior to men and angels and the Mediator of a new covenant. In him is the manhood rest and home after which men of faith aspired through all the dim ages before him. Of these ancient worthies a notable bead-roll is given in the eleventh chapter; men of faith and sturdy energy of whom it is said: "They that say such things make it manifest that they are seeking after a country of their own" (Heb. xi, 14), and yet that they "received not the promise, God having provided some better thing concerning us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect" (xi, 39, 40). The epistle is thus a masterly résumé and interpretation of the Jewish religious and traditional system, considered as an adumbration of (cf. x, 1) and preparation for Christianity. The Epistle to the Hebrews is evidently intended primarily for some Christian community whose members are Origin and imbued with Jewish ideas, and perhaps living in Aim daily contact with the legal customs of the Old Testament. No community is so fitted to answer these conditions as the church at Jerusalem, the mother church, as it existed before the destruction of the city and the Temple A.D. 70. Of this church the "great three" apostles, Peter and John and James (the last named the brother of Jesus), were the leaders, but as it would seem in the larger capacity of general directors and overseers, and not of men of letters. Besides their leadership there would be needed for the church, especially in its representative and standardgiving capacity, such educative training in their literature as a treatise like this could give, and notably to those who had not seen Jesus but had heard of him from those who had known him (cf. Heb. ii, 3). The epistle was not written, as the Authorized Version assumes,1 by St. Paul. It is in a style and line of thinking quite different from his, though it is so truly in harmony with his ideas that he may well have had some connection with the production of it, perhaps as counselor and adviser. The likeliest account of its origin, as seems to me, is that of Professor Ramsay 2, who believes that it was written from Cæsarea, where Philip the Evangelist lived (Acts xxi, 8), and that its date of composition was A.D. 59, toward the end 1 See title of the epistle in the King James (Authorized) Version. |