The Origin of Paul's Religion

By John Gresham Machen

If it should appear that Paul uses a vocabulary derived from the mysteries, the fact would not necessarily be of any significance whatever in determining the origin of his religion. Every missionary is obliged to take the words which have been used in the religion from which converts are to be won in order to express the new ideas. Translators of the Bible in the modern mission fields are obliged to proceed in this way. Yet the procedure does not necessarily involve any modification of Christian ideas. The old words are given loftier meanings in order to become the vehicle of Christian truth; the original meanings provide merely a starting-point for the new teaching. Conceivably, the apostle Paul might have proceeded in this way; conceivably he might have used words connected with the mystery religions in order to proclaim the gospel of Christ.

As a matter of fact, the evidence for such an employment of a mystery terminology in the Pauline Epistles is very slight. In 1 Cor. ii. 6, 7, Paul uses the terms "mystery" and "perfect" or "full-grown." The former word was sometimes used to designate the "mysteries" in the technical, religious sense. But it is also used in Greek in a very much more general way. And certainly as it is used in Paul it is very remote from the technical meaning. The Christian "mystery" according to Paul is not something that is to be kept secret on principle, like the mysteries of Eleusis, but it is something which, though it was formerly hidden in the counsels of God, is now to be made known to all. Some, it is true, may never be able to receive it. But that which is necessary in order that it may be received is not "gnosis" or an initiation. It is rather acceptance of a message and the holy life that follows. “If you would know the deep things of God," Paul says to the Corinthians, "then stop your quarreling." We find ourselves here in a circle of ideas quite different from that of the mystery religions. As for the word "teleios," it seems not to have been discovered in pagan sources in the sense of "initiated," which is sometimes attributed to it in 1 Corinthians. Apparently it means simply "full-grown"; Paul contrasts the full-grown man with the babes in Christ.

On the whole, it seems improbable that the converts of Paul, in any great numbers, had lived in the atmosphere of the mystery religions. At any rate, Paul certainly does not use the technical vocabulary of the mysteries. That fact has been amply demonstrated by Von Harnack in the illuminating study which he has devoted to the "terminology of the new birth." The earliest genuine technical term in the vocabulary of the early Church, Von Harnack believes, is "illumination," as Justin Martyr uses it to designate baptism. Certainly in the earlier period, there is not the slightest evidence of any such fixity in the use of terms as would have appeared if the New Testament writers had adopted a technical vocabulary.

Therefore, if the dependence of Paul upon the mystery religions is to be demonstrated, the lexical method of Reitzenstein must be abandoned. The terminology of Paul is not derived from the terminology of the mysteries. But possibly, it may be said, although there is no clear dependence in the terminology, the fundamental ideas of Paul may still be shown to have come from the surrounding paganism. It is in this more cautious form that the hypothesis is maintained by Bousset; at least Bousset is less inclined than Reitzenstein to lay stress upon verbal coincidences. The entire outlook of Paul, Bousset believes, regardless of the way in which that outlook is expressed, was derived from the mystical piety of the Hellenistic age; it was from his pagan environment that Paul derived the pessimistic estimate of human nature which is at the basis of his teaching.

At this point it may be admitted very freely that Paul was convinced of the insufficiency of human nature, and that that conviction was also prevalent in the paganism of the Hellenistic age. The Hellenistic age, like Paul, recognized the need of redemption; salvation, it was believed, could not be attained by unaided human resources, but was a gift of higher powers. But this similarity is quite insufficient to establish any relationship of dependence. Both Paulinism and the Hellenistic mystery religions were religions of redemption. But there have been many religions of redemption, in many ages and among many peoples, which have been entirely independent of one another. It will probably not be maintained, for example, that early Buddhism stood in any fundamental causal relation to the piety of the Hellenistic age. Yet early Buddhism was a religion of redemption.

No attempt indeed should be made to underestimate the community of interest which binds all redemptive religions together and separates them sharply from all others. Common recognition of the fundamental evil of the world is a far closer bond of union than agreement about the details of conduct. Gautama under the tree of knowledge in India, seeking in ascetic meditation for freedom from the misery of existence, was inwardly far nearer to the apostle Paul than is many a modern liberal preacher who loves to read the sixth chapter of Ephesians in Church. But such community of interest does not indicate any relation of dependence. It might do so if the sense of human inadequacy were an abnormal thing. In that case, the appearance of a pessimistic view of human nature would require explanation. But if human nature is really hopeless and helpless in an evil world, then the independent recognition of the fact by many men of many minds is no longer cause for wonder.

Historical judgments at this point, then, are apt to be influenced by the presuppositions of the investigator. To Bousset the whole notion of redemption is distasteful. It seems to him to be an abnormal, an unhealthy thing. To explain its emergence, therefore, in the course of human history he is prone to look for special causes. So he explains the Pauline doctrine of the radical evil of human nature as being due to the piety of a decadent age. But if this world is really an evil world, as Paul says it is, then recognition of the fact will appear spontaneously at many points. For a time, in an age of high achievements like the age of Pericles, the fundamental problem of life may be forgotten. But the problem is always there and will force itself ever anew into the consciousness of men.

John Gresham Machen (1881-1937) was an American Presbyterian New Testament scholar, who led a revolt against modernist theology at Princeton, and founded Westminster Theological Seminary as well as the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.