The Origin of Paul's Religion

By John Gresham Machen

Certainly the mere fact that the Christians used a title which was also used in the pagan cults does not establish any dependence upon paganism. For the title "Lord" was almost as well established as a designation of divinity as was the term "God." Whatever had been the origin of the religious use of the word, that use had become a part of the Greek language. A missionary who desired to proclaim the one true God was obliged, if he spoke in Greek, to use the term "God," which of course had been used in pagan religion. So if he desired to designate Jesus as God, by some word which at the same time would distinguish Him from God the Father, he was obliged to use the word “Lord,” though that word also had been used in paganism. Neither in the one case nor in the other did the use of a Greek word involve the slightest influence of the conceptions which had been attached to the word in a polytheistic religion.

But there was a far stronger reason for the application of the Greek term "Lord" to Jesus than that which was found in its general currency among Greek-speaking peoples. The religious use of the term was not limited to the pagan cults, but appears also, and if anything even more firmly established, in the Greek Old Testament. The word "Lord" is used by the Septuagint to translate the "Jahwe" of the Hebrew text. It would be quite irrelevant to discuss the reasons which governed the translators in their choice of this particular word. No doubt some word for "Lord" was required by the associations which had already clustered around the Hebrew word. And various reasons may be suggested for the choice of "kyrios" rather than some other Greek word meaning "lord." Possibly the root meaning of "kyrios" better expressed the idea which was intended; perhaps, also, a religious meaning had already been attached to "kyrios," which the other words did not possess. At any rate, whatever may have been the reason, "kyrios" was the word which was chosen.

And the fact is of capital importance. For it was among the readers of the Septuagint that Christianity first made its way. The Septuagint was the Bible of the Jewish synagogues, and in the synagogues the reading of it was heard not only by Jews but also by hosts of Gentiles, the "God-fearers" of the Book of Acts. It was with the "God-fearers" that the Gentile mission began. And even where there were Gentile converts who had not passed at all through the school of the synagogue in the very earliest period perhaps such converts were few-even then the Septuagint was at once used in their instruction. Thus when the Christian missionaries used the word "Lord" of Jesus, their hearers knew at once what they meant. They knew at once that Jesus occupied a place which is occupied only by God. For the word "Lord" is used countless times in the Greek scriptures as the holiest name of the covenant God of Israel, and these passages were applied freely to Jesus.

This Septuagint use of the term "Lord," with the application of the Septuagint passages to Jesus, which appears as a matter of course in the Epistles of Paul, was of vastly more importance for the early Christian mission than the use of the term in the pagan cults. And it sheds vastly more light upon the original significance of the term as applied to Jesus. But the pagan usage is interesting, and the exhibition of it by Bousset and others should be thankfully received. An important fact has been established more and more firmly by modern research—the fact that the Greek word "kyrios" in the first century of our era was, wherever the Greek language extended, distinctly a designation of divinity. The common usage of the word indeed persisted; the word still expressed the relation which a master sustained toward his slaves. But the word had come to be a characteristically religious term, and it is in the religious sense, especially as fixed by the Septuagint, that it appears in the New Testament.

Thus it is not in accordance with New Testament usage when Jesus is called, by certain persons in the modern Church, "the Master," rather than "the Lord." Sometimes, perhaps, this usage is adopted in conscious protest against the New Testament conception of the deity of Christ; Jesus is spoken of as "the Master,' " in very much the way in which the leader of a school of artists is spoken of as "the Master" by his fol-lowers. Or else the word means merely the one whose commands are to be obeyed. But sometimes the modern fashion is adopted by devout men and women with the notion that the English word "Lord" has been worn down and that the use of the word "Master" is a closer approach to the meaning of the Greek Testament. This notion is false. In translating the New Testament designation of Jesus, one should not desire to get back to the original meaning of the word "kyrios." For the Greek word had already undergone a de-velopment, and as applied to Jesus in the New Testament it was clearly a religious term. It had exactly the religious associations which are now possessed by our English word “Lord.” And for very much the same reason. The religious associations of the English word "Lord" are due to Bible usage; and the religious associations of the New Testament word "kyrios" were also due to Bible usage-the usage of the Septuagint. The Christian, then, should remember that "a little learning is a dangerous thing." The uniform substitution of "the Master" for "the Lord" in speaking of Jesus has only a false appearance of freshness and originality. In reality it sometimes means a departure from the spirit of the New Testament usage.

Accordingly, Bousset has performed a service in setting in clear relief the religious meaning of the word "Lord." But he has not succeeded in explaining the application of that word to Jesus.

Further difficulties, moreover, beset Bousset's theory. The term "Lord" as applied to Jesus, and the religious attitude toward Jesus expressed by the term, arose, according to Bous-set, in the meetings of such communities as the one at Antioch, and under the influence of pagan conceptions. But of course Bousset's explanation of the origin of Paulinism has not yet been completely set forth. Paulinism is something far more than an ecstatic worship of a cult-god; the personal relation to Christ dominates every department of the apostle's life.

Bousset recognizes this fact. The religion of Paul, he admits, is something far more than the religion which was expressed in the meetings of the Antioch Church. But he supposes that the other elements of Paul's religion, far-reaching as they are, had at least their starting-point in the cult. Here is to be found one of the least plausible elements in the whole construction. Bousset has underestimated the individualistic character of Paul's religion. At least he has not succeeded in showing that the Pauline life "in Christ" or "in the Lord" was produced by development from ecstatic experiences in the meetings of the Antioch Church.

But if the individualistic religion of Paul was developed from the “cult,” how was it developed? How shall the introduction of the new elements be explained? Bousset has attacked this problem with great earnestness. And he tries to show that the religion of Paul as it appears in the Epistles was developed from the cult religion of Antioch by the identification of “the Lord” with “the Spirit,” and by the generalizing and ethicizing of the conception of the Spirit’s activity.

The Pauline doctrine of the Spirit, Bousset believes, was derived from the pagan mystical religion of the Hellenistic age. Quite aside from the matter of terminology-though the contentions of Reitzenstein are thought by Bousset to be essentially correct-the fundamental pessimistic dualism of Paul was based, according to Bousset, upon that widespread type of thought and life which appears in the mystery religions and in the Hermetic writings. According to this pessimistic way of thinking, salvation could never be attained by human nature, even with divine aid, but only by an entirely new beginning, produced by the substitution of the divine nature for the old man. By the apostle Paul, Bousset continues, this super-naturalism, this conception of the dominance of divine power in the new life, was extended far beyond the limits of the cult or of visionary experiences; the Spirit was made to be the ruling principle of the Christian's life; not only prophecy, tongues, healing, and the like, were now regarded as the fruit of the Spirit, but also love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control. But this Pauline extension of the Spirit's activity, Bousset insists, did not involve the slightest weakening of the supernaturalism which was characteristic of the original conception; the Spirit that produced love, joy, peace, had just as little to do with the human spirit as the Spirit that caused men to speak with tongues. And the supernaturalism which here appears in glorified form was derived, Bousset concludes, from the mystical pagan religion of the Hellenistic age.

This contention has already been discussed, and the weakness of it has been pointed out. The Pauline doctrine of the Spirit was not derived from contemporary paganism. But the exposition of Bousset's theory has not yet been finished. The Spirit whose activities were extended by Paul into the innermost recesses of the Christian's life was identified, Bousset says, with "the Lord" (2 Cor. ii. 17). This identification exerted an important influence upon both the elements that were brought together; it exerted an important influence upon the conception both of "the Lord" and of "the Spirit." If “the Lord” was identified, or brought into very close relation, with the Spirit, and if the Spirit’s activity extended into the whole of life, then “the Lord” could no longer be for Paul merely the cult-god who was present in the meetings of the Church. On the contrary, He would have to be present everywhere where the Spirit was present-that is, He would have to be that in which the Christian lived and moved and had his being. Thus Paul could form the astonishing phrase "in Christ" or "in the Lord," for which Bousset admits that no analogy is to be found in pagan religion. On the other hand, the conception of the Spirit, Bousset believes, was necessarily modified by its connection with "the Lord." By the identification with an actual person who had lived but a few years before, "the Spirit" was given a personal quality which otherwise it did not possess. Or, to put the same thing in other words, the Pauline phrase "in the Lord" is not exactly the same in meaning as the phrase "in the Spirit"; for it possesses a peculiar personal character. "This remarkable mingling of abstraction and personality," says Bousset, "this connection of a religious principle with a person who had walked here on the earth and had here suffered death, is a phenomenon of peculiar power and originality."

At this point, Bousset is in danger of being untrue to the fundamental principles of his reconstruction; he is in danger of bringing the religion of Paul into connection with the concrete person of Jesus. But he detects the danger and avoids it. It must not be supposed, he says, that Paul had any very clear impression of the characteristics of the historical Jesus. For if he had had such an impression, he never could have connected Jesus with an abstraction like the Spirit. All that he was interested in, then, was the fact that Jesus had lived and especially that He had died.

Yet these bare facts are thought to have been sufficient to impart to Paul's notion of the Spirit-Lord that peculiar personal quality which arouses the admiration of Bousset! The truth is, Bousset finds himself at this point face to face with the difficulty which besets every naturalistic explanation of the genesis of Paul's religion. The trouble is that a close connection of Paul with the historical Jesus is imperatively required by the historian in order to impart to Paul's relation to Christ that warm, personal quality which shines out from every page of the Epistles; whereas, on the other hand, a wide separation of Paul from the historical Jesus is just as imperatively required in order that Paul might not be hampered by historical tradition in raising Jesus to divine dignity and in bringing Him into connection with the Spirit of God.

Modern criticism has wavered between the two requirements; it tries to preserve the rights of each. Bousset is more impressed by the second requirement; Wernle, his opponent, is more impressed by the former. But both are equally wrong. There is really only one way out of the difficulty. It is an old way and a radical way. But the world of scholarship may come back to it in the end. The fundamental difficulty in explaining the origin of Paulinism will never disappear by being ignored; it will never yield to compromises of any kind. It will disappear only when Jesus is recognized as being really what Paul presupposes Him to be and what all the Gospels represent Him as being— the eternal Son of God, come to earth for the redemption of man, now seated once more on the throne of His glory, and working in the hearts of His disciples through His Spirit, as only God can work. Such a solution was never so unpopular as it is to-day. Acceptance of it will involve a Copernican revolution in many departments of human thought and life. But refusal of such acceptance has left an historical problem which so far has not been solved.

At one point, Bousset admits, the religion of Paul was based upon an historical fact. It was based upon the death of Jesus. But the Pauline interpretation of the death of Jesus was derived, Bousset believes, in important particulars from contemporary pagan religion; the Pauline notion of dying and rising with Christ was formed under the influence of the widespread pagan conception of the dying and rising god. This assertion has become quite common among recent scholars; material in support of it has been collected in convenient form by M. Brückner. But as a matter of fact, the evidence in support of the assertion is of the feeblest kind. The review of Hellenistic religion which was attempted in Chapter VI revealed, indeed, the fact that certain gods, especially Attis, Adonis, and Osiris, were represented first as dying and then as being resuscitated. The similarity of these figures to one another may perhaps be explained by the hypothesis that all of them were originally vegetation gods, whose death and resuscitation represented the withering of vegetation in the autumn and its renewal in the spring. At first sight, the parallel between these gods and Jesus may seem striking. Jesus also was represented as dying and as coming back to life again. But what is the significance of the parallel? Can it mean that the entire New Testament story of the death and resurrection of Jesus was derived from these vegetation myths? Such has been the conclusion of certain modern scholars. But of course this conclusion is absurd, and it is not favored by Bousset. The essential historicity of the belief in His resurrection among His intimate friends stands too firm to be shaken by any theory of dependence upon pagan myth. Thus the argument drawn from the parallel between the New Testament story and the pagan myth of the dying and rising god proves too much. If it proves anything, it proves that the New Testament story of the resurrection was derived from the pagan myth. But such a view has not been held by any serious historians. Therefore it will have to be admitted that the parallel between the belief that Adonis and Osiris and Attis died and rose again, and the belief that Jesus died and rose again was not produced by dependence of one story upon the other. It will have to be recognized, therefore, that a parallel does not always mean a relationship of dependence. And if it does not do so at one point, perhaps it does not do so at others.

But Bousset will insist that although the New Testament story of the death and resurrection of Jesus was not originally produced by the pagan myth, yet the influence of the pagan conception made itself felt in the interpretation which Paul placed upon the story. Paul believed that the Christian shared the fate of Christ-died with Christ and rose with Christ. But a similar conception appears in the pagan religions. The classical expression of this idea appears in the oft-quoted words reported by Firmicus Maternus, "Be of good courage, ye initiates, since the god is saved; for to us there shall be salvation out of troubles."

But it must be remembered that the testimony of Firmicus Maternus is very late, and that the evidence for the prevalence of the conception in the early period is somewhat scanty.

The confident assertions of recent writers with regard to these matters are nothing short of astonishing. Lay readers are likely to receive the impression that the investigator can reconstruct the conception of a dying and rising god, and of the share which the worshipers have in the death and resurrection, on the basis of some vast store of information in the extant sources. As a matter of fact, nothing of the sort is the case. The extant information about the conception in question is scanty in the extreme, and for the most part dates from long after the time of Paul. It would be going too far, indeed, to assert that the conception of the dying and rising god, with its religious significance, was not in existence before the Pauline period. An ancient Egyptian text, for example, has been quoted by Er-man, which makes the welfare of the worshiper depend upon that of Osiris: "Even as Osiris lives, he also shall live." Very likely some such conceptions were connected also with the mourning and subsequent rejoicing for Attis and Adonis. if the conception was existent in the pre-Pauline period, it by no means follows that it was common. Certainly its prevalence has been enormously exaggerated in recent years. Against such exaggerations, J. Weiss—who surely cannot be accused of any lack of sympathy with the methods of comparative religion as applied to the New Testament—has pertinently called attention to 1 Cor. i. 23. Christ crucified, Paul says, was "to the Gentiles foolishness." That does not look as though the Gentiles among whom Paul labored were very familiar with the notion of a dying god. If the contentions of Brückner were correct, if the conception of the dying god were as common in Paul's day as Brückner supposes, the Cross would not have been "to the Gentiles foolishness"; on the contrary, it would have seemed to the Gentiles to be the most natural thing in the world.

But even if the early prevalence of the conception of a dying and rising god, with its religious significance, were better established than it is, the dependence of Paul upon that conception would by no means be proved. For the Pauline conception is totally different. One difference, of course, is perfectly obvious and is indeed generally recognized-the Pauline Christ is represented as dying voluntarily, and dying for the sake of men. He "loved me," says Paul, "and gave himself for me." There is absolutely nothing like that conception in the case of the pagan religions. Osiris, Adonis, and Attis were overtaken by their fate; Jesus gave His life freely away. The difference is stupendous; it involves the very heart of the religion of Paul. How was the difference caused? Whence was derived the Pauline conception of the grace of Christ? Was it derived from Jesus Himself? Was it derived from the knowledge which Paul had of the character of Jesus? The supposition might seem to be natural. But unfortunately, from the point of view of Bousset, it must be rejected. For if Paul had had any knowledge of Jesus’ real character, how could he ever have supposed that Jesus, a mere man, was the heavenly Lord?

Another difference is even more fundamental. The death and resurrection of the pagan gods was a matter of the cult; the death and resurrection of the Pauline Christ was a fact of history. It has been observed in the review of Hellenistic religion that the cults in the pagan religions were much more firmly fixed than the myths; in the opinion of modern scholars, the myths were derived from the cults rather than vice versa. So in the case of the "dying and rising gods," one is struck above all things with the totally fluid character of the myths. The story of Attis, for example, is told in many divergent forms, and there does not seem to have been the slightest interest among the Attis worshipers for the establishment of any authentic account of the death and resurrection of the god. Particularly the "resurrection" of the god appears in the myths of Attis, Adonis, and Osiris scarcely at all. The real death and resurrection occurred only in the cult. Every year in March, the Attis-worshipers at Rome first saw the god lying dead as he was represented by the fir-tree, and then rejoiced in his resurrection. The death and resurrection were hardly conceived of as events which had happened once for all long ago. They were rather thought of as happening at every celebration of the festival.

The Pauline treatment of the death and resurrection of Christ is entirely different. By Bousset, indeed, the difference is partly obscured; Bousset tries to show that the Pauline conception of the dying and rising of the believer with Christ was derived from the celebration of the sacraments. But there could be no more radical error. What is plainest of all in the Epistles is the historical character of the Pauline message. The religion of Paul was rooted in an event, and the sacraments were one way of setting forth the significance of the event. The event was the redemptive work of Christ in His death and resurrection.

Here lies the profoundest of all differences between Paul and contemporary religion. Paulinism was not a philosophy; it was not a set of directions for escape from the misery of the world; it was not an account of what had always been true. On the contrary, it was an account of something that had happened. The thing that had happened, moreover, was not hidden in the dim and distant past. The account of it was not evolved as a justification for existing religious forms. On the contrary, the death and resurrection of Jesus, upon which Paul's gospel was based, had happened only a few years before. And the facts could be established by adequate testimony; the eyewitnesses could be questioned, and Paul appeals to the eyewitnesses in detail. The single passage, 1 Cor. xv. 1-8, is sufficient to place a stupendous gulf between the Pauline Christ and the pagan saviour-gods. But the character of Paulinism does not depend upon one passage. Everywhere in the Epistles Paul stakes all his life upon the truth of what he says about the death and resurrection of Jesus. The gospel which Paul preached was an account of something that had happened. If the account was true, the origin of Paulinism is explained; if it was not true, the Church is based upon an inexplicable error.

This latter alternative has been examined in the preceding discussion. If Jesus was not the divine Redeemer that Paul says He was, how did the Pauline religion of redemption arise? Three great hypotheses have been examined and have been found wanting.

Paulinism, it has been shown, was not based upon the Jesus of modern naturalism; if Jesus was only what He is represented by modern naturalistic historians as being, then what is really distinctive of Paul was not derived from Jesus. The establishment of that fact has been a notable achievement of Wrede and Bousset. But if what is essential in Paulinism was not derived from Jesus, whence was it derived?

It was not derived, as Wrede believed, from the pre-Christian apocalyptic notions of the Messiah; for the apocalyptic Messiah was not an object of worship, and not a living person to be loved. It was not derived from pagan religion, in accordance with the brilliant hypothesis of Bousset; for pagan influence is excluded by the self-testimony of Paul, and the pagan parallels utterly break down. But even if the parallels were ten times closer than they are, the heart of the problem would not even have been touched. The heart of the problem is found in the Pauline relation to Christ.

That relation cannot be described by mere enumeration of details; it cannot be reduced to lower terms; it is an absolutely simple and indivisible thing. The relation of Paul to Christ is a relation of love; and love exists only between persons. It is not a group of ideas that is to be explained, if Paulinism is to be accounted for, but the love of Paul for his Saviour. And that love is rooted, not in what Christ had said, but in what Christ had done. He "loved me and gave Himself for me." There lies the basis of the religion of Paul; there lies the basis of all of Christianity. That basis is confirmed by the account of Jesus which is given in the Gospels, and given, indeed, in all the sources. It is opposed only by modern reconstructions. And those reconstructions are all breaking down. The religion of Paul was not founded upon a complex of ideas derived from Judaism or from paganism.

It was founded upon the historical Jesus. But the historical Jesus upon whom it was founded was not the Jesus of modern reconstruction, but the Jesus of the whole New Testament and of Christian faith; not a teacher who survived only in the memory of His disciples, but the Saviour who after His redeeming work was done still lived and could still be loved.

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.