Redemption in Pagan Religion and in Paul (Part 9)

By John Gresham Machen

With regard to the partaking of sacred food, in the mysteries of Eleusis, a special significance seems to have been attributed to the drinking of the "kykeon"; and the initiates into the Phrygian mysteries are reported by Clement of Alexandria (similarly Firmicus Maternus) to have used a formula including the words, "I ate from the drum, I drank from the cymbal." So far as the form of the act is concerned, the similarity to the Christian Eucharist is here certainly not great; there was eating and drinking in both cases, but everything else, so far as can be seen, was different. In the mysteries of Mithras the similarity of form seems to have been greater; the initiates partook of bread and of a cup in a way which Justin Martyr regarded as a demoniac imitation of the Christian sacrament. According to Cumont, moreover, the Mithraic practice was clearly sacramental; the initiates expected from their sacred banquet a supernatural effect. But it will be remembered that considerations of date render an influence of Mithras upon Paul exceedingly improbable. And the significance of the eating and drinking in connection with other mysteries is obscure. Apparently these acts did not form a part of the mysteries proper, but were only a preparation for them.

In a very savage form of religion there appears the notion that men could partake of the divine nature by actually eating the god. For example, in the worship of Dionysus, the worshipers in the height of religious frenzy tore in pieces the sacred bull and devoured the raw flesh. Here the bull apparently represented the god himself. This savage practice stands in external parallel with certain passages in the New Testament, not only with the references in John vi to the eating of the flesh and drinking of the blood of Christ, but also (though less clearly) with the Pauline teaching about the Lord's Supper. In 1 Cor. x. 16 Paul speaks of the "cup of blessing" as being communion of the blood of Christ, and of the bread as being communion of the body of Christ. Have we not here a sublimated form of the pagan notion of eating the god? The supposition might seem to be strengthened by the parallel which Paul draws a few verses further on between the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons, and between the table of the Lord and the table of demons (verse 21), the demons, it is said, being regarded by Paul as identical with the heathen gods.

But the trouble is that the savage notion of eating the god does not seem to have survived in the Hellenistic mystery religions. At this point, therefore, the student of comparative religion is faced with a difficulty exactly opposite to that which appears in most of the parallels which have been set up between the teaching of Paul and pagan religion. In most cases the difficulty is that the pagan parallels are too late; here, on the contrary, they are too early. If Paul is dependent upon the pagan notion of eating the god, he must have deserted the religious practice which prevailed in his own day in order to have recourse to a savage custom which had long since been abandoned. The suggestion does not seem to be very natural. It is generally admitted that even where Christianity is dependent upon Hellenistic religion it represents a spiritualizing modification of the pagan practice. But at this point it would have to be supposed that the Christian modification proceeded in exactly the opposite direction; far from marking a greater spiritualization of pagan practice, it meant a return to a savage stage of religion which even paganism had abandoned.

Efforts are sometimes made to overcome this objection. "We observe in the history of religion," says Heitmüller, "that tendencies connected with low stages of religious development, which in the higher stages were quiescent or extinct, suddenly spring up again—of course in a modified form adapted to the changed circumstances." Such general observations, even if they are based upon fact, will hardly serve to render the present hypothesis any more plausible. Dependence of the Pauline teaching about the Lord's Supper upon the savage notion of eating the god, when even paganism had come to abandon that notion, will always seem very unnatural.

Certainly the hypothesis is not supported by the parallel which Paul draws in 1 Cor. &. 21 between the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Paul does not say that the heathen had fellowship with their gods by partaking of them in a meal; the fellowship with those gods (verse 20) could be conceived of in other ways. For example, the cult god may have been conceived of in the sacrificial meals as the host at a feast. In point of fact, such an idea was no doubt widely prevalent. It is attributed to the Phrygian mysteries, for example, by Hepding, who supposes that the eating from the drum and drinking from the cymbal meant the entrance of the initiate into the circle formed by the table-companions of the god. At any rate, the savage notion of eating the god is not clearly attested for the Hellenistic period, and certainly dependence of Paul upon such a notion is unlikely in the extreme.

No close parallel, then, can be established between the Christian sacraments and the practices of the pagan cults. But the very fact that the Pauline churches had sacraments at all—irrespective of the form of the particular sacraments - may conceivably be made a ground for connecting Paulinism with the Hellenistic religions. The argument depends upon one particular view of the Pauline sacraments; it depends upon the view that baptism and the Lord's Supper were conceived of as conveying blessing not in virtue of the disposition of soul with which they were administered or received but in virtue of the sacramental acts themselves. In other words (to use traditional language), the argument depends upon the view that the Pauline sacraments conveyed their blessing not ex opere operantis but ex opere operato. In the Pauline churches, it is argued, the beginning of the new life and the communion with the cult god were connected with certain ceremonial acts. So it was also in the mystery religions. Therefore Paulinism is to be understood in connection with the mysteries.

But the interpretation of the Pauline Epistles upon which this hypothesis is based is fraught with serious difficulty. Did Paul really conceive of the sacraments as conveying their blessing ex opere operato? The general character of the Epistles certainly points in an opposite direction. An unprejudiced reader of the Epistles as a whole certainly receives the impression that the writer laid extraordinarily little stress upon forms and ceremonies. Salvation according to Paul was dependent solely upon faith, the simple acceptance of the offer contained in the message of the Cross. Any connection of such a religion with external forms seems even to be excluded expressly by the Epistle to the Galatians. A dispensation of forms and ceremonies, according to that Epistle, belongs to the period of childish bondage from which Christ has set men free.

Yet such a writer, it is maintained, actually taught that the mere act of baptism conveyed the blessing of a new life and the mere partaking of food and drink conveyed the blessing of communion with the risen Christ. The supposition seems at established, it’s at first sight to be preposterous. If it is to be established, it can only be on the basis of the clearest kind of evidence.

The evidence, it should be noted at the start, is at any rate decidedly limited in extent. It is only in the First Epistle to the Corinthians that Paul mentions the Lord's Supper at all, and it is only in Rom. vi and Col. ii. 12 that baptism is connected with the death and resurrection which the believer is said to have shared with Christ. The limited extent of the evidence may in itself be significant. If Paul held the high sacramentarian view of baptism and the Lord's Supper, it seems a little strange that he should have laid so little stress upon the sacraments. High sacramentarians of all ages have preserved a very different proportion. It seems still more strange, perhaps that Paul should have said that Christ sent him not to baptize but to preach the gospel (1 Cor. i. 17). On the ex opere operato view of baptism, baptism was the highest possible function. Could an apostle who held that view have attributed relatively so little importance to it? In order to appreciate how much less importance is attributed in the Epistles to baptism and the Lord's Supper than to certain other elements in Paul's teaching, it is only necessary to compare the references to the sacraments with the references to faith. The fact is perfectly plain. When Paul speaks, in the large, about the way of salvation, it never seems to occur to him to mention the sacraments; what he does think of is the message of the gospel and the simple acceptance of it through faith.

These facts are sometimes admitted even by those who attribute a high sacramentarian view of the sacraments to Paul; Paulinism when taken as a whole, it is admitted, is certainly not a sacramentarian religion. What has happened, then, it is supposed, is that Paul has retained in the doctrine of the sacraments an element derived from a lower type of religion, an unassimilated remnant of the type of religion which is represented by the mystery cults. Thus the Pauline doctrine of the sacraments is thought to introduce a glaring contradiction into the thought and life of Paul.

Can such a glaring contradiction be attributed to Paul? It could probably be attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. But can it be attributed to Paul? The writer of the Pauline Epistles was no mere compiler, receiving unassimilated materials from many sources. He was a person of highly marked characteristics. And he was a person of commanding intellect. Could such a writer have introduced a glaring contradiction into the very center of his teaching? Could a writer who in the great mass of his writing is triumphantly and even polemically anti-sacramentarian have maintained all along a crassly sacramentarian view of the way in which religious blessing was to be obtained?

An affirmative answer to these questions could be rendered only on the basis of positive evidence of the most unequivocal kind. And such positive evidence is not forthcoming. The most that can by any possibility be said for the strictly sacra-mentarian interpretation of Rom. vi is that it is possible. It might conceivably be adopted if Rom. vi stood alone. But as a matter of fact Rom. vi does not stand alone; it stands in the midst of a considerable body of Pauline Epistles. And it must be interpreted in the light of what Paul says elsewhere.

If Rom. vi stood absolutely alone, Paul might conceivably be thought to mean that the act of baptism in itself involves a dying with Christ and a rising with Him to a new life. But the whole character of the Pauline Epistles absolutely precludes such an interpretation. And another interpretation does full justice to the words as they stand. That interpretation is the obvious one which makes the act of baptism an outward sign of an inner experience.

"We were buried with him," says Paul, "through baptism unto death." These words are pressed by the modern school of comparative religion very much as Luther at the Marburg Conference pressed the Latin words of institution of the Lord's Supper. Luther wrote on the table, "This is my body" ("hoc est corpus meum"), and would not hear of anything but the most literal interpretation of the words. So the modern school of comparative religion presses the words "through baptism" in Rom. vi. 4. "We were buried with him through baptism," says Paul. Therefore, it is said, since it was through baptism, it was not through faith, or through any inner disposition of the soul; therefore the sacramentarian interpretation is correct. But if Luther's over- literalness, fraught with such disastrous consequences for the Church, is deserted by most advocates of the grammatico-historical method of exegesis, should an equally bald literalness be insisted upon in connection with Rom. vi. 4?

Interpreted in connection with the whole trend of the Epistles, the sixth chapter of Romans contains an appeal to the outward sign of an inner experience. It is perfectly natural that Paul should here appeal to the outward sign rather than to the inner experience. Paul desires to strengthen in his readers the conviction that the life which they are leading as Christians is a new life in which sin can have no place. Unquestionably he might have appealed to the faith which had been the means by which the new life had been begun. But faith is not something that can be seen. Baptism, on the other hand, was a plain and obvious fact. To use a modern term, it "visualized” faith. And it is just the visualizing of faith that Paul here desires. When the Roman Christians were baptized, they were convinced that the act meant a dying with Christ and a rising with Him; it meant the beginning of their Christian life. It was a solemn and a definite act. It was something that could be seen as well as felt. Conceivably, indeed, the act in itself might have been unaccompanied by faith. But in the early Church such cases were no doubt extremely rare. They could therefore be left out of account by Paul. Paul assumes-and no doubt he is correct-that, whatever might conceivably have been the case, as a matter of fact when any one of the Roman Christians was baptized he died and rose again with Christ. But Paul does not say that the dying and rising again was produced by the external act otherwise than as that act was an expression of faith. Here, however, it is to the external act that he appeals, because it is the external act which can be seen and can be realized. It can only be because the newness of the Christian life is not realized that Christians can think of it as permitting a continuance in sin. What enables it to be realized is that which can actually be seen, namely, the external and obvious fact of baptism. In other words, baptism is here made to discharge in typical fashion its divinely appointed function as an external sign of an inner experience, and an external sign which is made the vehicle of special blessing.

A similar interpretation may be applied to all the references to the sacraments which occur in the Pauline Epistles. What sometimes produces the impression of an ex opere operato conception of the sacraments is that Paul does not take into account the possibility that the sacraments might be unaccompanied by faith. So in Gal. iii. 27 he says, "All ye who were baptized into Christ did put on Christ." These words if taken alone might mean that every man, whatever the condition of his soul, who went through the external form of baptism had put on Christ. But of course as a matter of fact Paul means nothing of the kind. What he does mean is that the baptism of the Galatians, since that baptism was accompanied by faith (Gal. iii. 2), meant in that concrete case the putting on of Christ.

Here again there is an appeal, in the presence of those who were in danger of forgetting spiritual facts, to the external sign which no one could forget.

This interpretation cannot be invalidated by the passages which have been appealed to as supporting a crassly ex opere operato conception of the sacraments. In 1 Cor. xi. 30, for example, Paul says that because of an unworthy partaking of the Lord's Supper many of the Corinthians were ill and many had died. But these words need not necessarily mean that the bread and wine, because of a dangerous magical virtue that was in them, had inflicted harm upon those who had not used them aright. They may mean at least equally well that the physical ills of the Corinthians were a chastisement which had been inflicted by God. As for 1 Cor. xv. 29 (baptism in behalf of the dead), it can be said at least that that verse is isolated and exceedingly obscure, and that it is bad historical method to allow what is obscure to color the interpretation of what is plain. Many interpretations of the verse have been pro-posed. And it is by no means clear that Paul lent his own support to the custom to which reference is here made.

Thus it cannot be maintained that Paulinism was like the pagan mysteries even in the general sense that both Paulinism and the mysteries connected salvation with external acts. The acts themselves were different; and the meaning of the acts was still more diverse. An element of truth does indeed underlie the sacramentarian interpretation of Paul. The element of truth consists in the protest which is here raised against the interpretation which has sometimes been favored by “liberal” scholars. According to this liberal interpretation, when Paul speaks of dying and rising with Christ he is referring to a purely ethical fact; when he says that he has died to the Law, he means that he has made a radical break with an external, legalistic type of religion; when he says that it is no longer he that lives but Christ that lives in him, he means that he has made Christ his supreme guide and example; when he says that through the Cross of Christ he has been crucified to the world, he means that the Cross has led him to renounce all worldliness of purpose. Such interpretation is exceedingly common. But it is radically false. It is false because it does away with the supernaturalism of Paul's teaching. There could be no greater mistake than that of making salvation according to Paul an affair of the human will. On the contrary, the very essence of Pauline teaching is supernaturalism. Salvation, according to Paul, is based upon a supernatural act of God-the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And equally supernatural is the application of salvation to the individual. The new creation which stands at the beginning of the Christian life is according to Paul just as little a product of natural forces, and just as little a product of the human will, as the first creation was. The modern school of comparative religion is entirely correct in insisting upon the thoroughgoing supernaturalism of the Pauline gospel. Paulinism is a redemptive religion in the most thoroughgoing sense of the word; it finds salvation, not in a decision of the human will, but in an act of God.

But the error comes in confusing supernaturalism with sacramentalism. Paul's conception of salvation is supernatural, but it is not external. It is indeed just as supernatural as if it were external. The beginning of a man's Christian life, according to Paul, is just as little a product of his own moral forces, just as little a product of any mere moral influence brought to bear upon him, as it would be if it were produced by the water into which he was dipped or the bread and wine of which he partakes. Conceivably God might have chosen to use such means. If He had done so, His action would have been not one whit more supernatural than it actually is. But as a matter of fact, He has chosen, in His mysterious wisdom, to use the means of faith. Such is the teaching of Paul. It is highly distasteful to the modern liberal Church. But even if it is to be rejected it should at least be recognized as Pauline.

Thus the interpretation of the sacraments which is proposed by the modern school of comparative religion-and indeed the whole modern radical treatment of Paulinism as a thoroughgoing religion of redemption-marks a reaction against the modernizing exegesis which was practised by the liberal school. But the reaction has at any rate gone too far. It cannot be said that the newer exegesis is any more objective than the liberal exegesis which it endeavors to replace. The liberal scholars were concerned to keep Paul as near as possible to their modern naturalistic principles, in order to continue to use him for the edification of the Church; the radical scholars of the school of comparative religion are concerned to keep him as far away as possible from modern naturalistic principles in order to bring him into connection with the crass external-ism of the mystery religions. Neither group has attained the whole truth. The Pauline conception of salvation is just as spiritual as it is thought to be by the liberal scholars; but on the other hand, it is just as supernatural as it is represented as being by Reitzenstein and Bousset.

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.