In passing from the book of Acts to Paul’s Epistles, we are not advancing to a new period, in order that we may observe how Jesus had come to be thought of at a somewhat later date, in a the developing thought of Christians.¹ In point of fact, none of Paul’s letters are of a later. date than the Acts, and the earlier of them come from a time which antedates the composition of that book by ten or fifteen years. What we are passing to is merely a new form of literature,—didactic literature as distinguished from narrative. And what we are to observe is not a later development of the Christian conception of Jesus, but only more directly and precisely how the Christians of the first age thought of Jesus.
The book of Acts does indeed tell us not only how Paul and his companions thought and spoke of Jesus ¹0n the witness of Paul, see in general R. J. Knowling, The Wit- ness of the Epistles, 1892; The Testimony of St. Paul to Christ, 1905. It used to be the fashion to attribute to Paul a very “primitive” chris- tology supposed to find expression in Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians and Galatians; largely on the ground of this these Epistles were allowed to be his. It is now the fashion, recognizing that the christology of these Epistles too is high, to represent Paul as the author of the deifying christology which, so it is said, has spread from him through the N. T. “Paul is everywhere the starting point,” says Wernle (Beginnings of Christianity, 11, p. 294): “it is his Gospel which now speaks to us from the words of Jesus and the original Apostles.” The Gospels, from 220
as they presented Him to the faith of men; but also how Peter and his fellow-evangelists of the first days of the Gospel proclamation thought and spoke of Him: and to this extent the information derived from it reflects an earlier usage. But neither in Acts nor in Paul’s ( Epistles is there any hint that Peter and Paul stand related to one another in their thought of Christ as representatives of a less and ¹3 more developed conception. On the contrary in Acts the conception of the two, though “_ clothed in different forms of speech, is notably the same: “and in Paul’s Epistles, though differences are noted between the other Apostles and himself in other matters, there is none signalized on this central point. And it Mark (Wernle, 251 seq., cf. Wrede, Paulus, 89) to John (Wernle, 274, Wrede, p. 96), reflect Paul’s christological speculations: and the rest of the N. T. bears equally his mark. The origin of this high Pauline chris- tology is left somewhat obscure. Wrede and Weinel are, on the whole, “inclined to say that Paul had as a Jew believed in a transcendent Mes- “ siah, such as is pictured in the Similitudes of Enoch, say, and had only, on conversion, to accept Jesus as Messiah to have an exalted christology ready at hand. But if this doctrine of.a transcendent Messiah was “in the air,” why was it left to Paul to invent a transcendent chris- tology for the church? And if it was “in the air” why need it be sup- posed to be derived from the later Apocalypses? Why might not the Apocalypses and Paul alike draw from, say, Daniel 7¹³,¹⁴.? And why may it not have been shared by Jesus Himself? It scarcely seems logical to refer all traces of a transcendent christology in the N. T. to Paul; and then to refer Paul’s doctrine to a generally active cause. The single solid result of the movement is, thus, the general recognition that the christology of the N. T. at large is “transcendent.”
Note: Cf. Knowling, The Testimony of St. Paul to Christ, pp. 44, 45: “The Twelve and St. Paul differed, no doubt, in many ways; but there is no trace that the former opposed the Gentile Apostle in the estimate which he formed of the person of Christ and of His relationship to the Father.” “If the deification of Christ was due to St. Paul, how is it that we do not hear of any such opposition, of any such violation of Jewish feeling and belief?”
is distinctly to be borne in mind that these Epistles were written not merely in the lifetime of the original apostles of Christ, but also in full view of their teaching, and with an express claim to harmony with it. Their testimony is accordingly not to Paul’s distinctive doctrine with regard to the person of Jesus, but to the common doctrine of the Churches of the first age, when the Churches included in their membership the original followers of Jesus.³ They, therefore, do not present us a different usage from that reflected in Acts and the Synoptic Gospels, but the same usage from a different point of sight. “As didactic writings addressed by a Christian leader to Christian readers they enable us to observe, as the historical books do not, how Christians of the sixth and seventh decades of the first century were accustomed to speak of the Lord to one another; and accordingly what their thought of Jesus was as they sought to quicken in themselves Christian faith and hope and to bring their lives into conformity with their professions. Not merely in point of date, therefore, but also in point of intimacy of revelation, the Epistles of Paul present to us the most direct and determining evidence of the conception of Jesus prevalent in the primitive Church.