II Baur and His Critics
Ferdinand Christian Baur. Die Christuspartei in der korinthischen Gemeinde. (The Christ-party in the Corinthian Church.) Appeared in the Tübinger Zeitschrift für Theologie, 1831 and 1836. Über Zweck u. Veranlassung des Römerbriefs (Purpose and occasion of Rom.), ib. 1836. Die sogenannten Pastoralbriefe. (The so-called Pastoral Epistles.) 1835.
Paulus der Apostel Jesu Christi (1st ed., 1845; 2nd ed., 1866-67). (Eng. Trans. by “A. P.” and A. Menzies, 1873-75.)
Beiträge zu den Briefen an die Korinther, Thessalonicher und Römer. (Contributions to the elucidation of the Epistles to the Corinthians, Thessalonians and Romans.) Tübinger Jahrbücher für Theologie. 1850-57.
Vorlesungen über neutestamentliche Theologie. 1864. (Lectures on New-Testament Theology.)
Vorlesungen über die christliche Dogmengeschichte. (Lectures on the History of Dogma.) Vol. i., 1865.
Albert Schwegler. Das nachapostolische Zeitalter. 1846. (The Post-Apostolic Age.)
Carl Wieseler. Chronologie des apostolischen Zeitalters. 1848. (The Chronology of the Apostolic Age.) On the Pauline Epp., 225-278.
Albrecht Ritschl. Die Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche. (The Origin of the Early Catholic Church.) 1st ed., 1850; 2nd ed., 1857.
Gotthard Viktor Lechler. Das apostolische und nachapostolische Zeitalter. (The Apostolic and Post-Apostolic Age.) 1852. (Eng. Trans. by A. J. K. Davidson, Edinburgh, 1886.)
Richard Adalbert Lipsius. Die paulinische Rechtfertigungslehre. (The Pauline Doctrine of Justification.) 1853.
IN the fourth number of the Tübinger Zeitschrift für Theologie for the year 1831, F. C. Baur gave to the study of Paulinism a new direction, by advancing the opinion that the Apostle had developed his doctrine in complete opposition to that of the primitive Christian community, and that only when this is recognised can we expect to grasp the peculiar character of the Pauline ideas.
The great merit of the Tübingen critic was that he allowed the texts to speak for themselves, to mean what they said. On the ground of the striking difference between Acts and Galatians regarding Paul’s relation to the original Apostles, and in view of the divisions and contentions which reveal themselves in the Epistles to the Corinthians, Baur concludes that in the early days of Christianity two parties—a Petrine party or party of the original Apostles, and a Pauline party—stood opposed to one another, holding divergent views on the subject of the redemption wrought by Christ.
In the gradual adjustment of these differences he sees the development which led up to the formation of the early Catholic Church, and he traces the evidence for this process in the literature. He thinks he can show that the two parties gradually approached each other, making concessions on the one side and the other, and finally, under the pressure of a movement which was equally inimical to both of them—the Gnosticism of the early part of the second century—they coalesced into a single united Church.
The recognition of the character and significance of Gnosticism makes it possible for Baur to introduce a new kind of criticism. Before him it was only possible to arrive at the negative result that a writing was not by the author to whom it was traditionally ascribed. Now, according to him, it is possible to determine to what period it belongs. It is only necessary to show what position it occupies in the process of reconciliation of the two parties, and, especially, whether it deals with speculative error. This Baur calls “positive” criticism.
He applies it in the first place to the Pastoral Epistles, and argues that the heretics combated in them do not belong to primitive Christianity but are representatives of the Gnostic movement of the second century. By the “myths and genealogies” here mentioned are meant the great speculative systems which are known from Church history. The description given of the heretics is intentionally couched in terms which are neither too general nor too special, in order to sustain the fiction that the false doctrine arising at this later period only revives a movement which had already been attacked and defeated by Paul.
That neither the assumption of a second imprisonment, nor any other possible or impossible hypothesis, can restore to the Pastorals their lost genuineness is as firm a conviction with Baur as it was with Eichhorn.
In the course of his study of the Pastoral Epistles the Tübingen master had expressed the opinion that the criticism of the Pauline writings would probably not “come to a halt” with these Epistles. The results of his further study were offered ten years later (1845) in the brilliantly written work, “Paul the Apostle of Jesus Christ.” He here treats first the life and work, then the letters, and lastly the system of doctrine. The result arrived at in his investigation of the documents is that only the Epistles to the Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans can be confidently used as sources. Compared with these four, all the others must be classed as “anti-legomena,” “which does not at all imply the assertion that they are not genuine, but only indicates the opposition to which their claim to genuineness is in some cases already exposed, in others, may be exposed in the future, since there is not a single one of the smaller Pauline epistles against which, if the four main epistles are taken as the standard, there cannot be raised some objection or other.” There are strong grounds for questioning the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians; those to the Thessalonians and Philippians are to be suspected because of the small amount of dogma they contain. Baur’s reason for taking up such a critical attitude towards the “smaller epistles” is that he is bound to see in the heritage which has come down to us from the Apostle, writings “which belong to the history of the party which based itself on his name, and refer to the relations of the various parties,” and show us how Gentile Christianity softens down its principles and its peculiarities in order to meet the Jewish Christianity, which on its part was going through a similar process, in the unity of the early Catholic Church.
This radical view was attacked on all sides. It gave rise to a kind of reaction even within the sphere of scientific theology, and led to the calling in question of results which the labours of Eichhorn had brought into general acceptance. Thus Carl Wieseler prefaces his detailed study on the date of composition of the Pauline letters with the remark that he held all the thirteen letters which are attributed to the Apostle in the Canon to be authentic.
The Apostle’s system of doctrine culminates, according to Baur’s representation, in the doctrine of the Spirit. In the brilliant disquisitions of this section it is not so much the historian who speaks as the pupil of Hegel. Paulinism is in its own way an announcement of the unity of the subjective spirit with the objective spirit. It is only from this point of view that a consciousness of freedom such as is found in the Apostle of the Gentiles can exist. His doctrine is concerned with union with Christ and with God by faith, from which comes Spirit. “Righteousness” is “the proper relation towards God, to place men in which is the highest duty of all religion.”
Baur does not enter into the details of the Pauline doctrine of justification. Detail is in fact somewhat neglected in his treatment. Strictly speaking, he only includes that which can be in some way or other expressed in Hegelian thought-forms, and that in which Paulinism may be exhibited as representing absolute religion. Everything else is thrown into the background, and receives only a partial appreciation—or depreciation—in a separate chapter entitled “A special discussion of some subsidiary dogmatic questions.” The characteristic stamp of the Pauline doctrine is largely obliterated. In particular, Paul’s views about the “last things” and the angels are not allowed to become disturbingly prominent. Baur does not, indeed, hesitate practically to eliminate them. The angelology he dismisses with the following remark: “Of the angels the Apostle says little in the letters which we have here to take into consideration, and that little not dogmatically, but only metaphorically and in current popular phraseology.”
The Tübingen scholar, in fact, uses the language of Paul in order to set forth an imposing philosophy of religion instinct with Hegelian influence. He gives no authentic account of the Apostle’s thought. Nevertheless this book breathes the spirit of Paul the prophet of freedom more fully than almost any other which has been devoted to him. That is what gives it its remarkable attractiveness.
A year after the appearance of Baur’s “Paulus”—in 1846—Albert Schwegler published his work on the post-apostolic age.19 The founder of the Tübingen School had hitherto only, so to speak, hinted at the phases of development by which the early Church grew up out of the controversy between the two parties. Schwegler undertakes a more detailed description, and in doing so draws the lines so sharply that, along with the greatness of the construction, its faults become obvious. He has no deeper knowledge of Paulinism to impart.
Schwegler’s work had made it apparent from what side the Tübingen position was open to attack, and on this side Albrecht Ritschl proceeded to attack it in his well-known work on the origin of the early Catholic Church.20 The first edition (1850) is primarily directed against Schwegler only; in the second (1857) he develops his opposition of principle to Baur. He offers proof that the earliest literature is not dominated by the negotiations for a compromise between the two parties which was postulated by the Tübingen School, and at the same time he attacks the basis of the whole hypothetical construction. Baur, he urges, must have formed a false conception of Jewish Christianity and Gentile Christianity, since, on his view, it cannot be explained what was the common element that held the two together. Had they only, as the Tübingen School was obliged to assume, had the external bond of profession of faith in Christ, it would never be possible to explain why both parties felt the need of approaching one another by mutual concessions until finally they coalesced in a single united Church.
The extent of the doctrinal material common to both must, Ritschl argues, have been much greater than Baur represents. He has not discharged the first duty of a historian of the Apostolic age, for this requires “that the points should be clearly shown in which Jewish Christianity and Paulinism coincide.” Baur had only given a negative description of the Apostle’s doctrine, because he never gives any hint “that Paul in very essential points held views which were common also to Jewish Christianity.”
The problem regarding the nature of the unity between Paulinism and primitive Christianity is thus recognised and formulated.
But it was not so easy for Ritschl to say exactly what constituted the common element of doctrine, the existence of which he postulated. That is especially evident in the second edition of “The Origin of the Early Catholic Church.” He is then only willing to admit an “opposition of practice” between Paul and the original apostles; the area of this opposition is so restricted that “the essential agreement in the leading ideas laid down by Christ will be only the more clearly evident.” But since in Paulinism little enough is to be found of the “leading ideas laid down by Christ” the proof of the “essential agreement” remains a pious aspiration.
The only solid fact which Ritschl is able to adduce is the expectation of the parousia. He assumes that it formed a very important part of the common doctrinal material, and inclines to believe that Paulinism and Jewish Christianity agreed in an ideal-real expectation of the Second Coming in order to make common cause against Chiliasm, though the latter in its coarser form only appeared later.
But in thus recognising eschatology Ritschl did not take the matter very seriously. He uses the eschatology, in fact, only in order to score a dialectical point against Baur, who had taken too little account of it. In Ritschl’s “Justification and Reconciliation,” where he later on had occasion to give a positive description of Paulinism, he avoided the faintest hint of any eschatological colouring of the Apostle’s ideas.
Another work which is occupied with the question of the unity between Paulinism and primitive Christianity is Lechler’s “Apostolic and Post-Apostolic Age.”21 The work is a prize essay in answer to the problem proposed by the Teylerian Society in Holland, as to what constituted “the absolute difference between the doctrine and attitude of the Apostle Paul and that of the other Apostles,” by which the “so-called Tübingen School endeavours to justify its hostile treatment of Christianity.” Lechler opposes his teacher, but is not able to make any advance upon Ritschl in producing evidence of the common elements in the two doctrinal systems.
Among the works which controverted the Tübingen view of Paulinism a prominent place belongs to an early work of Richard Adalbert Lipsius on “the Pauline doctrine of justification.”22 Along with his scientific purpose the author also pursues a practical aim. He puts himself at the service of the anti-rationalistic reaction which aimed at restoring the old evangelical ideas to a position of honour, but in doing so did not grasp hands with the orthodoxy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but took as its starting-point the ideas which it finds present in the New Testament. In giving an objective presentation of the central Pauline doctrine of justification he believes that he is offering to the Protestantism of his time a view which it can adopt as its own.
For the Apostle of the Gentiles, he argues, justification is not a purely legal, forensic act, but also an ethical experience. Faith is an ethical attitude which produces an inward righteousness. What is really effectual in redemption is the fellowship with Christ in life and death. It is brought about by the Spirit of God and of Christ, who unites himself with the believer and transforms his personality.
Lipsius is the first to recognise the two trains of thought in Paulinism, and to remark that the one is based upon the juridical idea of justification, while the other has its starting-point in the conception of sanctification—of the real ethical new creation by the Spirit. He does not, as had always previously been done, make everything of the one and nothing of the other, but aims at showing how they are brought together in the Apostle’s thought.
The importance of the eschatological passages does not escape him. He assumes that the thought of the parousia gives an inner unity to the Apostle’s ideas.
It is true that Lipsius did not succeed in fully discharging the task which he laid upon himself. He weakens down one set of ideas in the interests of the other, and solders the two together externally by the use of skilfully chosen expressions; but it remains his great merit that he was the first to recognise this duality in Paul’s thought. Had he not been pursuing a dogmatic interest alongside of his scientific investigations he would doubtless have come to still closer quarters with the problem.
While his critics were at work Baur had not been idle. From 1850 onwards he published in the Tübinger Jahrbücher für Theologie, which had superseded the Tübinger Zeitschrift für Theologie, a series of separate investigations of the Pauline Epistles.23 He had resolved that the final results of his study of the Apostle of the Gentiles, with which he had begun his work, and which throughout his whole lifetime had been his favourite study, should be set forth in a new edition of his Paulus. This was to be the crown of his work.
But it was not to be. Death snatched him away from his task when he had only just cast the first part into its new shape. The second and most important, which was to treat the “system of doctrine,” he did not reach.24
To a certain extent a substitute for what was thus lost was furnished by the “Lectures on New Testament Theology,” published by the master’s son in 1864.25 The chapter on Paulinism is very striking in its brevity and clearness, and shows a great advance on the work of 1845. At that time Baur had examined and interpreted Paul’s teaching by the light of the Hegelian Intellectualism. Now he tries to grasp his ideas historically and empirically, and to describe them accordingly.
He discusses successively the Pauline views on sin and flesh; law and sin; faith in the death of Christ; law and promise; law and freedom; the righteousness of faith; faith and works; faith and predestination; Christology; baptism and the Lord’s Supper; the parousia of Christ.
Eschatology, which in the first edition was quite overlooked, receives here abundant recognition. Baur admits that the Apostle fully shared the faith of the primitive community in the nearness of the parousia, and was at one with it in all the conceptions referring to the End.
The Pauline theology as thus empirically apprehended has no longer the bold effectiveness of the speculatively constructed system of the year 1845. It becomes apparent in Baur, and increasingly evident in the work of subsequent investigators, that the self-consistency and logical concatenation of the system become obscured and disturbed in proportion as progress is made in the exact apprehension of the individual concepts and ideas.