And now that we have come to the end of our discussion, I suppose that I ought to sum up. But I assure you that the last thing I want to do, or have been aiming to do, is to leave with you a well-rounded and apparently completed picture of Paul, a picture at which you can gaze with a sense of satisfaction. The reason is this.
We are not here to learn about Paul, to analyze his writings, to find support for this or that view of his character, or for this or that theory of salvation. We are here to know Paul, to know what he was doing, what he was, what his aim was, or better to understand and feel these things rather than know them.
Carlyle, in his essay on Mirabeau, expressed the situation pretty well. He said, "The way to study honestly some earnest, deep-minded, truth-loving man, is to work your way into his manner of thought until you see the world with his eyes, feel as he felt, and judge as he judged."
If we are trying to do that, there are three steps that we must take. The first step is destructive. We must destroy our preconceived opinions, we must discount those things in Paul or his writings which perhaps annoy us—which perhaps are very pleasing to us—but which do not represent the true Paul. The second step is to collect and present to ourselves the constructive material, the facts of which are vital to the understanding of the meaning of Paul. And the third step is, building the new world, the new creation,—the "new creature," as he puts it.
The first and second step can be done for us. Some one can present to us the material, to a certain extent. But that does not do us any good at all. I have been astounded in reading many books on Paul to find that very often the mass of facts is presented adequately, but the author has no understanding of Paul, of what his aim was, and really no interest in him. He might have been pursuing any literary inquiry. He did not understand even what Paul was doing, much less what he was.
Of course there are outstanding exceptions. I take this opportunity not only of acknowledging my deep indebtedness to them but of recommending them to anyone interested in the Apostle Paul. I have already mentioned Adolf Deissmann whose pioneer work on the papyri is responsible for what we know of Paul's language to-day. Among the moderns T. R. Glover seems to me to have the best understanding of the basic meaning of Paul. We must not forget Conybeare and Howson whose "Life and Epistles of St. Paul" although written about fifty years ago is still unsurpassed in interest and value. It is amazing the insight that their paraphrase of the epistles displays when we remember that they at that time had not the benefit of the knowledge that later scholars have put at our disposal. Mathhew Arnold also must not be forgotten. His "St. Paul and Protestantism" thoroughly de-theologized Paul, although it is marred by the fact that it is a tract against dissenters.
These men not only collected the facts. They lived with them and built a synthesis of their own.1 In doing so, they reached the real Paul because this was the very thing Paul was striving for. No matter how adequately the facts are presented to us, if we merely accept them, we will never understand Paul. You will remember, in the first letter to the Corinthians, Paul complained because one said, "I am of Paul," another, "I am of Apollos," another, "I am of Cephas," and another, "I am of Christ." Even to be "of Christ" was of no avail because there had been no individual growth but merely an acceptance of some other individuality.
So it is that third stage that is vital: the building of the new world, the assimilation of the material. And that step cannot be taken for us. We must do it ourselves. We must "work our way" in, as Carlyle says.
In that same letter to the Corinthians, Paul said, "Paul planted, Apollos watered, but God giveth the increase." Well, we know that God is within us, and it is thus that growth must come. Plants are not made; they grow. And every plant is different. And the only value of a presentation of materials about Paul is in the reaction of the individual to those materials.
Paul knew this. He said, "You are my letters, known and read of all men." He never thought that by producing the written letters he was accomplishing anything. He was only using that as the one available means of approach to his real aim. Unless there was individual growth, Paul thought that he had accomplished nothing. Isaac Penington says, "Our knowledge is in a Principle, wherein the Father from Whom the Principle came teacheth us. And this is His way of teaching, namely, by making us one with the thing He teacheth." That was just what Paul wanted and the only thing he wanted: by some form of words to initiate in his readers the experience which he had lived. And any faithful presentation of Paul can be only that, a suggestion of what Paul's experience was, what his aim was in his letters, and his method, a collection and presentation of the available materials from which the "new creation" can again be built.