We have seen that the germ of Paul's manifested activity was his discovery that his body was acting quite mechanically without, or even against, the direction of his will and his recognition that as a being he had some other function to fulfil than to be the mere pasive experiencer of the behaviour of that body. We have looked at the Greek-Hebrew soil in which his thought developed, and have examined with some care the form which it took as it grew. We have seen that it exhibited not a system of doctrine but a manifold picture of man as he is and his potentialities.
There remains for us to see what Paul has to tell us of the actualization of these potentialities, the "new creation" as he calls it. This will be nothing less than the remade man in his new rôle, functioning now for the first time as a normal human being, a "son of God."
Our subject is really the theology of the Apostle Paul. This may seem surprising in view of the fact that we have just been demonstrating that Paul had no theology. However, there is no real inconsistency. What I meant then was that Paul had no theology in the popular sense. Of course he had an essential theology.
In the same way, there is a popular meaning, and a real meaning for other words. Gnosticism: there is a real Gnosis, the knowledge of which comes from experience, very different from the arrogant and sterile intellectualism of the Gnostics as we know them. There is a real Theosophy, the Wisdom of God, and it does not develop the fantasies of a Theosophical Society.
So theology in the real sense does not consist of speculative verbalizations about God nor deductions as to the nature of God drawn from the reports or the experiences of others, but it is the conceptual formulation of one's own experience of God. It is, as the name implies, the God-Word, the Word of God, the divine seed growing in us. Of course Paul had a theology in this sense. We cannot expect him to define the new state in so many words. It is beyond that. But if we look closely we can pick out from what he does say, plain intimations of the nature of the new relation as it presented itself to his consciousness in his experience.
When we tried to analyze the structure of the Epistle to the Romans, we found that the heart of the epistle was formulated in a double statement, the fact of sin and the way out, expressed thus at the end of the seventh chapter:
1.Miserable man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
2. God! To whom be thanks through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The first part of this statement, the fact of sin, Paul develops in the seventh chapter, where he paints a picture of his observed mechanicality and will-lessness which cannot be anything short of terrifying in its stark reality to those who have chanced to catch a glimpse of themselves as they are.
The second part of the statement, the liberating God, Paul develops in the 8th Chapter; and it is there, if anywhere that we should expect to find a statement of his theology. And that is exactly where we do find it, in the first two verses, where he says:
"There is now, therefore, no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus. For the law of the spirit, life in Jesus Christ, has set me free from the law of sin and death."
This statement of his theology is made in somewhat different words in the Epistle to the Galatians, which I have already observed is the Epistle to the Romans in a nutshell. There Paul says:
"I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me."
That is the sum total of Paul's theology, Life IN Christ,—Christ IN me. Those two phrases mean the same thing, so close is the union. The idea seems very simple, almost trite, yet I do not expect to be able to do more than hint at its richness and vitality.
In considering the question we must first rid ourselves of the idea that there was in this union, sometimes called the "mystical union," anything magical or mystical at all. It was a very real thing. Paul was a "new creature," but he knew that it was not by magic; that the change was in himself, and that no external influence could be the cause of it, although an outside stimulus was necessary as the initiatory impulse. Thus, the concrete beginning of Paul's experience undoubtedly was the vision on the road to Damascus, but Paul never considered that the incident in itself effected his salvation or conversion or transformation. He says: "I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision." This clearly implies that he might have been disobedient. In such case, although he had seen the vision, he would have been no different for it.
Even the death of Christ did not effect salvation or redemption. Paul never rested on "the finished work of Christ," as the saying is. Paul's conversion was an awakening to his ultimate function in the universe, his being-responsibility. It is true that God sent His Son to deal with sin; but why? In order that the ordinances of the law might be fulfilled1 thereby? No, not at all, but fulfilled "in us," Paul says, Romans 8:3. There is a similar statement in Galatians 1:15, where he says: "God revealed His Son in me." Unless there is a revelation in the individual there is no effective revelation at all.
Now note, if you will, a statement in Romans 5:10, which is very important in understanding Paul's position.
"For if while we were hostile we were reconciled to him through the death of his son, the more certainly after being reconciled shall we obtain salvation in his life (in the life of Him)."
That was what counted. Christ's death might have been the beginning episode but it was nothing more than that. In Galatians he says, "God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of Christ." Why? Because of Christ's effective sacrifice? By no means. But because "the world is crucified to me and I to the world." There again we have the point with Paul. The death of Christ is nothing in itself, if it is not effective in the individual.
I would point out also that Paul's view was not sacramentarian. The sacramentalists cite him as authority quite without warrant. With Paul no sacrament could effect anything. It was a seal, not the effective agency. In mediaeval times they thought that whether or not you would be saved depended on whether or not you had been baptised. But in all his letters Paul never refers to his own baptism. It could not have been central with him. He told the Corinthians that he was glad he had baptized only a few. In his letters he refers to the Lord's Supper only incidentally, in connection with abuses which had arisen in connection with its celebration. In this important Epistle to the Romans he never refers to the Lord's Supper at all. He does refer to baptism, but not in a way to afford comfort to the sacramentalist. He says, Romans 6:3, "Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Well, then, by our baptism we were buried with him in death." It was not the baptism that counted, but the fact of being buried with Christ. The sacrament was only the seal and outward sign of the fact and did not actualize the fact.
The reason that no external fact, even the death of Christ, can be the efficient agency of the new birth is, that to Paul the new life is not static, but a state of perpetual effort, which he pictures as growth, or building. "Growth" if we consider the Word as seed, we may conceive as "abiding in the Word," as Jesus says, incorporating it in our being by actualized perseverances. By "building," I conceive the actual fabrication of the higher body, the body of glory, the incorruptible body, the body which Paul designates as Soma in contrast to Sarx, the flesh.
The nature of this new life Paul states very explicitly in Colossians 2:6, 7: "As, therefore, ye received Christ Jesus the Lord, WALK IN HIM." You see the receiving is only preliminary. The real thing is living and acting in vital union with Him. Then Paul continues in that same sentence, "rooting yourselves in him, and continually building yourselves up in him." There we have it, both growth and building. It is very significant that at the very end of his career, in the Epistle to the Philippians, Paul is still striving, as he says, "that I may win Christ,—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection." What Paul even at that time wanted to know was, the force of the new life in himself. Nothing else mattered. He said in the 3rd Chapter of Philippians, verses 13, 14, "I count not myself to have attained; but, one thing.—I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward calling of God in Christ Jesus." And this was at the end of his life.
The passage, by the way, is interesting to me because of Paul's use of the word "calling." We hear in popular theology of calling, election, as a preliminary—a necessary preliminary—to the Christian life. And the horrible thought is that unless election happens to be predestined in the case of any individual, that individual cannot enter the life. But Paul here represents it, not as a preliminary, but as the goal, the actualization of the upward urge. The "high calling" is the ordinary translation, but the Greek means "the upward calling." The upward calling appears in us as aspiration. To answer this upward call, to fulfil our real being, is the essential underlying wish of every one of us, if we will discard irrelevant things. As Paul says, it was revealed to us before the creation of the world. That is the pre-existent Christ, the pre-existent Word of God. That is our predestination.
I would not have you think, however when I speak of growth, that with Paul this meant a natural growth, an evolutionary development, so to speak. It is above and beyond nature, at least, as we know and understand nature. I should call it supernatural, if that word had not been abused. With Paul, nature is, as he says, of the law, of the flesh. Here we are dealing with a new creation. That new creation is natural, if we only knew it. It deals with material as substantial as our planetary bodies, or this table, but it is a different order of material and we do not see it. But Paul knew. Listen:
"Even though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now know we him no longer. Wherefore, if any man is in Christ he is a new creature (a new creation). The old things are passed away. Behold, they are become new. All things are of God (not nature)."2 II Cor. 5:16–18.
Does that sound like what we call natural evolution?
Again:
"But ye did not so learn Christ, if so be that you heard him and were taught in him, (You see even a thing like learning, hearing, teaching, is nothing unless it is, "in Him") even the truth in Christ Jesus. But ye learned that ye put away the old man, (that is, the flesh) crumbling away with the desires that deceive, (Those desires are just our ordinary desires; but they deceive us because we do not have them, they have us.) that ye may be made anew in the spirit of your mind and clothe yourselves with the new man created according to God (not nature)." Ephesians 4:21–4.
You see, we clothe ourselves with a new body; we actually build. That is what Paul meant in II Cor. 5:1–5. His words are so explicit, they cannot be misunderstood:
"For we know that if the earthly house of our tabernacle (in the margin it says "bodily frame") be dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. (That does not mean some heavenly mansion) For verily in the old tabernacle we groan, longing to be clothed upon with our habitation which is from heaven; if so be that, being clothed, we shall not be found naked (as we certainly should be some time or other if we depended only on the earthly tabernacle). For indeed, we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened; not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be clothed upon, that what is mortal may be swallowed up of life. Now, he that wroght us for this very thing is God, who gave unto us the earnest of the spirit."
There is a recognition of normal function, of man's duty in the universe, of his place in the scheme of God. This building of the higher body is the very thing that God made us for.
The building of the incorruptible body is at the back of Paul's repeated use of the word which we translate "edify." The Greek word means simply "to build up," "to build a house." I think that Paul intended the literal meaning.
"So then let us follow after the things which make for peace and for upbuilding" Romans 14:19. "Let each of us please his neighbour for that which is good, unto upbuilding." Romans 15:2.
"Everything is allowable, but not everything builds up." I Cor. 10:23.
"Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up." I Cor. 8:1.
The new body Paul sometimes calls the body of glory.
"But all of us, as with unveiled faces we mirror the glory of the Lord, are metamorphosed into the same likeness, from glory to glory." II Cor. 3:18
"The Lord Jesus Christ, who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation to the same form as the body of his glory." Phil. 3:21.
We cannot build the new body alone. It is not the result of any natural form of action or reaction, as we understand the natural, but there is a subtle catalysis in process. The presence of an outside influence is necessary in order to make the change possible which indeed Paul thought impossible until he discovered the catalytic agent. "When He appears, we shall be like Him because we shall see Him as He is."
Paul refers to the body of glory in Romans 3:23 in the passage translated, "We all fall short of the glory of God." That translation does not convey the meaning. The text means we are lacking the God-glory, that is, that the body of glory has not been built. It is not that we fall short of God's ideal, but we are lacking in the actualization of the God-glory that should be ours; that is what Paul means.
"Tell me you who want to be subject to the law,—well, why do you not listen to the law? It is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave girl and one by the free woman. But whereas the child by the slave girl had an ordinary birth (birth by nature) the child of the free woman was born in fulfilment of God's promise. All this is allegorical, for the women represent two covenants. One originates on Mount Sinai, and bears children destined for slavery. This is Hagar, for the name "Hagar" stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, which is in bondage, together with her children. (How hopeless it was in Paul's time to think that the promise of endless seed to Abraham could be fulfilled.) The Jerusalem which is above is free, and she is our mother. For it is written: Rejoice, thou barren woman that bearest not; break forth into a joyful cry, thou that dost not travail; for the desolate woman has many children, more than she who has a husband." Gal. 4:21–7.
Can anything be stronger than that? Can anything be more explicit?
One thing must already have been most noticeable in all Paul has had to tell us, and that is the phrase "in Christ," always with us, like some haunting motif in music. What does it signify? It has a very special meaning and a very special usage with Paul. The phrase "in Christ" is used over 150 times in his letters. If we include cognate phrases, like "in his blood," it is used over 200 times. If we include contrasting phrases we can more than double that number. Now that phrase "en Christo," in Chirse, Deissmann says, is really a technical term with Paul. At any rate we can see that it has a peculiarly intimate meaning. It does not refer to the historical Jesus. It denotes a continuing relationship with the Christ present in the heart. It is what we call a personal relationship but it is more than that. It is a functional relationship, the relationship of a functioning member of the body to the totality of the body and to the integrating principle which is the life and soul of the body. Thus faith, with Paul, does not mean, as it means with us, trust or belief in Jesus, or Christ, but it means the kind of faith which results from a life in fellowshhip with Christ. It is an "in-Christ" faith. Faith in somebody is another word, "epi" in Greek, faith in God. By an in-Christ (en Christo) faith we are able to have faith in (epi) God.
Read over Paul's letters with that idea in mind. It gives a wealth of meaning. In Eph. 2:12, it is pointed out that apart from Christ we have no hope in the world, we are without God. Eph. 3:12: "In Christ we have boldness and access with confidence to the throne of grace." A most interesting chapter, the meaning of which is ordinarily missed, is the fifth chapter of the Romans, where Paul points out just what that "in-Christ" faith is. First, in a state of innocence we have as normal creatures the normal faith in God. Under the law, however, this faith was impossible because we are ruled by the law; but in Christ we can have this faith—an "in-Christ" faith in (epi) God.
This adjectival use of the phrase is shown very clearly in the third chapter of Romans again, verse 24: "Being justified (acquitted) freely by God's grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." It is very interesting to look at the different English translations of the Bible, and see how they have boggled over that phrase, sometimes getting its meaning, sometimes not. I set a very high value on Weymouth's translation but he slips here. He translates it, not "through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." but "through the ransom given in Christ Jesus." The Greek does not say that at all. It says an "in-Christ-Jesus redemption," the emancipation that results from being in that state which Paul calls "in Christ Jesus." It is the freeing from sin which results from a life in Christ. There is no idea in Paul of the human Jesus being the ransom or sacrifice whom God put forward to save us. In this passage we have the well-known reference to Jesus as a mercy-seat through "faith in his blood." Do you think that Paul thought that meant believing in the efficacy of the shed blood? No, it did not mean that at all. Most of us, I think, are revolted by the phrase "washed in the blood of the Lamb"; and with Paul it was exactly the same. That is what they did in the mystery religions. They put the initiate under the bull, and slaughtered it, and washed the initiate in his blood; and that was called the taurobolium. But Paul did not mean anything of that kind; he did not import that into his religion. Faith "in his blood" means faith in God that results from a relationship to Christ so close that it can only be symbolized by the intermingling of blood. Paul refers to our blood relationship with the living Christ, not to the shedding of Christ's blood. I have already pointed out, Paul no more thought that the crucifixion effected his redemption than he thought that his Damascus vision effected it.
We can extend our illustrations. "The love of Christ constraineth me." By that Paul does not mean his love for Christ; he does not men Christ's love for him; but it is an "of-Christ" love, that is, that some passionate yearning for humanity that Christ had; and by union with Christ he felt that love. That was what constrained Paul; that is what led him on. He had the Christ love, not mere affectionate attachment to his master.
A very important passage is Col. 1:24:
"Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and fill up on my part that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the church."
This does not mean, as it is usually interpreted, that Christ had not suffered enough afflictions to satisfy the justice of God, so that it was necessary for Paul to complete the tale. No, "of-Christ" is used as the adjective again. Paul is not completing Christ's sufferings. He is carrying out in his body his own Christ sufferings, that is, voluntary sufferings, the experience of which could alone perfect the unity with Christ.
We could continue indefinitely with examples of this kind, but these are perhaps sufficient. I suggest thinking over some of the contrasting phrases.
Paul speaks of "in the flesh" Rom. 7:5, "in sin" I Cor. 15:17, "in the law" Gal 5:18, "in the world" Eph 2:12. That was his original state. Now, he is "in Christ."
The relation which Paul has reference to here must not be conceived of as some mere abstract, mystical relation; it is a very vivid and personal one with Paul. Christ was actually present to him. "The love of Christ constraineth me," he says, II Cor. 5:14, "The Lord is near," Phil. 4:5, he prays that "Christ may dwell in your hearts," Eph. 3:17 "To me to live is Christ," Phil. 1:21. "Christ liveth in me," Gal. 2:20. In Christ he finds consolation, loving comfort, spiritual fellowship, kindness, compassion. Phil. 2:1.
Let me say that this personal character of Paul's religion is the very thing that is typical of Old Testament religion. There God was conceived of as a person, and his relation to the Children of Israel was a personal relation. That relationship, that sense of personality, Paul made even more vivid than it was conceived in Old Testament times. Eventually he transcended it.
While the relationship was personal, it was not with Paul an ordinary friendship, an ordinary attachment; far from it. "The riches of Christ are unsearchable," he says, Eph. 3:8. "His love passeth knowledge," Eph. 3:19. He always sought, as far as possible, by identification and surrender to Christ to draw nearer to that (to him) supreme personality. This was not an abdication of will but a conscious assumption of his function in the universal organism, Paul's chief interest outside of himself was to preach the Gospel, by which he meant merely to instil in others the same sort of experience that he had undergone. "Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel," he says, I Cor. 9:16. In himself, the purpose was "that I may know him and the fellowship of his sufferings," Phil. 3:10. It was in this way, by this constant striving, that Paul attained a relationship probably beyond the range of our experience; but it was not mere emotional ecstacy, it was a real fellowship of His sufferings, it was a union with Him so close that he felt the same yearning that Christ felt.
The relation was always ethical. "Give your mind to things above," he says, Col. 3:1. "We are ambitious to be acceptable to Him." II Cor. 5:9. Again and again he speaks of living "according to Christ"; that is, according to the motivation which ruled Christ's life. Rom. 15:5, Col. 2:8. In fact what Paul wanted most of all was the fellowship of the sufferings of Christ, to die with Christ. This doctrine is called technically the doctrine of Necrosis, and probably it is the most striking characteristic of Paul's doctrines. Very few men in the world have ever had the courage to preach the idea as Paul did; that is, to press it home to themselves. How explicit he was, the following passages will show.
"I have been crucified in Christ, and it is no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me." Gal. 2:20.
"I long to know Christ and the power that is in his resurrection, and to share in his sufferings and die even as he died; in the hope that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead." Phil. 3:10
"Well then, by our baptism we were burind with him in death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father's glorious power, we should also lead an entirely new life." Rom. 6:4.
"Co-heirs with Christ; if indeed we share Christ's sufferings in order to share also his glory." Romans 8:17.
I think it may be worth while to comment for a moment on the phrase "dying in Christ," for it is charged that Paul inculcated a life of repression and renunciation, whereas Jesus said that he came "that ye might have life and have it more abundantly." This life of repression was inherent in the old Stoic philosophy, and the historical church has not been free of the idea. In one of his periods of depression Keats said the world had taken on a "Quakerish aspect."
But if we are open to the charge, Paul was not. He was really the antithesis of a Stoic. There was nothing that was not lawful to him. Joy and Grace are his key words. His dying in Christ is simply the resurrection to the new life but formulated in a statement which is relative to the old life. He is "swallowed up of life." The new life is the death of the old life, but there is no sense of renunciation. We do not "give up" the old things with perhaps a tinge of regret but we discard them with relief. It is a matter of revaluation. Dean Inge speaks of our "nostalgia for the infinite." That is it. When we are homesick and are permitted to go home, we don't feel that we are making a "sacrifice" in "giving up" our foreign surroundings. In the same way if we feel that "dying with Christ" is frustration or renunciation we really haven't died at all but we are very much alive to the old life. There is no virtue in that. Iamblichus says:
"When the soul is elevated to natures better than itself, then it is entirely separated from subordinate natures, exchanges this for another life, and, deserting the order of things with which it was connected, links and mingles itself with the other."
Plotinus says:
"And this is the life of the gods and of godlike and happy men, a deliverance from the other things here, a life untroubled by the pleasures here, a flight of the alone to the Alone."
This complete change of status Paul could only express by death and resurrection. If we can see only the horror of death, we have not effected the change as yet.
One further thought. His relationship with Christ gave Paul contact with a tremendous power. He uses again and again the word "energy," which we think is so characteristic of our own time. God, with Paul, first is a personality, but personality culminating in power. There are two reasons why it was inevitable that Paul's God ultimately should stand for force, power, energy.
In the first place if we read over the seventh chapter of Romans we find that the one thing which characterized Paul's condition was impotence, lack of power. He lacked the power to do what he would. He lacked the power to exercise his will. He was, as he said, a slave to sin. God, to Paul was the liberator. To supply the lacking power was the very thing God did for Paul.
In the second place, Paul in his new state became a functioning unit in the universal organism, God's scheme, the body of Christ. As such he could not but be conscious of the energy of the organism passing through him and exercised through him. So in any hint that Paul gives of the nature of the new creation we must expect to find the idea of force dominant. Listen to these passages:
Col. 1.29:3
"I exert-my-strength-like-an-athelete (it is just one word in Greek,—'agonize'), according to his energy energising in me with power (the Greek word is 'dunamis,' our dynamite, dynamic)."
Notice how Paul piles up the words for power. It is typical of his style, and gives us a sense of his feeling. He is not satisfied to say that we are conquerors. We are more than conquerors.
Phil. 3:21:
"According to the energy of his power (dunamis again, this time in a verb form, 'having power') to subdue all things to himself."
We have come across this verse before. I hope we have not forgotten it. The power here referred to is none other than Christ the catalyst, "who shall metamorphose our bodies of the flesh so that they are fashioned the same as his body of glory."
Eph. 1:19:
"What the transcendent greatness of God's power (dunamis again) into us who have faith according to the energy of his mighty power (Here Paul calls in the aid of two more Greek words. We haven't enough synonyms to keep up with him) continually energised in Christ."
So we may gather that this is what union with Christ meant to Paul: a relationship which was in the first place personal and concrete, not abstract and what we should call mystical; a relationship so close that it amounts to blood kinship, nay more, the very blood of the Christ body flows in his veins; so it is a relationship which is more than human, which transcends all human intercourse however intimate; which results in an integration with the purpose of God; and which links up with the ineffable energy of the cosmos.
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.4 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.