We have been examining the sociological background of Paul's writings not because such matters explain his message or account in any way for the motivation or method of his letters. On the contrary, these are things which we must know about Paul only to be able to sweep them away and get at the real Paul underneath. On account of his Hebrew environment Paul's letters are full of Rabbinical illustrations and arguments. But in spite of that Paul's conclusions and underlying thought are the very antithesis of the Jewish psyche. So far was he from the Jewish idea of law, for instance, that he has even been accused of antinominalism. It is the same way with the Greek influence. Paul was very sensitive to the life around him and quickly absorbed and used the Greek elements with which he was familiar. Gilbert Murray calls him one of the greatest Greek writers. I think myself that he is one of the greatest writers in any language. But, although he was a great Greek writer, he was entirely un-pagan, entirely un-classical in his viewpoint, in his methods, in every way. If we must pigeonhole Paul he was emotionally closer to the mystics of the Middle Ages than he was to any classical writer. He did not have that idea of Fate—Anangke, Moira, Aisa—always enigmatic, inexplicable, that the Greeks had constantly pursuing them, although in the doctrine of predestination something of the sort has been read into Paul. But Paul was not a predestinarian; he was a universalist, if he was anything. Likwise, when we say that Paul used the vernacular tongue rather than a literary style or vocabulary, we haven't really explained anything. For Paul, after all, was not talking like "the man in the street." Far from it. There was a vast difference in his subject-matter, the scope of this thought. It is one thing to use words of common speech for ordinary social intercourse, and quite another thing to use them, as Paul did, with deliberate intent,—to indicate spiritual or objective truths quite apart from the aims of ordinary planetary existence.
So the source of Paul's gospel, its meaning and method, are to be found not in his sociological training or environment, but in an individual experience which was quite apart from these things. The nature of that experience (I am quite unwilling to call it a spiritual experience, and let it go at that) we must try to understand, for Paul in his letters is not theorizing or speculating or arguing, but merely trying vehemently, almost incoherently sometimes, to make that experience so vivid to his readers that they will be moved to enter upon it for themselves. In so doing he summoned to the aid of his rich intellectual and emotional nature every resource afforded him by both his Jewish and Greek training. He used the common language of the people and the details of every phase of the actual life about him as media with which to paint the picture of what he had seen and felt, the mystery which had been revealed to him he calls it.
Jesus used the same method. In the Sermon on the Mount, for instance, he constantly used the comon things of everyday life to give meaning to what he said. The likeness goes deeper. You know Paul said he had the mind of Christ; at least that is what he aimed at. Now Jesus never wrote a book. He was only incidentally a teacher. First and foremost He was a Life. It is evident from his recorded sayings that what he said was not for the sake of inculcating a doctrine, but in order to explain that life to his followers. Paul's teaching was similarly motivated. His whole life to him was nothing more than the shifting of the centre of gravity from "Adam" to "Christ," if I may be permitted for the time being to use Paul's own technical terms without explanation. He who had been the slave of his planetary organism, suddenly learned his functional post in God's scheme and how to fill it. His letters have the sole purpose of making that life experience available to others.
The basis of every one of his letters is experiential. If Paul had been merely a philosopher or an advocate (Christian apolosits we call them), or a poet, we should expect to find formal treatises on immortality, the nature of sin and so on, arguments to prove the resurrection of Christ or his Messiahship, or emotional passages of sheer beauty. But we find none of these things. Paul's letters are not abstract treatises nor poems, although profound and poetical to a high degree. They are real letters, each a response to some concrete problem of actual life. The correspondence with Corinth is a very good example of what I mean. Here we do not find a formal treatise or treastises but Paul simply deals directly with a series of practical problems actually presented to him. Take the great lyric on love in Chapter 13. We think of it as a separate poem and set it apart as such. But this is to miss its full significance. As a matter of fact all the descriptions of what love is, are not emotional ecstacy but a summing up by way of antithesis of the faults he has been previously discussing. Verify this for yourselves. It gives a key to the way we should read the passage. It was not intended for mere aesthetic enjoyment.
Similarly the chapter on immortality, Chapter 15, which we love so but the logic of which we sometimes think we cannot follow, is not a general dissertation on life after death, but is an answer to a difficulty arising out of the expected second coming of Christ which was perplexing the church. The church wondered what was to become of those who died in the faith but before the second coming, and it was with this difficulty that Paul was dealing, a psychological situation which we do not have to-day at all. Naturally what Paul has to say cannot be understood at all unless we recognize this.
In Chapter 11 he treats of the Lord's Supper, but here again he mentions it only for a practical reason, the abuses and excesses which had arisen in its celebration. To think that Paul introduced this passage into his letter to support the sacramentarian or non-sacramentarian view or to think that any argument along such lines can be drawn from it, is simply to misunderstand Paul completely. If we are willing to read verses 29 to 31, for instance, without any predisposition or prejudgment, we find that in Paul's view, whether the Lord's Supper is a sacrament or not, whether it was ordained by the Lord or not, its essence is in experiential self-awareness and self-understanding.
In this connection I want to refer to Romans 1:29 as evidencing the nature of Paul's approach, always from the basis of experience. He has been speaking in most profound cosmic terms of the complete knowledge of God which has been implanted in every man normally "from the very creation of the world" and of the complete degeneration which has overtaken mankind because of the neglect of this knowledge. Then in this verse he gives a list of the vices resultant upon this degeneracy. We might expect a list of splendid vices, which we might perhaps take comfort in disclaiming. But what do we find? Mischief, greed, envy, craftiness, quarrelsomeness, spite, lack of affection, and that sort of thing, appealing to the experience and conscience of every man.