St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians Part 16

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APPENDED NOTES.

NOTE A. See p. 26.

THE ROMAN EMPIRE RECOGNIZED BY CHRISTIAN WRITERS AS A DIVINE PREPARATION FOR THE SPREAD OF THE GOSPEL.

(1) The Spanish poet Prudentius (_c._ A.D. 400) fully appreciates the influence of the Roman Empire in welding together the world into a unity of government, laws, language, customs, and religious rites, to prepare the way for the universal Church. The stanzas are remarkable and worth quoting. They are put as a prayer into the mouth of the Roman deacon Laurence during his martyrdom. He recognizes what the Roman Empire has done, and prays that Rome may follow the example of the rest of the world in becoming Christian.

O Christe, numen unic.u.m ut discrepantum gentium O splendor, O virtus Patris, mores et observantiam, O factor orbis et poli, linguas et ingenia et sacra, atque auctor horum moenium! unis domares legibus.

Qui sceptra Romae in vertice En omne sub regnum Remi rerum locasti, sanciens mortale concessit genus: mundum quirinali togae idem loquuntur dissoni servire et armis cedere: ritus, id ipsum sentiunt.

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Hoc destinatum, quo magis Confoederantur omnia ius Christiani nominis hinc inde membra in symbolum: quodcunque terrarum iacet mansuescit orbis subditus: uno illigaret vinculo. mansuescat et summum caput.

Da, Christe, Romanis tuis _Peristephanon_, ii. 413 ff.

sit Christiana ut civitas: per quam dedisti ut caeteris mens una sacrorum foret.

(2) The Pope, Leo the Great (_c._ A.D. 450), speaks thus (_Serm._ lx.x.xii. 2): 'That the result of this unspeakable grace (the Incarnation) might be spread abroad throughout the world, G.o.d's providence made ready the Roman Empire, whose growth has reached so far that the whole mult.i.tude of nations have been brought into neighbourhood and connexion. For it particularly suited the divinely planned work that many kingdoms should be leagued together in one empire, so that the universal preaching might make its way quickly through nations already united under the government of one state. And yet that state, in ignorance of the author of its aggrandis.e.m.e.nt, though it ruled almost all races, was enthralled by the errors of them all; and seemed to itself to have received a great religion, because it had rejected no falsehood. And for this very reason its emanc.i.p.ation through Christ was the more wondrous that it had been so fast bound by Satan.' Leo further recognizes that the Popes are entering into the position of the Caesars (c. 1), that Rome, 'made the head of the world by being the holy see of blessed Peter, should rule more widely by means of the divine religion than of earthly sovereignty.' But his statement of the relation of Peter to Paul in the evangelization of the world (c. 5) is remarkably unhistorical.

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NOTE B. See p. 29.

THE (SO-CALLED) 'LETTERS OF HERACLEITUS.'

Nine letters under the name of the great philosopher of Ephesus remain to us. In one of them (iv) Heracleitus is represented as saying to some Ephesian adversaries, 'If you had been able to live again by a new birth 500 years hence, you would have discovered Heracleitus yet alive [i.e. in the memory of men] but not so much as a trace of your name.'

This probably indicates that the author is writing 500 years after Heracleitus' supposed age. His age was differently estimated. But '500 years after Heracleitus' would mean, according to all reckonings, about the first half of the first century A.D. All the other indications of age in the letters agree with this. (See Jacob Bernays'

_Herac.l.i.tischen Briefe_, Berlin, 1869, p. 112.) They were written presumably at Ephesus, and all or most of them by a Stoic philosopher.

I do not think that it is necessary to a.s.sume traces of Jewish influence in these letters, any more than in the writings of Seneca.

And the bulk of the letters is so thoroughly Stoic and contrary to Jewish feeling, that a Jew is hardly likely to have interpolated them.

They ill.u.s.trate therefore the current philosophic ideas which were at work in the world in which St. Paul lived and taught, when he was outside Judaea. That St. Paul was familiar with these ideas, however his familiarity may have been gained, is shown beyond possibility of mistake by his speeches--supposing them substantially genuine--at Lystra and Athens.

The following pa.s.sages in these letters are interesting:

(1) (From Heracleitus' defence of himself against {254} a charge of impiety in letter iv) 'Where is G.o.d? Is he shut up in the temples?

You forsooth are pious who set up the G.o.d in a dark place. A man takes it for an insult if he is said to be "made of stone": and is G.o.d truly described as "born of the rocks"? Ignorant men, do ye not know that G.o.d is not fas.h.i.+oned with hands, nor can you make him a sufficient pedestal, nor shut him into one enclosure, but the whole world is his temple, decorated with animals and planets and stars? I inscribed my altar "to Heracles the Ephesian" [Greek: ERAKLEI TOI EPHESIOI] making the G.o.d your citizen, not--he continues--to myself "Heracleitus an Ephesian" [the same letters differently divided], as I am accused of doing by you in your ignorance. Yet Heracles was a man deified by his goodness and n.o.ble deeds; and were his virtues and labours greater than mine? I have conquered money and ambition: I have mastered fear and flattery,' &c. Then after a pa.s.sage about the certainty of his own immortal renown, he returns to ridicule idolatry. 'If an altar of a G.o.d be not set up, is there no G.o.d? or if an altar be set up to what is not a G.o.d, is it a G.o.d--so that stones become the evidences (witnesses) of G.o.ds? Nay it is his works which shall bear witness to G.o.d, as the sun, the day and night, the seasons, the whole fruitful earth, and the circle of the moon, his work and witness in the heavens.' The whole of this letter (iv), which can be paralleled in all its ideas from Stoic and Platonic sources, may compare and contrast with Acts xiv. 15-18; xvii. 22-29.

(2) Letter v is written by Heracleitus in sickness. He gives a theory of disease as an excess of some element in the body; and describes his soul as a divine thing reproducing in his body the healing activity of G.o.d in the world as a whole,--'imitating G.o.d' by knowledge of the method of nature. Even if his body prove unmanageable and succ.u.mb to fate, yet his soul will rise {255} to heaven and 'I shall have my citizens.h.i.+p (Greek: politeusouai) not among men but among G.o.ds.'

'Perhaps my soul is giving prophetic intimation of its release even now from its prison house' so short lived and worthless. Letter vi is a continuation of v, containing a denunciation of contemporary medicine on the ground of its lack of science, and a further explanation of the Stoic doctrine of the immanence of G.o.d in all nature--forming, ordering, dissolving, transforming, healing everywhere. 'Him will I imitate in myself and dismiss all others.' We should compare and (even more) contrast St. Paul's a.s.sertions of independence of bodily circ.u.mstances; his belief in the higher sense of 'nature' (Rom. ii.

14), and such phrases as Phil. ii. 20, 'our citizens.h.i.+p is in heaven,'

Eph. v. 1, 'Be ye imitators of G.o.d.'

(3) Letter vii is addressed to Hermodorus in exile. Heracleitus is to be exiled also 'for misanthropy and refusal to smile' by a law directed against him alone. After an interesting condemnation of _privilegia_, the letter explains his misanthropy. He does not hate men, but their vices. The law should run 'If any man hates vice let him leave the city.' Then he will go willingly. In fact he is already an exile while in the city, for he cannot share its vices. Then he describes Ephesian life in terms of fierce contempt, their l.u.s.ts natural and unnatural, their frauds, their wars of words, their legal contentiousness, their faithlessness and perjuries, their robberies of temples. He denounces their vices in connexion with the wors.h.i.+p of Cybele (beating the kettle-drum) and Dionysus (the eating of live flesh), and with religious vigils and banquets, and alludes to details of sensuality a.s.sociated with these meetings. He condemns the submission of great principles to the verdicts of the crowd at their theatres, and pa.s.ses to a further vivid onslaught on their quarrels and murders (they are no longer men {256} but beasts), on their use of music to excite their bloodthirsty pa.s.sions, and on war altogether as contrary to 'the law of nature,' and involving the pursuit of all sorts of vice. All this impeachment may be compared with St. Paul, who speaks however by comparison with marked reserve, in Rom. i. 24-31, Eph. iv. 17-19, and elsewhere.

(4) The eighth letter is again written to Hermodorus now on his way to Italy to a.s.sist the Decemvirs with the Ten Tables. It contains a somewhat remarkable 'judgement on wealthy Ephesus' and statement of the judicial function of wealth. 'G.o.d does not punish by taking wealth away, but rather gives it to the wicked, that through having opportunity to sin they may be convicted, and by the very abundance of their resources may exhibit their corruption on a wider stage.' Cf. 1 Tim. vi. 9.

(5) The banishment of Hermodorus had been on account of a proposed law to grant equal citizens.h.i.+p to freed men, and the right of public office to their children. This instance of Ephesian intolerance gives occasion for an enunciation of the Stoic doctrine that the only real freedom is moral freedom, and moral freedom const.i.tutes a man a citizen of the world. 'The good Ephesian is a citizen of the world. For this is the common home of all, and its law is no written doc.u.ment but G.o.d (Greek: ou gramma alla theos), and he who transgresses his duty shall be impious; or rather he will not dare to transgress, for he will not escape justice.' 'Let the Ephesians cease to be the sort of men they are, and they will love all men in an equality of virtue.' 'Virtue, not the chance of birth, makes men equal.' 'Only vice enslaves, only virtue liberates.' For men to enslave their fellow men is to fall below the beasts; so also to mutilate them as the Ephesians do their Megabyzi--the eunuch-priests of the wooden image of Artemis. There must be inequality of function in the world, but not refusal of fellows.h.i.+p, as the {257} higher parts of nature do not despise the lower, or the soul think scorn to dwell with the body, or the head despise the entrails, or G.o.d refuse to give the gifts of nature, such as the light of the sun, to all equally. Here again we have what is both like and unlike St. Paul's doctrine of true human liberty and 'fellows.h.i.+p in the body.'

On the whole I think these letters are worth more notice than they have received, both in themselves and as a good example of the sort of religious and moral doctrine current in the better heathen circles of the Asiatic cities, while St. Paul was teaching. It presents many points of connexion with St. Paul's teaching, and co-operated with the influence of the Jewish synagogue to prepare men's minds for it. But perhaps what chiefly strikes us is the contrast which the fierce and arrogant contempt of the Stoic presents to the loving hopefulness of the Christian messenger of the gospel.

NOTE C. See p. 74.

THE JEWISH DOCTRINE OF WORKS IN _THE APOCALYPSE OF BARUCH_.

Mr. R. H. Charles gives us the following statement[1]:--

'The Talmudic doctrine of works may be shortly summarized as follows: Every good work--whether the fulfilment of a command or an act of mercy--established a certain degree of merit with G.o.d, while every evil work entailed a corresponding demerit. A man's position with G.o.d depended on the relation existing between his merits and demerits, and his salvation on the preponderance of the former over the latter. The relation between his {258} merits and demerits was determined daily by the weighing of his deeds. But as the results of such judgements were necessarily unknown, there could not fail to be much uneasiness; and, to allay this, the doctrine of the vicarious righteousness of the patriarchs and saints of Israel was developed not later than the beginning of the Christian era (cf. Matt. iii. 9). A man could thereby summon to his aid the merits of the fathers, and so counterbalance his demerits.

'It is obvious that such a system does not admit of forgiveness in any spiritual sense of the term. It can only mean in such a connexion a remission of penalty to the offender, on the ground that compensation is furnished, either through his own merit or through that of the righteous fathers. Thus, as Weber vigorously puts it: "Vergebung ohne Bezahlung gibt es nicht." Thus, according to popular Pharisaism, _G.o.d never remitted a debt until He was paid in full, and so long as it was paid it mattered not by whom_.

'It will be observed that with the Pharisees forgiveness was _an external thing_; it was concerned not with the man himself but with his works--with these indeed as affecting him, but yet as existing independently without him. This was not the view taken by the best thought in the Old Testament. There forgiveness dealt first and chiefly with the direct relation between man's spirit and G.o.d; it was essentially a restoration of man to communion with G.o.d. When, therefore, Christianity had to deal with these problems, it could not accept the Pharisaic solutions, but had in some measure to return to the Old Testament to authenticate and develope the highest therein taught, and in the person and life of Christ to give it a world-wide power and comprehensiveness.'

The doctrine called Talmudic in the above extract receives remarkable ill.u.s.tration in a Jewish work, _The {259} Apocalypse of Baruch_, which dates from the same period as the writings of the New Testament (A.D.

50-100; or if the work be regarded as composite, we should say that its component elements are of that date), and represents to us in a very vivid and touching form the hopes and beliefs of a pious orthodox Jew.

Thus--

1. _The doctrine of the merit of good works_, ii. 2 [words spoken to Jeremiah by G.o.d], 'Your works are to this city as a firm pillar.' xiv.

5: 'What have they profited who confessed before Thee, and have not walked in vanity as the rest of the nations ... but always feared Thee, and have not left Thy ways? And, lo, they have been carried off, nor on their account hast Thou had mercy on Zion. And if others did evil, it was due to Zion that on account of the works of those who wrought good works she should be forgiven, and should not be overwhelmed on account of the works of those who wrought unrighteousness.' lxiii. 3: 'Hezekiah trusted in his works, and had hope in his righteousness, and spake with the Mighty One ... and the Mighty One heard him.' lx.x.xv. 1: 'In the generations of old those our fathers had helpers, righteous men and holy prophets ... and they helped us when we sinned, and they prayed for us to Him who made us, because they trusted in their works, and the Mighty One heard their prayer and was gracious unto us.' li.

7: 'But those who have been saved by their works, and to whom the law has been now a hope, and understanding an expectation, and wisdom a confidence, to them wonders will appear in their time.'

It is very noticeable in the above quotations that it is the works of the righteous rather than their persons (as in Genesis xviii. 23-33) that are put forward as the grounds of confidence with G.o.d. The claim of righteousness in the second quotation (xiv. 5) may be paralleled in the somewhat earlier work called _The a.s.sumption {260} of Moses_[2]: 'Observe and know that neither did our fathers nor their forefathers tempt G.o.d so as to transgress His commandments.'

2. _The doctrine of the treasury of merits_. The good works of the righteous are laid up as in a treasury to avail for themselves and for others. Thus (xiv. 12): 'The righteous justly hope for the end, and without fear depart from this habitation, because they have with Thee a store of works preserved in treasuries.' xxiv. 1: 'Behold the days come when the books will be opened in which are written the sins of all those that have sinned, and again also the treasuries in which the righteousness of all those who have been righteous in creation is gathered.'

The connexion of the mediaeval doctrine of the treasury of merits with the similar Jewish doctrine needs to be traced out.

3. _Righteousness identified with the keeping of the law_. For the Pharisaic Jew righteousness meant simply the keeping of the law. Thus xv. 5: 'Man would not have rightly understood My judgement if he had not accepted the law.' Again, lxvii. 6: 'So far as Zion is delivered up and Jerusalem laid waste ... the vapour of the smoke of the incense of righteousness which is by the law is extinguished in Zion.' Thus the merits of Abraham are attributed to his having kept the law before it was written. lvii. 2: 'At that time the unwritten law was named among them, and the works of the commandments were then fulfilled.'

Of course it must be said that 'the Law' may mean the ceremonial law, as in the lower form of Jewish thought, or special stress may be laid on its moral precepts, as is the case in Baruch, and in the higher Jewish teaching generally.

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4. _The Gentiles are therefore incapable of righteousness_. lxii. 7: 'But regarding the Gentiles it were tedious to tell how they always wrought impiety and wickedness, and never wrought righteousness.' Thus the best hope of the Gentiles is that in the Messianic kingdom they should become servants to Israel. This will be their lot if they have never vexed the holy people; see lxxii. 2-6.

5. _The world created on account of Israel_, xiv. 18: 'Thou didst say that Thou wouldst make for Thy world man as the administrator of Thy works, that it might be known that he was by no means made on account of the world but the world on account of him. [But "man" is at once interpreted as the Jewish race.] And now I see that as for the world which was made on account of us, lo! it abides, but we on account of whom it was made depart' [i.e. into captivity], xv. 7: 'As regards what thou didst say touching the righteous, that on account of them has this world come into being, nay more, even that world which is to come is on their account.' xxi. 23: 'Reprove therefore the angel of death ... and let the treasuries of souls restore them that are enclosed in them, for there have been many years like those that are desolate, from the days of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and of all those who are like them, who sleep in the earth, on whose account Thou didst say that Thou hadst created the world.' (This idea of the treasury of the souls of the righteous recurs in x.x.x. 2.) In _The a.s.sumption of Moses_ (i. 12) it is said, 'G.o.d hath created the world on behalf of His people. But He was not pleased to manifest this purpose of creation from the foundation of the world, in order that the Gentiles might thereby be convicted [i.e. of ignorance], yea to their own humiliation might by their arguments convict one another.'

The above teaching shows us exactly what it was to which St. Paul opposed his doctrine of Justification by {262} Faith. We see it here on its own ground. Its close a.s.sociation with 'boasting' is apparent even in its better form; and its view of election contrasts, by its selfish narrowness, with the view of election put forward by St. Paul, viz. that G.o.d's election of a chosen people or society, together with His apparent reprobation of others left outside, both alike subserve a purpose of infinite width, the ultimate divine purpose to 'have mercy upon all.' See Romans ix-xi, especially xi. 32, and cf. Eph. i. 9-10: 'the secret of His will with a view to the dispensation of the fulness of the times, to bring together all things in the Christ, things in heaven and things in earth.'