the least of the apostles, that am not fit to be called an apostle;" for the words following show this humility to be due to a sense of personal unworthiness, not of official inferiority: "because I persecuted the church of God." (1) When his official authority was challenged, this humility dropped from him like a garment, and he could say to the same Corinthians, "For I reckon that I am not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles." (2) But though he thus claimed with emphasis entire official equality with the Twelve, and did not hesitate to reprove Peter publicly when Peter was clearly in the wrong, he never claimed more than equality. He never asserted for himself such a relation to Jesus as would make the Twelve by comparison mere ciphers. Such conceit in Paul is as unthinkable as tolerance of it by the Twelve. From the time of Constantine it was held that the promise of Jesus to send to his disciples the Spirit of Truth, had been fulfilled in such wise that the voice of the Church was the voice of Christ. A vast spiritual despotism was gradually built on the basis of that falsehood, and it required the great convulsion of the sixteenth century to win once more for Christian men a measure of that liberty wherewith Christ made us free. Now some would build a new spiritual despotism on the claim that the voice of Paul is the voice of Christ. In our day pure religion must do battle for the principle that the voice of Christ was heard once for all in the words of Jesus, and that all other pretended voices of Christ are delusion or sham. IV We have touched rather lightly on that event in Paul's life which marked the crisis in his thinking and doing: the appearance of Jesus to him as he was journeying (1) Cor. 15:9. (2) 2 Cor. 11:5. toward Damascus. We have noted the significance of the event without inquiring exactly what took place. We have three accounts, all in the Acts of the Apostles, one in the words of the author of that book, the other two purporting to be the apostle's own narrative of what happened. There are some remarkable differences in these accounts, which will be made plainer if brief summaries are placed in parallel columns : Acts 26:18-19 a light from heaven above the Acts 22:6-10 I fell to to ground. Saul: Who are you, Voice: I am Jesus of sun. All fell to the ground. Voice: Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads. Saul: Who are you, sir? a Voice: I am Jesus, whom you persecute (quite a long speech follows, nearly hundred words, corresponding to nothing in the other accounts). Nothing said about companions either seeing or hearing. From careful comparison of these three accounts, assuming that the first, in the words of Luke, was probably derived directly from Paul, certain conclusions inevitably follow: 1. This appearance of Jesus was to Paul alone. The first account says that his companions saw no one, and the second that they saw only the light. The first account says that they heard the voice, to which the second gives an apparently flat contradiction, that they did not hear the voice. But the contradition may be only apparent. The Greek word used means both "sound" and "voice," and the real fact probably was that the companions of Saul heard a sound, but no words. Not one of the three accounts says or fairly implies that the companions either saw Jesus or heard him speak; the contrary conclusion is clearly implied in the second and third accounts, and is quite consistent with the first. No interpretation of the three is possible, without straining words or phrases unduly, than this: Paul alone saw Jesus and heard him speak intelligible words. The others, at most, saw a light and heard a sound. 2. This appearance of Jesus to Paul was not objective. By "objective" is meant an event cognizable by the senses in the ordinary way. If Jesus had appeared in visible, material form, would not the others have seen him as clearly as Paul? If Jesus had spoken audible words, would not the others have heard him as distinctly as Paul? This is no attempt to evacuate Paul's testimony of its legitimate meaning; it is an attempt to evaluate the testimony in its fair significance, accepting just what Paul tells us, but declining to read into it a meaning that the words do not fairly bear. An objective material appearance of Jesus, that could be detected by the ordinary exercise of the senses of sight and hearing, seems to be carefully excluded from the narrative by the words chosen to describe the event. (1) 3. The appearance of Jesus was therefore made to Paul's spirit, not to his body. It was a "heavenly vision" (2) but not a physical sight of Jesus that he had; words addressed to his soul, not to his ear, that he heard. (1) The latest biography of Paul, by an "orthodox" Presbyterian, the Rev. David Smith, D.D., Professor of Theology in the M'Crea Magee College, Londonderry, a scholarly work, quite abreast of recent investigations, takes precisely the above view of the vision of Paul. "The Life and Letters of St. Paul," New York, 1921, p. 53. (2) Acts 26:19. This, we repeat, is his own account of the matter, in the only sense that his words will fairly bear. 4. Thus accurately to define the appearance of Jesus to Paul, according to the apostle's own testimony, is not to deny its reality, but only its materiality. Matter is not the only reality in the universe; it is merely the only reality that addresses eye and ear. Things visible to the eye are not the only things we see, nor are words audible to the ear the only words we hear. Seeing and hearing are spiritual processes, usually induced by impressions on the sensorium, but not always. That Jesus appeared to Paul he at least believed to be the most real thing in his life, and why need we doubt the reality of this vision of his merely because others did not see and hear? The change in his character, the total transformation of his life, are things inexplicable on any theory other than his own: the inexpungable conviction of his soul that Jesus met him in the way to Damascus and commissioned him to preach the gospel to the nations. Others have pronounced this Delusion; to Paul it was Fact, less open to doubt than any other fact, as certain to him as his own existence. Nor is there any answer, except mere refusal to accept it, to the view that this appearance may have had a material basis of an extraordinary kind. In saying above that it was immaterial and subjective we have only used words in their ordinary sense, as describing ordinary experiences of ordinary folk. At both ends of the spectrum there are rays invisible to our eyes, because our nerves are not sensitive enough to react to these vibrations of the ether. Above and below the musical sounds that we hear are tones inaudible to us, or audible only as noise. Were our ears sufficiently acute, it is possible that every sound would be musical. Science assures us that these are dependable facts, and we cannot therefore say that things do not exist because we cannot perceive them. A Superman is con man. ceivable, with senses of sight and hearing so far developed, that his range of knowledge would be immeasurably greater than ours. In the realm of spirit, Jesus was a SuperAnd there have been other choice spirits, so much more exquisitely attuned to the Infinite, that they have apprehended things beyond the ken of most. Such was Paul, such was Francis of Assisi. We lesser breeds can do no better than receive gratefully from such men what we cannot perceive for ourselves. The only obstacle to our doing this is our reluctance to admit that others surpass us in spiritual insight. The one thing that cannot be questioned is the permanent effect of this vision upon Paul. It transformed the whole man. Once for all he was convinced that Jesus was still living, Son of God, revelation of God's love, enthroned with power. He "was laid hold on by Christ Jesus," (1) who had now appeared to him "as to the child untimely born."(2) Henceforth Christ was to him the centre of all things and he could say "for me to live is Christ." (3) And with this new hope of salvation through love, not through Law, came another conviction into his soul, from which he never wavered, that he was specially commissioned to preach the Christ among the gentiles. (*) ence. V Men's religious experiences are determined by the forms under which they conceive religious truth-though it is equally true that religious concepts are modified by experiPaul early learned to think of God as Sovereign, and of men as subject to a system of divine Law, and he never learned to think otherwise. To the statutes of God he believed that penalties were attached, penalties both demanded and inflicted by the justice of God, who would (1) Phil. 3:12. (2) 1 Cor. 15:8. (3) Phil. 1:21; Gal. 2:20. (4) Gal. 1:16; Acts 22:21. |