IT is admitted that there are some new and rare expressions in this Epistle;1 but they are sufficiently accounted for by the idiosyncrasy of the writer, and the peculiarity of the subjects with which he had to deal. It is monstrous to assume that, in the case of one so fresh and eager as St. Paul, the vocabulary would not widely vary in writings extending over nearly twenty years, and written under every possible variety of circumstances, to very different communities, and in consequence of very different controversies. The wide range of dissimilarity in thought and expression between Epistles of admitted authenticity ought sufficiently to demonstrate the futility of overlooking broad probabilities and almost universal testimony, because of peculiarities of which many are only discoverable by a minute analysis. It must be remembered that at this period the phraseology of Christianity was still in a plastic, it might almost be said in a fluid, condition. No Apostle, no writer of any kind, contributed one tithe so much to its ultimate cohesion and rigidity as St Paul. Are we then to reject this Epistle, and that to the Colossians, on grounds so flimsy as the fact that in them for the first time he speaks of the remission (ἄφεσις, Eph. 1:7; Col. 1:14) instead of the prætermission (πάρεσις, Rom. 3:25) of sins; or that, writing to a Church predominantly Gentile, he says “Greeks and Jews” (Col. 3:11) instead of “Jews and Greeks” (Rom. 1:16, &c.); or that he uses the word “Church” in a more abstract and generic sense than in his former writings; or that he uses the rhetorical expression that the Gospel has been preached in all the world (Col. 1:6, 23)? By a similar mode of reasoning it would be possible to prove in the case of almost every voluminous author in the world that half the works attributed to him have been written by some one else. Such arguments only encumber with useless débris the field of criticism. There is indeed one very unusual expression, the peculiarity of which has been freely admitted by all fair controversialists. It is the remark that the mystery of Christ is now revealed “to the holy Apostles and Prophets” (3:5). The Prophets (as in 2:20; 4:11) are doubtless those of the New Testament—those who had received from the Spirit His special gifts of illumination; but the epithet is unexpected. It can only be accounted for by the general dignity and fulness (the σεπνότης) of the style in which the Epistle is written; and the epithet, if genuine, is, it need hardly be said, official and impersonal.
It would be much more to the purpose if the adverse critics could produce even one decided instance of un– Pauline theology. The demonology of the Epistle is identical with that of Paul’s Rabbinic training.2 The doctrine of original sin, even if it were by any means necessarily deducible from Eph. 2:3—which is not the case, since the word φύσει is not identical with “by birth”—is quite as clearly involved in the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians. The descent of Christ into Hades is not necessarily implied in 4:8; and even if it were, the fact that St. Paul has not elsewhere alluded to it furnishes no shadow of a proof that he did not hold it. The method of quoting Scripture is that of all Jewish writers in the age of Paul, and the reminiscences of the Old Testament in 4:8 and 5:14 (if the latter be a reminiscence) are scarcely more purely verbal than others which occur in the Epistles of which no doubt has ever been entertained. On the other hand, it is frankly admitted that in all essential particulars the views of the Epistle are distinctly Pauline. The relations of Christianity to Judaism; the universality of human corruption through sin; the merging of heathenism and Judaism in the higher unity of Christianity; the prominence given to faith and love; the unconditional freedom of grace; the unserviceableness and yet the moral necessity of good works; are in absolute accordance with the most fundamental conceptions of St. Paul’s acknowledged writings. If some of these great truths of theology here receive a richer, more mature, and more original development, this is only what we should expect from the power of a mind which never ceased to grow in grace and wisdom, and which regarded growth in grace and wisdom as the natural privilege of a Christian soul. On the other hand, we might well be amazed if the first hundred years after the death of Christ produced a totally unknown writer who, assuming the name of Paul, treats the mystery which it was given him to reveal with a masterly power which the Apostle himself rarely equalled, and most certainly never surpassed. Let any one study the remains of the Apostolic Fathers, and he may well be surprised at the facility with which writers of the Tübingen school, and their successors, assume the existence of Pauls who lived unheard of and died unknown, though they were intellectually and spiritually the equals, if not the superiors, of St. Paul himself! In no single Epistle is the point of view so clear, so supreme, so final—in no other Epistle of the Homologoumena is the doctrine so obviously the outcome and issue of truths which before had been less fully and profoundly enunciated—so undeniably the full consummate flower from germs of which we have, as it were, witnessed the planting. At supreme epochs of human enlightenment whole centuries of thought seem to separate the writings of a few years. The questions which occupy the Apostle in the Thessalonians and Galatians seem to lie indefinitely far behind the goal which his thoughts have now attained. In earlier Epistles he was occupied in maintaining the freedom of the Gentiles from the tyrannous narrowness of Jewish sacerdotalism; here, on the other hand, he is dwelling on the predestined grandeur of the equal and universal Church. In the Epistles to the Romans and the Galatians he has founded the claims of Christianity on “a philosophy of the history of religion,” by showing that Christ is the Second Adam, and the promised seed of Abraham; here he contemplates a scheme predestined before the ages of earth began, and running through them as an increasing purpose, so that æon after æon revealed new forms and hues of the richly–varied wisdom, and the Gentiles (καὶ ὑμεῖς, 1:13) as well as the Jews are included in the predestined election (ἐκληρώθημεν, προορισθέντες, 1:11) to the purchased possession (περιποίησις, 14). And not to exhaust, which would be indeed impossible, the manifold aspects of this so–called “colourless” Epistle, the manner in which it expresses the conception of the quickening of spiritual death by union with the Risen Christ (2:1–6); the present realisation, the immanent consciousness of communion with God; the all–pervading supremacy of God in Christ; the importance of pure spiritual knowledge; the dignity given to the Church as the house (2:20–22), the body (4:12–16) and the bride (5:25–27) of Christ,—all mark it out as the most sublime, the most profound, and, if I may use the expression, the most advanced and final utterance of that mystery of the Gospel which it was given to St. Paul for the first time to proclaim in all its fulness to the Gentile world.3 It is not surprising that when these truths had once found utterance they should have had their influence on the teachings of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews and upon St. Peter and St. John; nor is this any ground whatever, but rather the reverse, for looking with suspicion on the authenticity of the Epistle.4