Supernatural Religion Volume III Part 34

times been set apart as the Christian Sabbath, does not prove anything.

If the third day was believed to be the day indicated by "Scripture" for the Resurrection, of course that day would be selected as the time at which it must have occurred, and on which it should be commemorated. So far as the vision hypothesis is concerned, the day is of no consequence whatever, and the objection upon this point has no force.

There is another consideration which we must mention, which is not only important in connection with an estimate of the evidence for the Resurrection, but the inferences from which clearly support the explanation we are proposing. Before stating it we may, in pa.s.sing, again refer to the fact that it is nowhere affirmed that anyone was an eye-witness of the actual Resurrection. It is supposed to be proved by the circ.u.mstance that Jesus was subsequently "seen." Observe, however, that the part of this miracle which could not well have been ascribed to subjective impressions--the actual resurrection--is, naturally enough, not seen by anyone, but that which comes precisely within the scope of such subjective action is said to have been seen by many. To come at once to our point, however, neither Paul, nor the Gospels, nor Christian tradition in any form, pretends that Jesus was seen by any one but his disciples and those who believed in him. In fact, Jesus only appeared to those who were prepared by faith and expectant attention to see him in the manner we a.s.sert. We are at present merely speaking of the earlier appearances, and reserving Paul for separate discussion. Why, we may inquire, did Jesus not appear to his

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enemies as well as to his friends?(1) Nothing of course could have been more intelligible than his desire to comfort and rea.s.sure those who believed in and mourned for him, but to do this by no means excluded a wider manifestation of himself, supposing him to have actually risen from the dead. On the hypothesis that he only rose again and was seen through the yearning and enthusiastic faith of his followers, the reason why he was not seen by others is not hard to find. Yet it might be thought that the object of at once establishing beyond doubt his supernatural mission, and convincing his enemies of their crime, and the Jews of their blindness and folly, was important enough. Had he shown himself to the Chief Priests and elders, and confounded the Pharisees with the vision of him whom they had so cruelly nailed to the accursed tree, how might not the future of his followers have been smoothed, and the faith of many made strong! Or if he had stood again in the Courts of the Roman Procurator, no longer a prisoner buffeted and spat upon, but the glorious Messiah, beyond the reach of Jewish malignity or Roman injustice. But no, he was seen by none but those devoted to him. We shall of course be told by apologists that this also was "for the trial of our faith;" though to anyone who earnestly reflects, it must seem childish to ask men to believe what is beyond their reason, yet conceal the evidence by which reason is supposed to be guided. The reply, however, is clear: for the trial of our faith or for any other reason, it is nevertheless certain that this evidence does not exist.

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When the argument which we are now discussing was first advanced long ago by Celsus, Origen had no better refutation than, after admitting the fact that Jesus was not after his resurrection seen as before publicly and by all men, to take refuge in the belief that the pa.s.sage of Paul regarding his appearances contains wonderful mysteries which, if understood, would explain why Jesus did not show himself after that event as he had done before it.(1)

We must now proceed to show that the vision of Paul is satisfactorily explained by the same hypothesis.(2) We have already proved that there is no evidence of any value that Paul's conversion was due to his having seen Jesus in a manner which he believed to be objective and supernatural. To represent the arch persecutor Paul transformed in a moment, by a miraculous vision of Jesus, into the Apostle of the Gentiles was highly characteristic of the author of

1 Contra Cels., ii. 63. It is curious that, in an earlier chapter, Origen, discussing the question of Celsus,--whether any one who had been actually dead had ever risen with a real body, says that if Celsus had been a Jew who believed that Elijah and Elisha had raised little children he could not have advanced this objection. Origen adds that he thinks the reason why Jesus appeared to no other nation but the Jews was, that they had become accustomed to miracles, and could, by comparing the works of Jesus and what was told of him with what had been done before, recognize that he was greater than all who had preceded him. ii. 57.

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Acts, who further represents Paul as immediately preaching publicly in Damascus and confounding the Jews. Widely different is the statement of Paul. He distinctly affirms that he did not communicate with flesh and blood, nor went he up to Jerusalem to them which were Apostles before him, but that he immediately went away into Arabia. The Fathers delighted in representing this journey to Arabia as an instance of Paul's fervour and eagerness to preach the Gospel in lands over which its sound had not yet gone forth. There can be no doubt, however, we think, that Paul's journey to Arabia and his sojourn there were for the purpose of reflection.(1) It is only in legends that instantaneous spiritual revolutions take place. In sober history the process is more slow and progressive. We repeat that there is no evidence which can at all be accepted that Paul's conversion was effected by a vision, and that it is infinitely more probable that it was, so to say, merely completed and crowned by seeing Jesus; but, at the same time, even if the view be held that this vision was the decisive circ.u.mstance which induced Paul at once to resign his course of persecution and embrace Christianity, our argument is not materially affected. In any case, much silent, deep, and almost unconscious preparation for the change must long before have proceeded in the mind of Paul, which was finally matured in the Arabian waste. Upon no view that is taken can this be excluded; upon every ground of common sense, experience, and necessary inference, it must be admitted.

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Indifference is the only great gulf which separates opinions. There was no stolid barrier of apathy between Saul of Tarsus and belief in the Messiah-ship of Jesus. In persecuting Christianity, Paul proved two things: the earnestness and energy of his convictions, and the fact that his attention was keenly directed to the new sect. Both points contributed to the result we are discussing. Paul's Judaism was no mere formalism. It was the adoption, heart and soul, of the religion of his people; which was to him no dead principle, but a living faith stimulating that eager impetuous character to defend its integrity with "fire and sword." He did not, like so many of his countrymen, turn away with scorn from the followers of the despised Nazarene and leave them to their delusion; but turned to them, on the contrary, with the fierce attraction of the zealot whose own belief is outraged by the misbelief of others. The earnest Jew came into sharp collision with the earnest Christian. The earnestness of each was an element of mutual respect. The endurance and firmness of the one might not melt the bigoted resolution of the other, but it arrested his attention and commanded his unconscious sympathy. Just so would the persecutor have endured and resisted persecution; so, subsequently, he actually did meet it. And what was the main difference between the persecutor and the persecuted?

It consisted in that which const.i.tuted the burden of the apostolic preaching: the belief that "this was the Christ." The creed of the new sect at least was not complicated. It was little more at that time than a question of ident.i.ty, until Paul himself developed it into an elaborate system of theology.

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In this question of ident.i.ty, however, there was comprised a vast change of national ideas. To the devout Jew,--looking for the hope of Israel, yearning and praying for the advent of that Son of David who was to sit upon the throne of his fathers, restore the fortunes of the people, drive out the heathen and subdue the nations again to the yoke of Israel, establishing the worship of Jehovah in its purity and turning the Gentiles to the service of the G.o.d of G.o.ds,--it was an abhorrent thought that the lowly peasant who had died a shameful death on Golgotha should be represented as the Messiah, the promised King of the Jews.

Still there was something sufficiently startling in the idea to excite reflection. A political aspirant, who pretended to play the part, and after some feeble attempt at armed insurrection had been crushed by the heel of the Roman, could not have attracted attention. In that, there would have been no originality to astonish, and no singularity to require explanation. This man, on the contrary, who was said to be the Messiah, a.s.sumed no earthly dignity; claimed no kingdom in this world; had not even a place to lay his head; but ended a short and unambitious career as the teacher of a simple but profound system of morality by death on a cross. There was no vulgar imitation here. This was the reverse of the Messiah of the Jews. In spite of so much dissimilarity, however, there was in the two parties a fundamental agreement of belief.

The Jew expected the Messiah; the Christian believed he had now come.

The Messiah expected by the Jew was certainly a very different Saviour from the despised and rejected Jesus of Nazareth, but at the root of the

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Christian faith lay belief in a Messiah. It was a thoroughly Jewish belief, springing out of the covenant with the fathers, and based upon the Law and the Prophets. The difference was not one of principle but one of details. Their interpretation of the promises was strangely dissimilar, but the trust of both was in the G.o.d of Israel. To pa.s.s from one to the other did not involve the adoption of a new religion, but merely a modification of the views of the old. Once convinced that the Messiah was not a political ruler but a spiritual guide, not a victorious leader, but a suffering servant of Jehovah, the transition from judaic hopes to recognition of Jesus was almost accomplished.

It is clear that Paul in his capacity of Persecutor must have become well acquainted with the views of the Christians, and probably must have heard them repeatedly expounded by his captives before the Jewish Sanhedrin.1 He must have heard the victims of his blind religious zeal affirming their faith with all that ecstatic a.s.surance which springs out of persecution. The vision of Peter contributed to the vision of Paul. There can be no doubt that Paul must have become aware of the application to Jesus of Old Testament prophecies, and of the new conception thence derived of a suffering Messiah. The political horizon was certainly not suggestive of the coming of the Lord's Anointed. Never had the fortunes of Israel been at a lower ebb. The hope of a Prince of the house of David to restore dominion to the fallen race was hard to entertain. The suggestion of an alternative theory based upon a new interpretation of the prophets, if startling, was not untimely, when the old confidence

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was becoming faint in many minds, and the hope of his coming seemed so distant and unsure. If we do not misjudge the character of Paul, however shocked he may have been at first by the subst.i.tution of a crucified Nazarene for the triumphant Messiah of his earlier visions, there must have been something profoundly pleasing to his mind in the conception of a spiritual Messiah. As he became familiar with the idea, it is probable that flashes of doubt must have crossed his mind as to the correctness of his more material views. If the belief were true, which Christians professed, that this Jesus, despised and rejected of men, was actually the suffering servant of Jehovah, and this servant of Jehovah the Messiah! If the claim of this Jesus who had been esteemed smitten of G.o.d and afflicted, had been verified by his rising again from the dead and ascending to the right hand of G.o.d! This aspect of the Messianic idea had a mystery and significance congenial to the soul of Paul. The supernatural elements could have presented no difficulties to him.

Belief in the Resurrection was part of his creed as a Pharisee. That the risen Messiah should have been seen by many, the fundamental idea once admitted, could not surprise the visionary Jew. We can well imagine the conflict which went on in the ardent mind of Paul when doubts first entered it; his resistance and struggle for the faith of his youth; the pursuance as duty of the course he had begun, whilst the former conviction no longer strengthened the feverish energy; the excitement of religious zeal in the mad course of persecution, not to be arrested in a moment, but become, by growing doubt, bitterness and pain to him; the suffering

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inflicted sending its pang into his own flesh. There was ample preparation in such a situation for the vision of Paul.

The const.i.tution and temperament of the Apostle were eminently calculated to receive impressions of the strongest description.(1) We have mentioned the conjecture of many able men that his "stake in the flesh" was a form of epilepsy. It is, of course, but a conjecture, though one which has great probability,(2) and we must not treat it otherwise; but, if it could be proved correct, much light would be thrown upon Paul's visions. We have discussed the Apostle's statements regarding the supernatural Charismata in the Church, and have seen his extreme readiness to believe in the lavish bestowal of miraculous gifts where others could recognise but ordinary qualities. That Paul should be able to claim the power of speaking with tongues more than all the Corinthians, whose exercise of that spiritual gift he so unceremoniously restrains, is in perfect keeping with all that we elsewhere learn about him. Everywhere we find the keenly impressionable nature so apt to fall into the ecstatic state when brought under the influence of active religious emotion. "I must glory," he exclaims with irresistible impulse on coming to a theme so congenial to him, "I must glory; it is not indeed expedient, but I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord."(3) Even when he speaks of the stake in his flesh, which he does in such suggestive connection with his visions, he describes it as sent lest he should "be exalted above measure by the

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excess of the revelations."(1) We have so repeatedly had to refer to Paul's claim to have received his Gospel by special revelation that we need not again speak of it here. If we could quote Acts as a genuine representation of Christian tradition regarding Paul, we might point out the visions and revelations therein so freely ascribed to him, but his own writings are amply sufficient for our purpose. Even his second journey to Jerusalem is attributed to the direction of revelation.(2)

The only vision regarding which the Apostle gives any particulars is that referred to, 2 Cor. xii. 2: "I know a man in Christ above fourteen years ago (whether in the body I know not, whether out of the body I know not, G.o.d knoweth), such an one caught up even unto the third heaven. 3. And I know such a man (whether in the body or out of the body I know not, G.o.d knoweth), 4. that he was caught up into paradise and heard unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter. 5.

For such an one will I boast," etc.(3) It has been argued from this pa.s.sage and the repet.i.tion of the expression "whether in the body or out of the body I know not," that Paul himself could clearly distinguish objective facts from subjective impressions.(4) No interpretation could well be more erroneous. It is evident that Paul has no doubt whatever of his having been in the third heaven and in Paradise, and as little of

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his having heard the unspeakable words. That is quite objectively real to him. His only doubt is whether the body was caught up with his soul upon this occasion.(1) No one who has carefully considered such phenomena and examined the statements here made can have any doubt as to the nature of this vision. The conception of being caught up into "the third heaven," "into Paradise," and there hearing these "unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter," betrays in no doubtful manner the source of the subjective impressions. Of course, divines who are prepared to see in this pa.s.sage the account of an actual objective event will not consider it evidence that Paul had subjective visions which he believed to have been objective facts; but to those who, more rightly and reasonably, we think, recognize the subjective character of the vision, it must at once definitely settle the point that Paul could mistake subjective impressions for objective realities, and consequently the argument for the similar subjectivity of the vision of Jesus becomes complete. The possibility of such a mistake is precisely what apologists question. Here is an instance in which the mistake has clearly been made by Paul.

The Apostle's own statements show him to have been superlatively visionary and impressionable, with restless nervous energy it is true, but, at the same time, with keen physical and mental susceptibility.

Liable to be uplifted by "the excess of revelations," glorying in "visions and revelations of the Lord," possessing ecstatic

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powers more than all others, subjecting his very movements, his visits to Jerusalem, to the direction of impulses which he supposed to be revelations: there has never been a case in which both temperament and religious belief more thoroughly combined to ascribe, with perfect conviction, objective reality to subjective impressions connected with divine things then occupying his mind.

Paul moreover lived in a time when the Messianic longing of the Jews led them to be profoundly interested students of the later apocalyptic writings, which certainly made a deep impression upon the Apostle, and in which he must have been struck by the image of the promised Messiah, like the Son of Man, coming on the clouds of heaven (Dan. vii. 13, cf.

1 Cor. xv. 47).(1) At no time was such a vision more likely to present itself to him, than when his mind was fixed upon the Messianic idea with all the intensity of one who had been persecuting those who a.s.serted that the Messiah had already come. Here was reason for all that concentration of thought upon the subject which produces such visions: and when doubt and hesitation entered into that eager intense spirit, the conflict must have been sharp and the nerves highly strung. The Jesus whom he saw with his mind's eye was the climax of conviction in such a nature; and the vision vividly brought to him his own self-reproachful thoughts for cruelly mistaken zeal, and the remorse of n.o.ble souls which bounds to reparation. He devoted himself as eagerly to Christianity, as he had previously done to Judaism. He changed the contents but not the form of his mind.(2) Paul the

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Christian was the same man as Paul the Jew; and in abandoning the conception of a Messiah "according to the flesh," and placing his whole faith in one "according to the spirit," he displayed the same characteristics as before. The revolution in his mind, of which so much is said, was merely one affecting the Messianic idea. He did not at a bound become the complete Apostle of the Gentiles, but accepting at first nothing more than belief in a Messiah according to the spirit, his comprehensive and peculiar system of theology was, "of course, only the result of subsequent reflection. That his conviction should have been completed by a subjective vision is no more strange than that he should believe in supernatural Charismata, miraculous speaking with tongues, and being actually caught up into the third heaven, into Paradise, and hearing there unutterable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter. Paul evidently never questioned the source of his visions. They were simply accepted as divine revelations, and they excited all the less of misgiving in his soul from the fact that, without doubt, they expressed the expected solution of problems which intensely occupied his mind, and reflected conclusions already practically formed by his own thoughts.(1)

There remain two points to be briefly considered.

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The first of these is the a.s.sertion, constantly made in various shapes, that the cardinal miracles of the Resurrection and Ascension were proclaimed as unquestionable facts, without contradiction, at a time when such an a.s.sertion might have been easily refuted. The production of the body, the still occupied sepulchre, it is said, would have set such pretensions at rest It is unnecessary to say that the proclamation of the Resurrection and Ascension as facts proved nothing beyond the belief, perhaps, of those who a.s.serted them. So far as Paul is concerned, we may seek in vain for any a.s.sertion of a bodily Ascension.

But there is not the slightest evidence to show when the Resurrection and Ascension were first publicly proclaimed as unquestionable facts.

Even the Gospels do not state that they were mentioned beyond the circle of disciples. The second Synoptist, who does not state that Jesus himself was seen by any one, makes the curious affirmation at the close of his Gospel as we have it, that the women, on receiving the announcement of the Resurrection from the angels, and the command for the disciples and Peter to go into Galilee, "went out and fled from the sepulchre; for trembling and astonishment seized them, and they said nothing to any one; for they were afraid."(1) In the fourth Gospel, although the "beloved disciple" went into the sepulchre, "and he saw and believed," it is related of him and Peter: "So the disciples went away again unto their own home."(2) The Eleven, in fact, who all forsook their Master and fled--who are represented as meeting with closed doors "for fear of the Jews"--with closed doors after eight days, it is again said, although, a week before, ten of them are said to have seen Jesus--were not likely to expose

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themselves to the fate of Jesus by rushing into the highways and a.s.serting the Resurrection. Beyond the statement of the Gospels, the value of which we have seen, and a statement accompanied by so many confused circ.u.mstances, there is no evidence whatever that the sepulchre was found empty. There is no evidence that the sepulchre was really known to the disciples, none of whom, probably, was present at the crucifixion; and it might well be inferred that the women, who are represented as ignorant that the body had already been embalmed, yet who are the chief supposed witnesses for the empty sepulchre and the informants of the disciples, were equally ignorant of the sepulchre in which the body was laid. We might ask whether the 500 brethren who are said to have seen Jesus at the same time came from Galilee, or wherever they were, and examined the state of the sepulchre? We have already said, however, that if the sepulchre had been shown to be empty, the very last thing which could be proved by that circ.u.mstance would be the correctness of the a.s.sertion that it had become so in consequence of a stupendous miracle. On the other hand, if it had been shown that it was occupied by a body, it is exceedingly doubtful whether the fact would have convinced any one not previously sure that Jesus could not have risen from the dead, and he would not have required such evidence. When the Resurrection was publicly proclaimed as a fact, the body could no longer have been recognizable, and the idea that any of those in authority could have thought such demonstration necessary to refute a story whispered about amongst an obscure sect in Jerusalem, or even more courageously a.s.serted, is a product of later times. When Jesus of Nazareth, the head of the nascent sect, was suppressed

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by a shameful death, his humble and timid followers were obviously for a time despised; and there is little reason to suppose that the chief priests and rulers of the Jews would have condescended to any public contradiction of their affirmations, if they had even felt indifference to the defilement of exposing for such a purpose a decaying body to the gaze of Jerusalem. This kind of refutation is possible only in the imagination of divines. Besides, what evidence is there that even a single indifferent person found the sepulchre empty? There is not an iota of proof.

On the contrary, there is the very strongest evidence that when the a.s.sertion of the Resurrection and Ascension as "unquestionable facts"

was made, it was contradicted in the only practical and practicable way conceivable: (1.) by all but universal disbelief in Jerusalem; (2.) by actual persecution of those who a.s.serted it. It is a perfectly undeniable fact that the great ma.s.s of the Jews totally denied the truth of the statement by disbelieving it, and that the converts to Christianity who soon swelled the numbers of the Church and spread its influence amongst the nations were not the citizens of Jerusalem, who were capable of refuting such a.s.sertions, but strangers and Gentiles.

The number of the community of Jerusalem after the forty days seems to be stated by the author of Acts as "about 120," and although the numbers added to the Church, according to this doc.u.ment, are evidently fabulous, the converts at Pentecost are apparently chiefly from amongst the devout men of every nation upon earth congregated at Jerusalem. To this hour the Jews have retained as their inheritance the denial by their forefathers of the a.s.serted facts. The a.s.sertion, secondly, was emphatically denied by the persecution, as soon as it

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became worth any one's while to persecute, of those who made it. It was in this way denied by Paul himself, at a time when verification was infinitely more possible than when he came to join in the a.s.sertion. Are we to suppose that the Apostle took no trouble to convince himself of the facts before he began to persecute? He was in the confidence of the high priests it seems, can he ever have heard the slightest doubt from them on the subject? Is it not palpable that Paul and his party, by their very pursuit of those who maintained such allegations, stigmatized them as falsehoods, and perhaps as imposture? If it be said that Paul became convinced of his mistake, it is perfectly obvious that his conversion was not due to local and circ.u.mstantial evidence, but to dogmatic considerations and his supposed vision of Jesus. He disbelieved when the alleged occurrences were recent and, as it is said, capable of refutation; he believed when the time for such refutation had pa.s.sed.