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CHAPTER IV

PAUL NOT A SACRAMENTARIAN

In the very able article of Professor H. T. Andrews in the November Expositor on "The Place of the Sacraments in the Teaching of St. Paul" the learned writer, it seems to me, makes the fatal mistake of reading into Paul's language about baptism the ideas of the Mithraists and of the later sacramentarian Christians. This is precisely the vice of the historicocritical method that Professor H. A. A. Kennedy has so skilfully refuted in his St. Paul and the MysteryReligions. Paul's keen mind was all alert for points of contact with the thought of his time, but he was not a mere blunderer with no coherent theology. Professor Andrews surely overstates the matter when he claims that scientific exegesis has given the victory to the sacramentarians against the symbolists and that theologians must find some way to rescue modern Christianity from this blight or throw Paul overboard as a reliable interpreter of Christianity. He holds rightly that modern Christians as a whole are not going to accept sacramentarian Christianity. Professor Andrews admits that Paul has his evangelical side, but he holds that the inconsistency in his attitude toward baptism is incapable of solution. I venture to reply

that the Professor has himself gotten into the fog instead of Paul.

If one interprets Paul's language about the baptism symbolically there is no inconsistency. The bugle blast of liberty in Galatians against the Judaizing ceremonialists is thus entirely in place when we come to Paul's teaching on baptism. Now there are two passages in Paul's Epistles that to my mind are decisive on this point and render it impossible to class Paul with the sacramentarians on the subject of baptism. The first one is I Corinthians 1:14-17. Here Paul expresses gratitude1 that he baptized none of the Corinthian Christians save Crispus and Gaius. Then he recalls the household of Stephanas and beyond that he cannot recall whether he baptized any others. Certainly this attitude, almost of indifference, is not that of a man who attached saving efficacy to the ordinance of baptism. But verse 17 settles the matter. "For Christ sent me not to baptize but to evangelize, not in wisdom of speech, that the cross of Christ should not be made empty." Here Paul deliberately interprets his permanent mission as an apostle of Christ in language that leaves baptism to one side, and in contrast with his real work of preaching the gospel. I do not see how it is possible to understand that Paul could write thus if he held to baptismal regeneration. Certainly Paul was not

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making light of baptism, but he did not consider it his task.

I do not press the last clause where the fear is implied that the cross of Christ may be rendered null and void, emptied 1 of real value. It is possible to confine this clause to the "wisdom of speech," though it naturally points back also to the previous contrast. The other passage is Romans vi:3-6, where Paul explains the symbolism of baptism in terms of burial and resurrection. Certainly Paul here is a symbolist, as is so beautifully brought out by Sanday and Headlane on this passage.

There are passages in Paul's writings which are capable of the sacramentarian interpretation given to them by Professor Andrews. My contention is that these ambiguous passages should be expounded in the light of Paul's real spirit and not from the standpoint of Mithraism and later sacramentarian Christianity. To do that is not in my opinion scientific exegesis. It rather makes a jumble of Paul, whose insight into the mind of Christ has never been surpassed. It is not necessary to throw Paul overboard.

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CHAPTER V

PAUL AS CHURCH ARCHITECT IN CORINTH

Paul is on the defensive in the first four chapters of First Corinthians. The household of Chloe have come to Ephesus (1 Cor. 1:11) with full reports of the strife in the church in Corinth. There was schism and partisanship. Some stood for Paul, some for Apollos, some for Cephas, and some for Christ (making a partisan use of Christ's name). It was all very humiliating to Paul. It is not certain that Peter had been to Corinth though it is possible. At any rate the Judaizers made use of Peter's name as they had done with that of James, the Lord's brother (Gal. 2:12), in opposition to Paul. Apollos himself had left Corinth because of the disturbance and refused Paul's urgent entreaty to return (1 Cor. 16:12). He had had enough of Corinth. He had gone with cordial recommendations from Aquila and Priscilla in Ephesus (Acts 18:27) and his eloquence and learning had made a great impression. He had clearly not meant to cause a schism. But once factions arise in a church over preachers, it is not easy to end the turmoil.

The situation in Corinth must have been very bad, judging from Paul's own language in these chapters and from 2 Corinthians where the climax is reached.

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Paul is seeking to show that neither he nor Apollos is to blame for the divisions that have come, but the conceit and jealousy of the members themselves who have not acted in the spirit of Christ (1 Cor. 3:1-9; 4:6-21). Paul planted the seed, and Apollos watered the plant, but God gave the increase (3:6), and God deserves all the glory. Besides, it is "God's field or husbandry" and "God's building" and Paul and Apollos are merely fellow-workers with God in building the house of God (3.9).

It is this figure of "building" that Paul takes up and develops in 3:11-17. In doing so Paul has to justify his work in Corinth, but it makes him feel like a fool for Christ's sake to have to do it (4:10) as he says with the keenest irony: "We are fools for Christ's sake, but ye are wise in Christ."

The word translated "master-builder" is really our word "architect."1 Dr. Walter Lock, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity in Oxford University, has an excellent monograph on "St. Paul the Masterbuilder" in which he applies the figure to Paul's whole career. But Paul is here thinking primarily of his work in Corinth as founder and builder of the church there. The pastor is a church architect if he does his work properly. He does not, indeed, build the edifice in which the church meets, though often it is a pity that the preacher has had such a small part in the construction of the house of worship. Church architecture is a fascinating subject. had no separate houses of worship.

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