The Story of Civilization: Volume III: Caesar and Christ

by Will Durant

  It was a brave effort to reconcile Christianity with Greek philosophy.IV Nevertheless, it impressed only a few; the Athenians had heard too many ideas to have much enthusiasm for any. Paul left the city in disappointment and went to Corinth, where commerce had gathered a substantial community of Jews. He stayed there eighteen months (51-52?), earning his living as a tentmaker, and preaching every Sabbath in the synagogue. The leader of the synagogue was converted, and so many others that the alarmed Jews indicted Paul before the Roman governor, Gallio, on the charge of “trying to induce people to worship God in ways that are against the law.” Gallio replied: “As it is only a question of words and titles and your own law, you must look after it yourselves; I will not decide such matters”; and he dismissed them from the court. The two parties fell to blows, “but Gallio paid no attention.”39 Paul offered his gospel to the gentiles of Corinth, and made many converts among them. Christianity may have seemed to them an acceptable variation of the mystery faiths that had so often told them of resurrected saviors; possibly in accepting it they assimilated it to these beliefs, and influenced Paul to interpret Christianity in terms familiar to the Hellenistic mind.

  From Corinth Paul went to Jerusalem (53?) to “salute the church.” Soon, however, he was off on his third missionary journey, visiting the Christian communities in Antioch and Asia Minor, and reinvigorating them with his fervor and confidence. At Ephesus he spent two years, and “did such extraordinary wonders” that many looked upon him as a miracle-worker, and sought to cure ailments by applying to the sick the linens Paul had used. The manufacturers of the images that pagan worshipers dedicated in the Temple of Artemis found their trade slackening; perhaps Paul had repeated here his Athenian indictment of image worship, or idolatry. One Demetrius, who made silver models of the great shrine for pious pilgrims, organized a protest against Paul and the new faith, and led to the city theater a crowd of Greeks whose catchword, repeated for two hours, was “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” A local official dissolved the gathering, but Paul thought it the better part of valor to leave for Macedonia.

  He spent some happy months with the little congregations he had founded in Philippi, Thessalonica, and Beraea. Hearing that dissension and immorality were disordering the church at Corinth, he not only reprimanded it in several epistles, but went down to it in person (56?) to face his detractors. They had accused him of profiting materially from his preaching, laughed at his visions, and renewed the demand that all Christians should obey the Jewish Law. Paul reminded the turbulent community that he had everywhere earned his living with the work of his hands; and as to material profit, what had he not suffered from his missions?—eight floggings, one stoning, three shipwrecks, and a thousand dangers from robbers, patriots, and streams.40 Amid this turmoil word was brought him that the “party of the circumcision,” apparently violating the Jerusalem agreement, had gone into Galatia and demanded of all converts the full acceptance of the Jewish Law. He wrote to the Galatians a wrathful epistle in which he broke completely with the Judaizing Christians, and declared that men were to be saved not by adherence to the Mosaic Law, but by an active faith in Christ as the redeeming Son of God. Then, not knowing what sharper tribulations awaited him there, he left for Jerusalem, eager to defend himself before the Apostles, and wishing to celebrate in the Holy City the ancient feast of Pentecost. From Jerusalem, he hoped, he might go to Rome, even to Spain, and never rest till every province of the Empire had heard the news and promise of the risen Christ.

  3. The Theologian

  The leaders of the mother church gave him “a hearty welcome” (57?); but privately they admonished him:

  You see, brother, how many thousand believers there are among the Jews, all of them zealous upholders of the Law. They have been told that you teach all Jews who live among the heathen to turn away from Moses, that you tell them not to circumcize their children, nor to observe the old customs. . . . They will be sure to hear that you have come. So do what we tell you. We have four men here who are under a vow. Join them, undergo the rites of purification with them, and pay their expenses. . . . Then everybody will understand that there is no truth in the stories told about you, but that you yourself observe the Law.41

  Paul took the advice in good spirit, and went through the rites of purification. But when some Jews saw him in the Temple they raised an outcry against him as “the man who teaches everybody everywhere against our people and the Law.” A mob seized him, dragged him from the Temple, and “were trying to kill him” when a squad of Roman soldiers rescued him by arrest. Paul turned to speak to the crowd, and affirmed both his Judaism and his Christianity. They shouted for his death. The Roman officer ordered him to be flogged, but desisted when he learned of Paul’s Roman citizenship. The next day he brought the prisoner before the Sanhedrin. Paul addressed it, proclaimed himself a Pharisee, and won some support; but his excited opponents again sought to do him violence, and the officer withdrew him into the barracks. That night a nephew of Paul came to warn him that forty Jews had vowed not to eat or drink until they had killed him. The officer, fearing a disturbance that would compromise him, sent Paul in the night to the procurator Felix at Caesarea.

  Five days later the high priest and some elders came up from Jerusalem, and accused Paul of being “a pest and a disturber of the peace among Jews all over the world.” Paul admitted that he was preaching a new religion, but added: “I believe everything that is taught in the Law.” Felix dismissed the accusers; nevertheless, he kept Paul under house arrest—accessible to friends—for two years (58-60?), hoping, perhaps, for a substantial bribe.

  When Festus succeeded Felix he suggested that Paul should stand trial before him at Jerusalem. Fearing that hostile environment, Paul exercised his rights as a Roman citzen, and demanded trial before the emperor. King Agrippa, passing through Caesarea, gave him another hearing, and judged him “mad with great learning,” but otherwise innocent; “he might be let go,” said Agrippa, “if he had not appealed to the emperor.” Paul was put on a trading vessel, which sailed so leisurely that it encountered a winter storm before it could reach Italy. Through fourteen days of tempest, we are told, he gave crew and passengers an encouraging example of a man superior to death and confident of rescue. The ship broke to pieces on Malta’s rocks, but all on board swam safely to shore. Three months later Paul arrived in Rome (61?).

  The Roman authorities treated him leniently, awaiting his accusers from Palestine, and Nero’s leisure to hear the case. He was allowed to live in a house of his choosing, with a soldier to guard him; he could not move about freely, but he could receive whomever he wished. He invited the leading Jews of Rome to come to him; they heard him patiently, but when they perceived that in his judgment the observance of the Jewish Law was not necessary to salvation, they turned away; the Law seemed to them the indispensable prop and solace of Jewish life. “Understand, then,” said Paul, “that this message of God’s salvation has been sent to the heathen. They will listen to it!”42 His attitude offended also the Christian community that he found in Rome. These converts, chiefly Jews, preferred the Christianity that had been brought to them from Jerusalem; they practiced circumcision, and were hardly distinguished by Rome from the orthodox Jews; they welcomed Peter, but were cold to Paul. He made some converts among the gentiles, even in high place; but a bitter sense of frustration darkened the loneliness of his imprisonment.

  He found some solace in sending long and tender letters to his distant flocks. For ten years now he had written such epistles; there were doubtless many more than have come down to us under his name.V They did not come directly from his pen; he dictated them, often adding a postscript in his own rough hand; he left them apparently unrevised, with all their repetitions, obscurities, and bad grammar on their head. Nevertheless, the depth and sincerity of their feeling, their angry devotion to a great cause, their profusion of noble and memorable speech make them the most forceful and eloquent letters in all literature; even Cicero’s char
m seems slight beside this passionate faith. Here are strong words of love from one to whom his churches were his fiercely protected children; violent attacks upon his numberless enemies; reprimands to sinners, backsliders, and divisive disputants; and everywhere tender exhortations.

  Be filled with thanksgiving. Let the presence of Christ dwell in you, a well-spring of abounding wisdom; teach and encourage one another with hymns and songs of the spiritual life; make music in your hearts in gratitude to God.44

  Here are great phrases that all Christendom quotes and cherishes: “the letter kills, the spirit gives life”;45 “evil communications corrupt good manners”;46 “to the pure all things are pure”;47 “the love of money is the root of all evil.”48 Here are frank confessions of his faults, even of his statesmanlike hypocrisies:

  I have made myself everyone’s slave, so as to win over all the more. To the Jews I have become like a Jew to win Jews ... to those without the Law I have become like a man without any law ... I have become all things to all men, that I might save some of them. I do it all for the sake of the Good News, that I may share its blessings with the rest.49

  These epistles were preserved, and often publicly read, by the congregations to which they were addressed. By the end of the first century many of them were widely known; Clement of Rome refers to them in 97, Ignatius and Polycarp soon afterwards; gradually they entered into the subtlest theology of the Church. Moved by his own somber spirit and remorse, and his transforming vision of Christ; influenced perhaps by Platonist and Stoic denunciations of matter and the body as evil; recalling, it may be, Jewish and pagan customs of sacrificing a “scapegoat” for the sins of the people, Paul created a theology of which none but the vaguest warrants can be found in the words of Christ: that every man born of woman inherits the guilt of Adam, and can be saved from eternal damnation only by the atoning death of the Son of God.VI 50 Such a conception was more agreeable to the pagans than to the Jews. Egypt, Asia Minor, and Hellas had long since believed in gods—Osiris, Attis, Dionysus—who had died to redeem mankind; such titles as Soter (Savior) and Eleutherios (Deliverer) had been applied to these deities; and the word Kyrios (Lord), used by Paul of Christ, was the term given in Syrian-Greek cults to the dying and redeeming Dionysus.52 The gentiles of Antioch and other Greek cities, never having known Jesus in the flesh, could only accept him after the manner of their savior gods. “Behold,” said Paul, “I show you a mystery.”53

  Paul added to this popular and consoling theology certain mystic conceptions already made current by the Book of Wisdom and the philosophy of Philo. Christ, said Paul, is “the wisdom of God,”54 the first-born Son of God; “he is before all things, in him all things exist . . . through him all things have been created.”55 He is not the Jewish Messiah who will deliver Israel from bondage; he is the Logos whose death will deliver all men. Through these interpretations Paul could neglect the actual life and sayings of Jesus, which he had not directly known, and could stand on an equality with the immediate apostles, who were no match for him in metaphysical speculation; he could give to the life of Christ, and to the life of man, high roles in a magnificent drama that embraced all souls and all eternity. Moreover, he could answer the troublesome questions of those who asked why Christ, if very god, had allowed himself to be put to death: Christ had died to redeem a world lost to Satan by Adam’s sin; he had to die to break the bonds of death and open the gates of heaven to all who should be touched by the grace of God.

  Two factors, said Paul, determine who shall be saved by Christ’s death: divine election and humble faith. God chooses from all eternity those whom he will bless with his grace, and those whom he will damn.56 Nevertheless, Paul bestirred himself to awaken faith as a rod to catch God’s grace; only through such “assurance of things longed for,” such “confidence in things unseen,”57 can the soul experience that profound change which makes a new man, unites the believer with Christ, and allows him to share in the fruits of Christ’s death. Good works and the performance of all the 613 precepts of the Jewish Law will not suffice, said Paul; they cannot remake the inner man, or wash the soul of sin. The death of Christ had ended the epoch of the Law; now there should no more be Jew and Greek, slave and freeman, male and female, for “in union with Christ Jesus you are all one.”58 As to good works combined with faith, Paul never tired of inculcating them; and the most famous words ever spoken about love are his own:

  Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass or tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of preaching, and understand all mysteries, and have all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I can move mountains; if I have not love I am nothing. And though I give away everything that I am, and give myself, but do it in pride, not love, it profits me nothing. Love is patient and kind. It is not envious or boastful. ... It does not insist on its rights. ... It never fails. So faith, hope and love endure, these three; and the greatest of these is love.59

  To sexual love, and marriage, Paul gives the most discouraging toleration. One passage 60 suggests, but does not prove, that he was married: “Have we not” (he and Barnabas) “a right to take a Christian wife about with us, like the rest of the apostles, and the Lord’s brothers, and Peter?”—but in another 61 he calls himself single. Like Jesus, he had no sympathy for physical desire.62 He was horrified when he heard of promiscuity and perversions.63 “Do you not know,” he asked the Corinthians, “that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit that is within you? . . . Honor God with your bodies.”64 Virginity is better than marriage, but marriage is better than concupiscence. The marriage of divorced persons is forbidden, except after mixed unions. Women are to be obedient to their husbands, slaves to their masters. “Everyone ought to remain in the station in which he was called” (i.e., converted to Christianity). “If you were a slave when you were called, never mind. Even if you can gain your freedom, make the most of your present condition instead. For a slave who has been called to union with the Lord is a freedman of the Lord, just as a freeman who had been called is a slave of Christ.”65 Freedom and slavery meant little if the world was soon coming to an end. By the same token national liberty was unimportant. Let “every soul be in subjection to the higher powers, for there is no power but God, and the powers that be are ordained by God.”66 It was ungracious of Rome to destroy so accommodating a philosopher.

  4. The Martyr

  “Do your best to come to me soon,” runs the doubtful second letter to Timothy,

  for Demas has deserted me for love of the present world . . . Crescens has gone, and Titus; no one but Luke is with me. ... At my first appearance in court no one came to help me; everybody deserted me. . . . But the Lord stood by me, and gave me strength, so that I might make a full presentation of the message and let all the heathen hear it. So I was saved from the jaws of the lion. . . . My life is already being poured out, and the time has come for my departure. I have had a part in the great contest. I have run my race, I have preserved the faith.66a

  He spoke bravely, but he was desolate. One ancient tradition said that he was freed, went to Asia and Spain, preached again, and once more found himself a prisoner in Rome; probably he was never freed. Without wife or children to comfort him, with all friends gone but one, only his faith could support him; and perhaps that too was shaken. Like the other Christians of his age, he had lived on the hope of seeing Christ return. He had written to the Philippians: “We are eagerly awaiting the coming of a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. . . . The Lord is coming soon.”67 And to the Corinthians: “The appointed time has grown very short. From now on, those who have wives should live as though they had none . . . and those who buy anything as if they did not own it. . . . For the present shape of the world is passing away . . . Maranatha! Lord, come quickly!”68 But in his second epistle to the Thessalonians he reproved them for neglecting the affairs of this world in expectation of Christ’s early advent; the coming will be delayed until the “Adversary”—Satan—�
��makes his appearance and proclaims himself to be God.”69 We surmise from his last letters that he had struggled, during his imprisonment, to reconcile his early faith with the long delay in the Parousia or Second Appearance. More and more he put his hope beyond the grave, and made for his own solace the great adjustment that saved Christianity—the transformation of the belief in Christ’s earthly return into the hope of union with him in heaven after death. Apparently he was tried again, and convicted; Caesar and Christ came face to face, and Caesar won for a day. We do not know the precise charge; probably now, as at Thessalonica, Paul was accused of “disobeying the emperor’s decrees, and claiming that someone else called Jesus is king.”70 This was a crime of maiestas, punishable with death. We have no ancient record of the trial; but Tertullian, writing about 200, reports that Paul was beheaded at Rome; and Origen, about 220, writes that “Paul suffered martyrdom in Rome under Nero.”71 Probably, as a Roman citizen, he had the honor of a distinct execution, and was not mingled with the Christians crucified after the fire of 64. Tradition united him with Peter in a simultaneous, though separate, martyrdom; and a touching legend pictured the great rivals meeting in friendship on the road to death. Over the place on the Via Ostia, where the Church believed that Paul had found peace, a shrine was raised in the third century. Remade in ever fairer form, it stands today as the basilica of San Paolo fuori le Mura—St. Paul beyond the Walls.