- Christological: Colossians and Philippians.
- Ecclesiological: Ephesians (in part also Corinthians).
- Eschatological: Thessalonians.
- Pastoral: Timothy and Titus.
- Social and Personal: Philemon.
The Style.
"The style is the man." This applies with peculiar force to Paul. His style has been called
"the most personal that ever existed."^1133 It fitly represents the force and fire of his mind and the
tender affections of his heart. He disclaims classical elegance and calls himself "rude in speech,"
though by no means "in knowledge." He carried the heavenly treasure in earthen vessels. But the
defects are more than made up by excellences. In his very weakness the Strength of Christ was
perfected. We are not lost in the admiration of the mere form, but are kept mindful of the paramount
importance of the contents and the hidden depths of truth which he behind the words and defy the
power of expression.
Paul’s style is manly, bold, heroic, aggressive, and warlike; yet at times tender, delicate,
gentle, and winning. It is involved, irregular, and rugged, but always forcible and expressive, and
not seldom rises to more than poetic beauty, as in the triumphant paean at the end of the eighth
chapter of Romans, and in the ode on love (1 Cor. 13). His intense earnestness and overflowing
fulness of ideas break through the ordinary rules of grammar. His logic is set on fire. He abounds
in skilful arguments, bold antitheses, impetuous assaults, abrupt transitions, sudden turns, zigzag
flashes, startling questions and exclamations. He is dialectical and argumentative; he likes logical
particles, paradoxical phrases, and plays on words. He reasons from Scripture, from premises, from
conclusions; he drives the opponent to the wall without mercy and reduces him ad absurdum, but
without ever indulging in personalities. He is familiar with the sharp weapons of ridicule, irony,
and sarcasm, but holds them in check and uses them rarely. He varies the argument by touching
appeals to the heart and bursts of seraphic eloquence. He is never dry or dull, and never wastes
words; he is brief, terse, and hits the nail on the head. His terseness makes him at times obscure,
as is the case with the somewhat similar style of Thucydides, Tacitus, and Tertullian. His words
are as many warriors marching on to victory and peace; they are like a mountain torrent rushing in
foaming rapids over precipices, and then calmly flowing over green meadows, or like a thunderstorm
ending in a refreshing shower and bright sunshine.
Paul created the vocabulary of scientific theology and put a profounder meaning into religious
and moral terms than they ever had before. We cannot speak of sin, flesh, grace, mercy, peace,
redemption, atonement, justification, glorification, church, faith, love, without bearing testimony
to the ineffaceable effect which that greatest of Jewish rabbis and Christian teachers has had upon
the language of Christendom.
Notes.
Chrysostom justly compares the Epistles of Paul to metals more precious than gold and to
unfailing fountains which flow the more abundantly the more we drink of them.
(^1133) By Renan, who, notwithstanding his fastidious French taste and antipathy to Paul’s theology, cannot help admiring his lofty
genius.
A.D. 1-100.