The life and work of St. Paul

614 THE LIFE AJTD WORK OP ST. PATOU
Conviction tnat tfiere is no expression in it which, on these grounds at any
rate, disproves its genuineness. None but Paul could have written it. To say
that it is un-Pauline in doctrine is to make an arbitrary assertion, since itstates
no single truth which is not involved in his previous teachings. The
fact that, it is a splendid development of those teachings, or rather an expan-
sion in the statement of them, in order to meet new exigencies, is simply in
its favour. Nor do I see how any one familiar with the style and mind of St.
Paul can fail to recognise his touch in this Epistle. That the style should
lack the fire and passion the " meras flammas "
of the Epistle to the
Galatians, and the easy, fervent outflowing of thought and feeling in those
to the Thessalonians, Corinthians, and Philippians, is perfectly natural. Of
all the converts to whom St. Paul had written, the Colossians alone were
entire strangers to him. He had not indeed visited the Church of Rome,
but many members of that Church were personally known to him, and he
was writing to them on a familiar theme which had for years been occupying
his thoughts. The mere fact that he had already written on the same topic
to the Galatians would make his thoughts flow more easily. But in writing
to the Colossians he was handling a new theme, combating a recent error with
which, among Christians, he had not come into personal contact, and of which
he merely knew the special characteristics at secondhand. When, in the
Epistle to the Ephesians, he reverts to the same Tange of conceptions, 1 his
sentences' run with far greater ease. The style of no man is stereotyped, and
least of all is this the case with a man so many-sided, so emotional, so
original as St. Paul. His manner, as we have repeatedly noticed, reflects
to an unusual degree the impressions of the time, the place, the mood, in
which he was writing. A thousand circumstances unknown to us may have
given to this Epistle that rigid character, that want of spontaneity in the
movement of its sentences, which led even Ewald into the improbable con-
jecture that the words were Timothy's, though the subject and the thoughts
belong to St. Paul. But the difference of style between it and other Epistles
is no greater than we find in the works of other authors at different periods
of their lives, or than we daily observe in the writings and speeches of living
men who deal with different topics in varying moods.
1 V. infra, p. 630, seq. "These two letters are twins, singularly like one another
in face, like also in character, but not so identical as to exclude a strongly-marked
individuality" (J. LI. Davies, Eph. and Col., p. 7). He says that the style is laboured,
but "the substance eminently genuine and strong." A forger would have copied
phrases ; who could copy the most " characteristic and inward conceptions of the
Apostle?" Even critics who fail to admit the genuineness of the whole letter, see that
its sentiments and much of its phraseology are so indisputably Pauline that they adopt
the theory of interpolation (Hitzig, Weiss, Holtzman), or joint authorship of Paul and
Timothy (Ewald).