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Outspoken Essays by William Ralph Inge

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The distinctive feature of the Jewish religion is not, as is often
supposed, its monotheism, Hebrew religion in its golden age was
monolatry rather than monotheism; and when Jahveh became more strictly
'the only God,' the cult of intermediate beings came in, and restored a
quasi-polytheism. The distinctive feature in Jewish faith is its
historical and teleological character. The God of the Jew is not natural
law. If the idea of necessary causation ever forced itself upon his
mind, he at once gave it the form of predestination. The whole of
history is an unfolding of the divine purpose; and so history as a whole
has for the Jew an importance which it never had for a Greek thinker,
nor for the Hellenised Jew Philo. The Hebrew idea of God is dynamic and
ethical; it is therefore rooted in the idea of Time. The Pharisaic
school modified this prophetic teaching in two ways. It became more
spiritual; anthropomorphisms were removed, and the transcendence of God
above the world was more strictly maintained. On the other hand, the
religious relationship became in their hands narrower and more external.
The notion of a covenant was defined more rigorously; the Law was
practically exalted above God, so that the Rabbis even represent the
Deity as studying the Law. With this legalism went a spirit of intense
exclusiveness and narrow ecclesiasticism. As God was raised above direct
contact with men, the old animistic belief in angels and demons, which
had lasted on in the popular mind by the side of the worship of Jahveh,
was extended in a new way. A celestial hierarchy was invented, with
names, and an infernal hierarchy too; the malevolent ghosts of animism
became fallen angels. Satan, who in Job is the crown-prosecutor, one of
God's retinue, becomes God's adversary; and the angels, formerly
manifestations of God Himself, are now quite separated from Him. A
supramundane physics or cosmology was evolved at the same time. Above
Zion, the centre of the earth, rise seven heavens, in the highest of
which the Deity has His throne. The underworld is now first divided into
Paradise and Gehenna. The doctrine of the fall of man, through his
participation in the representative guilt of his first parents, is
Pharisaic; as is the strange legend, which St. Paul seems to have
believed (2 Cor. xi. 3), that the Serpent carnally seduced Eve, and so
infected the race with spiritual poison. Justification, in Pharisaism as
for St. Paul, means the verdict of acquittal. The bad receive in this
life the reward for any small merits which they may possess; the sins of
the good must be atoned for; but merits, as in Roman Catholicism, may be
stored and transferred. Martyrdoms especially augment the spiritual
bank-balance of the whole nation. There was no official Messianic
doctrine, only a mass of vague fancies and beliefs, grouped round the
central idea of the appearance on earth of a supernatural Being, who
should establish a theocracy of some kind at Jerusalem. The righteous
dead will be raised to take part in this kingdom. The course of the
world is thus divided into two epochs--'this age' and 'the age to come.'
A catastrophe will end the former and inaugurate the latter. The
promised deliverer is now waiting in heaven with God, until his hour
comes; and it will come very soon. All this St. Paul must have learned
from Gamaliel. It formed the framework of his theology as a Christian
for many years after his conversion, and was only partially thrown off,
under the influence of mystical experience and of Greek ideas, during
the period covered by the letters. The lore of good and bad spirits (the
latter are 'the princes of this world' in I Cor. ii. 6, 8) pervades the
Epistles more than modern readers are willing to admit. It is part of
the heritage of the Pharisaic school.

It is very unlikely (in spite of Johannes Weiss) that St. Paul ever saw
Jesus in the flesh. But he did come in contact with the little Christian
community at Jerusalem. These disciples at first attempted to live as
strict members of the Jewish Church. They knew that the coming Messiah
was their crucified Master, but this belief involved no rupture with
Judaism. So at least they thought themselves; the Sanhedrin saw more
clearly what the new movement meant. The crisis came when numerous
'Hellenists' attached themselves to the Church--Jews of the Dispersion,
from Syria, Egypt, and elsewhere. A threatened rupture between these and
the Palestinian Christians was averted by the appointment of seven
deacons or charity commissioners, among whom Stephen soon became
prominent by the dangerously 'liberal' character of his teaching. Philo
gives important testimony to the existence of a 'liberal' school among
the Jews of the Dispersion, who, under pretext of spiritualising the
traditional law, left off keeping the Sabbath and the great festivals,
and even dispensed with the rite of circumcision. Thus the admission of
Gentiles on very easy terms into the Church was no new idea to the
Palestinian Jews; it was known to them as part of the shocking laxity
which prevailed among their brethren of the Dispersion. With Stephen,
this kind of liberalism seemed to have entered the group of 'disciples.'
He was accused of saying that Jesus was to destroy the temple and change
the customs of Moses. In his bold defence he admitted that in his view
the Law was valid only for a limited period, which would expire so soon
as Jesus returned as Messiah. This was quite enough for the Sanhedrin.
They stoned Stephen, and compelled the 'disciples' to disperse and fly
for their lives. Only the Apostles, whose devotion to the Law was well
known, were allowed to remain. This last fact, briefly recorded in Acts,
is important as an indication that the persecution was directed only
against the liberalising Christians, and that these were the great
majority. Saul, it seems, had no quarrel with the Twelve; his hatred and
fanaticism were aroused against a sect of Hellenist Jews who openly
proclaimed that the Law had been abrogated in advance by their Master,
who, as Saul observed with horror, had incurred the curse of the Law by
dying on a gibbet. All the Pharisee in him was revolted; and he led the
savage heretic-hunt which followed the execution of Stephen.

What caused the sudden change which so astonished the survivors among
his victims? To suppose that nothing prepared for the vision near
Damascus, that the apparition in the sky was a mere 'bolt from the
blue,' is an impossible theory. The best explanation is furnished by a
study of the Apostle's character, which we really know very well. The
author of the Epistles was certainly not a man who could watch a young
saint being battered to death by howling fanatics, and feel no emotion.
Stephen's speech may have made him indignant; his heroic death, the very
ideal of a martyrdom, must have awakened very different feelings. An
undercurrent of dissatisfaction, almost of disgust, at the arid and
unspiritual seminary teaching of the Pharisees now surged up and came
very near the surface. His bigotry sustained him as a persecutor for a
few weeks more; but how if he could himself see what the dying Stephen
said that he saw? Would not that be a welcome liberation? The vision
came in the desert, where men see visions and hear voices to this day.
They were very common in the desert of Gobi when Marco Polo traversed
it. 'The Spirit of Jesus,' as he came to call it, spoke to his heart,
and the form of Jesus flashed before his eyes. Stephen had been right;
the Crucified was indeed the Lord from heaven. So Saul became a
Christian; and it was to the Christianity of Stephen, not to that of
James the Lord's brother, that he was converted. The Pharisee in him was
killed.

The travelling missionary was as familiar a figure in the Levant as the
travelling lecturer on philosophy. The Greek language brought all
nationalities together. The Hellenising of the East had gone on steadily
since the conquests of Alexander; and Greek was already as useful as
Latin in many parts of the West. A century later, Marcus Aurelius wrote
his Confessions in Greek; and even in the middle of the third century,
when the tide was beginning to turn in favour of Latin, Plotinus
lectured in Greek at Rome. Christianity, within a few years after the
Crucifixion, had allied itself definitely with the speech, and
therefore inevitably with the spirit, of Hellenism. At no time since
have travel and trade been so free between the West of Europe and the
West of Asia. A Phrygian merchant (according to the inscription on his
tomb) made seventy-two journeys to Rome in the course of his
business-life. The decomposition of nationalities, and the destruction
of civic exclusiveness, led naturally to the formation of voluntary
associations of all kinds, from religious sects to trade unions;
sometimes a single association combined these two functions. The
Oriental religions appealed strongly to the unprivileged classes, among
which genuine religious faith was growing, while the official cults of
the Roman Empire were unsatisfying in themselves and associated with
tyranny. The attempt of Augustus to resuscitate the old religion was
artificial and unfruitful. The living movement was towards a syncretism
of religious ideas and practices, all of which came from the Eastern
provinces and beyond them. The prominent features in this new devotion
were the removal of the supreme Godhead from the world to a
transcendental sphere; contempt for the world and ascetic abnegation of
'the flesh'; a longing for healing and redemption, and a close
identification of salvation with individual immortality; and, finally,
trust in sacraments ('mysteries,' in Greek) as indispensable means of
grace or redemption. This was the Paganism with which Christianity had
to reckon, as well as with the official cult and its guardians. The
established church it conquered and destroyed; the living syncretistic
beliefs it cleansed, simplified, and disciplined, but only absorbed by
becoming itself a syncretistic religion. But besides Christians and
Pagans, there were the Jews, dispersed over the whole Empire. There were
at least a million in Egypt, a country which St. Paul, for reasons
unknown to us, left severely alone; there were still more in Syria, and
perhaps five millions in the whole Empire. In spite of the fecundity of
Jewish women, so much emphasised by Seeck in his history of the Downfall
of the Ancient World, it is impossible that the Hebrew stock should have
multiplied to this extent. There must have been a very large number of
converts, who were admitted, sometimes without circumcision, on their
profession of monotheism and acceptance of the Jewish moral code. The
majority of these remained in the class technically called
'God-fearers,' who never took upon themselves the whole yoke of the Law.
These half-Jews were the most promising field for Christian
missionaries; and nothing exasperated the Jews more than to see St. Paul
fishing so successfully in their waters. The spirit of propagandism
almost disappeared from Judaism after the middle of the second century.
Judaism shrank again into a purely Eastern religion, and renounced the
dangerous compromise with Western ideas. The labours of St. Paul made an
all-important parting of the ways. Their result was that Christianity
became a European religion, while Judaism fell back upon its old
traditions.

It is very unfortunate that we have no thoroughly trustworthy records of
the Apostle's earlier mission preaching. The Epistles only cover a
period of about ten years; and the rapid development of thought which
can be traced during this short time prevents us from assuming that his
earlier teaching closely resembled that which we find in the Letters.
But if, during the earlier period, he devoted his attention mainly to
those who were already under Jewish influence, we may be sure that he
spoke much of the Messiahship of Jesus, and of His approaching return,
these being the chief articles of faith in Judaic Christianity. This
was, however, only the framework. What attracted converts was really the
historical picture of the life of Jesus; his message of love and
brotherhood, which they found realised in the little communities of
believers; and the abolition of all external barriers between human
beings, such as social position, race, and sex, which had undoubtedly
been proclaimed by the Founder, and contained implicitly the promise of
an universal religion. We can infer what the manner of his preaching was
from the style of the letters, which were probably dictated like
extempore addresses, without much preparation. He was no trained orator,
and he thoroughly disdained the arts of the rhetorician. His Greek,
though vigorous and effective, is neither correct nor elegant. His
eloquence is of the kind which proceeds from intense conviction, and
from a thorough knowledge of Old Testament prophecy and psalmody--no bad
preparation for a religious teacher. If at times he argued like a Rabbi,
these frigid debates were as acceptable to ancient Jews as they are to
modern Scotsmen. And when he takes fire, as he deals with some vital
truth which he has lived as well as learned and taught, he establishes
his right to be called what he never aimed at being--a writer of genius.
Such passages as 1 Cor. xiii., Phil, ii., Rom. viii., rank among the
finest compositions in later Greek literature. Regarded merely as a
piece of poetical prose, 1 Cor. xiii. is finer than anything that had
been written in the Greek language since the great Attic prose-writers.
And if this was dictated impromptu, similar outbursts of splendid
eloquence were probably frequent in his mission-preaching. Their effect
must have been overwhelming, when reinforced by the flashing eye of the
speaker, and by the absolute sincerity which none could doubt who saw
his face and figure, furrowed by toil and scarred by torture.

In addressing the Gentiles, we may assume that he followed the customary
Jewish line of apologetic, denouncing the folly of idolatry--an aid to
worship which is quite innocent and natural in some peoples, but which
the Jews never understood; that he spoke much of judgment to come; and
especially that he contrasted the pure and affectionate social life of
the Christian brotherhood with the licentiousness, cruelty, injustice,
oppression, and mutual suspicion of Pagan society. This argument
probably struck home in very many 'Gentile' hearts. The old
civilisation, with all the brilliant qualities which make many moderns
regret its destruction, rested on too narrow a base. The woman and the
slave were left out, the woman especially by the Greeks, and the slave
by the Romans. Acute social inequalities always create pride, brutality,
and widespread sexual immorality. And when the structure which
maintained these inequalities is itself tottering, the oppressed classes
begin to feel that they are unnecessary, and to hope for emancipation.
When St. Paul drew his lurid pictures of Pagan society steeped in
unnatural abominations, without hope for the future, 'hateful and hating
one another,' and then pointed to the little flock of Christians--among
whom no one was allowed to be idle and no one to starve, and where
family life was pure and mutual confidence full, frank and seldom
abused--the woman and the slave, of whom Aristotle had spoken so
contemptuously, flocked into his congregations, and began to organise
themselves for that victory which Nietzsche thought so deplorable.

It is not necessary in this essay to traverse again the familiar field
of St. Paul's missionary journeys. The first epoch, which embraces about
fourteen years, had its scene in Syria and Cilicia, with the short tour
in Cyprus and other parts of Asia Minor. The second period, which ends
with the imprisonment in A.D. 58 or 59, is far more important. St. Paul
crosses into Europe; he works in Macedonia and Greece. Churches are
founded in two of the great towns of the ancient world, Corinth and
Ephesus. According to his letters, we must assume that he only once
returned to Jerusalem from the great tour in the West, undertaken after
the controversy with Peter; and that the object of this visit was to
deliver the money which he had promised to collect for the poor 'saints'
at Jerusalem. He intended after this to go to Rome, and thence to
Spain--a scheme worthy of the restless genius of an Alexander. He saw
Rome indeed, but as a prisoner. The rest of his life is lost in
obscurity. The writer of the Acts does not say that the two years'
imprisonment ended in his execution; and if it was so, it is difficult
to see why such a fact should be suppressed. If the charge against him
was at last dismissed, because the accusers did not think it worth while
to come to Rome to prosecute it, St. Luke's silence is more explicable.
In any case, we may regard it as almost certain that St. Paul ended his
life under a Roman axe during the reign of Nero.

'There is hardly any fact' (says Harnack) 'which deserves to be turned
over and pondered so much as this, that the religion of Jesus has never
been able to root itself in Jewish or even upon Semitic soil.' This
extraordinary result is the judgment of history upon the life and work
of St. Paul. Jewish Christianity rapidly withered and died. According to
Justin, who must have known the facts, Jesus was rejected by the whole
Jewish nation 'with a few exceptions.' In Galilee especially, few, if
any, Christian Churches existed. There are other examples, of which
Buddhism is the most notable, of a religion gaining its widest
acceptance outside the borders of the country which gave it birth. But
history oilers no parallel to the complete vindication of St. Paul's
policy in carrying Christianity over into the Graeco-Roman world, where
alone, as the event proved, it could live. This is a complete answer to
those who maintain that Christ made no break with Judaism. Such a
statement is only tenable if it is made in the sense of Harnack's words,
that 'what Gentile Christianity did was to carry out a process which had
in fact commenced long before in Judaism itself, viz. the process by
which the Jewish religion was inwardly emancipated and turned into a
religion for the world.' But the true account would be that Judaism,
like other great ideas, had to 'die to live,' It died in its old form,
in giving birth to the religion of civilised humanity, as the Greek
nation perished in giving birth to Hellenism, and the Roman in creating
the Mediterranean empire of the Caesars and the Catholic Church of the
Popes. The Jewish people were unable to make so great a sacrifice of
their national hopes. With the matchless tenacity which characterises
their race they clung to their tribal God and their temporal and local
millennium. The disasters of A.D. 70 and of the revolt under Hadrian
destroyed a great part of the race, and at last uprooted it from the
soil of Palestine. But conservatism, as usual, has had its partial
justification. Judaism has refused to acknowledge the religion of the
civilised world as her legitimate child; but the nation has refused also
to surrender its life. There are no more Greeks and Romans; but the Jews
we have always with us.

St. Paul saw that the Gospel was a far greater and more revolutionary
scheme than the Galilean apostles had dreamed of. In principle he
committed himself from the first to the complete emancipation of
Christianity from Judaism. But it was inevitable that he did not at
first realise all that he had undertaken. And, fortunately for us, the
most rapid evolution in his thought took place daring the ten years to
which his extant letters belong. It is exceedingly interesting to trace
his gradual progress away from Apocalyptic Messianism to a position very
near that of the fourth Gospel. The evangelist whom we call St. John is
the best commentator on Paulinism. This is one of the most important
discoveries of recent New Testament criticism.

In the earliest Epistles--those to the Thessalonians--we have the naive
picture of Messiah coming on the clouds, which, as we now know, was part
of the Pharisaic tradition. In the central group the Christology is far
more complex. Besides the Pharisaic Messiah, and the records of the
historical Jesus of Nazareth, we have now to reckon with the
Jewish-Alexandrian idea of the generic, archetypal man, which is
unintelligible without reference to the Platonic philosophy. Philo is
here a great help towards understanding one of the most difficult parts
of the Apostle's teaching. We have also, fully developed, the mystical
doctrine of the Spirit of Christ immanent in the soul of the believer, a
conception which was the core of St. Paul's personal religion, and more
than anything else emancipated him from apocalyptic dreams of the
future. We have also a fourth conception, quite distinct from the three
which have been mentioned--that of Christ as a cosmic principle, the
instrument in creation and the sustainer of all his in the universe. We
must again have recourse to Philo and his doctrine of the Logos, to
understand the genesis of this idea, and to the Fourth Gospel to find it
stated in clear philosophical form. In this second period, these
theories about the Person of Christ are held concurrently, without any
attempt to reconcile or systematise them. The eschatology is being
seriously modified by the conception of a 'spiritual body,' which is
prepared for us so soon as our 'outward man' decays in death. The
resurrection of the flesh is explicitly denied (1 Cor. xv. 50); but a
new and incorruptible 'clothing' will be given to the soul in the future
state. Already the fundamental Pharisaic doctrine of the two ages--the
present age and that which is to come--is in danger. St. Paul can now,
like a true Greek, contrast the things that are seen, which are
temporal, with the things that are not seen, which are eternal. The
doctrine of the Spirit as a present possession of Christians brings down
heaven to earth and exalts earth to heaven; the 'Parousia' is now only
the end of the existing world-order, and has but little significance for
the individual. These ideas have not displaced the earlier apocalyptic
language; but it is easy to see that the one or the other must recede
into the background, and that the Pharisaic tradition will be the one to
fade.

The third group of Epistles--Philippians, Colossians, and Ephesians--are
steeped in ideas which belong to Greek philosophy and the Greek
mystery-religions. It would be impossible to translate them into any
Eastern language. The Rabbinical disputes with the Jews about
justification and election have disappeared; the danger ahead is now
from theosophy and the barbarised Platonism which was afterwards matured
in Gnosticism. The teaching is even more Christocentric than before; and
the Catholic doctrine of the Church as the body of Christ is more
prominent than individualistic mysticism. The cosmology is thoroughly
Johannine, and only awaits the name of the Logos.

This receptiveness to new ideas is one of the most remarkable features
in St. Paul's mind. Few indeed are the religious prophets and preachers
whose convictions are still malleable after they have begun to govern
the minds of others. St. Paul had already proved that he was a man who
would 'follow the gleam,' even when it called him to a complete breach
with his past. And the further development of his thought was made much
easier by the fact that he was no systematic philosopher, but a great
missionary who was willing to be all things to all men, while his own
faith was unified by his strength of purpose, and by the steady glow of
the light within.

It is difficult for us to realise the life of his little communities
without importing into the picture features which belong to a later
time. The organisation, such as it was, was democratic. The congregation
as a whole exercised a censorship over the morals of its members, and
penalties were inflicted 'by vote of the majority' (2 Cor. ii. 6). The
family formed a group for religious purposes, and remained the
recognised unit till the second century. In Ignatius and Hermas we find
the campaign against family churches in full swing. The meetings were
like those of modern revivalists, and sometimes became disorderly. But
of the moral beauty which pervaded the whole life of the brotherhoods
there can be no doubt. Many of the converts had formerly led
disreputable lives; but these were the most likely to appreciate the
gain of being no longer outlaws, but members of a true family. The
heathen were amazed at the kind of people whom the Christians admitted
and treated like brethren; but in the first century scandals do not seem
to have been frequent. Women, who were probably always the majority,
enjoyed a consideration unknown by them before. The extreme importance
attached by the early Church to sexual purity made it possible for them
to mix freely with Christian men; indeed, the strange and perilous
practice of a 'brother' and a virgin sharing the same house seems to
have already begun, if this is the meaning of the obscure passage in I
Cor. vii. 36.

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We do not know the women's names, but their voices are quite distinct. All are pregnant. But while the first woman awaits the birth of her baby with a moon-like serenity, the other two are not so lucky. One, whose previous pregnancies have failed to go to term, is experiencing a heartbreaking late miscarriage; the other is a young student whose accidental pregnancy will end in her child being put up for adoption.

Sylvia Plath's only play was never intended for the stage, being broadcast instead on BBC radio in August 1962. Less than six months later, Plath killed herself, but not before the burst of astonishing creative energy that produced her extraordinary, terrifying Ariel poems.

Anyone who knows Plath's poetry will see the connection between Three Women and Plath's subsequent poems, particularly in the way she talks about the agony of childbirth, the rush of love for this tiny alien being, and both the wonder and wounded rawness of motherhood. It is a beautiful piece, full of startling imagery that draws you in through the sheer intensity of its femaleness, and because it so precisely articulates the emotions that are often thought but seldom voiced by women - certainly not in the early 1960s - about men, motherhood and our relationship to our bodies.

It's been 20 years since there has been an attempt at a professional stage version and - in a theatre world that happily accepts the poetic offerings of Sarah Kane and Debbie Tucker Green, or the staged possibilities of The Waves, one of Plath's own inspirations for the piece, I see no reason why it shouldn't be brought to life. Sadly, it doesn't breathe here, in a production by Robert Shaw that is clearly a labour of love, but which never finds a way to give the internal a physical reality. Plath's poetry, like most babies, is more robust than it appears - and won't break if treated with a little less reverence and considerably more grit.

Instead, what we are offered is tinkling piano music, mournful mood lighting, an innocuous pale setting, as well as three perfectly good but indisputably ladylike performances that capture none of the wounded redness of Plath's poetry, and do her the disservice of making her sound bleached and somewhat prissy. It's a pity. What might have been a wonder ends up a mere curiosity.

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