The History Of The Christian Church Volume 1, Philip Shaff 1819-1893

CHAPTER XII THE NEW TESTAMENT 347 likes logical particles, paradoxical phrases, and plays on seem to have proceeded from the fleeting moments of words. He reasons from Scripture, from premises, from this earthly life only to enchain all eternity they were conclusions; he drives the opponent to the wall without born of anxiety and bitterness of human strife, to set mercy and reduces him ad absurdum, but without ever forth in brighter lustre and with higher certainty their indulging in personalities. He is familiar with the sharp superhuman grace and beauty. The divine assurance and weapons of ridicule, irony, and sarcasm, but holds them firmness of the old prophets of Israel, the all-transcendin check and uses them rarely. He varies the argument by ing glory and immediate spiritual presence of the Eternal touching appeals to the heart and bursts of seraphic elo- King and Lord, who had just ascended to heaven, and quence. He is never dry or dull, and never wastes words; all the art and culture of a ripe and wonderfully excited he is brief, terse, and hits the nail on the head. His terse- age, seem to have joined, as it were, in bringing forth the ness makes him at times obscure, as is the case with the new creation of these Epistles of the times which were somewhat similar style of Thucydides, Tacitus, and Ter- destined to last for all times.” tullian. His words are as many warriors marching on to On the style of Paul, see my Companion, etc., pp. 62 victory and peace; they are like a mountain torrent rush- sqq. To the testimonies there given I add the judgment ing in foaming rapids over precipices, and then calm- of Reuss (Geschichte der h. Schr. N. T., I. 67): “Still more ly flowing over green meadows, or like a thunderstorm [than the method] is the style of these Epistles the true ending in a refreshing shower and bright sunshine. expression of the personality of the author. The defect of Paul created the vocabulary of scientific theology classical correctness and rhetorical finish is more than and put a profounder meaning into religious and mor- compensated by the riches of language and the fulness of al terms than they ever had before. We cannot speak of expression. The condensation of construction demands sin, flesh, grace, mercy, peace, redemption, atonement, not reading simply, but studying. Broken sentences, eljustification, glorification, church, faith, love, without lipses, parentheses, leaps in the argumentation, allegobearing testimony to the ineffaceable effect which that ries, rhetorical figures express inimitably all the moods greatest of Jewish rabbis and Christian teachers has had of a wide-awake and cultured mind, all the affections of upon the language of Christendom. a rich and deep heart, and betray everywhere a pen at Notes. once bold, and yet too slow for the thought. Antitheses, Chrysostom justly compares the Epistles of Paul to climaxes, exclamations, questions keep up the attention, metals more precious than gold and to unfailing foun- and touching effusions win the heart of the reader.” tains which flow the more abundantly the more we drink § 89. The Epistles to the Thessalonians. of them.

Thessalonica,1093 a large and wealthy commercial city Beza: “When I more closely consider the whole ge- of Macedonia, the capital of “Macedonia secunda,” the nius and character of Paul’s style, I must confess that I seat of a Roman proconsul and quaestor, and inhabited have found no such sublimity of speaking in Plato him- by many Jews, was visited by Paul on his second missionself ... no exquisiteness of vehemence in Demosthenes ary tour, a.d. 52 or 53, and in a few weeks he succeedequal to his.” ed, amid much persecution, in founding a flourishing Ewald begins his Commentary on the Pauline Epis- church composed chiefly of Gentiles. From this centre tles (Göttingen, 1857) with these striking and truthful Christianity spread throughout the neighborhood, and remarks: “Considering these Epistles for themselves during the middle ages Thessalonica was, till its capture only, and apart from the general significance of the great by the Turks (a.d. 1430), a bulwark of the Byzantine emApostle of the Gentiles, we must still admit that, in the pire and Oriental Christendom, and largely instrumenwhole history of all centuries and of all nations, there is tal in the conversion of the Slavonians and Bulgarians; no other set of writings of similar extent, which, as cre- hence it received the designation of “the Orthodox City.” ations of the fugitive moment, have proceeded from such It numbered many learned archbishops, and still has severe troubles of the age, and such profound pains and more remains of ecclesiastical antiquity than any othsufferings of the author himself, and yet contain such an er city in Greece, although its cathedral is turned into a amount of healthfulness, serenity, and vigor of immortal mosque. genius, and touch with such clearness and certainty on To this church Paul, as its spiritual father, full of afthe very highest truths of human aspiration and action 1093 Strabo calls it εσσαλονίκαια. Its present name is .... The smallest as well as the greatest of these Epistles Salonichi.