LII. The Use of the Word “Mystery” in the Letters
There are no two words which are more peculiarly characteristic of the Greek spirit than “grace” (χάρις) and “mystery” (μυστήριον), (Our English word “grace” is a very inadequate rendering ofχάρις: it wants much of the connotation ofχάρις, adds an element that is not found in the Greek word. If we combine it with “graciousness” and “charm,” we get a little more of the force ofχάρις.) one in the sphere of art and philosophy, the other in the sphere of religion. The very essence of that delicate product which we call Hellenism lies in χάρις. The spirit of Hellenism breathes in the word. Without χάρις there is no Hellenism. With this Hellenic noun there is associated the adjective καλός, a word which cannot be rendered by any single English word, and which is difficult to express even in a long description: it means what in virtue of being beautiful is good and excellent and in virtue of its delicate excellence is lovely and honourable. The only spark of real religious fire and life that remained burning in Greece at this period was contained in the Mysteries. The rest of the old national cults in the Hellenic cities were at this time mere survivals of dead forms, retained mainly as brilliant patriotic ceremonial, on which much money was spent, and to which national art and individual ambition or ostentation imparted splendour. It was only at a much later time that those old cults were galvanised into life again through an alliance with the Imperial power and the popular philosophy in the great final struggle against the new Faith; but that does not belong to the Pauline age. The educated Hellenism of Paul’s time either despised any real and fervent religious belief as “superstition,” or received it under philosophic protection (This movement began before there was much formulated and regular philosophy; but a philosophic outlook on life is characteristic of Hellenism from the beginning.) and national recognition as the worship of “a god unknown” or “gods unknown”. A certain exceptional position was accorded to the “Mysteries,” and great philosophers or poets like Plato, and men of high personal character like Cicero, (Cicero speaks the opinion of Greek philosophers.) speak with profound respect of the Mysteries of Eleusis. In those rites they were ready to believe that philosophic views were dimly shadowed forth in ceremonies and obscure words.
Both words, χάρις and μυστήριον, are specially characteristic of Paul in the New Testament. It is quite impossible to suppose that he was ignorant of, or disregarded, the point of view from which his Greek readers would naturally contemplate them, as they read his letters. He spoke to Greeks in the language that they knew, and he would not write of “grace” merely as if it were a part of the Greek translation of the Old Testament, carrying only the meaning that it has there, but also would bear in mind its significance in the popular language of the Graeco-Asiatic world. A study of Paul’s use of χάρις and καλός from this point of view would be instructive, but would carry us too far at present. (Elsewhere I have had something to say about Paul’s use ofχάρις.) In an even greater degree this remark about significance to Greek readers must be applied to the word “Mystery”. A knowledge which had been previously the appanage of the few select, but was now declared through Jesus to all men, was an idea which is fundamental in the teaching of Paul. This knowledge is both the knowledge which God possesses, and the knowledge of God which man may come to possess. It is the Divine power of God and in God. (See Sections XXXVIII to XLII.) It is a knowledge which is in process of being revealed to each individual man, in so far as he wishes and desires to receive it, yet it is a knowledge which is revealed once for all to the world in Jesus. It is the Promise of God, and it is the Salvation of all mankind. “Brethren, both Jew and Greek, to us is the news of this Salvation sent,” says Paul to the first Galatian audience at Antioch in Acts 13:26; and, as he goes on to say, “Be it known to you, brethren, that through this man . . . every one that believeth is justified”. A similar statement was equally true in another way in Greece: the knowledge of a God unknown was now set forth publicly. The mystic promise, “thou shalt be God, instead of mortal,” which had been restricted by esoteric ritual, was now being declared to all: “He is not far from each one of us”. (Acts 17:27.) If Paul, as we have seen in Section XXXVIII, was acquainted even with the popular term used to designate the advanced stage of knowledge and ritual in the Mysteries, he must have known what a wealth of meaning the word “Mystery” carried to the Greek world; and he could not use the word without some thought of this meaning. Since he could quote from the poets such words regarding the deity Zeus, as “in Him we live and move and are,” and “we are His offspring,” with a view to making intelligible to a pagan audience his teaching about the nature of the true and living God, so it must be in his use of the word “Mystery”. He had regard to the significance which the word carried for his audience and his readers.
We must therefore cordially agree with Professor H. A. A. Kennedy’s words in the Expositor, October, 1912, p. 312, while Paul’s “use of the term ‘knowledge’ is affected by the . . . Old Testament . . . it seems equally certain that . . . he presupposed his hearers’ acquaintance with these through the medium of the Mystery-religions, and to some extent at least identified himself with the current usage” (He adds in a footnote a reference to the “admirable excursus” on1 Corinthians 12:10, by J. Weiss (in the ninth edition of Meyer) and Leitzmann’s Note on1 Corinthians 8:3.) Knowledge and revelation are closely related to one another, as we have shown above, (See Sections XLIV and XXXII.) and as Professor Kennedy there expressly recognises. Every step in the growth of knowledge is a revelation of the will of God and the order of nature. That there is a certain analogy in all this to the “paradosis of the mysteria” (See Section XLVII.) is as certain as the infinite inferiority of the latter idea to the teaching of Paul. Now, just as he writes to the Colossians rebuking them for the way in which they were allowing the material and unspiritual ideas of ritual which they got from the pagan Mysteries to colour and degrade their ideas of the “knowledge of God,” so we must interpret certain other places in which he writes to the Asian Christians. In no letter does he speak so clearly and strongly about the glorious lot of the Christian and the close relation in which the whole body of Christians stand to God and Christ, as in Ephesians. He wishes to show the Asians whom he was addressing that the Promise, which he is interpreting to them as his Gospel, is immeasurably superior to the promises made in the pagan Mysteries. The rewards promised to the initiated in the Mysteries, both in knowledge and in happiness, were great; but the Saints have far greater things to expect. It is not merely happiness that is promised them — after all for the mystai a too material conception of happiness. The Saints are actually the inheritance of the Lord Jesus Christ, they are the consummation of the purpose and will of God which He has had in mind in the creation of the universe, they are the crown of His plans, they are necessary to Him. (Ephesians 1:9;Ephesians 1:18: see Section XXXVII.) There is in this nothing that is not in perfect accordance with his earlier letters: “ye are a letter of Christ, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God . . . we all not as Moses, who put a veil upon his face . . . but we all with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror (Yet still only “as in a mirror in obscure fashion,”1 Corinthians 13:12.) the glory of the Lord are transformed into the same image through stage after stage of glory”. (2 Corinthians 3:3-18, where the reference to1 Corinthians 13:12is unmistakable.) The same truth is all there; but the expression is different and less emphatic; the Corinthians see after all “as in a mirror darkly,” although they gaze unveiled, yet they only behold a reflection troubled and dimmed (Dim as in the poor bronze mirrors used by the ancients.) of the glory of God: the direct vision is reserved for the future revelation. In Ephesians the Saints are encouraged with the confident anticipation of the future direct and complete revelation.
We can hardly doubt that it was through Paul that the word “mystery” came into the Christian vocabulary, and was used rarely in the three Synoptic Gospels (Mark 4:11is a good example. The word is used to translate in Greek a saying of Jesus expressed in Aramaic originally.) and rather more frequently in the Revelation. The influence of the earliest Christian writers on one another is a subject that we can only obscurely guess at: we see it “as in a glass darkly”. In Section XXXVI an example of the influence of older Christian language on Paul is pointed out. The language of Christian philosophical and religious thought was being elaborated step by step in the first century, largely by Paul, but not exclusively by him. The word “mystery” is specially characteristic of Ephesians and Colossians, but is found sporadically through Romans, First Corinthians, and First Timothy. In Thessalonians it is once used of the evil thing, “the mystery of iniquity”: the Christian religious use seems not to begin until later than the first year of Paul’s residence in Corinth. We have here a development from evil towards good: the word “mystery” begins to be used in reprobation, and is adapted to the highest good. In the verb “boast” (καυχάομαι), we have a development in the opposite direction: the Christian ethics, as Harnack points out, revolted from the use of that term in a favourable sense, and substituted another word for it. (See Section XLIX.)
If we are right in inferring from the contrasted use of the word “mystery” in 2 Thessalonians 2:7 and 1 Corinthians 2:1, that Paul began by using this pagan religious term as an expression of disapproval, and afterwards developed the better side of its connotation, and that this development took place after the earlier months of his stay in Corinth, we should have a confirmation of the view which we have taken (See Section XLVI.) that in that city Paul by no means repented of, or determined to abandon for ever, the tone which he had employed at Athens. On the contrary, we find that he continued the same tone where it was suitable. A pagan religious thought seemed to him quite proper for Christian use, where it offered the best means of making a Christian idea plain to the pagan mind. In Corinth, it is true, he had no intention of knowing anything except Jesus the Messiah and His death on the cross; (1 Corinthians 2:2.) but this message required to be made intelligible to the pagans: they had to be educated morally and intellectually to the level of understanding this conception, and the best way of doing this was to take the germ of higher thought that lay in their word “mystery,” and employ this as an instrument for his purpose. Hence, even in Corinth or immediately after his residence there, he was using the same method as at Athens: he was taking a thoroughly and characteristically pagan term, and developing it to a higher standard of thought.
Again, from the beginning of his Christian career he was using the characteristically pagan term “Salvation” for his purpose: this new sense, of course, he found already in Christian use, and merely continued. The truth is that either a new language had to be created to express the new truth, or the existing language had to be turned to the new purposes, and the customary pagan terms for religious ideas must be filled with a new content, wherever they were capable of receiving it. One word, at least, “love,” ἀγάπη), was substituted for the common pagan term ἕρως. The latter was condemned as unsuitable: it had been too much corrupted by “evil communications”. The new term was very rarely, if ever, used by the pagans, though some isolated example of it may yet be found, as it is etymologically a true word. The growth of a Christian vocabulary in the first century is an interesting and important subject; but one that has to be treated with great judgment and care. Deissmann, Moulton and Milligan have substituted a new method for the old in the treatment of New Testament words; but more of the creative fire and a deeper sympathy with the spirit of that age is needed than is applied in the latest work of the distinguished Berlin Professor. (See Preface, and also p. 4.) We must, on the one hand, not judge under false prepossessions about the use of words in the New Testament, — and Deissmann has played a prominent part in doing away with antiquated prepossessions: on the other hand, we must look more deeply through the word to the thought that it conveys, and we must remember always that a word exists only in relation to the idea that lies behind it. He who fills up the content of a word, and enriches its connotation, is as much a creative artist in language as he who introduces a new word. Paul was in both senses a great innovator and a master of language.
