[52] The words quoted from Dr. Moffatt, page 315, at the beginning of Section IV may perhaps be considered by some readers as a chance expression, over-emphasized by the author through a slip, and not to be regarded as a fair specimen of the necessary and consciously deliberate tendency of his mind. Had that been so, I would not have quoted them. My intention has been to make only typical quotations, and to bring out what is the real character of Dr. Moffatt's position. He does fully mean all that he says. He sacrifices everything that is most striking and powerful in a whole period, and one of the greatest periods, of the world's literature; with the literature he sacrifices all the personalities, all the great men except [53] Paul; 1 and he gives us instead of them a succession of shadowy anonymous "editors," who worked up in successive layers by laborious processes a series of writings, which were to delude the world for seventeen or eighteen centuries into a belief that there existed a series of great men moving the world and changing history and stamping their personality on human memory, all of them a fantasy of prejudiced misinterpretation of an artificial literature. That is what Dr. Moffatt asks a rational man to accept. It 15 irrational and impertinent to set before us such a pretence of investigation into literature on its historical side.

The end of the second century exercises a strange fascination on Dr. Moffatt. He thinks, one might almost say, in terms of the late second century. He tries to look at and interpret the New Testament too much as the writers of that period looked at it. This leads him to a strange and unnatural point of view, which is true neither to the second nor to the first century, [54] and which is especially noticeable in his treatment of the Pastoral Epistles. It is on that account that he finds the author of these Epistles "indifferent to such cardinal truths of his [Paul's] gospel as the fatherhood of God, the believing man's union with Jesus Christ, the power and witness of the Spirit, the spiritual resurrection from the death of sin, the freedom from the law, and reconciliation".

I do not find any real proof of this supposed indifference. In the opening of all three Epistles, "God Father" has become a fixed epithet, almost stereotyped, and has lost the article. One might say that this fixedness was not attained by Paul; that it is the sign of a kind of orthodoxy later than him; but at least it does not betray indifference to the Fatherhood of God. Moreover, no one can seriously say that "God Father " is too stereotyped for Paul, because he uses it regularly in his earlier letters. One might go over Dr. Moffatt's list of omissions, and show how blind he is to the real implication of the Pastorals; but I must here content myself with referring him, for example, [55] to Titus III.4 ff., and the words of Dr. Denney (who does not think that Paul wrote these Epistles) : " St. Paul could, no doubt, have said all this, but probably he would have said it otherwise and not all at a time”.

The Pastoral Epistles give much more definite and sharp expression to certain doctrines, and thus were nearer to the late second century point of view; they were therefore eagerly seized upon in that period, and the earlier Epistles were interpreted in accordance with them by an age which was no longer able to understand Paul. The earlier Epistles were the first to be rescued from the traditional misinterpretation, because they are most glaringly dissonant from it; and now the process has to be repeated in inverse order, and the Pastorals have to be interpreted afresh in accordance with the earlier Epistles. It will then be found that Dr. Denney's words require to have a reference to time inserted, and ought to be read: "he would [at the period when he wrote Romans and Colossians, etc.] have said it otherwise".

FOOTNOTES:

1 Peter is not an exception: see the subsequent Section on First Peter.