D.S.S Reviews A.M.Hunter's The 5th Evangelist (Paul)

D.S.S. “THE FIFTH EVANGELIST” AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 1981 (Just before he left Barry for The Butts, Haddington, aged 85)


From D.S.S. Letter 23 August 1981:
“I’ve to give a paper on a book by A.M. Hunter ‘The Fifth Evangelist’ in a month and am getting all sorts of ideas brewing in my brain....”

Before I discuss A.M. Hunter’s most interesting book I feel I must explain my own attitude to St. Paul. Like Dicken’s Mr. Dick I have MY KING CHARLES’S HEAD in as much as it has become an obsession with me that the RICH YOUNG RULER of the Gospels is one and the same with THE APOSTLE PAUL of the Acts and the Epistles: furthermore I am becoming more and more strongly of the opinion that contrary to the theory that the Epistles came into Canon because they had become so precious to those to whom they were first addressed that these treasures were subsequently gathered in a kind of Golden Treasury by the Church as a whole, they were really collected in a more simple way.

That is:- every important letter Paul issued he dictated and he did not dictate to only one secretary: not having carbon paper he found he could keep a copy of each letter by duplicating his secretaries. The letters were sent out: the copies were kept for reference and then when a man with a historiographical bent, say a St. Mark or a St. Luke came across them they were incorporated, along with the account he had already drawn up of the life of Jesus and the development of the early church, into a nucleus of what we now call, for short, the New Testament.

Something similar may have been happening meantime to St. John’s Gospel and the Johannine writings including Revelation. And Mark himself may have had a hand in seeing that the writings of Jude and Peter and James and that wonderful Catholic letter we call Hebrews also found a place. I rather think that the first half of Acts is from an account written by Mark: but I just wonder if the account written by Mark ended with the first half of Acts.

In the second and third centuries there was in Egypt a remarkable upsurge of Christian Theology and it was from North Africa that Augustine came : where did it originate? We know nothing of Barnabas’s Evangelistic campaigns after Paul and he separated. But surely we are entitled to guess, and to remember in our guessing, that Alexandria was already such an important place religiously that the Septuagint was made there.

Indeed I’d like to carry my argument one stage further by directing your attention to the books and parchments which Paul wanted Tychacus and Mark to bring with them as they were passing the Dardanelles. In this matter I haven’t found Peake very helpful so I have been thrown back on my Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica under heads ‘Parchments and Manuscripts’. And here I find a distinction between Parchment and Papyrus. In the second century B.C. parchment began to be used in PERGAMUM (one of John’s seven cities) from which indeed it takes its name. And to begin with, it was made, as was Papyrus, into volumes or rolls. But in time men discovered that, stronger than papyrus, parchment i.e. skins specially prepared, could be used ON BOTH SIDES; that, strangely cheaper, it could be STITCHED into CODICES or BOOKS (as we know them), and among the first thus to employ them were the Early Christians.

The practice had become established by the third century. But it must have had its small beginnings and surely it is significant that what I’ve called the NUCLEUS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT HAD ITS SMALL BEGINNINGS in the Aegean, in the vicinity of Pergamum. In this may Paul himself be one of the pioneers? (When I broached this idea to the minister at Barry he said at once, “After all he was a tent maker and well knew how to use a needle!”)

Another point I’d like to make is that I think the salutations and greetings and honourable mentions in the letters are equally significant with the other contents. Forinstance I find amongst them a Secondus a Tertius and a Quartus and am tempted to ask myself which of the others with a Latin name could have been the eldest of a family of four brothers especially as the third of them acted as secretary to St. Paul when writing to the Romans. (Later in margin: N.B. Secundus and Aristarchus came from Thessolonica. Could Aristarchus be the eldest of the four?) Again is ‘brother’ ALWAYS to be taken in its conventional Christian sense? Tertius’s ‘brother’ Quartus sends greetings. And when we are on that subject I wonder what deep feelings were in Paul’s heart when in dictating Romans 16:7 he speaks of “Andronicus and Junia my kinsmen ... who also were in Christ before me.”?

This may indicate the standpoint from which I’ve been reading A. M. Hunter and that though I have made these few provisos I was prepared to read with very great interest.

So, you see, I was ready to apply myself to A.M. Hunter’s argument with a good deal of sympathy. He’s a great fan of P.T. Forsyth a theologian, of whom, to my loss, I am lamentably ignorant. What I did know about him first of all brought me up short. I attended a University which in my time produced two Ferguson Scholars for whom we all had much respect and admiration as well as affection. And it was only years later when I read the register of Ferguson Scholars that in both cases the space which should have been given the father’s name (and wouldn’t he have been a proud father?) was vacant.

In St. Andrews the students judged a man by his manhood and not his pedigree. So you can understand what I felt when sometime later, when in Edinburgh, some people were discussing a Lord Provost of Edinburgh and someone said, “They say his father was a Postie and his mother a domestic servant” a gasp went round the room. That’s exactly what P.T. Forsyth was too, the classic example of the son of a God-fearing home so typical of so many Scotsmen who have influenced the world for good; examples of my old Bishop’s illustration in one of his wonderful Sermons “The streams that rise in the lonely places turn the mill wheels of the world.”

Of this great Aberdeen scholar, a minister of the Congregational Church, A. M. Hunter is an admiring follower. And P.T. Forsyth in 1905, 13 years before Barth produced his ROMANS, hailed St. Paul as the FIFTH EVANGELIST, the title which A. M. Hunter gives to this present book. In his youth Hunter, advised by Bultman to try some research on the dependance of Paul on his predecessors and soon discovering (1) “That Paul was no Columbus voyaging strange seas alone in the 1st century. He was but one, though the greatest, of many who in three decades carried the Good news from Jerusalem to Rome”; and (2) that the Gospel which he preached was ..... the same as that preached by the other apostles .... the common tradition which he himself had RECEIVED from those who were Christians before him. And further:- To these men he was indebted for:
(1) The Kerygma (I Corinthians 15: 3)
[For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve. After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles.
And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.]
(2) The Confession of Jesus as Saviour and Lord Romans 10: 9
That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
(3) The Holy Spirit as the Divine Dynamic of the New Life: Described in Romans 8 i.e. v 14 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.
(4) The conception of the Church as the People of God
(5) The TRIAD: faith, love, hope :: Corinthians 13:4 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
(6)Various “Words of the Lord” e.g.:
I Corinthians 7:10 And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband:
I Corinthians 9:14 Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel
(7) THe two Sacraments: Jesus Christ gave the command to baptize in Matthew 28:19: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”
In Luke 22:19-20, Christ institutes the Lord's Supper: “And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me’. In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you’.”
(8) Some early Christian Hymns e.g.
Philippians 2:6-11 “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
(9) The hope of Christ’s coming in Glory
I Corinthians 16:22 “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha”.

(10) Not a little about “The Jesus of History”.
(a) of David’s line: Romans 13
(b) had brothers one called James: 1 Corinthians 9:5 , Galatians 1:1
(c) on earth was poor man: 2 Corinthians 8:9
(d) gentle and magnanimous 2 Corinthians 10:1 cf Matthew 11:29
(e) patient under trial 2 Thessalonians 3:5
(f) obedient to the Father’s will Romans 5:9, Philippians 2:8
(g) with a mission among the Jews Romans 15:8
(h) had 12 disciples or apostles I Corinthians 15:5 two called Peter and John Galatians 2:9
(i) “On that night” instituted the last supper I Corinthians 11:22 ff
(j) crucified and buried , on third day God raised him from the dead designating HIm His son with power Romans 1:4 to appear alive to all the Apostles and many others (witnesses) Corinthians 15:5

To this summary Hunter adds, “The ‘liberals’ had made two mistakes
(1) They tried to tell the story of Jesus without a Christology
(2) They compared two quite incomparable persons, Jesus in His own historical situation and Paul in his: rightly understood the theology of Paul (and his Christian predecessors) is FAITH’S ANSWER TO THE SAVING WORK OF GOD IN CHRIST “the Gospel ABOUT Christ has replaced the GOOD NEWS OF GOD’S INBREAKING RULE WHICH JESUS HAD PROCLAIMED AND HIMSELF EMBODIED because of His Resurrection and the Pentecostal event Jesus has become all that the Kingdom contained.”

“The Gospel of the KIngdom” as Forsythe put it “was Christ in essence. The risen Christ was the Kingdom come with power” (cf Mark 9:1 Romans 14). If we allow for the difference made by the first Easter and Pentecost, the Gospel preached by Paul and his predecessors was not the distortion of the Gospel Jesus proclaimed but its fulfillment.

“When men ask why did not Jesus explain Himself and his saving power more fully, the answer is THAT HE DID - AFTER HIS EARTHLY WORK was done: but where? In the Apostolic writings of men like Paul Peter and John and by His Holy Spirit... “If Paul was a Christian prophet interpreting Salvation in Christ to a hard pagan world of the first century A.D., Forsyth was a like prophet for the twentieth century in their attitude to sin and its consequences : cf Romans 1. Yet Forsyth too could say, “If God cares enough to be angry. He cares enough to REDEEM.” (To this Paul would have said AMEN)

Forsyth said “Half Gospels have no dignity and no future like the famous mule they have neither pride of ancestry nor hope of posterity.”

In the introduction to the discussion of Paul’s separate letters and the role in which he appeared in each Hunter says they are full of subconscious echoes of the Greek O.T. as Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress is replete with echoes of the King James Bible. (This remark brings ME to the sudden realization that we just take for granted that the Old Testament (including also, according to some, the Apocrypha) is “SCRIPTURE”; what theological development in the Early Church brought this about?).

Hunter claims that while Paul disclaimed the devices of a rhetorician his letters contain much more art than appears at first sight. And he says that “but for Galatians, at any rate the Pauline vision that provoked it, Christianity might have dwindled into a heretical sect of Judaism” (but I’d suggest that this presumes that Paul was the only missionary with this vision. We know absolutely nothing of the men and women who like Queen Candace’s servant [The eunuch Acts 8:27] took the Gospel first to Egypt and North Africa where later we find Christian theology flourishing.)

In discussing (in Chapters 3-8) some of of the letters HUNTER deals with one letter in each chapter:
Chapter 3 Galatians Paul as Liberator
Chapter 4 I Corinthians Paul as Pastor
Chapter 5 Romans Paul as Theologian
Chapter 6 Ephesians Paul as Churchman
Chapter 7 Philemon Paul as Friend
Chapter 8 Philippians Paul as Saint

Perhaps we who have dwelt North of Antonine’s wall should have a greater interest in Galatian’s 3: The Liberator: for the Galatians are an Eastern migration of Balkan peoples who sent another migration westwards by coracle - the Gaels or Gauls. After Paul and Barnabas had converted them there came among them Judaizers who tried to enforce the Mosaic Law among them. Hunter suggests that Paul called them gormless Galatians for yielding to this and insisted that GRACE is supreme and it is the gift of the spirit under the Spirit’s control. You should not give way to lower impulses. As a man sows so shall he reap. Be not weary, then in welldoing.

We have already dealt with Galatians Chapter 3. Chapter 4 treats I Cor. And Hunter says, of Paul as Pastor, to gather a Christian flock in such a cosmopolitan seaport must have been like trying to set up a City of God in Vanity Fair. To effect this, and confirm and establish it, First Corinthians can be divided into five sections:
Chapter 1-6 Unity and order in the Church
Chapters 7-11 The Christian in a Pagan Society
Chapters 12-14 Spiritual Gifts
Chapter 15 Life after death
Chapter 16 Christian Giving

Estimating St. Paul’s role as PASTOR Hunter sums up by saying “Paul could be seen as stern as when denouncing faction in the Church or flagrant immorality: but so ought every true pastor be today. Yet through all his admonitions there always shines a deep love for all his “parishioners” so that one feels indeed how truly “he is a father as well as a founder of the Church at Corinth”.... “to problems of Christian behavior” bringing “a sanctified common sense” ... and being himself “a very businesslike man of God.”

In Chapter 5 “Paul the Theologian”, Hunter calls Romans “the answer to the question ‘What is Christianity?’ and that answer is “by the greatest thinker in the Early Church: and what Paul has to say is very much of concern today.”

In his discussion of the letter Hunter omits Romans 16 (I think ill-advisedly believing with Tony Lampkin that the P.S. is the cream of the correspondence) and dwells very briefly on Chapters 9-11 (The Jewish Question) in order to focus on Chapters 1-8 & 12-15 which contain the heart of THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. PAUL (and here may I record my gratitude to the late Dr C. M. Grant and Charles Soutar, Minister and S.S. Superintendent of St. Mark’s, Dundee, for making me learn by heart while hardly in my teens the 8th CHAPTER OF ROMANS AND ALSO OF PROVERBS)

[That’s 39 verses from:
There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.
to:
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation? or distress? or persecution? or famine? or nakedness? or peril? or sword? etc.........]

Believing that the GOSPEL = THE POWER OF GOD TO SAVE SINNERS so Paul deals with:-
1. The sin of man 1:17 - 3:20
2. BUT the Grace of God 3:21 - 8:39
3. THEREFORE THE CHRISTIAN ETHIC 12:1 - 15:3

In the Gospel Paul begins “The Righteousness of God is being revealed.” This is one of his key phrases well rendered in NEB as “God’s way of righting wrong” since it describes not so much a divine attribute as a DIVINE ACTIVITY - God’s putting things right for his people.

Before God man is morally bankrupt. To be sure, all men have some knowledge of God since He has made a general revelation of Himself in His creation. But the Gentiles rejecting this knowledge have turned idolaters. When men do this God gives them up to the dire consequences of their sin. Hence the unnatural vice and depravity of the Gentile world we see around us. But the Jews are no better case tho’ they pride themselves on having a special revelation of God in the Law, their actual behavior - their disobedience to its commandments - shews them no less guilty than the Gentiles. Thus in the sight of God all men Jews and Gentiles alike are sinners as the scriptures declare (1:1 - 3:20)

(At this stage I must enter a comment of my own. Quite as much as the writer of Hebrews (and others) Paul was a SEEKER EVEN BEFORE HIS CONVERSION. In his harrying of the Church (of which some of his own kinsfolk were already members) PAUL REALLY THOUGHT HE WAS DOING GOD SERVICE. For a proper understanding of his whole religious development (whether we identify him with the RICH YOUNG RULER or not) this is something which we must take into the very fabric of our study.)

At Romans 3:21 Paul turns to a DIVINE REMEDY. Now (he says) after (in his forbearance) overlooking men’s sins in the past, God has begun to put things right for them. On HIS side, it is a matter of gracious giving, on MAN’S of humble receiving..... what man cannot do (by the Law) GOD has now done for man in Christ. In the atoning Cross God has provided a way for sinful man to be justified (3) (Justification by FAITH is already recognized by Abraham). As from Adam came sin and death for his descendants so from Christ (the 2nd Adam) have come forgiveness and new life for all who trust in Him (4+5)

This new life means deliverance from sin’s dominion, symbolized in BAPTISM when we die in Christ to the old existence and rise into newness of life. NO LESS it means release from the DEATH GRIP which the law gets on us through sins power and our lower nature (6). Once, Paul confesses, “I knew that experience too well.” (7). BUT NOW THERE IS NO CONDEMNATION. What the law could not do, God has done in Christ and we live not in the flesh but in the Spirit crying ABBA (father). GOD IS ON OUR SIDE and CHRIST INTERCEDES. God who gave HIS ONLY SON GIVES EVERYTHING.... NOTHING CAN DIVIDE US FROM HIS INVINCIBLE LOVE (8)

FOR THE MORAL IMPERATIVE (The Gospel has a behaving as well as a believing side) we turn to Romans 12:1 -15:13. Responsive to grace we live FOR GOD AND IN A NEW WAY: AS ‘MEMBERS’ CALLED TO EMPLOY OUR GRACE-GIFTS FOR THE COMMON GOOD OF GOD’S PEOPLE:
Preaching, teaching, governing, helping, in love, in the glow of the spirit, in hope - obeying civil authority as ordained by God, law abiding, taxpaying. CHRISTIAN LOVE is the highest kind of conduct because it FULFILLS THE LAW.

THEN PAUL SOUNDS A REVEILLE -- GOD’S NEW DAY IS BREAKING SO OFF WITH THE DEEDS OF DARKNESS. Make allowance for the scruples of weaker brothers ---- no man censorious or judging (much of this reminiscent of the Sermon on the Mount). Christ did not please himself: no more should we AND MAY THE GOD OF HOPE FILL YOU WITH ALL PEACE IN BELIEVING (12:1 -15:3)

Hunter compares then and now:
Rome might bestride the world in conquest from Euphrates to Thames but to cleanse and regenerate was less then powerless. With all our MASTERY OVER SPACE FOR ALL HIS MODERN INVENTIONS MAN IS A TRAGIC FIGURE.
IS THE CASE HOPELESS? We should answer with Paul GOD FORBID.

Hunter in his 6th chapter deals with EFFUSIONS and this involves ECCLESIA.
The Church is far more than a building or denomination or clerical dress. It is the EKKLESIA i.e. the NEW AND TRUE PEOPLE OF GOD set up by Christ’s Cross and the Resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit with a mission that is meant to embrace the WORLD. (Hunter thinks it is one of the letters from ROME.) (In the best manuscript the word EPHESUS is missing .... scholars think it is a round-robin to all the chief Churches in proconsular ASIA sent by the hands of Tychicus to Paul’s ‘diocese’)

EPHESIANS Chapter 1:3-16 Hunter, calls “Christian doctrine set to music - a great overture to all that is to follow (cf. Prologue to John’s Gospel)... all revolving round one central point -- GOD’S SOVEREIGN WILL working itself out in Christ to a Glorious consummation.” (Ephesians was Calvin’s favorite Epistle.) It’s theme is “God’s plan for the fulness of time to unite all things in Christ, things in Heaven and things on Earth.” (Ephesians 1:10 RSV) embracing not humanity alone but the whole creation.

The first 3 chapters of Ephesians provide the the doctrine; the next 3 chapters the ethics flowing from it (In the N.T. Truth is always TRUTH-IN-ORDER-TO-GOODNESS.

The themes of the first 3 chapters of Ephesians are:-
(1) Behind the created universe and shaping the course of history is ONE GOD AND FATHER OF ALL from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. In his Beloved (Christ) He has graciously destined us to be His sons as for all creatures He intends as community BUT THERE IS A RIFT AT THE HEART OF THINGS -- AN INFECTION OF EVIL. Demonic forces (Ephesians 2:2, 3:16, 6:12) under a master-strategist bedevil the course of history and turn men into rebels. This fatal rift only God can repair and it is His purpose in Christ to subdue all hostile powers and create a final unity in heaven and earth.

(2) God’s plan centred in Christ.
The Gospel is the Good News of God’s UNVEILED SECRET (“Mystery”) embodied in Christ who is the integrating Centre - The Principle of Unity - in God’s Universe. When the time was ripe (Ephesians 1:10) God put his plan into effect sending his Beloved Son to atone for men’s sins, raising HIm from the dead and enthroning Him in heaven where He now reigns over principalities and powers (Ephesians 1:20ff). In In all this God’s purpose was not less than the reconciling to Himself, and to one another, of all God’s rebellious creatures.

(3) It is through the Church THE BODY OF THE RISEN AND REIGNING CHRIST THAT GOD’S PLAN IS BEING REALIZED. By His Cross Christ has broken down the DIVIDING WALL between Jew and Gentile (Ephesians 2:14) .... paving the way for a NEW HUMANITY. RISEN AND EXALTED He is now INCARNATE in the Church to carry out his work .... whereby all men (including Gentiles once without hope in the world) are now fellow citizens with God’s people and MEMBERS OF HIS HOUSEHOLD (Ephesians 2:14) But this is only a prelude to the one GREAT HUMANITY enjoying access through Christ in one spirit to the Father (Ephesians 2:18). So in Chapter 1-3 0f Ephesians Paul expounds GOD’S PLAN IN CHRIST ending in a noble prayer (Ephesians 3:14 -18):

“For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.”

and DOXOLOGY:
“Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations for ever and ever. Amen.”

Paul goes on now to the BEHAVIOR REQUIRED OF CHRISTIANS WHO WOULD LIVE UP TO THEIR HIGH CALLING (Ephesians 4:1)
(1) Promote CHURCH’S UNITY AND GROWTH by means of the various GRACE-GIFTS Christ gives for THE UPBUILDING OF HIS BODY (Ephesians 4: 1-16).
Seven constituents of Christian Unity:
1 Body, 1 Spirit, 1 Hope, 1 Lord, 1 Faith, 1 Baptism, 1 God and Father of all (and despite our present disunity Paul holds out a vision of the COMING GREAT CHURCH - for which we (even divided) are to WORK and PRAY.)

(2) We are to give up living like pagans (Ephesians 4:17-20). In the first century this was not easily done but then and now we are called AS GOD’S DEAR CHILDREN to be LIKE HIM (Ephesians 5:1) and to walk as CHILDREN OF LIGHT (Ephesians 5:8)

(3) We are to BUILD CHRISTIAN HOMES (Ephesians 5:21-6:9) in which husbands and wives , parents and children, masters and servants are a miniature of that great family the CHURCH which Christ died to create and sanctify. (THIS IS SOMETHING SPECIALLY APPLICABLE NOW.)

(4) PUT ON THE WHOLE ARMOUR WHICH GOD WILL PROVIDE.
KEEP ON PRAYING - why this? “Because” Paul answers in effect “The Church has a real fight on its hands ..... up against superhuman forces .... from the very HEADQUARTERS OF EVIL (Ephesians 6:12) (Things which perhaps last generation was to clever to credit but which the experience of ours makes evident.)

In Chapter 7 (of The 5th Evangelist) Paul shows himself as FRIEND. (In this connection Hunter translates Ephesians 4:15 “Speaking the truth in love” - which reminds me: when a man who had served with me in the 32 Division came back from Central Africa, where his gifts of translation had proved of value, to visit me in Iona we were discussing this very passage and he agreed with those who would insert a comma and translate:
“holding fast the truth (comma) in love might grow up in all things into Him who is the head even Christ.” and he further told me as a TRANSLATOR that he would remove the commas entirely from Ephesians 4:12
And he gave some apostles prophets evangelists pastors and teachers FOR the perfecting of the saints FOR the work of the ministry FOR the edifying of the body of Christ:

To me PHILEMON speaks of the results of growing up in love into Him who is the Head IN ALL THINGS. Something which though adopting a different translation Hunter enforces and although he accepts the old view that Philemon was written in Rome Hunter can wax almost lyrical about the relationship into which Paul entered with Onesimus through the love of Christ. Hunter regards as significant that about 110 A.D. when Ignatius Bishop of Antioch was writing to Christians in Ephesus he refers 3 times to THEIR Bishop, one ONESIMUS, whom he calls a man of inexpressible love.

As a student and follower of the late E. S. Duncan I cannot accept Hunter’s view that the letter to Philemon was written in Rome. Paul is in prison, hopes soon to be released, and when set at large sees an almost immediate prospect of coming to Colosse where he wants lodging. Meantime he sends affectionate greetings from FRIENDS: JOHN MARK, LUKE “The Beloved Physician, Epaphras, my fellow prisoner (very likely from Colosse), Aristarchus , a Macedonian, Demas all called as were Mark and Luke, MY FELLOW LABOURERS.

In chapter 8 (of the 5th Evangelist) PAUL AS SAINT, Hunter quotes Von Hugel’s definition of a SAINT as one shewing:
LOYALTY TO THE FAITH:
HEROISM IN TIME Of TESTING:
THE POWER TO DO WHAT ORDINARILY WOULD SEEM IMPOSSIBLE:
RADIANCE AMID THE STRESS AND STRAIN OF LIFE
and goes on to say that it is PHILIPPIANS that “Paul most clearly qualifies on the list of these criteria.” He regards it as Paul’s swan song. The sum of the letter, says Bengel, is: “I rejoice and you must also rejoice.”

No fewer than 16 times do the words joy and rejoice occur; which is an average of 4 joys per chapter. In loyalty to the faith, he passed the 1st test proclaiming it as he says: 1 Corinthians 15:
“For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;........
But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.”

and as is shewn in 2 Timothy 4:7 “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: grasped the magnitude of the Redemption God has wrought in Christ better than any other.”

As for HEROISM this is shewn in Acts 27 (Shipwreck on way to Rome) and
2 Corinthians 11:25-28 “Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I am more; in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren;
In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Beside those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches.” and here Hunter quotes Buchan’s Pieter Pienaar, “But the headman at the job was the Apostle Paul.”

POWER TO DO.... THE IMPOSSIBLE. What in 1st century A. D. might have been so described? .... would it not have been the CONQUEST OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE TO CHRISTIANITY ON FOOT. Hunter sums up, “Some of us today long to see the Church returning to the Gospel of the 5th Evangelist. What we have in mind is no uncritical fundamentalism - there is no real future in this - but a Gospel built on a Pauline foundation - a Gospel which takes seriously the sinfulness of sin, proclaims God’s free grace to sinners, and has at its heart a commanding Christ and a redeeming Christ. A Gospel which expounds these truths in modern ways and looks to the work of the Holy Spirit to make them real in men’s lives” and then rather a strange thing in brackets (Here, without ENDORSING all their doctrines, we may learn from our later day Pentecostals).

The rest of the book is taken up with short articles on “Whatsoever things are true” in which Hunter favours again the the conventional interpretation of Ephesians 4:15 “But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ:” and
“Faith and Works” in which Huter concludes “Formally then Romans 3:28 a man is justified by FAITH apart from the Law” and James 2 “A man is justified by works not by faith alone” contradict one another. In fact the difference between Paul and James is small and this becomes clear when we remember the different areas of conflict in which the two of them were engaged..... James’s message can only be understood when Paul’s has been understood. Both Paul and James would have agreed that the FIRST THING TO DO WITH THE FAITH IS LIVE BY IT.

And on this firm note the first part of the book ends.
Part two has several brief notices of CHRISTIAN VIRTUES.

BUT THE MOST IMPORTANT CHAPTER IS THE FIRST WHICH HE ENTITLES A NEW LOOK AT ST. JOHN GIVING TO THE FOURTH GOSPEL A MUCH EARLIER DATE AND TO ITS AUTHOR A MUCH GREATER INTIMACY WITH JESUS than were allowed by most modern critics until Dodds in his Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel appeared, in the words used by James Merville of his famous Uncle Andrew “Like fly in an ettercops web.”

Long ago I had come to a like conclusion about the Fourth Gospel basing it first on the authors’s intricate knowledge of the scenes which he was describing. Indeed for some time I have gone considerably further than Hunter believing that the ORIGINAL was written in Aramaic basing this upon a persuasion that like Matthew, Mark, Luke, John has his own story of the Incarnation although much shorter, translating John 1:12-14 (with the Roman Church I believe) “But as many as received Him to them gave He power to become the children of God. He who himself was born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God and the word was made flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His Glory the Glory as of the only begotten of the Father full of Grace and Truth.”