7 Ferdinand Christian Baur as Interpreter of Paul: History, the Absolute, and Freedom

Ferdinand Christian Baur plays a prominent part in the development of historical research on the Christian tradition in general, and on the texts of the New Testament in particular.¹ Under the heading of historical criticism,²right up to the present day, these scriptures are investigated, interpreted, and discussed in their historical dimensions and with ever more refined exegetical methods. The historically oriented approach to the biblical texts certainly did not begin with Baur, although in the nineteenth century it took on a specific form, one especially operative in theology, because of Baur’s achievements. This approach has left its mark on scholarly discourse right up to today, as well as on many ecclesiastical debates without the participants having to be aware of Baur’s role in it. This was possible because of the fact that Baur’s reflections on historical criticism were fundamental and methodical.³ To be sure, Baur did not proceed simply along the lines of a method just applied in a mechanical fashion, a method remaining external to its object. Instead, Baur held that historical criticism is in fact consistent with the ideas present, and unfolding, within history. The particular way of reflecting on the historical method, as Baur practiced it, can be perceived as a decisive turning point in the development of historical research on the biblical texts.⁴

Baur understands his interpretation of Paul to be a concrete, historical–critical achievement. For him, historical criticism is not just an optional method; instead it is the only suitable way to capture, and to comprehend, the actual contents of the New Testament texts and the Christian tradition. The reflections that follow in this essay refer directly to these contents of the Pauline epistles. Thus the question to be raised here is: What meaningful insights for theology, or for the perception of history, does Baur gain from his historical–critical investigation into these texts of the Pauline epistles?

The historical criticism Baur practiced and called for clearly bears recognizable marks of philosophical influences.⁵ When he interprets Paul, we must also take into consideration this background. In the preface to Baur’s first major publication, Symbolik und Mythologie (1824), we find the oft-cited dictum: “without philosophy, history for me remains forever dead and mute.”⁶ For Baur, this thesis is programmatic. Of course he does not simply accommodate himself to philosophical systems, and he also does not employ them to serve as bearings that are foreign to his historical investigations. His adoption of philosophical conceptions is selective, and is constrained by his own understanding of history.

Even in the years Baur sets forth his interpretation of Paul in its essentials,⁷ when Hegel’s influence becomes more of a factor, Baur also adopts conceptions from Kant’s critical philosophy and Schelling’s idealistic thought.⁸ One also has to reckon with an influence from Fichte; and last but not least, Schleiermacher is very significant for Baur in one phase of Baur’s work. Many traces of philosophical terminology can be recognized even in Baur’s interpretation of Paul.⁹

The foundation from which Baur engages with the New Testament texts is that of his own time. In the end he is inquiring about nothing less than the essence of Christianity. In Christianity he recognizes “the greatest spiritual power, one determinative of all the faith and thinking of the present day, the absolute principle supporting and sustaining the self-consciousness of spirit—the self-consciousness that, unless it be essentially Christian self-consciousness, would have embodied no stability and permanence.”¹⁰ In order to understand and comprehend this present time, in order to actually make distinct the ideas residing in it, we need to look at how these ideas unfold in history and in particular at their beginning. This perspective makes the question about Christianity into an explicitly historical inquiry.¹¹ The elements of the idea of Christianity are already present at the outset. Accordingly, our own time has a preeminent interest in the historical investigation of Christianity’s beginnings, an interest Baur sees as tied to the New Testament era and above all linked with the person of Paul. As the definitive goal of historical research on the New Testament canon as a whole, and with reference to the Pauline epistles in particular, Baur singles out “more precise information about the historical circumstances in which these epistles originated, and the purpose for which they were consequently intended.”¹² Paul’s epistles have a specifiable place in history, that is, their “historical circumstances.” We can understand these texts only when we become aware of the intended purpose of their author, therefore Paul’s purpose.¹³ With reference to Paul’s epistles, Baur makes two fundamentally important observations. First, Paul’s epistles were written in specifiable situations, ones involving controversies, and in writing them Paul did so with quite clearly recognizable intentions of a polemical or apologetic kind. Second, Paul took part in particular historical situations as the writer of epistles, and in writing them he influenced the course of history in an essential way.

For Baur, it is vital to look at the entire history.¹⁴ However, what is decisive, in the case of individual authors and their writings, is becoming aware, in historical terms, of the “connection of the individual and the whole,” in order for the exegesis to convey “the writer’s mind and thought processes.”¹⁵ Only by coordinating them with the whole picture does the actual meaning of the individual’s thought processes become transparent, and we see how they function in the totality of an author’s thinking. Determining the way in which what is individual or singular relates to the whole, a procedure Baur presupposes both in the case of an author’s thoughts and in the case of events in history, is from his perspective not just obligatory for an abstract system of thought. On the contrary, it is itself the theme of his own investigations, in which it is apparent that he finds attention to this relation to be inescapable. For Baur, the exegesis of the New Testament texts is a task for today. It is a historical task in a twofold sense, in that this exegesis focuses on the historical past, and that it focuses on a specific point in history.

In the first sentence of his introduction, in both editions of his book on Paul, Baur points out that: “The great task of our day is to research the early history of Christianity, its origins and initial development, in the way it lies before us in the series of scriptures constituting the contents of our New Testament canon. This is a task that can only arise from our era’s most central, general concerns and feelings.”¹⁶ According to Baur the present day does not just look to how history will develop further. It therefore wants “not so much to create, with productive energy, a world first coming to be, but rather to comprehend, in the elements of what has come to be, a world already come to be and now at hand.”¹⁷

Present-day historiography does not simply look back on a finished object lying before it, an object remaining external to it. The “elements of what has come to be” point rather to a development in history that has results in the present. If we are to understand the present, we must also comprehend history in its development. This development must be fully understood, not only in its individual features but also in its character as process and as goal-directed. Only by so perceiving the goal-directed development of history can one ask, as such, about the “historical justification” for “what is said to be history’s importance for the present.”¹⁸ The crucial element in this examination of history consists precisely in determining what importance it is said to have and to retain for the present.

According to Baur, the history significant for the present day is not a constant, self-propelled flow of events. As we understand history, there are especially significant breaks in this flow of events. The ones of greatest relevance are “the beginnings and initial factors in which it all is already comprised.”¹⁹ The examination of history must direct its special attention to these beginnings if it wants to comprehend the present. And Baur sees his own present day, too, as a time standing out in history. In a century experiencing “great stress,” and in its own “arduous labors,” thinking has “struggled to achieve” its independence.²⁰ Only the spirit abiding “within itself” and thus “in the self-certainty of its own consciousness” takes up the standpoint that enables it, “with the consciousness of the inner necessity of its own coming into being, to make its way through what has been devoid of this consciousness.”²¹

The human spirit has therefore already made its way through a history it can look back upon, and that puts it in a position today to examine history independently and with self-certainty, in such a way that spirit can recognize history’s directly necessary character as process. Therefore the examination of history serves “the self-understanding of modern consciousness.”²² Through the examination of history, consciousness arrives at itself.

As will become evident after we go over Baur’s interpretation of Paul, the perspective of the human spirit and of modern consciousness, too, is in turn not something outside of history. Instead, the human spirit in a specific way plays a part in the spirit unfolding itself in history, which is none other than God’s Spirit. The very possibility of examining history as understood in this way is bound up with the development of human consciousness.²³

A further element is decisive for Baur’s approach to history in the context of his interpretation of Paul. Development within history always takes place in conflict or opposition, and eventuates in antitheses. This aspect at least reminds us of Hegel’s dialectical framework for history. A suitable examination of history will seek out these antitheses, in order to bring into view the development within history rather than a static and complacent or apparently self-contained state of affairs. That is because history has for its goal the consummate unfolding of spirit, of the idea, of the absolute. To be sure, the absolute does not make itself felt only at the end of history, thus with its consummate unfolding. The absolute has its place also in the preliminary, sensuous forms of consciousness. For instance, the absolute is indeed camouflaged, and thus is covered over by symbol and myth.²⁴ However, the idea of the absolute is to be uncovered in all the stages of development in history. That is why the critical examination of history is required; the idea must be distinguished from the representations accompanying it and sometimes camouflaging it.

At this point, too, it is again apparent how human consciousness is tied into history. In his early publication Symbolik und Mythologie, Baur speaks about the “ideas of the absolute innate in reason.”²⁵ Precisely owing to the ideas of the absolute innate in its own reason, rational consciousness can also search out these ideas in history. This is possible for human consciousness, commensurate with its own stage of development. For Baur, Pauline Christianity is precisely what provides human consciousness in a specific way with insight into the absolute.

Baur seeks to know the historical circumstances and the purpose of Paul’s epistles, so as to be able to determine their place in history. By thus situating them within history, the texts are deprived of dogmatic autonomy and universal applicability. Baur directs his attention to the individual event as well as to the history as a whole. This makes it possible for criticism to align the individual features with the whole, and also gives the critic room to decide which individual features are perhaps of no importance for the whole. Exegesis oriented to history is in turn a part of history. It is therefore also important to know, and to specify, one’s own locus in history. History repeatedly has phases that are especially important. Prominent is a historical sequence’s beginning, in which the idea is already present, the idea that becomes explicit in the course of that history. History is never a finished and self-contained state; history goes on developing. Development takes place in conflict. “Development in history” means an unfolding of the idea present in that history, a showing forth of the spirit that is the Spirit of God, which, simply put, is the absolute. The goal of history is the showing forth of this absolute. Human self-consciousness that grasps this absolute therefore arrives at its highest stage of development, and this means its freedom.

With his interpretation of Paul, Baur fills out at least these elements of his approach to history, and links them back to the New Testament texts.

In his approach to the person of Paul, Baur takes his bearings from the Pauline epistles. The Book of Acts, at least as compared with the genuine Pauline epistles, seems to Baur to be hardly a meaningful testimony to the actual development of the history and intellectual world of early Christianity.²⁶ The Book of Acts and the Pauline epistles exhibit clear differences in their historical portrayals, so that, in Baur’s estimation, they are not coequal sources. In contrast to all the other New Testament scriptures, the epistles of Paul fundamentally have “the advantage of being an authentic source.”²⁷ Only the epistles of Paul provide certainty as to their author. On the contrary, based on the interests that are discernible in it, the Book of Acts must take a back seat to the Pauline epistles as a source for the early Christian era.

Baur can “make out no purely objective interest” in the Book of Acts; “instead we simply recognize a presentation called forth by a subjective interest.”²⁸ Baur sees a harmonizing and apologetic portrayal of the Apostle Paul as the main tendency of the Book of Acts; it defends Paul’s mission to the Gentiles in response to attacks on it by the “Judaizers.”²⁹ According to Baur, the identifiable theological differences between the early Christian protagonists Paul and Peter, differences apparent from the authentic Pauline epistles, Acts glosses over with its harmonizing goal. Paul’s “righteousness according to the law” gets emphasized, whereas the presentation “of the side of Pauline piety that is dismissive of any legal system” is, on the contrary, lacking,³⁰ and so Baur says that the essential feature is, of course, missing in this portrait of Paul’s person and piety. In the Book of Acts the personal description of Paul has a “Judaizing character.”³¹ Continuing Baur’s train of thought here, one could say that this description simply gives a false idea of Paul’s Christian perspective. As evidence for the fact that the Book of Acts is not useful for a historically reliable approach to the person of Paul, Baur reminds us that the Book of Acts says nothing about the conflict between Paul and Peter at Antioch, as reported in Galatians 2.³² Also, the Book of Acts differs from Paul’s report in Galatians 1, as to how it presents Paul’s own personal development.³³ The Book of Acts conveys an altogether “false picture of the Apostle as a person.”³⁴ According to Baur, we must therefore turn to Paul’s epistles for a suitably historical awareness of the person of Paul.

Baur wants to judge the “historical value and character” of the Book of Acts by proceeding from a comparison of Acts with the “historical contents of the Pauline epistles.”³⁵ The Book of Acts has, on the whole, an “idealizing tendency.”³⁶ With this tendency Acts makes it evident “that its interests are basically different from historical ones.”³⁷ All the awkward features have largely been eliminated from the account of the first Christian community; what appears is on the whole a harmonious picture of the early Christian community. “However, this is not actually how things stand.”³⁸ Establishing this point is decisive for Baur. That is because the development said to lead ultimately to the unfolding of the Christian spirit in history could only have arisen from conflict within the first Christian communities, and against the background of the early Christian differences of opinion.

Only the authentic epistles of Paul make accessible to us “the living, objective workings of that time.”³⁹ Thus, according to Baur, from the historical investigation of Paul’s epistles on the issue of Christianity’s development, we can see the “basis of its existence,” for “the beginnings,” the roots, and the “initial elements” of Christianity are found in Paul.⁴⁰

Paul wrote about specific occasions. The meanings and the purposes of his epistles are disclosed from the historical situation at a particular time, a situation in turn accessible to us from the epistles themselves. According to Baur the purpose of Paul’s epistles first and foremost is making the case for his successful missionary work in the face of attacks on it. That case certainly was not said to have been made in the harmonizing way presented in the Book of Acts, which, according to Baur, smoothed over the actual profile of Paul’s theology. Paul was directly compelled to write his epistles “if he did not want to see his work come to naught.”⁴¹

Inasmuch as Paul’s epistles specify the contents of the opposing positions in early Christianity, the Christian community’s “objective course of development” is discernible in these epistles.⁴² According to Baur, Paul was the foremost apostle in the early Christian era. Certainly the thinking of all the apostles also underwent a development.⁴³ In the first Christian communities the diversification, the struggles, and controversies called for development, for “the knowledge of Christian truth,” for “the higher illumination that they owed to the divine Spirit governing them.”⁴⁴ In these disputes and conflicts, which gave rise to a higher knowledge, Paul towered above the other apostles.

Before we can approach the person of Paul as seen from Baur’s perspective, we must summarize the situation as to the sources. He says that not all the New Testament epistles bearing the name of Paul as their originator or author can, in fact, be ascribed to this apostle. Baur discusses his definitive view concerning the Pauline epistles in the introduction to the second part of his book on Paul in its second edition.⁴⁵ The entire first part serves to show “how erroneously we would have had to picture the person of the apostle to ourselves, had we no other source of knowledge but the Book of Acts.”⁴⁶ “The same doppelgänger, the false counterpart that in the Book of Acts has taken the place of the real apostle, has set aside the real apostle” in the epistles ascribed to Paul in the New Testament.⁴⁷ By his historical–critical labors Baur reaches the conclusion that not all these epistles ascribed to Paul would have been written by him.⁴⁸ By adopting the explicit terminology of Eusebius of Caesarea, Baur distinguishes, to begin with, two classes of Pauline epistles, the homologoumena and the antilegomena.⁴⁹ To the homologoumena, the uncontested epistles of Paul, Baur assigns, in the order of their composition, Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Romans. All the other Pauline epistles belong to the antilegomena, the authenticity of which cannot be demonstrated. One can at least object to Pauline authorship of the antilegomena, “although in doing so” one cannot “declare for sure that they are in fact inauthentic.”⁵⁰ In any event the antilegomena surely also include epistles for which critical judgment increasingly makes it likely that they certainly cannot be epistles by Paul. Baur assigns the Pastoral Epistles to the notha.⁵¹ Thus Baur ultimately arrives at three classes of Pauline epistles.⁵²

Baur wants to see the picture of Paul he develops as being anchored in the authentic epistles of Paul. That is why what follows here should be derived from his analysis of the four uncontested, genuine epistles of Paul, in order to follow closely the essential lines of Baur’s conception of the thought and person of Paul.

According to Baur, the person of Paul has its historical locus in a stage defined by the clashes between Judaism and Christianity. This conflict is already essentially bound up with [the conception of] the person of Jesus. There was a disconnect between these two forms of religion upon the death of Jesus.⁵³ In this death Baur discerns the paradox that “what, in its outward appearance, seems to be just downfall and negation … has become the most completely decisive victory and awakening to life.”⁵⁴ Baur says the Jewish people’s expectation, that Jesus would be the Messiah, came to an end with Jesus’ death. “To a Jew who remained a Jew, a death such as Jesus experienced made it impossible to believe in him as the Messiah.”⁵⁵ For a Jew, a dead Messiah would have been inconceivable. Baur states that after Jesus’ death there were only two, mutually exclusive possibilities: “Either, in his death, belief in him also had to cease, or else this belief, if it was sufficiently firm and strong, of necessity also had to break through the bonds of death and press on from death to life.”⁵⁶ The event of Jesus’ resurrection, an event not to be grasped by a historical investigation, was the basis of the disciples’ faith, and this faith “became the firmest and most unshakable certainty.”⁵⁷ For Baur, this faith of the disciples forms the presupposition for the ensuing development of Christianity.⁵⁸ Paul, too, is concerned with this faith proceeding from Jesus’ death and resurrection. His theology especially expresses the antithesis between Judaism and Christianity, and this brings us closer to the “principle” of Christianity.

The circle of disciples did not break up following Jesus’ death. The first Christian community arose in Jerusalem, the surviving community that became “the leader for all of Jesus’ faithful followers coming from Judaism.”⁵⁹ For Paul, this Jewish-Christian community later becomes the main one, and he enters into an in-house dispute with it. Even though, as we already established, the Book of Acts conveys “only a very meager and hazy picture” of the course of historical events, in Acts 6–7 we nevertheless are on “firmer historical ground”⁶⁰ with the figure of Stephen. Baur recognizes in Stephen the “forerunner of the Apostle Paul.”⁶¹ Over against the temple cultus Stephen sets a “spiritual worship of God,” a worship leading beyond Judaism.⁶² The Hellenists perceived Stephen to be the first instance in the early Christian community of a decisive antithesis to Judaism. This antithesis to Judaism also led to various alignments within the early Christian community.⁶³ After Stephen’s martyrdom, the members of the Hellenistic community of Jerusalem dispersed to Judea and Samaria, and as far as Antioch, where the first Gentile-Christian community arose. According to Baur, remaining in Jerusalem were not only the apostles, but also those members coming into the community from Judaism, the “Hebrews.”⁶⁴ From then on there were two forms of Christianity, determined by their locale: the Jewish-Christian community in Jerusalem and the Gentile-Christian community in Antioch. According to Baur the Jewish-Christian and the Gentile-Christian forms of the two early Christian communities not only were distinguished with respect to the origins of their community members; they also took directly opposite approaches to the content of Christianity. We see this from the disputes in which Paul became involved.

Baur maintains that we find the real Paul only in the historically comprehensible features of the epistles he takes to be authentically Pauline. Baur describes the person and thought of Paul by sticking to these epistles and the accepted sequence of their composition.

According to Baur, Galatians represents the oldest Pauline epistle that we have.⁶⁵ Baur sees this epistle as being directed to a Gentile-Christian community. He doubts that there were also Jewish-Christians residing in the Galatian community.⁶⁶ In any event “Judaizing opponents” did show up in Galatia.⁶⁷ The Galatian communities were at risk of abandoning the gospel message preached by Paul. According to Baur, the opponents of Paul and his preaching did not, of course, wish “to prevent the Gentiles too from being called to participate in the messianic salvation.”⁶⁸ The opponents of Paul also would have already “broken through” the “bounds of Judaism.”⁶⁹ In any event they did want to hold firmly to “the fact that, in this wider sphere too, all salvation can only be had in the form of Judaism.”⁷⁰ Unless they turned to Judaism, the Gentiles would remain excluded from salvation.⁷¹ By calling for adherence to the law, these opponents set themselves against Paul’s preaching of the gospel, which was characterized by “freedom from the law.”⁷² They insisted on the absolute validity of Judaism.⁷³

According to Baur, the Epistle to the Galatians provides insight into “the major movement just now beginning, the struggle between Judaism and Christianity.”⁷⁴ He sees Christianity’s essential difference from Judaism first becoming a historical reality because of Paul.⁷⁵ The actual theme of the Epistle to the Galatians is “the justification of Pauline Christianity.”⁷⁶

Paul stands at the center of the debate essential to the development of early Christianity. However, his personal authority is contested. He is not an apostle who was among Jesus’ immediate followers. That is why Paul faces the necessity of demonstrating “his own direct apostolic calling.”⁷⁷ Paul endeavors to do so at the outset of the Epistle to the Galatians. Baur sees the basis for Paul’s apostolic authority in the fact that he did not receive it as something “imparted by a human source.” Instead he acquired it “only through an immediate act of his self-consciousness.”⁷⁸ Paul is aware of being completely independent, as opposed to the other apostles. According to Galatians 1:15–24, Paul sees his apostolic authority as based on his own conversion experience.⁷⁹ Simultaneous with it was his summons to be the missionary to the Gentiles. So Paul saw himself made equal with the other apostles.⁸⁰

Baur says what took place by Paul’s turning to the Gentiles was the decisive opening for “Christian universalism with its distinction in principle from Jewish particularism.”⁸¹ Paul’s conversion event links “the calling to apostolic office with the determination of Christianity as the universal principle of salvation for all peoples.”⁸² Baur describes the event of Paul’s conversion as a miracle, “since in this reversal of his consciousness he also broke through the limitations of Judaism and abolished Jewish particularism by the universal idea of Christianity.”⁸³ Judaism, with its particularism, is not simply negated, for instead it is sublated, i.e., spiritualized, in the idea of Christianity. But for Baur, Judaism is also overcome by doing so. Only with Paul does Christian universalism, by breaking through the particularism of Judaism, become “a certainty.”⁸⁴

At this point Baur introduces a decisive conception. With his universal Christianity, Paul also sees himself free as to how he views Jesus’ person.⁸⁵ “The full meaning” of Christian universalism gets expressed for the first time because of Paul.⁸⁶ The person of Jesus inherently brings with it “the limiting and restrictive Messiah-idea of Jewish nationalism.”⁸⁷ This is of course necessary, because this is precisely where we locate “the starting point for universalism’s historical development.”⁸⁸ But Jesus’ person has “absolute significance” based on its other constitutive element: “moral universality, universal humanity, divine sublimity.”⁸⁹ Thus Baur sees the universality of Christianity already in place in the person of Jesus, although in Jesus’ case it does not come to be fully recognized, inasmuch as Jesus had to operate in the context of representations of the Messiah within particular, national horizons.

In Paul’s confrontation with Peter in Antioch (Galatians 2:11–14) we can recognize the way in which the conflict between particularistic Judaism and universal Christianity also came into play inside the early Christian community. Galatians shows Peter to be in the wrong. Proceeding from [his account of] this confrontation, in the following passages of Galatians, Paul switches over to a dogmatic line of argument.⁹⁰ Paul demonstrates that Christianity is “the absolute religion, the religion of spirit and freedom.”⁹¹ Judaism, like paganism, is subordinated to the standpoint of Christianity.⁹²

The early Christian conflict between particularistic Judaism and universal Christianity already becomes clearly recognizable in the Epistle to the Galatians. A dispute arose within the early Christian community, involving the particularism of those who required that the Gentiles, too, have ties to Judaism, and the universalism of Paul’s mission to the Gentiles, for Paul proclaims a gospel freed from the law. This conflict is ongoing in the other authentically Pauline epistles.

The two epistles to the Corinthians form the topic of one of Baur’s most important and early investigations into Paul’s theology. In his 1831 article, “Die Christuspartei in der korinthischen Gemeinde,”⁹³ Baur draws a detailed picture of the theology of Paul as discernible in the Corinthians epistles, and its consequences for developments in the time of the ancient church.⁹⁴

The two epistles to the Corinthians are of special interest to Baur because they “take us into the vital center of a Christian community that is in its initial stages.”⁹⁵ He devotes special attention to these epistles because they make comprehensible the way in which the conflict in the Corinthian community that marked early Christianity took the kind of form that determined the further development of the Christian realm of ideas. The two epistles to the Corinthians have a prominent place at the outset of the history of Christianity.

Paul refers to the conflict in Corinth right at the start of his correspondence with the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 1:11). Baur sees an initial precondition for the disputes in Corinth resulting from the makeup of the community at that time. The majority of its members would have been Gentile-Christians, but according to Baur there were also Jewish-Christians in the community.⁹⁶ The Corinthian conflicts led to the formation of factions. The factions aligned themselves explicitly with various authorities named in 1 Corinthians 1:12. Baur understands these alignments as the group of Gentile-Christians associating themselves with Paul and Apollos, whereas the Jewish-Christians took their bearings from Peter.⁹⁷ Paul disapproves of the “sectarian spirit of the Corinthians” and points to the main thing about the preaching of the gospel, the εὐαγγελίζεσθαι (bringing of good news).⁹⁸ With this reference to the preaching of the gospel, Baur shifts attention to “simply the teaching about certain historical events, and above all about the great event of Jesus’ death on the cross.”⁹⁹ In doing so Paul takes a stance opposed to the notions of the Gentiles as well to those of the Jews. He wants to develop “what is a distinctively Christian consciousness,” and indeed “in keeping with the consequence of its individual elements.”¹⁰⁰ The development of Christianity is set in motion by the elements of the dispute in Corinth indicated here.

According to Baur, the “principle” of the distinctive feature of Christian consciousness is the πνεῦμα θεοῦ, God’s Spirit.¹⁰¹ Thus God’s Spirit can also bring about something within a human being’s self-consciousness, and must correspond to “the pneumatic element that seeks to impart the πνεῦμα θεοῦ, something pneumatic in the very soul of a human being.” We are therefore to presuppose a human receptivity for the pneumatic element. That is because, on their own, human beings cannot share in what is divine; “that must be imparted to them by God.”¹⁰² According to Baur, here God’s imparting of what is divine occurs through Christianity. “A wholly new and higher consciousness has been awakened in all who have the receptivity for it.”¹⁰³ Paul’s opponents in Corinth lack this receptivity for the pneumatic element.¹⁰⁴ Baur traces the “factiousness” of the Corinthians back to their “still so low-level spiritual life.”¹⁰⁵ A specific stage of growth is therefore a requisite if they are to be receptive to the pneumatic element and to Paul’s teaching.

According to Paul, Christian teachers do not speak in their own behalf. Baur says that is decisive for their authority, because they are “only servants of God’s purposes.”¹⁰⁶ They lead the community to Christ and ultimately to God. God is “the One Supreme Principle of genuinely spiritual life.”¹⁰⁷ Baur says that Paul describes a succession of relationships. Teachers are oriented to the community, the community is related to Christ, and Christ points to God. “So everything is ultimately related to God.”¹⁰⁸

Baur sees the main opposition in Corinth as that between the authority of Paul, as the apostle to the Gentiles, and the authority of Peter as the apostle to the Jews.¹⁰⁹ The aforementioned antithesis between Judaism and Christianity is mirrored in the Corinthian Christian community, now to some extent within a Christian context. It is noteworthy that the party of Peter is, of course, not characterized by an “excessive dependence … on the Mosaic law,”¹¹⁰ even though the Mosaic law may have been an important motivating factor for them.¹¹¹ We ought not simply assume what it is that constitutes this party’s difference from Paul; instead it is to be discovered from the contents of the Corinthian epistles themselves. Baur takes the “main topic of the contents of both epistles” to be “a justification of apostolic standing.”¹¹² Paul defends his own apostolic status. This central theological issue gets expressed in connection with Paul’s apologia.

As Baur sees it, Paul was under attack from the Petrine party. He says the names “Peter” and “Christ,” already invoked by those parties hostile to Paul, had been chosen in order to single out “the direct link to Christ as the touchstone of genuine apostolic standing.”¹¹³ Paul could not meet this criterion, and that is why his authority as an apostle could not be equated with that of Peter. In various passages of the Corinthian epistles Paul counters this very attack on his authority. In 1 Corinthians 9:1, Paul recalls his having seen the κύριος or Lord for himself, and in saying this he has, without qualification, equated himself with the other apostles who had been close to Jesus.¹¹⁴ In 1 Corinthians 15:8, Paul appeals to the fact that the Lord has appeared to him. too.¹¹⁵ The other apostles have no greater proximity to the κύριος, so Paul is not deficient in this regard.

In 2 Corinthians, according to Baur, Paul sees himself exposed to still stronger attacks on his apostolic authority. In this epistle Paul seeks to convince his readers “of the purity of his intentions and efforts,” by pointing to his διακονία τῆς καινῆς διαθήκης (ministry of the new covenant).¹¹⁶ In 2 Corinthians 5:11–21 the content of the διακονία τῆς καινῆς διαθήκης is reconciliation. Paul sees his preaching of the gospel as being “in the spirit of the love with which Christ has sacrificed himself for us.”¹¹⁷ In virtue of this reconciliation, we see ourselves “transposed into a wholly new sphere of consciousness and life.”¹¹⁸ Paul simply works in the name of Christ, by whose death God has brought about reconciliation with human beings.

Against the background of this theme—the reconciliation God made effective for human beings in virtue of Christ’s death—Baur introduces what, in his judgment, is one of Paul’s central assertions. In 2 Corinthians 5:16, Paul reflects on how Christ can be known. Baur interprets this text in such a way that it involves a Χριστὸν κατὰ σάρκα γινώσκειν (knowing Christ according to the flesh). In doing so, Baur reads κατὰ σάρκα adjectivally, thus referring to Χριστός. The passage would then be: “We do not know a Christ according to the flesh.”

In 2 Corinthians 5:16, Baur sees an antithesis to the preceding passage (5:15), which spoke about the new life of the believers, because of the one who died for them.¹¹⁹ As Baur sees it, the σάρξ is set over against this new life. The term σάρξ represents what stands opposed to the “new life proper,” namely, “just the concept of what is congenital, is hereditary, is the old or former human being (Angebornen, Angestammten, Althergebrachten), and for that reason what is something sensible, something external.”¹²⁰ The σάρξ is “what is passed on and perpetuated by the life of the nation” and, as such, it stands “opposed to the new life.”¹²¹ Upon further reflection, Baur interprets the phrase κατὰ σάρκα Χριστός as “Anointed One or Messiah of Judaism.”¹²² With this messianic conception, Christ is represented as remaining within the domain of what is passed on by the national life of the Jews, and this Jewish life remains something circumscribed, sensuous, and external; it does not at all get to the Christ who is active in what occurs in reconciliation.

Exegetically, Baur’s line of argument about this passage cannot be convincing. The brief text in 2 Corinthians 5:16 has a clear structure.

῞Ωστε ἡμεῖς ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν οὐδένα οἴδαμεν κατὰ σάρκα·

εἰ καὶ ἐγνώκαμεν κατὰ σάρκα Χριστόν

ἀλλὰ νῦν οὐκέτι γινώσκομεν [κατὰ σάρκα].

Hence it reads: “From now on we no longer know anyone according to the flesh. But if we have known Christ [as such] according to the flesh, we now no longer know him [according to the flesh].”

The fact that we no longer know anyone according to the flesh is the consequence of the salvific death of Christ, as described previously. Baur correctly observes that this statement can only be understood against the background of what was said previously. A more detailed grammatical analysis is indeed necessary. In the phrase οὐδένα οἴδαμεν κατὰ σάρκα, the word οὐδένα is the accusative object of the verb οἴδαμεν. Here the prepositional phrase κατὰ σάρκα is adverbial, qualifying οἴδαμεν. That is already suggested by its position following the verb. The expression ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν (from now on) does not simply intend just the present moment in time; instead, by his νῦν Paul qualifies the present as a time of salvation in virtue of the Christ event. In 2 Corinthians 6:2 Paul conclusively sums up the passage 2 Corinthians 5:11–6:2: ἰδοὺ νῦν καιρὸς εὐπρόσδεκτος, ἰδοὺ νῦν ἡμέρα σωτηρίας, “see, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation.”¹²³ Therefore now, in the time of salvation’s dawning, someone believing in Christ can no longer regard anyone as independent of what took place in Christ. But then this also holds good for how we perceive Christ. Even our knowledge of Christ is decisively marked by the Christ event (Christusgeschehen), meaning by this a salvific event [i.e., death] embracing all human beings. The Christ event changes our view of human beings and of Christ. Paul formulates this change in an indefinite, conditional statement. The prepositional phrase κατὰ σάρκα refers to ἐγνώκαμεν (we know). The apodosis or main clause is formulated elliptically. The way the line of argument proceeds makes it likely that here, too, based on the parallelism, a prepositional qualification of the verb is to fill out the three partial statements. In all three partial statements there is a verbum cognoscendi, a verb of “knowing,” that is bound up with a prepositional qualification of a manner of knowing. Therefore we no longer know Christ in a fleshly way. Instead, we only know Christ as the kind of knowers who have been grasped by the Christ event. The prepositional phrase ουκέτι … [κατὰ σάρκα] therefore refers not to Christ, but instead to our own way of knowing with a view to Christ against the background of the salvific Christ event.¹²⁴

According to Baur, in any event Paul’s opponents “still occupy the standpoint of Judaism and adopt the Jewish concept of the Messiah.”¹²⁵ However, a clear distinction must be drawn between the Jewish Messiah and the Christ. Death on the cross, in the Christian sense, does not fit with the Jewish understanding of the Messiah. The meaning of εἶναι ἐν Χριστῷ (being in Christ) is solely a function of Jesus’ death, “certainly insofar as only in death does the old life pass away.”¹²⁶ Christ must be set apart from the Jewish understanding of the Messiah precisely by his suffering and dying, therefore because of “the exalted significance of the death on the cross.”¹²⁷ For Baur, the death on the cross forms the central point of Paul’s teaching. That is then also precisely the reason why, given Paul’s teaching, he must not fix his attention on Jesus’ earthly life. The other apostles’ relationship with Jesus in his earthly existence is no longer an advantage. That is because Paul, too, could claim to have encountered the resurrected one, who, “as the one dead and once more alive, lets the full significance of Christian consciousness and life become clear to us, and grounds within us the true Χριστοῦ εἶναι (being in Christ).”¹²⁸

As Baur sees it, in his confrontation with his opponents Paul is dealing “with nothing less than the issue of true and false Christianity.”¹²⁹ In an ironic sense, Paul calls his opponents οἱ ὑπερλίαν ἀπόστολοι or “super-apostles” (2 Corinthians 11:5 and 12:11), or even pointedly οἱ ψευδαπόστολοι, “false apostles” (2 Corinthians 11:13). These opponents would have been Jews by birth and would have stood “in some sort of connection with the Palestinian Jewish apostles.”¹³⁰ As Jews of “genuinely Israelite descent,” Baur counts them among “the Petrine party,” which would have appealed to the authority of Peter.¹³¹ Thus Paul’s opponents appealed to an authority that would have been “outwardly connected with Jesus and in his circle of associates.”¹³² Here we see the difference between Paul’s situation and that of his opponents. Whereas the Apostle Peter could point to “outward personal experience,” Paul can “only set over against this an inner experience,” namely, an “extraordinary appearance that, as inward vision and revelation of the divine, as an event within his own immediate consciousness, had awakened in him his faith in Christ.”¹³³

However, the external, sensuous, or physical interaction with Jesus ultimately proves to be no advantage at all for the earlier apostles, and for Peter among them. For Paul, the aforementioned manifestation directly in his self-consciousness provides a “justification for, and establishment of, his apostolic standing.”¹³⁴ In contrast, the “sectarian nature of the Corinthian community” remains stuck “in the sensuousness of its way of thinking, in its inability to rise to a higher standpoint, to an all-embracing unity.”¹³⁵

This therefore expresses the decisive difference. The opponents are unreceptive to a “consciousness of the divine πνεῦμα or Spirit,”¹³⁶ and so they are also not ready for their consciousness to be more highly developed. They cannot grasp or comprehend the essential nature of Christianity.¹³⁷

Here Paul’s line of argument is wholly in the interest of his own apologia, and does not yet serve to unpack the essence of Christianity systematically. This apologia has two principal aspects. In one, according to Baur, Paul emphasizes that his own Christian convictions have not come about from being instructed by the earlier apostles. The other aspect is that the Apostle Paul’s teaching does not contradict the truth recognized by the earlier apostles.¹³⁸ Thus Paul’s apostolic authority proves to be “just as directly and objectively valid … as that of the others.”¹³⁹

In summary, this shows that Paul sees his apostolic authority grounded in an ἀποκάλυψις ᾽Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ (a disclosure of Jesus Christ), and thus in a “divine action,” one that “presented itself to him simply as something happening within his own consciousness.”¹⁴⁰ For Baur, one’s own consciousness is the appropriate place for the disclosure of Christian truth, in the way this truth unfolds to indicate the essential features of Christianity. That is because the πνεῦμα, “as the Christian principle,” is “the self-identical, absolute self-certainty of Christian consciousness; it is the consciousness opened up to the full knowledge of truth, transcending all sheerly external means of transmission, in oneness with Christ.”¹⁴¹

According to Baur, we can see from Paul’s epistles that, in the Christian community in Corinth, the basic conflict between Judaism and Christianity reappeared in the form of a dispute within the early Christian community. He then also finds traces of this partisanship in the development of the early church.¹⁴² It is a conflict in which he sees played out the dialectical dynamic through which Christianity’s development already begins in the early period of the church, a dynamic that then ultimately leads to the unfolding of the Spirit in the present day. According to Baur, insight into these very conflicts in the era of early Christianity and the ancient church is necessary for us to understand the present day.

When we proceed from Judaism, through early Christianity, to the era of the ancient church, according to Baur the conflict takes, in principle, the same form as the one clearly evident in the antithesis between a “Jewish outlook” (Judaismus) and Pauline Christianity. For this Jewish outlook, revelation is “only the general disclosure, ensuing over time, of what was already existent beforehand”; namely, the view that all divine revelation would take place “only by the route of outward instruction.”¹⁴³ For Pauline Christianity, in contrast, revelation is “a καινὴ κτίσις, a new creation, which has to be grasped, in the depths of one’s own consciousness, as a higher life-principle imparted by the divine Spirit.”¹⁴⁴ For the Jewish outlook in the early Christian community, Jesus is just a teacher; for Pauline Christianity he is the redeemer.¹⁴⁵ The antitheses are manifold. In the context of 2 Corinthians, chapter 3, Baur sees the old διαθήκη (covenant) and the new one set against each other, in Judaism and Christianity respectively. The old διαθήκη has expired, and the new one is, in contrast, “bright and luminous.”¹⁴⁶ The decisive difference lies in the Spirit “as the principle of Christian consciousness.”¹⁴⁷ In the end what Paul could maintain against his opponents is simply “the imperfection of their religious consciousness.”¹⁴⁸

Baur sees all the features of Pauline Christianity summed up in Paul’s statement in 2 Corinthians 3:17: ὁ δὲ κύριος τὸ πνεῦμα ἐστιν· οὗ δὲ τὸ πνεῦμα κυρίου, ἐλευθερία, “the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” Baur translates this somewhat more freely, as: “The Lord is the Spirit, but the Spirit is freedom.”¹⁴⁹ He does so in order to link the Spirit more closely with the theme of freedom. For Baur, the freedom intended here describes “the principle and essence of Paulinism,” and this signifies “the freeing of consciousness from every external authority established just by human beings, the removal of all confining limitations, the elevation to a standpoint at which everything is unveiled and laid open in luminous clarity to the gaze of spirit—the autonomy and immediacy of self-consciousness.”¹⁵⁰

Thus according to Baur the principle of Christianity’s essential nature is described, in 2 Corinthians 3:17, as freedom posited in the Spirit, and this principle unfolds in the further development of the early Christian community and in the history of the church.

The most important epoch in the emerging discussions about Paul’s theology Baur sees set forth in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans.¹⁵¹ This epistle is directed to a community Paul did not know [at first hand]. Paul addresses the community as “representative of all the Jewish-Christians living among the Gentile peoples.”¹⁵² In contrast to the epistles to the Galatians and the Corinthians, Paul’s tone in Romans is indeed “milder, more conciliatory, and more accommodating.”¹⁵³ The “acuteness of its dialectical polemic” does probe more deeply here than in the other epistles. This serves the purpose “of cutting away from Jewish particularism the very last roots of its justification.”¹⁵⁴ Certainly Romans is not just set apart from the preceding Pauline epistles by its style, for it exhibits “internal progression.” In Romans we for the first time have an overview of “the abundant content of the spiritual life that the apostle generates from his own experience—the rigorous, well thought-out connection in which he develops, and carries through with, his Christian principle, and the magnificent setting in which he goes to work.”¹⁵⁵ As Baur sees it, Romans describes Paul’s theology in its fullest development.¹⁵⁶ However, this was not just Paul’s theology reaching a particular stage of development in Romans. Paul had the “distinctive privilege” of “having expressed, and made people generally aware of, what had come to the fore, through the objective course of development of the Christian church itself, as a new element of Christian consciousness.”¹⁵⁷ Paul gives expression to the enhanced development of Christianity in his day, brought about by the divine Spirit.

According to Baur, the Epistle to the Romans serves the overall purpose of comprehensively grounding “Pauline universalism, in its antithesis to Jewish particularism.”¹⁵⁸ Paul undertook this task against the historical background of his currently very successful mission to the Gentiles.¹⁵⁹ Just as in Paul’s other epistles, Romans owes its contents essentially to the disputes in the community to which it is addressed and to which Paul is responding.¹⁶⁰

Baur says the main issue for the contending positions in the Roman community is to be found in chapters 9–11 of Romans.¹⁶¹ We are to read the epistle as a whole in light of these decisive passages. Baur assumes that the Jewish-Christian party was dominant in the Roman community.¹⁶² With this epistle Paul answered the question raised by the Jewish-Christians in Rome, as to why “such a large part of the Jewish people,” those who are God’s chosen people, “will not in fact share in the salvation appearing in Christ.”¹⁶³ Baur says that even in Rome Pauline universalism would have been contested by Jewish-Christians. Baur saw that the objections there would have been raised “against the Gentiles’ participation in the grace of the gospel.”¹⁶⁴ Thus Pauline universalism would have been contested using the argument “that, as long as Israel as a nation, as the chosen people of God, does not share in this grace, then the Gentiles’ sharing in it seems to be a devaluation of Judaism, to be an injustice to Judaism.”¹⁶⁵ According to Baur, the Jewish-Christians saw their “claim to primacy” jeopardized.¹⁶⁶ Unlike the Jews, the Jewish-Christians presupposed “the truth of Christianity and the necessity of believing in Christ.”¹⁶⁷ He says the Jewish-Christians surely objected to “the same route to blessedness also being open to Gentiles.”¹⁶⁸ He sees the theological problem for the Jewish-Christians as the lessening of the law’s significance within the Christian community if, as Romans 9:30 puts it, Gentile-Christians attain righteousness and salvation based on faith, but not based on the law.¹⁶⁹ Baur holds that, because of the increasing number of Gentile-Christians in the community, the Jewish-Christians were afraid that “the antithesis between Judaism and paganism, an antithesis the Jewish-Christians still constantly clung to, also had to lose its significance.”¹⁷⁰ According to Baur, the Jewish-Christians were apprehensive that, owing to the success of Pauline universalism, they would be suppressed or displaced.¹⁷¹

Thus Pauline universalism came to be questioned by the Jewish-Christians in Rome. That Gentiles ought to be accepted into the community as Gentiles came to be challenged or at least questioned.¹⁷² So, in a nutshell, the issue Paul precipitated was “whether Christian salvation would have a particularist or a universal meaning; whether imparting the grace of the gospel rested on a national prerogative, or a universal human need.”¹⁷³

Over against the “absolute precedence of Judaism,” which the Jewish-Christians in Rome also asserted for themselves, Paul sets what Christianity accepts as the “universality of the human need for salvation, that in God’s sight there is absolutely nothing praiseworthy about human beings.”¹⁷⁴ In Romans 1:18–3:20, Paul says that the Gentiles are culpable as are the Jews.¹⁷⁵ This amounts to a twofold assertion. One assertion is that no human being is just or righteous in God’s sight. With his theological position Paul sets this negative assertion against the “positive contention that a human being gains righteousness by faith alone.”¹⁷⁶ Paul follows up on this point from Romans 3:21 onward. With Romans 5:12, Paul comes to “the highest and most comprehensive standpoint of these reflections,” a passage in which “the Apostle Paul extends his vision to embrace the whole of humanity, and where Adam and Christ emerge as opposite figures.”¹⁷⁷ Here we reach the universal anthropological perspective, where, Baur says, Paul speaks of Adam’s sin as being “universal sinfulness as a principle of sin indwelling human nature.”¹⁷⁸ In Romans, chapters 6–8, justification, or righteousness by faith, is set against this principle of sin (and with a view to the “inner life of the individual”), “as the supreme principle of the moral or ethical salvation that frees one from sin’s dominion.”¹⁷⁹

Baur says that the first eight chapters of Romans, with their consistent line of argument, serve to resist Jewish particularism, and Paul spells out this point in chapters 9–11.¹⁸⁰ Paul’s procedure is suited “very well to a distinctively methodical exposition (Entwicklungs-Methode),” for Paul does not stop with “the empirically given circumstances,” but instead next endeavors to approach his topic “right away from the loftiest and most general perspective.”¹⁸¹ He sets out based on his own observation, surveying all the elements and antitheses making up the general picture (das Allgemeine), in order finally “to apply the general picture to what is empirically given.”¹⁸² Baur calls it a “synthetic” procedure when Paul, “setting aside all merely subordinate elements, knows how to attain reflection’s absolute standpoint.”¹⁸³ The individual issue comes into view once again, seen from this absolute standpoint. So the direction Paul’s procedure takes is “from above to below.”¹⁸⁴

In this context Baur sees chapter 1 of 1 Corinthians attaining the “objective, divine [standpoint]” as distinct from the “subjective, human standpoint,” an objective standpoint that “in Christianity” signifies “a σοφία θεοῦ ἐν μυστηρίῳ, a wisdom of God in the form of mystery.”¹⁸⁵ According to Baur, the supreme and absolute principle of this revealed wisdom is for Paul the πνεῦμα or Spirit in God, “the same πνεῦμα that is the principle of the divine self-consciousness.”¹⁸⁶ Faith in Jesus Christ, through which God’s righteousness becomes available, is consistent with “the universal concept of God.”¹⁸⁷ This faith comes about through the Spirit, which makes human beings into God’s children, whereby “for them, in their oneness with Christ, all that separates human beings from God is removed, so that nothing can separate them from the love of God.”¹⁸⁸

Baur sees Paul as standing within a significant phase of Christianity’s development. In various of his writings Baur presents Paul’s thought in connection with the Pauline epistles that owe their orientation to the conflicts they depict. Baur also follows this procedure in both editions of his book on Paul. In the first part of it Baur sets forth the apostle’s life and activities, in the course of his taking issue with the Book of Acts.¹⁸⁹ In the second part Baur turns to Paul’s epistles,¹⁹⁰ and he treats these in three groups, according to how he assesses their authenticity. Baur concludes each edition of Paulus with a lengthy third part entitled “The Apostle’s Theological Framework.”¹⁹¹ In a brief sketch, one far from capturing all of its features, I shall conclude by noting what Baur considers to be a few important aspects of Paul’s theological framework.

By proceeding through the epistles of Paul, Baur sought to trace the historical development within Paul’s thinking. In discussing Paul’s theological framework, Baur points to what in Paul “is essential and universal.”¹⁹² He is after insight into the actual development of Paul’s mind. Baur’s discussion begins under the heading “The Principle of Christian Consciousness.”¹⁹³ The apostle’s Christian consciousness bears the marks of his conversion.¹⁹⁴ His conversion exhibits the power and force of Christianity. In the “lively awareness of a standpoint gained for the first time in all its forcefulness and energy,” Paul’s conversion leads to the “absoluteness of his Christian standpoint.”¹⁹⁵ Baur understands the conversion as a spiritual process leading to the absoluteness of the Christian standpoint. Baur looks upon this absoluteness as a principle grounded exclusively in the “fact that it is essentially identical with the person of Christ.”¹⁹⁶ The principle of Christianity, and thus of Christian consciousness, is therefore defined christologically. Galatians 1:15–16 states that the person of Jesus became revealed to Paul as the Son of God.¹⁹⁷ In virtue of Jesus’ death, his person is removed from its nationalistic context “and is set within a freer, more universal, and purely spiritual realm.”¹⁹⁸ This shifts Christ “into the truly spiritual consciousness in which one could, for the first time, grasp him as the absolute principle of spiritual life.”¹⁹⁹

For Baur, Christian consciousness is defined in terms of spirit; it is straightforwardly an essentially spiritual consciousness.²⁰⁰ The “Spirit of God expressing itself within us” produces in Christian consciousness “absolute certainty as to the self-subsistent, absolute Spirit of God himself.”²⁰¹ Baur assumes the closest possible relationship between God’s Spirit and the godly [human] spirit. 2 Corinthians 3:17 shows that what is posited as essential for Christian consciousness, along with the spirit, is “the principle of spiritual freedom.”²⁰² For Baur, the absolute makes itself accessible only in this spirit. Put more precisely, what is mediated to Christian self-consciousness by the Spirit is “communion and oneness with God,” therefore “reconciliation with God.”²⁰³

Baur sets forth what reconciliation means, in connection with the theme of justification according to Paul.²⁰⁴ Faith is the principle essential for δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ, God’s righteousness or justification.²⁰⁵ Above all, faith is regarding the contents of the gospel as true.²⁰⁶ The resurrected Jesus, as this faith’s object (Romans 4:24–25), gains an ever more intensive significance “from faith’s subjective aspect.”²⁰⁷ Reconciliation expresses “a human being’s innermost concern,” and it gives rise to confidence and certainty.²⁰⁸

In what follows, Baur sets forth in all its facets what, according to Paul, takes place for justification and reconciliation, and does so with a view to Christian self-consciousness. According to Paul, believers see themselves being included in the death of Christ. In referring to Galatians 2:19–20, Baur establishes that “whoever is crucified with Christ knows himself or herself as united with the crucified Christ, and also has Christ living within himself or herself.”²⁰⁹ This oneness with Christ is in turn owing to Christ’s love for us human beings (2 Corinthians 5:14).²¹⁰ Here, too, what this ultimately suggests is oneness with the absolute.

In a fourth section, Baur describes “Christ as principle of the communion he founded.”²¹¹ The teaching about justification and about reconciliation stays principally “within the sphere of individual consciousness.”²¹² With a view to 1 Corinthians, chapter 12, however, Baur states that we can say the Christian community forms one body, an organic unity. This unity, in turn, has its basis in Christ. If, given the definite role of believing self-consciousness, the individual perspective seems to be dominant so far, the communal aspect now appears as a directly necessary dimension of faith and of the specific role of the divine Spirit. “Christ in himself is the principle of this spiritual body’s unity, although Christ proves to be operative in this connection via the Spirit. In the Spirit, therefore, all who become Christians, howsoever they may also differ in their natural origins and in their other circumstances, become one body.”²¹³

The Spirit determines the individual consciousness. But since there is one Spirit that determines believers, it is ultimately the Spirit’s “own impulse” (Selbstbewegung) that brings about the unity of the community.²¹⁴ Thus the Spirit generates a unity in which the differences are superseded,²¹⁵ and this unity becomes realized in love.²¹⁶ Thus what comes about is a oneness with Christ, and this being-in-Christ proves to be the innermost principle, through which all that is disruptive is wiped away.²¹⁷ The ἐν Χριστῷ εἶναι, the being-in-Christ, holds good for the individual just as it does for the community,²¹⁸ since “in this oneness with Christ, all are one with one another.”²¹⁹

Oneness with God and the Spirit, oneness with Christ through the Spirit, which is none other than oneness with the absolute, forms the highest stage of development for the individual self-consciousness as it also does for the Christian communion. According to Baur, in the Gentile world beyond Judaism, humankind has made the decisive advance “from servitude to freedom, from immaturity to maturity, from humankind’s youth to the period of full adulthood, from the flesh to the spirit.”²²⁰ Baur regards Pauline Christianity as a religion of spirit, of freedom, and clarity. Self-consciousness arrives at a “clear, unclouded identity … with itself.”²²¹ He holds that it is because of Christ that Christianity is the absolute religion.

This presentation of our reconstruction of Pauline thought can end with the observation that, for Baur, Pauline Christianity is the absolute religion. Baur draws out quite a few, thoroughly significant, elements of Paul’s theology, and describes this theology in its manifold variations. He has undertaken his investigation from a consistently historical perspective. In the idea he discerns in history he tracks the progressive realization of the absolute in the self-consciousness of believing individuals and in the Christian community.²²² Thus he superimposes on Pauline thinking the methods of his own understanding of a dialectical and teleological development of spirit in history. To be sure, Baur’s Paul shows us very little of Paul’s eschatological thinking, which is nevertheless also to be understood as present in the Pauline epistles Baur acknowledges to be authentic, and which is essential for Paul’s theology as a whole.²²³ However, even if neither the conception of development nor Baur’s form of dialectic, nor also his teleology, may be discoverable in Paul himself, Baur nevertheless does have an impressive grasp of the Pauline idea of the freedom realizing itself in believers and in the Christian community in virtue of the Spirit. How this point is to be explicated under present-day conditions must be addressed anew. That this theme is central to Paul’s theology²²⁴ remains an insight that Baur, with his historical–critical method and his speculative interpretation, arrived at and solidly supported.