Note 8 — VII SYMBOLS OF THE MESSIAH: THE LAMB AND THE CROSS THE CHRISTIAN JESUS I THE PAULINE JESUS

Paul himself never disguised the fact that he had seen Jesus, not with mortal eyes, but only with those of the Spirit, as an inner revelation. “It has pleased God,” he says (Gal. i. 16), “to reveal his Son within me.”8 He confesses that the Gospel preached by him was not “of men,” that he neither received nor learnt it from any man, but that he had obtained it directly from the heavenly Christ and was inspired by the Holy Ghost.9 He seems also to have had no interest at all in giving accurate information as to the personality of Jesus, as to his fortunes and teachings. When three years after his conversion he first returns to Jerusalem, he visits only Peter and makes the acquaintance of James during the fourteen days of his stay there, troubling himself about none of the other apostles.10 But when, fourteen years after, he meets with the “First Apostles” in the so-called Council of the Apostles in Jerusalem, he does not set about learning from them, but teaching them and procuring from them recognition of his own missionary activity; and he himself declares that he spoke with them only on the method of proclaiming the Gospel, but not on its religious content or on the personality of the historic Jesus.11