Note 124 — Chapter V

B. W. Bacon (Jesus and Paul, 1921, pp. 45-49) seeks to bridge the gulf between Jesus and Paul by supposing that Jesus himself, somewhat like the Maccabean hero, finally attained, after the failure of His original program and at the very close of His life, the conception that His approaching death was to be in some sort an expiation for His people. But the idea of expiation which Bacon attributes to Jesus is no doubt very different from the Pauline doctrine of the Cross of Christ. The gulf between Jesus and Paul is therefore not really bridged. Moreover, it cannot be said that Bacon's hypothesis of successive stages in the experience of Jesus, culminating in the idea of expiation attained at the last supper, has really helped at all to solve the problem presented to every historian who proceeds upon naturalistic presuppositions by Jesus' lofty claims. At least, however, this latest investigator of the problem of "Jesus and Paul" has betrayed a salutary consciousness of the fact that the Pauline conception of Jesus' redemptive work is inexplicable unless it find some justification in the mind of Jesus Himself. Only, the justification which Bacon himself has found—particularly his account of the way in which the idea of expiation is supposed to have arisen in Jesus' mind—is entirely inadequate.