n the type of
missionary or apostle. Of this type Paul was the first, and he remained
its primary, and in some senses its only, example. Though he could
claim, on occasion, to satisfy the old test of having seen the risen
Lord (1 Cor. ix. 1, cf. xv. 8), he himself laid stress not on this, but
on the revelation within his own soul of Jesus as God's Son, and of the
Gospel latent therein (Gal. i. 16). This was his divine call as "apostle
of the Gentiles" (Rom. xi. 13); here lay both his qualification and his
credentials, once the fruits of the divine inworking were manifest in
the success of his missionary work (Gal. ii. 8 f.; 1 Cor. xi. 1 f.; 2
Cor. in. 2 f., xii. 12). But this new criterion of apostleship was
capable of wider application, one dispensing altogether with vision of
the risen Lord--which could not even in Paul's case be proved so fully
as in the case of the original apostles--but appealing to the "signs of
an apostle" (1 Cor. ix. 2; 2 Cor. xii. 12), the tokens of spiritual gift
visible in work done, and particularly in the planting of the Gospel in
fresh fields (2 Cor. x. 14-18). It may be in this wide charismatic sense
that Paul uses the term in 1 Cor. xii. 28 f., Eph. ii. 20, iii. 5, iv.
11, and especially in Rom. xvi. 7, "men of mark among the apostles" (cf.
2 Cor. xi. 13, "pseudo-apostles" masquerading as "apostles of Christ,"
and perhaps 1 Thess. ii, 6, of himself and Silas). That he used it in
senses differing with the context is proved by 1 Cor. xv. 9, where he
styles himself "the least of apostles," although in other connexions he
claims the very highest rank, co-ordinate even with the Twelve as a body
(Gal. ii. 7 ff.), in virtue of his distinctive Gospel.

This point of view was not widely shared even in circles appreciative of
his actual work. To most he seemed but a fruitful worker within lines
determined by "the twelve apostles of the Lamb" as a body (Rev. xxi.
14). So we read of "the plant (Church) which the twelve apostles of the
Beloved shall plant" (_Ascension of Isaiah_, iv. 3); "those who preached
the Gospel to us (especially Gentiles) ... unto whom He gave authority
over the Gospel, being twelve for a witness to the tribes" (Barn. viii.
3, cf. v. 9); and the going forth of the Twelve, after twelve years,
beyond Palestine "into the world," to give it a chance to hear
(_Preaching of Peter_, in Clem. Alex. _Strom._ vi. 5.43; 6.48). Later
on, however, his own claim told on the Church's mind, wh