IN the first volume of this work Professor Wernle
deals with the rise of the Christian religion as it
manifests itself in the personality and teaching of
Jesus and His immediate followers. This is the creative period, the period of great men. In the second
volume we follow the fortunes of the new faith when
the great men are succeeded by a great ecclesiastical
organization. Henceforth it is within the rules and
forms imposed upon it by this mighty organization
that the Gospel has to find a footing and make its
way among the populations of the ancient world.
The free creative period, the period of the unfettered
spirit, is succeeded by an age of anonymity in which
institutions, dogmas and sacraments rise up and fill
the place originally occupied by the great personalities of the first Christian generation. Many
ecclesiastical historians have regarded the elaborate
process which took place in the second century of
incorporating the Gospel into a hard and fast group
of institutions, forms and ceremonies, as a time of
In the opening chapters of this volume Professor
Wernle shows us how the successors of the primitive
preachers of Christianity fell into disrepute among
the Christian communities, and how these communities organized themselves into a Church resting
on the basis of episcopacy. It is interesting to watch
the rise of the bishop from a humble and subordinate
place in the community to a position of dignity and
power which ultimately makes him the centre of the
new ecclesiastical system. In spite of having to
face the somewhat formidable rivalry of ascetics,
saints and martyrs, the pressure of circumstances
within the community and outside of it as well lifted
the bishops into the highest position in the Church,
and determined the character of ecclesiastical institutions for centuries to come. After organizing
itself from within, the Church was confronted from
without by the three great forces of Judaism,
Hellenism, and Gnosticism. Ecclesiastical theology
THE author considers it advisable to direct attention to two points in which a slight difference exists between the first and second volumes. In the first volume the origin of the conception of the sacraments is derived from St Paul (p. 273), and not from the earliest Christian community; whereas vol. ii. presupposes the existence of the sacraments in the earliest Church, and even suggests that they are anterior to Christianity itself (vol. ii. p. 128). On this point the author has accepted the arguments advanced by Bousset and Heitmüller.
The first volume did not clearly settle the question whether, according to St Paul, all Christians attained salvation, or only a part of them (vol. i. p. 219 seq., and p. 281), whereas the second volume presupposes that St Paul considered all the members of his congregation as the elect of God’s mercy (vol. ii. p. 91). Here the author’s doubts have been removed by studies of his own in later ecclesiastical history which has presented analogous cases. For the work as a whole these differences are of little importance, but the author begs his English readers to excuse the want of complete agreement between the two volumes.
IN the earliest age of Christianity the external constitution is of altogether secondary importance compared with the living personalities. The course of events was shaped by men whose names were well-known and who were animated by a profound sense of their call. It is true that the congregations were gradually formed into an organization, but there was as yet nothing permanent about it: it was entirely under the influence of the Spirit. As to the personality of St Paul, the apostle by revelation, it eluded all attempts at inclusion under any organization whatever.
The great men died out, the stream of inspiration ran dry. Hence the change. We have here
one of those facts which, while they explain
everything else, do not themselves admit of explanation.
The organization of the itinerant preachers, men driven by the Spirit, did, it is true, resist the tendency to decay for a considerable time. But it is the rule in history, that institutions outlive the spirit that created them. After a long struggle it finally succumbed to the episcopal organization and to the catholic theology. The Catholic Church came into being in the course of this struggle. There is something tragic about it, as the vanquished, while representing the higher idea, are inferior to the victors in moral strength. The former are the prophets, the latter the priests and theologians.
The first missionary period had come to an end
even before the close of the first century. We hear
no more of the sending forth of new missionaries, of
collections for them, of the founding of new congregations. Not that we are to infer from this that
Christianity no longer spreads as rapidly as before.
On the contrary, the extension of Christianity has
only just begun, and there is a marked increase every
decade. But there is all the difference in the world
between the two methods. In the one case the
Christian merchant or soldier carries the gospel
message with him on his business journey, on his
The new task which is now laid upon the apostles
and prophets is no longer the foundation of new
congregations, but the welding together of the old
ones. They continue to wander about preaching,
but it is to fully organized Christian congregations.
Decay sets in quite of itself, owing to the cessation of
their real work as missionaries, with all the sacrifices
and the privation which it involved. Want of
discipline, mendicancy, trickery and charlatanism are
increasingly prevalent amongst the itinerant preachers.
They make use of their divine authority—he that
receiveth you, receiveth God—to the damage of the
congregations. These are the false prophets that
come in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. They boast of
prophesying and casting out devils and work miracles in Jesus' name, and yet they
are steeped in wickedness. They do not spare the flock of Christ, but, shameless
beggars that they are, get what they can—silver and gold and raiment. Or they
creep into houses and captivate women laden with sin and slaves to all kinds of
passions. These few passages, taken from the first and third evangelist, and the
Pastoral epistles, are well illustrated by the Didache and the eleventh
commandment of Hermas. There the apostle is described as staying as long as
possible in each congregation so as to take his ease in a comfortable
berth, and then at his departure he gets himself
furnished with plenty of provisions for the journey,
A new and very serious danger arose through
the appearance of the Gnostic heresy among the
It was in consequence of this receptivity of the prophets for every kind of heretical spirit that new measures were taken to protect the congregations, and tests were set up of a dogmatic and ethical character. “Righteousness,” “Faith and Love,” “Jesus Christ come in the flesh”—such were some of the shibboleths by which all teachers were to be judged. Not everything that claims to be of the Spirit is of divine origin; it may also be due to the suggestion of demons, of Antichrist. “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but prove the spirits whether they are of God.” The only prophecy tolerated is that which conforms to the creed of the Church. We meet with such ecclesiastical prophets throughout the whole of the second century down to the Montanist controversy; nor can it be denied that they did the Church good service in the struggle against the Gnostics. But the spirit of the first age that set up and rejected free rules and canons had long ceased to find utterance in them.
Besides the two enemies, however, which have been
already mentioned, there was yet a third, a formidable
rival, which was bound finally to make an end of
this order of itinerant preachers, and that was the
constitution of the single congregations. The Church
was now composed of a number of separate churches
permanently established. No single prophet could
At Rome, again, we find altogether different conditions prevailing. The prophets had evidently never enjoyed the same esteem there as in the East, for even the end of the first century witnessed the episcopal organization with the principle of apostolic succession fully matured in all essentials. Here, too, there were prophets (Hermas), but if they did not prove obedient to the constitution, they were set aside as false prophets, relegated to obscurity, and so entirely degenerated. From the very first, order here prevailed over anarchy.
The diminished importance of the itinerant
preachers and the decay of this institution brought
about an important change in ecclesiastical terminology, at least in so far as the apostles are concerned.
The title of ‘Apostle’ was reserved for the Twelve
and St Paul; the other missionaries are no longer
called apostles but evangelists. This altered use of
words was accelerated by the historical fact that Paul
was the only apostle for his congregations; he never
calls his fellow-missionaries apostles. Perhaps he
had them in view when, in the letter to the Ephesians,
he introduces the term ‘evangelist.’ The new
theory, however, that it was only in the first age,
the age when the foundations were laid, that apostles
existed, and that therefore the apostolic age is to
The passing away of the apostles and prophets was no event of merely secondary importance in the history of Christianity. It signified the end of inspiration. God ceased to speak directly through men. One main element in early Christianity—the Faith in a God that speaks and works in the present—had begun to decay.
THE question now arises, Who stepped into the place left vacant by the inspired leaders of the first age?
It was the presiding officials of the single congregations, whose duties were originally confined to
the care of public worship, Priests and Levites
according to Jewish conceptions. In the very earliest
age of all, they were persons who came forward
voluntarily, either men of substance who placed a
room at the disposal of the community for the
meetings and there supervised the discipline, or men
of trust, in whose hands the offerings for the poor
were placed for distribution. In his earlier letters St
Paul calls them ‘presidents’ or ‘workers.’ In the
letter to the Philippians, written not long before the
apostle’s death, they appear for the first time in the
two divisions of overseers (bishops) and ministers
(deacons). The apostolic age knows nothing as yet
of an election and institution of these officials; it is
only in the succeeding age that this becomes the
rule. Presbyterial colleges appointed by election,
The work of the colleges was of a wide and all-embracing nature in the conduct of the communities
affairs generally. That is expressed by the words ‘leaders,’ ‘shepherds,’ ‘presidents.’ More especially,
however, their activity may be considered under the
three chief heads of the conduct of religious worship, the
preservation of public order, the dispensation of social
charities. The enumeration of the qualities required
of the members of the colleges shows us better than
anything else that their energies were concentrated
in this direction. Sincerity, honesty, mildness, gentleness, are the chief characteristics that were looked
for in them. Teaching and preaching formed at
first the least part of a priest’s work. The teachers
The increased dignity of these officials keeps pace with the development of their functions. Originally it was only the apostles and prophets that counted as the messengers of God’s word and representatives of God and of Christ for the Church, whilst the bishops were the officials of the single congregations without any higher honour. Their exaltation to their new position of dignity was brought about in a threefold manner.
1. By the theory of apostolic succession. The
way is paved for this theory by the Acts of the
Apostles, which emphasizes the apostolic institution
of the presbyters and makes Paul speak to the
2. By the theory of a special gift of the Spirit
attached to the office. We find it first of all in the
Pastoral epistles side by side with that of the apostolic
succession. The two, in fact, run into each other as
they did in the case of the Rabbis. The gift of the
Spirit is made to depend upon the right succession.
Amongst the Christians this theory was bound to
strengthen the hands of the defence against the heretics
and the prophets. For itinerant preachers and
Gnostics alike appealed to “the Spirit.” In order to
check their extravagances it was now maintained that
the Spirit was only to be found amongst the Church
officials, not amongst the Gnostics, but—and this is
the evil consequence of the theory—no longer
amongst the congregation either. “I put thee in
remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God which
is in thee through the laying on of my hands. For
The ‘we’ who have the Spirit are the officials of the Church alone. An Ignatius, it is true, felt himself to be inspired, for he believed himself entitled to boast of genuine visions; but then he tries to make his theory apply to all bishops, even to those who never had any inspiration of this kind. The only way in which the theory can gain the victory over enthusiasm and prophecy is by falsely proclaiming every bishop to be a prophet.
3. By the theory of the Old Testament priesthood. The first trace of it is to be found in the first Epistle of St Clement (ch. 40), where reference is made to the typical nature of the Israelite priesthood; but it may just as well have arisen in Egypt or Syria amongst the readers of the Didache—in fact, wherever the Old Testament was counted a sacred book of the law. There in the Old Testament they read of a clear and sharp distinction between clergy and laity—this is noticed even as early as Clement!—and of a hierarchy with different degrees of dignity. The type was endowed with creative power. The Didache, as is well-known, furnishes other evidence of the great and commanding influence which the Old Testament exercised upon the congregations.
All three theories possessed the further advantage of being capable of combination. This is what actually occurred a little later. The bishops became the successors of the apostles, prophets, and priests. By the end of the first century the foundation of the whole system had been laid.
The first external consequence of the new dignity was that the bishops came to be paid. The author of the Acts still protests against the innovation: instead of copying those grievous wolves, the itinerant preachers, the bishops should learn of Paul to earn their livelihood by the labour of their own hands. In the province in which the Didache was written the prophets and teachers were paid rich contributions in kind; if no prophet was present, then it was the poor and not the bishops who benefited thereby. Such was the original practice. The author of the Pastoral epistles has quite a different opinion on this point:—“The husbandman that laboureth must be the first to partake of the fruits. Consider what I say; for the Lord shall give thee understanding in all things.” All this is as yet very mysterious and cautious. The later letter is less enigmatic: “Let the elders that rule well [not all therefore indiscriminately] be counted worthy of double honour [i.e., be paid], especially those who labour in the word and in teaching [for they have less time to devote to their own business]. For the Scripture saith, ‘Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn,’ and ‘the labourer is worthy of his hire.’” Evidently the payment of bishops is still an innovation which is not to be risked without due limitations, and has to be supported by passages from Scripture. It helped to increase the professional feeling of the clergy.
Our earliest authority for the monarchical episcopate and the threefold ministry—bishops, presbyters,
and deacons—is Ignatius (110-120 A.D.), and that
only for Antioch in Syria and for Asia Minor. In
But what reception was accorded the new constitution by the congregations? As far as they were ecclesiastically minded, they viewed it with favour. It was a time of struggle and of persecution—the Church needed strong and skilful leaders. There was, however, naturally some diversity of opinion, and many old and young Christians sympathized with the itinerant preachers. Evidence of this may be found in the Third Epistle of St John. But the more perfect organization won the day.
Thus, then, the Church had received its new leaders.
Those who a short while previously had been merely
occupied with the public services, now found themselves suddenly at the head of the whole spiritual
life. Religious gifts were less looked for in these
men than energy and a practical turn of mind. The
more serious Christians, however, made it a matter
of anxious concern that the bishop should be of
an exemplary moral life. The man who did
more than all others to increase their authority—the author of the Pastoral epistles—took the utmost
pains at the same time to further the improvement
The Formation of the Office of Teacher in the Catholic Church.
Of the three most important personalities of the
apostolic age, the apostle, the prophet and the
teacher, the last-named alone subsists in sub-apostolic
times, and that not without having traversed a serious
crisis. There were some critical moments when the
Christian teacher, too, threatened to degenerate into
the talkative and controversial Sophist. Hence the
warning in the Epistle of St James: “I do not want
many of you, my brothers, to become teachers, knowing as you do that we who teach shall be judged by
a more severe standard than others.” The author of
the Pastoral epistles would prefer to merge the office
of teacher entirely in that of bishop, and looks with
suspicion upon all freelances. His demands, however, were pitched too high. The bishops could
guarantee the true doctrine of others, but they could
never take up the calling of teachers themselves;
they had far too much practical work in hand for
that. The problem was solved by placing the
teachers henceforward under episcopal control. They
had to subscribe to the creed, but otherwise they
had complete liberty of teaching, i.e., as far as the
ecclesiastical authorities were concerned. We only
The great anonymous period of the teacher’s office extends from the age of Apollos to that of Justin. Anonymity is really its characteristic feature; the names of Catholic and Gnostic teachers alike have completely vanished. The literature, however, that has come down to us from the anonymous teachers of the Church is of considerable extent. It includes, amongst other writings, the Catholic Epistles, the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Gospels (except that of Mark), the Pastoral epistles, Barnabas, the Didache. Of the ecclesiastical authors, besides the bishops, we are only acquainted with an evangelist, Mark, one prophet, Hermas, and Aristion, to whom the spurious conclusion of St. Mark’s Gospel may possibly be ascribed.
There are also very many pseudonymous writings amongst the products of the literary activity of the catholic teachers. The Gospels, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the letter known as that of St Barnabas, are the only works which begin without any name whatever. The whole of the remaining literature claims to be apostolic. And this is one of the clearest proofs that we have reached an age of decline. These teachers feel their inferiority. Their names carry no weight, they possess no authority. It is only by prefixing the names of the apostles to their letters (which, moreover, are letters in name only, mere literary fabrications) that they gain any hearing. A parallel to this ecclesiastical usurpation of apostolic authority is to be found in the constant appeal to secret apostolic tradition by the Gnostics.
Thus the fathers of the later catholic office of teachers are anonymous persons who acquired a standing, not by their own personal influence, but only by the assumption of spurious titles—a kind of necromancy. It was they who laid the foundations of the later catholic theology. They were the spiritual leaders of the Church in the greatest crisis which the Church ever traversed, and the Church’s safe emergence from that crisis is to be ascribed to them and to the bishops.
As long as there were apostles and prophets they were the homines religiosi, the representatives of ecstasy and exaltation, and of all that was extraordinary. They were the incarnation of the enthusiastic impulse, of that excess of zeal, love and energy which could find no room in the everyday life. This impulse had to discover a new outlet when the order of the apostles and of the prophets succumbed to the altered circumstances of the times. The Christian life was too abnormal, too vehement, too volcanic to find full satisfaction in the office of bishop or of teacher, and in the ordinary layman’s piety. There must be saints to set a goal to the longing of the deepest natures, to whom the masses could look up and venerate as heroes. They are the successors of the apostles and the prophets in the abnormal manner of their lives, though not in their historical calling. They do not represent anything distinctively Christian; they belong rather to the universal history of religion than to the history of the Gospel.
Who are the saints of the sub-apostolic age? First
Other writings celebrate the martyrs of past ages
as saints, so the Epistle to the Hebrews. The
catalogue of the men of faith—the cloud of witnesses—is closed with the martyrs. The author enumerates
every variety of death and terror. “Some were
crucified, others had trial of mockings and scourgings;
yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment; they
were stoned, tortured, sawn asunder; they were slain
with the sword: they went about in sheepskins,
in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, evil-intreated, of
whom the world was not worthy.” That applies to
the martyrs of the Jewish Church, but it shows how
Christian enthusiasm was kindled by such fancies.
The Acts of the Apostles celebrates the apostles as
martyrs. Nothing but his martyrdom is related of
James, and not much more of Stephen. St Peter
and St Paul are heroes of suffering. But the fatal
termination is by no means the most important part
The ascetics formed the second class of the saints.
The beginnings of the voluminous literature of
hagiology can be traced back to the end of the first
century. The series is begun by the Gospels; Jesus
Himself appears in them as the first of the saints,
though He is, it is true, at the same time the
messenger of the clear Word of God. The various
Acts of the Apostles follow next; they reflect the ideal of popular piety. The
men of God are there depicted as converters of the heathen, as workers of
miracles, as ascetics, and as martyrs. It is possible that our canonical book of
the Acts is the first of this group of literary productions. But the editor
reproduces the legend of the saints with an ecclesiastical bias and writes as a
conscious advocate of episcopal authority. In the apocryphal writings, on the
contrary, the saint is pourtrayed without any ecclesiastical
coloring. They are the last products of the dying
enthusiasm. Human and divine here melt into one;
the miraculous forms the rule, the ordinary the exception.
Thus equipped with bishops, theologians and saints, the Church goes forward to meet the problems of the new age. There were no longer any great personalities with an immediate divine calling. That is not the fault of the Church. The time now came when second-rate characters and talents were strong enough to find a place for the new religion in the world and to preserve it from entire destruction therein.
IT was only the Jewish war and the destruction of
Jerusalem in the year 70 A.D. that finally effected the
external breach between Jews and Christians. It
was now clear to all Christians that the mission of
Jesus and the apostles to Israel had been in vain, and
had not stayed the judgment of God. The fulfilment
of Jesus’ prophecies, the wrath of God poured out
upon Jerusalem as a punishment for the murder of
Jesus—such seemed (to all Christians) to be the
meaning of the terrible events which had just
taken place, for everyone who could read the signs
of the times. And while these convictions were
gaining ground among the Christians, the authors of
the Apocalypse of Baruch and of Ezra were pouring
forth their lamentations for the desolation of the
holy land and the destruction of the holy city.
Something was gradually settling down between
Jews and Christians, something of greater weight
than theological differences. A rift in thought and
The Jews retaliated first of all by the expulsion of all Christians from membership in the synagogues. Everyone that espoused the cause of Jesus was immediately excommunicated with the most terrible curses. The passage in St Luke’s Gospel alludes to this where it is written: “Blessed are ye when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company and reproach you and cast out your name as evil for the Son of man’s sake.” A nice illustration is also to be found (in the Fourth Gospel) in the story of the man that was born blind. This man was cast out of the assembly, “for the Jews had agreed that if any man should confess Him to be Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue.”
A further step was taken when the Christians were
denounced to the Roman governors under the pretext
of being politically dangerous. The Jews were the
principal instigators in the persecution of Christians
that now began; it was they who sowed broadcast
the accusations of revolt, innovation and conspiracy,
and thrust Christianity from them as an “illegal
religion.” The Lucan writings contain a series of
such denunciations: “Jesus perverted the people,
forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that
He Himself is Christ a king.” “The Christians
have turned the world upside down; they act contrary
to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another
king, one Jesus.” It is true that, according to the
narrative in the Acts of the Apostles, these accusations
The influence of Judaism upon Christianity would
never have been of any consequence had the combatants confined themselves to these brutal methods
of warfare. But from very early times controversy
was employed as well as calumny. Thus the teachers
of the two religions engaged in learned disputations,
which naturally scarcely ever had any practical
results, but did not fail to exercise a considerable
influence upon men’s minds. The earliest picture of
such a disputation is to be found in the Acts of the
Apostles. The record of the speeches and of the
argumentation of St Stephen and of St Paul affords us
at the same time an insight into the circumstances of
a later age. Next, we have the disputes of Jesus with
the Jews at Jerusalem, contained in the Fourth
Gospel. Here the author simply carries back into
the life of Jesus the wranglings between Jews and
Christians of his own day. Lastly, in his dialogue
with the Jew Trypho, Justin gives us the outline
of a regular disputation, of course in a Christian
light. This work of Justin’s compensates in a measure
for the loss of the older disputation between Jason
and Papiscus, of which Aristo of Pella is said to
have been the author. Justin’s dialogue is in any
case an authority of the highest value if we would
determine, not only the outer procedure in such a
disputation, but also the apologetic methods in detail.
Other anti-Jewish writings, such as the Epistle to
If we ask, what was the subject of this controversy
and what were the main points in the dispute, then
we must be prepared to find that the specific differences between the Christian and the Jew had not
been grasped at all by either party in the theological
dispute. For in reality two completely different
types or species of religion stood opposed to each
other, and they could only be contrasted as wholes:
it was not a question of single dogmas or customs;
the point at issue was the entire relation of man to
God. Does man claim to be God’s child, or is he His
slave? Are love and joy to prevail in him, or is it
fear? Which is important in God’s sight—the abiding
in the three realities, or a hundred secondary matters?
The answer to these fundamental questions was that
which really differentiated the Christian from the Jew.
But even in the earliest Christian Church the subject
of controversy was less the new element in religion
than the dogma of the Messiah. Could it be applied
to Jesus in spite of His death or not? This dispute
began the process whereby the fundamental points of
difference were obliterated and obscured. Then, in
addition to this, there came in, through Paul, the strife
concerning the law. Paul sets up a sharp antithesis—the law or Jesus Christ. Here was at any rate a
faint glimmering of the truth. It is because Jesus
Christ is the only mediator between God and man
and the barrier of the law no longer exists for the
Christian, that His religion is of a totally different
nature—it is the glorious liberty of the children of
God. St Paul had indeed a profounder conception
We have now to give an outline of the Christological controversy between the Jews and the
Christians and the Christological apologetics of the
latter. The starting-point was the question: Is Jesus
the Messiah expected by the Jews or not? But
since St Paul had created an entirely new Christology—the Son of God from heaven, the mediator
Here were two things as far as the poles asunder—Jewish eschatological doctrines and new Christian speculations. The dialogue with Trypho (ch. 48) shows conclusively that the difference between Jews and Christians was clearly realized. Trypho says, that Jesus should be the Messiah is paradoxical, but to assert that He pre-existed as God and then became man in a supernatural fashion, is “not only paradoxical but foolish,” whereupon Justin admits that the proof of the second statement is rather more difficult.
First of all, it had to be proved that Jesus was the
Messiah. This was in reality no easy task, seeing
that Jesus had eliminated nearly all that was Jewish
from the conception of the Messiah and referred His
disciples to the future for the little that remained.
But the difficulty was no longer felt. It was maintained that Jesus had been acknowledged as the
Jewish Messiah while He lived on earth. The chief
rock of offence was now, as ever, His death, which
the Jews interpreted as punishment for wrongdoing.
Hence the greatest part of this Messianic theology is
apologetics for the death of Jesus. The Resurrection
there appears as evidence of restitution, and is itself
defended by an ever-lengthening chain of proofs.
When the Jews persisted in spreading abroad the
report of the theft of the body of Jesus, the Christians
invented the story of the watch and the sealing of the
grave by way of refutation. The legends concerning
the miraculous occurrences at the death of Jesus were
The proof from prophecy was intended to remove
any further objections that might be entertained. In
the first place, prophecies of Jesus Himself were
fulfilled in the story of the Passion—there was a
whole series of detailed predictions and of symbolical
actions, from which the inference was to be drawn
that He did not bow before superior force but died
of His own free will. Next, the whole of the Old
Testament was interpreted as the book of the death
of the Messiah, not merely
The last recourse of apologetics was the proof of
the voluntariness of Jesus' sufferings. He could have
asked God to send Him legions of angels, but He
would not. If by the mere utterance of the words “I am He” He made His enemies fall to the ground,
how easily might He have escaped from them. His
life was His own to give or to keep, and if He gave
it, then it was for our sakes and that the scripture
The rest of the history was, however, not entirely
neglected. Difficulties had to be removed and
further proofs of the Messiahship furnished. The
doctrine of Jesus Davidic descent was maintained in
Galilee was, however, still the land of darkness.
Can the Messiah come from Galilee? The first
evangelist has recourse to the prophecy of Isaiah—the
light of the Messiah is to spring up in Galilee. The
fourth evangelist simply transfers the scene of Jesus’ activity to Jerusalem in order that every reproach of
Jesus having taught in a corner and in secret might
be removed. This apologetic transformation of the
life of Jesus equals in boldness the transference of His
birthplace. One other apparent obstacle to the
doctrine that Jesus was the Messiah had to be surmounted—the baptism of Jesus by John, for surely
the Baptist is the greater, and the baptized is even
a sinner. To counterbalance these inferences the
first evangelist inserted the conversation in the course
of which the Baptist humbles himself before Jesus;
the third placed the Baptist in an inferior position
through his previous history; the fourth made the
The main question still remained unanswered as
before: Does the life of Jesus as a whole give one the
impression that He was the Messiah? Originally the
Christians universally shared the belief that Jesus had
yet to come as Messiah. The Messianic glory had
not yet been revealed in Him. It was only the
return of Jesus and the ‘advent of Messiah” that was
to furnish the full Messianic proof. But in the
course of the controversy with the Jews, and under
the influence of the Pauline conception of the Son
of God who had already appeared, the proof began to
be attempted that Jesus was the Messiah who had
The Christian apologists sought to surmount the difficulty in two mutually exclusive ways. The first, and the more honest, was the artificially constructed theory of the twofold advent of the Messiah—one in humiliation, one in glory. The first traces of this theory are to be found in the Lucan writings, where we have the explanation—first the suffering and then the glory. It is completed in Barnabas and in Justin, together with the proofs from the Old Testament. On the great day of Atonement there were two he-goats resembling each other, according to the Rabbinical theory; just so the Jesus of the second advent will be like the Jesus murdered by the Jews. This theory possessed one great advantage: the story of Jesus could be taken as it was in reality. But then the chief proof had to be deferred to the uncertain future.
Hence the origin of the opposite theory. The
Messianic glory was manifested during Jesus’ earthly
life. The first evangelist goes a long way to meet it
with his great proof from miracles (
Jesus had not been the Messiah of the Jews. The whole artificial series of proofs brought forward by the Christians simply corroborates this assertion. All that they advance is figment, feint and fabrication. No single Christian had the courage to tell the Jews straight out: Jesus was not that which you wish Him to be, because He was something a great deal better.
There were, of course, many Christians to whom the title of Messiah did not imply very much, though that which they substituted for it was in no wise better. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews belongs to this class. Although he calls Jesus Christ he knows practically nothing of the Messianic theology, and therefore the Jewish Alexandrine school of thought to which he belongs attached no importance to this doctrine. His favourite book is the Pentateuch, which makes no mention of the Messiah. When he wishes to picture Jesus clearly to himself and the Jewish readers of the Bible he can only do so by means of the types and conceptions of the Pentateuch. Hence he derives his favourite idea, Jesus the high priest according to the order of Melchisedec.
His letter is addressed to Christians, but to such as
The usual result of apologetics can be traced in our
author. Instead of brushing these preposterous
objections aside he takes them into consideration and
really tries to prove that the Christians possess the
better Church with a higher ritual and priesthood.
It was an amazing undertaking. The method employed was to apply the Pentateuch to Jesus. But
Jesus was not of Aaron’s line, and had He been He
would but have been the equal of the Jewish high
priests. So our Christian author selects the figure of
Melchisedec, naturally incited thereto by the
Starting from this figure, our author proves on the
one hand the similarity of Christ to the Jewish high
priests, but above all, the difference that exists between
them and His superiority over them. The priests of
Aaron are many, Jesus one; they are the sinful, He
the sinless; they worship in the temple made with
hands, He in the heavenly temple; they make atonement to God year by year, He once; they with the
blood of bulls and calves, He with His own. In all
this clever trifling it does not of course matter that
Jesus is explained now as priest and now as victim,
for the author never employs that imaginative power
which welds different features into one consistent
picture. It is possible that he is influenced by
another typical figure in the Jewish faith, that of the
heavenly high priest Michael, believed by the Jews to
represent their people continually in the sanctuary of
God in heaven. Philo had already identified this
archangelic high priest with his Logos. Philo’s pupil—our author—may very well have combined the
We do not really enter the domain of speculation until we come to the title ‘Son of God.’ The expression was originally a mere title for the Messiah, though even as such it was by no means common in the terminology of the schools. St Paul was the first to develop the theory of the heavenly Son of God, whose nature is inherently superior to our own. He is God’s own true Son, whereas we only become His sons by adoption. As Son of God He is to be conceived as dwelling in heaven from all eternity. This Pauline theory of the Son of God was immediately accepted by the teachers of the sub-apostolic age (e.g., the authors of the Epistle to the Hebrews, of St John’s Gospel, and the letter of Barnabas) as a certain basis on which to build. It was now also drawn into the controversy with the Jews.
The Jews clung firmly to their belief that God was
the Father of all, so that they might call themselves
His children. They altogether refused to accept
Jesus as the Son of God in an especial sense. The
Christians answered by denying the Jewish faith in
God the Father, and by separating Jesus still more
If, however, the Son of God was thus removed
from the children of God, then the question as to His
relation to God was bound to come to the front at
once. Once more the Jews were the instigators.
They accused the Christians of apostasy from
monotheism, of pure idolatry. Our oldest Gospel,
St Mark, refers to this accusation when it tells
us that Jesus was condemned to death as a
blasphemer because He had called Himself Son
of God; then the Fourth Gospel reproduces the
charge made by the Jews in so many words: “Jesus by calling God His Father makes Himself
equal with God.” “He blasphemes God in that
The development of the Pauline Gnosis led the Christians a great deal further than the defence of the divine Sonship. Since the days of St Paul it was a universally accepted opinion that the whole of the Old Testament bore witness to Jesus as Lord. Both at the creation and in revelation He had acted mediatorially and vicariously. Now, as ‘the Lord’ is the Old Testament name of God, really all that is wanting in St Paul’s account is the name God for Jesus. The thing was there. As regards the Jews this was a complete innovation. The framework of the old Messianic theology was broken. The Jews protested, We dare not accept a second God. The Old Testament knows only one God—the Creator, and His servants—the angels.
In spite of this protest the Christological exegesis of the Old Testament prevailed in the Church. According to the Epistle to the Hebrews God created the world through His Son. This Son, the effulgence of the divine glory, is highly exalted above all angels. It is of Him that we read in the Psalms, “Let all the angels of God worship Him.” And, “Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Thy hands: they shall perish, but Thou continuest.” Thereby the Jews are confounded with all their loud boasting in the revelation of angels.
John, too, declares that God created the world
through His Son, the Logos. But above all it is
What are the names by which Jesus is known in
Trypho’s comment upon this is very effective: “Very well then; you Gentile Christians may be worshippers of this Lower Deity, but let us continue to be worshippers of the highest God.” That hits the nail upon the head. It is a choice between monotheism and mythology. The Christians preferred the latter, because they thereby rendered themselves masters of the Old Testament, and because it was better suited to the needs of such as were Gentiles.
The Christians were fully persuaded in their own
minds that they had come forth from this controversy
with the Jews victorious in all points. They had
satisfactorily proved Jesus to be the Messiah by
wonders and prophecies; they had proved Him to be
a high priest according to the order of Melchisedec, to
be Son of God, to be Lord and God in the Old
Testament. They had started from the Messianic
proof of the early Christian Church and the Gnosis
of St Paul; and upon this foundation they had
continued to build without change of plan. A
straight line of succession can be traced from St
Paul through St John to Justin. Proceeding from
the secure basis of the Pauline Gnosis, the surrounding country is conquered until the whole of
the Old Testament becomes a Christian book, and
the Lower God stands beneath and by the side
And yet this victory over the Jews implied at the
same time an increasing alienation from Jesus Himself. It is an awful spectacle: here we have
theologians fighting for Jesus, taking up arms in His
defence, exalting Him, deifying Him, and at the
same time inventing texts in His favour, transforming
and perverting others, and all the while they never
asked who He was in reality and what His aims
were. The subject of all this anti-Jewish apologetic
is never really Jesus, but the titles of Messiah, Son of
God, and the like. The evangelist, who is the ablest
champion of this defence of the faith, composes a new
life of Jesus without any compunction as a theological
commentary or canon of interpretation for the stories
which he found to hand. No single Christian said
what he might have said: “Jesus is our Redeemer,
because He led us to God, because He freed us from
the Scribes, because He made our lives wholesome
and honest as against the Pharisees, because He inspired us with glad hope, forgiveness, courage and
joy.” All this is to be found, to be sure, in the first
three Gospels, though not as the real proof. The
following, on the contrary, is indicated as the line of
action to be pursued. He that would defend Jesus
must first of all give Him the right titles; he must
prove these titles by wonders and by prophecies; he
must ransack the whole of the Old Testament for
corroborative matter, and all the while care as little
as possible for the real Jesus. This plan had such
wide-reaching effects that to this day it is difficult to
The Christological controversy served to keep alive amongst the Christians the sense of the contrast between their religion and that of the Jews. Simultaneously, however, a strong current was making for a silent and gradual approximation of the Christian faith to that of their adversaries. Jewish eschatology, the Jewish belief in angels, even Jewish conceptions of God Himself, pass over into the Christian Church more and more extensively, though without at first attracting notice.
In its origin Christian eschatology was merely a
form of the Jewish. All that Jesus did was to
simplify and denationalize the Jewish hope. Even
in St Paul we notice a very great increase in apocalyptic conceptions, theories as to the metamorphosis
of the body, the concatenation of catastrophes, Antichrist and his destruction. Next the Christian
Apocalypse regularly flooded the thoughts of the
future hope with the Jewish Apocalypse. Nor did
the process cease: it continued in an increasing
measure. One single fact proves this more than an
entire series of treatises. The whole of the later
Jewish apocalyptic literature, even that which dates
from after the year 70 A.D., crosses silently over to
the Christians, and is held by them in canonical
estimation. The Epistle of St Jude employs the
books of Enoch and the ascension of Moses; Barnabas
uses the Apocalypse of Ezra; Hermas the prophecy
of Eldad and Medad; Papias actually quotes a
text from the Apocalypse of Baruch as a saying of
The belief in angels naturally formed an integral
part of Christianity from the very first. Yet how
The Christian faith in God inevitably suffered loss
through the influx of so many later Jewish speculations. It is wonderful how rapidly the early faith
in God the Father deteriorates. Men like St Paul
and St John, who stand on the same high level as
the Gospel of Jesus, do indeed from time to time
give glad expression to their faith that God has
manifested His love to us as the Father. But these
same theologians, writing as apologists, proclaimed
the terrible God of wrath or the hidden, unapproachable God who decrees death
upon all who stand without the Church. What wonder, then, if even within the
Church Christians but seldom obtained or retained the joyful trust in God the
loving Father, and were content with His deputies and substitutes, Christ, the
angels and the saints. At present, no direct intercourse with God is possible,
for He is surrounded by His heavenly court filling all the heavens and
encompassing Him so closely that no eye can pierce through it. It is only in the
future, when the angels shall have smitten the whole earth with their plagues
and executed their judgments, that one may hope that God will appear upon earth
in mercy, though still inspiring terror. So Christians and Jews alike had once
more reverted to the old conception of God, and the resulting frame of mind was
a state of suspense, a perpetual oscillation between
NEXT to Christology the question as to the law
was the chief point of contention between Jews and
Christians. Since Paul had proclaimed the annulling of the law for all Christians, they had remained
practically free. Isolated attempts on the part of
the Jews to reintroduce the law among the Christians
were at once energetically repulsed—we need but
look at the Epistle to the Hebrews, and at that of
Barnabas. In Justin’s time, things have come to
such a pitch that those who cling to the law after
the manner of the old Jewish Christians are denied
all hope of future blessedness by many members
of the Church Catholic. It was impossible to go
back upon the position laid down by St Paul. But
to formulate and establish his theses soon proved to
be impracticable. He himself had gone no further
than to declare that the law had been annulled.
The Jews forthwith reproach the Christians with
having fallen away from the faith of the fathers in
The First Gospel makes the earliest attempt in this
direction. It is possible that the great declaration
in the Sermon on the Mount, “I came to fulfil the
law, not to destroy it,” may have been originally
inserted by Judaizers. It is certain, however, that
the words, as we read them to-day, are to be taken,
not in a Jewish sense, but in that of the Catholic
Church, and only thus obtained a footing in the
Church. This is proved by the mere fact of the
addition, “and the prophets” to the word “law.” Jesus here simply declares that
He is the true interpreter of the Old Testament, that He alone has seized
its inner meaning, and that this meaning is to be
accepted by the Church. Naturally this is only
possible if the interpretation be free and allegorical,
in other words, Christian. Christ is the second
The addition, “and the prophets,” is very characteristic of the methods pursued by the Christians in their
apologetic. Whilst the Jews take their stand firmly
upon the law and fight against the Christians from this
basis, the latter substitute the “law and the prophets” in their defence: they shelter themselves behind the
Old Testament as the word of God, of prophecy. Both
the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Lucan writings, and
the Johannine Gospel convert the controversy as to
the law into one concerning prophecy. The law, too,
is to be read as foretelling Christ. St Luke’s procedure is very instructive in this connection. In the
source which lay before him he found the saying: “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than
for one tittle of the law to fall.” He could not
simply omit the saying. It was too well known, and
one had to define one’s position towards it. He
therefore inserts in front of these words as to the
eternal validity of the law the other statement, “the
law and the prophets were until John,” in order at
least to indicate their meaning. And then he further
shows in what sense they are to be interpreted by the
concluding words of the following parable. Moses
and the prophets are the road to Faith, the law is to
be forever valid as a prophecy leading to Christ.
Hence Paul says in the Acts, “I believe all things which are according to the
law and which are written in the prophets”; and so too Jesus says in the Fourth
Gospel, “If ye believed Moses ye would believe Me; for he wrote of Me”; as though the important matter
In spite of all, however, the controversy continued. It could not be definitely settled by simply
smoothing over the real points of opposition. The
fact that the ceremonial law was no longer obligatory
upon Christians had to be established by some clear
theory. The first attempts to discover such a theory
are to be found in the Epistle to the Hebrews and
the speech of Stephen. The transitory nature of the
ceremonial law is proved from the Old Testament
itself. If God, speaking by the prophets, foretells a
new covenant and a high priest after the order of
Melchizedek and therefore not of Aaron’s, He
Himself declares the old legislation to have been
superseded. The severe sayings of the prophets
directed against sacrifices and the temple, in which
God Himself rejects the Jewish ceremonial, point in
the direction. These indications are expanded into
a fully developed theory in Barnabas; he was
one of the most outspoken opponents of Judaism,
Justin was the first to find a satisfactory explanation of the difficulty, and his answer has been accepted
ever since by the Church. He collected the apologetic works of his predecessors, and also contributed
to the collection. Peculiar to himself and decisive
The significance of the whole of this controversy
was purely theoretical. The actual freedom of the
Christians from the law was its presupposition; it
needed to be sanctioned, it already existed as a
For, whilst the controversy as to the validity of the national law was occupying public attention, a far more important process was pursuing its silent course with entirely opposite results. All that was essential in Jewish ethics was tacitly being accepted by the Church, just as the apologetic and angelology in the domain of faith. The squabbles of theologians are not the only objects of importance in the world. The greatest changes are effected quietly by the natural exchange of ideas in social intercourse without being either prohibited or permitted.
The reasons for this influx of Jewish ethics into the Christian Church are evident. The words of Jesus were at first but little known, and scanty as they were in number they referred to but a few of the many relations of life. But Paul himself had made very frequent use of the Old Testament, especially of the Proverbs and Psalms. It was easiest to follow him in this direction. Almost all the ethical admonitions, e.g., that are contained in 1 Peter, 1 Clement, and also in St James, are based upon the Jewish proverbial philosophy in the Psalms, Proverbs, and also the Prophets, Ecclesiasticus and Wisdom of Solomon, or they are founded upon the Old Testament narrative as the great collection of moral examples. For all these Christian teachers the ceremonial law has simply been annulled, but the moral treasures of the sacred book they do not intend to give up under any considerations whatever. But in so doing they appropriate a system of ethics which has a character quite of its own—the ethics of later Judaism.
The procedure of the Christians was, moreover,
exactly the same here as in the domain of faith.
They took over the most recent Jewish writings of
an ethical character and turned them into Christian
tracts by a few scanty additions. An unquestionable
instance of this is to be found in the Jewish Testaments of the twelve patriarchs, an example of an
exceedingly copious and lofty moral literature, to
which were appended a few Christological statements.
The origin of the little tract concerning the two
ways—the Way of Life and the Way of Death—is not quite so certain. It now stands at the
commencement of the Didache as a catechism for
proselytes, but we meet with it before this at the
conclusion of the Epistle of Barnabas. The tract
originally formed an independent work. There is
nothing Christian about it, nor are parallels wanting
in the nearly-related Jewish literature for the absence
of everything that is distinctively and nationally
Jewish. But the fact that a Christian and a Jewish
origin can be maintained for the same writing is in
itself remarkable. The exceedingly close resemblance
The presuppositions of these later Jewish and early Christian ethics strike us to-day as strangely childlike. Every human being is placed between God and the devil. Both would influence him and win him over. For this purpose they send forth their angels or spirits to him. Now these are nothing but the various moods and feelings, fancies and impulses, which are conceived of as something foreign to the man and due to external influence. We find it is true beside this, the impersonal conceptions of lust, pleasure, and conscience as immanent powers. Man is completely free to decide between good and bad. According to his decision the good or evil spirit wins the upper hand in him and the thought passes into deed, with the consequent reward or punishment. Even after the deed is done man retains his freedom. If he has hitherto followed the evil spirit he can choose the road of repentance which leads home again. Not only the Testaments and the commandments of Hermas, but the Epistle of St James and even the First of St Peter presuppose conceptions such as these.
From the abundant ethical material of all these
The next thing that is enjoined is usually continence or chastity: the commandment to keep oneself
unspotted from the world. The whole world appeared
to the religious man of that age to be a temple of
immorality, be it in deed or merely in desire. The
manifold temptations with which the religious man
is assailed in his goings out and his comings in are
minutely described, sometimes too minutely, so
that they acquire an especial interest of their own.
For it cannot be maintained that Judaism merely
took sins that were actually committed into account.
The distinction between sins of fact and sins of
thought was one with which it had long been familiar,
and through the greater inwardness of the moral
claim it had only too often been led to a weak and
even morally dangerous introspection of motives and
Next to chastity we hear most frequently of singleness of heart, and of its contrary double-mindedness. The ideal of the religious life was held to include the earnest endeavour to attain to a morality which should be at once complete, clear and simple, lifted far up above all doubt and hesitation or secret participation in the forbidden fruit, and of transparent sincerity both in what it did and in what it left undone.
Within the narrower circle of the brethren, sympathy, benevolence and compassion are esteemed
most highly. To visit the widows and fatherless in
their affliction is almost the half of true religion for
St James and also for Hermas. At all times the
Jews have achieved very striking results by their
works of charity to the poor of their own faith. A
proof of this is the wonderful amount of cohesion that
existed amongst the Jews of the dispersion. At the
same time, however, they exaggerated the value of
It is by no means easy clearly to characterize the difference between these late Jewish ethics and the ethics of the Gospel. The latter have evidently found an ally in the former. Both agree in their indifference to all that is merely national, in their greater inwardness, in their extension of the claim of morality to the whole of man’s life. We come across Christian sayings, even reminiscences, of Jesus in St James’ Epistle, although the author is probably almost entirely unacquainted with the words of the Gospel.
And yet it is a new ethics which now enters into
the Christian Churches. The most striking characteristic is legality. It would be going a great
deal too far, it is true, to ascribe its origin to the
influence of Judaism alone. It is a constantly
recurring feature in the history of religion that
that which began in the freedom of spirit ended—was bound to end—in the restriction of law, for it
is only possible to discipline large masses of men
by laws and institutions. This process was still
further accelerated in the Christian Church by the
rise of the Gnostic heresies which in many cases
In his Jewish source Hermas found a parable
describing the dispersion of the people of God—the
Israelites—all over the world under the protection of
the law. The archangel Michael was the governor
of this people, and gave the law to each individual
Israelite. Varying results followed, and these the
parable indicated by its distinction of three principal
classes: the righteous, the sinners who have not as yet
lost all hope of repentance, and the utterly lost. The
law he explains as being the Son of God, and the
people of God as the different peoples who have
accepted the Faith. But a few lines further on he
forgets his Christian exegesis, and is completely under
the influence of his Jewish source. Even the name
and office of Michael are left unaltered. He speaks of
the law and of the law alone. Martyrs are men who
have suffered death for the law, while there are others
who were grievously oppressed for the law—though
they were not actually put to death—and did not
deny their law. The meaning which he attaches to
the law is, of course, quite different to that which
it possessed in his Jewish source, but the form is
the same. Like Hermas, James introduced purely
The consequences of this legal view of morality were exactly
the same as those which manifested
themselves in Judaism. The moral ideal is divided
up into a number of single equivalent commandments which soon defy every attempt at comprehensive survey. They have to be learnt by heart
as something external, something that derives its
authority entirely from its divine origin and the
system of rewards and punishments, i.e., from results.
Now, too, the practice of drawing up long lists of
virtues and vices becomes increasingly common
among the Christians. The tract of the Two Ways
is a model for such lists. First of all, the chief sins
are enumerated in the order of the Decalogue and
forbidden; then follows the prohibition of the roots
of these sins in desire, thought, and speech. The
Testaments of the twelve patriarchs ascribe a vice or
a virtue to each of the patriarchs, which are then
examined at length in their origin and their consequences. The commandments of Hermas treat of
the single virtues or vices successively and separately
in quite a similar manner, whilst other portions of
the book give us catalogues of virtues arranged
according to the numbers 7 and 12. Traces are
not absolutely wanting in Hermas that he perceived
the necessity of an inward connection of the virtues
But as soon as the positive law sets up a criterion of good
and bad, the conception of works of supererogation, of merit, arises. Even St
Matthew had connected alms, prayer and fasting in his Sermon on the Mount as
acts done for God’s sake and meriting special reward. But it was Hermas beyond
all others who sanctioned the Jewish idea of ‘merit’ by his prophetical writing.
He discovered a parable in his source intended to illustrate this very idea.
There was a servant who did a good work in addition to the task laid upon him by
his Master, and then divided the reward which was allotted to him among his
fellow-servants, thereby meriting a double reward. So in like manner fasting is
doubly meritorious:
The diffusion of this same conception was still
further aided by the code of morals current among
the Jewish proselytes. There were proselytes of
different degrees; such as only subjected themselves
to the Jewish morality of the Two Ways, and such
as took upon them the whole yoke of the Lord.
It was only the second that led to perfection.
The insertion of the catechism for proselytes into
the Christian Didache gave this theory of a double
standard of morality—with modified demands in
the second case—apostolic sanction. In other cases,
too, the fatal use of the word ‘perfection’ passes
over from Judaism to Christianity. In St Mark
Jesus calls upon the rich man to sell his goods, else
he would not inherit eternal life; but St Matthew
says else he would not attain to that perfection,
which goes beyond obedience to the commandments.
On the other hand, in St Matthew, the saying of
Jesus as to the turning of the other cheek is still a
command, it is a part of God’s will, to do which is
for all men the way into the kingdom of God. In
the Didache we find a tendency to account this a
special mark of perfection, and inasmuch as it takes
this command and the similar sayings concerning
love for one’s enemies and boundless liberality as
But by far the worst consequence of the encroachment of legalism upon morality concerns the religious
relation itself. Religion is again turned into a legal
relation of performance and reward. God is the
taskmaster and judge; man His slave who seeks to
earn his reward in fear and trembling. Owing to
the Jewish source from which he worked, this change
is to be found very largely exemplified in Hermas.
Every deed, be it good or bad, is recorded in the
heavenly account-book, and every change of fortune
is considered as the divine answer to man’s actions.
Hence all misfortune is looked upon as punishment,
with the possible exception of martyrdom, and even
in this case its value for the sinner consists in its
being repentance for his sins. If the misfortune
appear to be greater than the merited punishment,
then it must be supposed to have a supererogatory
efficiency, and to be punishment for the sins of other
members of the family. According to strict justice,
the punishment lasts exactly as long as the sin has
been indulged in; but for our feelings a day of
pleasure corresponds to a year of torment. Amongst
the evils and misfortunes which the author is especially
The second principal characteristic which sharply
differentiates the ethics influenced by Judaism from
the ethics of the Gospel is its ecclesiasticism. This
tendency, too, originated independently in the Christian Churches, and merely received a powerful impetus
through the pattern presented by Jewish ethics, which
for a long time previously had tended to accentuate
the contrast to the heathen world, and to tighten the
In the first place, the Christians take over the position occupied by the Jewish synagogue towards the
Gentiles. The conceptions ‘Gentiles’ and ‘world.’ are, generally speaking, an inheritance from Judaism.
The Jew included all the peoples and states of antiquity in all their manifold variety as one uniform
mass under the conception of the ‘nations’ (Gentiles),
and contrasted them with his Church as an unclean
world under the dominion of demons. St Matthew’s version of the Sermon on the Mount shows Jewish
colouring in this particular. Those who are felt to
be furthest removed from the Christian ideal are
called Publicans and Gentiles. “Do not even the
publicans the same?” “Do not even the Gentiles
the same?” and so again, “Let him be unto thee as
the Gentile and the publican.” The evangelist does
not notice how badly this colouring of his words
harmonizes with Jesus own life. As for Hermas,
his thoughts and words are entirely influenced by
this theory. The righteous, sinners, heathen—such is
his division of mankind. The righteous are inheritors
of the world to come. The sinners and the heathen
are lost; the former because they sinned and did
not repent, the latter because they knew not their
Creator. “They consorted not with the righteous,
but lived together with the heathen.” Such is the
judgment upon one class of sinners. How would
Jesus have stood in this judgment? But as it was
The converse of this strict separation from the
Gentiles is presented by the intimate relation of the
brethren. Paul copies the Jews in this point and
goes beyond them. Clement refers his panegyric
of love to love of the brethren within the Church,
and surely not without some reason. When Paul,
summing up his moral exhortations, speaks of love
as the bond of perfection, we are involuntarily reminded of the Jewish catalogues of virtues in which
love is always the keystone of the arch. One of the
most important manifestations of this love—though
it is by no means exhausted herein—is benevolence
to one’s co-religionists. Love, peace, and humility
belong together, and together constitute the complete
No one will reproach the young Christian Church for seeking instruction and advice in its ethics from the older and far more experienced Jewish Church. The position of both Churches was at bottom the same. Why should the younger pass by the treasures of wisdom of earlier generations? But then one must not be astonished to find Christian ethics retrograding in many places to the position in which Jesus and Paul found them.
JESUS had prophesied the destruction of the Jewish Church. The external rupture between the Christians and that Church had been brought about by St Paul, since whose day the Christians had stood outside of any ecclesiastical communion with the Jews. But it was none other than St Paul who had done more than all others to found and consolidate the new Christian Church; and this in two ways. First, he laid down the theory that the way to salvation led through the ecclesia of Jesus Christ alone, and that all were lost who remained as unbelievers outside of the Church. Only the believer will be saved, “extra ecclesiam nulla salus.” But at the same time he established a connection between the new Church and the Israel of old, by means of his gnosis, through the theory: “The Christians are the Israel of God, the spiritual Israel; all pious Jews of pre-Christian times were Christians before Christ.”
The immediate consequence of these great theories of St Paul was that, generally speaking, the Jewish ecclesiastical idea struck deep root in Christianity and grew apace. Hence the further result that customs and institutions of the Jewish Church were taken over into the Christian.
The most remarkable feature was the assurance
with which the Christians, who, after all, were mainly
recruited from among the heathen, proclaimed themselves as the true Israel of God. There is scarcely
a single Christian who knows anything of a new
Church, or says that Jesus founded the Church.
The Christian Church is of immemorial antiquity, and
the Christians are simply the Old Testament people
of God. The emphasis which is placed upon the
antiquity of the Church is often due, as in the Acts,
to apologetic considerations. The reproach of schism
and of unauthorized innovation is thus guarded against.
The same consciousness is, however, shared by purely
devotional writings, which have no connection
whatever with apologetics. The decisive factor was the
supremacy of the Old Testament in all Christian
communities. One could only read and love the
Old Testament, if one found therein the history of
the ‘fathers’ of one’s own people. As soon as the
Christians began to reflect upon the matter from a
theoretical point of view, they had to confess that
the Jews were the primitive stock and the heathen
Christians the proselytes. The authors of the
Apocalypse, of the Acts and of the Fourth Gospel,
say so quite plainly. But the very candour of their
statements proves the entire insignificance of the
distinction. There is no idea of the proselytes being
Whether the Christians called themselves ‘people
of God,’ or ‘Church,’ was really a matter of in
difference to them, for the Old Testament provided
them with both expressions. The word ‘people’ or ‘peoples of God,’ seems, however, to have been the
more popular. A man like the author of the
Apocalypse knows but the one contrast: the people
of God and the Gentiles. There are, besides, “those
who call themselves Jews but are not,” i.e., the name of Jew belongs
solely to the Christian people of God. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews
lives especially in the idea of the Old Testament congregation with its divine
institutions; but he finds, too, in the Old Testament the great company of
heroes, the fathers of the faith, who light the Christians
The other expression ‘Church’ meets us rather more
rarely in the sub-apostolic literature; but (and this is
significant) more especially in the writings which are in
closest touch with Judaism. The evangelist Matthew,
himself a born Jew, as he knows how to read the
original Hebrew text of the Old Testament, and even
follows the order of the books, is one of those who
appropriate the Jewish term ‘Church.’ By ‘the
Church’ he understands not only the single congregation which in its local organization is sharply distinguished from the Gentile world, but also the Church
Catholic, that great juridical body corporate, the
government of which Jesus is said to have handed
over to Peter as His successor and vicar. All that
Peter determines as legislator in the Church shall be
valid for the kingdom of God. For by the power of
It is a remarkable coincidence that the other old
writing, the “Shepherd” of Hermas, which speaks
most about the Church, certainly dates from Rome, and
was written by a Christian who was perfectly familiar
with Judaism. In the third vision and the ninth
parable he has made use of a Jewish document which
describes the building of the tower of the Jewish
Church with the stones of the depths, i.e. the fathers
before Jacob, with the stones of the twelve mountains,
We meet with the same close connection between
Church and kingdom of God in the so-called
eucharistic prayers of the Didache. “As this bread
was scattered upon the hillside and being gathered
The necessary consequence of the acceptation of
the Jewish idea of the Church was the acceptation of
all the narrowness and the intolerance which this idea
implied amongst the Jews. It is, of course, possible
that the Christian congregations would have been
impelled to make these extravagant and intolerant
claims quite of themselves, urged thereto by the
sense of their superiority to their surroundings, and by
their consciousness of power. But this abstract possibility may safely be disregarded, since the influence
of the Jewish Church, which is the only other adequate
cause, is so patent at every step. “Extra ecclesiam
salus nulla,” comes to be the motto of the Christian
religion. It is only the symbol that has changed.
It is not the ceremonies, the Jewish blood, that are
efficacious, but the Christian faith. But the high
The limitation of salvation to the Church is, it
is true, very seldom expressed in so many words.
The apologetic writings which preach the idea most
zealously, the Acts and the Fourth Gospel, do not once
mention the Church. They only speak of Christ
and Faith, but then that is the Church. At all times
zeal for Christology has been zeal for ecclesiasticism.
The highest titles are assigned to Christ. Blessedness is centred in Him alone, and thus the demand
is made for entrance into the Church. St Paul had
led the way by setting up the theory, “Only he that
believes can be saved.” The author of the Acts
follows: “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and thou and
thy house shall be saved,” i.e., become a Christian. “In none other is there salvation; for neither is there
any other name under heaven that is given among
men whereby we should be saved.” The author of the
Fourth Gospel takes the last step by transforming
these thoughts of St Paul and St Luke into actual
words of Jesus. “I am the Way, the Truth, and the
Life: no one cometh unto the Father but by Me.” “Unless a man be born of water and the Spirit, he
Fortunately, however, the genuineness of the picture of Jesus
as we find it in the Synoptic Gospels has not been impaired by all the later
ecclesiastical additions, and the fanatical narrowness of the faith of His adherents is thereby repeatedly condemned. The great
examples of a breadth of view which were entirely
non-ecclesiastical, were not to be rooted out. All
those sayings of Jesus remained unimpaired, that the
moral element alone—the fruit—is decisive in God’s sight, and everything else worthless: that it is righteousness, love, and justice that God requires, and that
these qualities please Him all the world over wherever
they are found. How do the ecclesiastical authorities
manage, then, to make the Jesus of the Gospels suit
their theories? They attach ecclesiastical conclusions
to the Gospels. The evangelist Matthew closed his
work with the command of the risen Lord to evangelize and baptize, which confines salvation to the Church. The Gospel of St
Mark received the concluding verses which are recognized as not genuine,
and which contain the proclamation: “He that
believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that
disbelieveth shall be condemned,” and this was put
into Jesus' mouth! The author of the Lucan writings likewise makes the risen Lord utter the ecclesiastical
But for this later time the principle of salvation
limited to the Church set up by St Paul had to be
taken in the catholic sense that the Church did
indeed afford the necessary presupposition for salvation,
but by no means guaranteed it. St Paul had still
hoped that his congregations would all enter into the
kingdom as the elect of God’s mercy. The sub-apostolic age was obliged to relinquish this optimistic
faith entirely. It was by no means merely the
Gnostic division which impelled men to take a more
sober view of the Church. The fact that “average
Christianity” was perpetually on the increase in all
the congregations was too evident to be ignored,
and that especially in seasons of persecution when
the chaff is winnowed from the wheat. So we find
the author of the Apocalypse plainly telling his fellow-Christians that whole congregations (Thyatira, Sardis,
Laodicea) are in danger of being lost, or at any rate
of enduring the day of judgment in very small
minorities. Away, then, with all comfortable assurance of salvation! Only he that endureth in the
last great tribulation shall obtain the crown of
everlasting life. The author of the Pastoral letters and
the first evangelist put forth their theories, which
We cannot be surprised to find that when once the Jewish idea of the Church had been taken over by the Christians, many other things followed in its track. A whole mass of Jewish customs and institutions were either directly borrowed or were imitated, so that there should be something in a Christian dress to replace them.
The constitution of the Church was closely assimilated to the Jewish by the Old Testament foundation
of the episcopal system. The first letter of St
Clement, written at the end of the first century, sets
up the sharp distinction between clergy and laity
according to the standard of the Old Testament.
Fortunately the parallel was incomplete, for the
Christian priestly castes had no privileges derived from
birth. But the sharp dividing line between the
orders was to subsist and be respected under heavy
penalties. The centralization, too, of the public
worship in opposition to the many conventicles held
by the Gnostics received Old Testament sanction.
Clement writes: “Sacrifices are not offered
everywhere, but only in Jerusalem, and there not in every
place but in front of the temple on the altar, after
that the sacrifice has been examined by the high
priest and his ministers.” Ignatius draws this conclusion: One altar, one bishop, one congregation of
The practice of paying the officials of the Church is also supported by Old Testament prescriptions regarding the support of the priests. In the Didache these dues are still paid to the prophets, “for they are your high priests.” The revision of the Didache in the later apostolic constitutions substitutes ‘priests’ for ‘prophets,’ and this correction dates back to very early times.
Jewish models again are followed in the development of the tradition and office of teacher. The
Pastoral letters are the principal source of our evidence, although that combination of the episcopacy
with the teaching office which it was the aim of these
letters to further fell through. Jewish doctrine had
been handed down both in written Scriptures and by
oral tradition. It is to the Scriptures and tradition
that the Christian now likewise appeals. In the first
place, the Old Testament canon is saved from destruction in the struggle against the Gnostics, and receives
recognition as the Word of God. Compared with it
all Christian evidence, whether written or oral, is
counted as tradition in the first instance. We begin
to hear the watchwords, “Teaching of the Lord by
the Twelve Apostles,” “Teaching of the apostles most
sacred faith,” “The faith handed over to the saints.”
We shall see later how this faith was formulated.
We are here concerned with the form. The pseudo-Paul speaks of the apostolic deposit (παρακαταθήκη).
It has been given by God to the apostle, and is to
remain intact until the last day. This apostolic tradition is, of course, to be discovered above all in the
The public worship of the Church was also looked
upon as an imitation of the Jewish. A letter like
that to the Hebrews was bound to impel men to
try and find the Jewish originals almost for every
detail. They wished to see the pattern which Moses
had seen on the mount when he wrote the law.
St Clement of Rome is the first writer acquainted
Sunday, the Lord’s day, takes the place of the
Sabbath, first in the Apocalypse, then in the letter
of Pliny, and in most writings of the second century.
This celebration of Sunday by the Christians instead
of the Sabbath, is for Ignatius an important sign of
the new religion. Jewish liturgies are used for divine
service with short Christian additions. Hence the
regular confession of sins. This Jewish origin likewise
accounts for the fact that the name of God the Father
occurs so seldom in the prayers of the congregation.
The First Epistle of Clement, the Pastoral epistles,
and probably the Didache as well, contain instances
of Jewish prayers adapted for Christian use. But an
earlier document—the Apocalypse—is full of Jewish
liturgies. Just as in the synagogue, the service of
prayer is followed by the reading of Scripture, by the
sermon, and by a concluding prayer; for plainly the
In addition to this the Jewish institution of
penance is very widely used in the case of
particular faults of individuals. St Paul had been
the first to introduce it. In his case this was
absolutely necessary, for as he looked upon all
sinful Christians as elect in spite of their sin,
the possibility of repentance had to be left open
for them. The evangelist Matthew shows us that
amongst Jewish Christians a kind of penance was in
use which he refers back to Jesus Himself. It rests
upon a number of Jewish presuppositions. The
Apocalypse proves a similar institution to have
existed in Asia Minor, and according to Clement
and Hermas we find it at Rome. Clement tries to
derive it from Christian sources. Jesus’ blood is so
precious in God’s sight that it obtained the grace of
repentance for the whole world. But he immediately
There is no doubt that Jesus’ call to repentance
was not without influence in the introduction of the
practice of penance; but the Jewish influence was by
far the more powerful. This was the source of the
uncertainty which began to be felt by the Christians
As time went on fresh loans were continually
being made. The conclusion to which our study of
eschatology and of angelology led us, applies here
One great advantage the early Christians derived from their constant contact with the Jewish Church. Opposed as they were by a religion resting upon an entirely historical basis, they were preserved from the danger of allowing their religion to be subtilized into a philosophy. The defence of Jesus and the controversy about the Old Testament guarded them against this peril. Whatever form He might assume, the God of the Christians remained a God of works and no philosophical abstraction: He was identified with Righteousness, and Hope looked forward expectantly to His works in the future. It was just the battle with the Gnostics that taught the Christians to value their great debt to Judaism.
But setting aside this one advantage, the impression
left by the anti-Jewish apologetic of the Christians
is distinctly bad. It exhibits a finished skill in the
explaining away of unpleasant facts or of perverting
them, of inserting one’s own opinions into the text
instead of simply explaining it. The sense of truth
amongst the Christians in the sub-apostolic age must
have been very small indeed. No certain answer is
given to the central question: “Wherein does the
superiority of Christianity over Judaism consist?”
St Mark gives the best answer in his picture of Jesus
as the Son of God exalted far above all parties
To these considerations we must add the by no
means inconsiderable material influence of the
Jewish Church, its piety, and ethics, and the invasion of Jewish literature and Jewish institutions.
Politically Christianity becomes more opposed to the
Jews than ever; the sequence—Paul, Luke, John and
Barnabas—proves this. From a religious point of
view, on the other hand, it makes advances to
IT was very fortunate for the new religion that
through Jesus’ words, “Render unto Caesar the things
that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s,” all revolutionary and zelotic projects of the
Christians were nipped in the bud. As a Christian
Pharisee St Paul had inculcated obedience to the
powers that be as the will of God, and had held up
the State to the Christians as God’s ministry. This
was before the beginning of the persecutions. After
a short panic in Nero’s reign the Christians had to
endure the undisguised hostility of the State from
the year 90 A.D. onwards. The persecution began
in Asia Minor, the birthplace of the Apocalypse, and
the place to which St Peter’s first letter is addressed.
The Apocalypse dates from the early years of the
persecution. God’s minister has been transformed
into the minister of the dragon. Wild songs of
triumph are now chanted by the Christians over the
The Christians now have to choose between one of two feelings: hatred of the State as the power of the devil—that is what the Apocalypse preaches—or resignation to God’s will. He rules even through the emperor. Which is going to be the stronger?
We must draw a clear distinction between the
official position of the Christian writers and the
feeling of many groups of laymen whose favourite
book was the Apocalypse, and who shared the author’s hatred against Rome. From time to time there is an
altogether unpremeditated outburst of wrath against
the tyrants, as in the case of Lucius, the Christian
whose story Justin Martyr tells us. When he saw
how Ptolemaus the teacher was condemned to death
for no other crime than that of being a Christian, he
broke out into reproaches against the prefect Urbicus
who had passed the sentence, rebuking him for his
unjust and unworthy behaviour. Being thereupon at
once himself condemned to death, he cried out that
he was very thankful to Urbicus. He knew that he
was now quit of these bad masters of his, and was
going to the Father and Lord of heaven. So, too,
the Christian’s longing for the end of the world—let
grace begin, let the world perish—is to be interpreted
as a heartfelt cry for delivery from the tyranny of the
State. All the millenary expectations of the old
Christians likewise presuppose hostility against the
The official attitude of many of the Christian
authors is an entirely different one. From first to
last it is obsequious. Christianity is to be a religio
licita, like Judaism and in the place of Judaism, and
that at any cost. Hence it makes advances to the
State, and even assigns a fixed place to it in the
liturgies borrowed from Judaism. The author of
the First Epistle of St Peter is anxious to adapt St
Paul’s words as to the powers that be to the changed
circumstances of his own time. In so doing he
abandons the position that the State is the minister
of God, as the State which persecutes the Christians
cannot possibly be so called any longer. For the
Lord’s sake, however, it is to be obeyed. The fear
of God and the honour due to the king are not mutually exclusive; only let each keep to its own place.
As yet, faith in the calling of the State and the right
to exercise protection is as strong as ever, and St
Paul’s words on the subject find ready credence.
Besides, obedience to the governor is a duty incumbent on the Christians because of the malignant
slanders that are current. They have got to prove
that they are no anarchists. And yet this letter, in
The First Epistle of St Clement is the first document
to afford us an insight into the political element of
the old Christian liturgies. Its great concluding
prayer contains the first petition known to us for
It was only when it became evident that neither
the Church’s prayers for the emperor and the governor
nor the Church’s literature exercised any influence
whatever upon the persecutors, that the Christian
apologetic literature, properly so-called, took its rise.
The prophet Quadratus was the first apologist. He
dedicated his apology to the Emperor Hadrian. Next
came the philosophers Aristides and Justin under
Antoninus Pius. The only innovation consisted in
the instrument that was now employed. The frankly
apologetic attitude of the Church was not new, but
several decades older. Many glaring inconsistencies
were, however, the result of this policy. The liturgies
were especially rich in contradictory passages. Prayers
are prescribed for the health and wealth of those in
The Heathen Religion.
Its Jewish parentage in itself determined the position of
Christianity towards all the popular religion of the Gentiles. Heathendom was
all lies, darkness, and the service of the devil. Whilst the philosophical
monotheism of the Greeks was combined
On the other hand, we have a mass of Christian
apologetic literature in which the attempt was made
The attack upon the old gods keeps entirely to the lines laid down by the Jews and the Greeks themselves. Nowhere do we find any trace of original thoughts. We are here concerned with three theories of religion.
1. Under the influence of Judaism the Christians apply a
coarsely materialistic theory to the Greek religion. The Jew only believes what
he sees. The pictures are made by hands, the sacred animals are just animals,
the sacred trees, wood, the sacred stones, stones and nothing else. But surely
it is the height of folly to worship mere natural objects or the works of human
art. This pitiful theory, by which it is just the religious element which is
hidden away out of sight—i.e., the divinity that was supposed to reside in
the objects—was the one that prevailed amongst
Christian laymen. It can be traced back to St
Paul and thence to its Jewish source, the wisdom of
2. The Christians borrowed another, a rationalistic, theory of religion from the philosophers. It is known as Euhemerism. A very cursory examination is sufficient to show, of course, that the pictures and God are not the same, that the picture has been consecrated to God. But the gods appear, and this, especially in the Homeric poems, as over-men, of whose birth, suffering, and death we are often told. The objects of this worship were therefore the mighty men of old. This theory we meet with first of all in Aristides. He came across it in some Greek text-book.
3. The most important theory practically was that
of the demons, in which both Jews and Greeks agreed,
the only difference being that the Greeks conceived
the demons to be demi-gods of a neutral character,
while the Jews looked upon them as evil spirits.
The Jewish theory of demons recognizes the reality
of the heathen religion and its outward effects, but
explains them as a great temptation to lead men
away from God. The starting-point is always the
fact of prophecy and of miracles. Hence the whole
world is looked upon as a great kingdom of demons,
while the heathen ritual is merely one favourite
province thereof. This was the only theory that
practically governed men in their every-day relations.
St Paul was already acquainted with it. It was
based upon the Greek Bible The hall-mark of
The question now was how to set up the new Christian God in the place of the fallen heathen divinities. In their establishment of monotheism, the Christians, from the very first, simply followed in the lines laid down by the philosophers as soon as they attempted to produce any arguments beyond those furnished by the Old Testament. This subject rather belongs, therefore, to our next chapter, in which we are to consider the general influence of philosophy upon the Christians. The defence of Jesus, on the other hand, entirely enters into the conceptions of the popular religion. Jesus Christ is opposed to the old gods as the new and stronger God. That is the meaning of the “Divinity of Christ.” The idea arose amongst the heathen, and must be conceived of in antithesis to the heathen gods.
One thing we must grasp clearly. The notion is as little
Jewish as it possibly can be. The Jews simply have no room for a second being
called God in the strict sense of the word. “The alone true God,” “The only
God,” as John and Clement call Him, that is Jewish. The Messiah is a man chosen
or sent by God hence in any case a created being. Therefore the strict Jewish
Christianity, and Mohammedanism,
But amongst the heathen, apotheosis was exceedingly common. The number of their deities is not limited, and they range by the most varied series of degrees imaginable down to the hero who is deified. The characteristic signs of a god are always considered to be great power, miracles, and prophecy. For the Jews a miracle proves the truth of a doctrine, for the Gentiles it denotes the presence of a god on earth. Hence St Paul was twice taken to be a god, at Lystra and at Malta, because of the miracles that he performed. So, too, the Roman centurion exclaims beneath the Cross, “This was a Son of God!” because of the miracles which accompanied the death of Jesus. The Jewish word “Son of God” has, by itself, the sound of hero or demi-god in Greek ears.
And so as soon as it came to the Greeks, accompanying the pictures of the great worker of miracles,
Partly consciously, and partly unconsciously, the
Christian apologetic accommodated itself to this
faith from a very early date. The first condition for
this was the transformation of the picture contained
in the Gospels in a universalistic sense. Paul had
already ascribed to Jesus’ death an atoning power for
the whole world. And now the whole world must
be described as the object of the affections of the
living Jesus of the Gospels. This was effected first
of all by simply supplementing the national Jewish
activity of Jesus by the command to go and
preach to all people, which was ascribed to the
risen Lord. That is the procedure adopted by our
three Synoptists, in all of whom a certain hiatus is
noticeable between the real history and the theory.
Next, John paints his picture without any concern for
the actual history. It begins with the Logos, the
mediator both for creation and revelation to the
whole world, and throughout proclaims Jesus to be
the Saviour of the world, while it reaches its height
In the next place, Jesus had to be proved a stronger God than the demons. St Mark’s Gospel undertakes this proof by presenting Jesus to all the world as the Son of God, the worker of miracles, the conqueror of the demons, and the prophet. Hence the important position here assigned to miracles, and amongst the miracles, especially to the victory over the demons. The empire of Satan is at an end. Legions of demons fall into the sea. Jesus is Lord over nature. He stills the storm. He makes the sea to be firm land. His power knows no limits, Mark naturally did not picture all this to himself after the same heathen fashion in which it must have worked upon his readers.
Soon after this (by analogy with other myths of
the gods) the parentage of the Son of God is ascribed
to God and a mortal woman. Such is the account in
the opening chapters of the First and Third Gospels.
The myth sprang up amongst Gentile Christians.
A great proportion of the old Jewish Christians
rejected it, and rightly, for it did away with the
descent from David, which was a matter of such
importance to them. The Christian spirit has, to be
sure, been at work at this myth, and has removed
from it every trace of sensuality and anthropomorphism. It is not God Himself but God’s Holy Spirit
The Christology of the Fourth Gospel has, it is
true, borrowed the idea of the Logos from philosophy.
Besides this, consideration for the feelings of the
Jews leads the author to emphasize the subordination
of Christ to God. But concealed beneath the philosophy and the anti-Jewish apologetic, the popular
belief in the new God that has appeared upon earth
can be discovered in all its power. The miracles of
Jesus—all of them the miracles of an omnipotent
deity—are conceived of as a proof of the Messiahship
for the Jews, and for the Greeks as a revelation of the
Godhead. When Thomas sees the crucified Saviour
with the stigmata risen from the dead, he cries out,
as any Gentile might, “My Lord and my God!” And the evangelist would like to bring all people to
make this same confession. All men should honour
the Son as they honour the Father, i.e., just as
God, and such is the will of the Father Himself.
Then there is the mantic art, second sight and
prophecy, which, next to the miracles, are a proof
of the divinity. Like a God, Jesus looks into the
hearts of all men, so that no man needed to tell
Prophecy and miracles together formed the proof
of the divinity of Christ. For John is just as far
removed from an ethical conception of the divinity
of Christ as the whole of the rest of Christian antiquity after him. The doing of God’s will, to
whatever degree of perfection one may attain, is still
something human. It is man’s duty. It is at most
important for St John in so far as a sinful man can
not be God’s instrument. Indeed, the ethical conception of Christ’s divinity only came to be entertained
when men began to find miracles a stumbling-block,
and were yet loth to abandon the title of God. For
St John God is the highest hyperphysical force.
Consequently a human being upon earth can only
prove himself to be divine by manifestations of this
force. It was not because he felt the impression of
Christ’s moral splendour, but because he marvelled at
the conquest of death by life, that St Thomas uttered
the exclamation, “My God!” It is not because of
His moral supremacy that all men are to honour
the Son as God, but because He does His Father’s work, because He raises the dead and comes to judge
the world. So, too, the Son’s unity with the Father is
not merely the unity of a loving will, but the unity
of power. No demon can take those that are His
out of His hand, for otherwise he would have to be
more powerful than God Himself, who is Lord of all.
He that hath seen the Son seeth the Father, because
the Son does the Father’s mighty works. This same
divine, miraculous power is to do still greater works
through the disciples, but not in order that they too
The greatest obstacle to belief in Jesus’ divinity
was His death, just as it seemed impossible to
harmonize it with His claim to the Messiahship.
Hence the frequent recurrence to this subject in
the anti-Jewish apologetic. Justin did, it is true,
find analogies for the death, too, in Greek mythology.
There was Asclepius struck by lightning, Dionysus
dismembered, Heracles burnt on the funeral pyre,
and all these were worshipped as gods or the
sons of God. This clever discovery had, however,
not been made by the earlier apologists. They
strained every nerve to harmonize the death of
Jesus with His divinity. They succeeded in doing
so by adopting the same method as in the anti-Jewish apologetic, by a brilliant description of the
Resurrection, by multiplying the miracles and the
instances of fulfilled prophecies in the story of the
Passion, by emphasizing the voluntariness of the
death. Many Gentile Christians would have preferred to have denied the death of Jesus altogether.
His death was only outwardly apparent. According
to the Acts of St John it is only for the populace
that He is crucified, while at the same time He
appears to His disciples in glory. But this consequence of the “divinity of Christ” was at once
indignantly rejected as a Gnostic error. We may
Whilst the other apologists were satisfied with proving the physical superiority of Jesus over the old gods, the Fourth Gospel alone attempted to give a clear answer to the question what gifts God had brought men down from heaven. His answer was shaped to meet the needs of the Greek world. Chiefest of all the gifts was that of truth or knowledge, light, illumination. Such conceptions were current even amongst the Jewish proselytes. This, too, is when we find mention of the opposites, light and darkness, truth and lies, knowledge and ignorance. With these conceptions John as well as the Jews would describe monotheism—the worship of the only true God—and the knowledge of the lies of the demons. The only thing which is both novel and great is the way in which these privileges are here conceived of as gifts of God through Christ. Whilst in many other apologists monotheism and faith in Christ lie side by side without any apparent connection, the Fourth Gospel laid a great Christo-centric foundation for the whole faith in God, and strongly emphasized St Paul’s statement that the God and Father of Jesus Christ is the alone true God.
The next great gift which Christ brought the
Greeks from heaven was everlasting life, i.e., immortality, or rather the present assurance of the
certain possession of the same. That, too, was a
great source of comfort for the Greeks, facing the
future as they did with such hesitation, scepticism,
and fear. The tangible proof was furnished by the
It was only amongst the Gnostics that the pure doctrine of the divinity of Christ was maintained. In the Church it was counted as a heresy just because of the Gnostics and with deference to the accusations of the Jews. This popular belief, however, in the appearance of the new god constitutes the kernel of the new Christology. A striking proof of this assertion is furnished by Ignatius’ letter to the Ephesians. The virginity of Mary and her birth and the death of the Lord remained concealed from the Prince of this world. They were three mysteries which spoke aloud in the stillness of God. How, then, were they revealed to the ages? A star appeared in the heavens brighter than all other stars, and the light thereof was inexpressibly great, and its strangeness spread consternation. But all the other stars, together with the sun and the moon, formed a circle round this star, yet its light exceeded the light of all the others. And the hearts of men failed them, for they could not tell whence this strange star appeared unto them. Henceforth all magic was at an end and all the bonds of wickedness were snapped asunder. Ignorance was dethroned, the old reign was no more, now that God Incarnate had come to give men the newness of everlasting life. Nowhere, even in the New Testament, is the significance of Christ for the downfall of Paganism formulated as clearly as here.
The question now presents itself, How was Christianity related
to the religion of the mysteries?
From the very first the Gospel courted publicity and claimed to be a message intended for the light of common day. A city set upon a hill cannot be hid. The candle is not intended to be placed under the bushel but on the candlestick. Even though we begin with whispering in the ear and speaking in the chamber, yet the end clearly aimed at is to preach on the roof and in the public streets. And just as the Gospel courts publicity, so its scope is universal. Why, it is the exact opposite of everything that is exclusive. It abolishes the privileges of the learned and throws its doors wide open to the simple layman. There is nothing esoteric in the preaching of Jesus from first to last. It is one of the great and comforting features in His character that the love of mystery and aristocratic self-sufficiency are alike alien to Him. Hence Christianity and the mysteries are mutually exclusive.
So, too, the aim of the disciples of Jesus and of St
Paul was not to found a sect, but to gather together
and to increase the people of God. By their choice
of the Old Testament as their sacred book they
declared their intention of remaining faithful to
the public religion. Their adoption of the name ‘Church’ points in the same direction. For the
Church is something public, something which embraces
But for all that there was an inner resemblance
between the two. In the first place, the persecution
of the national Jewish Church and afterwards of the
Roman Government actually forced the Christians
to live, so to speak, underground in the dark and in
mystery. Even the Fourth Gospel speaks of a
meeting with closed doors for fear of the Jews. By
positively refusing to acknowledge the public
character of the Christian religion, the State itself
made of Christianity a sect that shunned the light.
Besides this external reason, however, there was a
second, due to the essential character of the original
society. Christianity was at first organized as an
exclusive community. Hence its strength. It was
only within these narrow limits that the teaching of
Jesus could be realized. But as such a community
it only possessed a limited public character. The
sacrament of baptism formed a sharp dividing line
between members and non-members. It was itself a
sectarian form borrowed from the sect of the disciples
of the Baptist. The Lord’s Supper was only intended
for the brethren, and the same remark applies to
several other rites and customs, e.g., the public confession, the kiss of brotherhood, etc. Now as Christianity spread under the form of this organization and
thus became known to the Greeks and Romans, it
could only appear to them to be a sect, and they then
As a matter of fact a contradiction existed between the claim of Christianity to be the world religion and its sectarian form, its rites and ceremonies adapted only to a small society. We are conscious of this contradiction even at the present day as soon as we ask ourselves what place the sacraments really occupy in our national and established Churches.
As a result of the confusion caused by the rise of Gnosticism, numberless small sects appear by the side of the one sect, which still upheld its claim to be the Church. Prolonging, as nearly all of them did, a precarious existence in almost greater obscurity than the Church, they were the first to fall irrevocably under the influence of the mysteries, because from the very beginning they cultivated an exclusive aristocratic spirit and an esoteric doctrine. In opposition to this tendency the belief in the universal scope of Christ’s message and its public character was the more firmly rooted, and once again this was exceedingly fortunate for the Church.
Ecclesiastical Christianity won the victory over Gnosticism, but not without submitting to the influence of the mysteries. Without themselves being conscious of it, the Christian teachers adapted themselves in many points to the opinions of their opponents in the course of their controversies and defence of the Church. It is in the development of the idea of the sacraments that we have the strongest evidence of the influence of the mysteries.
The essential characteristic of the mysteries was,
of course, inherent in the sacraments from the very
In the sub-apostolic age, belief in sacramental
efficacy grows in proportion to the rapidity with
which Christianity takes root in heathen soil. There,
among the Greeks and in contact with the thoughts
disseminated by the mysteries, the unseen world
comes to dominate everywhere as the only true
reality, filling the whole foreground of life, and
baptism and the Lord’s Supper are subordinated to
it as mysterious initiatory rites, while at the same
time the sacramental apparatus becomes evermore
The original simplicity of baptism, washing in
running water and utterance of the name of Jesus,
no longer sufficed. The laying on of hands was
added. This addition alone, so the author of the
Acts tells us, afforded a channel for the descent of
the Holy Ghost. It was the prerogative of the
apostles—later, of the bishops. Somewhat later
appeared the anointing with consecrated oil. If the
First Epistle of St John knows the name we may
conclude that the thing, too, existed either among
Catholic Christians or Gnostics. Possibly the name
Christ, the anointed, facilitated the reception of this
rite. Ignatius refers to the anointing of Christ in
Bethany, and thence derives the custom. It was, at
all events, long before the time of Tertullian (to
whom we owe our first treatise on baptism), possibly
a century earlier, that the sacrament consisted of
three separate ceremonial parts—immersion, unction,
imposition of hands. We really have three sacraments united in one, or rather there are four, since
the utterance of the name of Jesus has itself
the efficacy of a sacrament. At the beginning of
the second century baptism into the name of Jesus
began to give way to baptism into the name of the
Trinity, the latter practice being founded on the
passage in St Matthew’s Gospel which traced the
formula back to Jesus Himself. But it was an
innovation, for we see from the Acts that the
apostles and St Paul only baptized into the name of
Jesus. How and where the phrase arose we cannot
tell, but we are acquainted with a transition stage.
We have traced the first steps of that fateful development
which, under the influence of Greek and Oriental mysteries, made of Christianity
a religion of superstition and of magic charms. True, there is no lack of
Christian teachers in our period, just as little as there was in later periods,
who, when they speak of the sacraments, immediately treat them as symbols and
the means of inculcating moral truth, whose end and aim is the grace of God and
spiritual communion with the Redeemer through these outer magical media. But in
interpreting the sacraments after their own fashion, these teachers give the
Christian people the right to do so after theirs—i.e., to look upon them as magic rites.
The only really valid argument that can be advanced in favour of the sacraments
is
In eschatology, too, we can trace the beginnings of a further development destined to be of great consequence. Eschatology lost its abhorrence of the Greek idea of the future world and assimilated thence all that it possibly could. It is true that we have come to the time when the flood of the Jewish Apocalyptic conceptions swept over the young religion with their gigantic and fantastic imagery more than ever before. The eschatology of most of the Christian congregations has still more of a Jewish than a Greek appearance. The expectation of the kingdom of God upon earth and of the resurrection of the dead—i.e., the two thoughts which are least Greek in character—still stand in the centre of the Christian hope. Even so educated a Christian as Justin is a convinced millenarian. And yet the process of Hellenization set in about the end of the century, and it is this same Justin who is our witness for it.
The process really begins in the Third Gospel, where Jesus' parable of the rich man and Lazarus, which is certainly genuine, is reproduced in Greek terminology. That is where we first hear of Hades, the Greek world of the departed. It seems to consist of two divisions, separated from each other by a great chasm: there is the place of rest, where Abraham and his children are comforted, and there is the place of torment, where sinners do everlasting penance in flames. If St Luke had given names, then he would have spoken of Gehenna and of Paradise. But since when are there two divisions of Hades? The evangelist has melted into one Gehenna and Tartarus, Paradise and Elysium, hence his wonderful topography. He was not the first to do this. We find Gehenna and Tartarus used indiscriminately in monumental inscriptions and in the Sibylline oracles. As soon as a Jew or a Christian living amongst Greeks began to reflect upon the fate of the soul after death, the well-known pictures of bliss and torment, which Greek prophets, poets, and philosophers—especially those of the Orphic school—had scattered broadcast among the people, filled his shadowy Sheol.
It was especially the Greek ideas of hell which
found a very early entrance into Christian eschatology. The most celebrated instance of this is in
the Apocalypse of St Peter. There we read of the
dark place of torment, of the different classes of
sinners, and of the punishments, each undergone
in an appointed place, of the torturing angels, and
so forth. All these fancies are of Orphic origin, and
they can be paralleled by passages from Virgil,
A considerable difference subsisted, it is true,
between the two views as to the time when the
sentence was to be passed. According to the Greeks
it was at death, but according to the Jews it was
postponed to the judgment of the world by God.
This difficulty, however, could be explained away,
either by the assumption of an increase in the
torments of hell after the judgment, or by their
entire postponement after the same. In any case
the old Jewish eschatology was not threatened with
The Gospel of St John would also appear to afford
an instance of this Hellenization of the eschatology,
although its author effectually conceals his true
meaning. In the parting address to His disciples
Jesus proclaims a hope of the future state which is
entirely unlike that of the Jews. “In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so would I
have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I come
again and receive you unto Myself, that where I am
there ye may be also. And whither I go ye know
the way,” i.e., to the Father. This can scarcely mean
anything else than that Jesus will fetch the Christians
Even the “Shepherd” of Hermas furnishes us with an example how deep an impression Greek and Roman eschatology made upon the Christians, though he is usually entirely on the side of the Jewish eschatology. An old woman appeared to him in the neighbourhood of Cumae, and gave him revelations contained in the roll of a book. Being asked who the woman was, he answered, “The Sibyl.” “Thou art wrong,” was the reply; “it was the Church.” Here we have a typical instance of the way in which heathen ideas passed over into Christianity. Hermas knew from Virgil’s Æneid that the Sibyl of Cumae was endowed with the knowledge of the world to come, of heaven and of hell. She was accounted by him, as well as by many Christians, to be a true prophetess. Cumae, therefore, was the place where there were revelations. Churchman as he was, however, his imagination displaced the faith in the Sibyl. But then the Church had to appear in the guise of the Sibyl, and even occupy her dwelling. Paganism is Christianized and Christianity is Romanized.
Would it, then, have been so great a loss had the
Greeks with their ideas of the future blessedness
won the day over the Jewish eschatology of the
Christians? Jesus Himself had striven to purify
and simplify the old hope in the kingdom, and to
elevate it into the domain of eternity. St Paul had
continued this work of Jesus by his great theory
of the spiritual nature of the kingdom of God. It
would seem, then, to be a decided retrogression when
THE Apostle Paul would have nothing to do with philosophy. He was still an apologist of the layman’s religion. Human wisdom and divine revelation were entirely opposed to each other in his view. Long before his time, however, an alliance had been concluded between these two opposites in Alexandria and even in Palestine. As Clement of Alexandria so beautifully expresses it, the divine reason did not merely educate for Christianity the Jews through the law but the Greeks through philosophy. Philosophical and religious monotheism, philosophical and religious ethics, had met and had discovered, to their astonishment, that they were near relations. Had it not been for this alliance, Christianity had not conquered the world.
The first meeting-point was in the criticism of
the old polytheistic faith. Greek philosophers had
written text-books in which all the weaknesses and
failings of mythology had been collected and
The positive point of contact in monotheism was of still greater importance. Originally, it is true, Jews and Greeks attached a very different signification to the same name, for the Greeks started from the laws of nature and the Jews from the miracles of their historical past. As a matter of fact, therefore, their agreement in the use of the same formula meant the immediate and wide acceptance of the philosophical view of the world, both by Judaism and by Christianity. The process begins in the Jewish writings, even in the Old Testament itself, in the 9th chapter of the Proverbs. So, too, Philo’s idea of the world as an everlasting order fulfilled by the forces of Deity is entirely Greek.
Turning to the New Testament, we find the first
traces of this Greek view, though naturally still intermingled with Jewish conceptions, in the two little
Our next document, St Clement’s letter to the
Corinthians, is entirely impregnated with Greek
popular philosophy (see especially chaps. xix., xxi.,
In chaps. xxiv. and xxv. we have the first attempt to find a rational basis for the belief in the resurrection by analogies from Nature. There is a resurrection throughout Nature, there is the change of night and day, of seed-time and of harvest. This is a proof of the greatness of God’s providence. The view is further supported by the great miracle of the resurrection of the phoenix, and finally there is a sufficient, if somewhat meagre, scriptural proof from the Old Testament.
The concluding prayer is again addressed to the Demiurge of the universe, who has revealed the everlasting cosmical order by His manifestations. The prayer for princes (see page 108, supra) who stand under this government, is based upon this general belief in Providence.
The influence of the Greek cosmology and its optimism is especially striking at the beginning of Aristides’ apology. “Through God’s providence, O king, I came into the world, and as I regarded the heavens and the earth and the sea and the sun and the moon, I was amazed at the order (dioikesis) of these things. But when I perceived that the world and all that therein is, moves according to a fixed law, then I understood that He that moves it and rules over it is none other than God. For He that moves is mightier than that which is moved, and He that rules is stronger than those that are governed: Him therefore I call God. It is He that directs all things.” A principle of Aristotle is here directly taken over in a popular form. The enthusiastic admiration of the beauty of the cosmos is also thoroughly Greek.
God and the universe are bound more closely together in this Greek popular philosophy than in the Jewish faith. The belief in Providence was based upon natural religion. Lactantius could declare that it was the common property of all religions, and was firmly established before all revelation. Christianity is built up upon a rationalistic cosmology. This, however, was one of the tendencies which affected the new religion.
God and the world are rent asunder—this process
goes on simultaneously with the former—the conception
Here, too, the Jews had shown the way. Philo, and after him Josephus, had drawn up long catalogues of the negative predicates of God—unbegotten, unchangeable, needing nothing, unknown in His essence, incomprehensible, without qualities. Josephus declares expressly that the Jewish conception of God is none other than the philosophical, such as was taught by Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, Plato, the Stoics, and nearly all the philosophers. Here, as everywhere, the Christians had merely to follow in the path which had been marked out for them by the Jews.
We find the first traces of this negative conception of God even in New Testament writings, in the Pastoral epistles, and in St John. There God is called “the King of the ages, the incorruptible, the invisible, the only true God,” or “the blessed and only potentate, who only hath immortality, dwelling in light unapproachable, whom no man hath seen or can see.” “God no man hath seen.” How widely removed are these Greek thoughts from the earlier Jewish realistic faith in God, the faith of men whose greatest delight was in the theophanies!
Even Hermas has taken up into his short commandment of faith in God the formula,
“Who
comprehends all, but is Himself not comprehended.”
An apologetic tract dating from the beginning of
Aristides, who is acquainted with the sermon of Peter, describes God as Him that is without beginning, the invisible, the immortal, who needeth nothing, who is exalted high above all passions and defects, such as wrath and sorrow and ignorance. Through Him all things coexist. He needeth neither sacrifices nor offerings, nor anything that is visible, but all need Him. Later apologists simply follow Aristides with shorter or longer catalogues.
Such was the origin of a contradiction which crept
into the Christian faith in God. For the stoical
theory of immanence, to which the doctrine of the
dioikesis corresponds, and the Platonic theory of
transcendence, which finds its expression in the
negative predicates, are irreconcilable. Immanence
implies the complete unity of God with the cosmos.
Transcendence implies the conception of God as the
entire negation of the world. This contradiction very
frequently escaped notice. God was thrust out of
sight far behind the world, and yet the belief in a
constant divine providence is not abandoned. Where
the inconsistency, however, was noticed, there the
Angels and demons were the connecting link between the remote God and the visible world for the popular belief. Philosophy substituted the ‘Logoi’ or the ‘Logos’ and the Holy Spirit for the angels.
Here Philo had paved the way for the Christians. He himself was a Platonist, feeling himself a stranger in this phenomenal world while his true home was in the world of ideas. He did not introduce the conception of Logos into Jewish thought. Stoic and Aristotelian philosophers had done that before him. But just as he appropriated the work of his Jewish predecessors to a very large extent, even where they followed other Greek philosophers, so he took up the conception of the Logos from this tradition, and adapted it to Platonic modes of thought by defining it more sharply, and by individualizing it both as regards God and as regards the world. Even in Philo we find the Logos called the “second God,” and the Old Testament was interpreted with reference to him.
Nor was Philo the only forerunner in this direction.
In the Wisdom of Solomon the spirit of wisdom is described, in accordance with the Stoic doctrine, as an infinitely subtilized, universal reason that pervades everything and is yet distinct from God Himself.
Of Christian writers, St Paul was the first to look
upon Christ as such an intermediary being, higher
than all the angels, yet lower than God Himself, nor
was the term Logos as yet applied to Him. It was
Then the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews
developed his Pauline theology by means of conceptions taken directly from Alexandrine sources.
The world was created through the Son of God.
He is the reflection of God’s glory and the impress
of His substance, upholding all things by the word of
His power. In the
In the prologue of the Fourth Gospel, however,
this name appears clearly and unmistakably. “In
the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was
with God, and the Logos was a God.” Dependence
on Philo’s writings is possible, yet it is not even
absolutely necessary to presuppose it. The cosmological character of the opening sentences clearly
points to a philosophical source. Between God and
the world stands the Logos. On the one hand He
is with God, on the other everything is created by
Him. He is called ‘a’ God, but not ‘the’ God;
in exactly the same way Philo distinguished between
God with and God without the article, and supported
this distinction by Old Testament proofs. The most
Now the fact is of great importance that the man who introduced the Logos into the Gospel was not himself a philosopher, nor did the problem of the mediation between God and the world cause him any anxiety or difficulty. It is for apologetic and not philosophical ends that he makes use of the theory of the Logos. If, therefore, he ascribes a cosmological signification to the Logos, notwithstanding all this, then he must have been determined to do so by a firmly established tradition. It was an accepted theory—derived either from Philo or elsewhere—that the Logos had created and supported the world. The evangelist accepts this view in order to make it the basis for the transition to the apologetic, which is the sole aim of the whole of his prologue.
He lived at a time when the Gnostics had already begun to interpolate their endless genealogies of aeons between the purely negative first cause of all things and the existing world. The belief in the existence of intermediary beings between God and ourselves had naturally been strengthened in consequence. The evangelist himself reduces the number of these intermediary beings to one—to that one who was most intelligible to the Greeks. The fact that he does this in a Gospel constitutes the boldness of his act.
It was the celebrated passage in the Gospel of St
The position that Justin occupies with regard to the Logos theory is at bottom that of his great teacher. He uses it for apologetic purposes. He has no interest whatever in its cosmological aspect. It is a traditional doctrine, and no new thesis of Justin’s, that God created and ordered the world by the Logos. It is only in one point that we recognize that we are no longer dealing with the earliest age. The manner in which the Logos proceeds from God has come to be the subject of reflection, and no wonder, when we remember the interminable speculations of the Gnostics as to the procession of the aeons from the First Cause. Justin finds the closest analogy in fire. Just as from one fire a second is kindled without any diminution of the former, so the Logos proceeds from God as a second divine being, and yet God Himself does not suffer any loss thereby. He decidedly rejects the comparison of the Logos to a sunbeam, which the sun sends forth as it rises and again draws back as it sets, because it destroys the personal individuality of the Logos.
It was inevitable, if God disappeared behind the world so completely that all His government was effected by intermediary beings, that matter should all the more appear to have an independent existence, and its origin become a problem for Christian teachers.
Once again it was the Jews who had framed the
The earliest statement of this theory is to be found in the second book of the Maccabees: “Look up to heaven and on the earth, and when thou hast seen all things therein, know thou that God created them out of the things that were not (ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων}, and that thus the race of men arose.” This is to be the basis of the faith in a life after death.
This theory found early acceptance with the Christians. St Paul calls God Him who summons into being that which was not (τὰ μὴ ὄντα). He is thinking of the awakening of the dead, but the same remark applies to the creation. The Epistle to the Hebrews formulates the belief in creation in accordance with this theory: By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen hath been made out of things which do not appear (μὴ ἐκ φαινομένων). Hermas, too, enunciates the same theory in the First Commandment: “It is God who created all things, and perfected them, and made all things out of that which was not so that it was.” Although Hebrew in origin, this theory is Greek in form. We are reminded that Plato calls matter the non-existent (μὴ ὄν).
A second theory supposed matter to be eternal
but in a chaotic condition, and caused the cosmos
to arise through God’s creation from chaos. This,
theory might be based on
The two theories, creation out of nothing, creation out of the chaos, are not in reality very dissimilar. Philo, e.g., uses words of the first theory, and thinks according to the second. If only the thought of the creation is strictly preserved the rest is a matter of indifference.
The early Christians did not really elaborate any cosmologies. The story of Genesis was quite sufficient for them. The need had not as yet arisen. The world was God’s. This was the unshaken faith of the Church. It was only the Gnostics, who separated the redemption from the creation, who were obliged to ransack Greek philosophy, and hunt after cosmological questions.
Greeks, Jews, and Christians thus finding a common
meeting ground in their monotheistic faith, the horizon
of the early Christians was immensely enlarged. They
suddenly became aware of the fact that the Gentile
world was by no means the God-forsaken, devil-deluded mass of corruption which it had before been
held to be. In its monotheistic philosophy it possessed much that was closely akin to the truth. The
same conclusion was reached by an even superficial
examination of Greek ethics. Jewish laws and Stoic
Now the more firmly this knowledge of a certain relationship between Christianity and all that was good and sound in Hellenism was established amongst Christian teachers, the more eagerly were apologetics bound to attempt to profit by the relationship. But one more bold step was needed and the divine element would be recognized even in non-Christian religions. Hence arose a twofold task for apologetics. The foundation of the relationship between the Christian and non-Christian must be proved, and at the same time care must be taken that the superiority of Christianity should no longer be questioned. The absolute claims advanced by the Church must be reconciled with the relative rights of so-called natural religion.
One great obstacle stood in the way. There was
the old theory set up by St Paul of the Spirit as the
exclusive possession of the Church. Did not the
Christians feel themselves from the very first in
direct opposition to the world around them? Their
As was to be expected, the new thoughts were at first firmly established side by side with the old ones, without expelling them or even weakening them. We possess a very wonderful document which sets us in the very midst of this transition, revealing as it does the old exclusive spirit and the new assimilating tendencies. It is the Gospel of St John.
From one point of view this writing is as clear a
piece of evidence as we possess of the narrow and
sectarian spirit in early Christianity. The theory of
the Spirit here assumes the most exclusive shape.
Whilst other Christian teachers—the author of the
First Epistle of St Peter and of the letter of St
Clement—readily assume that the Christian spirit
spoke from the Old Testament prophets, John
But this narrow theory of the Spirit has its exact
This method of apologetics was only rendered possible by a Greek conception, the Logos. The evangelist presupposes that his readers are familiar with the idea of the Logos. That is why he has hopes of being able to lead them to Christ. As one can only come to Christ within the Church, the object of the apologetics is clear. If you wish to attain to the complete possession of the Logos, and be altogether reasonable, then become Christians.
These thoughts of the prologue do not recur in the course of the narrative. The author shows his good taste in not putting his own theories into Christ’s mouth. But in other ways he remains true to his apologetic standpoint. He ascribes to non-Christian ethics a preparatory position: it is a school to lead to Christ. That also was a bold innovation. It is true that St Paul had once theoretically conceded the point that there might be heathen who fulfil the law. But his only object in making this concession was to abate the pretensions of the Jews to the exclusive possession of the law. Practically he condemns all heathen without exception as lost sinners, in whom dwells nothing good, who entirely depend upon the Spirit of Christ in their Church for the power to fulfil the divine will.
The majority of Christians assumed as a matter
of course that all heathen were ‘unrighteous,’ ‘sinners,’ that only Christians could do that which
was good. A consequence of this was that the
heathen began to speak of the Christians as of a
company of criminals that shunned the light and
sought to escape punishment, and indeed it was easy
to point to many abandoned outcasts who had
Wherein, then, it may very naturally be asked, does the advantage of Christianity consist, if there are those that work righteousness even outside the Church, and yet the road to blessedness is through the Church alone? The author would probably answer that the vision of the kingdom, the gift of everlasting life, the resurrection of the dead, the close communion with God, do in any case continue to be divine gifts which the doing of the divine will neither gives by itself nor deserves. Obedience to God which manifests itself in the moral life is, it is true, a condition of blessedness, but is not blessedness itself. Such is the opinion of all the early Christians, the simple proof of which is their eschatology. Therefore for the sake of future blessedness, even those that are morally sound still have need to become Christians. And besides, we need but look at the First Epistle of St John to see how high an opinion the evangelist personally entertained as to the gift of forgiveness.
A Christian is a man who has received forgiveness. St John’s
final opinion is surely this, then: that life without Christ is entirely sinful,
if even life with Christ never roots out sin. The statements, therefore, about
the naturally good who come to the light have to be limited as far as the
principle itself is concerned. They have only an apologetic value. But for all
that, this instance of an apology of Christianity
The peculiarity of the Johannine theology is just this, that Logos and Spirit are placed side by side in it and nowhere mediated. On the one hand, we have a perfectly open mind for the world and wide sympathies; on the other, extreme narrowness, and both are harboured by the same man. He stands at the turning-point of the ages. For him the old sectarian spirit in Christianity still resists any attempt at an approach towards the world. But at the same time his apologetic instincts and the desire to gain converts cause him to go out beyond all these narrow boundaries. In the same writing we have philosophy and its antinomy. And such is ever the way with those writers to whom it is vouchsafed to exercise a widespread influence over widely different natures.
Within a few years of the date of John a likewise unknown author writes the sermon of St Peter. He speaks of Jesus therein as ‘the law’ and ‘reason.’ This apologist can scarcely have been thinking of the Jewish law when he uses the word law. The fact that he couples law with reason prevents our making this assumption. It is the law which all men possess and know, the sum of moral knowledge which the then world presupposed in every man. When Jesus therefore was called Reason and Law, the author meant to speak of Him as the ideal of all religion and moral knowledge.
We find this view set forth at some length in
Justin, the philosophical successor of St John. His
apologetics deal with the conception of the Logos, the
Justin’s remarks about the Logos look like a
learned exposition of the prologue of St John. For
Justin, too, the Logos is the light of all men. Justin,
however, consciously applies this statement to Greek
philosophy, of which St John had not as yet thought.
There is a still further development when we pass from the few scattered indications of St John concerning the morality that exists outside of the Church to Justin’s clear theory. There is a natural moral law which existed in the hearts of men long before the Mosaic dispensation. The patriarchs lived in accordance therewith, and were therefore well pleasing to God. Nor were the Greek philosophers or poets without knowledge of it, for the Logos-seed taught them. This natural moral law, largely forgotten in course of time, obscured and disfigured as it had come to be, Christ restored again, and gave to it its simplest eternal expression.
These apologetics differ completely from St Paul’s.
The difference lies in the far larger measure of
The unmistakable tendency on the part of apologetics to incorporate philosophical conceptions is, however, only one side of the great though gradual transformation of Christianity into a philosophy like that of Philo’s. Several other phenomena point in the same direction.
Philo and Josephus had proclaimed the Jewish religion to be a philosophy long before this. But such an idea was entirely foreign to the first preachers of Christianity. For St Paul the word ‘philosophy’ denoted a bad, an ungodlike form of science, and such was the opinion of all Christians for a long time to come. Nearly a century passed before an ecclesiastical Christian, Justin, ventured to call Christianity the only certain and useful philosophy. But then we must remember that facts precede reflexion as a rule. Two writings that were accepted in the canon—the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Fourth Gospel—give rise to the question whether Christianity itself was not beginning to become philosophical.
The Epistle to the Hebrews is still entirely under
the Jewish Alexandrine influence. The use it
makes of the Old Testament, of definitions and of
dogmas, its Platonic terminology, are all philosophical.
Nowhere else in the New Testament do we find
such a definition of Faith as that in
Now it is a question whether the Fourth Gospel also presupposes a like Greek philosophy even if it does not preach it. In favour of this view we have the fact that it became the favourite gospel of the Alexandrine philosophers.
It was by comparing St John with the Synoptists
that Clement and Origen were impressed by the
philosophical character of the Fourth Gospel. This
we can readily understand. We need but fix our
attention on two points—the facts that are no longer
related of Christ, and in the next place the style of
His discourses. They are for the most part of
a parabolical character, such as no initiated hearer
could understand; words are used in different senses;
This conception, however, of the Fourth Gospel as
a philosophical work to which the Alexandrines first
gave currency, and which is still widely held to-day,
is a radically wrong one. John’s main idea, the
descent of the Son of Man to reveal the Father, is
unphilosophical. It is not in philosophical speculation, but in myths, that we must seek for analogies
to it. The only purpose which the author sets before
himself in this work is the awakening of Faith in this
Son of Man who has come from heaven. True, it
bears a strongly didactic character, but the truths that
it teaches are those of the Church’s apologetic—the
dignity of Jesus, the office of Jesus, the rewards of
the faithful, the punishment of the foes of the Church
On the whole, all that has been said about the
influence of Hellenism upon Christianity in this epoch
must be regarded as something preliminary, and
therefore incomplete. It is only a beginning of the
great Hellenizing of Christianity; the old piety
existed side by side with it in full force, and Jewish
influences are evenly balanced against Greek. And
still more, Judaism, especially Hellenistic Judaism,
still constantly forms the channel for Greek culture
to enter into the Church itself. Yet this beginning
is certainly not without importance. By the year
100 we are almost justified in saying that the germ
had been formed of the complete transformation of
THEOLOGICAL inquiry has not as yet mastered the complex and intricate problem of Gnosticism. Our description must therefore confine itself carefully to the few points that have been clearly ascertained, unless it is content to assume an altogether problematical character. With the question of the origin of Gnosticism it is only concerned in a very secondary degree. Can Gnosticism be derived from the same root as Catholicism or not? Was it imported from outside sources, or does it spring out of Christianity itself?
The question can only be answered if Gnosticism itself be present to the reader’s mind in bare outline. For of course it can only be a question of presenting the chief features, that which the different Gnostic sects possessed in common.
The following points are common to at least a great portion of the Gnostic schools and sects.
1. A definite principle of authority. The Spirit
2. A definite belief in God. The God who had
hitherto been worshipped both by Jews and
Christians, the Jehovah of the Jews, is not the
highest God revealed by Jesus. This latter is rather
a new, hitherto concealed God who is enthroned
high above the world and above all spirits; high, too,
above the creator of the world. He is not the God
of this world, the author of men’s creation and preservation, and, generally speaking, this world does
not belong to Him directly. Practical consequences
of this are the destruction of the faith in Providence,
and the hostile, or at best indifferent, relation of the
Christian to the whole of this world, to nature, to
the body, to human ordinances; all of which we
ought not only not to ascribe to the highest God,
3. A definite eschatology. Man’s chief end is to return to God, who is his home, to the uppermost realm of light out of this prison-house of decadence and of exile. The creature in man, the flesh, is not capable of this return, but only that element, call it spirit or soul, which has had its birth in the celestial light. Immediately after death the soul of man is intended to set out upon its homeward journey, and to make its way upwards through the innumerable hostile spirits which fill the long interval between God and this lower earth.
4. A definite Christology. The Saviour Christ is a spiritual being sent down from the realm of light above to the earth below in order to reveal divine truth to men and to illuminate their minds. As a divine being He was neither born nor did He die; He was only in outward appearance a man such as we are, in that He clothed Himself with a human body. His work consisted essentially in imparting the higher knowledge and the sacraments.
5. A definite Soteriology. Redemption is effected
by the liberation of man from the bondage of the
lower gods, and by the due preparation for his
return to his true home above. This liberation is
brought about by the imparting of the superior
wisdom, the removal of man’s ignorance regarding
his origin, his destiny, the hindrances in the road
and the way to overcome them. Thereby the
divine element in man, the Spirit, becomes self-conscious. Then the Christian has to prepare
himself for his homeward journey, first by the
6. A definite view of the Church. That which the Christians usually call Church is not the Church of God at all. That Church consists of the number of the spiritual, i.e., of those who bring with them from the upper world the seed, the spiritual embryo. For them alone Christ appeared. They alone return after death into the kingdom of light. The aim of the Gnostic propaganda and of their conventicles is to gather them together and to awaken the slumbering divine life within them by imparting the higher mysteries to them. The natural inequality of man is presupposed. Whilst the Catholic Church in vain strives to remove this inequality by sending forth her missionaries, the Gnostic conventicles suffer Church and world to go to ruin, and reserve heaven for themselves.
Such, in the barest outline, is the Gnostic theology.
What is its source? According to the theory of the
later anti-gnostic Fathers of the Church, Gnosticism
arose by a wholesale rejection of Catholic theology.
The Catholic Church, it is said, has always remained
the same; it has never changed; it is only the
heretics that have changed. There is a good deal
that is true in this theory. On the whole, Catholicism
Where, now, do we find in primitive Christianity the starting-point, the source of the Gnostic movement?
One thing is clear to begin with. The Jesus of history and the Jesus of Gnosticism have nothing whatever to do with each other. Although Jesus was placed in the centre of the Gnostic systems, He and His worshippers have no connection with each other. Speculation and mysticism are alike foreign to Jesus. His teaching never leaves the domain of the practical and the ethical, the problems of human life. He knows that He is surrounded by a world of spirits, but His curiosity is never directed towards that world. There is one occasional saying, related by St Luke, about the fall of Satan from heaven, and that only served to comfort the disciples.
Even St Paul’s Christology very seldom came
into contact with the historical Jesus. What St
Nevertheless points of contact with Gnosticism have been discovered by modern writers even in Jesus. The fact is instructive, for it shows us how deeply rooted Gnostic tendencies were even in the Church itself.
1. Jesus had spoken in parables to the people.
Why had He done so? For all Hellenistic Jews ‘parables’ were dark and mysterious sayings. The
chief idea suggested by the word was something that
needed explanation, problems that awaited solution.
Hence the parables of Jesus were necessarily regarded
as riddles and mysteries. That is the case throughout the New Testament. According to the
Synoptists the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven
are contained in the parables. The people are not
meant to understand them, but even the disciples
cannot; they are too difficult. It is only with the ‘solution’ of Jesus that the deeper knowledge of the
parables begins. The evangelist Matthew appeals for
the Greek word ‘parables’ to
2. A second point of contact was the difference
observable in the inner circle of Jesus’ disciples.
In St Mark’s Gospel, St Peter and the two sons of
Zebedee appear in several places as the recipients
of especial marks of love and of confidence. They
alone, e.g., were eyewitnesses of His mysterious
3. In the next place a completely isolated and
harmless saying of Jesus, the promise of the Spirit
after His death, which St Mark is the first to record,
came to acquire great importance. What Jesus
meant was that His disciples who knew not how to
speak should be empowered by a higher power to
defend themselves in the law courts. Hence the
opinion arose that the disciples should receive in
the Spirit a substitute for Jesus and a continuance
of His work. This opinion was capable of very
different interpretations according to the conception
formed of the Spirit. The Spirit was regarded either
as the source of prophecy and the talking with tongues,
or as the fount of knowledge and of the superior
wisdom. If emphasis was laid on the latter, then
the inference was that it was only after Jesus’ death
that His disciples had received the higher knowledge.
Hence nothing was easier now than simply to derive
from the Spirit any Christian doctrine for the origin
of which no room could be found in the course of
the life of Jesus—unless, indeed, another favourite
course was followed, that of putting the doctrine
into the mouth of the risen Lord. In the Fourth
Gospel the Paraclete—so His Spirit is here called
as the advocate of the disciples—is the giver of all
higher knowledge. In the time of the earthly Jesus
we do not meet with him. His existence only dates
from a later time. From him, however, may be
derived everything that rendered the deep and
universal comprehension of Jesus possible. It is
true that as “spirit of truth” he receives an orthodox
colouring, and this, too, is orthodox that the Spirit is
to teach nothing new. He is simply to remind the
4. Lastly, there was the unusually bold assertion
that Jesus made in the feeling of His superiority
over the Scribes, the official interpreters of God, “No one hath known the Father save the Son.”
Jesus appeared here to put forth His revelation as
something absolutely new and not to be compared
with anything that had gone before. It seemed as
though the whole of the Old Testament had been
laid aside. In the Gospel of St John Jesus declares
to the Jews that their God is not His Father but
the devil. The Jewish monotheistic faith must have
been held in very low esteem by this author, for he
says that only he that honoureth the Son honoureth
the Father. It is true that sentences such as these,
which originated in the controversy with the Jews,
were very far indeed from being intended to bear
the Gnostic meaning which they appeared to possess.
John fully accepts the Old Testament as a divine
revelation, and therefore the connection with Old
Testament history. Only his theory is that it is not
God the Father but the Son of God, the Logos
Christ, who appeared to patriarchs and prophets, and
that they were therefore Christians, after all, before
Christ. Following on these lines Justin explains the
saying of Jesus to mean that the Jews did not
recognize either the Father or the Son, because they
did not know that He who spoke with Moses was
the Son of God and not the Father. This again is
But with the exception of these four points the teaching of Jesus presents no points of contact with Gnosticism whatever. Nor have we here the real starting-point of the Gnostic movement. Our former statement holds good: Jesus and the Gnostics have nothing to do with each other. But when once the current towards Gnosticism had set in, it was possible to find a place for Jesus subsequently in the Gnostic theology as we have shown above. The process began as soon as the Synoptic Gospels had been accepted by the Gentile Churches. Since the common stock of the Synoptists apprehended no danger from Gnostic sources, while the Johannine writings are full of such indications, the decisive turn must have taken place in the two last decades of the first century between the composition of St Mark’s Gospel and that of St John.
The extent to which St Paul paved the way for Gnosticism was altogether different. In his soteriology, his anti-Jewish apologetics, his gnosis, there are numberless points from which the Gnostic movement may have started.
1. The source of the Pauline soteriology is the
hypothesis of the entire corruption of the world.
The solution that matter itself is the abode of evil
St Paul’s Christology contains in the germ all the
principal features of the Gnostic development. Jesus
is called the Redeemer (Soter). He is a being whose
origin is not to be sought in the lower world at all,
but in heaven. His nature is heavenly. In heaven
He existed before all time, until He suffered Himself
to be humbled, and emptied Himself of the Pleroma.
Now He became man. Yet His humanity was
something foreign and strange, alien to His true
nature. Hence the ‘fashion’ or ‘similitude’ of
the body of sin, of the man, in which He appeared.
How easy, how natural it was to draw the Docetic
St John applies these Pauline theories to the Gospel narrative. Here, too, Jesus is the Soter whose dwelling-place is heaven, who came down from thence and has returned thither. He alone is from above. We all are from below. Yet in St John’s writings the humiliation of Christ is not carried out completely. Even upon earth the Soter manifested all the power of His heavenly glory, and thereby revealed the hidden God. His work is to save men from the cosmos, to reveal the unknown God to them, and to grant them everlasting life. All this presupposes the consistent Pauline pessimism. But how nearly related is the Johannine Christ to Docetism. He needs neither to eat nor to drink. It is His to die or not as He likes. He looks into every human heart. He performs many divine miracles. He is miraculously delivered. Here we have inferences strictly drawn, not from the idea of the Logos, but from the heavenly divine origin of Jesus as a whole. It is evident that for the Christology of St John the Parousia and, generally speaking, the eschatological element, are almost entirely absent. At most there will be one thing left for the Redeemer to do, that He should fetch us home to the world on high. In reality, as a member of the Christian Church, John held very different opinions. In the Gospel he is writing as a learned man.
The Pauline soteriology, in the narrower sense of the word, is already marked by very strong Gnostic tendencies. The Spirit is the agent upon whom everything depends. St Paul makes the Spirit to be the gift of God or of Christ, which only those receive who believe in the Soter.
Salvation consists in the reception and in the growth of the Spirit. But the Spirit is restricted to certain media, as, e.g., the Church and the Sacraments above all others. By means of the Church and the Sacraments the Christian receives a new accession of strength from above, and he himself helps to prepare a fit dwelling-place for the Spirit by a mortification of the passions which is often almost ascetic. Even now the Christian is a new creature, risen from the dead, a member of the body of Christ. It is only St Paul’s eschatological teaching, however, that completes the process: thereby the flesh is entirely subdued and the spirit returns to its home, for flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.
St Paul’s successor, St John, holds essentially the
same theory as to redemption. The beginning of
the new life is the new birth, the birth from above—the passing from death unto life, and the end is the
return to the world above. Only St John does not
ascribe nearly as much to the agency of the Spirit,
while all that man can and ought to do himself is
thoroughly emphasized. Here we have already the
reaction from the exaggerated theory of the Spirit
put forward by the Gnostics. Nevertheless the new
life is described, as it was later by Valentinus, as the
victory over the world and liberation from its snares.
The final development of the Pauline pessimism is
the doctrine of the creator of the world who is not
identical with the highest God. So, again, the Pauline
Christology ends in Docetism, and his teaching that
we are saved by the Spirit is a soteriology which is
at once physical and magical, while the evolution
of his eschatology consists in the denial of the
resurrection of the body. These are, of course,
developments which St Paul himself would have
utterly repudiated, and it is the easiest thing in the
world to refute them by means of his epistles. All
that is best, all the Christian elements in the Pauline
theology, are opposed to Gnosticism. But for all
that, the Pauline soteriology contained a powerful
2. St Paul’s anti-Jewish apologetics would also
be likely to strike many as incomplete and standing
in need of further consistent development. Paul
had rejected the Jewish law, and had at the same
time declared it to be divinely inspired. Such a
position could not be maintained permanently. Did
not St Paul himself emphasize the fact—when it
suited him—that the law had been given by angels,
and was closely related to the elements of the world?
In other words, the law is not to be ascribed to the
good God. Barnabas—a teacher of the Church—went so far as to refer the literal keeping of the law
to a temptation of the devil. At the same time
he denied that God had concluded a covenant with
the Jews. In St John’s Gospel Jesus always speaks
of ‘your,’ i.e., of the Jew's law. All this produced
the theory which separated the God of the law and
the Father of Jesus Christ. Jesus’ own positive
position towards the law pointed, it is true, in
another direction. Many indications, however,
furnished by the Synoptists caused distinctions to
be made in the law itself. At any rate in its literal
A practical antinomianism was the result. Everything depends upon Faith and Love and the Spirit. All else is secondary. There is no law for the Christian, and nothing is forbidden. Christians are quite free; all is permitted them. Text after text taken from St Paul’s writings, but without the context, of course, seems to countenance libertinism. And this libertinism could be understood either in a refined or in a coarse sense.
In the course of his controversy with the Jews, St Paul had set up the doctrine of a twofold Predestination, setting up a direct contradiction for thought therein. It was asserted that one and the same God had created vessels of wrath and vessels of mercy. This was incredible. A twofold predestination presupposes a twofold God—the saved imply a God of mercy, the lost a God of wrath.
Now in St Paul’s writings there were frequent references to those that were of the flesh and those that were of the Spirit. The latter class had received their spiritual endowment from the God of the Christians; but who had assigned to the former their evil lot? St Paul gave no answer to that question. What more natural than to suppose a different origin, a different God for the fleshly man? The new thought of predestination is immediately connected with the idea of the two classes of men.
This connection is best seen in St John’s writings.
His thoughts are those of a strict predestinarian, but
at the same time they have a dualistic colouring.
3. It was through his Gnosis, however, that St Paul exercised the strongest influence of all on the new tendency which is named after it. We have to take into account here not only the form of this Gnosis, its definition, and the determination of its relation to faith, but also the contents, the angelological and Christological speculations that were the results of the inspired exegesis.
The Pauline Gnosis has been defined as the
revealed understanding of revelation. Three characteristic features are to be noted: it counts higher
than faith; it is the property of single individuals; its
source is in the Spirit. Exactly the same conception
of the essential nature of Gnosis is to be found in the
ecclesiastical teachers of the sub-apostolic age, e.g., in
the writers of the Epistles to the Hebrews and of
Clement and Barnabas. It may be objected, indeed,
that they emphasize the fact that all Christians
“Of Melchizedek we have many things to say
and hard of interpretation, seeing ye are become
dull of hearing. For when by reason of the time
ye ought to be teachers, ye have need again that
someone teach you the rudiments of the beginning
of the word of God, and are become such as have
need of milk and not of solid food. For every one
that partaketh of milk hath no understanding in the
word of righteousness; for he is a babe. But solid
food is for the perfect, even those who by practice
have their senses exercised to discern good and evil.
Therefore we will leave the word of the beginning
of Christ and press on unto perfection, not laying
again the foundation of repentance from dead works
and of faith towards God, of the teaching of baptisms
and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the
dead and of eternal judgment.” No mention is here
made of the Spirit. The author, who has been
trained by Philo, follows a scientific method of
exegesis, which almost assumes the place of inspiration for him. The proud exaltation, however, of
Gnosis above faith, and of the teacher of perfection above the ignorant multitude, can be traced
very plainly. There is no difference between
ecclesiastical and Gnostic teachers as regards the
Another point is to be noticed. The ecclesiastical teachers
exercised their skill in distinguishing the double meaning of Scripture on the
Old Testament. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews does this by
contrasting, as Plato would have done, between the idea and its copy in the
world of phenomena. For him the whole of the Old Testament order of things has
merely the value of such a copy or shadow. The application of this method to the
words of Jesus and to the writings of St Paul cannot as yet be traced in
ecclesiastical teachers. And yet it existed as a matter of fact when Jesus in
the Fourth Gospel is made to speak almost exclusively in parables. The Gnostic
teachers therefore introduced no new principle in applying the Platonic
methods of the Epistle to the Hebrews to the objects
of the Christian faith. In fact, it was only by this
means that a certain obscurity in the relation of
Gnosis to faith was removed. It is not the same
object which is presented to faith as folly and to
Gnosis as wisdom. Faith merely sees the copy, the
appearance. It is only Gnosis that grasps the
original in the world of spirit. That is the later
Valentinian method, and the Church was powerless
against it, for it had already surrendered on the
question of principle. The first germs of the method
may possibly be discovered even in St John’s writings. Are not baptism and the Lord’s Supper
there considered to be the types of higher truths,
the birth from above and the feeding with the
Logos? The miracles are not merely signs of
But the contents of the Pauline Gnosis exercised
an important influence on the development of the
heresy. The Gnosis was to be the revealed exegesis
of the Old Testament. As a matter of fact, it
revealed a number of things which had but a very
slight connection with the Old Testament. It read
out of the Scriptures a great supernatural story of
Christ and of the spirits, discovered the mysteries of
the fall, of the struggle between the good and evil spirits
and their reconciliation, set up Jesus and His cross
as the centre, the sun of the world of spirits, formed
the conceptions of the fulness (Pleroma) and the
emptying (Kenosis) of the Godhead in Christ. The
union, too, of Christ and the Church, the pattern
of marriage, St Paul discovered in the Old Testament. It can be proved that these angelological
and Christological speculations seriously engaged the
attention and deeply stirred the imagination of the
Church. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews,
and Hermas, employ methods which are almost diametrically opposed, but their end is the same—the
definition of Christ’s position towards angels and archangels.
St Paul cannot, in fact, be acquitted of the
charge of having very greatly furthered the Gnostic
movement. Things crept into Christianity through
his instrumentality which are nowhere to be found
in Jesus’ teaching: there were speculations of
the wildest nature, which lightly passed over every
obstacle in the spirit-world; mysticism was introduced in the doctrine of the indwelling Christ or
But from this we infer that Gnosticism certainly cannot be derived from St Paul in the straight line of descent, however much later Gnostic teachers appealed to him. They made use of the apostle, and appealed to his authority, but he was not their ultimate source. No Gnostics whatever were personal scholars of St Paul. Their relation of dependence upon him only dates from the circulation of the Pauline letters among the Churches—i.e., from about the nineties of the first century. By the reading of his letters they were then confirmed in convictions which they had formed already.
Now if Gnosticism can neither be derived from Jesus, with whom
it has nothing in common, nor directly from St Paul, to whom the ecclesiastical
and anti-gnostic features are no less prominent than those which furthered
Gnosticism, then it can only be explained by the influence of foreign elements
upon Christianity. Gnosticism arose through the absorption of Christianity in
its earliest days into the great syncretism of all religions. Jewish,
Babylonian, Persian, Syrian, Egyptian, Greek influences stormed in upon the
Christian faith in its infancy, and produced
Of all these influences the Jewish must at first have been the most powerful. The heretical teachers, against whom the author of the Pastoral epistles and Ignatius take up arms, are described by them as Judaizing. Hegesippus tells us that the Gnostics spring from Jewish sects. The great arch-heretic of the later fathers, Simon Magus, was a half Jew, a Samaritan, and the Gnostic sources of the pseudo-Clementines which are directed against him are likewise to be traced to a Jewish-Christian milieu. None of these men, in fact, were strict Jews like those Judaizers, e.g., who intrigued against St Paul. The official, rabbinical Judaism excommunicated such Gnostic Jews just as much as the Christians. They were the representatives of a Jewish faith which had itself succumbed to foreign influences.
It is easily conceivable how Jews, adherents apparently of the most exclusive and firmly established
of religions, suffered themselves to be drawn into
this universal maëlstrom of religions. The distinctive feature of the Jewish character is something
purely practical, the strict retention of the national
law. The conception of dogma in the usual sense of
the word did not exist here at all. Men were free
to believe what they liked, and there were therefore
no doctrinal disputes. The most varied phantasmagorias concerning the future
life were taken up into the Apocalyptic. It admitted Greek fancies as to hell as
readily as Babylonian dragon-myths or Persian ideas as to resurrection. There
was
Hence the ultimate origin of Gnosticism is to be
sought beyond Judaism. It is an alien element in
Judaism itself, derived partly from Babylon—hence
the roll assigned to the Seven, the gods of the constellations in the oldest cosmogonies, partly from Persia—hence the good God, the Saviour of men from the
might of the tyrants, the gods of the constellations.
First of all, these two religions, the Babylonian and
the Persian, met and produced the idea of the enslavement of the soul through the fateful power of the
lower tyrants, and of its liberation and its ascent up
above all the stars to the good God of light. Then
these ideas firmly established themselves in Jewish
hands. The God of the Jews, the creator of the
world, had to submit to be degraded and Himself
to become the first of the tyrants. The fact that
the Jewish national God is the demiurge in all
Gnostic systems, proves that Gnostic doctrines
travelled to Christianity by way of Judaism. Nothing was more natural for Christians, when they
heard this esoteric teaching, than to assign the roll of
Finally, these Gnostico-Babylonian-Jewish-Christian ideas made their way to the Greek Christians.
It was then that they were purified and clarified
by Greek philosophy. The difference is noticeable
when the systems of Valentinus and his scholars
are compared with the speculations of other Gnostics
such as the Ophite sects. Even the highest systems
betray their barbaric origin, but yet they approach,
and that very nearly, to the tendency prevalent
amongst the cultured classes which was making for
neoplatonism. It was only through these esoteric
Gnostic doctrines that Christianity was rendered
accessible to many educated Greeks. Hitherto
Christianity had appeared to them to be of purely
indigenous Jewish growth. The Jewish anthropomorphic God, Jesus the crucified as Saviour, the
grossly material Jewish Apocalyptic, were all mere
idle dreams and fancies for intellectual Greeks.
They now learnt of a purer higher conception of
But to these three influences—the Jewish, the Babylonian-Persian, the Greek, each of which can clearly be recognized—we must not forget to add a vast importation of superstition and chimeras from every corner of the chaos of peoples inhabiting the then-known world. There was a truly international element in the Gnostic religion. Incantations of all kinds, the love of the mysteries, both old and new, a universal ascetic ideal of saintliness, and side by side with it bestial aberrations, every occult science, every variety of swindling, are all bound up with the esoteric doctrines of Gnosticism, which are not altogether lacking in elevation. The profoundest reflections end in merely childish or abstruse speculations. The first present which the chaos of peoples hastened to give to the new religion was every scrap of religious mystery which could be collected together.
The circumstances of the time were exceedingly favourable to the rise of Gnosticism.
We must picture this earliest age of the Church
as one in which men were perfectly free to think
and to teach whatever they wished. Only one
dogma was necessarily imposed—Jesus is the Lord,
There is an additional factor, however, the consideration of which is essential to a right understanding
of the genesis of Christian Gnosticism. Gnosticism
did not merely force its way into Christianity from
outside; it arose in the midst of the congregations as
well. Its origin is to be looked for in connection
with the influx of the Pagan masses into the Christian
congregations and the reaction that was occasioned
thereby, leading to the formation of more restricted
circles of people of holy life as a protest against the
Christianity of the masses. Even as far back as St
Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians we have a remarkable picture of the curious composition of an
early Christian congregation and the great differences
within it. These Christian Corinthians were for the
most part the offscourings of the big cities, the most
degraded and sunken elements of the population.
Nor did this state of things change speedily. The
congregations were for a long time to come mostly
recruited from the lowest ranks of society. From an
intellectual point of view they must be conceived of as
exceedingly rude and superstitious, and morally they
were far below the ideal of St Paul. The Church
had flung her doors wide open for them that were
without, and had made the conditions of salvation for
the individual very easy at his entrance. We cannot
We here come across a curious contradiction.
These narrower circles of the initiated and illuminated
were the first to succumb to the attacks of an increasing worldliness. Their secret doctrines, as well as
their sacraments and their ethics, came from outside
sources, from the great chaos of heathen religions.
That which they set forth as a higher Christianity
and a progress in knowledge is, from our point of
view, the decomposition and dissolution of the Gospel
into a heathen syncretism—a confused mass of superstitions and philosophies. They themselves, however,
usually, if not always, regarded their work, on the
contrary, as a reaction. Marcion was not the only one
to proclaim the watchword, “Back to Paul; back to
all that is original and genuine.” Nearly all the
Gnostic schools advanced the claim to a better and
purer knowledge of Jesus and Paul than the Church
of their day, based as it was on a spirit of legalism and
tradition. This Church appeared to them to be too
wide, too universal, too much a Church of the world
and of sinners. Surely this could not be the Church
which claimed to be the body of Christ, the fellowship
of the elect, of the saints, of the spiritual. A blind,
blunt, traditional faith, worldly ethics, a sensual,
Jewish hope for the future world: such appeared to
be her characteristics. This Church was the world,
the fellowship of the unredeemed, of natural men.
In contrast to this Church, the Gnostics form their
narrower circles and gather the saints into their
conventicles, where they impart to them the higher
initiation, and reveal to them the higher knowledge
by which alone the Christian truly becomes such.
Gnosticism thus regarded—and such it was in its own
It is only after taking considerations such as these into
account that the relation of Gnostic theology to Paulinism becomes clear. There
can be no doubt that St Paul did not originate the Gnostic movement; no single one of his own pupils could become
a Gnostic. For St Paul the Catholic Church is the
firm ground upon which he stands, the basis of his
thoughts and work, the fervent love of his heart, the
centre of all his speculations. The whole of his
theology is an ecclesiastical dualism which divides
the world into two halves—without Christ, with
Christ; allotting death to the former, life to the latter,
and yet keeping both together through God, the
creator and ruler. It was when this standard of the
Catholic Church was abandoned in favour of that of
a mere sect that the Puritan-Gnostic theology was
developed from St Paul’s. And this was the critical
moment in the evolution of Gnosticism; not the
influx of foreign thoughts and rites, but the transference of the centre of gravity from the Church
catholic into the little circle of the spiritual.
Thereby the ecclesiastical dualism is transformed into
an absolute, metaphysical dualism. God and the
world fall altogether asunder, just as the spirit and
the flesh, the spirit and reason. The spiritual alone
are chosen by God to all eternity; all the rest of mankind, even including other Christians, are the children
of the devil or of some inferior deity. Christ is not
the redeemer of the world, but of the spiritual, who
leads them back to the home from which they have
THE first encounter between the Church and the
Gnostic tendencies occurred while St Paul was still
alive. Heretical teachers appeared at Colossae, who
had already been engulfed in the great whirlpool of religions. They boasted of their Jewish
circumcision and of their Greek philosophy, recommended angelolatry and ascetic practices. Paul
combated them from the standpoint of his gnosis,
and opposed practical Christian principles to their
asceticism. We know nothing as to the further
history of this Colossian sect. It was the advance
guard of the invading army which attacked the
Church on all sides in the last two decades of the first
century, and is noticed in almost every contemporary
ecclesiastical writing. The Pastoral and Johannine
epistles (about 100 A.D.) are the earliest documents to
give us a clear conception of their opponent’s position.
It is very instructive how quickly, after all, the
consciousness of the difference between what was
1. The debate as to the first capital point, the
principle of authority, was the most unfortunate
The Gnostics proclaimed the supremacy of the Spirit.
2. The Gnostics separated the creator of the world
from the redeemer. The Church maintained their
unity. The creator is no inferior God, but the true
and highest God, the redeemer. The author of the
Pastoral epistles combats the Gnostic theory of the
divinity by insisting on the unity of God and opposing asceticism. “Every creature of God is good.
God has created meat and drink for the Christians, to
be received by them with thanksgiving.” It was
clearly recognized in the Church that it was no mere
matter of speculation. Had the Christian any right
to believe in Providence? That was the issue at
stake. Is God or the devil supreme in this world?
Is the believer indebted for his life, his health, his
natural powers, to the God that redeems him, or
to an enemy of God? About the middle of the
second century the old expressions “the devil, the
prince of this world,” etc., almost vanish from
Christian writings. By a bold exegesis Irenaeus
makes out that Paul never called Satan God of
this world. And on the other hand, God appears
in the creeds as creator of heaven and earth. At
3. The defence of “the resurrection of the flesh” against the purely spiritualistic eschatology of the Gnostics was a natural consequence of the belief in God the creator. The heresy that the Resurrection had already taken place is first met with in the Pastoral epistles, and both Polycarp and Justin make further mention of it. We may reasonably assume that the practical significance of this dogma—which was of Jewish origin—had been already realized, as it certainly was later by Irenaeus and Tertullian. The body belongs to the whole man such as he was created by God. Whoever denies the resurrection of the flesh thereby attacks the God of creation. An additional reason was the unwillingness to give up the Jewish eschatology. But the really decisive argument was the first. Much difficulty indeed was occasioned by St Paul’s statement, that flesh and blood should not inherit the kingdom of God. Irenaeus tells us that it was the main support of the Gnostics; and even before this, Justin attempted to adapt the phrase to the creed of the Church in a book which has been lost. But the stories of the risen Lord appeared more important than words of St Paul. Here the theory of the resurrection of the flesh was actually realized. There is something truly magnificent in the way in which the martyrs go forth to death with the certainty that the God who created their body can likewise restore it.
4. From eschatology we turn to Christology.
Here the most valuable tenet, the humanity of
Jesus, was protected against the Gnostics and their
5. The physical soteriology of the Gnostics now has
to make way for the moral and ecclesiastical doctrine
of salvation. The Gnostics appealed to St Paul’s doctrine of the Spirit. However one-sided and
arbitrary the fashion in which they interpreted this,
they were right in the main thought: the Christian
is redeemed by the power of God coming over him.
How important the Spirit was to them we may infer
indirectly from the fact that salvation by the Spirit
is completely thrust into the background both in the
Pastoral letters and in that of St John. Through
the latter we get to know a number of expressions
current among the Gnostics: “I have known God;
I am in the light; I dwell in God; I am born in God
and God’s seed dwells in me; I have passed from
death unto life; I love God; the love of God is
completed in me; we do not sin, neither have we
sinned.” Knowledge always occupies the first place;
the second is assigned to mysticism as the fruit of
knowledge, to the flight of the soul above all the
world to God, and the indwelling of God in the
soul. This ideal of piety was in nowise necessarily
6. The last antithesis was the truest. Sect or
Catholic Church—the gathering together of the
spiritual, or the call to go forth and make disciples
of all men. The Gnostics had withdrawn arrogantly
from the Church. They had refused to take part
in the life of the fellowship. We may infer from
St John’s First Epistle that they hated the brethren,
i.e., the ordinary Christians; that they criticised
and despised them, and gave themselves up
exclusively to their mystic love of God. Ignatius
says still more plainly: “Love is of no importance
to them. They care nothing for widows or orphans,
As against such conduct the watchword is proclaimed: hold fast by the unity of the Church and
follow zealously after love in the Church. St Paul
himself gave out this watchword in his last letters,
for a special congregation in the Epistle to the
Philippians, and for the Church as a whole in the
so-called letter to the Ephesians. “Forbear with one
another in love; giving diligence to keep the unity
of the spirit in the bond of peace. There is one
body and one spirit, even as also ye were called in
one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one
baptism, one God and Father of all.” But this
thought of unity receives its most impressive expression in the high priestly prayer in the Gospel of St
John. The unity of the Church amidst the Gnostic
storms is the aim of the whole of this prayer, the
last testament of Jesus to His disciples. Four
times Jesus repeats the petition, “That they may
be one, even as we are one; I in them and thou
in Me, that they may be perfected into one.” But
not the prayer alone: the last discourses of Jesus
taken as a whole, with the magnificent parable of
the vine and the branches which forms their centre,
with the new commandment of the love of the
brethren and the promise of the spirit of truth—all aim at this duty of ecclesiastical unity. The
mere setting forth of the ideal without any direct
polemic imparts their wonderful impressiveness to
these admonitions. Hence we can understand why
It was no insignificant or worthless portion of Christianity that the Church determined to defend at all costs against the Gnostics. Of course all that it defended was not of equal value. Christianity clings firmly to its foundation in the Old Testament. It carefully preserves the three articles in its creed which it took over from Judaism: the belief in God the creator, the central position of morality, the hope for the future. The struggle in which it likewise engaged for the sensuous Jewish eschatology and the rabbinical doctrine of inspiration was due to the special circumstances of the time, and did not do very much harm.
In like manner the Church retained the best elements in the Gospel of Jesus: His promise and His claims, the fundamental democratic trait in His character, with His search for the light. On no single point is the Gospel of Jesus on the side of the Gnostics. And thus far the reproach of having fallen away from the Church was fully justified.
The relation of the two contending parties to
St Paul was, however, somewhat different. Both
seized hold of a portion of his teaching; the Paul
whom the Church finally retained was not the
whole Paul, but one cut after an ecclesiastical
pattern. It cannot be denied that the Gnostics
understood many thoughts of St Paul better than
the Church his pessimism, his eschatology, his
thoughts of the spirit and of redemption. The
complete understanding of the Pauline soteriology
ceases in the Church after the Gnostic controversy.
The ecclesiastical teachers who remained faithful to
the Old Testament, to the Gospel of Jesus, and of the
apostle St Paul—that is, the St Paul of the Church—saved Christianity from the greatest danger, the
subtlest temptation, with which it was ever threatened.
Gnosticism was an attempt on the part of the chaos
of peoples to absorb the Gospel of Jesus—an
attempt which was doubly dangerous, because it
assumed the appearance of a reaction and professed
to have attained to a truer estimate and a clearer
understanding of Christ and His power. The chaos
of peoples declared its readiness to assign to Jesus
the very highest position in the Gnostic religion of
redemption if He were prepared to become the leader
Would that the victory had been complete and the deliverance less imperfect! But in not a few places the chaos of heathen religions left a deep mark on ecclesiastical Christianity; the Church did not succeed in entirely repulsing the foreign elements. The Gnostic speculations were rejected, and the ecclesiastical thereby the more securely established. But are the latter a great deal better or more intelligent? The divinity of Christ and the Logos-Christ are heathen fabrications just as much as the Gnostic Soter, only it is a great deal more difficult to harmonize them with the human Jesus than was the case with the Gnostic Christology.
The defeat of the Gnostic mysteries was effected
in like manner. They were reduced in number.
Lastly, the ascetic ideal had to give way to the ethical of the Gospels. How loudly the author of the Pastoral epistles thunders against those who would hinder marriage. Yet the same author declares people who contracted a second marriage to be unfit for the office of bishop or deacon. This is a result of the ascetic view of marriage. The opinion that marriage is a stain and that virginity is consequently to be esteemed more highly as a more holy state, is still upheld by the Church. Here we have the source of the later monasticism. In spite, therefore, of many striking contrasts the Church and Gnosticism continue to share more than enough in common—intellectualism and dogma, the sacramental religion, the ascetic view of the sexual relation. It is exceedingly significant that these three factors find no support whatever in the teaching of Jesus, while they are upheld by several passages in the writings of St Paul. And indeed many words of the apostle are already accounted as highly as those of their master.
We must not, it is true, forget that the dangerous
And yet, after all deductions, the Church’s victory was the victory of the Gospel within the limits that were alone possible at that time. The Church’s teachers, the opponents of the Gnostics, were the representatives of the old Christianity, such as they had received it, such as they understood it. No blame, therefore, can attach to them. Their merit is to have recognized the attainable and to have attained it. In so doing, they secured a fresh lease of life for Christianity.
The forcible measures employed by the Church.
The conflict between the Catholic and Gnostic
teachers was not carried on to the end with merely
spiritual weapons. Yes, however bitter it may be to
have to make the confession, the spiritual weapons
of the Church would not have sufficed to gain the
victory. The struggle began when the Church’s institutions were exceedingly primitive, the products
of enthusiasm. The men of the Spirit—apostles,
prophets, and teachers—were as yet the only
authorities besides the words of Jesus, and the
canon of the Old Testament. Complete freedom
of teaching prevailed, and great freedom in public
worship, with a broad-hearted extension of the name
of Christian to all who called Jesus Lord. This state
of things endangered the existence of the congregations and threatened them with dissolution, while it
rendered the clear distinction of the opposing forces
exceedingly difficult. The employment of forcible
Three measures were taken by the Church to put an end to the prevailing license. 1. The teachers were placed under Church authority. 2. Public worship was centralized and the government of the congregations entrusted to the bishops. 3. Heretics were excluded and condemned. The birth of the Catholic Church dates from the employment of these measures.
1. The only means of setting some limit to the chaos of conflicting opinions appeared to be to place the teachers under Church authority. What was the use of refuting erroneous opinions as long as each teacher could appeal to the Spirit? The question had to be put: Is any and every person to be allowed to bring forward his new doctrines on the authority of the Spirit? The question needed but to be put to be answered in the negative.
The authors of the Pastoral letters and of the letters of St John, and Ignatius, are united in their efforts to put an end to the freedom of teaching. But they use two different means.
There was first of all the theory that the bishop as such
possessed the Spirit. The object of this theory was to create fitting
instruments for the office of teaching. The spirit of knowledge is in the
possession of few, the apostles and their successors, the bishops. They alone
preserve the divine tradition (gift—depositum). The spirit of truth is handed on in
succession from one to another by the laying on of
hands. The Pastoral letters, which were the first to
Next we have the theory of the Rule of Faith.
The aim of this theory is itself to create the pure
doctrine. It is significant that we come across it
in the Johannine epistles. The author of these
epistles is no ecclesiastic, nor is the building up of
ecclesiastical office his object. His aim is rather to
set up a principle which would make a judge of every
Christian and not merely of the bishop. We are to
try the spirits, i.e., the prophets and the teachers,
whether their spirit is of God or not. Knowledge
of their teaching is sufficient for this examination.
He whose teaching is Docetic is not of God. “Jesus Christ come in the flesh”: such is here the
regula fidei.
Thereby John attains the same end as the Pastoral
But the setting up of the Rule of Faith is older
than John. The author of the Pastoral epistles is in
reality acquainted with both of these ecclesiastical
measures. There was an old “preaching of Christ,”
a short summary of all that was essential in Christology. St Paul had taught his congregations such
an epitome: died, buried, raised again on the third
day. Additions were gradually made to this short
confession, and first of all without any reference to
Gnostic opponents, the object being merely to instruct
new converts. The author of the Pastoral letters is
acquainted with the following new clauses: Of the
house of David; under Pontius Pilate; who shall
come to judge the quick and the dead. The omission
of all mention of the Virgin Birth, as well as the
older view of the descent from David, are sufficient
proof that at this time the story of the miraculous
birth had not as yet received official sanction. It is
only when we come to Ignatius that we find this
further addition to the summary, though the Davidic
descent is as yet by no means suppressed. His statement is either: of the house of David, of Mary; or,
of the seed of David, of the Holy Ghost. Soon after
this the Davidic descent was either removed from the
creed altogether—so in the old Roman form: of the
Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary—or ascribed to
Mary. This is what Justin does: Of Mary the Virgin,
who is of the house of David. These additions and
changes, however, are not to be ascribed to any
anti-gnostic tendency, but to the necessity of harmonizing the catechetical teaching with the widened
Two conditions were now clearly laid down for the teachers:—
1. Whenever a teacher wishes to exercise his vocation he has to be approved by the bishop and be licensed by him.
2. Every teacher is strictly bound by the regula fidei.
Important alterations followed hence. The withdrawal of the free permission to teach implied negatively the cessation of free theological production, positively the exaltation of the ecclesiastical tradition, i.e., of the apostles and their writings, into the place of the sacred canon.
One characteristic of the sub-apostolic age is the
immense increase in the esteem with which the first
apostles were regarded. All the Gospels, the Acts,
As a rule these writings are of a perfectly harmless character, and at least they do not threaten the stability of the Rule of Faith by any originality. We may safely conclude, e.g., from the occurrence of the idea of Christ’s descent into Hades in the First Epistle of St Peter, that it had already found acceptance in a considerable portion of the Church. Later, to be sure, it found its way even into the Creed.
The increased reverence paid to the apostles and
their work resulted in the formation of the canon of
the New Testament. At first we have, of course,
just a collection of the apostolic writings. The
process was, however, a very rapid one. The first
letter of St Clement, written from Rome to Corinth
towards the end of the first century, assumes its
readers acquaintance with a number of the letters of
St Paul, the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Synoptic
Gospels, the Acts. Two decades later we find in
Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, mention of all four
Gospels, the letters of St Paul, including the
Pastoral epistles, and the Apocalypse; shortly
afterwards in Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, the Acts, and
the First of St Peter and the First of St John
in addition. The Epistle of Polycarp is especially
instructive for the rapid growth of the canon. The
writer is a widely respected bishop, who is said to
have had personal intercourse with the apostles, or,
at least, with the disciples of Jesus. And yet he
gives us scarcely anything but quotations from the
later writings of the New Testament, scarcely any
thing of his own. In so doing he presupposes the
The formation of the canon marks the end of the first age of Christianity under certain aspects. The old Christianity projects itself, as it were, into the canon, and sets up its own past as an object of veneration. Now, too, the chief motive power of the first great age, hero-worship, may be said to be no longer operative.
Instead of the heroes themselves, their writings
are accessible as a written law. Here, half a century
before Montanism, we have the death-knell of
prophecy and of the ever-progressive spirit. The
Church of tradition has been formed. Its teachers,
Justin and Irenaeus, are right in maintaining that
2. Nor was the second measure, the centralization of public worship and Church government in the hands of the bishop—who was almost everywhere in an independent position of supremacy—less decisive.
In the old time it was the itinerant preachers who
exercised all the authority and were counted as the
divine instruments for the whole Church. As often
as they came to a congregation they took the
precedence over all the church officers. It was
supposed, e.g., that a prophet could pray more
effectively than a bishop. Here we have the key
to the power which the Gnostics managed to acquire.
Owing to these peculiar circumstances they were
able to gain adherents in every congregation, and to
form branches of their schools and sects in every
locality. We have therefore to picture to ourselves
congregations in which Catholic and Gnostic societies
existed happily side by side, just as did the various
family churches which
If, therefore, Gnosticism was to be extirpated, the
freedom of public worship and of ecclesiastical action
must be limited. This had not as yet happened at
the time of the Pastoral letters. And yet things
were pointing that way. We read, for instance:
He that “consenteth not to sound words and to
the doctrine which is according to godliness (which
surely includes the services of the Church), is
The Johannine letters, too, which probably date but a few years later than the Pastoral epistles, furnish us with proofs that public worship had not been completely centralized by the time of their composition. In the Third Epistle we still find the old itinerant preachers wandering about and trying to gain a hearing, while the head of one particular congregation—presumably the bishop—refuses to give them a reception. Here we have both tendencies actively at work—that to the monarchical episcopate (Diotrephes, who very much wishes to be the first); and that to the centralization of public worship—the exclusion of the itinerant preachers.
Both tendencies reach their culminating point in
Ignatius. The monarchical episcopate must now be
presupposed, at least for Asia Minor and Syria. There
is no longer any need to struggle for that. But the
struggle still continues for the centralization of public
worship and church government in the hands of
the bishop and the college of elders. That is the
only weapon wherewith to ward off the danger of
heresy. And it is something relatively new, for the
greatest emphasis is laid upon it. So entirely does it
engross the thoughts of Ignatius, that he speaks of it
even in an ecstatic condition. Once at Philadelphia,
he cried out in the midst of an assembly in a loud
voice, the voice of God: “Keep to the bishop and
Never did any man use more extravagant language about the ecclesiastical importance of the bishop than Ignatius. To the people he says: “Where the shepherd is, there do ye follow as sheep”; “Wherever the bishop appears, there let the multitude be; just as where Jesus Christ is, there is the Church Catholic.” Apart from bishop, presbyters, and deacons there is no Church. “As many as are of God and of Jesus Christ are with the bishop.” The practical consequence of this exaltation of the episcopate is the one command which runs through all the letters alike: “Let no man do anything without the bishop”; “He that doeth anything without the knowledge of the bishop serveth the devil.” That Eucharist is alone to be held lawful which is celebrated by the bishop or by his duly appointed deputy. “It is not allowable either to baptize or to hold a love feast without the bishop, but whatsoever he may approve, this also is well-pleasing to God.” Those who marry are likewise to obtain the bishop’s consent to their union. “One body of Christ, one cup, one altar, just as there is one bishop together with his presbyters and deacons.” So speaks the first sacerdotalist.
Ignatius attained his aim. The centralization of public worship set up an effective barrier against the heretics. There was nothing left for them to do but to become schismatics, and to establish rival congregations of their own. Rarely, however, did they attain to any efficient form of organization. Tertullian speaks of this as their weakest point. And this is what we should expect, for where the Spirit rules there can be no strict ecclesiastical order.
The Church won the day, but at the cost of uniformity and rigidity. The old freedom vanished, and with it the rich and varied life of the first age.
3. The prohibition of the freedom of teaching and of worship involved the exclusion of all those who would not conform to the new regulations. This last measure is the most to be regretted, because it exalted fanaticism into a place of permanent power in the Church.
The Church had indeed been narrow and even fanatical since the days of St Paul, but only with regard to those that were without, to the unbelievers. Every unbelieving Jew or heathen was, it is true, counted capable of redemption; as yet, however, he was a child of wrath, in the toils of the devil and on the road to damnation. For this, however, there was compensation in the earlier age of which we are speaking. There was great liberality towards all that were within the Church. Every one who called Jesus his Lord was accounted a member of the congregation. It mattered not under what category his Gnosis fell. Hence the rich variety of views built up upon the same faith.
But with the commencement of the struggle
The Pastoral epistles are also our oldest document
for all the virulence of ecclesiastical fanaticism.
Their polemics against the Gnostics are characterized
by ecclesiastical haughtiness, insinuations of immorality, and the condemnation of their opponents
The Johannine epistles are worthy successors of the Pastoral, as their author, the so-called apostle of love, shows himself to be a past master in the art of judging and condemning. Just as he exhibited his narrow hatred in the Gospel against the unbelieving Jews, those children of the devil, those thieves and robbers, so here in the epistle he manifests the same hatred against all the brethren who do not think exactly as he does. The Gnostics are liars in whom the truth dwelleth not, and who walk in darkness. If you would understand them aright, you must see anti-Christ in them; their existence is only comprehensible as a temptation of the devil in the last hour. The second letter draws the practical conclusion: as all Docetists are deceivers and anti-Christs, and have not God, they are not to be received into the house, nor are they to be given greeting, for he that giveth them greeting partaketh in their evil works.
The anecdote which Irenaeus relates of St John agrees very well with this passage: When St John on one occasion learnt that Cerinthus was in the same public bathing establishment as himself, he rushed out of it, exclaiming, “Let us flee lest the house break down upon us, for Cerinthus is within, the enemy of the truth.” Should this anecdote be historically reliable, the Johannine Epistles have certainly faith fully reproduced the spirit of this John.
As Ignatius and Polycarp are acquainted with both
True, even now, the door stood open for the Gnostics to return. Only they had to do penance. Gnostic views were counted to be exactly as bad as gross moral sins. One great advantage was, it must be admitted, gained by this hateful device. All doubt and ambiguity was at an end. Within the Church—the boast was justified—there was one faith, one confession.
But the Christians who remained faithful to this confession had lost qualities which their Lord and Master had esteemed most highly—love and humanity. The very prayer for the conversion of the Gnostics is more Pharisaic than Christian, and does not spring from simple human love.
The result of this division into the two camps of orthodoxy and heresy was that Christianity now entirely acquired a scholastic dogmatic character, and in a very serious degree lost its original peculiarity—that of being an essentially ethical religion.
Originally this scholastic dogmatic character was completely foreign to Christianity. Christianity was a layman’s personal religion under the guidance of a prophet. It was entirely undogmatic. The only article in its creed, Jesus is the Messiah, belonged to the sphere of religious hope, and was not therefore capable of proof.
Controversies with the Jews brought about the first symptoms of change. No documents, it is true, have come down to us from the very earliest age, but all that we can gather from the Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel of St John indicates that anti-Jewish apologetics soon degenerated into the squabbles of rival schools. The controversy ranged over every variety of subject, but the most important of all is left untouched. What the Christians wanted to do was to harmonize the picture of Jesus with the dogmas of the Messianic theology, and to prove that Jesus was after all the Messiah in accordance with Jewish dogma. As though the cause of Jesus had thereby been advanced in the very slightest degree! That a redemptive power went forth from Jesus, that through the simplification of His message He burst Judaism asunder—all this was disregarded as unimportant. And so in very deed Christianity became a heresy, a separate opinion, like that of the Pharisees, though, unlike theirs, not ecclesiastically tolerated; it was too revolutionary for that.
Under these circumstances it must be considered
fortunate that Christianity was transferred to Greek
soil. If it took root here at all, it must be as a new
religion, for the squabbles of the Messianic theology
were unintelligible to the Greeks. Numberless
Gnosticism provoked the crisis which sooner or later must have been brought about through the influence of Greek philosophy. The Gnostics aim was to understand the revelation given to faith, and to adapt it to their own opinions, while they were all the while under the delusion that in so doing they were inspired of the Spirit. It was not long before differences of opinion and heresies manifested themselves. Just as the Jewish Rabbis variously interpreted the Oracles of the Old Testament, and then split up into different schools, so each Gnostic teacher cut the Christian faith after his own pattern, and a number of schools and a whole multitude of dogmas resulted thence. The dogmas were not the really important thing to the Gnostics themselves, but it was these that first engaged the attention of the Christian teachers, and became the object of their criticism and attack.
Now in controverting the Gnostics, the ecclesiastical teachers adapted themselves to their opponents’ scholastic view of Christianity. All that they did
was to oppose ecclesiastical to Gnostic dogmas. The
The religion of Christ thus underwent the greatest change of all. The practical and the personal no longer formed, as they did before, the core and centre of the faith. Originally the true marks of Christianity were the ardour of its hope, the strictness of the new life, inspiration for Jesus. Whosoever had suffered himself to be redeemed by Jesus so as to attain the freedom of a child of God, was accounted a Christian. No one had inquired as to the dogmas which he accepted. And so the oldest community was a fellowship united by the same enthusiasm and working for the same ends. This conception of Christianity was supplanted in the course of the struggle with Gnosticism by the scholastic, dogmatic view. The new confessional Christianity is scholastic.
The expression ‘Catholic Church’ first occurs in
Ignatius in the course of the Gnostic controversy,
and there signifies the Church universal, which
embraces the whole of Christianity as contrasted
with the particular congregations. It then expressed
a geographical idea, and had not as yet become
a battle-cry against the heretics. But, as a matter
of fact, it is quite true to say that from this time
Gnosticism made of Jesus a divine phantom, Catholicism rescued the true Jesus. In any case we are here more in the line of the direct succession from primitive Christianity. The mischievous innovation which it introduced was the exaltation of orthodoxy and ecclesiasticism into leading marks of Christianity, in contrast to the freedom of teaching and the freedom from Church discipline that characterized the Gnostics. Henceforth assent to the pure doctrine and subjection to the bishop are a sine qua non in the case of every Christian. The old leading marks are secondary matters. In other words, hostility towards the unbelieving Christians outside of the Church comes to be a sign of true Christianity. And this state of things was not, alas, materially altered at the Reformation.
THE origin of the New Testament is the last important event in the history of the early days of Christianity, and at the same time that which most deeply influenced all successive centuries. It is most intimately bound up with the struggle against the Gnostics, because this implied the cessation of the original productive activity and the consecration of tradition, i.e., of the apostles and their writings. Its sources, however, are to be traced to far older fundamental presuppositions of Christianity.
Christianity was bound to obtain its New Testament, because Judaism had its Old Testament.
Originating as it did from a book-religion and
developing in the constant veneration of the sacred
writings, it was inevitably destined itself to become
a, book-religion in its turn. Jesus, it is true, wished
to set His disciples free from the learning of the
Scribes, and St Paul gave as his watchword: “Not
But the origin of the New Testament was likewise necessitated
by the circumstances of Christianity itself. St Paul, the founder of the science
of the Church, is the father of the New Testament, although he himself certainly
thought of nothing less than that. It was he who first clearly contrasted
Christian
It was the struggle with the Gnostics and, generally
speaking, certain definite conditions, which determined
the selection of these Christian writings. The first
decade of the second century seems to fulfil these
conditions best. The fact that the writings which
form the New Testament towards the end of the
second century were already—with scarcely any exceptions in the possession of
the ecclesiastical writers Ignatius, Polycarp and Papias, at the beginning
Now if the New Testament as a whole dates from the beginning of the second century, its theology must in the main be the theology of this period. The theology of the New Testament is the theology of Catholicism, as it originates at the beginning of the second century. However much older the single writings may be, however much unwritten tradition those who collected and ordered the writings may have respected in addition, the body of writings as a whole must have corresponded to their thoughts and feelings. Here we have a fact which deserves notice even to-day. When the New Testament as a whole is our authority, then we are simply submitting to the judgment of the Church at the beginning of the second century. It is not the words of Jesus or the letters of St Paul which are then our final court of appeal, but the thoughts of the ecclesiastics who selected the words of Jesus and the letters of St Paul together with documents of a later date to form the canon of the Christian scriptures.
The New Testament is composed of two strata of
The writings of the older strata are our real
authority for the history of the earliest Christian
age—the world’s greatest possession for all time.
A grand and savage freedom characterizes them all,
though in varying degrees. What St Paul has left
us has come down to us with the least change, a
series of occasional letters called forth simply and
solely by the needs of the moment, revealing the man
just as he was, rough-hewn, without any artificial
shaping or polishing. The letter to the Ephesians is
the only one that here and there strikes one as not
belonging to the series, but that which it shares in
common with his other letters outweighs in importance the marks of a later age. If only Jesus could
speak to us as directly as His apostle, how gladly we
would surrender all the gospels! In the best of cases
it is but a broken impression that we obtain of Him.
We have lost the oldest written sources, the collection
of logia from which Matthew and Luke derived their
discourses, and much else besides. No writing of an
eyewitness of Jesus has come down to us. Even St
Mark’s narrative would have been incorporated by the
first and third evangelists in their compilations and
so deprived of its separate existence had they been
able to do as they wished. In spite of the amputated
We must endeavour to realize what inconvenient
problems were occasioned for the later age by the
existence of these writings. In the first place, Jesus
and St Paul by no means agreed together. In Jesus
we have the promise of the kingdom of God and
the call to do God’s will in order to enter into
this kingdom. Such are the essential contents of
the preaching of Jesus in all three Synoptists. The
It is true that the early Christians scarcely realized these contradictions and problems as sharply
as this. Had this been the case, then all the
It is impossible to arrive at any fair estimate of the writings of the second strata unless we realize the entire change which had taken place in the thought of the Church, in which all Christians participated alike and which cannot be attributed to any single individual. The authors of the Gospel of St John and the Acts of the Apostles and the rest of these documents must still be allowed a considerable measure of original composition, even if the motives and presuppositions of their writings are to be found in the Christian atmosphere by which they were surrounded. It is only by taking this atmosphere into account that it becomes comprehensible that they dared to do what they did, and that they were met by understanding and approval in all quarters. But then it also becomes evident that their writings cease to be historical documents for Jesus and His gospel, or for St Paul, his character and his theology. They tell us what the growing Catholic Church thought about Jesus and St Paul. Further than that their historical reliability does not go.
The Gospel of St John exceeds all the rest of these writings in importance. The picture which it draws of Jesus had an all-powerful influence upon the Catholic Church, the Reformers, and even Schleiermacher and his successors. Nothing, however, is more opposed to the truth than to isolate it and to ascribe to it a solitary originality to which it makes no claim whatever itself. We have had to mention it in all the chapters of the sub-apostolic age, because it takes so prominent a part in all the struggles and efforts of the Church. It appears to belong to no particular age and to stand above and outside of history, but in spite of this appearance there is scarcely any other writing of the early Christian era which is more a child of its own time and which influences the life of the Church more directly. The author stands like a general on a lofty watch-tower. At his feet he beholds the hosts of the Jews, the Greeks, and in his own Christian camp the Gnostics. He forms a clear conception of the position of each of these, and issues plain decisive commands how each is to be met. He combines the conqueror’s enthusiasm with the unrelenting severity of the combatant.
It is to the Greeks that he is evidently the most
favourably inclined. For them he gives the watchword
of the Logos—in the prologue of the Gospel—which
after having sought in vain for reception in the world
incarnates itself in the person of Jesus Christ, whence
it manifests the glory of God. It is true that he
does not follow up this thought any longer. He does
not as yet think of proving by the words and life of
Jesus that the world’s reason here revealed itself. It
is not the Logos but the Son of God, Jesus Christ,
The Jews are for St John the foe that is without. It is with them that the Church of his day
engaged in a desperate struggle; it is they who are
the cause of the greatest suffering. Hence his life
of Jesus is almost entirely filled with controversy
with the Jews. It even forces its way into the last
discourses. And, furthermore, it is the Jews as a
There is no doubt that he rendered the Church of
his time a service by this appreciation. For his contemporaries the struggle with the Jews raged far
more violently than the struggle with the heathen
state. They read the Gospels, they desired to understand Jesus Himself in the light of this struggle. The
entirely different polemic of Jesus against the Scribes
and Pharisees justified them—so they imagined—in
doing this. They understood the woe upon the
hypocritical piety of the Pharisees as a curse upon
their unbelief. One need but read in the dogmatic
contrast wherever the Synoptists speak of the contrast between the religious relation and morality,
The foes within are in John’s eyes the heretical
Gnostic teachers and their followers. The first
epistle is entirely devoted to meet the danger from
this quarter, but the Gospel, too, is affected by
the consciousness of the same peril. The author,
however, shows good taste in not suffering Jesus to
speak of them anywhere, and in not drawing the
picture of Jesus in an anti-gnostic spirit. He speaks
of the incarnation of the Logos quite incidentally
and without any polemical purpose, nor does he
appear afterwards to be greatly concerned to defend
this true human body of Christ against Gnostic
docetism. Even in the accurate proofs that he
offers of the death of Jesus and His resurrection-body, he is thinking of unbelieving Jews, not of
unbelieving Christians. But, on the other hand,
the last discourses of Jesus can only rightly be under
stood when we conceive them to have been written
with a view to guide the Church safely through the
Gnostic troubles. This supposition does not deprive
them of the wonderful power which they exercise,
for the position which John occupies in his struggle
against the Gnostics could with difficulty be surpassed.
Jesus promises His disciples the Spirit of Truth,
which is to protect them against the lying spirits
who are mentioned in the first letter. Jesus admonishes them to recognize the marks of His
discipleship, and the conditions of His fellowship in
the keeping of the commandments and the love of
As a tract for the times, touching upon every question of the day, and intended to define the position towards Jews, Gnostics, and Greeks, the Gospel of St John was welcome to the Church, and furthered its interests. If one would understand it in connection with all the moving forces of its age, one must forget the picture of the mystic and the philosopher, and call up before one’s mind the ecclesiastical champion. Even thus, however, its world-historic importance is but imperfectly accounted for. How could we thus ever understand the fact that it became the most important of the Gospels when the disputes with Jews and Gnostics had long ago died away?
The Fourth Gospel derived this importance, lasting
long beyond the time of its birth, from its having
bridged over the chasm between Jesus and St Paul,
and from its having carried the Pauline Gospel back
into the life and teaching of Jesus. It is only through
this gospel that Paulinism attains to absolute
dominion in the theology of the Church. By
Paulinism, however, we do not here mean the Pauline
doctrine of justification, or, generally speaking, the
apostle’s anti-Jewish apologetic. The whole antithetical vocabulary—law, faith; law, grace; law, the
Spirit—was abandoned by John as it had been by the
whole Church of his day. For the controversy as to
the law was now dead and buried, and Christians were
Whoever, like Paul, has conceived of Jesus as the
But once again following St Paul, this salvation
St John agrees also with St Paul in never mentioning the Church in connection with his doctrine
of salvation. He speaks of salvation as though each
individual received it afresh and immediately at the
hand of Jesus Christ. And yet he himself wished
by no means to be understood in a mystical but
in an ecclesiastical sense. The emphasis laid upon
the Word is sufficient in itself to decide the point.
Faith is kindled by the Word, but the Word does
not come straight down from heaven, but through
the preachers of the Church and the communion of
the Church. We may draw the same conclusion,
too, from the importance attached to the sacraments
of the Church, with which salvation always appears
to be very closely connected. But it is contained
still more directly in the demand for faith; faith
is the sign of the Christian Church. In St John’s time there are no believers outside the Church:
“Extra Christum nulla salus” means and is intended
to mean “Extra ecclesiam nulla salus.” The necessity
for ecclesiastical communion is set forth by St John
in the parable of the true vine so clearly that none
of his readers could mistake his meaning. It is
merely due to his feeling of fitness that he does
not use the word Church when speaking of a time
when it did not as yet exist. The parable of the
vine and the branches has the same meaning as the
Pauline parable of the head and the members, viz.,
that the Church has in Christ its centre of life, that
each single individual derives all his strength by
The mysticism which is clearly to be traced in
the Gospel of St John is that of the sacraments.
It is now referred to Jesus Himself. Even in Jesus’ lifetime, says the Fourth Gospel, men were baptized
in His name, though Jesus Himself did not baptize.
Without this baptism there is no new birth,
no entrance into the kingdom of God. But the
one baptism is to be sufficient. Jesus refuses to
allow any repetition of the rite. And in the
same way He is made to declare there can be no
The Pauline soteriology is completed by the belief
in predestination. St John makes Jesus proclaim
this belief aloud to all men. He alone cometh to
the faith whom the Father draweth to the Son and
giveth to the Son. “It is not ye that have chosen
Me; it is I who have chosen you,” says Jesus to
the disciples, and so furnishes the predestinarian
interpretation to the choice of the twelve in the
Synoptic Gospels. But he that is chosen is absolutely certain of salvation. “Nobody can tear him
from My hand, from My Father’s hand. Who can
separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ?” Here, however, a difficult problem arises owing to the
changed position of affairs. For St Paul all believers
were chosen, and the Church was the fellowship of
the chosen saints. Could John maintain this now
that so many Christians were notoriously evil livers,
and now that the Gnostic heresy had led so many
believers astray? It is very significant that the
character of the traitor Judas came to be of importance to him for the solution of this difficult question.
Judas is one of the twelve whom Jesus called; he
believes in Him, follows Him to the end, takes part
in the Last Supper. And yet he is a devil. Jesus
never chose him, but knew from the beginning the
Now just as John here starts from St Paul’s doctrine of predestination and modifies it from the
point of view of his own age and its requirements,
so in other subjects too he occasionally adapts his Pauline basis to other thoughts and formulizations.
The whole of the Johannine theology is a natural development from the Pauline. It is Paulinism modified to meet the needs of the sub-apostolic age. Two important consequences follow from this.
There is no Johannine theology by the side of
and independent of the Pauline. Luther already felt
The question which now arises as to who this
John was to whom the tradition (first to be traced
in Irenaeus) ascribes these writings is, from a theological point of view, entirely valueless, and can
only interest the antiquarian investigators of tradition. Ignatius, the only writer of the beginning of
the second century who was well acquainted with
Asia Minor, and of whom genuine writings have
come down to us, only knows of the intercourse of
the apostle Paul with the congregations of Asia
Minor, although he has himself read the Johannine
writings. It must, however, be admitted that this
search for an apostolic author is occasioned by the
Gospel itself, which claims to be written by a favourite
The significance of the Fourth Gospel consists in
the fact that it refers the teaching of St Paul back
to Jesus Himself. This constitutes its value and its
worthlessness, its force and its fatality. It is Jesus
Himself who now tells us that everyone is lost
without Him, that He is the only Redeemer and
Reconciler for all nations and men. that faith in Him
OF the other writings of the second strata of the New Testament, none approaches even from afar to the importance of the Fourth Gospel, which it would not be too much to say has influenced the world’s history by its Pauline transformation of the picture of Jesus. But yet it is significant, too, how the Apostle Paul and the twelve are adapted in these later writings to the Catholicism of the turn of the century. In St Paul’s case the Acts and the Pastoral epistles which are based upon it have to be considered.
In these writings Paul appears as the great
missionary to the heathen, the opponent of the Jews,
the ecclesiastical organizer. The Paul of history was
all this most decidedly—only after a somewhat
different fashion, and he was something else besides.
The first point which is everywhere emphasized is
that Paul became a Christian from being a persecutor
of the Christians, and right from the midst of this
The picture that is drawn of St Paul is altogether
based upon this conception. Everything great and
original, the apostleship that is of revelation, the new
gospel of Christian liberty, the conflict with the
twelve, the great controversy with the judaizers, has
completely disappeared or has been smoothed away
past recognition. Peter, not Paul, is the first
missionary to the Gentiles; Paul does not go to
heathen lands till he and Barnabas are sent by the
congregation of Antioch. Even now he will not go
to the Gentiles in the first instance, and it is only
the opposition of the Jews that drives him to it.
The picture which the book of the Acts draws of
St Paul is even thus a mighty one. Something of
the magic charm of the first Christian mission, with
all its new outlook, its surprises, its obstacles and
victorious progress, accompanies all the journeys of
the apostle. Rich, invaluable material here lay to
hand in the so-called “we-source,” the travel-journal
The account that is given us of the oldest form
of Christian life in the Pauline congregations is
exceedingly scanty. There is no trace, for instance,
of any attempt to draw upon the rich treasures of
the First Epistle to the Corinthians. Nor should
we ever have imagined, had we possessed the Acts
alone, that such a thing as the enthusiasm of the
early Christians ever existed in the Pauline congregations. The more significant, therefore, is the
selection of the few details which the author does
impart to us: the appointment of the elders, the
The theology of the Pastoral epistles is built
upon the foundation of the Pauline soteriology, but
goes further in a Catholic direction than St John.
Faith in Jesus comes, as ever, first and foremost; it
accepts the free grace of God which came down to
us in the expiatory death of Jesus. But then love,
righteousness, patience, and, generally speaking, good
works, must at once be added to faith, if we are
to attain to the right kind of piety. There is no
mention of the Spirit in this connection except—and this is significant—when speaking of baptism.
Otherwise the Spirit is confined to the officials.
John would surely scarcely have written this. And
in like manner predestination is much more clearly
abandoned than in St John. It depends upon a
man’s own self whether he become a vessel to
honour or dishonour, whether he purge himself or
But in spite of all this it is a practical, an excellent conception of Christianity, one which would by no means discredit even St Paul himself. The author knows exactly what the Church of his age needs above all else in order to be steered safely through all perils and dangers. But as he would have had too little authority had he written merely in his own name, he assumes the authority of the aged apostle. Some few short notes of St Paul to his younger missionary associates may very likely have been known to him, and may have helped him to clothe his thoughts in a skilful dress, but at the very beginning of the Second Epistle to Timothy he has abandoned his rôle, and the greater part of these letters is, after all, his own addition.
The transformation of St Paul into a Catholic ecclesiastic in the Acts and the Pastoral epistles was far from being attended by the important consequences which resulted from the exaltation of St John over the Synoptic Gospels. A man who served the Church with such devotion as St Paul had done, cannot object if she added some touches to the original picture in order to adapt it for her use in later times. And yet the world was thus deprived of some of the best and greatest elements in the apostle’s character. It could no longer look back upon the picture of a man who trusted in God and conscience alone, and thence derived the gigantic strength to overthrow traditions and authorities in vested with the sanctity of centuries.
And now the ecclesiastical teachers had only one task left at the end of the first century: that was to fill up the gap between Jesus and St Paul, to give a picture of the apostles which should fit that of the Paulinized Jesus and the Catholicized St Paul. The first part of the Acts and the “Catholic Epistles” complete this task. It was rendered exceedingly easy by the fact that no older written historical documents (composed in a different spirit) existed in the case of the twelve apostles as they did in the case of Jesus and St Paul, but, at most, all manner of oral traditions, which had no other object than that of glorification. For the belief was already firmly established that all that the Church possessed, both in matters of doctrine and of organization, came down from the apostles, and through them from Jesus. It is on the basis of this faith that the author of the Acts composes his book, but at the same time he describes the lives of the apostles from a point of view which was entirely foreign to them—that of a gradual transition of the gospel from the Jews to the Gentiles. First of all the risen Lord gives the plan of the mission: Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, unto the uttermost parts of the earth. Then the feast of Pentecost brings us the first anticipated realization of the furthest aims of the missionaries, when the representatives of all nations listen to the preaching of Peter concerning Jesus the Messiah.
At first, however, the scene of their missionary
activity is confined to Jerusalem, until the increasing severity of the persecutions of the Jews
culminates in the first martyrdom and causes the
The author of the Acts, of course, filled up this
The glorification, however, and canonization of the
But apart from this, the whole conception of the increased power and perfection of the apostles since the day of Pentecost contradicts all that we know of the actual conduct of the apostles. As a matter of fact they were men filled with an intense love for Jesus and possessed of the courage of martyrs, but they were also exceedingly shortsighted in the face of every divinely ordained change in the position of affairs. They greatly increased St Paul’s difficulties through their want of clearness and decision, through their unyielding passive resistance to his progressive tendencies. Pray, where was the Holy Ghost in St Peter when he played the hypocrite with the Jewish Christians at Antioch? Surely we have here an altogether untrue picture as the result of the bright colours which have been laid on in the ecclesiastical and devotional interests. Nowhere does our author present us with any really valuable historical information regarding the acts of these twelve apostles, which is sufficient proof that we are here concerned rather with dogma than with historical recollections.
In like manner the meagre description of the life
And thus he sheds a golden light upon the first age of the saints, which is to be a bright example to all later generations while they realize the distance that separates the present from this glorious past. Such a description, the product of faith and enthusiasm, can be justified even if its historical value is very small. But it is fortunate for us that in the Synoptical traditions and in the epistles of St Paul we can recognize the features of another picture which is less ideal, less harmonious, but on the other hand infinitely fresher and more vigorous, fuller of contradictions—in one word, more natural.
When once the original apostles were acknowledged as the highest authority for the Gentile
Churches, it was very natural that the wish should
The writings of the end of the first century lead
us everywhere to the same result. The theology of
the New Testament is Catholicized Paulinism. Paul
is everywhere the starting-point. It is his gospel
that now speaks to us out of the words of Jesus and
the original apostles. As he drove the Judaists out
of the Gentile Church so he has impressed upon
it the stamp of his spirit for all time. By the side
of his all-powerful influence none other could have
existed. But his victory was very considerably
furthered by the eminently ecclesiastical character of
his theology with its motto, “Extra Christum, extra ecclesiam, nulla salus,” shining in large letters above
it. To this day it remains an impressive sight for us,
One and the same process has operated in the New
as well as the Old Testament. Both books contain
that which is most original, the greatest and the
deepest moments in the course of the long history of
God’s dealings with men: there we have the great
prophets from Amos to Jeremiah; here the Jesus of
the Synoptic tradition, and the Paul of the genuine
epistles. But in both instances these everlasting
ONE is always glad to turn aside from the theology of this period to the personal religion of the age, for here we can trace the personal influence of Jesus. Never has the theology of any age been identical with its Christianity. Never has it been anything else than an attempt at harmonizing the Gospel with the spiritual force of each age. St Paul was a true disciple of Jesus in his conception of personal religion, of that which we call the life with God. It was only in his apologetics, in his proof of the way, the one sole way, which leads to this piety, that he did not keep close to his Master, but fashioned a theology of his own in his controversy with the Jews, which he then took to be the Gospel itself. So it was again in the course of the second century. Theological systems were often put forward so prominently that one was tempted to mistake them for the Christianity of that age. We can assure ourselves of our mistake if we trace the power of the Gospel on the lives of men even in this age of the growth of Catholicism.
It is not the eschatology of the Catholic Church which we here intend to portray, how the spiritualism of St Paul, Jewish apocalyptic writings, Greek fancies as to Hades, Gnostic longing for heaven, were successively added to Jesus’ preaching of the kingdom, and how out of this chaos of opinions regarding the future there gradually arose a firmly established eschatological dogma of the Church. All with which we have to do here is the influence of this hope on the emotions and imaginations, and consequently upon the practical life. Though the conceptions are entirely different, the hope remains the same in its intensity and fervour, and conversely we may trace the identical eschatological dogma with varying degrees of zeal and enthusiasm. And besides this, however much the eschatologies may differ, they all agree in one principal point. Unlike the modern idea of the kingdom of God, they never take the future history of this earth into account. Even the millenary theory clings to the old opinion that the kingdom of God on earth will be brought about by wonders and catastrophes. No Christian, no Gnostic even, ever built up his hopes on anything but a supernatural basis.
Had the promises, however, which Jesus had made in the first instance, and St Paul had confirmed, been fulfilled? Jesus had promised certain of His disciples that they should not taste death until they had seen the kingdom of God come with power. In like manner His contemporaries, especially His judges, were to witness His second coming.
Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “We shall not all
die, but we shall all be changed”; and to the Romans,
It is true that the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem confirmed one of Jesus’ prophetic words. But the second coming did not, as was expected, follow immediately thereupon. All the evangelists, from the first to the last, try in their narratives to meet the difficulties occasioned by the disappointment, i.e., the postponement of the coming of Jesus. In the old apocalyptic pamphlet, dating from the sixties, which Mark has inserted in his eschatological discourses, there stood originally, in all probability, “Immediately after the tribulation of those days cometh the Son of man”; but Mark omitted the word “immediately.” Following the prevailing mood of his day Luke reports a sad utterance of the Lord. “The days will come when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and shall not see it.” Jesus had spoken of the unexpected coming of the Master by night. Luke describes the impatience of his age, if He shall come only in the second watch or even only in the third. He revises Mark’s eschatological discourse so that the date of the second coming is postponed. “These things must needs come to pass first, but the end is not immediately.” Between the destruction of Jerusalem and the Parousia he inserts the seasons of the Gentiles.
In answer to the question, “Dost Thou at this time
restore the kingdom to Israel?” St Luke makes even
the risen Lord to give an evasive answer, and when
Jesus ascends to heaven shortly afterwards the angels
It is worth noting all these little utterances of
hope disappointed or deferred, very carefully. They
prove to us that the authors of these writings were
no mere heedless copyists, but took an exact account
of the difference between the actual course of events
and prophecy. Jesus did riot come. The kingdom
of God was still in the future. Now whilst the
evangelists tried to forget their disappointment by
setting up the theory of postponement, many
Christians began to murmur, some secretly, others
All the more admirable because of this background of doubt and despair are the joyful gladness and the full assurance of hope which speak to us from most of the writings of the teachers of the Church. Even though the kingdom is not yet come and the Parousia delayed, hope still abides firm and triumphs over all doubts and scruples. Nearly all the catholic letters and the apostolic fathers are full of plain indications: it is the last time. Most of them agree in seeing in this last time the beginning of the great tribulation with the last terrible temptations for Christians. Otherwise they often differ greatly in the vivacity and energy of their hope, but only to prove their truthfulness; for in hoping, each preserves his individual character.
Some Christians—there will probably have
been a great number of them—live rather in fear
of the coming judgment than in hope of mercy:
so the prophet Hermas and the preacher to whom
the Second Epistle of St Clement is to be ascribed.
Hermas never really got quit of the Jewish
uncertainty of salvation. Even as a Christian
In other Christians hope assumes the shape of a
firm, quiet, even somewhat dogmatic belief in requital. To this number belong the authors of the
First Epistle of Clement and of the Epistle of James,
and Justin Martyr. None of these are acquainted
with any real longing for perfection, though James
comes very near to it. Apart from this, too,
thoughts of the return of Christ with all its dramatic
concomitants and their appeal to the fancy, enter but
little into their hope. The word requital contains
everything for them. Sinners are to be punished,
the just and righteous shall inherit the promises
and become partakers of God’s grace—that is to say,
the grace they have earned. This faith in requital
is strong enough to become a real living power,
for it places the whole of this life in the presence of
eternity. But it seldom inspires the soul with that
glad rejoicing, that anxious expectancy, that impatience with which St Paul hoped. Nor is there
anything distinctively Christian in it. Jews and
Stoics met in the same faith in requital—the parables
and commandments of Hermas, mainly Jewish in
their character, are one of our chief authorities in
this matter. The First Epistle of Clement dates
from the end of the first century. How very rapidly,
therefore, did the first wild enthusiastic hope cool
down and assume a rigid dogmatic shape. Here the
form was already found which assured the thought
of eternity a place in the Christian life after the fading away of all dramatic fancies. This belief in
Hope’s real heartfelt tones are heard most seldom where the ecclesiastical interests of the present entirely engross the writer. This applies to the author of the Pastoral epistles. He, too, is of course a man of hope, as were all the early Christians; when he thinks of the duty of martyrdom he utters even enthusiastic words of hope. But when he is fighting the Gnostics all along the line, or when he is establishing the constitution of the Church, his thoughts seldom go beyond the task of the present moment. It was difficult for such an eager worker in the cause of ecclesiastical order and discipline to think that all this was merely a provisional measure for possibly a week or two. In His own time God shall show the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ. The writer is not to be blamed for this attitude: the time was not one for idle expectation, but for a strenuous struggle for the right. Nevertheless he affords us an illustration of the truth that zeal for the Church and longing for the kingdom are not easily combined, or at least not in a like measure.
The author of the Johannine writings, an opponent
of the Gnostics just as much as the pseudo-Paul
of the Pastoral letters, is his exact contrary in one
point. He is not very greatly concerned in the
Church—as an external organization—and her
ordinances. But as an immediate consequence of
this he is filled with a mighty longing and an earnest
expectation. He clearly realizes the provisional
character of all personal conditions—even that of
our relation as children to the heavenly Father.
In fact, persecution was the strongest impulse of
all for the renewal of hope. At such times
all the old Christian longing for the future burst
into flame again. It is evident now that without
hope the Christians are the most wretched of men.
All manner of temptations, sufferings and tortures
threaten them. Only he that hopeth can overcome.
The First Epistle of St Peter is written with the
object of awakening congregations that are in the
midst of persecution to an ardent, earnest hope.
It sets before them the greatness of this last great
time of trial. For them that confess Christ
there is consolation, for nominal Christians condemnation. Now the end must be awaited in
prayer and in striving after righteousness, for the
devil is going about like a roaring lion and is
seeking whom he may devour. But our author
is one of those Christians whose fear has been
entirely cast out by their enthusiasm. “Praised
be God, who begat us again unto a living hope
by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”
The somewhat earlier Epistle to the Hebrews
was written during dark days, when the hearts
of men failed them because the promise tarried
and doubts arose and joy was crushed. That which
gives St Peter’s Epistle its force and fire, the
terrible earnestness of the struggle for life and
death, is wanting here. The author of this Epistle
is a man who looks back wistfully to the golden
age of persecution, and would possess the martyr’s courage and the martyr’s hope in full measure,
should the call come to him. The tedious dryness
of the Melchizedek theories gives way at once
to heartfelt tones of longing and enthusiasm as
soon as he touches that which is his inmost possession, his hope. Even in the midst of learned
disquisitions the reader is interrupted by the call: “Awake and look forward. He is coming. Hold
your hope firm until the end.” This hope really
constitutes his religion. Just like the author
of the First Epistle of St Peter, he speaks of the
confession of hope instead of the confession of
faith. And as some of those to whom he was
writing began to complain that the hope was
never fulfilled, that Christians died without having
inherited the promise, he added his well-known
11th chapter, in which he draws up the long
roll of the Old Testament men of faith, down to
Jesus. All of them were men of hope, all were
apparently deceived; but their hope possessed vigour
enough to overcome all deceptions. Here, too, he
As we should naturally expect, Christian hope
assumes its boldest, often its wildest, guise in
the martyrs themselves a short time before their
death. The bent of Ignatius mind, like that of
the author of the Pastoral epistles, is ecclesiastical,
and therefore, in so far, his nature is of this world.
Even on his last journey when he is being conveyed
to martyrdom, ecclesiastical concerns occupy him
to the full. His six letters addressed to Asia
Minor are almost wholly filled with the measures
that are to be taken in the prosecution of the
struggle against the Judaists and Docetae, and
with the striving to subject the Churches entirely
to the bishop. Nevertheless hope appears far more
distinctly here than in the Pastoral epistles. The
difference arises from the fact that here we have a
martyr speaking to us—one who knows that within
a few weeks he will be standing face to face with
eternity. The writing addressed to Rome is the
classical document for the martyr’s enthusiasm of
this age. Ignatius’ one anxiety is lest certain
members of the church should use their influence
at the court and obtain his pardon. He begs
the Romans to be sure not to do that. His one
longing is to come to God as soon as possible—never mind how terrible the road. To come to
God and to rise from the dead is identical for him.
The hope of the early Christians had its limitations, no doubt, and there was an element of hostility to the world in it. No thoughts of progress can be traced back to it. The gradual amelioration of the world, the interpenetration of every sphere of life with the Christian spirit, the growth of a new Christian humanity, were unfamiliar ideas to the Christian of the first age. “The world is rotten ripe for change”: that is the motto of most Christians, at bottom of the millenarians, too, who expect the transformation of the world to be brought about by tremendous catastrophes. In all this we can trace the influence of an old civilization fast hastening to decay. The little company of harried and persecuted Christians could not fancy that they would one day come to play a great part in the history of humanity. Their citizenship was in heaven. Here upon earth they lived as strangers and sojourners, as pilgrims to their heavenly home.
But what a mighty power there lay in this future
hope. It achieved two memorable results: it
overcame the deceived expectation as to the coming
of Jesus and the kingdom of God. Men like the
author of the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Johannine writings derive such joy and confidence from
their hope that the element of time, the question
whether we come to Jesus or whether Jesus comes
Whilst theology underwent a complete transformation through its alternations of controversy and agreement with Jews, Greeks, and Gnostics, hope, the main element in personal religion, remained the same. The Christianity that hopes is the Christianity of the early days. The martyrs Polycarp, Ignatius, and Justin take up exactly the same attitude to the present and the future, to death and to life, as Paul and Jesus did a century before. When the flame of hope flickers or actually goes out, Christianity is immediately extinguished with it.
FROM the very first there was a sharp distinction
between the Christianity that was actually lived
in the churches and the Christianity which the
teachers of the Church postulated in their writings.
It is the old chasm between the real and the ideal.
The higher and the purer the ideal, the greater the
divergence was bound to appear the more severe the
criticism to be applied. That which is called worldliness did not make its way into Christianity through
decay from some high level of excellence. It came
through the mission itself as each new convert
brought in a portion of the world along with him,
and could not be raised at once to the level of the
morality of the Gospel. Even in the apostolic age
the world thus obtained a firm footing in the congregations, only it was, as a rule, still more or less
concealed by the enthusiasm of the first love. There
may of course have been isolated ideal congregations,
but never an ideal Church. The First Epistle of St
Clement gives us, it is true, a picture of the Church
If the leaders instead of resisting the progress of
corruption had often enough themselves given way
to it, we cannot be surprised if we find that the
condition of the congregations had, speaking generally, deteriorated considerably at a very early date.
We can already see the different classes of Christians
with their special class sins. Amongst the women,
the love of dress and finery increases to such an
extent that it passes the bounds of decency. They
are great gossips into the bargain. The warning of
the letter to Titus addressed to the older women,
that they should not suffer themselves to be enslaved by drink, gives rise to serious reflections. The
rich and well-to-do soon degenerate into a merely
nominal worldly Christianity. St James attacks
them with such vehemence that the reader of his
epistle is bound to ask himself whether his severe
strictures are not intended for people outside the
Church altogether. But St James is not writing for
such; he really means rich Christians. They blaspheme the Christian name, for they do violence to the
poorer brethren of the faith, and drag them before
tribunals because they love gold more than God.
They keep back the wages of the labourers who have
reaped their fields, and so are the cause of the sighs of
vengeance which mount up to God from these men.
But they continue their life of careless extravagance
and luxury. Such is the picture of the rich men of
his day drawn by a brave teacher of the Church not
quite one hundred years after Christ. Hermas confirms the statements of this call to repentance by the
description which he gives of the state of things at
Rome. For him, too, the rich and the merchants
In addition to these sins peculiar to separate classes,
were the signs of increasing worldliness common in a
greater or less degree to all Christians in general.
It would seem to be natural to assign the first place
This excessive chastity, however, was probably only the aim of individual members of the congregations. On the other hand, the opposite reproach of the so-called διψυχία, the weak half-heartedness which could not come to any clear decision either for or against Jesus, affected whole classes. The Christian hope, the life of prayer, Christian morality, all suffered grievous loss through this indecision and hesitation. The dividing line between Christianity and the world was thereby often obliterated even more than by gross sins.
Another marked sign of worldliness was the decrease
in public-spiritedness in many Christians. The
apostolic age had been characterized—so St Paul
himself tells us—by a deep concern for the good of
the community. The apostle’s congregations were
nurseries of the love which Jesus had brought into
the world. In the sub-apostolic age complaints are
The rapid increase in the Hellenization of Christianity, a process which was greatly accelerated by the
Gnostic confusion, brought with it a danger of a quite
peculiar nature. Greek Christians lost, or rather they
never acquired, the sense that Christian piety is
something altogether practical and simple. They
took an exaggerated delight in speculation and disputation. These Greeks made the objects of the
Christian faith the aim of their intellectual devices,
just as every rhetorician chose his subject. They
found something at once instructive and amusing in
the fact that they had now received new problems
from these barbaric Orientals. Hence it was that so
many crowded into the profession of teacher. Given
a certain amount of fluency, and a man might hope
to become a celebrated Christian teacher. Even in
those classes which were destitute of any real kind of
rhetorical training the vice of pious gossip increased
apace. Many Christians praised the clever preacher
as they left the assembly without giving one moment’s thought to the fact that the practising of what was
preached was more important than all else. The
stupid idle chatter about faith and justification arose
in consequence of the public reading of St Paul’s letters. It was Catholic Christians and not Gnostics
who made use of the saying as to saving faith in
such a way as to undermine morality. But the worst
feature of all was the contrast presented between this
gossip about spiritual things and the miserable condition of the elementary moral life. Jealousy and
wrangling, slander and party strife, were all endured
without any feeling of the contradiction to the ethical
ideal that was thereby involved. Such was the
Such was the Christian life of the sub-apostolic age in many quarters. Of course there is a bright side as well as a dark to the picture. If it were not so, the attraction which Christianity continued to exercise would not be intelligible. The severe criticism to which the above-mentioned faults are subjected in the Christian writings should itself be regarded as a formidable sign. For it is entirely the Christians themselves to whom we are indebted for our knowledge of the dark side of the life of the congregations, and together with this knowledge we have in each case the vigorous reaction of the Christian conscience presented to us.
What we have to do is to endeavour to realize the Christian ideal of life itself, as it was maintained by the teachers of the Church in so pleasing a contrast to all these aberrations.
On the whole it is the ideal of the first great
age, only it has been enriched—and that not to its
advantage—by a dogmatic and ecclesiastical outwork.
This outwork is in a great measure—not wholly—the result of the Gnostic controversy. Perhaps
the development of the Church would itself have
produced it, The confession of the orthodox faith
is claimed as the essence of Christianity and the
presupposition for every recognition of Christian life.
Christians were, it is true, the faithful, even in the
time of St Paul and earlier, but the formulas of the
faith were as yet very simple. The expansion of the
In the next place, a prime importance was attached
to ecclesiasticism, to subordination to the bishop and
his jurisdiction. Originally the Christian care for the
common weal furthered the mutual rendering of the
services of love amongst the brethren and made them
give heed to the voice of the Spirit in the prophets.
As the new episcopal constitution was developed in
the course of the sub-apostolic age, obedience to the
officials of the Church came to be more and more
regarded as of the greatest consequence. The First
Epistle of St Clement shows us how the claims of the
Church would have come to be urged above all else
even without the Gnostic struggle. The author,
writing on behalf of the Roman Church, endeavoured
to restore ecclesiastical peace at Corinth, when the
younger had stirred up strife against the older. To
effect his purpose, he writes as though Christianity
and ecclesiastical order were identical. Every defection from this order, every disturbance of ecclesiastical
Both orthodoxy and ecclesiasticism are henceforth essential elements in the Christian ideal. No one refusing to give ear to their claims can be said to be in possession of the ideal. But at the same time it would not be fair to be blind to the great fidelity shown throughout this age to the old Christianity. One result of the struggle against the Gnostics was to sharpen the insight of the teachers into the practical and ethical characteristics of the Gospel. And besides, men like the author of the Epistle to St James show us that even without this struggle, the chief thing needful was not forgotten by earnest minds.
Most of the representatives of the Catholicism that is in process of development are unanimous in their enthusiastic proclamation: Christianity is practical piety, a new ethical life, a walking in righteousness, a doing of good works—nothing extraordinary, but just those of the every-day life—and love to the brethren. Speculations, mysticism, idle dreams and pious prattle—none of these nor yet asceticism is Christianity: they are something entirely foreign to it. This excellent principle is set forth with all conceivable clearness by the teachers of the Church.
The Pastoral letters, the writings of St John and the Epistle of St James, afford us the completest proof of this practical understanding of the Gospel.
The author of the Pastoral letters manifests an
instinctive hatred for every kind of speculation and
The author of the Johannine writings took good
care that no reader of his Gospel should be in any
doubt as to the practical character of Christianity.
For him, as for the author of the Pastoral epistles,
Christianity is faith and love. Faith comes first.
The aim of the first twelve chapters is to recommend
it to us, and to defend it from attacks from without.
Then the last discourses of Jesus reveal the real
essence of discipleship which presupposes faith as
something purely practical. First comes the washing
of the disciples feet as an example of ministering
love, then the new commandment, the testament of
the love of the brethren. But the parable of the vine
and the branches in the fifteenth chapter, affords us
the clearest insight of all into the character of Christian discipleship. The disciple’s aim is to bring forth
fruits, to realize religion in good works. This bringing forth of fruit is only possible through communion
with Jesus, or, as John says, by ‘abiding’ in Jesus.
There is a mystic ring about the expression, and it is
even possible that John borrowed it from the Gnostics.
There is no knowledge of God unless we do His commandments.
There is no love of God unless we keep His words.
There is no being in God unless we walk in Jesus’ footsteps.
There is no being in the light unless we show love to the brethren.
A Christian is a child of God if he does righteousness
The authors of the Pastoral epistles and of the
Johannine writings were led to emphasize the
Would that they had written in their own names, these simple saviours of Christianity in its darkest hour! They understood the Gospel of Jesus better than all later Catholic and Protestant dogmatists. The pseudo-James is, besides this, entirely untouched by orthodoxy and ecclesiasticism. Both the other authors, however, afford a good proof that the heart of practical Christianity remained untouched by those outworks of dogmatism and ecclesiasticism. Orthodoxy and ecclesiasticism were the necessary armour for the substance of the Gospel of Jesus. It needed a protection such as this, capable of resisting the world both within and without. They were not the main thing—not even for those who fought for them. The main thing even now was the fruit of good living, the doing of God’s will, as John says, in Jesus’ words. The authors of the Epistle to the Hebrews, of the First Epistle of St Peter, of the First and Second of Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin, all thought and wrote in the same strain. In this main point they are all evangelical Christians.
The only question now is, What transformation did
the practical ideal itself undergo, what aspects were
bound to acquire prominence in consequence of the
altered historical position? The one thing needful
is still, at bottom, that which it was in the Gospel of
Jesus—to be in the right relation to the three great
realities, to one’s own soul, to one’s brother, and to
God. Only—as we already have seen was the case in
St Paul—certain special claims have to be emphasized
Sanctification is the watchword for the individual
in relation to himself. As before, the word signifies
renunciation of the sinful world and consecration of
the entire personal life to God. Included in this is
naturally a decided abjuration of all elementary sins,
such as drunkenness, thieving and lying, all forms of
idolatry, of magic and the like. But the resolve to
live a life of purity excels all other demands. It
often appears to be absolutely the most important
element in the conversion to Christianity. Justin
tells us of a Roman woman who had lived a life of
vice. The very first thing that she did after her
conversion by a teacher named Ptolemaus was to
renounce her unchaste life. The case is a typical
one. The dividing line between the Christian and
the non-Christian is above all else a difference of
attitude and of judgment with regard to the laxity
and the filth of the sexual life amongst the heathen.
The reaction against the prevailing immorality soon
passed over into asceticism. The first commencements of the monkish ideal date from the age with
which we are now concerned. In like manner more
value was attached in many instances to external
purity than to the purity of the heart. The strict
ecclesiastical discipline which inexorably excluded
fornicators and adulterers, but naturally could not
control impure thoughts, was bound to play directly
into the hands of hypocrisy in many cases. Nevertheless the strictness with which the early Christians
Naturally, then, the chiefest concern of the
Christian teachers in laying down their prescriptions for marriages, Christian as well as mixed, was
to see the ideal of purity and fidelity realized in
them. Hence their campaign against luxury and
the love of dress. The custom of concluding the
marriage ceremony before the bishop dates from the
time of Ignatius, and proved salutary and beneficial
in encouraging publicity and preventing precipitancy.
The author of the First Epistle of St Peter
endeavours to elevate the position of women and
to ennoble marriage by his sensible admonitions
addressed to Christian husbands. At the same time
he warns the wives of heathen husbands against a
mistaken spirit of proselytising, and urges them to
The restriction of brotherly love to the members
of the congregation dates from the establishment of
the congregations as organized bodies. It was necessary, and not in itself injurious. Reminiscences of
Jesus' commandment of love without limits, and
especially of love to one’s enemies, are not wanting.
The First Epistle of St Peter, Ignatius and Polycarp,
dating from the period of persecution, admonish us
to this love in splendid words which might just as
well have stood in the gospel. Unfortunately the
Gnostic controversy introduced a hostile and censorious spirit into the Church
itself, and so brotherly love was restricted to orthodox believers. In the
Johannine writings this restriction meets us in an altogether un-Christian form.
“Not for the world do I pray,” says Jesus in the high-priestly prayer. And how
poor a thing after all is the new commandment
The principal direction in which this brotherly
love was manifested in the sub-apostolic age may be
gathered from the concrete instances mentioned by St
Matthew in the verses just quoted. Hospitality, the
lodging and caring for missionaries and the many other
brethren on their journeys, usually comes first. Here,
too, is the place to notice the custom of the washing
of the feet which the Pastoral letters and St John
presuppose as firmly established. If we next consider the single congregation in itself, we have the
duties of the care for the poor, the support of widows
and orphans with food, drink, and clothing, the
visiting and caring for the sick. Later on there was
a church fund for widows who were under the
bishop’s special care, though the Epistle of St James
and Hermas still enjoin upon all Christians the duty
A special signification is now also attached to the
summons to Christians to show trust in God: it is
the duty to approve their constancy and their valour
in suffering, and if need be in death. No other admonition is of greater importance in relation to God.
The love of the brethren provides against all necessities both within and without. But when face to
The expectation of the Parousia was of the greatest
importance for the Christian life. It definitely
turned the lives of all serious-minded people in the
direction of eternity. They applied the words “the
world passeth away and the lust thereof” to all that
It was a great achievement—this clear recognition
of the Gospel’s claims which maintained itself till
the middle of the second century. A Christian—there is no doubt about this—is one who is master
CHRISTIANITY appeared in the world as the religion of redemption. Promising, as it does, everlasting bliss to mankind, and setting forth as the road thereto the doing of God’s will, its aim is to inspire men even now with courage, strength and joy for the new life, through the gladness of communion with God. Jesus Himself was more than a prophet and teacher of God’s will. He came to men as their Redeemer, to bring God near to them and lift them up to be children of God.
After His death, His redemptive power continued
to work in the fellowship of His disciples, as the
Spirit of Christ, to use St Paul’s expression. The
story of His life, and, still more, the new life of His
disciples, kindled at His flame, now took the place of
His Person. Christianity ever clung fast to this its
claim. It did not merely hold up the goal to men
and show the way to blessedness. It did, as a matter
of fact, set their feet on the right road and led them
to their journey’s end by imparting the power of God
which lives in Jesus and His disciples. Everything,
What do we learn of this redemption in the sub-apostolic age? We must draw a sharp distinction
between the actual experiences and the postulates.
The latter we shall do well to regard with the
greatest distrust. Christian writings are filled from
one end to the other with statements as to the value
of the death of Jesus and of baptism, of the new
birth and reception of the Spirit. But they are
partly apologetic, and partly devotional watchwords
and formulas handed on from one man to another,
a part of the language of Christianity, without any
objective reality necessarily corresponding to them.
The Epistle of Barnabas may serve us as a deterrent
example: “We enter the water full of sin and of
filth; we come forth with fruit in our hearts, for we
have our hope set on Jesus in the Spirit. Before
this our heart was a dwelling place of demons; when
we received forgiveness and hoped in His name,
then we were created anew from the beginning.”
Nothing could be better expressed. If it were only
true! The authors of the Epistle to the Hebrews,
the First of St Peter, the First of Clement, and Justin
ascribe forgiveness and cleansing power to the blood
of Jesus, and thereby prove that reliance was placed
on this. Here we have merely theories, however,
and theories alone are never able to guarantee a new
life. Listen to the author of the Epistle to the
Hebrews: “If the blood of goats and bulls and the
ashes of a heifer, sprinkling them that have been
defiled, sanctify unto the cleanness of the flesh: how
much more shall the blood of Christ cleanse your
We are on different ground altogether when
Christians speak of their conversion. Here we come
across positive facts. The majority of every congregation was as yet formed of converts from heathen
ism. Here conversion was an occurrence the day
and hour of which were known to every man, for it
divided the whole life into two clear divisions. For
most men it marked the breach with an evil past,
when the filth of bestial barbarity and childish superstition were laid aside. The Christian fellowship
conferred great gifts upon them: a pure and moral
faith in God, the Gospel ideal of life, and an unshaken hope which lifted them up above all need.
In addition they received at their entrance the
promise of the forgiveness of all past sins, a gift that
brought the greatest blessedness to earnest seekers,
of doubtful value, however, to such as were of baser
But now we come to the principal question: Does the rest of the Christian life correspond to the conversion? Does the Christian really lead a redeemed life from baptism onwards?
All that we gather from the Pastoral epistles, the
Epistle of St James, the “Shepherd” of Hermas, the
sermon of Clement, leads us to answer the questions
decidedly in the negative. Very many Christians
indeed cannot be counted redeemed. The difference
between the former and the present life was frequently
imperceptible. Heathen laxity and licentiousness,
superstition, uncertainty and fear, party spirit, care—all
made their way over into the Christian congregations
from their heathen surroundings. The state of things
presupposed by the Epistle of St James and the
personality of Hermas afford the plainest evidence.
The readers of the Epistle, e.g., are on so low a plane
that it is quite intelligible that the question has been
With the exception of Ignatius, the Roman
prophet Hermas is the only Christian whom we
get to know personally from his writings. The
declaration at his baptism that his sins were forgiven
him had made a profound impression upon him.
This forgiveness, however, only covered his pre-Christian past. After baptism—so he was taught—the Christian was to sin no more, but remain pure.
This was a sheer impossibility for Hermas and his
family. His household was disorderly. His children
blasphemed God, betrayed their parents, and lived
riotous lives. His wife sinned continuously with
her tongue. But he himself is far from being an
ideal character. At the very beginning of his book
his conscience pricks him because of adulterous
The picture is, of course, incomplete. We have
not got the whole Hermas, any more than the
prophet Ezra in his prayers and questionings is
the whole Ezra. His personality is divided into a
strong and a weak half. The former is represented
by the angel, Hermas’ better self. True, the woman
who appears to him in the first vision merely
represents his evil conscience, which fills him with
misery. But otherwise the angel is sharply distinguished from him, as the soul of all that is good
and confident and glad and strong. He speaks but
to utter vigorous commands. “Be of good cheer,
In addition to this there is the great consolation
which Hermas is able to announce to himself and
all Christians: God’s great mercy affords all Christians yet one other grace, that of repentance. If
they avail themselves of this at once while it is still
to-day, their earlier Christian sinful life shall be
wiped away. Hermas describes the impression which
this message made upon him: “When I heard thee
announce this to me in these very terms, I was
awakened unto life.” So in the third vision: “Power
came upon you and ye became strong in the faith,
and when the Lord beheld your strength He
rejoiced.” “It is as though a man should receive
an inheritance a short while before his death that
raises him up to renewed strength.” Such was
the effect of forgiveness upon Christians. It was,
There is no lack, therefore, of bright touches to relieve the prevailing gloom of the picture which Hermas leaves us. But he had no experience of the redemption which Jesus wanted to bring. Just as Jesus Himself is unknown to him, so likewise are the God of Jesus and the Gospel. God is not his heavenly Father! nor is He the God of love! He has no certainty of salvation, no comfort strong enough to overcome all the anguish of sin, no personal power for the good. Man remains the creature of his moods and feelings; there is none higher than himself that can set him free. After all, this is nothing but the religion of fear and hope, which prevailed before Jesus and which Jesus had overcome. Not a word is said of our being the children of God. St Paul’s criticism of Judaism applies to this form of Christianity as well: “A spirit of bondage unto fear.” As is the leader, so are the led. Hermas’ description of his flock shows us throughout a lukewarm average Christianity. We hear not a word of redeemed men and women. The majority of Christians lacked the power to live the new life: they could get no further than good resolutions.
As often as Hermas divides his Christians into
classes and passes them in review, the number of the
bad classes is sure to exceed that of the good. This,
however, is partly due to the fact that the vices of
Christians are always more striking than their virtues,
and afford greater occasion for talk. In all the
Notes such as John strikes, so full of the purest
joy, are, it is true, not all too common. On the
whole, it was the persecutions that were fitted to
awaken the new life in the Christians. The authors
of the First Epistle of St Peter and Ignatius are
instances of this. In view of the sore tribulation
the contrast with the world is accentuated, the devil
stands bodily before man’s soul. He has no other
choice: either he must conquer or worship Satan.
Temptations and cares which formerly hindered and
oppressed the Christian are now easily overcome, since
it is a question of life or death. The tares are
separated from the wheat. Every Christian who
clings firmly to the confession accomplishes the
decisive act, bids farewell to the whole world in view
of the promises. That awakens a hitherto unknown
enthusiasm in the soul, a feeling of freedom from all
former burdens, joy, longing, abandonment of all to
God. Now the Christian praises God for that: he
has a living hope which looks beyond death to the
inheritance in heaven. He is glad with an unspeakable, a transfigured joy. Not till now does he
enter into complete fellowship with Christ, now that
he suffers with Him, looking forward to the rapturous
joy of the revelation of His glory. In view of death
he calls Christ his true life, his hope, his joy. To
But redemption is also to be found wherever the
moral task is clearly realized and the courage
attained to fulfil it. In spite of their boundless
hope, the Christians of our age were not, like Paul, of
an emotional nature, but rather sober-minded, almost
prosaic. Stormy, ecstatic outbursts do, it is true,
flash forth now and then, but they are always felt
to be exceptions, and it is just the teachers who have
left us writings to whom they are comparatively
unknown. Take them one after another, the authors
of the Epistle to the Hebrews, of the Catholic and
Pastoral epistles, the Apostolic Fathers. With the
exception of Hermas, the apocalyptic visionary, only
one of them boasts of personal revelations, voices of
the Spirit—Ignatius; but the only specimen which he
gives us of these is of so episcopal and theological
a character that the good man would have spoken
in exactly the same manner even had he been
uninspired. All the others, not excepting John, are
noble-minded moralists filled with a sure hope and
animated by great moral earnestness, and just as
such they are the saviours of Christianity; but there
is no trace of the ecstatic enthusiast about them.
Nor are the modern experiences of grace any less
strange to these men than the manifestations of the
spirit of ancient times. Not one of them boasts
of the rapid alternations of feeling, from a miserable
sinner to a pardoned child of God, which he experiences
It was in another direction altogether that the sub-apostolic Christians went astray. Their real mistake
was that they laboured under a misconception as
to the sources of the new life. They gave up the
reality and attached themselves to the shadow.
Christian redemption is after all something exclusively personal, something effected by means of
persons. It began when Jesus led His disciples to
an unshaken hope, moral power, the comfort of God’s love, victory over the world—even over death—by
His words and the impression that He made upon
them. It continued to flow on from this source
through the founding of the Church which was
inspired by Jesus Spirit, in which, therefore, every
new member came into touch with Jesus Himself.
All Christian life in the future derives from the true
disciples of Jesus, who hand on their impression of
Hereby our religion has suffered grievous loss.
In consequence of this transposition, the ethical
element has been removed to the circumference,
and superstition has been enthroned in the centre.
He that has experienced the personal impression of
Jesus and His disciples has received more than blood
CONCLUDING REMARKS.
If the presence of great men was the chief characteristic of the first, the creative period, then the want of them marks the second. St Paul has no successor, no one who attains to his level. The itinerant preachers, the apostles and prophets, degenerate, and have to hand over the guidance of the congregations to the bishops and teachers. Amongst these there are many powerful characters who keep their aim steadily in view, but no man inspired to open up new paths and acknowledged to be leader by a divine call. The fact that the ecclesiastical authors write anonymously or pseudonymously proves to us more than all else that even the leading persons feel themselves fallen on degenerate days and are no longer conscious of being personally called by God.
A great ecclesiastical organization now takes the
place of the great men. The Church itself dates
from the earliest period. St Paul was one of the
founders. But it is only in our period that it quite
comes to occupy its dominating position. The
creative spirit, hitherto free and untrammelled, is
now confined within ecclesiastical forms and institutions which acquire their great power for the very
reason that the Spirit of Jesus and His apostles is
It is a characteristic feature of the intellectual
development of Christianity, which finds expression
in theology, that a powerful progressive impulse is
kept in check by a sound appreciation of the value
of the original Gospel. Christianity steps forth into
the great world and assimilates all that appears to
be compatible with its own peculiar nature. It is
continually deriving fresh increment even from old
Judaistic sources, in its apocalyptic, its ethics, and its
ecclesiastical ideas. But it is to Hellenism that it
And so instead of promoting its dissolution the Gnostic movement is a powerful factor in the preservation of the distinctive features of the Christian religion and in the defence of the old faith with its hope and ethics. Even though the victory over the mighty enemy was only completely won at the cost of the introduction of forcible ecclesiastical measures, yet the old Gospel remained unimpaired. In this spiritual struggle for existence Jesus Himself reacts against the corruption of the work of His life. And therewith the decree goes forth that in future the measure of all Christian theology is to be found in the Gospel.
The picture presented to us by the examination
of Christian piety is altogether lacking in unity,
ABRAHAM, i. 307.
Acts, later Apocryphal, i. 204; ii. 26, 111, 116, 119.
Acts of the Apostles. See Apostles, Acts of the.
Alexandria, Clement of, ii. 140, 165, 166.
Alexandria, Jews of, i. 177.
Anabaptists, i. 132.
Ananias, St Paul and, ii. 280.
Angels, i. 7, 8, 16, 18, 235, 293, 330 seq., 362, 382, 384; ii. 55-58.
Antichrist, i. 26, 141, 202, 283, 371; ii. 7, 53, 54, 26l.
Antioch, i. 292; ii. 16.
Apocalypse—
Baruch, of, i. 285, 362; ii. 28.
Ezra, of, i. 362; ii. 28, 86.
St John, of—
Christianity of the, i. 379-387.
Claim, the, i. 376-378.
Position of, i. 360-365.
Promise, the, i. 366-375.
St Mark, in, i. 205.
St Peter, of, ii. 134.
Apocrypha, the, rejected by the Christians, ii. 208.
Apollos, i. 125, 177; ii. 19, 201.
Apologetic—
Christian, the, i. 139, 14-2; ii. 33, 53. 109, 116.
Pauline, the, i. 226-227, 230-236, 240, 246, 253, 256, 272, 281, 291-320.
Apostles, the twelve, i. 71, 103, 107, 118 seq., 154-155, 162, 168, 170, 175, 187, 271; ii. 9, 226.
Acts of the, i. 120, 124, 170, 204; ii. 3, 12, 13, 19, 22, 26, 31, 96, 107.
Bishops and, relation between, ii. 2.
Canonization of, in Acts, ii. 227, 289-291.
Church, the founders of, i. 117-122.
Congregations, interference with, resented, ii. 8.
Decay of, ii. 1 seq.
Decrees of the, ii. 78.
Disciples and, distinction between, i. 74-75.
Reverence paid to the, ii. 226-229.
Title reserved for the, ii. 9.
Apostles, later, i. 126, l6l, 168; ii. 4 seq.; definition, ii. 9, 12.
Apostolic succession, ii. 13, 224; tradition, ii. 95-96, 226.
Aramaic, i. 213.
Aristides, teacher and philosopher, ii. 19, 108, 113, 141, 144, 146, 343.
Aristion, ii. 19.
Aristo, ii. 31.
Asceticism, i. 76, 92, 197, 204,
205, 231, 264, 277, 347,
355; ii. 6, 24-25, 201, 205,
Asia Minor—
Bishops in, ii. 16.
Heresies in, ii. 6-7.
Persecutions in, ii. 104.
Atonement, i. 7, 143, 188, 240 seq., 269, 271; ii. 11 6, 264.
Augustine, St, i. 83, 355.
Barnabas, Jewish Law, attitude towards, i. 154-155.
BAPTISM, ii. 129-131.
First use of, i. 132-3.
St Paul and, i. 273-4.
Baptists, i. 158.
Barnabas, apostle, i. 1 26, 175; ii. 35, 37, 50, 62, 63.
Baruch, Apocalypse of. See Apocalypse.
Basilides, Gnostic teacher, ii. 19.
Baur, F. C., ii. 280.
Beatitudes, the, i. 6l, 68.
Bethlehem, Jesus born at, ii. 37.
Birth of Christ, apocryphal histories of, ii. 83.
Bishops—
Apostles, successors to, ii. 15.
Ascetic, the rival of the, ii. 25.
Character of, from the Pastoral letters, ii. 328.
Gifts of the, ii. 223-224.
Origin of, ii. 11-12.
Payment of, ii. 16.
Power of, ii. 231-33.
Saints, opposition to, ii. 317.
Work of, ii. 13, 97.
CARLYLE, i. 286.
Catholic Epistles. See Epistles.
Catholicism—
Gnosticism and, ii. 170-242.
Rise of, ii. 326.
Theology of, ii. 247.
Celsus, i. 141; ii. 30-31.
Ceremonial. See also Sacraments—
Church, in the early, i. 129.
Greek, i. 22.
Jesus, in the teaching of, i. 192.
Jewish, i. 21.
St Paul, in the teaching of, i. 214, 274-275, 340.
Cerinthus, heretic, ii. 6, 236.
Charity, Christian, i. 134, 189, 210; ii. 335-340.
Christ. See Jesus Christ.
Christianity—
Ancient beliefs, foundations on, i. 1-11.
Apocalypse, relation with, i. 385.
Characteristics of earliest—
Faith, theoretical character of, i. 342-3.
Judaism and Heathenism, and, difference between, i. 341-342.
Rites, i. 343-4.
Civilizing power, a, ii. 141.
Essentials of, ii. 157-160.
Gnosticism, effect on, ii. 206, 322.
Greek, ii. 323-324.
Hellenism, effect on, ii. 104 seq., 140 seq., 167-1 69, 323.
Hope, the religion of, i. 68.
Jewish, character of, i. 158-159; decay of, i. 156-157.
Johannine writings, from, ii. 329-331.
Judaism and—
Compared and contrasted, i. 12, 30; ii. 53-54, 59, 65 seq., 101-102, 107-108.
Early relations, i. 131, 139.
Jewish law annulled in regard to, i. 292 seq.
Jewish legalism, furthered by destruction of, i. 314.
Rift between, ii. 28 seq.
Source of Christianity in Judaism, i. 16, 30.
Mysteries and, connection between, ii. 123-133.
Orthodoxy, identified with, ii. 241.
Pastoral letters, from, ii. 327-9.
Principles of—
Forgiveness of sins, and Retribution, i. 107-111.
Love, i. 79-80, 93-95.
Obedience to the Will of God, i. 83-86.
Self-discipline, i. 76-78.
Roman persecutions, ii. 105 seq.
St James’ epistle, from, ii. 332.
St Paul and—
Attitude towards the average, i. 348.
Pauline Gnosis, effect on, i. 322 seq.
St Paul’s definition of, i. 186-187.
Simplicity of, i. 100-101.
Social ethics in, i. 81-82.
State and, ii. 106-109, 126.
Sub-apostolic, mode of life, ii. 314 seq., 344 seq.
Universality and publicity of, ii. 125-128.
Christians, early
Miracles, religious value attached to, i. 2-5.
Spirits, belief in, i. 6-10.
Sub-apostolic, character of, ii. 355-360.
Christology—
Apocalypse, of the. i. 384-385.
Earliest, the, i. 139-148, 248, 332, 339.
Gnostic, ii. 6, 123, 172, 210.
St John, of, ii. 48-49, 118, 182, 264, 265.
St Paul, of, i. 188, 237-239, 246-252, 333-334: ii. 33, 181.
Church. See also Christianity, Congregations.
Catholic—
Expression, first occurrence of, ii. 241-242.
Origin and rise of, ii. 2, 223.
Teacher, office of, in, ii. 18-20.
Christian, i. 13, 95, 102, 114, 118.
Antiquity of, ii. 81.
Constitution of, ii. 94.
Discipline of, i. 133.
Gnosticism, measures against, ii. 222-241.
Government of. See also Bishops, and Teacher, ii. 1-20.
Jewish customs, etc., taken over by, ii. 94.
Legalism in, i. 135.
Origin and development of, i. 127 seq.
Orthodoxy, beginnings of, i. 134-136.
Salvation, none out of, ii. 88.
Sectarian character of early, i. 132-134.
Theology in early, i. 139-151.
Tradition of, ii. 229.
Gentile, moral degradation in, i. 183, 192, 196, 206, 216, 255, 348; ii. 200.
Jewish, ii. 86; institutions of, ii. 80 seq.
Circumcision, i. 307.
Gentile resistance to, i. 154-157.
Jewish appreciation of, i. 296.
Clement, Rome, of, ii. 14.
Clementines, ii. 195, 292.
Colleges, presbyterial, ii. 11, 231.
Colossae, ii. 205.
Colossians, i. 332-334, 384.
Confirmation, ii. 129.
Congregations—
Greek, i. 264.
Pauline, i. 189, 209-212; ii. 284-285.
Timothy, founded by, ii. 3.
Controversies—
Effect of, ii. 239, 315.
Montanist, ii. 7.
Corinth, religious enthusiasm in, i. 347.
Corinthians—
Christianity of, ii. 314-315.
St Clement’s letter to, ii. 142-143.
St Paul’s Epistle to. See under Epistles.
Cosmology—
Christianity and, of Genesis, ii. 152.
Greek, ii. 144.
Pauline, i. 333.
Creed, the, i. 270, 306, 309, 342; ii. 18, 225, 226, 228, 239.
Culture—
Early church, non-appreciation of, ii. 342.
Modern ideal of, i. 78.
DANIEL, Book of, i. 53, 140, 248, 330.
Davidic descent. See under Jesus Christ.
Demiurge, the, ii. 144, 196, 207.
Demons, early belief in, i. 11, 236; ii. 113.
Deuteronomy, Book of, i. 121, 308.
Didache, the, reference to, ii. 4, 7, 8, 12, 15, 16, 19, 74, 95, 132, 271, 301.
Diotrephes, ii. 8, 231.
Disciples, apostles and, distinction between, i. 74-75.
Divinity of Christ. See under Jesus Christ.
Docetism, i. 145, 251; ii. 7, 119, 181, 184, 206, 211, 224, 226, 237.
Dogma, i. 254, 344; ii. 32, 198, 199, 220, 239, 240, 241, 305.
Domitian, i. 360.
Dualism, ii. 48, 93, 186, 192, 203.
ECCLESIASTICISM, i. 86, 192, 256, 314, 339; ii. 17, 76, 8891, 163, 216, 219, 240, 242, 268, 325, 333.
“Ephesian letters,” the, ii. 111.
Ephesians, St Paul’s letter to, ii. 9.
Ephesus, riot of the silversmiths at, ii. 111.
Episcopacy. See Bishop.
Epistles—
Barnabas, ii. 50.
Catholic, the, ii. 19, 227, 287 seq.
Colossians, to, i. 332-334, 384.
Corinthians, to, i. 160-161, 165, 171, 172, 200, 205, 206, 262, 311.
Galatians, to, i. 160, 262, 294, 296, 305, 311, 312.
Hebrews, to, ii. 19, 43-44, 96, 164-165.
Pastoral, the, ii. 3, 4, 8, 12, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 24, 91, 95, 97, 103, 108, 136, 194, 205, 208, 210, 211, 213, 214, 216, 218, 223, 224, 225, 230, 234, 285 seq., 303, 306, 315, 316, 324, 327, 328, 332, 336, 338; Gnosticism condemned in, ii. 234-236; Theology of, ii. 285.
Philippians, to, i. 201; ii. 11.
Romans, to, i. 200, 202, 293, 296, 305, 312.
St Clement, of, ii. 12, 15, 96, 99, 142-143, 305, 314-315, 325.
St James, of, i. 23, 122; ii. 12, 18, 22, 67, 318, 332.
St John, of, ii. 8, 17, 116-117, 129; ii. 236.
St Jude, of, ii. 7.
St Paul, of, i. 160-162, 165, 170-171, 195, 199-200; ii. 9, 11.
St Peter, of—
1st Epistle of, ii. 65, 67, 84, 104, 106, 154, 228, 293 seq.
2nd Epistle of, ii. 208, 302, 308, 335, 336, 341.
Eschatology, i. 3, 25 seq., 51, 71,94, 140, 179, 279, 282, 287, 364, 373; ii. 53, 133, 159, 172, 298.
Christian, ii. 53.
Greek, ii. 134 seq., 139.
Jewish, i. 25-26; ii. 53, 133.
Pauline, i. 178, 282-288.
Essenes, the, ii. 195.
Ethics, Jewish and Christian, compared, ii. 59-79.
Euhemerism, ii. 113.
Euhemerus, ii. 141.
Ezra, Apocalypse of. See under Apocalypse.
FAITH—
Confession of, ii. 324-325.
Justification by, i. 300-314.
Rule of, ii. 224-228.
St Paul, in, i. 268-272.
Fatherhood, the Divine. See also Son of God, i. 301, 309, 340, 385.
Faith in, ii. 57.
Jesus’ teaching, presupposition of, ii. 47.
Fourth Gospel. See John, St, Gospel of.
GALILEE, Jesus’ connection with, ii. 37.
Genealogy, Jesus, of, i. 1 46.
Genesis, i. 307.
Gentiles—
Christian Church of the, i. 189.
Congregations under St Paul, i. 209-211.
Jewish Law, resistance to wards, i. 154-157.
St Paul’s method of converting, i. 175 seq.
Gnosis, the Pauline, i. 321-340; ii. 49, 180-193.
Gnosticism—
Catholicism and, ii. 170-242.
Characteristics of, ii. 170-175.
Christianity, effect on, ii. 322.
Christology of, ii. 6, 123, 172, 210.
Church’s measures against, ii. 222-241.
Divinity of Christ, belief in, ii. 123, 127.
Gnostic heresies, ii. 5-7, 14; teachers, ii. 19.
Jesus and, points of contact, ii. 175-180.
Origin of, ii. 170-204.
Paulinism and, relation between, ii. 180-193, 203-205.
Principles of, ii. 206-215.
St John, attitude towards, ii. 260-262.
God—
Greek philosophy, conception of, ii. 144 seq.
Jewish idea of, i. 16-21.
Love of, manifested on the Cross, i. 239-243.
Son of. See under Jesus Christ, titles of. Spirit of, i. 26l seq.
Gospels. See under names of Evangelists.
Additions to original, ii. 60-61.
Age in which written, reflection of, ii. 256, 262.
Ethical character of, ii. 331.
Gnosticism, relation to, ii. 182, 187, 260 seq., 267.
Jesus and Paul, time between bridged by, ii. 262.
Jesus in, ii. 166, 259, 277.
Origin of the, i. 148; ii. 229, 248, 250.
Philosophical character of, ii. 165.
Sacraments in the, ii. 125, 131.
St Paul, harmony with, ii. 167.
Spirit in the, ii. 1 54, 227.
Synoptic, the, ii. 96.
Theology, a measure of, ii. 362.
Grace—
Means of, i. 268 seq.
St Paul’s teaching regarding, i. 301.
Greek—
Belief, i. 17.
Ceremonial, Christianity and, ii. 197.
Christianity, later, ii. 323-4.
Congregations, i. 264.
Influence on Christianity. See also Hellenism, ii. 239.
Philosophy, ii. 140-169.
Greeks—
Gnosticism, effect on, ii. 197-198.
Idol worship among, i. 181-2.
St John, attitude towards, ii. 254.
St Paul’s preaching to the, i. 177-222.
HANNAH, widow, ii. 24.
Heathens, Christian attitude towards, ii. 157-158.
Heaven. See also Eschatology, Kingdom of God, i. 59, 60, 283; ii. 136.
Hebrews, Epistle to the. See under Epistles.
Hegesippus, i. 152; ii. 194.
Hell, i. 286; ii. 134.
Hellenism, Christianity and, ii. 104 seq., 140 seq., 167-169, 323.
Heresy, meaning of, ii. 234.
Hermas, writer and prophet, ii. 4, 12, 19, 68-70, 71-75, 93, 131, 348-352.
High Priest, Jewish, Jesus and, comparison between, ii. 45-46.
Holy Ghost, ii. 56; blasphemy against, i. 125.
Hope, the Christian, i. 279; ii. 297-313.
Limitations of, i. 312-313.
Nature of, i. 303-310.
Strength of, i. 310-312.
IDOL worship among the Greeks, i. 181-2.
Ignatius, i. 287; ii. 6, 13, 16, 24, 25, 94, 129, 132, 310-311, 348.
Bishops, on the importance of, ii. 231-233.
Gnostics, on, ii. 213, 236-238.
Individual, the—
Christianity in, ii. 343, 363.
Jesus and, i. 179, 192.
St John and, ii. 270.
St Paul and, i. 190, 195, 220; ii. 343.
Irenaeus, ii. 64, 137, 176, 209, 210, 214, 224, 229, 236.
Isaias, i. 330.
Islam, religion of, i. 195.
JASON, ii. 31.
Jerusalem—
Council of, ii. 290.
Destruction of, ii. 28, 44, 299.
Jesus’ activity transferred to, ii. 37.
Jesus Christ—
Angels, reference to, ii. 54-55.
Appearances of, after the resurrection, i. 115, 117 seq.; 141, 142, 165, 238, 244, 250, 255, 300.
Birth of, apocryphal histories of, ii. 83.
Brethren of, i. 122.
Ceremonial in teaching of, i. 92.
Character of, from the Fourth Gospel, ii. 166-168.
Children and, i. 105, 150.
Culture and, i. 78.
Davidic descent of, ii. 36-7, 117, 225.
Death of, ii. 121.
Divinity of—
Docetic teaching regarding, ii. 211.
Ethical conception of, ii. 120.
Gnostic belief in, ii. 123.
Prophecy and miracles, proved by, ii. 120-121.
Gnostic heresies against, ii. 210-211.
Gnosticism and, points of contact, ii. 174-180.
Gospel, in, ii. 37, 39, 41, 46, 168.
Humanity of, 211-212.
Jewish travesty of, ii. 30-31.
Kingdom of God, promise of, i. 56-72.
Law, attitude towards, i. 15, 64, 88-92.
Melchisedec, identification with, ii. 43-45.
Messianic idea, the, i. 37-52; ii. 33-46.
Miracles of, i. 42, 64, 66, 97, 98, 119, 145.
Old Testament, the ‘Lord’ of, i. 331-332; ii. 34, 35.
Parables of, i. 65, 70.
Pietism and, i. 78, 92.
Redeemer, the, i. 42, 96-116, 176, 220, 264 seq., 299; ii. 52, 58, 163, 172, 344 seq.; St John’s Gospel, in, ii 263 seq., 278.
Resurrection of, i. 141-145—Gnostic heresy regarding, ii. 210.
St Paul, importance attached to, i. 243-246.
St Paul’s conception of, ii. 147; contrast with, i. 78, 163, 185, 192, 199 seq., 207, 214, 237-243, 252, 302, 319, 321; ii. 249-253.
Scribes and Pharisees, attitude towards, i. 15-16, 98.
Second coming looked for, ii. 299.
Self-consciousness of, i. 38, 45-55.
Social ethics, non-consideration of, i. 81-82.
Spirit of, i. 263 seq.
Teachings of—
Forgiveness of sins and retribution, i. 107-111.
Love, i. 79-80, 93-95.
Obedience to the will of God, i. 83-86.
Self-discipline, i. 73-78.
Social, i. 80-82.
Titles of, i. 52-55, 247-251; ii. 46-53, 147-149.
Transfiguration, i. 145.
Jews. See also Judaism—
Alexandrian, religion of, i. 177.
St John, attitude towards, ii. 256-260.
Salvation of, in the Old Testament, ii. 89.
John the Evangelist, i. 121; ii. 116-117, 352-355.
Apocalypse of. See under Apocalypse.
Asia Minor, in, ii. 2.
Catholicism in, ii. 89.
Christianity, public character of, emphasized by, ii. 125.
John, St—
Christology of, ii. 48-4-9, 118, 182, 264, 265.
Epistle of. See under Epistle.
Gnostics, attitude towards, ii. 260-262.
Gospel of, ii. 3, 122, 254-278.
Philosophical character of, ii. 165-166.
St Paul’s teachings compared with, i. 36l; ii. 263-275.
Greeks, attitude towards, ii. 254.
Jesus, treatment of the life of, i. 40; ii. 37, 41, 46, 47, 89, 91, 120.
Jews, attitude towards, ii. 256-260.
Johannine writings, reference to, ii. 6, 8, 17, 129, 205, 211, 213, 214, 216, 223, 224, 231, 236, 260, 274, 306-307, 329-331, 337, 352.
John the Baptist, St, i. 35-36, 64, 116, 153, 158; ii. 37, 41, 89; Judaism, attitude towards, i. 35-36.
Josephus, ii. 141, 145, 164, 234.
Judaism—
Christianity and—
Compared and contrasted, i. 12, 30; ii. 53-54, 65 seq., 101-102, 107-108.
Early relations between, i. 131, 139.
Law, contention regarding, ii. 59 seq.
Rift between, ii. 28 seq.
Forgiveness of sins and retribution, i. 107-111.
Gnosticism, rise in, ii. 195.
Greek influence on, i. 32-33.
Jesus Christ, Messiahship of, and, ii. 33-46.
Jewish Church and its institutions, ii. 80 seq.
Kingdom of God, conception of promise, i. 56-72.
Nature and character of, i. 12 seq.
St Paul’s criticism of, i. 295 300.
Son of God, title of, a blasphemy, ii. 46 seq.
Spirits, belief in, i. 8.
State of, at the coming of Christ, i. 34-35.
Judaizers, the, St Paul, opposition to, i. 290-292, 306-7.
Judas Ischariot, i. 118.
Justification—
Christian doctrine of, i. 302-314.
Jewish doctrine of, i. 305-314.
Justin Martyr, i. 10; ii. 2, 19, 31-32, 34, 36, 39, 40, 42, 50, 54, 56, 59, 63, 64, 105, 108, 109, 121, 125,130, 132, 133, 135, 136, 141, 150, 160 seq., 176, 179, 210, 214, 225, 246, 305, 334, 343.
KERDON, Gnostic teacher, ii. 19.
Kierkegaard, i. 353.
Kingdom of God—
Church, close connection with, ii. 86, 306.
Entrance into, i. 134, 246, 374.
Jesus’ promise of, i. 56-72.
Modern idea of, ii. 298, 312.
Non-political character of, ii. 107.
Koran, i. 57.
LACTANTIUS, i. 17; ii. 144.
Law, Jewish—
Christianity and, contention
Early Christianity, relation to, i. 153 seq.; ii. 59 seq.
Jesus Christ, attitude towards, i. 15, 88-92.
Pharisees, relation to, i. 14, 21.
St Paul’s attitude towards, i. 154, 292 seq., 307 seq., 329; ii. 185.
Legalism—
Church, in early, i. 134, 297, 349.
St James, in, ii. 69-73.
St Paul, in, i. 309, 314, 378; ii. 14, 65.
Life, the Christian, in sub-apostolic times, ii. 344 seq.
Liturgy, Christian, political element in, ii. 107-8.
Jewish. See also Prayer, ii. 97.
Logos, the, ii. 62, 116.
Conception of term, and theories of, ii. 147-152, 156.
Justin, remarks of, ii. l6l-l62.
St John, theory of, ii. l60-l6l .
Lord’s Prayer, i. 112, 212, 260; ii. 98.
Lord’s Supper, i. 133, 135, 214, 219, 274, 343; ii. 97, 125, 126, 128, 131-133, 189, 232, 271.
Love—
Christian brotherly, i. 209; ii. 78, 212, 216, 335-340.
God’s, i. 241, 306; ii. 102, 215, 261, 336.
St Paul and, i. 210, 258, 262, 340, 355; ii. 326.
Taught by Jesus Christ, i. 79-80, 93-95.
Lucian, ii. 339.
Luke, St, i. 64, 151; ii. 29, 249.
Luther, Martin, i. 74, 104.
MACCABEES, i. 25, 123, 143.
Mahomet, i. 158.
Marcion, i. 293; ii. 19.
Mark, St, i. 101, 205; ii. 74.
Apocalypse, in, i. 205.
Gospel of, ii. 248-249.
Logia of, i. 150-151.
Marriage—
Jesus’ teaching on, i. 81, 150.
Laws regarding, ii. 335-336.
St Paul’s teaching regarding, i. 204-207.
Martyrs, i. 87, 102, 130, 143, 368, 376, 378; ii. 22-24, 71, 75, 136, 210, 308, 310, 342.
Matthew, St, i. 64; ii. 74, 77, 85.
Gospel of, ii. 30, 129, 249.
Logia of, i. 148-149.
Melchisedec, ii. 43-46.
Messianic idea, the, i. 37-52; ii. 33-46.
Michael, St, i. 333; ii. 71.
Millennium, the, i. 373; ii. 54, 105, 133, 139, 298, 312.
Miracles—
Divinity of Christ, proof of, ii. 120-121.
Early Christians, religious value attached to, i. 2-5.
Jesus Christ, of, i. 64.
St Paul, of, i. 170.
Missions—
Acts of the Apostles, account in, ii. 287.
Christian, ii. 110.
Decay of, ii. 2 seq.
Monasticism, ii. 220.
Monotheism, ii. 68.
Montanus, ii. 54.
Moses, Jesus compared with, ii. 61.
Mysteries, the, Christianity, relation to, ii. 123-133.
Mysteries of Jesus Christ—
Conception by the Holy Ghost, i. 146-147.
Resurrection, i. 141-145.
Mysticism, i. 82, 130, 258, 263, 264, 354, 357; ii. 25, 145, 174, 185, 191,213,214,271, 327, 329, 331.
Mythology, Christian, i. 251, 254, 363; ii. 48, 49, 51, 117, 166, 175, 359.
Myths, Babylonian, i. 372; ii. 196.
NERO, i. 201, 368.
New Testament—
Canon of the, formation of, ii. 226, 228-229, 246.
Divisions of, ii. 247-278.
Greek philosophy, traces in, ii. 141 seq.
Origin of, ii. 243-247.
Significance of, ii. 296.
OLD TESTAMENT—
Allegorical exegesis of, i. 21, 333; ii. 60, 209.
Christianity, foundation in, ii. 82.
Gnostic attacks on, ii. 171, 199, 208.
Jesus Christ, a witness to, ii. 34-35, 48-53, 71.
St Paul, in, i. 307, 317, 319, 322, 325 seq.
The ‘Lord’ in, i. 331-332.
Orthodoxy, i. 134-136; ii. 238, 324-327.
PAPIAS, Bishop of Hierapolis, ii. 96.
Papiskus, ii. 31.
Parables, Jesus Christ, of, i. 60, 65, 68, 69, 71, 83, 99, 108, 109, 110, 134, 151, 270; ii. 3, 75, 92, 175-176, 189, 300, 329.
Parousia, the, i. 50-51, 106, 140, 285, 366; ii. 42, 182, 299, 303.
Paul, St—
Ananias and, ii. 280.
Apocalypse, agreement with, i. 384.
Apostolic self-consciousness of, i. 162-166.
Baptism, and, i. 273-274; ii. 129.
Character of the work of, i. 166-170.
Christianity brought to the Gentiles by, i. 159; definition of, i. 186-187.
Christology of, i. 237-239, 246-252, 333-334.
Church, and the, i. 185, 193, 219, 256, 270 seq., 289, 297, 314, 330, 339; ii. 57, 80, 203, 215, 218, 250.
Congregations of, i. 189, 209-212, 264; ii. 284-285.
Description of, from the Acts, ii. 281 seq.
Ecclesiastic, the, i. 219, 220.
Epistles of. See under Epistles.
Eschatology of, i. 282-288.
Faith of, i. 268-272.
Gnosis of, i. 321-340; ii. 49.
Gnosticism, attitude towards, ii. 175, 180-193, 203-205.
Grace, teaching regarding, i. 301.
Jesus, comparison and contrast with, i. 78, 163, 185, 192, 199 seq., 207, 214 seq., 237, 243, 252 seq., 302, 319, 321, 349, 357; ii. 249-253, 287; relation to, i. 159, 163, 191 seq., 199, 204, 206, 212, 214, 217, 221, 222, 243, 246, 248, 267, 281, 283, 286, 315, 339, 340; ii. 57, 175, 296.
Jewish attacks on, i. 172-173; Law, attitude towards, i. 155-157, 290-300.
Judaism, criticism of, i. 15-16; opposition to, ii. 32.
Justification, principles regarding, i. 300-314.
Methods of conversion, i. 175 seq.
Missionary labours, results of, i. 315, 350-351.
Missioner, as, i. 174 seq., 226, 315, 321, 328; ii. 263.
Moods of, i. 352-357.
Predestination, on, i. 280-281.
Public worship under, i. 212-217.
Religion, personal, of, i. 341-359.
Sacraments, and, ii. 128.
St John’s Gospel and teachings of, compared, i. 361; ii. 263-275.
St Peter, relations with, i. 290, 292.
Salvation, self-discipline necessary for, i. 275 seq.
Scribe and Rabbi, the, i. 15, 159, 168, 199, 206, 224, 300, 308, 328.
Sin, theories on, i. 229-237.
Social institutions, attitude towards, i. 201.
Soteriology of, i. 228-289.
Spirit, teaching of, regarding the, i. 261-271; ii. 153-156.
Theologian, the, i. 19, 223-340; ii. 57.
Penance, institution of, ii. 98-100.
Pentateuch, ii. 43-44.
Persecutions, i. 360, 367, 376; ii. 8, 29, 84, 91, 104, 125, 308-309, 354.
Peter, St, ii. 12, 22, 23—
Apocalypse of, ii. 134.
Epistles of. See under Epistles.
Primacy of, i. 117.
St Paul and, relations between, i. 290, 292.
Pharisees. See Scribes and Pharisees.
Philippi, Judaism in, i. 291; ii. 17.
Philo, Alexandrian Jew, i. 294, 295; ii. 147, 164.
Philosophy, Greek, Christianity and, ii. 140-169.
Pietism, i. 79, 92, 213; ii. 204.
Platonism, ii. 1 64-1 65.
Polycarp, St, ii. 2, 12, 23, 24, 25, 30, 311-312.
Prayer, i. 112, 214, 260, 337, 354; Jewish and early Christian, i. 108; ii. 86-87, 97, 98, 107, 271. See also Lord’s Prayer.
Preachers, itinerant, ii. 2, 4 seq., 14, 17, 230, 231.
Predestination, ii. 267, 272-273; St Paul on, i. 280-281.
Presbyter, i. 126; ii. 3, 12, 232, 284-285, 316.
Promise of the Kingdom of God, i. 56-72.
Prophets—
Early Christian, i. 123-125; ii. 95, 196, 199, 229.
False, ii. 4 seq., 7, 12.
New Testament, of, i. 123, 166, 167, 325, 360 seq., 376; ii. 2.
Rome, in, ii. 9.
Psalms, Messianic, i. 6l.
Psychology—
Ancient world, of, i. 7, 50, 51, 130, 262; ii. 114.
Early Christian ethics, of, ii. 67.
Jewish, ii. 78.
St Paul, of, i. 255, 260.
Public Worship—
Centralization of, ii. 230 seq.
St Paul, under, i. 212-217.
QUADRATUS, first apologist, ii. 108.
RABBIS, work of, i. 326-327.
Redeemer. See under Jesus Christ.
Redemption, the, ii. 344-363.
Religion, personal, i. 246, 255, 281, 352; ii. 133, 206, 239, 241, 296 seq.
Hope, main element in, ii. 313.
Jesus, of, ii. 297, 343, 357.
Sub-apostolic age, in, ii. 314 seq.
Theories of, ii. 112-114.
Repentance and retribution, ii. 303 seq. See also Penance.
Resurrection of the flesh—
Gnostic theory regarding, ii. 210.
Greek antipathy towards, i. 180-181.
Resurrection of Jesus. See under Jesus Christ.
Roman persecutions. See Persecutions.
Rome, ii. 9, 14, 17, 19, 85, 86, 105.
SACRAMENTS, i. 86, 273, 314, 329, 343 seq.
Christianity and the, ii. 128-133.
Churches, place in national, ii. 127.
Defence of the, ii. 133, 172-3, 189, 214, 218, 220, 268, 269, 271, 346, 358, 359.
Lord’s Supper. See that title.
Saints—
Ascetics, life of, ii. 24-27.
Bishops, opposition to, ii. 317.artyrs, ii. 22-24.
Salvation—
Church, none out of, ii. 88.
St Paul, as set up by, ii. 91-92.
Satan, i. 2, 19, 235, 236, 373, 379, 381; ii. 181, 209.
Scribes and Pharisees—
Dignity and work of, i. 14-15.
Jesus Christ, attitude towards, i. 15-16, 98.
Self-discipline, necessity of, i. 73-78, 275-280, 282.
Septuagint, i. 143, 224, 319.
Sermon on the Mount, i. 24, 69, 75, 88; ii. 60-6l, 73, 77, 261, 274, 337.
Sibylline books, the, i. 32.
Simon Magus, ii. 194, 197.
Sin, St Paul’s theories on, i. 229-237.
Social ethics, Christianity in, i. 81-82.
Son of God. See also Jesus Christ, titles of, ii. 147-149.
Son of Man. See also Jesus Christ, titles of, i. 51, 53.
Soteriology—
St John’s, ii. 263.
St Paul’s, i. 228-289; ii. 217.
Spirit, Church, of the, i. 324; St Paul’s teaching regarding, i. 261-271; 301 seq.
Spirits, i. 235-236—
Early Christians, belief in, i. 6-10.
Jewish belief in, i. 8.
Persian belief in, i. 8.
State, the—
Apocalypse, in the, i. 368 seq.; ii. 105.
Christianity, attitude towards, ii. 107-109, 126 seq.
Church officials and, ii. 106.
Jesus’ teaching regarding, i. 81, 82; ii. 104.
St Paul, teaching regarding, i. 192, 201 seq., 369; ii. 104.
Stephen, St, ii, 22.
Stoics, i. 17, 184; ii. 64, 145, 147, 152, 162, 305.
Sunday, institution of, ii. 97.
TABITHA, ii. 24.
Tatian, ii. 19.
Teacher, Church, in, i. 125, 322, 327; ii. 8, 12, 18 seq., 95, 222-226.
Temple, destruction of the, i. 153.
Tertullian, ii. 109, 111, 129, 233.
Teschuba, the, i. 74; ii. 98.
Thecla, ii. 26.
Theology—
Apocalypse, absence in, i. 378.
Development of, in early church, i. 125, 137 seq.; ii. 140 seq., 227.
Oldest, the, i. 137-151.
St John, of, ii. 89, 274 seq.
St Paul, of, i. 223-340.
Thessalonians—
Religious enthusiasm of, i. 347.
St Paul’s epistle to, i. 170, 171, 199-200.
Thora, the, i. 14.
Thyatira, prophetess of, ii. 6.
Timothy, congregations of, ii. 3.
Titus, ii. 318.
Tongues, speaking with, i. 129, 255, 258.
Tradition, i. 120, 124, 166, 168-169, 212; ii. 13, 207, 223, 227, 229, 252; oral, ii. 54; Roman Petrine, ii. 85.
UNCTION, ii. 129, 216.
Universalism, i. 285, 309; ii. 116, 117, 167.
VALENTINUS, ii. 19.
WIDOWS, ii. 317, 338; order of, ii. 24, 328.
ZEALOTS, i. 34, 48.
iv v vi vii viii ix x xi 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 25 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 374 375 376