CHAPTER X.

THE OLDEST THEOLOGY.

THE ‘Spirit’ did not merely move men to talk with tongues in the early Church. He did not only kindle the glad ardour of sacrifice, and inflame the courage of the martyrs—he was likewise the creator of the oldest theology. New thoughts and pictures, and peculiar frames of mind, come into being amongst the brethren in contrast with the unbelieving world. They are felt to be new, and yet they make their way with an irresistible compulsion; they obtain authority as inspirations of the Spirit. They originate partly from enthusiastic laymen who by sudden illumination solve some dark mystery, partly from learned students of the Old Testament to whom deep insight into passages hitherto obscure is vouchsafed by the spirit that prevails in the community. If the formation of the new thoughts is thus guided by the Spirit, we can still more clearly recognize the Spirit as their ultimate source by the opposition of the world which lacks the gift of the same Spirit. Or, to express the same thing in the language of to-day, only he who shares to some extent in the 138enthusiasm of the disciples for Jesus can understand their thoughts about Him.

Now, as the Christian brotherhood was from the very first a lay brotherhood, their theology was bound to partake very largely of the lay character. A theology arises in which unbridled fancy and enthusiastic feelings have a greater share than the clear conceptions of the understanding, which is founded, not upon learning, at least not in the first place, which is ready to accept at once moods of the heart and mysterious echoes from the unconscious as divine revelations, and above all, takes the miraculous into account at every turn. These laymen often accept the contrast to the Scribes as their guiding line. Whenever any very artificial theory is advanced in the Gospels, which does not appeal to the heart, it is prefaced by the words “The Scribes . . . . say unto Him.” They themselves would by preference be reckoned among the babes and the foolish to whom God has revealed that which has remained hidden from the prudent and the wise. This contrast, however, soon ceases to be as complete as it was at first. In its teachers the brotherhood acquired a learned element which differed from the rabbis only by its readiness to enter into the spirit of the sect. The special service which these teachers rendered to the community was the unsealing of the treasures of the whole of the Old Testament, which had otherwise remained a closed book for the laity, even were it only by reason of the difficulties presented by the language in which it was written. But they were also the first to borrow from the Jewish professional 139theologians, and introduced from thence into the lay theology—anticipating St. Paul herein—all manner of speculations and mystic doctrines as well as the whole apparatus of legal conceptions. Between these two elements—the lay and the theological—there were, of course, many transitional stages, and for this reason alone it would be impossible to arrive at any certain differentiation.

There were really two different motives at work leading to the formation of this earliest theology. On the one hand, the personality of Jesus Himself challenged reflection in the highest degree, almost more on account of that which lay hidden in the future, than on account of that which men already knew concerning it. They could not but feel impelled to examine in every direction and to attempt to understand His Messiahship, His death and His resurrection, and above all the mystery of His miraculous personality.

To this inner motive, the impression made by the personality of Jesus, there was at once added another—the apologetic interest, the determination of the relation to Judaism. The object was to win Jews for Jesus, to defend Him against them. In both cases, whether it were attack or defence, the employment of Jewish words and conceptions, common to friend and foe alike, was obviously necessary. All the oldest Christian theology is therefore Jewish in the means which it employs.

The whole of the great impression made by Jesus culminates in the confession “Jesus is the Messiah.” This was likewise the chief point of contention with the Jews. If the Jews said, “He is not the Messiah 140because He died,” the Christians replied, “Yes but He is, for He shall come again.” Jesus answer before the Sanhedrim, “Ye shall see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of power and coming upon the clouds of heaven,” forms the sum total of the earliest Christian apology. The parousia is the proof that Jesus is Messiah. True, the proof lay in the uncertain future, but the comforting thought, “Qui vivra verra,” helped to remove all scruples. Hence the centre of gravity of the Christian faith was transferred to its eschatology.

Through that one word Messiah it came about that the whole figure of Jesus was placed within the framework of the Jewish picture of the things to come that lay there ready and to hand. In the latter no change was made whatever; the only addition was the name of Jesus. This oldest Christian dogma is nothing but the filling up of a Jewish outline with a concrete name. First of all, the prophecies of Daniel are taken for guidance. So Jesus Himself had done. Hence the “Son of man” becomes in the Gospels the usual self-designation of Jesus. This, however, is but the starting-point. Soon all the Jewish apocalyptic theories with their richness of fantasy, claim the person of Jesus for their own. Contrary to all expectation, He becomes a mighty conqueror, hastening on a white steed at the head of the heavenly host to annihilate all God’s enemies upon earth. How strangely inappropriate to Jesus that the “eagles” should be “gathered together” to devour the dead bodies of the slain! First come the storm-signals of wars and rumours of wars, famines, pestilences and earthquakes, signs in the 141heavens, and, most terrible of all, in the midst of these tribulations, Antichrist. In all this domain there is the completest agreement between Christians and Jews. Rightly could the heathen Celsus make merry over their petty quarrels as to whether the Messiah was called Jesus or whether His name was as yet unknown.

The Jewish faith swallowed up the Christian, and in reality it was the Jews who came forth the conquerors from these disputes. ‘Jesus the Messiah’ is a Jewish idea. It remains such in spite of all the new meaning which Jesus put into the conception. All that there is inadequate in it, which He Himself had repressed as far as possible, recovered the lost ground immediately after His death.

But how can Jesus return as Messiah if He rests in the grave? This objection is met by the proof of the resurrection. Unfortunately, the reality of the appearance was convincing to believers only, for it was only disciples that had seen the risen Lord. The enemies of the faith might without further ado declare them to be either deceivers or deceived. The belief in mere visions would never have made any impression upon Jews. An objective proof must be furnished.

The story of the empty grave was circulated at a very early period with the object of providing this desideratum. But who had found the grave empty? Again, it was only disciples, and women too so writes the oldest evangelist. Was that a sufficient foundation? It was strengthened by the additional facts that apostles themselves found the grave empty, and that the women had besides seen 142the living Jesus close by the grave. Thereupon the Jews circulated the report that the body had been stolen. The story of the watch set upon the grave, making such theft impossible, serves to refute it. And, finally, in order that the impression of a possible self-deception, or that the visions were of a mere phantom, should be entirely removed, legends arose of appearances of a more material kind wherein Jesus eats and drinks and suffers Himself to be felt, and Himself declares He is no spirit. It is true that these final stages in Christian apologetics are, in part at least, only reached late in sub-apostolic times, but it was necessary to exhibit the whole process in this place in order that it might be seen how one proof has to support the other, and no single proof is sufficient by itself. Faith in Jesus living and victorious can never be forcibly attained by arguments such as these, in great part invented for the purpose. Strange how blind men have been to this fact! No, this theology also was Jewish and obsolete.

But the death of Jesus? How was this greatest stumbling-block, this direct negation of the Messiahship, to be united with the faith? The oldest theology of the Cross originated in this question. Jesus own forebodings and His prophecies were appealed to as proving that His death had been no surprise to Him. Hence the emphasis laid upon the prophecies of the Passion in our Gospels. But that was but a poor comfort! Some few scanty indications given by Jesus as to the salvation to be brought about by His death were taken as a starting-point. It would seem that Jesus had Himself imagined that His death would exercise a salutary influence on 143many of His fellow-countrymen who were as yet unbelieving. But the actual setting of all these sayings we owe to the first community of Christians. The picture of the Martyr whose sufferings exercise a vicarious power and enlist God’s mercy for His people had long formed an essential portion of the Jewish faith. The fourth book of the Maccabees is the best known document to which to turn in support of this statement.

This thought is now brought into connection with the sufferings of Jesus. Then come the theologians who skilfully apply all their juridical and ceremonial conceptions to the death of Jesus. When St Paul became a Christian he already met with the formula, “died for our sins,” on the lips of the leaders of the early Church. Now, all this is again Jewish theology. The real conclusion which the disciples should have drawn from the death of Jesus, is that even death itself is no punishment sent by God but a gift of His love. Christian apologetics working with Jewish conceptions overlaid and concealed this thought, so full of comfort. Forensic metaphors and ideas of propitiation began the process which is to transform the mystery of love into an arithmetical problem.

It was the teachers, too, not the laymen, who tried to explain the death of Jesus by the Old Testament. They transferred the scheme of prophecy and of fulfilment to the death of Jesus, and indeed to all the events of the Gospel history, and so removed by this argument from prophecy any rock of offence that still perchance remained. Such of them as spoke Greek preferred to make use of the Septuagint 144in this attempt, for this translation often served their ends better than the original Hebrew. Whoever has bowed in reverence before the great and original personability of Jesus must look upon this undertaking of the ancient Christians as almost an insult. What concern in all the world have prophecies of past centuries with our Jesus? Is it conceivable that all that was new and free that He brought into the world should be merely the mechanical result of causes that had existed long ago? The thing could not be done at all without a forced and artificial system of interpretation. And even the best analogies would seem to have come down to us from late times. So we come to the formulae:

Died according to the Scriptures.

Rose on the third day according to the Scriptures.

Born at Bethlehem according to the Scriptures.

But, after all, a great undertaking is connected with what had else been merely an insupportable extravagance, viz., the conquest of the Old Testament by Christian ideas. Apparently the interpreters proved their thesis from the Old Testament. What they really did was to put their meaning into it. And so it became possible to preserve the endless treasures of this sacred book.

To laymen, who had not the same intimate acquaintance with the Old Testament, the whole earthly life of Jesus, forming as it did but the ante chamber to His reign in heaven, appeared less in the light of prophecy than in that of the miraculous and supernatural. Did not the greatest miracle of all, the Resurrection, reflect a halo upon the Master’s earthly life, removing Him from the rest of mankind 145and causing the miraculous to appear to be the element of His being? Miracles were to prove Jesus to be the Messiah; the more miracles and the greater they are, the more likely that God has destined Him for the highest honour. One craves for something a little more substantial than hope in the uncertain future. The miracles of Jesus are the sure pledge that through Him the kingdom of heaven shall come, and that “He it is that shall come.” Thus the foundation is laid for the strange and fantastic picture presented to us in the Gospels. St Mark gives us the first outlines, and even he often approaches very near to the limits of docetism, and afterwards this tendency knew no bounds. One specially noticeable feature in the picture is the story of the Transfiguration. Jesus’ most intimate apostles are represented as once in His life beholding the Master in His Messianic glory and as hearing the divine confirmation of His claims, “This is My beloved Son; hear Him.” We are expressly told that this story only became known after the resurrection.

Thus, then, one was at the same time brought to the ultimate question, What is the foundation for this element of mystery and miracle in the personality of Jesus? The answers to this question are exceedingly instructive, although their date is entirely a matter of conjecture. One thing is evident. Jesus was man and as man Messiah. This firm conviction could never be abandoned amid Jewish surroundings. With this presupposition the answer that appealed most convincingly to the early Church and its enthusiasm was the story of the reception of the Spirit. Thereby Jesus completely came into line 146with the Christian prophets, and, generally speaking, with inspired men. Dating from one certain moment, the Spirit of God descended upon Him, to dwell in Him and to be the source of all His miracles. This particular moment was connected with Jesus' baptism, the earliest event known in His life. The Spirit works in Jesus just as He does in all Christians, only Jesus is the leader of all inspired men, for He is the Son. Just because of this connection of ideas this theory seems to be the oldest.

But was not the Messiah David’s son? Curiously enough the very passage of Scripture accepted by the Scribes but rejected by Jesus, is quoted in confirmation of the Messiahship. St. Paul is already familiar with it as something that needs no proof. The genealogies of our first and third Gospels must be ascribed to the earliest community. One is almost inclined to believe that it flattered the family of Jesus to be raised thus suddenly to the rank of a Davidic and Messianic dynasty. They certainly did not refuse the honour, as we can see from their confession to the Emperor Domitian. For us there is something that almost provokes a smile in this attempt to found the majesty of Jesus upon a royal genealogy.

The next attempt to explain the mystery of Jesus—the story of the conception by the Holy Ghost which later won its way to general acceptation—no longer belongs to the earliest brotherhood. Many of the Jewish Christians themselves rejected it. But, on the other hand, Jewish teachers began from very early times to bring the idea of pre-existence into connection with Jesus. Strictly speaking, the Jewish theory 147was contained only in the affirmation that the name of Messiah lay hidden with God before the creation of the world. Now this name was Jesus. The new thought was very naturally inferred that Jesus Himself lay hidden with God from of old. The same goal was reached as soon as Jesus’ words about His being sent by God were taken literally, and the conclusion was drawn that if God sent Him Jesus must have been with God before. Although the first three Gospels as yet nowhere give expression to the pre-existence and the heavenly origin in Jesus own words, these theories are for all that to be ascribed to a much earlier date than theirs. The course of history is by no means such that that which is logically posterior should likewise always appear last in point of time. There was then a ferment in men’s thoughts, a crop unparalleled for its richness, and one consequence of this was that dissimilar and even contradictory explanations appeared simultaneously.

Speaking generally, all this theological activity betrays a certain dilettantism. There is a want of creative power in these early Christians. They have experienced something altogether abnormal in Jesus, but in order to express it their own words fail them. So they turn to the Jewish categories nearest at hand and attempt to confine the indefinable within these definitions. After all, how very petty are these first Christian thoughts about Jesus compared with the deeds of Jesus Himself and His own inner life. The real superiority of the new religion over the old is rather concealed than expressed by the earliest Christology.

No one will blame these early Christians because 148of their transference of Jewish ideas to Jesus. The same hero-worship, the same faith which moved them to speak with tongues and enabled them to face the martyr’s death, likewise impelled them thus to formulate their creed. The great picture presented by this first Jewish Christology, quaint and extravagant as it is, is inspired by pure love and enthusiasm.

The theology of the early Christian Church has, however, yet one other fruit to show—and therein consists its true greatness. It was the collection and the arrangement of the most important sayings of Jesus, the handing down of the Gospel itself. It is a mistaken view to look upon this work as one that was merely receptive. The power to recognize the essential and to adapt it to the needs of the brethren was also requisite. The first in the field was the author of the Collection of Logia, perhaps the Apostle Matthew, who grouped the most important words of the Master under different headings from a practical point of view for catechetical purposes. Above all, he brought together the principal sayings in which God’s will is clearly taught to all men by Jesus—these formed the nucleus of the later Sermon on the Mount. It began with the gracious promises of the Beatitudes, and ended with the judgment upon all those who know God’s will but do it not. Still to this day the passage relating to the true standard of judgment expresses the clear consciousness that the kernel of the Gospel is contained in this sermon. All depends upon the fruits: and what they are is just what the whole sermon tells us. Then a second address brings together the duties of the missionaries. Controversial collections of Logia are attached to this; 149the relation of the Christians to John’s disciples, to slanderous fellow-countrymen seeking for a sign, to Scribes and Pharisees—all this is made clear by words of Jesus. Finally, light is in like manner thrown upon various aspects of the Christian life-prayer, the question of riches and of anxious poverty, the forgiving spirit, hope, and confession of sins. The man who made this collection had a wonderful grasp of the essential elements in the message of Jesus. At the same time he gives us the best picture of the early Church in its greatness. From his writings we can see what the hope of heaven and expectation of the judgment to come meant for the life of these Christians. The advent of the kingdom and of the Lord Himself in the immediate future is the presupposition of the whole of this Christianity. Then he leads us into the midst of the actual battle, he shows us the pride of the Christians towards the disciples of John, their fierce anger against the Pharisees, the official patterns of piety, their fidelity to their Master even unto death, stronger even than family affection and the fear of man. But above all he understands the awful seriousness for the individual of the claim which Jesus makes. He knows that the sum of the Gospel is something absolutely simple and practical, but for that very reason that which decides for heaven or for hell. For all that, however, he climbs the heights of joy and of childlike confidence. And so he achieved this result. Without any additions of his own, merely by selecting the words of everlasting life, he has bequeathed to us a picture of all that is essential in Christianity which is striking in its grandeur.

St Mark, the exponent possibly of a Petrine tradition, gives us another collection of Logia, arranged some what differently, not in the shape of long addresses, but by way of a narrative. He shows us how this tradition first attached importance to the occasion and the situation of each saying, how it inquired into the persons concerned, and then how groups of related anecdotes came to be formed. St Mark’s groups, too, contain a portion of the theology of the early Christians.

The first of his groups collects words of Jesus in which His power to forgive sins, His intercourse with publicans, His opposition to fasting, His lordship over the Sabbath, are all illustrated in contrast to the Scribes and Pharisees and the disciples of John. The same heading, “Jesus and the parties,” may be placed over the controversies in Jerusalem with the priests, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Scribes, which illustrate Jesus’ attitude to the people, to the Roman government, to the resurrection, to the law and the prophets. A third controversy sets forth Jesus’ attitude to the tradition of the elders. The enemies, it will seen, are the same as those against whom St Matthew’s Collection of Logia fights. And the same subjects meet us here as well as there, the kingdom of God, the second advent, the confession of sins, love of the brethren, and prayer. An especial group brings together the principal sayings about marriage, children, riches, self-denial and the duty of serving. It is true that the chief commandments in which God’s will consists are nowhere set forth in order. The reason for this will be that the Logia Collection had already obtained so firm a footing. 151What St Mark’s tradition does for us is partly to complete St Matthew’s Logia, partly to bring them home to us with greater vividness. And yet the picture of the Gospel thus presented to us is an independent one and has peculiar features of its own. We see the opponents better before us, we share in the rejoicings when Jesus answers, concise, full of irony and the confidence of victory, ever hit their mark full in the centre; we live through the education to independence and freedom under the guidance of Jesus. St Mark’s authority, the man who handed down to him the groups of stories, was without doubt a layman who saw in the Scribes the deadly enemies of Jesus and His cause. It was just his hostile feelings against the theologians which enabled him to grasp in so masterly a fashion the new and revolutionary elements in Jesus.

But the treasury of the early Christian brotherhood was not yet exhausted. The first and the third evangelists drew still further riches from this marvellous store; above all, the numerous parables which partly in all probability lay before them in written collections. St Luke especially must have been acquainted with a wonderful tradition of parables. It is a pity that those who took up arms in defence of the position that Jesus was the Messiah were but seldom clear as to the real sources of their strength. They did not perceive that the simple setting forth of the words of Jesus without any addition or explanation constitutes the best defence of Christianity, because better than all titles and legends it sets forth Jesus the man.