CHAPTER XV.

THE REDEMPTION.

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, 345 therefore, converges on the message of the love or grace of God.

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 346 conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” The learned author is, of course, perfectly right in refusing to admit that the blood of the sacrificial victims has any efficacy upon the conscience: but is the blood of Christ, then, any more suited to cleanse the conscience? How can the debt of personal, moral wrongdoing be wiped out by another’s blood? Much superstition was attached from the earliest times to the blood of Christ and to baptism. The effects of both were conceived of as magical, even where no change in the moral nature followed. A necessary consequence of this theology of the blood of Christ and of the sacraments was that men contented themselves with the external objective facts and never asked themselves the question: Am I really a redeemed person in my life?

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 347 alloy. The new converts were by the grace of God confirmed in their possession of all these realities. The sudden transition to their new condition produced psychical convulsions in many, mysterious ecstatic phenomena. Yet such cases were exceptional. The preponderant feeling which characterized the reception of these new gifts was something half rational, half superstitious. The immense impression made by conversion, the sharp antithesis between then and now, finds frequent expression in early Christian literature. If the expression is not all too stereotyped, we may be sure that there is some underlying experience. Yet in very early times such experiences came to be clothed in a traditional liturgical language which has to be accepted with caution.

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 348 asked whether they are Christians at all. The author inveighs against his rich readers with a “Woe unto you,” as though they stood outside of the Church. And naturally, for they blaspheme the Christian name by their un-Christian conduct. Nor do the majority of the congregation appear to have been much better. “You crave for something and do not get it. You commit murder and try your utmost to secure the thing and yet you cannot do so. You quarrel and fight. You do not get what you want because you do not ask. When you ask you do not get it, because you ask for a wrong purpose—to spend what you get upon your pleasures.” “Make your hands clean, you sinners, and your hearts pure, you vacillating men! Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep.” Are these men still to be considered Christians? Yes or no, as you like it. Redeemed children of God they are not.

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 349 thoughts; his imagination is altogether corrupt and easily trespasses on forbidden ground. He behaves toward his children like a good-natured blockhead, and shuts his eyes to their failings. The third commandment contains a terrible confession as to his truthfulness: “Never in all my life have I spoken a single true word, but always and to all men have I spoken with cunning and made my lies pass as good coin among all; nor did any man ever contradict me, but they believed my words.” Hence, too, throughout his life he knows that he is full of sin, and confessions of sin are never absent from his lips. His will-power is half broken. He has no backbone. Fear always has the upper hand in him. The picture which we gather from his writings as a whole gives one the impression of an unredeemed nature. Sin holds him fast in her chains. He cannot shake himself free. Hence his anxious question, “What must I do to be saved? How shall I make atonement to God for my misdeeds, if even sins of thought are recorded?”

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, 350 doubt not; be strong, believe; cast thy care upon the Lord.” The fourth vision is especially instructive, where Hermas overcomes the terrors of the last vision by recollection of the voice which he heard, “Doubt not, Hermas.” Thereupon Hermas puts on the armour of faith, thinks of the great things which the angel has taught him, and plucks up courage. His conversation with the angel at the close of the twelfth commandment is likewise full of comfort. When he asks in doubt whether God’s commandments can ever be fulfilled, the angel answers: “If you resolve that they shall be fulfilled, they can be easily: they will not be hard.” Hence in the end the picture emerges of a Christian who in spite of all weakness and corruption has good and glad moments in his life whence he draws strength to persevere bravely on his journey.

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, 351 of course, a law of grace, which had for its reverse all manner of terrors. Woe to the Christian that sins again! Yet they took it to their hearts and were glad, for once more they were able to hope.

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 352 churches there lived a great company of men and women who had become new creatures through Jesus and His disciples, and had passed from death unto life. Theirs was a hidden life unknown to history—but the life was lived. The redemptive power of Christianity is brought before us so impressively in quite a number of Christian writings, that we feel that we have here the record of a real experience. The most striking of all these is the First Epistle of St John, full of the gladdest and yet soberest consciousness of an abiding redemption. Here we have a life that is lived above the world in love and the joy of God, free from all care and anxiety. The writer can find no words to express his praise and glad rejoicing. How boundless are the Christian’s possessions: the knowledge of God, the forgiveness of sins, the victory over the devil, the confidence of prayer, courage on the day of judgment, the certainty of being a child of God and an heir of eternal life, perfect joy. “Behold what love the Father hath shown us, that we are called God’s children, and such we are.” He that has experienced all this in his own person may well attain in the bold flights of his faith to the statement that he is born of God, and in possession even now of eternal life. That is a judgment of faith, no empirical knowledge, and yet a judgment of faith which is based upon facts which are matters of experience—the keeping of the commandments, the love of the brethren. Hence the triumphant final judgment of this letter: “We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in the evil one.” That we are of God is also confirmed to us 353 by the Spirit with a sovereign self-consciousness. The Christian bears the witness within himself as Paul writes: “The spirit beareth witness to our spirit that we are the children of God.” But just as St Paul ever took refuge from this inner testimony in the outer objective fact, the proof of God’s love in the death of Jesus, in order to be secure from all the varying moods of his soul, so St John, too, places the water and the blood—i.e., the manifestation of God’s love in the gift of His own Son—by the side of the Spirit’s testimony. It is only because God’s love has become so clear to him in Jesus—beyond all power of expression—that he can live his glad life, resting on the forgiveness of sins. It is of course a comfort for him, too, to feel sure that, in case he falls away and his conscience accuses him, the all-knowing God is greater than our accusing heart, and beholds the soul of goodness in sinful man. And yet how poor a consolation this would be in itself. Does not the thought of God’s all-seeing eye call forth fear and terror within the breast of ordinary men? But for John the fact that God can read his inmost being is a comfort, because through Jesus he knows God as love, and is sure of pardon through faith in this love. We need but to compare John with Hermas if we would realize the difference that it makes for a Christian whether Jesus is ever before his soul or not. Though they are nearly contemporaries, the divergence between the two is immense. Hermas—a man who never gets beyond a state of alternate fear and hope, without trust in God and His love, his horizon limited by sin and the avoidance of sin. John, the sober Christian, who by no means considers himself 354 to be sinless, but has nevertheless attained to the unshaken conviction, through experience of God’s love, that he is a child of God in spite of all sin, and in this conviction goes boldly and gladly forward to obtain the promises, full of love and confidence. It is just the complete contrast between one that is redeemed and one as yet unredeemed.

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 355 come to Christ is his only aim. “How could we live without Him?” Wherever this martyr joyfulness speaks to us it presupposes redeemed men, for joy is the best token—everywhere—of the new and blessed life.

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 356 as a Christian in hours of blessed joy. Most of them rather, as a rule, look back upon pardon as a definite single event in the past, and expend all their power in the present, no longer to stand in need of it. Certainly one element in the greatness of this age is that Christians do not make much ado about their pious feelings and special experiences. Some of their teachers would in that case have without doubt themselves inveighed against the practice as mischievous, and likely to be attended by religious self-deception. So the author of the Epistle of St James. One of the immediate consequences of this great sobriety is that the joy of present redemption finds no expression in many cases. That is not to be regretted, however, nor is it a sign of decay. The first disciples of Jesus presented all that they had received from Him within the limits of the promises and the claim; it was only in their enthusiastic description of Jesus Himself that the gratitude of redeemed men finds expression. But the authors of these letters, living in a later age, had not to speak about Jesus but to point out the tasks of the present to the Churches. Their simplest, their most natural course, was therefore to say: As Christians, the greatest of all conceivable promises await us in the future, but their fulfilment is attached to one condition, that we should do God’s will now in the present. That alone answered their purpose. And then by encouraging hope themselves and kindling moral zeal by their appeals, by calling attention to weak spots in the armour and giving good counsel, they furthered the true work of redemption without much eloquent palaver. Nor is it greatly to 357 be regretted that they appealed to the will of their hearers instead of to God’s grace and strength. For Jesus Himself had followed exactly the same course. What else are His words than imperatives addressed to a man’s power of self-determination? On no single occasion does He make any mention of grace besides. The later teachers were therefore likewise fully justified in not diluting their energetic moral appeals by the message of grace. All these moralists are really good disciples of Jesus, and take part in the work of the real—not the theological redemption. For he that holds fast the Christian hope and walks in the path of love and obedience, with his eyes firmly fixed on the great goal, has entered into the new life, whether he talks piously about it or not.

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 358 Jesus to the Church and present something of His divine life in their own persons. Here are the two bed-rocks of our salvation—Jesus and His living disciples; these are proof against every trial, they are the great and comforting realities, the mediators of God’s love. Here, too, was the source of all real redemption in the sub-apostolic age; it matters not whether Christians realized the fact or not. But for those realities they substituted imaginary objects—the blood of Christ, the sacraments—and made the certainty of their new life depend on them. The ignorance of Jesus that prevailed in the earliest missionary epoch is chiefly to blame for this. St Paul limited his preaching so uniformly and persistently to the death and resurrection of the Son of God that no impression of the historic Christ could be obtained from it. At the same time he attached a theological signification to the signs of membership which caused them to appear to be more important than the membership itself. The theory of the blood of Christ and of the sacraments was ready to hand; it had grown up along with the growth of the Christian consciousness when the written Gospels began to be spread abroad in the great Church of the Gentiles, and Jesus Himself became better known to all Christians. And so in spite of the new impression of the person of Jesus they cling to the old theory, their inheritance from St Paul. The writings of St John afford a striking confirmation of this statement. The Synoptic Gospels formed the author’s spiritual food. He was compelled by them himself to put down his impressions of the future conveyed by the Gospel in the shape of a Gospel, so 359 that the person of Jesus—the person and not His death alone—should become endeared to and revered by the whole world. This same man plainly shows us in his letter that he practically continues to derive all his comfort from the old formulae of the blood and the sacrifice. If this applies to a giant like John, how much more to Christians of smaller stature. A second decisive reason may be added. Men want to have something external as a guarantee for their salvation, and hence they eagerly take hold of facts—of historical occurrences and material things. Blood, water, wine and bread, possess the great advantage of being tangible and visible: they bulk larger than the invisible impression made by persons. The low level of culture which characterized the first age favoured this superstitious tendency. The age was not yet ripe for the understanding of purely personal greatness and nobility. The Gospels themselves, with their myths and their apparatus of miracles, lead us to this conclusion. A lofty ethical education is needed to reach even the theoretical certainty that persons and not things are that which is truly real. Hence it is that Christians have set up as the guarantees of their salvation, instead of the person of Christ, His blood, i.e., its theological interpretation; and instead of the fellowship of Christian persons, the sacraments.

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 360 and the sacraments can ever impart to the fancy: he has come into touch with the living God, and that alone can uplift us into the eternal. By contact with these realities, the substance, he experiences a joy and a gladness which he would like to impart to all those who are yet under the bondage of the shadow.

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 361 counted as their origin. Almost within the lifetime of disciples of Jesus, the past comes to be surrounded with a halo of sanctity, whereby, as ever on such occasions, creations of a very late date are uncritically ascribed to earlier days. We may even say that we have here the main characteristic of the development of churches: the thoroughgoing depreciation of the present, while the past is idealized and artificially extolled, and the period of inspiration is sharply distinguished from the period of tradition. Genuine and true feelings and reflections have driven men to take up this position, but also a certain want of faith in the living God. The most important characteristics of this Church, now ante-dated and ascribed to the earliest days, were orthodoxy and the episcopal constitution. Both were derived from the apostles, but wrongly so, for none cared less for just these things than the apostles themselves. Adhesion to the Christian religion is now determined by assent to the orthodox faith and by subordination to the bishop. All other marks of Christianity are only accepted as such when the ecclesiastical conditions have been fulfilled.

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 362 especially directs its attention, and that in an increasing measure. It preaches Jesus as the new God and transforms the badges of Christian membership into mysteries. It concludes an alliance with Greek philosophy, at first tentatively and cautiously, bases its apologetic upon the ideas of the logos and the moral law, speaks even of God Himself in philosophic language. Even as early as this we can trace the first beginnings of intellectualism, of the transformation of Christianity into a philosophy of religion. But when the Gnostic movement began and the Gospel threatened to be sacrificed, not only to Hellenism but to the whole intermingling of religions in the chaos of peoples, when it threatened to disappear altogether in speculations, mysteries, asceticisms, superstitions of every kind, then the majority of the Christian teachers and bishops at once cried out, “Thus far but no further.”

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, 363 according as we look at the dark or the light side. A merely average Christianity prevails throughout the congregations, while at the same time the ascetic ideal begins to vie for the mastery with that of the Gospel. Documents such as the Epistle of St James and the “Shepherd” of Hermas give one a really terrible idea of the moral and religious level of many congregations. It would often seem as though the Gospel had lost much of its old power through its alliance with the world. And yet such an impression would be incomplete. There can be no doubt that even in this age the congregations are better than their surroundings, that through the preaching of Jesus and the presence of living Christians in their midst they possess and can offer something which the whole world lacks. But everything depends upon the individuals. In many writings of our age we can trace, not merely the Christian ideal, but its realization in individuals. We may venture to say that men and women existed in all congregations whose lives mightily inspired their fellow-Christians in times of weakness as well as in the day of strife, inspired them with hope and moral grandeur, with brotherly love and trust in God. Where such lives are lived there is Jesus with His redemption, and there is the living God: there, too, is the bright promise of the future, hope for the progress of Christianity through out the world’s history.