Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity Part 6

This was done, and the implication of the book is that the same opportunity is offered to all others who are willing to follow their Lord. It is interesting to notice that, though it would be an abuse of language, it might be said that Hermas has a doctrine of the Trinity, but that his Trinity does not consist of Father, Son, and Spirit, {115} but of Father, pre-existent Son, that is the Spirit, and adopted Son, that is Jesus. The exact details, however, of the relations subsisting between those three is a question more easily asked than answered, and the next investigator of Hermas will have to consider it very carefully. It is at present only possible to define the problem. As was said above, Hermas seems to imply that the Spirit existed from the beginning alongside of the Father, but he also implies the existence of many other good spirits opposed to the army of demons who people the world. These good spirits seem at times to be identified with angels, and the question will have some day to be discussed afresh of the relation of these spirits to the Spirit who is the Son of G.o.d and of both to the angels. Moreover, the question cannot be solved without taking into account the composition of Hermas. Closely connected with this problem is that of the identification of the Son of G.o.d with an angel who is sometimes described as "the most glorious angel" and sometimes named as Michael. Did Hermas think that the Spirit who was the Son is identical with Michael, or that Jesus became Michael, or in what way are the facts to be explained? Finally, did Hermas think that Christians became angels at their death?[11]

On what book did Hermas base his interpretation of Jesus? There is no proof that he made use of any of our existing gospels, just as it is very doubtful whether 1 Clement was acquainted with any of them. {116}

There is, indeed, in 1 Clement one pa.s.sage referring to the words of Jesus,[12] but it cannot be said that this is a quotation either from Matthew or Luke. It has points of similarity to both, but agrees completely with neither. No theory to explain the facts is convincing, for three are possible. It may be a confused reminiscence of the existing Gospels, or it may be the proof that a harmony was already in existence, or it may be drawn from a doc.u.ment which was used by both Matthew and Luke--in other words, the Q of the critics. Different minds will see different grades of probability in these three hypotheses. But there is no evidence to settle the question.

There is no satisfactory proof that the canonical gospels were known in the Church of Rome until the time of Justin Martyr. If, however, the question be discussed not on the basis of what gospel is quoted by Hermas or Clement, for none of them are by either, but merely on the ground of their doctrinal affinities, the gospel of Mark has the best claim to consideration. According to the other gospels Jesus was the Son of G.o.d from his birth, but, though Mark could be otherwise interpreted, the most obvious meaning of the gospel as it stands is that Jesus became Son of G.o.d at the baptism when the Spirit descended upon him. {117} It can hardly be merely a coincidence that this gospel is actually attributed by tradition[13] to a Church which was at first adoptionist.

Sacramental adoptionist Christianity seems to be the nearest approach to a complete transformation to a mystery religion with no philosophy, which is found in the history of Christianity, but even here the basis is Jewish.

This is plain in its treatment of conduct. It had apparently accepted the sacramental remission of sins in baptism, and there is no trace in this of any allusion to original sin; the sins which are remitted had been committed by the Christian before his baptism, and there is no suggestion of any inheritance of sin. Hermas never contemplated infant baptism. The baptized Christian started with a clean slate, but what would happen to him if he lapsed again into sin? The Epistle to the Hebrews clearly thought that he had no hope of further forgiveness, and Hermas refers very plainly, if not to the Epistle to the Hebrews itself, at least to teaching which it represents. This teaching was, of course, calculated either to maintain a high standard of conduct or else to change the definition of sin. Apparently none of the other mystery religions ever attached this importance to conduct after initiation, but human nature presented some difficulties in the enforcement of the Christian theory. It was found that the baptized frequently, {118} if not always, lapsed into sin, and that the situation complained of by 4 Ezra was repeating itself.[14] What was the use of a system which offered men immortality, but only on conditions which no one could fulfil?

Hermas solved the problem by having recourse to another element in Jewish thought. He appealed to the possibility of repentance, and put his solution of the problem into the form of a revelation made to him by an angel--the Shepherd of the book. The revelation which Hermas announces is that there is one repentance, but only one, for those who sin after baptism. If repentance is taken merely as an act of contrition this obviously does little to solve the problem: it is not really sufficient to cover the facts of human nature. But for Hermas repentance is much more than contrition. It consists apparently of cheerful submission to all the unpleasant {119} happenings of life, which are regarded as organised by an angel, specially appointed for the purpose, in order to adapt them to the improvement of sinners.

From the general characteristic of the parables it is clear that Hermas did not contemplate the immediate restoration of the penitent, or the immediate elimination of sin. Penitence is for him an unpleasant process of education, and I think he contemplates the probability that it is life-long. Like all education it demands that the pupil shall obey his teacher, and the teacher is in this case the angel of repentance, who arranges life so as to make it educative. It is the beginning of the great Catholic system of penance which it is so difficult to estimate at its full value because of its corruption and exploitation in the Middle Ages. Whether one believes in the existence of an angel of repentance or not, the view that life with all its happenings is an education, which gradually teaches men, if they are willing to accept it, how to cease to be sinful, was a great lesson for the second century, and I do not doubt that it had much to do with producing in the next century a Church which, in spite of persecution, ultimately won the a.s.sent of the best part of the Roman world. Though the form in which Hermas presented his teaching was mythological and crude it contained truths which cannot be neglected.

No one can read _The Shepherd of Hermas_ without feeling that it has not been adequately discussed by modern scholarship. It is the key to the proper {120} understanding of Roman Christianity at the beginning of the second century, but to use this key properly it must be subjected to a process of criticism to determine the relations of its const.i.tuent parts to one another, and to the contemporary or almost contemporary doc.u.ments--1 Clement and the Epistle to the Hebrews.

Adoptionist Christianity was not destined to conquer the world, and though Roman Christianity proved to be the surviving form it had first to change much of its character in a manner which can with some degree of picturesque exaggeration be described as conquest by Ephesus.

The early development of Christianity in Ephesus is more obscure than it is in Rome; it ceased quite soon to flourish in its place of origin, but lived on elsewhere. The doc.u.ments which represent the first stages of its growth are the later Pauline epistles, and the Fourth Gospel.

They are inextricably involved in critical questions which have as yet received less attention than the synoptic problem.

This is especially true of the later epistles. In them, as distinct from the earlier epistles, we have a cosmical Christology which regards Christ as a pre-existent divine person who became a human being. Of that there is no doubt, nor can it be disputed that there are one or two pa.s.sages in the earlier epistles which seem to pave the way for this kind of thought; but these pa.s.sages are very few, and as it were wholly {121} incidental. Thus the critical question arises whether these later epistles were written by the same person as the author of the earlier ones. The point has never been discussed fully in England, and by but a very few scholars on the Continent. The result is that it is only possible at present to say that three solutions are possible and are awaiting discussion. The first is that Paul's thought moved very rapidly in the last years of his life, and that the difference between the earlier and the later epistles only represents the development of his thought. This is certainly a possible solution.

There is no literary objection to it which cannot adequately be answered. The only doubt is the psychological question whether the development implied is not so great as to be improbable. A second possibility is that the later epistles are not Pauline but are the work of some of Paul's followers. This is also possible, and from the nature of the case scarcely admits of proof or of refutation. The third possibility was suggested in 1877 by H. J. Holtzmann, who thought that Ephesians represents the work of the second generation, and that Colossians was a genuine epistle interpolated by the author of Ephesians. It is said sometimes that this is an incredibly complicated hypothesis. Undoubtedly it is complicated, but so are the facts, and those who regard it as incredible forget that it is merely the application to the Pauline epistles of exactly the same process as every one knows to have been suffered by the epistles of Ignatius.

Therefore this theory {122} also is perfectly possible, and ultimately, unless the interest in critical questions dies out altogether, the discussion of these three possibilities is certain to receive fresh attention.[15]

The critical questions concerned with the Fourth Gospel are better known. But whether it is later than the later epistles of Paul, and whether it represents the result of their influence or is a parallel line of thought is another problem which has not yet been fully discussed: in any case, it is cognate with them. No one knows who wrote the Fourth Gospel. Tradition ascribes it to John the son of Zebedee, but all critical probability is against this theory. It seems tolerably clear that the Fourth Gospel was not written by an eye-witness, and that it implies not a knowledge of the historic Jesus so much as an acquaintance with the subapostolic Church. It is apparently an attempt to rewrite the story of Jesus in the interests of a "pre-existent" Christology, and of a high form of sacramental teaching.

Tradition connects both the later Pauline epistles and the Fourth Gospel with the Province of Asia, and especially with Ephesus. There is no reason for doubting this tradition, but it is strange how soon its {123} creative spirit pa.s.sed to Alexandria, a Church of which the origin is as obscure as the later history is famous.

Tantalising though many of these problems are, there is no doubt as to the main characteristics of the Christianity of Ephesus and its neighbourhood. Its Christology was the reverse of Adoptionist. It did not think of Jesus as a man who had become divine, but as a G.o.d who had become human. Moreover, an identification of this pre-existent being with the Logos of the philosopher was gradually approached in the later Epistles, and finally made in the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel.

The word Logos has an intricate and long history which has often been treated in books on the New Testament: it is quite unnecessary to repeat it at length. But it has not usually been sufficiently noted that the difficulty of the problems raised by it are mainly due to its use in different ways in different systems of thought. The popular Stoic philosophy, with its belief in a G.o.d immanent in the universe, could use Logos in the sense of the governing principle of the world, and as little less than a synonym, or, perhaps one should say, description of G.o.d. On the other hand, a transcendental theology such as Platonism, believing in a G.o.d entirely above all existence in the universe, needed a connecting link between G.o.d and the world, and could use Logos in this sense. Finally, a mediatising writer such as Cornutus could explain that the Logos was Hermes, and so triumphantly {124} reconcile philosophy and myth, by giving a mythological meaning to a philosophic term.

All this is clear enough; but the difficulty begins when one asks in which sense the writer of the Fourth Gospel used the phrase. Did he mean that the Logos was the _anima mundi_? The phrase "the true light which lighteth every one" is susceptible of such a meaning. But it seems more probable that his theology was in the main transcendental, and that the Logos was for him the connecting link between G.o.d and the world. But how far is the Prologue really metaphysical and not comparable in its identification of Jesus and the Logos to Cornutus,[16] with his identification of Hermes and the Logos?

Further problems arise if an effort is made to reconstruct fully the Ephesian Christianity of which the Fourth Gospel is the product. After the Prologue the Logos does not seem to be mentioned again; Jesus appears as the supernatural Lord (though this word is not characteristic of the Gospel) who reveals the Father to men. He offers them salvation by regeneration in baptism, and by eating his flesh and blood in the Eucharist. They become supernaturally the children of G.o.d. This is the teaching of the h.e.l.lenised Church, not of the historic Jesus. But running through the Gospel there is also another line of thought which regards salvation as due to knowledge rather than sacraments. What is the relation to each other of {125} these two ways of regarding salvation? The problem has scarcely been formulated by the students of the Fourth Gospel, much less adequately discussed.

Obviously the tendency of Ephesian Christianity was to minimise the human characteristics of the historic Jesus, and to merge into Docetism. This can be seen in the Fourth Gospel, and in the allied Johannine Epistles. The writer is fully aware of the danger, and protests against Docetism, but his own writings with very small changes would have been admirably adapted for Docetic purposes.[17]

If Ephesian Christianity had never come to Rome, and met its complement in the Adoptionists, it might, in spite of the Fourth Gospel, have degenerated into thorough-going Docetism, or have been represented only by Gnostics. It is hard either to prove or to refute the suggestion that Alexandrian Gnosticism of the Valentinian type came from Ephesus along the Syrian coast, and that the ultimately successful Catholicism of Pantaenus and Clement came from the other stream which pa.s.sed first northwards and then through Italy to Alexandria. Each of these streams acc.u.mulated new ideas on the way: the stream pa.s.sing through Syria found the Eastern Gnostics of whom Simon Magus is alleged to have been the first. The other stream pa.s.sed through Rome and found Adoptionism.

The combination with this strengthened the belief in the true humanity of Jesus, and in his {126} real divinity, thus providing the groundwork for the Christological development of Irenaeus and his successors in the fourth century.[18]

The man who seems to have brought Ephesian Christianity to Rome was Justin Martyr, sometimes called the Philosopher. This t.i.tle is somewhat unfair to philosophers, for the only claim which Justin could make to the name was that he had dabbled with little profit in many schools before he was converted to Christianity by an old man who gave him the Christian interpretation of the Old Testament.

Justin is in fact not much more philosophic than Hermas. His Christology is the incarnation of the Logos; but Logos is for him merely the name of a second G.o.d who is responsible for creation and redemption. Of the many books which he is said to have written only his two Apologies and his Dialogue with Trypho are extant. The latter is a long rambling exposition of the proof from the Old Testament, in the Septuagint version, that there is a "second G.o.d," and that his incarnation in Jesus was foretold. The Apologies also are full of proof from the Old Testament, but contain most valuable statements as to the Christian cult and its sacraments. They are also remarkable for insisting that the heathen religions are due to the clumsy efforts of demons to deceive men by false fulfilments of scripture.

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Justin was not a man of commanding intellect, but he seems to have brought Ephesian Christianity to Rome, and so began in that city the synthesis with Greek philosophy which the later Pauline epistles and Fourth Gospel began in Ephesus and Origen completed in Alexandria. He appears to have been martyred in Rome, perhaps owing to the hostility of Crescens, a cynic philosopher with whom he had quarrelled. The acts of his martyrdom are extant; the most significant point in them is his dissociation from other bodies of Christians in Rome.[19] This is seen from the following extract from his examination by Rusticus the Prefect:

"Rusticus the prefect said, 'Where do you a.s.semble?' Justin said, 'Where inclination and ability lead each of us. For do you really think that we all a.s.semble in the same place? That is not the case, because the G.o.d of the Christians is not locally circ.u.mscribed, but, though he cannot be seen, fills heaven and earth and receives worship and glorification from the faithful in all places.' Rusticus the prefect said, 'Tell me where you a.s.semble or in what place you collect your disciples.' Justin said, 'I am staying above the baths of a certain Martin, the son of Timothinus, and throughout this period (it is my second visit to Rome) I am unacquainted with any other a.s.sembly except that in this house. And if {128} any one wished to come with me, I communicated to him the words of truth.'"[20]

It would be possible to fill a volume with the discussion of the development of the Logos doctrine after the time of Justin Martyr. All that can here be done is to note how it pa.s.sed from Rome to Alexandria--from Justin to Origen--and to compare certain aspects of it with Adoptionist Christianity, and to consider the position which either of these Christologies can take in modern theology.

It is very doubtful whether Justin Martyr or the writer of the Fourth Gospel had any concept of Immaterial Reality. To Justin Martyr, at least, the Logos appears to have been a second G.o.d, and his identification of Jesus with the Logos is much more like that of Cornutus--_mutatis mutandis_--than anything else which we possess. But however this may be, the Logos Christology was invaluable for Origen in finding room in Christian theology for the identification of G.o.d with Immaterial Reality. We may paraphrase rather than explain his teaching by saying that he believed in the divinity and unity of Immaterial {129} Reality, but thought also that diversity as well as unity could be predicated of it; that man belonged on one side of his nature to Immaterial Reality, and that, so far as he did so, he shared the attribute of eternity. Like other thinkers, Origen failed to make clear exactly what is the relation between the Immaterial Reality which is eternal and changeless and the Material Reality which is subject to change and time, and is the basis of phenomena. But in some way, he believed, the Logos[21] was that power of Immaterial Reality which stretches out and mingles with the world of matter. It is impossible and undesirable to expound at length this general theory; it must suffice to notice its bearings on Christology.

In the first place, it seems to have overcome the tendency of Logos theology to produce Docetism. The earlier forms of this kind of teaching which represented the Logos as a spirit who came down to rescue humanity offered no real reason for maintaining the true humanity of Jesus. It seems to have been the pressure of recognised fact, which had not yet been forgotten, which made the writer of the Fourth Gospel and of the First Epistle of John protest so strongly against Docetism. The tendency of their teaching by itself was all the other way, and the Acts of John, with their completely unreal humanity of Jesus, are the natural, though no doubt unlooked-for, results of the Ephesian school. But that is not the case with {130} Origen, and cannot be the case with any Christology or theology which really understands the doctrine of Immaterial Reality. It is possible to have a spirit, using the word in the popular and material sense, which looks like a human being, but is not really one, but that cannot be so with Immaterial Reality.

Origen achieved a synthesis with Greek philosophy which enabled Christianity to accept a belief in Immaterial Reality without a Docetic Christology, but it must be remembered that Origen was able to do this largely because he stood in the line of succession from the Fourth Gospel and Justin Martyr. He did not take the word Logos in the same sense as Justin had done, and he permanently changed, and indeed partly confused, Christian terminology by giving the meaning of immaterial to the words spirit and spiritual. They have in the main retained this meaning ever since, but students of the New Testament will do well to remember that this is not the meaning of the words in the original, and that Origen, though neither the first nor the last, is probably the ablest of the long line of theologians who have introduced metaphysics into Christian doctrine by a perverse exegesis of the words of Scripture.

The Catholic Christianity which emerged from the struggle between Adoptionism and the Logos Christology was a curious combination of both. In the strict sense of Christology, Adoptionism was completely abandoned. Jesus was regarded as the eternal Logos who became man, not as the inspired {131} and perfect man who became G.o.d. But in the sphere of soteriology the legacy of Adoptionism can clearly be seen.

The Christian became the adopted son of G.o.d, joint heir with Christ, and this remained part of Catholic teaching. It is not, however, really consistent with the Logos doctrine, and is logically part of Adoptionism. The incoherence introduced at this point was met by the splendid paradox of Irenaeus and Athanasius that G.o.d became man in order that man might become G.o.d. But splendid though this be, it remains a paradox, and it was diluted very considerably in later theology, which seems to have felt that the abandonment of Adoptionism in the sphere of Christology necessitated its abandonment in the doctrine of salvation. Thus, at least in popular theology, the grandiose conception of the apotheosis of humanity has pa.s.sed into the far more mythological one of becoming an angel after death--a view very widely held, though perhaps never officially recognised.

What part can either Adoptionism or the Logos Christology play in any modern form of thought? Adoptionism seems to me to have no part or lot in any intelligent modern theology, though it is unfortunately often promulgated, especially in pulpits which are regarded as liberal. We cannot believe that at any time a human being, in consequence of his virtue, became G.o.d, which he was not before, or that any human being ever will do so. No doctrine of Christology and no doctrine of salvation which is {132} Adoptionist in essence can come to terms with modern thought.

The doctrine of the Logos is on a different plane. In the form in which it is presented by Justin Martyr it is probably as unacceptable as Adoptionism, but in the form presented by Origen the modern mind constantly feels that the writer is struggling to express its own thoughts, and is attracted to Origen not only by the recognition of a common purpose, but by a consciousness of a common failure, for, at the end, reality transcends thought and language, and the philosophy of Alexandria was no more completely successful than is that of our world.

I have often felt in talking with younger men of the present day how closely they have approached to the position of Origen and how tar they are from him in method. If I may put into my own words the form of thought which seems to animate them, it is something of this kind.

They feel that the world in which we live is the expression of some great plan or purpose or pattern which is not yet complete, which shows no sign of finality, but is ever growing in complexity; which resolves itself again and again into simplicity, and then spreads out again on a yet wider scale. The plan or purpose is not a dead mechanical thing; the life which explains it is within and not without it. Men are partly the result, but partly also the instruments or even agents of this purpose. Wisdom is the right understanding of its nature; and righteousness is the attempt to subordinate human purposes {133} to this great purpose of life. For man is not only an effect, he is a cause. When he acts, he brings into existence a new cause of which the results will follow in accordance with the established laws of reality.

But there is a moment of choice, when he has it within his power to decide whether he will act or not. If he choose right, his actions will be taken up into the great web of existence, consistently with the great purpose. If he choose wrongly, the results will in the end be destroyed, not without suffering to himself and others.

To a more vivid imagination which thinks in pictures rather than in metaphysical language, life presents itself as a great web which is slowly coming from the loom, and sometimes there seems to be behind the loom the figure of the great weaver; at other times the weaving is being carried on by men and women whose weaving sometimes conforms, sometimes does not, to an infinitely complicated but symmetrical plan which, and here is the paradoxical tragedy, they can only see in the web which has been already woven; but they know that whether what they weave will remain, or not depends upon its being in accord with the pattern. And then the picture changes slightly, and it seems as though the pattern begins to reveal the same features as those dimly discerned in the weaver behind the loom. And yet again the picture changes, and it is not merely the great weaver, but the men and women who are working that reappear with him to live on in the pattern emerging in the web.

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That is not the same thing as the Logos Christology or doctrine of salvation as propounded by Origen, but I think that he would have understood it had he lived now. It is not the same thing as the teaching of the Kingdom of G.o.d preached by Jesus, yet I do not think that he would have condemned it, for great men understand the thoughts of lesser ones though they themselves fail to be understood. The thoughts and words of Jesus, like those of Origen, were borrowed from his own time and race; they belong to the first century as those of Origen belong to the third. No historical reconstruction can make them adequate for our generation, or even intelligible except to those who have pa.s.sed through an education in history impossible for most. But the will of Jesus and the will of Origen, if we can reach them through the language and thought of their time, have no such limitations. If I have understood them rightly, both were animated by a desire to accomplish the purpose of G.o.d, the G.o.d who is life.[22] And that purpose did not appeal to them as the achievement for themselves of any salvation, in this world or in the world to come, beyond the reach of other men, but rather to show them what is the way of life, the natural way, consistent with the purpose of G.o.d {135} and the pattern of life.

So far as they succeeded, in their teaching they did so because they devoted themselves to expressing clearly what they wished without troubling to ask whether it conformed to what other people said, and they spoke the clearest language which they could find in their own generation.

To do the same thing is the business of preachers and teachers to-day.

The man who tries merely to repeat the thoughts or the words of past generations forgets that the call which comes to the teacher is not to repeat what others have said because they have said it, but to say what is true because it is true, and to say it in the language of his own time that it may be intelligible. He will often appear to contradict the thought or the language of Jesus or of Paul or of Origen, but he will be loyal to the purpose which was theirs, and yet so much more than theirs.

[1] This proves that this form of thought is not Semitic; had it been so, the Spirit would scarcely have been masculine.

[2] It would be unfair and misleading to say the doctrine of the Trinity. That doctrine is not the statement of the "threeness" of G.o.d, but of the relation which this bears to his unity.

[3] No doubt the "threeness" was emphasised by the habit of three immersions in baptism, whatever the origin of this practice may be, and by philosophic reflections as to the properties of triangles such as are found in Philo.

[4] Illuminating suggestions can be found in F. C. Conybeare's _The Key of Truth_ and in H. Usener's _Weihnachtsfest_.

[5] In the _Earlier Epistles of St. Paul_, pp. 335 ff. (especially p.

368), I suggested that the shorter recension of the Epistle to the Romans, the existence of which is proved by the evidence of the Latin _breves_, Tertullian, Cyprian, and Marcion, and by the textual confusion surrounding the final doxology, may be the same as that which omits all mention of Rome, and that, if so, it was probably written originally for some other destination. This suggestion has met with little approbation from critics, but with even less discussion. I still think that it is worth consideration.

[6] _Paulos doulos Iesou Christou klets apostolos aphorismenos eis eu aggelion theou o proepeggeilato dia ton propheton autou en graphais hagiais per tou uhiou autou tou genomenou ek spermatos Daued kata sarka tou hopisthentos uhiou en dunamei kata pneuma hagiosunes ex anastaseos nekron Iesou Christou tou kuriou hemon._