History of Dogma Volume I Part 3

The Gospel is the glad message of the government of the world and of every individual soul by the almighty and holy G.o.d, the Father and Judge. In this dominion of G.o.d, which frees men from the power of the Devil, makes them rulers in a heavenly kingdom in contrast with the kingdoms of the world, and which will also be sensibly realised in the future aeon just about to appear, is secured life for all men who yield themselves to G.o.d, although they should lose the world and the earthly life. That is, the soul which is pure and holy in connection with G.o.d, and in imitation of the Divine perfection is eternally preserved with G.o.d, while those who would gain the world, and preserve their life, fall into the hands of the Judge who sentences them to h.e.l.l. This dominion of G.o.d imposes on men a law, an old and yet a new law, viz., that of the Divine perfection and therefore of undivided love to G.o.d and to our neighbour. In this love, where it sways the inmost feeling, is presented the better righteousness (better not only with respect to the Scribes and Pharisees, but also with respect to Moses, see Matt. V.), which corresponds to the perfection of G.o.d. The way to attain it is a change of mind, that is, self-denial, humility before G.o.d, and heartfelt trust in him. In this humility and trust in G.o.d there is contained a recognition of one's own unworthiness; but the Gospel calls to the kingdom of G.o.d those very sinners who are thus minded, by promising the forgiveness of the sins which hitherto have separated them from G.o.d. But the Gospel which appears in these three elements, the dominion of G.o.d, a better righteousness embodied in the law of love, and the forgiveness of sin, is inseparably connected with Jesus Christ; for in preaching this Gospel Jesus Christ everywhere calls men to himself. In him the Gospel is word and deed; it has become his food, and therefore his personal life, and into this life of his he draws all others. He is the Son who knows the Father. In him men are to perceive the kindness of the Lord; in him they are to feel G.o.d's power and government of the world, and to become certain of this consolation; they are to follow him the meek and lowly, and while he, the pure and holy one, calls sinners to himself, they are to receive the a.s.surance that G.o.d through him forgiveth sin.

Jesus Christ has by no express statement thrust this connection of his Gospel with his Person into the foreground. No words could have certified it unless his life, the overpowering impression of his Person, had created it. By living, acting and speaking from the riches of that life which he lived with his Father, he became for others the revelation of the G.o.d of whom they formerly had heard, but whom they had not known.

He declared his Father to be their Father and they understood him. But he also declared himself to be Messiah, and in so doing gave an intelligible expression to his abiding significance for them and for his people. In a solemn hour at the close of his life, as well as on special occasions at an earlier period, he referred to the fact that the surrender to his Person which induced them to leave all and follow him, was no pa.s.sing element in the new position they had gained towards G.o.d the Father. He tells them, on the contrary, that this surrender corresponds to the service which he will perform for them and for the many, when he will give his life a sacrifice for the sins of the world.

By teaching them to think of him and of his death in the breaking of bread and the drinking of wine, and by saying of his death that it takes place for the remission of sins, he has claimed as his due from all future disciples what was a matter of course so long as he sojourned with them, but what might fade away after he was parted from them. He who in his preaching of the kingdom of G.o.d raised the strictest self-examination and humility to a law, and exhibited them to his followers in his own life, has described with clear consciousness his life crowned by death as the imperishable service by which men in all ages will be cleansed from their sin and made joyful in their G.o.d. By so doing he put himself far above all others, although they were to become his brethren; and claimed a unique and permanent importance as Redeemer and Judge. This permanent importance as the Lord he secured, not by disclosures about the mystery of his Person, but by the impression of his life and the interpretation of his death. He interprets it, like all his sufferings, as a victory, as the pa.s.sing over to his glory, and in spite of the cry of G.o.d-forsakenness upon the cross, he has proved himself able to awaken in his followers the real conviction that he lives and is Lord and Judge of the living and the dead.

The religion of the Gospel is based on this belief in Jesus Christ, that is, by looking to him, this historical person, it becomes certain to the believer that G.o.d rules heaven and earth, and that G.o.d, the Judge, is also Father and Redeemer. The religion of the Gospel is the religion which makes the highest moral demands, the simplest and the most difficult, and discloses the contradiction in which every man finds himself towards them. But it also procures redemption from such misery, by drawing the life of men into the inexhaustible and blessed life of Jesus Christ, who has overcome the world and called sinners to himself.

In making this attempt to put together the fundamental features of the Gospel, I have allowed myself to be guided by the results of this Gospel in the case of the first disciples. I do not know whether it is permissible to present such fundamental features apart from this guidance. The preaching of Jesus Christ was in the main so plain and simple, and in its application so manifold and rich, that one shrinks from attempting to systematise it, and would much rather merely narrate according to the Gospel. Jesus searches for the point in every man on which he can lay hold of him and lead him to the Kingdom of G.o.d. The distinction of good and evil--for G.o.d or against G.o.d--he would make a life question for every man, in order to shew him for whom it has become this, that he can depend upon the G.o.d whom he is to fear. At the same time he did not by any means uniformly fall back upon sin, or even the universal sinfulness, but laid hold of individuals very diversely, and led them to G.o.d by different paths. The doctrinal concentration of redemption on sin was certainly not carried out by Paul alone; but, on the other hand, it did not in any way become the prevailing form for the preaching of the Gospel. On the contrary, the ant.i.theses, night, error, dominion of demons, death and light, truth, deliverance, life, proved more telling in the Gentile Churches. The consciousness of universal sinfulness was first made the negative fundamental frame of mind of Christendom by Augustine.

II. Details.

1. Jesus announced the Kingdom of G.o.d which stands in opposition to the kingdom of the devil, and therefore also to the kingdom of the world, as a future Kingdom, and yet it is presented in his preaching as present; as an invisible, and yet it was visible--for one actually saw it. He lived and spoke within the circle of eschatological ideas which Judaism had developed more than two hundred years before: but he controlled them by giving them a new content and forcing them into a new direction.

Without abrogating the law and the prophets he, on fitting occasions, broke through the national, political and sensuous eudaemonistic forms in which the nation was expecting the realisation of the dominion of G.o.d, but turned their attention at the same time to a future near at hand, in which believers would be delivered from the oppression of evil and sin, and would enjoy blessedness and dominion. Yet he declared that even now, every individual who is called into the kingdom may call on G.o.d as his Father, and be sure of the gracious will of G.o.d, the hearing of his prayers, the forgiveness of sin, and the protection of G.o.d even in this present life.[58] But everything in this proclamation is directed to the life beyond: the certainty of that life is the power and earnestness of the Gospel.

2. The conditions of entrance to the kingdom are, in the first place, a complete change of mind, in which a man renounces the pleasures of this world, denies himself, and is ready to surrender all that he has in order to save his soul; then, a believing trust in G.o.d's grace which he grants to the humble and the poor, and therefore hearty confidence in Jesus as the Messiah chosen and called by G.o.d to realise his kingdom on the earth. The announcement is therefore directed to the poor, the suffering, those hungering and thirsting for righteousness, not to those who live, but to those who wish to be healed and redeemed, and finds them prepared for entrance into, and reception of the blessings of the kingdom of G.o.d,[59] while it brings down upon the self-satisfied, the rich and those proud of their righteousness, the judgment of obduracy and the d.a.m.nation of h.e.l.l.

3. The commandment of undivided love to G.o.d and the brethren, as the main commandment, in the observance of which righteousness is realised, and forming the ant.i.thesis to the selfish mind, the l.u.s.t of the world, and every arbitrary impulse,[60] corresponds to the blessings of the Kingdom of G.o.d, viz., forgiveness of sin, righteousness, dominion and blessedness. The standard of personal worth for the members of the King is self-sacrificing labour for others, not any technical mode of wors.h.i.+p or legal preciseness. Renunciation of the world together with its goods, even of life itself in certain circ.u.mstances, is the proof of a man's sincerity and earnest in seeking the Kingdom of G.o.d; and the meekness which renounces every right, bears wrong patiently, requiting it with kindness, is the practical proof of love to G.o.d, the conduct that answers to G.o.d's perfection.

4. In the proclamation and founding of this kingdom, Jesus summoned men to attach themselves to him, because he had recognised himself to be the helper called by G.o.d, and therefore also the Messiah who was promised.[61] He gradually declared himself to the people as such by the names he a.s.sumed,[62] for the names "Anointed," "King," "Lord," "Son of David," "Son of Man," "Son of G.o.d," all denote the Messianic office, and were familiar to the greater part of the people.[63] But though, at first, they express only the call, office, and power of the Messiah, yet by means of them and especially by the designation Son of G.o.d, Jesus pointed to a relation to G.o.d the Father, then and in its immediateness unique, as the basis of the office with which he was entrusted. He has, however, given no further explanation of the mystery of this relation than the declaration that the Son alone knoweth the Father, and that this knowledge of G.o.d and Sons.h.i.+p to G.o.d are secured for all others by the sending of the Son.[64] In the proclamation of G.o.d as Father,[65] as well as in the other proclamation that all the members of the kingdom following the will of G.o.d in love, are to become one with the Son and through him with the Father,[66] the message of the realised kingdom of G.o.d receives its richest, inexhaustible content: the Son of the Father will be the first-born among many brethren.

5. Jesus as the Messiah chosen by G.o.d has definitely distinguished himself from Moses and all the Prophets: as his preaching and his work are the fulfilment of the law and the prophets, so he himself is not a disciple of Moses, but corrects that law-giver; he is not a Prophet, but Master and Lord. He proves this Lords.h.i.+p during his earthly ministry in the accomplishment of the mighty deeds given him to do, above all in withstanding the Devil and his kingdom,[67] and--according to the law of the Kingdom of G.o.d--for that very reason in the service which he performs. In this service Jesus also reckoned the sacrifice of his life, designating it as a [Greek: lutron] which he offered for the redemption of man.[68] But he declared at the same time that his Messianic work was not yet fulfilled in his subjection to death. On the contrary, the close is merely initiated by his death; for the completion of the kingdom will only appear when he returns in glory in the clouds of heaven to judgment. Jesus seems to have announced this speedy return a short time before his death, and to have comforted his disciples at his departure, with the a.s.surance that he would immediately enter into a supramundane position with G.o.d.[69]

6. The instructions of Jesus to his disciples are accordingly dominated by the thought that the end, the day and hour of which, however, no one knows, is at hand. In consequence of this, also, the exhortation to renounce all earthly good takes a prominent place. But Jesus does not impose ascetic commandments as a new law, far less does he see in asceticism as such, sanctification[70]--he himself did not live as an ascetic, but was reproached as a wine-bibber--but he prescribed a perfect simplicity and purity of disposition, and a singleness of heart which remains invariably the same in trouble and renunciation, in possession and use of earthly good. A uniform equality of all in the conduct of life is not commanded: "To whom much is given, of him much shall be required." The disciples are kept as far from fanaticism and overrating of spiritual results as from asceticism. "Rejoice not that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven." When they besought him to teach them to pray, he taught them the "Lord's prayer", a prayer which demands such a collected mind, and such a tranquil, childlike elevation of the heart to G.o.d, that it cannot be offered at all by minds subject to pa.s.sion or preoccupied by any daily cares.

7. Jesus himself did not found a new religious community, but gathered round him a circle of disciples, and chose Apostles whom he commanded to preach the Gospel. His preaching was universalistic inasmuch as it attributed no value to ceremonialism as such, and placed the fulfilment of the Mosaic law in the exhibition of its moral contents, partly against or beyond the letter. He made the law perfect by harmonising its particular requirements with the fundamental moral requirements which were also expressed in the Mosaic law. He emphasised the fundamental requirements more decidedly than was done by the law itself, and taught that all details should be referred to them and deduced from them. The external righteousness of Pharisaism was thereby declared to be not only an outer covering, but also a fraud, and the bond which still united religion and nationality in Judaism was sundered.[71] Political and national elements may probably have been made prominent in the hopes of the future, as Jesus appropriated them for his preaching. But from the conditions to which the realising of the hopes for the individual was attached, there already shone the clearer ray which was to eclipse those elements, and one saying such as Matt. XXII. 21, annulled at once political religion and religious politics.

_Supplement_ 1.--The idea of the inestimable inherent value of every individual human soul, already dimly appearing in several psalms, and discerned by Greek Philosophers, though as a rule developed in contradiction to religion, stands out plainly in the preaching of Jesus.

It is united with the idea of G.o.d as Father, and is the complement to the message of the communion of brethren realising itself in love. In this sense the Gospel is at once profoundly individualistic and Socialistic. The prospect of gaining life, and preserving it for ever, is therefore also the highest which Jesus has set forth, it is not, however, to be a motive, but a reward of grace. In the certainty of this prospect, which is the converse of renouncing the world, he has proclaimed the sure hope of the resurrection, and consequently the most abundant compensation for the loss of the natural life. Jesus put an end to the vacillation and uncertainty which in this respect still prevailed among the Jewish people of his day. The confession of the Psalmist, "Whom have I in heaven but thee, and there is none upon the earth that I desire beside thee", and the fulfilling of the Old Testament commandment, "Love thy neighbour as thyself", were for the first time presented in their connection in the person of Jesus. He himself therefore is Christianity, for the "impression of his person convinced the disciples of the facts of forgiveness of sin and the second birth, and gave them courage to believe in and to lead a new life." We cannot therefore state the "doctrine" of Jesus; for it appears as a supramundane life which must be felt in the person of Jesus, and its truth is guaranteed by the fact that such a life can be lived.

_Supplement_ 2.--The history of the Gospel contains two great transitions, both of which, however, fall within the first century; from Christ to the first generation of believers, including Paul, and from the first, Jewish Christian, generation of these believers to the Gentile Christians, in other words: from Christ to the brotherhood of believers in Christ, and from this to the incipient Catholic Church. No later transitions in the Church can be compared with these in importance. As to the first, the question has frequently been asked, Is the Gospel of Christ to be the authority or the Gospel concerning Christ? But the strict dilemma here is false. The Gospel certainly is the Gospel of Christ. For it has only, in the sense of Jesus, fulfilled its Mission when the Father has been declared to men as he was known by the Son, and where the life is swayed by the realities and principles which ruled the life of Jesus Christ. But it is in accordance with the mind of Jesus and at the same time a fact of history, that this Gospel can only be appropriated and adhered to in connection with a believing surrender to the person of Jesus Christ. Yet every dogmatic formula is suspicious, because it is fitted to wound the spirit of religion; it should not at least be put before the living experience in order to evoke it; for such a procedure is really the admission of the half belief which thinks it necessary that the impression made by the person must be supplemented. The essence of the matter is a personal life which awakens life around it as the fire of one torch kindles another. Early as weakness of faith is in the Church of Christ, it is no earlier than the procedure of making a formulated and ostensibly proved confession the foundation of faith, and therefore demanding, above all, subjection to this confession. Faith a.s.suredly is propagated by the testimony of faith, but dogma is not in itself that testimony.

The peculiar character of the Christian religion is conditioned by the fact that every reference to G.o.d is at the same time a reference to Jesus Christ, and _vice versa_. In this sense the Person of Christ is the central point of the religion, and inseparably united with the substance of piety as a sure reliance on G.o.d. Such a union does not, as is supposed, bring a foreign element into the pure essence of religion.

The pure essence of religion rather demands such a union; for "the reverence for persons, the inner bowing before the manifestation of moral power and goodness is the root of all true religion" (W.

Herrmann). But the Christian religion knows and names only one name before which it bows. In this rests its positive character, in all else, as piety, it is by its strictly spiritual and inward att.i.tude, not a positive religion alongside of others, but religion itself. But just because the Person of Christ has this significance is the knowledge and understanding of the "historical Christ" required: for no other comes within the sphere of our knowledge. "The historical Christ" that, to be sure, is not the powerless Christ of contemporary history shewn to us through a coloured biographical medium, or dissipated in all sorts of controversies, but Christ as a power and as a life which towers above our own life, and enters into our life as G.o.d's Spirit and G.o.d's Word, (see Herrmann, Der Verkehr des Christen mit Gott. 2. Edit. 1892, (i.e., "The Fellows.h.i.+p of the Christian with G.o.d", an important work included in the present series of translations. Ed.) Kahler, Der sog. historische Jesus und der geschichtliche biblische Christus, 1892). But historical labour and investigation are needed in order to grasp this Jesus Christ ever more firmly and surely.

As to the second transition, it brought with it the most important changes, which, however, became clearly manifest only after the lapse of some generations. They appear, first, in the belief in holy consecrations, efficacious in themselves, and administered by chosen persons; further, in the conviction, that the relation of the individual to G.o.d and Christ is, above all, conditioned on the acceptance of a definite divinely attested law of faith and holy writings; further, in the opinion that G.o.d has established Church arrangements, observance of which is necessary and meritorious, as well as in the opinion that a visible earthly community is the people of a new covenant. These a.s.sumptions, which formally const.i.tute the essence of Catholicism as a religion, have no support in the teaching of Jesus, nay, offend against that teaching.

_Supplement_ 3.--The question as to what new thing Christ has brought, answered by Paul in the words, "If any man be in Christ he is a new creature, old things are pa.s.sed away, behold all things are become new", has again and again been pointedly put since the middle of the second century by Apologists, Theologians and religious Philosophers, within and without the Church, and has received the most varied answers. Few of the answers have reached the height of the Pauline confession. But where one cannot attain to this confession, one ought to make clear to oneself that every answer which does not lie in the line of it is altogether unsatisfactory; for it is not difficult to set over against every article from the preaching of Jesus an observation which deprives it of its originality. It is the Person, it is the fact of his life that is new and creates the new. The way in which he called forth and established a people of G.o.d on earth, which has become sure of G.o.d and of eternal life; the way in which he set up a new thing in the midst of the old and transformed the religion of Israel into _the religion_ that is the mystery of his Person, in which lies his unique and permanent position in the history of humanity.

_Supplement_ 4.--The conservative position of Jesus towards the religious traditions of his people had the necessary result that his preaching and his Person were placed by believers in the frame-work of this tradition, which was thereby very soon greatly expanded. But, though this way of understanding the Gospel was certainly at first the only possible way, and though the Gospel itself could only be preserved by such means (see -- 1), yet it cannot be mistaken that a displacement in the conception of the Person and preaching of Jesus, and a burdening of religious faith, could not but forthwith set in, from which developments followed, the premises of which would be vainly sought for in the words of the Lord (see ---- 3, 4). But here the question arises as to whether the Gospel is not inseparably connected with the eschatological world-renouncing element with which it entered into the world, so that its being is destroyed where this is omitted. A few words may be devoted to this question. The Gospel possesses properties which oppose every positive religion, because they depreciate it, and these properties form the kernel of the Gospel. The disposition which is devoted to G.o.d, humble, ardent and sincere in its love to G.o.d and to the brethren, is, as an abiding habit, law, and at the same time, a gift of the Gospel, and also finally exhausts it. This quiet, peaceful element was at the beginning strong and vigorous, even in those who lived in the world of ecstasy and expected the world to come. One may be named for all, Paul. He who wrote 1 Cor. XIII. and Rom. VIII. should not, in spite of all that he has said elsewhere, be called upon to witness that the nature of the Gospel is exhausted in its world-renouncing, ecstatic and eschatological elements, or at least, that it is so inseparably united with these as to fall along with them. He who wrote those chapters, and the greater than he who promised the kingdom of heaven to children, and to those who were hungering and thirsting for righteousness, he to whom tradition ascribes the words: "Rejoice not that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice that your names are written in heaven"--both attest that the Gospel lies above the antagonisms between this world and the next, work and retirement from the world, reason and ecstasy, Judaism and h.e.l.lenism. And because it lies above them it may be united with either, as it originally unfolded its powers under the ruins of the Jewish religion. But still more; it not only can enter into union with them, it must do so if it is otherwise the religion of the living and is itself living. It has only one aim; that man may find G.o.d and have him as his own G.o.d, in order to gain in him humility and patience, peace, joy and love. How it reaches this goal through the advancing centuries, whether with the co-efficients of Judaism or h.e.l.lenism, of renunciation of the world or of culture, of mysticism or the doctrine of predestination, of Gnosticism or Agnosticism, and whatever other incrustations there may yet be which can defend the kernel, and under which alone living elements can grow--all that belongs to the centuries.

However each individual Christian may reckon to the treasure itself the earthly vessel in which he hides his treasure; it is the duty and the right, not only of the religious, but also of the historical estimate to distinguish between the vessel and the treasure; for the Gospel did not enter into the world as a positive statutory religion, and cannot therefore have its cla.s.sic manifestation in any form of its intellectual or social types, not even in the first. It is therefore the duty of the historian of the first century of the Church, as well as that of those which follow, not to be content with fixing the changes of the Christian religion, but to examine how far the new forms were capable of defending, propagating and impressing the Gospel itself. It would probably have perished if the forms of primitive Christianity had been scrupulously maintained in the Church; but now primitive Christianity has perished in order that the Gospel might be preserved. To study this progress of the development, and fix the significance of the newly received forms for the kernel of the matter, is the last and highest task of the historian who himself lives in his subject. He who approaches from without must be satisfied with the general view that in the history of the Church some things have always remained, and other things have always been changing.

_Literature._--Weiss. Biblical Theology of the New Testament. T. and T.

Clark. Wittichen. Beitr. z. bibl. Theol. 3. Thle. 1864-72.

Schureer. Die Predigt Jesu in ihrem Verhaltniss z. A.T.u. z. Judenthum, 1882.

Wellhausen. Abriss der Gesch. Israels u. Juda's (Skizzen u. Vorarbeiten) I. Heft. 1884.

Baldensperger. Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu im Licht der Messianischen Hoffnungen seiner Zeit, 1888, (2 Aufl. 1891). The prize essays of Schmoller and Issel, Ueber die Lehre vom Reiche Gottes im N. Test. 1891 (besides Gunkel in d. Theol. Lit. Ztg. 1893. N. 2).

Wendt. Die Lehre Jesu. (The teaching of Jesus. T. and T. Clark. English translation.)

Joh. Weiss. Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes, 1892.

Bousset. Jesu Predigt in ihrem Gegensatz zum Judenthum, 1892.

C. Holtzman. Die Offenbarung durch Christus und das Neue Testament (Zeitschr. f. Theol. und Kirche I. p. 367 ff.) The special literature in the above work of Weiss, and in the recent works on the life of Jesus, and the Biblical Theology of the New Testament by Beyschlag. (T.T.

Clark)

-- 3. _The Common Preaching concerning Jesus Christ in the First Generation of Believers._

Men had met with Jesus Christ and in him had found the Messiah. They were convinced that G.o.d had made him to be wisdom and righteousness, sanctification and redemption. There was no hope that did not seem to be certified in him, no lofty idea which had not become in him a living reality. Everything that one possessed was offered to him. He was everything lofty that could be imagined. Everything that can be said of him was already said in the first two generations after his appearance.

Nay, more: he was felt and known to be the ever living one, Lord of the world and operative principle of one's own life. "To me to live is Christ and to die is gain;" "He is the way, the truth and the life." One could now for the first time be certain of the resurrection and eternal life, and with that certainty the sorrows of the world melted away like mist before the sun, and the residue of this present time became as a day. This group of facts which the history of the Gospel discloses in the world, is at the same time the highest and most unique of all that we meet in that history; it is its seal and distinguishes it from all other universal religions. Where in the history of mankind can we find anything resembling this, that men who had eaten and drunk with their Master should glorify him, not only as the revealer of G.o.d, but as the Prince of life, as the Redeemer and Judge of the world, as the living power of its existence, and that a choir of Jews and Gentiles, Greeks and Barbarians, wise and foolish, should along with them immediately confess that out of the fulness of this one man they have received grace for grace? It has been said that Islam furnishes the unique example of a religion born in broad daylight, but the community of Jesus was also born in the clear light of day. The darkness connected with its birth is occasioned not only by the imperfection of the records, but by the uniqueness of the fact, which refers us back to the uniqueness of the Person of Jesus.

But though it certainly is the first duty of the historian to signalise the overpowering impression made by the Person of Jesus on the disciples, which is the basis of all further developments, it would little become him to renounce the critical examination of all the utterances which have been connected with that Person with the view of elucidating and glorifying it; unless he were with Origen to conclude that Jesus was to each and all whatever they fancied him to be for their edification. But this would destroy the personality. Others are of opinion that we should conceive him, in the sense of the early communities, as the second G.o.d who is one in essence with the Father, in order to understand from this point of view all the declarations and judgments of these communities. But this hypothesis leads to the most violent distortion of the original declarations, and the suppression or concealment of their most obvious features. The duty of the historian rather consists in fixing the common features of the faith of the first two generations, in explaining them as far as possible from the belief that Jesus is Messiah, and in seeking a.n.a.logies for the several a.s.sertions. Only a very meagre sketch can be given in what follows. The presentation of the matter in the frame-work of the history of dogma does not permit of more, because as noted above, -- 1, the presupposition of dogma forming itself in the Gentile Church is not the whole infinitely rich abundance of early Christian views and perceptions. That presupposition is simply a proclamation of the one G.o.d and of Christ transferred to Greek soil, fixed merely in its leading features and otherwise very plastic, accompanied by a message regarding the future, and demands for a holy life. At the same time the Old Testament and the early Christian Palestinian writings with the rich abundance of their contents, did certainly exercise a silent mission in the earliest communities, till by the creation of the canon they became a power in the Church.

I. The contents of the faith of the disciples,[72] and the common proclamation which united them, may be comprised in the following propositions. Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah promised by the prophets.

Jesus after his death is by the Divine awakening raised to the right hand of G.o.d, and will soon return to set up his kingdom visibly upon the earth. He who believes in Jesus, and has been received into the community of the disciples of Jesus, who, in virtue of a sincere change of mind, calls on G.o.d as Father, and lives according to the commandments of Jesus, is a saint of G.o.d, and as such can be certain of the sin-forgiving grace of G.o.d, and of a share in the future glory, that is, of redemption.[73]

A community of Christian believers was formed within the Jewish national community. By its organisation, the close brotherly union of its members, it bore witness to the impression which the Person of Jesus had made on it, and drew from faith in Jesus and hope of his return, the a.s.surance of eternal life, the power of believing in G.o.d the Father and of fulfilling the lofty moral and social commands which Jesus had set forth. They knew themselves to be the true Israel of the Messianic time (see -- 1), and for that very reason lived with all their thoughts and feelings in the future. Hence the Apocalyptic hopes which in manifold types were current in the Judaism of the time, and which Jesus had not demolished, continued to a great extent in force (see -- 4). One guarantee for their fulfilment was supposed to be possessed in the various manifestations of the Spirit,[74] which were displayed in the members of the new communities at their entrance, with which an act of baptism seems to have been united from the very first[75], and in their gatherings. They were a guarantee that believers really were the [Greek: ekklesia tou theou], those called to be saints, and, as such, kings and priests unto G.o.d[76] for whom the world, death and devil are overcome, although they still rule the course of the world. The confession of the G.o.d of Israel as the Father of Jesus, and of Jesus as Christ and Lord[77] was sealed by the testimony of the possession of the Spirit, which as Spirit of G.o.d a.s.sured every individual of his call to the kingdom, united him personally with G.o.d himself and became to him the pledge of future glory[78].

2. As the Kingdom of G.o.d which was announced had not yet visibly appeared, as the appeal to the Spirit could not be separated from the appeal to Jesus as Messiah, and as there was actually nothing possessed but the reality of the Person of Jesus, so in preaching all stress must necessarily fall on this Person. To believe in him was the decisive fundamental requirement, and, at first, under the presupposition of the religion of Abraham and the Prophets, the sure guarantee of salvation.

It is not surprising then to find that in the earliest Christian preaching Jesus Christ comes before us as frequently as the Kingdom of G.o.d in the preaching of Jesus himself. The image of Jesus, and the power which proceeded from it, were the things which were really possessed.

Whatever was expected was expected only from Jesus the exalted and returning one. The proclamation that the Kingdom of heaven is at hand must therefore become the proclamation that Jesus is the Christ, and that in him the revelation of G.o.d is complete. He who lays hold of Jesus lays hold in him of the grace of G.o.d, and of a full salvation. We cannot, however, call this in itself a displacement: but as soon as the proclamation that Jesus is the Christ ceased to be made with the same emphasis and the same meaning that it had in his own preaching, and what sort of blessings they were which he brought, not only was a displacement inevitable, but even a dispossession. But every dispossession requires the given forms to be filled with new contents.

Simple as was the pure tradition of the confession: "Jesus is the Christ," the task of rightly appropriating and handing down entire the peculiar contents which Jesus had given to his self-witnessing and preaching was nevertheless great, and in its limit uncertain. Even the Jewish Christian could perform this task only according to the measure of his spiritual understanding and the strength of his religious life.

Moreover, the external position of the first communities in the midst of contemporaries who had crucified and rejected Jesus, compelled them to prove, as their main duty, that Jesus really was the Messiah who was promised. Consequently, everything united to bring the first communities to the conviction that the proclamation of the Gospel with which they were entrusted, resolved itself into the proclamation that Jesus is the Christ. The [Greek: didaskein terein panta hota eneteilato ho Iesous]

(teaching to observe all that Jesus had commanded), a thing of heart and life, could not lead to reflection in the same degree, as the [Greek: didaskein hoti outos estin ho christos tou theou] (teaching that this is the Christ of G.o.d): for a community which possesses the Spirit does not reflect on whether its conception is right, but, especially a missionary community, on what the certainty of its faith rests.

The proclamation of Jesus as the Christ, though rooted entirely in the Old Testament, took its start from the exaltation of Jesus, which again resulted from his suffering and death. The proof that the entire Old Testament points to him, and that his person, his deeds and his destiny are the actual and precise fulfilment of the Old Testament predictions, was the foremost interest of believers, so far as they at all looked backwards. This proof was not used in the first place for the purpose of making the meaning and value of the Messianic work of Jesus more intelligible, of which it did not seem to be in much need, but to confirm the Messiahs.h.i.+p of Jesus. Still, points of view for contemplating the Person and work of Jesus could not fail to be got from the words of the Prophets. The fundamental conception of Jesus dominating everything was, according to the Old Testament, that G.o.d had chosen him and through him the Church. G.o.d had chosen him and made him to be both Lord and Christ. He had made over to him the work of setting up the Kingdom, and had led him through death and resurrection to a supra-mundane position of sovereignty, in which he would soon visibly appear and bring about the end. The hope of Christ's speedy return was the most important article in the "Christology," inasmuch as his work was regarded as only reaching its conclusion by that return. It was the most difficult, inasmuch as the Old Testament contained nothing of a second advent of Messiah. Belief in the second advent became the specific Christian belief.

But the searching in the scriptures of the Old Testament, that is, in the prophetic texts, had already, in estimating the Person and dignity of Christ, given an important impulse towards transcending the frame-work of the idea of the theocracy completed solely in and for Israel. Moreover, belief in the exaltation of Christ to the right hand of G.o.d, caused men to form a corresponding idea of the beginning of his existence. The missionary work among the Gentiles, so soon begun and so rich in results, threw a new light on the range of Christ's purpose and work, and led to the consideration of its significance for the whole human race. Finally, the self-testimony of Jesus summoned them to ponder his relation to G.o.d the Father, with the presuppositions of that relation, and to give it expression in intelligible statements.

Speculation had already begun on these four points in the Apostolic age, and had resulted in very different utterances as to the Person and dignity of Jesus (-- 4).[79]

3. Since Jesus had appeared and was believed on as the Messiah promised by the Prophets, the aim and contents of his mission seemed already to be therewith stated with sufficient clearness. Further, as the work of Christ was not yet completed, the view of those contemplating it was, above all, turned to the future. But in virtue of express words of Jesus, and in the consciousness of having received the Spirit of G.o.d, one was already certain of the forgiveness of sin dispensed by G.o.d, of righteousness before him, of the full knowledge of the Divine will, and of the call to the future Kingdom as a present possession. In the procuring of these blessings not a few perceived with certainty the results of the first advent of Messiah, that is, his work. This work might be seen in the whole activity of Christ. But as the forgiveness of sins might be conceived as _the_ blessing of salvation which included with certainty every other blessing, as Jesus had put his death in express relation with this blessing, and as the fact of this death so mysterious and offensive required a special explanation, there appeared in the foreground from the very beginning the confession, in 1 Cor. XV.

3: [Greek: paredoxa humin en protois, ho kai parelabon, hoti christos apethanen huper ton hamartion hemon.] "I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, that _Christ died for our sins_." Not only Paul, for whom, in virtue of his special reflections and experiences, the cross of Christ had become the central point of all knowledge, but also the majority of believers, must have regarded the preaching of the death of the Lord as an essential article in the preaching of Christ[80], seeing that, as a rule, they placed it somehow under the aspect of a sacrifice offered to G.o.d. Still, there were very different conceptions of the value of the death as a means of procuring salvation, and there may have been many who were satisfied with basing its necessity on the fact that it had been predicted, ([Greek: apethanen kata tas graphas]: "he died for our sins _according to the scriptures_"), while their real religious interests were entirely centered in the future glory to be procured by Christ. But it must have been of greater significance for the following period that, from the first, a short account of the destiny of Jesus lay at the basis of all preaching about him (see a part of this in 1 Cor. XV. 1-11). Those articles in which the ident.i.ty of the Christ who had appeared with the Christ who had been promised stood out with special clearness, must have been taken up into this report, as well as those which transcended the common expectations of Messiah, which for that very reason appeared of special importance, viz., his death and resurrection. In putting together this report, there was no intention of describing the "work" of Christ. But after the interest which occasioned it had been obscured, and had given place to other interests, the customary preaching of those articles must have led men to see in them Christ's real performance, his "work."[81]

4. The firm confidence of the disciples in Jesus was rooted in the belief that he did not abide in death, but was raised by G.o.d. That Christ had risen was, in virtue of what they had experienced in him, certainly only after they had seen him, just as sure as the fact of his death, and became the main article of their preaching about him.[82] But in the message of the risen Lord was contained not only the conviction that he lives again, and now lives for ever, but also the a.s.surance that his people will rise in like manner and live eternally. Consequently, the resurrection of Jesus became the sure pledge of the resurrection of all believers, that is of their real personal resurrection. No one at the beginning thought of a mere immortality of the spirit, not even those who a.s.sumed the perishableness of man's sensuous nature. In conformity with the uncertainty which yet adhered to the idea of resurrection in Jewish hopes and speculations, the concrete notions of it in the Christian communities were also fluctuating. But this could not affect the certainty of the conviction that the Lord would raise his people from death. This conviction, whose reverse side is the fear of that G.o.d who casts into h.e.l.l, has become the mightiest power through which the Gospel has won humanity.[83]

5. After the appearance of Paul, the earliest communities were greatly exercised by the question as to how believers obtain the righteousness which they possess, and what significance a precise observance of the law of the Fathers may have in connection with it. While some would hear of no change in the regulations and conceptions which had hitherto existed, and regarded the bestowal of righteousness by G.o.d as possible only on condition of a strict observance of the law, others taught that Jesus as Messiah had procured righteousness for his people, had fulfilled the law once for all, and had founded a new covenant, either in opposition to the old, or as a stage above it. Paul especially saw in the death of Christ the end of the law, and deduced righteousness solely from faith in Christ, and sought to prove from the Old Testament itself, by means of historical speculation, the merely temporary validity of the law and therewith the abrogation of the Old Testament religion. Others, and this view, which is not everywhere to be explained by Alexandrian influences (see above p. 72 f.), is not foreign to Paul, distinguished between spirit and letter in the Mosaic law, giving to everything a spiritual significance, and in this sense holding that the whole law as [Greek: nomos pneumatikos] was binding. The question whether righteousness comes from the works of the law or from faith, was displaced by this conception, and therefore remained in its deepest grounds unsolved, or was decided in the sense of a spiritualised legalism. But the detachment of Christianity from the political forms of the Jewish religion, and from sacrificial wors.h.i.+p, was also completed by this conception, although it was regarded as identical with the Old Testament religion rightly understood. The surprising results of the direct mission to the Gentiles would seem to have first called forth those controversies (but see Stephen) and given them the highest significance. The fact that one section of Jewish Christians, and even some of the Apostles, at length recognised the right of the Gentile Christians to be Christians without first becoming Jews, is the clearest proof that what was above all prized was faith in Christ and surrender to him as the saviour. In agreeing to the direct mission to the Gentiles the earliest Christians, while they themselves observed the law, broke up the national religion of Israel, and gave expression to the conviction that Jesus was not only the Messiah of his people, but the redeemer of humanity.[84] The establishment of the universal character of the Gospel, that is, of Christianity as a religion for the world, became now, however, a problem, the solution of which, as given by Paul, but few were able to understand or make their own.

6. In the conviction that salvation is entirely bound up with faith in Jesus Christ, Christendom gained the consciousness of being a new creation of G.o.d. But while the sense of being the true Israel was thereby, at the same time, held fast, there followed, on the one hand, entirely new historical perspectives, and on the other, deep problems which demanded solution. As a new creation of G.o.d, [Greek: he ekklesia tou theou], the community was conscious of having been chosen by G.o.d in Jesus before the foundation of the world. In the conviction of being the true Israel, it claimed for itself the whole historical development recorded in the Old Testament, convinced that all the divine activity there recorded had the new community in view. The great question which was to find very different answers, was how, in accordance with this view, the Jewish nation, so far as it had not recognised Jesus as Messiah, should be judged. The detachment of Christianity from Judaism was the most important preliminary condition, and therefore the most important preparation, for the Mission among the Gentile nations, and for union with the Greek spirit.

_Supplement_ 1.--Renan and others go too far when they say that Paul alone has the glory of freeing Christianity from the fetters of Judaism.

Certainly the great Apostle could say in this connection also: [Greek: perissoteron auton panton ekopiasa], but there were others beside him who, in the power of the Gospel, transcended the limits of Judaism.

Christian communities, it may now be considered certain, had arisen in the empire, in Rome for example, which were essentially free from the law without being in any way determined by Paul's preaching. It was Paul's merit that he clearly formulated the great question, established the universalism of Christianity in a peculiar manner, and yet in doing so held fast the character of Christianity as a positive religion, as distinguished from Philosophy and Moralism. But the later development presupposes neither his clear formulation nor his peculiar establishment of universalism, but only the universalism itself.