History of Dogma Volume I Part 5

The stages in the ecclesiastical history of dogma, from the middle of the first to the middle of the fifth century, correspond to the stages in the history of the ancient religion during the same period. The Apologists, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus; the Alexandrians; Methodius, and the Cappadocians; Dionysius, the Areopagite, have their parallels in Seneca, Marcus Aurelius; Plutarch, Epictetus, Numenius; Plotinus, Porphyry; Iamblichus and Proclus.

But it is not only Greek philosophy that comes into question for the history of Christian dogma. The whole of Greek culture must be taken into account. In his posthumous work, Hatch has shewn in a masterly way how that is to be done. He describes the Grammar, the Rhetoric, the learned Profession, the Schools, the Exegesis, the Homilies, etc., of the Greeks, and everywhere shews how they pa.s.sed over into the Church, thus exhibiting the Philosophy, the Ethic, the speculative Theology, the Mysteries, etc., of the Greeks, as the main factors in the process of forming the ecclesiastical mode of thought.

But, besides the Greek, there is no mistaking the special influence of Romish ideas and customs upon the Christian Church. The following points specially claim attention: (1) The conception of the contents of the Gospel and its application as "salus legitima," with the results which followed from the naturalising of this idea. (2) The conception of the word of Revelation, the Bible, etc., as "lex." (3) The idea of tradition in its relation to the Romish idea. (4) The Episcopal const.i.tution of the Church, including the idea of succession, of the Primates.h.i.+p and universal Episcopate, in their dependence on Romish ideas and inst.i.tutions (the Ecclesiastical organisation in its dependence on the Roman Empire). (5) The separation of the idea of the "sacrament" from that of the "mystery", and the development of the forensic discipline of penance. The investigation has to proceed in a historical line, described by the following series of chapters: Rome and Tertullian; Rome and Cyprian; Rome, Optatus and Augustine; Rome and the Popes of the fifth century. We have, to shew how, by the power of her const.i.tution and the earnestness and consistency of her policy, Rome a second time, step by step, conquered the world, but this time the Christian world.[135]

Greek philosophy exercised the greatest influence not only on the Christian mode of thought, but also through that, on the inst.i.tutions of the Church. The Church never indeed became a philosophic school: but yet in her was realised in a peculiar way, that which the Stoics and the Cynics had aimed at. The Stoic (Cynic) Philosopher also belonged to the factors from which the Christian Priests or Bishops were formed. That the old bearers of the Spirit--Apostles, Prophets, Teachers--have been changed into a cla.s.s of professional moralists and preachers, who bridle the people by counsel and reproof [Greek: nouthetein kai elenchein], that this cla.s.s considers itself and desires to be considered as a mediating Kingly Divine cla.s.s, that its representatives became "Lords"

and let themselves be called "Lords", all this was prefigured in the Stoic wise man and in the Cynic Missionary. But so far as these several "Kings and Lords" are united in the idea and reality of the Church and are subject to it, the Platonic idea of the republic goes beyond the Stoic and Cynic ideals, and subordinates them to it. But this Platonic ideal has again obtained its political realisation in the Church through the very concrete laws of the Roman Empire, which were more and more adopted, or taken possession of. Consequently, in the completed Church we find again the philosophic schools and the Roman Empire.

_Literature._--Besides the older works of Tzschirner, Dollinger, Burckhardt, Preller, see Friedlander, Darstellungen aus der Sittengesch.

Roms. in der Zeit von August bis zum Ausgang der Antonine, 3 Bd. Aufl.

Boissier, La Religion Romaine d'Auguste aux Antonins, 2 Bd. 1874.

Ramsay, The Church in the Roman Empire before 170. London, 1893.

Reville, La Religion a Rome sous les Severes, 1886. Schiller, Geschichte der Rom. Kaiserzeit, 1883. Marquardt, Romische Staatsverwaltung, 3 Bde.

1878. Foucart, Les a.s.sociations Relig. chez les Grecs, 1873. Liebeman, Z. Gesch. u. Organisation d. Rom. Vereinswesen, 1890. K.J. Neumann, Der Rom. Staat und die allg. Kirche, Bd. I. 1890. Leopold Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen, 2 Bd. 1882. Heinrici, Die Christengemeinde Korinth's und die religiosen Genossenschaften der Griechen, in der Ztschr. f.

wissensch. Theol. 1876-77. Hatch, The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church. Buechner, De neocoria, 1888.

Hirschfeld, Z. Gesch. d. rom. Kaisercultus. The Histories of Philosophy by Zeller, Erdmann, Ueberweg, Strumpell, Windelband, etc. Heinze, Die Lehre vom Logos in der Griech. Philosophie, 1872. By same Author, Der Eudamonismus in der Griech. Philosophie, 1883. Hirzel, Untersuchungen zu Cicero's philos. Schriften, 3 Thle. 1877-1883. These investigations are of special value for the history of dogma, because they set forth with the greatest accuracy and care, the later developments of the great Greek philosophic schools, especially on Roman soil. We must refer specially to the discussions on the influence of the Roman on the Greek Philosophy. Volkmann, Die Rhetorik der Griechen und Romer, 1872.

_Supplementary._

Perhaps the most important fact for the following development of the history of Dogma, the way for which had already been prepared in the Apostolic age, is the twofold conception of the aim of Christ's appearing, or of the religious blessing of salvation. The two conceptions were indeed as yet mutually dependent on each other, and were twined together in the closest way, just as they are presented in the teaching of Jesus himself; but they began even at this early period to be differentiated. Salvation, that is to say, was conceived, on the one hand, as sharing in the glorious kingdom of Christ soon to appear, and everything else was regarded as preparatory to this sure prospect; on the other hand, however, attention was turned to the conditions and to the provisions of G.o.d wrought by Christ, which first made men capable of attaining that portion, that is, of becoming sure of it. Forgiveness of sin, righteousness, faith, knowledge, etc., are the things which come into consideration here, and these blessings themselves, so far as they have as their sure result life in the kingdom of Christ, or more accurately eternal life, may be regarded as salvation. It is manifest that these two conceptions need not be exclusive. The first regards the final effect as the goal and all else as a preparation, the other regards the preparation, the facts already accomplished by Christ and the inner transformation of men as the main thing, and all else as the natural and necessary result. Paul, above all, as may be seen especially from the arguments in the epistle to the Romans, unquestionably favoured the latter conception and gave it vigorous expression. The peculiar conflicts with which he saw himself confronted, and, above all, the great controversy about the relation of the Gospel and the new communities to Judaism, necessarily concentrated the attention on questions as to the arrangements on which the community of those sanctified in Christ should rest, and the conditions of admission to this community. But the centre of gravity of Christian faith might also for the moment be removed from the hope of Christ's second advent, and would then necessarily be found in the first advent, in virtue of which salvation was already prepared for man, and man for salvation (Rom.

III.-VIII.). The dual development of the conception of Christianity which followed from this, rules the whole history of the Gospel to the present day. The eschatological view is certainly very severely repressed, but it always breaks out here and there, and still guards the spiritual from the secularisation which threatens it. But the possibility of uniting the two conceptions in complete harmony with each other, and on the other hand, of expressing them ant.i.thetically, has been the very circ.u.mstance that has complicated in an extraordinary degree the progress of the development of the history of dogma. From this follows the ant.i.thesis, that from that conception which somehow recognises salvation itself in a present spiritual possession, eternal life in the sense of immortality may be postulated as final result, though not a glorious kingdom of Christ on earth; while, conversely, the eschatological view must logically depreciate every blessing which can be possessed in the present life.

It is now evident that the theology, and, further, the h.e.l.lenising, of Christianity, could arise and has arisen in connection, not with the eschatological, but only with the other conception. Just because the matters here in question were present spiritual blessings, and because, from the nature of the case, the ideas of forgiveness of sin, righteousness, knowledge, etc., were not so definitely outlined in the early tradition, as the hopes of the future, conceptions entirely new and very different, could, as it were, be secretly naturalised. The spiritual view left room especially for the great contrast of a religious and a moralistic conception, as well as for a frame of mind which was like the eschatological in so far as, according to it, faith and knowledge were to be only preparatory blessings in contrast with the peculiar blessing of immortality, which of course was contained in them.

In this frame of mind the illusion might easily arise that this hope of immortality was the very kernel of those hopes of the future for which old concrete forms of expression were only a temporary sh.e.l.l. But it might further be a.s.sumed that contempt for the transitory and finite as such, was identical with contempt for the kingdom of the world which the returning Christ would destroy.

The history of dogma has to shew how the old eschatological view was gradually repressed and transformed in the Gentile Christian communities, and how there was finally developed and carried out a spiritual conception in which a strict moralism counterbalanced a luxurious mysticism, and wherein the results of Greek practical philosophy could find a place. But we must here refer to the fact, which is already taught by the development in the Apostolic age, that Christian dogmatic did not spring from the eschatological, but from the spiritual mode of thought. The former had nothing but sure hopes and the guarantee of these hopes by the Spirit, by the words of prophecy and by the apocalyptic writings. One does not think, he lives and dreams, in the eschatological mode of thought; and such a life was vigorous and powerful till beyond the middle of the second century. There can be no external authorities here; for one has at every moment the highest authority in living operation in the Spirit. On the other hand, not only does the ecclesiastical christology essentially spring from the spiritual way of thinking, but very specially also the system of dogmatic guarantees. The co-ordination of [Greek: logos theou, didache kuriou, kerygma ton dodeka apostolon] [word of G.o.d, teaching of the Lord, preaching of the twelve Apostles], which lay at the basis of all Gentile Christian speculation almost from the very beginning, and which was soon directed against the enthusiasts, originated in a conception which regarded as the essential thing in Christianity, the sure knowledge which is the condition of immortality. If, however, in the following sections of this historical presentation, the pervading and continuous opposition of the two conceptions is not everywhere clearly and definitely brought into prominence, that is due to the conviction that the historian has no right to place the factors and impelling ideas of a development in a clearer light than they appear in the development itself. He must respect the obscurities and complications as they come in his way. A clear discernment of the difference of the two conceptions was very seldom attained to in ecclesiastical antiquity, because they did not look beyond their points of contact, and because certain articles of the eschatological conception could never be suppressed or remodelled in the Church. Goethe (Dichtung und Wahrheit, II. 8,) has seen this very clearly. "The Christian religion wavers between its own historic positive element and a pure Deism, which, based on morality, in its turn offers itself as the foundation of morality. The difference of character and mode of thought shew themselves here in infinite gradations, especially as another main distinction cooperates with them, since the question arises, what share the reason, and what the feelings, can and should have in such convictions." See, also, what immediately follows.

2. The origin of a series of the most important Christian customs and ideas is involved in an obscurity which in all probability will never be cleared up. Though one part of those ideas may be pointed out in the epistles of Paul, yet the question must frequently remain unanswered, whether he found them in existence or formed them independently, and accordingly the other question, whether they are exclusively indebted to the activity of Paul for their spread and naturalisation in Christendom.

What was the original conception of baptism? Did Paul develop independently his own conception? What significance had it in the following period? When and where did baptism in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit arise, and how did it make its way in Christendom?

In what way were views about the saving value of Christ's death developed alongside of Paul's system? When and how did belief in the birth of Jesus from a Virgin gain acceptance in Christendom? Who first distinguished Christendom, as [Greek: ekklesia tou theou], from Judaism, and how did the concept [Greek: ekklesia] become current? How old is the triad: Apostles, Prophets and Teachers? When were Baptism and the Lord's Supper grouped together? How old are our first three Gospels? To all these questions and many more of equal importance there is no sure answer. But the greatest problem is presented by Christology, not indeed in its particular features doctrinally expressed, these almost everywhere may be explained historically, but in its deepest roots as it was preached by Paul as the principle of a new life (2 Cor. V. 17), and as it was to many besides him the expression of a personal union with the exalted Christ (Rev. II. 3). But this problem exists only for the historian who considers things only from the outside, or seeks for objective proofs. Behind and in the Gospel stands the Person of Jesus Christ who mastered men's hearts, and constrained them to yield themselves to him as his own, and in whom they found their G.o.d. Theology attempted to describe in very uncertain and feeble outline what the mind and heart had grasped. Yet it testifies of a new life which, like all higher life, was kindled by a Person, and could only be maintained by connection with that Person. "I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me." "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." These convictions are not dogmas and have no history, and they can only be propagated in the manner described by Paul, Gal. I. 15, 16.

3. It was of the utmost importance for the legitimising of the later development of Christianity as a system of doctrine, that early Christianity had an Apostle who was a theologian, and that his Epistles were received into the canon. That the doctrine about Christ has become the main article in Christianity is not of course the result of Paul's preaching, but is based on the confession that Jesus is the Christ. The theology of Paul was not even the most prominent ruling factor in the transformation of the Gospel to the Catholic doctrine of faith, although an earnest study of the Pauline Epistles by the earliest Gentile Christian theologians, the Gnostics, and their later opponents, is unmistakable. But the decisive importance of this theology lies in the fact that, as a rule, it formed the boundary and the foundation--just as the words of the Lord himself--for those who in the following period endeavoured to ascertain original Christianity, because the Epistles attesting it stood in the canon of the New Testament. Now, as this theology comprised both speculative and apologetic elements, as it can be thought of as a system, as it contained a theory of history and a definite conception of the Old Testament, finally, as it was composed of objective and subjective ethical considerations and included the realistic elements of a national religion (wrath of G.o.d, sacrifice, reconciliation, Kingdom of glory), as well as profound psychological perceptions and the highest appreciation of spiritual blessings, the Catholic doctrine of faith as it was formed in the course of time, seemed, at least in its leading features, to be related to it, nay, demanded by it. For the ascertaining of the deep-lying distinctions, above all for the perception that the question in the two cases is about elements quite differently conditioned, that even the method is different, in short, that the Pauline Gospel is not identical with the original Gospel and much less with any later doctrine of faith, there is required such historical judgment and such honesty of purpose not to be led astray in the investigation by the canon of the New Testament,[136]

that no change in the prevailing ideas can be hoped for for long years to come. Besides, critical theology has made it difficult, to gain an insight into the great difference that lies between the Pauline and the Catholic theology, by the one-sided prominence it has. .h.i.therto given to the antagonism between Paulinism and Judaistic Christianity. In contrast with this view the remark of Havet, though also very one-sided, is instructive, "Quand on vient de relire Paul, on ne peut meconnaitre le caractere eleve de son oeuvre. Je dirai en un mot, qu'il a agrandi dans une proportion extraordinaire l'attrait que le judasme exercait sur le monde ancien" (Le Christianisme, T. IV. p. 216). That, however, was only very gradually the case and within narrow limits. The deepest and most important writings of the New Testament are incontestably those in which Judaism is understood as religion, but spiritually overcome and subordinated to the Gospel as a new religion,--the Pauline Epistles, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Gospel and Epistle of John. There is set forth in these writings a new and exalted world of religious feelings, views and judgments, into which the Christians of succeeding centuries got only meagre glimpses. Strictly speaking, the opinion that the New Testament in its whole extent comprehends a unique literature is not tenable; but it is correct to say that between its most important const.i.tuent parts, and the literature of the period immediately following there is a great gulf fixed.

But Paulinism especially has had an immeasurable and blessed influence on the whole course of the history of dogma, an influence it could not have had, if the Pauline Epistles had not been received into the canon.

Paulinism is a religious and Christocentric doctrine, more inward and more powerful than any other which has ever appeared in the Church. It stands in the clearest opposition to all merely natural moralism, all righteousness of works, all religious ceremonialism, all Christianity without Christ. It has therefore become the conscience of the Church, until the Catholic Church in Jansenism killed this her conscience. "The Pauline reactions describe the critical epochs of theology and the Church."[137] One might write a history of dogma as a history of the Pauline reactions in the Church, and in doing so would touch on all the turning points of the history. Marcion after the Apostolic Fathers; Irenaeus, Clement and Origen after the Apologists; Augustine after the Fathers of the Greek Church;[138] the great Reformers of the middle ages from Agobard to Wessel in the bosom of the mediaeval Church; Luther after the Scholastics; Jansenism after the council of Trent:--Everywhere it has been Paul, in these men, who produced the Reformation. Paulinism has proved to be a ferment in the history of dogma, a basis it has never been.[139] Just as it had that significance in Paul himself, with reference to Jewish Christianity, so it has continued to work through the history of the Church.

[Footnote 46: The Old Testament of itself alone could not have convinced the Graeco-Roman world. But the converse question might perhaps be raised as to what results the Gospel would have had in that world without its union with the Old Testament. The Gnostic Schools and the Marcionite Church are to some extent the answer. But would they ever have arisen without the presupposition of a Christian community which recognised the Old Testament?]

[Footnote 47: We here leave out of account learned attempts to expound Paulinism. Nor do we take any notice of certain truths regarding the relation of the Old Testament to the New, and regarding the Jewish religion, stated by the Antignostic church teachers, truths which are certainly very important, but have not been sufficiently utilised.]

[Footnote 48: There is indeed no single writing of the new Testament which does not betray the influence of the mode of thought and general conditions of the culture of the time which resulted from the h.e.l.lenising of the east: even the use of the Greek translation of the Old Testament attests this fact. Nay, we may go further, and say that the Gospel itself is historically unintelligible, so long as we compare it with an exclusive Judaism as yet unaffected by any foreign influence.

But on the other hand, it is just as clear that, specifically, h.e.l.lenic ideas form the presuppositions neither for the Gospel itself, nor for the most important New Testament writings. It is a question rather as to a general spiritual atmosphere created by h.e.l.lenism, which above all strengthened the individual element, and with it the idea of completed personality, in itself living and responsible. On this foundation we meet with a religious mode of thought in the Gospel and the early Christian writings, which so far as it is at all dependent on an earlier mode of thought, is determined by the spirit of the Old Testament (Psalms and Prophets) and of Judaism. But it is already otherwise with the earliest Gentile Christian writings. The mode of thought here is so thoroughly determined by the h.e.l.lenic spirit that we seem to have entered a new world when we pa.s.s from the synoptists, Paul and John, to Clement, Barnabas, Justin or Valentinus. We may therefore say, especially in the frame-work of the history of dogma, that the h.e.l.lenic element has exercised an influence on the Gospel first on Gentile Christian soil, and by those who were Greek by birth, if only we reserve the general spiritual atmosphere above referred to. Even Paul is no exception; for in spite of the well-founded statements of Weizsacker (Apostolic Age, vol. I. Book 11) and Heinrici (Das 2 Sendschreiben an die Korinthier, 1887, p. 578 ff), as to the h.e.l.lenism of Paul, it is certain that the Apostle's mode of religious thought, in the strict sense of the word, and therefore also the doctrinal formation peculiar to him, are but little determined by the Greek spirit. But it is to be specially noted that as a missionary and an Apologist he made use of Greek ideas (Epistles to the Romans and Corinthians). He was not afraid to put the Gospel into Greek modes of thought. To this extent we can already observe in him the beginning of the development which we can trace so clearly in the Gentile Church from Clement to Justin, and from Justin to Irenaeus.]

[Footnote 49: The complete universalism of salvation is given in the Pauline conception of Christianity. But this conception is singular.

Because: (1) the Pauline universalism is based on a criticism of the Jewish religion as religion, including the Old Testament, which was not understood and therefore not received by Christendom in general. (2) Because Paul not only formulated no national anti-Judaism, but always recognised the prerogative of the people of Israel as a people. (3) Because his idea of the Gospel, with all his Greek culture, is independent of h.e.l.lenism in its deepest grounds. This peculiarity of the Pauline Gospel is the reason why little more could pa.s.s from it into the common consciousness of Christendom than the universalism of salvation, and why the later development of the Church cannot be explained from Paulinism. Baur, therefore, was quite right when he recognised that we must exhibit another and more powerful element in order to comprehend the post-Pauline formations. In the selection of this element, however, he has made a fundamental mistake, by introducing the narrow national Jewish Christianity, and he has also given much too great scope to Paulinism by wrongly conceiving it as Gentile Christian doctrine. One great difficulty for the historian of the early Church is that he cannot start from Paulinism, the plainest phenomenon of the Apostolic age, in seeking to explain the following development, that in fact the premises for this development are not at all capable of being indicated in the form of outlines, just because they were too general. But, on the other hand, the Pauline Theology, this theology of one who had been a Pharisee, is the strongest proof of the independent and universal power of the impression made by the Person of Jesus.]

[Footnote 50: In the main writings of the New Testament itself we have a twofold conception of the Spirit. According to the one he comes upon the believer fitfully, expresses himself in visible signs, deprives men of self-consciousness, and puts them beside themselves. According to the other, the spirit is a constant possession of the Christian, operates in him by enlightening the conscience and strengthening the character, and his fruits are love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, etc. (Gal. V.

22). Paul above all taught Christians to value these fruits of the spirit higher than all the other effects of his working. But he has not by any means produced a perfectly clear view on this point: for "he himself spoke with more tongues than they all." As yet "Spirit" lay within "Spirit." One felt in the spirit of sons.h.i.+p a completely new gift coming from G.o.d and recreating life, a miracle of G.o.d; further, this spirit also produced sudden exclamations--"Abba, Father;" and thus shewed himself in a way patent to the senses. For that very reason, the spirit of ecstasy and of miracle appeared identical with the spirit of sons.h.i.+p. (See Gunkel, Die Wirkungen d. h. Geistes nach der popularen Anschauung der Apostol. Zeit. Gottingen, 1888).]

[Footnote 51: It may even be said here that the [Greek: athanasia (zoe aionios)], on the one hand, and the [Greek: ekklesia], on the other, have already appeared in place of the [Greek: Basileia tou theou], and that the idea of Messiah has been finally replaced by that of the Divine Teacher and of G.o.d manifest in the flesh.]

[Footnote 52: It is one of the merits of Bruno Bauer (Christus und die Casaren, 1877), that he has appreciated the real significance of the Greek element in the Gentile Christianity which became the Catholic Church and doctrine, and that he has appreciated the influence of the Judaism of the Diaspora as a preparation for this Gentile Christianity.

But these valuable contributions have unfortunately been deprived of their convincing power by a baseless criticism of the early Christian literature, to which Christ and Paul have fallen a sacrifice. Somewhat more cautious are the investigations of Havet in the fourth volume of Le Christianisme, 1884; Le Nouveau Testament. He has won great merit by the correct interpretation of the elements of Gentile Christianity developing themselves to catholicism, but his literary criticism is often unfortunately entirely abstract, reminding one of the criticism of Voltaire, and therefore his statements in detail are, as a rule, arbitrary and untenable. There is a school in Holland at the present time closely related to Bruno Bauer and Havet, which attempts to banish early Christianity from the world. Christ and Paul are creations of the second century: the history of Christianity begins with the pa.s.sage of the first century into the second--a peculiar phenomenon on the soil of h.e.l.lenised Judaism in quest of a Messiah. This Judaism created Jesus Christ just as the later Greek religious philosophers created their Saviour (Apollonius, for example). The Marcionite Church produced Paul and the growing Catholic Church completed him. See the numerous treatises of Loman, the Verisimilia of Pierson and Naber (1886), and the anonymous English work "Antiqua Mater" (1887), also the works of Steck (see especially his Untersuchung uber den Galaterbrief). Against these works see P.V. Schmidt's, "Der Galaterbrief," 1892. It requires a deep knowledge of the problems which the first two centuries of the Christian Church present, in order not to thrust aside as simply absurd these attempts, which as yet have failed to deal with the subject in a connected way. They have their strength in the difficulties and riddles which are contained in the history of the formation of the Catholic tradition in the second century. But the single circ.u.mstance that we are asked to regard as a forgery such a doc.u.ment as the first Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, appears to me, of itself, to be an unanswerable argument against the new hypotheses.]

[Footnote 53: It would be a fruitful task, though as yet it has not been undertaken, to examine how long visions, dreams and apocalypses, on the one hand, and the claim of speaking in the power and name of the Holy Spirit, on the other, played a _role_ in the early Church; and further to shew how they nearly died out among the laity, but continued to live among the clergy and the monks, and how, even among the laity, there were again and again sporadic outbreaks of them. The material which the first three centuries present is very great. Only a few may be mentioned here: Ignat. ad. Rom. VII. 2; ad. Philad. VII; ad Eph. XX. 1, etc.; 1 Clem. LXIII. 2; Martyr. Polyc.; Acta Perpet. et Felic; Tertull de animo XLVII.; "Major paene vis hominum e visionibus deum disc.u.n.t." Orig. c.

Celsum. i. 46: [Greek: polloi hosperei akontes proseleluthasi christianismo, pneumatos tinos trepsantos ... kai phantasiosantos autous hupar e onar] (even Arn.o.bius was ostensibly led to Christianity by a dream). Cyprian makes the most extensive use of dreams, visions, etc., in his letters, see for example Ep. XI. 3-5; XVI. 4 ("praeter nocturnas visiones per dies quoque impletur apud nos spiritu sancto puerorum innocens aetas, quae in ecstasi videt," etc.); x.x.xIX. 1; LXVI 10 (very interesting: "quamquam sciam somnia ridicula et visiones ineptas quibusdam videri, sed utique illis, qui malunt contra sacerdotes credere quam sacerdoti, sed nihil mirum, quando de Joseph fratres sui dixerunt: ecce somniator ille," etc.). One who took part in the baptismal controversy in the great Synod of Carthage writes, "secundum motum animi mei et spiritus sancti." The enthusiastic element was always evoked with special power in times of persecution, as the genuine African martyrdoms, from the second half of the third century, specially shew.

Cf. especially the pa.s.sio Jacobi, Mariani, etc. But where the enthusiasm was not convenient it was called, as in the case of the Montanists, daemonic. Even Constantine operated with dreams and visions of Christ (see his Vita).]

[Footnote 54: As to the first, the recently discovered "Teaching of the Apostles" in its first moral part, shews a great affinity with the moral philosophy which was set up by Alexandrian Jews and put before the Greek world as that which had been revealed: see Ma.s.sebieau, L'enseignement des XII. Apotres, Paris, 1884, and in the Journal "Le Temoignage," 7 Febr. 1885. Usener, in his Preface to the Ges. Abhandl. Jacob Bernays', which he edited, 1885, p.v.f., has, independently of Ma.s.sebieau, pointed out the relations.h.i.+p of chapters 1-5 of the "Teaching of the Apostles"

with the Phocylidean poem (see Bernays' above work, p. 192 ff.). Later Taylor, "The teaching of the twelve Apostles", 1886, threw out the conjecture that the Didache had a Jewish foundation, and I reached the same conclusion independently of him: see my Treatise: Die Apostellehre und die judischen beiden Wege, 1886.]

[Footnote 55: It is well known that Judaism at the time of Christ embraced a great many different tendencies. Beside Pharisaic Judaism as the stem proper there was a motley ma.s.s of formations which resulted from the contact of Judaism with foreign ideas, customs, and inst.i.tutions (even with Babylonian and Persian), and which attained importance for the development of the predominant church as well as for the formation of the so-called gnostic Christian communions. h.e.l.lenic elements found their way even into Pharisaic theology. Orthodox Judaism itself has marks which shew that no spiritual movement was able to escape the influence which proceeded from the victory of the Greeks over the east. Besides who would venture to exhibit definitely the origin and causes of that spiritualising of religions and that limitation of the moral standard of which we can find so many traces in the Alexandrian age? The nations who inhabited the eastern sh.o.r.e of the Mediterranean sea had from the fourth century B.C. a common history and therefore had similar convictions. Who can decide what each of them acquired by its own exertions and what it obtained through interchange of opinions? But in proportion as we see this we must be on our guard against jumbling the phenomena together and effacing them. There is little meaning in calling a thing h.e.l.lenic, as that really formed an element in all the phenomena of the age. All our great political and ecclesiastical parties to-day are dependent on the ideas of 1789 and again on romantic ideas.

It is just as easy to verify this as it is difficult to determine the measure and the manner of the influence for each group. And yet the understanding of it turns altogether on this point. To call Pharisaism or the Gospel or the old Jewish Christianity h.e.l.lenic is not paradox but confusion.]

[Footnote 56: The Acts of the Apostles is in this respect a most instructive book. It as well as the Gospel of Luke is a doc.u.ment of Gentile Christianity developing itself to Catholicism; Cf. Overbeck in his Commentar z Apostelgesch. But the comprehensive judgment of Havet in the work above mentioned (IV. p. 395) is correct: "L h.e.l.lenisme tient a.s.sez peu de place dans le N.T. du moins l h.e.l.lenisme voulu et reflechi.

Ces livres sont ecrits en grec et leurs auteurs vivaient en pays grec, il y a donc eu chez eux infiltration des idees et des sentiments h.e.l.leniques, quelquefois meme l imagination h.e.l.lenique y a penetre comme dans le 3 evangile et dans les Actes. Dans son ensemble le N.T. garde le caractere d un livre hebraique. Le christianisme ne commence avoir une litterature et des doctrines vraiment h.e.l.leniques qu au milieu du second siecle. Mais il y avait un judaisme celui d Alexandrie qui avait faite alliance avec l h.e.l.lenisme avant meme qu il y eut des chretiens."]

[Footnote 57: The right of distinguis.h.i.+ng (b) and (c) may be contested.

But if we surrender this we therewith surrender the right to distinguish kernel and husk in the original proclamation of the Gospel. The dangers to which the attempt is exposed should not frighten us from it for it has its justification in the fact that the Gospel is neither doctrine nor law.]

[Footnote 58: Therewith are, doubtless, heavenly blessings bestowed in the present. Historical investigation has, notwithstanding, every reason for closely examining whether, and in how far, we may speak of a present for the Kingdom of G.o.d, in the sense of Jesus. But even if the question had to be answered in the negative, it would make little or no difference for the correct understanding of Jesus' preaching. The Gospel viewed in its kernel is independent of this question. It deals with the inner const.i.tution and mood of the soul.]

[Footnote 59: The question whether, and in what degree, a man of himself can earn righteousness before G.o.d is one of those theoretic questions to which Jesus gave no answer. He fixed his attention on all the gradations of the moral and religious conduct of his countrymen as they were immediately presented to him, and found some prepared for entrance into the kingdom of G.o.d, not by a technical mode of outward preparation, but by hungering and thirsting for it, and at the same time unselfishly serving their brethren. Humility and love unfeigned were always the decisive marks of these prepared ones. They are to be satisfied with righteousness before G.o.d, that is, are to receive the blessed feeling that G.o.d is gracious to them as sinners, and accepts them as his children. Jesus, however, allows the popular distinction of sinners and righteous to remain, but exhibits its perverseness by calling sinners to him and by describing the opposition of the righteous to his Gospel as a mark of their G.o.dlessness and hardness of heart.]

[Footnote 60: The blessings of the kingdom were frequently represented by Jesus as a reward for work done. But this popular view is again broken through by reference to the fact that all reward is the gift of G.o.d's free grace.]

[Footnote 61: Some Critics--most recently Havet, Le Christianisme et ses origines, 1884. T. IV. p. 15 ff.--have called in question the fact that Jesus called himself Messiah. But this article of the Evangelic tradition seems to me to stand the test of the most minute investigation. But, in the case of Jesus, the consciousness of being the Messiah undoubtedly rested on the certainty of being the Son of G.o.d, therefore of knowing the Father and being constrained to proclaim that knowledge.]

[Footnote 62: We can gather with certainty from the Gospels that Jesus did not enter on his work with the announcement: Believe in me for I am the Messiah. On the contrary, he connected his work with the baptising movement of John, but carried that movement further, and thereby made the Baptist his forerunner (Mark I. 15: [Greek: peplerotai ho kairos kai engiken he basileia tou theou, metanoeite kai pisteuete en toi euaggelioi]). He was in no hurry to urge anything that went beyond that message, but gradually prepared, and cautiously required of his followers an advance beyond it. The goal to which he led them was to believe in him as Messiah without putting the usual political construction on the Messianic ideal.]

[Footnote 63: Even "Son of Man" probably means Messiah: we do not know whether Jesus had any special reason for favouring this designation which springs from Dan. VII. The objection to interpreting the word as Messiah really resolves itself into this, that the disciples (according to the Gospels) did not at once recognise him as Messiah. But that is explained by the contrast of his own peculiar idea of Messiah with the popular idea. The confession of him as Messiah was the keystone of their confidence in him, inasmuch as by that confession they separated themselves from old ideas.]

[Footnote 64: The distinction between the Father and the Son stands out just as plainly in the sayings of Jesus, as the complete obedient subordination of the Son to the Father. Even according to John's Gospel, Jesus finishes the work which the Father has given him, and is obedient in everything even unto death. He declares Matt. XIX. 17: [Greek: heis estin ho agathos]. Special notice should be given to Mark XIII. 32, (Matt. XXIV. 36). Behind the only manifested life of Jesus, later speculation has put a life in which he wrought, not in subordination and obedience, but in like independence and dignity with G.o.d. That goes beyond the utterances of Jesus even in the fourth Gospel. But it is no advance beyond these, especially in the religious view and speech of the time, when it is announced that the relation of the Father to the Son lies beyond time. It is not even improbable that the sayings in the fourth Gospel referring to this, have a basis in the preaching of Jesus himself.]

[Footnote 65: Paul knew that the designation of G.o.d as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, was the new Evangelic confession. Origen was the first among the Fathers (though before him Marcion) to recognise that the decisive advance beyond the Old Testament stage of religion, was given in the preaching of G.o.d as Father; see the exposition of the Lord's prayer in his treatise _De oratione_. No doubt the Old Testament, and the later Judaism knew the designation of G.o.d as Father; but it applied it to the Jewish nation, it did not attach the evangelic meaning to the name, and it did not allow itself in any way to be guided in its religion by this idea.]

[Footnote 66: See the farewell discourses in John, the fundamental ideas of which are, in my opinion, genuine, that is, proceed from Jesus.]

[Footnote 67: The historian cannot regard a miracle as a sure given historical event: for in doing so he destroys the mode of consideration on which all historical investigation rests. Every individual miracle remains historically quite doubtful, and a summation of things doubtful never leads to certainty. But should the historian, notwithstanding, be convinced that Jesus Christ did extraordinary things, in the strict sense miraculous things, then, from the unique impression he has obtained of this person, he infers the possession by him of supernatural power. This conclusion itself belongs to the province of religious faith: though there has seldom been a strong faith which would not have drawn it. Moreover, the healing miracles of Jesus are the only ones that come into consideration in a strict historical examination. These certainly cannot be eliminated from the historical accounts without utterly destroying them. But how unfit are they of themselves, after 1800 years, to secure any special importance to him to whom they are attributed, unless that importance was already established apart from them. That he could do with himself what he would, that he created a new thing without overturning the old, that he won men to himself by announcing the Father, that he inspired without fanaticism, set up a kingdom without politics, set men free from the world without asceticism, was a teacher without theology, at a time of fanaticism and politics, asceticism and theology, is the great miracle of his person, and that he who preached the Sermon on the Mount declared himself in respect of his life and death, to be the Redeemer and Judge of the world, is the offence and foolishness which mock all reason.]

[Footnote 68: See Mark X. 45.--That Jesus at the celebration of the first Lord's supper described his death as a sacrifice which he should offer for the forgiveness of sin, is clear from the account of Paul.

From that account it appears to be certain, that Jesus gave expression to the idea of the necessity and saving significance of his death for the forgiveness of sins, in a symbolical ordinance (based on the conclusion of the covenant, Exod. XXIV. 3 ff., perhaps, as Paul presupposes, on the Pa.s.sover), in order that His disciples by repeating it in accordance with the will of Jesus, might be the more deeply impressed by it. Certain observations based on John VI., on the supper prayer in the Didache, nay, even on the report of Mark, and supported at the same time by features of the earliest practice in which it had the character of a real meal, and the earliest theory of the supper, which viewed it as a communication of eternal life and an antic.i.p.ation of the future existence, have for years made me doubt very much whether the Pauline account and the Pauline conception of it, were really either the oldest, or the universal and therefore only one. I have been strengthened in this suspicion by the profound and remarkable investigation of Spitta (z. Gesch. u. Litt. d. Urchristenthums: Die urchristl. Traditionen u. den Urspr. u. Sinnd. Abendmahls, 1893). He sees in the supper as not inst.i.tuted, but celebrated by Jesus, the festival of the Messianic meal, the antic.i.p.ated triumph over death, the expression of the perfection of the Messianic work, the symbolic representation of the filling of believers with the powers of the Messianic kingdom and life. The reference to the Pa.s.sover and the death of Christ was attached to it later, though it is true very soon. How much is thereby explained that was. .h.i.therto obscure--critical, historical, and dogmatico-historical questions--cannot at all be stated briefly. And yet I hesitate to give a full recognition to Spitta's exposition: the words 1 Cor. XI. 23: [Greek: ego gar parelabon apo tou kuriou, ho ka paredoka humin k.t.l.] are too strong for me. Cf.

besides, Weizsacker's investigation in "The Apostolic Age." Lobstein, La doctrine de la s. cene. 1889. A. Harnack i.d. Texten u. Unters. VII. 2.

p. 139 ff. Schurer, Theol. Lit. Ztg. 1891, p. 29 ff. Julicher Abhandl. f Weizsacker, 1892, p. 215 ff.]