ROME AND EPHESUS
Paul's contribution--Adoptionism--Roman
documents--Romans--Hebrews--1 Peter--1 Clement--Hermas--Baptism
and repentance--Pre-existent Christology--The later Epistles--The
Fourth Gospel--The doctrine of the Logos--Justin
Martyr--Origen--Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
APPENDIX
The Interpretation of _The Shepherd of Hermas_. By F. S.
Mackenzie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
ADDITIONAL NOTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
{1}
I
GALILEE
At first sight the historian of religions appears to be faced by a
number of clearly distinguished entities, to each of which he feels
justified in giving the name of a separate religion; but on further
consideration it becomes obvious that each one of these entities has
been in a condition of flux throughout its history. Each began as a
combination or synthesis of older forms of thought with comparatively
little new in its composition; each ended by disintegrating into many
elements, of which the worst disappeared, while the best were taken up
into new life in some new religion. The movement was more marked at
some times than at others, and the differentiation of the various
religions depends chiefly on the recognition of these moments of more
rapid change. But the process never really stopped; from beginning to
end new elements were constantly absorbed and old elements dropped.
For religion lives through the death of religions.
Nothing illustrates this so well as the history of Christianity, for no
religion is so well-known. The {2} facts are plainly visible, and
would be plainly seen by all, were it not for the general tendency of
ecclesiastical scholarship to consult the records of the past only to
find the reflection of its own features.
The general condition of religion in the Roman Empire at the beginning
of the Christian era was one of far advanced disintegration and rapid
synthesis. In every district there could be found the remains of old
local religions, which retained the loyalty of the conservative, but no
longer aroused any vital response in the emotions of the multitudes or
in the interest of the educated. At that time, and for many
generations afterward, the Roman landowners, to take one example,
maintained the ceremonies and customs of an agricultural animism which
for their ancestors had been a living religion, but for them had become
aesthetic, conventional, and superstitious,--an appendage to life, not
its driving force. Those who wish can read a description of it,
written with a sympathy possible only for one who felt the analogy of
his own experience, in the pages of _Marius the Epicurean_, in which
Walter Pater, by a wonderful _tour de force_, wove an exact and
scholarly knowledge of the original documents into such a web of
artistic English that the deep learning of the book cannot be
appreciated except by those who have some small share in it themselves.
Over these local religions had been thrown throughout the Empire the
covering fabric of Greek mythology. It had lost much of its power; it
was {3} no longer sincerely believed; it was in every respect decadent;
but it still played its part in unifying, and to some extent
civilising, the diverse races of the Empire. But more important than
the Greek mythology was the Greek philosophy, which was indeed in many
ways its antidote. If the mythology of Greece appeared to sanction an
infinite number of gods and goddesses, her philosophers taught with
equal persuasiveness that the divine reality is one, though its forms
be many. A remarkable synthesis was thus gradually accomplished,
though it will always be a question whether the stronger tendency was
to philosophise mythology or to mythologise philosophy.
Yet another element was provided by the stream of Oriental religions
which were coming into the Empire. Though these religions had all of
them at one time been national, quite as much as the religion of Greece
or Rome, their adherents had been detached violently by the conquering
hand of Rome from adherence to ancestral shrines or to political
institutions. The Cappadocian or the Syrian, or even the Egyptian, who
was travelling as a merchant or living as a slave in the western parts
of the Empire, brought with him the worship of his own god; but the
changed conditions of his life were reflected in his religion. As a
political entity his country had disappeared; the institutions which
were originally bound up with the name of his god had vanished, and had
become an ever-fading memory. What these men without {4} countries
asked for was personal salvation, and this they believed that they
could find in their mysterious worship. Each of these religions was
rapidly developing in the first century into a sacramental cult which
offered the blessing of partial protection in this world, and of a
happy immortality after death to all who accepted and were accepted by
its divine lord, and took part in its sacraments or mysteries.
Much is obscure in their history, even though hypothesis be given the
widest range and a friendly hearing. The central problem, which still
requires much further attention than it has as yet received, is how and
when these religions became mystery cults. As we know them in the
Roman Empire all have the same central feature of offering personal
salvation to their adherents through sacraments. But did they have
this characteristic in their original homes, where they were national
religions? The evidence that they did so is not convincing, and
perhaps cannot be, because of the absence of literary sources. For
instance, one of the best known of these religions is the cult of Isis,
for the nature of which in the second and third centuries there is
admirable evidence in the writings of Plutarch and Apuleius. It was
then clearly a sacramental religion offering private salvation. It was
also connected with a myth which was obviously a hindrance rather than
a help to these educated Romans, and this myth can be traced back to
the monuments of ancient {5} Egypt. Are we justified in concluding
that the interpretation in ancient Egypt was the same as in imperial
Rome? It may be so; but it is possible that the sacramental nature,
though not the element of private salvation came in, in Hellenistic or
in Imperial times, to meet the necessity of Egyptians who had lost all
sense of belonging to a living nation or having a national religion,
and of Greeks who with decadent enthusiasm desired imported rites. In
any case, a synthesis was rapidly established between these cults and
the official Graeco-Roman religion. The names of the Oriental deities
were Hellenised, and the barbaric crudities of the East were removed by
allegory and symbolism; the philosophers felt that the myths only
needed restatement to confirm their opinions, while the priests were
confident that the elements of truth in philosophy were those revealed
by the language and ritual of the cults.[1]
With considerable rapidity, therefore, Greek mythology, Greek
philosophy, and Oriental cults were being accommodated to one another,
and brought together in a new and highly complex religious system. For
political purposes the introduction into this system of the worship of
the emperors, living or dead, was of great importance. It tended to
unify the whole mass, and the imperial authorities adopted the {6}
position, with some reservations, that, provided a man accepted the
cult of Caesar and Rome, he could in addition be a member of any other
religion which pleased his fancy or soothed his soul.
There was one exception to the ease with which the Oriental cults
accepted the situation. Still inspired by the instinct which nine
hundred years before had made their prophets fight against syncretism,
the Jews resolutely refused to come to terms with heathen religions.
Some, indeed, accepted the Greek philosophy, as the writings of Philo
and the Wisdom Literature show; but with the cults or with the
mythology of the heathen no compromise was tolerated.
It would be interesting to know how far the imperial leaders perceived
the process of synthesis, but consciously or unconsciously they helped
it considerably by the policy which they adopted towards the local
councils, or Synedria--Sanhedrims--as they were often called.[2] They
were willing to encourage their continuance, allowing them to control
all local questions of religion, and indeed all local interests
generally, on condition that they made themselves also responsible for
the cult of Rome and of Caesar. In this way Caesar was introduced into
the local religion, and, what was much more important, the local
religion was absorbed into the unified system of the Empire. The
policy was almost uniformly successful: the one exception {7} was the
Sanhedrim of the Jews, which obstinately refused the imperial cult and
resisted Caligula's effort to introduce his statue with the same
successful pertinacity as had repelled the efforts of Antiochus
Epiphanes in the days of the Maccabees. The episode ended
disastrously, for the spirit of nationalism and unreasoning hate to the
government of Rome roused a rebellion which inevitably led to the fall
of Jerusalem and the violent destruction of Jewish national life.
Henceforward the official Jewish religion remained a foreign element in
the life of the western world. It could not die, for in spite of
rabbinical extravagances it possessed more ethical truth than
heathenism, and was more sincere in its protest against superstition.
But neither could it form a synthesis with the better elements of the
Roman world; the process of accommodation to Greek philosophy was
stopped for many centuries, and the Jew had neither part nor lot in the
life of the empire in which necessity compelled him to live.
Nevertheless in the end the inevitable synthesis between Judaism and
Greek thought was accomplished, though the official world was unable to
bring it about. The small and at first despised sect of Christians was
driven out of the Synagogue and forced into contact with the heathen
world, at first probably against its will. There is nothing to show
that Christians originally desired to break away from Judaism or to
approach the Greeks; yet they did both. When their fellow-countrymen
refused to {8} hear they turned to the Gentiles, and there ensued
rapidly the abandonment of Jewish practice and the assimilation of
Greek and Graeco-Oriental thought.
From that time on the history of Christianity might be written as a
series of syntheses with the thought and practice of the Roman world,
beginning with the circumference and moving to the centre. The first
element which was absorbed was the least Roman, the Graeco-Oriental
cults. Christianity had been originally the worship of God, as he was
understood by the Jews, combined with the belief that Jesus was he whom
God had appointed, or would appoint, as his representative at the day
of judgement. To this were now joined the longings for private
salvation of the less fortunate classes in the Roman Empire, and their
belief that this salvation could come from sacraments instituted by a
Lord who was either divine by nature or had attained apotheosis. It
thus became, partly indeed, the recognition of the Jewish God as
supreme, but chiefly the recognition of Jesus as the divine Lord who
had instituted saving mysteries for those who accepted him.
Christianity became the Jewish contribution to the Oriental cults,
offering, as the Synagogue never did, private salvation by supernatural
means to all who were willing to accept it.
Such Christianity became, and such in some districts, notably in Rome,
it remained for one or two generations. But in Ephesus and possibly
elsewhere a further synthesis was accomplished. {9} This
sacramentalised Christianity began to come to terms with Greek
philosophy, as the other mystery religions tried to do. It asked what
was the philosophic explanation of its Lord, and it hit on the device
of identifying him with the Logos--a phrase common to several types of
philosophy though used in quite different meanings.
The development of this second synthesis was comparatively slow.
Probably some of the systems which are loosely described as gnostic
were unsuccessful attempts at its accomplishment; but in the end the
Alexandrian theologians Clement and Origen followed the lead given them
by the Fourth Gospel and some of the apologists to the triumphant
construction of a system which really reconciled in part and seemed to
reconcile entirely the Christian cult and the later Platonic
metaphysics.
Although the general fabric of the Christian philosophy which was thus
built up was in the main Platonic, not a little was borrowed also from
the system of the Stoics, especially on the border ground between
metaphysics and ethics. This paved the way for a further synthesis,
accomplished more easily, more thoroughly, and with less perceptible
controversy than had attended either of the others. Probably the
culmination of this conquest of the Christian Church by the ethics of
the Stoa was reached by Ambrose, who gave to the Christian world
Cicero's popularisation of Panaetius and Posidonius in a series of
sermons which extracted the {10} ethics of Rome from the scriptures of
the Christians. The ethics of the Stoics were almost wholly adopted by
the leaders of Christian thought, especially in the West, and the
teaching of Jesus as represented in the Gospels was interpreted in the
interests of this achievement, which, like the other syntheses, was
largely effective in proportion as it was unconscious.
Probably it was the early stages of this movement which had rendered
possible the acceptance by one another of Christianity and the Empire.
Certainly there is still much need of study, even if it produce only
the statement of problems, as to the changed character of Christianity
between the time of Tertullian and Eusebius.
The next few centuries, so far as they were not occupied in struggling
against the eclipse of civilisation which began in the fifth century,
were occupied in working out the implications of these syntheses. The
results were codified in Catholic theology and in the civil and canon
law of the early Middle Ages. But one more step remained; after nearly
a thousand years Aristotle was rediscovered, and the final achievement
of Christian theology was the synthesis effected by St. Thomas Aquinas
between the Christian theology and the philosophy of Aristotle.
It is a great record of great achievement, for no one who studies the
history of religions with any degree of sympathetic insight can doubt
but that each synthesis was a real step in progress towards that
unification of aspiration with knowledge which {11} it is the task of
theologians to bring about, and to express as clearly as they may.
Many centuries have passed since the time of St. Thomas Aquinas; and
the element of tragedy in the study of the history of religions for the
Christian theologian is that he is forced to admit that never again has
there been a time when the unification of aspiration and knowledge has
been so completely realised by organised Christianity. It was not long
after this time that epoch-making changes were made, first in the
domain of astronomy and afterwards in other sciences. They have
revolutionised human knowledge. Nor have human aspirations stayed
where they were. The ideal of justice which men see to-day is
different and assuredly better than that of a thousand years ago. It
extends beyond the sphere of the law-courts to every branch of human
life. But the doctrines of the Church remain formulated according to
the knowledge and aspirations of the past. The divergence between
knowledge and theological statement has become more and more obvious
every year. There has been no synthetic progress in theology since the
time of St. Thomas Aquinas,[3] for it is impossible for the student of
history to feel that the Reformation can be regarded as a synthesis.
Indeed it seems ominously like the first step in that disintegration
which has always been {12} the last stage in the story of each
religion. It is absolutely certain that the world will once again some
day achieve what it has often had and often lost--the closer
approximation of knowledge and aspiration--so that its religious system
may satisfy the soul of the saint without disgusting the intellect of
the scholar. What is uncertain is whether this achievement will be
made by any form of organised Christianity or is reserved for some
movement which cannot at present be recognised.[4]
To trace the whole of these syntheses would be a reasonable programme
for many volumes. These lectures are limited to the discussion of the
evolution of the first and the beginning of the second--that is to say,
the change of Christianity from a Jewish sect to a sacramental cult and
the beginning of the movement which introduced Greek metaphysics into
its theology.
At the beginning of the first century the control of the Jewish nation
was in the hands partly of Rome, partly of the high-priests and their
families. The latter, as was natural, held in the main a conservative
attitude towards the laws and customs of their people. They were rich
men--some of them probably could appreciate the culture if not the
thought of Rome--and the class in modern Europe which most closely {13}
resembles them is that of the aristocratic Turks of
Constantinople--orthodox but not enthusiastic adherents of the religion
of their fathers. They doubtless regarded themselves as the leaders of
the people: it was with them, naturally enough, that the Roman world
had to deal, and the price of their failure to keep the peace between
the populace and Rome was their political extinction and their personal
ruin. The populace demanded that the leaders should secure national
independence; Rome required that they should induce the people to cease
from asking it. The task was an impossible one, but history does not
accept impossibility as an excuse for failure.
Closely connected with them were the Herods, who at intervals assumed a
more or less dominating influence in Jewish affairs. At the time of
Christ one of the family was ruling over Galilee, and another was
destined in a short time to inherit not only this dominion but also
that of Judaea. But though for political purposes the Herods were
capable of playing Jewish cards, they had become completely absorbed
into the cosmopolitan society of the Empire. They were as little
typical of anything really Jewish as an educated Indian prince
frequenting London society is typical of Hinduism.
Ultimately more important than the high-priests or the Herods were two
other classes which were destined respectively to ruin their nation and
to save their church. The one was the party of the patriots, the other
the Scribes and Pharisees.
{14}
After the death of Herod the Great the Romans made a census of his
country, and a certain Judas of Galilee endeavoured to raise an active
rebellion. The influence of the ruling classes in Jerusalem suppressed
this movement for the time, but it remained, as Josephus[5] terms it,
the fourth philosophy, or sect, among the Jews, maintaining that no
pious Jew could recognise any ruler except God, and steadily insisting
that active resistance to the power of Rome was justifiable and even
necessary. The sect apparently remained anonymous until about A.D. 66,
when one branch of those who accepted its tenets took to themselves the
name of Zealots and were largely instrumental in bringing about those
final disturbances which led to the fall of Jerusalem. We know very
little of this party except from Josephus, and the reasons for which
his book was written did not encourage him to give unnecessary
information, but, judging by results, the fourth philosophy must have
been in the first half of the first century a steadily growing menace
to all organised government, willing to destroy but unable to build,
concealing under the name of patriotism that pathological excitement
which is the delirium of diseased nations.
It is possible, but not certain, that these Jews were influenced by and
possibly helped to produce some parts of that curious literature known
as Apocalypses,[6] {15} which seems in the main to have been intended
to comfort the discouraged and to inspire them with enthusiasm by
giving them the assurance that a better time was at hand.
A very different type of Jew was represented by the Scribes and
Pharisees. They believed implicitly that the law of Moses and the
tradition of the elders had a divine sanction, and that to live in
accordance with it, not to take part in political intrigue, was the way
of Life. Their main object was to interpret the Law in such a way as
to make it possible to follow, and to extend its explanation so as to
cover every possible problem in practical life. They were opposed to
Jesus during his life, and afterwards bitterly opposed to his
followers. It is therefore natural that there is in the Christian
Scriptures a large amount of polemic against the Pharisees,[7] and
there would be probably more against the Christians in the rabbinical
writings had it not been for the activities of the mediaeval censors,
so that statements in the Talmud which originally referred to the
Christians are concealed (sometimes obviously but in other cases
probably successfully) by being referred to the Sadducees or other
extinct parties of Jews for whose reputation neither Synagogue nor
Church cared.
{16}
Owing to the fact that generations of Christians have seen the early
history of the Scribes and Pharisees almost wholly through glasses
coloured by early controversy, it is hard to be fair to the Pharisees.
Taken at their best they probably represent the highest form of a
religion based on codified ethics which the world has ever seen. They
did not feel that the Law was external, for it represented the will of
the Father, which could not be alien to that of his children if they
understood it aright. The "word" was not in heaven or across the sea,
but very nigh unto them, in their mouth and in their heart that they
might do it. That is to say, the Law was not something imposed
entirely from without by a wholly external authority, but was rather
the very perfect expression of what man would of himself choose to do
if he had perfect knowledge. Thus the best of the Pharisees no doubt
felt that obedience to the Law and to tradition was a labour of love,
and the story which is told of the death of Akiba may be regarded as
typical of the best both of his predecessors and successors. He was
being put to death by torture when the hour came that every pious Jew
repeats the Shema, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart
and with all thy soul." He recited as far as "with all thy heart," and
then stopped and smiled. "How," said one of the bystanders, "can you
smile when you are dying in agony?" "Every day," he replied, "have I
repeated these words, and I could say without hesitation that I loved
the Lord with all my heart, but to {17} say that I loved him with all
my soul, that is to say, with all my life, was hard, for how can a man
say what he has done with his life before the day of his death? But
now that the day of my death has come and the hour for repeating the
Shema has returned, and I have loved the Lord my God with all my heart
and with all my life, why should I not smile?"[8]
It is not surprising that it was the school of these men who saved the
Jewish Church from extinction when the nation was destroyed; neither is
it surprising, though it is sad, that there was deep hatred between
them and the Christians; for in religion, as in other things, a really
lively hatred requires some degree of relationship.
It was into this world of Jewish thought and practice that Jesus came
preaching in Galilee. The content of his preaching is given by Mark as
"Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." Therefore the two
questions of primary importance are the meaning of the Kingdom of
Heaven or Kingdom of God, and of repentance.
The phrase "the Kingdom of Heaven" is common in the later Jewish
literature and familiar in Christian ears. But it is not actually
found before the Christian era, though similar expressions were
customary, and the concept which it covers is often met with in the
{18} Old Testament. It means primarily the sovereignty of God in the
world, not a kingdom in the local sense, or even in the sense of an
organisation. Though in the Old Testament God is frequently referred
to as a king whose rule is universal even now, the dominion of a king
is not complete or perfect unless he be recognised by his subjects, and
the dominion of God is not yet thus recognised or submitted to
throughout the world. The Jewish view seems to have been that men had
fallen away from the rule of God in the days before Abraham, and that
when Abraham recognised the Lord as his God, then for him--but not for
others--the sovereignty of God was complete. Similarly, when Israel
recognised the Lord as their God there was a nation which accepted the
sovereignty of God. The time would come when all the world would make
this same recognition, but the day was not yet present, and there was
more than one opinion as to the probable course of events which would
lead up to it.
In general the Jews believed that the universal recognition of the
sovereignty of God would bring about, or would at least be coincident
with, the coming of the Golden Age, so frequently spoken of by the
prophets, and described with imaginative profusion in the apocalyptic
writings. But it is by no means always clear whether the Golden Age
was the condition or the result of the coming of the Kingdom. Would
the heathen, who knew not God, be converted or be exterminated? It is
not surprising if there was a {19} tendency to confuse the recognition
of the sovereignty of God with the phenomena attending it, and to speak
of the Kingdom of God when the conditions of its attainment were really
meant.
There were two special features in the Jewish expectation of the future
recognition of the sovereignty of God which were especially liable to
be confused with it in this manner. In the first place, some of the
prophets had spoken of the coming of the Golden Age and the restoration
of the national fortunes of Israel. Sometimes this restoration had
been associated with the house of David, sometimes with the dynasty of
the high priest; but frequently no such association was present, and
Christian scholarship has in general greatly exaggerated the amount of
evidence, especially for a Davidic king. The reason for this
exaggeration is partly verbal. The custom has arisen of speaking of
this Golden Age as the "Messianic" Age, which can only mean the age in
which the "Messiah" will appear. "Messiah" is itself a technical term,
but "Messianic" can only be applied to a person appointed by God to
some high office, and to a period of history only if such a person be
central in it. The really most striking feature of most of the
descriptions of the Golden Age in the Old Testament and in the
apocalyptic books is that there is no mention of any Messiah at all.
But the later literature emphasised the coming of King Messiah, and the
Jews therefore refer to this period as "the days of the Messiah."
There is no evidence that this {20} phrase was used until after the
Christian era. For this reason it is a great pity that scholars, who
personally, of course, know better, constantly use so misleading a term
as the Messianic Age. It would be far better if it were described as
the "Golden Age" or the "good time."[9]
This whole conception of the coming Golden Age was in essence
peculiarly Jewish, though parallels can be found in the religion of all
nations. Cognate to it was another point of view which was not
originally Jewish, but had probably been taken over by the Jews from
Persian thought. This was the expectation of the Age to Come, which
plays so large a part in the fourth book of Ezra[10] and in the later
literature. An integral part of the Persian system was the belief that
the world would come to an end and be consumed by fire which would
purify it from evil, after which the righteous would be raised from the
dead and take part in the glorious life of a new world. A supernatural
figure known as the Shaoshyant would take part in this process, and
especially in the Judgement which would decide whether men should or
should not pass on into the life of the Age to Come.
From the time of Daniel, if not earlier, these ideas {21} had been
absorbed by the Jews, and though belief in a resurrection was not
universal it had been accepted by the Pharisees, and was probably more
popular than either the ancient Jewish belief in Sheol or the imported
Greek belief in the immortality of the soul, of which traces can be
found in the Wisdom Literature. All this is, however, different from
the ancient Jewish tradition of a Golden Age in this world, and there
are plain traces in Jewish literature of the attempt to reconcile the
two systems.
It was obviously possible, by dint of a comparatively small confusion
of thought, to identify the Golden Age with the Age to Come, and to
suppose that all the unfulfilled features of the visions of the earlier
prophets would be realised in the Age to Come. In this case the figure
of the Davidic king, if he happened to be part of the picture, could
easily be transplanted into the Age to Come, and whereas in the earlier
presentation he had the special function of destroying in a holy war
the enemies of Israel, he could now have the more universal
responsibility of abolishing all evil, and of acting as judge to decide
who should enter into the new world.
It is on general principles entirely probable that some such
accommodation of thought was effected in some Jewish circles, as it was
afterwards among the Christians. But there is comparatively little
evidence that such was actually the case. Especially is there very
little evidence that the anointed Son of David was transmuted in this
fashion. The most that can {22} be said is that some of the many
titles which were applied to the expected Davidic king were also
applied to the expected supernatural judge. But identity of title does
not always mean identity of person, and the general descriptions of the
two figures are as a rule quite separate. It would appear that on the
whole the better Jews in the time of Christ were looking for the End of
the Age and the Resurrection, rather than for the restoration of the
kingdom of David, but that there was a popular minority which still had
hopes of the restoration of the monarchy.
The most thorough attempt to reconcile the two lines of thought is to
be found in the fourth book of Ezra, which elaborates a complete
combination of both systems with a clearness quite unusual in
apocalyptic literature. According to this the time was approaching
when the Messiah, by which is clearly meant the king of Israel, would
appear, destroy all opposition, and reign for four hundred years. He
and all mankind would then die. The world would come to an end and be
restored to primaeval silence. Then would follow the Resurrection and
Judgement, and the beginning of the Age to Come. All the features of
both systems are thus combined, except that it appears that the
Judgement is the act of God himself, rather than of an especially
appointed representative.
The general result of reading the literature belonging to this period
is to create the impression that recent scholarship has gone much
further than is {23} justifiable in the attempt to systematise Jewish
thought on eschatology. It has succumbed too readily to the temptation
to find system where there is none, to base a chronological development
of thought on the discovery, and finally to emend the texts in its
light, and sometimes in its aid. It seems extremely doubtful whether
there was any "generally recognised" Jewish teaching on this subject.
The belief that God would deliver his people, and that his sovereignty
would be recognised throughout the world, was no doubt part of the
belief of every pious Jew, but the details were vague and there was no
systematic teaching on them.
If we turn to the gospels we find that the Kingdom of God is sometimes
looked for in the future, sometimes regarded as a present reality.
Scholarship in the last fifteen years has passed through a period in
which the presence of these two elements has been somewhat hotly
debated. The beginning of the discussion was probably the publication
of Johannes Weiss' monograph[11] on the preaching of Jesus as to the
Kingdom of God, in which he emphasised the future aspect of the
Kingdom. The question was, however, presented with greater perspective
as to its position in the history of criticism by A. Schweitzer in a
book which he called _Von Reimarus zu Wrede_. This was translated into
English,[12] a fate denied to Weiss, with the result that in England
and America the whole {24} problem was associated with Schweitzer's
name. The position adopted by these writers was that the teaching of
Jesus was mainly eschatological, that is to say, it looked forward to
the coming of the end of the world. In the enthusiasm of the
rediscovery of this point of view--by no means unknown to our
ancestors, and universal in the early Church--Schweitzer and others
went rather further than the evidence permitted, and endeavoured to
explain eschatologically passages not susceptible of that meaning, but
that does not excuse the foolish acrimony with which the less learned,
especially among liberal Protestants, assailed them, nor the attempt to
cut out from the text of the gospels all eschatological reference.
At present the question has apparently reached equilibrium by the
general recognition that it is impossible to excise or to explain away
the passages in the gospels in which the Kingdom of Heaven is clearly
regarded as future, and that it is equally impossible to ignore those
in which it is regarded as a present reality. Probably, however, it
has even now not been sufficiently perceived that the solution of the
problem is not to be found in the literary criticism of the gospels,
but in the history of the phrase, Kingdom of God. This rendered
inevitable the double use of the phrase. Sometimes it was used
strictly, and referred to a present reality within the grasp of all
willing to reach out to it, and accept the conditions imposed on its
attainment, of {25} which Jesus was so frequently speaking. But at
other times, by an entirely natural extension of its meaning, it was
used of the period when the recognition of the sovereignty of God would
be universal. In this sense it was still future. It was at hand, but
not yet present, even though that generation would not entirely pass
away before it was accomplished. There is no exegetical obstacle to
accepting this view, for it is the plain and simple meaning of simple
phrases; but there is the theological difficulty that it represents an
expectation on the part of Jesus which was falsified by history.[13]
That generation has passed away, and many others after it, and the
Kingdom of God has not yet come. Indeed, it is scarcely orthodox any
longer to expect it in the manner in which the gospels represent Jesus
to have foretold its coming.
But even when it is conceded that Jesus in some places in the gospels
did undoubtedly contemplate the coming of the Kingdom in the future, it
remains a problem, which has as yet attracted too little attention,
whether he identified the eschatological phenomena attending its coming
with the reign of the anointed scion of the house of David, or with the
end of this age and the inauguration of the Age to Come. In general it
seems to me far more likely that he looked for the Age to Come rather
than for the reign of the Son of David, though the evidence is {26}
admittedly not very full or entirely satisfactory. It is, however, at
least clear that in his answer to the young man who asked Jesus what he
should do,[14] eternal life is treated as synonymous with the Kingdom
of God. The young man asked what was necessary to inherit eternal
life, and when Jesus told him that he should observe the commandments,
sell all that he had and give to the poor, he was grieved. Jesus then
said, "How hardly will those that have riches enter into the Kingdom of
God." Obviously eternal life and the Kingdom of God are here
identical, and there is no doubt that the Jews expected eternal life in
the Age to Come, not in the Days of the Messiah. Moreover, the
continuation of the narrative--the implied question of Peter, "Lo, we
have left all and followed thee"--introduces the statement of Jesus,
"There is no one who has left home, or brothers, or sisters, or mother,
or father, or children, or lands, for my sake and for the good news,
who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time--houses, and
brothers, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with
persecutions, and in the Age to Come life everlasting." The
distinction here between "this time" and the Age to Come is entirely
Jewish, and shows that in the previous paragraph the Kingdom of God and
eternal life were associated in the mind of Jesus with the Age to Come.
But, it may be said, did not Jesus identify himself {27} with the
Davidic Messiah? Undoubtedly his disciples did so in the circles
represented by Matthew and Luke, but it is doubtful whether the gospel
of Mark represents this point of view, and the question of Jesus to the
Pharisees, how David in the Scriptures could call the Messiah Lord if
he were his son, is pointless, except on the assumption that Jesus did
not regard himself as the Son of David.[15] On the other hand, the
identification of Jesus with the Son of Man, whether by himself or by
his disciples, can in no case affect the question, because the figure
of the Son of Man in Jewish literature is an integral part of the
inauguration of the Age to Come, not of the reign of the Davidic king.
Thus it seems probable that one part of the teaching of Jesus was the
announcement that this age is coming to its end and that the Age to
Come is rapidly approaching, when the Kingdom of God will be
universally realised. Those who wish to pass on into the life of the
New Age must prepare themselves by accepting already the sovereignty of
God at whatever cost it may be. Nothing physical or social must be
allowed to stand in the way; relations, property, eyesight, hands or
feet must all be sacrificed if they stand between man and his perfect
acceptance of God's sovereignty[16]; few men have lived up to this
standard, and to reach it they must repent.
Repentance to a Jew in the first century meant primarily change of
conduct, but it is a {28} misunderstanding of the Jewish position to
suppose that by this they excluded or indeed did not definitely intend
a change of heart. A typical example of the meaning of repentance in
Jewish literature is the story of Rabbi Eliezer ben Durdaiya,[17] who
was famous for his consistently immoral life, but was stung to the
heart one day when one of his companions casually remarked that for him
at least no repentance could avail. Then, continues the story, he went
forth, and sat between the hills, and said, "Ye mountains and hills,
seek mercy for me." But they said, "Before we seek mercy for you, we
must seek it for ourselves, for it is said, The mountains shall depart
and the hills be removed." Then he said, "Heaven and earth, ask mercy
for me." But they said, "Before we ask mercy for you, we must ask it
for ourselves, as it is said, The heavens shall vanish like smoke, and
the earth shall wax old as a garment." Then he said, "Sun and moon,
ask mercy for me." But they said, "Before we ask for you, we must ask
for ourselves, as it is said, The moon shall be confounded, and the sun
ashamed." Then he said, "Planets and stars, ask mercy for me." But
they said, "Before we ask for you, we must ask for ourselves, as it is
said, All the hosts of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heaven shall
be rolled up as a scroll." Then he said, "The matter depends wholly
upon me." He sank his head between his knees, and cried and wept so
long that his soul went {29} forth from him. Then a heavenly voice was
heard to say, "Rabbi Eliezer ben Durdaiya has been appointed to the
life of the world to come." But Rabbi Jehudah I., the Patriarch, wept
and said, "There are those who acquire the world to come in years upon
years; there are those who acquire it in an hour." The story is an
admirable parallel to that of the Prodigal Son and shows that the best
rabbinical and the best Christian teaching on repentance were identical
as to its nature and efficacy.
It is thus clear that there was not any essential difference between
Jesus and his contemporaries as to either the meaning of the Kingdom of
God or the necessity and power of repentance. The difference between
them came in the kind of conduct which was necessary for membership in
the Kingdom of God and prescribed for repentance. It was at this point
that Jesus came into sharp conflict with the two parties previously
described, the Fourth Philosophy and the Scribes and Pharisees.
The difference between Jesus and the Pharisees was one of
interpretation. Both he and they regarded the Law as the revelation of
God's will, and Jesus himself was emphatic in declaring that it was
binding and that he did not wish to destroy it. But the Pharisees
endeavoured to make the Law cover every detail of human life by
combining it with clever verbal interpretations which stretched its
meaning in every direction. Jesus, on the other hand, appealed from
the letter of the Law to its original {30} purpose, which he held to be
the benefit of man.[18] If, therefore, there was any contradiction
between the letter of the Law and its original purpose, it was the
purpose which was dominant. No one can doubt that in this respect
Jesus followed a principle incontestably correct but extraordinarily
difficult of application. It contains, moreover, implicit in it an
appeal to conscience, for it was really by this rather than by historic
knowledge that the ultimate purpose of the Law was revealed. The final
test of formularies which appeal to the intellect is whether they are
true and of codes defining conduct whether they are right, but the
perception of truth and of right depends in the end on reason and on
conscience,[19] and the difficulty and obscurity which attend their
application constantly frighten men into trying to substitute some
easier way for that of Jesus: but here too the saying is true that
"narrow is the way that leadeth unto life."
Far more deep-seated was the difference between Jesus and the Fourth
Philosophy. It is only {31} necessary to put oneself back in the
position of a Jew of Galilee in the first century, inspired by the
patriotic teaching of Judas of Galilee and his followers, to understand
how extraordinarily unpopular the teaching of Jesus must have been in
Galilee. Such a Jew believed that the continuance of the Roman rule
was an intolerable injustice, that it ought not to be endured, that
resistance to it was right and proper and would be crowned with success
by the intervention of God. If he heard Jesus say, "Love your enemies,
do good to them that hate you, bless them that curse you ... as ye
would that men should do to you do ye to them likewise; for if ye love
them that love you what thank have you ... love ye your enemies," what
would such a man have thought? In the light of the experiences of our
own time there is no reason for wonder that Jesus in the end found it
impossible to live in Galilee. The marvel is that he escaped with his
life.
The contrast between such teaching and that of the Fourth Philosophy is
so obvious that it could never either escape attention or be denied if
it were not for the absence of any definite mention of this party in
the gospels. The probable explanation is that by the time that the
gospels were written the Fourth Philosophy had ceased to exist, and
that in Greek circles this party was never prominent. The result was
that there was no reason to perpetuate any tradition as to controversy
between Jesus and the Fourth Philosophy. The only dispute with the
{32} Jews in which the Christians of the generation that produced the
gospels were interested was that with the rabbis, the lineal
descendants of the Pharisees. Thus they preserved the story of
arguments between Jesus and the Pharisees, but not between him and the
representatives of other schools. This, however, did not mean that the
teaching of Jesus called out by the Fourth Philosophy was not
preserved. The teaching itself was given, but, just as in the Talmud
the sayings of rabbis are often given without historic context, so also
in Christian tradition the sayings of Jesus usually appear without the
incidents which had called them out. In exactly the same way, except
for the final scene in Jerusalem, the priests and Sadducees are not
mentioned; they played no part in the life of the Christian generation
which produced the gospels. There was, however, a special reason why
the non-resistant teaching of Jesus should be preserved even when its
historic background was lost. Though the Fourth Philosophy had ceased
to have any contact with the Church, the persecution of Christians was
an actual problem, and the practical difficulty of right conduct under
its stress kept alive teaching which might otherwise have been
forgotten.
The question is sometimes asked whether such teaching is really
consistent with the violent cleansing of the Temple. The true answer
is probably not to be found in any ingenious harmonisation, but rather
in accentuating the fact that the "non-resistant" teaching in the
Sermon on the Mount deals with the {33} line of conduct to be observed
towards foreign oppressors and violence from without. The sacerdotal
money-changers and sellers of doves in the Temple were not the
"oppressors of Israel." Israel was called on to suffer under Roman
rule, and the righteous to endure violence at the hands of the wicked,
for that was the will of God, who in his own good time would shorten
the evil days. But the manipulation of the sacrificial system as a
means of plundering the pious was a sin of Israel itself, against
which, protest and force were justified. What the heathen and the
wicked do is their concern and God's, but the sins of Israel are
Israel's own; against them the righteous in Israel may execute
judgement.
It would be an affectation to suggest that this subject does not raise
questions of the greatest practical importance for the present age; no
one is justified in evading the issues presented. The teaching of
Jesus represents a non-resistant attitude which has come to be
described as "pacifist," and the world has just passed through a crisis
which has proved that "pacifism" and "non-resistance" are impossible
policies. What does this mean for those who profess and call
themselves Christians? It cannot mean that they ought to adopt a
non-resistant policy either in personal or in national affairs, for
experience (which has, after all, some merit) seems to prove that the
policy of not resisting evil leads to its triumph rather than its
defeat. But this fact gives no justification for {34} explaining away
or watering down the plain and intelligible teaching of Jesus.[20] It
was his teaching; it may have been right and wise for his immediate
hearers; but it is not wise or right as the general basis of conduct,
whether personal or national. If Jesus intended to lay down a general
principle of conduct we have to admit that he was wrong, or adopt the
pacifist position. There is nothing in the context to suggest that he
thought of a limited application of his words, nor in the days of
persecution which followed did Christians so interpret him. If,
therefore, he was wrong it is necessary to ask how we can explain the
error.
The answer seems to lie in a comparison of the attitude adopted by the
Jews of the first century on the one hand, and by ourselves on the
other, as to the working of God in the world. The Jew believed not
merely in an omnipotent God, but in a God who constantly used his power
quite independently of the action of men. We, on the contrary, believe
that the universe is so constituted that human action bears a fixed
relation to the course of events. What men do or do not bears a
definite relation to the events which will follow, and we no longer
look for God to help those who are unwilling to help themselves. One
of the means which we possess of helping ourselves is force, physical
force. We have the power to use it for good or for evil. It is as
culpable {35} not to use force when occasion requires as it is to use
it when occasion does not.
This is tolerably plain to us, but it was not tolerably plain to the
Jew of the first century. The war has brought out the human
limitations of the ethics of Jesus by the intellectual horizon of his
own time as clearly as the application of literary criticism to the Old
Testament brought out the defects of his knowledge of the authorship of
the Jewish scriptures. Just as it was wrong and futile to pretend that
when he said "David said" and quoted a psalm, he did not mean to
ascribe it to David, it is futile to argue that when he said "resist
not evil" and "love your enemies" he sanctioned the patriotic pursuit
of war.
[1] The best example of this method of "restatement" is probably
Plutarch's _De Iside et Osiride_, which discusses the Egyptian myth and
the various explanations given of it in accommodation to philosophic
truth. Heathenism did not long survive this kind of help; nor is it
surprising that it did not.
[2] See _Prolegomena to Acts_, i. 199-216.
[3] Ritschlianism is perhaps an exception: it did at least attempt a
synthesis with science approached through Kantian philosophy. But was
it successful?
[4] No one has seen this more clearly, or expressed it more vividly,
than the late George Tyrrell, especially in his _A Much Abused Letter_
and _Christianity at the Cross-roads_.
[5] Josephus, _Antiq._ xviii. 1. 1 and 6. See also _Prolegomena to
Acts_, i. 421 ff.
[6] This literature is now available as a whole in R. H. Charles,
_Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha_.
[7] The suggestion has even been made that some of the polemic in the
gospels, which is--as the text stands--directed against the Pharisees
and Rabbis, was historically intended for the Sadducees. It was too
important to be lost, and, as those who were originally attacked had
ceased to be important, it was turned against the only Jewish party
which still survived to oppose Christianity at the time when the
gospels were written. See also p. 32.
[8] This is a free rendering, somewhat paraphrased to bring out the
meaning, of the account of the martyrdom of Akiba under Tinnius
(Turnus) Rufus in the Jerusalem Talmud (_Berakh._ ix. 7). See
_Prolegomena to Acts_, I. 62.
[9] J. Klausner's _Die messianische Vorstellungen des juedischen Volkes
im Zeitalter der Tannaiten_ is probably the clearest statement of the
facts.
[10] The fourth book of Ezra is in many ways the finest of all
Apocalypses, and the English authorised version (in which it is called
2 Esdras) is a magnificent piece of English, needing, however,
occasional elucidation and correction by the critical editions of G. H.
Box, _The Ezra Apocalypse_, and of B. Violet, in the edition of the
Greek Christian writers of the first three centuries published by the
Berlin Academy.
[11] J. Weiss, _Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes_. The first edition
of this book is smaller and better than the second.
[12] The _Quest of the Historic Jesus_.
[13] I have endeavoured to deal with this question in the _Stewardship
of Faith_, pp. 36 ff.
[14] Mark x. 17 ff.
[15] Mark xii. 35.
[16] Mark ix. 43 ff.; cf. Matt. v. 29. ff.
[17] Quoted by C. G. Montefiore in the _Prolegomena to Acts_, pp. 71 f.
[18] See Mark ii. 27. For the meaning of Son of Man in this passage
see p. 60.
[19] Neither reason nor conscience is infallible: the tribunal of
history condemns many actions which were undoubtedly dictated by
conscience. Nevertheless we have no better guides in action, and both
reason and conscience have the peculiarity that the more they are used
the better do they become, and conversely that if they be neglected
they cease to be available in time of need. Men who habitually use
their powers in order to circumvent either conscience or reason in the
end find they are unable to use them at all. The distinction between
right and wrong disappears when conscience dies, and that between fact
and fiction when reason is neglected. The one is the danger which
besets clever politicians, the other the nemesis which waits on popular
preachers.
[20] The situation becomes pathetically impossible when men's
theological conscience is shocked by the suggestion that Jesus was
wrong, and their political conscience by the claim that he should be
obeyed.
{36}
II
JERUSALEM
For the history of the disciples after the death of Jesus we are
dependent upon a single source, the Acts of the Apostles, which can,
however, be controlled, and to some extent corrected, by the gospels
and by the epistles of Paul.
It is now generally recognised that if any one wishes to write a life
of Christ he ought to base his work not on the gospels as we have them
now, but rather on the information provided by the critical analysis of
the gospels as to their sources. These sources, or at least the two
oldest and most important, have become well known as Mark and Q. Every
one nowadays is aware that behind Matthew and Luke is a document which
was almost or entirely identical with our Mark, and that in addition to
this both Matthew and Luke used another source, or possibly sources, to
which the name of Q is given. In general, however, there is a tendency
among those who have acquired this insight into the composition of the
gospels from lectures or from little books rather than by the study of
a synopsis to {37} attach altogether too rigid an importance to these
results.
Mark, though a document of early date and unsurpassed value, is the
Greek edition of an earlier Aramaic tradition, probably, though not
certainly, in documentary form before it was translated. It would be a
miracle if it contained nothing due to the Greek circle in which its
present form was produced.
Q, after all, is the name, not of an existing document, but of the
critical judgement that there is a documentary source behind material
common to Matthew and Luke but absent in Mark. This critical judgement
is accepted by theologians as well as critics; but theologians, with a
distrust of criticism not wholly unjustified, frequently prefer a
mechanical to a rational application of this discovery, and dignify
their preference by calling it objective, though it is difficult to see
why a process should be regarded as objective, in any valuable sense of
the word, because it automatically accepts as derived from Q everything
common to Matthew and Luke, and leaves out all the rest. It is merely
a method of canonising the subjectivity of Matthew when it agrees with
that of Luke, or of Luke when it agrees with that of Matthew, and
damning both of them when they happen to disagree. Why the
subjectivity of the editors of the gospels becomes objective when it is
accepted by modern writers is a little difficult to see.
The result of this concentration of attention on the value of synoptic
criticism for the life of Jesus {38} and of the neglect of the
editorial subjectivity of the evangelists has been a general tendency
to overlook the value of the gospels as the record of the opinion of
the generation which produced them. Yet obviously there are no other
documents which tell us the views held in the early Church of the
teaching and office of Christ. On this subject they give even more
information than Acts, and enable us to control it by showing the
gradual development of thought and language in the Christian community.
Similarly, for a slightly later period and for a different locality,
the Pauline epistles give us glimpses of the process of development--a
process by no means always peaceable--of which the results are recorded
in the second part of Acts.
In this way the critical use of the gospels, the Acts, and Pauline
epistles enable us to trace the general outline of the early stages of
the synthesis between primitive Jewish Christianity and the spirit of
Graeco-Oriental mysteries. It takes us in succession into Jerusalem,
Antioch, and Corinth, not because these were the only churches which
grew up in this period, but because it is in the main their tradition
which is preserved in the documents at our disposal.
What was the course of events immediately after the death of Jesus?
There is no period of which the details are more obscure, but the
criticism of Mark and Acts enables us to reconstruct its general
outline. The fortunate preservation of Mark enables us to {39} correct
the narrative of Acts. If we had Acts alone we should have no doubt
but that the disciples stayed in Jerusalem, and settled there from the
time when they entered it with Jesus on the first Palm Sunday until the
day when they left it to preach to the world outside. Mark, however,
is convincing proof that Acts has omitted a complete incident. In Mark
xiv. 28 Jesus is represented as saying, "After I am risen I will go
before you into Galilee," and in Mark xvi. 7 the young man at the tomb
says, "Go tell his disciples and Peter that he goes before you into
Galilee, there ye shall see him." The sequence of events clearly
implied is that the disciples after the death of Jesus went back to
Galilee, where they saw the risen Jesus. Inspired by this vision, they
returned to Jerusalem to wait for his return in triumph, and meanwhile
to continue the work which he had begun. Unfortunately the end of
Mark, which undoubtedly described the details, has disappeared, but the
general sequence is as clear as anything can be which is not definitely
narrated.
The general tenor of the narrative in Acts makes it plain that in
Jerusalem they settled down as a separate synagogue. Any ten Jews had
a right to form a synagogue of their own, and general community of
interests, joined to opinions differing from those of others, would be
the natural basis of its organisation; but it is sometimes hard for
Christians, who have come to think of identity of opinion, especially
on points beyond the reach of proof, as {40} the basis of
ecclesiastical life, to understand that Palestinian Judaism admitted
the widest possible range of thought, and that the Church of Israel
rested not on uniformity of thought, but on obedience to the Law.
Naturally there was in point of fact considerable agreement in opinion,
and naturally also difference of opinion led to quarrels and hostility;
but in general the Church of Israel in the first century was as
characteristically based on uniformity of conduct as the Christian
Church in the fourth and following centuries was based on uniformity of
opinion.
On three points this synagogue of the Nazarenes, as the disciples were
called, differed from other Jews: (1) They held the opinion that they
were inspired, at least at intervals, by the Spirit of God; (2) they
followed a special kind of communistic rule which they probably
regarded as fulfilling the teaching of Jesus; (3) they held and
preached distinctive opinions about Jesus himself.
The opinion that the disciples were inspired by the Holy Spirit was in
some ways the keystone of Christian life. It formed a connecting link
with the authority of Jesus himself; for, whatever the later generation
of Christians may have thought, it is clear from Mark that Jesus in his
public preaching never claimed the authority of any special office or
function such as that associated with the word "Messiah" or with the
title "Son of Man," even though he may have allowed an inner ring of
disciples to believe that these were the offices to which he was {41}
entitled. Nor during his lifetime did he even permit his followers in
their preaching to ascribe any such rank to him. The authority which
he actually claimed for his words and deeds was that of the Holy Spirit
of God; and those who maintained that he cast out demons by the power
of Satan were, he said, guilty of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.
It is probable that the gospel tradition is trustworthy which
associates his baptism at the hands of John the Baptist with his first
consciousness of this inspiration.
Jesus, then, had claimed for himself, openly and publicly, the
authority of the Holy Spirit. There is no evidence that any of his
disciples had claimed this for themselves during his lifetime, but
after his death it seemed to them that the Spirit which had filled
their Master had descended on them, inspiring their words and guiding
their actions.[1]
What ought to be our verdict on this claim of the first Christians? To
see the question in its true light it is necessary to distinguish
between the experience of the Christians and the opinion which they
held about it. Their opinion was that they had been taken possession
of by the Spirit of God, which was acting through them, so that their
words and deeds had the authority no longer of fallible man but of the
omnipotent and infallible God. This theory was a heritage from a
distant past in Israel {42} when the Spirit of the Lord had been
regarded as the source of all extraordinary events, good or evil.
Later, evil events had no longer been attributed to the Spirit of the
Lord, but to demons or unclean spirits who peopled the earth and took
possession of men as they found opportunity. To them were attributed
disease, misfortune, and especially the raving of madness, while
healing and prophecy were attributed to the Divine Spirit.
In modern times we no longer attribute disease, misfortune, or madness
to devils, not because these phenomena have ceased, but because we have
a different theory of their origin, which, on the whole, produces more
satisfactory therapeutic results than the theory of possession.
Similarly the phenomena of prophecy, which the Jews ascribed to the
Spirit of God, remain. There has never been a generation lacking in
men who believe that their action and speech are being governed by a
compelling force, separate from the ordinary process of volition.
Those who have this experience seem to themselves to be, as it were,
the spectators of their own deeds, or to be listening to their own
utterances. Under its influence individuals, groups of men, or even
nations, are carried away by inexplicable waves of passion or
enthusiasm which, once aroused, cannot be resisted till their force is
spent. This consciousness has been felt in varying degree in every
generation, and the progress of humanity can never be explained unless
it be taken into account. Sometimes, in the inevitable {43} reaction
after the psychic stress of such experiences, men have resented,
doubted, or denied the validity of their own consciousness; sometimes
they have regarded it as possessing a value exceeding all else in life.
Usually those who have it attract the hostility of their
contemporaries, scarcely tempered by the allegiance of a few followers,
and their names are forgotten in a few years, but sometimes the verdict
of contemporary hatred is reversed by posterity, which endeavours to
compensate by legendary honours for the contempt and contumely of life.
The problem presented by this experience is really twofold. It calls
for a judgement as to its origin and for a judgement as to its value,
and on neither point has there as yet been sufficiently clear
discussion.
Does the experience of controlling force which the prophet feels really
come from some external influence, or is it merely his consciousness of
ordinarily unknown depths in his own nature? It is obvious that a
theory of prophecy could be made on lines rendered familiar by
psychologists, by suggesting that what happens in a prophetic
experience is the sudden "coming up" of what is ordinarily
"subliminal." It is, however, important to remember that this is
merely a modern hypothesis, just as the Jewish view of inspiration was
an ancient one. But it is impossible in a rational theology to combine
fragments of two wholly different explanations of life and of the
universe. "The Spirit" was an admirably intelligible phrase in the
Jewish or early {44} Christian view of the universe; it does not fit in
well with the modern view of the universe. Similarly the theory of
subliminal action fits very well into the modern view, but not into
that of traditional Christian theology. Preachers seem to make a
serious mistake when they try to combine the language of two rival
hypotheses to explain the same human experience.
The judgement of value which ought to be passed on the prophets is no
clearer than the judgement of origin. The early Church knew perfectly
well that there were true prophets and false prophets,[2] and so did
the Jews, but in the end the only way of distinguishing them was to say
that a true prophet was a prophet who was right, and a false prophet
was a prophet who was wrong. Nor can we arrive at any different
judgement. The truth is,--and unfortunately the modern world is
sometimes in danger of forgetting it,--that the difference between
right and wrong, fact and fancy, possibility and impossibility, is
inherent in the nature of things and incapable of modification by human
beings, prophets or otherwise. It cannot be changed by the glowing
utterances of poets, prophets, or preachers, or by the unanimous votes
of peoples. All that man can do is to discover it and obey it with
humility. The mere fact of discovery arouses in some men an emotion
which for the moment seems to change their being, but their {45}
emotion does not change or increase the truth, and it may be questioned
whether in some cases it has not prevented them from seeing rightly the
value of what they have found. For the same deep emotion is sometimes
caused by error, and there are few mistakes more deadly than to judge
the truth of what a man says, or the value of what he does, by the
emotion which he feels himself--however sincerely--or arouses in
others--however vehemently.
The way of life which the first Christians adopted was especially
marked by an attempt to organise themselves on communistic principles.
The Christians shared all things; those who had property realised it,
and pooled the proceeds in a common fund, which was distributed to
individual members as need arose. It is impossible not to recognise in
this action consistent and literal obedience to the teaching of Jesus.
The disciples had followed Jesus to the end of his journey in
Jerusalem; they were waiting for his manifestation in glory, and sold
all that they had and gave to the poor. But in terms of political
economy the Church was realising the capital of its members and living
on the division of the proceeds. It is not surprising that under these
circumstances for the moment none was in need among them, and that they
shared their food in gladness of heart, for nothing so immediately
relieves necessity or creates gladness of heart as living on capital,
which would be indeed an ideal system of economy if society were coming
to an end, or capital {46} were not. It is probable that the Church
thought that society would soon end, but it proved to be wrong, and it
is not surprising that the same book, which in its early chapters
relates the remarkable lack of poverty among the Christians, has in the
end to describe the generous help sent by the Gentile churches to the
poor brethren.
We may, however, surmise that the breakdown of this communistic
experiment was accompanied by other difficulties in the Church. It
appears that by this time Christianity had attracted the favourable
attention of a number of Jews who belonged at least by origin to the
Diaspora, and this introduced a new element, destined in the end to
become dominant and much more objectionable than the original disciples
to the Jews of Jerusalem. We know from other sources that among the
Hellenistic Jews was a tendency to liberalism, or Hellenism. This
touched the Jews where they were most sensitive, for it affected not
opinion but conduct, and seemed to threaten the destruction of the
Jewish Law. They were apparently willing to tolerate Peter and the
rest, so long as they confined themselves to holding peculiar opinions
about the Messiah, and remained perfectly orthodox in their fulfilment
of all the requirements of the Law. But when the synagogue of the
Nazarenes took to themselves Hellenists the situation became
intolerable: a severe persecution arose, Stephen was killed, and the
rest of the Hellenistic party were driven out of Jerusalem, though the
{47} original disciples remained, for the time at least, in comparative
peace. The Hellenists scattered throughout the Gentile neighbourhood
of Palestine, and their future history will have to be considered later.
The opinion which the disciples held of Jesus now became part of their
preaching in a manner which had not been the case during his lifetime.
To distinguish its nature and development requires a somewhat critical
investigation of the meaning and history of the titles first used in
speaking of Jesus. The chief of these are Messiah, Son of Man, Son of
God, and Servant. That which in the end was the most important of
all--Lord--was probably not used until a little later.
Messiah is really an adjective which, translated literally, means
"anointed," or in Greek _christos_, but whereas to say that a man was
anointed has no more meaning in Greek than it has in English, it had in
Hebrew the clear and universally understood meaning of "consecrated" or
"appointed by God." It was applied in the Old Testament to the
high-priest, and it is habitually used in this sense in the Mishna. It
was also used of Saul, of David, and of some of the other kings, but
always with some defining phrase attached to it, generally speaking
"the anointed of Jehovah." Without definition it is not found until
the Christian period. There is no reason to suppose that at the
beginning of the first century it was used exclusively to describe the
hope of the Jews that a {48} prince of the house of David would restore
their fallen fortunes, though in the later Jewish literature it was
used in this way.[3]
Thus if we try to construct the impression which the early Christians
made on the Jews of Jerusalem by claiming that Jesus was anointed by
God, we are obliged to say that the phrase itself only implied his
divine appointment; it did not by itself indicate definitely the
function to which he was appointed. But the way in which it was used
must have suggested two special functions--that of the Davidic prince
alluded to above, and that of the supernatural representative of God
who would judge the world at the last day.
It is quite clear that the writer of Luke and Acts, and the editor of
Matthew, identified Jesus with the expected Son of David, but there is
room for doubt whether this fully represents the thought of the first
disciples. There is very little in Mark which identifies Jesus with
the Son of David. In the preaching of Jesus the Kingdom of God, so far
as it was not the divine sovereignty, was the Age to Come much more
than the restored monarchy. It is true that the people of Jerusalem
seem to have been looking forward to a Davidic king, as may be seen
from the cries of the multitude at the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem.
It is also true that Bartimaeus greeted Jesus as Son of David; but
there is nothing in the recorded words {49} of Jesus to show that he
accepted this view. It seems, therefore, probable that just as the
people were thinking of the splendours of a restored monarchy, while
Jesus was speaking of the reign of God in the Age to Come, so they were
looking for a Davidic Messiah, and explained Jesus' strange and
overmastering personality in accordance with their own wishes rather
than with his words. It is not the only point at which the Church
followed the leading of the people rather than the teaching of Jesus.
The figure of the Son of Man destined to be God's representative at the
day of judgement which will divide this age from the Age to Come is
prominent in the undoubted teaching of Jesus, but forms one of the most
difficult problems in New Testament criticism. There seems but little
doubt that "Son of Man," which in Greek is an unintelligible phrase
rather than a title, was quite as obscure to the generation of Greek
Christians which produced the present gospels as it is to ourselves.
It was to them merely the strange self-designation of Jesus. Probably
the editors of the gospels believed that Jesus used this phrase
continually, and introduced it into their redactions of early sources
without stopping too narrowly to inquire either whether it had this
meaning in the passage in question, or whether the way in which they
were using it was consistent with the connotation of the phrase. The
result is that both in Mark and in Q there are passages in which "Son
of Man" represents an Aramaic phrase which might be {50} translated
literally in this way, but would be idiomatically rendered "man." For
instance, it is tolerably certain that in the passage in which Jesus
speaks of the Sabbath and says, "The Sabbath was made for man and not
man for the Sabbath," he really continued, "so that man is lord also of
the Sabbath," but in unidiomatic translation the word meaning "man" was
rendered "Son of Man" and interpreted as referring to Jesus himself.
The reason for saying that this is tolerably certain is that the only
alternative is that "Son of Man" really meant "Jesus," and was intended
as a reference to the "Son of Man" who plays a part in some of the
apocalypses, and it seems inconceivable that Jesus, who forbade his
disciples to tell the public that he was the Messiah, could so openly
have claimed this dignity.
Discussion of the phrase "Son of Man" has been going on for many years,
and has made it increasingly clear that, apart from the unidiomatic
translations referred to above, apocalyptic usage is the most important
factor in the problem. An obscure but impressive passage in Daniel was
taken up in the Book of Enoch, which describes in the Similitudes the
vision of a Man--or in Aramaic phraseology a "Son of Man"--in heaven,
who was "anointed," that is to say consecrated by God, to act as the
judge at the end of the age. Jesus appears to have used this
expression, and to have anticipated the speedy coming in judgement of
this Man on the clouds of heaven. This much may be regarded as agreed
upon by all {51} investigators. But the curious and striking thing is
that in none of the Marcan passages in which it is used in this sense
does it unambiguously refer to Jesus himself. No doubt the disciples
were convinced that it did, but it is therefore all the more
interesting and important that his actual words as reported by them do
not necessarily confirm their opinion. On the other hand, there is a
series of passages peculiar to Mark (that is to say, none of them is
found in Q) in which "Son of Man" does not refer to any coming in
judgement, but to the approaching passion, death, and resurrection of
Jesus. If he really uttered these words, beyond doubt he meant himself
by the Son of Man, and was introducing an entirely unparalleled and new
element into the delineation of this supernatural figure. But did he
use these words? In the description of the passion, death, and
resurrection it is generally recognised that the exactness of the
prediction probably owes something to the disciples' later knowledge of
the actual course of events. Their conduct at the arrest of Jesus, and
the entire absence of any sign of expectation of the resurrection,
render it very improbable that Jesus spoke with the definiteness
ascribed to him. In this case, therefore, there is decided reason for
thinking that the phrase "Son of Man" may itself belong to the
embellishment rather than to the body of tradition.
Thus the passages in which Jesus certainly uses "Son of Man" are
ambiguous--they need not {52} necessarily refer to him, and the
passages which unambiguously refer to him were not certainly spoken by
him. For this reason it is somewhat more probable than not that the
identification of Jesus with the Son of Man was not made by Jesus
himself. But it certainly embodies the earliest opinion of the
disciples concerning him, and it is in all probability to this
apocalyptic figure of the Man in heaven, predestined to judge the world
and anointed by God for that purpose, that the Markan tradition (we
cannot speak with certainty of Q) referred when it described Jesus as
"anointed."
A little later the circles represented by Matthew and Luke added to
this the more popular expectation of the restored monarchy of the house
of David; but the original stamp was never lost, and the functions of
the Christian Messiah, as apart from his name, were always those of the
Man of Enoch, much more than those of the Davidic king of the Psalms of
Solomon.
Finally, the concept of the Man who was to judge the world was
extensively modified by the actual course of the passion, death, and
resurrection of Jesus, and the Lukan writings, though probably not
Mark, Q, or even Matthew, facilitated or confirmed this process by
connecting the story of Jesus with the picture given in the fifty-third
chapter of Isaiah of the suffering of the righteous Servant of the Lord.
The Servant is a comparatively common title in the Old Testament for
those who faithfully carried {53} out the will of God; it is used of
Abraham, David, and Job among the sons of Israel, of Cyrus among the
heathen, of Israel in general, and of the righteous portion of Israel
in particular. In some parts, but not in all, the suffering of the
Servant, whoever he may be, is emphasised; but there is no trace in the
Old Testament, or in the later Jewish writings, that these descriptions
were regarded as predictive of the future. It was inevitable that the
resemblance of the death of Jesus to Isaiah liii. should sooner or
later strike Christian readers of the Old Testament, but it does not
appear to have done so immediately, and it is doubtful whether Isaiah
liii. was the first "suffering" passage in the Old Testament to be
ascribed to him. It is more probable that the use of the twenty-second
Psalm was earlier.
One further title of Jesus in the early Christian literature remains to
be discussed. He is referred to as Son of God. What would this phrase
mean in Jewish ears? In general the Jews regarded God as unique. The
idea of a Son of God in any physical sense, such as seemed natural
enough to the heathen world, would have been unthinkable to them, but
they believed that God himself had used the phrase metaphorically to
describe the relation between him and his chosen people. It was a
moral sonship, not a physical one in the heathen sense, or a
metaphysical one in the later Christian sense.
In the later literature the phrase developed on two {54} separate
lines. There was the tendency, exemplified in some of the Psalms, and
still more in the Psalms of Solomon, to use the phrase "Son of God" to
describe the Davidic king, but it was also used in quite a different
sense in the Wisdom Literature as the description of the righteous man,
and especially of the righteous man who suffered.
In Christian literature it seems tolerably clear that the history of
the phrase passed through several stages. The latest, though in the
end the most important for the development of doctrine, is that of
metaphysical sonship, which followed upon the equation of "Son of God"
with "Logos." Somewhat earlier than this, in the early chapters of
Luke, and probably of Matthew, is an idea of sonship which approximates
to the physical notion of the heathen world. Earlier still it was
probably used as a synonym for the Davidic Messiah. The question is
whether this is its meaning in the earliest passage of all,--the
account given in the first chapter of Mark of the voice from heaven at
the baptism which said, "Thou art my beloved Son in whom I am well
pleased." It is generally held that this is a quotation from the
second Psalm,[4] and therefore identifies Jesus with the Davidic
Messiah. But is it quite so certain that it is a quotation from
anything? The words of the Psalm are really quite different, "Thou art
my Son" instead of "Beloved Son," and "This day have I begotten {55}
thee" instead of "in whom I am well pleased." Why should we suppose
either that the voice from heaven was restricted to quoting scripture,
or that it did so with quite remarkable inaccuracy? If, however, the
idea be abandoned that the voice from heaven necessarily refers to the
second Psalm, it becomes an open question whether Jesus himself
regarded his divine sonship as the Davidic messiahship, or as that
divine sonship which the Book of Wisdom ascribes to the righteous. The
problem thus raised can never be settled, for the evidence is
insufficient; but neither can it be dismissed, for it is implicit in
the gospel itself.
The whole importance of this series of problems in the history of early
Christology is often strangely mistaken. It seems to many as though
the line of thought suggested above, which reduces to a vanishing point
the amount of Christology traceable, in the ordinary sense of the word,
to Jesus himself, is in some way a grave loss to Christianity. No
doubt it is a departure from orthodoxy. But if the history of religion
has any clear lesson, it is that a nearer approach to truth is always a
departure from orthodoxy. Moreover, the alternative to the view stated
above is to hold that Jesus did regard himself as either one or both of
the two Jewish figures, the Davidic Messiah and the Son of Man
described in Enoch. Both of these are part of a general view of the
universe, and especially of a prognostication of the future, wholly
different from our own, and quite incredible {56} to modern minds. How
do we endanger the future of Christianity by doubting that Jesus
identified himself with figures central in incredible and now almost
universally abandoned forms of thought?
[1] I have discussed the story of the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost
in the _Earlier Epistles of St. Paul_, pp. 241 ff., and have added some
critical remarks on the various forms of the tradition in the
_Prolegomena to Acts_, i. 322 f.
[2] I have discussed the history of early Christian attempts to
distinguish false from true prophets in "De strijd tusschen het oudste
Christendom en de bedriegers" in the _Theologisch Tijdschrift_, xlii.
395-411.
[3] The history of the phrase in the Old Testament and in Jewish
literature is discussed by G. F. Moore in the _Prolegomena to Acts_,
pp. 346 ff.
[4] W. C. Allen is a noteworthy exception. See his note on Matt. iii.
17 in the _International Critical Commentary_. See further
_Prolegomena to Acts_, pp. 397 ff.
{57}
III
ANTIOCH
According to Acts the result of the persecution of Stephen was the
spread of Christianity outside Palestine. As the narrative stands it
seems to imply that before this time there had been no Christian
propaganda outside Jerusalem. But significant details show that this
impression is wrong and merely due to the fact that the writer gives no
account of the earlier stages.
After the death of Stephen Paul appears to have continued his
persecuting zeal, and obtained authority to go to Damascus and
prosecute the Christians resident there. Obviously, then, the
Christian movement had already spread to Damascus, but there is no hint
in Acts as to how it did so. That in so doing it had advanced beyond
the limits of the Synagogue is not clear, but Damascus was essentially
a Gentile city, and the following considerations suggest that it had
done so. We know that the Jews of the Diaspora at this period were
filled with a proselytising zeal of which the fact is more certain than
the details. It is also tolerably plain from Philo that {58} there was
a strong tendency to Hellenise and go further than orthodox Jews were
willing to tolerate. It is also certain that the outcry against the
Christians in Jerusalem which led to the death of Stephen did not start
among the native Jews but among the Hellenists--those who belonged to
the synagogues of the freedmen and of the Cyrenaeans, Alexandrians,
Cilicians, and Asians, who had synagogues in Jerusalem.[1] In addition
to this, though Acts suggests that the origin of the Seven was the
necessity of administering the funds of the community, it is clear that
in point of fact it was their preaching which made them prominent.
Finally, it is clear from Acts that Philip began to preach to the
Gentiles as soon as he left Jerusalem, and that some of the Cypriots
and Cyrenaeans did the same.
There is thus considerable though not overwhelming evidence that
preaching to the Gentiles began somewhat sooner than is popularly
supposed, and that before the conversion of Paul near Damascus by the
vision of the risen Lord, or before the conversion of Peter by the
episode of Cornelius, there was already a Christian mission to the
Gentiles. The importance of this is that it enables us to see the
history of the early Church in a somewhat different perspective. It
shows that Paul was not the first, though he was undoubtedly the
greatest, of the Christians who preached to the Gentiles. He was {59}
a part of Hellenistic Christianity, and probably, as will be seen
later, not the most extreme of its adherents.
We have, then, to imagine the gradual rise of a Hellenising movement
among the Christians, of which the Seven were probably the original
leaders in Jerusalem, while unknown disciples, of whom we only know
that they were successful in Damascus, were carrying it on in other
places. The Twelve appear to have regarded the movement with doubt and
suspicion, and the Jews in Jerusalem always distinguished between the
original disciples and the Hellenists. Gradually, however, the
opposition of the Twelve and their followers crumbled away. The final
defection, from the point of view of Judaism, was that of Peter. To
judge from Acts he had undertaken a mission in Palestine, following up
the work of Philip and probably of others, but the story brings to
notice one of the characteristic weaknesses of Acts as history. It
always omits or minimises differences of opinion and quarrels among
Christians. We know this by comparing the Epistles with the Acts. It
is therefore perfectly legitimate to suppose that there may well have
been far more friction at first between the Hellenist missionaries and
the Twelve than Acts suggests. But in the end Peter had a vision at
Joppa which convinced him that he was wrong, and he accepted Cornelius
as a brother Christian. Acts would have us understand that the whole
Church at Jerusalem accepted Peter's position, {60} but in view of the
Judaistic controversy, which continued to rage much later than this
time, it is certain that this is not in accordance with fact. It is
significant that soon after this Peter was put in prison, and on his
escape from prison left Jerusalem.[2]
From this time on, if not before, the undoubted head of the Church in
Jerusalem was James, the brother of the Lord. What was his attitude
towards the Hellenising Christians? Acts would have us understand that
he was always on perfectly good terms with Peter, and later on with
Paul. But that is hardly the impression given by the Pauline epistles,
which very clearly distinguish Peter from James and his emissaries.
Paul's view is that Peter was in principle on the same side as himself,
and that he therefore had no right to yield to the representatives of
James; but he never suggests that James and he were on the same side.
Nor had the Jews in Jerusalem any illusions on the subject; when Paul
appeared in the temple he was promptly arrested, but not until the
popular madness of the year 66 did any of the orthodox Jews think of
interfering with James, the head of the Christians in Jerusalem.
Thus Acts plainly has understated the amount of controversy between the
Hellenising Christians and the original community. Failure to see this
is due to the ultimately complete triumph of the Hellenistic party, who
naturally looked on what was really the conservative position as
Judaising, {61} whereas the truth was that they themselves were
Hellenising.
According to Acts the most successful centre of Hellenistic
Christianity was Antioch. Here, too, it is possible that the picture
presented by it is one-sided, owing to the fact that, at least in many
places, Acts reproduces the tradition of Antioch. Doubtless there were
other centres equally important. Neither Ephesus nor Rome seems to
have been founded by missionaries from Antioch, though Paul and the
other Antiochean missionaries came into their history at an early date.
The controversy between the school of James and the Hellenistic
Christians appears to have been very acute in Antioch, but the details
are extremely obscure. Acts represents the beginning of the Church at
Antioch as due to Hellenistic Christians who left Jerusalem after the
death of Stephen. Nor is there any reason to doubt the correctness of
this tradition, which is probably that of Antioch itself. A little
later Barnabas came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. Acts does not
state, but seems to imply, that he came down, as Peter had come to
Samaria, in order to criticise and control Hellenistic enthusiasm.
But, like Peter at Caesarea, he was converted by the Hellenists, and
stayed to help their mission. He went further than this: hearing
apparently of the success of Paul at Tarsus he sent for him and
co-opted him into the service of the Church at Antioch. It is worth
noting in passing that the complete absence {62} of any details as to
Paul's work in Tarsus, and the silence concerning his movements from
the time he left Jerusalem soon after his conversion, proves that this
part of Acts is an Antiochean rather than a Pauline tradition.
Soon after this more missionaries arrived from Jerusalem. They do not
appear to have been active propagandists, but brought with them a sad
story of approaching destitution in the famine which was at hand. The
Church at Antioch rose to the necessity and sent Paul and Barnabas with
relief.[3] Acts tells us nothing more of what happened, but that soon
after Paul and Barnabas, having returned to Antioch, started on the
"First Missionary Journey."[4] On their return, however, a mission of
protest against their methods arrived from Jerusalem. Paul, Barnabas,
and some others went up to Jerusalem; a meeting of the representatives
of the two churches was held, and an amicable agreement which was in
the main a triumph for Antioch was arrived at.[5]
This appears to be Paul's third visit to Jerusalem after his
conversion; but this raises difficulties, and has led to considerable
critical investigation and not a little controversy. It had always
been supposed that this visit of Paul to Jerusalem was identical with
that described in the second chapter of Galatians, but in that chapter
Paul, calling God to witness that he is not lying, makes a statement
which loses all its point if it was not his second visit. Various {63}
attempts to explain this difficulty have been made. One solution of
the problem is that the visit to Jerusalem described in Galatians ii.
is not identical with that of Acts xv., but is an episode connected
with the visit in the time of the famine relief, which the writer of
Acts had either not known or thought it unnecessary to recount.[6]
According to this theory the visit described in Acts xv. took place
after the visit in Galatians had been written. But this theory does
not answer the difficulty that the apostolic decrees are not mentioned
in the Epistles to the Corinthians, and that it is incredible that they
could have been overlooked by Paul if the account in Acts xv. were
wholly correct. It seems better to accept the suggestion that the
solution of the problem is to be found in the source-criticism of Acts.
The source-criticism of Acts has passed through three more or less
spasmodic stages.[7] The first was early in the nineteenth century
when a number of scholars endeavoured to analyse the book. Their
efforts were not very successful, though they unearthed a great many
interesting phenomena. Later on, in the 'nineties, another series of
efforts were made with, on the whole, even less success than before.
{64} Finally, in our own time there have been some interesting
suggestions by Harnack, Schwartz, and Torrey.[8]
The last named has shown extremely good reason for thinking that there
is an Aramaic source behind the first fifteen chapters of Acts.[9] He
is less convincing when he tries to prove that this was a single
document, and that it was faithfully translated without addition or
change by the editor of Acts. It seems more probable that there was
more than one Aramaic source, and that it was often changed and
interpolated by the editor.
Harnack skilfully tries to distinguish two main lines of tradition,
that of Antioch and that of Jerusalem. He also thinks the Jerusalem
tradition existed in two forms, which can be distinguished as doublets
in Acts i.-v. He attaches Acts xv. to the tradition of Antioch, but it
seems more probable that it belongs to the Jerusalem tradition. The
truth may be as follows: soon after the time when Barnabas had gone
over to the Hellenistic party another body of Christians from Jerusalem
came to Antioch. In the years which followed there grew up two
traditions of what happened next. The tradition at Antioch was that
{65} the Christians from Jerusalem had been chiefly concerned with the
physical necessities of their Church, though they were undoubtedly men
possessed of a prophetic gift. They had so worked on the sympathy of
Antioch that it had accepted the needs of the poor saints in Jerusalem
as a responsibility laid on it by heaven. This tradition is preserved
in a short form in Acts xi., and in the Epistle to the Galatians Paul
energetically sustained its correctness, incidentally mentioning some
other events connected with his stay at Jerusalem, the perversion of
which, as he maintained, had given rise to the tradition of Jerusalem.
This latter tradition the editor of Acts had found preserved in the
document which he has used as the basis of Acts xv., and if any one
will read Galatians ii. alongside of Acts xv., not in order to see how
much they agree or differ, but rather to note how far they might be
different accounts of the same series of events, he will see that
Paul's chief contention is that he only saw the leaders of the
community at Jerusalem in private, and that they at no time succeeded
in imposing any regulations on him. The vigour of his protestations
seems to indicate that his opponents had maintained that the meeting
was an official one, and that it had imposed regulations, namely,
should the theory which is being suggested be correct, the Apostolic
Decrees.
The two traditions are naturally quite contradictory; but human nature
is so constituted that it is not impossible for two sets of people,
especially after {66} some lapse of time, to give entirely different
accounts of the same events and to do so in perfectly good faith. The
editor of Acts, however, did not realise that the two traditions
referred to the same event, and made a mistake in thinking that the
meeting which he found described in the Jerusalem source came after and
not before the first missionary journey. Ed. Schwartz goes further.
He points out that the first missionary journey follows the account of
the meeting in Jerusalem given in Acts xi., and that the second journey
follows the account given in Acts xv. If there was really only one
meeting, was there not really only one journey, which the editor of
Acts, or his sources, converted into two?
However this may be, and no agreement among critics is ever likely to
be reached, it is at least certain that there was considerable friction
between Jerusalem and Antioch, and that Antioch wholly refused to
accept the dictation of Jerusalem. On the contrary, it undertook
wide-reaching missions, of one of which Paul became the leader,
founding churches in Galatia, Asia, and Achaea. Of his career we have
an obviously good account, so far as the sequence of events is
concerned, in the second part of Acts, and some interesting sidelights
on its difficulties and trials in the Pauline epistles.
What were the main characteristics of the preaching to the Gentiles
which thus found a centre in Antioch? Its basis was the intellectual
heritage from Jerusalem which made the Christians teach that {67} the
God of the Jews was the only true God, and that Jesus had been
appointed by him as the Man who would judge the world at the end of the
age. This represents the teaching in Marcan tradition as to the Son of
Man, but Paul also accepted the view that Jesus was the Son of David,
though he seems to have eliminated the purely national character of the
expected restoration of the kingdom of the Jews under a Davidic king.
The only complete evidence as to the exact form of the expectation
which played a part in the teaching of Paul, and presumably in that of
the Church of Antioch as a whole, is the invaluable description given
in the Epistles[10] of the sequence of events to which Paul looked
forward. According to this he expected that Jesus would come on the
clouds of heaven; Christians who had died would be raised up, and the
rest would be changed, so that they would no longer consist of flesh
and blood, but of spirit. But, just as in 4 Ezra, the reign of the
Messiah is limited; a time will come when he will deliver up his
dominion to God. Then comes "the End," and Paul takes the picture no
further. Is it too much to suppose that, like 4 Ezra, he thought that
at the End the whole of the present order would cease, and that after
it would come the general resurrection and judgement, to which he
frequently alludes, followed by the life of the Age to Come? In any
case the idea of the limited reign of the Messiah, and the increased
{68} emphasis on the descent of Jesus from David, are points of contact
with 4 Ezra, and thus make it increasingly possible that Paul thought
that the resurrection of Christians to life would be separate from the
final resurrection of all to judgement.
This original Christian teaching was essentially Jewish, but much of
the phraseology in which it would have been expressed by Jews must have
been unintelligible to Greek ears. It therefore soon either
disappeared or was transformed. The Kingdom of God, for instance, is
as rarely mentioned in the Pauline epistles as it is frequent in the
earliest part of the gospels. The word "Christ," translating the
Hebrew adjective "anointed," was entirely unintelligible to Greek ears,
and became a proper name. "Son of Man" or "Man" would have been even
more unintelligible; Paul never used "Son of Man," and it is doubtful
whether he uses the word "Man" in the technical apocalyptic sense. But
though the words were unintelligible the ideas had not disappeared.
The functions attributed to the Son of Man in the gospels still remain
attributed to Jesus in the Pauline epistles, though they are scarcely
so much emphasised.
The Antiochean missionaries seem to have adopted a new word to take the
place of the unintelligible "Messiah" and "Son of Man," and called
Jesus "Lord." It is made tolerably certain by comparing the oldest
strata of the gospels with the more recent that this word was not used
in Jerusalem or in Galilee {69} as a title of Jesus. It may have been
used occasionally in Aramaic-speaking circles, but it became dominant
in Greek. Its extreme importance is that it was already familiar to
the Greek-speaking world in connection with religion. It had become
the typical title for the God of one of the Graeco-Oriental cults which
offered private salvation[11] to individuals. It was therefore
inevitable that whatever the Jews may have meant when they called Jesus
Lord, their Greek converts interpreted it in the sense in which the
word had become familiar to them, and thought in consequence that Jesus
was the divine head of a cult by which each individual might obtain
salvation. The full importance of this became obvious in a purely
Greek centre such as Corinth, but the process began in Antioch.
This change in the significance attached to Jesus had its correlative
effect on the position which the Christians ascribed to themselves.
They came inevitably to regard themselves as the members of a new cult
which was superior to all others. Only by joining their number was
salvation to be found. In this sense they began to interpret the
phrase "Kingdom of God," which in many parts of the gospels very
obviously means the Christian Church. Few things, however, are more
certain than that Jesus had no intention of founding a new society
outside the Jewish Church, and none of these passages can with any
probability be ascribed to him, even {70} though at least one can, on
mechanical grounds, make out a fair case for inclusion in Q.
A correlative change was introduced into the attitude adopted towards
the Old Testament. The Antiochean Christians refused to accept it as
an obligatory law of conduct; but more and more was it interpreted as
prophetic of Jesus, and not only of him but also of the Christian
Church. In this way everything that was said of ancient Israel, and
all the promises made to it, were transferred to the Christians, who
claimed that they, and not the Jews, were the ancient People of God.
The complete fulfilment of this process did not, it is true, take place
in the time of Paul, but it was not long in coming, and even in the
epistles there are many places which show that the Christians regarded
themselves as the true heirs of the promise.
This transference of the Jewish scriptures to the Christian Church was
probably almost as important for the future history of Christianity as
the change which made Jesus the centre of a cult offering private
salvation, instead of the prophetic herald of the Kingdom of Heaven,
destined by God to be his representative at the End of the Age. It
meant that Christianity shared with Judaism the advantage, which no
other religion in the Empire had, of being a religion with a Book.
Nevertheless the obvious fact that the Book was not originally
Christian was destined in the long run to lead to considerable
difficulty. Though the Old Testament is not always susceptible {71} of
the meaning given to it by Jewish rabbis, it is essentially a Jewish
book, and the attempt to find in it a series of prophecies foretelling
the coming of Jesus was radically wrong. It could not be supported by
any straightforward interpretation, which gave to the Old Testament its
original historical meaning. The result was the inevitable growth of
an unnatural symbolical interpretation which had little difficulty in
extracting anything from anything. It is difficult to estimate whether
the result has been more good or evil. It produced good, in that it
very soon necessitated the growth of a Christian canon--the New
Testament added to the Old--and this preserved much great literature
for the advantage of future generations, and was a check upon
extravagances of thought. Perhaps most important of all, it provided
an ethical standard which successive generations of Christians have
never succeeded in practising. They have indeed frequently tried to
explain away the contrast between their scriptures and their deeds when
it became too oppressive, but they have never quite succeeded, or been
able entirely to satisfy themselves by these methods: the letter of
scripture has constantly remained a salutary protest against the
interpretation put upon it. All this has been of enormous advantage
for the Christian Church. But on the other hand the infallibility
ascribed to the Bible has been an easy weapon for obscurantism, and a
drag on intellectual progress. It has prevented the Church from
adopting the discoveries of science and {72} criticism in such a way as
to make them applicable to religious life. Bible Christianity[12] in
some of its more recent forms has become a serious danger, and in
moments of depression a student is apt to ask whether in the irony of
history the Bible, which strengthened and supported the Church in its
early history, and helped it in many generations to moral reformation,
is destined to become an instrument for preventing the adaptation of
Christianity to the needs of to-day, and to drive the spirit of
religion, which is eternal, from organised Christianity to take refuge
once more in some newer forms, more receptive of truth, and less
tenacious of error.
[1] It is probable that Paul was at this time settled in Damascus
rather than Jerusalem. If so, which synagogue in Jerusalem did he
frequent? That of the Cilicians as a native of Tarsus?
[2] Unless this story is misplaced and ought to come before Acts ix. 32.
[3] Acts xi. 27 ff.
[4] Acts xii. 25-xiv. 28.
[5] Acts xv.
[6] See especially O. W. Emmet, _The Eschatological Question in the
Gospels and other Studies_, pp. 191 ff., and K. Lake, _The Earlier
Epistles of St. Paul_, pp. 274 ff.
[7] The most important names in the first period are Koenigsmann,
Schleiermacher, Gfroerer, and Schwanbeck, especially the last; in the
second period B. Weiss, Wendt, Sorof, Juengst, J. Weiss, Spitta, Clemen,
Hilgenfeld. In general the work of this group is inferior in value to
that of their predecessors. A clear and invaluable summary of both is
given by W. Heitmuller in the _Theologische Rundschau_ for 1899, pp. 47
ff.
[8] Perhaps Norden's name should be added, but interesting and
stimulating though his book _Agnostos Theos_ be, it suffers from
ignorance of early Christianity, and has little permanent value for the
criticism of Acts.
[9] A. von Harnack, _Untersuchungen zu den Schriften des Lukas_; E.
Schwartz, "Zur Chronologie des Paulus," in the _Goettingische
Nachrichten_, 1907, pp. 263 ff.; C. C. Torrey, "The Composition and
Date of Acts," in the _Harvard Theological Studies_, i. The most
damaging criticism of Torrey is that of F. C. Burkitt in the _Journal
of Theological Studies_, Oct. 1919, but I do not think that he answers
Torrey's case.
[10] Especially 1 Cor. xv. and 1 Thess. iv.
[11] See p. 76.
[12] The reference is to certain American institutions, connected in
the main with evangelising movements.
{73}
IV
CORINTH
Christianity had been profoundly changed by its passage from Galilee to
Jerusalem. Whereas the teaching of Jesus had been the announcement of
the kingdom of God, the illustration of its character, and the
insistent call to men to repent, the central teaching of the disciples
in Jerusalem became the claim that Jesus was the Messiah. But the
passage from Jerusalem to Antioch had produced still greater changes.
After all, the teaching of the disciples in Jerusalem contained no
elements foreign to Judaism. It was probably considered by the Jewish
authorities as the erroneous application to Jesus of opinions which,
rightly or wrongly, were widely held among the Jews; but nothing in it
represented concession to Hellenism. As soon as Hellenism was
suspected the Christians were at once driven out. In Antioch, on the
other hand, much that was distinctly Jewish was abandoned, and
Hellenistic thought adopted, so that Jesus became the divine centre of
a cult. It is incredible that he should have been so regarded by the
Jews of {74} Jerusalem; it is impossible that he should not have been
by Gentiles.
It is remarkable that Paul and the other Antiochean missionaries were
willing to accept this development, and to make themselves the
enthusiastic agents of its propaganda; but they clearly did so, and the
point is of extreme importance for the history of Judaism.[1] The only
alternative to large concessions to the position of the Dutch radicals
is to admit that in the Diaspora the Hellenising of Jews had proceeded
more rapidly and far deeper than has as a rule been supposed.
The result is clear, however obscure the process may be; Christianity
became a Graeco-Oriental cult, offering salvation, just as did the
other mystery religions. It competed with them for the right of
succession to the official religion of Rome, and ultimately it
triumphed. To understand the situation it is necessary to comprehend
the general nature of these cults, and to see the points of likeness
and difference in Christianity.
In general all the mystery religions assumed the existence of a Lord,
who had passed through various experiences on earth, and finally been
glorified and exalted. He had left behind the secret of obtaining the
same reward, in the form partly of knowledge, partly of magical
ceremonies. His followers knew this secret, and admitted into it those
whom the Lord was willing to accept. The initiated obtained {75}
protection in this world, and a blessed immortality after death. The
Lord was probably not usually identified with the Supreme God; for
instance, in Mithraism the Sun, not Mithras, was originally the supreme
God, though in the last stages of the cult the difference between the
two was apparently blurred, and Mithras became indistinguishable from
the Sun.
The Christianity revealed in 1 Corinthians clearly conforms to this
type. It has its Lord, Jesus, who is far more than human, but is not
identified with the supreme God "the Father";[2] he has suffered on
earth, but been glorified and exalted, and Christians who accept him in
faith, and are initiated into the Church by the sacrament of Baptism,
obtain a share in his glory, and will enjoy a blessed immortality. The
general resemblance is striking and undeniable. It may be summarised,
as was said above, by the statement that Christianity offered men
salvation, and was believed to fulfil its offer. Indeed, its success
was partly due not to any difference from the other cults, but to the
fact that it made more exclusive claims, combined with a higher ethical
standard, than any other.
But what exactly was meant by salvation? No single answer can be
given. In one sense salvation was primarily an eschatological concept,
though its formulation was different among Jewish-minded and
Greek-minded believers. The Jew meant, in the main, that, at the great
day when the dead {76} would rise and join the living before the
judgement seat of God, he would be safe from the Divine Wrath, be
acquitted, and have a place among those who would live in happiness in
the Age to Come. The Greek probably thought rather that each soul
which was saved would pass at death to a happier and better existence.
Ultimately these two strands of eschatology were woven together, though
scarcely reconciled, in the elaborate fabric of the Catholic system of
purgatory, paradise, resurrection, judgement, heaven and hell.
In another sense salvation meant something different, which was not
eschatological. In accordance with the general spirit of the
Graeco-Oriental mysteries, there existed a belief that through
sacraments men could change their nature, be born again, and--as
Irenaeus puts it--become the children of the eternal and unchangeable
God instead of the children of mortal man.[3] In this way they passed,
even before death, into eternal life, and they were raised to an
existence beyond the reach of Fate. The basis of this concept was
doubtless astral, and at least some early Christians believed that
whereas the unbaptized were subject to the inimical decrees of the
stars, the regenerate were immune.
Judged by our standards this belief is magical, just as the Jewish
eschatology is mythological. Neither has part or lot in modern
thinking; this does not necessarily prove that they are wrong, but it
means {77} that the problem for us is not one of details, but of
opposing systems, the parts of which cannot be interchanged. We can,
with logical propriety, accept the Graeco-Jewish eschatology or the
Graeco-Oriental sacramental regeneration if we reject modern thought.
But we cannot, except in intellectual chaos, combine the two, or
appropriately express modern thought in language belonging to the
ancient systems.
The modern man does not believe in any form of salvation known to
ancient Christianity. He does believe that so long as life lasts, and
he does not know of any limit to its duration, good and evil are
realities, and those who do good, and are good, achieve life of
increasingly higher and higher potentiality. If anything were gained
in practical life by calling this "salvation," it would be right and
wise to do so. But in fact it is disastrous, for it obscures thought
and confuses language.
Thus there is no doubt as to the general resemblance of the Christian
offer of salvation to that of other cults, and the obvious point of
difference--the presence of the Jewish eschatology--has no claim to
superior truth. What, then, are the points of difference between
Christianity and the other cults which explain the triumph of the
Church? Two popular but probably mistaken explanations may first be
discussed.
It is often said that Christianity had an enormous advantage in that
Jesus was an historic person, whereas the Lords of the other cults were
not. But {78} closer analysis does not confirm the importance of this
difference.
The initiates of the other cults believed that their Lords were
historic persons, just as Christians believed that Jesus was. They
had, indeed, lived a long time ago, but this was no disadvantage: any
one who reads Tatian's _Oratio ad Graecos_ can see how antiquity, not
recentness, was regarded as desirable. The general argument of
Christians was not that Jesus was historic, and the other Lords were
not, but that he fulfilled a true offer of salvation, made in a more
remote antiquity than any pagan religion could claim, while the heathen
Lords were demons, misunderstanding the prophecies of the Old
Testament, clumsily simulating their fulfilment, and arrogating to
themselves the title of God. It was of course an advantage that the
"sacred legend" of Christianity was free from the repulsive elements in
other cults, which it taxed the ingenuity of a Julian to explain.
Moreover, historical criticism shows that the points in the story of
Jesus which played the greatest part in commending Christianity to a
generation asking for private salvation are those which are not
historic. The element of truth in much perverse criticism, arguing
that Jesus never existed, is that the Jesus of history is quite
different from the Lord assumed as the founder of Catholic
Christianity. The Church conquered the world by offering salvation
through a redeeming Lord. Jesus made no such offer: to him {79} the
Kingdom of God, the pearl of great price, was the natural inheritance
of men, if they would only take it. No supernatural change of nature,
but to turn round, abandon all that hindered, and go in the right
direction--go home--was the repentance which he required. Probably it
was not unique teaching: it is very hard to obey, and it makes no
spectacular demands. Its only claim to acceptance is its truth. It
did not conquer the world. Nor did Jesus--the Jesus of history--think
that it would do so. "Strait is the gate and narrow is the way that
leadeth unto Life, and few there are that find it."
Thus the theory that Catholic Christianity succeeded because Jesus was
an historic person cannot be sustained.
Nor is there much more truth in the attribution of its success to the
influence of the personality of Jesus. No doubt it was the personality
of Jesus which influenced his immediate followers, made them regard him
as the Davidic Messiah or as "Son of Man," and rendered possible their
belief in his exaltation to the right hand of God. Without this belief
Christianity could never have come into existence; but once the belief
was established it became the foundation of the whole structure, and
the personality of Jesus was quite eclipsed by the supernatural value
attached to him. Not the men who had known Jesus, but those who had
not, converted the Roman Empire, and their gospel was that of the
Cross, Resurrection, and Parousia, not the Sermon on the Mount, or an
{80} ethical interpretation of the Parables, or a moral _imitatio
Christi_.
The true answer is that Catholic Christianity conquered because it was
popular, not because it was true, and failed for the same reason.
Permanence, not popularity, is the test of truth; for truth has often
no adherents, while error has many.
The permanent truth in Christianity is, I think, to be found in the
spirit, or perhaps more correctly the "will," which Jesus had, and
tried to hand on to his disciples, of service and self-sacrifice. It
calls men to redeem others, rather than to seek redemption for
themselves. This is to spiritual life what gravitation is to the
physical world. It was known to others before him and after, but it
has not yet conquered the world.
But the popular teaching[4] which loomed largest in the early days of
the Church offered the privilege rather than the responsibility of
redemption, and maintained that the Christian was united to the Supreme
God--a claim higher than that made by any other cult. This side of
Christianity, though not Jewish, was in the main derived from Judaism,
from which all the first Christian missionaries accepted the preaching
of the one supreme God, whom Paul constantly refers to as "the Father."
There has been of recent years much loose writing and looser speech
{81} about the "Fatherhood of God." It has even been asserted that
this was the special revelation of Jesus. Such a view does not for a
moment sustain any critical investigation. No doubt Jesus sometimes,
possibly often, spoke of God as "Father"; but so did many other Jews.
They and he referred to the moral son-ship of the righteous, not to a
supernatural or sacramental relation. Nor is there any sign that Jesus
felt that he had any new revelation as to the nature of God: he was
much more intent on telling men what they ought to do to conform to the
demands of God.
But after the time of Jesus the use of "Father" as applied to God
became more and more general; especially to denote the peculiar
relationship--however that may have been conceived--between Jesus and
God. This use is especially characteristic of the editor of Matthew,
and still more of the Fourth Gospel. It is the correlative to the
process by which "Jesus, the Son of God," became "God the Son."