of the _incunabula_ of our faith, and throw open that time to free
relation with the whole providence of humanity. Suppose Christianity
to be the influence upon the world of a Divine Person,--in quality
divine, in quantity human,--whose Epiphany was determined at a crisis
of ripe conditions for the rescue, the evolution, the spread of holy
and sanctifying truth. What are those conditions? They consist mainly
in the co-presence, within the embrace of one vast state, of two
opposite races or types of men, both having a partial gift of divine
apprehension, and holding in charge an indispensable element of truth;
both with their spiritual life verging to exhaustion and capable of no
separate effort more; and each unconsciously pining away for want of
the complement of thought which the other only could supply. The
_Hebrew_ brought his intense feeling of the Personality of God;
conceiving this in so concentrated a form as to exclude the proper
notion of infinitude, and render Him only the most powerful Being in
the Universe, its Monarch,--wielding the creatures as his
puppets,--acting historically upon its scenes as objective to Him, and
by the annals of his past agency supplying to the Abrahamic family a
religion of archives and documents. The sovereignty of Jehovah raised
him to an immeasurable height above his creation; dwarfed all other
existence; placed him by _nature_ at a distance from men, and only by
_condescension_ allowing of approximation. And hence his worshippers,
in proportion as they adored his greatness, felt the littleness of all
else; acquired a temper towards their fellow-men, if not severe and
scornful, at least not reverent and tender; and regarded them as
separate in kind from Him, mere dust on the balance or locusts in the
field. The religion of the _Hellenic_ race began at the other
end,--from the midst of human life, its mysteries, its struggles, its
nobleness, its mixture of heroic Free-will and awful Destiny; and
their deepest reverence, their quickest recognition of the Divine, was
directed towards the soul of a man vindicating its grandeur, though it
should be against superhuman powers. In proportion as men were great,
beautiful, and good, did they appear to be as lesser gods, and earth
and heaven to be filled with the same race. Thought, conscience,
admiration in the human mind were not personal accidents separately
originating in each individual; but the sympathetic response of our
common intellect, standing in front of Nature, to the kindred life of
the Divine intellect behind Nature, and ever passing into expression
through it. When this feeling of the Hellenic race became reflective,
and organized itself into philosophy, it represented the universe as
the eternal assumption of form by the Divine thought, which we were
enabled to read off by our essential identity of nature. Hence a whole
series of conceptions quite different from the Hebrew representations;
instead of Creation, Evolution of being; instead of Interposition
from without, Incarnation operating from within; instead of Omnipotent
Will, Universal Thought; assigning as the ideal of man's perfection,
not so much obedience to Law, as similitude of Mind to God; and
tending predominantly not to strength in Morals, but to beauty in Art.
These two opposite tendencies had run their separate course, and
expended their proper history; and were talking wildly, as in the
approaching delirium of death. But they are the two factors of all
religious truth: and to fuse them together, to make it impossible that
either should perish or should remain alone, the Christ was given to
the world, so singularly balanced between them, that neither could
resist his power, but both were drawn into it for the regeneration of
mankind. In the accidents of his lot given to the one race, and only
baffling the visions of prophets to transcend them; in the essence of
his nature, so august and attractive to the other that the faith in
Incarnation was irresistible; presented to the Hebrews by his mortal
birth, and snatched from them by his immortal; stopping by his
holiness the mouth of Law, and carrying it up into the higher region
of Faith and Love; in the Temple wishing the Temple gone, that there
might be open communion, Spirit with Spirit; translating sacrifice
into self-sacrifice;--he had every requisite for conciliating and
blending the separated elements of truth which, for so many ages, had
been converging towards him. But if this was the function
providentially assigned to him, and for which the divine and human
were so blended in him, it is a function which could not be
accomplished in a moment, in a generation, in a century. It is an
_historical_ function, freely demanding time for its theatre; and as
the separate factors had occupied ages in attaining their ripeness for
combination, so must their fusion consume many a lifetime of
effervescing thought, ere the homogeneous truth appeared. The words of
Christ are not in this view the end in which Revelation terminates;
but the means given to us of knowing himself, contributions to the
picture we form of his personality. Nor are the sentiments of his
immediate followers about his office and position in the scheme of
Providence anything more authoritative to us than the incipient
attempts made, when his influence was fresh, to grasp the whole of his
relations while only a part was to be seen. The records of the great
crisis are no doubt of superlative value, as the vehicles by which
alone we understand and feel its power; but their value is lost if
they are to dictate truth to our passive acceptance, instead of
quickening our reason and conscience to find it: they stop in this way
the very development which they were to lead, and disappoint Christ of
the very work he came to achieve. Human elements were inevitably and
fully present in the first age and its Scriptures, as in every other;
and the transitory ingredients they have left, it is a duty to detach
from the eternal truth. And as conditions of finite imperfection
cannot be banished from the central era, neither can the guidance of
the Infinite Spirit be denied, whether among the Hebrew, the Hellenic,
or the Christian people, in the ages before and after. In that new
development of human consciousness and knowledge in regard to God,
which we call Christianity, _all_ the requisite conditions--viz. the
factors taken up, the Person who blends them, and the continuous
product they evolve--include Divine Inspiration as well as Human
Reflection,--the living presence and communion of the Eternal with the
Transitory Mind, of the perfectly Good with the good in the Imperfect.
To disengage the one from the other, to treasure up the true and holy
that is born of God, and let fall the false and wrong that is infused
by man, is possible only to Reason and Conscience, is indeed the
perpetual work in which they live; the denial of which is not merely
Atheism, but Devil-worship,--not the bare negation, but the positive
reversal, of religion,--the virtual affirmation that God indeed
_exists_, but exists as _Un_-reason and _Un_-good. No mechanical, no
chronological separation can be effected of the Divine from the Human,
the Revealed from the Unrevealed, in faith; there is no person, no
book, no age, no Church, in which both do not meet, and require to be
disentangled the one from the other; but the perseverance of God's
living and self-harmonious Spirit throughout the discordant errors of
dying generations enables the men most apt and faithful to his voice
to know more and more what his reality is, and drop the semblances by
which it is disguised. The effect of this view on our estimate of
ecclesiastical literature is evident. As, according to it, the
Apostolic period is not exempted from critical judgment, so neither
are succeeding times to be without their claim on religious reverence.
The canonical books of the New Testament fall back into the general
mass of literature recording the earliest knowledge and consciousness
of the disciples, neither detached, as a mysterious whole, from other
productions of their time, nor excluding the greatest diversities of
value among themselves. They exhibit the first struggling efforts--not
always concurrent in their direction--of an awakening spiritual life,
to interpret a recent Divine manifestation, and to solve by it the
problem of the world's Providence. Their very freshness and proximity
to the great figure of Christ was by no means an unmixed advantage to
these efforts; and they were not so complete and successful as to
supersede their continuance in the next and following generations,
which lay under no incompetency for their prosecution, and are as
likely, so far as antecedent probability goes, to have enriched and
improved, as to have impoverished and spoiled, the earlier doctrine of
Christ's relation to God and to mankind. The chasm thus disappears
between the Apostolic age and its successor; the products of the first
are not to be accepted simply because they are there, nor those of the
second rejected because they are absent from the first; nor is
everything to be admitted on showing that it stands in both, and even
had a tenure long enough to become the prescriptive occupant of the
Church. The Catholic is right in clinging to the continuous thread of
Divine Inspiration binding the centuries of Christendom together; and
in maintaining that the expression of true doctrine grows fuller with
time. He is wrong in making the Spirit over to an hierarchical
corporation; and in treating the ostensible growth of doctrine as the
mere negation of heresies. The Protestant is right in rescuing from
the haze of uncertain tradition the real historical ground of his
religion, and setting it in the focus of an intense reverence; and in
rejecting whatever cannot be adjusted with the clear facts and
essential Spirit of that primitive Gospel. He is wrong in his
insulation of that time as a sole authoritative age of golden days, in
which the faith had neither error nor defect, and from which it must
be copied, with daguerreotype exactitude, into every disciple's mind.
Keep the positive elements, destroy the negative limitations of both
these systems, and the true conception of Christianity emerges. As a
system of self-conscious doctrine, it is a religious Philosophy,
starting from the historical appearance of Christ as an expression of
God in human life, and always detained around this one object as its
centre; and in its development consulting not the idiosyncrasies and
conceits of private and personal reflection, but the devout
consciousness and spiritual _consensus_ of all Christian ages and all
holy men. All religion is the product of an action of the Infinite
mind upon the finite: in the _Christian_ religion that action takes
place upon souls engaged in the contemplation of Christ as the
manifestation of God's moral nature. This given object remaining the
same, there is room for indefinite expansion and variety; and every
developed form is to be tried, not by its date, but by the tests of
truth relevant to religious philosophy.
How far M. Bunsen would recognize his own doctrine in this exposition
we cannot say; but without intending in the least to make him
responsible for it, we think it does not essentially deviate from his
scheme of thought. The philosophical aphorisms in which he has
embodied his speculative faith follow an order which we should have
spoiled, had we, for our present purpose, so brought them together as
to make them speak for themselves. And though they display the same
astonishing command of our language, in which the author never fails,
the cast of the thoughts is so Teutonic, that few English readers, it
is to be feared, will appreciate their depth and richness. The
complaint, which we have heard and seen, that they are wholly
unintelligible, is indeed purely ridiculous, except that it sadly
illustrates the extent to which reflection, and even feeling, on such
subjects has ceased in England. M. Bunsen, we can assure our readers,
knows what he means, and lucidly states what he means; and those who
miss his meaning have for the most part no slight loss. The following
sentences, which the greatest sufferer from philosophobia may drink in
without convulsions, will explain his idea of Revelation, in its
bearing upon the use of written records. The mere "Natural Religion"
of the Deist, he observes, was--
"The negative reaction against the equally untenable, unphilosophical,
and irrational notion, that revelation was nothing but an external
historical act. Such a notion entirely loses sight of the infinite or
eternal factor of revelation, founded both in the nature of the
infinite and that of the finite mind, of God and man.
"This heterodox notion became still more obnoxious, by its imagining
something higher in the manifestation of God's will and being than the
human mind, which is the divinely-appointed organ of divine
manifestation, and in a double manner; ideally in mankind, as object,
historically in the individual man, as instrument.
"The notion of a merely historical revelation by written records is as
unhistorical as it is unintellectual and materialistic. It necessarily
leads to untruth in philosophy, to unreality in religious thought, and
to Fetichism in worship. It misunderstands the process necessarily
implied in every historical representation. The form of expressing the
manifestation of God in the mind, as if God was himself using human
speech to man, and was thus himself finite and a man, is a form
inherent in the nature of human thought as embodied in language, its
own rational expression. It was originally never meant to be
understood materialistically, because the religious consciousness
which produced it was essentially spiritual; and, indeed, it can only
be thus misunderstood by those who make it a rule and criterion of
faith, never to connect any thought whatever with what they are
expected to believe as divinely true.
"Every religion is positive. It is, therefore, justly called a
religion '_made manifest_' (offenbart), or, as the English term has
it, _revealed_; that is to say, it supposes an action of the infinite
mind, or God, upon the finite mind, or man, by which God, in his
relation to man, becomes manifest or visible. This can be mediate,
through the manifestation of God in the Universe of Nature; or a
direct, immediate action, through the religious consciousness.
"This second action is called _revealed_, in the strictest sense. The
more a religion manifests of the real substance and nature of God, and
of his relation to the universe and to man, the more it deserves the
name of a divine manifestation, or of Revelation. But no religion
which exists could exist without something of truth, revealed to man,
through the creation, and through his mind.
"Such a direct communication of the Divine mind as is called
Revelation has necessarily two factors, which are unitedly working in
producing it. The one is the infinite factor, or the direct
manifestation of eternal truth to the mind, by the power which that
mind has of perceiving it; for human perception is the correlate of
divine manifestation. There could be no revelation of God if there was
not the corresponding faculty in the human mind to receive it, as
there is no manifestation of light where there is no eye to see it.
"This infinite factor is, of course, not historical; it is inherent in
every individual soul, only with an immense difference in the degree.
"The action of the Infinite upon the mind, is _the_ miracle of history
and of religion, equal to the miracle of creation.
"Miracle, in its highest sense, is therefore essentially and
undoubtedly an operation of the Divine mind upon the human mind. By
that action the human mind becomes inspired with a new life, which
cannot be explained by any precedent of the selfish (natural) life,
but is its absolute contrary. This miracle requires no proof; the
existence and action of religious life is its proof, as the world is
the proof of creation.
"The second factor of revelation is the finite or external. This
means of divine manifestation is, in the first place, a universal one,
the Universe or Nature. But, in a more special sense, it is a
historical manifestation of divine truth through the life and teaching
of higher minds among men. These men of God are eminent individuals,
who communicate something of eternal truth to their brethren; and, as
far as they themselves are true, they have in them the conviction,
that what they say and teach of things divine is an objective truth.
They therefore firmly believe that it is independent of their
individual personal opinion and impression, and will last, and not
perish, as their personal existence upon earth must.
"The difference between Christ and other men of God is analogous to
that between the manifestation of a part, and of the totality and
substance, of the divine mind."--Vol. II. p. 60, _seq._
The newly-found work, like other productions of the same period, can
have only a disturbing interest for the Roman Catholic and Orthodox
Protestant. For, in conjunction with previous evidence, it shows that
the unbroken unity of teaching is altogether a fiction; that what
afterwards became heresy was, in the latter part of the second
century, held in the church of the primacy itself, and by successors
of St. Peter; that the clergy of Rome, so far from owning the
apostolic authority of their chief, could resist him as heterodox; and
that the contents of the Catholic system, far from appearing as an
invariable whole from the first, were a gradual synthesis of elements
flowing in from new channels of influence brought into connection with
the faith; and as against the approved type of Protestant, it shows
that his favorite scheme of dogma was still in a very unripe state,
and that further back it had been still more so; so that if he binds
himself to the earliest creed, he may probably have to accept a
profession which he hardly regards as Christian at all. But from the
third point of view, which assumes that development is an inherent
necessity in a revelation, and may add to its truth, instead of
subtracting from it, the monuments of Christian literature from the
secondary period have a positive interest, free from all uneasiness
and alarm. They arrest for us, in the midst, the advance of
theological belief towards the form ultimately recognized in the
Church, and expressed in the established creeds; they render visible
the beautiful features and expanded look of the faith, when its Judaic
blood had been cooled by the waters of an Hellenic baptism; and though
they leave many undetermined problems as to the successive steps by
which the original Hebrew type of the Gospel in Jerusalem was
metamorphosed into the Nicene and hierarchical Christianity, they fix
some intermediate points, and make us profoundly conscious of the
greatness of the change.
The author of the "Philosophumena," for instance, would be stopped at
the threshold of every sect in our own country, and excluded as
heterodox. He crosses the lines of our theological definitions, and
trespasses on forbidden ground, in every possible doctrinal direction.
Cardinal Wiseman would have nothing to say to him; for he is
insubordinate to the "Vicar of Christ," and profanely insists that a
pope may be deposed by his own council of presbyters. The Bishop of
Exeter would refuse him institution; for his Trinity is imperfect, and
he allows no Personality to the Holy Ghost. The Archbishop of Dublin
might probably think him a little hard upon Sabellius; but, if he
would quietly sign the Articles, (which, however, he could by no means
do,) might abstain from retaliation, and let him pass. At Manchester,
Canon Stowell would keep him in hot water for his respectable opinion
of human nature, and his lofty doctrine of free-will. In Edinburgh,
Dr. Candlish would not listen to a man who had nothing to say of
reliance on the imputed merits of Christ. The sapient board at New
College, St. John's Wood, would expel him for his loose notions of
Inspiration. And the Unitarians would find him too transcendental,
make no common sense out of his notions of Incarnation, and recommend
him to try Germany. This fact, that a bishop of the second and third
centuries would be ecclesiastically not a stranger only, but an
outcast among us, is most startling; and ought surely to open the eyes
of modern Christians to the false and dangerous position into which
their churches have been brought by narrow-heartedness and
insincerity. It will not be M. Bunsen's fault if our Churchmen remain
insensible to the national peril and disgrace of maintaining
unreformed a system long known to have no heart of modern reality, and
now seen to have as little ground of ancient authority. Again and
again he raises his voice of earnest and affectionate warning. As a
foreigner domesticated among us, as a scholar of wide historical view,
as a philosophical statesman who, amid the diplomacy of the hour,
descends to the springs of perennial life in nations, as a Christian
who profoundly trusts the reality of religion, and cannot be dazzled
by the pretence, he sees, with a rare clearness and breadth, both the
capabilities and the dangers of our social and spiritual condition. He
sees that God has given to the English people a moral massiveness and
veracity of character which presents the grandest basis of noble
faith; while learned selfishness and aristocratic apathy uphold in the
Church creeds which only stupidity can sign without mental
reservations,--a Liturgy that catches the scruple of the intellectual
without touching the enthusiasm of the popular heart,--a laity without
function,--a clergy without unity,--and a hierarchy without power. He
sees that our insular position has imparted to us a distinctive
nationality of feeling, supplying copious elements for coalescence in
a common religion; while obstinate conservatism has permitted our
Christianity to become our great divisive power, and to disintegrate
us through and through. He respects our free institutions, which
sustain the health of our political life; but beside them he finds an
ecclesiastical system either imposed by a dead and inflexible
necessity, or left unguided to a whimsical voluntaryism, which
separates the combinations of faith from the relations of
neighborhood, of municipality, of country. With noble and
richly-endowed universities at the exclusive disposal of the Church,
he finds the theological and philosophical sciences so shamefully
neglected, that Christian faith notoriously does not hold its
intellectual ground, and in its retreat does nothing to reach a
firmer position; but only protests its resolution to stand still, and
raise a din against the critic or metaphysic host that drives it back.
Is there no one in this great and honest country that has trust enough
in God and truth, foresight enough of ruin from falsehood and
pretence, to lay the first hand to the work of renovation? Is
statesmanship so infected with negligent contempt of mankind, that no
high-minded politician can be found to care for the highest discipline
of the people, and reorganize the institutions in which their
conscience, their reason, their upward aspirations, should find life?
Has the Church no prophet with faith enough to fling aside creed and
college, and fire within him to burn away mediæval pedantries, and
demand an altar of veracity, that may bring us together for common
work and "common prayer"? Or is it to be left to the _strong men_,
exulting in their strength, and storming with the furor of honest
discontent, to settle these matters with the sledge-hammer of their
indignation? Miserable hypocrisy! to open the lips and lift the eyes
to heaven, while beckoning with the finger of apathy to these pioneers
of Necessity! Would that some might be found to lay to heart our
author's warning and counsel in the following sentences:--
"While we exclude all suggestions of despair, as being equally
unworthy of a man and of a Christian, we establish two safe
principles. The first is, that, in all congregational and
ecclesiastical institutions, Christian freedom, within limits
conformable to Scripture, constitutes the first requisite for a vital
restoration. The second fundamental principle is, that every Church
must hold fast what she already possesses, in so far as it presents
itself to her consciousness as true and efficacious. In virtue of the
first condition, she will combine Reason and Scripture in due
proportions; by virtue of the second, she will distinguish between
Spirit and Letter, between Idea and Form. No external clerical forms
and mediæval reflexes of bygone social and intellectual conditions can
save us, nor can sectarian schisms and isolation from national life.
Neither can learned speculations, and still less the incomparably more
arrogant dreams of the unlearned. Scientific consciousness must dive
into real life, and refresh itself in the feelings of the people, and
that no one will be able to do without having made himself thoroughly
conversant with the sufferings and the sorrows of the lowest classes
of society. For out of the feeling of these sufferings and sorrows, as
being to a great degree the most extensive and most deep-seated
product of evil,--that is, of selfishness,--arose, eighteen hundred
years ago, the divine birth of Christianity. The new birth, however,
requires new pangs of labor, and not only on the part of individuals,
but of the whole nation, in so far as she bears within her the germs
of future life, and possesses the strength to bring forth. Every
nation must set about the work herself, not, indeed, as her own
especial exclusive concern, but as the interest of all mankind. Every
people has the vocation to coin for itself the divine form of
Humanity, in the Church as well as in the State; its life depends on
this being done, not its reputation merely; it is the condition of
existence, not merely of prosperity.
"Is it not time, in truth, to withdraw the veil from our misery? to
point to the clouds which rise from all quarters, to the noxious vapors
which have already well-nigh suffocated us? to tear off the mask from
hypocrisy, and destroy that sham which is undermining all real ground
beneath our feet? to point out the dangers which surround, nay, threaten
already to engulf us? Is the state of things satisfactory in a Christian
sense, where so much that is unchristian predominates, and where
Christianity has scarcely begun here and there to penetrate the surface
of the common life? Shall we be satisfied with the increased outward
respect paid to Christianity and the Church? Shall we take it as a sign
of renewed life, that the names of God and Christ have become the
fashion, and are used as a party badge? Can a society be said to be in a
healthy condition, in which material and selfish interests in
individuals, as well as in the masses, gain every day more and more the
upper hand? in which so many thinking and educated men are attached to
Christianity only by outward forms, maintained either by despotic power,
or by a not less despotic, half-superstitious, half-hypocritical
custom? when so many churches are empty, and satisfy but few, or display
more and more outward ceremonials and vicarious rites? when a godless
schism has sprung up between spirit and form, or has even been preached
up as a means of rescue? when gross ignorance or confused knowledge,
cold indifference or the fanaticism of superstition, prevails as to the
understanding of Holy Scripture, as to the history, nay, the fundamental
ideas of Christianity? when force invokes religion in order to command,
and demagogues appeal to the religious element in order to destroy?
when, after all their severe chastisements and bloody lessons, most
statesmen base their wisdom only on the contempt of mankind? and when
the prophets of the people preach a liberty, the basis of which is
selfishness, the object libertinism, and the wages are vice? And this in
an age the events of which show more and more fatal symptoms, and in
which a cry of ardent longing pervades the people, re-echoed by a
thousand voices!"--III. XV.
Sorry, however, as we should be to see our Roman presbyter
disconsolately wandering from fold to fold in modern England, and
dismissed as a black sheep from all, we should not like to find him
metamorphosed into chief shepherd either, and invested with the
guidance of our ecclesiastical affairs. Though he is above imitating
the feeble railing of Irenæus at the heresies, he deals with them in
the true clerical style; often missing their real meaning, he does not
spare them his bad word; and fancies he has killed them before he has
even caught them. He has an evident relish also for a tale of scandal,
as a make-weight against a theological opponent. In the "Little
Labyrinth," he had told us a story about a Unitarian minister, who,
for accepting his schismatical office, had been horsewhipped by angels
all night; so that he crawled in the morning to the metropolitan, and
gave in his penitential recantation. And now, in the larger work, the
author flies at higher game, and makes out that Pope Callistus was an
incorrigible scamp; originally a slave in the household of a wealthy
Christian master, Carpophorus, whose confidence he abused in every
possible way. First, having been intrusted with the management of a
bank in the _Piscina publica_, he swindled and ruined the depositors,
and decamped, with the intention of sailing from Portus, but was found
on board ship; and, though he jumped into the sea to avoid capture,
was picked up, and condemned by his master to the hand-mill. Next,
being allowed to go out, on the plea of collecting some debts which
would enable him to pay a dividend to the depositors, he created a
riot in a Jews' synagogue, and, being brought before the prefect, was
sentenced to be flogged and transported to Sardinia. Thence he escaped
by passing himself off among a number of Christians, released from
their exile through the influence of the Emperor's concubine, Marcia,
and on the recommendation of Victor, the Pope. As he was not included
in the list of pardons, he no sooner made his appearance in Rome than
his master sent him off to live on a monthly allowance at Antium. On
the death of Carpophorus, he seems to have attained his freedom by
bequest; and his fertility of resource having made him useful to the
new Pope Zephyrinus, he acquired influence enough to succeed him in
the Primacy. We must confess that the evident _gusto_ with which our
presbyter tells this scandal, the _animus_ with which he accuses
Zephyrinus also of stupidity and venality, and the predominance in his
narrative of theological antipathy over moral disgust, leave a painful
impression on the reader respecting the spirit then at work in the
Apostolic See. And though his scheme of belief, especially in relation
to the person of Christ, was more rational than the definitions of
more modern creeds, yet we fear that he would be not less nice about
its shape, and intolerant of those who move about in freer folds of
thought, than a divine of the Canterbury cloisters or the Edinburgh
platform. His quarrel with the two popes whom he abuses shows pretty
clearly the stage of development which the Christian theology had then
reached. On this matter we must say a few words.
Whatever may have been the precise order of combination which brought
the Hebrew and Hellenic ideas of God into union, there can be no
doubt about the two _termini_ of the process. It started from the
monarchical conception of Jehovah, as a Unity without plurality; and
it issued in the Athanasian Trinity, with its three hypostases in one
essence. Of these, the Father expressed the Absolute existence, the
Son the Objective manifestation, the Holy Spirit the Subjective
revelation of God. In the presbyter's creed, the third term was not
yet incorporated, but still floated freely, diffused and impersonal.
Leaving this out of view, we may observe, in the remaining part of the
doctrine, two principal difficulties to be surmounted, arising from
the double medium of divine objective manifestation,--Nature, always
proceeding,--and Christ, historically transient. The first problem is,
How to pass at all out of the Infinite existence into Finite
phenomena, and conceive the relation between the Father and the Son;
the second, How to pass from Eternal manifestation through all
phenomena into temporary appearance in an Individual, so as to
conceive the relation between the Son and the Galilean Christ. Thus,
excluding all reference to the Holy Spirit, there were, in fact,
_four_ objects of thought, whose relations to one another were to be
adjusted; viz. the Father, the Son evolving all things, the Christ or
divine individualization in the Gospel, and Jesus of Nazareth, the
human being with whose life this individualization concurred. Among
all these there were, so to speak, two clearly distinct Wills to
dispose of; that of the man Jesus at the lowest extremity, and that of
the Supreme God, which the Jew, at least, would fix at the upper.
These two Wills act, in the whole development of doctrine on this
subject, as the secret centres of Personality; and the remaining
elements obtain or miss a hypostatic character according as they are
drawn or not into coalescence with the one or the other. The
volitional point of the Divine Agency being once determined, it may be
regarded as enclosed between the _Thought_, or intellectual essence
out of which it comes, and the _Execution_ by which it is realized; or
it may be left undistinguished from these, and may be made to coincide
with either. According to these variable conditions arise the several
modes of doctrine in reference to the Divine element in God's
Objective manifestation. The differences, for instance, between our
presbyter's doctrine and Origen's, will be found to depend on the
different points which they seize as the seat of divine volition, and
the germ of their logical development. Our author, exemplifying the
Hebrew tendency, seeks his initiative up at the fountain-head, and
puts himself back before the first act of creation; he starts from the
One God, with whom nothing was co-present, and fixes in Him the seat
of the primeval Will. There, however, it would remain, a mere
potentiality, did not the Eternal Mind, by reflection in itself, pass
into self-consciousness, and give objectivity to its own thought. This
primary expression of his essence, in which it enters into relation,
but relation only to itself, is the _Logos_, or _Son_ of God, the
agent in the production of all things. The potentiality is thus
reserved to the Father; the effectuation is given to the Son; who,
coming in at a point lower down than the seat of Will, and simply
bridging over the interval that leads to accomplishment, is felt
without the essential condition of a numerically distinct subsistence;
and has either the instrumental and subordinate personality of a
dependent being, or is imperfectly hypostatized.[41] In this
impersonal character does the Logos manifest the Divine thought in the
visible universe; in the minds of godly men, which are the source of
law; in the glance of prophets, which catches and interprets the
divine significance of all times; and first assumes a full personality
in the Incarnation. Having left the primary Will behind in the
Father's essence, the Logos remains but an inchoate hypostasis, till
alighting, in the human nature, on another centre of volition. As if
our author were half conscious, in reaching this point, of relief from
an antecedent uneasiness, he now holds fast to the personality which
has been realized, represents it as not dissolved by the death on the
cross, but taken up into heaven, and abiding for ever. It is, in this
view, the two extreme terms that supply the hypostatizing power; of
the others, the Logos has no personality but by looking back to the
Father; nor the Christ, but by going forward to the Son of Mary. This
shows the yet powerful influence of the Judaic Monarchianism, and the
embarrassment of a mind, setting out from that type of faith, to
provide any plurality within the essence of God. Origen, on the other
hand, yielded to the Hellenic feeling, and, instead of going back to
any absolute commencement, looked for his Divine centre and
starting-point further down; and took thence whatever upward glance
was needful to complete his view. As the Greek reverence was not
touched but by the Divine embodied in concrete life and form, so the
Alexandrine catechist instinctively fixed upon the SON, the objective
Thought of God, proceeding, not once upon a time or ever _first_, but
_eternally_, from Him, as the initiative position for his doctrine.
Here was placed the clearest and intensest focus of Will; and only in
this ever-evolving efficient were the full conditions of personality
realized. The Father was conceived more pantheistically, as the
universal νους, the intellectual background, whence issued the acting
nature of the Son. In meditating on them in their conjunction, Origen
would think of the relation between _thought_ and _volition_; our
author, of that between _volition_ and _execution_. Both doctrines
show the imperfect fusion of Hebrew and Hellenic elements, and
illustrate the characteristic effect of an excessive proportion of
each. Where the Hebrew element prevails, the personality of the Son is
endangered; where the Hellenic, the personality of the Father. Even
our presbyter's doctrine of the Son, however, gave too strong an
impersonation to Him for the party in Rome who sided with Zephyrinus
and Callistus. These popes accused him, it seems, of being a
_Ditheist_; and themselves maintained that the terms Father and Son
denoted only different sides and relations of one and the same
Being,--nay, not only of the same Being, but of the same προσωπον; and
that the spirit that dwelt in Christ was the Father, of whom all
things are full. For this opinion the two popes are angrily dealt with
by our author, and charged with being half Sabellian, half
humanitarian. His rancor justifies the suspicion, that, though he
represents the party which triumphed at Rome, his opponents had been
numerous and powerful, as, indeed, their election to the primacy would
of itself show, and that even his own imperfect dogma was
superinduced, not without a protracted struggle, upon an earlier faith
yet remote from the Nicene standard.
And this brings us at once to a question of historical research,
which, though far too intricate and extensive to be discussed here, we
feel bound to notice, as far as it is affected by the newly discovered
work. How long did it take for the Christian faith to assume the
leading features of its orthodox and catholic form, and especially to
work itself clear of Judaism? It is an acknowledged fact, that the
earliest disciples, including at the lowest estimate all the converts
of the first seven years from the ascension, not only were born
Hebrews, but did not regard their baptism as in any way withdrawing
them from the pale of their national religion; that, on the contrary,
they claimed to be the only true Jews, differing from others simply by
their belief in a personally appointed, instead of a vaguely promised
Messiah; that they aimed at no more than to bring over their own race
to this conviction, and persuade them that the national destinies were
about to be consummated, and, so far from relaxing the obligations of
their Law, adhered with peculiar rigor to its ritual and its
exclusiveness. So long as none but the twelve Apostles had charge of
its diffusion, Christianity was only a particular mode of Judaism, and
its whole discussion a ζητησις των Ιουδαιων. It is further admitted,
that the first inroad upon this narrowness was made by St. Paul, who
insisted on the universality of Christ's function, and the abrogation
of the Mosaic Law in favor of inward faith, as the condition of union
with God. Nor, again, is it denied that this freer view met with great
resistance, and that its conflict with the other, apparent throughout
the Pauline Epistles, formed the most animating feature of the
Apostolic age. During that period, two distinct parties, and two
separate lines of development and growth, may be traced; one following
out in morals the _legal_ idea into asceticism, voluntary poverty, and
physical purity, and in faith the _monarchian_ idea into theocratic
and millenarian expectations; the other, proceeding from the notion of
_faith_ to substitute an ideal Christ for the historical, a new
religion for an old law, the free embrace of divine reconciliation for
the anxious strain of self-mortifying obedience. But how long did this
struggle and separation continue? According to the prevalent belief,
it was all over in a few years; and, by the happy harmony and
concurrence of the Apostles, was determined in favor of the generous
Pauline doctrine; so that St. John lived to see the Hebrew Christians
sink into a mere Ebionitish sect outside the pale, and their stiff
Unitarian theology disowned in favor of the higher teachings of his
Gospel. Against this assumption of so easy a victory over the Jewish
tendency, several striking testimonies have often been urged.
Tertullian, in a well-known passage of his treatise against Praxeas,
describes the dislike with which the unlearned majority of believers
regard the Trinitarian distinctions in the Godhead, and the zeal with
which they cry out for holding to "the Monarchy."[42] In the time of
Pope Zephyrinus, as we learn from Eusebius, a body of Unitarians in
Rome, followers of Artemon, defended their doctrine by the
conservative plea of antiquity and general consent; affirming that it
was no other than the uninterrupted creed of the Roman Church down to
the time of Victor, the preceding pope; and that the higher doctrine
of the Person of Christ was quite a recent innovation.[43] Nor are we
without ecclesiastical literature, of even a later date, that by its
theological tone gives witness to the same effect. The "Clementine
Recognitions," written somewhere between 212 and 230, occupy a
dogmatic position, higher indeed than the disciples of Artemon, but
only in the direction of Arius, and, to save the Unity of God, deny
the Deity of Christ.[44] Relying on such evidence as this, Priestley,
in his "History of Early Opinions," and his controversy with Bishop
Horsley, maintained that the creed of the Church for the first two
centuries was Unitarian. But this position was attended with many
difficulties, so long as the present canonical Scriptures were allowed
to have been in the hands of the Christians of that period, and
recognized as authorities; for the narratives of the miraculous
conception, the writings of Paul, and the Gospel of John, are
irreconcilable with the schemes of belief attributed to the early
Unitarians. Moreover, if for two centuries the Church had interpreted
its authoritative documents in one way, and formed on this its
services and expositions, it is not easy to conceive the rapid
revolution into another. During a period of free and floating
tradition, there is manifest room for the growth of essentially
different modes of faith; but after the reception of a definite set of
sacred books, the scope for change is much contracted. To treat the
doctrine of the Logos as an innovation, yet ascribe the fourth Gospel
to the beloved disciple; to suppose that justification by works was
the generally received notion among people who guided themselves by
the authority of Paul,--involves us in irremediable contradictions.
Avoiding these at least, possibly not without the risk of others, the
celebrated theologians of Tübingen have maintained a bolder thesis
than that of Priestley, including it indeed, but with it also a vast
deal more. Their theory runs as follows. The opposition which St.
Paul's teaching excited, and of which his letters preserve so many
traces, was neither so insignificant nor so short-lived as is commonly
supposed; but was encouraged and led by the other Apostles, especially
James and John and Peter, who never heartily recognized the volunteer
Apostle; and was so completely successful, that he died without having
made any considerable impression on the Judaic Christianity sanctioned
from Jerusalem. Accordingly, the earliest Christian literature was
Ebionitish; and no production was in higher esteem than the "Gospel
of the Hebrews," which, after being long current, with several
variations of form, at last settled down into our Gospel of Matthew.
In almost all the writings known to us, even in Roman circles of the
second century,--the Shepherd of Hermas, the Memorials of Hegesippus,
the works of Justin,--some character or other of Ebionitism is
present,--millenarian doctrine, admiration of celibacy and of
abstinence from meat and wine, denunciation of riches, emphatic
assertion of the _Messiahship_ of Jesus, and treatment of the
miraculous conception as at least an open question. The labors of
Paul, however, had left a seed which had been buried, but not killed;
and from the first, a small party had cherished his freer principles,
and sought to win acceptance for them; and as the progress of time
increased the proportion of provincial and Gentile converts, and the
Jewish wars of Titus and Hadrian destroyed the possibility of Mosaic
obedience and the reasonableness of Hebrew hopes, the Pauline element
rose in magnitude and importance. Thus the two courses of opposite
development ran parallel with each other, and gradually found their
interest in mutual recognition and concession. Hence, a series of
writings proceeding from either side, first of conciliatory
approximation only, next of complete neutrality and equipoise, in
which sometimes the figures of Peter and Paul themselves are presented
with studiously balanced honor, at others their characteristic ideas
are adjusted by compromise. The Clementine Homilies, the Apostolic
Constitutions, the Epistle of James, the Second Epistle of Clement,
the Gospel of Mark, the Recognitions, the Second Epistle of Peter,
constitute the series proceeding from the Ebionitish side; while from
the Pauline came the First Epistle of Peter, the Preaching of Peter,
the writings of Luke, the First Epistle of Clement, the Epistle to the
Philippians, the Pastoral Epistles, Polycarp's, and the Ignatians.
These productions, however, springing from the practical instinct of
the West, deal with the ecclesiastical more than with the doctrinal
phase of antagonism between the two directions; and end with
establishing in Rome a Catholic Church, founded on the united
sepulchres of Peter and Paul, and combining the sacerdotalism of the
Old Testament with the universality of the New Gentile Gospel.
Meanwhile, a similar course, with local modifications, was run by the
Church of Asia Minor. Rome, with its political aptitude, having taken
in hand the questions of discipline and organization, the speculative
genius of the Asiatic Greek addressed itself simultaneously to the
development and determination of doctrine. Here the Epistle to the
Galatians marks, as a starting-point, the same original struggle
between the contrasted elements which the Epistle to the Romans
betrays in Italy; while the Gospel of John closes the dogmatic strife
of development with an accepted Trinity for faith, just as the
Ignatian Epistles wind up the contests of the West with a recognized
hierarchy for government. And between these extremes the East presents
to us, first, the intensely Judaical Apocalypse; next, with increasing
reaction in the Pauline direction, the rudiments of the Logos idea in
the Epistles to the Hebrews, Colossians, and Ephesians; and as
Montanism, in the midst of which these arose, had already made
familiar the conception of the Paraclete, all the conditions were
present for combination into the Johannine doctrine of the Trinity;
and then it was, in the second quarter of the second century, that the
fourth Gospel appeared. The speculative theology thus native to Lesser
Asia was adopted for shelter and growth by the kindred Hellenism of
Egypt, and gave rise to the school of Alexandria. In the whole of this
theory great use is made of Montanism: it spans, as it were, the
interval between the parallel movements of Italy and Asia; and is the
common medium of thought in which they both take place. Singularly
uniting in itself the rigor, the narrowness, the ascetic superstitions
of its Hebrew basis, with a Phrygian prophetic enthusiasm and an
Hellenic theosophy, it imported the latter into the doctrine, the
former into the discipline, of the Church. The Roman Catholic system
betrays its Jewish or Montanist origin in its legalism, its penances,
its celibacy, its monachism, its ecstatic phenomena, its physical
supernaturalism, its exaggerated appreciation of martyrdom.
Such, in barest outline, is the theory which M. Bunsen characterizes as
the "Tübingen romance." Its leading principle is, that the antagonism
between the Petrine and Pauline, the Hebrew and the Hellenic Gospel,
which has its origin and authentic expression in the Epistles to the
Galatians, Romans, and Corinthians, continued into the second century;
determined the evolution of doctrine and usage; stamped itself upon the
ecclesiastical literature; and ended in the compromise and
reconciliation of the Catholic Church. It is evident that, in the
working out of this principle, the New Testament canon is made to give
way. With the exception of the greater Pauline Epistles and the
Apocalypse, both of which are held fast as genuine productions of the
Apostles whose names they bear, and the first Gospel, which is allowed
to have at least the groundwork in the primitive tradition, the received
books are all set loose from the dates and names usually assigned to
them, and arranged, in common with other products of the time, according
to the relation they bear to the Ebionitish or to the Pauline school,
and the particular stage they seem to mark in the history of either.
This proceeding, however, is not an original violence resorted to for
the exigencies of the theory; but, for the most part, a mere
appropriation to its use of conclusions reached by antecedent
theologians on independent grounds. The Epistle to the Philippians is
the only work, if we mistake not, on the authenticity of which doubt has
been thrown for the first time,--in our opinion, on very inadequate
grounds. In this, as in many other details of the hypothetical history,
there is not a little of that straining of real evidence and subtle
fabrication of unreal, which German criticism seems unable to avoid. But
the acerbity displayed by the North German theologians towards the
Tübingen critics appears to us unwarranted and humiliating; and we
certainly wish that M. Bunsen, whose prompt admiration of excellence so
nobly distinguishes him from Ewald, could have expressed his dissent
from Baur and Schwegler in a tone still further removed from the
Göttingen pitch. At least, we do not find the positive assertion that
the Tübingen theory is finally demolished by the "Philosophumena" at
all borne out by the evidence; and are inclined to think that the case
is very little altered by the new elements now contributed to its
discussion. The critical offence which he thinks is now detected and
exposed, is the ascription of a late origin to the fourth Gospel,[45]
and the treatment of it as the perfected product, instead of the misused
source, of the Montanist conceptions of the Logos and the Paraclete. It
cannot, however, be denied, that, in the previous absence of any
external testimony to the existence of this Gospel earlier than the year
170,[46] the internal difficulties are sufficiently serious to redeem
the doubt of its authenticity from the character of rashness or
perversity. The irreconcilable opposition between its whole mode of
thought and that of the Apocalypse is confessed by M. Bunsen himself,
when he suggests that the proem on the Logos was directed against
Cerinthus,--the very person whose sentiments the Apocalypse was supposed
to express, and to whom, accordingly, it was ascribed by those who
rejected it. _One_ of the two books must resign, then, the name of the
beloved disciple; and, of the two, we need hardly say that the
Apocalypse is incomparably the better authenticated. Moreover, the
traditions which unite the names of James and John, as the authorities
followed by the Church of Lesser Asia, render it hard to conceive that
their doctrines can have taken precisely opposite directions; and that,
while James represented the Judaic Christianity of the deepest dye,
John can have produced the standard and conclusive work on the other
side. In particular, the well-known fact, that the Asiatic Christians
justified their Jewish mode of keeping Easter by the double plea, (1.)
that James and John always did so, (2.) that Christ himself had done so
before he suffered, seems incompatible with any knowledge of the fourth
Gospel, which denies that Jesus ate the passover before he suffered, and
makes his own death to _be_ the passover. How could this Quartodeciman
controversy live a day among a people possessing and acknowledging
John's Gospel, which so bears upon it as to give a distinct
contradiction to the view of the other Gospels, and to pronounce in Asia
Minor itself an unambiguous verdict in favor of the West? These are
grave difficulties, which, after all the ingenuity, even of Bleek,
remain, we fear, unrelieved; and in their presence we cannot feel the
justice of M. Bunsen's sentence, that Baur's opinion is "the most
unhappy of philological conjectures." Everything conjectural, however,
must give way before real historical testimony; and, if new evidence is
actually contained in the "Philosophumena," every true critic, of
Tübingen or elsewhere, will be thankful for light to dissipate the
doubt. Now, it is said that our Roman bishop, in treating of the heresy
of Basilides, supplies passages from the writings of this heresiarch
which include quotations from the fourth Gospel; and thus prove its
existence as early as the year 130. This argument, as stated by M.
Bunsen, appeared to us quite conclusive, and we hoped, that a decided
step had been gained towards the settlement of the question. Great was
our disappointment, on reading the account in the original, to find no
evidence that any extract from Basilides was before us at all. A general
description of the system bearing his name is given; but with no mention
of any work of his, no profession that the words are his, and even so
little individual reference to him, that the exposition is introduced as
being a report of what "Basilides and Isidorus, and the whole troop of
these people, falsely say" (καταψευδεται, sing.). Then follows the
account of the dogmas of the sect, with the word φησιν inserted from
time to time, to indicate that the writer is still reporting the
sentiments of others. The _singular_ form of this word implies nothing
at all; it occurs immediately after the word καταψευδεται, and has the
same avowedly plural subject. The statement, therefore, within which are
contained the Scripture citations, is a merely general one of the
opinions of a sect which continued to subsist till a much later time
than the lowest date ever assigned for the composition of the fourth
Gospel. If the actual words of any writings current among these heretics
are given, they are the words of an author or authors wholly unknown,
and to refer them to Basilides in particular is a mere arbitrary act of
will. The change from the singular to the plural forms of citation in
the midst of one and the same sentence, and the disregard of concord
between verb and subject, show that no inference can be drawn from so
loose a system of grammatical usage. All that can be affirmed is, that
our author had in his hand _some_ production of the Basilidian χορος, in
which the fourth Gospel was quoted; but this affords no chronological
datum that can be of the smallest use.[47] The same remark applies to
the use of John's Gospel by the Ophites. That they did use it is
evident; that they existed as far back as the time of Peter and Paul is
certainly probable; yet it does not follow that the fourth Gospel was
then extant. For they continued in existence through two or three
centuries, dating, as Baur has shown, from a time anterior not only to
the Christian heresies, but to Christianity itself, and extending down
to Origen's time; and to what part of this long period the writings
belonged which the author of the "Philosophumena" employed, we are
absolutely unable to determine. We do not know why M. Bunsen has not
appealed also to a quotation from the Gospel which occurs (p. 194) in an
account of the Valentinian system. If, as he affirms (I. 63), this
account were really in "_Valentinus's own words_," the citation would be
of particular value in the controversy. For it has always been urged by
the Tübingen critics as a highly significant fact, that while the
_followers_ of Valentinus showed an especial eagerness to appeal to the
Gospel of John, and one of the earliest, Heracleon, wrote a commentary
upon it, no trace could be found of its use by the heresiarch himself.
From this circumstance, they have inferred that the Gospel was not
available for him, and first appeared after his time. A single clause
cited by him from the Gospel would demolish this argument at once. But
the assertion that we have here "full eight pages of Valentinus's own
words" appears to us quite groundless. No such thing is affirmed by the
writer of the eight pages. He promises to tell us how the strict
adherents to the original principle of the sect expounded their doctrine
(ὡς εκεινοι διδασκουσι); and then passes over, as usual, to the singular
φησι, returning, however, from time to time, to the plural
forms,--θελουσι, λεγουσι, &c.,--and thus leaving no pretext for the
assumption that Valentinus is before us in person. The later Gnostics
indisputably resorted to the Gospel of John with especial zeal and
preference; and if their predecessors, Basilides and Valentinus, were
acquainted with the book, it is surprising that no trace of their
familiarity with it has been found; and that the former should have
sought to authenticate the secret doctrine he professed to have received
by the name of Matthew or Matthias instead of John. It deserves remark,
that the citations preserved by our author are made, like those of
Justin Martyr, as from an anonymous writing, without mentioning the name
of the Evangelist; a circumstance less surprising in reference to the
Synoptics alone, which present only varieties of the same fundamental
tradition, than when the fourth Gospel, so evidently the independent
production of a single mind, is thrown into the group. The Epistles of
Paul and the books of the Old Testament are frequently quoted by name;
and why this practice should invariably cease whenever the historical
work of an Apostle was in the hand, it is not easy to explain. The
Apocalypse is mentioned not without his name.[48]
For these reasons we are of opinion that the question about the date and
authenticity of the fourth Gospel is wholly unaffected by the
newly-discovered work. On this side, no new facilities are gained for
confuting the Tübingen theory. The most positive and startling fact
against it is presented from another direction. We know that the system
of Theodotus, which was Unitarian, was condemned by Victor in the last
decade of the second century.[49] Now Victor was the very pope to the
end of whose period, according to the followers of Artemon, their
monarchian faith was upheld in the Roman Church, and in the time of
whose successor was the first importation of the higher doctrine of the
Logos. On this complaint of the Artemonites, Baur and Schwegler lay
great stress; but is it not refuted by Victor's orthodox act of
expelling a Unitarian? Undoubtedly it would be so, _if_ Theodotus were
excommunicated precisely for his belief in the uni-personality of God.
But his scheme included many articles; and we know nothing of the
ground taken in the proceedings against him. There was one question,
however, which, however indifferent to us, was evidently very near to
the feelings of the early Church, and on which Theodotus separated
himself from the prevailing conceptions of his time,--viz. At what date
did the Christ, the Divine principle, become united with Jesus, the
human being? "At his baptism," replied Theodotus.[50] "Before his
birth," said the general voice of the Christians. We are disposed to
think _this_ was the obnoxious tenet which Victor construed into heresy;
and if so, the strife had no bearing upon the doctrine of the
personality of the Logos, which the pope and the heretic might both have
rejected. Of the Unitarianism of that time, it was no essential feature
to postpone till the baptism the heavenly element in Christ. We remember
no reason for supposing that the Artemonites did so, though Theodotus
did; and if they knew that the objection which had been fatal to him did
not apply to them, their claim of ancient and orthodox sanction for what
they held in common with him was not answered by pointing to his
condemnation for what was special to himself. But is there, it will be
asked, any evidence that the Roman Church attached importance to this
particular ingredient of the Theodotian scheme, so that their bishop
might feel impelled to visit it with ecclesiastical censure? We believe
there is, and _that_ too in the "Philosophumena." In the author's
confession of faith occurs a passage which produces at first a strange
impression upon a modern reader, and appears like a violence done to the
Gospel history. It affirms that Christ _passed through every stage of
human life_, that he might serve as the model to all. Nor is this idea a
personal whim of the writer; but is borrowed from his master, Irenæus,
who gives it in more detail, and winds it up with the assertion, that
Christ _lived to be fifty years old_.[51] Irenæus thus falsifies the
history to make good the moral; our presbyter, by respecting the
history, apparently invalidates the moral: for it can scarcely be said
of a life closed after thirty-one or thirty-two years, that it supplies
a rule πασα ἡλικιη; at least it would seem more natural to apologize for
its premature termination, than to lay stress on its absolute
completeness. The truth is, there was a certain, obnoxious tenet behind,
which these writers were anxious to contradict, and which their
assertion exactly meets,--viz. the very tenet of Theodotus, that the
Divine nature did not unite itself with the Saviour till his baptism.
Irenæus and his pupil could not endure this limitation of what was
highest in Christ to the interval between his first public preaching and
his crucifixion. They thought that in this way it was reduced to a mere
official investiture, not integral to his being, but externally
superinduced; and that such a conception deprived it of all its moral
significance. The union of the Logos with our nature was not a provision
for temporary inspiration or a forensic redemption; but was intended to
mould a life and shape a personal existence, according to the immaculate
ideal of humanity. To accomplish this intention it was necessary that
the Logos should never be absent from any part of his earthly being; but
should have claimed his person from the first, and by preoccupation have
neutralized the action of the natural (or psychic) element, throughout
all the years of his continuance among men. The anxiety of Irenæus's
school to put this interpretation on the manifestation of the Logos,
their determination to distinguish it, on the one hand, from the
_mediate_ communication of prophets as an _immediate_ presentation
(αυτοψει φανερωθηναι), and, on the other, from the _transient_ occupancy
of a ready-made man, as a _permanent_ and thorough-going incarnation
(σαρκωθηναι in opposition to φαντασια or τροπη), is apparent in their
whole language on this subject. In the Son, we are carried to the fresh
fountain-head of every kind of perfection, and find the unspoiled ideal
of heavenly and terrestrial natures. In one of the fragments of
Hippolytus, published by Mai, and noticed in M. Bunsen's Appendix, this
notion is conveyed by the remark, that He is first-born of God's own
essence, that he may have precedence of angels; first-born of a virgin,
that he may be a fresh-created Adam; first-born of death, that he might
become the first fruits of our resurrection.[52] This doctrine it is, we
apprehend, which amplifies itself into the Irenæan statement, that the
divine and ideal function of Christ coalesced with the historical
throughout, so that to infants he was a consecrating infant; to little
children, a consecrating child; to youth, a consecrating model of youth;
and to elders, a still consecrating rule, not only by disclosure of
truth, but by exhibiting the true type of their perfection.[53] The
teaching of Theodotus, that the heavenly εικων remained at a distance
till the baptism, was directly contradictory of this favorite notion;
and might well produce hostile excitement, and provoke condemnation, in
a church where the Irenæan influence is known to have been powerful. The
attitude that Victor assumed towards the Theodotians is thus perfectly
compatible with Monarchian opinions, and with an attitude equally
hostile, in the opposite direction, towards the advancing Trinitarian
claims of a distinct personality for the Logos. Though only the one
hostility is recorded of Victor, the other is ascribed, as we have seen,
to his immediate successors, Zephyrinus and Callistus, who maintained
that it was no other person than the Father that dwelt as the Logos in
the Son. The facts taken together, and spreading as they do over the
periods of three popes, afford undeniable traces of a struggle at the
turn of the second century, between a prevalent but threatened
Monarchianism, and a new doctrine of the Divine Personality of the Son.
After all, why is M. Bunsen so anxious to disprove the late appearance
of the fourth Gospel? Did he value it chiefly as a biographical sketch,
and depend upon it for concrete facts, a first-hand authentication of
its contents would be of primary moment. But his interest in it is
evidently speculative rather than historical, and centres upon its
doctrinal thought, not on its narrative attestation; and especially
singles out the proem as a condensed and perfect expression of Christian
ontology. The book speaks to him, and finds him, out of its mystic
spiritual depths; sanctifies his own philosophy; glorifies with an ideal
haze the greatest reality of history; blends with melting tints the
tenderness of the human, and the sublimity of the divine life; and
presents the Holy Spirit as immanent in the souls of the faithful and
the destinies of humanity. But its enunciation of great truths, its
penetration to the still sanctuary of devout consciousness, will not
cease to be facts, or become doubtful as merits, or be changed in their
endearing power, by an alteration in the superscription or the date.
These religious and philosophical features converse directly with Reason
and Conscience, and have the same significance, whatever their critical
history may be; and are not the less rich as inspirations from having
passed for interpretation through more minds than one. There is neither
common sense nor piety, as M. Bunsen himself, we feel certain, will
allow, in the assumption that Revelation is necessarily most perfect at
its source, and can only grow earthy and turbid as it flows. Were it
something entirely foreign to the mind, capable of holding no thought in
solution, but inevitably spoiled by every abrasion it effects of
philosophy and feeling, this mechanical view would be correct. But if it
be the intenser presence, the quickened perception of a Being absent
from none; if it be the infinite original of which philosophy is the
finite reflection; if thus it speaks, not in the unknown tongue of
isolated ecstasy, but in the expressive music of our common
consciousness and secret prayer;--then is it so little unnatural, so
related to the constitution of our faculties, that the mind's continuous
reaction on it may bring it more clearly out; and, after being detained
at first amid sluggish levels and unwholesome growths which mar its
divine transparency, it may percolate through finer media, drop its
accidental admixtures, and take up in each stratum of thought some
elements given it by native affinity, and become more purely the spring
of life in its descent than in its source. If, before the fourth Gospel
was written, the figure of Christ, less close to the eye, was seen more
in its relations to humanity and to God; if his deep hints, working in
the experience of more than one generation, had expanded their
marvellous contents; if, in a prolonged contact of his religion with
Hellenism, elements had disclosed themselves of irresistible sympathy,
and the first sharp boundary drawn by Jewish hands had melted away; if
his concrete history itself was now subordinate to its ideal
interpretation;--the book will present us still with a Christianity, not
impoverished, but enriched. In proportion as its thoughts speak for
themselves by their depth and beauty, may all anxiety cease about their
external legitimation; their credentials become eternal instead of
individual; and where the Father himself thus beareth witness, Christ
needeth not the testimony of man. It cannot be, therefore, any religious
issue that depends on the date of this Christian record; it cannot
_make_ truth, it can only awaken the mind to discern it; and whether it
has this power or not, the mind can only report according to its
consciousness of quickening light or stagnant darkness. The interest of
this question cannot surely be more than a _critical_ interest, to one
who can feel and speak in this noble strain:--
"No divine authority is given to any set of men to make truth for
mankind. The supreme judge is the Spirit in the Church, that is to
say, in the universal body of men professing Christ. The universal
conscience is God's highest interpreter. If Christ speaks truth, his
words must speak to the human reason and conscience, whenever and
wherever they are preached: let them, therefore, be preached. If the
Gospels contained inspired wisdom, they must themselves inspire with
heavenly thoughts the conscientious inquirer and the serious thinker:
let them, therefore, freely be made the object of inquiry and of
thought. Scripture, to be believed true with full conviction, must be
at one with reason: let it, therefore, be treated rationally. By
taking this course, we shall not lose strength; but we shall gain a
strength which no church ever had. There is strength in Christian
discipline, if freely accepted by those who are to submit to it; there
is strength in spiritual authority, if freely acknowledged by those
who care for Christ; there is strength unto death in the enthusiasm of
an unenlightened people, if sincere, and connected with lofty moral
ideas. But there is no strength to be compared with that of a faith
which identifies moral and intellectual conviction with religious
belief, with that of an authority instituted by such a faith, and of a
Christian life based upon it, and striving to Christianize this world
of ours, for which Christianity was proclaimed. Let those who are
sincere, but timid, look into their conscience, and ask themselves
whether their timidity proceeds from faith, or whether it does not
rather betray a want of faith. Europe is in a critical state,
politically, ecclesiastically, socially. Where is the power able to
reclaim a world, which, if it be faithless, is become so under
untenable and ineffective ordinances,--which, if it is in a state of
confusion, has become confused by those who have spiritually guided
it? Armies may subdue liberty; but armies cannot conquer ideas: much
less can Jesuits and Jesuitical principles restore religion, or
superstition revive faith. I deny the prevalence of a destructive and
irreligious spirit in the hearts of the immense majority of the
people. I believe that the world wants, not less, but more religion.
But however this be, I am firmly convinced that God governs the world,
and that he governs it by the eternal ideas of truth and justice
engraved on our conscience and reason; and I am sure that nations, who
have conquered, or are conquering, civil liberty for themselves, will
sooner or later as certainly demand liberty of religious thought, and
that those whose fathers have victoriously acquired religious liberty
will not fail to demand civil and political liberty also. With these
ideas, and with the present irresistible power of communicating ideas,
what can save us except religion, and therefore Christianity? But then
it must be a Christianity based upon that which is eternally God's
own, and is as indestructible and as invincible as he is himself: it
must be based upon Reason and Conscience, I mean reason spontaneously
embracing the faith in Christ, and Christian faith feeling itself at
one with reason and with the history of the world. Civilized Europe,
as it is at present, will fall; or it will be pacified by this
liberty, this reason, this faith. To prove that the cause of
Protestantism in the nineteenth century is identical with the cause of
Christianity, it is only necessary to attend to this fact; that they
both must sink and fall, until they stand upon their indestructible
ground, which, in my inmost conviction, is the real, genuine, original
ground upon which Christ placed it. Let us, then, give up all notions
of finding any other basis, all attempts to prop up faith by effete
forms and outward things: let us cease to combat reason, whenever it
contradicts conventional forms and formularies. We must take the
ground pointed out by the Gospel, as well as by the history of
Christianity. We may then hope to realize what Christ died for, to see
the Church fulfil the high destinies of Christianity, and God's will
manifested by Christ to mankind, so as to make the kingdoms of this
earth the kingdoms of the Most High."--p. 172.
We have given our readers no conception of the variety and richness of
M. Bunsen's work; having scarcely passed beyond the limits of the
first volume. It was impossible to pass by, without examination, the
recovered monument of early Christianity, whence his materials and
suggestions are primarily drawn; and it is equally impossible to pass
beyond it, without entering on a field too wide to be surveyed. We can
only record that, in the remaining volumes, which are, in fact, a
series of separate productions, the early doctrine of the Eucharist is
investigated, and the progress of its corruptions strikingly traced;
the primitive system of ecclesiastical rules or canons, and the
"Church-and-House Book," or manual of instruction and piety in use
among the ante-Nicene Christians, are carefully and laboriously
restored; and genuine Liturgies of the first centuries are reproduced.
In this arduous work of recovery, there is necessarily much need of
critical tact, not to say much room for critical conjecture. But the
one our author exercises with great felicity; and the other he takes
all possible pains to reduce to its lowest amount by careful
comparison of Syrian, Coptic, and Abyssinian texts. The general result
is a truly interesting set of sketches for a picture of the early
Church; which rises before us with no priestly pretensions, no
scholastic creeds, no bibliolatry, dry and dead; but certainly with an
aspect of genuine piety and affection, and with an air of mild
authority over the whole of life, which are the more winning from the
frightful corruption and dissolving civilization of the Old World
around. That our author should be fascinated with the image he has
re-created, and long to see it brought to life, in place of that body
of death on which we hang the pomps and titles of our nominal
Christianity, is not astonishing. But a greater change is
needed--though a far less will be denied--than a return to the type of
faith and worship in the second century. To destroy the fatal chasm
between profession and conviction, and bring men to live fresh out of
a real reverence instead of against a pretended or a fancied one, a
greater latitude and flexibility must be given to the forms of
spiritual culture than was needed in the ancient world. The unity of
system which was once possible is unseasonable amid our growing
varieties of condition and culture; and the methods which were natural
among a people closely thrown together and constructing their life
around the Church as a centre, would be highly artificial in a state
of society in which the family is the real unit, and the congregation
a precarious aggregate, of existence. Nothing, however, can be finer
or more generous than the spirit of our author's suggestions of
reform; and we earnestly thank him for a profusion of pregnant
thoughts and faithful warnings, the application of one half of which
would change the fate of our churches,--the destiny of our
nation,--the courses of the world.