Justin does not consider Christians who believe in the natural birth
of Jesus, of whom he implies that there is a respectable minority, to
be heretics, though he himself strongly holds the preternatural birth
of Jesus and his pre-existence as the "Logos" or "Word." He conceives
the Logos to be a second God, inferior to the first, unknowable God,
with respect to whom Justin, like Philo, is a complete agnostic. The
Holy Spirit is not regarded by Justin as a separate personality, and
is often mixed up with the "Logos." The doctrine of the natural
immortality of the soul is, for Justin, a heresy; and he is as firm a
believer in the resurrection of the body, as in the speedy Second
Coming and the establishment of the millennium.
The pillar of the Church in the middle of the second century--a
much-travelled native of Samaria--was certainly well acquainted with
Rome, probably with Alexandria; and it is likely that he knew the
state of opinion throughout the length and breadth of the Christian
world as well as any man of his time. If the various categories above
enumerated are arranged in a series thus:--
_Justin's Christianity_
________/\__________
/ \
_Orthodox_ _Judæo-Christianity_ _Idolothytic_
_Judaism_ ______/\______ _Christianity_ _Paganism_
/ \
I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII.
it is obvious that they form a gradational series from orthodox
Judaism, on the extreme left, to Paganism, whether philosophic or
popular, on the extreme right; and it will further be observed that,
while Justin's conception of Christianity is very broad, he rigorously
excludes two classes of persons who, in his time, called themselves
Christians; namely, those who insist on circumcision and other
observances of the Law on the part of Gentile converts; that is to
say, the strict Judæo-Christians (II.); and, on the other hand, those
who assert the lawfulness of eating meat offered to idols--whether
they are Gnostic or not (VII.). These last I have called "idolothytic"
Christians, because I cannot devise a better name, not because it is
strictly defensible etymologically.
At the present moment, I do not suppose there is an English missionary
in any heathen land who would trouble himself whether the materials of
his dinner had been previously offered to idols or not. On the other
hand, I suppose there is no Protestant sect within the pale of
orthodoxy, to say nothing of the Roman and Greek Churches, which would
hesitate to declare the practice of circumcision and the observance of
the Jewish Sabbath and dietary rules, shockingly heretical.
Modern Christianity has, in fact, not only shifted far to the right of
Justin's position, but it is of much narrower compass.
_Justin_
___________/\________________
/ \
_Judæo-Christianity_ _Modern Christianity_ _Paganism_
_Judaism_ _____/\_____ _______/\_______
/ \ / \
I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII.
For, though it includes VII., and even, in saint and relic worship,
cuts a "monstrous cantle" out of paganism, it excludes, not only all
Judæo-Christians, but all who doubt that such are heretics. Ever since
the thirteenth century, the Inquisition would have cheerfully burned,
and in Spain did abundantly burn, all persons who came under the
categories II., III., IV., V. And the wolf would play the same havoc
now, if it could only get its blood-stained jaws free from the muzzle
imposed by the secular arm.
Further, there is not a Protestant body except the Unitarian, which
would not declare Justin himself a heretic, on account of his doctrine
of the inferior godship of the Logos; while I am very much afraid
that, in strict logic, Dr. Wace would be under the necessity, so
painful to him, of calling him an "infidel," on the same and on other
grounds.
Now let us turn to our other authority. If there is any result of
critical investigations of the sources of Christianity which is
certain,[76] it is that Paul of Tarsus wrote the Epistle to the
Galatians somewhere between the years 55 and 60 A.D., that is to say,
roughly, twenty, or five-and-twenty years after the crucifixion. If
this is so, the Epistle to the Galatians is one of the oldest, if not
the very oldest, of extant documentary evidences of the state of the
primitive Church. And, be it observed, if it is Paul's writing, it
unquestionably furnishes us with the evidence of a participator in the
transactions narrated. With the exception of two or three of the other
Pauline Epistles, there is not one solitary book in the New Testament
of the authorship and authority of which we have such good evidence.
And what is the state of things we find disclosed? A bitter quarrel,
in his account of which Paul by no means minces matters, or hesitates
to hurl defiant sarcasms against those who were "reputed to be
pillars": James "the brother of the Lord," Peter, the rock on whom
Jesus is said to have built his Church, and John, "the beloved
disciple." And no deference toward "the rock" withholds Paul from
charging Peter to his face with "dissimulation."
The subject of the hot dispute was simply this. Were Gentile converts
bound to obey the Law or not? Paul answered in the negative; and,
acting upon his opinion, he had created at Antioch (and elsewhere) a
specifically "Christian" community, the sole qualifications for
admission into which were the confession of the belief that Jesus was
the Messiah, and baptism upon that confession. In the epistle in
question, Paul puts this--his "gospel," as he calls it--in its most
extreme form. Not only does he deny the necessity of conformity with
the Law, but he declares such conformity to have a negative value.
"Behold, I, Paul, say unto you, that if ye receive circumcision,
Christ will profit you nothing" (Galatians v. 2). He calls the legal
observances "beggarly rudiments," and anathematises every one who
preaches to the Galatians any other gospel than his own. That is to
say, by direct consequence, he anathematises the Nazarenes of
Jerusalem, whose zeal for the Law is testified by James in a passage
of the Acts cited further on. In the first Epistle to the Corinthians,
dealing with the question of eating meat offered to idols, it is clear
that Paul himself thinks it a matter of indifference; but he advises
that it should not he done, for the sake of the weaker brethren. On
the other hand, the Nazarenes of Jerusalem most strenuously opposed
Paul's "gospel," insisting on every convert becoming a regular Jewish
proselyte, and consequently on his observance of the whole Law; and
this party was led by James and Peter and John (Galatians ii. 9). Paul
does not suggest that the question of principle was settled by the
discussion referred to in Galatians. All he says is, that it ended in
the practical agreement that he and Barnabas should do as they had
been doing, in respect to the Gentiles; while James and Peter and John
should deal in their own fashion with Jewish converts. Afterwards, he
complains bitterly of Peter, because, when on a visit to Antioch, he,
at first, inclined to Paul's view and ate with the Gentile converts;
but when "certain came from James," "drew back, and separated himself,
fearing them that were of the circumcision. And the rest of the Jews
dissembled likewise with him; insomuch as even Barnabas was carried
away with their dissimulation" (Galatians ii. 12-13).
There is but one conclusion to be drawn from Paul's account of this
famous dispute, the settlement of which determined the fortunes of
the nascent religion. It is that the disciples at Jerusalem, headed by
"James, the Lord's brother," and by the leading apostles, Peter and
John, were strict Jews, who had objected to admit any converts into
their body, unless these, either by birth, or by becoming proselytes,
were also strict Jews. In fact, the sole difference between James and
Peter and John, with the body of the disciples whom they led and the
Jews by whom they were surrounded, and with whom they, for many years,
shared the religious observances of the Temple, was that they believed
that the Messiah, whom the leaders of the nation yet looked for, had
already come in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
The Acts of the Apostles is hardly a very trustworthy history; it is
certainly of later date than the Pauline Epistles, supposing them to
be genuine. And the writer's version of the conference of which Paul
gives so graphic a description, if that is correct, is unmistakably
coloured with all the art of a reconciler, anxious to cover up a
scandal. But it is none the less instructive on this account. The
judgment of the "council" delivered by James is that the Gentile
converts shall merely "abstain from things sacrificed to idols, and
from blood and from things strangled, and from fornication." But
notwithstanding the accommodation in which the writer of the Acts
would have us believe, the Jerusalem Church held to its endeavour to
retain the observance of the Law. Long after the conference, some time
after the writing of the Epistles to the Galatians and Corinthians,
and immediately after the despatch of that to the Romans, Paul makes
his last visit to Jerusalem, and presents himself to James and all the
elders. And this is what the Acts tells us of the interview:--
And they said unto him, Thou seest, brother, how many
thousands [or myriads] there are among the Jews of them
which have believed; and they are all zealous for the law;
and they have been informed concerning thee, that thou
teachest all the Jews which are among the Gentiles to
forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their
children, neither to walk after the customs. (Acts xxi. 20,
21.)
They therefore request that he should perform a certain public
religious act in the Temple, in order that
all shall know that there is no truth in the things whereof
they have been informed concerning thee; but that thou
thyself walkest orderly, keeping the law (_ibid_. 24).[77]
How far Paul could do what he is here requested to do, and which the
writer of the Acts goes on to say he did, with a clear conscience, if
he wrote the Epistles to the Galatians and Corinthians, I may leave
any candid reader of these epistles to decide. The point to which I
wish to direct attention is the declaration that the Jerusalem
Church, led by the brother of Jesus and by his personal disciples and
friends, twenty years and more after his death, consisted of strict
and zealous Jews.
Tertullus, the orator, caring very little about the internal
dissensions of the followers of Jesus, speaks of Paul as a "ringleader
of the sect of the Nazarenes" (Acts xxiv. 5), which must have affected
James much in the same way as it would have moved the Archbishop of
Canterbury, in George Fox's day, to hear the latter called a
"ringleader of the sect of Anglicans." In fact, "Nazarene" was, as is
well known, the distinctive appellation applied to Jesus; his
immediate followers were known as Nazarenes; while the congregation of
the disciples, and, later, of converts at Jerusalem--the Jerusalem
Church--was emphatically the "sect of the Nazarenes," no more, in
itself, to be regarded as anything outside Judaism than the sect of
the Sadducees, or that of the Essenes.[78] In fact, the tenets of both
the Sadducees and the Essenes diverged much more widely from the
Pharisaic standard of orthodoxy than Nazarenism did.
Let us consider the condition of affairs now (A.D. 50-60) in relation
to that which obtained in Justin's time, a century later. It is plain
that the Nazarenes--presided over by James, "the brother of the Lord,"
and comprising within their body all the twelve apostles--belonged to
Justin's second category of "Jews who observe the Law, believe Jesus
to be the Christ, but who insist on the observance of the Law by
Gentile converts," up till the time at which the controversy reported
by Paul arose. They then, according to Paul, simply allowed him to
form his congregations of non-legal Gentile converts at Antioch and
elsewhere; and it would seem that it was to these converts, who would
come under Justin's fifth category, that the title of "Christian" was
first applied. If any of these Christians had acted upon the more than
half-permission given by Paul, and had eaten meats offered to idols,
they would have belonged to Justin's seventh category.
Hence, it appears that, if Justin's opinion, which was probably that
of the Church generally in the middle of the second century, was
correct, James and Peter and John and their followers could not be
saved; neither could Paul, if he carried into practice his views as to
the indifference of eating meats offered to idols. Or, to put the
matter another way, the centre of gravity of orthodoxy, which is at
the extreme right of the series in the nineteenth century, was at the
extreme left just before the middle of the first century, when the
"sect of the Nazarenes" constituted the whole church founded by Jesus
and the apostles; while, in the time of Justin, it lay mid-way between
the two. It is therefore a profound mistake to imagine that the
Judæo-Christians (Nazarenes and Ebionites) of later times were
heretical outgrowths from a primitive universalist "Christianity." On
the contrary, the universalist "Christianity" is an outgrowth from the
primitive, purely Jewish, Nazarenism; which, gradually eliminating all
the ceremonial and dietary parts of the Jewish law, has thrust aside
its parent, and all the intermediate stages of its development, into
the position of damnable heresies.
Such being the case, we are in a position to form a safe judgment of
the limits within which the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth must have
been confined. Ecclesiastical authority would have us believe that the
words which are given at the end of the first Gospel, "Go ye,
therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in
the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost," are part
of the last commands of Jesus, issued at the moment of his parting
with the eleven. If so, Peter and John must have heard these words;
they are too plain to be misunderstood; and the occasion is too solemn
for them ever to be forgotten. Yet the "Acts" tells us that Peter
needed a vision to enable him so much as to baptize Cornelius; and
Paul, in the Galatians, knows nothing of words which would have
completely borne him out as against those who, though they heard, must
be supposed to have either forgotten, or ignored them. On the other
hand, Peter and John, who are supposed to have heard the "Sermon on
the Mount," know nothing of the saying that Jesus had not come to
destroy the Law, but that every jot and tittle of the Law must be
fulfilled, which surely would have been pretty good evidence for their
view of the question.
We are sometimes told that the personal friends and daily companions
of Jesus remained zealous Jews and opposed Paul's innovations, because
they were hard of heart and dull of comprehension. This hypothesis is
hardly in accordance with the concomitant faith of those who adopt it,
in the miraculous insight and superhuman sagacity of their Master; nor
do I see any way of getting it to harmonise with the orthodox
postulate; namely, that Matthew was the author of the first gospel and
John of the fourth. If that is so, then, most assuredly, Matthew was
no dullard; and as for the fourth gospel--a theosophic romance of the
first order--it could have been written by none but a man of
remarkable literary capacity, who had drunk deep of Alexandrian
philosophy. Moreover, the doctrine of the writer of the fourth gospel
is more remote from that of the "sect of the Nazarenes" than is that
of Paul himself. I am quite aware that orthodox critics have been
capable of maintaining that John, the Nazarene, who was probably well
past fifty years of age, when he is supposed to have written the most
thoroughly Judaising book in the New Testament--the Apocalypse--in the
roughest of Greek, underwent an astounding metamorphosis of both
doctrine and style by the time he reached the ripe age of ninety or
so, and provided the world with a history in which the acutest critic
cannot [always] make out where the speeches of Jesus end and the text
of the narrative begins; while that narrative is utterly
irreconcilable, in regard to matters of fact, with that of his
fellow-apostle, Matthew.
The end of the whole matter is this:--The "sect of the Nazarenes," the
brother and the immediate followers of Jesus, commissioned by him as
apostles, and those who were taught by them up to the year 50 A.D.,
were not "Christians" in the sense in which that term has been
understood ever since its asserted origin at Antioch, but Jews--strict
orthodox Jews--whose belief in the Messiahship of Jesus never led to
their exclusion from the Temple services, nor would have shut them out
from the wide embrace of Judaism.[79] The open proclamation of their
special view about the Messiah was doubtless offensive to the
Pharisees, just as rampant Low Churchism is offensive to bigoted High
Churchism in our own country; or as any kind of dissent is offensive
to fervid religionists of all creeds. To the Sadducees, no doubt, the
political danger of any Messianic movement was serious; and they would
have been glad to put down Nazarenism, lest it should end in useless
rebellion against their Roman masters, like that other Galilean
movement headed by Judas, a generation earlier. Galilee was always a
hotbed of seditious enthusiasm against the rule of Rome; and high
priest and procurator alike had need to keep a sharp eye upon natives
of that district. On the whole, however, the Nazarenes were but little
troubled for the first twenty years of their existence; and the
undying hatred of the Jews against those later converts, whom they
regarded as apostates and fautors of a sham Judaism, was awakened by
Paul. From their point of view, he was a mere renegade Jew, opposed
alike to orthodox Judaism and to orthodox Nazarenism; and whose
teachings threatened Judaism with destruction. And, from their point
of view, they were quite right. In the course of a century, Pauline
influences had a large share in driving primitive Nazarenism from
being the very heart of the new faith into the position of scouted
error; and the spirit of Paul's doctrine continued its work of
driving Christianity farther and farther away from Judaism, until
"meats offered to idols" might be eaten without scruple, while the
Nazarene methods of observing even the Sabbath, or the Passover, were
branded with the mark of Judaising heresy.
But if the primitive Nazarenes of whom the Acts speak were orthodox
Jews, what sort of probability can there be that Jesus was anything
else? How can he have founded the universal religion which was not
heard of till twenty years after his death?[80] That Jesus possessed,
in a rare degree, the gift of attaching men to his person and to his
fortunes; that he was the author of many a striking saying, and the
advocate of equity, of love, and of humility; that he may have
disregarded the subtleties of the bigots for legal observance, and
appealed rather to those noble conceptions of religion which
constituted the pith and kernel of the teaching of the great prophets
of his nation seven hundred years earlier; and that, in the last
scenes of his career, he may have embodied the ideal sufferer of
Isaiah, may be, as I think it is, extremely probable. But all this
involves not a step beyond the borders of orthodox Judaism. Again,
who is to say whether Jesus proclaimed himself the veritable Messiah,
expected by his nation since the appearance of the pseudoprophetic
work of Daniel, a century and a half before his time; or whether the
enthusiasm of his followers gradually forced him to assume that
position?
But one thing is quite certain: if that belief in the speedy second
coming of the Messiah which was shared by all parties in the primitive
Church, whether Nazarene or Pauline; which Jesus is made to prophesy,
over and over again, in the Synoptic gospels; and which dominated the
life of Christians during the first century after the crucifixion;--if
he believed and taught that, then assuredly he was under an illusion,
and he is responsible for that which the mere effluxion of time has
demonstrated to be a prodigious error.
When I ventured to doubt "whether any Protestant theologian who has a
reputation to lose will say that he believes the Gadarene story," it
appears that I reckoned without Dr. Wace, who, referring to this
passage in my paper, says:--
He will judge whether I fall under his description; but I
repeat that I believe it, and that he has removed the only
objection to my believing it (p. 363).
Far be it from me to set myself up as a judge of any such delicate
question as that put before me; but I think I may venture to express
the conviction that, in the matter of courage, Dr. Wace has raised for
himself a monument _ære perennius._ For really, in my poor judgment, a
certain splendid intrepidity, such as one admires in the leader of a
forlorn hope, is manifested by Dr. Wace when he solemnly affirms that
he believes the Gadarene story on the evidence offered. I feel less
complimented perhaps than I ought to do, when I am told that I have
been an accomplice in extinguishing in Dr. Wace's mind the last
glimmer of doubt which common sense may have suggested. In fact, I
must disclaim all responsibility for the use to which the information
I supplied has been put. I formally decline to admit that the
expression of my ignorance whether devils, in the existence of which I
do not believe, if they did exist, might or might not be made to go
out of men into pigs, can, as a matter of logic, have been of any use
whatever to a person who already believed in devils and in the
historical accuracy of the gospels.
Of the Gadarene story, Dr. Wace, with all solemnity and twice over,
affirms that he "believes it." I am sorry to trouble him further, but
what does he mean by "it"? Because there are two stories, one in
"Mark" and "Luke," and the other in "Matthew." In the former, which I
quoted in my previous paper, there is one possessed man; in the
latter there are two. The story is told fully, with the vigorous
homely diction and the picturesque details of a piece of folklore, in
the second gospel. The immediately antecedent event is the storm on
the Lake of Gennesaret. The immediately consequent events are the
message from the ruler of the synagogue and the healing of the woman
with an issue of blood. In the third gospel, the order of events is
exactly the same, and there is an extremely close general and verbal
correspondence between the narratives of the miracle. Both agree in
stating that there was only one possessed man, and that he was the
residence of many devils, whose name was "Legion."
In the first gospel, the event which immediately precedes the Gadarene
affair is, as before, the storm; the message from the ruler and the
healing of the issue are separated from it by the accounts of the
healing of a paralytic, of the calling of Matthew, and of a discussion
with some Pharisees. Again, while the second gospel speaks of the
country of the "Gerasenes" as the locality of the event, the third
gospel has "Gerasenes," "Gergesenes," and "Gadarenes" in different
ancient MSS.; while the first has "Gadarenes."
The really important points to be noticed, however, in the narrative
of the first gospel, are these--that there are two possessed men
instead of one; and that while the story is abbreviated by omissions,
what there is of it is often verbally identical with the corresponding
passages in the other two gospels. The most unabashed of reconcilers
cannot well say that one man is the same as two, or two as one; and,
though the suggestion really has been made, that two different
miracles, agreeing in all essential particulars, except the number of
the possessed, were effected immediately after the storm on the lake,
I should be sorry to accuse any one of seriously adopting it. Nor will
it he pretended that the allegory refuge is accessible in this
particular case.
So, when Dr. Wace says that he believes in the synoptic evangelists'
account of the miraculous bedevilment of swine, I may fairly ask which
of them does he believe? Does he hold by the one evangelist's story,
or by that of the two evangelists? And having made his election, what
reasons has he to give for his choice? If it is suggested that the
witness of two is to be taken against that of one, not only is the
testimony dealt with in that common-sense fashion against which the
theologians of his school protest so warmly; not only is all question
of inspiration at an end, but the further inquiry arises, After all,
is it the testimony of two against one? Are the authors of the
versions in the second and third gospels really independent witnesses?
In order to answer this question, it is only needful to place the
English versions of the two side by side, and compare them carefully.
It will then be seen that the coincidences between them, not merely in
substance, but in arrangement, and in the use of identical words in
the same order, are such, that only two alternatives are conceivable:
either one evangelist freely copied from the other, or both based
themselves upon a common source, which may either have been a written
document, or a definite oral tradition learned by heart. Assuredly,
these two testimonies are not those of independent witnesses. Further,
when the narrative in the first gospel is compared with that in the
other two, the same fact comes out.
Supposing, then, that Dr. Wace is right in his assumption that
Matthew, Mark, and Luke wrote the works which we find attributed to
them by tradition, what is the value of their agreement, even that
something more or less like this particular miracle occurred, since it
is demonstrable, either that all depend on some antecedent statement,
of the authorship of which nothing is known, or that two are dependent
upon the third?
Dr. Wace says he believes the Gadarene story; whichever version of it
he accepts, therefore, he believes that Jesus said what he is stated
in all the versions to have said, and thereby virtually declared that
the theory of the nature of the spiritual world involved in the story
is true. Now I hold that this theory is false, that it is a monstrous
and mischievous fiction; and I unhesitatingly express my disbelief in
any assertion that it is true, by whomsoever made. So that, if Dr.
Wace is right in his belief, he is also quite right in classing me
among the people he calls "infidels"; and although I cannot fulfil the
eccentric expectation that I shall glory in a title which, from my
point of view, it would be simply silly to adopt, I certainly shall
rejoice not to be reckoned among "Christians" so long as the
profession of belief in such stories as the Gadarene pig affair, on
the strength of a tradition of unknown origin, of which two discrepant
reports, also of unknown origin, alone remain, forms any part of the
Christian faith. And, although I have, more than once, repudiated the
gift of prophecy, yet I think I may venture to express the
anticipation, that if "Christians" generally are going to follow the
line taken by Dr. Wace, it will not be long before all men of common
sense qualify for a place among the "infidels."