THE HIBBERT LECTURES
1888
The Hibbert Trustees cannot add this volume to their series without a few
lines of grateful acknowledgment. It is impossible to forget either the
courteous readiness with which the accomplished author undertook the task
originally, or the admirable qualities he brought to it. When he died
without completing the MS. for the press, the anxiety of the Trustees
was at once relieved by the kind effort of his family to obtain adequate
assistance. The public will learn from the Preface how much had to be
done, and will join the Trustees in grateful appreciation of the services
of the gentlemen who responded to the occasion. That Dr. Hatch’s friend,
Dr. Fairbairn, consented to edit the volume, with the valuable aid of Mr.
Bartlet and Professor Sanday, was an ample pledge that the want would
be most efficiently met. To those gentlemen the Trustees are greatly
indebted for the learned and earnest care with which the laborious
revision was made.
_THE HIBBERT LECTURES, 1888._
THE
INFLUENCE OF GREEK IDEAS
AND USAGES
UPON THE
CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
BY THE LATE
EDWIN HATCH, D.D.
READER IN ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.
EDITED BY
A. M. FAIRBAIRN, D.D.
LATE PRINCIPAL OF MANSFIELD COLLEGE, OXFORD.
[Illustration]
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE,
14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON.
1914.
RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED,
BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E.,
AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
PREFACE.
The fittest introduction to these Lectures will be a few words of
explanation.
Before his death, Dr. Hatch had written out and sent to press the first
eight Lectures. Of these he had corrected six, while the proofs of the
seventh and eighth, with some corrections in his own hand, were found
among his papers. As regards these two, the duties of the editor were
simple: he had only to correct them for the press. But as regards the
remaining four Lectures, the work was much more arduous and responsible.
A continuous MS., or even a connected outline of any one of the Lectures,
could not be said to exist. The Lectures had indeed been delivered a
year and a half before, but the delivery had been as it were of selected
passages, with the connections orally supplied, while the Lecturer
did not always follow the order of his notes, or, as we know from the
Lectures he himself prepared for the press, the one into which he meant
to work his finished material. What came into the editor’s hands was
a series of note-books, which seemed at first sight but an amorphous
mass or collection of hurried and disconnected jottings, now in ink,
now in pencil; with a multitude of cross references made by symbols and
abbreviations whose very significance had to be laboriously learned; with
abrupt beginnings and still more abrupt endings; with pages crowded with
successive strata, as it were, of reflections and references, followed by
pages almost or entirely blank, speaking of sections or fields meant to
be further explored; with an equal multitude of erasures, now complete,
now incomplete, now cancelled; with passages marked as transposed or as
to be transposed, or with a sign of interrogation which indicated, now
a suspicion as to the validity or accuracy of a statement, now a simple
suspense of judgment, now a doubt as to position or relevance, now a
simple query as of one asking, Have I not said this, or something like
this, before? In a word, what we had were the note-books of the scholar
and the literary workman, well ordered, perhaps, as a garden to him who
made it and had the clue to it, but at once a wilderness and a labyrinth
to him who had no hand in its making, and who had to discover the way
through it and out of it by research and experiment. But patient, and,
I will add, loving and sympathetic work, rewarded the editor and his
kind helpers. The clue was found, the work proved more connected and
continuous than under the conditions could have been thought to be
possible, and the result is now presented to the world.
A considerable proportion of the material for the ninth Lecture had been
carefully elaborated; but some of it, and the whole of the material for
the other three, was in the state just described. This of course added
even more to the responsibilities than to the labours of the editor. In
the body of the Lectures most scrupulous care has been taken to preserve
the author’s _ipsissima verba_, and, wherever possible, the structure and
form of his sentences. But from the very necessities of the case, the
hand had now and then to be allowed a little more freedom; connecting
words, headings, and even here and there a transitional sentence or
explanatory clause, had to be added; but in no single instance has a
word, phrase or sentence been inserted in the text without warrant
from some one part or another of these crowded note-books. With the
foot-notes it has been different. One of our earliest and most serious
difficulties was to find whence many of the quotations, especially in the
ninth Lecture, came. The author’s name was given, but often no clue to
the book or chapter. We have been, I think, in every case successful in
tracing the quotation to its source. Another difficulty was to connect
the various references with the paragraph, sentence or statement, each
was meant to prove. This involved a new labour; the sources had to be
consulted alike for the purposes of verification and determination of
relevance and place. The references, too, in the note-books were often of
the briefest, given, as it were, in algebraics, and they had frequently
to be expanded and corrected; while the search into the originals led now
to the making of excerpts, and now to the discovery of new authorities
which it seemed a pity not to use. As a result, the notes to Lecture IX.
are mainly the author’s, though all as verified by other hands; but the
notes to Lecture X., and in part also XI., are largely the editor’s. This
is stated in order that all responsibility for errors and inaccuracies
may be laid at the proper door. It seemed to the editor that, while he
could do little to make the text what the author would have made it if
it had been by his own hand prepared for the press, he was bound, in the
region where the state of the MSS. made a discreet use of freedom not
only possible but compulsory, to make the book as little unworthy of the
scholarship and scrupulous accuracy of the author as it was in his power
to do.
The pleasant duty remains of thanking two friends who have greatly
lightened my labours. The first is Vernon Bartlet, M.A.; the second,
Professor Sanday. Mr. Bartlet’s part has been the heaviest; without him
the work could never have been done. He laboured at the MSS. till the
broken sentences became whole, and the disconnected paragraphs wove
themselves together; and then he transcribed the black and bewildering
pages into clear and legible copy for the printer. He had heard the
Lectures, and had happily taken a few notes, which, supplemented
from other sources, proved most helpful, especially in the way of
determining the order to be followed. He has indeed been in every way a
most unwearied and diligent co-worker. To him we also owe the Synopsis
of Contents and the Index. Professor Sanday has kindly read over all
the Lectures that have passed under the hands of the editor, and has
furnished him with most helpful criticisms, suggestions, and emendations.
The work is sent out with a sad gratitude. I am grateful that it has been
possible so far to fulfil the author’s design, but sad because he no
longer lives to serve the cause he loved so well. This is not the place
to say a word either in criticism or in praise of him or his work. Those
of us who knew him know how little a book like this expresses his whole
mind, or represents all that in this field he had it in him to do.
The book is an admirable illustration of his method; in order to be
judged aright, it ought to be judged within the limits he himself has
drawn. It is a study in historical development, an analysis of some of
the formal factors that conditioned a given process and determined a
given result; but it deals throughout solely with these formal factors
and the historical conditions under which they operated. He never
intended to discover or discuss the transcendental causes of the process
on the one hand, or to pronounce on the value or validity of the result
on the other. His purpose, like his method, was scientific; and as an
attempt at the scientific treatment of the growth and formulation of
ideas, of the evolution and establishment of usages within the Christian
Church, it ought to be studied and criticised. Behind and beneath
his analytical method was a constructive intellect, and beyond his
conclusions was a positive and co-ordinating conception of the largest
and noblest order. To his mind every species of mechanical Deism was
alien; and if his method bears hardly upon the traditions and assumptions
by which such a Deism still lives in the region of early ecclesiastical
history, it was only that he might prepare the way for the coming of a
faith and a society that should be worthier of the Master he loved and
the Church he served.
A. M. FAIRBAIRN.
OXFORD, _July, 1890_.
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS.
PAGE
LECTURE I.
INTRODUCTORY.
The Problem:
How the Church passed from the Sermon on the Mount to the Nicene
Creed; the change in spirit coincident with a change in soil 1, 2
The need of caution: two preliminary considerations 2
1. A religion relative to the whole mental attitude of an age:
hence need to estimate the general attitude of the Greek
mind during the first three centuries A.D. 3, 4
2. Every permanent change in religious belief and usage rooted
in historical conditions: roots of the Gospel in Judaism,
but of fourth century Christianity—the key to historical—in
Hellenism 4, 5
The Method:
Evidence as to _process_ of change scanty, but ample and
representative as to ante-Nicene Greek thought and
post-Nicene Christian thought. Respects in which evidence
defective 5-10
Two resulting tendencies:
1. To overrate the value of the surviving evidence.
2. To under-estimate opinions no longer accessible or known
only through opponents 10
Hence method, the correlation of antecedents and consequents 11-13
Antecedents: sketch of the phenomena of Hellenism 13, 14
Consequents: changes in original Christian ideas and usages 14
Attitude of mind required 15
1. Demand upon attention and imagination 15, 16
2. Personal prepossessions to be allowed for 17, 18
3. Need to observe under-currents, e.g.
(_a_) The dualistic hypothesis, its bearing on baptism and
exorcism 19, 20
(_b_) The nature of religion, e.g. its relation to conscience 21
History as a scientific study: the true apologia in religion 21-24
LECTURE II.
GREEK EDUCATION.
The first step a study of environment, particularly as literary.
The contemporary Greek world an educated world in a special
literary sense 25-27
I. Its _forms_ varied, but all literary:
Grammar 28-30
Rhetoric 30-32
A “lecture-room” Philosophy 32-35
II. Its _influence_ shown by:
1. Direct literary evidence 35-37
2. Recognized and lucrative position of the teaching
profession 37-40
3. Social position of its professors 40-42
4. Its persistent survival up to to-day in general education,
in special terms and usages 42-48
Into such an artificial habit of mind Christianity came 48, 49
LECTURE III.
GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS.
To the Greek the mystery of writing, the reverence for antiquity,
the belief in inspiration, gave the ancient poets a unique
value 50, 51
Homer, his place in moral education; used by the Sophists in
ethics, physics, metaphysics, &c. 52-57
Apologies for this use culminate in allegory, especially among
the Stoics 57-64
The Allegoric temper widespread, particularly in things religious.
Adopted by Hellenistic Jews, especially at Alexandria; Philo 65-69
Continued by early Christian exegesis in varied schools,
chiefly as regards the Prophets, in harmony with Greek
thought, and as a main line of apologetic 69-74
Application to the New Testament writings by the Gnostics and
the Alexandrines 75, 76
Its aid as solution of the Old Testament problem, especially in
Origen 77-79
Reactions both Hellenic and Christian: viz. in
1. The Apologists’ polemic against Greek mythology 79, 80
2. The Philosophers’ polemic against Christianity 80
3. Certain Christian Schools, especially the Antiochene 81, 82
Here hampered by dogmatic complications 82
Use and abuse of allegory—the poetry of life 82, 83
Alien to certain drifts of the modern spirit, viz.
1. Historic handling of literature 84
2. Recognition of the living voice of God 84, 85
LECTURE IV.
GREEK AND CHRISTIAN RHETORIC.
The period one of widely diffused literary culture.
The Rhetorical Schools, old and new 86-88
Sophistic largely pursued the old lines of Rhetoric, but also
philosophized and preached professionally 88-94
Its manner of discourse; its rewards 94-99
Objections of earnest men; reaction led by Stoics like Epictetus 99-105
Significance for Christianity 105
Primitive Christian “prophesying” _v._ later “preaching.”
Preaching of composite origin: its essence and form, e.g.
in fourth century, A.D.: preachers sometimes itinerant 105-113
Summary and conclusions 113-115
LECTURE V.
CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
Abstract ideas among the Greeks, who were hardly aware of the
different degrees of precision possible in mathematics and
philosophy 116-118
Tendency to define strong with them, apart from any criterion;
hence _dogmas_ 118-120
Dogmatism, amid decay of originality: reaction towards doubt;
yet Dogmatism regnant 120-123
“Palestinian Philosophy,” a complete contrast 123, 124
Fusion of these in the Old Catholic Church achieved through
an underlying kinship of ideas 125, 126
Explanations of this from both sides 126-128
Philosophical Judaism as a bridge, e.g., in allegorism and
cosmology 128, 129
Christian philosophy partly apologetic, partly speculative.
Alarm of Conservatives: the second century one of transition
and conflict 130-133
The issue, compromise, and a certain habit of mind 133, 134
Summary answer to the main question 134
The Greek mind seen in:
1. The tendency to define 135
2. The tendency to speculate 136
3. The point of emphasis, i.e. Orthodoxy 137
Further development in the West. But Greece the source of the
true _damnosa hereditas_ 137, 138
LECTURE VI.
GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS.
The average morality of the age: its moral philosophy 139, 140
An age of moral reformation 140-142
1. Relation of ethics to philosophy and life 142
Revived practical bent of Stoicism; Epictetus 143-147
A moral gymnastic cultivated 147
(1) _Askesis_ (ἄσκησις): Philo, Epictetus, Dio
Chrysostom 148-150
(2) The “philosopher” or moral reformer 150-152
2. The contents of ethical teaching, marked by a religious
reference. Epictetus’ two maxims, “Follow Nature,”
“Follow God” 152-155
Christian ethics show agreement amid difference; based upon
the Divine command; idea of sin: agreement most emphasized
at first, i.e. the importance of conduct 158, 159
1. Tone of earliest Christian writings: the “Two Ways:”
Apostolical Constitutions, Bk. i. 159-162
2. Place of discipline in Christian life: Puritan ideal
_v._ later _corpus permixtum_ 162-164
Further developments due to Greece:
1. A Church within the Church: _askesis_, Monasticism 164-168
2. Resulting deterioration of average ethics: Ambrose of
Milan 168, 169
Complete victory of Greek ethics seen in the basis of modern
society 169, 170
LECTURE VII.
GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
I. THE CREATOR.
The idea of One God, begotten of the unity and order of the
world, and connected with the ideas of personality and mind.
Three elements in the idea—Creator, Moral Governor, Absolute
Being 171-174
Growth of idea of a beginning: Monism and Dualism 174, 175
1. Monism of the Stoics: _natura naturata_ and _naturans_:
a beginning not necessarily involved 175-177
2. Dualism, Platonic: creation recognized 177-180
Syncretistic blending of these as to process: _Logos_ idea
common. Hence Philo’s significance: God as Creator:
Monistic and Dualistic aspects; his terms for the
Forces in their plurality and unity: after all, God
is Creator, even Father, of the world 180-188
Early Christian idea of a single supreme Artificer took permanent
root; but questions as to mode emerged, and the first answers
were tentative 188-190
1. Evolutional type; supplemented by idea of a lapse 190-194
2. Creational type accepted 194
There remained:
(i.) The ultimate relation of matter to God: Dualistic
solutions: Basilides’ Platonic theory the basis
of the later doctrine, though not at once
recognized 194-198
(ii.) The Creator’s contact with matter: Mediation
hypothesis: the _Logos_ solution 198-200
(iii.) Imperfection and evil: Monistic and Dualistic
answers, especially Marcion’s 200, 201
But the Divine Unity overcomes all: position of Irenæus, &c.,
widely accepted: Origen’s cosmogony a theodicy. Prevalence
of the simpler view seen in Monarchianism 202-207
Results 207, 208
LECTURE VIII.
GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
II. THE MORAL GOVERNOR.
A.—_The Greek Idea._
1. Unity of God and Unity of the world: will and order 209
Order, number, necessity and destiny: intelligent force
and law 209-211
The Cosmos as a city-state (πόλις) 211, 212
2. New conceptions of the Divine Nature: _Justice_ and
_Goodness_ in connection with Providence 213-215
Thus about the Christian era we find Destiny and Providence,
and a tendency to synthesis—through two stages—in the use
of the term God 215-217
3. The problem of evil emerges: attempts at solution.
(_a_) Universality of Providence denied (Platonic and Oriental) 217
(_b_) Reality of apparent evils denied (Stoic) 217-220
This not pertinent to moral evil, hence:
(_c_) Theory of human freedom 220, 221
Its relation to Universality of Providence: the Stoical
theodicy exemplified in Epictetus 221-223
B.—_The Christian Idea._
Primitive Christianity a contrast: two main conceptions.
1. Wages for work done 224
2. Positive Law—God a Lawgiver and Judge 225
Difficulties in fusing the two types.
(i.) Forgiveness and Law 226
Marcion’s ditheism 227, 228
Solution in Irenæus, Tertullian, &c.: result 228-230
(ii.) The Moral Governor and Free-will.
Marcion’s dualistic view of moral evil 230, 231
Justin Martyr, Tatian, Irenæus 231, 232
Tertullian and the Alexandrines 232
Origen’s comprehensive theodicy by aid of Stoicism
and Neo-Platonism 233-237
LECTURE IX.
GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
III. GOD AS THE SUPREME BEING.
Christian Theology shaped by Greece, though on a Jewish basis 238, 239
A.—_The Idea and its Development in Greek Philosophy._
Parallel to Christian speculation in three stages.
1. Transcendence of God.
History of the idea before and after Plato 240-243
Its two forms, transcendent proper and supra-cosmic 244
Blending with religious feeling, e.g. in Philo 244, 245
2. Revelation of the Transcendent.
Through intermediaries:
(i.) Mythological 246
(ii.) Philosophical, e.g. in Philo 246, 247
3. Distinctions in the nature of God.
Philo’s Logos 247, 248
Conceived both monistically and dualistically in
relation to God 249
But especially under metaphor of generation 250
B.—_The Idea and its Development in Christian Theology._
1. Here the idea of Transcendence is at first absent 250-252
Present in the Apologists 252, 253
But God as transcendent (_v._ supra-cosmic) first
emphasized by Basilides and the Alexandrines 254-256
2. Mediation (= Revelation) of the Transcendent, a vital
problem 256, 257
Theories of modal _manifestation_ 257, 258
Dominant idea that of modal _existence_:
(i.) As manifold: so among certain Gnostics 258
(ii.) As constituting a unity 259
Its Gnostic forms 259, 260
Relation of the _logoi_ to the _Logos_, especially in
Justin 260-262
The issue is the Logos doctrine of Irenæus 262, 263
3. Distinctions in the nature of God based on the Logos.
(i.) Theories as to the _genesis_ of the Logos,
analogous to those as to the world 263, 264
Theories guarding the “sole monarchy,” thus endangered,
culminate in Origen’s idea of eternal generation 265-267
(ii.) Theories of the _nature_ of the Logos determined
by either the supra-cosmic or transcendental
idea of God 267, 268
Origen marks a stage—and but a stage—in the controversies 268, 269
Greek elements in the subsequent developments.
_Ousia_; its history 269-272
Difficulty felt in applying it to God 273, 274
As also with _homoousios_: need of another term 274, 275
_Hypostasis_: its history 275-277
Comes to need definition by a third term (πρόσωπον) 277, 278
Resumé of the use of these terms; the reign of dogmatism 278-280
Three underlying assumptions—a legacy of the Greek spirit 280, 281
1. The importance of metaphysical distinctions.
2. Their absolute truth.
3. The nature of God’s perfection.
Conclusion 282
LECTURE X.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE MYSTERIES UPON CHRISTIAN USAGES.
A.—_The Greek Mysteries and Related Cults._
Mysteries and religious associations side by side with ordinary
Greek religion.
1. The Mysteries, e.g. at Eleusis 283, 284
(i.) Initial Purification, through confession and
lustration (baptism) 285-287
(ii.) Sacrifices, with procession, &c. 287, 288
(iii.) Mystic Drama, of nature and human life 288-290
2. Other religious associations: condition of entrance,
sacrifice and common meal 290, 291
Wide extent of the above 291, 292
B.—_The Mysteries and the Church._
Transition to the Christian Sacraments; influence, general and
special 292-294
1. Baptism:
Its primitive simplicity 294, 295
Later period marked by:
(i.) Change of _name_ 295, 296
(ii.) Change of _time_ and conception 296, 297
Minor confirmations of the parallelism 298-300
2. The Lord’s Supper:
Stages of extra-biblical development, e.g. in Didaché,
Apost. Const., the “altar,” its offerings as “mysteries” 300-303
Culmination of tendency in fifth century in Dionysius 303-305
The tendency strongest in the most Hellenic circles, viz.
Gnostics 305, 306
Secrecy and long catechumenate 306, 307
Anointing 307, 308
Realistic change of conception 308, 309
Conclusion 309
LECTURE XI.
THE INCORPORATION OF CHRISTIAN IDEAS, AS MODIFIED BY GREEK,
INTO A BODY OF DOCTRINE.
“Faith” in Old Testament = trust—trust in a person.
In Greek philosophy = intellectual conviction 310, 311
In Philo, these blend into trust in God—in His
veracity, i.e. in the Holy Writings 311, 312
Contemporary longing for certainty based on fact 312
Here we have the germs of (1) the Creed, (2) the New Testament
Canon 313
1. At first emphasis on its ethical purpose and revealed basis;
then the latent intellectual element emerges, though not
uniformly 315
The baptismal formula becomes a test.
Expansion by “apostolic teaching” 316, 317
The “Apostles’ Creed” and the Bishops 317-319
2. Related question as to sources of the Creed and the
materials for its interpretation.
Value of _written_ tradition: influence of Old Testament
and common idea of prophecy: apostolicity as limit 319, 320
Marcion and the idea of a Canon 320, 321
“Faith” assumes the sense it had in Philo 321
3. But the speculative temper remained active upon the “rule
of faith:” γνῶσις alongside πίστις, especially at
Alexandria: Origen 321-323
Hence tendency to:
(1) Identify a fact with speculations upon it 323, 324
(2) Check individual speculations in favour of those of the
majority 324-326
Results:
(i.) Such speculations formulated and inserted in the Creed,
formally as interpretations: belief changed, but not
the importance attached to it 327, 328
(ii.) Distinction between “majority” and “minority” views at
a meeting, on points of metaphysical speculation 329
Resumé of the stages of belief 329, 330
Underlying conceptions to be noted 330, 331
(1) Philosophic regard for exact definition.
(2) Political belief in a majority.
(3) Belief in the finality of the views of an age so ascertained.
Development, if admitted, cannot be arrested 332
Place of speculation in Christianity 332, 333
LECTURE XII.
THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE BASIS OF CHRISTIAN UNION:
DOCTRINE IN THE PLACE OF CONDUCT.
Association at first voluntary, according to the genius of
Christianity 334, 335
Its basis primarily moral and spiritual: Holiness its
characteristic: the “Two Ways,” Apost. Const. (Bk. i.),
the Elchasaites 335-337
Also a common Hope: its changing form 337, 338
Coincident relaxation of bonds of discipline and change in
idea of the Church 338, 339
Growing stress also upon the intellectual element 339, 340
Causes for this, primary and collateral 340, 341
(1) Importance given to Baptism realistically conceived:
its relation to the ministrant 341, 342
(2) Intercommunion: the necessary test at first moral
(e.g. Didaché), subsequently a doctrinal formula 343-345
This elevation of doctrine due to causes internal to the
Christian communities: but an external factor enters with
case of Paul of Samosata: its results 345-347
Lines of reaction against this transformation:
(1) Puritan or conservative tendency: Novatianism 347, 348
(2) Formation of esoteric class with higher moral ideal:
Monachism 348, 349
Conclusion:
The Greek spirit still lives in Christian Churches: the
vital question is its relation to Christianity 349, 350
Two theories—permanence of the primitive, assimilative
development: no logical third 350, 351
On either theory, the Greek element may largely go 351
The problem pressing: our study a necessary preliminary and
truly conservative 352
New ground here broken: a pioneer’s forecast: the Christianity
of the future 352, 353
LECTURE I.
INTRODUCTORY.
It is impossible for any one, whether he be a student of history or no,
to fail to notice a difference of both form and content between the
Sermon on the Mount and the Nicene Creed. The Sermon on the Mount is the
promulgation of a new law of conduct; it assumes beliefs rather than
formulates them; the theological conceptions which underlie it belong to
the ethical rather than the speculative side of theology; metaphysics
are wholly absent. The Nicene Creed is a statement partly of historical
facts and partly of dogmatic inferences; the metaphysical terms which it
contains would probably have been unintelligible to the first disciples;
ethics have no place in it. The one belongs to a world of Syrian
peasants, the other to a world of Greek philosophers.
The contrast is patent. If any one thinks that it is sufficiently
explained by saying that the one is a sermon and the other a creed,
it must be pointed out in reply that the question why an ethical
sermon stood in the forefront of the teaching of Jesus Christ, and a
metaphysical creed in the forefront of the Christianity of the fourth
century, is a problem which claims investigation.
It claims investigation, but it has not yet been investigated. There
have been inquiries, which in some cases have arrived at positive
results, as to the causes of particular changes or developments in
Christianity—the development, for example, of the doctrine of the
Trinity, or of the theory of a Catholic Church. But the main question to
which I invite your attention is antecedent to all such inquiries. It
asks, not how did the Christian societies come to believe one proposition
rather than another, but how did they come to the frame of mind which
attached importance to either the one or the other, and made the assent
to the one rather than the other a condition of membership.
In investigating this problem, the first point that is obvious to an
inquirer is, that the change in the centre of gravity from conduct
to belief is coincident with the transference of Christianity from a
Semitic to a Greek soil. The presumption is that it was the result of
Greek influence. It will appear from the Lectures which follow that
this presumption is true. Their general subject is, consequently, The
Influence of Greece upon Christianity.
* * * * *
The difficulty, the interest, and the importance of the subject make it
incumbent upon us to approach it with caution. It is necessary to bear
many points in mind as we enter upon it; and I will begin by asking your
attention to two considerations, which, being true of all analogous
phenomena of religious development and change, may be presumed to be true
of the particular phenomena before us.
1. The first is, that the religion of a given race at a given time is
relative to the whole mental attitude of that time. It is impossible to
separate the religious phenomena from the other phenomena, in the same
way that you can separate a vein of silver from the rock in which it is
embedded. They are as much determined by the general characteristics of
the race as the fauna and flora of a geographical area are determined
by its soil, its climate, and its cultivation; and they vary with the
changing characteristics of the race as the fauna and flora of the
tertiary system differ from those of the chalk. They are separable
from the whole mass of phenomena, not in fact, but only in thought.
We may concentrate our attention chiefly upon them, but they still
remain part of the whole complex life of the time, and they cannot be
understood except in relation to that life. If any one hesitates to
accept this historical induction, I will ask him to take the instance
that lies nearest to him, and to consider how he could understand the
religious phenomena of our own country in our own time—its doubts, its
hopes, its varied enterprises, its shifting enthusiasms, its noise, its
learning, its estheticism, and its philanthropies—unless he took account
of the growth of the inductive sciences and the mechanical arts, of
the expansion of literature, of the social stress, of the commercial
activity, of the general drift of society towards its own improvement.
In dealing, therefore, with the problem before us, we must endeavour to
realize to ourselves the whole mental attitude of the Greek world in the
first three centuries of our era. We must take account of the breadth
and depth of its education, of the many currents of its philosophy, of
its love of literature, of its scepticism and its mysticism. We must
gather together whatever evidence we can find, not determining the
existence or measuring the extent of drifts of thought by their literary
expression, but taking note also of the testimony of the monuments of art
and history, of paintings and sculptures, of inscriptions and laws. In
doing so, we must be content, at any rate for the present and until the
problem has been more fully elaborated, with the broader features both
of the Greek world and of the early centuries. The distinctions which
the precise study of history requires us to draw between the state of
thought of Greece proper and that of Asia Minor, and between the age of
the Antonines and that of the Severi, are not necessary for our immediate
purpose, and may be left to the minuter research which has hardly yet
begun.
2. The second consideration is, that no permanent change takes place in
the religious beliefs or usages of a race which is not rooted in the
existing beliefs and usages of that race. The truth which Aristotle
enunciated, that all intellectual teaching is based upon what is
previously known to the person taught,[1] is applicable to a race as
well as to an individual, and to beliefs even more than to knowledge.
A religious change is, like a physiological change, of the nature of
assimilation by, and absorption into, existing elements. The religion
which our Lord preached was rooted in Judaism. It came “not to destroy,
but to fulfil.” It took the Jewish conception of a Father in heaven,
and gave it a new meaning. It took existing moral precepts, and gave
them a new application. The meaning and the application had already been
anticipated in some degree by the Jewish prophets. There were Jewish
minds which had been ripening for them; and so far as they were ripe for
them, they received them. In a similar way we shall find that the Greek
Christianity of the fourth century was rooted in Hellenism. The Greek
minds which had been ripening for Christianity had absorbed new ideas and
new motives; but there was a continuity between their present and their
past; the new ideas and new motives mingled with the waters of existing
currents; and it is only by examining the sources and the volume of the
previous flow that we shall understand how it is that the Nicene Creed
rather than the Sermon on the Mount has formed the dominant element in
Aryan Christianity.
* * * * *
The method of the investigation, like that of all investigations, must
be determined by the nature of the evidence. The special feature of the
evidence which affects the method is, that it is ample in regard to the
causes, and ample also in regard to the effects, but scanty in regard to
the process of change.
We have ample evidence in regard to the state of Greek thought during
the ante-Nicene period. The writers shine with a dim and pallid light
when put side by side with the master-spirits of the Attic age; but their
lesser importance in the scale of genius rather adds to than diminishes
from their importance as representatives. They were more the children of
their time. They are consequently better evidence as to the currents of
its thought than men who supremely transcended it. I will mention those
from whom we shall derive most information, in the hope that you will
in course of time become familiar, not only with their names, but also
with their works. Dio of Prusa, commonly known as Dio Chrysostom, “Dio of
the golden mouth,” who was raised above the class of travelling orators
to which he belonged, not only by his singular literary skill, but also
by the nobility of his character and the vigour of his protests against
political unrighteousness. Epictetus, the lame slave, the Socrates of his
time, in whom the morality and the religion of the Greek world find their
sublimest expression, and whose conversations and lectures at Nicopolis,
taken down, probably in short-hand, by a faithful pupil, reflect
exactly, as in a photograph, the interior life of a great moralist’s
school. Plutarch, the prolific essayist and diligent encyclopædist,
whose materials are far more valuable to us than the edifices which he
erects with them. Maximus of Tyre, the eloquent preacher, in whom the
cold metaphysics of the Academy are transmuted into a glowing mysticism.
Marcus Aurelius, the imperial philosopher, in whose mind the fragments
of many philosophies are lit by hope or darkened by despair, as the
clouds float and drift in uncertain sunlight or in gathered gloom before
the clearing rain. Lucian, the satirist and wit, the prose Aristophanes
of later Greece. Sextus Empiricus, whose writings—or the collection
of writings gathered under his name—are the richest of all mines for
the investigation of later Greek philosophy. Philostratus, the author
of a great religious romance, and of many sketches of the lives of
contemporary teachers. It will hardly be an anachronism if we add to
these the great syncretist philosopher, Philo of Alexandria; for, on
the one hand, he was more Greek than Jew, and, on the other, several of
the works which are gathered together under his name seem to belong to
a generation subsequent to his own, and to be the only survivors of the
Judæo-Greek schools which lasted on in the great cities of the empire
until the verge of Christian times.
We have ample evidence also as to the state of Christian thought in the
post-Nicene period. The Fathers Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus,
Gregory of Nyssa, and Cyril of Jerusalem, the decrees of general and
local Councils, the apocryphal and pseudonymous literature, enable us to
form a clear conception of the change which Greek influences had wrought.
But the evidence as to the mode in which the causes operated within the
Christian sphere before the final effects were produced is singularly
imperfect. If we look at the literature of the schools of thought which
ultimately became dominant, we find that it consists for the most part
of some accidental survivals.[2] It tells us about some parts of the
Christian world, but not about others. It represents a few phases of
thought with adequate fulness, and of others it presents only a few
fossils. In regard to Palestine, which in the third and fourth centuries
was a great centre of culture, we have only the evidence of Justin
Martyr. In regard to Asia Minor, which seems to have been the chief
crucible for the alchemy of transmutation, we have but such scanty
fragments as those of Melito and Gregory of Neocæsarea. The largest and
most important monuments are those of Alexandria, the works of Clement
and Origen, which represent a stage of singular interest in the process
of philosophical development. Of the Italian writers, we have little
that is genuine besides Hippolytus. Of Gallican writers, we have chiefly
Irenæus, whose results are important as being the earliest formulating
of the opinions which ultimately became dominant, but whose method is
mainly interesting as an example of the dreary polemics of the rhetorical
schools. Of African writers, we have Tertullian, a skilled lawyer,
who would in modern times have taken high rank as a pleader at the
bar or as a leader of Parliamentary debate; and Cyprian, who survives
chiefly as a champion of the sacerdotal hypothesis, and whose vigorous
personality gave him a moral influence which was far beyond the measure
of his intellectual powers. The evidence is not only imperfect, but also
insufficient in relation to the effects that were produced. Writers of
the stamp of Justin and Irenæus are wholly inadequate to account for
either the conversion of the educated world to Christianity, or for the
forms which Christianity assumed when the educated world had moulded it.
And if we look for the literature of the schools of thought which were
ultimately branded as heretical, we look almost wholly in vain. What the
earliest Christian philosophers thought, we know, with comparatively
insignificant exceptions, only from the writings of their opponents. They
were subject to a double hate—that of the heathen schools which they
had left, and that of the Christians who were saying “Non possumus” to
philosophy.[3] The little trust that we can place in the accounts which
their opponents give of them is shown by the wide differences in those
accounts. Each opponent, with the dialectical skill which was common at
the time, selected, paraphrased, distorted, and re-combined the points
which seemed to him to be weakest. The result is, naturally, that the
accounts which the several opponents give are so different in form and
feature as to be irreconcilable with one another.[4] It was so also with
the heathen opponents of Christianity.[5] With one important exception,
we cannot tell how the new religion struck a dispassionate outside
observer, or why it was that it left so many philosophers outside its
fold. Then, as now, the forces of human nature were at work. The tendency
to disparage and suppress an opponent is not peculiar to the early ages
of Christianity. When the associated Christian communities won at length
their hard-fought battle, they burned the enemy’s camp.
This fact of the scantiness and inadequacy of the evidence as to the
process of transformation has led to two results which constitute
difficulties and dangers in our path.
1. The one is the tendency to overrate the value of the evidence that has
survived. When only two or three monuments of a great movement remain,
it is difficult to appreciate the degree in which those monuments are
representative. We tend at almost all times to attach an exaggerated
importance to individual writers; the writers who have moulded the
thoughts of their contemporaries, instead of being moulded by them, are
always few in number and exceptional. We tend also to attach an undue
importance to phrases which occur in such writers; few, if any, writers
write with the precision of a legal document, and the inverted pyramids
which have been built upon chance phrases of Clement or Justin are
monuments of caution which we shall do well to keep before our eyes.
2. The other is the tendency to under-estimate the importance of the
opinions that have disappeared from sight, or which we know only in the
form and to the extent of their quotation by their opponents. If we were
to trust the histories that are commonly current, we should believe that
there was from the first a body of doctrine of which certain writers were
the recognized exponents; and that outside this body of doctrine there
was only the play of more or less insignificant opinions, like a fitful
guerilla warfare on the flanks of a great army. Whereas what we really
find on examining the evidence is, that out of a mass of opinions which
for a long time fought as equals upon equal ground, there was formed a
vast alliance which was strong enough to shake off the extremes at once
of conservatism and of speculation, but in which the speculation whose
monuments have perished had no less a share than the conservatism of
which some monuments have survived.
* * * * *
This survey of the nature of the evidence enables us to determine the
method which we should follow. We can trace the causes and we can see
the effects; but we have only scanty information as to the intermediate
processes. If the evidence as to those processes existed in greater mass,
if the writings of those who made the first tentative efforts to give
to Christianity a Greek form had been preserved to us, it might have
been possible to follow in order of time and country the influence of
the several groups of ideas upon the several groups of Christians. This
method has been attempted, with questionable success, by some of those
who have investigated the history of particular doctrines. But it is
impossible to deprecate too strongly the habit of erecting theories upon
historical quicksands; and I propose to pursue the surer path to which
the nature of the evidence points, by stating the causes, by viewing
them in relation to the effects, and by considering how far they were
adequate in respect of both mass and complexity to produce those effects.
There is a consideration in favour of this method which is in entire
harmony with that which arises from the nature of the evidence. It
is, that the changes that took place were gradual and at first hardly
perceptible. It would probably be impossible, even if we were in
possession of ampler evidence, to assign a definite cause and a definite
date for the introduction of each separate idea. For the early years of
Christianity were in some respects like the early years of our lives. It
has sometimes been thought that those early years are the most important
years in the education of all of us. We learn then, we hardly know how,
through effort and struggle and innocent mistakes, to use our eyes and
our ears, to measure distance and direction, by a process which ascends
by unconscious steps to the certainty which we feel in our maturity. We
are helped in doing go, to an incalculable degree, by the accumulated
experience of mankind which is stored up in language; but the growth is
our own, the unconscious development of our own powers. It was in some
such unconscious way that the Christian thought of the earlier centuries
gradually acquired the form which we find when it emerges, as it were,
into the developed manhood of the fourth century. Greek philosophy helped
its development, as language helps a child; but the assimilation of it
can no more be traced from year to year than the growth of the body can
be traced from day to day.
We shall begin, therefore, by looking at the several groups of facts of
the age in which Christianity grew, and endeavour, when we have looked at
them, to estimate their influence upon it.
We shall look at the facts which indicate the state of education: we
shall find that it was an age that was penetrated with culture, and that
necessarily gave to all ideas which it absorbed a cultured and, so to
speak, scholastic form.
We shall look at the facts which indicate the state of literature: we
shall find that it was an age of great literary activity, which was proud
of its ancient monuments, and which spent a large part of its industry in
endeavouring to interpret and to imitate them.
We shall look at the facts which indicate the state of philosophy: we
shall find that it was an age in which metaphysical conceptions had come
to occupy relatively the same place which the conceptions of natural
science occupy among ourselves; and that just as we tend to look upon
external things in their chemical and physical relations, so there was
then, as it were, a chemistry and physics of ideas.
We shall look at the facts which indicate the state of moral ideas:
we shall find that it was an age in which the ethical forces of human
nature were struggling with an altogether unprecedented force against
the degradation of contemporary society and contemporary religion, and
in which the ethical instincts were creating the new ideal of “following
God,” and were solving the old question whether there was or was not an
art of life by practising self-discipline.
We shall look at the facts which indicate the state of theological
ideas: we shall find that it was an age in which men were feeling after
God and not feeling in vain, and that from the domains of ethics,
physics, metaphysics alike, from the depths of the moral consciousness,
and from the cloud-lands of poets’ dreams, the ideas of men were trooping
in one vast host to proclaim with a united voice that there are not many
gods, but only One, one First Cause by whom all things were made, one
Moral Governor whose providence was over all His works, one Supreme Being
“of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness.”
We shall look at the facts which indicate the state of religion: we shall
find that it was an age in which the beliefs that had for centuries
been evolving themselves from the old religions were showing themselves
in new forms of worship and new conceptions of what God needed in the
worshipper; in which also the older animalism was passing into mysticism,
and mysticism was the preparation of the soul for the spiritual religion
of the time to come.
We shall then, in the case of each great group of ideas, endeavour to
ascertain from the earliest Christian documents the original Christian
ideas upon which they acted; and then compare the later with the earlier
form of those Christian ideas; and finally examine the combined result
of all the influences that were at work upon the mental attitude of the
Christian world and upon the basis of Christian association.
* * * * *
I should be glad if I could at once proceed to examine some of these
groups of facts. But since the object which I have in view is not so
much to lead you to any conclusions of my own, as to invite you to walk
with me in comparatively untrodden paths, and to urge those of you who
have leisure for historical investigations to explore them for yourselves
more fully than I have been able to do—and since the main difficulties of
the investigation lie less in the facts themselves than in the attitude
of mind in which they are approached—I feel that I should fail of my
purpose if I did not linger still upon the threshold to say something of
the “personal equation” that we must make before we can become either
accurate observers or impartial judges. There is the more reason for
doing so, because the study of Christian history is no doubt discredited
by the dissonance in the voices of its exponents. An ill-informed writer
may state almost any propositions he pleases, with the certainty of
finding listeners; a well-informed writer may state propositions which
are as demonstrably true as any historical proposition can be, with the
certainty of being contradicted. There is no court of appeal, nor will
there be until more than one generation has been engaged upon the task to
which I am inviting you.