term _homoousios_ lent itself more readily to a Sabellian Christology.
This was anticipated by Irenæus in his polemic against the Valentinian
heresy of the emission of Æons. _Ousiai_, in the sense of genera and
species, might be merely conceptions in the mind: the alternative
was that of their having an existence of their own.[580] So that
_hypostasis_ came in certain schools of thought to be the term for the
_substantia concreta_, the individual, the οὐσία ἄτομος of Galen.[581]
The distinction, however, was far from being universally recognized. The
clearest and most elaborate exposition of it is contained in a letter
of Basil to his brother Gregory, who was evidently not quite clear upon
the point.[582] The result was, that just as ὑπόστασις had been used
to express one of the senses of οὐσία, so a new term came into use to
define more precisely the sense of ὑπόστασις. Its origin is probably to
be traced to the interchange of documents between East and West, which
leading to a difficulty in regard to this use of ὑπόστασις, ended in the
introduction of a third term.
So long as οὐσία and ὑπόστασις had been convertible terms, the one
Latin word _substantia_, the etymological equivalent of ὑπόστασις, had
sufficed for both. When the two words became differentiated in Greek, it
became advisable to mark the difference. However, the word _essentia_,
the natural equivalent for οὐσία, jarred upon a Latin ear.[583]
Consequently _substantia_ was claimed for οὐσία, while for ὑπόστασις a
fresh equivalent had to be sought. This was found in _persona_, whose
antecedents may be those of “a character in a play,” or of “person”
in the juristic sense, a possible party to a contract, in which case
Tertullian may have originated this usage.[584] Such Western practice
would tend to stimulate the employment of the corresponding Greek term
πρόσωπον, whose use hitherto seems to have been subordinate to that of
ὑπόστασις.[585] And, finally, the philosophic terms φύσις and _natura_
came into use. In the second century φύσις had been distinct from οὐσία
and identical with Reason.[586] But in the fourth century it came to be
identified with οὐσία,[587] and afterwards again distinguished from it,
whereas the Monophysites identified it with ὑπόστασις.
To sum up, then. We have in Greek four terms, οὐσία, ὑπόστασις, πρόσωπον,
φύσις, and in Latin three, _substantia_, _persona_, _natura_, the two
series not being actually parallel even to the extent to which they
are so in appearance. Times have changed since Tertullian’s[588] loose
and vague usage caused no remark; when Jerome, thinking as a Latin,
hesitates to speak of τρεῖς ὑποστάσεις, by which he understood _tres
substantias_, and complains that he is looked upon as a heretic in the
East in consequence. There is a remarkable saying of Athanasius which is
capable of a wider application than he gave it: it runs as follows:[589]
“They seemed to be ignorant of the fact that when we deal with words
that require some training to understand them, different people may
take them in senses not only differing but absolutely opposed to each
other.”[590] Thus there was an indisposition to accept οὐσία. The phrase
was not understanded of the people.[591] A reaction took place against
the multiplicity of terms; but the simple and unstudied language of the
childhood of Christianity, with its awe-struck sense of the ineffable
nature of God, was but a fading memory, and on the other hand the
tendency to trust in and insist upon the results of speculation was
strong. Once indeed the Catholic doctrine was formulated, then, though
not till then, the majority began to deprecate investigations as to the
nature of God.
But I do not propose to dwell upon the sad and weary history of the way
in which for more than a century these metaphysical distinctions formed
the watchwords of political as well as of ecclesiastical parties—of the
strife and murder, the devastation of fair fields, the flame and sword,
therewith connected. For all this, Greek philosophy was not responsible.
These evils mostly came from that which has been a permanently disastrous
fact in Christian history, the interference of the State, which gave the
decrees of Councils that sanction which elevated the resolutions of the
majority upon the deepest subjects of human speculation to the factitious
rank of laws which must be accepted on pain of forfeiture, banishment or
death.
Philosophy branched off from theology. It became its handmaid and its
rival. It postulated doctrines instead of investigating them. It had
to show their reasonableness or to find reasons for them. And for ages
afterwards philosophy was dead. I feel as strongly as you can feel
the weariness of the discussions to which I have tried to direct your
attention. But it is only by seeing how minute and how purely speculative
they are, that we can properly estimate their place in Christian
theology. Whether we do or do not accept the conclusions in which the
greater part of the Christian world ultimately acquiesced, we must at
least recognize that they rest upon large assumptions. Three may be
indicated which are all due to the influence of Greek philosophy.[592]
(1) It is assumed that metaphysical distinctions are important.
I am far from saying that they are not: but it is not less important
to recognize that much of what we believe rests upon this assumption
that they are. There is otherwise no justification whatever for drawing
men’s thoughts away from the positive knowledge which we may gain both
of ourselves and of the world around us, to contemplate, even at far
distance, the conception of Essence.
(2) The second is the assumption that these metaphysical distinctions
which we make in our minds correspond to realities in the world around
us, or in God who is beyond the world and within it.
Again, I am far from saying that they do not; but it is at least
important for us to recognize the fact that, in speaking of the essence
of either the world or God, we are assuming the existence of something
corresponding to our conception of essence in the one or the other.[593]
(3) The third assumption is that the idea of perfection which we transfer
from ourselves to God, really corresponds to the nature of His being.
It is assumed that rest is better than motion, that passionlessness is
better than feeling, that changelessness is better than change. We know
these things of ourselves: we cannot know them of One who is unlike
ourselves, who has no body that can be tired, who has no imperfection
that can miss its aim, with whom unhindered movement may conceivably be
perfect life.
I have spoken of these assumptions because, although it would be
difficult to over-estimate the importance of the conceptions by which
Greek thought lifted men from the conception of God as a Being with
human form and human passions, to the lofty height on which they can
feel around them an awful and infinite Presence, the time may have come
when—in face of the large knowledge of His ways which has come to us
through both thought and research—we may be destined to transcend the
assumptions of Greek speculation by new assumptions, which will lead us
at once to a diviner knowledge and the sense of a diviner life.[594]
LECTURE X.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE MYSTERIES UPON CHRISTIAN USAGES.
A. THE GREEK MYSTERIES AND RELATED CULTS.
Side by side in Greece with the religion which was openly professed
and with the religious rites which were practised in the temples, not
in antagonism to them, but intensifying their better elements and
elaborating their ritual, were the splendid rites which were known as the
Mysteries. Side by side also with the great political communities, and
sheltered within them by the common law and drawn together by a stronger
than political brotherhood, were innumerable associations for the
practice of the new forms of worship which came in with foreign commerce,
and for the expression in a common worship of the religious feelings
which the public religion did not satisfy. These associations were known
as θίασοι, ἔρανοι or ὀργεῶνες.
I will speak first of the mysteries, and then of the associations for the
practice of other cults.
1. The mysteries were probably the survival of the oldest religions of
the Greek races and of the races which preceded them. They were the
worship not of the gods of the sky, Zeus and Apollo and Athené, but of
the gods of the earth and the under-world, the gods of the productive
forces of nature and of death.[595]
The most important of them were celebrated at Eleusis, near Athens, and
the scattered information which exists about them has been made more
impressive and more intelligible to us by excavations, which have brought
to light large remains of the great temple—the largest in Greece—in
which they were celebrated. It had been a cult common to the Ionian
tribes, probably borrowed from the earlier races among whom they had
settled. It was originally the cult of the powers which produce the
harvest, conceived as a triad of divinities—a god and two goddesses,
Pluto, Demeter and Koré, of whom the latter became so dominant in the
worship, that the god almost disappeared from view, and was replaced
by a divinity, Iacchus, who had no place in the original myth.[596]
Its chief elements were the initiation, the sacrifice, and the scenic
representation of the great facts of natural life and human life, of
which the histories of the gods were themselves symbols.[597]
(i.) The main underlying conception of initiation was, that there were
elements in human life from which the candidate must purify himself
before he could be fit to approach God. There was a distinction
between those who were not purified, and those who, in consequence of
being purified, were admitted to a diviner life and to the hope of a
resurrection. The creation of this distinction is itself remarkable.
The race of mankind was lifted on to a higher plane when it came to be
taught that only the pure in heart can see God. The rites of Eleusis were
originally confined to the inhabitants of Attica: but they came in time
to be open to all Greeks, later to all Romans, and were open to women as
well as to men.[598] The bar at the entrance came to be only a moral bar.
The whole ceremonial began with a solemn proclamation: “Let no one enter
whose hands are not clean and whose tongue is not prudent.” In other
mysteries it was: “He only may enter who is pure from all defilement,
and whose soul is conscious of no wrong, and who has lived well and
justly.”[599]
The proclamation was probably accompanied by some words or sights
of terror. When Nero went to Eleusis and thought at first of being
initiated, he was deterred by it. Here is another instance of exclusion,
which is not less important in its bearing upon Christian rites.
Apollonius of Tyana was excluded because he was a magician (γόης)
and not pure in respect of τὰ δαιμόνια—he had intercourse with other
divinities than those of the mysteries, and practised magical rites.[600]
We learn something from the parody of the mysteries in Lucian’s romance
of the pseudo-prophet Alexander. In it Alexander institutes a celebration
of mysteries and torchlights and sacred shows, which go on for three
successive days. On the first there is a proclamation of a similar
kind to that at Athens. “If any Atheist or Christian or Epicurean has
come as a spy upon the festival, let him flee; let the initiation of
those who believe in the god go on successfully.” Then forthwith at the
very beginning a chasing away takes place. The prophet himself sets
the example, saying, “Christians, away!” and the whole crowd responds,
“Epicureans, away!” Then the show begins—the birth of Apollo, the
marriage of Coronis, the coming of Æsculapius, are represented; the
ceremonies proceed through several days in imitation of the mysteries and
in glorification of Alexander.[601]
The proclamation was thus intended to exclude notorious sinners from the
first or initial ceremonial.[602] The rest was thrown upon a man’s own
conscience. He was asked to confess his sins, or at least to confess the
greatest crime that he had ever committed. “To whom am I to confess it?”
said Lysander to the mystagogoi who were conducting him. “To the gods.”
“Then if you will go away,” said he, “I will tell them.”
Confession was followed by a kind of baptism.[603] The candidates for
initiation bathed in the pure waters of the sea. The manner of bathing
and the number of immersions varied with the degree of guilt which they
had confessed. They came from the bath new men. It was a κάθαρσις, a
λουτρὸν, a laver of regeneration. They had to practise certain forms of
abstinence: they had to fast; and when they ate they had to abstain from
certain kinds of food.[604]
(ii.) The purification was followed by a sacrifice—which was known
as σωτήρια—a sacrifice of salvation: and in addition to the great
public sacrifice, each of the candidates for initiation sacrificed a
pig for himself.[605] Then there was an interval of two days before
the more solemn sacrifices and shows began. They began with a great
procession—each of those who were to be initiated carrying a long lighted
torch, and singing loud pæans in honour of the god.[606] It set out from
Athens at sunrise and reached Eleusis at night. The next day there was
another great sacrifice. Then followed three days and nights in which
the initiated shared the mourning of Demeter for her daughter, and broke
their fast only by drinking the mystic κυκεὼν—a drink of flour and water
and pounded mint, and by eating the sacred cakes.[607]
(iii.) And at night there were the mystic plays: the scenic
representation, the drama in symbol and for sight. Their torches were
extinguished: they stood outside the temple in the silence and the
darkness. The doors opened—there was a blaze of light—and before them
was acted the drama of Demeter and Koré—the loss of the daughter, the
wanderings of the mother, the birth of the child. It was a symbol of the
earth passing through its yearly periods. It was the poetry of Nature.
It was the drama which is acted every year, of summer and winter and
spring. Winter by winter the fruits and flowers and grain die down into
the darkness, and spring after spring they come forth again to new life.
Winter after winter the sorrowing earth is seeking for her lost child;
the hopes of men look forward to the new blossoming of spring.
It was a drama also of human life. It was the poetry of the hope of a
world to come. Death gave place to life. It was a _purgatio animæ_, by
which the soul might be fit for the presence of God. Those who had been
baptized and initiated were lifted into a new life. Death had no terrors
for them. The blaze of light after darkness, the symbolic scenery of the
life of the gods, were a foreshadowing of the life to come.[608]
There is a passage in Plutarch which so clearly shows this, that I will
quote it.[609]
“When a man dies, he is like those who are being initiated
into the mysteries. The one expression, τελευτᾶν—the other,
τελεῖσθαι, correspond.... Our whole life is but a succession of
wanderings, of painful courses, of long journeys by tortuous
ways without outlet. At the moment of quitting it, fears,
terrors, quiverings, mortal sweats, and a lethargic stupor,
come over us and overwhelm us; but as soon as we are out of
it, pure spots and meadows receive us, with voices and dances
and the solemnities of sacred words and holy sights. It is
there that man, having become perfect and initiated—restored
to liberty, really master of himself—celebrates, crowned with
myrtle, the most august mysteries, holds converse with just
and pure souls, looking down upon the impure multitude of the
profane or uninitiated, sinking in the mire and mist beneath
him—through fear of death and through disbelief in the life to
come, abiding in its miseries.”
There was probably no dogmatic teaching—there were possibly no words
spoken—it was all an acted parable.[610] But it was all kept in silence.
There was an awful individuality about it. They saw the sight in common,
but they saw it each man for himself. It was his personal communion with
the divine life. The glamour and the glory of it were gone when it was
published to all the world.[611] The effect of it was conceived to be a
change both of character and of relation to the gods. The initiated were
by virtue of their initiation made partakers of a life to come. “Thrice
happy they who go to the world below having seen these mysteries: to them
alone is life there, to all others is misery.”[612]
2. In time, however, new myths and new forms of worship were added. It
is not easy to draw a definite line between the mysteries, strictly so
called, and the forms of worship which went on side by side with them.
Not only are they sometimes spoken of in common as mysteries, but there
is a remarkable syncretist painting in a non-Christian catacomb at Rome,
in which the elements of the Greek mysteries of Demeter are blended with
those of Sabazius and Mithra, in a way which shows that the worship was
blended also.[613] These forms of worship also had an initiation: they
also aimed at a pure religion. The condition of entrance was: “Let no
one enter the most venerable assembly of the association unless he be
pure and pious and good.” Nor was it left to the individual conscience:
a man had to be tested and examined by the officers.[614] But the
main element in the association was not so much the initiation as the
sacrifice and the common meal which followed it. The offerings were
brought by individuals and offered in common: they were offered upon
what is sometimes spoken of as the “holy table.” They were distributed
by the servants (the deacons), and the offerer shared with the rest in
the distribution. In one association, at Xanthos in Lycia, of which the
rules remain on an inscription, the offerer had the right to half of
what he had brought. The feast which followed was an effort after real
fellowship.[615] There was in it, as there is in Christian times, a sense
of communion with one another in a communion with God.
During the earliest centuries of Christianity, the mysteries, and the
religious societies which were akin to the mysteries,[616] existed on
an enormous scale throughout the eastern part of the Empire. There
were elements in some of them from which Christianity recoiled, and
against which the Christian Apologists use the language of strong
invective.[617] But, on the other hand, the majority of them had the
same aims as Christianity itself—the aim of worshipping a pure God,
the aim of living a pure life, and the aim of cultivating the spirit
of brotherhood.[618] They were part of a great religious revival which
distinguishes the age.[619]
B. THE MYSTERIES AND THE CHURCH.
It was inevitable when a new group of associations came to exist side
by side with a large existing body of associations, from which it was
continually detaching members, introducing them into its own midst with
the practices of their original societies impressed upon their minds,
that this new group should tend to assimilate, with the assimilation
of their members, some of the elements of these existing groups.[620]
This is what we find to have been in fact the case. It is possible that
they made the Christian associations more secret than before. Up to a
certain time there is no evidence that Christianity had any secrets.
It was preached openly to the world. It guarded worship by imposing
a moral bar to admission. But its rites were simple and its teaching
was public. After a certain time all is changed: mysteries have arisen
in the once open and easily accessible faith, and there are doctrines
which must not be declared in the hearing of the uninitiated.[621]
But the influence of the mysteries, and of the religious cults which
were analogous to the mysteries, was not simply general; they modified
in some important respects the Christian sacraments of Baptism and
the Eucharist—the practice, that is, of admission to the society by a
symbolical purification, and the practice of expressing membership of the
society by a common meal. I will ask you to consider first Baptism, and
secondly the Lord’s Supper, each in its simplest form, and then I will
attempt to show how the elements which are found in the later and not in
the earlier form, are elements which are found outside Christianity in
the institutions of which I have spoken.
1. Baptism. In the earliest times, (1) baptism followed at once upon
conversion; (2) the ritual was of the simplest kind, nor does it appear
that it needed any special minister.
The first point is shown by the Acts of the Apostles; the men who
repented at Pentecost, those who believed when Philip preached in
Samaria, the Ethiopian eunuch, Cornelius, Lydia, the jailor at Philippi,
the converts at Corinth and Ephesus, were baptized as soon as they were
known to recognize Jesus Christ as the Messiah.[622] The second point is
also shown by the Acts. It was a baptism of water.
A later, though still very early stage, with significant modifications,
is seen in the “Teaching of the Apostles:”[623] (1) no special minister
of baptism is specified, the vague “he that baptizeth” (ὁ βαπτίζων)
seeming to exclude a limitation of it to an officer; (2) the only
element that is specified is water; (3) previous instruction is implied,
but there is no period of catechumenate defined; (4) a fast is enjoined
before baptism.
These were the simple elements of early Christian baptism. When it
emerges after a period of obscurity—like a river which flows under the
sand—the enormous changes of later times have already begun.
(i.) The first point of change is the change of _name_.
(_a_) So early as the time of Justin Martyr we find a name given
to baptism which comes straight from the Greek mysteries—the name
“enlightenment” (φωτισμός, φωτίζεσθαι).[624] It came to be the constant
technical term.[625]
(_b_) The name “seal” (σφραγίς), which also came both from the
mysteries[626] and from some forms of foreign cult, was used partly of
those who had passed the tests and who were “consignati,” as Tertullian
calls them,[627] partly of those who were actually sealed upon the
forehead in sign of a new ownership.[628]
(_c_) The term μυστήριον is applied to baptism,[629] and with it comes
a whole series of technical terms unknown to the Apostolic Church, but
well known to the mysteries, and explicable only through ideas and usages
peculiar to them. Thus we have words expressive either of the rite
or act of initiation, like μύησις,[630] τελετή,[631] τελείωσις,[632]
μυσταγωγία;[633] of the agent or minister, like μυσταγωγός;[634] of
the subject, like μυσταγωγούμενος,[635] μεμυημένος, μυηθείς, or, with
reference to the unbaptized, ἀμύητος.[636] In this terminology we
can more easily trace the influence of the mysteries than of the New
Testament.[637]
(ii.) The second point is the change of _time_, which involves a change
of _conception_. (_a_) Instead of baptism being given immediately upon
conversion, it came to be in all cases postponed by a long period of
preparation, and in some cases deferred until the end of life.[638]
(_b_) The Christians were separated into two classes, those who had
and those who had not been baptized. Tertullian regards it as a mark
of heretics that they have not this distinction: who among them is a
catechumen, who a believer, is uncertain: they are no sooner hearers than
they “join in the prayers;” and “their catechumens are perfect before
they are fully instructed (_edocti_).”[639] And Basil gives the custom
of the mysteries as a reason for the absence of the catechumens from the
service.[640] (_c_) As if to show conclusively that the change was due to
the influence of the mysteries, baptized persons were, as we have seen,
distinguished from unbaptized by the very term which was in use for the
similar distinction in regard to the mysteries—initiated and uninitiated,
and the minister is μυσταγωγός, and the persons being baptized are
μυσταγωγούμενοι. I dwell upon these broad features, and especially on
the transference of names, because it is necessary to show that the
relation of the mysteries to the sacrament was not merely a curious
coincidence; and what I have said as to the change of name and the change
of conception, might be largely supplemented by evidence of parallelism
in the benefits which were conceived to attach to the one and the other.
There are many slighter indications serving to supplement what has been
already adduced.