important: the bishops of the several churches were regarded as the
conservators of the tradition:[684] while the bishops of the apostolic
churches settled down to a general agreement as to the terms of the
apostolic tradition.[685] In distinction from the Gnostic standards,
there came to be a standard which the majority of the churches—the middle
party in the Church—accepted. It is quite uncertain when the rule came
to be generally accepted, or in what form it was accepted. But it is
in the main preserved for us—with undoubtedly later accretions—in the
Apostles’ Creed. Tertullian’s contention is that this rule is not only
apostolic and binding, but also adequate—a complete representation of
apostolic teaching—that there were no necessary truths outside it.[686]
The additions were made by the gradual working of the common sense,
the common consciousness, of the Christian world. They were approved
by the majority; they were accepted by the sees which claimed to have
been founded by the apostles. The earliest form is that which may be
gathered from several writers as having been generally accepted in Rome
and the West: it is a bare statement. “I believe in God Almighty, and in
Jesus Christ His Son our Lord, who was born of a virgin, crucified under
Pontius Pilate, the third day rose again from the dead, sitteth on the
right hand of the Father, from whence he is coming to judge the living
and dead; and in the Holy Spirit.” The term Son came to be qualified in
very early times by “only begotten;” and after “the Holy Spirit,” “the
Holy Church, the remission of sins, and the resurrection of the flesh,”
were added.
* * * * *
2. Side by side with this question of the standard or authentic minimum
of traditional teaching, and growing necessarily with it and out of
it, was the question of the sources from which that teaching could be
drawn, and of the materials by which the standard might be interpreted.
The greater part of apostolic teaching had been oral. The tradition
was mostly oral. But as the generations of men receded farther from
the apostolic age, and as the oral tradition which was delivered came
necessarily to vary, it became more and more uncertain what was the true
form and content of the tradition. Written records came to be of more
importance than oral tradition. They had at first only the authority
which attached to tradition. Their elevation to an independent rank
was due to the influence of the Old Testament. There had been already
a series of revelations of God to men, which having once been oral had
become written. The revelation consisted of what was then known as the
Scriptures, and what we now know as the Old Testament. The proofs of
Christianity consisted to a large extent in its consonance with those
Scriptures. But the term Holy Scriptures was less strictly used than
is sometimes supposed. The hedge round them had gaps, and there were
patches lying outside what has since come to be its line. It was partly
the indefiniteness of the Old Testament canon which caused the term
Scripture to be applied to some writings of the apostolic age. But the
question, Which writings? was only answered gradually. The spirit of
prophecy had only gradually passed away. It was the common ground for
the reception of the Old Testament and the New Testament; as the spirit
of prophecy was common to both, it was but natural that both should have
the same attributes. But prophecy was not in the first instance conceived
as having suddenly ceased in the Church. The term Scripture (ἡ γραφή)
is applied to the Shepherd of Hermas by Irenæus.[687] The delimitation
of the body of writings that could be so denoted was connected with
the necessity of being sure about the _apostolical_ teaching—the
παράδοσις.[688] The term Scripture was applied to the recorded sayings
of Jesus Christ (the λόγια) without demur.[689] It came to be applied
also to the records which the apostles had left of the facts of the life
of Christ. Then, finally, it tended more gradually to be applied to the
writings of the apostles and of apostolic men.
But questions arose in regard to all these classes, which were not
immediately answered. There were several recensions current both of the
sayings of Jesus Christ and of the memoirs of the apostles. There were
many writings attributed to apostles and apostolic men which were of
doubtful authority. But the determination was slow, and the date when a
general settlement was made is uncertain.[690] There is no distinction
between canonical and uncanonical books either in Justin Martyr or in
Irenæus. The first Biblical critic was Marcion: the controversy with his
followers, which reaches its height in Tertullian, forced on the Church
the first serious consideration of the question,—Which recensions of the
words and memoirs of Christ, and which of the letters and other writings
of the apostles and apostolic men, should be accepted? There came to be
a recognized list of the writings of the new revelations, as there came
to be—though it is doubtful whether there had yet come to be—a list of
the writings of the earlier revelations to the Jews. Writings on the
recognized list came in as the voices of the Holy Ghost.[691] They were,
as the writings of the prophets had been, the revelation of the Father
to His children. Hence faith or belief came to take in the Christian
world the sense that it had in Philo—of assent not only to the great
conceptions which were contained in the notion of God, but also to the
divine revelation which was recorded in the two Testaments.
* * * * *
3. It might have been well if the Christian Church had been content to
rest with this first stage in the transformation of the idea of belief,
and to take as its intellectual basis only the simple statements of
the primitive creed interpreted by the New Testament. But the conflict
of speculations which had compelled the middle party in the Christian
churches to adopt a standard of belief and a limitation of the sources
from which the belief might be interpreted, had also had the effect of
bringing into the Church the philosophical temper.[692] In the creed of
the end of the second century, the age of Tertullian, there are already
philosophical ideas—the creation of the world out of nothing, the Word,
the relation of the Creator to the world, of the Word or Son to the
Father, and of both to men. The Creed, as given in the treatise against
Praxeas, is equally elaborate.[693] With that Creed—traditional as he
believed it to be—Tertullian himself was satisfied. He deprecates the
“curiositas” of the brethren no less than the “scrupulositas” of the
heretics. He denies the applicability of the text, “Seek and ye shall
find,” to research into the content of Christian doctrine: it relates
only to the traditional teaching: when a man has found that, he has all
that he needs: further “seeking” is incompatible with having found. In
other words, as among modern Ultramontanes, faith must rest not on search
but on tradition (authority).[694] The absolute freedom of speculation
was checked, but the tendency to speculate remained, and it had in the
“rule of faith” a vantage-ground within the Church. There grew up
within the lines that had been marked out a tendency which, accepting
the rule of faith, and accepting also, with possibly slight variations,
the canonical Scriptures, tried to build theories out of them: γνῶσις
took its place side by side with πίστις.[695] It grew up in several parts
of Christendom. In Cappadocia, in Asia, in Edessa, in Palestine, in
Alexandria, were different small groups of men who within the recognized
lines were working out philosophical theories of Christianity.[696] We
know most about Alexandria. There was a recognized school—on the type
of the existing philosophical schools—for the study of philosophical
Christianity. Its first great teacher was Clement. He was the first to
construct a large philosophy of Christian doctrine, with a recognition
of the conventional limits, but by the help and in the domain of Greek
thought. But he is of less importance than his great disciple Origen. In
the _De Principiis_ of the latter we have the first complete system of
dogma; and I recommend the study of it, of its omissions as well as of
its assertions, of the strange fact that the features of it which are in
strongest contrast to later dogmatics are in fact its most archaic and
conservative elements.
* * * * *
It is not to my present purpose to state the results of these
speculations. The two points to which I wish to draw your attention in
reference to this tendency to philosophize, are these:
(1) The distinction between what was either an original and ground
belief or a historical fact of which a trustworthy tradition had come
down, and speculations in regard to such primary beliefs and historical
facts, tended to disappear in the strong philosophical current of the
time. It did not disappear without a struggle. Tertullian, among others,
gives indications of it. The doctrine of the Divine Word had begun in his
time to make its way into the Creed: it was known as the “dispensation”
(_œconomia_). “The simpler-minded men,” he remarks, “not to say ignorant
and uneducated, who always constitute the majority of believers—since
the rule of faith itself transfers us from the belief in polytheism to
the belief in one only true God—not understanding that though God be
one, yet His oneness is to be understood as involving a dispensation,
are frightened at this idea of dispensation.”[697] But the ancient
conservatism was crushed. It came to be considered as important to have
the right belief in the speculation as it confessedly was to have it in
the fact.
(2) The result of the fading away of this distinction, and of the
consequent growth in importance of the speculative element, was a
tendency to check individual speculations, and to fuse all speculation
in the average speculations of the majority. The battle of the second
century had been a battle between those who asserted that there was a
single and final tradition of truth, and those who claimed that the Holy
Spirit spoke to them as truly as He had spoken to men in the days of
the apostles. The victorious opinion had been that the revelation was
final, and that what was contained in the records of the apostles was
the sufficient sum of Christian teaching: hence the stress laid upon
_apostolic_ doctrine.
The battle of the third century was between those who claimed, as
Marcion claimed, that inspired documents were to be taken in their
literal sense, and those who claimed that they needed a philosophical
interpretation,[698]—that while these monuments of the apostolic age
required interpretation,[699] yet they were of no private interpretation,
and that theories based upon them must be the theories of the apostolical
churches. In other words, the contention that Christianity rested upon
the basis of a traditional doctrine and a traditional standard, was
necessarily supplemented by the contention that the doctrine and standard
must have a traditional interpretation. A rule of faith and a canon were
comparatively useless, and were felt to be so, without a traditionally
authoritative interpretation. The Gnostics were prepared to accept all
but this. They also appealed to tradition and to the Scriptures.[700] So
far it was an even battle: each side in such a controversy might retort
upon the other, and did so.[701] If it were allowed to each side to
argue on the same bases and by the same methods, each side might claim
a victory. A new principle had to be introduced—the denial of the right
of private interpretation. In regard both to the primary articles of
belief and to the majority of apostolic writings, no serious difference
of opinion had existed among the apostolical churches. It was otherwise
with the speculations that were based upon the rule of faith and the
canon. They required discussion. The Christological ideas that were
growing up on all sides had much in common with the Gnostic opinions.
They needed a limitation and a check. The check was conterminous with the
sources of the tradition itself; the meaning of the canon, as well as the
canon itself, was deposited with the bishops of apostolical churches;
and their method of enforcing the check was the holding of meetings and
the framing of resolutions. Such meetings had long been held to ensure
unity on points of discipline. They came now to be held to ensure unity
on that which had come to be no less important—the interpretation of the
recognized standard of belief. They were meetings of bishops. Bishops had
added to their original functions the function of teachers (διδάσκαλοι)
and interpreters of the will of God (προφῆται).[702] Accordingly meetings
of bishops were held, and through the operation of political rather than
of religious causes their decisions were held to be final. Two important
results followed.
(i.) The first result was the formulating of the speculations in definite
propositions, and the insertion of such propositions in the Creed. The
theory was that such insertions were of the nature of definitions and
interpretations of the original belief. The mass of communities have
never wandered from the belief that they rest upon an original revelation
preserved by a continuous tradition. But a definition of what has
hitherto been undefined is necessarily of the nature of an addition.
Perhaps the earliest instance which has come down to us of such an
expansion of the Creed, is in the letter sent by Hymenæus, Bishop of
Jerusalem, and his colleagues to Paul of Samosata.[703] The faith which
had been handed down from the beginning is “that God is unbegotten, one,
without beginning, unseen, unchangeable, whom no man hath seen nor can
see, whose glory and greatness it is impossible for human nature to trace
out adequately; but we must be content to have a moderate conception of
Him: His Son reveals Him ... as he himself says, ‘No man knoweth the
Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son revealeth Him.’ We
confess and proclaim His begotten Son, the only begotten, the image of
the invisible God, the first-born of every creature, the wisdom and word
and power of God, being before the worlds, God not by foreknowledge but
by essence and substance.”
They had passed into the realm of metaphysics. The historical facts of
the earlier creed were altogether obscured. Belief was belief in certain
speculations. The conception of the nature of belief had travelled round
a wide circuit. It will be noted that there had been a change in the
meaning of the word which has lasted until our own day. The belief in the
veracity of a witness, or in facts of which we are cognizant through our
senses, or the primary convictions of our minds—in which I may include
the belief in God—admit of a degree of certainty which cannot attach to
the belief in deductions from metaphysical premises.[704] Belief came
to mean, not the highest form of conviction, but something lower than
conviction, and it tends to have that meaning still. But with this change
in the nature of belief, there had been no change in the importance which
was attached to it. The acceptance of these philosophical speculations
was as important as the belief in God and in Jesus Christ, the Son of
God. The tendency developed, and we find it developing all through the
fourth century. In the Nicene Council the tendency was politically more
important, but it was not theologically different from what had gone
before. The habit of defining and of making inferences from definitions,
grew the more as the philosophers passed over into the Christian lines,
and logicians and metaphysicians presided over Christian churches.
The speculations which were then agreed upon became stamped as a body
of truth, and with the still deeper speculations of the Councils of
Constantinople and Chalcedon, the resolutions of the Nicene Fathers have
come to be looked upon as almost a new revelation, and the rejection of
them as a greater bar to Christian fellowship than the rejection of the
New Testament itself.
(ii.) The second result was the creation of a distinction between what
was accepted by the majority at a meeting and what was accepted only
by a minority. The distinction had long been growing. There had been
parties in the Christian communities from the first. And the existence
of such parties was admissible.[705] They broke the concord of the
brethren, but they did not break the unity of the faith. Now heretics
and schismatics were identified; difference in speculative belief was
followed by political penalty. The original contention, still preserved
in Tertullian,[706] that every man should worship God according to his
own conviction, that one man’s religion neither harms nor helps another
man, was exchanged for the contention that the officers of Christian
communities were the guardians of the faith. Controversy on these lines,
and with these assumptions, soon began to breed its offspring of venom
and abuse. But I will not pain your ears by quoting, though I have them
at hand, the torrents of abuse which one saint poured upon another,
because the one assented to the speculations of a majority, and the other
had speculations of his own.[707]
* * * * *
It was by these stages, which passed one into the other by a slow
evolution, that the idea of trust in God, which is the basis of all
religion, changed into the idea of a creed, blending theory with fact,
and metaphysical speculation with spiritual truth.
It began by being (1) a simple trust in God; then followed (2) a simple
expansion of that trust into the assent to the proposition that God
is good, and (3) a simple acceptance of the proposition that Jesus
Christ was His Son; then (4) came in the definition of terms, and each
definition of terms involved a new theory; finally, (5) the theories were
gathered together into systems, and the martyrs and witnesses of Christ
died for their faith, not outside but inside the Christian sphere; and
instead of a world of religious belief, which resembled the world of
actual fact in the sublime unsymmetry of its foliage and the deep harmony
of its discords, there prevailed the most fatal assumption of all, that
the symmetry of a system is the test of its truth and a proof thereof.
I am far from saying that those theories are not true. The point to which
I would draw attention is, first, that they are speculations; secondly,
that their place in Christian thought arises from the fact that they are
the speculations of a majority at certain meetings. The importance which
attaches to the whole subject with which we are dealing, lies less in the
history of the formation of a body of doctrine, than in the growth and
permanence of the conceptions which underlie that formation.
(1) The first conception comes from the antecedent belief which was
rooted in the Greek mind, that, given certain primary beliefs which are
admitted on all sides to be necessary, it is requisite that a man should
define those beliefs[708]—that it is as necessary that a man should be
able to say with minute exactness what he means by God, as that he should
say, I believe in God. It is purely philosophical. A philosopher cannot
be satisfied with unanalyzed ideas.
(2) The second conception comes rather from politics than from
philosophy. It is the belief in a majority of a meeting. It is the
conception that the definitions and interpretations of primary beliefs
which are made by the majority of church officers assembled under certain
conditions, are in all cases and so certainly true, that the duty of the
individual is, not to endeavour, by whatever light of nature or whatever
illumination of the Holy Spirit may be given to him, to understand them,
but to acquiesce in the verdict of the majority. The theory assumes that
God never speaks to men except through the voice of the majority. It is
a large assumption. It is a transference to the transcendental sphere in
which the highest conceptions of the Divine Nature move, of what is a
convenient practical rule for conducting the business of human society:
“Let the majority decide.” I do not say that it is untrue, or that it has
not some arguments in its favour; but I do venture to point out that the
fact of its being an assumption must at least be recognized.
(3) The third conception is, that the definitions and interpretations of
primary beliefs which were made by the majority, or even by the unanimous
voice of a church assembly, in a particular age, and which were both
relative to the dominant mental tendencies of that age and adequately
expressed them, are not only true but final. It is a conceivable view
that once, and once only, did God speak to men, and that the revelation
of Himself in the Gospels is a unique fact in the history of the
universe. It is also a conceivable view that God is continually speaking
to men, and that now, no less than in the early ages of Christianity,
there is a divine Voice that whispers in men’s souls, and a divine
interpretation of the meaning of the Gospel history. The difficulty is
in the assumption which is sometimes made, that the interpretation of
the divine Voice was developed gradually through three centuries, and
that it was then suddenly arrested. The difficulty has sometimes been
evaded by the further assumption that there was no development of the
truth, and that the Nicene theology was part of the original revelation—a
theology divinely communicated to the apostles by Jesus Christ himself.
The point of most importance in the line of study which we have been
following together, is the demonstration which it affords that this
latter assumption is wholly untenable. We have been able to see, not
only that the several elements of what is distinctive in the Nicene
theology were gradually formed, but also that the whole temper and frame
of mind which led to the formation of those elements were extraneous to
the first form of Christianity, and were added to it by the operation of
causes which can be traced. If this be so, the assumption of the finality
of the Nicene theology is the hypothesis of a development which went
on for three centuries, and was then suddenly and for ever arrested.
Such a hypothesis, even if it be _à priori_ conceivable, would require
an overwhelming amount of positive testimony. Of such testimony there
is absolutely none. But it may be that the time has come in which,
instead of travelling once more along the beaten tracks of these ancient
controversies as to particular speculations, we should rather consider
the prior question of the place which speculation as such should occupy
in the economy of religion and of the criterion by which speculations
are to be judged. We have to learn also that although for the needs of
this life, for the solace of its sorrow, for the development of its
possibilities, we must combine into societies and frame our rules of
conduct, and possibly our articles of belief, by striking an average, yet
for the highest knowledge we must go alone upon the mountain-top; and
that though the moral law is thundered forth so that even the deaf may
hear, the deepest secrets of God’s nature and of our own are whispered
still in the silence of the night to the individual soul.
It may be that too much time has been spent upon speculations about
Christianity, whether true or false, and that that which is essential
consists not of speculations but of facts, and not in technical accuracy
on questions of metaphysics, but in the attitude of mind in which we
regard them. It would be a cold world in which no sun shone until the
inhabitants thereof had arrived at a true chemical analysis of sunlight.
And it may be that the knowledge and thought of our time, which is
drawing us away from the speculative elements in religion to that
conception of it which builds it upon the character and not only upon the
intellect, is drawing us thereby to that conception of it which the life
of Christ was intended to set forth, and which will yet regenerate the
world.
LECTURE XII.