OF CONDUCT.
I spoke in the last Lecture of the gradual formation under Greek
influence of a body of doctrine. I propose to speak in the present
Lecture of that enormous change in the Christian communities by which
an assent to that body of doctrine became the basis of union. I shall
have to speak less of the direct influence of Greece than in previous
Lectures: but it is necessary to show not only the separate causes and
the separate effects, but also their general sum in the changed basis of
Christian communion.
* * * * *
There is no adequate evidence that, in the first age of Christianity,
association was other than voluntary. It was profoundly individual.
It assumed for the first time in human history the infinite worth of
the individual soul. The ground of that individual worth was a divine
sonship. And the sons of God were brethren. They were drawn together by
the constraining force of love. But the clustering together under that
constraining force was not necessarily the formation of an association.
There was not necessarily any organization.[709] The tendency to
organization came partly from the tendency of the Jewish colonies in the
great cities of the empire to combine, and to a far greater extent from
the large tendency of the Greek and Roman world to form societies for
both religious and social purposes.
But though there is no evidence that associations were in the first
instance universal, there is ample evidence that, when once they began
to be formed, they were formed on a basis which was less intellectual
than moral and spiritual. An intellectual element existed: but it
existed as an element, not by itself but as an essential ingredient
in the whole spiritual life. It was not separable from the spiritual
element. Of the same spiritual element, “faith” and “works” were two
sides. The associations, like the primitive clusters which were not
yet crystallized into associations, were held together by faith and
love and hope, and fused, as it were, by a common enthusiasm. They were
baptized, not only into one body, but also by one spirit, by the common
belief in Jesus Christ as their Saviour, by the overpowering sense of
brotherhood, by the common hope of immortality. Their individual members
were the saints, that is, the holy ones. The collective unity which they
formed—the Church of God—was holy. It was regarded as holy before it
was regarded as catholic. The order of the attributes in the creed is
historically correct—the holy Catholic Church. The pictures which remain
of the earliest Christian communities show that there was a real effort
to justify their name. The earliest complete picture of a Christian
community is that of the “Two Ways.” There are fragments elsewhere.
From the Acts of the Apostles and the canonical Epistles, and the
extra-canonical writings of the sub-apostolic age, it is possible to put
together a mosaic.
But in the “Two Ways” we have a primitive manual of Christian teaching,
and the teaching is wholly moral. It professes to be a short exposition
(διδαχὴ) of the two commandments of love to God and love to one’s
neighbour. The exposition is partly a quotation from and partly an
expansion of the Sermon on the Mount. “Bless those that curse you, and
pray for your enemies.” “If any one give thee a blow on the one cheek,
turn to him the other also.” “Give to every one that asketh thee, and
ask not back.” “Thou shalt not be double-minded nor double-tongued.”
“Thou shalt not be covetous nor grasping.” “Thou shalt not be angry nor
envious.” “Thou shalt not be lustful nor filthy-tongued.” “But thou shalt
be meek and long-suffering and quiet and guileless and considerate.”[710]
The ideal was not merely moral, but it was also that of an internal
morality, of a new heart, of a change of character.
The book which is probably nearest in date, and which is certainly
most alike in character to this simple manual, is the first book of
the collection of documents known as the Apostolical Constitutions. It
pictures the aim of the Christian life as being to please God by obeying
His will and keeping His commandments. “Take heed, O sons of God, to
do everything in obedience to God, and to become well-pleasing in all
things to the Lord our God.”[711] “If thou wilt please God, abstain from
all that He hates, and do none of those things that are displeasing to
Him.”[712] Individual Christians are spoken of as servants and sons of
God, as fellow-heirs and fellow-partakers with His Son, as believers,
i.e., as the phrase is expanded, “those who have believed on His unerring
religion.”[713] The rule of life is the Ten Commandments, expanded as
Christ expanded them, so as to comprehend sins of thought as well as of
deed. It was a fellowship of a common ideal and a common enthusiasm of
goodness, of neighbourliness and of mutual service, of abstinence from
all that would rouse the evil passions of human nature, of the effort to
crush the lower part of us in the endeavour to reach after God.[714]
It is even possible that the baptismal formula may have consisted, not in
an assertion of belief, but in a promise of amendment; for a conservative
sect made the candidate promise—“I call these seven witnesses to witness
that I will sin no more, I will commit adultery no more, I will not
steal, I will not act unjustly, I will not covet, I will not hate, I will
not despise, nor will I have pleasure in any evil.”[715]
The Christian communities were based not only on the fellowship of a
common ideal, but also on the fellowship of a common hope. In baptism
they were born again, and born to immortality. There was the sublime
conception that the ideal society which they were endeavouring to
realize would be actually realized on earth. The Son of Man would come
again, and the regenerated would die no more. The kingdoms of this world
would become the kingdom of the Messiah. The lust and hate, the strife
and conflict, the iniquity and vice, which dominated in current society,
would be cast out for ever; and over the new earth there would be the
arching spheres of a new heaven, into which the saints, like the angels,
might ascend. But as the generations passed, and all things continued as
they had been, and the sign of the Son of Man sent no premonitory ray
from the far-off heaven, this hope of a new earth, without changing its
force, began to change its form. It was no longer conceived as sudden,
but as gradual. The nations of the world were to be brought one by one
into the vast communion. There grew up the magnificent conception of a
universal assembly, a καθολικὴ ἐκκλησία.[716] There would be a universal
religion and a universal society, and not until then would the end come:
it would be a transformed and holy world.
* * * * *
The first point which I will ask you to note is, that this very
transformation of the idea of a particular religion into that of a
universal religion—this conception of an all-embracing human society,
naturally, if unconsciously, carried with it a relaxation of the
bonds of discipline. The very earnestness which led men to preach the
Gospel and to hasten the Kingdom, led them also to gather into the
net fish of every kind. There was always a test, but the rigour of the
test was softened. The old Adam asserted itself. There were social
influences, and weakness of character in the officers, and a condonation
by the community. It became less and less practicable to eject every
offender against the Christian code. It was against this whole tendency
that Montanism was a rebellion—not only against the officialism of
Christianity, but also against its worldliness.[717] The earlier
conception of that code, in which it embraced sins of thought, came to
be narrowed. The first narrowing was the limitation to open sins. The
Christian societies fell under the common law which governs all human
organizations, that no cognizance can be taken of the secret thoughts of
the heart. The second limitation was, that even when a man had committed
an open sin, and had been therefore excluded from the community, he might
be re-admitted. The limitation was not accepted without a controversy
which lasted over a great part of two centuries, and which at one time
threatened to rend the whole Christian communities into fragments. The
Church was gradually transformed from being a community of saints—of men
who were bound together by the bond of a holy life, separated from the
mass of society, and in antagonism to it—to a community of men whose
moral ideal and moral practice differed in but few respects from those of
their Gentile neighbours. The Church of Christ, which floated upon the
waves of this troublesome world was a Noah’s ark, in which there were
unclean as well as clean.
Side by side with this diminution in the strictness of the moral tests
of admission and of continued membership, was a growth in the importance
of the intellectual elements, of which I spoke in a previous Lecture.
The idea of holiness and purity came to include in early times the
idea of sound doctrine. Hegesippus,[718] in speaking of a church as a
virgin, gives as his reason, not its moral purity, but the fact that
it was not corrupted by foolish doctrines. The growth, both within the
Church and on its outskirts, of opinions which were not the opinions of
the majority—the tendency of all majorities to assert their power—the
flocking into the Christian fold of the educated Greeks and Romans, who
brought with them the intellectual habits of mind which dominated in
the age—gave to the intellectual element an importance which it had not
previously possessed. Knowledge, which had always been in some sort an
element in Christianity, though not as a basis of association, came to
assert its place side by side with love. Agreement in opinion, which
had been the basis of union in the Greek philosophical schools, and
later in the Gnostic societies, now came to form a new element in the
bond of union within and between the Churches.[719] But the practical
necessity, when once an intellectual element was admitted, of giving
some limitations to that element by establishing a rule of faith and
a standard list of apostolic documents, caused stress to be laid at
once upon the intellect and the region within which it moved. It was,
that is to say, necessary to ensure that the intellectual element was
of the right kind, and this of itself gave emphasis to the new temper
and tendency. The profession of belief in Christ which had been in the
first instance subordinate to love and hope, and which had consisted in
a simple recognition of him as the Son of God, became enucleated and
elaborated into an explicit creed; and assent to that creed became the
condition, or, so to speak, the contract of membership. The profession of
faith must be in the words of the Christian rule.[720] The teaching of
the catechumens was no longer that which we find in the “Two Ways”—the
inculcation of the higher morality; it was the _traditio symboli_, the
teaching of the pass-word and of its meaning. The creed and teaching were
the creed and teaching of the average members of the communities. In
religion, as in society, it is the average that rules. The law of life is
compromise.
There were two collateral causes which contributed to the change and gave
emphasis to it.
(1) The one arose from the importance which was attached to baptism.
There is no doubt that baptism was conceived to have in itself an
efficacy which in later times has been rarely attached to it. The
expressions which the more literary ages have tended to construe
metaphorically were taken literally. It was a real washing away of sins;
it was a real birth into a new life; it was a real adoption into a divine
sonship. The _renunciatio diaboli_—the abjuring of false gods and their
wicked worship—was also an important element.[721] These elements were
indeed even more strongly emphasized by certain Gnostic societies than
by the more orthodox writers; but they directly suggested a question
which soon became vital, viz. whether all baptism had this efficacy. Was
the mere act or ceremonial enough, or did it depend on the place where,
the person by whom, and the ritual with which it was administered? In
particular, the question of the minister of baptism became important.
It came to be doubted whether baptism had its awful efficacy, if the
baptizer were cut off from the general society of Christians on the
ground of either his teaching or his practice. It became important to
ensure that those who baptized held the right faith, lest the baptism
they administered should be invalid, and should carry with it all the
evil consequences of a vitiated baptism. The rules which were laid down
were minute. There were grave controversies as to the precise amount of
difference of opinion which vitiated baptism, and the very fact of the
controversies about opinion accentuated the stress which was laid upon
such opinion. It drew away attention from a man’s character to his mental
attitude towards the general average of beliefs.
(2) There was another feature of early Christian life which probably
contributed more than anything else to strengthen this tendency. It was
the habit of intercourse and intercommunion. Christians, like Jews,
travelled widely—more for trade and commerce than for pleasure. The new
brotherhood of Christians, like the ancient brotherhood of the Jews,
gave to all the travelling brethren a welcome and hospitality. A test
had been necessary in the earliest times in regard to the prophets and
teachers. It is mentioned in the Teaching of the Apostles. But the
test was of moral rather than of intellectual teaching. “Whoever comes
to you and teaches you all these things” (i.e. the moral precepts of
the “Two Ways”), “receive him. But in case he who teaches, himself
turns and teaches you another teaching[722] so as to destroy (this
teaching), listen not to him: but if he teaches you so as to add to your
righteousness and knowledge of the Lord, receive him as the Lord.”[723]
So of the prophets: “Not every one who speaks in the spirit is a prophet,
but only he who has the moral ways of the Lord (τοὺς τρόπους Κυρίου):
by these ways shall be known the false prophet and the true prophet....
Every prophet who teaches the truth, if he does not what he teaches, is a
false prophet.”[724] So also of the travelling brethren: “Let every one
who comes in the name of the Lord be received; afterwards ye shall test
him and find out.... If he wish to settle among you and is a craftsman,
let him work and so eat. If he be not a craftsman, provide some way
of his living among you as a Christian, but not being idle. If he be
unwilling so to do, he is χριστέμπορος—making a gain of godliness.”[725]
The test here also is a test of character and not of belief. But when
the intellectual elements had asserted a prominence in Christianity,
and when the acceptance of the baptismal formula had been made a test
of admission to a Christian community, it gradually became a custom to
make the acceptance of that formula also a condition of admission to
hospitality.[726] It was, so to speak, a _tessera_ or pass-word. By being
a pass-word to hospitality, it became also a form which a man might
easily strain his conscience to accept, and in religion no less than in
politics there are no such strenuous upholders of current opinion as
those who are hypocrites. The importance of the formula as a passport
attached not only to individuals, but also to whole communities.[727]
The fact that the Teaching of the Apostles makes the test personal and
individual, shows that in the country and at the time when that book was
written the later system had not yet begun to prevail. This later system
was for a community to furnish its travelling members with a circular
letter of recommendation. Such a letter served as a passport. The
travelling Christian who brought it received an immediate and ungrudging
hospitality. But when churches had wide points of difference, they would
not receive each other’s letters. The points of difference which thus
led to the renunciation of fellowship, related in the first instance
to discipline or practice. They came to relate to belief. Points of
doctrine, no less than points of discipline, came to be discussed at the
meetings of the representatives of the churches in a district, concerning
which I spoke in the last Lecture. Doctrine came to be thus co-ordinate
with character as the basis on which the churches joined together in
local or general confederations, and accepted each other’s certificates.
The hierarchical tendency grew with it and out of it. The position of
the bishops, which had grown out of the assumed desirability of guarding
the tradition of truth, tended to emphasize that tradition. It gave to
tradition not only a new importance, but also a new sanction. It rested
belief upon living authority. Men were no longer free to interpret for
themselves.
* * * * *
This elevation of doctrine to a co-ordinate position with life in
the Christian communities was the effect of causes internal to those
communities. Those causes were in themselves the effects of other causes,
the influence of which I have traced in previous Lectures: but in their
direct operation within the churches they were altogether internal. But
that which gave importance to their operation was not internal, but
external. It was the interposition of the State. The first instance of
that interposition was in the days of Aurelian, in the case of Paul of
Samosata. The principle which was then established has been of enormous
importance to the Christian communities ever since. It is clear that
confederation of churches was so far established in Syria in the middle
of the third century, that the bishops of a district claimed a right to
interfere in the affairs of a neighbouring church. There was not yet
the complete confederation, on the basis of the organization of the
Empire, which we find after the Nicene Council; it was a question only
of neighbourhood. The Bishop of Antioch, Paul of Samosata, who was a
statesman as well as a theologian, had a difference of opinion with the
leading bishops of Syria on one of the new questions of the metaphysical
theology, which was forcing its way into the Christian churches.
Meetings were held, at the first of which there appears to have been a
compromise. At the second, Paul was condemned. He was formally deposed
from his see. He refused to recognize the authority of the meeting, and
probably with the support of his people, remained in possession of the
church-buildings. An appeal as of “civil right” was made by his opponents
to the Emperor. The answer of the Emperor determined the principle
already referred to. The tenant of the buildings held them on condition
of being a Christian. The Emperor did not determine what Christianity
was. But he determined that whatever was taught by the bishops of Italy
might be properly taken as the standard. This determined Roman policy,
and it went far to determine Christian doctrine for the future.
When Christianity came to be recognized by the State, Constantine
adopted the plan of assembling the bishops on his own authority, and
of giving whatever sanction the State could give to their resolutions.
He said in effect, “I, as Emperor, cannot determine what Christian
doctrine is, but I will take the opinion of the majority, and I will
so far recognize that opinion that no one shall have the privileges of
Christians, a right to hold property and an exemption from civil burdens,
who does not assent to that opinion.” The succeeding Christian Emperors
followed in his track. The test of being a Christian was conformity
to the resolutions of the Councils. One who accepted them received
immunity and privileges. One who did not was liable to confiscation, to
banishment, to death. I need hardly draw out for you, who know what human
nature is, the importance which those resolutions of the Councils assumed.
* * * * *
Against this whole transformation of the basis of union there were two
great lines of reaction.
1. The one was the reaction of the Puritan party in the Church—the
conservative party, which was always smouldering, and sometimes burst
forth into flame. The most important of such reactionary outbursts were
those of the Novatians in the third century, and of the Donatists in the
fourth. I will speak now only of the former. Its first cause was the
action of the Roman bishop, Callistus, who allowed the return to the
Church of those who had been excluded on account of sins of the flesh,
and of return to idolatry. The policy was continued. In 250, a determined
stand was made against it. The election of a bishop who belonged to the
lax party forced on a schism. The schism was strong. It had sympathizers
all over the Christian world—in Egypt, in Armenia, in Asia Minor, in
Italy and Spain. It involved the whole theory of the Church—the power
of the Keys. It lasted long. It was so strong that the State had to
recognize it. It did not die out until at least five centuries after its
birth. It lingered on in detached communities, but it ceased to be a
power. The majority, with the support not only of the State, but also of
human nature, dominated the Christian world.
2. The other reaction was stronger and even more permanent. It consisted
of the formation within the Christian community of an inner class, who
framed for themselves and endeavoured to realize a higher than the
common ideal. They stood to the rest of the community as the community
itself stood to the rest of the world. The tendency itself came, as I
have tried to point out in a previous Lecture,[728] mainly from the
Greek philosophical schools, and was fostered to a large extent by the
influence on the main body of Christians of the philosophic parties upon
its borders. But it asserted its place as a permanent element in the
Christian world mainly as a reaction against the change of the basis of
the Christian communities, and the lowering of the current standard of
their morality. Henceforward there was, side by side with the τάγμα τῶν
κληρικῶν and the τάγμα τῶν λαϊκῶν, a third rank, τάγμα τῶν ἀσκητῶν. The
ideal has been obscured by its history: but that ideal was sublime. It
was impracticable and undesirable; and yet sometimes in human life room
must be found for impossible ideals. And the blurred and blotted picture
of it which has survived to our own times, cannot take the place of the
historical fact that it began as a reaction against Christianity as it
was and as it is—an effort to regenerate human society. But Monachism,
by the very fact of its separation, did not leaven the Church and raise
the current morality. The Church became, not an assembly of devout men,
grimly earnest about living a holy life—its bishops were statesmen;
its officers were men of the world; its members were of the world,
basing their conduct on the current maxims of society, held together
by the loose bond of a common name, and of a creed which they did not
understand. In such a society, an intellectual basis is the only possible
basis. In such a society also, in which officialism must necessarily
have an important place, the insistence on that intellectual basis comes
from the instinct of self-preservation. But it checked the progress of
Christianity. Christianity has won no great victories since its basis
was changed. The victories that it has won, it has won by preaching, not
Greek metaphysics, but the love of God and the love of man. Its darkest
pages are those which record the story of its endeavouring to force its
transformed Greek metaphysics upon men or upon races to whom they were
alien. The only ground of despair in those who accept Christianity now,
is the fear—which I for one cannot entertain—that the dominance of the
metaphysical element in it will be perpetual.
* * * * *