In the previous lectures we have traced the development of Greek
religious thought from the Homeric poems to the third century of
our era; we have seen how Greece extended her intellectual dominion
over the entire Mediterranean world which the military and political
genius of Rome bound into one empire; and we have examined the chief
oriental mysteries which spread throughout the same area. We now turn
to Christianity. In dealing with this it will be necessary to review at
some length the work of Jesus and the doctrines of Paul, that we may
have in mind the material which was later brought into accord with the
philosophic thought and the intellectual habits of the Roman Empire
outside that district in which Christianity had its birth. But before
we do this we should recall some characteristics of the ancient world
in the earliest centuries of our era.
In the first place we must realize that it was a Greco-Roman world, one
in which the civilizations of two great peoples—the one intellectual,
the other political—had been compounded. In the eastern half of the
Empire Greek influence dominated. Alexander’s conquests had made Greek
the common language of a great area with the result that in the East
Greek thought and Greek habits of expression—that is to say, Greek
philosophy and Greek rhetoric—were practically native. The West
also, as I have earlier tried to show, had received Greek philosophy
and Greek rhetoric more than a century and a half before our era, so
that indeed over all the Roman Empire common habits of thought and
universal modes of expression prevailed. The eastern half of the Empire
contained Alexandria, which had been the chief intellectual center from
the third century before our era; in the West was Rome, the center of
that imperial power which made the world a political unit; yet western
thought owed not merely its form but almost its existence to Greek
influences.
In the second place the East was the home of the learning of the world.
The Greeks furnished the West not only philosophy and rhetoric but
the sciences as well. Building on the mathematics and astronomy which
they had learned from their Eastern neighbors and the Egyptians they
soon developed these two sister sciences. Tradition says that in the
sixth century B.C. the philosopher Thales predicted an eclipse of the
sun; certainly a century later the Greeks had made great advances; and
such were their attainments by the opening of our era that only in
comparatively modern times has a new period in the history of astronomy
and mathematics begun. In the descriptive sciences of botany and
zoölogy especially the Greeks had reached a high position by the fourth
century B.C. The work of Aristotle, of Theophrastus, and of
others still holds the profound respect of all modern scientists who
are familiar with the history of their subjects. In geography and
mineralogy also their accomplishments were not inconsiderable;
likewise in many branches of physics they did notable work; while
Greek scientific medicine, already highly developed in Hippocrates’
day (c. 460-377 B.C.), was further advanced in the succeeding
centuries. The works of Galen (129-c. 199 A.D.) remained the
authoritative treatises for more than fourteen hundred years. All
these sciences the Romans learned from the Greeks, and although in
some fields they made notable application of their lessons, they never
surpassed their teachers.
Moreover Greece and Hellenized Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt had a
knowledge of the conduct of business, of banking, and of the details
of administration which they gave to the western half of the Empire.
Indeed Roman history between the battle of Actium and the reign of
Diocletian from one point of view is the history of the spread of
eastern ideas to the West and of their absorption there. Not only did
captive Greece take her captor captive, but in a sense Egypt, Syria,
and Asia Minor won their conquests as well. Many causes operated to
further this intellectual domination of the Hellenized East over the
Roman West. The eastern provinces had not suffered in the civil wars
at the end of the Republic as had many parts of the West; their wealth
was not wasted, and in general their social and economic relations
were comparatively undisturbed. Under the wise administration of the
Emperors these provinces grew richer; their inhabitants, especially the
Greeks among them, gained a consciousness of their own intellectual
superiority which they had not had in the last two centuries before our
era. The influence of the East, therefore, was in many ways consciously
exerted.
Thirdly we must bear in mind that the world was cosmopolitan. For
centuries traders had carried not only wares but ideas from one part
of the ancient world to another, slaves had done their part, which
was not small, since many of them were educated; and from the time of
Augustus the soldiers drawn from every province of the Empire exerted a
great influence in breaking down the barriers between the nations. For
the idea of a cosmopolitan world Stoicism had furnished a philosophic
basis; the actuality was realized in large measure by the natural
developments under Roman imperial rule. Separate nations had ceased
to exist; and in the universal levelling which a growing autocracy
produced, the differences between citizens, provincials, and slaves
were diminished and an approach was made to a cosmopolitan equality.
Furthermore the Roman world of the first three centuries was virtually
a world of peace. Merchants and traders, tourists and missionaries
moved freely from one end of the Empire to the other. The value of
this Roman peace was recognized by the Christians; near the end of the
second century the Christian writer Irenaeus declared: “The Romans have
given the world peace and we travel without fear along the roads and
across the sea wherever we will.”[301]
The world was also one of religious unrest and inquiry. The traditional
religions and the inherited forms of religious expression had in
large part failed. There was, as has been said in an earlier lecture,
a sense of weariness and dissatisfaction which showed itself in the
large resort of all classes to Stoic philosophy, in the devotion among
the cultured to the mystic philosophies, in conversions to Judaism,
and later in the ready reception of oriental religions, including
Christianity. We have already seen how both philosophy and mysticism
recognized that men had a sense of moral guilt and were conscious of an
estrangement from God through sin, from which they desired to secure
purification, that is, to attain freedom from the common lot of the
bondage of wickedness. Philosophy and mysticism also agreed in holding
that the means at man’s disposal were not sufficient to accomplish
his release, that the reason and the will unaided could not free him,
and that therefore external help was necessary—that an act of grace
made known by a divine revelation was required. This escape from sin,
this freeing of man’s spirit, for which they longed, was regarded as a
reunion with God, which gave the promise of security and salvation here
and hereafter, and which thereby answered man’s hope for an unbroken
and a perfected existence. It was into a world of such a nature and
with such religious thoughts as these that Christianity entered.
But Christianity grew out of Judaism. It will be well therefore to
recall briefly to our minds those religious ideas of the Jews to which
the mission and the teaching of Jesus were immediately related. At the
beginning of our era a majority of the Jews had abandoned the earlier
notion of a golden age, a material kingdom of God, which was to be
set up on earth, for a belief in a more spiritual kingdom, which was
to be established at some future time either on a transformed earth
or in a supermundane heaven. They no longer expected that the whole
nation would share in the supreme happiness of this kingdom, but only
those individuals who by righteousness and through God’s mercy had
won a place therein; the wicked were to be either utterly destroyed
or punished forever in Sheol. Moreover the Jews generally entertained
Messianic expectations of various kinds; they did not, however, look
forward with confidence, as their forefathers had done, to the coming
of one who should be a national king on earth. There were besides hopes
of revelation from God on which we must not pause. Nor is it necessary
to speak of the weaknesses of Judaism, its tendency to make the
practice of religion a matter of conformity to the minute regulations
of the law, its frequent disregard of moral motives, its pride and
religious pretence.
* * * * *
All thoughtful readers of the New Testament are aware that within it
are represented three stages in the early development of Christianity.
In the first the disciples of Jesus formed a group and then a sect
within the Jewish nation. The second was that in which the gospel was
carried outside Judea into the Roman Empire to Gentiles as well as to
Jews. Thus the transformation of Christianity into a universal religion
was begun. In that movement, as we all know, Paul was the chief figure.
The third stage was that in which philosophic thought began to operate
upon the doctrines of this new religion. It was the period in which
Christian theology started to develop; the time in which Christian
thought began to be expressed in philosophic form and squared with the
philosophy of the day. The fourth Gospel is the document in our canon
in which the use of a great philosophic conception for the expression
of Christian ideas is first obvious.
Let us now consider briefly the teachings that belong to these three
stages, as they are represented by Jesus, by Paul, and by the writer of
the Johannine books.
Like every great spiritual teacher Jesus built on the beliefs of
his time, refining, enlarging, ennobling, and transforming men’s
conceptions of God and of his kingdom, of man and of his salvation.
His teachings were concrete; he made no attempt to present his views
in philosophic form, but inculcated his lessons as occasion offered
or required. His words and the history of his life are preserved to
us in imperfect and fragmentary forms, having been recorded after
his death at a time when his followers had considerably increased in
numbers and were to be found at many places outside Judea and Syria.
For our present purpose we must confine ourselves to the three synoptic
gospels. Of these Mark in essentially its present form was written
shortly after 70; Matthew and Luke can hardly be earlier than 80-90
A.D. These gospels are necessarily both historical and interpretative;
their writers were children of their own day and shared in its beliefs
and superstitions. They were naturally credulous toward the myths and
legends which had rapidly grown up about Jesus. When we consider their
great eschatological interest, we realize that the authors actually
tell us an extraordinary amount concerning Jesus’ life and teachings.
The historical interpretation of the gospels must take all these
matters into account.
It is impossible to understand Jesus’ teachings if we detach them from
his person, for in a very real sense he was himself the gospel. Only by
grasping so far as possible his personality can we comprehend in any
adequate degree the impression which he made on his followers. Their
discipleship at the time and the whole development of Christianity
after Jesus’ death depended on that personality. Nor is there anything
strange in this fact; we are in a degree familiar with it in our own
experience, whenever any great teacher or leader appears.
Let us now consider Jesus’ views as to the nature of God and as to
man’s relation to him. First of all he taught his disciples that they
must regard God as their Father. This idea was by no means new or
foreign to the thoughts of his hearers. In the Old Testament we not
infrequently find Israel spoken of as the son of God; it was said that
God took a special and gracious interest in the people of Israel, that
he cared for them wholly, or especially, and that they were his beloved
people whom he had chosen to be the agents of his revelation. Jesus
taught that God’s fatherhood expresses itself in infinite love for men,
that this love extends not only to the righteous but to the wicked as
well, so that both receive his care and blessings: “But I say unto
you, Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you; that ye
may be sons of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun
to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the
unjust.”[302] Furthermore he showed that the divine care is given to
the humblest and smallest parts of the universe, so that the heavenly
Father marks even the fall of a sparrow to the ground. The perfect
nature of God’s love Jesus made the measure of God’s perfection; and,
although he recognized man’s limitations and the moral value of an
honest advance in righteousness, he set as man’s ultimate goal nothing
less than the perfection of God himself as shown in perfect love.[303]
Again he gave a new hope to outcasts and sinners by declaring that
those who repented of their sins and desired to enter into right
relations with God would not be despised. That was the meaning of the
parable of the Prodigal Son: it illustrated the generosity of God’s
affection and showed that it reached to the poorest and worst of men.
To realize fully the significance of this teaching we must remind
ourselves of the attitude of self-righteous Pharisees not only toward
publicans and sinners but toward the common people, association with
whom they scrupulously shunned and among whom they hardly admitted
that true piety could exist. It was a scandal in their eyes that Jesus
mingled freely with the classes whose contact was defilement and whose
intimacy was shame, while he declared that he came to call not the
righteous, but sinners to repentance.
Man’s proper relation to God Jesus held to be the exact converse of
God’s to man: he taught that man’s sonship consists in a likeness
to God, which will express itself in love toward God and toward all
men. This teaching is nowhere more clearly set forth than in the
words which I have just quoted: “Love your enemies, and pray for them
that persecute you; that ye may be sons of your Father which is in
heaven;”[304] the same lesson he inculcated in the prayer which he
taught his disciples: “Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven
our debtors.” On another occasion he charged his followers: “Whensoever
ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have aught against anyone; that your
Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.”[305]
So Jesus held that love and forgiveness, the characteristics of God
himself, are required of men as sons of their heavenly Father; that
those who wish to claim such a relationship to God must exercise the
same generous affection toward their fellows that God shows to them;
and that with this must go such love of God as was taught in the law:
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all
thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy
neighbour as thyself.”[306]
Salvation Jesus would no doubt have defined in part as peace and
confidence of mind in this world and eternal happiness in the next.
Our data clearly show that he held that man secures salvation when he
enters on the life which belongs to the sons of God, and that the basis
of this life, as we have just seen, is love, while its outward signs
are acts prompted by whole hearted affection for one’s fellow-men and
for God. This life Jesus evidently regarded as the natural one from
which man departs through sin, and therefore he taught that repentance
from sin is the antecedent condition of entrance into right relations
with God, that is to say, into salvation. At the beginning of his
ministry he preached in Galilee that the kingdom of Heaven was at
hand and called on men to repent and to believe in the good news; and
at the end of his work he charged his disciples to preach repentance
and the remission of sins to all peoples.[307] But it is important
that we should keep clearly before us the fact that Jesus did not
lay so much emphasis on the negative element of repentance as on the
positive motive of love. He taught that the man who had that motive
would naturally exhibit it in a trustful dependence on God and in a
righteousness of life which would be of a very different character
from that of a life directed by mere obedience to legal and ritual
requirements. A man whose thoughts and acts were prompted by love of
God and of his fellow-men had attained salvation—that is to say, Jesus
held salvation to be a present experience, one which could be realized
at any time by any man who recognized God as his father with all
which that implied, and who consequently devoted himself to a life of
unselfish service. He declared that such a man had already entered into
a joy and blessedness which no earthly misfortunes could disturb. Jesus
therefore not only gave his followers a sure hope of salvation in the
future, when they should realize in heaven the supreme ideal of life
and complete happiness, but he also taught them that they could have a
real experience of salvation in their present every-day lives.
It should be observed that Jesus laid the greatest stress on the
motives for righteousness, and that he paid little attention to the
negative and restrictive elements which are inevitably large in any
legalistic system of ethics or religion. For him mere external acts
and observances were not enough, but righteousness and service must be
prompted from within. Furthermore, although the record of his life and
teachings show that he attached much importance to the social elements
in religion, he dwelt on the responsibility of the individual, who
must for himself, by his motives, character, and actions fulfill the
requirements for entrance into salvation.
With regard to Jesus’ conception of his own person it is difficult to
speak with certainty on many points. It is beyond question, however,
that he regarded himself as one divinely commissioned to present the
fatherhood of God and to set forth man’s proper relations to God and to
his fellow-men. Faith in the validity of his commission and in
his teachings as showing the way of salvation was required of his
followers, for only by such faith could they be moved to transmute his
teachings into action. Yet it is intimated that up to the time of his
last arrival at Jerusalem Jesus made no effort to be popularly regarded
as the Messiah for whom the Jews had looked. When at Caesarea Philippi
Peter declared that he was the Christ, Jesus “charged the disciples
that they should tell no man.”[308] His reasons for such caution seem
evident when we consider the varied character of the Jews’ Messianic
hopes, and the great probability that if he had allowed himself to be
recognized as the one whom they expected, his proper work would have
been greatly hampered, if not utterly checked. The danger is well
illustrated by the incident recorded in John, when the people wished to
take him by force and make him king, so that he was obliged to withdraw
from them.[309]
But in spite of Jesus’ unwillingness to put forward Messianic claims
for himself, it is clear that he considered his relation to God as
unique in its knowledge and perfection. When he asked his followers to
believe on him, he seems obviously to have called on them to trust him
as the one who had been divinely commissioned to interpret God to men,
and to accept the validity of his teaching as to man’s proper relations
to God and his fellow-men, that is, as to the life which they should
follow as the sons of their Father. The dogmatic associations which
today are attached to the idea of a “belief in Christ,” obscure Jesus’
plain teaching for many. But when his ministry had been brought to its
tragic close, his disciples saw him in a new light, and thereafter made
his person a matter of supreme moment, as the Church on the whole has
done ever since.
Again there has been much debate as to the significance of the
sufferings and death of Jesus. From our data we must conclude that
Jesus did not give to his passion the interpretation which his
disciples naturally gave after the event, and which succeeding
generations have given it. Yet toward the end of his ministry Jesus
recalled and applied to himself the doctrine that the good may suffer
death, not for his own faults, but for the sins of others, as found in
the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah; and it seems clear that he regarded
his rejection and crucifixion as essential factors in bringing men into
the kingdom of God.
What relation now did the teachings of Jesus bear to the religious
beliefs and hopes of the Jewish people? Certainly his words on most
matters did not appear to his hearers opposed to Jewish doctrines, but
rather they seemed to enlarge and to give a nobler content to their own
ideas. With the current doctrine that the salvation of the individual
depended on his own righteousness he was thoroughly in accord. He gave,
however, a deeper meaning to the idea of righteousness: in opposition
to the extreme legalistic notions which were emphasized especially by
some of the Pharisees, he taught that there must first exist the inner
motive of love for God and man from which alone right actions could
flow; that one who had recognized his true relations to God and his
fellows and whose transformed character showed itself in filial
dependence on God and in loving and generous service towards men, and
in the practice of humility, was already delivered from the bondage
of sin and had entered into a new spiritual life. Although his
contemporaries had abandoned their hopes of a prompt realization of the
kingdom of God on earth, Jesus showed that that kingdom was already
present in its beginning wherever men displayed the character and did
the deeds which belonged to the kingdom—in other words, that the
kingdom could be realized here by changing present conditions so that
God’s will should be done on earth as in heaven. God, to Jesus’ mind,
was not to be conceived as a king ruling over his people, but rather
as a universal loving father, whose affection extended to the wicked
as well as to the good, and embraced every class of mankind. He taught
further that from this divine love flowed an infinite grace which left
no man outside the possibility of salvation. But beyond all these
elements in the teachings of Jesus, which, because of their supreme
moral demands, made the way of salvation at once most simple and most
severe, more than the fact that his teachings dealt primarily with
the health of the soul, the personality of Jesus, his belief that he
had received a divine commission, and his consciousness of his unique
relation to God must be taken into account if we are to understand
adequately the effect of his teaching. His immediate disciples never
dreamed of separating themselves from the Jews until events forced them
to take that step, but they were filled with the conviction that their
Master was the Messiah and that a new revelation had come to them.
After Jesus’ death his followers made the central theme of their
preaching the proclamation of him as the Christ, who by his sufferings
and death had brought salvation to men; they taught that through him
men might be delivered from their sin and enter into the blessings
promised by his gospel. In general they laid more stress on eschatology
than Jesus had done, for they confidently expected an early end of
the world and the reappearance of Christ in glory. Quietly no doubt
at first they began to make converts in Jerusalem. Then a persecution
broke out and conversions were made outside Judea among other peoples
than the Jews. About the year 45 a church, largely Gentile, was formed
at Antioch,[310] the third city of importance in the Empire. The
founding of this church definitely began the expansion of Christianity
beyond the bounds of Judaism.
Paul was the chief leader in extending the gospel to the Gentiles,
and so much did he overshadow the other missionaries that his work
and teaching mark the second period in the history of Christianity.
Although no account can here be given of his life and experiences,
it is necessary to have these in mind to understand his influence.
Especially important is it to remember that he was a trained Jew,
familiar with the Old Testament and with the theological doctrines of
his people; nor was he unacquainted with the ideas and the language
of the Greek world, or untouched by the mysticism of his day. A Roman
citizen by birth, a Hebrew of the Hebrews by descent and education,
he was well fitted to play his great rôle as the apostle who was to
carry Christianity out of Judaism to the Gentiles. He was, however, no
systematic theologian to lay down a logical body of doctrine as a Greek
might have done, and his writings were all occasional. Furthermore he
had not been a companion of Jesus, but was one who believed that by an
extraordinary experience he had come directly into knowledge of the
risen Christ.
Yet if Paul was not a systematic theologian, he combined with his
intense religious devotion a keen habit of mind which made the
fundamental elements of his thought stand out clearly. To him Christ’s
death and resurrection were the great facts of salvation, the means
whereby man was redeemed from sin. If we read the Epistle to the
Galatians, perhaps the earliest of the Pauline epistles (c. 46-50
A.D.), which contains much autobiographical material, we find
certain ideas set forth there which are repeated again and again in his
other writings. We can hardly do better than to begin with this letter.
First, Christ is stated to be the redeemer of men from their sins; this
is shown by the words of the greeting: “Grace to you and peace from God
the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins,
that he might deliver us out of this present evil world, according to
the will of our God and Father.” The suffering of the good for the sins
of others, as we have already seen, was an idea familiar to the Jews,
and it was easy for a Jewish convert to relate the death of Jesus to
the prophecy in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. Paul saw in the
death and the resurrection of Jesus the proof that he was the Christ.
The vicarious character of Christ’s death was probably an element in
all apostolic teaching. On it and the mystic indwelling of Christ, Paul
wholly based his preaching.
Paul, however, did not teach that the death of Christ in itself
saved men without effort on their part; on the contrary he held that
man could attain redemption only through faith in Jesus Christ. Now
“faith” meant to him something more than mere belief or trust; it was
trust marked by an attitude of sympathy with the divine nature and a
readiness to receive that nature into one’s self so that Christ could
dwell in man, and the human and the divine natures could be united. In
this way to Paul’s mind the Jew was set free from the requirements of
the law and obtained justification, that is, gained forgiveness of his
sins and reconciliation with God. Faith supplanted law, and made men
sons of God. So he wrote: “We being Jews by nature, and not sinners of
the Gentiles, yet knowing that a man is not justified by the works of
the law, save through faith in Jesus Christ, even we believed on Christ
Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the
works of the law: because by the works of the law shall no flesh be
justified.”[311] And again: “But before faith came, we were kept in
ward under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be
revealed. So that the law hath been our tutor to bring us unto Christ,
that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith is come, we
are no longer under a tutor. For ye are all the sons of God, through
faith, in Christ Jesus.”[312] This attitude of the apostle was due in
part to his own experience, which had shown him the insufficiency of
the Jewish law, and also in part to the polemic against Judaism which
was a necessary part of his ministry. But his doctrine of justification
by faith was not developed for forensic purposes; it was one of his
firmest convictions.
When Paul spoke of Christ dwelling in a man, as he frequently did
in the Epistle to the Galatians,[313] he meant his words to be taken
literally: he held that Christ enters into the man, frees him from the
domination of the sinful flesh, and, being a life-giving spirit, brings
the Christian from death to life; and that in this way the believer by
faith shares in Christ’s death, resurrection, and triumph. Therefore he
exhorted the Colossians: “If then ye were raised together with Christ,
seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right
hand of God. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the
things that are upon the earth. For ye died, and your life is hid with
Christ in God.”[314] Faith to Paul’s mind was a present union with the
risen and glorified Christ; it was for him the means of salvation,
or rather it was salvation. As he wrote in the sixth chapter of the
Epistle to the Romans, he held that through union with Christ man dies
to sin and rises to freedom from the bondage of wickedness; he is
reborn a new creature and enters into a new spiritual life.[315]
Closely associated with faith is Paul’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit.
The word itself (πνεῦμα) was intelligible to both the Greek and Jewish
world, but since Paul was not a systematic theologian, it is a matter
of much dispute as to what his exact concept of the Holy Spirit was. He
evidently thought of the Spirit as a divine objective reality. In some
passages he identifies Christ and the spirit of Christ or the spirit
of God;[316] from this we may conclude that he probably thought the Holy
Spirit to be a mode of the indwelling Christ. But if his concept is not
clear to us, we have no difficulty in understanding his ideas as to the
operation of the Spirit. He taught that it is the Spirit which assures
men of their sonship so that they may address God as their Father; that
it transforms the inner man; and that it demands the sanctification of
the body, for the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.[317] From the
Spirit come the fundamental virtues—“love, joy, peace, long-suffering,
kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, temperance.”[318] Thus the
Spirit is the means of continuing the believer in his course and of
perfecting him in the Christian life. In common with his contemporaries
Paul of course believed that many ecstatic phenomena—speaking with
tongues and prophesying, for example—were the gifts of the Spirit; but
his instructions to the excitable Corinthians show his good sense and
wisdom.[319]
In all his teaching Paul was highly practical. It is not certain that
he held a dualistic view of man’s nature in the Greek or Persian sense,
but he was well acquainted with the struggle between man’s lower and
higher natures and he knew the warring elements within the individual.
He frequently contrasted the flesh and the spirit, meaning by the first
man’s sinful nature which keeps him in the bondage of wickedness. From
this bondage and consequent death he held that man cannot escape by his
own powers; but that Christ delivers man from sin and its consequences.
This deliverance is an act of grace, a gift from God. We have only to
read the Epistles which bear his name to see how wisely he dealt with
actual errors and sins, or stirred to concrete acts of righteousness
the members of the churches which he had founded.
In most of his writing Paul dwelt on the present salvation which
the mystic union with Christ secured, but at times he treated the
eschatological nature of salvation, teaching that the full effects of
it would be realized when Christ should come to be glorified in his
saints. That this day would come quickly the apostle fully believed;
then the faithful, dead and living alike, would receive their full
reward and the wicked their punishment.
These, briefly, are the fundamental elements in Paul’s doctrine: first,
the significance of the death and resurrection of Jesus; second, faith
which secures the mystic union with Christ; third, the indwelling
Holy Spirit, which completes man’s redemption and moral regeneration.
For all Paul doubtless found warrant in the life and words of Jesus,
although he seems to have neglected the ethical teachings of the
Master. Paul’s views have formed the basis of much of the doctrine
of the Church since his time, although his idea of union with Christ
through faith soon fell into the background; when it was revived it
took on a form very unlike the apostle’s teaching.
We have thus far seen two tendencies in Christian thought. The first
appears in the synoptic gospels where Jesus is represented as the
mediator and teacher, who interpreted to men the universal loving
fatherhood of God and showed them their proper relations to God and to
their fellow-men; the other is seen in Paul who taught that through
the indwelling Christ salvation was secured. It was inevitable that
reflective thought should act upon these teachings, and that in the
philosophic environment of the Christian churches, at least outside
Judea, attempts should be made to apprehend and to formulate in
intellectual terms the nature, life, and mission of Jesus—in other
words to create a Christian philosophy or theology. When in the period
between 50 and 100 A.D., Christianity came into conflict
with Hellenistic philosophy and theosophy this work of building up a
Christian philosophy began. This stage is the third represented in the
New Testament.
The so-called Epistle to the Hebrews (c. 90 A.D.) is the first
document of the New Testament in which the Greek intellectual habit
clearly appears. Although the unknown author was writing to Gentile
Christians for practical and not doctrinal ends, there is good evidence
that he had been influenced by Alexandrian thought. He presents
Christianity as the final and absolute religion, emphasizes Christ’s
priestly office and his sacrifice, and gives a more philosophical
and abstract definition of faith than any other writer of the New
Testament. The great example, however, of the effect of the contact of
Christianity with Greek thought is furnished by the Gospel of John and
the Johannine Epistles.
This fourth Gospel was apparently written at Ephesus, probably between
100 and 110 A.D., by one who was well acquainted with the
philosophy and mysticism of his time; he was also strongly influenced
by Paul. If the Johannine Epistles are not by the same author, they
represent the same range of ideas as the Gospel, and we are therefore
justified in using them together with it.
The fourth Gospel is much more an interpretation than a history of
Jesus’ person and life; it takes for granted that its readers are
acquainted with the facts; and it assumes that the church is one
universal body.
Let us now consider the opening words of this Gospel: “In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same
was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without
him was not anything made that hath been made. In him was life; and the
life was the light of men. And the light shineth in the darkness; and
the darkness apprehended it not. There came a man, sent from God, whose
name was John. The same came for witness, that he might bear witness of
the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light,
but came that he might bear witness of the light. There was the true
light, even the light which lighteth every man, coming into the world.
He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew
him not. He came unto his own, and they that were his own received him
not. But as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become
children of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were
born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of
man, but of God. And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we
beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father), full
of grace and truth.”[320]
Here then are two fundamental ideas: first, the eternal existence and
divine nature of Christ who is the Word, the Logos of philosophic
speech, and second, the revelation of God to man through the incarnate
Word—“the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” The concept of the
Logos as the world-reason we saw first appear in the philosophy of
Heraclitus; then the idea developed through the centuries until the
Logos was equivalent to the reason of God, at once existing in God and
being his expression. As such it was a part of Alexandrian thought,
being found, for example, in Philo. The Logos of the philosopher,
however, was the agent connecting a transcendental god with the divine
creation, making and sustaining the world. In so far the Johannine
statement is in accord with current thought and expression, although
we should probably be wrong if we affirmed that the author was drawing
on Philo directly; it is far more probable that he was simply using
ideas and language common in the intellectual circles of the day. But
if we compare the idea of the Logos in the Johannine prologue with that
in Philo we observe a profound and striking difference between the
two. For Philo, as we have just said, the Logos was an abstract entity
which existed for cosmological purposes; in the Johannine thought,
although the Logos is the creator of the world, he is much more: he is
incarnate in mortal flesh that he may reveal God to man and bring man
salvation. The author wished to show that the creator and revealer were
one, that the Logos had appeared as a man on earth. Now this emphasis
on the human side of Jesus, the son of God, was in all probability due
to the arguments of some incipient Gnostics who denied that the Christ
had come in the flesh, and this polemic purpose goes far to explain
the abruptness of the prologue. When once the statement has been made
the philosophical language dealing with the Logos is dropped; yet the
position and emphasis of the ideas in the prologue were calculated to
assure the enlightened readers of the fourth Gospel that the witness of
the generation which had seen Jesus was true and must be accepted.[321]
The first purpose of the author was to set forth the prime significance
of the personal human Jesus, with whom men had lived on familiar terms
and from whom they had learned the deepest truths.[322]
How then, according to this writer, does the incarnation of the Word
of God in the human Jesus bring salvation to men? The first answer is
given by the use of a symbol which is employed in six passages in the
Gospel:[323] Christ is the light which lighteth every man; that is, the
function of the incarnate Word is to bring the light of true insight,
which is knowledge of God,—and Jesus in himself brings that knowledge.
So Jesus declared that he was the light of the world, come to illumine
the darkness of sin and ignorance in which men dwelt by manifesting the
Father to them. He said in answer to Philip: “He that hath seen me hath
seen the Father; how sayest thou, Shew us the Father? Believest thou
not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I say
unto you I speak not from myself: but the Father abiding in me doeth
his works. Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or
else believe me for the very works’ sake.”[324] These words show also
that knowledge could come only from belief; hence followed the
necessity of believing in Jesus as the incarnation of the Word of God,
and in the truth of his teachings. It is the knowledge of the truth
thus acquired which sets men free.[325]
Yet the knowledge of God revealed to the believer through faith in
Christ was not to the author’s mind the sole factor in securing
salvation. We have seen how prominent love is in the teachings of
Christ, as reported by the synoptic writers; to this element the
Johannine writer returned and made it almost preëminent. Love is the
definition of God himself in the First Epistle;[326] love was the
motive which prompted God to reveal himself to the world through his
only begotten son who by that revelation and in his person brought
salvation to men.[327] To love one another was the new commandment
which Christ gave his followers, and the measure of their love was his
love for them; it was also to be the proof to the world that they were
his disciples.[328] Love, then, was at once the warrant of their hope
and the evidence of the new life into which they were reborn through
belief in Christ and acceptance of him as the revealer of God to men.
This new life is expressed in the fourth Gospel as a mystical union
with Christ which cannot be distinguished in its essence from that of
the Pauline epistles; only the way of entrance into it is differently
described. Paul makes faith the gate; although the Johannine author
does not lay less emphasis on faith than Paul,[329] he does not look at
it in quite the same way as the earlier writer, and he speaks of the
entrance into the true relation with Christ as a new birth—using the
same idea as the pagan mystics. The new birth was described as of the
spirit, whereas the first was of the flesh,[330] and the believer’s
vital relation to Christ was symbolized by the figures of the vine, of
the bread, and of the water of life.[331]
Pauline influence may possibly be seen also in the Johannine doctrine
of the Holy Spirit—at any rate the fourth Gospel shows that at the time
it was written a belief in the Holy Spirit was well established, so
that the germ of the doctrine of the Trinity was already planted.[332]
The Holy Spirit is variously referred to as the Advocate or Helper,
and the Spirit of Truth, which was to be the active agent in edifying
believers and rebuking the world when Christ was no longer in the
flesh.[333]
The purpose of the fourth Gospel then was first to prove that Jesus
was the Christ, the Son of God, and secondly to bring men to a belief
in this fact which would give them life in Christ.[334] The idea that
salvation is present spiritual experience culminates in the Johannine
writings; the doctrine that those who hear and believe have already
entered into eternal life is clearly stated.[335]
Let us now summarize the fundamental ideas of primitive Christianity
which we have been examining in this lecture. In the first place,
because of his nature and his teachings Jesus was regarded as the
revealer of God to men, and at the same time, being the Christ, he was
held to be their saviour and redeemer. Paul emphasized Christ’s death
and resurrection, John the incarnation as the great central facts.
Secondly, love and faith and their effects on man’s relation to God and
to his fellow-men were made the essential elements in the Christian
life. Thirdly, the doctrine of the mystic union of the believer
with the divine Christ and that of the indwelling Holy Spirit were
fundamental in both the Pauline and Johannine writings. Revelation,
faith, mystic union with the Divine, salvation—our previous studies
have shown us that these ideas were both familiar and welcome in the
Greco-Roman world of the first century of our era.
We have now reviewed the essential elements in each of the three stages
represented in the writings of the New Testament. In the first, the
teachings of Jesus show no trace of any influence exerted by Greek
philosophic or religious thought. With Paul we begin to detect the
signs of such influence—the germs of the doctrine of Logos, for
example, are found in the later epistles (Philippians, Ephesians, and
Colossians), which set forth a belief in the eternal existence of
Christ, the Son of God. But it remained for the Johannine writer to
give a fuller philosophic statement to this doctrine, and in general
to bring Christianity well within the province of Greek thought and
expression. Thenceforth Christianity belonged to the Greek intellectual
world.