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THEOLOGICAL TRANSLATION LIBRARY
EDITED BY THE REV. T. K. CHEYNE MA DD, ORIET PROFESSOR OF INTERPRETATION
OXFORD AND THE REV. A. B. BRUCE, DD PROFESSOR OF APOLOGETICS AND NEW
TESTAMENT: EXEGESIS, FREE CHURCH COLLEGE GLASGOW
VOL II
HARNACKS HISTORY OF DOGMA. VOL. I
[Greek: To dogmatos onoma tês anthrôpinês echetai boulês te kai gnômês.
Hoti de touth' houtos echei, marturei men hikanôs hê dogmatikê tôn
iatrôn technê, martyrei de kai ta tôn philosophôn kaloumena dogmata.
Hoti de kai ta synklêto doxanta eti kai nun dogmata synklêtou legetai,
oudena agnoein oimai.]
MARCELLUS OF ANCYRA.
Die Christliche Religion hat nichts in der Philosophie zu thun, Sie ist
ein machtiges Wesen für sich, woran die gesunkene und leidende
Menschheit von Zeit zu Zeit sich immer wieder emporgearbeitet hat, und
indem man ihr diese Wirkung zugesteht, ist sie über aller Philosophie
erhaben und bedarf von ihr keine Stütze.
Gesprache mit GOETHE von ECKERMANN,
2 Th p 39.
HISTORY OF DOGMA
BY
DR. ADOLPH HARNACK
ORDINARY PROF. OF CHURCH HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY, AND FELLOW OF THE
ROYAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCE, BERLIN
_TRANSLATED FROM THE THIRD GERMAN EDITION_
BY
NEIL BUCHANAN
VOL. I.
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1901
VORWORT ZUR ENGLISCHEN AUSGABE.
Ein theologisches Buch erhält erst dadurch einen Platz in der
Weltlitteratur, dass es Deutsch und Englisch gelesen werden kann. Diese
beiden Sprachen zusammen haben auf dem Gebiete der Wissenschaft vom
Christenthum das Lateinische abgelöst. Es ist mir daher eine grosse
Freude, dass mein Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte in das Englische
übersetzt worden ist, und ich sage dem Uebersetzer sowie den Verlegern
meinen besten Dank.
Der schwierigste Theil der Dogmengeschichte ist ihr Anfang, nicht nur
weil in dem Anfang die Keime für alle späteren Entwickelungen liegen,
und daher ein Beobachtungsfehler beim Beginn die Richtigkeit der ganzen
folgenden Darstellung bedroht, sondern auch desshalb, weil die Auswahl
des wichtigsten Stoffs aus der Geschichte des Urchristenthums und der
biblischen Theologie ein schweres Problem ist. Der Eine wird finden,
dass ich zu viel in das Buch aufgenommen habe, und der Andere zu
wenig--vielleicht haben Beide recht; ich kann dagegen nur anführen, dass
sich mir die getroffene Auswahl nach wiederholtem Nachdenken und
Experimentiren auf's Neue erprobt hat.
Wer ein theologisches Buch aufschlägt, fragt gewöhnlich zuerst nach dem
"Standpunkt" des Verfassers. Bei geschichtlichen Darstellungen sollte
man so nicht fragen. Hier handelt es sich darum, ob der Verfasser einen
Sinn hat für den Gegenstand den er darstellt, ob er Originales und
Abgeleitetes zu unterscheiden versteht, ob er seinen Stoff volkommen
kennt, ob er sich der Grenzen des geschichtlichen Wissens bewusst ist,
und ob er wahrhaftig ist. Diese Forderungen enthalten den kategorischen
Imperativ für den Historiker; aber nur indem man rastlos an sich selber
arbeitet, sind sie zu erfullen,--so ist jede geschichtliche Darstellung
eine ethische Aufgabe. Der Historiker soll in jedem Sinn _treu_ sein: ob
er das gewesen ist, darnach soll mann fragen.
_Berlin_, am 1. Mai, 1894.
ADOLF HARNACK.
THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION.
No theological book can obtain a place in the literature of the world
unless it can be read both in German and in English. These two languages
combined have taken the place of Latin in the sphere of Christian
Science. I am therefore greatly pleased to learn that my "History of
Dogma" has been translated into English, and I offer my warmest thanks
both to the translator and to the publishers.
The most difficult part of the history of dogma is the beginning, not
only because it contains the germs of all later developments, and
therefore an error in observation here endangers the correctness of the
whole following account, but also because the selection of the most
important material from the history of primitive Christianity and
biblical theology is a hard problem. Some will think that I have
admitted too much into the book, others too little. Perhaps both are
right. I can only reply that after repeated consideration and experiment
I continue to be satisfied with my selection.
In taking up a theological book we are in the habit of enquiring first
of all as to the "stand-point" of the Author. In a historical work there
is no room for such enquiry. The question here is, whether the Author is
in sympathy with the subject about which he writes, whether he can
distinguish original elements from those that are derived, whether he
has a thorough acquaintance with his material, whether he is conscious
of the limits of historical knowledge, and whether he is truthful. These
requirements constitute the categorical imperative for the historian:
but they can only be fulfilled by an unwearied self-discipline. Hence
every historical study is an ethical task. The historian ought to be
faithful in every sense of the word; whether he has been so or not is
the question on which his readers have to decide.
_Berlin_, 1st May, 1894.
ADOLF HARNACK.
FROM THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
The task of describing the genesis of ecclesiastical dogma which I have
attempted to perform in the following pages, has hitherto been proposed
by very few scholars, and, properly speaking, undertaken by one only. I
must therefore crave the indulgence of those acquainted with the subject
for an attempt which no future historian of dogma can avoid.
At first I meant to confine myself to narrower limits, but I was unable
to carry out that intention, because the new arrangement of the material
required a more detailed justification. Yet no one will find in the
book, which presupposes the knowledge of Church history so far as it is
given in the ordinary manuals, any repertory of the theological thought
of Christian antiquity. The diversity of Christian ideas, or of ideas
closely related to Christianity, was very great in the first centuries.
For that very reason a selection was necessary; but it was required,
above all, by the aim of the work. The history of dogma has to give an
account, only of those doctrines of Christian writers which were
authoritative in wide circles, or which furthered the advance of the
development; otherwise it would become a collection of monographs, and
thereby lose its proper value. I have endeavoured to subordinate
everything to the aim of exhibiting the development which led to the
ecclesiastical dogmas, and therefore have neither, for example,
communicated the details of the gnostic systems, nor brought forward in
detail the theological ideas of Clemens Romanus, Ignatius, etc. Even a
history of Paulinism will be sought for in the book in vain. It is a
task by itself, to trace the aftereffects of the theology of Paul in the
post-Apostolic age. The History of Dogma can only furnish fragments
here; for it is not consistent with its task to give an accurate account
of the history of a theology the effects of which were at first very
limited. It is certainly no easy matter to determine what was
authoritative in wide circles at the time when dogma was first being
developed, and I may confess that I have found the working out of the
third chapter of the first book very difficult. But I hope that the
severe limitation in the material will be of service to the subject. If
the result of this limitation should be to lead students to read
connectedly the manual which has grown out of my lectures, my highest
wish will be gratified.
There can be no great objection to the appearance of a text-book on the
history of dogma at the present time. We now know in what direction we
have to work; but we still want a history of Christian theological ideas
in their relation to contemporary philosophy. Above all, we have not got
an exact knowledge of the Hellenistic philosophical terminologies in
their development up to the fourth century. I have keenly felt this
want, which can only be remedied by well-directed common labour. I have
made a plentiful use of the controversial treatise of Celsus against
Christianity, of which little use has hitherto been made for the history
of dogma. On the other hand, except in a few cases, I have deemed it
inadmissible to adduce parallel passages, easy to be got, from Philo,
Seneca, Plutarch, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Porphyry, etc.; for only a
comparison strictly carried out would have been of value here. I have
been able neither to borrow such from others, nor to furnish it myself.
Yet I have ventured to submit my work, because, in my opinion, it is
possible to prove the dependence of dogma on the Greek spirit, without
being compelled to enter into a discussion of all the details.
The Publishers of the Encyclopædia Britannica have allowed me to print
here, in a form but slightly altered, the articles on Neoplatonism and
Manichæism which I wrote for their work, and for this I beg to thank
them.
It is now eighty-three years since my grandfather, Gustav Ewers, edited
in German the excellent manual on the earliest history of dogma by
Münter, and thereby got his name associated with the history of the
founding of the new study. May the work of the grandson be found not
unworthy of the clear and disciplined mind which presided over the
beginnings of the young science.
_Giessen_, 1st August, 1885.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
In the two years that have passed since the appearance of the first
edition I have steadily kept in view the improvement of this work, and
have endeavoured to learn from the reviews of it that have appeared. I
owe most to the study of Weizsäcker's work, on the Apostolic Age, and
his notice of the first edition of this volume in the Göttinger gelehrte
Anzeigen, 1886, No. 21. The latter, in several decisive passages
concerning the general conception, drew my attention to the fact that I
had emphasised certain points too strongly, but had not given due
prominence to others of equal importance, while not entirely overlooking
them. I have convinced myself that these hints were, almost throughout,
well founded, and have taken pains to meet them in the new edition. I
have also learned from Heinrici's commentary on the Second Epistle to
the Corinthians, and from Bigg's "Lectures on the Christian Platonists
of Alexandria." Apart from these works there has appeared very little
that could be of significance for my historical account; but I have once
more independently considered the main problems, and in some cases,
after repeated reading of the sources, checked my statements, removed
mistakes and explained what had been too briefly stated. Thus, in
particular, Chapter II. §§ 1-3 of the "Presuppositions", also the Third
Chapter of the First Book (especially Section 6), also in the Second
Book, Chapter I. and Chapter II. (under B), the Third Chapter
(Supplement 3 and excursus on "Catholic and Romish"), the Fifth Chapter
(under 1 and 3) and the Sixth Chapter (under 2) have been subjected to
changes and greater additions. Finally, a new excursus has been added on
the various modes of conceiving pre-existence, and in other respects
many things have been improved in detail. The size of the book has
thereby been increased by about fifty pages. As I have been
misrepresented by some as one who knew not how to appreciate the
uniqueness of the Gospel history and the evangelic faith, while others
have conversely reproached me with making the history of dogma proceed
from an "apostasy" from the Gospel to Hellenism, I have taken pains to
state my opinions on both these points as clearly as possible. In doing
so I have only wrought out the hints which were given in the first
edition, and which, as I supposed, were sufficient for readers. But it
is surely a reasonable desire when I request the critics in reading the
paragraphs which treat of the "Presuppositions", not to forget how
difficult the questions there dealt with are, both in themselves and
from the nature of the sources, and how exposed to criticism the
historian is who attempts to unfold his position towards them in a few
pages. As is self-evident, the centre of gravity of the book lies in
that which forms its subject proper, in the account of the origin of
dogma within the Græco-Roman empire. But one should not on that account,
as many have done, pass over the beginning which lies before the
beginning, or arbitrarily adopt a starting-point of his own; for
everything here depends on where and how one begins. I have not
therefore been able to follow the well-meant counsel to simply strike
out the "Presuppositions."
I would gladly have responded to another advice to work up the notes
into the text; but I would then have been compelled to double the size
of some chapters. The form of this book, in many respects awkward, may
continue as it is so long as it represents the difficulties by which the
subject is still pressed. When they have been removed--and the smallest
number of them lie in the subject matter--I will gladly break up this
form of the book and try to give it another shape. For the friendly
reception given to it I have to offer my heartiest thanks. But against
those who, believing themselves in possession of a richer view of the
history here related, have called my conception meagre, I appeal to the
beautiful words of Tertullian; "Malumus in scripturis minus, si forte,
sapere quam contra."
_Marburg_, 24th December, 1887.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.
In the six years that have passed since the appearance of the second
edition I have continued to work at the book, and have made use of the
new sources and investigations that have appeared during this period, as
well as corrected and extended my account in many passages. Yet I have
not found it necessary to make many changes in the second half of the
work. The increase of about sixty pages is almost entirely in the first
half.
_Berlin_, 31st December, 1893
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY DIVISION.
CHAPTER I.--PROLEGOMENA TO THE STUDY OF THE HISTORY OF DOGMA
§ 1. The Idea and Task of the History of Dogma
Definition
Limits and Divisions
Dogma and Theology
Factors in the formation of Dogma
Explanation as to the conception and task of the History of Dogma
§ 2. History of the History of Dogma
The Early, the Mediæval, and the Roman Catholic Church
The Reformers and the 17th Century
Mosheim, Walch, Ernesti
Lessing, Semler, Lange, Münscher, Baumgarten-Crusius, Meier Baur,
Neander, Kliefoth, Thomasius,
Nitzsch, Ritschl, Renan, Loofs
CHAPTER II.--THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF THE HISTORY OF DOGMA
§ 1. Introductory
The Gospel and the Old Testament
The Detachment of the Christians from the Jewish Church
The Church and the Græco-Roman World
The Greek spirit an element of the Ecclesiastical Doctrine of Faith
The Elements connecting Primitive Christianity and the growing Catholic
Church
The Presuppositions of the origin of the Apostolic Catholic Doctrine of
Faith
§ 2. The Gospel of Jesus Christ according to His own Testimony
concerning Himself
Fundamental Features
Details
Supplements
Literature
§ 3. The Common Preaching concerning Jesus Christ in the first
generation of believers.
General Outline
The faith of the first Disciples
The beginnings of Christology
Conceptions of the Work of Jesus
Belief in the Resurrection
Righteousness and the Law
Paul
The Self-consciousness of being the Church of God
Supplement 1. Universalism
Supplement 2. Questions as to the value of the Law; the four main
tendencies at the close of the Apostolic Age
Supplement 3. The Pauline Theology.
Supplement 4. The Johannine Writings
Supplement 5. The Authorities in the Church
§ 4. The current Exposition of the Old Testament and the Jewish hopes of
the future in their significance for the Earliest types of Christian
preaching
The Rabbinical and Exegetical Methods
The Jewish Apocalyptic literature
Mythologies and poetical ideas, notions of pre-existence and their
application to Messiah
The limits of the explicable Literature
§ 5. The Religious Conceptions and the Religious Philosophy of the
Hellenistic Jews in their significance for the later formulation of the
Gospel
Spiritualising and Moralising of the Jewish Religion
Philo
The Hermeneutic principles of Philo
§ 6. The religious dispositions of the Greeks and Romans in the first
two centuries, and the current Græco-Roman philosophy of religion
The new religious needs and the old worship (Excursus on [Greek: theos])
The System of associations, and the Empire
Philosophy and its acquisitions
Platonic and Stoic Elements in the philosophy of religion
Greek culture and Roman ideas in the Church
The Empire and philosophic schools (the Cynics)
Literature
SUPPLEMENTARY.
(1) The twofold conception of the blessing of Salvation in its
significance for the following period
(2) Obscurity in the origin of the most important Christian ideas and
Ecclesiastical forms
(3) Significance of the Pauline theology for the legitimising and
reformation of the doctrine of the Church in the following period
DIVISION I.--THE GENESIS OF ECCLESIASTICAL DOGMA, OR THE GENESIS OF THE
CATHOLIC APOSTOLIC DOGMATIC THEOLOGY, AND THE FIRST SCIENTIFIC
ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM OF DOCTRINE.
BOOK I.
THE PREPARATION.
CHAPTER I. HISTORICAL SURVEY
CHAPTER II.--THE ELEMENT COMMON TO ALL CHRISTIANS AND THE BREACH WITH
JUDAISM
CHAPTER III. THE COMMON FAITH AND THE BEGINNINGS OF KNOWLEDGE IN GENTILE
CHRISTIANITY AS IT WAS BEING DEVELOPED INTO CATHOLICISM
(1) The Communities and the Church
(2) The Foundations of the Faith; the Old Testament, and the traditions
about Jesus (sayings of Jesus, the _Kerygma_ about Jesus), the
significance of the "Apostolic"
(3) The main articles of Christianity and the conceptions of salvation.
The new law. Eschatology.
(4) The Old Testament as source of the knowledge of faith
(5) The knowledge of God and of the world, estimate of the world
(Demons)
(6) Faith in Jesus Christ
Jesus the Lord.
Jesus the Christ
Jesus the Son of God, the _Theologia Christi_
The Adoptian and the Pneumatic Christology
Ideas of Christ's work
(7) The Worship, the sacred actions, and the organisation of the
Churches
The Worship and Sacrifice
Baptism and the Lord's Supper
The organisation
SUPPLEMENTARY.
The premises of Catholicism
Doctrinal diversities of the Apostolical Fathers
CHAPTER IV.--THE ATTEMPTS OF THE GNOSTICS TO CREATE AN APOSTOLIC
DOGMATIC, AND A CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY; OR THE ACUTE SECULARISING OF
CHRISTIANITY
(1) The conditions for the rise of Gnosticism.
(2) The nature of Gnosticism
(3) History of Gnosticism and the forms in which it appeared
(4) The most important Gnostic doctrines
CHAPTER V.--THE ATTEMPT OF MARCION TO SET ASIDE THE OLD TESTAMENT
FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIANITY, TO PURIFY THE TRADITION AND REFORM
CHRISTENDOM ON THE BASIS OF THE PAULINE GOSPEL
Characterisation of Marcion's attempt
(1) His estimate of the Old Testament and the god of the Jews
(2) The God of the Gospel
(3) The relation of the two Gods according to Marcion. The Gnostic woof
in Marcion's Christianity
(4) The Christology
(5) Eschatology and Ethics
(6) Criticism of the Christian tradition, the Marcionite Church
Remarks
CHAPTER VI.--THE CHRISTIANITY OF JEWISH CHRISTIANS, DEFINITION OF THE
NOTION JEWISH CHRISTIANITY
(1) General conditions for the development of Jewish Christianity
(2) Jewish Christianity and the Catholic Church, insignificance of
Jewish Christianity, "Judaising" in Catholicism
Alleged documents of Jewish Christianity (Apocalypse of John, Acts of
the Apostles, Epistle to the Hebrews, Hegesippus)
History of Jewish Christianity
The witness of Justin
The witness of Celsus
The witness of Irenæus and Origen
The witness of Eusebius and Jerome
The Gnostic Jewish Christianity
The Elkesaites and Ebionites of Epiphanius
Estimate of the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions and Homilies, their want
of significance for the question as to the genesis of Catholicism and
its doctrine
APPENDICES.
I. On the different notions of Pre-existence.
II. On Liturgies and the genesis of Dogma.
III. On Neoplatonism Literature
I
PROLEGOMENA TO THE DISCIPLINE OF THE HISTORY OF DOGMA.
II
THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF THE HISTORY OF DOGMA.
CHAPTER I
PROLEGOMENA TO THE DISCIPLINE OF THE HISTORY OF DOGMA.
§ 1. _The Idea and Task of the History of Dogma_.
1. The History of Dogma is a discipline of general Church History, which
has for its object the dogmas of the Church. These dogmas are the
doctrines of the Christian faith logically formulated and expressed for
scientific and apologetic purposes, the contents of which are a
knowledge of God, of the world, and of the provisions made by God for
man's salvation. The Christian Churches teach them as the truths
revealed in Holy Scripture, the acknowledgment of which is the condition
of the salvation which religion promises. But as the adherents of the
Christian religion had not these dogmas from the beginning, so far, at
least, as they form a connected system, the business of the history of
dogma is, in the first place, to ascertain the origin of Dogmas (of
Dogma), and then secondly, to describe their development (their
variations).
2. We cannot draw any hard and fast line between the time of the origin
and that of the development of dogma; they rather shade off into one
another. But we shall have to look for the final point of division at
the time when an article of faith logically formulated and
scientifically expressed, was first raised to the _articulus
constitutivus ecclesiæ_, and as such was universally enforced by the
Church. Now that first happened when the doctrine of Christ, as the
pre-existent and personal Logos of God, had obtained acceptance
everywhere in the confederated Churches as the revealed and fundamental
doctrine of faith, that is, about the end of the third century or the
beginning of the fourth. We must therefore, in our account, take this as
the final point of division.[1] As to the development of dogma, it seems
to have closed in the Eastern Church with the seventh Oecumenical
Council (787). After that time no further dogmas were set up in the East
as revealed truths. As to the Western Catholic, that is, the Romish
Church, a new dogma was promulgated as late as the year 1870, which
claims to be, and in point of form really is, equal in dignity to the
old dogmas. Here, therefore, the History of Dogma must extend to the
present time. Finally, as regards the Protestant Churches, they are a
subject of special difficulty in the sphere of the history of dogma; for
at the present moment there is no agreement within these Churches as to
whether, and in what sense, dogmas (as the word was used in the ancient
Church) are valid. But even if we leave the present out of account and
fix our attention on the Protestant Churches of the 16th century, the
decision is difficult. For, on the one hand, the Protestant faith, the
Lutheran as well as the Reformed (and that of Luther no less), presents
itself as a doctrine of faith which, resting on the Catholic canon of
scripture, is, in point of form, quite analogous to the Catholic
doctrine of faith, has a series of dogmas in common with it, and only
differs in a few. On the other hand, Protestantism has taken its stand
in principle on the Gospel exclusively, and declared its readiness at
all times to test all doctrines afresh by a true understanding of the
Gospel. The Reformers, however, in addition to this, began to unfold a
conception of Christianity which might be described, in contrast with
the Catholic type of religion, as a new conception, and which indeed
draws support from the old dogmas, but changes their original
significance materially and formally. What this conception was may still
be ascertained from those writings received by the Church, the
Protestant symbols of the 16th century, in which the larger part of the
traditionary dogmas are recognised as the appropriate expression of the
Christian religion, nay, as the Christian religion itself.[2]
Accordingly, it can neither be maintained that the expression of the
Christian faith in the form of dogmas is abolished in the Protestant
Churches--the very acceptance of the Catholic canon as the revealed
record of faith is opposed to that view--nor that its meaning has
remained absolutely unchanged.[3] The history of dogma has simply to
recognise this state of things, and to represent it exactly as it lies
before us in the documents.
But the point to which the historian should advance here still remains
an open question. If we adhere strictly to the definition of the idea of
dogma given above, this much is certain, that dogmas were no longer set
up after the Formula of Concord, or in the case of the Reformed Church,
after the decrees of the Synod of Dort. It cannot, however, be
maintained that they have been set aside in the centuries that have
passed since then; for apart from some Protestant National and
independent Churches, which are too insignificant and whose future is
too uncertain to be taken into account here, the ecclesiastical
tradition of the 16th century, and along with it the tradition of the
early Church, have not been abrogated in authoritative form. Of course,
changes of the greatest importance with regard to doctrine have appeared
everywhere in Protestantism from the 17th century to the present day.
But these changes cannot in any sense be taken into account in a history
of dogma, because they have not as yet attained a form valid for the
Church. However we may judge of these changes, whether we regard them as
corruptions or improvements, or explain the want of fixity in which the
Protestant Churches find themselves, as a situation that is forced on
them, or the situation that is agreeable to them and for which they are
adapted, in no sense is there here a development which could be
described as history of dogma.
These facts would seem to justify those who, like Thomasius and Schmid,
carry the history of dogma in Protestantism to the Formula of Concord,
or, in the case of the Reformed Church, to the decrees of the Synod of
Dort. But it may be objected to this boundary line; (1) That those
symbols have at all times attained only a partial authority in
Protestantism; (2) That as noted above, the dogmas, that is, the
formulated doctrines of faith have different meanings on different
matters in the Protestant and in the Catholic Churches. Accordingly, it
seems advisable within the frame-work of the history of dogma, to
examine Protestantism only so far as this is necessary for obtaining a
knowledge of its deviations from the Catholic dogma materially and
formally, that is, to ascertain the original position of the Reformers
with regard to the doctrine of the Church, a position which is beset
with contradictions. The more accurately we determine the relation of
the Reformers to Catholicism, the more intelligible will be the
developments which Protestantism has passed through in the course of its
history. But these developments themselves (retrocession and advance) do
not belong to the sphere of the history of dogma, because they stand in
no comparable relation to the course of the history of dogma within the
Catholic Church. As history of Protestant doctrines they form a peculiar
independent province of Church history.
As to the division of the history of dogma, it consists of two main
parts. The first has to describe the origin of dogma, that is, of the
Apostolic Catholic system of doctrine based on the foundation of the
tradition authoritatively embodied in the creeds and Holy scripture, and
extends to the beginning of the fourth century. This may be conveniently
divided into two parts, the first of which will treat of the
preparation, the second of the establishment of the ecclesiastical
doctrine of faith. The second main part, which has to portray the
development of dogma, comprehends three stages. In the first stage the
doctrine of faith appears as Theology and Christology. The Eastern
Church has never got beyond this stage, although it has to a large
extent enriched dogma ritually and mystically (see the decrees of the
seventh council). We will have to shew how the doctrines of faith formed
in this stage have remained for all time in the Church dogmas [Greek:
kat' exochên]. The second stage was initiated by Augustine. The doctrine
of faith appears here on the one side completed, and on the other
re-expressed by new dogmas, which treat of the relation of sin and
grace, freedom and grace, grace and the means of grace. The number and
importance of the dogmas that were, in the middle ages, really fixed
after Augustine's time, had no relation to the range and importance of
the questions which they raised, and which emerged in the course of
centuries in consequence of advancing knowledge, and not less in
consequence of the growing power of the Church. Accordingly, in this
second stage which comprehends the whole of the middle ages, the Church
as an institution kept believers together in a larger measure than was
possible to dogmas. These in their accepted form were too poor to enable
them to be the expression of religious conviction and the regulator of
Church life. On the other hand, the new decisions of Theologians,
Councils and Popes, did not yet possess the authority which could have
made them incontestable truths of faith. The third stage begins with the
Reformation, which compelled the Church to fix its faith on the basis of
the theological work of the middle ages. Thus arose the Roman Catholic
dogma which has found in the Vatican decrees its provisional settlement.
This Roman Catholic dogma, as it was formulated at Trent, was moulded in
express opposition to the Theses of the Reformers. But these Theses
themselves represent a peculiar conception of Christianity, which has
its root in the theology of Paul and Augustine, and includes either
explicitly or implicitly a revision of the whole ecclesiastical
tradition, and therefore of dogma also. The History of Dogma in this
last stage, therefore, has a twofold task. It has, on the one hand, to
present the Romish dogma as a product of the ecclesiastical development
of the middle ages under the influence of the Reformation faith which
was to be rejected, and on the other hand, to portray the conservative
new formation which we have in original Protestantism, and determine its
relation to dogma. A closer examination, however, shews that in none of
the great confessions does religion live in dogma, as of old. Dogma
everywhere has fallen into the background; in the Eastern Church it has
given place to ritual, in the Roman Church to ecclesiastical
instructions, in the Protestant Churches, so far as they are mindful of
their origin, to the Gospel. At the same time, however, the paradoxical
fact is unmistakable that dogma as such is nowhere at this moment so
powerful as in the Protestant Churches, though by their history they are
furthest removed from it. Here, however, it comes into consideration as
an object of immediate religious interest, which, strictly speaking, in
the Catholic Church is not the case.[4] The Council of Trent was simply
wrung from the Romish Church, and she has made the dogmas of that
council in a certain sense innocuous by the Vatican decrees.[5] In this
sense, it may be said that the period of development of dogma is
altogether closed, and that therefore our discipline requires a
statement such as belongs to a series of historical phenomena that has
been completed.
3. The church has recognised her faith, that is religion itself, in her
dogmas. Accordingly, one very important business of the History of Dogma
is to exhibit the unity that exists in the dogmas of a definite period,
and to shew how the several dogmas are connected with one another and
what leading ideas they express. But, as a matter of course, this
undertaking has its limits in the degree of unanimity which actually
existed in the dogmas of the particular period. It may be shewn without
much difficulty, that a strict though by no means absolute unanimity is
expressed only in the dogmas of the Greek Church. The peculiar character
of the western post-Augustinian ecclesiastical conception of
Christianity, no longer finds a clear expression in dogma, and still
less is this the case with the conception of the Reformers. The reason
of this is that Augustine, as well as Luther, disclosed a new conception
of Christianity, but at the same time appropriated the old dogmas.[6]
But neither Baur's nor Kliefoth's method of writing the history of dogma
has done justice to this fact. Not Baur's, because, notwithstanding the
division into six periods, it sees a uniform process in the development
of dogma, a process which begins with the origin of Christianity and has
run its course, as is alleged, in a strictly logical way. Not
Kliefoth's, because, in the dogmas of the Catholic Church which the East
has never got beyond, it only ascertains the establishment of one
portion of the Christian faith, to which the parts still wanting have
been successively added in later times.[7] In contrast with this, we may
refer to the fact that we can clearly distinguish three styles of
building in the history of dogma, but only three; the style of Origen,
that of Augustine, and that of the Reformers. But the dogma of the
post-Augustinian Church, as well as that of Luther, does not in any way
represent itself as a new building, not even as the mere extension of an
old building, but as a complicated rebuilding, and by no means in
harmony with former styles, because neither Augustine nor Luther ever
dreamed of building independently.[8] This perception leads us to the
most peculiar phenomenon which meets the historian of dogma, and which
must determine his method.
Dogmas arise, develop themselves and are made serviceable to new aims;
this in all cases takes place through Theology. But Theology is
dependent on innumerable factors, above all, on the spirit of the time;
for it lies in the nature of theology that it desires to make its object
intelligible. Dogmas are the product of theology, not inversely; of a
theology of course which, as a rule, was in correspondence with the
faith of the time. The critical view of history teaches this: first we
have the Apologists and Origen, then the councils of Nice and Chalcedon;
first the Scholastics, then the Council of Trent. In consequence of
this, dogma bears the mark of all, the factors on which the theology was
dependent. That is one point. But the moment in which the product of
theology became dogma, the way which led to it must be obscured; for,
according to the conception of the Church, dogma can be nothing else
than the revealed faith itself. Dogma is regarded not as the exponent,
but as the basis of theology, and therefore the product of theology
having passed into dogma limits, and criticises the work of theology
both past and future.[9] That is the second point. It follows from this
that the history of the Christian religion embraces a very complicated
relation of ecclesiastical dogma and theology, and that the
ecclesiastical conception of the significance of theology cannot at all
do justice to this significance. The ecclesiastical scheme which is here
formed and which denotes the utmost concession that can be made to
history, is to the effect that theology gives expression only to the
form of dogma, while so far as it is ecclesiastical theology, it
presupposes the unchanging dogma, i.e., the substance of dogma. But this
scheme, which must always leave uncertain what the form really is, and
what the substance, is in no way applicable to the actual circumstances.
So far, however, as it is itself an article of faith it is an object of
the history of dogma. Ecclesiastical dogma when put on its defence must
at all times take up an ambiguous position towards theology, and
ecclesiastical theology a corresponding position towards dogma; for they
are condemned to perpetual uncertainty as to what they owe each other,
and what they have to fear from each other. The theological Fathers of
dogma have almost without exception failed to escape being condemned by
dogma, either because it went beyond them, or lagged behind their
theology. The Apologists, Origen and Augustine may be cited in support
of this; and even in Protestantism, _mutatis mutandis_, the same thing
has been repeated, as is proved by the fate of Melanchthon and
Schleiermacher. On the other hand, there have been few theologians who
have not shaken some article of the traditional dogma. We are wont to
get rid of these fundamental facts by hypostatising the ecclesiastical
principle or the common ecclesiastical spirit, and by this normal
hypostasis, measuring, approving or condemning the doctrines of the
theologians, unconcerned about the actual conditions and frequently
following a hysteron-proteron. But this is a view of history which
should in justice be left to the Catholic Church, which indeed cannot
dispense with it. The critical history of dogma has, on the contrary, to
shew above all how an ecclesiastical theology has arisen; for it can
only give account of the origin of dogma in connection with this main
question. The horizon must be taken here as wide as possible; for the
question as to the origin of theology can only be answered by surveying
all the relations into which the Christian religion has entered in
naturalising itself in the world and subduing it. When ecclesiastical
dogma has once been created and recognised as an immediate expression of
the Christian religion, the history of dogma has only to take the
history of theology into account so far as it has been active in the
formation of dogma. Yet it must always keep in view the peculiar claim
of dogma to be a criterion and not a product of theology. But it will
also be able to shew how, partly by means of theology and partly by
other means--for dogma is also dependent on ritual, constitution, and
the practical ideals of life, as well as on the letter, whether of
Scripture, or of tradition no longer understood--dogma in its
development and re-expression has continually changed, according to the
conditions under which the Church was placed. If dogma is originally the
formulation of Christian faith as Greek culture understood it and
justified it to itself, then dogma has never indeed lost this character,
though it has been radically modified in later times. It is quite as
important to keep in view the tenacity of dogma as its changes, and in
this respect the Protestant way of writing history, which, here as
elsewhere in the history of the Church, is more disposed to attend to
differences than to what is permanent, has much to learn from the
Catholic. But as the Protestant historian, as far possible, judges of
the progress of development in so far as it agrees with the Gospel in
its documentary form, he is still able to shew, with all deference to
that tenacity, that dogma has been so modified and used to the best
advantage by Augustine and Luther, that its Christian character has in
many respects gained, though in other respects it has become further and
further alienated from that character. In proportion as the traditional
system of dogmas lost its stringency it became richer. In proportion as
it was stripped by Augustine and Luther of its apologetic philosophic
tendency, it was more and more filled with Biblical ideas, though, on
the other hand, it became more full of contradictions and less
impressive.
This outlook, however, has already gone beyond the limits fixed for
these introductory paragraphs and must not be pursued further. To treat
_in abstracto_ of the method of the history of dogma in relation to the
discovery, grouping and interpretation of the material is not to be
recommended; for general rules to preserve the ignorant and half
instructed from overlooking the important, and laying hold of what is
not important, cannot be laid down. Certainly everything depends on the
arrangement of the material; for the understanding of history is to find
the rules according to which the phenomena should be grouped, and every
advance in the knowledge of history is inseparable from an accurate
observance of these rules. We must, above all, be on our guard against
preferring one principle at the expense of another in the interpretation
of the origin and aim of particular dogmas. The most diverse factors
have at all times been at work in the formation of dogmas. Next to the
effort to determine the doctrine of religion according to the _finis
religionis_, the blessing of salvation, the following may have been the
most important. (1) The conceptions and sayings contained in the
canonical scriptures. (2) The doctrinal tradition originating in earlier
epochs of the church, and no longer understood. (3) The needs of worship
and organisation. (4) The effort to adjust the doctrine of religion to
the prevailing doctrinal opinions. (5) Political and social
circumstances. (6) The changing moral ideals of life. (7) The so-called
logical consistency, that is the abstract analogical treatment of one
dogma according to the form of another. (8) The effort to adjust
different tendencies and contradictions in the church. (9) The endeavour
to reject once for all a doctrine regarded as erroneous. (10) The
sanctifying power of blind custom. The method of explaining everything
wherever possible by "the impulse of dogma to unfold itself," must be
given up as unscientific, just as all empty abstractions whatsoever must
be given up as scholastic and mythological. Dogma has had its history in
the individual living man and nowhere else. As soon as one adopts this
statement in real earnest, that mediæval realism must vanish to which a
man so often thinks himself superior while imbedded in it all the time.
Instead of investigating the actual conditions in which believing and
intelligent men have been placed, a system of Christianity has been
constructed from which, as from a Pandora's box, all doctrines which in
course of time have been formed, are extracted, and in this way
legitimised as Christian. The simple fundamental proposition that that
only is Christian which can be established authoritatively by the
Gospel, has never yet received justice in the history of dogma. Even the
following account will in all probability come short in this point; for
in face of a prevailing false tradition the application of a simple
principle to every detail can hardly succeed at the first attempt.
_Explanation as to the Conception and Task of the History of Dogma_.
No agreement as yet prevails with regard to the conception of the
history of dogma. Münscher (Handbuch der Christl. D.G. 3rd ed. I. p. 3
f.) declared that the business of the history of dogma is "To represent
all the changes which the theoretic part of the Christian doctrine of
religion has gone through from its origin up to the present, both in
form and substance," and this definition held sway for a long time. Then
it came to be noted that the question was not about changes that were
accidental, but about those that were historically necessary, that dogma
has a relation to the church, and that it represents a rational
expression of the faith. Emphasis was put sometimes on one of these
elements and sometimes on the other. Baur, in particular, insisted on
the first; V. Hofmann, after the example of Schleiermacher, on the
second, and indeed exclusively (Encyklop. der theol. p. 257 f.: "The
history of dogma is the history of the Church confessing the faith in
words"). Nitzsch (Grundriss der Christl. D.G. I. p. 1) insisted on the
third: "The history of dogma is the scientific account of the origin and
development of the Christian system of doctrine, or that part of
historical theology which presents the history of the expression of the
Christian faith in notions, doctrines and doctrinal systems." Thomasius
has combined the second and third by conceiving the history of dogma as
the history of the development of the ecclesiastical system of doctrine.
But even this conception is not sufficiently definite, inasmuch as it
fails to do complete justice to the special peculiarity of the subject.
Ancient and modern usage does certainly seem to allow the word dogma to
be applied to particular doctrines, or to a uniform system of doctrine,
to fundamental truths, or to opinions, to theoretical propositions or
practical rules, to statements of belief that have not been reached by a
process of reasoning, as well as to those that bear the marks of such a
process. But this uncertainty vanishes on closer examination. We then
see that there is always an authority at the basis of dogma, which gives
it to those who recognise that authority the signification of a
fundamental truth "_quæ sine scelere prodi non poterit_" (Cicero Quæst.
Acad. IV. 9). But therewith at the same time is introduced into the idea
of dogma a social element (see Biedermann, Christl. Dogmatik. 2. Edit.
I. p. 2 f.); the confessors of one and the same dogma form a community.
There can be no doubt that these two elements are also demonstrable in
Christian dogma, and therefore we must reject all definitions of the
history of dogma which do not take them into account. If we define it as
the history of the understanding of Christianity by itself, or as the
history of the changes of the theoretic part of the doctrine of religion
or the like, we shall fail to do justice to the idea of dogma in its
most general acceptation. We cannot describe as dogmas, doctrines such
as the Apokatastasis, or the Kenosis of the Son of God, without coming
into conflict with the ordinary usage of language and with
ecclesiastical law.
If we start, therefore, from the supposition that Christian dogma is an
ecclesiastical doctrine which presupposes revelation as its authority,
and therefore claims to be strictly binding, we shall fail to bring out
its real nature with anything like completeness. That which Protestants
and Catholics call dogmas, are not only ecclesiastical doctrines, but
they are also: (1) theses expressed in abstract terms, forming together
a unity, and fixing the contents of the Christian religion as a
knowledge of God, of the world, and of the sacred history under the
aspect of a proof of the truth. But (2) they have also emerged at a
definite stage of the history of the Christian religion; they show in
their conception as such, and in many details, the influence of that
stage, viz., the Greek period, and they have preserved this character in
spite of all their reconstructions and additions in after periods. This
view of dogma cannot be shaken by the fact that particular historical
facts, miraculous or not miraculous are described as dogmas; for here
they are regarded as such, only in so far as they have got the value of
doctrines which have been inserted in the complete structure of
doctrines and are, on the other hand, members of a chain of proofs,
viz., proofs from prophecy.
But as soon as we perceive this, the parallel between the ecclesiastical
dogmas and those of ancient schools of philosophy appears to be in point
of form complete. The only difference is that revelation is here put as
authority in the place of human knowledge, although the later
philosophic schools appealed to revelation also. The theoretical as well
as the practical doctrines which embraced the peculiar conception of the
world and the ethics of the school, together with their rationale, were
described in these schools as dogmas. Now, in so far as the adherents of
the Christian religion possess dogmas in this sense, and form a
community which has gained an understanding of its religious faith by
analysis and by scientific definition and grounding, they appear as a
great philosophic school in the ancient sense of the word. But they
differ from such a school in so far as they have always eliminated the
process of thought which has led to the dogma, looking upon the whole
system of dogma as a revelation and therefore, even in respect of the
reception of the dogma, at least at first, they have taken account not
of the powers of human understanding, but of the Divine enlightenment
which is bestowed on all the willing and the virtuous. In later times,
indeed, the analogy was far more complete, in so far as the Church
reserved the full possession of dogma to a circle of consecrated and
initiated individuals. Dogmatic Christianity is therefore a definite
stage in the history of the development of Christianity. It corresponds
to the antique mode of thought, but has nevertheless continued to a very
great extent in the following epochs, though subject to great
transformations. Dogmatic Christianity stands between Christianity as
the religion of the Gospel, presupposing a personal experience and
dealing with disposition and conduct, and Christianity as a religion of
cultus, sacraments, ceremonial and obedience, in short of superstition,
and it can be united with either the one or the other. In itself and in
spite of all its mysteries it is always intellectual Christianity, and
therefore there is always the danger here that as knowledge it may
supplant religious faith, or connect it with a doctrine of religion,
instead of with God and a living experience.
If then the discipline of the history of dogma is to be what its name
purports, its object is the very dogma which is so formed, and its
fundamental problem will be to discover how it has arisen. In the
history of the canon our method of procedure has for long been to ask
first of all, how the canon originated, and then to examine the changes
through which it has passed. We must proceed in the same way with the
history of dogma, of which the history of the canon is simply a part.
Two objections will be raised against this. In the first place, it will
be said that from the very first the Christian religion has included a
definite religious faith as well as a definite ethic, and that therefore
Christian dogma is as original as Christianity itself, so that there can
be no question about a genesis, but only as to a development or
alteration of dogma within the Church. Again it will be said, in the
second place, that dogma as defined above, has validity only for a
definite epoch in the history of the Church, and that it is therefore
quite impossible to write a comprehensive history of dogma in the sense
we have indicated.
As to the first objection, there can of course be no doubt that the
Christian religion is founded on a message, the contents of which are a
definite belief in God and in Jesus Christ whom he has sent, and that
the promise of salvation is attached to this belief. But faith in the
Gospel and the later dogmas of the Church are not related to each other
as theme and the way in which it is worked out, any more than the dogma
of the New Testament canon is only the explication of the original
reliance of Christians on the word of their Lord and the continuous
working of the Spirit; but in these later dogmas an entirely new element
has entered into the conception of religion. The message of religion
appears here clothed in a knowledge of the world and of the ground of
the world which had already been obtained without any reference to it,
and therefore religion itself has here become a doctrine which has,
indeed, its certainty in the Gospel, but only in part derives its
contents from it, and which can also be appropriated by such as are
neither poor in spirit nor weary and heavy laden. Now, it may of course
be shewn that a philosophic conception of the Christian religion is
possible, and began to make its appearance from the very first, as in
the case of Paul. But the Pauline gnosis has neither been simply
identified with the Gospel by Paul himself (1 Cor. III. 2 f.; XII. 3;
Phil. I. 18) nor is it analogous to the later dogma, not to speak of
being identical with it. The characteristic of this dogma is that it
represents itself in no sense as foolishness, but as wisdom, and at the
same time desires to be regarded as the contents of revelation itself.
Dogma in its conception and development is a work of the Greek spirit on
the soil of the Gospel. By comprehending in itself and giving excellent
expression to the religious conceptions contained in Greek philosophy
and the Gospel, together with its Old Testament basis; by meeting the
search for a revelation as well as the desire for a universal knowledge;
by subordinating itself to the aim of the Christian religion to bring a
Divine life to humanity as well as to the aim of philosophy to know the
world: it became the instrument by which the Church conquered the
ancient world and educated the modern nations. But this dogma--one
cannot but admire its formation or fail to regard it as a great
achievement of the spirit, which never again in the history of
Christianity has made itself at home with such freedom and boldness in
religion--is the product of a comparatively long history which needs to
be deciphered; for it is obscured by the completed dogma. The Gospel
itself is not dogma, for belief in the Gospel provides room for
knowledge only so far as it is a state of feeling and course of action,
that is a definite form of life. Between practical faith in the Gospel
and the historico-critical account of the Christian religion and its
history, a third element can no longer be thrust in without its coming
into conflict with faith, or with the historical data--the only thing
left is the practical task of defending the faith. But a third element
has been thrust into the history of this religion, viz., dogma, that is,
the philosophical means which were used in early times for the purpose
of making the Gospel intelligible have been fused with the contents of
the Gospel and raised to dogma. This dogma, next to the Church, has
become a real world power, the pivot in the history of the Christian
religion. The transformation of the Christian faith into dogma is indeed
no accident, but has its reason in the spiritual character of the
Christian religion, which at all times will feel the need of a
scientific apologetic.[10] But the question here is not as to something
indefinite and general, but as to the definite dogma formed in the first
centuries, and binding even yet.
This already touches on the second objection which was raised above,
that dogma, in the given sense of the word, was too narrowly conceived,
and could not in this conception be applied throughout the whole history
of the Church. This objection would only be justified, if our task were
to carry the history of the development of dogma through the whole
history of the Church. But the question is just whether we are right in
proposing such a task. The Greek Church has no history of dogma after
the seven great Councils, and it is incomparably more important to
recognise this fact than to register the theologoumena which were later
on introduced by individual Bishops and scholars in the East, who were
partly influenced by the West. Roman Catholicism in its dogmas, though,
as noted above, these at present do not very clearly characterise it, is
to-day essentially--that is, so far as it is religion--what it was 1500
years ago, viz., Christianity as understood by the ancient world. The
changes which dogma has experienced in the course of its development in
western Catholicism are certainly deep and radical: they have, in point
of fact, as has been indicated in the text above, modified the position
of the Church towards Christianity as dogma. But as the Catholic Church
herself maintains that she adheres to Christianity in the old dogmatic
sense, this claim of hers cannot be contested. She has embraced new
things and changed her relations to the old, but still preserved the
old. But she has further developed new dogmas according to the scheme of
the old. The decrees of Trent and of the Vatican are formally analogous
to the old dogmas. Here, then, a history of dogma may really be carried
forward to the present day without thereby shewing that the definition
of dogma given above is too narrow to embrace the new doctrines.
Finally, as to Protestantism, it has been briefly explained above why
the changes in Protestant systems of doctrine are not to be taken up
into the history of dogma. Strictly speaking, dogma, as dogma, has had
no development in Protestantism, inasmuch as a secret note of
interrogation has been here associated with it from the very beginning.
But the old dogma has continued to be a power in it, because of its
tendency to look back and to seek for authorities in the past, and
partly in the original unmodified form. The dogmas of the fourth and
fifth centuries have more influence to-day in wide circles of Protestant
Churches than all the doctrines which are concentrated around
justification by faith. Deviations from the latter are borne
comparatively easy, while as a rule, deviations from the former are
followed by notice to quit the Christian communion, that is, by
excommunication. The historian of to-day would have no difficulty in
answering the question whether the power of Protestantism as a Church
lies at present in the elements which it has in common with the old
dogmatic Christianity, or in that by which it is distinguished from it.
Dogma, that is to say, that type of Christianity which was formed in
ecclesiastical antiquity, has not been suppressed even in Protestant
Churches, has really not been modified or replaced by a new conception
of the Gospel. But, on the other hand, who could deny that the
Reformation began to disclose such a conception, and that this new
conception was related in a very different way to the traditional dogma
from that of the new propositions of Augustine to the dogmas handed down
to him? Who could further call in question that, in consequence of the
reforming impulse in Protestantism, the way was opened up for a
conception which does not identify Gospel and dogma, which does not
disfigure the latter by changing or paring down its meaning while
failing to come up to the former? But the historian who has to describe
the formation and changes of dogma can take no part in these
developments. It is a task by itself more rich and comprehensive than
that of the historian of dogma, to portray the diverse conceptions that
have been formed of the Christian religion, to portray how strong men
and weak men, great and little minds have explained the Gospel outside
and inside the frame-work of dogma, and how under the cloak, or in the
province of dogma, the Gospel has had its own peculiar history. But the
more limited theme must not be put aside. For it can in no way be
conducive to historical knowledge to regard as indifferent the peculiar
character of the expression of Christian faith as dogma, and allow the
history of dogma to be absorbed in a general history of the various
conceptions of Christianity. Such a "liberal" view would not agree
either with the teaching of history or with the actual situation of the
Protestant Churches of the present day: for it is, above all, of crucial
importance to perceive that it is a peculiar stage in the development of
the human spirit which is described by dogma. On this stage, parallel
with dogma and inwardly united with it, stands a definite psychology,
metaphysic and natural philosophy, as well as a view of history of a
definite type. This is the conception of the world obtained by antiquity
after almost a thousand years' labour, and it is the same connection of
theoretic perceptions and practical ideals which it accomplished. This
stage on which the Christian religion has also entered we have in no way
as yet transcended, though science has raised itself above it.[11] But
the Christian religion, as it was not born of the culture of the ancient
world, is not for ever chained to it. The form and the new contents
which the Gospel received when it entered into that world have only the
same guarantee of endurance as that world itself. And that endurance is
limited. We must indeed be on our guard against taking episodes for
decisive crises. But every episode carries us forward, and
retrogressions are unable to undo that progress. The Gospel since the
Reformation, in spite of retrograde movements which have not been
wanting, is working itself out of the forms which it was once compelled
to assume, and a true comprehension of its history will also contribute
to hasten this process.
1. The definition given above, p. 17: "Dogma in its conception and
development is a work of the Greek spirit on the soil of the Gospel,"
has frequently been distorted by my critics, as they have suppressed the
words "on the soil of the Gospel." But these words are decisive. The
foolishness of identifying dogma and Greek philosophy never entered my
mind; on the contrary, the peculiarity of ecclesiastical dogma seemed to
me to lie in the very fact that, on the one hand, it gave expression to
Christian Monotheism and the central significance of the person of
Christ, and, on the other hand, comprehended this religious faith and
the historical knowledge connected with it in a philosophic system. I
have given quite as little ground for the accusation that I look upon
the whole development of the history of dogma as a pathological process
within the history of the Gospel. I do not even look upon the history of
the origin of the Papacy as such a process, not to speak of the history
of dogma. But the perception that "everything must happen as it has
happened" does not absolve the historian from the task of ascertaining
the powers which have formed the history, and distinguishing between
original and later, permanent and transitory, nor from the duty of
stating his own opinion.
2. Sabatier has published a thoughtful treatise on "Christian Dogma: its
Nature and its Development." I agree with the author in this, that in
dogma--rightly understood--two elements are to be distinguished, the
religious proceeding from the experience of the individual or from the
religious spirit of the Church, and the intellectual or theoretic. But I
regard as false the statement which he makes, that the intellectual
element in dogma is only the symbolical expression of religious
experience. The intellectual element is itself again to be
differentiated. On the one hand, it certainly is the attempt to give
expression to religious feeling, and so far is symbolical; but, on the
other hand, within the Christian religion it belongs to the essence of
the thing itself, inasmuch as this not only awakens feeling, but has a
quite definite content which determines and should determine the
feeling. In this sense Christianity without dogma, that is, without a
clear expression of its content, is inconceivable. But that does not
justify the unchangeable permanent significance of that dogma which has
once been formed under definite historical conditions.
3. The word "dogmas" (Christian dogmas) is, if I see correctly, used
among us in three different senses, and hence spring all manner of
misconceptions and errors. By dogmas are denoted: (1) The historical
doctrines of the Church. (2) The historical facts on which the Christian
religion is reputedly or actually founded. (3) Every definite exposition
of the contents of Christianity is described as dogmatic. In contrast
with this the attempt has been made in the following presentation to use
dogma only in the sense first stated. When I speak, therefore, of the
decomposition of dogma, I mean by that, neither the historical facts
which really establish the Christian religion, nor do I call in question
the necessity for the Christian and the Church to have a creed. My
criticism refers not to the general genus dogma, but to the species,
viz., the defined dogma, as it was formed on the soil of the ancient
world, and is still a power, though under modifications.
2. _History of the History of Dogma._
The history of dogma as a historical and critical discipline had its
origin in the last century through the works of Mosheim, C. W. F. Walch,
Ernesti, Lessing and Semler. Lange gave to the world in 1796 the first
attempt at a history of dogma as a special branch of theological study.
The theologians of the Early and Mediæval Churches have only transmitted
histories of Heretics and of Literature, regarding dogma as
unchangeable.[12] This presupposition is so much a part of the nature of
Catholicism that it has been maintained till the present day. It is
therefore impossible for a Catholic to make a free, impartial and
scientific investigation of the history of dogma.[13] There have,
indeed, at almost all times before the Reformation, been critical
efforts in the domain of Christianity, especially of western
Christianity, efforts which in some cases have led to the proof of the
novelty and inadmissibility of particular dogmas. But, as a rule, these
efforts were of the nature of a polemic against the dominant Church.
They scarcely prepared the way for, far less produced a historical view
of, dogmatic tradition.[14] The progress of the sciences[15] and the
conflict with Protestantism could here, for the Catholic Church, have no
other effect than that of leading to the collecting, with great
learning, of material for the history of dogma, the establishing of the
_consensus patrum et doctorum_, the exhibition of the necessity of a
continuous explication of dogma, and the description of the history of
heresies pressing in from without, regarded now as unheard-of novelties,
and again as old enemies in new masks. The modern Jesuit-Catholic
historian indeed exhibits, in certain circumstances, a manifest
indifference to the task of establishing the _semper idem_ in the faith
of the Church, but this indifference is at present regarded with
disfavour, and, besides, is only an apparent one, as the continuous
though inscrutable guidance of the Church by the infallible teaching of
the Pope is the more emphatically maintained.[16]
It may be maintained that the Reformation opened the way for a critical
treatment of the history of dogma.[17] But even in Protestant Churches,
at first, historical investigations remained under the ban of the
confessional system of doctrine and were used only for polemics.[18]
Church history itself up to the 18th century was not regarded as a
theological discipline in the strict sense of the word, and the history
of dogma existed only within the sphere of dogmatics as a collection of
testimonies to the truth, _theologia patristica_. It was only after the
material had been prepared in the course of the 16th and 17th centuries
by scholars of the various Church parties, and, above all, by excellent
editions of the Fathers,[19] and after Pietism had exhibited the
difference between Christianity and Ecclesiasticism, and had begun to
treat the traditional confessional structure of doctrine with
indifference,[20] that a critical investigation was entered on.
The man who was the Erasmus of the 18th century, neither orthodox nor
pietistic, nor rationalistic, but capable of appreciating all these
tendencies, familiar with English, French and Italian literature,
influenced by the spirit of the new English Science,[21] while avoiding
all statements of it that would endanger positive Christianity. John
Lorenz Mosheim, treated Church history in the spirit of his great
teacher Leibnitz,[22] and by impartial analysis, living reproduction,
and methodical artistic form raised it for the first time to the rank of
a science. In his monographic works also, he endeavours to examine
impartially the history of dogma, and to acquire the historic
stand-point between the estimate of the orthodox dogmatists and that of
Gottfried Arnold Mosheim, averse to all fault-finding and polemic, and
abhorring theological crudity as much as pietistic narrowness and
undevout Illuminism, aimed at an actual correct knowledge of history, in
accordance with the principle of Leibnitz, that the valuable elements
which are everywhere to be found in history must be sought out and
recognised. And the richness and many-sidedness of his mind qualified
him for gaining such a knowledge. But his latitudinarian dogmatic
stand-point as well as the anxiety to awaken no controversy or endanger
the gradual naturalising of a new science and culture, caused him to put
aside the most important problems of the history of dogma and devote his
attention to political Church history as well as to the more indifferent
historical questions. The opposition of two periods which he endeavoured
peacefully to reconcile could not in this way be permanently set
aside.[23] In Mosheim's sense, but without the spirit of that great man,
C.W.F. Walch taught on the subject and described the religious
controversies of the Church with an effort to be impartial, and has thus
made generally accessible the abundant material collected by the
diligence of earlier scholars.[24] Walch, moreover, in the "Gedanken von
der Geschichte der Glaubenslehre," 1756, gave the impulse that was
needed to fix attention on the history of dogma as a special discipline.
The stand-point which he took up was still that of subjection to
ecclesiastical dogma, but without confessional narrowness. Ernesti in
his programme of the year 1759. "De theologiae historicae et dogmaticae
conjungendae necessitate," gave eloquent expression to the idea that
Dogmatic is a positive science which has to take its material from
history, but that history itself requires a devoted and candid study, on
account of our being separated from the earlier epochs by a complicated
tradition.[25] He has also shewn in his celebrated "Antimuratorius" that
an impartial and critical investigation of the problems of the history
of dogma, might render the most effectual service to the polemic against
the errors of Romanism. Besides, the greater part of the dogmas were
already unintelligible to Ernesti, and yet during his lifetime the way
was opened up for that tendency in theology, which prepared in Germany
by Chr. Thomasius, supported by English writers, drew the sure
principles of faith and life from what is called reason, and therefore
was not only indifferent to the system of dogma, but felt it more and
more to be the tradition of unreason and of darkness. Of the three
requisites of a historian, knowledge of his subject, candid criticism,
and a capacity for finding himself at home in foreign interests and
ideas, the Rationalistic Theologians who had outgrown Pietism and passed
through the school of the English Deists and of Wolf, no longer
possessed the first, a knowledge of the subject, to the same extent as
some scholars of the earlier generation. The second, free criticism,
they possessed in the high degree guaranteed by the conviction of having
a rational religion; the third, the power of comprehension, only in a
very limited measure. They had lost the idea of positive religion, and
with it a living and just conception of the history of religion.
In the history of thought there is always need for an apparently
disproportionate expenditure of power, in order to produce an advance in
the development. And it would appear as if a certain self-satisfied
narrow-mindedness within the progressing ideas of the present, as well
as a great measure of inability even to understand the past and
recognise its own dependence on it, must make its appearance, in order
that a whole generation may be freed from the burden of the past. It
needed the absolute certainty which Rationalism had found in the
religious philosophy of the age, to give sufficient courage to subject
to historical criticism the central dogmas on which the Protestant
system as well as the Catholic finally rests, the dogmas of the canon
and inspiration on the one hand, and of the Trinity and Christology on
the other. The work of Lessing in this respect had no great results. We
to-day see in his theological writings the most important contribution
to the understanding of the earliest history of dogma, which that period
supplies; but we also understand why its results were then so trifling.
This was due, not only to the fact that Lessing was no theologian by
profession, or that his historical observations were couched in
aphorisms, but because like Leibnitz and Mosheim, he had a capacity for
appreciating the history of religion which forbade him to do violence to
that history or to sit in judgment on it, and because his philosophy in
its bearings on the case allowed him to seek no more from his materials
than an assured understanding of them, in a word again, because he was
no theologian. The Rationalists, on the other hand, who within certain
limits were no less his opponents than the orthodox, derived the
strength of their opposition to the systems of dogma, as the Apologists
of the second century had already done with regard to polytheism, from
their religious belief and their inability to estimate these systems
historically. That, however, is only the first impression which one gets
here from the history, and it is everywhere modified by other
impressions. In the first place, there is no mistaking a certain
latitudinarianism in several prominent theologians of the rationalistic
tendency. Moreover, the attitude to the canon was still frequently, in
virtue of the Protestant principle of scripture, an uncertain one, and
it was here chiefly that the different types of rational supernaturalism
were developed. Then, with all subjection to the dogmas of Natural
religion, the desire for a real true knowledge was unfettered and
powerfully excited. Finally, very significant attempts were made by some
rationalistic theologians to explain in a real historical way the
phenomena of the history of dogma, and to put an authentic and
historical view of that history in the place of barren pragmatic or
philosophic categories.
The special zeal with which the older rationalism applied itself to the
investigation of the canon, either putting aside the history of dogma,
or treating it merely in the frame-work of Church history, has only been
of advantage for the treatment of our subject. It first began to be
treated with thoroughness when the historical and critical interests had
become more powerful than the rationalistic. After the important labours
of Semler which here, above all, have wrought in the interests of
freedom,[26] and after some monographs on the history of dogma,[27] S.G.
Lange for the first time treated the history of dogma as a special
subject.[28] Unfortunately, his comprehensively planned and carefully
written work, which shews a real understanding of the early history of
dogma, remains incomplete. Consequently, W. Münscher, in his learned
manual, which was soon followed by his compendium of the history of
dogma, was the first to produce a complete presentation of our
subject.[29] Münscher's compendium is a counterpart to Giesler's Church
history; it shares with that the merit of drawing from the sources,
intelligent criticism and impartiality, but with a thorough knowledge of
details it fails to impart a real conception of the development of
ecclesiastical dogma. The division of the material into particular
_loci_, which, in three sections, is carried through the whole history
of the Church, makes insight into the whole Christian conception of the
different epochs impossible, and the prefixed "General History of
Dogma," is far too sketchily treated to make up for that defect.
Finally, the connection between the development of dogma and the general
ideas of the time is not sufficiently attended to. A series of manuals
followed the work of Münscher, but did not materially advance the
study.[30] The compendium of Baumgarten Crusius,[31] and that of F.K.
Meier,[32] stand out prominently among them. The work of the former is
distinguished by its independent learning as well as by the discernment
of the author that the centre of gravity of the subject lies in the
so-called general history of dogma.[33] The work of Meier goes still
further, and accurately perceives that the division into a general and
special history of dogma must be altogether given up, while it is also
characterised by an accurate setting and proportional arrangement of the
facts.[34]
The great spiritual revolution at the beginning of our century, which
must in every respect be regarded as a reaction against the efforts of
the rationalistic epoch, changed also the conceptions of the Christian
religion and its history. It appears therefore plainly in the treatment
of the history of dogma. The advancement and deepening of Christian
life, the zealous study of the past, the new philosophy which no longer
thrust history aside, but endeavoured to appreciate it in all its
phenomena as the history of the spirit, all these factors co-operated in
begetting a new temper, and accordingly, a new estimate of religion
proper and of its history. There were three tendencies in theology that
broke up rationalism; that which was identified with the names of
Schleiermacher and Neander, that of the Hegelians, and that of the
Confessionalists. The first two were soon divided into a right and a
left, in so far as they included conservative and critical interests
from their very commencement. The conservative elements have been used
for building up the modern confessionalism, which in its endeavours to
go back to the Reformers has never actually got beyond the theology of
the Formula of Concord, the stringency of which it has no doubt
abolished by new theologoumena and concessions of all kinds. All these
tendencies have in common the effort to gain a real comprehension of
history and be taught by it, that is, to allow the idea of development
to obtain its proper place, and to comprehend the power and sphere of
the individual. In this and in the deeper conception of the nature and
significance of positive religion, lay the advance beyond Rationalism.
And yet the wish to understand history, has in great measure checked the
effort to obtain a true knowledge of it, and the respect for history as
the greatest of teachers, has not resulted in that supreme regard for
facts which distinguished the critical rationalism. The speculative
pragmatism, which, in the Hegelian School, was put against the "lower
pragmatism," and was rigorously carried out with the view of exhibiting
the unity of history, not only neutralised the historical material, in
so far as its concrete definiteness was opposed, as phenomenon, to the
essence of the matter, but also curtailed it in a suspicious way, as may
be seen, for example, in the works of Baur. Moreover, the universal
historical suggestions which the older history of dogma had given were
not at all, or only very little regarded. The history of dogma was, as
it were, shut out by the watchword of the immanent development of the
spirit in Christianity. The disciples of Hegel, both of the right and of
the left, were, and still are, agreed in this watch-word,[35] the
working out of which, including an apology for the course of the history
of dogma, must be for the advancement of conservative theology. But at
the basis of the statement that the history of Christianity is the
history of the spirit, there lay further a very one-sided conception of
the nature of religion, which confirmed the false idea that religion is
theology. It will always, however, be the imperishable merit of Hegel's
great disciple, F. Chr. Baur, in theology, that he was the first who
attempted to give a uniform general idea of the history of dogma, and to
live through the whole process in himself, without renouncing the
critical acquisitions of the 18th century.[36] His brilliantly written
manual of the history of dogma, in which the history of this branch of
theological science is relatively treated with the utmost detail, is,
however, in material very meagre, and shews in the very first
proposition of the historical presentation an abstract view of
history.[37] Neander, whose "Christliche Dogmengeschichte," 1857, is
distinguished by the variety of its points of view, and keen
apprehension of particular forms of doctrine, shews a far more lively
and therefore a far more just conception of the Christian religion. But
the general plan of the work, (General history of dogma--_loci_, and
these according to the established scheme), proves that Neander has not
succeeded in giving real expression to the historical character of the
study, and in attaining a clear insight into the progress of the
development.[38]
Kliefoth's thoughtful and instructive, "Einleitung in die
Dogmengeschichte," 1839, contains the programme for the conception of
the history of dogma characteristic of the modern confessional theology.
In this work the Hegelian view of history, not without being influenced
by Schleiermacher, is so represented as to legitimise a return to the
theology of the Fathers. In the successive great epochs of the Church
several circles of dogmas have been successively fixed, so that the
respective doctrines have each time been adequately formulated.[39]
Disturbances of the development are due to the influence of sin. Apart
from this, Kliefoth's conception is in point of form equal to that of
Baur and Strauss, in so far as they also have considered the theology
represented by themselves as the goal of the whole historical
development. The only distinction is that, according to them, the next
following stage always cancels the preceding, while according to
Kliefoth, who, moreover, has no desire to give effect to mere
traditionalism, the new knowledge is added to the old. The new edifice
of true historical knowledge, according to Kliefoth, is raised on the
ruins of Traditionalism, Scholasticism, Pietism, Rationalism and
Mysticism. Thomasius (Das Bekenntniss der evang-luth. Kirche in der
Consequenz seines Princips, 1848) has, after the example of Sartorius,
attempted to justify by history the Lutheran confessional system of
doctrine from another side, by representing it as the true mean between
Catholicism and the Reformed Spiritualism. This conception has found
much approbation in the circles of Theologians related to Thomasius, as
against the Union Theology. But Thomasius is entitled to the merit of
having produced a Manual of the history of dogma which represents in the
most worthy manner,[40] the Lutheran confessional view of the history of
dogma. The introduction, as well as the selection and arrangement of his
material, shews that Thomasius has learned much from Baur. The way in
which he distinguishes between central and peripheral dogmas is,
accordingly, not very appropriate, especially for the earliest period.
The question as to the origin of dogma and theology is scarcely even
touched by him. But he has an impression that the central dogmas contain
for every period the whole of Christianity, and that they must therefore
be apprehended in this sense.[41] The presentation is dominated
throughout by the idea of the self-explication of dogma, though a
malformation has to be admitted for the middle ages;[42] and therefore
the formation of dogma is almost everywhere justified as the testimony
of the Church represented as completely hypostatised, and the outlook on
the history of the time is put into the background. But narrow and
insufficient as the complete view here is, the excellences of the work
in details are great, in respect of exemplary clearness of presentation,
and the discriminating knowledge and keen comprehension of the author
for religious problems. The most important work done by Thomasius is
contained in his account of the history of Christology.
In his outlines of the history of Christian dogma (Grundriss der
Christl. Dogmengesch. 1870), which unfortunately has not been carried
beyond the first part (Patristic period), F. Nitzsch, marks an advance
in the history of our subject. The advance lies, on the one hand, in the
extensive use he makes of monographs on the history of dogma, and on the
other hand, in the arrangement. Nitzsch has advanced a long way on the
path that was first entered by F.K. Meier, and has arranged his material
in a way that far excels all earlier attempts. The general and special
aspects of the history of dogma are here almost completely worked into
one,[43] and in the main divisions, "Grounding of the old Catholic
Church doctrine," and "Development of the old Catholic Church doctrine,"
justice is at last done to the most important problem which the history
of dogma presents, though in my opinion the division is not made at the
right place, and the problem is not so clearly kept in view in the
execution as the arrangement would lead one to expect.[44] Nitzsch has
freed himself from that speculative view of the history of dogma which
reads ideas into it. No doubt idea and motive on the one hand, form and
expression on the other, must be distinguished for every period. But the
historian falls into vagueness as soon as he seeks and professes to find
behind the demonstrable ideas and aims which have moved a period, others
of which, as a matter of fact, that period itself knew nothing at all.
Besides, the invariable result of that procedure is to concentrate the
attention on the theological and philosophical points of dogma, and
either neglect or put a new construction on the most concrete and
important, the expression of the religious faith itself. Rationalism has
been reproached with "throwing out the child with the bath," but this is
really worse, for here the child is thrown out while the bath is
retained. Every advance in the future treatment of our subject will
further depend on the effort to comprehend the history of dogma without
reference to the momentary opinions of the present, and also on keeping
it in closest connection with the history of the Church, from which it
can never be separated without damage. We have something to learn on
this point from rationalistic historians of dogma.[45] But progress is
finally dependent on a true perception of what the Christian religion
originally was, for this perception alone enables us to distinguish that
which sprang out of the inherent power of Christianity from that which
it has assimilated in the course of its history. For the historian,
however, who does not wish to serve a party, there are two standards in
accordance with which he may criticise the history of dogma. He may
either, as far as this is possible, compare it with the Gospel, or he
may judge it according to the historical conditions of the time and the
result. Both ways can exist side by side, if only they are not mixed up
with one another. Protestantism has in principle expressly recognised
the first, and it will also have the power to bear its conclusions; for
the saying of Tertullian still holds good in it; "Nihil veritas
erubescit nisi solummodo abscondi." The historian who follows this
maxim, and at the same time has no desire to be wiser than the facts,
will, while furthering science, perform the best service also to every
Christian community that desires to build itself upon the Gospel.
After the appearance of the first and second editions of this Work,
Loofs published, "Leitfaden für seine Vorlesungen über
Dogmengeschichte," Halle, 1889, and in the following year, "Leitfaden
zum Studium der Dogmengeschichte, zunächst für seine Vorlesungen,"
(second and enlarged edition of the first-named book). The work in its
conception of dogma and its history comes pretty near that stated above,
and it is distinguished by independent investigation and excellent
selection of material. I myself have published a "Grundriss der
Dogmengeschichte," 2 Edit, in one vol. 1893. (Outlines of the history of
dogma, English translation, Hodder and Stoughton). That this has not
been written in vain, I have the pleasure of seeing from not a few
notices of professional colleagues. I may mention the Church history of
Herzog in the new revision by Koffmane, the first vol. of the Church
history of Karl Müller, the first vol. of the Symbolik of Kattenbusch,
and Kaftan's work, "The truth of the Christian religion." Wilhelm
Schmidt, "Der alte Glaube und die Wahrheit des Christenthums," 1891, has
attempted to furnish a refutation in principle of Kaftan's work.
[Footnote 1: Weizsäcker, Gött. Gel. Anz. 1886, p. 823 f., says, "It is a
question whether we should limit the account of the genesis of Dogma to
the Antenicene period and designate all else as a development of that.
This is undoubtedly correct so long as our view is limited to the
history of dogma of the Greek Church in the second period, and the
development of it by the Oecumenical Synods. On the other hand, the
Latin Church, in its own way and in its own province, becomes productive
from the days of Augustine onwards; the formal signification of dogma in
the narrower sense becomes different in the middle ages. Both are
repeated in a much greater measure through the Reformation. We may
therefore, in opposition to that division into genesis and development,
regard the whole as a continuous process, in which the contents as well
as the formal authority of dogma are in process of continuous
development." This view is certainly just, and I think is indicated by
myself in what follows. We have to decide here, as so often elsewhere in
our account, between rival points of view. The view favoured by me has
the advantage of making the nature of dogma clearly appear as a product
of the mode of thought of the early church, and that is what it has
remained, in spite of all changes both in form and substance, till the
present day.]
[Footnote 2: See Kattenbusch. Luther's Stellung zu den ökumenischen
Symbolen, 1883.]
[Footnote 3: See Ritschl, Geschichte des Pietismus. I. p. 80 ff., 93 ff.
II. p. 60 f.: 88 f. "The Lutheran view of life did not remain pure and
undefiled, but was limited and obscured by the preponderance of dogmatic
interests. Protestantism was not delivered from the womb of the western
Church of the middle ages in full power and equipment, like Athene from
the head of Jupiter. The incompleteness of its ethical view, the
splitting up of its general conceptions into a series of particular
dogmas, the tendency to express its beliefs as a hard and fast whole;
are defects which soon made Protestantism appear to disadvantage in
comparison with the wealth of Mediæval theology and asceticism ... The
scholastic form of pure doctrine is really only the provisional, and not
the final form of Protestantism."]
[Footnote 4: It is very evident how the mediæval and old catholic dogmas
were transformed in the view which Luther originally took of them. In
this view we must remember that he did away with all the presuppositions
of dogma, the infallible Apostolic Canon of Scripture, the infallible
teaching function of the Church, and the infallible Apostolic doctrine
and constitution. On this basis dogmas can only be utterances which do
not support faith, but are supported by it. But, on the other hand, his
opposition to all the Apocryphal saints which the Church had created,
compelled him to emphasise faith alone, and to give it a firm basis in
scripture, in order to free it from the burden of tradition. Here then,
very soon, first by Melanchthon, a summary of _articuli fidei_ was
substituted for the faith, and the scriptures recovered their place as a
rule. Luther himself, however, is responsible for both, and so it came
about that very soon the new evangelic standpoint was explained almost
exclusively by the "abolition of abuses", and by no means so surely by
the transformation of the whole doctrinal tradition. The classic
authority for this is the Augsburg confession ("hæc fere summa est
doctrina apud suos, in qua cerni potest nihil inesse, quod discrepet a
scripturis vel ab ecclesia Catholica vel ab ecclesia Romana ... sed
dissensio est de quibusdam abusibus"). The purified catholic doctrine
has since then become the palladium of the Reformation Churches. The
refuters of the Augustana have justly been unwilling to admit the mere
"purifying," but have noted in addition that the Augustana does not say
everything that was urged by Luther and the Doctors (see Ficker, Die
Konfutation des Augsburgischen Bekenntnisse, 1891). At the same time,
however, the Lutheran Church, though not so strongly as the English,
retained the consciousness of being the true Catholics. But, as the
history of Protestantism proves, the original impulse has not remained
inoperative. Though Luther himself all his life measured his personal
Christian standing by an entirely different standard than subjection to
a law of faith; yet, however presumptuous the words may sound, we might
say that in the complicated struggle that was forced on him, he did not
always clearly understand his own faith.]
[Footnote 5: In the modern Romish Church, Dogma is, above all, a
judicial regulation which one has to submit to, and in certain
circumstances submission alone is sufficient, _fides implicita_. Dogma
is thereby just as much deprived of its original sense and its original
authority as by the demand of the Reformers, that every thing should be
based upon a clear understanding of the Gospel. Moreover, the changed
position of the Romish Church towards dogma is also shewn by the fact
that it no longer gives a plain answer to the question as to what dogma
is. Instead of a series of dogmas definitely defined, and of equal
value, there is presented an infinite multitude of whole and half
dogmas, doctrinal directions, pious opinions, probable theological
propositions, etc. It is often a very difficult question whether a
solemn decision has or has not already been taken on this or that
statement, or whether such a decision is still necessary. Everything
that must be believed is nowhere stated, and so one sometimes hears in
Catholic circles the exemplary piety of a cleric praised with the words
that "he believes more than is necessary." The great dogmatic conflicts
within the Catholic Church, since the Council of Trent, have been
silenced by arbitrary Papal pronouncements and doctrinal directions.
Since one has simply to accommodate oneself to these as laws, it once
more appears clear that dogma has become a judicial regulation,
administered by the Pope, which is carried out in an administrative way
and loses itself in an endless casuistry. We do not mean by this to deny
that dogma has a decided value for the pious Catholic as a Summary of
the faith. But in the Catholic Church it is no longer piety, but
obedience that is decisive. The solidarity with the orthodox Protestants
may be explained by political reasons, in order from political reasons
again, to condemn, where it is necessary, all Protestants as heretics
and revolutionaries.]
[Footnote 6: See the discussions of Biedermann (Christliche Dogmatik. 2
Ed. p. 150 f.) about what he calls the law of stability in the history
of religion.]
[Footnote 7: See Ritschl's discussion of the methods of the early
histories of dogma in the Jahrb. f. Deutsche Theologie. 1871, p. 181
ff.]
[Footnote 8: In Catholicism, the impulse which proceeded from Augustine
has finally proved powerless to break the traditional conception of
Christianity, as the Council of Trent and the decrees of the Vatican
have shewn. For that very reason the development of the Roman Catholic
Church doctrine belongs to the history of dogma. Protestantism must,
however, under all circumstances be recognised as a new thing, which
indeed in none of its phases has been free from contradictions.]
[Footnote 9: Here then begins the ecclesiastical theology which takes as
its starting-point the finished dogma it strives to prove or harmonise,
but very soon, as experience has shewn, loses its firm footing in such
efforts and so occasions new crises.]
[Footnote 10: Weizsäcker, Apostolic Age, Vol. I. p. 123. "Christianity
as religion is absolutely inconceivable without theology; first of all,
for the same reasons which called forth the Pauline theology. As a
religion it cannot be separated from the religion of its founder, hence
not from historical knowledge. And as Monotheism and belief in a world
purpose, it is the religion of reason with the inextinguishable impulse
of thought. The first gentile Christians therewith gained the proud
consciousness of a gnosis." But of ecclesiastical Christianity which
rests on dogma ready made, as produced by an earlier epoch, this
conception holds good only in a very qualified way; and of the vigorous
Christian piety of the earliest and of every period, it may also be said
that it no less feels the impulse to think against reason than with
reason.]
[Footnote 11: In this sense it is correct to class dogmatic theology as
historical theology, as Schleiermacher has done. If we maintain that for
practical reasons it must be taken out of the province of historical
theology, then we must make it part of practical theology. By dogmatic
theology here, we understand the exposition of Christianity in the form
of Church doctrine, as it has been shaped since the second century. As
distinguished from it, a branch of theological study must be conceived
which harmonises the historical exposition of the Gospel with the
general state of knowledge of the time. The Church can as little
dispense with such a discipline as there can be a Christianity which
does not account to itself for its basis and spiritual contents.]
[Footnote 12: See Eusebius' preface to his Church History. Eusebius in
this work set himself a comprehensive task, but in doing so he never in
the remotest sense thought of a history of dogma. In place of that we
have a history of men "who from generation to generation proclaimed the
word of God orally or by writing," and a history of those who by their
passion for novelties, plunged themselves into the greatest errors.]
[Footnote 13: See for example, B. Schwane, Dogmengesch. d.
Vornicänischen Zeit, 1862, where the sense in which dogmas have no
historical side is first expounded, and then it is shewn that dogmas,
"notwithstanding, present a certain side which permits a historical
consideration, because in point of fact they have gone through
historical developments." But these historical developments present
themselves simply either as solemn promulgations and explications, or as
private theological speculations.]
[Footnote 14: If we leave out of account the Marcionite gnostic
criticism of ecclesiastical Christianity, Paul of Samosata and Marcellus
of Ancyra may be mentioned as men who, in the earliest period,
criticised the apologetic Alexandrian theology which was being
naturalised (see the remarkable statement of Marcellus in Euseb. C.
Marc. I.4: [Greek: to tou dogmatos onoma tês anthrôpinês echetai boulês
te kai gnômês k.t.l.] which I have chosen as the motto of this book). We
know too little of Stephen Gobarus (VI. cent.) to enable us to estimate
his review of the doctrine of the Church and its development (Photius
Bibl. 232). With regard to the middle ages (Abelard "Sic et Non"), see
Reuter, Gesch. der relig. Aufklärung im MA., 1875. Hahn Gesch, der
Ketzer, especially in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries, 3 vols., 1845.
Keller, Die Reformation und die alteren Reform-Parteien, 1885.]
[Footnote 15: See Voigt, Die Wiederbelebung des classischen Alterthums.
2 vols., 1881, especially vol. II p. 1 ff. 363 ff. 494 ff. ("Humanism
and the science of history"). The direct importance of humanism for
illuminating the history of the middle ages is very little, and least of
all for the history of the Church and of dogma. The only prominent works
here are those of Saurentius Valla and Erasmus. The criticism of the
scholastic dogmas of the Church and the Pope began as early as the 12th
century. For the attitude of the Renaissance to religion, see
Burckhardt, Die Cultur der Renaissance. 2 vols., 1877.]
[Footnote 16: See Holtzmann, Kanon und Tradition, 1859, Hase, Handbuch
der protest. Polemik, 1878. Joh Delitszch, Das Lehrsystem der röm.
Kirche, 1875. New revelations, however, are rejected, and bold
assumptions leading that way are not favoured: See Schwane, above work
p. 11: "The content of revelation is not enlarged by the decisions or
teaching of the Church, nor are new revelations added in course of time
... Christian truth cannot therefore in its content be completed by the
Church, nor has she ever claimed the right of doing so, but always where
new designations or forms of dogma became necessary for the putting down
of error or the instruction of the faithful, she would always teach what
she had received in Holy scripture or in the oral tradition of the
Apostles." Recent Catholic accounts of the history of dogma are Klee,
Lehrbuch der D.G. 2 vols, 1837, (Speculative). Schwane, Dogmengesch. der
Vornicänischen Zeit, 1862, der patrist Zeit, 1869; der Mittleren Zeit,
1882. Bach, Die D.G. des MA. 1873. There is a wealth of material for the
history of dogma in Kuhn's Dogmatîk, as well as in the great
controversial writings occasioned by the celebrated work of Bellarmin;
Disputationes de controversiis Christianæ fidei adversus hujus temporis
hæreticos, 1581-1593. It need not be said that, in spite of their
inability to treat the history of dogma historically and critically,
much may be learned from these works, and some other striking monographs
of Roman Catholic scholars. But everything in history that is fitted to
shake the high antiquity and unanimous attestation of the Catholic
dogmas, becomes here a problem, the solution of which is demanded,
though indeed its carrying out often requires a very exceptional
intellectual subtlety.]
[Footnote 17: Historical interest in Protestantism has grown up around
the questions as to the power of the Pope, the significance of Councils,
or the Scripturalness of the doctrines set up by them, and about the
meaning of the Lord's supper, of the conception of it by the Church
Fathers; (see Oecolampadius and Melanchthon.) Protestants were too sure
that the doctrine of justification was taught in the scriptures to feel
any need of seeking proofs for it by studies in the history of dogma,
and Luther also dispensed with the testimony of history for the dogma of
the Lord's supper. The task of shewing how far and in what way Luther
and the Reformers compounded with history has not even yet been taken
up. And yet there may be found in Luther's writings surprising and
excellent critical comments on the history of dogma and the theology of
the Fathers, as well as genial conceptions which have certainly remained
inoperative; see especially the treatise "Von den Conciliis und
Kirchen," and his judgment on different Church Fathers. In the first
edition of the _Loci_ of Melanchthon we have also critical material for
estimating the old systems of dogma. Calvin's depreciatory estimate of
the Trinitarian and Christological Formula, which, however, he retracted
at a later period is well known.]
[Footnote 18: Protestant Church history was brought into being by the
Interim, Flacius being its father, see his Catalogus Testium Veritatis,
and the so called Magdeburg Centuries 1559-1574, also Jundt Les
Centuries de Magdebourg Paris, 1883 Von Engelhardt (Christenthum
Justins, p. 9 ff.) has drawn attention to the estimate of Justin in the
Centuries, and has justly insisted on the high importance of this first
attempt at a criticism of the Church Fathers Khefoth (Eml. in. d. D.G.
1839) has the merit of pointing out the somewhat striking judgment of A.
Hyperius on the history of dogma Chemnitz, Examen concilii Tridentini,
1565 Forbesius a Corse (a Scotsman) Instructiones historico-theologiæ de
doctrina Christiana 1645.]
[Footnote 19: The learning, the diligence in collecting, and the
carefulness of the Benedictines and Maurians, as well as of English
Dutch and French theologians, such as Casaubon, Vossius, Pearson,
Dallaus Spanheim, Grabe, Basnage, etc. have never since been equalled,
far less surpassed. Even in the literary historical and higher criticism
these scholars have done splendid work, so far as the confessional
dogmas did not come into question]
[Footnote 20: See especially, G. Arnold, Unpartheyische Kirchen- und
Ketzerhistorie, 1699, also Baur, Epochen der kirchlichen
Geschichtsschreibung p. 84 ff., Floring G. Arnold als Kirchenhistoriker
Darmstadt, 1883. The latter determines correctly the measure of Arnold's
importance. His work was the direct preparation for an impartial
examination of the history of dogma however partial it was in itself
Pietism, here and there, after Spener, declared war against scholastic
dogmatics as a hindrance to piety, and in doing so broke the ban under
which the knowledge of history lay captive.]
[Footnote 21: The investigations of the so-called English Deists about
the Christian religion contain the first, and to some extent a very
significant free-spirited attempt at a critical view of the history of
dogma (see Lechler, History of English Deism, 1841). But the criticism
is an abstract rarely a historical one. Some very learned works bearing
on the history of dogma were written in England against the position of
the Deists especially by Lardner; see also at an earlier time Bull,
Defensio fidei nic.]
[Footnote 22: Calixtus of Helmstadt was the forerunner of Leibnitz with
regard to Church history. But the merit of having recognised the main
problem of the history of dogma does not belong to Calixtus. By pointing
out what Protestantism and Catholicism had in common he did not in any
way clear up the historico-critical problem. On the other hand, the
_Consensus repetitus_ of the Wittenberg theologians shews what
fundamental questions Calixtus had already stirred.]
[Footnote 23: Among the numerous historical writings of Mosheim may be
mentioned specially his Dissert ad hist Eccles pertinentes 2 vols.
1731-1741, as well as the work "De rebus Christianorum ante Constantinum
M Commentarii," 1753; see also "Institutiones hist Eccl" last Edition,
1755.]
[Footnote 24: Walch, "Entwurf einer vollständigen Historie der
Ketzereien, Spaltungen und Religionsstreitigkeiten bis auf die Zeiten
der Reformation." 11 Thle (incomplete), 1762-1785. See also his "Entwurf
einer vollständigen Historie der Kirchenversammlungen" 1759, as well as
numerous monographs on the history of dogma. Such were already produced
by the older Walch, whose "Histor. theol Einleitung in die
Religionsstreitigkeiten der Ev. Luth. Kirche," 5 vols. 1730-1739, and
"Histor.-theol. Einleit. in die Religionsstreitigkeiten welche
sonderlich ausser der Ev Luth. Kirche entstanden sind 5 Thle",
1733-1736, had already put polemics behind the knowledge of history (see
Gass. "Gesch. der protest. Dogmatik," 3rd Vol. p. 205 ff).]
[Footnote 25: Opusc. p. 576 f.: "Ex quo fit, ut nullo modo in
theologicis, quæ omnia e libris antiquis hebraicis, grascis, latinis
ducuntur, possit aliquis bene in definiendo versari et a peccatis multis
et magnis sibi cavere, nisi litteras et historiam assumat." The title of
a programme of Crusius, Ernesti's opponent, "De dogmatum Christianorum
historia cum probatione dogmatum non confundenda," 1770, is significant
of the new insight which was steadily making way.]
[Footnote 26: Semler, Einleitung zu Baumgartens evang. Glaubenslehre,
1759: also Geschichte der Glaubenslehre, zu Baumgartens Untersuch.
theol. Streitigkeiten, 1762-1764. Semler paved the way for the view that
dogmas have arisen and been gradually developed under definite
historical conditions. He was the first to grasp the problem of the
relation of Catholicism to early Christianity, because he freed the
early Christian documents from the fetters of the Canon. Schröckh
(Christl. Kirchengesch., 1786,) in the spirit of Semler described with
impartiality and care the changes of the dogmas.]
[Footnote 27: Rössler, Lehrbegriff der Christlichen Kirche in den 3
ersten Jahrh. 1775; also, Arbeiten by Burscher, Heinrich, Stäudlin,
etc., see especially, Löffler's "Abhandlung welche eine kurze
Darstellung der Entstehungsart der Dreieinigkeit enthält," 1792, in the
translation of Souverain's Le Platonisme devoilé, 1700. The question as
to the Platonism of the Fathers, this fundamental question of the
history of dogma, was raised even by Luther and Flacius, and was very
vigorously debated at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th
centuries, after the Socinians had already affirmed it strongly. The
question once more emerges on German soil in the church history of G.
Arnold, but cannot be said to have received the attention it deserves in
the 150 years that have followed (see the literature of the controversy
in Tzschirner, Fall des Heidenthums, p. 580 f.). Yet the problem was
first thrust aside by the speculative view of the history of
Christianity.]
[Footnote 28: Lange. Ausführ. Gesch. der Dogmen, oder der Glaubenslehre
der Christl. Kirche nach den Kirchenväter ausgearbeitet. 1796.]
[Footnote 29: Münscher, Handb. d. Christl. D.G. 4 vols. first 6
Centuries 1797-1809; Lehrbuch, 1st Edit. 1811; 3rd. Edit. edited by v
Cölln, Hupfeld and Neudecker, 1832-1838. Planck's epoch-making work:
Gesch. der Veränderungen und der Bildung unseres protestantischen
Lehrbegriffs. 6 vols. 1791-1800, had already for the most part appeared.
Contemporary with Münscher are Wundemann, Gesch. d. Christl.
Glaubenslehren vom Zeitalter des Athanasius bis auf Gregor. d. Gr. 2
Thle. 1789-1799; Münter, Handbuch der alteren Christl. D.G. hrsg. von
Ewers, 2 vols. 1802-1804; Stäudlin, Lehrbuch der Dogmatik und
Dogmengeschichte, 1800, last Edition 1822, and Beck, Comment, hist.
decretorum religionis Christianæ, 1801.]
[Footnote 30: Augusti, Lehrb. d. Christl. D.G. 1805. 4 Edit. 1835.
Berthold, Handb. der D.G. 2 vols. 1822-1823. Schickedanz, Versuch einer
Gesch. d. Christl. Glaubenslehre etc. 1827. Ruperti, Geschichte der
Dogmen, 1831. Lenz, Gesch. der Christl. Dogmen. 2 parts. 1834-1835.
J.G.V. Engelhardt, Dogmengesch. 1839. See also Giesler, Dogmengesch. 2
vols. edited by Redepenning, 1855: also Illgen, Ueber den Werth der
Christl. D.G. 1817.]
[Footnote 31: Baumgarten Crusius, Lehrb. d. Christl. D.G. 1852: also
compendium d. Christl. D.G. 2 parts 1830-1846, the second part edited by
Hase.]
[Footnote 32: Meier, Lehrb. d. D.G. 1840. 2nd Edit. revised by G. Baur
1854.]
[Footnote 33: The "Special History of Dogma" in Baumgarten Crusius, in
which every particular dogma is by itself pursued through the whole
history of the Church, is of course entirely unfruitful. But even the
opinions which are given in the "General History of Dogma," are
frequently very far from the mark, (Cf., e.g., § 14 and p. 67), which is
the more surprising as no one can deny that he takes a scholarly view of
history.]
[Footnote 34: Meier's Lehrbuch is formally and materially a very
important piece of work, the value of which has not been sufficiently
recognised, because the author followed neither the track of Neander nor
of Baur. Besides the excellences noted in the text, may be further
mentioned, that almost everywhere Meier has distinguished correctly
between the history of dogma and the history of theology, and has given
an account only of the former.]
[Footnote 35: Biedermann (Christl Dogmatik 2 Edit 1 vol. p. 332 f) says,
"The history of the development of the Dogma of the Person of Christ
will bring before us step by step the ascent of faith in the Gospel of
Jesus Christ to its metaphysical basis in the nature of his person."
This was the quite normal and necessary way of actual faith and is not
to be reckoned as a confused mixture of heterogeneous philosophical
opinions. The only thing taken from the ideas of contemporary philosophy
was the special material of consciousness in which the doctrine of
Christ's Divinity was at any time expressed. The process of this
doctrinal development was an inward necessary one.]
[Footnote 36: Baur, Lehrbuch der Christl D.G. 1847 3rd Edit. 1867, also
Vorles uber die Christl D.G. edited by F. Baur 1865-68. Further the
Monographs, "Ueber die Christl Lehre v.d. Versohnung in ihrergesch Entw.
1838." Ueber die Christl Lehre v.d. Dreieinigkeit u.d. Menschwerdung,
1841, etc. D.F. Strauss preceded him with his work Die Christl
Glaubenslehre in ihrer gesch Entw 2 vols 1840-41. From the stand-point
of the Hegelian right we have Marheineke Christl D.G. edited by Matthias
and Vatke 1849. From the same stand-point though at the same time
influenced by Schleiermacher Dorner wrote "The History of the Person of
Christ."]
[Footnote 37: See p. 63: "As Christianity appeared in contrast with
Judaism and Heathenism, and could only represent a new and peculiar form
of the religious consciousness in distinction from both reducing the
contrasts of both to a unity in itself, so also the first difference of
tendencies developing themselves within Christianity, must be determined
by the relation in which it stood to Judaism on the one hand, and to
Heathenism on the other." Compare also the very characteristic
introduction to the first volume of the Vorlesungen.]
[Footnote 38: Hagenbach's Manual of the history of dogma might be put
alongside of Neander's work. It agrees with it both in plan and spirit.
But the material of the history of dogma which it offers in
superabundance, seems far less connectedly worked out than by Neander.
In Shedd's history of Christian doctrine the Americans possess a
presentation of the history of dogma worth noting 2 vols 3 Edit 1883.
The work of Fr. Bonifas Hist des Dogmes 2 vols 1886 appeared after the
death of the author and is not important.]
[Footnote 39: No doubt Kliefoth also maintains for each period a stage
of the disintegration of dogma but this is not to be understood in the
ordinary sense of the word. Besides there are ideas in this introduction
which hardly obtain the approval of their author to-day.]
[Footnote 40: Thomasius' Die Christl. Dogmengesch. als Entwickel. Gesch.
des Kirchl. Lehrbegriffs. 2 vols. 1874-76. 2nd Edit intelligently and
carefully edited by Bonwetsch. and Seeberg, 1887. (Seeberg has produced
almost a new work in vol. II). From the same stand-point is the manual
of the history of dogma by H. Schmid, 1859, (in 4th Ed. revised and
transformed into an excellent collection of passages from the sources by
Hauck, 1887), as well as the Luther. Dogmatik (Vol. II 1864: Der
Kirchenglaube) of Kahnis, which, however, subjects particular dogmas to
a freer criticism.]
[Footnote 41: See Vol. 1. p. 14.]
[Footnote 42: See Vol. 1. p. 11. "The first period treats of the
development of the great main dogmas which were to become the basis of
the further development (the Patristic age). The problem of the second
period was, partly to work up this material theologically, and partly to
develop it. But this development, under the influence of the Hierarchy,
fell into false paths, and became partly, at least, corrupt (the age of
Scholasticism), and therefore a reformation was necessary. It was
reserved for this third period to carry back the doctrinal formation
which had become abnormal, to the old sound paths, and on the other
hand, in virtue of the regeneration of the Church which followed, to
deepen it and fashion it according to that form which it got in the
doctrinal systems of the Evangelic Church, while the remaining part
fixed its own doctrine in the decrees of Trent (period of the
Reformation)." This view of history, which, from the Christian
stand-point, will allow absolutely nothing to be said against the
doctrinal formation of the early Church, is a retrogression from the
view of Luther and the writers of the "Centuries," for these were well
aware that the corruption did not first begin in the middle ages.]
[Footnote 43: This fulfils a requirement urged by Weizsäcker (Jahrb. f.
Deutsche Theol 1866 p. 170 ff.)]
[Footnote 44: See Ritschl's Essay, "Ueber die Methode der älteren
Dogmengeschichte" (Jahrb. f. deutsche Theol. 1871 p. 191 ff.) in which
the advance made by Nitzsch is estimated, and at the same time, an
arrangement proposed for the treatment of the earlier history of dogma
which would group the material more clearly and more suitably than has
been done by Nitzsch. After having laid the foundation for a correct
historical estimate of the development of early Christianity in his work
"Entstehung der Alt-Katholischen Kirche", 1857, Ritschl published an
epoch-making study in the history of dogma in his "History of the
doctrine of justification and reconciliation" 2 edit. 1883. We have no
superabundance of good monographs on the history of dogma. There are few
that give such exact information regarding the Patristic period as that
of Von Engelhardt "Ueber das Christenthum Justin's", 1878, and Zahn's
work on Marcellus, 1867. Among the investigators of our age, Renan above
all has clearly recognised that there are only two main periods in the
history of dogma, and that the changes which Christianity experienced
after the establishment of the Catholic Church bear no proportion to the
changes which preceded. His words are as follows (Hist. des origin. du
Christianisme T. VII. p. 503 f.):--the division about the year 180 is
certainly placed too early, regard being had to what was then really
authoritative in the Church.--"Si nous comparons maintenant le
Christianisme, tel qu'il existait vers l'an 180, au Christianisme du IVe
et du Ve, siècle, au Christianisme du moyen âge, au Christianisme de nos
jours, nous trouvons qu'en réalité il s'est augmenté des très peu de
chose dans les siècles qui ont suivis. En 180, le Nouveau Testament est
clos: il ne s'y ajoutera plus un seul livre nouveau(?). Lentement, les
Épitres de Paul out conquis leur place à la suite des Evangiles, dans le
code sacré et dans la liturgie. Quant aux dogmes, rien n'est fixé; mais
le germe de tout existe; presque aucune idée n'apparaitra qui ne puisse
faire valoir des autorités du 1er et du 2e siècles. Il y a du trop, il y
a des contradictions; le travail théologique consistera bien plus à
émonder, à écarter des superfluités qu'à inventer du nouveau. L'Église
laissera tomber une foule de choses mal commencées, elle sortira de bien
des impasses. Elle a encore deux coeurs, pour ainsi dire; elle a
plusieurs têtes; ces anomalies tomberont; mais aucun dogme vraiment
original ne se formera plus." Also the discussions in chapters 28-34, of
the same volume. H. Thiersch (Die Kirche im Apostolischen Zeitalter,
1852) reveals a deep insight into the difference between the spirit of
the New Testament writers and the post-Apostolic Fathers, but he has
overdone these differences and sought to explain them by the
mythological assumption of an Apostasy. A great amount of material for
the history of dogma may be found in the great work of Böhringer, Die
Kirche Christi und ihre Zeugen, oder die Kirchengeschichte in
Biographien. 2 Edit. 1864.]
[Footnote 45: By the connection with general church history we must,
above all, understand, a continuous regard to the world within which the
church has been developed. The most recent works on the history of the
church and of dogma, those of Renan, Overbeck (Anfänge der patristischen
Litteratur), Aube, Von Engelhardt (Justin), Kühn (Minucius Felix). Hatch
("Organization of the early church," and especially his posthumous work
"The influence of Greek ideas and usages upon the Christian Church,"
1890, in which may be found the most ample proof for the conception of
the early history of dogma which is set forth in the following pages),
are in this respect worthy of special note. Deserving of mention also is
R. Rothe, who, in his "Vorlesungen über Kirchengeschichte", edited by
Weingarten, 1875, 2 vols, gave most significant suggestions towards a
really historical conception of the history of the church and of dogma.
To Rothe belongs the undiminished merit of realising thoroughly the
significance of nationality in church history. But the theology of our
century is also indebted for the first scientific conception of
Catholicism, not to Marheineke or Winer, but to Rothe. (See Vol II. pp.
1-11 especially p. 7 f.). "The development of the Christian Church in
the Græco-Roman world was not at the same time a development of that
world by the Church and further by Christianity. There remained, as the
result of the process, nothing but the completed Church. The world which
had built it had made itself bankrupt in doing so." With regard to the
origin and development of the Catholic cultus and constitution, nay,
even of the Ethic (see Luthardt, Die antike Ethik, 1887, preface), that
has been recognised by Protestant scholars, which one always hesitates
to recognise with regard to catholic dogma: see the excellent remarks of
Schwegler, Nachapostolisches Zeitalter. Vol. 1. p. 3 ff. It may be hoped
that an intelligent consideration of early Christian literature will
form the bridge to a broad and intelligent view of the history of dogma.
The essay of Overbeck mentioned above (Histor. Zeitschrift. N. F. XII p.
417 ff.) may be most heartily recommended in this respect. It is very
gratifying to find an investigator so conservative as Sohm, now fully
admitting that "Christian theology grew up in the second and third
centuries, when its foundations were laid for all time (?), the last
great production of the Hellenic Spirit." (Kirchengeschichte im
Grundriss, 1888. p. 37). The same scholar in his very important
Kirchenrecht. Bd. I. 1892, has transferred to the history of the origin
of Church law and Church organization, the points of view which I have
applied in the following account to the consideration of dogma. He has
thereby succeeded in correcting many old errors and prejudices; but in
my opinion he has obscured the truth by exaggerations connected with a
conception, not only of original Christianity, but also of the Gospel in
general, which is partly a narrow legal view, partly an enthusiastic
one. He has arrived _ex errore per veritatem ad errorem_; but there are
few books from which so much may be learned about early church history
as from this paradoxical "Kirchenrecht."]
CHAPTER II
THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF THE HISTORY OF DOGMA
§ 1. _Introductory._
The Gospel presents itself as an Apocalyptic message on the soil of the
Old Testament, and as the fulfilment of the law and the prophets, and
yet is a new thing, the creation of a universal religion on the basis of
that of the Old Testament. It appeared when the time was fulfilled, that
is, it is not without a connection with the stage of religious and
spiritual development which was brought about by the intercourse of Jews
and Greeks, and was established in the Roman Empire; but still it is a
new religion because it cannot be separated from Jesus Christ. When the
traditional religion has become too narrow the new religion usually
appears as something of a very abstract nature; philosophy comes upon
the scene, and religion withdraws from social life and becomes a private
matter. But here an overpowering personality has appeared--the Son of
God. Word and deed coincide in that personality, and as it leads men
into a new communion with God, it unites them at the same time
inseparably with itself, enables them to act on the world as light and
leaven, and joins them together in a spiritual unity and an active
confederacy.
2. Jesus Christ brought no new doctrine, but he set forth in his own
person a holy life with God and before God, and gave himself in virtue
of this life to the service of his brethren in order to win them for the
Kingdom of God, that is, to lead them out of selfishness and the world
to God, out of the natural connections and contrasts to a union in love,
and prepare them for an eternal kingdom and an eternal life. But while
working for this Kingdom of God he did not withdraw from the religious
and political communion of his people, nor did he induce his disciples
to leave that communion. On the contrary, he described the Kingdom of
God as the fulfilment of the promises given to the nation, and himself
as the Messiah whom that nation expected. By doing so he secured for his
new message, and with it his own person, a place in the system of
religious ideas and hopes, which by means of the Old Testament were
then, in diverse forms, current in the Jewish nation. The origin of a
doctrine concerning the Messianic hope, in which the Messiah was no
longer an unknown being, but Jesus of Nazareth, along with the new
temper and disposition of believers was a direct result of the
impression made by the person of Jesus. The conception of the Old
Testament in accordance with the _analogia fidei_, that is, in
accordance with the conviction that this Jesus of Nazareth is the
Christ, was therewith given. Whatever sources of comfort and strength
Christianity, even in its New Testament, has possessed or does possess
up to the present, is for the most part taken from the Old Testament,
viewed from a Christian stand-point, in virtue of the impression of the
person of Jesus. Even its dross was changed into gold; its hidden
treasures were brought forth, and while the earthly and transitory were
recognised as symbols of the heavenly and eternal, there rose up a world
of blessings, of holy ordinances, and of sure grace prepared by God from
eternity. One could joyfully make oneself at home in it; for its long
history guaranteed a sure future and a blessed close, while it offered
comfort and certainty in all the changes of life to every individual
heart that would only raise itself to God. From the positive position
which Jesus took up towards the Old Testament, that is, towards the
religious traditions of his people, his Gospel gained a footing which,
later on, preserved it from dissolving in the glow of enthusiasm, or
melting away in the ensnaring dream of antiquity, that dream of the
indestructible Divine nature of the human spirit, and the nothingness
and baseness of all material things.[46] But from the positive attitude
of Jesus to the Jewish tradition, there followed also, for a generation
that had long been accustomed to grope after the Divine active in the
world, the summons to think out a theory of the media of revelation, and
so put an end to the uncertainty with which speculation had hitherto
been afflicted. This, like every theory of religion, concealed in itself
the danger of crippling the power of faith; for men are ever prone to
compound with religion itself by a religious theory.
3. The result of the preaching of Jesus, however, in the case of the
believing Jews, was not only the illumination of the Old Testament by
the Gospel and the confirmation of the Gospel by the Old Testament, but
not less, though indirectly, the detachment of believers from the
religious community of the Jews from the Jewish Church. How this came
about cannot be discussed here: we may satisfy ourselves with the fact
that it was essentially accomplished in the first two generations of
believers. The Gospel was a message for humanity even where there was no
break with Judaism: but it seemed impossible to bring this message home
to men who were not Jews in any other way than by leaving the Jewish
Church. But to leave that Church was to declare it to be worthless, and
that could only be done by conceiving it as a malformation from its very
commencement, or assuming that it had temporarily or completely
fulfilled its mission. In either case it was necessary to put another in
its place, for, according to the Old Testament, it was unquestionable
that God had not only given revelations, but through these revelations
had founded a nation, a religious community. The result, also, to which
the conduct of the unbelieving Jews and the social union of the
disciples of Jesus required by that conduct, led, was carried home with
irresistible power: believers in Christ are the community of God, they
are the true Israel, the [Greek: ekklêsia tou theou]: but the Jewish
Church persisting in its unbelief is the Synagogue of Satan. Out of this
consciousness sprang--first as a power in which one believed, but which
immediately began to be operative, though not as a commonwealth--the
christian church, a special communion of hearts on the basis of a
personal union with God, established by Christ and mediated by the
Spirit; a communion whose essential mark was to claim as its own the Old
Testament and the idea of being the people of God, to sweep aside the
Jewish conception of the Old Testament and the Jewish Church, and
thereby gain the shape and power of a community that is capable of a
mission for the world.
4. This independent Christian community could not have been formed had
not Judaism, in consequence of inner and outer developments, then
reached a point at which it must either altogether cease to grow or
burst its shell. This community is the presupposition of the history of
dogma, and the position which it took up towards the Jewish tradition
is, strictly speaking, the point of departure for all further
developments, so far as with the removal of all national and ceremonial
peculiarities it proclaimed itself to be what the Jewish Church wished
to be. We find the Christian Church about the middle of the third
century, after severe crisis, in nearly the same position to the Old
Testament and to Judaism as it was 150 or 200 years earlier.[47] It
makes the same claim to the Old Testament, and builds its faith and hope
upon its teaching. It is also, as before, strictly anti-national; above
all, anti-judaic, and sentences the Jewish religious community to the
abyss of hell. It might appear, then, as though the basis for the
further development of Christianity as a church was completely given
from the moment in which the first breach of believers with the
synagogue and the formation of independent Christian communities took
place. The problem, the solution of which will always exercise this
church, so far as it reflects upon its faith, will be to turn the
Old Testament more completely to account in its own sense, so as to
condemn the Jewish Church with its particular and national forms.
5. But the rule even for the Christian use of the Old Testament lay
originally in the living connection in which one stood with the Jewish
people and its traditions, and a new religious community, a religious
commonwealth, was not yet realised, although it existed for faith and
thought. If again we compare the Church about the middle of the third
century with the condition of Christendom 150 or 200 years before, we
shall find that there is now a real religious commonwealth, while at the
earlier period there were only communities who believed in a heavenly
Church, whose earthly image they were, endeavoured to give it expression
with the simplest means, and lived in the future as strangers and
pilgrims on the earth, hastening to meet the Kingdom of whose existence
they had the surest guarantee. We now really find a new commonwealth,
politically formed and equipped with fixed forms of all kinds. We
recognise in these forms few Jewish, but many Græco-Roman features, and
finally, we perceive also in the doctrine of faith on which this
commonwealth is based, the philosophic spirit of the Greeks. We find a
Church as a political union and worship institute, a formulated faith
and a sacred learning; but one thing we no longer find, the old
enthusiasm and individualism which had not felt itself fettered by
subjection to the authority of the Old Testament. Instead of
enthusiastic independent Christians, we find a new literature of
revelation, the New Testament, and Christian priests. When did these
formations begin? How and by what influence was the living faith
transformed into the creed to be believed, the surrender to Christ into
a philosophic Christology, the Holy Church into the _corpus permixtum_,
the glowing hope of the Kingdom of heaven into a doctrine of immortality
and deification, prophecy into a learned exegesis and theological
science, the bearers of the spirit into clerics, the brethren into laity
held in tutelage, miracles and healings into nothing, or into
priestcraft, the fervent prayers into a solemn ritual, renunciation of
the world into a jealous dominion over the world, the "spirit" into
constraint and law?
There can be no doubt about the answer: these formations are as old in
their origin as the detachment of the Gospel from the Jewish Church. A
religious faith which seeks to establish a communion of its own in
opposition to another, is compelled to borrow from that other what it
needs. The religion which is life and feeling of the heart cannot be
converted into a knowledge determining the motley multitude of men
without deferring to their wishes and opinions. Even the holiest must
clothe itself in the same existing earthly forms as the profane if it
wishes to found on earth a confederacy which is to take the place of
another, and if it does not wish to enslave, but to determine the
reason. When the Gospel was rejected by the Jewish nation, and had
disengaged itself from all connection with that nation, it was already
settled whence it must take the material to form for itself a new body
and be transformed into a Church and a theology. National and
particular, in the ordinary sense of the word, these forms could not be:
the contents of the Gospel were too rich for that; but separated from
Judaism, nay, even before that separation, the Christian religion came
in contact with the Roman world and with a culture which had already
mastered the world, viz., the Greek. The Christian Church and its
doctrine were developed within the Roman world and Greek culture in
opposition to the Jewish Church. This fact is just as important for the
history of dogma as the other stated above, that this Church was
continuously nourished on the Old Testament. Christendom was of course
conscious of being in opposition to the empire and its culture, as well
as to Judaism; but this from the beginning--apart from a few
exceptions--was not without reservations. No man can serve two masters;
but in setting up a spiritual power in this world one must serve an
earthly master, even when he desires to naturalise the spiritual in the
world. As a consequence of the complete break with the Jewish Church
there followed not only the strict necessity of quarrying the stones for
the building of the Church from the Græco-Roman world, but also the idea
that Christianity has a more positive relation to that world than to the
synagogue. And, as the Church was being built, the original enthusiasm
must needs vanish. The separation from Judaism having taken place, it
was necessary that the spirit of another people should be admitted, and
should also materially determine the manner of turning the Old Testament
to advantage.
6. But an inner necessity was at work here no less than an outer.
Judaism and Hellenism in the age of Christ were opposed to each other,
not only as dissimilar powers of equal value, but the latter having its
origin among a small people, became a universal spiritual power, which,
severed from its original nationality, had for that very reason
penetrated foreign nations. It had even laid hold of Judaism, and the
anxious care of her professional watchmen to hedge round the national
possession, is but a proof of the advancing decomposition within the
Jewish nation. Israel, no doubt, had a sacred treasure which was of
greater value than all the treasures of the Greeks,--the living God--but
in what miserable vessels was this treasure preserved, and how much
inferior was all else possessed by this nation in comparison with the
riches, the power, the delicacy and freedom of the Greek spirit and its
intellectual possessions. A movement like that of Christianity, which
discovered to the Jew the soul whose dignity was not dependent on its
descent from Abraham, but on its responsibility to God, could not
continue in the framework of Judaism however expanded, but must soon
recognise in that world which the Greek spirit had discovered and
prepared, the field which belonged to it: [Greek: eikotôs Ioudaiois men
nomos, Hellesi de philosophia mechris tês parousias enteuthen de hê
klêsis hê katholikê] [to the Jews the law, to the Greeks Philosophy, up
to the Parousia; from that time the catholic invitation.] But the Gospel
at first was preached exclusively to the lost sheep of the house of
Israel, and that which inwardly united it with Hellenism did not yet
appear in any doctrine or definite form of knowledge.
On the contrary, the Church doctrine of faith, in the preparatory stage,
from the Apologists up to the time of Origen, hardly in any point shews
the traces, scarcely even the remembrance of a time in which the Gospel
was not detached from Judaism. For that very reason it is absolutely
impossible to understand this preparation and development solely from
the writings that remain to us as monuments of that short earliest
period. The attempts at deducing the genesis of the Church's doctrinal
system from the theology of Paul, or from compromises between Apostolic
doctrinal ideas, will always miscarry; for they fail to note that to the
most important premises of the Catholic doctrine of faith belongs an
element which we cannot recognise as dominant in the New Testament,[48]
viz., the Hellenic spirit.[49] As far backwards as we can trace the
history of the propagation of the Church's doctrine of faith, from the
middle of the third century to the end of the first, we nowhere perceive
a leap, or the sudden influx of an entirely new element. What we
perceive is rather the gradual disappearance of an original element, the
Enthusiastic and Apocalyptic, that is, of the sure consciousness of an
immediate possession of the Divine Spirit, and the hope of the future
conquering the present; individual piety conscious of itself and
sovereign, living in the future world, recognising no external authority
and no external barriers. This piety became ever weaker and passed away:
the utilising of the Codex of Revelation, the Old Testament,
proportionally increased with the Hellenic influences which controlled
the process, for the two went always hand in hand. At an earlier period
the Churches made very little use of either, because they had in
individual religious inspiration on the basis of Christ's preaching and
the sure hope of his Kingdom which was near at hand, much more than
either could bestow. The factors whose co-operation we observe in the
second and third centuries, were already operative among the earliest
Gentile Christians. We nowhere find a yawning gulf in the great
development which lies between the first Epistle of Clement and the work
of Origen, [Greek: Peri archôn]. Even the importance which the
"Apostolic" was to obtain, was already foreshadowed by the end of the
first century, and enthusiasm always had its limits.[50] The most
decisive division, therefore, falls before the end of the first century;
or more correctly, the relatively new element, the Greek, which is of
importance for the forming of the Church as a commonwealth, and
consequently for the formation of its doctrine, is clearly present in
the churches even in the Apostolic age. Two hundred years, however,
passed before it made itself completely at home in the Gospel, although
there were points of connection inherent in the Gospel.
7. The cause of the great historical fact is clear. It is given in the
fact that the Gospel, rejected by the majority of the Jews, was very
soon proclaimed to those who were not Jews, that after a few decades the
greater number of its professors were found among the Greeks, and that,
consequently, the development leading to the Catholic dogma took place
within Græco-Roman culture. But within this culture there was lacking
the power of understanding either the idea of the completed Old
Testament theocracy, or the idea of the Messiah. Both of these essential
elements of the original proclamation, therefore, must either be
neglected or remodelled.[51] But it is hardly allowable to mention
details however important, where the whole aggregate of ideas, of
religious historical perceptions and presuppositions, which were based
on the old Testament, understood in a Christian sense, presented itself
as something new and strange. One can easily appropriate words, but not
practical ideas. Side by side with the Old Testament religion as the
presupposition of the Gospel, and using its forms of thought, the moral
and religious views and ideals dominant in the world of Greek culture
could not but insinuate themselves into the communities consisting of
Gentiles. From the enormous material that was brought home to the hearts
of the Greeks, whether formulated by Paul or by any other, only a few
rudimentary ideas could at first be appropriated. For that very reason,
the Apostolic Catholic doctrine of faith in its preparation and
establishment, is no mere continuation of that which, by uniting things
that are certainly very dissimilar, is wont to be described as "Biblical
Theology of the New Testament." Biblical Theology, even when kept within
reasonable limits, is not the presupposition of the history of dogma.
The Gentile Christians were little able to comprehend the controversies
which stirred the Apostolic age within Jewish Christianity. The
presuppositions of the history of dogma are given in certain fundamental
ideas, or rather motives of the Gospel, (in the preaching concerning
Jesus Christ, in the teaching of Evangelic ethics and the future life,
in the Old Testament capable of any interpretation, but to be
interpreted with reference to Christ and the Evangelic history), and in
the Greek spirit.[52]
8. The foregoing statements involve that the difference between the
development which led to the Catholic doctrine of religion and the
original condition, was by no means a total one. By recognising the Old
Testament as a book of Divine revelation, the Gentile Christians
received along with it the religious speech which was used by Jewish
Christians, were made dependent upon the interpretation which had been
used from the very beginning, and even received a great part of the
Jewish literature which accompanied the Old Testament. But the
possession of a common religious speech and literature is never a mere
outward bond of union, however strong the impulse be to introduce the
old familiar contents into the newly acquired speech. The Jewish, that
is, the Old Testament element, divested of its national peculiarity, has
remained the basis of Christendom. It has saturated this element with
the Greek spirit, but has always clung to its main idea, faith in God as
the creator and ruler of the world. It has in the course of its
development rejected important parts of that Jewish element, and has
borrowed others at a later period from the great treasure that was
transmitted to it. It has also been able to turn to account the least
adaptable features, if only for the external confirmation of its own
ideas. The Old Testament applied to Christ and his universal Church has
always remained the decisive document, and it was long ere Christian
writings received the same authority, long ere individual doctrines and
sayings of Apostolic writings obtained an influence on the formation of
ecclesiastical doctrine.
9. From yet another side there makes its appearance an agreement between
the circles of Palestinian believers in Jesus and the Gentile Christian
communities, which endured for more than a century, though it was of
course gradually effaced. It is the enthusiastic element which unites
them, the consciousness of standing in an immediate union with God
through the Spirit, and receiving directly from God's hand miraculous
gifts, powers and revelations, granted to the individual that he may
turn them to account in the service of the Church. The depotentiation of
the Christian religion, where one may believe in the inspiration of
another, but no longer feels his own, nay, dare not feel it, is not
altogether coincident with its settlement on Greek soil. On the
contrary, it was more than two centuries ere weakness and reflection
suppressed, or all but suppressed, the forms in which the personal
consciousness of God originally expressed itself.[53] Now it certainly
lies in the nature of enthusiasm, that it can assume the most diverse
forms of expression, and follow very different impulses, and so far it
frequently separates instead of uniting. But so long as criticism and
reflection are not yet awakened, and a uniform ideal hovers before one,
it does unite, and in this sense there existed an identity of
disposition between the earliest Jewish Christians and the still
enthusiastic Gentile Christian communities.
10. But, finally, there is a still further uniting element between the
beginnings of the development to Catholicism, and the original condition
of the Christian religion as a movement within Judaism, the importance
of which cannot be overrated, although we have every reason to complain
here of the obscurity of the tradition. Between the Græco-Roman world
which was in search of a spiritual religion, and the Jewish commonwealth
which already possessed such a religion as a national property, though
vitiated by exclusiveness, there had long been a Judaism which,
penetrated by the Greek spirit, was, _ex professo_, devoting itself to
the task of bringing a new religion to the Greek world, the Jewish
religion, but that religion in its kernel Greek, that is,
philosophically moulded, spiritualised and secularised. Here then was
already consummated an intimate union of the Greek spirit with the Old
Testament religion, within the Empire and to a less degree in Palestine
itself. If everything is not to be dissolved into a grey mist, we must
clearly distinguish this union between Judaism and Hellenism and the
spiritualising of religion it produced, from the powerful but
indeterminable influences which the Greek spirit exercised on all things
Jewish, and which have been a historical condition of the Gospel. The
alliance, in my opinion, was of no significance at all for the _origin_
of the Gospel, but was of the most decided importance, first, for the
propagation of Christianity, and then, for the development of
Christianity to Catholicism, and for the genesis of the Catholic
doctrine of faith.[54] We cannot certainly name any particular
personality who was specially active in this, but we can mention three
facts which prove more than individual references. (1) The propaganda of
Christianity in the Diaspora followed the Jewish propaganda and partly
took its place, that is, the Gospel was at first preached to those
Gentiles who were already acquainted with the general outlines of the
Jewish religion, and who were even frequently viewed as a Judaism of a
second order, in which Jewish and Greek elements had been united in a
peculiar mixture. (2) The conception of the Old Testament, as we find it
even in the earliest Gentile Christian teachers, the method of
spiritualising it, etc., agrees in the most surprising way with the
methods which were used by the Alexandrian Jews. (3) There are Christian
documents in no small number and of unknown origin, which completely
agree in plan, in form and contents with Græco-Jewish writings of the
Diaspora, as for example, the Christian Sibylline Oracles, and the
pseudo-Justinian treatise, "de Monarchia." There are numerous tractates
of which it is impossible to say with certainty whether they are of
Jewish or of Christian origin.
The Alexandrian and non-Palestinian Judaism is still Judaism. As the
Gospel seized and moved the whole of Judaism, it must also have been
operative in the non Palestinian Judaism. But that already foreshadowed
the transition of the Gospel to the non-Jewish Greek region, and the
fate which it was to experience there. For that non-Palestinian Judaism
formed the bridge between the Jewish Church and the Roman Empire,
together with its culture.[55] The Gospel passed into the world chiefly
by this bridge. Paul indeed had a large share in this, but his own
Churches did not understand the way he led them, and were not able on
looking back to find it.[56] He indeed became a Greek to the Greeks, and
even began the undertaking of placing the treasures of Greek knowledge
at the service of the Gospel. But the knowledge of Christ crucified, to
which he subordinated all other knowledge as only of preparatory value,
had nothing in common with Greek philosophy, while the idea of
justification and the doctrine of the Spirit (Rom. VIII), which together
formed the peculiar contents of his Christianity, were irreconcilable
with the moralism and the religious ideals of Hellenism. But the great
mass of the earliest Gentile Christians became Christians because they
perceived in the Gospel the sure tidings of the benefits and obligations
which they had already sought in the fusion of Jewish and Greek
elements. It is only by discerning this that we can grasp the
preparation and genesis of the Catholic Church and its dogma.
From the foregoing statements it appears that there fall to be
considered as presuppositions of the origin of the Catholic Apostolic
doctrine of faith, the following topics, though of unequal importance as
regards the extent of their influence:
(a) The Gospel of Jesus Christ.
(b) The common preaching of Jesus Christ in the first generation of
believers.
(c) The current exposition of the Old Testament, the Jewish speculations
and hopes of the future, in their significance for the earliest types of
Christian preaching.[57]
(d) The religious conceptions, and the religious philosophy of the
Hellenistic Jews, in their significance for the later restatement of the
Gospel.
(e) The religious dispositions of the Greeks and Romans of the first two
centuries, and the current Græco-Roman philosophy of religion.
§ 2. _The Gospel of Jesus Christ according to His own testimony
concerning Himself._
I. The Fundamental Features.
The Gospel entered into the world as an apocalyptic eschatological
message, apocalyptical and eschatological not only in its form, but also
in its contents. But Jesus announced that the kingdom of God had already
begun with his own work, and those who received him in faith became
sensible of this beginning; for the "apocalyptical" was not merely the
unveiling of the future, but above all the revelation of God as the
Father, and the "eschatological" received its counterpoise in the view
of Jesus' work as Saviour, in the assurance of being certainly called to
the kingdom, and in the conviction that life and future dominion is hid
with God the Lord and preserved for believers by him. Consequently, we
are following not only the indications of the succeeding history, but
also the requirement of the thing itself, when, in the presentation of
the Gospel, we place in the foreground, not that which unites it with
the contemporary disposition of Judaism, but that which raises it above
it. Instead of the hope of inheriting the kingdom, Jesus had also spoken
simply of preserving the soul, or the life. In this one substitution
lies already a transformation of universal significance, of political
religion into a religion that is individual and therefore holy; for the
life is nourished by the word of God, but God is the Holy One.
The Gospel is the glad message of the government of the world and of
every individual soul by the almighty and holy God, the Father and
Judge. In this dominion of God, which frees men from the power of the
Devil, makes them rulers in a heavenly kingdom in contrast with the
kingdoms of the world, and which will also be sensibly realised in the
future æon just about to appear, is secured life for all men who yield
themselves to God, although they should lose the world and the earthly
life. That is, the soul which is pure and holy in connection with God,
and in imitation of the Divine perfection is eternally preserved with
God, while those who would gain the world, and preserve their life, fall
into the hands of the Judge who sentences them to Hell. This dominion of
God imposes on men a law, an old and yet a new law, viz., that of the
Divine perfection and therefore of undivided love to God and to our
neighbour. In this love, where it sways the inmost feeling, is presented
the better righteousness (better not only with respect to the Scribes
and Pharisees, but also with respect to Moses, see Matt. V.), which
corresponds to the perfection of God. The way to attain it is a change
of mind, that is, self-denial, humility before God, and heartfelt trust
in him. In this humility and trust in God there is contained a
recognition of one's own unworthiness; but the Gospel calls to the
kingdom of God those very sinners who are thus minded, by promising the
forgiveness of the sins which hitherto have separated them from God. But
the Gospel which appears in these three elements, the dominion of God, a
better righteousness embodied in the law of love, and the forgiveness of
sin, is inseparably connected with Jesus Christ; for in preaching this
Gospel Jesus Christ everywhere calls men to himself. In him the Gospel
is word and deed; it has become his food, and therefore his personal
life, and into this life of his he draws all others. He is the Son who
knows the Father. In him men are to perceive the kindness of the Lord;
in him they are to feel God's power and government of the world, and to
become certain of this consolation; they are to follow him the meek and
lowly, and while he, the pure and holy one, calls sinners to himself,
they are to receive the assurance that God through him forgiveth sin.
Jesus Christ has by no express statement thrust this connection of his
Gospel with his Person into the foreground. No words could have
certified it unless his life, the overpowering impression of his Person,
had created it. By living, acting and speaking from the riches of that
life which he lived with his Father, he became for others the revelation
of the God of whom they formerly had heard, but whom they had not known.
He declared his Father to be their Father and they understood him. But
he also declared himself to be Messiah, and in so doing gave an
intelligible expression to his abiding significance for them and for his
people. In a solemn hour at the close of his life, as well as on special
occasions at an earlier period, he referred to the fact that the
surrender to his Person which induced them to leave all and follow him,
was no passing element in the new position they had gained towards God
the Father. He tells them, on the contrary, that this surrender
corresponds to the service which he will perform for them and for the
many, when he will give his life a sacrifice for the sins of the world.
By teaching them to think of him and of his death in the breaking of
bread and the drinking of wine, and by saying of his death that it takes
place for the remission of sins, he has claimed as his due from all
future disciples what was a matter of course so long as he sojourned
with them, but what might fade away after he was parted from them. He
who in his preaching of the kingdom of God raised the strictest
self-examination and humility to a law, and exhibited them to his
followers in his own life, has described with clear consciousness his
life crowned by death as the imperishable service by which men in all
ages will be cleansed from their sin and made joyful in their God. By so
doing he put himself far above all others, although they were to become
his brethren; and claimed a unique and permanent importance as Redeemer
and Judge. This permanent importance as the Lord he secured, not by
disclosures about the mystery of his Person, but by the impression of
his life and the interpretation of his death. He interprets it, like all
his sufferings, as a victory, as the passing over to his glory, and in
spite of the cry of God-forsakenness upon the cross, he has proved
himself able to awaken in his followers the real conviction that he
lives and is Lord and Judge of the living and the dead.
The religion of the Gospel is based on this belief in Jesus Christ, that
is, by looking to him, this historical person, it becomes certain to the
believer that God rules heaven and earth, and that God, the Judge, is
also Father and Redeemer. The religion of the Gospel is the religion
which makes the highest moral demands, the simplest and the most
difficult, and discloses the contradiction in which every man finds
himself towards them. But it also procures redemption from such misery,
by drawing the life of men into the inexhaustible and blessed life of
Jesus Christ, who has overcome the world and called sinners to himself.
In making this attempt to put together the fundamental features of the
Gospel, I have allowed myself to be guided by the results of this Gospel
in the case of the first disciples. I do not know whether it is
permissible to present such fundamental features apart from this
guidance. The preaching of Jesus Christ was in the main so plain and
simple, and in its application so manifold and rich, that one shrinks
from attempting to systematise it, and would much rather merely narrate
according to the Gospel. Jesus searches for the point in every man on
which he can lay hold of him and lead him to the Kingdom of God. The
distinction of good and evil--for God or against God--he would make a
life question for every man, in order to shew him for whom it has become
this, that he can depend upon the God whom he is to fear. At the same
time he did not by any means uniformly fall back upon sin, or even the
universal sinfulness, but laid hold of individuals very diversely, and
led them to God by different paths. The doctrinal concentration of
redemption on sin was certainly not carried out by Paul alone; but, on
the other hand, it did not in any way become the prevailing form for the
preaching of the Gospel. On the contrary, the antitheses, night, error,
dominion of demons, death and light, truth, deliverance, life, proved
more telling in the Gentile Churches. The consciousness of universal
sinfulness was first made the negative fundamental frame of mind of
Christendom by Augustine.
II. Details.
1. Jesus announced the Kingdom of God which stands in opposition to the
kingdom of the devil, and therefore also to the kingdom of the world, as
a future Kingdom, and yet it is presented in his preaching as present;
as an invisible, and yet it was visible--for one actually saw it. He
lived and spoke within the circle of eschatological ideas which Judaism
had developed more than two hundred years before: but he controlled them
by giving them a new content and forcing them into a new direction.
Without abrogating the law and the prophets he, on fitting occasions,
broke through the national, political and sensuous eudæmonistic forms in
which the nation was expecting the realisation of the dominion of God,
but turned their attention at the same time to a future near at hand, in
which believers would be delivered from the oppression of evil and sin,
and would enjoy blessedness and dominion. Yet he declared that even now,
every individual who is called into the kingdom may call on God as his
Father, and be sure of the gracious will of God, the hearing of his
prayers, the forgiveness of sin, and the protection of God even in this
present life.[58] But everything in this proclamation is directed to the
life beyond: the certainty of that life is the power and earnestness of
the Gospel.
2. The conditions of entrance to the kingdom are, in the first place, a
complete change of mind, in which a man renounces the pleasures of this
world, denies himself, and is ready to surrender all that he has in
order to save his soul; then, a believing trust in God's grace which he
grants to the humble and the poor, and therefore hearty confidence in
Jesus as the Messiah chosen and called by God to realise his kingdom on
the earth. The announcement is therefore directed to the poor, the
suffering, those hungering and thirsting for righteousness, not to those
who live, but to those who wish to be healed and redeemed, and finds
them prepared for entrance into, and reception of the blessings of the
kingdom of God,[59] while it brings down upon the self-satisfied, the
rich and those proud of their righteousness, the judgment of obduracy
and the damnation of Hell.
3. The commandment of undivided love to God and the brethren, as the
main commandment, in the observance of which righteousness is realised,
and forming the antithesis to the selfish mind, the lust of the world,
and every arbitrary impulse,[60] corresponds to the blessings of the
Kingdom of God, viz., forgiveness of sin, righteousness, dominion and
blessedness. The standard of personal worth for the members of the King
is self-sacrificing labour for others, not any technical mode of worship
or legal preciseness. Renunciation of the world together with its goods,
even of life itself in certain circumstances, is the proof of a man's
sincerity and earnest in seeking the Kingdom of God; and the meekness
which renounces every right, bears wrong patiently, requiting it with
kindness, is the practical proof of love to God, the conduct that
answers to God's perfection.
4. In the proclamation and founding of this kingdom, Jesus summoned men
to attach themselves to him, because he had recognised himself to be the
helper called by God, and therefore also the Messiah who was
promised.[61] He gradually declared himself to the people as such by the
names he assumed,[62] for the names "Anointed," "King," "Lord," "Son of
David," "Son of Man," "Son of God," all denote the Messianic office, and
were familiar to the greater part of the people.[63] But though, at
first, they express only the call, office, and power of the Messiah, yet
by means of them and especially by the designation Son of God, Jesus
pointed to a relation to God the Father, then and in its immediateness
unique, as the basis of the office with which he was entrusted. He has,
however, given no further explanation of the mystery of this relation
than the declaration that the Son alone knoweth the Father, and that
this knowledge of God and Sonship to God are secured for all others by
the sending of the Son.[64] In the proclamation of God as Father,[65] as
well as in the other proclamation that all the members of the kingdom
following the will of God in love, are to become one with the Son and
through him with the Father,[66] the message of the realised kingdom of
God receives its richest, inexhaustible content: the Son of the Father
will be the first-born among many brethren.
5. Jesus as the Messiah chosen by God has definitely distinguished
himself from Moses and all the Prophets: as his preaching and his work
are the fulfilment of the law and the prophets, so he himself is not a
disciple of Moses, but corrects that law-giver; he is not a Prophet, but
Master and Lord. He proves this Lordship during his earthly ministry in
the accomplishment of the mighty deeds given him to do, above all in
withstanding the Devil and his kingdom,[67] and--according to the law of
the Kingdom of God--for that very reason in the service which he
performs. In this service Jesus also reckoned the sacrifice of his life,
designating it as a [Greek: lutron] which he offered for the redemption
of man.[68] But he declared at the same time that his Messianic work was
not yet fulfilled in his subjection to death. On the contrary, the close
is merely initiated by his death; for the completion of the kingdom will
only appear when he returns in glory in the clouds of heaven to
judgment. Jesus seems to have announced this speedy return a short time
before his death, and to have comforted his disciples at his departure,
with the assurance that he would immediately enter into a supramundane
position with God.[69]
6. The instructions of Jesus to his disciples are accordingly dominated
by the thought that the end, the day and hour of which, however, no one
knows, is at hand. In consequence of this, also, the exhortation to
renounce all earthly good takes a prominent place. But Jesus does not
impose ascetic commandments as a new law, far less does he see in
asceticism as such, sanctification[70]--he himself did not live as an
ascetic, but was reproached as a wine-bibber--but he prescribed a
perfect simplicity and purity of disposition, and a singleness of heart
which remains invariably the same in trouble and renunciation, in
possession and use of earthly good. A uniform equality of all in the
conduct of life is not commanded: "To whom much is given, of him much
shall be required." The disciples are kept as far from fanaticism and
overrating of spiritual results as from asceticism. "Rejoice not that
the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written
in heaven." When they besought him to teach them to pray, he taught them
the "Lord's prayer", a prayer which demands such a collected mind, and
such a tranquil, childlike elevation of the heart to God, that it cannot
be offered at all by minds subject to passion or preoccupied by any
daily cares.
7. Jesus himself did not found a new religious community, but gathered
round him a circle of disciples, and chose Apostles whom he commanded to
preach the Gospel. His preaching was universalistic inasmuch as it
attributed no value to ceremonialism as such, and placed the fulfilment
of the Mosaic law in the exhibition of its moral contents, partly
against or beyond the letter. He made the law perfect by harmonising its
particular requirements with the fundamental moral requirements which
were also expressed in the Mosaic law. He emphasised the fundamental
requirements more decidedly than was done by the law itself, and taught
that all details should be referred to them and deduced from them. The
external righteousness of Pharisaism was thereby declared to be not only
an outer covering, but also a fraud, and the bond which still united
religion and nationality in Judaism was sundered.[71] Political and
national elements may probably have been made prominent in the hopes of
the future, as Jesus appropriated them for his preaching. But from the
conditions to which the realising of the hopes for the individual was
attached, there already shone the clearer ray which was to eclipse those
elements, and one saying such as Matt. XXII. 21, annulled at once
political religion and religious politics.
_Supplement_ 1.--The idea of the inestimable inherent value of every
individual human soul, already dimly appearing in several psalms, and
discerned by Greek Philosophers, though as a rule developed in
contradiction to religion, stands out plainly in the preaching of Jesus.
It is united with the idea of God as Father, and is the complement to
the message of the communion of brethren realising itself in love. In
this sense the Gospel is at once profoundly individualistic and
Socialistic. The prospect of gaining life, and preserving it for ever,
is therefore also the highest which Jesus has set forth, it is not,
however, to be a motive, but a reward of grace. In the certainty of this
prospect, which is the converse of renouncing the world, he has
proclaimed the sure hope of the resurrection, and consequently the most
abundant compensation for the loss of the natural life. Jesus put an end
to the vacillation and uncertainty which in this respect still prevailed
among the Jewish people of his day. The confession of the Psalmist,
"Whom have I in heaven but thee, and there is none upon the earth that I
desire beside thee", and the fulfilling of the Old Testament
commandment, "Love thy neighbour as thyself", were for the first time
presented in their connection in the person of Jesus. He himself
therefore is Christianity, for the "impression of his person convinced
the disciples of the facts of forgiveness of sin and the second birth,
and gave them courage to believe in and to lead a new life." We cannot
therefore state the "doctrine" of Jesus; for it appears as a
supramundane life which must be felt in the person of Jesus, and its
truth is guaranteed by the fact that such a life can be lived.
_Supplement_ 2.--The history of the Gospel contains two great
transitions, both of which, however, fall within the first century; from
Christ to the first generation of believers, including Paul, and from
the first, Jewish Christian, generation of these believers to the
Gentile Christians, in other words: from Christ to the brotherhood of
believers in Christ, and from this to the incipient Catholic Church. No
later transitions in the Church can be compared with these in
importance. As to the first, the question has frequently been asked, Is
the Gospel of Christ to be the authority or the Gospel concerning
Christ? But the strict dilemma here is false. The Gospel certainly is
the Gospel of Christ. For it has only, in the sense of Jesus, fulfilled
its Mission when the Father has been declared to men as he was known by
the Son, and where the life is swayed by the realities and principles
which ruled the life of Jesus Christ. But it is in accordance with the
mind of Jesus and at the same time a fact of history, that this Gospel
can only be appropriated and adhered to in connection with a believing
surrender to the person of Jesus Christ. Yet every dogmatic formula is
suspicious, because it is fitted to wound the spirit of religion; it
should not at least be put before the living experience in order to
evoke it; for such a procedure is really the admission of the half
belief which thinks it necessary that the impression made by the person
must be supplemented. The essence of the matter is a personal life which
awakens life around it as the fire of one torch kindles another. Early
as weakness of faith is in the Church of Christ, it is no earlier than
the procedure of making a formulated and ostensibly proved confession
the foundation of faith, and therefore demanding, above all, subjection
to this confession. Faith assuredly is propagated by the testimony of
faith, but dogma is not in itself that testimony.
The peculiar character of the Christian religion is conditioned by the
fact that every reference to God is at the same time a reference to
Jesus Christ, and _vice versa_. In this sense the Person of Christ is
the central point of the religion, and inseparably united with the
substance of piety as a sure reliance on God. Such a union does not, as
is supposed, bring a foreign element into the pure essence of religion.
The pure essence of religion rather demands such a union; for "the
reverence for persons, the inner bowing before the manifestation of
moral power and goodness is the root of all true religion" (W.
Herrmann). But the Christian religion knows and names only one name
before which it bows. In this rests its positive character, in all else,
as piety, it is by its strictly spiritual and inward attitude, not a
positive religion alongside of others, but religion itself. But just
because the Person of Christ has this significance is the knowledge and
understanding of the "historical Christ" required: for no other comes
within the sphere of our knowledge. "The historical Christ" that, to be
sure, is not the powerless Christ of contemporary history shewn to us
through a coloured biographical medium, or dissipated in all sorts of
controversies, but Christ as a power and as a life which towers above
our own life, and enters into our life as God's Spirit and God's Word,
(see Herrmann, Der Verkehr des Christen mit Gott. 2. Edit. 1892, (i.e.,
"The Fellowship of the Christian with God", an important work included
in the present series of translations. Ed.) Kähler, Der sog. historische
Jesus und der geschichtliche biblische Christus, 1892). But historical
labour and investigation are needed in order to grasp this Jesus Christ
ever more firmly and surely.
As to the second transition, it brought with it the most important
changes, which, however, became clearly manifest only after the lapse of
some generations. They appear, first, in the belief in holy
consecrations, efficacious in themselves, and administered by chosen
persons; further, in the conviction, that the relation of the individual
to God and Christ is, above all, conditioned on the acceptance of a
definite divinely attested law of faith and holy writings; further, in
the opinion that God has established Church arrangements, observance of
which is necessary and meritorious, as well as in the opinion that a
visible earthly community is the people of a new covenant. These
assumptions, which formally constitute the essence of Catholicism as a
religion, have no support in the teaching of Jesus, nay, offend against
that teaching.
_Supplement_ 3.--The question as to what new thing Christ has brought,
answered by Paul in the words, "If any man be in Christ he is a new
creature, old things are passed away, behold all things are become new",
has again and again been pointedly put since the middle of the second
century by Apologists, Theologians and religious Philosophers, within
and without the Church, and has received the most varied answers. Few of
the answers have reached the height of the Pauline confession. But where
one cannot attain to this confession, one ought to make clear to oneself
that every answer which does not lie in the line of it is altogether
unsatisfactory; for it is not difficult to set over against every
article from the preaching of Jesus an observation which deprives it of
its originality. It is the Person, it is the fact of his life that is
new and creates the new. The way in which he called forth and
established a people of God on earth, which has become sure of God and
of eternal life; the way in which he set up a new thing in the midst of
the old and transformed the religion of Israel into _the religion_ that
is the mystery of his Person, in which lies his unique and permanent
position in the history of humanity.
_Supplement_ 4.--The conservative position of Jesus towards the
religious traditions of his people had the necessary result that his
preaching and his Person were placed by believers in the frame-work of
this tradition, which was thereby very soon greatly expanded. But,
though this way of understanding the Gospel was certainly at first the
only possible way, and though the Gospel itself could only be preserved
by such means (see § 1), yet it cannot be mistaken that a displacement
in the conception of the Person and preaching of Jesus, and a burdening
of religious faith, could not but forthwith set in, from which
developments followed, the premises of which would be vainly sought for
in the words of the Lord (see §§ 3, 4). But here the question arises as
to whether the Gospel is not inseparably connected with the
eschatological world-renouncing element with which it entered into the
world, so that its being is destroyed where this is omitted. A few words
may be devoted to this question. The Gospel possesses properties which
oppose every positive religion, because they depreciate it, and these
properties form the kernel of the Gospel. The disposition which is
devoted to God, humble, ardent and sincere in its love to God and to the
brethren, is, as an abiding habit, law, and at the same time, a gift of
the Gospel, and also finally exhausts it. This quiet, peaceful element
was at the beginning strong and vigorous, even in those who lived in the
world of ecstasy and expected the world to come. One may be named for
all, Paul. He who wrote 1 Cor. XIII. and Rom. VIII. should not, in spite
of all that he has said elsewhere, be called upon to witness that the
nature of the Gospel is exhausted in its world-renouncing, ecstatic and
eschatological elements, or at least, that it is so inseparably united
with these as to fall along with them. He who wrote those chapters, and
the greater than he who promised the kingdom of heaven to children, and
to those who were hungering and thirsting for righteousness, he to whom
tradition ascribes the words: "Rejoice not that the spirits are subject
to you, but rather rejoice that your names are written in heaven"--both
attest that the Gospel lies above the antagonisms between this world and
the next, work and retirement from the world, reason and ecstasy,
Judaism and Hellenism. And because it lies above them it may be united
with either, as it originally unfolded its powers under the ruins of the
Jewish religion. But still more; it not only can enter into union with
them, it must do so if it is otherwise the religion of the living and is
itself living. It has only one aim; that man may find God and have him
as his own God, in order to gain in him humility and patience, peace,
joy and love. How it reaches this goal through the advancing centuries,
whether with the co-efficients of Judaism or Hellenism, of renunciation
of the world or of culture, of mysticism or the doctrine of
predestination, of Gnosticism or Agnosticism, and whatever other
incrustations there may yet be which can defend the kernel, and under
which alone living elements can grow--all that belongs to the centuries.
However each individual Christian may reckon to the treasure itself the
earthly vessel in which he hides his treasure; it is the duty and the
right, not only of the religious, but also of the historical estimate to
distinguish between the vessel and the treasure; for the Gospel did not
enter into the world as a positive statutory religion, and cannot
therefore have its classic manifestation in any form of its intellectual
or social types, not even in the first. It is therefore the duty of the
historian of the first century of the Church, as well as that of those
which follow, not to be content with fixing the changes of the Christian
religion, but to examine how far the new forms were capable of
defending, propagating and impressing the Gospel itself. It would
probably have perished if the forms of primitive Christianity had been
scrupulously maintained in the Church; but now primitive Christianity
has perished in order that the Gospel might be preserved. To study this
progress of the development, and fix the significance of the newly
received forms for the kernel of the matter, is the last and highest
task of the historian who himself lives in his subject. He who
approaches from without must be satisfied with the general view that in
the history of the Church some things have always remained, and other
things have always been changing.
_Literature._--Weiss. Biblical Theology of the New Testament. T. and T.
Clark. Wittichen. Beitr. z. bibl. Theol. 3. Thle. 1864-72.
Schüreer. Die Predigt Jesu in ihrem Verhaltniss z. A.T.u. z. Judenthum,
1882.
Wellhausen. Abriss der Gesch. Israels u. Juda's (Skizzen u. Vorarbeiten)
I. Heft. 1884.
Baldensperger. Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu im Licht der Messianischen
Hoffnungen seiner Zeit, 1888, (2 Aufl. 1891). The prize essays of
Schmoller and Issel, Ueber die Lehre vom Reiche Gottes im N. Test. 1891
(besides Gunkel in d. Theol. Lit. Ztg. 1893. N°. 2).
Wendt. Die Lehre Jesu. (The teaching of Jesus. T. and T. Clark. English
translation.)
Joh. Weiss. Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes, 1892.
Bousset. Jesu Predigt in ihrem Gegensatz zum Judenthum, 1892.
C. Holtzman. Die Offenbarung durch Christus und das Neue Testament
(Zeitschr. f. Theol. und Kirche I. p. 367 ff.) The special literature in
the above work of Weiss, and in the recent works on the life of Jesus,
and the Biblical Theology of the New Testament by Beyschlag. (T.T.
Clark)
§ 3. _The Common Preaching concerning Jesus Christ in the First
Generation of Believers._
Men had met with Jesus Christ and in him had found the Messiah. They
were convinced that God had made him to be wisdom and righteousness,
sanctification and redemption. There was no hope that did not seem to be
certified in him, no lofty idea which had not become in him a living
reality. Everything that one possessed was offered to him. He was
everything lofty that could be imagined. Everything that can be said of
him was already said in the first two generations after his appearance.
Nay, more: he was felt and known to be the ever living one, Lord of the
world and operative principle of one's own life. "To me to live is
Christ and to die is gain;" "He is the way, the truth and the life." One
could now for the first time be certain of the resurrection and eternal
life, and with that certainty the sorrows of the world melted away like
mist before the sun, and the residue of this present time became as a
day. This group of facts which the history of the Gospel discloses in
the world, is at the same time the highest and most unique of all that
we meet in that history; it is its seal and distinguishes it from all
other universal religions. Where in the history of mankind can we find
anything resembling this, that men who had eaten and drunk with their
Master should glorify him, not only as the revealer of God, but as the
Prince of life, as the Redeemer and Judge of the world, as the living
power of its existence, and that a choir of Jews and Gentiles, Greeks
and Barbarians, wise and foolish, should along with them immediately
confess that out of the fulness of this one man they have received grace
for grace? It has been said that Islam furnishes the unique example of a
religion born in broad daylight, but the community of Jesus was also
born in the clear light of day. The darkness connected with its birth is
occasioned not only by the imperfection of the records, but by the
uniqueness of the fact, which refers us back to the uniqueness of the
Person of Jesus.
But though it certainly is the first duty of the historian to signalise
the overpowering impression made by the Person of Jesus on the
disciples, which is the basis of all further developments, it would
little become him to renounce the critical examination of all the
utterances which have been connected with that Person with the view of
elucidating and glorifying it; unless he were with Origen to conclude
that Jesus was to each and all whatever they fancied him to be for their
edification. But this would destroy the personality. Others are of
opinion that we should conceive him, in the sense of the early
communities, as the second God who is one in essence with the Father, in
order to understand from this point of view all the declarations and
judgments of these communities. But this hypothesis leads to the most
violent distortion of the original declarations, and the suppression or
concealment of their most obvious features. The duty of the historian
rather consists in fixing the common features of the faith of the first
two generations, in explaining them as far as possible from the belief
that Jesus is Messiah, and in seeking analogies for the several
assertions. Only a very meagre sketch can be given in what follows. The
presentation of the matter in the frame-work of the history of dogma
does not permit of more, because as noted above, § 1, the presupposition
of dogma forming itself in the Gentile Church is not the whole
infinitely rich abundance of early Christian views and perceptions. That
presupposition is simply a proclamation of the one God and of Christ
transferred to Greek soil, fixed merely in its leading features and
otherwise very plastic, accompanied by a message regarding the future,
and demands for a holy life. At the same time the Old Testament and the
early Christian Palestinian writings with the rich abundance of their
contents, did certainly exercise a silent mission in the earliest
communities, till by the creation of the canon they became a power in
the Church.
I. The contents of the faith of the disciples,[72] and the common
proclamation which united them, may be comprised in the following
propositions. Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah promised by the prophets.
Jesus after his death is by the Divine awakening raised to the right
hand of God, and will soon return to set up his kingdom visibly upon the
earth. He who believes in Jesus, and has been received into the
community of the disciples of Jesus, who, in virtue of a sincere change
of mind, calls on God as Father, and lives according to the commandments
of Jesus, is a saint of God, and as such can be certain of the
sin-forgiving grace of God, and of a share in the future glory, that is,
of redemption.[73]
A community of Christian believers was formed within the Jewish national
community. By its organisation, the close brotherly union of its
members, it bore witness to the impression which the Person of Jesus had
made on it, and drew from faith in Jesus and hope of his return, the
assurance of eternal life, the power of believing in God the Father and
of fulfilling the lofty moral and social commands which Jesus had set
forth. They knew themselves to be the true Israel of the Messianic time
(see § 1), and for that very reason lived with all their thoughts and
feelings in the future. Hence the Apocalyptic hopes which in manifold
types were current in the Judaism of the time, and which Jesus had not
demolished, continued to a great extent in force (see § 4). One
guarantee for their fulfilment was supposed to be possessed in the
various manifestations of the Spirit,[74] which were displayed in the
members of the new communities at their entrance, with which an act of
baptism seems to have been united from the very first[75], and in their
gatherings. They were a guarantee that believers really were the [Greek:
ekklêsia tou theou], those called to be saints, and, as such, kings and
priests unto God[76] for whom the world, death and devil are overcome,
although they still rule the course of the world. The confession of the
God of Israel as the Father of Jesus, and of Jesus as Christ and
Lord[77] was sealed by the testimony of the possession of the Spirit,
which as Spirit of God assured every individual of his call to the
kingdom, united him personally with God himself and became to him the
pledge of future glory[78].
2. As the Kingdom of God which was announced had not yet visibly
appeared, as the appeal to the Spirit could not be separated from the
appeal to Jesus as Messiah, and as there was actually nothing possessed
but the reality of the Person of Jesus, so in preaching all stress must
necessarily fall on this Person. To believe in him was the decisive
fundamental requirement, and, at first, under the presupposition of the
religion of Abraham and the Prophets, the sure guarantee of salvation.
It is not surprising then to find that in the earliest Christian
preaching Jesus Christ comes before us as frequently as the Kingdom of
God in the preaching of Jesus himself. The image of Jesus, and the power
which proceeded from it, were the things which were really possessed.
Whatever was expected was expected only from Jesus the exalted and
returning one. The proclamation that the Kingdom of heaven is at hand
must therefore become the proclamation that Jesus is the Christ, and
that in him the revelation of God is complete. He who lays hold of Jesus
lays hold in him of the grace of God, and of a full salvation. We
cannot, however, call this in itself a displacement: but as soon as the
proclamation that Jesus is the Christ ceased to be made with the same
emphasis and the same meaning that it had in his own preaching, and what
sort of blessings they were which he brought, not only was a
displacement inevitable, but even a dispossession. But every
dispossession requires the given forms to be filled with new contents.
Simple as was the pure tradition of the confession: "Jesus is the
Christ," the task of rightly appropriating and handing down entire the
peculiar contents which Jesus had given to his self-witnessing and
preaching was nevertheless great, and in its limit uncertain. Even the
Jewish Christian could perform this task only according to the measure
of his spiritual understanding and the strength of his religious life.
Moreover, the external position of the first communities in the midst of
contemporaries who had crucified and rejected Jesus, compelled them to
prove, as their main duty, that Jesus really was the Messiah who was
promised. Consequently, everything united to bring the first communities
to the conviction that the proclamation of the Gospel with which they
were entrusted, resolved itself into the proclamation that Jesus is the
Christ. The [Greek: didaskein têrein panta hota eneteilato ho Iêsous]
(teaching to observe all that Jesus had commanded), a thing of heart and
life, could not lead to reflection in the same degree, as the [Greek:
didaskein hoti outos estin ho christos tou theou] (teaching that this is
the Christ of God): for a community which possesses the Spirit does not
reflect on whether its conception is right, but, especially a missionary
community, on what the certainty of its faith rests.
The proclamation of Jesus as the Christ, though rooted entirely in the
Old Testament, took its start from the exaltation of Jesus, which again
resulted from his suffering and death. The proof that the entire Old
Testament points to him, and that his person, his deeds and his destiny
are the actual and precise fulfilment of the Old Testament predictions,
was the foremost interest of believers, so far as they at all looked
backwards. This proof was not used in the first place for the purpose of
making the meaning and value of the Messianic work of Jesus more
intelligible, of which it did not seem to be in much need, but to
confirm the Messiahship of Jesus. Still, points of view for
contemplating the Person and work of Jesus could not fail to be got from
the words of the Prophets. The fundamental conception of Jesus
dominating everything was, according to the Old Testament, that God had
chosen him and through him the Church. God had chosen him and made him
to be both Lord and Christ. He had made over to him the work of setting
up the Kingdom, and had led him through death and resurrection to a
supra-mundane position of sovereignty, in which he would soon visibly
appear and bring about the end. The hope of Christ's speedy return was
the most important article in the "Christology," inasmuch as his work
was regarded as only reaching its conclusion by that return. It was the
most difficult, inasmuch as the Old Testament contained nothing of a
second advent of Messiah. Belief in the second advent became the
specific Christian belief.
But the searching in the scriptures of the Old Testament, that is, in
the prophetic texts, had already, in estimating the Person and dignity
of Christ, given an important impulse towards transcending the
frame-work of the idea of the theocracy completed solely in and for
Israel. Moreover, belief in the exaltation of Christ to the right hand
of God, caused men to form a corresponding idea of the beginning of his
existence. The missionary work among the Gentiles, so soon begun and so
rich in results, threw a new light on the range of Christ's purpose and
work, and led to the consideration of its significance for the whole
human race. Finally, the self-testimony of Jesus summoned them to ponder
his relation to God the Father, with the presuppositions of that
relation, and to give it expression in intelligible statements.
Speculation had already begun on these four points in the Apostolic age,
and had resulted in very different utterances as to the Person and
dignity of Jesus (§ 4).[79]
3. Since Jesus had appeared and was believed on as the Messiah promised
by the Prophets, the aim and contents of his mission seemed already to
be therewith stated with sufficient clearness. Further, as the work of
Christ was not yet completed, the view of those contemplating it was,
above all, turned to the future. But in virtue of express words of
Jesus, and in the consciousness of having received the Spirit of God,
one was already certain of the forgiveness of sin dispensed by God, of
righteousness before him, of the full knowledge of the Divine will, and
of the call to the future Kingdom as a present possession. In the
procuring of these blessings not a few perceived with certainty the
results of the first advent of Messiah, that is, his work. This work
might be seen in the whole activity of Christ. But as the forgiveness of
sins might be conceived as _the_ blessing of salvation which included
with certainty every other blessing, as Jesus had put his death in
express relation with this blessing, and as the fact of this death so
mysterious and offensive required a special explanation, there appeared
in the foreground from the very beginning the confession, in 1 Cor. XV.
3: [Greek: paredôxa humin en prôtois, ho kai parelabon, hoti christos
apethanen huper tôn hamartion hêmon.] "I delivered unto you first of all
that which I also received, that _Christ died for our sins_." Not only
Paul, for whom, in virtue of his special reflections and experiences,
the cross of Christ had become the central point of all knowledge, but
also the majority of believers, must have regarded the preaching of the
death of the Lord as an essential article in the preaching of
Christ[80], seeing that, as a rule, they placed it somehow under the
aspect of a sacrifice offered to God. Still, there were very different
conceptions of the value of the death as a means of procuring salvation,
and there may have been many who were satisfied with basing its
necessity on the fact that it had been predicted, ([Greek: apethanen
kata tas graphas]: "he died for our sins _according to the
scriptures_"), while their real religious interests were entirely
centered in the future glory to be procured by Christ. But it must have
been of greater significance for the following period that, from the
first, a short account of the destiny of Jesus lay at the basis of all
preaching about him (see a part of this in 1 Cor. XV. 1-11). Those
articles in which the identity of the Christ who had appeared with the
Christ who had been promised stood out with special clearness, must have
been taken up into this report, as well as those which transcended the
common expectations of Messiah, which for that very reason appeared of
special importance, viz., his death and resurrection. In putting
together this report, there was no intention of describing the "work" of
Christ. But after the interest which occasioned it had been obscured,
and had given place to other interests, the customary preaching of those
articles must have led men to see in them Christ's real performance, his
"work."[81]
4. The firm confidence of the disciples in Jesus was rooted in the
belief that he did not abide in death, but was raised by God. That
Christ had risen was, in virtue of what they had experienced in him,
certainly only after they had seen him, just as sure as the fact of his
death, and became the main article of their preaching about him.[82] But
in the message of the risen Lord was contained not only the conviction
that he lives again, and now lives for ever, but also the assurance that
his people will rise in like manner and live eternally. Consequently,
the resurrection of Jesus became the sure pledge of the resurrection of
all believers, that is of their real personal resurrection. No one at
the beginning thought of a mere immortality of the spirit, not even
those who assumed the perishableness of man's sensuous nature. In
conformity with the uncertainty which yet adhered to the idea of
resurrection in Jewish hopes and speculations, the concrete notions of
it in the Christian communities were also fluctuating. But this could
not affect the certainty of the conviction that the Lord would raise his
people from death. This conviction, whose reverse side is the fear of
that God who casts into hell, has become the mightiest power through
which the Gospel has won humanity.[83]
5. After the appearance of Paul, the earliest communities were greatly
exercised by the question as to how believers obtain the righteousness
which they possess, and what significance a precise observance of the
law of the Fathers may have in connection with it. While some would hear
of no change in the regulations and conceptions which had hitherto
existed, and regarded the bestowal of righteousness by God as possible
only on condition of a strict observance of the law, others taught that
Jesus as Messiah had procured righteousness for his people, had
fulfilled the law once for all, and had founded a new covenant, either
in opposition to the old, or as a stage above it. Paul especially saw in
the death of Christ the end of the law, and deduced righteousness solely
from faith in Christ, and sought to prove from the Old Testament itself,
by means of historical speculation, the merely temporary validity of the
law and therewith the abrogation of the Old Testament religion. Others,
and this view, which is not everywhere to be explained by Alexandrian
influences (see above p. 72 f.), is not foreign to Paul, distinguished
between spirit and letter in the Mosaic law, giving to everything a
spiritual significance, and in this sense holding that the whole law as
[Greek: nomos pneumatikos] was binding. The question whether
righteousness comes from the works of the law or from faith, was
displaced by this conception, and therefore remained in its deepest
grounds unsolved, or was decided in the sense of a spiritualised
legalism. But the detachment of Christianity from the political forms of
the Jewish religion, and from sacrificial worship, was also completed by
this conception, although it was regarded as identical with the Old
Testament religion rightly understood. The surprising results of the
direct mission to the Gentiles would seem to have first called forth
those controversies (but see Stephen) and given them the highest
significance. The fact that one section of Jewish Christians, and even
some of the Apostles, at length recognised the right of the Gentile
Christians to be Christians without first becoming Jews, is the clearest
proof that what was above all prized was faith in Christ and surrender
to him as the saviour. In agreeing to the direct mission to the Gentiles
the earliest Christians, while they themselves observed the law, broke
up the national religion of Israel, and gave expression to the
conviction that Jesus was not only the Messiah of his people, but the
redeemer of humanity.[84] The establishment of the universal character
of the Gospel, that is, of Christianity as a religion for the world,
became now, however, a problem, the solution of which, as given by Paul,
but few were able to understand or make their own.
6. In the conviction that salvation is entirely bound up with faith in
Jesus Christ, Christendom gained the consciousness of being a new
creation of God. But while the sense of being the true Israel was
thereby, at the same time, held fast, there followed, on the one hand,
entirely new historical perspectives, and on the other, deep problems
which demanded solution. As a new creation of God, [Greek: he ekklêsia
tou theou], the community was conscious of having been chosen by God in
Jesus before the foundation of the world. In the conviction of being the
true Israel, it claimed for itself the whole historical development
recorded in the Old Testament, convinced that all the divine activity
there recorded had the new community in view. The great question which
was to find very different answers, was how, in accordance with this
view, the Jewish nation, so far as it had not recognised Jesus as
Messiah, should be judged. The detachment of Christianity from Judaism
was the most important preliminary condition, and therefore the most
important preparation, for the Mission among the Gentile nations, and
for union with the Greek spirit.
_Supplement_ 1.--Renan and others go too far when they say that Paul
alone has the glory of freeing Christianity from the fetters of Judaism.
Certainly the great Apostle could say in this connection also: [Greek:
perissoteron autôn pantôn ekopiasa], but there were others beside him
who, in the power of the Gospel, transcended the limits of Judaism.
Christian communities, it may now be considered certain, had arisen in
the empire, in Rome for example, which were essentially free from the
law without being in any way determined by Paul's preaching. It was
Paul's merit that he clearly formulated the great question, established
the universalism of Christianity in a peculiar manner, and yet in doing
so held fast the character of Christianity as a positive religion, as
distinguished from Philosophy and Moralism. But the later development
presupposes neither his clear formulation nor his peculiar establishment
of universalism, but only the universalism itself.
_Supplement_ 2.--The dependence of the Pauline Theology on the Old
Testament or on Judaism is overlooked in the traditional contrasting of
Paulinism and Jewish Christianity, in which Paulinism is made equivalent
to Gentile Christianity. This theology, as we might _a priori_ suppose,
could, apart from individual exceptions, be intelligible as a whole to
born Jews, if to any, for its doctrinal presuppositions were strictly
Pharisaic, and its boldness in criticising the Old Testament, rejecting
and asserting the law in its historical sense, could be as little
congenial to the Gentile Christians as its piety towards the Jewish
people. This judgment is confirmed by a glance at the fate of Pauline
Theology in the 120 years that followed. Marcion was the only Gentile
Christian who understood Paul, and even he misunderstood him: the rest
never got beyond the appropriation of particular Pauline sayings, and
exhibited no comprehension especially of the theology of the Apostle, so
far as in it the universalism of Christianity as a religion is proved,
even without recourse to Moralism and without putting a new construction
on the Old Testament religion. It follows from this, however, that the
scheme "Jewish Christianity"-"Gentile Christianity" is insufficient. We
must rather, in the Apostolic age, at least at its close, distinguish
four main tendencies that may have crossed each other here and
there,[85] (within which again different shades appear). (1) The Gospel
has to do with the people of Israel, and with the Gentile world only on
the condition that believers attach themselves to the people of Israel.
The punctilious observance of the law is still necessary and the
condition on which the messianic salvation is bestowed (particularism
and legalism, in practice and in principle, which, however, was not to
cripple the obligation to prosecute the work of the Mission). (2) The
Gospel has to do with Jews and Gentiles: the first, as believers in
Christ, are under obligation as before to observe the law, the latter
are not; but for that reason they cannot on earth fuse into one
community with the believing Jews. Very different judgments in details
were possible on this stand-point; but the bestowal of salvation could
no longer be thought of as depending simply on the keeping of the
ceremonial commandments of the law[86] (universalism in principle,
particularism in practice; the prerogative of Israel being to some
extent clung to). (3) The Gospel has to do with both Jews and Gentiles;
no one is any longer under obligation to observe the law; for the law is
abolished (or fulfilled), and the salvation which Christ's death has
procured is appropriated by faith. The law (that is the Old Testament
religion) in its literal sense is of divine origin, but was intended
from the first only for a definite epoch of history. The prerogative of
Israel remains, and is shewn in the fact that salvation was first
offered to the Jews, and it will be shewn again at the end of all
history. That prerogative refers to the nation as a whole, and has
nothing to do with the question of the salvation of individuals
(Paulinism: universalism in principle and in practice, and Antinomianism
in virtue of the recognition of a merely temporary validity of the whole
law; breach with the traditional religion of Israel; recognition of the
prerogative of the people of Israel; the clinging to the prerogative of
the people of Israel was not, however, necessary on this stand-point:
see the epistle to the Hebrews and the Gospel of John). (4) The Gospel
has to do with Jews and Gentiles: no one need therefore be under
obligation to observe the ceremonial commandments and sacrificial
worship, because these commandments themselves are only the wrappings of
moral and spiritual commandments which the Gospel has set forth as
fulfilled in a more perfect form (universalism in principle and in
practice in virtue of a neutralising of the distinction between law and
Gospel, old and new; spiritualising and universalising of the law).[87]
_Supplement_ 3.--The appearance of Paul is the most important fact in
the history of the Apostolic age. It is impossible to give in a few
sentences an abstract of his theology and work; and the insertion here
of a detailed account is forbidden, not only by the external limits, but
by the aim of this investigation. For, as already indicated (§ 1), the
doctrinal formation in the Gentile Church is not connected with the
whole phenomenon of the Pauline theology, but only with certain leading
thoughts which were only in part peculiar to the Apostle. His most
peculiar thoughts acted on the development of Ecclesiastical doctrine
only by way of occasional stimulus. We can find room here only for a few
general outlines.[88]
(1) The inner conviction that Christ had revealed himself to him, that
the Gospel was the message of the crucified and risen Christ, and that
God had called him to proclaim that message to the world, was the power
and the secret of his personality and his activity. These three elements
were a unity in the consciousness of Paul, constituting his conversion
and determining his after-life. (2) In this conviction he knew himself
to be a new creature, and so vivid was this knowledge that he was
constrained to become a Jew to the Jews, and a Greek to the Greeks in
order to gain them. (3) The crucified and risen Christ became the
central point of his theology, and not only the central point, but the
one source and ruling principle. The Christ was not in his estimation
Jesus of Nazareth now exalted, but the mighty personal spiritual being
in divine form who had for a time humbled himself, and who as Spirit has
broken up the world of law, sin, and death, and continues to overcome
them in believers. (4) Theology therefore was to him, looking forwards,
the doctrine of the liberating power of the Spirit (of Christ) in all
the concrete relations of human life and need. The Christ who has
already overcome law, sin and death, lives as Spirit, and through his
Spirit lives in believers, who for that very reason know him not after
the flesh. He is a creative power of life to those who receive him in
faith in his redeeming death upon the cross, that is to say, to those
who are justified. The life in the Spirit, which results from union with
Christ, will at last reveal itself also in the body (not in the flesh).
(5) Looking backwards, theology was to Paul a doctrine of the law and of
its abrogation; or more accurately, a description of the old system
before Christ in the light of the Gospel, and the proof that it was
destroyed by Christ. The scriptural proof, even here, is only a
superadded support to inner considerations which move entirely within
the thought that that which is abrogated has already had its due, by
having its whole strength made manifest that it might then be
annulled,--the law, the flesh of sin, death: by the law the law is
destroyed, sin is abolished in sinful flesh, death is destroyed by
death. (6) The historical view which followed from this begins, as
regards Christ, with Adam and Abraham; as regards the law, with Moses.
It closes, as regards Christ, with the prospect of a time when he shall
have put all enemies beneath his feet, when God will be all in all; as
regards Moses and the promises given to the Jewish nation, with the
prospect of a time when all Israel will be saved. (7) Paul's doctrine of
Christ starts from the final confession of the primitive Church, that
Christ is with the Father as a heavenly being and as Lord of the living
and the dead. Though Paul must have accurately known the proclamation
concerning the historical Christ, his theology in the strict sense of
the word does not revert to it: but springing over the historical, it
begins with the pre-existent Christ (the Man from heaven), whose moral
deed it was to assume the flesh in self-denying love, in order to break
for all men the powers of nature and the doom of death. But he has
pointed to the words and example of the historical Christ in order to
rule the life in the Spirit. (8) Deductions, proofs, and perhaps also
conceptions, which in point of form betray the theology of the Pharisaic
schools, were forced from the Apostle by Christian opponents, who would
only grant a place to the message of the crucified Christ beside the
[Greek: dikaiosunê ex ergôn]. Both as an exegete and as a typologist he
appears as a disciple of the Pharisees. But his dialectic about law,
circumcision and sacrifice, does not form the kernel of his religious
mode of thought, though, on the other hand, it was unquestionably his
very Pharisaism which qualified him for becoming what he was. Pharisaism
embraced nearly everything lofty which Judaism apart from Christ at all
possessed, and its doctrine of providence, its energetic insistence on
making manifest the religious contrasts, its Messianic expectations, its
doctrines of sin and predestination, were conditions for the genesis of
a religious and Christian character such as Paul.[89] This first
Christian of the second generation is the highest product of the Jewish
spirit under the creative power of the Spirit of Christ. Pharisaism had
fulfilled its mission for the world when it produced this man. (9) But
Hellenism also had a share in the making of Paul, a fact which does not
conflict with his Pharisaic origin, but is partly given with it. In
spite of all its exclusiveness the desire for making proselytes,
especially in the Diaspora, was in the blood of Pharisaism. Paul
continued the old movement in a new way, and he was qualified for his
work among the Greeks by an accurate knowledge of the Greek translation
of the Old Testament, by considerable dexterity in the use of the Greek
language, and by a growing insight into the spiritual life of the
Greeks. But the peculiarity of his Gospel as a message from the Spirit
of Christ, which was equally near to and equally distant from every
religious and moral mode of thought among the nations of the world,
signified much more than all this. This Gospel--who can say whether
Hellenism had already a share in its conception--required that the
missionary to the Greeks should become a Greek and that believers should
come to know, "all things are yours, and ye are Christ's." Paul, as no
doubt other missionaries besides him, connected the preaching of Christ
with the Greek mode of thought; he even employed philosophic doctrines
of the Greeks as presuppositions in his apologetic,[90] and therewith
prepared the way for the introduction of the Gospel to the Græco-Roman
world of thought. But, in my opinion, he has nowhere allowed that world
of thought to influence his doctrine of salvation. This doctrine,
however, was so fashioned in its practical aims that it was not
necessary to become a Jew in order to appropriate it. (10) Yet we cannot
speak of any total effect of Paulinism, as there was no such thing. The
abundance of its details was too great and the greatness of its
simplicity too powerful, its hope of the future too vivid, its doctrine
of the law too difficult, its summons to a new life in the spirit too
mighty to be comprehended and adhered to even by those communities which
Paul himself had founded. What they did comprehend was its Monotheism,
its universalism, its redemption, its eternal life, its asceticism; but
all this was otherwise combined than by Paul. The style became Hellenic,
and the element of a new kind of knowledge from the very first, as in
the Church of Corinth, seems to have been the ruling one. The Pauline
doctrine of the incarnate heavenly Man was indeed apprehended; it fell
in with Greek notions, although it meant something very different from
the notions which Greeks had been able to form of it.
_Supplement_ 4.--What we justly prize above all else in the New
Testament is that it is a union of the three groups, Synoptic Gospels,
Pauline Epistles,[91] and Johannine writings, in which are expressed the
richest contents of the earliest history of the Gospel. In the Synoptic
Gospels and the epistles of Paul are represented two types of preaching
the Gospel which mutually supplement each other. The subsequent history
is dependent on both, and would have been other than it is had not both
existed alongside of each other. On the other hand, the peculiar and
lofty conception of Christ and of the Gospel, which stands out in the
writings of John, has directly exercised no demonstrable influence on
the succeeding development--with the exception of one peculiar movement,
the Montanistic, which, however, does not rest on a true understanding
of these writings--and indeed partly for the same reason that has
prevented the Pauline theology as a whole from having such an influence.
What is given in these writings is a criticism of the Old Testament as
religion, or the independence of the Christian religion, in virtue of an
accurate knowledge of the Old Testament through development of its
hidden germs. The Old Testament stage of religion is really transcended
and overcome in the Johannine Christianity, just as in Paulinism, and in
the theology of the epistle to the Hebrews. "The circle of disciples who
appropriated this characterisation of Jesus is," says Weizsäcker, "a
revived Christ-party in the higher sense." But this transcending of the
Old Testament religion was the very thing that was unintelligible,
because there were few ripe for such a conception. Moreover, the origin
of the Johannine writings is, from the stand-point of a history of
literature and dogma, the most marvellous enigma which the early history
of Christianity presents: Here we have portrayed a Christ who clothes
the indescribable with words, and proclaims as his own self-testimony
what his disciples have experienced in him, a speaking, acting, Pauline
Christ, walking on the earth, far more human than the Christ of Paul and
yet far more Divine, an abundance of allusions to the historical Jesus,
and at the same time the most sovereign treatment of the history. One
divines that the Gospel can find no loftier expression than John XVII.:
one feels that Christ himself put these words into the mouth of the
disciple, who gives them back to him, but word and thing, history and
doctrine are surrounded by a bright cloud of the suprahistorical. It is
easy to shew that this Gospel could as little have been written without
Hellenism, as Luther's treatise on the freedom of a Christian man could
have been written without the "Deutsche Theologie." But the reference to
Philo and Hellenism is by no means sufficient here, as it does not
satisfactorily explain even one of the external aspects of the problem.
The elements operative in the Johannine theology were not Greek
Theologoumena--even the Logos has little more in common with that of
Philo than the name, and its mention at the beginning of the book is a
mystery, not the solution of one[92]--but the Apostolic testimony
concerning Christ has created from the old faith of Psalmists and
Prophets, a new faith in a man who lived with the disciples of Jesus
among the Greeks. For that very reason, in spite of his abrupt
Anti-judaism, we must without doubt regard the Author as a born Jew.
_Supplement_ 5.--The authorities to which the Christian communities were
subjected in faith and life, were these: (1) The Old Testament
interpreted in the Christian sense. (2) The tradition of the Messianic
history of Jesus. (3) The words of the Lord: see the epistles of Paul,
especially 1 Corinthians. But every writing which was proved to have
been given by the Spirit had also to be regarded as an authority, and
every tested Christian Prophet and Teacher inspired by the Spirit could
claim that his words be received and regarded as the words of God.
Moreover, the twelve whom Jesus had chosen had a special authority, and
Paul claimed a similar authority for himself ([Greek: diataxeis tôn
apostolôn]). Consequently, there were numerous courts of appeal in the
earliest period of Christendom, of diverse kinds and by no means
strictly defined. In the manifold gifts of the spirit was given a fluid
element indefinable in its range and scope, an element which guaranteed
freedom of development, but which also threatened to lead the
enthusiastic communities to extravagance.
_Literature._--Weiss, Biblical Theology of the New Testament, 1884.
Beyschlag, New Testament Theology, 1892. Ritschl, Entstehung der
Alt-Katholischen Kirche, 2 Edit. 1857. Reuss, History of Christian
Theology in the Apostolic Age, 1864. Baur, The Apostle Paul, 1866.
Holsten, Zum Evangelium des Paulus und Petrus, 1868. Pfleiderer,
Paulinism, 1873: also, Das Urchristenthum, 1887. Schenkel, Das
Christusbild der Apostel, 1879. Renan, Origins of Christianity Vols.
II.-IV. Havet, Le Christianisme et ses orig. T, IV. 1884. Lechler, The
Apostolic and Post-Apostolic Age, 1885. Weizsäcker, The Apostolic Age,
1892. Hatch, Article "Paul" in the Encyclopædia Britannica. Everett, The
Gospel of Paul. Boston, 1893. On the origin and earliest history of the
Christian proofs from prophecy, see my "Texte und Unters. z. Gesch. der
Alt-Christl." Lit. I. 3, p. 56 f.
§ 4. _The Current Exposition of the Old Testament, and the Jewish hopes
of the future, in their significance for the earliest types of Christian
preaching._
Instead of the frequently very fruitless investigations about
"Jewish-Christian," and "Gentile-Christian," it should be asked, What
Jewish elements have been naturalised in the Christian Church, which
were in no way demanded by the contents of the Gospel? have these
elements been simply weakened in course of the development, or have some
of them been strengthened by a peculiar combination with the Greek? We
have to do here, in the first instance, with the doctrine of Demons and
Angels, the view of history, the growing exclusiveness, the fanaticism;
and on the other hand, with the cultus, and the Theocracy, expressing
itself in forms of law.
1. Although Jesus had in principle abolished the methods of pedantry,
the casuistic treatment of the law, and the subtleties of prophetic
interpretation, yet the old Scholastic exegesis remained active in the
Christian communities above all the unhistorical local method in the
exposition of the Old Testament, both allegoristic and Haggadic; for in
the exposition of a sacred text--and the Old Testament was regarded as
such--one is always required to look away from its historical
limitations and to expound it according to the needs of the present.[93]
The traditional view exercised its influence on the exposition of the
Old Testament, as well as on the representations of the person, fate and
deeds of Jesus, especially in those cases where the question was about
the proof of the fulfilment of prophecy, that is, of the Messiahship of
Jesus. (See above § 3, 2). Under the impression made by the history of
Jesus it gave to many Old Testament passages a sense that was foreign to
them, and, on the other hand, enriched the life of Jesus with new facts,
turning the interest at the same time to details which were frequently
unreal and seldom of striking importance.[94]
2. The Jewish Apocalyptic literature, especially as it flourished since
the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, and was impregnated with new elements
borrowed from an ethico-religious philosophy, as well as with Babylonian
and Persian myths (Greek myths can only be detected in very small
number), was not banished from the circles of the first professors of
the Gospel, but was rather held fast, eagerly read, and even extended
with the view of elucidating the promises of Jesus.[95] Though their
contents seem to have been modified on Christian soil, and especially
the uncertainty about the person of the Messiah exalted to victory and
coming to judgment,[96] yet the sensuous earthly hopes were in no way
repressed. Green fat meadows and sulphurous abysses, white horses and
frightful beasts, trees of life, splendid cities, war and bloodshed
filled the fancy,[97] and threatened to obscure the simple and yet, at
bottom, much more affecting maxims about the judgment which is certain
to every individual soul, and drew the confessors of the Gospel into a
restless activity, into politics, and abhorrence of the State. It was an
evil inheritance which the Christians took over from the Jews,[98] an
inheritance which makes it impossible to reproduce with certainty the
eschatological sayings of Jesus. Things directly foreign were mixed up
with them, and, what was most serious, delineations of the hopes of the
future could easily lead to the undervaluing of the most important gifts
and duties of the Gospel.[99]
3. A wealth of mythologies and poetic ideas was naturalised and
legitimised[100] in the Christian communities, chiefly by the reception
of the Apocalyptic literature, but also by the reception of artificial
exegesis and Haggada. Most important for the following period were the
speculations about Messiah, which were partly borrowed from expositions
of the Old Testament and from the Apocalypses, partly formed
independently, according to methods the justice of which no one
contested, and the application of which seemed to give a firm basis to
religious faith.
Some of the Jewish Apocalyptists had already attributed pre-existence to
the expected Messiah, as to other precious things in the Old Testament
history and worship, and, without any thought of denying his human
nature, placed him as already existing before his appearing in a series
of angelic beings.[101] This took place in accordance with an
established method of speculation, so far as an attempt was made thereby
to express the special value of an empiric object, by distinguishing
between the essence and the inadequate form of appearance, hypostatising
the essence, and exalting it above time and space. But when a later
appearance was conceived as the aim of a series of preparations, it was
frequently hypostatised and placed above these preparations even in
time. The supposed aim was, in a kind of real existence, placed, as
first cause, before the means which were destined to realise it on
earth.[102]
Some of the first confessors of the Gospel, though not all the writers
of the New Testament, in accordance with the same method, went beyond
the declarations which Jesus himself had made about his person, and
endeavoured to conceive its value and absolute significance abstractly
and speculatively. The religious convictions (see § 3. 2): (1) That the
founding of the Kingdom of God on earth, and the mission of Jesus as the
perfect mediator, were from eternity based on God's plan of Salvation,
as his main purpose; (2) that the exalted Christ was called into a
position of Godlike Sovereignty belonging to him of right; (3) that God
himself was manifested in Jesus, and that he therefore surpasses all
mediators of the Old Testament, nay, even all angelic powers,--these
convictions with some took the form that Jesus pre-existed, and that in
him has appeared and taken flesh a heavenly being fashioned like God,
who is older than the world, nay, its creative principle.[103] The
conceptions of the old Teachers, Paul, the author of the Epistle to the
Hebrews, the Apocalypse, the author of the first Epistle of Peter, the
fourth Evangelist, differ in many ways when they attempt to define these
convictions more closely. The latter is the only one who has recognised
with perfect clearness that the premundane Christ must be assumed to be
[Greek: theos hôn en archê pros ton theon], so as not to endanger by
this speculation the contents and significance of the revelation of God
which was given in Christ. This, in the earliest period, was essentially
a religious problem, that is, it was not introduced for the explanation
of cosmological problems, (see, especially, Epistle to the Ephesians, I
Peter; but also the Gospel of John), and there stood peacefully beside
it, such conceptions as recognised the equipment of the man Jesus for
his office in a communication of the Spirit at his baptism,[104] or in
virtue of Isaiah VII., found the germ of his unique nature in his
miraculous origin.[105] But as soon as that speculation was detached
from its original foundation, it necessarily withdrew the minds of
believers from the consideration of the work of Christ, and from the
contemplation of the revelation of God which was given in the ministry
of the historical person Jesus. The mystery of the person of Jesus in
itself, would then necessarily appear as the true revelation.[106]
A series of theologoumena and religious problems for the future doctrine
of Christianity lay ready in the teaching of the Pharisees and in the
Apocalypses (see especially the fourth book of Ezra), and was really
fitted for being of service to it; e.g., doctrines about Adam, universal
sinfulness, the fall, predestination, Theodicy, etc., besides all kinds
of ideas about redemption. Besides these spiritual doctrines there were
not a few spiritualised myths which were variously made use of in the
Apocalypses. A rich, spiritual, figurative style, only too rich and
therefore confused, waited for the theological artist to purify, reduce
and vigorously fashion. There really remained very little of the
Cosmico-Mythological in the doctrine of the great Church.
_Supplement._--The reference to the proof from prophecy, to the current
exposition of the Old Testament, the Apocalyptic and the prevailing
methods of speculation, does not suffice to explain all the elements
which are found in the different types of Christian preaching. We must
rather bear in mind here that the earliest communities were
enthusiastic, and had yet among them prophets and ecstatic persons. Such
circumstances will always directly produce facts in the history. But, in
the majority of cases, it is absolutely impossible to account
subsequently for the causes of such productions, because their formation
is subject to no law accessible to the understanding. It is therefore
inadmissible to regard as proved the reality of what is recorded and
believed to be a fact, when the motive and interest which led to its
acceptance can no longer be ascertained.[107]
Moreover, if we consider the conditions, outer and inner, in which the
preaching of Christ in the first decades was placed, conditions which in
every way threatened the Gospel with extravagance, we shall only see
cause to wonder that it continued to shine forth amid all its wrappings.
We can still, out of the strangest "fulfilments", legends and
mythological ideas, read the religious conviction that the aim and goal
of history is disclosed in the history of Christ, and that the Divine
has now entered into history in a pure form.
_Literature._--The Apocalypses of Daniel, Enoch, Moses, Baruch, Ezra;
Schürer, History of the Jewish People in the time of Christ;
Baldensperger, in the work already mentioned. Weber, System der
Altsynagogalen palästinischen Theologie, 1880, Kuenen, Hibbert Lectures,
1883. Hilgenfeld, Die jüdische Apokalyptik, 1857. Wellhausen, Sketch of
the History of Israel and Judah, 1887. Diestel, Gesch. des A. T. in der
Christl. Kirche, 1869. Other literature in Schürer. The essay of Hellwag
in the Theol. Jahrb. von Baur and Zeller, 1848, "Die Vorstellung von der
Präexistenz Christi in der ältesten Kirche", is worth noting; also Joël,
Blicke in die Religionsgeschichte zu Anfang des 2 Christl. Jahrhunderts,
1880-1883.
§ 5. _The Religious Conceptions and the Religious Philosophy of the
Hellenistic Jews, in their significance for the later formulation of the
Gospel_.
1. From the remains of the Jewish Alexandrian literature and the Jewish
Sibylline writings, also from the work of Josephus, and especially from
the great propaganda of Judaism in the Græco-Roman world, we may gather
that there was a Judaism in the Diaspora, for the consciousness of which
the cultus and ceremonial law were of comparatively subordinate
importance; while the monotheistic worship of God, apart from images,
the doctrines of virtue and belief in a future reward beyond the grave,
stood in the foreground as its really essential marks. Converted
Gentiles were no longer everywhere required to be even circumcised; the
bath of purification was deemed sufficient. The Jewish religion here
appears transformed into a universal human ethic and a monotheistic
cosmology. For that reason, the idea of the Theocracy as well as the
Messianic hopes of the future faded away or were uprooted. The latter,
indeed, did not altogether pass away; but as the oracles of the Prophets
were made use of mainly for the purpose of proving the antiquity and
certainty of monotheistic belief, the thought of the future was
essentially exhausted in the expectation of the dissolution of the Roman
empire, the burning of the world, and the eternal recompense. The
specific Jewish element, however, stood out plainly in the assertion
that the Old Testament, and especially the books of Moses, were the
source of all true knowledge of God, and the sum total of all doctrines
of virtue for the nations, as well as in the connected assertion that
the religious and moral culture of the Greeks was derived from the Old
Testament, as the source from which the Greek Poets and Philosophers had
drawn their inspiration.[108]
These Jews and the Greeks converted by them formed, as it were, a
Judaism of a second order without law, i.e., ceremonial law, and with a
minimum of statutory regulations. This Judaism prepared the soil for the
Christianising of the Greeks, as well as for the genesis of a great
Gentile Church in the empire, free from the law; and this the more that,
as it seems, after the second destruction of Jerusalem, the punctilious
observance of the law[109] was imposed more strictly than before on all
who worshipped the God of the Jews.[110]
The Judaism just portrayed, developed itself, under the influence of the
Greek culture with which it came in contact, into a kind of
Cosmopolitanism. It divested itself, as religion, of all national forms,
and exhibited itself as the most perfect expression of that "natural"
religion which the stoics had disclosed. But in proportion as it was
enlarged and spiritualised to a universal religion for humanity, it
abandoned what was most peculiar to it, and could not compensate for
that loss by the assertion of the thesis that the Old Testament is the
oldest and most reliable source of that natural religion, which in the
traditions of the Greeks had only witnesses of the second rank. The
vigour and immediateness of the religious feeling was flattened down to
a moralism, the barrenness of which drove some Jews even into Gnosis,
mysticism and asceticism.[111]
2. The Jewish Alexandrian philosophy of religion, of which Philo gives
us the clearest conception,[112] is the scientific theory which
corresponded to this religious conception. The theological system which
Philo, in accordance with the example of others, gave out as the Mosaic
system revealed by God, and proved from the Old Testament by means of
the allegoric exegetic method, is essentially identical with the system
of Stoicism, which had been mixed with Platonic elements and had lost
its Pantheistic materialistic impress. The fundamental idea from which
Philo starts is a Platonic one; the dualism of God and the world, spirit
and matter. The idea of God itself is therefore abstractly and
negatively conceived (God, the real substance which is not finite), and
has nothing more in common with the Old Testament conception. The
possibility, however, of being able to represent God as acting on
matter, which as the finite is the non-existent, and therefore the evil,
is reached, with the help of the Stoic [Greek: logos] as working powers
and of the Platonic doctrine of archetypal ideas, and in outward
connection with the Jewish doctrine of angels and the Greek doctrine of
demons, by the introduction of intermediate spiritual beings which, as
personal and impersonal powers proceeding from God, are to be thought of
as operative causes and as Archetypes. All these beings are, as it were,
comprehended in the Logos. By the Logos Philo understands the operative
reason of God, and consequently also the power of God. The Logos is to
him the thought of God and at the same time the product of his thought,
therefore both idea and power. But further, the Logos is God himself on
that side of him which is turned to the world, as also the ideal of the
world and the unity of the spiritual forces which produce the world and
rule in it. He can therefore be put beside God and in opposition to the
world; but he can also, so far as the spiritual contents of the world
are comprehended in him, be put with the world in contrast with God. The
Logos accordingly appears as the Son of God, the foremost creature, the
representative, Viceroy, High Priest, and Messenger of God; and again as
principle of the world, spirit of the world, nay, as the world itself.
He appears as a power and as a person, as a function of God and as an
active divine being. Had Philo cancelled the contradiction which lies in
this whole conception of the Logos, his system would have been
demolished; for that system with its hard antithesis of God and the
world, needed a mediator who was, and yet was not God, as well as world.
From this contrast, however, it further followed that we can only think
of a world-formation by the Logos, not of a world-creation.[113] Within
this world man is regarded as a microcosm, that is, as a being of Divine
nature according to his spirit, who belongs to the heavenly world, while
the adhering body is a prison which holds men captive in the fetters of
sense, that is, of sin.
The Stoic and Platonic ideals and rules of conduct (also the
Neo-pythagorean) were united by Philo in the religious Ethic as well as
in the Cosmology. Rationalistic moralism is surmounted by the injunction
to strive after a higher good lying above virtue. But here, at the same
time, is the point at which Philo decidedly goes beyond Platonism, and
introduces a new thought into Greek Ethics, and also in correspondence
therewith into theoretic philosophy. This thought, which indeed lay
altogether in the line of the development of Greek philosophy, was not,
however, pursued by Philo into all its consequences, though it was the
expression of a new frame of mind. While the highest good is resolved by
Plato and his successors into knowledge of truth, which truth, together
with the idea of God, lies in a sphere really accessible to the
intellectual powers of the human spirit, the highest good, the Divine
original being, is considered by Philo, though not invariably, to be
above reason, and the power of comprehending it is denied to the human
intellect. This assumption, a concession which Greek speculation was
compelled to make to positive religion for the supremacy which was
yielded to it, was to have far-reaching consequences in the future. _A
place was now for the first time provided in philosophy for a mythology
to be regarded as revelation._ The highest truths which could not
otherwise be reached, might be sought for in the oracles of the Deity;
for knowledge resting on itself had learnt by experience its inability
to attain to the truth in which blessedness consists. _In this very
experience the intellectualism of Greek Ethics was, not indeed
cancelled, but surmounted._ The injunction to free oneself from sense
and strive upwards by means of knowledge, remained; but the wings of the
thinking mind bore it only to the entrance of the sanctuary. Only
ecstasy produced by God himself was able to lead to the reality above
reason. The great novelties in the system of Philo, though in a certain
sense the way had already been prepared for them, are the introduction
of the idea of a philosophy of revelation and the advance beyond the
absolute intellectualism of Greek philosophy, an advance based on
scepticism, but also on the deep-felt needs of life. Only the germs of
these are found in Philo, but they are already operative. They are
innovations of world-wide importance: for in them the covenant between
the thoughts of reason on the one hand, and the belief in revelation and
mysticism on the other, is already so completed that neither by itself
could permanently maintain the supremacy. Thought about the world was
henceforth dependent, not only on practical motives, it is always that,
but on the need of a blessedness and peace which is higher than all
reason. It might, perhaps, be allowable to say that Philo was the first
who, as a philosopher, plainly expressed that need, just because he was
not only a Greek, but also a Jew.[114]
Apart from the extremes into which the ethical counsels of Philo run,
they contain nothing that had not been demanded by philosophers before
him. The purifying of the affections, the renunciation of sensuality,
the acquisition of the four cardinal virtues, the greatest possible
simplicity of life, as well as a cosmopolitan disposition are
enjoined.[115] But the attainment of the highest morality by our own
strength is despaired of, and man is directed beyond himself to God's
assistance. Redemption begins with the spirit reflecting on its own
condition; it advances by a knowledge of the world and of the Logos, and
it is perfected, after complete asceticism, by mystic ecstatic
contemplation in which a man loses himself, but in return is entirely
filled and moved by God.[116] In this condition man has a foretaste of
the blessedness which shall be given him when the soul, freed from the
body, will be restored to its true existence as a heavenly being.
This system, notwithstanding its appeal to revelation, has, in the
strict sense of the word, no place for Messianic hopes, of which nothing
but very insignificant rudiments are found in Philo. But he was really
animated by the hope of a glorious time to come for Judaism. The
synthesis of the Messiah and the Logos did not lie within his
horizon.[117]
3. Neither Philo's philosophy of religion, nor the mode of thought from
which it springs, exercised any appreciable influence on the first
generation of believers in Christ.[118] But its practical
ground-thoughts, though in different degrees, must have found admission
very early into the Jewish Christian circles of the Diaspora, and
through them to Gentile Christian circles also. Philo's philosophy of
religion became operative among Christian teachers from the beginning of
the second century,[119] and at a later period actually obtained the
significance of a standard of Christian theology, Philo gaining a place
among Christian writers. The systems of Valentinus and Origen presuppose
that of Philo. It can no longer, however, be shewn with certainty how
far the direct influence of Philo reached, as the development of
religious ideas in the second century took a direction which necessarily
led to views similar to those which Philo had anticipated (see § 6, and
the whole following account).
_Supplement._--The hermeneutic principles (the "Biblicalalchemy"), above
all, became of the utmost importance for the following period. These
were partly invented by Philo himself, partly traditional,--the Haggadic
rules of exposition and the hermeneutic principles of the Stoics having
already at an earlier period been united in Alexandria. They fall into
two main classes; "first, those according to which the literal sense is
excluded, and the allegoric proved to be the only possible one, and
then, those according to which the allegoric sense is discovered as
standing beside and above the literal sense."[120] That these rules
permitted the discovery of a new sense by minute changes within a word,
was a point of special importance.[121] Christian teachers went still
further in this direction, and, as can be proved, altered the text of
the Septuagint in order to make more definite what suggested itself to
them as the meaning of a passage, or in order to give a satisfactory
meaning to a sentence which appeared to them unmeaning or
offensive.[122] Nay, attempts were not wanting among Christians in the
second century--they were aided by the uncertainty that existed about
the extent of the Septuagint, and by the want of plain predictions about
the death upon the cross--to determine the Old Testament canon in
accordance with new principles; that is, to alter the text on the plea
that the Jews had corrupted it, and to insert new books into the Old
Testament, above all, Jewish Apocalypses revised in a Christian sense.
Tertullian (de cultu fem. I. 3,) furnishes a good example of the latter.
"Scio scipturam Enoch, quæ hunc ordinem angelis dedit, non recipi a
quibusdam, quia nee in armorium Judaicum admittitur ... sed cum Enoch
eadem scriptura etiam de domino prædicarit, a nobis quidem nihil omnino
reiciendum est quod pertinet ad nos. Et legimus omnem scripturam
ædificationi habilem divinitus inspirari. A Judæis potest jam videri
propterea reiecta, sicut et cetera fere quæ Christum sonant.... Eo
accedit quod Enoch apud Judam apostolum testimonium possidet." Compare
also the history of the Apocalypse of Ezra in the Latin Bible (Old
Testament). Not only the genuine Greek portions of the Septuagint, but
also many Apocalypses were quoted by Christians in the second century as
of equal value with the Old Testament. It was the New Testament that
slowly put an end to these tendencies towards the formation of a
Christian Old Testament.
To find the spiritual meaning of the sacred text, partly beside the
literal, partly by excluding it, became the watchword for the
"scientific" Christian theology which was possible only on this basis,
as it endeavoured to reduce the immense and dissimilar material of the
Old Testament to unity with the Gospel, and both with the religious and
scientific culture of the Greeks,--yet without knowing a relative
standard, the application of which would alone have rendered possible in
a loyal way the solution of the task. Here, Philo was the master; for he
first to a great extent poured the new wine into old bottles. Such a
procedure is warranted by its final purpose; for history is a unity. But
applied in a pedantic and stringently dogmatic way it is a source of
deception, of untruthfulness, and finally of total blindness.
_Literature._--Gefrörer, Das Jahr des Heils, 1838. Parthey, Das
Alexandr. Museum, 1838. Matter, Hist. de l'école d'Alex. 1840. Dähne,
Gesch. Darstellung der jüd.-alex. Religions-philos. 1834. Zeller, Die
Philosophie der Griechen, III. 2. 3rd Edition. Mommsen, History of Rome,
Vol. V. Siegfried, Philo von Alex. 1875. Massebieau, Le Classement des
Oeuvres de Philon. 1889. Hatch, Essays in Biblical Greek, 1889.
Drummond, Philo Judæus, 1888. Bigg, The Christian Platonists of
Alexandria, 1886. Schürer, History of the Jewish People. The
investigations of Freudenthal (Hellenistische Studien), and Bernays
(Ueber das phokylideische Gedicht; Theophrastos' Schrift über
Frömmigkeit; Die heraklitischen Briefe). Kuenen, Hibbert Lectures:
"Christian Theology could have made and has made much use of Hellenism.
But the Christian religion cannot have sprung from this source." Havet
thinks otherwise, though in the fourth volume of his "Origines" he has
made unexpected admissions.
§ 6. _The Religious Dispositions of the Greeks and Romans in the first
two centuries, and the current Græco-Roman Philosophy of Religion._
1. After the national religion and the religious sense generally in
cultured circles had been all but lost in the age of Cicero and
Augustus, there is noticeable in the Græco-Roman world from the
beginning of the second century a revival of religious feeling which
embraced all classes of society, and appears, especially from the middle
of that century, to have increased from decennium to decennium.[123]
Parallel with it went the not altogether unsuccessful attempt to restore
the old national worship, religious usages, oracles, etc. In these
attempts, however, which were partly superficial and artificial, the new
religious needs found neither vigorous nor clear expression. These needs
rather sought new forms of satisfaction corresponding to the wholly
changed conditions of the time, including intercourse and mixing of the
nations; decay of the old republican orders, divisions and ranks;
monarchy and absolutism and social crises; pauperism; influence of
philosophy on the domain of public morality and law; cosmopolitanism and
the rights of man; influx of Oriental cults into the West; knowledge of
the world and disgust with it. The decay of the old political cults and
syncretism produced a disposition in favour of monotheism both among the
cultured classes who had been prepared for it by philosophy, and also
gradually among the masses. Religion and individual morality became more
closely connected. There was developed a corresponding attempt at
spiritualising the worship alongside of and within the ceremonial forms,
and at giving it a direction towards the moral elevation of man through
the ideas of moral personality, conscience, and purity. The ideas of
repentance and of expiation and healing of the soul became of special
importance, and consequently such Oriental cults came to the front as
required the former and guaranteed the latter. But what was sought above
all, was to enter into an inner union with the Deity, to be saved by him
and become a partaker in the possession and enjoyment of his life. The
worshipper consequently longed to find a "præsens numen" and the
revelation of him in the cultus, and hoped to put himself in possession
of the Deity by asceticism and mysterious rites. This new piety longed
for health and purity of soul, and elevation above earthly things, and
in connection with these a divine, that is, a painless and eternal life
beyond the grave ("renatus in æternum taurobolio"). A world beyond was
desired, sought for and viewed with an uncertain eye. By detachment from
earthly things and the healing of its diseases (the passions) the freed,
new born soul should return to its divine nature and existence. It is
not a hope of immortality such as the ancients had dreamed of for their
heroes, where they continue, as it were, their earthly existence in
blessed enjoyment. To the more highly pitched self-consciousness this
life had become a burden, and in the miseries of the present, one hoped
for a future life in which the pain and vulgarity of the unreal life of
earth would be completely laid aside ([Greek: Enkrateia] and [Greek:
anastasis]). If the new moralistic feature stood out still more
emphatically in the piety of the second century, it vanished more and
more behind the religious feature, the longing after life[124] and after
a Redeemer God. No one could any longer be a God who was not also a
saviour.[125]
With all this Polytheism was not suppressed, but only put into a
subordinate place. On the contrary, it was as lively and active as ever.
For the idea of a _numen supremum_ did not exclude belief in the
existence and manifestation of subordinate deities. Apotheosis came into
currency. The old state religion first attained its highest and most
powerful expression in the worship of the emperor, (the emperor
glorified as "dominus ac deus noster",[126] as "præsens et corporalis
deus", the Antinous cult, etc.)., and in many circles an incarnate ideal
in the present or the past was sought, which might be worshipped as
revealer of God and as God, and which might be an example of life and an
assurance of religious hope. Apotheosis became less offensive in
proportion as, in connection with the fuller recognition of the
spiritual dignity of man, the estimate of the soul, the spirit, as of
supramundane nature, and the hope of its eternal continuance in a form
of existence befitting it, became more general. That was the import of
the message preached by the Cynics and the Stoics, that the truly wise
man is Lord, Messenger of God, and God upon the earth. On the other
hand, the popular belief clung to the idea that the gods could appear
and be visible in human form, and this faith, though mocked by the
cultured, gained numerous adherents, even among them, in the age of the
Antonines.[127]
The new thing which was here developed, continued to be greatly obscured
by the old forms of worship which reasons of state and pious custom
maintained. And the new piety, dispensing with a fixed foundation,
groped uncertainly around, adapting the old rather than rejecting it.
The old religious practices of the Fathers asserted themselves in public
life generally, and the reception of new cults by the state, which was
certainly effected, though with many checks, did not disturb them. The
old religious customs stood out especially on state holidays, in the
games in honour of the Gods, frequently degenerating into shameless
immorality, but yet protecting the institutions of the state. The
patriot, the wise man, the sceptic, and the pious man compounded with
them, for they had not really at bottom outgrown them, and they knew of
nothing better to substitute for the services they still rendered to
society (see the [Greek: logos alêthês] of Celsus).
2. The system of associations, naturalised centuries before among the
Greeks, was developed under the social and political pressure of the
empire, and was greatly extended by the change of moral and religious
ideas. The free unions, which, as a rule, had a religious element and
were established for mutual help, support, or edification, balanced to
some extent the prevailing social cleavage, by a free democratic
organisation. They gave to many individuals in their small circle the
rights which they did not possess in the great world, and were
frequently of service in obtaining admission for new cults. Even the new
piety and cosmopolitan disposition seem to have turned to them in order
to find within them forms of expression. But the time had not come for
the greater corporate unions, and of an organised connection of
societies in one city with those of another we know nothing. The state
kept these associations under strict control. It granted them only to
the poorest classes (_collegia tenuiorum_) and had the strictest laws in
readiness for them. These free unions, however, did not in their
historical importance approach the fabric of the Roman state in which
they stood. That represented the union of the greater part of humanity
under one head, and also more and more under one law. Its capital was
the capital of the world, and also, from the beginning of the third
century, of religious syncretism. Hither migrated all who desired to
exercise an influence on the great scale: Jew, Chaldean, Syrian priest,
and Neoplatonic teacher. Law and Justice radiated from Rome to the
provinces, and in their light nationalities faded away, and a
cosmopolitanism was developed which pointed beyond itself, because the
moral spirit can never find its satisfaction in that which is realised.
When that spirit finally turned away from all political life, and after
having laboured for the ennobling of the empire, applied itself, in
Neoplatonism, to the idea of a new and free union of men, this certainly
was the result of the felt failure of the great creation, but it
nevertheless had that creation for its presupposition. The Church
appropriated piecemeal the great apparatus of the Roman state, and gave
new powers, new significance and respect to every article that had been
depreciated. But what is of greatest importance is that the Church by
her preaching would never have gained whole circles, but only
individuals, had not the universal state already produced a neutralising
of nationalities and brought men nearer each other in temper and
disposition.
3. Perhaps the most decisive factor in bringing about the revolution of
religious and moral convictions and moods, was philosophy, which in
almost all its schools and representatives, had deepened ethics, and set
it more and more in the foreground. After Possidonius, Seneca,
Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius of the Stoical school, and men like
Plutarch of the Platonic, attained to an ethical view, which, though not
very clear in principle (knowledge, resignation, trust in God), is
hardly capable of improvement in details. Common to them all, as
distinguished from the early Stoics, is the value put upon the soul,
(not the entire human nature), while in some of them there comes clearly
to the front a religious mood, a longing for divine help, for redemption
and a blessed life beyond the grave, the effort to obtain and
communicate a religious philosophical therapeutic of the soul. From
the beginning of the second century, however, already announced itself
that eclectic philosophy based on Platonism which after two or three
generations appeared in the form of a school, and after three
generations more was to triumph over all other schools. The several
elements of the Neoplatonic philosophy, as they were already
foreshadowed in Philo, are clearly seen in the second century, viz., the
dualistic opposition of the divine and the earthly, the abstract
conception of God, the assertion of the unknowableness of God,
scepticism with regard to sensuous experience, and distrust with regard
to the powers of the understanding, with a greater readiness to examine
things and turn to account the result of former scientific labour;
further, the demand of emancipation from sensuality by means of
asceticism, the need of authority, belief in a higher revelation, and
the fusion of science and religion. The legitimising of religious fancy
in the province of philosophy was already begun. The myth was no longer
merely tolerated and re-interpreted as formerly, but precisely the
mythic form with the meaning imported into it was the precious
element.[128] There were, however, in the second century numerous
representatives of every possible philosophic view. To pass over the
frivolous writers of the day, the Cynics criticised the traditional
mythology in the interests of morality and religion.[129] But there were
also men who opposed the "ne quid nimis" to every form of practical
scepticism, and to religion at the same time, and were above all intent
on preserving the state and society, and on fostering the existing
arrangements which appeared to be threatened far more by an intrusive
religious than by a nihilistic philosophy.[130] Yet men whose interest
was ultimately practical and political, became ever more rare,
especially as from the death of Marcus Aurelius, the maintenance of the
state had to be left more and more to the sword of the Generals. The
general conditions from the end of the second century were favourable to
a philosophy which no longer in any respect took into real consideration
the old forms of the state.
The theosophic philosophy which was prepared for in the second
century,[131] was, from the stand-point of enlightenment and knowledge
of nature, a relapse: but it was the expression of a deeper religious
need, and of a self-knowledge such as had not been in existence at an
earlier period. The final consequences of that revolution in philosophy
which made consideration of the inner life the starting-point of thought
about the world, only now began to be developed. The ideas of a divine,
gracious providence, of the relationship of all men, of universal
brotherly love, of a ready forgiveness of wrong, of forbearing patience,
of insight into one's own weakness--affected no doubt with many
shadows--became, for wide circles, a result of the practical philosophy
of the Greeks as well as, the conviction of inherent sinfulness, the
need of redemption, and the eternal value and dignity of a human soul
which finds rest only in God. These ideas, convictions and rules, had
been picked up in the long journey from Socrates to Ammonius Saccas: at
first, and for long afterwards, they crippled the interest in a rational
knowledge of the world; but they deepened and enriched the inner life,
and therewith the source of all knowledge. Those ideas, however, lacked
as yet the certain coherence, but, above all, the authority which could
have raised them above the region of wishes, presentiments, and
strivings, and have given them normative authority in a community of
men. There was no sure revelation, and no view of history which could be
put in the place of the no longer prized political history of the nation
or state to which one belonged.[132] There was, in fact, no such thing
as certainty. In like manner, there was no power which might overturn
idolatry and abolish the old, and therefore one did not get beyond the
wavering between self-deification, fear of God, and deification of
nature. The glory is all the greater of those statesmen and jurists who,
in the second and third centuries, introduced human ideas of the Stoics
into the legal arrangements of the empire, and raised them to standards.
And we must value all the more the numerous undertakings and
performances, in which it appeared that the new view of life was
powerful enough in individuals to beget a corresponding practice even
without a sure belief in revelation.[133]
_Supplement._--For the correct understanding of the beginning of
Christian theology, that is, for the Apologetic and Gnosis, it is
important to note where they are dependent on Stoic, and where on
Platonic lines of thought. Platonism and Stoicism, in the second
century, appeared in union with each other: but up to a certain point
they may be distinguished in the common channel in which they flow.
Wherever Stoicism prevailed in religious thought and feeling, as for
example, in Marcus Aurelius, religion gains currency as _natural_
religion in the most comprehensive sense of the word. The idea of
revelation or redemption scarcely emerges. To this rationalism, the
objects of knowledge are unvarying, ever the same: even cosmology
attracts interest only in a very small degree. Myth and history are
pageantry and masks. Moral ideas (virtues and duties) dominate even the
religious sphere, which in its final basis has no independent authority.
The interest in psychology and apologetic is very pronounced. On the
other hand, the emphasis, which, in principle, is put on the contrast of
spirit and matter, God and the world, had for results: inability to rest
in the actual realities of the cosmos, efforts to unriddle the history
of the universe backwards and forwards, recognition of this process as
the essential task of theoretic philosophy, and a deep, yearning
conviction that the course of the world needs assistance. Here were
given the conditions for the ideas of revelation, redemption, etc., and
the restless search for powers from whom help might come, received here
also a scientific justification. The rationalistic apologetic interests
thereby fell into the background: contemplation and historical
description predominated.[134]
The stages in the ecclesiastical history of dogma, from the middle of
the first to the middle of the fifth century, correspond to the stages
in the history of the ancient religion during the same period. The
Apologists, Irenæus, Tertullian, Hippolytus; the Alexandrians;
Methodius, and the Cappadocians; Dionysius, the Areopagite, have their
parallels in Seneca, Marcus Aurelius; Plutarch, Epictetus, Numenius;
Plotinus, Porphyry; Iamblichus and Proclus.
But it is not only Greek philosophy that comes into question for the
history of Christian dogma. The whole of Greek culture must be taken
into account. In his posthumous work, Hatch has shewn in a masterly way
how that is to be done. He describes the Grammar, the Rhetoric, the
learned Profession, the Schools, the Exegesis, the Homilies, etc., of
the Greeks, and everywhere shews how they passed over into the Church,
thus exhibiting the Philosophy, the Ethic, the speculative Theology, the
Mysteries, etc., of the Greeks, as the main factors in the process of
forming the ecclesiastical mode of thought.
But, besides the Greek, there is no mistaking the special influence of
Romish ideas and customs upon the Christian Church. The following points
specially claim attention: (1) The conception of the contents of the
Gospel and its application as "salus legitima," with the results which
followed from the naturalising of this idea. (2) The conception of the
word of Revelation, the Bible, etc., as "lex." (3) The idea of tradition
in its relation to the Romish idea. (4) The Episcopal constitution of
the Church, including the idea of succession, of the Primateship and
universal Episcopate, in their dependence on Romish ideas and
institutions (the Ecclesiastical organisation in its dependence on the
Roman Empire). (5) The separation of the idea of the "sacrament" from
that of the "mystery", and the development of the forensic discipline of
penance. The investigation has to proceed in a historical line,
described by the following series of chapters: Rome and Tertullian; Rome
and Cyprian; Rome, Optatus and Augustine; Rome and the Popes of the
fifth century. We have, to shew how, by the power of her constitution
and the earnestness and consistency of her policy, Rome a second time,
step by step, conquered the world, but this time the Christian
world.[135]
Greek philosophy exercised the greatest influence not only on the
Christian mode of thought, but also through that, on the institutions of
the Church. The Church never indeed became a philosophic school: but yet
in her was realised in a peculiar way, that which the Stoics and the
Cynics had aimed at. The Stoic (Cynic) Philosopher also belonged to the
factors from which the Christian Priests or Bishops were formed. That
the old bearers of the Spirit--Apostles, Prophets, Teachers--have been
changed into a class of professional moralists and preachers, who bridle
the people by counsel and reproof [Greek: nouthetein kai elenchein],
that this class considers itself and desires to be considered as a
mediating Kingly Divine class, that its representatives became "Lords"
and let themselves be called "Lords", all this was prefigured in the
Stoic wise man and in the Cynic Missionary. But so far as these several
"Kings and Lords" are united in the idea and reality of the Church and
are subject to it, the Platonic idea of the republic goes beyond the
Stoic and Cynic ideals, and subordinates them to it. But this Platonic
ideal has again obtained its political realisation in the Church through
the very concrete laws of the Roman Empire, which were more and more
adopted, or taken possession of. Consequently, in the completed Church
we find again the philosophic schools and the Roman Empire.
_Literature._--Besides the older works of Tzschirner, Döllinger,
Burckhardt, Preller, see Friedländer, Darstellungen aus der Sittengesch.
Roms. in der Zeit von August bis zum Ausgang der Antonine, 3 Bd. Aufl.
Boissier, La Religion Romaine d'Auguste aux Antonins, 2 Bd. 1874.
Ramsay, The Church in the Roman Empire before 170. London, 1893.
Réville, La Religion à Rome sous les Sévères, 1886. Schiller, Geschichte
der Röm. Kaiserzeit, 1883. Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung, 3 Bde.
1878. Foucart, Les Associations Relig. chez les Grecs, 1873. Liebeman,
Z. Gesch. u. Organisation d. Röm. Vereinswesen, 1890. K.J. Neumann, Der
Röm. Staat und die allg. Kirche, Bd. I. 1890. Leopold Schmidt, Die Ethik
der alten Griechen, 2 Bd. 1882. Heinrici, Die Christengemeinde Korinth's
und die religiösen Genossenschaften der Griechen, in der Ztschr. f.
wissensch. Theol. 1876-77. Hatch, The Influence of Greek Ideas and
Usages upon the Christian Church. Buechner, De neocoria, 1888.
Hirschfeld, Z. Gesch. d. röm. Kaisercultus. The Histories of Philosophy
by Zeller, Erdmann, Ueberweg, Strümpell, Windelband, etc. Heinze, Die
Lehre vom Logos in der Griech. Philosophie, 1872. By same Author, Der
Eudämonismus in der Griech. Philosophie, 1883. Hirzel, Untersuchungen zu
Cicero's philos. Schriften, 3 Thle. 1877-1883. These investigations are
of special value for the history of dogma, because they set forth with
the greatest accuracy and care, the later developments of the great
Greek philosophic schools, especially on Roman soil. We must refer
specially to the discussions on the influence of the Roman on the Greek
Philosophy. Volkmann, Die Rhetorik der Griechen und Römer, 1872.
_Supplementary._
Perhaps the most important fact for the following development of the
history of Dogma, the way for which had already been prepared in the
Apostolic age, is the twofold conception of the aim of Christ's
appearing, or of the religious blessing of salvation. The two
conceptions were indeed as yet mutually dependent on each other, and
were twined together in the closest way, just as they are presented in
the teaching of Jesus himself; but they began even at this early period
to be differentiated. Salvation, that is to say, was conceived, on the
one hand, as sharing in the glorious kingdom of Christ soon to appear,
and everything else was regarded as preparatory to this sure prospect;
on the other hand, however, attention was turned to the conditions and
to the provisions of God wrought by Christ, which first made men capable
of attaining that portion, that is, of becoming sure of it. Forgiveness
of sin, righteousness, faith, knowledge, etc., are the things which come
into consideration here, and these blessings themselves, so far as they
have as their sure result life in the kingdom of Christ, or more
accurately eternal life, may be regarded as salvation. It is manifest
that these two conceptions need not be exclusive. The first regards the
final effect as the goal and all else as a preparation, the other
regards the preparation, the facts already accomplished by Christ and
the inner transformation of men as the main thing, and all else as the
natural and necessary result. Paul, above all, as may be seen especially
from the arguments in the epistle to the Romans, unquestionably favoured
the latter conception and gave it vigorous expression. The peculiar
conflicts with which he saw himself confronted, and, above all, the
great controversy about the relation of the Gospel and the new
communities to Judaism, necessarily concentrated the attention on
questions as to the arrangements on which the community of those
sanctified in Christ should rest, and the conditions of admission to
this community. But the centre of gravity of Christian faith might also
for the moment be removed from the hope of Christ's second advent, and
would then necessarily be found in the first advent, in virtue of which
salvation was already prepared for man, and man for salvation (Rom.
III.-VIII.). The dual development of the conception of Christianity
which followed from this, rules the whole history of the Gospel to the
present day. The eschatological view is certainly very severely
repressed, but it always breaks out here and there, and still guards the
spiritual from the secularisation which threatens it. But the
possibility of uniting the two conceptions in complete harmony with each
other, and on the other hand, of expressing them antithetically, has
been the very circumstance that has complicated in an extraordinary
degree the progress of the development of the history of dogma. From
this follows the antithesis, that from that conception which somehow
recognises salvation itself in a present spiritual possession, eternal
life in the sense of immortality may be postulated as final result,
though not a glorious kingdom of Christ on earth; while, conversely, the
eschatological view must logically depreciate every blessing which can
be possessed in the present life.
It is now evident that the theology, and, further, the Hellenising, of
Christianity, could arise and has arisen in connection, not with the
eschatological, but only with the other conception. Just because the
matters here in question were present spiritual blessings, and because,
from the nature of the case, the ideas of forgiveness of sin,
righteousness, knowledge, etc., were not so definitely outlined in the
early tradition, as the hopes of the future, conceptions entirely new
and very different, could, as it were, be secretly naturalised. The
spiritual view left room especially for the great contrast of a
religious and a moralistic conception, as well as for a frame of mind
which was like the eschatological in so far as, according to it, faith
and knowledge were to be only preparatory blessings in contrast with the
peculiar blessing of immortality, which of course was contained in them.
In this frame of mind the illusion might easily arise that this hope of
immortality was the very kernel of those hopes of the future for which
old concrete forms of expression were only a temporary shell. But it
might further be assumed that contempt for the transitory and finite as
such, was identical with contempt for the kingdom of the world which the
returning Christ would destroy.
The history of dogma has to shew how the old eschatological view was
gradually repressed and transformed in the Gentile Christian
communities, and how there was finally developed and carried out a
spiritual conception in which a strict moralism counterbalanced a
luxurious mysticism, and wherein the results of Greek practical
philosophy could find a place. But we must here refer to the fact, which
is already taught by the development in the Apostolic age, that
Christian dogmatic did not spring from the eschatological, but from the
spiritual mode of thought. The former had nothing but sure hopes and the
guarantee of these hopes by the Spirit, by the words of prophecy and by
the apocalyptic writings. One does not think, he lives and dreams, in
the eschatological mode of thought; and such a life was vigorous and
powerful till beyond the middle of the second century. There can be no
external authorities here; for one has at every moment the highest
authority in living operation in the Spirit. On the other hand, not only
does the ecclesiastical christology essentially spring from the
spiritual way of thinking, but very specially also the system of
dogmatic guarantees. The co-ordination of [Greek: logos theou, didachê
kuriou, kêrygma tôn dôdeka apostolôn] [word of God, teaching of the
Lord, preaching of the twelve Apostles], which lay at the basis of all
Gentile Christian speculation almost from the very beginning, and which
was soon directed against the enthusiasts, originated in a conception
which regarded as the essential thing in Christianity, the sure
knowledge which is the condition of immortality. If, however, in the
following sections of this historical presentation, the pervading and
continuous opposition of the two conceptions is not everywhere clearly
and definitely brought into prominence, that is due to the conviction
that the historian has no right to place the factors and impelling ideas
of a development in a clearer light than they appear in the development
itself. He must respect the obscurities and complications as they come
in his way. A clear discernment of the difference of the two conceptions
was very seldom attained to in ecclesiastical antiquity, because they
did not look beyond their points of contact, and because certain
articles of the eschatological conception could never be suppressed or
remodelled in the Church. Goethe (Dichtung und Wahrheit, II. 8,) has
seen this very clearly. "The Christian religion wavers between its own
historic positive element and a pure Deism, which, based on morality, in
its turn offers itself as the foundation of morality. The difference of
character and mode of thought shew themselves here in infinite
gradations, especially as another main distinction cooperates with them,
since the question arises, what share the reason, and what the feelings,
can and should have in such convictions." See, also, what immediately
follows.
2. The origin of a series of the most important Christian customs and
ideas is involved in an obscurity which in all probability will never be
cleared up. Though one part of those ideas may be pointed out in the
epistles of Paul, yet the question must frequently remain unanswered,
whether he found them in existence or formed them independently, and
accordingly the other question, whether they are exclusively indebted to
the activity of Paul for their spread and naturalisation in Christendom.
What was the original conception of baptism? Did Paul develop
independently his own conception? What significance had it in the
following period? When and where did baptism in the name of the Father,
Son and Holy Spirit arise, and how did it make its way in Christendom?
In what way were views about the saving value of Christ's death
developed alongside of Paul's system? When and how did belief in the
birth of Jesus from a Virgin gain acceptance in Christendom? Who first
distinguished Christendom, as [Greek: ekklêsia tou theou], from Judaism,
and how did the concept [Greek: ekklêsia] become current? How old is the
triad: Apostles, Prophets and Teachers? When were Baptism and the Lord's
Supper grouped together? How old are our first three Gospels? To all
these questions and many more of equal importance there is no sure
answer. But the greatest problem is presented by Christology, not indeed
in its particular features doctrinally expressed, these almost
everywhere may be explained historically, but in its deepest roots as it
was preached by Paul as the principle of a new life (2 Cor. V. 17), and
as it was to many besides him the expression of a personal union with
the exalted Christ (Rev. II. 3). But this problem exists only for the
historian who considers things only from the outside, or seeks for
objective proofs. Behind and in the Gospel stands the Person of Jesus
Christ who mastered men's hearts, and constrained them to yield
themselves to him as his own, and in whom they found their God. Theology
attempted to describe in very uncertain and feeble outline what the mind
and heart had grasped. Yet it testifies of a new life which, like all
higher life, was kindled by a Person, and could only be maintained by
connection with that Person. "I can do all things through Christ who
strengtheneth me." "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." These
convictions are not dogmas and have no history, and they can only be
propagated in the manner described by Paul, Gal. I. 15, 16.
3. It was of the utmost importance for the legitimising of the later
development of Christianity as a system of doctrine, that early
Christianity had an Apostle who was a theologian, and that his Epistles
were received into the canon. That the doctrine about Christ has become
the main article in Christianity is not of course the result of Paul's
preaching, but is based on the confession that Jesus is the Christ. The
theology of Paul was not even the most prominent ruling factor in the
transformation of the Gospel to the Catholic doctrine of faith, although
an earnest study of the Pauline Epistles by the earliest Gentile
Christian theologians, the Gnostics, and their later opponents, is
unmistakable. But the decisive importance of this theology lies in the
fact that, as a rule, it formed the boundary and the foundation--just as
the words of the Lord himself--for those who in the following period
endeavoured to ascertain original Christianity, because the Epistles
attesting it stood in the canon of the New Testament. Now, as this
theology comprised both speculative and apologetic elements, as it can
be thought of as a system, as it contained a theory of history and a
definite conception of the Old Testament, finally, as it was composed of
objective and subjective ethical considerations and included the
realistic elements of a national religion (wrath of God, sacrifice,
reconciliation, Kingdom of glory), as well as profound psychological
perceptions and the highest appreciation of spiritual blessings, the
Catholic doctrine of faith as it was formed in the course of time,
seemed, at least in its leading features, to be related to it, nay,
demanded by it. For the ascertaining of the deep-lying distinctions,
above all for the perception that the question in the two cases is about
elements quite differently conditioned, that even the method is
different, in short, that the Pauline Gospel is not identical with the
original Gospel and much less with any later doctrine of faith, there is
required such historical judgment and such honesty of purpose not to be
led astray in the investigation by the canon of the New Testament,[136]
that no change in the prevailing ideas can be hoped for for long years
to come. Besides, critical theology has made it difficult, to gain an
insight into the great difference that lies between the Pauline and the
Catholic theology, by the one-sided prominence it has hitherto given to
the antagonism between Paulinism and Judaistic Christianity. In contrast
with this view the remark of Havet, though also very one-sided, is
instructive, "Quand on vient de relire Paul, on ne peut méconnaître le
caractère élevé de son oeuvre. Je dirai en un mot, qu'il a agrandi dans
une proportion extraordinaire l'attrait que le judaïsme exerçait sur le
monde ancien" (Le Christianisme, T. IV. p. 216). That, however, was only
very gradually the case and within narrow limits. The deepest and most
important writings of the New Testament are incontestably those in which
Judaism is understood as religion, but spiritually overcome and
subordinated to the Gospel as a new religion,--the Pauline Epistles, the
Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Gospel and Epistle of John. There is set
forth in these writings a new and exalted world of religious feelings,
views and judgments, into which the Christians of succeeding centuries
got only meagre glimpses. Strictly speaking, the opinion that the New
Testament in its whole extent comprehends a unique literature is not
tenable; but it is correct to say that between its most important
constituent parts, and the literature of the period immediately
following there is a great gulf fixed.
But Paulinism especially has had an immeasurable and blessed influence
on the whole course of the history of dogma, an influence it could not
have had, if the Pauline Epistles had not been received into the canon.
Paulinism is a religious and Christocentric doctrine, more inward and
more powerful than any other which has ever appeared in the Church. It
stands in the clearest opposition to all merely natural moralism, all
righteousness of works, all religious ceremonialism, all Christianity
without Christ. It has therefore become the conscience of the Church,
until the Catholic Church in Jansenism killed this her conscience. "The
Pauline reactions describe the critical epochs of theology and the
Church."[137] One might write a history of dogma as a history of the
Pauline reactions in the Church, and in doing so would touch on all the
turning points of the history. Marcion after the Apostolic Fathers;
Irenæus, Clement and Origen after the Apologists; Augustine after the
Fathers of the Greek Church;[138] the great Reformers of the middle ages
from Agobard to Wessel in the bosom of the mediæval Church; Luther after
the Scholastics; Jansenism after the council of Trent:--Everywhere it
has been Paul, in these men, who produced the Reformation. Paulinism has
proved to be a ferment in the history of dogma, a basis it has never
been.[139] Just as it had that significance in Paul himself, with
reference to Jewish Christianity, so it has continued to work through
the history of the Church.
[Footnote 46: The Old Testament of itself alone could not have convinced
the Græco-Roman world. But the converse question might perhaps be raised
as to what results the Gospel would have had in that world without its
union with the Old Testament. The Gnostic Schools and the Marcionite
Church are to some extent the answer. But would they ever have arisen
without the presupposition of a Christian community which recognised the
Old Testament?]
[Footnote 47: We here leave out of account learned attempts to expound
Paulinism. Nor do we take any notice of certain truths regarding the
relation of the Old Testament to the New, and regarding the Jewish
religion, stated by the Antignostic church teachers, truths which are
certainly very important, but have not been sufficiently utilised.]
[Footnote 48: There is indeed no single writing of the new Testament
which does not betray the influence of the mode of thought and general
conditions of the culture of the time which resulted from the
Hellenising of the east: even the use of the Greek translation of the
Old Testament attests this fact. Nay, we may go further, and say that
the Gospel itself is historically unintelligible, so long as we compare
it with an exclusive Judaism as yet unaffected by any foreign influence.
But on the other hand, it is just as clear that, specifically, Hellenic
ideas form the presuppositions neither for the Gospel itself, nor for
the most important New Testament writings. It is a question rather as to
a general spiritual atmosphere created by Hellenism, which above all
strengthened the individual element, and with it the idea of completed
personality, in itself living and responsible. On this foundation we
meet with a religious mode of thought in the Gospel and the early
Christian writings, which so far as it is at all dependent on an earlier
mode of thought, is determined by the spirit of the Old Testament
(Psalms and Prophets) and of Judaism. But it is already otherwise with
the earliest Gentile Christian writings. The mode of thought here is so
thoroughly determined by the Hellenic spirit that we seem to have
entered a new world when we pass from the synoptists, Paul and John, to
Clement, Barnabas, Justin or Valentinus. We may therefore say,
especially in the frame-work of the history of dogma, that the Hellenic
element has exercised an influence on the Gospel first on Gentile
Christian soil, and by those who were Greek by birth, if only we reserve
the general spiritual atmosphere above referred to. Even Paul is no
exception; for in spite of the well-founded statements of Weizsäcker
(Apostolic Age, vol. I. Book 11) and Heinrici (Das 2 Sendschreiben an
die Korinthier, 1887, p. 578 ff), as to the Hellenism of Paul, it is
certain that the Apostle's mode of religious thought, in the strict
sense of the word, and therefore also the doctrinal formation peculiar
to him, are but little determined by the Greek spirit. But it is to be
specially noted that as a missionary and an Apologist he made use of
Greek ideas (Epistles to the Romans and Corinthians). He was not afraid
to put the Gospel into Greek modes of thought. To this extent we can
already observe in him the beginning of the development which we can
trace so clearly in the Gentile Church from Clement to Justin, and from
Justin to Irenæus.]
[Footnote 49: The complete universalism of salvation is given in the
Pauline conception of Christianity. But this conception is singular.
Because: (1) the Pauline universalism is based on a criticism of the
Jewish religion as religion, including the Old Testament, which was not
understood and therefore not received by Christendom in general. (2)
Because Paul not only formulated no national anti-Judaism, but always
recognised the prerogative of the people of Israel as a people. (3)
Because his idea of the Gospel, with all his Greek culture, is
independent of Hellenism in its deepest grounds. This peculiarity of the
Pauline Gospel is the reason why little more could pass from it into the
common consciousness of Christendom than the universalism of salvation,
and why the later development of the Church cannot be explained from
Paulinism. Baur, therefore, was quite right when he recognised that we
must exhibit another and more powerful element in order to comprehend
the post-Pauline formations. In the selection of this element, however,
he has made a fundamental mistake, by introducing the narrow national
Jewish Christianity, and he has also given much too great scope to
Paulinism by wrongly conceiving it as Gentile Christian doctrine. One
great difficulty for the historian of the early Church is that he cannot
start from Paulinism, the plainest phenomenon of the Apostolic age, in
seeking to explain the following development, that in fact the premises
for this development are not at all capable of being indicated in the
form of outlines, just because they were too general. But, on the other
hand, the Pauline Theology, this theology of one who had been a
Pharisee, is the strongest proof of the independent and universal power
of the impression made by the Person of Jesus.]
[Footnote 50: In the main writings of the New Testament itself we have a
twofold conception of the Spirit. According to the one he comes upon the
believer fitfully, expresses himself in visible signs, deprives men of
self-consciousness, and puts them beside themselves. According to the
other, the spirit is a constant possession of the Christian, operates in
him by enlightening the conscience and strengthening the character, and
his fruits are love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, etc. (Gal. V.
22). Paul above all taught Christians to value these fruits of the
spirit higher than all the other effects of his working. But he has not
by any means produced a perfectly clear view on this point: for "he
himself spoke with more tongues than they all." As yet "Spirit" lay
within "Spirit." One felt in the spirit of sonship a completely new gift
coming from God and recreating life, a miracle of God; further, this
spirit also produced sudden exclamations--"Abba, Father;" and thus
shewed himself in a way patent to the senses. For that very reason, the
spirit of ecstasy and of miracle appeared identical with the spirit of
sonship. (See Gunkel, Die Wirkungen d. h. Geistes nach der populären
Anschauung der Apostol. Zeit. Göttingen, 1888).]
[Footnote 51: It may even be said here that the [Greek: athanasia (zôê
aiônios)], on the one hand, and the [Greek: ekklêsia], on the other,
have already appeared in place of the [Greek: Basileia tou theou], and
that the idea of Messiah has been finally replaced by that of the Divine
Teacher and of God manifest in the flesh.]
[Footnote 52: It is one of the merits of Bruno Bauer (Christus und die
Cäsaren, 1877), that he has appreciated the real significance of the
Greek element in the Gentile Christianity which became the Catholic
Church and doctrine, and that he has appreciated the influence of the
Judaism of the Diaspora as a preparation for this Gentile Christianity.
But these valuable contributions have unfortunately been deprived of
their convincing power by a baseless criticism of the early Christian
literature, to which Christ and Paul have fallen a sacrifice. Somewhat
more cautious are the investigations of Havet in the fourth volume of Le
Christianisme, 1884; Le Nouveau Testament. He has won great merit by the
correct interpretation of the elements of Gentile Christianity
developing themselves to catholicism, but his literary criticism is
often unfortunately entirely abstract, reminding one of the criticism of
Voltaire, and therefore his statements in detail are, as a rule,
arbitrary and untenable. There is a school in Holland at the present
time closely related to Bruno Bauer and Havet, which attempts to banish
early Christianity from the world. Christ and Paul are creations of the
second century: the history of Christianity begins with the passage of
the first century into the second--a peculiar phenomenon on the soil of
Hellenised Judaism in quest of a Messiah. This Judaism created Jesus
Christ just as the later Greek religious philosophers created their
Saviour (Apollonius, for example). The Marcionite Church produced Paul
and the growing Catholic Church completed him. See the numerous
treatises of Loman, the Verisimilia of Pierson and Naber (1886), and the
anonymous English work "Antiqua Mater" (1887), also the works of Steck
(see especially his Untersuchung über den Galaterbrief). Against these
works see P.V. Schmidt's, "Der Galaterbrief," 1892. It requires a deep
knowledge of the problems which the first two centuries of the Christian
Church present, in order not to thrust aside as simply absurd these
attempts, which as yet have failed to deal with the subject in a
connected way. They have their strength in the difficulties and riddles
which are contained in the history of the formation of the Catholic
tradition in the second century. But the single circumstance that we are
asked to regard as a forgery such a document as the first Epistle of
Paul to the Corinthians, appears to me, of itself, to be an unanswerable
argument against the new hypotheses.]
[Footnote 53: It would be a fruitful task, though as yet it has not been
undertaken, to examine how long visions, dreams and apocalypses, on the
one hand, and the claim of speaking in the power and name of the Holy
Spirit, on the other, played a _rôle_ in the early Church; and further
to shew how they nearly died out among the laity, but continued to live
among the clergy and the monks, and how, even among the laity, there
were again and again sporadic outbreaks of them. The material which the
first three centuries present is very great. Only a few may be mentioned
here: Ignat. ad. Rom. VII. 2; ad. Philad. VII; ad Eph. XX. 1, etc.; 1
Clem. LXIII. 2; Martyr. Polyc.; Acta Perpet. et Felic; Tertull de animo
XLVII.; "Major pæne vis hominum e visionibus deum discunt." Orig. c.
Celsum. i. 46: [Greek: polloi hosperei akontes proselêluthasi
christianismô, pneumatos tinos trepsantos ... kai phantasiôsantos autous
hupar ê onar] (even Arnobius was ostensibly led to Christianity by a
dream). Cyprian makes the most extensive use of dreams, visions, etc.,
in his letters, see for example Ep. XI. 3-5; XVI. 4 ("præter nocturnas
visiones per dies quoque impletur apud nos spiritu sancto puerorum
innocens aetas, quæ in ecstasi videt," etc.); XXXIX. 1; LXVI 10 (very
interesting: "quamquam sciam somnia ridicula et visiones ineptas
quibusdam videri, sed utique illis, qui malunt contra sacerdotes credere
quam sacerdoti, sed nihil mirum, quando de Joseph fratres sui dixerunt:
ecce somniator ille," etc.). One who took part in the baptismal
controversy in the great Synod of Carthage writes, "secundum motum animi
mei et spiritus sancti." The enthusiastic element was always evoked with
special power in times of persecution, as the genuine African
martyrdoms, from the second half of the third century, specially shew.
Cf. especially the passio Jacobi, Mariani, etc. But where the enthusiasm
was not convenient it was called, as in the case of the Montanists,
dæmonic. Even Constantine operated with dreams and visions of Christ
(see his Vita).]
[Footnote 54: As to the first, the recently discovered "Teaching of the
Apostles" in its first moral part, shews a great affinity with the moral
philosophy which was set up by Alexandrian Jews and put before the Greek
world as that which had been revealed: see Massebieau, L'enseignement
des XII. Apôtres, Paris, 1884, and in the Journal "Le Temoignage," 7
Febr. 1885. Usener, in his Preface to the Ges. Abhandl. Jacob Bernays',
which he edited, 1885, p.v.f., has, independently of Massebieau, pointed
out the relationship of chapters 1-5 of the "Teaching of the Apostles"
with the Phocylidean poem (see Bernays' above work, p. 192 ff.). Later
Taylor, "The teaching of the twelve Apostles", 1886, threw out the
conjecture that the Didache had a Jewish foundation, and I reached the
same conclusion independently of him: see my Treatise: Die Apostellehre
und die judischen beiden Wege, 1886.]
[Footnote 55: It is well known that Judaism at the time of Christ
embraced a great many different tendencies. Beside Pharisaic Judaism as
the stem proper there was a motley mass of formations which resulted
from the contact of Judaism with foreign ideas, customs, and
institutions (even with Babylonian and Persian), and which attained
importance for the development of the predominant church as well as for
the formation of the so-called gnostic Christian communions. Hellenic
elements found their way even into Pharisaic theology. Orthodox Judaism
itself has marks which shew that no spiritual movement was able to
escape the influence which proceeded from the victory of the Greeks over
the east. Besides who would venture to exhibit definitely the origin and
causes of that spiritualising of religions and that limitation of the
moral standard of which we can find so many traces in the Alexandrian
age? The nations who inhabited the eastern shore of the Mediterranean
sea had from the fourth century B.C. a common history and therefore had
similar convictions. Who can decide what each of them acquired by its
own exertions and what it obtained through interchange of opinions? But
in proportion as we see this we must be on our guard against jumbling
the phenomena together and effacing them. There is little meaning in
calling a thing Hellenic, as that really formed an element in all the
phenomena of the age. All our great political and ecclesiastical parties
to-day are dependent on the ideas of 1789 and again on romantic ideas.
It is just as easy to verify this as it is difficult to determine the
measure and the manner of the influence for each group. And yet the
understanding of it turns altogether on this point. To call Pharisaism
or the Gospel or the old Jewish Christianity Hellenic is not paradox but
confusion.]
[Footnote 56: The Acts of the Apostles is in this respect a most
instructive book. It as well as the Gospel of Luke is a document of
Gentile Christianity developing itself to Catholicism; Cf. Overbeck in
his Commentar z Apostelgesch. But the comprehensive judgment of Havet in
the work above mentioned (IV. p. 395) is correct: "L hellenisme tient
assez peu de place dans le N.T. du moins l hellenisme voulu et reflechi.
Ces livres sont ecrits en grec et leurs auteurs vivaient en pays grec,
il y a donc eu chez eux infiltration des idees et des sentiments
helleniques, quelquefois même l imagination hellenique y a pénetre comme
dans le 3 evangile et dans les Actes. Dans son ensemble le N.T. garde le
caractere d un livre hebraique. Le christianisme ne commence avoir une
litterature et des doctrines vraiment helleniques qu au milieu du second
siecle. Mais il y avait un judaisme celui d Alexandrie qui avait faite
alliance avec l hellenisme avant meme qu il y eut des chretiens."]
[Footnote 57: The right of distinguishing (b) and (c) may be contested.
But if we surrender this we therewith surrender the right to distinguish
kernel and husk in the original proclamation of the Gospel. The dangers
to which the attempt is exposed should not frighten us from it for it
has its justification in the fact that the Gospel is neither doctrine
nor law.]
[Footnote 58: Therewith are, doubtless, heavenly blessings bestowed in
the present. Historical investigation has, notwithstanding, every reason
for closely examining whether, and in how far, we may speak of a present
for the Kingdom of God, in the sense of Jesus. But even if the question
had to be answered in the negative, it would make little or no
difference for the correct understanding of Jesus' preaching. The Gospel
viewed in its kernel is independent of this question. It deals with the
inner constitution and mood of the soul.]
[Footnote 59: The question whether, and in what degree, a man of himself
can earn righteousness before God is one of those theoretic questions to
which Jesus gave no answer. He fixed his attention on all the gradations
of the moral and religious conduct of his countrymen as they were
immediately presented to him, and found some prepared for entrance into
the kingdom of God, not by a technical mode of outward preparation, but
by hungering and thirsting for it, and at the same time unselfishly
serving their brethren. Humility and love unfeigned were always the
decisive marks of these prepared ones. They are to be satisfied with
righteousness before God, that is, are to receive the blessed feeling
that God is gracious to them as sinners, and accepts them as his
children. Jesus, however, allows the popular distinction of sinners and
righteous to remain, but exhibits its perverseness by calling sinners to
him and by describing the opposition of the righteous to his Gospel as a
mark of their godlessness and hardness of heart.]
[Footnote 60: The blessings of the kingdom were frequently represented
by Jesus as a reward for work done. But this popular view is again
broken through by reference to the fact that all reward is the gift of
God's free grace.]
[Footnote 61: Some Critics--most recently Havet, Le Christianisme et ses
origines, 1884. T. IV. p. 15 ff.--have called in question the fact that
Jesus called himself Messiah. But this article of the Evangelic
tradition seems to me to stand the test of the most minute
investigation. But, in the case of Jesus, the consciousness of being the
Messiah undoubtedly rested on the certainty of being the Son of God,
therefore of knowing the Father and being constrained to proclaim that
knowledge.]
[Footnote 62: We can gather with certainty from the Gospels that Jesus
did not enter on his work with the announcement: Believe in me for I am
the Messiah. On the contrary, he connected his work with the baptising
movement of John, but carried that movement further, and thereby made
the Baptist his forerunner (Mark I. 15: [Greek: peplêrôtai ho kairos kai
êngiken hê basileia tou theou, metanoeite kai pisteuete en tôi
euaggeliôi]). He was in no hurry to urge anything that went beyond that
message, but gradually prepared, and cautiously required of his
followers an advance beyond it. The goal to which he led them was to
believe in him as Messiah without putting the usual political
construction on the Messianic ideal.]
[Footnote 63: Even "Son of Man" probably means Messiah: we do not know
whether Jesus had any special reason for favouring this designation
which springs from Dan. VII. The objection to interpreting the word as
Messiah really resolves itself into this, that the disciples (according
to the Gospels) did not at once recognise him as Messiah. But that is
explained by the contrast of his own peculiar idea of Messiah with the
popular idea. The confession of him as Messiah was the keystone of their
confidence in him, inasmuch as by that confession they separated
themselves from old ideas.]
[Footnote 64: The distinction between the Father and the Son stands out
just as plainly in the sayings of Jesus, as the complete obedient
subordination of the Son to the Father. Even according to John's Gospel,
Jesus finishes the work which the Father has given him, and is obedient
in everything even unto death. He declares Matt. XIX. 17: [Greek: heis
estin ho agathos]. Special notice should be given to Mark XIII. 32,
(Matt. XXIV. 36). Behind the only manifested life of Jesus, later
speculation has put a life in which he wrought, not in subordination and
obedience, but in like independence and dignity with God. That goes
beyond the utterances of Jesus even in the fourth Gospel. But it is no
advance beyond these, especially in the religious view and speech of the
time, when it is announced that the relation of the Father to the Son
lies beyond time. It is not even improbable that the sayings in the
fourth Gospel referring to this, have a basis in the preaching of Jesus
himself.]
[Footnote 65: Paul knew that the designation of God as the Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, was the new Evangelic confession. Origen was the
first among the Fathers (though before him Marcion) to recognise that
the decisive advance beyond the Old Testament stage of religion, was
given in the preaching of God as Father; see the exposition of the
Lord's prayer in his treatise _De oratione_. No doubt the Old Testament,
and the later Judaism knew the designation of God as Father; but it
applied it to the Jewish nation, it did not attach the evangelic meaning
to the name, and it did not allow itself in any way to be guided in its
religion by this idea.]
[Footnote 66: See the farewell discourses in John, the fundamental ideas
of which are, in my opinion, genuine, that is, proceed from Jesus.]
[Footnote 67: The historian cannot regard a miracle as a sure given
historical event: for in doing so he destroys the mode of consideration
on which all historical investigation rests. Every individual miracle
remains historically quite doubtful, and a summation of things doubtful
never leads to certainty. But should the historian, notwithstanding, be
convinced that Jesus Christ did extraordinary things, in the strict
sense miraculous things, then, from the unique impression he has
obtained of this person, he infers the possession by him of supernatural
power. This conclusion itself belongs to the province of religious
faith: though there has seldom been a strong faith which would not have
drawn it. Moreover, the healing miracles of Jesus are the only ones that
come into consideration in a strict historical examination. These
certainly cannot be eliminated from the historical accounts without
utterly destroying them. But how unfit are they of themselves, after
1800 years, to secure any special importance to him to whom they are
attributed, unless that importance was already established apart from
them. That he could do with himself what he would, that he created a new
thing without overturning the old, that he won men to himself by
announcing the Father, that he inspired without fanaticism, set up a
kingdom without politics, set men free from the world without
asceticism, was a teacher without theology, at a time of fanaticism and
politics, asceticism and theology, is the great miracle of his person,
and that he who preached the Sermon on the Mount declared himself in
respect of his life and death, to be the Redeemer and Judge of the
world, is the offence and foolishness which mock all reason.]
[Footnote 68: See Mark X. 45.--That Jesus at the celebration of the
first Lord's supper described his death as a sacrifice which he should
offer for the forgiveness of sin, is clear from the account of Paul.
From that account it appears to be certain, that Jesus gave expression
to the idea of the necessity and saving significance of his death for
the forgiveness of sins, in a symbolical ordinance (based on the
conclusion of the covenant, Exod. XXIV. 3 ff., perhaps, as Paul
presupposes, on the Passover), in order that His disciples by repeating
it in accordance with the will of Jesus, might be the more deeply
impressed by it. Certain observations based on John VI., on the supper
prayer in the Didache, nay, even on the report of Mark, and supported at
the same time by features of the earliest practice in which it had the
character of a real meal, and the earliest theory of the supper, which
viewed it as a communication of eternal life and an anticipation of the
future existence, have for years made me doubt very much whether the
Pauline account and the Pauline conception of it, were really either the
oldest, or the universal and therefore only one. I have been
strengthened in this suspicion by the profound and remarkable
investigation of Spitta (z. Gesch. u. Litt. d. Urchristenthums: Die
urchristl. Traditionen ü. den Urspr. u. Sinnd. Abendmahls, 1893). He
sees in the supper as not instituted, but celebrated by Jesus, the
festival of the Messianic meal, the anticipated triumph over death, the
expression of the perfection of the Messianic work, the symbolic
representation of the filling of believers with the powers of the
Messianic kingdom and life. The reference to the Passover and the death
of Christ was attached to it later, though it is true very soon. How
much is thereby explained that was hitherto obscure--critical,
historical, and dogmatico-historical questions--cannot at all be stated
briefly. And yet I hesitate to give a full recognition to Spitta's
exposition: the words 1 Cor. XI. 23: [Greek: egô gar parelabon apo tou
kuríou, ho kaì paredoka humin k.t.l.] are too strong for me. Cf.
besides, Weizsäcker's investigation in "The Apostolic Age." Lobstein, La
doctrine de la s. cène. 1889. A. Harnack i.d. Texten u. Unters. VII. 2.
p. 139 ff. Schürer, Theol. Lit. Ztg. 1891, p. 29 ff. Jülicher Abhandl. f
Weizsäcker, 1892, p. 215 ff.]
[Footnote 69: With regard to the eschatology, no one can say in detail
what proceeds from Jesus, and what from the disciples. What has been
said in the text does not claim to be certain, but only probable. The
most important, and at the same time the most certain point, is that
Jesus made the definitive fate of the individual depend on faith,
humility and love. There are no passages in the Gospel which conflict
with the impression that Jesus reserved day and hour to God, and wrought
in faith and patience as long as for him it was day.]
[Footnote 70: He did not impose on every one, or desire from every one
even the outward following of himself: see Mark V. 18-19. The "imitation
of Jesus", in the strict sense of the word, did not play any noteworthy
rôle either in the Apostolic or in the old Catholic period.]
[Footnote 71: It is asserted by well-informed investigators, and may be
inferred from the Gospels (Mark XII. 32-34; Luke X. 27, 28), perhaps
also from the Jewish original of the Didache, that some representatives
of Pharisaism, beside the pedantic treatment of the law, attempted to
concentrate it on the fundamental moral commandments. Consequently, in
Palestinian and Alexandrian Judaism at the time of Christ, in virtue of
the prophetic word and the Thora, influenced also, perhaps, by the Greek
spirit which everywhere gave the stimulus to inwardness, the path was
indicated in which the future development of religion was to follow.
Jesus entered fully into the view of the law thus attempted, which
comprehended it as a whole and traced it back to the disposition. But he
freed it from the contradiction that adhered to it, (because, in spite
of and alongside the tendency to a deeper perception, men still
persisted in deducing righteousness from a punctilious observance of
numerous particular commandments, because in so doing they became
self-satisfied, that is, irreligious, and because in belonging to
Abraham they thought they had a claim of right on God). For all that, so
far as a historical understanding of the activity of Jesus is at all
possible, it is to be obtained from the soil of Pharisaism, as the
Pharisees were those who cherished and developed the Messianic
expectations, and because, along with their care for the Thora, they
sought also to preserve, in their own way, the prophetic inheritance. If
everything does not deceive us, there were already contained in the
Pharisaic theology of the age, speculations which were fitted to modify
considerably the narrow view of history, and to prepare for
universalism. The very men who tithed mint, anise and cummin, who kept
their cups and dishes outwardly clean, who, hedging round the Thora,
attempted to hedge round the people, spoke also of the sum total of the
law. They made room in their theology for new ideas which are partly to
be described as advances, and on the other hand, they have already
pondered the question even in relation to the law, whether submission to
its main contents was not sufficient for being numbered among the people
of the covenant (see Renan: _Paul_). In particular the whole sacrificial
system, which Jesus also essentially ignored, was therewith thrust into
the background. Baldensperger (Selbstbewusstsein Jesu. p. 46) justly
says. "There lie before us definite marks that the certainty of the
nearness of God in the Temple (from the time of the Maccabees) begins to
waver, and the efficacy of the temple institutions to be called in
question. Its recent desecration by the Romans, appears to the author of
the Psalms of Solomon (II. 2) as a kind of Divine requital for the sons
of Israel, themselves having been guilty of so grossly profaning the
sacrificial gifts. Enoch calls the shewbread of the second Temple
polluted and unclean. There had crept in among the pious a feeling of
the insufficiency of their worship, and from this side the Essenic
schism will certainly represent only the open outbreak of a disease
which had already begun to gnaw secretly at the religious life of the
nation": see here the excellent explanations of the origin of Essenism
in Lucius (Essenism 75 ff. 109 ff.) The spread of Judaism in the world,
the secularization and apostacy of the priestly caste, the desecration
of the Temple, the building of the Temple at Leontopolis, the perception
brought about by the spiritualising of religion in the empire of
Alexander the Great, that no blood of beast can be a means of
reconciling God--all these circumstances must have been absolutely
dangerous and fatal, both to the local centralisation of worship, and to
the statutory sacrificial system. The proclamation of Jesus (and of
Stephen) as to the overthrow of the Temple, is therefore no absolutely
new thing, nor is the fact that Judaism fell back upon the law and the
Messianic hope, a mere result of the destruction of the Temple. This
change was rather prepared by the inner development. Whatever point in
the preaching of Jesus we may fix on, we shall find, that--apart from
the writings of the Prophets and the Psalms, which originated in the
Greek Maccabean periods--parallels can be found only in Pharisaism, but
at the same time that the sharpest contrasts must issue from it.
Talmudic Judaism is not in every respect the genuine continuance of
Pharisaic Judaism, but a product of the decay which attests that the
rejection of Jesus by the spiritual leaders of the people had deprived
the nation, and even the Virtuosi of Religion of their best part (see
for this the expositions of Kuenen "Judaismus und Christenthum", in his
(Hibbert) lectures on national religions and world religions). The ever
recurring attempts to deduce the origin of Christianity from Hellenism,
or even from the Roman Greek culture, are there also rightly, briefly
and tersely rejected. Also the hypotheses, which either entirely
eliminate the person of Jesus or make him an Essene, or subordinate him
to the person of Paul, may be regarded as definitively settled. Those
who think they can ascertain the origin of Christian religion from the
origin of Christian Theology will, indeed, always think of Hellenism:
Paul will eclipse the person of Jesus with those who believe that a
religion for the world must be born with a universalistic doctrine.
Finally, Essenism will continue in authority with those who see in the
position of indifference which Jesus took to the Temple worship, the
main thing, and who, besides, create for themselves an "Essenism of
their own finding." Hellenism, and also Essenism, can of course indicate
to the historian some of the conditions by which the appearance of Jesus
was prepared and rendered possible; but they explain only the
possibility, not the reality of the appearance. But this with its
historically not deducible power is the decisive thing. If some one has
recently said that "the historical speciality of the person of Jesus" is
not the main thing in Christianity, he has thereby betrayed that he does
not know how a religion that is worthy of the name is founded,
propagated, and maintained. For the latest attempt to put the Gospel in
a historical connection with Buddhism (Seydel, Das Ev von Jesus in
seinen Verhältnissen zur Buddha-Sage, 1882: likewise, Die Buddha-Legende
und das Leben Jesu, 1884), see, Oldenburg, Theol. Lit-Z'g 1882. Col. 415
f. 1884. 185 f. However much necessarily remains obscure to us in the
ministry of Jesus when we seek to place it in a historical
connection,--what is known is sufficient to confirm the judgment that
his preaching developed a germ in the religion of Israel (see the
Psalms) which was finally guarded and in many respects developed by the
Pharisees, but which languished and died under their guardianship. The
power of development which Jesus imported to it was not a power which he
himself had to borrow from without; but doctrine and speculation were as
far from him as ecstasy and visions. On the other hand, we must remember
we do not know the history of Jesus up to his public entrance on his
ministry, and that therefore we do not know whether in his native
province he had any connection with Greeks.]
[Footnote 72: See the brilliant investigations of Weizsäcker (Apost.
Zeitalter. p. 36) as to the earliest significant names,
self-designations, of the disciples. The twelve were in the first place
"[Greek: mathêtai]," (disciples and family-circle of Jesus, see also the
significance of James and the brethren of Jesus), then witnesses of the
resurrection and therefore Apostles; very soon there appeared beside
them, even in Jerusalem, Prophets and Teachers.]
[Footnote 73: The Christian preaching is very pregnantly described in
Acts XXVIII. 31. as [Greek: kêrussein tên Basileian tou Theou, kai
didaskein ta peri tou Iêsou Christou].]
[Footnote 74: On the spirit of God (of Christ) see note, p. 50. The
earliest Christians felt the influence of the spirit as one coming on
them from without.]
[Footnote 75: It cannot be directly proved that Jesus instituted
baptism, for Matth. XXVIII. 19, is not a saying of the Lord. The reasons
for this assertion are: (1) It is only a later stage of the tradition
that represents the risen Christ as delivering speeches and giving
commandments. Paul knows nothing of it. (2) The Trinitarian formula is
foreign to the mouth of Jesus and has not the authority in the Apostolic
age which it must have had if it had descended from Jesus himself. On
the other hand, Paul knows of no other way of receiving the Gentiles
into the Christian communities than by baptism, and it is highly
probable that in the time of Paul all Jewish Christians were also
baptised. We may perhaps assume that the practice of baptism was
continued in consequence of Jesus' recognition of John the Baptist and
his baptism, even after John himself had been removed. According to John
IV. 2, Jesus himself baptised not, but his disciples under his
superintendence. It is possible only with the help of tradition to trace
back to Jesus a "Sacrament of Baptism," or an obligation to it _ex
necessitate salutis_, though it is credible that tradition is correct
here. Baptism in the Apostolic age was [Greek: eis aphesin hamartiôn],
and indeed [Greek: eis to onoma christou] (1 Cor. I. 13; Acts XIX. 5).
We cannot make out when the formula, [Greek: eis to onoma tou patros,
kai tou huiou, kai tou hagiou pneumatos], emerged. The formula [Greek:
eis to onoma] expresses that the person baptised is put into a relation
of dependence on him into whose name he is baptised. Paul has given
baptism a relation to the death of Christ, or justly inferred it from
the [Greek: eis aphesin hamartiôn]. The descent of the spirit on the
baptised very soon ceased to be regarded as the necessary and immediate
result of baptism; yet Paul, and probably his contemporaries also,
considered the grace of baptism and the communication of the spirit to
be inseparably united. See Scholten. Die Taufformel. 1885. Holtzman, Die
Taufe im N.T. Ztsch. f. wiss. Theol. 1879.]
[Footnote 76: The designation of the Christian community as [Greek:
ekklêsia] originates perhaps with Paul, though that is by no means
certain; see as to this "name of honour," Sohm, Kirchenrecht, Vol. I. p.
16 ff. The words of the Lord, Matt. XVI. 18; XVIII. 17, belong to a
later period. According to Gal. I. 22, [Greek: tais en christo] is added
to the [Greek: tais ekklêsiais tês Ioudaias]. The independence of every
individual Christian in, and before God is strongly insisted on in the
Epistles of Paul, and in the Epistle of Peter, and in the Christian
portions of Revelations: [Greek: epoiêsen hêmas basileian, hiereis tôi
theo kai patri autou].]
[Footnote 77: Jesus is regarded with adoring reverence as Messiah and
Lord, that is, these are regarded as the names which his Father has
given him. Christians are those who call on the name of the Lord Jesus
Christ (1 Cor. I. 2): every creature must bow before him and confess him
as Lord (Phil. II. 9): see Deissmann on the N.T. formula "in Christo
Jesu."]
[Footnote 78: The confession of Father, Son and Spirit is therefore the
unfolding of the belief that Jesus is the Christ: but there was no
intention of expressing by this confession the essential equality of the
three persons, or even the similar relation of the Christian to them. On
the contrary, the Father, in it, is regarded as the God and Father over
all, the Son as revealer, redeemer and Lord, the Spirit as a possession,
principle of the new supernatural life and of holiness. From the
Epistles of Paul we perceive that the Formula Father, Son and Spirit
could not yet have been customary, especially in Baptism. But it was
approaching (2 Cor. XIII. 13).]
[Footnote 79: The Christological utterances which are found in the New
Testament writings, so far as they explain and paraphrase the confession
of Jesus as the Christ and the Lord, may be almost entirely deduced from
one or other of the four points mentioned in the text. But we must at
the same time insist that these declarations were meant to be
explanations of the confession that "Jesus is the Lord," which of course
included the recognition that Jesus by the resurrection became a
heavenly being (see Weizsäcker in above mentioned work, p. 110) The
solemn protestation of Paul, 1 Cor. XII. 3 [Greek: dio gnôrizo humin
hoti oudeis en pneumati theou lalôn legei ANATHEMA IÊSOUS, kai oudeis
dunatai eipein KURIOS IÊSOUS ei mê en pneumati hagiô] (cf. Rom. X. 9),
shews that he who acknowledged Jesus as the Lord, and accordingly
believed in the resurrection of Jesus, was regarded as a full-born
Christian. It undoubtedly excludes from the Apostolic age the
independent authority of any christological dogma besides that
confession and the worship of Christ connected with it. It is worth
notice, however, that those early Christian men who recognised
Christianity as the vanquishing of the Old Testament religion (Paul, the
Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, John) all held that Christ was a
being who had come down from heaven.]
[Footnote 80: Compare in their fundamental features the common
declarations about the saving value of the death of Christ in Paul, in
the Johannine writings, in 1st Peter, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and
in the Christian portions of the book of Revelation: [Greek: tô agapônti
hêmas kai lusanti hêmas ek tôn hamartiôn en tôi haimati autou, autô hê
doxa]: Compare the reference to Isaiah LIII. and the Passover lamb: the
utterances about the "lamb" generally in the early writings: see
Westcott, The Epistles of John, p. 34 f.: The idea of the blood of
Christ in the New Testament.]
[Footnote 81: This of course could not take place otherwise than by
reflecting on its significance. But a dislocation was already completed
as soon as it was isolated and separated from the whole of Jesus, or
even from his future activity. Reflection on the meaning or the causes
of particular facts might easily, in virtue of that isolation, issue in
entirely new conceptions.]
[Footnote 82: See the discriminating statements of Weizsäcker,
"Apostolic Age", p. 1 f., especially as to the significance of Peter as
first witness of the resurrection. Cf. 1 Cor. XV. 5 with Luke XXIV. 34:
also the fragment of the "Gospel of Peter" which unfortunately breaks
off at the point where one expects the appearance of the Lord to Peter.]
[Footnote 83: It is often said that Christianity rests on the belief in
the resurrection of Christ. This may be correct, if it is first declared
who this Jesus Christ is, and what his life signifies. But when it
appears as a naked report to which one must above all submit, and when
in addition, as often happens, it is supplemented by the assertion that
the resurrection of Christ is the most certain fact in the history of
the world, one does not know whether he should marvel more at its
thoughtlessness or its unbelief. We do not need to have faith in a fact,
and that which requires religious belief, that is, trust in God, can
never be a fact which would hold good apart from that belief. The
historical question and the question of faith must therefore be clearly
distinguished here. The following points are historically certain: (1)
That none of Christ's opponents saw him after his death. (2) That the
disciples were convinced that they had seen him soon after his death.
(3) That the succession and number of those appearances can no longer be
ascertained with certainty. (4) That the disciples and Paul were
conscious of having seen Christ not in the crucified earthly body, but
in heavenly glory--even the later incredible accounts of the appearances
of Christ, which strongly emphasise the reality of the body, speak at
the same time of such a body as can pass through closed doors, which
certainly is not an earthly body. (5) That Paul does not compare the
manifestation of Christ given to him with any of his later visions, but,
on the other hand, describes it in the words (Gal. I. 15): [Greek: hote
eudokêsen ho theos apokalupsai ton huion autou en emoi], and yet puts it
on a level with the appearances which the earlier Apostles had seen.
But, as even the empty grave on the third day can by no means be
regarded as a certain historical fact, because it appears united in the
accounts with manifest legendary features, and further because it is
directly excluded by the way in which Paul has portrayed the
resurrection 1 Cor. XV. it follows: (1) That every conception which
represents the resurrection of Christ as a simple reanimation of his
mortal body, is far from the original conception, and (2) that the
question generally as to whether Jesus has risen, can have no existence
for any one who looks at it apart from the contents and worth of the
Person of Jesus. For the mere fact that friends and adherents of Jesus
were convinced that they had seen him, especially when they themselves
explain that he appeared to them in heavenly glory, gives, to those who
are in earnest about fixing historical facts not the least cause for the
assumption that Jesus did not continue in the grave.
History is therefore at first unable to bring any succour to faith here.
However firm may have been the faith of the disciples in the appearances
of Jesus in their midst, and it was firm, to believe in appearances
which others have had is a frivolity which is always revenged by rising
doubts. But history is still of service to faith; it limits its scope
and therewith shews the province to which it belongs. The question which
history leaves to faith is this: Was Jesus Christ swallowed up of death,
or did he pass through suffering and the cross to glory, that is, to
life, power and honour. The disciples would have been convinced of that
in the sense in which Jesus meant them to understand it, though they had
not seen him in glory (a consciousness of this is found in Luke XXIV. 26
[Greek: ouchi tauta edei pathein ton christon kai eiselthein eis tên
doxan autou], and Joh. XX. 29 [Greek: hoti eôrakas me pepisteukas,
makarioi hoi mê idontes kai pisteusantas]) and we might probably add,
that no appearances of the Lord could permanently have convinced them of
his life, if they had not possessed in their hearts the impression of
his Person. Faith in the eternal life of Christ and in our own eternal
life is not the condition of becoming a disciple of Jesus, but is the
final confession of discipleship. Faith has by no means to do with the
knowledge of the form in which Jesus lives, but only with the conviction
that he is the living Lord. The determination of the form was
immediately dependent on the most varied general ideas of the future
life, resurrection, restoration, and glorification of the body, which
were current at the time. The idea of the rising again of the body of
Jesus appeared comparatively early, because it was this hope which
animated wide circles of pious people for their own future. Faith in
Jesus, the living Lord, in spite of the death on the cross, cannot be
generated by proofs of reason or authority, but only to-day in the same
way as Paul has confessed of himself [Greek: hote eudokêsen ho theos
apokalupssai ton huion autou en emoi]. The conviction of having seen the
Lord was no doubt of the greatest importance for the disciples and made
them Evangelists, but what they saw cannot at first help us. It can only
then obtain significance for us when we have gained that confidence in
the Lord which Peter has expressed in Mark VIII. 29. The Christian even
to-day confesses with Paul [Greek: ei en tê zôê tautê en christô
êlpikotes esmen monon, eleeisteroi pantôn anthropôn esmen]. He believes
in a future life for himself with God because he believes that Christ
lives. That is the peculiarity and paradox of Christian faith. But these
are not convictions that can be common and matter of course to a deep
feeling and earnest thinking being standing amid nature and death, but
can only be possessed by those who live with their whole hearts and
minds in God, and even they need the prayer, I believe, help thou mine
unbelief. To act as if faith in eternal life and in the living Christ
was the simplest thing in the world, or a dogma to which one has just to
submit, is irreligious. The whole question about the resurrection of
Christ, its mode and its significance, has thereby been so thoroughly
confused in later Christendom, that we are in the habit of considering
eternal life as certain, even apart from Christ. That, at any rate, is
not Christian. It is Christian to pray that God would give the Spirit to
make us strong to overcome the feelings and the doubts of nature and
create belief in an eternal life through the experience of dying to
live. Where this faith obtained in this way exists, it has always been
supported by the conviction that the Man lives who brought life and
immortality to light. To hold fast this faith is the goal of life, for
only what we consciously strive for is in this matter our own. What we
think we possess is very soon lost.]
[Footnote 84: Weizsäcker (Apostolic Age, p. 73) says very justly: "The
rising of Judaism against believers put them on their own feet. They saw
themselves for the first time persecuted in the name of the law, and
therewith for the first time it must have become clear to them, that in
reality the law was no longer the same to them as to the others. Their
hope is the coming kingdom of heaven, in which it is not the law, but
their Master from whom they expect salvation. Everything connected with
salvation is in him. But we should not investigate the conditions of the
faith of that early period, as though the question had been laid before
the Apostles whether they could have part in the Kingdom of heaven
without circumcision, or whether it could be obtained by faith in Jesus,
with or without the observance of the law. Such questions had no
existence for them either practically or as questions of the school. But
though they were Jews, and the law which even their Master had not
abolished, was for them a matter of course, that did not exclude a
change of inner position towards it, through faith in their Master and
hope of the Kingdom. There is an inner freedom which can grow up
alongside of all the constraints of birth, custom, prejudice, and piety.
But this only comes into consciousness, when a demand is made on it
which wounds it, or when it is assailed on account of an inference drawn
not by its own consciousness, but only by its opponents."]
[Footnote 85: Only one of these four tendencies--the Pauline, with the
Epistle to the Hebrews and the Johannine writings which are related to
Paulinism--has seen in the Gospel the establishment of a new religion.
The rest identified it with Judaism made perfect, or with the Old
Testament religion rightly understood. But Paul, in connecting
Christianity with the promise given to Abraham, passing thus beyond the
law, that is, beyond the actual Old Testament religion, has not only
given it a historical foundation, but also claimed for the Father of the
Jewish nation a unique significance for Christianity. As to the
tendencies named 1 and 2, see Book I. chap. 6.]
[Footnote 86: It is clear from Gal. II. 11 ff. that Peter then and for
long before occupied in principle the stand-point of Paul: see the
judicious remarks of Weizsäcker in the book mentioned above, p. 75 f.]
[Footnote 87: These four tendencies were represented in the Apostolic
age by those who had been born and trained in Judaism, and they were
collectively transplanted into Greek territory. But we cannot be sure
that the third of the above tendencies found intelligent and independent
representatives in this domain, as there is no certain evidence of it.
Only one who had really been subject to it, and therefore understood it,
could venture on a criticism of the Old Testament religion. Still, it
may be noted that the majority of non-Jewish converts in the Apostolic
age, had probably come to know the Old Testament beforehand--not always
the Jewish religion, (see Havet, Le Christianisme, T. IV. p. 120: "Je ne
sais s'il y est entré, du vivant de Paul, un seul païen: je veux dire un
homme, qui ne connût pas déjà, avant d'y entrer, le judaïsme et la
Bible"). These indications will shew how mistaken and misleading it is
to express the different tendencies in the Apostolic age and the period
closely following by the designations "Jewish Christianity-Gentile
Christianity." Short watchwords are so little appropriate here that one
might even with some justice reverse the usual conception, and maintain
that what is usually understood by Gentile Christianity (criticism of
the Old Testament religion) was possible only within Judaism, while that
which is frequently called Jewish Christianity is rather a conception
which must have readily suggested itself to born Gentiles superficially
acquainted with the Old Testament.]
[Footnote 88: The first edition of this volume could not appeal to
Weizsäcker's work, Das Apostolische Zeitalter der Christlichen Kirche,
1886, (second edition translated in this series). The author is now in
the happy position of being able to refer the readers of his imperfect
sketch to this excellent presentation, the strength of which lies in the
delineation of Paulinism in its relation to the early Church, and to
early Christian theology (p. 79-172). The truth of Weizsäcker's
expositions of the inner relations (p. 85 f.), is but little affected by
his assumptions concerning the outer relations, which I cannot
everywhere regard as just. The work of Weizsäcker as a whole is, in my
opinion, the most important work on Church history we have received
since Ritschl's "Entstehung der alt-katholischen Kirche." (2 Aufl.
1857.)]
[Footnote 89: Kabisch, _Die Eschatologie des Paulus_, 1893, has shewn
how strongly the eschatology of Paul was influenced by the later
Pharisaic Judaism. He has also called attention to the close connection
between Paul's doctrine of sin and the fall, and that of the Rabbis.]
[Footnote 90: Some of the Church Fathers (see Socr. H. E. III. 16) have
attributed to Paul an accurate knowledge of Greek literature and
philosophy: but that cannot be proved. The references of Heinrici (2
Kor.-Brief. p. 537-604) are worthy of our best thanks; but no certain
judgment can be formed about the measure of the Apostles' Greek culture,
so long as we do not know how great was the extent of spiritual ideas
which were already precipitated in the speech of the time.]
[Footnote 91: The epistle to the Hebrews and the first epistle of Peter,
as well as the Pastoral epistles belong to the Pauline circle; they are
of the greatest value because they shew that certain fundamental
features of Pauline theology took effect afterwards in an original way,
or received independent parallels, and because they prove that the
cosmic Christology of Paul made the greatest impression and was
continued. In Christology, the epistle to the Ephesians in particular,
leads directly from Paul to the pneumatic Christology of the
post-apostolic period. Its non-genuineness is by no means certain to
me.]
[Footnote 92: In the Ztschr. für Theol und Kirche, II. p. 189 ff. I have
discussed the relation of the prologue of the fourth Gospel to the whole
work and endeavoured to prove the following: "The prologue of the Gospel
is not the key to its comprehension. It begins with a well-known great
object, the Logos, re-adapts and transforms it--implicitly opposing
false Christologies--in order to substitute for it Jesus Christ, the
[Greek: monogenês theos], or in order to unveil it as this Jesus Christ.
The idea of the Logos is allowed to fall from the moment that this takes
place." The author continues to narrate of Jesus only with the view of
establishing the belief that he is the Messiah, the son of God. This
faith has for its main article the recognition that Jesus is descended
from God and from heaven; but the author is far from endeavouring to
work out this recognition from cosmological, philosophical
considerations. According to the Evangelist, Jesus proves himself to be
the Messiah, the Son of God, in virtue of his self-testimony, and
because he has brought a full knowledge of God and of life--purely
supernatural divine blessings (Cf. besides, and partly in opposition,
Holtzmann, i.d. Ztschr. f. wissensch. Theol. 1893). The author's
peculiar world of theological ideas, is not, however, so entirely
isolated in the early Christian literature as appears on the first
impression. If, as is probable, the Ignatian Epistles are independent of
the Gospel of John, further, the Supper prayer in the Didache, finally,
certain mystic theological phrases in the Epistle of Barnabas, in the
second epistle of Clement, and in Hermas, a complex of Theologoumena may
be put together, which reaches back to the primitive period of the
Church, and may be conceived as the general ground for the theology of
John. This complex has on its side a close connection with the final
development of the Jewish Hagiographic literature under Greek
influence.]
[Footnote 93: The Jewish religion, especially since the (relative) close
of the canon, had become more and more a religion of the Book.]
[Footnote 94: Examples of both in the New Testament are numerous. See,
above all, Matt. I. 11. Even the belief that Jesus was born of a Virgin
sprang from Isaiah VII. 14. It cannot, however, be proved to be in the
writings of Paul (the two genealogies in Matt. and Luke directly exclude
it: according to Dillmann, Jahrb. f. protest. Theol. p. 192 ff. Luke I.
34, 35 would be the addition of a redactor); but it must have arisen
very early, as the Gentile Christians of the second century would seem
to have unanimously confessed it (see the Romish Symbol, Ignatius,
Aristides, Justin, etc.) For the rest, it was long before theologians
recognised in the Virgin birth of Jesus more than fulfilment of a
prophecy, viz., a fact of salvation. The conjecture of Usener, that the
idea of the birth from a Virgin is a heathen myth which was received by
the Christians, contradicts the entire earliest development of Christian
tradition which is free from heathen myths, so far as these had not
already been received by wide circles of Jews, (above all, certain
Babylonian and Persian Myths), which in the case of that idea is not
demonstrable. Besides, it is in point of method not permissible to stray
so far when we have near at hand such a complete explanation as Isaiah
VII. 14. Those who suppose that the reality of the Virgin birth must be
held fast, must assume that a misunderstood prophecy has been here
fulfilled (on the true meaning of the passage see Dillmann (Jesajas, 5
Aufl. p. 69): "of the birth by a Virgin (i.e., of one who at the birth
was still a Virgin.) the Hebrew text says nothing ... Immanuel as
beginning and representative of the new generation, from which one
should finally take possession of the king's throne"). The application
of an unhistorical local method in the exposition of the Old
Testament--Haggada and Rabbinic allegorism--may be found in many
passages of Paul (see, e.g., Gal. III. 16, 19; IV. 22-31; 1 Cor. IX. 9;
X. 4; XI. 10; Rom. IV. etc.).]
[Footnote 95: The proof of this may be found in the quotations in early
Christian writings from the Apocalypses of Enoch, Ezra, Eldad and Modad,
the assumption of Moses and other Jewish Apocalypses unknown to us. They
were regarded as Divine revelations beside the Old Testament; see the
proofs of their frequent and long continued use in Schürer's "History of
the Jewish people in the time of our Lord." But the Christians in
receiving these Jewish Apocalypses did not leave them intact, but
adapted them with greater or less Christian additions (see Ezra, Enoch,
Ascension of Isaiah). Even the Apocalypse of John is, as Vischer (Texte
u. Unters. 3 altchristl. lit. Gesch. Bd. II. H. 4) has shown, a Jewish
Apocalypse adapted to a Christian meaning. But in this activity, and in
the production of little Apocalyptic prophetic sayings and articles (see
in the Epistle to the Ephesians, and in those of Barnabas and Clement)
the Christian labour here in the earliest period seems to have exhausted
itself. At least we do not know with certainty of any great Apocalyptic
writing of an original kind proceeding from Christian circles. Even the
Apocalypse of Peter which, thanks to the discovery of Bouriant, we now
know better, is not a completely original work as contrasted with the
Jewish Apocalypses.]
[Footnote 96: The Gospel reliance on the Lamb who was slain, very
significantly pervades the Revelation of John, that is, its Christian
parts. Even the Apocalypse of Peter shews Jesus Christ as the comfort of
believers and as the Revealer of the future. In it (v. 3,) Christ says;
"Then will God come to those who believe on me, those who hunger and
thirst and mourn, etc."]
[Footnote 97: These words were written before the Apocalypse of Peter
was discovered. That Apocalypse confirms what is said in the text.
Moreover, its delineation of Paradise and blessedness are not wanting in
poetic charm and power. In its delineation of Hell, which prepares the
way for Dante's Hell, the author is scared by no terror.]
[Footnote 98: These ideas, however, encircled the earliest Christendom
as with a wall of fire, and preserved it from a too early contact with
the world.]
[Footnote 99: An accurate examination of the eschatological sayings of
Jesus in the synoptists shews that much foreign matter is mixed with
them (see Weiffenbach, Der Wiederkunftsgedanke Jesu, 1875). That the
tradition here was very uncertain because influenced by the Jewish
Apocalyptic, is shewn by the one fact that Papias (in Iren. V. 33)
quotes as words of the Lord which had been handed down by the disciples,
a group of sayings which we find in the Apocalypse of Baruch, about the
amazing fruitfulness of the earth during the time of the Messianic
Kingdom.]
[Footnote 100: We may here call attention to an interesting remark of
Goethe. Among his Apophthegms (no. 537) is the following: "Apocrypha: It
would be important to collect what is historically known about these
books, and to shew that these very Apocryphal writings with which the
communities of the first centuries of our era were flooded, were the
real cause why Christianity at no moment of political or Church history
could stand forth in all her beauty and purity." A historian would not
express himself in this way, but yet there lies at the root of this
remark a true historical insight.]
[Footnote 101: See Schürer, History of the Jewish people. Div. II. vol.
II. p. 160 f., yet the remarks of the Jew Trypho in the dialogue of
Justin shew that the notions of a pre-existent Messiah were by no means
very widely spread in Judaism. (See also Orig. c. Cels. I. 49: "A Jew
would not at all admit that any Prophet had said, the Son of God will
come: they avoided this designation and used instead the saying: the
anointed of God will come"). The Apocalyptists and Rabbis attributed
pre-existence, that is, a heavenly origin to many sacred things and
persons, such as the Patriarchs, Moses, the Tabernacle, the Temple
vessels, the city of Jerusalem. That the true Temple and the real
Jerusalem were with God in heaven and would come down from heaven at the
appointed time, must have been a very wide-spread idea, especially at
the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, and even earlier than that
(see Gal. IV. 26; Rev. XXI. 2; Heb. XII. 22). In the Assumption of Moses
(c. 1) Moses says of himself: Dominus invenit me, qui ab initio orbis
terrarum præparatus sum, ut sim arbiter ([Greek: mesitês]) testamenti
illius ([Greek: tês diathêkês autou]). In the Midrasch Bereschith rabba
VIII. 2. we read, "R. Simeon ben Lakisch says, 'The law was in existence
2000 years before the creation of the world.'" In the Jewish treatise
[Greek: Proseuchê Iôsêph], which Origen has several times quoted, Jacob
says of himself (ap. Orig. tom. II. in Joann. C. 25. Opp. IV. 84):
"[Greek: ho gar lalôn pros humas, egô Iakôb kai Isrêl, angelos theou
eimi egô kai pneuma archikon kai Abraam kai Isaak proektisthêsan pro
pantos ergou, egô de Iakob ... egô prôtogonos pantos zôos zôoumenou hupo
theou]." These examples could easily be increased. The Jewish
speculations about Angels and Mediators, which at the time of Christ
grew very luxuriantly among the Scribes and Apocalyptists, and
endangered the purity and vitality of the Old Testament idea of God,
were also very important for the development of Christian dogmatics. But
neither these speculations, nor the notions of heavenly Archetypes, nor
of pre-existence, are to be referred to Hellenic influence. This may
have co-operated here and there, but the rise of these speculations in
Judaism is not to be explained by it; they rather exhibit the Oriental
stamp. But, of course, the stage in the development of the nations had
now been reached, in which the creations of Oriental fancy and Mythology
could be fused with the ideal conceptions of Hellenic philosophy.]
[Footnote 102: The conception of heavenly ideals of precious earthly
things followed from the first naive method of speculation we have
mentioned, that of a pre-existence of persons from the last. If the
world was created for the sake of the people of Israel, and the
Apocalyptists expressly taught that, then it follows, that in the
thought of God Israel was older than the world. The idea of a kind of
pre-existence of the people of Israel follows from this. We can still
see this process of thought very plainly in the shepherd of Hermas, who
expressly declares that the world was created for the sake of the
Church. In consequence of this he maintains that the Church was very
old, and was created before the foundation of the world. See Vis. I. 2.
4; II. 4. 1 [Greek: Diati oun presbutera] (scil.) [Greek: hê ekklêsia:
Hoti, phêsin, pantôn prôte ektisthê dia touto presbutera, kai dia tautên
ho kosmos katêrtisthê]. But in order to estimate aright the bearing of
these speculations, we must observe that, according to them, the
precious things and persons, so far as they are now really manifested,
were never conceived as endowed with a double nature. No hint is given
of such an assumption; the sensible appearance was rather conceived as a
mere wrapping which was necessary only to its becoming visible, or,
conversely, the pre-existence or the archetype was no longer thought of
in presence of the historical appearance of the object. That pneumatic
form of existence was not set forth in accordance with the analogy of
existence verified by sense, but was left in suspense. The idea of
"existence" here could run through all the stages which, according to
the Mythology and Meta-physic of the time, lay between what we now call
"valid," and the most concrete being. He who nowadays undertakes to
justify the notion of pre-existence, will find himself in a very
different situation from these earlier times, as he will no longer be
able to count on shifting conceptions of existence. See Appendix I. at
the end of this Vol. for a fuller discussion of the idea of
pre-existence.]
[Footnote 103: It must be observed here that Palestinian Judaism,
without any apparent influence from Alexandria, though not independently
of the Greek spirit, had already created a multitude of intermediate
beings between God and the world, avowing thereby that the idea of God
had become stiff and rigid. "Its original aim was simply to help the God
of Judaism in his need." Among these intermediate beings should be
specially mentioned the Memra of God (see also the Shechina and the
Metatron).]
[Footnote 104: See Justin Dial. 48. fin: Justin certainly is not
favourably disposed towards those who regard Christ as a "man among
men," but he knows that there are such people.]
[Footnote 105: The miraculous genesis of Christ in the Virgin by the
Holy Spirit and the real pre-existence are of course mutually exclusive.
At a later period, it is true, it became necessary to unite them in
thought.]
[Footnote 106: There is the less need for treating this more fully here,
as no New Testament Christology has become the direct starting-point of
later doctrinal developments. The Gentile Christians had transmitted to
them, as a unanimous doctrine, the message that Christ is the Lord who
is to be worshipped, and that one must think of him as the Judge of the
living and the dead, that is, [Greek: hôs peri theou]. But it certainly
could not fail to be of importance for the result that already many of
the earliest Christian writers, and therefore even Paul, perceived in
Jesus a spiritual being come down from heaven ([Greek: pneuma]) who was
[Greek: en morphê theou], and whose real act of love consisted in his
very descent.]
[Footnote 107: The creation of the New Testament canon first paved the
way for putting an end, though only in part, to the production of
Evangelic "facts" within the Church. For Hermas (Sim. IX. 16) can relate
that the Apostles also descended to the under world and there preached.
Others report the same of John the Baptist. Origen in his homily on 1
Kings XXVII. says that Moses, Samuel and all the Prophets descended to
Hades and there preached. A series of facts of Evangelic history which
have no parallel in the accounts of our Synoptists, and are certainly
legendary, may be put together from the epistle of Barnabas, Justin, the
second epistle of Clement, Papias, the Gospel to the Hebrews, and the
Gospel to the Egyptians. But the synoptic reports themselves, especially
in the articles for which we have only a solitary witness, shew an
extensive legendary material, and even in the Gospel of John, the free
production of facts cannot be mistaken. Of what a curious nature some of
these were, and that they are by no means to be entirely explained from
the Old Testament, as for example, Justin's account of the ass on which
Christ rode into Jerusalem, having been bound to a vine, is shewn by the
very old fragment in one source of the Apostolic constitutions (Texte u.
Unters II. 5. p. 28 ff.); [Greek: hote êtpsen ho didaskalos ton arton
kai to potêrion kai êulogêsen auta legôn touto esti to sôma mou kai to
haima, ouk epetrepse tautais] (the women) [Greek: sustênai hêmin ...
Martha eipen dia Mariam, hoti eiden autên meidiôsan. Maria eipen ouketi
egelasa]. Narratives such as those of Christ's descent to Hell and
ascent to heaven, which arose comparatively late, though still at the
close of the first century (see Book I. Chap 3) sprang out of short
formulæ containing an antithesis (death and resurrection, first advent
in lowliness, second advent in glory: descensus de coelo, ascensus in
c[oe]lum; ascensus in coelum, descensus ad inferna) which appeared to be
required by Old Testament predictions, and were commended by their
naturalness. Just as it is still, in the same way naively inferred: if
Christ rose bodily he must also have ascended bodily (visibly?) into
heaven.]
[Footnote 108: The Sibylline Oracles, composed by Jews, from 160 B.C. to
189 A.D. are specially instructive here: See the Editions of Friedlieb.
1852; Alexandre, 1869; Rzach, 1891. Delaunay, Moines et Sibylles dans
l'antiquité judéo-grecque, 1874. Schürer in the work mentioned above.
The writings of Josephus also yield rich booty, especially his apology
for Judaism in the two books against Apion. But it must be noted that
there were Jews, enlightened by Hellenism, who were still very zealous
in their observance of the law. "Philo urges most earnestly to the
observance of the law in opposition to that party which drew the extreme
inferences of the allegoristic method, and put aside the outer legality
as something not essential for the spiritual life. Philo thinks that by
an exact observance of these ceremonies on their material side, one will
also come to know better their symbolical meaning" (Siegfried, Philo, p.
157).]
[Footnote 109: Direct evidence is certainly almost entirely wanting
here, but the indirect speaks all the more emphatically: see § 3,
Supplements 1, 2.]
[Footnote 110: The Jewish propaganda, though by no means effaced, gave
way very distinctly to the Christian from the middle of the second
century. But from this time we find few more traces of an enlightened
Hellenistic Judaism. Moreover, the Messianic expectation also seems to
have somewhat given way to occupation with the law. But the God of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as well as other Jewish terms certainly played
a great rôle in Gentile and Gnostic magical formulæ of the third
century, as may be seen, e.g., from many passages in Origen c. Celsum.]
[Footnote 111: The prerogative of Israel was for all that clung to;
Israel remains the chosen people.]
[Footnote 112: The brilliant investigations of Bernays, however, have
shewn how many-sided that philosophy of religion was. The proofs of
asceticism in this Hellenistic Judaism are especially of great interest
for the history of dogma (See Theophrastus' treatise on piety). In the
eighth Epistle of Heraclitus, composed by a Hellenistic Jew in the first
century, it is said (Bernays, p. 182). "So long a time before, O
Hermodorus, saw thee that Sibyl, and even then thou wert" [Greek: eide
se pro posoutou aiônos, Ermodôre hê Sibulla ekeinê, kai tote êstha].
Even here then the notion is expressed that foreknowledge and
predestination invest the known and the determined with a kind of
existence. Of great importance is the fact that even before Philo, the
idea of the wisdom of God creating the world and passing over to men had
been hypostatised in Alexandrian Judaism (see Sirach, Baruch, the wisdom
of Solomon, Enoch, nay, even the book of Proverbs). But so long as the
deutero-canonical Old Testament, and also the Alexandrine and
Apocalyptic literature continue in the sad condition in which they are
at present, we can form no certain judgment and draw no decided
conclusions on the subject. When will the scholar appear who will at
length throw light on these writings, and therewith on the section of
inner Jewish history most interesting to the Christian theologian? As
yet we have only a most thankworthy preliminary study in Schürer's great
work, and beside it particular or dilettante attempts which hardly shew
what the problem really is, far less solve it. What disclosures even the
fourth book of the Maccabees alone yields for the connection of the Old
Testament with Hellenism!]
[Footnote 113: "So far as the sensible world is a work of the Logos, it
is called [Greek: neôteros huios] (quod deus immut. 6. I.277), or
according to Prov. VIII. 22, an offspring of God and wisdom: [Greek: hê
de paradexamêne to tou theou sperma telesphorois ôdisi ton monon kai
agapêton aisthêton huion apekuêse ton de ton kosmon] (de ebriet 8 I. 361
f). So far as the Logos is High Priest his relation to the world is
symbolically expressed by the garment of the High Priest, to which
exegesis the play on the word [Greek: kosmos], as meaning both ornament
and world, lent its aid." This speculation (see Siegfried. Philo, 235)
is of special importance; for it shews how closely the ideas [Greek:
cosmos] and [Greek: logos] were connected.]
[Footnote 114: Of all the Greek Philosophers of the second century,
Plutarch of Chäronea, died c. 125 A.D., and Numenius of Apamea, second
half of the second century, approach nearest to Philo; but the latter of
the two was undoubtedly familiar with Jewish philosophy, specially with
Philo, and probably also with Christian writings.]
[Footnote 115: As to the way in which Philo (see also 4 Maccab. V. 24)
learned to connect the Stoic ethics with the authority of the Torah, as
was also done by the Palestinian Midrash, and represented the Torah as
the foundation of the world, and therewith as the law of nature: see
Siegfried, Philo, p. 156.]
[Footnote 116: Philo by his exhortations to seek the blessed life, has
by no means broken with the intellectualism of the Greek philosophy, he
has only gone beyond it. The way of knowledge and speculation is to him
also the way of religion and morality. But his formal principle is
supernatural and leads to a supernatural knowledge which finally passes
over into sight.]
[Footnote 117: But everything was now ready for this synthesis so that
it could be, and immediately was, completed by Christian philosophers.]
[Footnote 118: We cannot discover Philo's influence in the writings of
Paul. But here again we must remember that the scripture learning of
Palestinian teachers developed speculations which appear closely related
to the Alexandrian, and partly are so, but yet cannot be deduced from
them. The element common to them must, for the present at least, be
deduced from the harmony of conditions in which the different nations of
the East were at that time placed, a harmony which we cannot exactly
measure.]
[Footnote 119: The conception of God's relation to the world as given in
the fourth Gospel is not Philonic. The Logos doctrine there is therefore
essentially not that of Philo (against Kuenen and others. See p. 93).]
[Footnote 120: Siegfried (Philo. p. 160-197) has presented in detail
Philo's allegorical interpretation of scripture, his hermeneutic
principles and their application. Without an exact knowledge of these
principles we cannot understand the Scripture expositions of the
Fathers, and therefore also cannot do them justice.]
[Footnote 121: See Siegfried, Philo. p. 176. Yet, as a rule, the method
of isolating and adapting passages of scripture, and the method of
unlimited combination were sufficient.]
[Footnote 122: Numerous examples of this may be found in the epistle of
Barnabas (see c. 4-9), and in the dialogue of Justin with Trypho (here
they are objects of controversy, see cc. 71-73, 120), but also in many
other Christian writings, (e.g., Clem. ad. Cor. VIII. 3; XVII. 6; XXIII.
3, 4; XXVI. 5; XLVI. 2; 2 Clem. XIII. 2). These Christian additions were
long retained in the Latin Bible, (see also Lactantius and other Latins:
Pseudo-Cyprian de aleat. 2 etc.), the most celebrated of them is the
addition "a ligno" to "dominus regnavit" in Psalm XCVI., see Credner,
Beiträge II. The treatment of the Old Testament in the epistle of
Barnabas is specially instructive, and exhibits the greatest formal
agreement with that of Philo. We may close here with the words in which
Siegfried sums up his judgment on Philo. "No Jewish writer has
contributed so much as Philo to the breaking up of particularism, and
the dissolution of Judaism. The history of his people, though he
believed in it literally, was in its main points a didactic allegoric
poem for enabling him to inculcate the doctrine that man attains the
vision of God by mortification of the flesh. The law was regarded by him
as the best guide to this, but it had lost its exclusive value, as it
was admitted to be possible to reach the goal without it, and it had,
besides, its aim outside itself. The God of Philo was no longer the old
living God of Israel, but an imaginary being who, to obtain power over
the world, needed a Logos by whom the palladium of Israel, the unity of
God, was taken a prey. So Israel lost everything which had hitherto
characterised her."]
[Footnote 123: Proofs in Friedländer, Sittengeschichte, vol. 3.]
[Footnote 124: See the chapter on belief in immortality in Friedländer.
Sittengesch. Roms. Bde. 3. Among the numerous mysteries known to us,
that of Mythras deserves special consideration. From the middle of the
second century the Church Fathers saw in it, above all, the caricature
of the Church. The worship of Mithras had its redeemer, its mediator,
hierarchy, sacrifice, baptism and sacred meal. The ideas of expiation,
immortality, and the Redeemer God, were very vividly present in this
cult, which of course, in later times, borrowed much from Christianity:
see the accounts of Marquardt, Réville, and the Essay of Sayous, Le
Taurobole in the Rev. de l'Hist. des Religions, 1887, where the earliest
literature is also utilised. The worship of Mithras in the third century
became the most powerful rival of Christianity. In connection with this
should be specially noted the cult of Æsculapius, the God who helps the
body and the soul; see my essay "Medicinisches aus der ältesten
Kirchengeschichte," 1892. p. 93 ff.]
[Footnote 125: Hence the wide prevalence of the cult of Æsculapius.]
[Footnote 126: Dominus in certain circumstances means more than deus;
see Tertull. Apol. It signifies more than Soter: see Irenæus I. 1. 3:
[Greek: ton sôtêra legousin, oude gar kurion onomazein auton
thelousin--kurios] and [Greek: despotês] are almost synonymous. See
Philo. Quis. rer. div. heres. 6: [Greek: sunônuma tauta einai legetai].]
[Footnote 127: We must give special attention here to the variability
and elasticity of the concept [Greek: theos], and indeed among the
cultured as well as the uncultured (Orig. prolegg. in Psalm, in Pitra,
Anal. T. II. p. 437, according to a Stoic source; [Greek: kat' allon de
tropon legesthai theon zôion athanaton logikon opoudaion, hôste pasan
asteian psychên theon huparchein, kan periechêtai, allôs de legesthai
theon to kath' auto on zôion athanaton hôs ta en anthrôpois
periechomenas psychas mê huparchein theous]). They still regarded the
Gods as passionless, blessed men living for ever. The idea therefore of
a [Greek: theopoiêsis], and on the other hand, the idea of the
appearance of the Gods in human form presented no difficulty (see Acts
XIV. 11; XXVIII. 6). But philosophic speculation--the Platonic, as well
as in yet greater measure the Stoic, and in the greatest measure of all
the Cynic--had led to the recognition of something divine in man's
spirit ([Greek: pneuma, nous]). Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations
frequently speaks of the God who dwells in us. Clement of Alexandria
(Strom. VI. 14. 113) says: [Greek: houtôs dunamin labousa kuriakên hê
psychê meletai einai theos, kakon men ouden allo plên agnoias einai
nomizousa.] In Bernays' Heraclitian Epistles, pp. 37 f. 135 f., will be
found a valuable exposition of the Stoic (Heraclitian) thesis and its
history, that men are Gods. See Norden, Beiträge zur Gesch. d. griech.
Philos. Jahrb. f. klass Philol. XIX. Suppl. Bd. p. 373 ff., about the
Cynic Philosopher who, contemplating the life and activity of man
([Greek: kataskopos]), becomes its [Greek: episkopos], and further
[Greek: kurios, angelos theou, theos en anthrôpois]. The passages which
he adduces are of importance for the history of dogma in a twofold
respect. (1) They present remarkable parallels to Christology (one even
finds the designations, [Greek: kurios, angelos, kataskopos, episkopos,
theos] associated with the philosophers as with Christ, e.g., in Justin;
nay, the Cynics and Neoplatonics speak of [Greek: episkopoi daimones]);
cf. also the remarkable narrative in Laertius VI. 102, concerning the
Cynic Menedemus; [Greek: houtos, katha phêsin Hippobotos, eis tosos ton
terateias êlasen, hôste Erinuos analabon schêma perieiei, legôn
episkopos aphichthai ex Haidou tôn hamartomenon, hopôs palin katiôn
tasta apangelloi tois ekei, daimosin.] (2) They also explain how the
ecclesiastical [Greek: episkopoi] came to be so highly prized, inasmuch
as these also were from a very early period regarded as mediators
between God and man, and considered as [Greek: en anthrôpois theoi].
There were not a few who in the first and second centuries, appeared
with the claim to be regarded as a God or an organ inspired and chosen
by God (Simon Magus [cf. the manner of his treatment in Hippol. Philos.
VI. 8: see also Clem. Hom. II. 27], Apollonius of Tyana (?), see further
Tacitus Hist. II. 51: "Mariccus.... iamque adsertor Galliarum et deus,
nomen id sibi indiderat"; here belongs also the gradually developing
worship of the Emperor: "dominus ac deus noster." cf. Augustus,
Inscription of the year 25; 24 B.C. in Egypt [where the Ptolemies were
for long described as Gods] [Greek: Huper Kaisaros Autokrattoros theou]
(Zeitschrift fur Aegypt. Sprache. XXXI Bd. p. 3). Domitian: [Greek:
theos Adrianos], Kaibel Inscr. Gr. 829. 1053. [Greek: theos Seouêros
Eusebês]. 1061--the Antinouscult with its prophets. See also Josephus on
Herod Agrippa. Antiq. XIX 8. 2. (Euseb. H. E. II. 10). The flatterers
said to him, [Greek: theon prosagoreuontes; ei kai mechri nun hôs
anthrôpon ephobêthêmen, alla tounteuthen kreittona se thnêtês tês
phuseôs homologoumen.] Herod himself, § 7, says to his friends in his
sickness: [Greek: ho theos humin egô êdê katastrephein epitattomai ton
bion ... ho klêtheis athanatos huph' hêmôn êdê thanein apagomai]). On
the other hand, we must mention the worship of the founder in some
philosophic schools, especially among the Epicureans Epictetus says
(Moral. 15), Diogenes and Heraclitus and those like them are justly
called Gods. Very instructive in this connection are the reproaches of
the heathen against the Christians, and of Christian partisans against
one another with regard to the almost divine veneration of their
teachers. Lucian (Peregr. II) reproaches the Christians in Syria for
having regarded Peregrinus as a God and a new Socrates. The heathen in
Smyrna, after the burning of Polycarp, feared that the Christians would
begin to pay him divine honours (Euseb. H. E. IV. 15 41). Cæcilius in
Minucius Felix speaks of divine honours being paid by Christians to
priests (Octav. IX. 10). The Antimontanist (Euseb. H. E. V. 18. 6)
asserts that the Montanists worship their prophet and Alexander the
Confessor as divine. The opponents of the Roman Adoptians (Euseb. H. E.
V. 28) reproach them with praying to Galen. There are many passages in
which the Gnostics are reproached with paying Divine honours to the
heads of their schools, and for many Gnostic schools (the Carpocratians,
for example) the reproach seems to have been just. All this is extremely
instructive. The genius, the hero, the founder of a new school who
promises to shew the certain way to the _vita beata_, the emperor, the
philosopher (numerous Stoic passages might be noted here) finally, man,
in so far as he is inhabited by [Greek: nous]--could all somehow be
considered as [Greek: theoi], so elastic was this concept. All these
instances of Apotheosis in no way endangered the Monotheism which had
been developed from the mixture of Gods and from philosophy; for the one
supreme Godhead can unfold his inexhaustible essence in a variety of
existences, which, while his creatures as to their origin, are parts of
his essence as to their contents. This Monotheism does not yet exactly
disclaim its Polytheistic origin. The Christian, Hermas, says to his
Mistress (Vis. I 1. 7) [Greek: ou pantote se hôs thean hegêsamên], and
the author of the Epistle of Diognetus writes (X. 6), [Greek: tauta tois
epideomenois chorêgôn], (i.e., the rich man) [Greek: theos ginetai tôn
lambanontôn]. That the concept [Greek: theos] was again used only of one
God, was due to the fact that one now started from the definition "qui
vitam æternam habet," and again from the definition "qui est super omnia
et originem nescit." From the latter followed the absolute unity of God,
from the former a plurality of Gods. Both could be so harmonised (see
Tertull. adv. Prax. and Novat. de Trinit.) that one could assume that
the God, _qui est super omnia_, might allow his monarchy to be
administered by several persons, and might dispense the gift of
immortality and with it a relative divinity.]
[Footnote 128: See the so-called Neopythagorean philosophers and the
so-called forerunners of Neoplatonism (Cf. Bigg, The Platonists of
Alexandria, p. 250, as to Numenius). Unfortunately, we have as yet no
sufficient investigation of the question what influence, if any, the
Jewish Alexandrian Philosophy of religion had on the development of
Greek philosophy in the second and third centuries. The answering of the
question would be of the greatest importance. But at present it cannot
even be said whether the Jewish philosophy of religion had any influence
on the genesis of Neoplatonism. On the relation of Neoplatonism to
Christianity and their mutual approximation, see the excellent account
in Tzschirner, Fall des Heidenthums, pp. 574-618. Cf. also Réville, La
Religion à Rome, 1886.]
[Footnote 129: The Christians, that is the Christian preachers, were
most in agreement with the Cynics (see Lucian's Peregrinus Proteus),
both on the negative and on the positive side; but for that very reason
they were hard on one another (Justin and Tatian against Crescens)--not
only because the Christians gave a different basis for the right mode of
life from the Cynics, but above all, because they did not approve of the
self-conscious, contemptuous, proud disposition which Cynicism produced
in many of its adherents. Morality frequently underwent change for the
worse in the hands of Cynics, and became the morality of a "Gentleman,"
such as we have also experience of in modern Cynicism.]
[Footnote 130: The attitude of Celsus, the opponent of the Christians,
is specially instructive here.]
[Footnote 131: For the knowledge of the spread of the idealistic
philosophy the statement of Origen (c. Celsum VI. 2) that Epictetus was
admired not only by scholars, but also by ordinary people who felt in
themselves the impulse to be raised to something higher, is well worthy
of notice.]
[Footnote 132: This point was of importance for the propaganda of
Christianity among the cultured. There seemed to be given here a
reliable, because revealed, Cosmology and history of the world--which
already contained the foundation of everything worth knowing. Both were
needed and both were here set forth in closest union.]
[Footnote 133: The universalism as reached by the Stoics is certainly
again threatened by the self-righteous and self-complacent distinction
between men of virtue, and men of pleasure, who, properly speaking, are
not men. Aristotle had already dealt with the virtuous élite in a
notable way. He says (Polit. 3. 13. p. 1284), that men who are
distinguished by perfect virtue should not be put on a level with the
ordinary mass, and should not be subjected to the constraints of a law
adapted to the average man. "There is no law for these elect, who are a
law to themselves."]
[Footnote 134: Notions of pre-existence were readily suggested by the
Platonic philosophy; yet this whole philosophy rests on the fact that
one again posits the thing (after stripping it of certain marks as
accidental, or worthless, or ostensibly foreign to it) in order to
express its value in this form, and hold fast the permanent in the
change of the phenomena.]
[Footnote 135: See Tzschirn. i.d. Ztschr. f. K.-Gesch. XII. p. 215 ff.
"The genesis of the Romish Church in the second century." What he
presents is no doubt partly incomplete, partly overdone and not proved:
yet much of what he states is useful.]
[Footnote 136: What is meant here is the imminent danger of taking the
several constituent parts of the canon, even for historical
investigation, as constituent parts, that is, of explaining one writing
by the standard of another and so creating an artificial unity. The
contents of any of Paul's epistles, for example, will be presented very
differently if it is considered by itself and in the circumstances in
which it was written, or if attention is fixed on it as part of a
collection whose unity is presupposed.]
[Footnote 137: See Bigg, The Christian Platonist of Alexandria, pp. 53,
283 ff.]
[Footnote 138: Reuter (August. Studien, p. 492) has drawn a valuable
parallel between Marcion and Augustine with regard to Paul.]
[Footnote 139: Marcion of course wished to raise it to the exclusive
basis, but he entirely misunderstood it.]
DIVISION I.
THE GENESIS OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL DOGMA, OR THE GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC
APOSTOLIC DOGMATIC THEOLOGY, AND THE FIRST SCIENTIFIC ECCLESIASTICAL
SYSTEM OF DOCTRINE.
BOOK I.
THE PREPARATION.
[Greek: Ean murious paidagôgous echête en christôi all' ou pollous
pateras.]
1 Cor IV. 15.
Eine jede Idee tritt als ein fremder Gast in die Erscheinung, und wie
sie sich zu realisiren beginnt, ist sie kaum von Phantasie und
Phantasterei zu unterscheiden.
GOETHE, Sprüche in Prosa, 566
BOOK I
_THE PREPARATION_
CHAPTER I
HISTORICAL SURVEY
The first century of the existence of Gentile Christian communities is
particularly characterised by the following features:
I. The rapid disappearance of Jewish Christianity.[140]
II. The enthusiastic character of the religious temper; the Charismatic
teachers and the appeal to the Spirit.[141]
III. The strength of the hopes for the future, Chiliasm.[142]
IV. The rigorous endeavour to fulfil the moral precepts of Christ, and
truly represent the holy and heavenly community of God in abstinence
from everything unclean, and in love to God and the brethren here on
earth "in these last days."[143]
V. The want of a fixed doctrinal form in relation to the abstract
statement of the faith, and the corresponding variety and freedom of
Christian preaching on the basis of clear formulæ and an increasingly
rich tradition.
VI. The want of a clearly defined external authority in the communities,
sure in its application, and the corresponding independence and freedom
of the individual Christian in relation to the expression of the ideas,
beliefs and hopes of faith.[144]
VII. The want of a fixed political union of the several communities with
each other--every _ecclesia_ is an image complete in itself, and an
embodiment of the whole heavenly Church--while the consciousness of the
unity of the holy Church of Christ which has the spirit in its midst,
found strong expression.[145]
VIII. A quite unique literature in which were manufactured facts for the
past and for the future, and which did not submit to the usual literary
rules and forms, but came forward with the loftiest pretensions.[146]
IX. The reproduction of particular sayings and arguments of Apostolic
Teachers with an uncertain understanding of them.[147]
X. The rise of tendencies which endeavoured to hasten in every respect
the inevitable process of fusing the Gospel with the spiritual and
religious interests of the time, viz., the Hellenic, as well as attempts
to separate the Gospel from its origins and provide for it quite foreign
presuppositions. To the latter belongs, above all, the Hellenic idea
that knowledge is not a charismatic supplement to the faith, or an
outgrowth of faith alongside of others, but that it coincides with the
essence of faith itself.[148]
The sources for this period are few, as there was not much written, and
the following period did not lay itself out for preserving a great part
of the literary monuments of that epoch. Still we do possess a
considerable number of writings and important fragments,[149] and
further important inferences here are rendered possible by the monuments
of the following period, since the conditions of the first century were
not changed in a moment, but were partly, at least, long preserved,
especially in certain national Churches and in remote communities.[150]
_Supplement._--The main features of the message concerning Christ, of
the matter of the Evangelic history, were fixed in the first and second
generations of believers, and on Palestinian soil. But yet, up to the
middle of the second century, this matter was in many ways increased in
Gentile Christian regions, revised from new points of view, handed down
in very diverse forms, and systematically allegorised by individual
teachers. As a whole, the Evangelic history certainly appears to have
been completed at the beginning of the second century. But in detail,
much that was new was produced at a later period--and not only in
Gnostic circles--and the old tradition was recast or rejected.[151]
[Footnote 140: This fact must have been apparent as early as the year
100. The first direct evidence of it is in Justin (Apol. I. 53).]
[Footnote 141: Every individual was, or at least should have been
conscious, as a Christian, of having received the [Greek: pneuma theou],
though that does not exclude spiritual grades. A special peculiarity of
the enthusiastic nature of the religious temper is that it does not
allow reflection as to the authenticity of the faith in which a man
lives. As to the Charismatic teaching, see my edition of the Didache
(Texte u Unters. II 1. 2 p. 93 ff.).]
[Footnote 142: The hope of the approaching end of the world and the
glorious kingdom of Christ still determined men's hearts; though
exhortations against theoretical and practical scepticism became more
and more necessary. On the other hand, after the Epistles to the
Thessalonians, there were not wanting exhortations to continue sober and
diligent.]
[Footnote 143: There was a strong consciousness that the Christian
Church is, above all, a union for a holy life, as well as a
consciousness of the obligation to help one another, and use all the
blessings bestowed by God in the service of our neighbours. Justin (2
Apol. in Euseb. H. E. IV. 17. 10) calls Christianity [Greek: to
didaskalion tes theias aretes].]
[Footnote 144: The existing authorities (Old Testament, sayings of the
Lord, words of Apostles) did not necessarily require to be taken into
account; for the living acting Spirit, partly attesting himself also to
the senses, gave new revelations. The validity of these authorities
therefore held good only in theory, and might in practice be completely
set aside (cf. above all, the Shepherd of Hermas).]
[Footnote 145: Zahn remarks (Ignatius, v. A. p. VII.): "I do not believe
it to be the business of that province of historical investigation which
is dependent on the writings of the so-called Apostolic Fathers as main
sources, to explain the origin of the universal Church in any sense of
the term; for that Church existed before Clement and Hermas, before
Ignatius and Polycarp. But an explanatory answer is needed for the
question, by what means did the consciousness of the 'universal Church'
so little favoured by outer circumstances, maintain itself unbroken in
the post-Apostolic communities?" This way of stating it obscures, at
least, the problem which here lies before us, for it does not take
account of the changes which the idea "universal Church" underwent up to
the middle of the third century--besides, we do not find the title
before Ignatius. In so far as the "universal Church" is set forth as an
earthly power recognisable in a doctrine or in political forms, the
question as to the origin of the idea is not only allowable, but must be
regarded as one of the most important. On the earliest conception of the
"Ecclesia" and its realisation, see the fine investigations of Sohm
"Kirchenrecht," I. p. i ff., which, however, suffer from being a little
overdriven.]
[Footnote 146: See the important essay of Overbeck: Ueber die Anfänge d.
patrist. Litteratur (Hist. Ztschr. N. F. Bd. XII pp. 417-472). Early
Christian literature, as a rule, claims to be inspired writing. One can
see, for example, in the history of the resurrection in the recently
discovered Gospel of Peter (fragment) how facts were remodelled or
created.]
[Footnote 147: The writings of men of the Apostolic period, and that
immediately succeeding, attained in part a wide circulation, and in some
portions of them, often of course incorrectly understood, very great
influence. How rapidly this literature was diffused, even the letters,
may be studied in the history of the Epistles of Paul, the first Epistle
of Clement, and other writings.]
[Footnote 148: That which is here mentioned is of the greatest
importance; it is not a mere reference to the so-called Gnostics. The
foundations for the Hellenising of the Gospel in the Church were already
laid in the first century (50-150).]
[Footnote 149: We should not over-estimate the extent of early Christian
literature. It is very probable that we know, so far as the titles of
books are concerned, nearly all that was effective, and the greater
part, by very diverse means, has also been preserved to us. We except,
of course, the so-called Gnostic literature of which we have only a few
fragments. Only from the time of Commodus, as Eusebius, H. E. V. 21. 27,
has remarked, did the great Church preserve an extensive literature.]
[Footnote 150: It is therefore important to note the locality in which a
document originates, and the more so the earlier the document is. In the
earliest period, in which the history of the Church was more uniform,
and the influence from without relatively less, the differences are
still in the background. Yet the spirit of Rome already announces itself
in the Epistle of Clement, that of Alexandria in the Epistle of
Barnabas, that of the East in the Epistles of Ignatius.]
[Footnote 151: The history of the genesis of the four Canonical Gospels,
or the comparison of them, is instructive on this point. Then we must
bear in mind the old Apocryphal Gospels, and the way in which the
so-called Apostolic Fathers and Justin attest the Evangelic history, and
in part reproduce it independently, the Gospels of Peter, of the
Egyptians, and of Marcion; the Diatesseron of Tatian; the Gnostic
Gospels and Acts of the Apostles, etc. The greatest gap in our knowledge
consists in the fact, that we know so little about the course of things
from about the year 61 to the beginning of the reign of Trajan. The
consolidating and remodelling process must, for the most part, have
taken place in this period. We possess probably not a few writings which
belong to that period; but how are we to prove this, how are they to be
arranged? Here lies the cause of most of the differences, combinations
and uncertainties; many scholars, therefore, actually leave these 40
years out of account, and seek to place everything in the first three
decennia of the second century.]