THE ELEMENT COMMON TO ALL CHRISTIANS AND THE BREACH WITH JUDAISM
On account of the great differences among those who, in the first
century, reckoned themselves in the Church of God, and called themselves
by the name of Christ,[152] it seems at first sight scarcely possible to
set up marks which would hold good for all, or even for nearly all, the
groups. Yet the great majority had one thing in common, as is proved,
among other things, by the gradual expulsion of Gnosticism. The
conviction that they knew the supreme God, the consciousness of being
responsible to him (Heaven and Hell), reliance on Jesus Christ, the hope
of an eternal life, the vigorous elevation above the world--these are
the elements that formed the fundamental mood. The author of the Acts of
Thecla expresses the general view when he (c. 5-7) co-ordinates [Greek:
ton tou christou logon] with [Greek: logos theou peri enkateias, kai
anastaseôs]. The following particulars may here be specified.[153]
I. The Gospel, because it rests on revelation, is the sure manifestation
of the supreme God, and its believing acceptance guarantees salvation
([Greek: sôteria]).
II. The essential content of this manifestation (besides the revelation
and the verification of the oneness and spirituality of God),[154] is,
first of all, the message of the resurrection and eternal life ([Greek:
anastasis zôê aiônios]), then the preaching of moral purity and
continence ([Greek: enkrateia]), on the basis of repentance toward God
([Greek: metanoia]), and of an expiation once assured by baptism, with
eye ever fixed on the requital of good and evil.[155]
III. This manifestation is mediated by Jesus Christ, who is the Saviour
([Greek: sôtêr]) sent by God "in these last days," and who stands with
God himself in a union special and unique, (cf. the ambiguous [Greek:
pais theou], which was much used in the earliest period). He has brought
the true and full knowledge of God, as well as the gift of immortality
[Greek: gnôsis kai zôê], or [Greek: gnôsis tês zôês], as an expression
for the sum of the Gospel. See the supper prayer in the Didache, c. IX.
an X.; [Greek: eucharistoumen soi, pater hêmôn huper tês zôês kai
gnôseôs hês egnôrisas hêmin dia Iêsou tou paidos sou], and is for that
very reason the redeemer ([Greek: sôtêr] and victor over the demons) on
whom we are to place believing trust. But he is, further, in word and
walk the highest example of all moral virtue, and therefore in his own
person the law for the perfect life, and at the same time the
God-appointed lawgiver and judge.[156]
IV. Virtue as continence, embraces as its highest task, renunciation of
temporal goods and separation from the common world; for the Christian
is not a citizen, but a stranger on the earth, and expects its
approaching destruction.[157]
V. Christ has committed to chosen men, the Apostles (or to one Apostle),
the proclamation of the message he received from God; consequently,
their preaching represents that of Christ himself. But, besides, the
Spirit of God rules in Christians, "the Saints." He bestows upon them
special gifts, and, above all, continually raises up among them Prophets
and spiritual Teachers who receive revelations and communications for
the edification of others, and whose injunctions are to be obeyed.
VI. Christian Worship is a service of God in spirit and in truth (a
spiritual sacrifice), and therefore has no legal ceremonial and
statutory rules. The value of the sacred acts and consecrations which
are connected with the cultus, consists in the communication of
spiritual blessings. (Didache X., [Greek: hêmin de echarisô, despota,
pneumatikên trophên kai poton kai zôên aiônion dia tou paidos sou]).
VII. Everything that Jesus Christ brought with him, may be summed up in
[Greek: gnôsis kai zôê], or in the knowledge of immortal life.[158] To
possess the perfect knowledge was, in wide circles, an expression for
the sum total of the Gospel.[159]
VIII. Christians, as such, no longer take into account the distinctions
of race, age, rank, nationality and worldly culture, but the Christian
community must be conceived as a communion resting on a divine election.
Opinions were divided about the ground of that election.
IX. As Christianity is the only true religion, and as it is no national
religion, but somehow concerns the whole of humanity, or its best part,
it follows that it can have nothing in common with the Jewish nation and
its contemporary cultus. The Jewish nation in which Jesus Christ
appeared, has, for the time at least, no special relation to the God
whom Jesus revealed. Whether it had such a relation at an earlier period
is doubtful (cf. here, e.g., the attitude of Marcion, Ptolemæus the
disciple of Valentinus, the author of the Epistle of Barnabas, Aristides
and Justin); but certain it is that God has now cast it off, and that
all revelations of God, so far as they took place at all before Christ,
(the majority assumed that there had been such revelations and
considered the Old Testament as a holy record), must have aimed solely
at the call of the "new people", and in some way prepared for the
revelation of God through his Son.[160]
[Footnote 152: See, as to this, Celsus in Orig. III. 10 ff. and V. 59
ff.]
[Footnote 153: The marks adduced in the text do not certainly hold good
for some comparatively unimportant Gnostic groups, but they do apply to
the great majority of them, and in the main to Marcion also.]
[Footnote 154: Most of the Gnostic schools know only one God, and put
all emphasis on the knowledge of the oneness, supramundaneness, and
spirituality of this God. The Æons, the Demiurgus, the God of matter, do
not come near this God though they are called Gods. See the testimony of
Hippolytus c. Noet. 11; [Greek: kai gar pantes apekleisthêsan eis touto
akontes eipein hoti to pan eis hena anatrechei ei oun ta panta eis hena
anatrechei kai kata thualentinon kai kata Markiôna, Kêrinthon te kai
pasan tên ekeinôn phluarian, kai akontes eis touto periepesan, hina ton
hena homologêsôsin aition tôn pantôn houtôs oun suntrechousin kai autoi
mê thelontes tê alêtheia hena theon legein poiêsanta hôs êthelêsen].]
[Footnote 155: Continence was regarded as the condition laid down by God
for the resurrection and eternal life. The sure hope of this was for
many, if not for the majority, the whole sum of religion, in connection
with the idea of the requital of good and evil which was now firmly
established. See the testimony of the heathen Lucian, in Peregrinus
Proteus.]
[Footnote 156: Even where the judicial attributes were separated from
God (Christ) as not suitable, Christ was still comprehended as the
critical appearance by which every man is placed in the condition which
belongs to him. The Apocalypse of Peter expects that God himself will
come as Judge (see the Messianic expectations of Judaism, in which it
was always uncertain whether God or the Messiah would hold the
judgment).]
[Footnote 157: Celsus (Orig. c. Celsum, V. 59) after referring to the
many Christian parties mutually provoking and fighting with each other,
remarks (V. 64) that though they differ much from each other, and
quarrel with each other, you can yet hear from them all the
protestation, "The world is crucified to me and I to the world." In the
earliest Gentile Christian communities brotherly love for reflective
thought falls into the background behind ascetic exercises of virtue, in
unquestionable deviation from the sayings of Christ, but in fact it was
powerful. See the testimony of Pliny and Lucian, Aristides, Apol. 15,
Tertull Apol. 39.]
[Footnote 158: The word "life" comes into consideration in a double
sense, viz., as soundness of the soul, and as immortality. Neither, of
course, is to be separated from the other. But I have attempted to shew
in my essay, "Medicinisches aus der ältesten Kirchengesch" (1892), the
extent to which the Gospel in the earliest Christendom was preached as
medicine and Jesus as a Physician, and how the Christian Message was
really comprehended by the Gentiles as a medicinal religion. Even the
Stoic philosophy gave itself out as a soul therapeutic, and Æsculapius
was worshipped as a Saviour-God; but Christianity alone was a religion
of healing.]
[Footnote 159: Heinrici, in his commentary on the epistles to the
Corinthians, has dealt very clearly with this matter; see especially
(Bd. II. p. 557 ff.) the description of the Christianity of the
Corinthians: On what did the community base its Christian character? It
believed in one God who had revealed himself to it through Christ,
without denying the reality of the hosts of gods in the heathen world (1
VIII. 6). It hoped in immortality without being clear as to the nature
of the Christian belief in the resurrection (1 XV.) It had no doubt as
to the requital of good and evil (1 IV. 5; 2 V. 10; XI. 15: Rom. II. 4),
without understanding the value of self-denial, claiming no merit, for
the sake of important ends. It was striving to make use of the Gospel as
a new doctrine of wisdom about earthly and super-earthly things, which
led to the perfect and best established knowledge (1 I. 21: VIII. 1). It
boasted of special operations of the Divine Spirit, which in themselves
remained obscure and non-transparent, and therefore unfruitful (1 XIV.),
while it was prompt to put aside as obscure, the word of the Cross as
preached by Paul (2. IV. 1 f). The hope of the near Parousia, however,
and the completion of all things, evinced no power to effect a moral
transformation of society We herewith obtain the outline of a conviction
that was spread over the widest circles of the Roman Empire "Naturam si
expellas furca, tamen usque recurret."]
[Footnote 160: Nearly all Gentile Christian groups that we know, are at
one in the detachment of Christianity from empiric Judaism; the
"Gnostics," however, included the Old Testament in Judaism, while the
greater part of Christians did not. That detachment seemed to be
demanded by the claims of Christianity to be the one, true, absolute and
therefore oldest religion, foreseen from the beginning. The different
estimates of the Old Testament in Gnostic circles have their exact
parallels in the different estimates of Judaism among the other
Christians; cf. for example, in this respect, the conception stated in
the Epistle of Barnabas with the views of Marcion, and Justin with
Valentinus. The particulars about the detachment of the Gentile
Christians from the Synagogue, which was prepared for by the inner
development of Judaism itself, and was required by the fundamental fact
that the Messiah, crucified and rejected by his own people, was
recognised as Saviour by those who were not Jews, cannot be given in the
frame-work of a history of dogma; though, see Chaps. III. IV. VI. On the
other hand, the turning away from Judaism is also the result of the mass
of things which were held in common with it, even in Gnostic circles.
Christianity made its appearance in the Empire in the Jewish propaganda.
By the preaching of Jesus Christ who brought the gift of eternal life,
mediated the full knowledge of God, and assembled round him in these
last days a community, the imperfect and hybrid creations of the Jewish
propaganda in the empire were converted into independent formations.
These formations were far superior to the synagogue in power of
attraction, and from the nature of the case would very soon be directed
with the utmost vigour against the synagogue.]