THE EVOLUTION OF CHRISTIANITY
Christianity did not arise in the form we associate with it. The
followers of Jesus, after they had become convinced that their
crucified leader had arisen from the dead and had become a spiritual
agent, grouped themselves together in Jerusalem and formed a religious
congregation whose distinguishing tenet was a belief in the near
approach of the earthly kingdom of God, whose ruler would be Jesus. In
his powerful name, the members of the congregation could perform
miracles of healing where the faith was sufficient. This form of
Christianity did not differ very widely from Judaism in anything but
this belief in Jesus as the expected Messiah. It is obvious that this
difference has no essential meaning to us to-day who know the origin
and import of the Messianic hope of the Jews. Let us be frank with
ourselves and clear our minds of these dreams of the past. These early
Christians deceived themselves; their hopes were not fulfilled; the
earthly kingdom of God did not come. Jesus was not the Messiah for the
simple reason that there is no such person. He was not the Messiah any
more than Mohammed Ahmed was the Mahdi--and for the very same reason.
Mahdis and Messiahs and Buddhas are creations of religious and race
imagination just as King Lear is the product of the poetic imagination
of William Shakespeare. The {85} educated man of the present must
classify these figures as tremendous fictions whose power is waning.
When he faces them squarely and asks himself what significance they
have for his life, his answer must be, "Only historical and artistic."
We may say, then, that Christianity in its first form has been outgrown.
But the Messianic form of Christianity gave it a vividness and concrete
impressiveness that made it a force among the men of that age. Jesus
was the heavenly Messiah who would return in power and rule according
to righteousness. With him was bound up the hope of immortality and in
his hand was dominion over the evils which beset one's path. A great
world-event was impending; at any moment the last trumpet might sound
and the dead and the living be delivered to judgment. Moreover, Jesus
as the Christ and Lord was even now at work among men, his Spirit was
active to guide and encourage those who had faith in him. In the
congregation at Jerusalem, this belief in Jesus as the Messiah was
closely associated with the past history of the race and did not
involve a break with the Law. The Old Testament was searched to find
prophecies which would throw light upon this apparently new departure
and soon passage after passage was found which would easily lend itself
to the desired interpretation. Under the guidance of these passages
and of the new outlook, the life of the prophet of Nazareth was
re-molded until it lost the greater part of its more human features.
Such an important amendment of the Jewish religion could not keep
itself hidden. The Jews of the dispersion, broadened by their contact
with the political, {86} philosophical and religious movements of the
Roman empire, yet cherishing a sincere faith in the traditions of their
fathers, heard of the new sect which had arisen in Palestine. Their
interest was aroused. Sometimes they felt sympathetic, sometimes they
were antagonistic. Slowly at first and then more rapidly through the
work of Paul, they came in more direct contact with this new movement.
By this time, it had already become Hellenistic in its spirit and
attitude. Around the nucleus of the life of Jesus and his
resurrection, the seething, myriad-shaped ideas of the age attached
themselves. The Palestinian congregation was left behind in its
peaceful conservatism while the movement which it had inaugurated grew
by leaps and bounds and swept outward into the tossing ocean of faiths
and philosophies which extended from India to Gaul. To suppose that it
could remain unchanged in such fellowship is to undervalue the
assimilative tendencies in the social mind. The Greeks and Romans and
Egyptians and Syrians could not think as Jews. They inevitably
interpreted it in terms of their own ideas and problems in order to
comprehend it.
We have already considered the interpretation which Paul gave to
Christianity. It was, as we saw, dominated by the apocalyptic notion
of a heavenly, or spiritual, man while it gave ample recognition to the
desire for salvation from sin and participation in the divine life.
Thus Christianity was brought into touch with the mystery-cults and
responded to the yearning for some guarantee of immortality so
wide-spread at this time. "But if the Spirit of him that raised up
Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, he that raised up Christ Jesus
from the dead shall quicken also your mortal {87} bodies through his
Spirit which dwelleth in you." We should compare this passage from
Romans with the corresponding discussion in Corinthians (1, 15), "And
if Christ hath not been raised, then is our preaching vain, our faith
also is vain." The message which he brought to the Hellenistic world
was in its essentials a definite one. Jesus, a man who recently lived
in Palestine and did wonders, was raised by God and has become a
heavenly man, the guarantee of immortality to those who have faith in
him. The last trumpet of the day of judgment will sound and the dead
will be raised with spiritual or incorruptible bodies, and those who
are still alive will be changed and given these spiritual bodies since
flesh and blood cannot enter the coming kingdom of God. This message
is the natural interpretation of Christianity by a learned Hellenistic
Jew.
But this was merely the beginning of the evolution of Christianity.
The next phase involves its interpretation by the Gnostic movement.
Let us see first what this Gnostic movement was before we try to
determine its direct and indirect influence upon Christianity.
So far as can be made out, Gnosticism was a religious philosophy which
grew up in the eastern part of the Roman empire. Toward the making of
this theosophy went many strands of refined mythology coming from
India, Persia, Alexandria and Palestine. It was an esoteric doctrine
representing that free mingling of traditions from all sources so
characteristic of the age. Those traditions were worked up by
reflection into a fairly systematic outlook upon the world, entirely
continuous with mythology yet far more highly developed. Gnosticism
cannot be called a philosophy in the technical sense of that term since
its constructions did not {88} have a critical foundation. So far as
it used Greek philosophy, it drew from the more pictorial myths of
Plato and the conception of subordinate powers or demons advanced by
stoicism. Its interest was not, however, philosophical but rather
theosophical in character. The relation of the individual soul to the
world-powers and the way in which a future state of happiness could be
reached occupied its attention in the first instance; and the theology
which it developed represented the stage-setting for this personal
drama. I do not think it is saying too much when I state that there is
nothing in Gnosticism which modern science and philosophy can recognize
as having a valid foundation. We can understand why it developed, just
as we can understand why mythology arose, but it was a mistaken
movement because it followed the old mythological path of explanation.
If the direction taken by reflection is wrong, the most strenuous
endeavors cannot lead to truth.
Gnosticism possessed certain tenets which were very wide-spread in
ancient civilization. The flesh was looked upon as a thing of evil
which corrupted the soul. The physical world was in fact given over to
the powers of darkness while the spiritual world was ruled by the god
of light and purity. This dualism with its accompanying asceticism is
to be found in the Persian religion, in India, in later Jewish thought,
in the Orphic cults of Greece and even in Plato. It entered into
Christianity as naturally as science does into our outlook to-day. All
through the early years of the Christian era, and during the Middle
Ages, this contrast existed and controlled ethics. All of which goes
to show that Christianity was not the creation of a single man but the
flowering out of religious mythology.
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According to the teaching of Gnosticism, the soul was in danger of
destruction or of dire calamities unless it possessed the proper
preparation for its journey after death. The best means of safety was
the participation in the life of some savior-god who had vanquished the
powers of darkness and evil. It is evident that the world-setting of
Gnosticism was not far different from that of Christianity. They were
products of the same age, outgrowths of a similar soil. The advantage
which Christianity had was its connection with a noble personality and
the ethical background which this gave it. Gnosticism was oriental far
more than it was Greek. Had it been connected with the ethical
teaching of the classic Greek tradition, had a myth of the resurrection
of some noble teacher like Plato arisen to control the phantasy of the
oriental mind, the result would not have been far different from
Christianity.
It was only natural that Gnosticism with its belief in a savior-god
should feel itself drawn to Christianity with its similar teaching.
Jesus was regarded by the Christian gnostics as divine, as an eternal
being who had manifested himself historically in fulfillment of his
function of mediator. The Christian congregations were thus forced to
take another step in the deification of Jesus. For Paul, he was still
a man, the second or spiritual Adam who began a new dispensation. For
the earlier Christians, he was the God-selected Messiah. He now became
a god who was also the son of God. The evolution was inevitable in the
intellectual environment of the time. But the Christian congregations,
as represented by their clearest thinkers, wished to avoid gnostic
extremes and to keep near the historical basis and the ethical
monotheism of the best Hebrew {90} tradition. Jesus was God, but he
was also man. In this way, arose the doctrine of the incarnation.
Instead of being a monument of mystical insight as theologians tell us,
it was the consequence of a problem forced upon the Church. In other
words, the doctrine of the Trinity is the attempt to combine gnostic
polytheism and monotheism. The only way three can be made one is by a
mystery, so a mystery it became. It is a bit of verbal gymnastic or a
formal solution of an impossible problem which the pressure of events
had forced upon the Church.
Christianity was now on the high-road to a theology. To enter the
Hellenistic world and not be forced to develop a theology was simply
impossible. The first fruit of this entrance into the intellectual
world of the time was the Fourth Gospel or the so-called Gospel
according to John. Scholars have begun to interpret this gospel as an
attempt to combine the older Christian tradition with the theological
speculations of the age. The beginning of the gospel strikes a new
note which separates it immediately from the synoptics. "In the
beginning was the Word (Logos) and the Word was with God and the Word
was God." What is this Word or Logos with which the historical Jesus
was identified? For Philo, the Alexandrian Jew who played such an
important part in the theological speculation of the time, the Logos
was a second God, the reflection of his glory, the only begotten Son,
the actual creator of the world, his active agent at work in events.
It is not going too far to assert that, without the speculations of
Philo, the Fourth Gospel could not have been written. And yet Philo
was merely developing and applying to the Old Testament the writings of
the stoic philosophy and the {91} teaching of Plato. Does it not
follow that, in the Fourth Gospel, we have the more theosophic portions
of ancient philosophy attached externally to the life of the Prophet of
Nazareth? Under such conditions of origin, how can we begin to
separate reason and revelation? Gnosticism, stoicism, platonism, the
Old Testament, the stories of the life of Jesus, the broadening of
Christianity, all went together to make possible the mystic theology of
this gospel.
But the more Jesus was transformed into a god, the more he lost his
human characteristics. The figure of Jesus becomes elusive and
shadowy; he lives among men but is not of them. To make God a man or
man a second God was an impossible task. When all is said, the Fourth
Gospel performs this task about as well as it could be done, yet Jesus
is no longer a Galilean peasant but a mystic being who speaks in
riddles.
This vital interplay of Christianity and Hellenistic thought led to the
passing away of the older Messianic idea with its distinct limitations.
A noble monotheism was the result, while the concrete, human element
which the historical origins of Christianity had contributed to it
prevented this monotheism from losing sight of human problems. The
value of Christianity lies in its ethics but it is doubtful whether the
ethics could have become effective unless it had been carried by the
more chaotic beliefs which we usually call religious. There can be
little doubt that some religious system would have conquered the Roman
empire; the educational level was too low to enable the better type of
philosophy to dominate the life of the mass of the people. Magic and
other-worldism were rampant because the social and political
organization was unsatisfactory and mental discipline {92} was not
wide-spread. In brief, the world was still at the mythological level
and was not yet prepared for a higher plane. _This being so, the
success of Christianity was the best thing which could have happened_.
Later phases of the evolution of Christianity force us to qualify this
position that its success was the best thing which could have happened.
In order to escape the dangers which free theosophizing brought, the
leaders of the Christian congregations felt the need of a firmer
organization. The result was the gradual concentration of moral and
doctrinal authority in the hands of bishops. The early Church had been
democratic in polity but the times were not ripe for such democracy and
slowly elders were chosen to be leaders. These elders were shepherds
or bishops, that is, spiritual overseers. Soon they claimed and were
granted life-tenure and greater authority. Every analogy from the Old
Testament and from the larger political organization of the time worked
in their favor. This assumption of authority on the part of the
bishops is well represented by the letter of warning sent out by Bishop
Ignatius of Antioch. "Obey the Bishop as Jesus Christ the Father, and
the Presbyters as the Apostles, but honor the Deacons as the law of the
Lord.... Whoever honors the Bishop is honored of God; whoever does
aught behind the Bishop's back, serves the devil." The natural result
of this changed organization was the doctrine of Apostolic succession.
With this doctrine went another, the belief in the Apostolic Origin of
the articles of faith. The flexible growth of Christianity was at an
end. There arose a series of dogmas enunciated by Councils of bishops
and these were forced upon Christianity as authoritative. Free enquiry
and {93} speculation was at an end. A religion with a creed had
appeared, a thing unknown before in the history of ancient thought.
When Protestantism arose, it made a half-hearted appeal to the spirit
of free inquiry. Protestantism was, however, a complex movement with
decided limitations in the motives at work and the knowledge on which
to build. The old church organization, molded on the lines of the
Roman empire, was discarded and the function of the priesthood was
changed, but the intellectual attitude and the creed upheld remained
practically the same. Some of the more radical branches of the
movement like the baptists of Northern Italy were suppressed too soon
to allow their influence to be felt. On the whole, Protestantism was
hampered by the New Testament canon which it inherited from the later
stages of the evolution of Christianity. It seldom went seriously back
of the stage at which Jesus was deified. Its reforms were social and
political rather than theological. The tendency was to establish the
bible as ultimate authority without investigation as to its origin.
The consequence of this establishment of the bible as the final court
of appeal was decidedly harmful since it set reason and experience over
against a supposed revelation. So far as Protestantism itself was
concerned, it did not have in it, as a consequence of this bibliolatry,
the intellectual vitality necessary to a true evolution. Had it not
been for the larger social, scientific and philosophical developments
which sprang up at the same time and founded themselves on reason and
experience, the protestant revolt would have ended in a blind alley.
There is every reason to believe, however, that it helped to break the
tyranny of the theological {94} view of the world and to free the human
spirit for new endeavors. Protestantism, just because it was a revolt,
could not attain sufficient unity and power to stamp out intellectual
freedom. The modern world was too complex to be dominated by religion.
But we have already indicated the conditions which gave rise to the
higher criticism whose results we have been summarizing.
We must frankly ask ourselves what features of historical Christianity
are congruent with our modern life. The Hellenistic world to which
dogma and ritual are mainly due is a thing of the past, existent for no
one but the scholar. Ours is a new world with new ideas, new problems
and new possibilities. Does the recognition of historical continuity
preclude the acknowledgment of very radical changes?
I am certain that the deification of Jesus will be given up step by
step. He was not born miraculously, nor was he preexistent as the Word
or Logos. These terms do not fit into an outlook dominated by science.
To call him the Son of God in an exclusive sense is not warranted by
the facts, nor has it any clear meaning for the present age. To the
old Greek, Egyptian, and Roman, the idea was familiar; many of the
patrician families traced their descent to Apollo or Jupiter. But such
a literal interpretation of the phrase has no sanction for us, and any
other than a literal meaning is essentially meaningless. Jesus was a
noble and tender-hearted man with the beliefs of his age. To speak of
him as ideally perfect and sinless is absurd just because these terms
are absolutes where relatives alone have meaning. Like most
theological terms they cut themselves loose {95} from their necessary
setting, which, in this case, is human nature and society.
When the necessary critical work has been done, what is left of the
stately theology reared by Church Fathers, councils and scholastics?
Apparently only a mellowed religion with a universalistic outlook and a
strong ethical trend. This mellowness and this universalism were not
qualities present in perfection from the start, although we cannot say
that Christianity was antagonistic to them. Mellowness takes time. I
cannot but feel that men like St. Francis, Pascal, Bossuet, Fenelon,
Melancthon, Wesley, on the ecclesiastical side, and men like Plato,
Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, Fichte, Darwin, and Mazzini, on the laic
side, have contributed to this mellowness. From this point of view, we
can best describe modern Christianity as an evolution of Hebrew ethical
monotheism along tenderer and more human lines under the stimulus of
many very noble personalities.
During the latter half of the nineteenth century, Christianity passed
through a fire of criticism which rocked it to its foundation. To
those who lived at that time, the transition from the older, and more
dogmatic, form was accompanied by spiritual and moral struggles which
seem to us exaggerated. The very indifference of the present age shows
that the atmosphere has cleared and that new values have come to the
front. A short while since, I picked up Hutton's once famous book,
_Modern Guides of English Thought in Matters of Faith_, and read his
analysis of the life of Cardinal Newman and his interesting criticism
of Matthew Arnold. I must confess that the time-spirit of which Arnold
{96} made so much has done its work. The scene is shifting from a
religion which stresses a peculiar form of salvation and a career in
another world to social and economic conditions and ideals. Is there
not something Byronic in much of Arnold's religious poetry? Is there
not too much of the pageant of the bleeding heart in his sighs of
regret and farewell? Yet he realized that the old faith was dying and
that man had not yet found that which could fill its place. It takes
time to make an adjustment in these matters, just as it is time alone
that softens the griefs of unrequited love or the loss of dear ones.
And it is usually only the next generation, which has been able to make
a genuinely fresh start, that settles into a new way of life.
Change is a great physician because it is able to introduce new factors
into the situation, and it has been at work since Arnold's day. There
are, nevertheless, prophecies in his poems of another world which would
before long take the place of the one that was dying; and some of us
believe that, in the new democracy which is stirring into life
throughout the earth, this new and more creative world is being born:
"The millions suffer still and grieve,
And what can helpers heal
With old-world cures men half believe
For woes they wholly feel?
"And yet men have such need of joy!
But joy whose grounds are true;
And joy that should all hearts employ
As when the past was new."
In the figure of Jesus, ethical and aesthetic idealization guided by
religious emotion has created a {97} personality of a peculiarly
appealing type well fitted to remain as an ideal to foster and
strengthen the noblest tendencies. But this ideal has become
practically self-supporting apart from its mythical scaffolding. Its
real foundation to-day is in its appeal to sympathies, natural to
social beings, which the spiritual evolution of humanity has developed
and given content to. When man succeeds in applying these sympathies
rationally, in a social fashion, he may bring upon this sad old earth
some measure of that kingdom for which Jesus longed. But Christianity
has stood and, on the whole, still stands for certain beliefs in regard
to the universe as a whole and the relation of man to it, which only
patient reflection and inductive investigation can settle. By their
very nature, these beliefs cannot have an historical justification
although they have had an historical origin. Taking these beliefs in
their simplest form and separating them from all connection with the
figure of Jesus and the developed ethics whose stimulus goes back to
him, they become an acceptance of an ethical God, a special providence
and immortality. Remove these postulates, and it is doubtful whether
theology has not also disappeared. It behooves us to examine the
validity of these postulates in the light of modern science and
philosophy.
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