§ 32.8. =The Acts of the Martyrs.=--Of the numerous professedly
contemporary accounts of celebrated martyrs of the 2nd and 3rd
cents., those adopted by Eusebius in his Church History may be
accepted as genuine; especially the _Epistle of the Church of
Smyrna to the Church at Philomelium_ about the persecution which
it suffered (§ 22, 3); also the _Report of the Church at Lyons
and Vienne_ to the Christians in Asia and Phrygia about the
persecution under Marcus Aurelius in A.D. 177 (§ 22, 3); and an
_Epistle of Dionysius Bishop of Alexandria_ to Fabian of Antioch
about the Alexandrian martyrs and confessors during the Decian
persecution. The Acts of the Martyrs of Scillita are also genuine
(§ 22, 3); so too the Montanistic History of the sufferings of
Perpetua, Felicitas, and their companions (§§ 22, 4; 40, 3); as
well as the _Acta s. Cypriani_. The main part of the _Martyrdom
of Justin Martyr_ by Simeon Metaphr. (§ 68, 4) belongs
probably to the 2nd cent. The _Martyrdom of Ignatius_ (§ 30, 5)
professedly by his companions in his last journey to Rome, and
the _Martyrdom of Sympherosa_ in the Tiber, who was put to death
with her seven sons under Hadrian, as well as all other Acts of
the Martyrs professedly belonging to the first four centuries,
are of more than doubtful authenticity.
§ 33. THE DOCTRINAL CONTROVERSIES OF THE
OLD CATHOLIC AGE.[90]
The development of the system of Christian doctrine must become a
necessity when Christianity meeting with pagan culture in the form of
science is called upon to defend her claim to be the universal religion.
In the first three centuries, however, there was as yet no official
construction and establishment of ecclesiastical doctrine. There
must first be a certain measure of free subjective development and
wrestling with antagonistic views. A universally acknowledged organ is
wanting, such as that subsequently found in the Œcumenical Councils.
The persecutions allowed no time and peace for this; and the church had
enough to do in maintaining what is specifically Christian in opposition
to the intrusion of such anti-Christian, Jewish and Pagan elements
as sought to gain a footing in Ebionism and Gnosticism. On the other
hand, friction and controversy within the church had already begun
as a preparation for the construction of the ecclesiastical system of
doctrine. The _Trinitarian_ controversy was by far the most important,
while the _Chiliastic_ discussions were of significance for Eschatology.
§ 33.1. =The Trinitarian Questions.=--The discussion was mainly
about the relation of the divine μοναρχία (the unity of God) to
the οἰκονομία (the Trinitarian being and movement of God). Then
the relation of the Son or Logos to the Father came decidedly
to the front. From the time when the more exact determination of
this relationship came to be discussed, toward the end of the 2nd
cent., the most eminent teachers of the Catholic church maintained
stoutly the personal independence of the Logos--=Hypostasianism=.
But the necessity for keeping this view in harmony with the
monotheistic doctrine of Christianity led to many errors and
vacillations. Adopting Philo’s distinction of λόγος ἐνδιάθετος
and λόγος προφορικός (§ 10, 1), they for the most part regarded
the hypostasizing as conditioned first by the creating of the
world and as coming forth not as a necessary and eternal element
in the very life of God but as a free and temporal act of the
divine will. The proper essence of the Godhead was identified
rather with the Father, and all attributes of the Godhead were
ascribed to the Son not in a wholly equal measure as to the
Father, for the word of Christ: “the Father is greater than I”
(John xiv. 28), was applied even to the pre-existent state of
Christ. Still greater was the uncertainty regarding the Holy
Spirit. The idea of His personality and independence was far less
securely established; He was much more decidedly subordinated,
and the functions of inspiration and sanctification proper to
Him were ascribed to Christ, or He was simply identified with
the Son of God. The result, however, of such _subordinationist
hypostasianism_ was that, on the one hand, many church teachers
laid undue stress on the fundamental anti-pagan doctrine of the
unity of God, just as on the other hand, many had indulged in
exaggerated statements about the divinity of Christ. It seemed
therefore desirable to set aside altogether the question of the
personal distinction of the Son and Spirit from the Father. This
happened either in the way clearly favoured by the Ebionites who
regarded Christ as a mere man, who, like the prophets, though
in a much higher measure, had been endued with divine wisdom and
power (_dynamic_ =Monarchianism=), or in a way more accordant
with the Christian mode of thought, admitting that the fulness
of the Godhead dwelt in Christ, and either identifying the
Logos with the Father (_Patripassianism_), or seeing in Him
only a mode of the activity of the Father (_modal Monarchianism_).
Monarchianism in all these forms was pronounced heretical by all
the most illustrious fathers of the 3rd cent., and hypostasianism
was declared orthodox. But even under hypostasianism an
element of error crept in at a later period in the form of
subordinationism, and modal Monarchianism approached nearer
to the church doctrine by adopting the doctrine of sameness
of essence (ὁμοουσία) in Son and Father. The orthodox combination
of the two opposites was reached in the 3rd cent, in _homoousian
hypostasianism_, but only in the 4th cent. attained universal
acceptance (§ 50).
§ 33.2. =The Alogians.=--Soon after A.D. 170 in Asia Minor we
meet with the Alogians as the first decided opponents from within
the church of Logos doctrine laid down in the Gospel by John
and the writings of the Apologists. They started in diametrical
opposition to the chiliasm of the Montanists and their claims
to prophetic gifts, and were thus led not only to repudiate the
Apocalypse but also the Gospel of John; the former on account of
its chiliast-prophetic contents which embraced so much that was
unintelligible, yea absurd and untrue; the latter, first of all
on account of the use the Montanists made of its doctrine of the
Paraclete in support of their prophetic claims (§ 40, 1), but
also on account of its seeming contradictions of and departures
from the narratives of the Synoptists, and finally, on account
of its Logos doctrine in which the immediate transition from the
incarnation of the Logos to the active life of Christ probably
seemed to them too closely resembling docetic Gnosticism. They
therefore attributed to the Gnosticizing Judaist, Cerinthus, the
authorship both of the Fourth Gospel and of the Apocalypse. Of
their own Christological theories we have no exact information.
Irenæus and Hippolytus deal mildly with them and recognise
them as members of the Catholic church. It is Epiphanius who
first gives them the equivocal designation of Alogians (which
may either be “deniers of the Logos” or “the irrational”),
denouncing them as heretical rejecters of the Logos doctrine
and the Logos-Gospel. This is the first instance which we have of
historical criticism being exercised in the Church with reference
to the biblical books.
§ 33.3. =The Theodotians and Artemonites.=--Epiphanius describes
the sect of the Theodotians at Rome as an ἀπόσπασμα τῆς ἀλόγου
αἱρέσεως. The main source of information about them is the Little
Labyrinth (§ 31, 3), and next to it Hippolytus in his Syntagma,
quoted by the Pseudo-Tertullian and Epiphanius, and in his
Elenchus. The founder of this sect, =Theodotus= ὁ σκυτεύς, _the
Tanner_, a man well trained in Greek culture, came A.D. 190 to
Byzantium where, during the persecution, he denied Christ, and
on this account changed his residence to Rome and devoted himself
here to the spread of his dynamic Monarchianism. He maintained
ψιλὸν ἄνθρωπον εἶναι τὸν Χριστόν,--_Spiritu quidem sancto
natum ex virgine, sed hominem nudum nulla alia præ cæteris nisi
sola justitæ auctoritate_. He sought to justify his views by
a one-sided interpretation of scripture passages referring to
the human nature of Christ.[91] But since he acknowledged the
supernatural birth of Christ as well as the genuineness of the
Gospel of John, and in other respects agreed with his opponents,
he could still represent himself as standing on the basis of
the Old Catholic _Regula fidei_ (§ 35, 2). Nevertheless the
Roman bishop Victor (A.D. 189-199) excommunicated him and his
followers. The most distinguished among his disciples was a
_second_ =Theodotus= ὁ τραπεζίτης, the _Money-changer_. By an
exegesis of Heb. v. 6, 10; vi. 20; vii. 3, 17, he sought to prove
that Melchisedec was δύναμις τίς μεγίστη and more glorious than
Christ; the former was the original type, the latter only the
copy; the former was intercessor before God for the angels,
the latter only for men; the origin of the former is secret,
because truly heavenly, that of Christ open, because born of
Mary. The later heresiologists therefore designate his followers
Melchisedecians. Laying hold upon the theory φύσει τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ
θεοῦ ἐν ἰδέᾳ ἀνθρώπου τότε τῷ Ἀβραὰμ πεφηνέναι which, according
to Epiphanius, was held even by Catholics, and also, like the
Shepherd of Hermas, identifying the Son of God with the Holy
Spirit that descended in baptism on the man Jesus, Theodotus
seems from those two points of view to have proceeded to
teach, that the historical Christ, because operated upon only
dynamically by the Holy Spirit or the Son of God, was inferior to
the purely heavenly Melchisedec who was himself the very eternal
Son of God. The reproaches directed against the Theodotians by
their opponents were mainly these: that instead of the usual
allegorical exegesis they used only a literal and grammatical,
that they practised an arbitrary system of Textual criticism, and
that instead of holding to the philosophy of the divine Plato,
they took their wisdom from the empiricists (Aristotle, Euclid,
Galen, etc.), and sought by such objectionable means to support
their heretical views. We have thus probably to see in them a
group of Roman theologians, who, towards the close of the 2nd
cent. and the beginning of the 3rd cent. maintained exegetical
and critical principles essentially the same as those which the
Antiochean school with greater clearness and definiteness set
forth toward the end of the 3rd cent. (§§ 31, 1; 47, 1). The
attempt, however, which they made to found an independent sect
in Rome about A.D. 210 was an utter failure. According to the
report of the Little Labyrinth, they succeeded in getting for
their bishop a weak-minded confessor called Natalius. Haunted
by visions of judgment and beaten sore one night by good angels
till in a miserable plight, he hasted on the following morning
to cast himself at the feet of bishop Zephyrinus (A.D. 199-217),
successor of Victor, and showing his stripes he begged for
mercy and restoration.--The last of the representatives of the
Theodotians in Rome, and that too under this same Zephyrinus, was
a certain =Artemon= or Artemas. He and his followers maintained
that their own doctrine (which cannot be very exactly determined
but was also of the dynamic order) had been recognised in Rome
as orthodox from the time of the Apostles down to that of bishop
Victor, and was first condemned by his successor Zephyrinus. This
assertion cannot be said to be altogether without foundation in
view, on the one hand, of the agreement above referred to between
Theodotus the younger and the Roman Hermas, and on the other hand,
of the fact that the Roman bishops Zephyrinus and Callistus had
passed over to Noëtian _Modalism_. Artemon must have lived at
least until A.D. 260, when Paul of Samosata (§ 33, 8), who also
maintained fellowship with the excommunicated Artemonites in
Rome, conducted a correspondence with him.
§ 33.4. =Praxeas and Tertullian.=--Patripassianism, which
represented the Father Himself as becoming man and suffering in
Christ, may be characterized as the precursor and first crude
form of Modalism. It also had its origin during the 2nd cent.,
in that same intellectually active church of Asia Minor, and
from thence the movement spread to Rome, where after a long and
bitter struggle it secured a footing in the 3rd cent.--=Praxeas=,
a confessor of Asia Minor and opponent of Montanism, was its first
representative at Rome, where unopposed he expounded his views
about A.D. 190. As he supported the Roman bishop Victor in his
condemnation of Montanism (§ 40, 2), so he seems to have won
the bishop’s approval for his Christological theory.[92] Perhaps
also the excommunication which was at this time uttered against
the dynamic Monarchian, Theodotus the Elder, was the result of
the bishop’s change of views. From Rome Praxeas betook himself,
mainly in the interest of his Anti-Montanist crusade, to Carthage,
and there also won adherents to his Christology. Meanwhile,
however, Tertullian returned to Carthage, and as a convert
to Montanism, hurled against Praxeas and his followers a
controversial treatise, in which he laid bare with acute
dialectic the weaknesses and inconsistencies, as well as the
dangerous consequences of their theory. Just like the Alogians,
Praxeas and his adherents refused to admit the doctrine of the
Logos into their Christology, and feared that it in connection
with the doctrine of the hypostasis would give an advantage to
Gnosticism. In the interests of monotheism, as well as of the
worship of Christ, they maintained the perfect identity of Father
and Son. God became the Son by the assumption of the flesh;
under the concept of the Father therefore falls the divinity,
the spirit; under that of the Son, the humanity, the flesh of
the Redeemer.--=Tertullian= himself in his Hypostasianism had not
wholly got beyond the idea of subordinationism, but he made an
important advance in this direction by assuming three stages in
the hypostasizing of the Son (_Filiatio_). The first stage is
the eternal immanent state of being of the Son in the Father; the
second is the forthcoming of the Son alongside of the Father for
the purpose of creating the world; and the third is the going
forth of the Son into the world by means of the incarnation.
§ 33.5. =The Noëtians and Hippolytus.=--The Patripassian
standpoint was maintained also by =Noëtus= of Smyrna, who summed
up his Christological views in the sentence: the Son of God is
His own, and not another’s Son. One of his pupils, _Epigonus_,
in the time of bishop Zephyrinus brought this doctrine to Rome,
where a Noëtian sect was formed with Cleomenes at its head.
Sabellius too, who in A.D. 215 came to Rome from Ptolemais in
Egypt, attached himself to it, but afterwards constructed an
independent system of doctrine in the form of a more speculative
Modalism. The most vigorous opponent of the Noëtians was the
celebrated presbyter =Hippolytus= (§ 31, 3). He strongly insisted
upon the hypostasis of the Son and of the Spirit, and claimed
for them divine worship. But inasmuch as he maintained in all
its strictness the unity of God, he too was unable to avoid
subordinating the Son under the Father. The Son, he taught, owed
His hypostasizing to the will of the Father; the Father commands
and the Son obeys; the perfect Logos was the Son from eternity,
but οὐ λόγος ὡς φωνὴ, ἀλλ’ ἐνδιάθετος τοῦ πάντος λογισμός,
therefore in a hypostasis, which He became only at the creation
of the world, so that He became perfect Son first in the
incarnation. Bishop Zephyrinus, on the other hand, was not
inclined to bear hard upon the Noëtians, but sought in the
interests of peace some meeting-point for the two parties. The
conflagration fairly broke out under his successor, Callistus
(A.D. 217-222; comp. § 41, 1). Believing that truth and error
were to be found on both sides he defined his own position thus:
God is a spirit without parts, filling all things, giving life
to all, who as such is called Logos, and only in respect of name
is distinguished as Father and Son. The Pneuma become incarnate
in the Virgin is personally and essentially identical with the
Father. That which has thereby become manifest, the man Jesus,
is the Son. It therefore cannot be said that the Father as such
has suffered, but rather that the Father has suffered in and
with the Son. Decidedly Monarchian as this formula of compromise
undoubtedly is, it seems to have afforded the bridge upon which
the official Roman theology crossed over to the homoousian
Hypostasianism which forty years later won the day (§ 33, 7).
Among the opposing parties it found no acceptance. Hippolytus
denounced the bishop as a Noëtian, while the Noëtians nicknamed
him a Dytheist. The result was that the two party leaders,
Sabellius and Hippolytus, were excommunicated. The latter formed
the company of his adherents in Rome into a schismatic sect.
§ 33.6. =Beryllus and Origen.=--=Beryllus of Bostra=[93] in
Arabia also belonged to the Patripassians; but he marks the
transition to a nobler Modalism, for though he refuses to the
deity of Christ the ἰδία θεότης, he designates it πατρικὴ θεότης,
and sees in it a new form of the manifestation (πρόσωπον) of
God. In regard to him an Arabian Synod was held in A.D. 244,
to which =Origen= was invited. Convinced by him of his error,
Beryll [Beryllus] retracted.--All previous representatives of
the hypostasis of the Logos had understood his hypostatizing
as happening in time for the purpose of the creation and the
incarnation. =Origen= removed this restriction when he enunciated
the proposition: The Son is from eternity begotten of the Father
and so from eternity an hypostasis. The generation of the Son
took not place simply as the condition of creation, but as of
itself necessary, for where there is light there must be the
shedding forth of rays. But because the life of God is bound
to no time, the objectivizing of His life in the Son must also
lie outside of all time. It is not therefore an act of God
accomplished once and for ever, but an eternally continued
exercise of living power (ἀεὶ γεννᾲ τὸν υἱόν). Origen did not
indeed get beyond subordinationism, but he restricted it within
the narrowest possible limits. He condemns the expression that
the Son is ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ πατρός, but only in opposition
to the Gnostic theories of emanation. He maintained a ἑτερότης
τῆς οὐσίας, but only in opposition to the ὁμοούσιος in the
Patripassian sense. He teaches a generation of the Son ἐκ τοῦ
θελήματος θεοῦ, but only because he sees in Him the objectified
divine will. He calls Him a κτίσμα, but only in so far as He is
θεοποιούμενος, not αὐτόθεος, though indeed the Son is αὐτοσοφία,
αὐτοαλήθεια, δεύτερος θεός. Thus what he teaches is not a
subordination of essence or nature, but only of existence or
origin.
§ 33.7. =Sabellius and Dionysius of Alex. and Dionysius of
Rome.=--We have already seen that =Sabellius= had founded in
Rome a speculative Manichæan system, which found much favour
among the bishops of his native region. His assigning an essential
and necessary place in his system to the Holy Spirit indicates
an important advance. God is a unity (μονάς) admitting of no
distinctions, resting in Himself as θεὸς σιωπών coming forth
out of Himself (for the purpose of creation) as θεὸς λαλῶν. In
the course of the world’s development the Monas for the sake of
redemption assumes necessarily three different forms of being
(ὀνόματα πρόσωπα), each of which embraces in it the complete
fulness of the Monas. They are not ὑποστάσεις, but πρόσωπα, masks,
we might say roles, which the God who manifests Himself in the
world assumes in succession. After the _prosopon_ of the Father
accomplished its work in the giving of the law, it fell back into
its original condition; advancing again through the incarnation
as Son, it returns by the ascension into the absolute being of
the Monas; it reveals itself finally as the Holy Spirit to return
again, after securing the perfect sanctification of the church,
into the Monas that knows no distinctions, there to abide through
all eternity. This process is characterized by Sabellius as
an expansion (ἔκτασις) and contraction (συστολή). By way of
illustration he uses the figure of the sun ὄντος μὲν ἐν μίᾳ
ὑποστάσει, τρεῖς δὲ ἔχοντος τὰς ἐνεργείας, namely τὸ τῆς
περιφερείας σχῆμα, τὸ φωτιστικὸν καὶ τὸ θάλπον.--At a Synod of
Alexandria in A.D. 261 =Dionysius the Great= (§ 31, 6) entered
the lists against the Sabellianism of the Egyptian bishops, and
with well-intentioned zeal employed subordinationist expressions
in a highly offensive way (ξένον κατ’ οὐσίαν αὐτὸν εἶναι τοῦ
Πατρὸς ὥσπερ ἐστὶν ὁ γεωργὸς πρὸς τὴν ἄμπελον καὶ ὁ ναυπηγὸς πρὸς
τὸ σκάφος,--ὡς ποίημα ὢν οὐκ ἦν πρὶν γέννηται). When bishop
=Dionysius of Rome= (A.D. 259-268) was informed of these
proceedings he condemned his Alexandrian colleague’s modes of
expression at a Synod at Rome in A.D. 262, and issued a tract
(Ἀνατροπή), in which against Sabellius he affirmed hypostasianism
and against the Alexandrians, notwithstanding the suspicion of
Manichæanism that hung about it, the doctrine of the ὁμοουσία
and the eternal generation of the Son. With a beautiful modesty
Dionysius of Alexandria retracted his unhappily chosen phrases
and declared himself in thorough agreement with the Roman
exposition of doctrine.
§ 33.8. =Paul of Samosata.=--In Rome and throughout the West
general dynamical Monarchianism expired with Artemon and his
party. In the East, however, it was revived by Paul of Samosata,
in A.D. 260 bishop of the Græco-Syrian capital Antioch, which,
however, was then under the rule of Queen Zenobia of Palmyra.
Attaching himself to the other dynamists, especially the
Theodotians and Artemonites, he went in many respects beyond them.
Maintaining as they did the unipersonality of God (ἓν πρόσωπον),
he yet admitted a distinction of Father, Son (λόγος) and Spirit
(σοφία) the two last, however, being essentially identical
attributes of the first, and also the distinction of the
λόγος προφορικός from the λόγος ἐνδιάθετος, the one being the
ἐπιστήμη ἀνυπόστατος operative in the prophets, the other the
ἐπ. ἀνυπ. latent in God. Further, while placing like the dynamists
the personality of Christ in His humanity and acknowledging
His supernatural birth from the Holy Spirit by the Virgin, he
conceived of Him, like the modern Socinians, as working the
way upward, ἐκ προκοπῆς τεθεοποιῆσθαι, _i.e._ by reason of His
unique excellence to divine rank and the obtaining of the divine
name.--Between A.D. 264-269 the Syrian bishops held three large
Synods in regard to him at Antioch, to which also many other
famous bishops of the East were invited. The first two were
without result, for he knew how to conceal the heterodox character
of his views. It was only at the third that the presbyter Malchion,
a practised dialectician and formerly a rhetorician, succeeded
in unmasking him at a public disputation. The Synod now declared
him excommunicated and deprived him of his office, and also
transmitted to all the catholic churches, first of all to Rome
and Alexandria, the records of the disputation together with
a complete report in which he was described as a proud, vain,
pompous, covetous and even immoral man (§ 39, 3). Nevertheless
by the favour of the Queen he kept possession of his bishopric,
and holding a high office at the court he exercised not only
spiritual functions but also great civil authority. But when
Zenobia was overcome by Aurelian in A.D. 272, the rest of the
bishops accused him before the pagan emperor, who decided that
the ecclesiastical buildings should be made over to that one
of the contending bishops whom the Christian bishops of Rome
and Italy should recognise. In these conflicts undoubtedly a
national and political antagonism lay behind the dogmatic and
ecclesiastical dispute (§ 31, 9 e).--At the Synod of A.D. 269
the expression ὁμοούσιος, which since it had been first used by
Sabellius was always regarded with suspicion in church circles,
was dragged into the debate and expressly condemned; and so it is
doubtful whether Paul himself had employed it, or whether, on the
contrary, he wished to charge his opponents with heresy as being
wont to use this term.
§ 33.9. =Chiliasm= or the doctrine of an earthly reign of the
Messiah in the last times full of splendour and glory for His
people arose out of the literal and realistic conception of the
Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament. The adoption of the
period of a thousand years for its duration rested on the idea
that as the world had been created in six days, so, according
to Ps. xc. 4 and 2 Pet. iii. 8, its history would be completed
in six thousand years. Under the oppression of the Roman rule
this notion came to be regarded as a fundamental doctrine of
Jewish faith and hope (Matt. xx. 21; Acts i. 6). The Apocalypse
of St. John was chiefly influential in elaborating the Christian
chiliastic theory. In chap. xx. under the guise of vision the
doctrine is set forth that after the finally victorious conflict
of the present age there will be a first and partial resurrection,
the risen saints shall reign with Christ a thousand years, and
then after another revolt of Satan that is soon suppressed the
present age will be closed in the second universal resurrection,
the judgment of the world and the creation of new heavens and a
new earth. What fantastic notions of the glory of the thousand
years’ reign might be developed from such passages, is seen in
the traditional saying of the Lord given by Papias (_Iren._,
v. 33) about the wonderful fruitfulness of the earth during the
millennium: one vine-stock will bear 10,000 stems (palmites),
each stem will have 10,000 branches (bracchia), each branch
10,000 twigs (flagella), each twig 10,000 clusters (botrus), each
cluster 10,000 grapes, and every grape will yield 25 measures
of wine; “_et quum eorum apprehenderit aliquis Sanctorum,
alius clamabit: Botrus ego melior sum, me sume, per me Dominum
benedic_!” After the time of Papias Chiliasm became the favourite
doctrine of the Christians who under the severe pressure of
pagan persecution longed for the early return of the Lord. The
Apologists of the 2nd century do indeed pass it over in silence,
but only perhaps because it seemed to them impolitic to give
it a marked prominence in works directly addressed to the pagan
rulers; at least Justin Martyr does not scruple in the _Dialog.
c. Tryph._ addressed to another class of readers to characterize
it as a genuinely orthodox doctrine. Asia Minor was the chief
seat of these views, where, as we have seen (§ 40), Montanism
also in its most fanatical and exaggerated form was elevated
into a fundamental article of the Christian faith. Irenæus
enthusiastically adopted chiliastic views and gave a full though
fairly moderate exposition of them in his great work against the
Gnostics (v. 24-36). Tertullian also championed these notions,
at the same time rejecting many outgrowths of a grossly carnal
nature (_Adv. Marc._, iii. 24, and in a work no longer extant,
_De spe fidelium_). The most vigorous opposition is shown to
Chiliasm by the Alogians, Praxeas the Patripassian and Caius
of Rome, who were also the determined opponents of Montanism.
The last named indeed went so far in his controversial writing
against Proclus the Montanist, as to ascribe the authorship of
the Johannine Apocalypse to the heretic Cerinthus (§ 27, 1).
The Alexandrian spiritualists too, especially Origen (_De Prin._,
ii. 11), were decided opponents of every form of Chiliasm and
explained away the Scripture passages on which it was built by
means of allegorical interpretation. Nevertheless even in Egypt
it had numerous adherents. At their head about the middle of
the 3rd cent. stood the learned bishop Nepos of Arsinoe, whose
Ἔλεγχος τῶν ἀλληγοριστῶν directed against the Alexandrians is no
longer extant. After his death his party under the leadership of
the presbyter Coracion separated from the church of Alexandria,
the bishop Dionysius the Great going down himself expressly
to Arsinoe in order to heal the breach. In a conference of the
leaders of the parties continued for three days he secured the
sincere respect of the dissentients by his counsels, and even
Coracion was induced to make a formal recantation. Dionysius
then wrote for the confirmation of the converts his book: Περὶ
ἐπαγγελιῶν. But not long after, opposition to the spiritualism of
the school of Origen made Methodius, the bishop of Olympus, play
the part of a new herald of Chiliasm, and in the West, Commodian,
Victor of Poitiers, and especially Lactantius, became its zealous
advocates in a particularly materialistic form. Its day, however,
was already past. What tended most to work its complete overthrow
was the course of events under Constantine. Amid the rejoicings
of the national church as a present reality, interest in the
expectation of a future thousand years’ reign was lost. Among
post-Constantine church teachers only Apollinaris the Younger
favoured Chiliasm (§ 47, 5). Jerome indeed, in deference to the
cloud of witnesses from the ancient church, does not venture to
pronounce it heretical, but treats it with scornful ridicule;
and Augustine (_De civ. Dei_), though at an earlier period not
unfavourable to it, sets it aside by showing that the scriptural
representations of the thousand years’ reign are to be understood
as referring to the church obtaining dominion through the
overthrow of the pagan Roman empire, the thousand years being a
period of indefinite duration, and the first resurrection being
interpreted of the reception of saints and martyrs into heaven
as sharers in the glory of Christ.--See Candlish, “The Kingdom of
God.” Edin., 1884. Especially pp. 409-415, “Augustine on the City
of God.”