ORGANIZATION AND ECONOMICS
§ 1. The Economic Side
It is important to realize in some detail the operation of the economic
factor in particular, and of organization in general, before we try
to grasp synthetically the total process of documentary and doctrinal
construction. The former is somewhat sedulously ignored in ordinary
historiography, by reason of a general unwillingness even among
rationalists to seem to connect mercenary motives with religious
beginnings; and of the general assumption among religionists that
"true" or "early" religion operates in spite of, in defiance or
in independence of and not by aid of, economic motives. No one
will dispute that the history of the Roman Catholic Church is one
of economic as well as doctrinal action and reaction, or that
Protestantism from the first was in large measure an economic
processus. But it is commonly assumed, at least implicitly, that
"primitive" religion, religion "in the making," is not at all an
affair of economic motive or reaction.
Those who have at all closely studied primitive religious life know
that this is not so. [340] The savage medicine-man is up to his lights
as keenly concerned about his economic interest as were the priests
of ancient Babylon and Egypt--to take instances that can hardly give
modern offence. [341] And to say this is not to say that the "religion"
involved is insincere, in the case of the savage or the pagan any more
than in that of the modern ecclesiastic or missionary. It is merely
to say that religion has always its economic side, and that faith
may go with economic self-seeking as easily as with self-sacrifice. I
at least am not prepared to say that when the Franciscans in general
passed from the state of voluntary poverty to that of corporate wealth
they ceased to be sincere believers; or that a bishop is necessarily
less pious than a Local Preacher.
I have seen, in Egypt, the life of a Moslem "saint" in the making. He
fasted much, certainly never eating more than one meal a day, and he
was visibly emaciated and feeble as a result of his abstinences. Over
his devout neighbours he had an immense influence. To his religious
addresses they listened with rapt reverence; and when once in my
presence he gave to a young man a religious charm to cure his sick
sister, in the shape of a cigarette paper inscribed with a text
from the Koran and rolled up to be swallowed, the youth's face was
transfigured with joyous faith, his eyes shining as if he had seen
a glorious vision. I have not seen more radiant faith, in or out of
"Israel." And the saint, all the same, took unconcealed satisfaction
in showing privately the heavy purse of gold he had recently collected
from his faithful. To call him insincere would be puerile. I believe
him to have been as sincere as Luther or Loyola. He simply happened,
like so many Easterns and Westerns, to combine the love of pelf with
the love of God.
If I am told there were no such men among the early Jesuists or
Christian propagandists, I answer that if there had not been the
cult would not have gone very far. Of course the records minimize
the economic side. In the gospels we are told that Judas carried
"the bag," but never anything of what he got to put in it. But in the
Acts, the economic factor obtrudes itself even in myth. A picture
is there drawn (ii, 44), for the edification of later Christians,
of the first community as having "all things common"--a statement
which we have no reason to believe true of any ancient Christian
community whatever--unless in the "pre-apostolic" period. [342]
The picture never recurs, in the apostolic history or elsewhere. And
the purpose of edification is unconsciously turned to the account of
revelation. Of the faithful it is represented that they "sold their
possessions and goods and parted them to all, according as any man had
need." The assertion is reiterated (iv, 34) to the extent of alleging
that all who had houses or lands sold all, bringing the proceeds to
the apostles for distribution "according as any one had need." Among
these having need would certainly be the "apostles."
Soon one of the faithful, Joseph surnamed Barnabas, "a Levite, a man
of Cyprus by race," is held up to honour for that "having a field,"
he "sold it, and brought the money, and laid it at the apostles'
feet." Then comes the story of Ananias and Sapphira, who, or at least
the former, have ever since supplied Christendom with its standing
name for the fraudulent liar. The sin of Ananias consisted in his
not having given the apostles the whole price of a possession he had
voluntarily sold for behoof of the community. There could be no more
striking instance of the power of ecclesiastical ethic to paralyse
the general moral sense. Ananias in the legend was giving liberally,
but not liberally enough to satisfy the apostle, who accordingly
denounces him as sinning against the Holy Ghost, [343] and miraculously
slays him for his crime. One might have supposed that no Christian
reader, remembering that the ultra-righteous apostle, in the previous
sacrosanct record, had just before been represented as basely denying
his Lord, could fail to be struck with shame and horror by the savage
recital. But of such shame and horror I cannot recall one Christian
avowal. And we are to remember that the devout recipients of that
recital are assumed to have been the ideal Christian converts.
Soon the twelve are made to explain (vi, 2-4) to the growing "multitude
of the disciples" that "it is not fit that we should forsake the
word of God, and serve tables. Look ye out ... seven men of good
report, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may appoint over
this business. But we will continue stedfastly in prayer, and in the
ministry of the word." From the date of that writing the apostle and
his successors could claim to be worthy of their hire, though they
had long to squabble for it. In the early Jesuist additions to the
Teaching we see how the issue was raised. At first (xi) there is a
succession of wandering apostles or "prophets." Every apostle is to
be received "as the Lord; but he shall not remain [except for?] one
day; if however there be need, then the next [day]; but if he remain
three days, he is a false prophet. But when the apostle departeth,
let him take nothing except bread enough till he lodge [again]; but
if he ask money, he is a false prophet." That is the first stage,
probably quite Judaic.
The next section (xii) still adheres broadly to the same view. Every
entrant must work for his living. "If he will not act according to
this, he is a Christmonger (christemporos)." Evidently there were
already Christmongers. But in chapter xiii the primitive stage has
been passed, and there is systematic enactment of economic provision
for the installed prophet or teacher as such:--
But every true prophet who will settle among you is worthy of his
food. Likewise a true teacher, he also is worthy, like the workman,
of his food. Every first-fruit, then, of the produce of wine-press
and threshing-floor, of oxen and of sheep, thou shalt take and give
to the prophets; for they are your high-priests. But if ye have no
prophet, give [it] to the poor. If thou makest a baking of bread,
take the first [of it] and give according to the commandment. In
like manner when thou openest a jar of wine or oil, take the first
[of it] and give to the prophets; and of money and clothing and
every possession, take the first, as may seem right to thee,
and give according to the commandment.
This economic development, too, may have been Jewish, as it was
heathen. [344] It is certainly also Christian. The "prophets" are
represented in the Acts (xi, 27) as at work already in the days
of Claudius; and they were an established class at the time of the
writing of First Corinthians (xii, 28), standing next to "apostles"
and above "teachers." That passage is obviously post-Pauline, if
we are to think of Paul as spending only a few years in his eastern
propaganda. But the prophets are ostensibly numerous in the earliest
days of the church, [345] and seem to have subsisted alongside
of "apostles" at the outset. All along they must have found some
subsistence: in time they are "established." The eleventh, twelfth,
and thirteenth sections of the Teaching, which are our best evidence
of the progression, show a gradual triumph of the economic factor,
registering itself in the additions. The fifteenth section divides
in two parts, an economic and an ethical, the economic coming first:--
Now elect for yourselves bishops and deacons worthy of the Lord,
men meek and not avaricious, and upright and proved; for they too
render you the service of the prophets and the teachers. Therefore
neglect them not; for they are the ones who are honoured of you,
together with the prophets and teachers.
It was for a community thus supporting various classes of teachers
and preachers, first poorly and primitively, later in an organized
fashion, that the gospels were built up and the epistles composed.
§ 2. Organization
Organization, which in our days has become "a word to conjure with,"
is no new factor in human life. It is the secret of survival for
communities and institutions; and the survival of Christism in
its competition with other cults must be traced mainly to the
early process of adaptation. That, however, takes place in terms
of three concurrent factors: (1) the appeal made by the cult which
is the ground of association; (2) the practice of the community as
regards the relations of members; (3) the administration, as regards
propaganda, expansion and co-ordination of groups. And it is through
primary adaptations in respect of the first and second, with a constant
stimulus from the third, that the Christian Church can be seen to have
succeeded in the struggle for existence. That is to say, it is in the
element in which conscious organization is most prominent as distinct
from usage or tradition that the determining influence chiefly lies.
The writer who in England was the first to take a comparatively
scientific view of church organization from the ecclesiastical side,
the late Dr. Edwin Hatch, puts in the forefront of his survey "the
preliminary assumption that, as matter of historical research, the
facts of ecclesiastical history do not differ in kind from the facts
of civil history." [346] For those who see in the religion itself a
processus of natural social history, this assumption is a matter of
course; but the ecclesiastical recognition of the fact is an important
step; and the churchman's analysis of the process is doubly serviceable
in that he keeps the study avowedly separate from that of the evolution
of doctrine. What he could not have supplied on scientific lines
without falling into heresy, the rationalist can supply for himself.
As our historian recognizes, the Christian movement in the Eastern
Empire had from the outset a strong basis in the democratic spirit
which it derived alike from Jewish and from Hellenistic example. In
the day of universal autocracy, social life lay more and more in
the principles of voluntary association; and the first Christian
churches were but instances of an impulse seen in operation on all
sides. In the Jewish environment, the synagogue; in the Hellenistic the
ecclesia or private association, were everywhere in evidence. Greek
religious associations--thiasoi, eranoi, orgeones--were but types
of the prevailing impetus to find in voluntary organized groups
a substitute for the democratic life of the past. [347] Whereas
the older associations for the promotion of special worships were
limited to male free citizens, the new admitted foreigners, slaves,
and women. Besides religious associations there were a multitude of
others which had the double aspect of clubs and friendly societies;
trade guilds existed "among almost every kind of workmen in almost
every town in the empire:" [348] and burial clubs, dining clubs,
financial societies, and friendly societies met other social needs.
Almost every society, however, had its tutelary divinity, "in the
same way as at the present day similar associations on the continent
of Europe"--as in England before the Reformation--"invoke the name
of a patron saint; and their meetings were sometimes called by a
name which was afterwards consecrated to Christian uses--that of a
'sacred synod.'" [349] In many of them "religion was, beyond this, the
basis and bond of union.... Then, as now, many men had two religions,
that which they professed and that which they believed; for the
former there were temples and State officials and public sacrifices;
for the latter there were associations; and in these associations,
as is shown from extant inscriptions, divinities whom the State
ignored had their priests, their chapels, and their ritual." [350]
The Christists, then, when they began to form groups, were doing what
a swarm of other movements did. Their ecclesiæ were called by a pagan
name, as were the Jewish synagogues. Two things it behoved them to do
if they were collectively to gain ground and outlive or out-top the
rest: they must multiply in membership, and they must co-ordinate their
groups; and both things they did on lines of common action. Membership
was from the first promoted by the simplest of all methods, systematic
almsgiving to poor adherents; a practice long before initiated by the
Jewish synagogues and to this day fixed among them. Given the basis
of free association, the inculcated duty of almsgiving, the eastern
belief in its saving virtue, [351] and the special Christian belief
in the speedy end of the world, the problem of membership was early
solved. The poor, helped one day, would themselves help the next,
as is their human way in all ages; and in an age of general poverty,
the result of an autocratic fiscal system in the Empire as afterwards
in the Turkish Empire which in the East took its place, such mutual
sympathy constituted a broad social basis of corporate existence.
For our ecclesiastical historian, the poverty is the main determinant
on the side of early organization. With a note of profound pessimism,
which alternates strangely with passages of professional eulogy of the
Church, he notes that pauperism and philanthropy were going hand in
hand already throughout the Empire before the advent of Christianity,
rich men and municipalities proclaiming an "almost Christian sentiment"
on the subject. "The instinct of benevolence was fairly roused. And
yet to the mass of men life was hardly worth living. It tended to
become a despair." [352] And he claims that the Christian practice
of almsgiving--which he knows to have been warmly inculcated among
the Jews, as it has always been in Eastern countries--was one of the
conservative forces that "arrested decay. They have prevented the
disintegration, and possibly the disintegration by a vast and ruinous
convulsion, of the social fabric. Of those forces the primitive bishops
and deacons were the channels and the ministers.... They bridged over
the widening interval between class and class. They lessened to the
individual soul the weight of that awful sadness of which, then as now,
to the mass of men, life was the synonym and the sum." [353]
The generalization as to the widening of the interval between classes
is hardly borne out by the evidence; and the pessimism of the last
sentence partly defeats the argument, by putting the life of the early
Christian period on the same general level with that of to-day and of
all the time between. The true summary would be that in that age the
springs of social life were lamed by the suppression of all national
existence; that the rule of Rome tended to general impoverishment in
respect of a vicious system of taxation; and that the subject peoples,
deprived of the old impulses to collective energy, at once turned
more and more to private association and became ready to believe in a
coming "end of the world" which in some way was to mean a new life. And
as the Church's doctrine was pre-eminently one of salvation in that
new life, it behoved it in every way to resort to propaganda while
maintaining the eleemosynary system which gave it a broad basis of
membership. Thus the organization which controlled the simple financial
system must also have regard to the spread of doctrine. And for the
means of spreading doctrine, again, as we have already noted, the cue
was obviously given by Judaism, which stood out from all religious
systems in the Roman world as a religion of Sacred Books. Sacred
Books of its own the Jesuist movement must have if it was to hold
its own against the prestige of the Jewish Bible. The production of
Sacred Books, then, was a task which devolved upon the organizers of
the Christian ecclesiæ throughout the Eastern Empire, equally with
the task of co-ordination, of which, in fact, it was a main part. A
common religious literature was the basis of Jewish cohesion. Only
by means of a common religious literature could Christism cohere.
No literature, indeed, could avert schism. Schism and strife are among
the first notes sounded in the epistles; and a religion which aimed
at dogmatic teaching, as against the purely liturgical practice of
the old pagan cults, was bound to multiply them. Judaism itself was
divided into antagonistic groups of Pharisees, Sadducees, and Scribes,
to say nothing of the Zealots, the Essenes, and other diverging
groups. But sects do not destroy a religion any more than parties
destroy a State; and the way of success for Christism was a way which,
while it involved a multiplication of schism so long as the voluntary
basis remained, made a growing aggregate which was at least a unity
as having a special creed, distinct from all competing with it.
Thus the Christian movement was doubly a copy and competitor of
Judaism, upon whose books it primarily founded. As the dispersed Jewish
synagogues were co-ordinated from Jerusalem by the High Priest, and
later from Tiberias by the Patriarch, by means of Twelve Apostles and
possibly by a subordinate grade of seventy-two collectors who brought
in the contributions of the faithful scattered among the Gentiles,
so the Jesuists, beginning with an organization centred in Jerusalem
and likewise aiming at the collection of funds for which almsgiving
in Jerusalem was the appealing pretext, were bound after the fall
of the Temple to aim at a centralization or centralizations of their
own. A literature became more and more necessary if the new faith was
to extend. That was the way at once to glorify the new Hero-God and
to multiply his devotees. And it would seem to have been from the
starting-point of the Jewish Teaching of the Twelve Apostles that
the new departure on one line was made.
To say who, or what class in the new organization, began the evolution,
seems impossible in the present state of our knowledge. The point at
which the Christist organization in course of time most noticeably
diverges from the Jewish model is in the creation and aggrandisement
of the episcopos, the bishop, a title and a function borrowed
from the pagan societies. These had officials called epimeletai
(superintendents) and episcopoi, whose function it was to receive
funds and dispense alms. [354] The early Christists adopted the latter
title, and constituted for each group a single official so named, who
as president of the assembly received the offerings of donors and was
personally responsible for their distribution. This is not the place
to trace the effects of the institution in the general development of
the churches. It must suffice to note that while in their presbyters
these preserved the democratic element which they had derived from
Judaism and which gave them their social foundation, their creation
of a supreme administrator, whose interest it was always to increase
the influence of his church by increasing his own, gave them a special
source of strength in comparison with the Judaic system. [355]
For the dispersed Jews, held by a racial tie, association was a matter
of course. Marked off by religion if not by aspect from Gentiles
everywhere, they were a community within the Gentile community. For
the first Jesuists, association was not thus a matter of course all
round. For the slaves, seeking friendship, and the poor, seeking help,
it may have been; but the more prosperous were for that very reason
less spontaneously attracted. The fundamental tie was the so-called
"Eucharist," which at first, in varying forms, was probably only an
annual rite: the agapae or love feasts were common to the multitude
of pagan associations. Accordingly many adherents tended to "forsake
the assembling of themselves together," [356] and it was plainly
the function of the bishop to act upon these. Not only the Epistle
to the Hebrews and that of Jude but those of Barnabas and Ignatius,
and The Shepherd of Hermas, anxiously or sternly urge the duty of
regular meeting. Addresses by bishops and "prophets" would be natural
means of promoting the end.
Who then produced the literature? Once more, there is no evidence. If
any of the Epistles might at first sight seem "genuine," they are
those ascribed to James and Jude, essentially Judaic or Judaistic
documents, especially the former, in which (ii, 1) the cumbrous formula
"the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ of glory" exhibits a Christian
interpolation. It is essentially in the spirit of the Teaching,
a counsel of right living, calling for works in opposition to the
new doctrine that faith is the one thing needful, and sounding the
Ebionitic note (v, 1): "Go to now, ye rich, weep and howl for your
miseries that are coming upon you." But save for the interpolation and
the naming of Jesus Christ in the sentence of preamble, there is no
specific Jesuist or Christist teaching whatever. If this document was
current among the Jesuists, it was borrowed from a Jewish author who
had at most one special item of belief in common with them, that of
"the coming [or presence] of the Lord" (v. 7, 8); and here there is
no certainty that "the Lord" meant for the writer the Christ.
Once more, then, we turn for our first clue to the Judaic Teaching,
which on its face exhibits the gradual accretion of Jesuist elements,
beginning with an Ebionitic mention of the "Servant" Jesus, and
proceeding step by step from a stage in which wandering "apostles"
or "prophets" must subsist from hand to mouth and from day to day,
to one in which settled prophets are supported by first fruits, and
yet a further one in which bishops and deacons appear to administer
while prophets and teachers continue to teach. And as the "prophets"
constitute a class which in the third century has disappeared from
the church, as if its work were done; and as they bear the name given
to the chief producers of the sacred literature of Judaism, it would
seem to be the natural surmise that they were the primary producers
of special literature for the early Christian churches.