account of which Paul by no means minces matters, or hesitates to hurl
defiant sarcasms against those who were "reputed to be pillars:" James,
"the brother of the Lord," Peter, the rock on whom Jesus is said to have
built his Church, and John, "the beloved disciple." And no deference toward
"the rock" withholds Paul from charging Peter to his face with
"dissimulation."
The subject of the hot dispute was simply this. Were Gentile converts bound
to obey the Law or not? Paul answered in the negative; and, acting upon his
opinion, had created at Antioch (and elsewhere) a specifically "Christian"
community, the sole qualifications for admission into which were the
confession of the belief that Jesus was the Messiah, and baptism upon that
confession. In the epistle in question, Paul puts this--his "gospel," as he
calls {434} it--in its most extreme form. Not only does he deny the
necessity of conformity with the Law, but he declares such conformity to
have a negative value. "Behold, I, Paul, say unto you, that if ye receive
circumcision, Christ will profit you nothing" (Galatians v. 2). He calls
the legal observances "beggarly rudiments," and anathematises every one who
preaches to the Galatians any other gospel than his own. That is to say, by
direct consequence, he anathematises the Nazarenes of Jerusalem, whose zeal
for the Law is testified by James in a passage of the Acts cited further
on. In the first Epistle to the Corinthians, dealing with the question of
eating meat offered to idols, it is clear that Paul himself thinks it a
matter of indifference; but he advises that it should not be done, for the
sake of the weaker brethren. On the other hand, the Nazarenes of Jerusalem
most strenuously opposed Paul's "gospel," insisting on every convert
becoming a regular Jewish proselyte, and consequently on his observance of
the whole Law; and this party was led by James and Peter and John
(Galatians ii. 9). Paul does not suggest that the question of principle was
settled by the discussion referred to in Galatians. All he says is that it
ended in the practical agreement that he and Barnabas should do as they had
been doing, in respect to the Gentiles; while James and Peter and John
should deal in their own fashion with Jewish converts. Afterwards, he
complains bitterly of Peter, because, when on a visit to Antioch, he at
first inclined to Paul's view, and ate with the Gentile converts; but when
"certain came from James," {435} "drew back, and separated himself, fearing
them that were of the circumcision. And the rest of the Jews dissembled
likewise with him; insomuch that even Barnabas was carried away with their
dissimulation" (Galatians ii. 12-13).
There is but one conclusion to be drawn from Paul's account of this famous
dispute, the settlement of which determined the fortunes of the nascent
religion. It is that the disciples at Jerusalem, headed by "James, the
Lord's brother," and by the leading apostles, Peter and John, were strict
Jews, who had objected to admit any converts into their body, unless these,
either by birth, or by becoming proselytes, were also strict Jews. In fact,
the sole difference between James and Peter and John, with the body of the
disciples whom they led, and the Jews by whom they were surrounded, and
with whom they for many years shared the religious observances of the
Temple, was that they believed that the Messiah, whom the leaders of the
nation yet looked for, had already come in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
The Acts of the Apostles is hardly a very trustworthy history; it is
certainly of later date than the Pauline Epistles, supposing them to be
genuine. And the writer's version of the conference of which Paul gives so
graphic a description, if that is correct, is unmistakably coloured with
all the art of a reconciler, anxious to cover up a scandal. But it is none
the less instructive on this account. The judgment of the "council"
delivered by James is that the Gentile converts shall merely "abstain from
things {436} sacrificed to idols, and from blood and from things strangled,
and from fornication." But notwithstanding the accommodation in which the
writer of the Acts would have us believe, the Jerusalem Church held to its
endeavour to retain the observance of the Law. Long after the conference,
some time after the writing of the Epistles to the Galatians and
Corinthians, and immediately after the despatch of that to the Romans, Paul
makes his last visit to Jerusalem, and presents himself to James and all
the elders. And this is what the Acts tells us of the interview:--
And they said unto him, Thou seest, brother, how many thousands [or
myriads] there are among the Jews of them which have believed; and they
are all zealous for the law; and they have been informed concerning
thee, that thou teachest all the Jews which are among the Gentiles to
forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children, neither
to walk after the customs. (Acts xxi. 20, 21.)
They therefore request that he should perform a certain public religious
act in the Temple, in order that
all shall know that there is no truth in the things whereof they have
been informed concerning thee; but that thou thyself walkest orderly,
keeping the law (_ibid._ 24).[119]
How far Paul could do what he is here requested to do, and which the writer
of the Acts goes on to say he did, with a clear conscience, if he wrote the
Epistles to the Galatians and Corinthians, I may leave any candid reader of
these epistles to decide. The {437} point to which I wish to direct
attention is the declaration that the Jerusalem Church, led by the brother
of Jesus and by his personal disciples and friends, twenty years and more
after his death, consisted of strict and zealous Jews.
Tertullus, the orator, caring very little about the internal dissensions of
the followers of Jesus, speaks of Paul as a "ringleader of the sect of the
Nazarenes" (Acts xxiv. 5), which must have affected James much in the same
way as it would have moved the Archbishop of Canterbury, in George Fox's
day, to hear the latter called a "ringleader of the sect of Anglicans." In
fact, "Nazarene" was, as is well known, the distinctive appellation applied
to Jesus; his immediate followers were known as Nazarenes; while the
congregation of the disciples, and, later, of converts at Jerusalem--the
Jerusalem Church--was emphatically the "sect of the Nazarenes," no more in
itself to be regarded as anything outside Judaism than the sect of the
Sadducees or of the Essenes.[120] In fact, the tenets of both the Sadducees
and the Essenes diverged much more widely from the Pharisaic standard of
orthodoxy than Nazarenism did.
Let us consider the position of affairs now (A.D. 50-60) in relation to
that which obtained in Justin's time, a century later. It is plain that the
Nazarenes--presided over by James, "the brother of the Lord," and
comprising within their body all the twelve {438} apostles--belonged to
Justin's second category of "Jews who observe the Law, believe Jesus to be
the Christ, but who insist on the observance of the Law by Gentile
converts," up till the time at which the controversy reported by Paul
arose. They then, according to Paul, simply allowed him to form his
congregations of non-legal Gentile converts at Antioch and elsewhere; and
it would seem that it was to these converts, who would come under Justin's
fifth category, that the title of "Christian" was first applied. If any of
these Christians had acted upon the more than half-permission given by
Paul, and had eaten meats offered to idols, they would have belonged to
Justin's seventh category.
Hence, it appears that, if Justin's opinion, which was probably that of the
Church generally in the middle of the second century, was correct, James
and Peter and John and their followers could not be saved; neither could
Paul, if he carried into practice his views as to the indifference of
eating meats offered to idols. Or, to put the matter another way, the
centre of gravity of orthodoxy, which is at the extreme right of the series
in the nineteenth century, was at the extreme left, just before the middle
of the first century, when the "sect of the Nazarenes" constituted the
whole church founded by Jesus and the apostles; while, in the time of
Justin, it lay midway between the two. It is therefore a profound mistake
to imagine that the Judaeo-Christians (Nazarenes and Ebionites) of later
times were heretical outgrowths from a primitive universalist
"Christianity." On the {439} contrary, the universalist "Christianity" is
an outgrowth from the primitive, purely Jewish, Nazarenism; which,
gradually eliminating all the ceremonial and dietary parts of the Jewish
law, has thrust aside its parent, and all the intermediate stages of its
development, into the position of damnable heresies.
Such being the case, we are in a position to form a safe judgment of the
limits within which the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth must have been
confined. Ecclesiastical authority would have us believe that the words
which are given at the end of the first Gospel, "Go ye, therefore, and make
disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and
of the Son and of the Holy Ghost," are part of the last commands of Jesus,
issued at the moment of his parting with the eleven. If so, Peter and John
must have heard these words; they are too plain to be misunderstood; and
the occasion is too solemn for them ever to be forgotten. Yet the "Acts"
tell us that Peter needed a vision to enable him so much as to baptize
Cornelius; and Paul, in the Galatians, knows nothing of words which would
have completely borne him out as against those who, though they heard, must
be supposed to have either forgotten or ignored them. On the other hand,
Peter and John, who are supposed to have heard the "Sermon on the Mount,"
know nothing of the saying that Jesus had not come to destroy the Law, but
that every jot and tittle of the Law must be fulfilled, which surely would
have been pretty good evidence for their view of the question. {440}
We are sometimes told that the personal friends and daily companions of
Jesus remained zealous Jews and opposed Paul's innovations, because they
were hard of heart and dull of comprehension. This hypothesis is hardly in
accordance with the concomitant faith of those who adopt it, in the
miraculous insight and superhuman sagacity of their Master; nor do I see
any way of getting it to harmonise with the orthodox postulate; namely,
that Matthew was the author of the first gospel and John of the fourth. If
that is so, then, most assuredly, Matthew was no dullard; and as for the
fourth gospel--a theosophic romance of the first order--it could have been
written by none but a man of remarkable literary capacity, who had drunk
deep of Alexandrian philosophy. Moreover, the doctrine of the writer of the
fourth gospel is more remote from that of the "sect of the Nazarenes" than
is that of Paul himself. I am quite aware that orthodox critics have been
capable of maintaining that John, the Nazarene, who was probably well past
fifty years of age when he is supposed to have written the most thoroughly
Judaising book in the New Testament--the Apocalypse--in the roughest of
Greek, underwent an astounding metamorphosis of both doctrine and style by
the time he reached the ripe age of ninety or so, and provided the world
with a history in which the acutest critic cannot [always] make out where
the speeches of Jesus end and the text of the narrative begins; while that
narrative is utterly irreconcilable, in regard to matters of fact, with
that of his fellow-apostle, Matthew. {441}
The end of the whole matter is this:--The "sect of the Nazarenes," the
brother and the immediate followers of Jesus, commissioned by him as
apostles, and those who were taught by them up to the year 50 A.D., were
not "Christians" in the sense in which that term has been understood ever
since its asserted origin at Antioch, but Jews--strict orthodox Jews--whose
belief in the Messiahship of Jesus never led to their exclusion from the
Temple services, nor would have shut them out from the wide embrace of
Judaism.[121] The open proclamation of their special view about the Messiah
was doubtless offensive to the Pharisees, just as rampant Low Churchism is
offensive to bigoted High Churchism in our own country; or as any kind of
dissent is offensive to fervid religionists of all creeds. To the
Sadducees, no doubt, the political danger of any Messianic movement was
serious; and they would have been glad to put down Nazarenism, lest it
should end in useless rebellion against their Roman masters, like that
other Galilean movement headed by Judas, a generation earlier. Galilee was
always a hotbed of seditious enthusiasm against the rule of Rome; and high
priest and procurator alike had need to keep a sharp eye upon natives of
that district. On the whole, however, the Nazarenes were but little
troubled for the first twenty years of their existence; and the undying
hatred of the Jews against those later {442} converts, whom they regarded
as apostates and fautors of a sham Judaism, was awakened by Paul. From
their point of view, he was a mere renegade Jew, opposed alike to orthodox
Judaism and to orthodox Nazarenism, and whose teachings threatened Judaism
with destruction. And, from their point of view, they were quite right. In
the course of a century, Pauline influences had a large share in driving
primitive Nazarenism from being the very heart of the new faith into the
position of scouted error; and the spirit of Paul's doctrine continued its
work of driving Christianity farther and farther away from Judaism, until
"meats offered to idols" might be eaten without scruple, while the Nazarene
methods of observing even the Sabbath, or the Passover, were branded with
the mark of Judaising heresy.
But if the primitive Nazarenes of whom the Acts speaks were orthodox Jews,
what sort of probability can there be that Jesus was anything else? How can
he have founded the universal religion which was not heard of till twenty
years after his death?[122] That Jesus possessed in a rare degree the gift
of attaching men to his person and to his fortunes; that he was the author
of many a striking saying, and the advocate of equity, of love, and of
humility; that he may have disregarded the subtleties of the bigots for
legal observance, and appealed rather to those noble {443} conceptions of
religion which constituted the pith and kernel of the teaching of the great
prophets of his nation seven hundred years earlier; and that, in the last
scenes of his career, he may have embodied the ideal sufferer of Isaiah,
may be, as I think it is, extremely probable. But all this involves not a
step beyond the borders of orthodox Judaism. Again, who is to say whether
Jesus proclaimed himself the veritable Messiah, expected by his nation
since the appearance of the pseudo-prophetic work of Daniel, a century and
a half before his time; or whether the enthusiasm of his followers
gradually forced him to assume that position?
But one thing is quite certain: if that belief in the speedy second coming
of the Messiah which was shared by all parties in the primitive Church,
whether Nazarene or Pauline; which Jesus is made to prophesy, over and over
again, in the Synoptic gospels; and which dominated the life of Christians
during the first century after the crucifixion;--if he believed and taught
that, then assuredly he was under an illusion, and he is responsible for
that which the mere effluxion of time has demonstrated to be a prodigious
error.
When I ventured to doubt "whether any Protestant theologian who has a
reputation to lose will say that he believes the Gadarene story," it
appears that I reckoned without Dr. Wace, who, referring to this passage in
my paper, says:--
He will judge whether I fall under his description; but I repeat that I
believe it, and that he has removed the only objection to my believing
it (p. 363).
{444}
Far be it from me to set myself up as a judge of any such delicate question
as that put before me; but I think I may venture to express the conviction
that, in the matter of courage, Dr. Wace has raised for himself a monument
_aere perennius_. For really, in my poor judgment, a certain splendid
intrepidity, such as one admires in the leader of a forlorn hope, is
manifested by Dr. Wace when he solemnly affirms that he believes the
Gadarene story on the evidence offered. I feel less complimented perhaps
than I ought to do, when I am told that I have been an accomplice in
extinguishing in Dr. Wace's mind the last glimmer of doubt which common
sense may have suggested. In fact, I must disclaim all responsibility for
the use to which the information I supplied has been put. I formally
decline to admit that the expression of my ignorance whether devils, in the
existence of which I do not believe, if they did exist, might or might not
be made to go out of men into pigs, can, as a matter of logic, have been of
any use whatever to a person who already believed in devils and in the
historical accuracy of the gospels.
Of the Gadarene story, Dr. Wace, with all solemnity and twice over, affirms
that he "believes it." I am sorry to trouble him further, but what does he
mean by "it"? Because there are two stories, one in "Mark" and "Luke," and
the other in "Matthew." In the former, which I quoted in my previous paper,
there is one possessed man; in the latter there are two. The story is told
fully, with the vigorous homely diction and the {445} picturesque details
of a piece of folklore, in the second gospel. The immediately antecedent
event is the storm on the Lake of Gennesaret. The immediately consequent
events are the message from the ruler of the synagogue and the healing of
the woman with an issue of blood. In the third gospel, the order of events
is exactly the same, and there is an extremely close general and verbal
correspondence between the narratives of the miracle. Both agree in stating
that there was only one possessed man, and that he was the residence of
many devils, whose name was "Legion."
In the first gospel, the event which immediately precedes the Gadarene
affair is, as before, the storm; the message from the ruler and the healing
of the issue are separated from it by the accounts of the healing of a
paralytic, of the calling of Matthew, and of a discussion with some
Pharisees. Again, while the second gospel speaks of the country of the
"Gerasenes" as the locality of the event, the third gospel has "Gerasenes,"
"Gergesenes," and "Gadarenes" in different ancient MSS.; while the first
has "Gadarenes."
The really important points to be noticed, however, in the narrative of the
first gospel, are these--that there are two possessed men instead of one;
and that while the story is abbreviated by omissions, what there is of it
is often verbally identical with the corresponding passages in the other
two gospels. The most unabashed of reconcilers cannot well say that one man
is the same as two, or two as one; and, {446} though the suggestion really
has been made, that two different miracles, agreeing in all essential
particulars, except the number of the possessed, were effected immediately
after the storm on the lake, I should be sorry to accuse any one of
seriously adopting it. Nor will it be pretended that the allegory refuge is
accessible in this particular case.
So, when Dr. Wace says that he believes in the synoptic evangelists'
account of the miraculous bedevilment of swine, I may fairly ask which of
them does he believe? Does he hold by the one evangelist's story, or by
that of the two evangelists? And having made his election, what reasons has
he to give for his choice? If it is suggested that the witness of two is to
be taken against that of one, not only is the testimony dealt with in that
commonsense fashion against which the theologians of his school protest so
warmly; not only is all question of inspiration at an end, but the further
inquiry arises, After all, is it the testimony of two against one? Are the
authors of the versions in the second and the third gospels really
independent witnesses? In order to answer this question, it is only needful
to place the English versions of the two side by side, and compare them
carefully. It will then be seen that the coincidences between them, not
merely in substance, but in arrangement, and in the use of identical words
in the same order, are such, that only two alternatives are conceivable:
either one evangelist freely copied from the other, or both based
themselves upon a common source, which may either have been a written {447}
document, or a definite oral tradition learned by heart. Assuredly, these
two testimonies are not those of independent witnesses. Further, when the
narrative in the first gospel is compared with that in the other two, the
same fact comes out.
Supposing, then, that Dr. Wace is right in his assumption that Matthew,
Mark, and Luke wrote the works which we find attributed to them by
tradition, what is the value of their agreement, even that something more
or less like this particular miracle occurred, since it is demonstrable,
either that all depend on some antecedent statement, of the authorship of
which nothing is known, or that two are dependent upon the third?
Dr. Wace says he believes the Gadarene story; whichever version of it he
accepts, therefore, he believes that Jesus said what he is stated in all
the versions to have said, and thereby virtually declared that the theory
of the nature of the spiritual world involved in the story is true. Now I
hold that this theory is false, that it is a monstrous and mischievous
fiction; and I unhesitatingly express my disbelief in any assertion that it
is true, by whomsoever made. So that, if Dr. Wace is right in his belief,
he is also quite right in classing me among the people he calls "infidels";
and although I cannot fulfil the eccentric expectation that I shall glory
in a title which, from my point of view, it would be simply silly to adopt,
I certainly shall rejoice not to be reckoned among "Christians" so long as
the profession of belief in such stories as the Gadarene pig affair, on the
{448} strength of a tradition of unknown origin, of which two discrepant
reports, also of unknown origin, alone remain, forms any part of the
Christian faith. And, although I have, more than once, repudiated the gift
of prophecy, yet I think I may venture to express the anticipation, that if
"Christians" generally are going to follow the line taken by Dr. Wace, it
will not be long before all men of common sense qualify for a place among
the "infidels."
* * * * *
{449}
XII
AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY
Nemo ergo ex me scire quaerat, quod me nescire scio, nisi forte ut
nescire discat.--AUGUSTINUS, _De Civ. Dei_, xii. 7.
[123]The present discussion has arisen out of the use, which has become
general in the last few years, of the terms "Agnostic" and "Agnosticism."