i't" ' . , CRISES IN THE :aruy CHURCH JOHN ALFRED FAULKNER com YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY THE LIBRARY OF THE DIVINITY SCHOOL OTHER WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR Cyprian: The Churchman 12mo. Net, if 1.00 Erasmus: The Scholar 12mo. Net, $1.00 CRISES IN THE EARLY CHURCH BY JOHN ALFRED FAULKNER Professor of Historical Theology in Drew Theological Seminary [YALE DrnwrT SCHOOL] NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS CINCINNATI: JENNINGS & GRAHAM Copyright, 1912, by John Alfred Faulkner CONTENTS chapter page I. The Jewish Crisis: oh, Shall Christianity be a Sect of the Jews? — The New Testament Phase 9 II. The Jewish Crisis — The Post-Apostolic Age 23 III. The Gnostic Crisis: or, Shall Christianity be Transformed into a Theosophic Cult or Esoteric "Christian Science"? 34 IV. The Montanist Crisis: or, Is Christianity a Progressive Religion? 52 V. The Monarchian Crisis: or, Who is Jesus Christ? 76 VI. The Chili astic Crisis: or, Shall Christianity Fulfill its Mission by Leavening or by Catastrophe? 97 VII. The Arian Crisis: or, Have We a Saviour as Divine as He is Human? 113 VIII. The Catholic Change: or, Will Christianity Remain a Spiritual Religion? 145 Appendix I. — Montanist Prophecies 156 Appendix II. — Literature 160 Index 165 fKo THE HONORED MEMORY OF MY THREE AMERICAN TEACHERS IN CHURCH HISTORY THE FIRST TWO MY PREDECESSORS IN THIS CHAIR SFofttt jfutcljer Outsit Scholar, Author, Traveler, Bishop George SRicfjarb Crook* Scholar, Ecclesiastical Reformer, Theologian Cgbert Coffin Smtptf) Scholar. Theologian. Seen PREFACE I have been asked to give a brief but adequate discussion of the crises in early Christian history, so that they could be understood by ministers, theological students, and laymen who might be interested in the origins of their religion — a dis cussion founded on a study of the sources and of modern scholars. This little book is a modest attempt to meet that request. For the sake of those who wish to verify statements made in the text and to carry on further studies, it has been necessary to add notes ; but these have been made as short as possible, and it is hoped that they will not interfere with the pleasure of reading by those who do not care for them. Brief biblio graphical lists will be found in an appendix. In that appendix also I have taken occasion to add some information on points referred to in chap ters I and IV, namely, on the authenticity of the Great Commission and baptismal command (p. 160) and on that most interesting movement, Montanism (p. 161). As to the true attitude of the student of Church history let the reader turn to the paragraph in troducing the literature (p. 159). If the fasci- 7 8 Preface nating study of history is of any value at all, it is to make one esteem truth and fact more than all things else; indeed, to make one care much for truth but nothing for shibboleths, whether the so-called liberal or the so-called conservative. CHAPTER I The Jewish Crisis : or, Shall Christianity be a Sect of the Jews? — The New Testament Phase We moderns can have but little conception of the fearful conflicts through which early Chris tianity passed, or of how great was the cost of our inheritance. It is the aim of this book to tell something about those conflicts, how they arose, what was involved in them, and how they were settled. It may be too that indirectly a little light may be thrown on present-day ques tions. First, then, the Jewish agitation. What was our Lord's attitude toward the law, the institu tions and customs of his people? Christ was born a Jew, was circumcised, educated, and in ducted into all the privileges and rights of a Jew. He, accordingly, recojgnized cordially^jan^the "nopTe1TeTimenlLs~of his ancestral faith. He went up to its feasts, he attended its synagogues, he studied its sacred books, he revered its great men, he gloried in its history, and felt himself a part of that venerable tradition which went back to Abraham. He stood squarely on the Old Testa ment. He quoted it to decide questions in doc trine and life; his own religious consciousness 9 10 Crises in the Early Church was formed in part by sinking himself into the books of its prophets and psalmists. He delib erately shut off from his gaze the literature and civilizations of the Orient and of the West, know ing that for his purpose as the Messiah of Israel and Redeemer of men they had nothing to offer. This did not mean that he had no sympathy for their culture, but that for salvation the Jewish religion was sufficient. He would have said that so far as the Greek or any other religion or civilization had truth he was its author (John 1. 9), and he deliberately extended the horizon of God's kingdom far beyond the pent-up Utica of Judaism (Matt. 8. 11; compare Luke 13. 29, 30). But for the spiritual regeneration of men, which was his task, the Jews were the God- ordained instruments (John 4. 22). That any essential element in the Jewish faith or worship as revealed in the Old Testament should pass away as a frivolous or vain thing would have seemed to him preposterous. Not a jot must fail. All must be taken up and fulfilled in its highest and permanent meaning by him (Matt. 5. 17, 18). On the other hand, Christ recognized that Judaism itself was intended to be a universal, eternal religion in all those things worthy of such destination, and that he was to be the in strument of it. The vision of the Old Testament prophets went far beyond local or teniporal The Jewish Crisis 11 boundaries. Their spiritual messages were for all mankind. In other words, there was a vast Christian element in the Old Testament, an ele ment that had been covered up by a multitude of extra-biblical and post-biblical ideas and customs and commandments. To sweep away these latter, to break their intolerable yoke, and to fasten the gaze of Israel on its great spiritual treasure — l that was one of the aims of Jesus. Therefore he quoted the liberating messages of the prophets, and felt that his mission was to carry out their ideas (Luke 4. 17-19; Matt. 9. 13, etc.). The spiritual nature and universal destination of Judaism as summed up and flowered out in Chris tianity, therefore, was something not brought in from without, but was a part of the inmost con sciousness of Jesus steeped in the study of the prophets and wise men. It was therefore no afterthought on Jesus's part, no daring program, no break with the spir itual ideas of Judaism, when he gave the great commission, "Go and make disciples of all," etc. (Matt. 28. 19) ; nor need that commission be a stumbling-block to critics. Even Moffatt is swept off his feet here by the winds from Germany. He says1: (1) That the conception of Jesus as the] source of authoritative rules and regulations for j the Church is not primitive. How late is it, then? The disciples feel the force of his authority in » Historical New Testament, 1901, pp. 647-649. 12 Crises in the Early Church Acts 1. 4, 6. But Christ gave no "authoritative rules and regulations." He spoke not as the scribes, not as a lawyer, but as a prophet, and the great commission, the Lord's Supper, and baptism were not given as "rules and regula tions," but, rather, as spiritual principles and in stitutions. (2) The idea of Christ's spiritual presence ( Matt. 28. 20 ) can also hardly be primi tive. But it is already spoken in Matt. 18. 20 and is involved in 11. 28, 29; see also 18. 5. The idea is at the background of much of Christ's teach ing. (3) The universal mission of Matt. 28. 19, 20 could not have been known to the disciples, for they "lived for years in flagrant disobedience to their Master's solemn command." Did they? The command was to begin at Jerusalem (Luke 24. 47) and thence go forth. This they did. Peter went on missions outside of Jerusalem, receiving the Samaritans and Roman proselytes at Caesarea and finally up to Antioch and on to Rome. James, the son of Zebedee, did not live long enough to carry out the commission, and his namesake James, the brother of the Lord, had his duties in the home city. John was finally not disobedient to the commission, though his youth may have excused him from too early bat tling with the troubled sea. Nor is it fair to say that till Providence had thrust them out on the Gentile mission they could not rightly feel that it was being carried out for them by an. The Jewish Crisis 13 other, as by Paul. Nor was their recognition of him "reluctant," but cordial and effective (Acts 15. J25,„ 26). We must remeTKBer also that the great commission meant Jew as well as Gentile. "All the world" includes Jerusalem and the Dis persion as well as Rome. They could not be blamed for feeling that one way not to carry out Jesus's wish was to refuse to preach the gospel in their native land. (4) Moffatt objects also to; the "incipient Trinitarianism" of Matt. 28. 19 as too early, but he acknowledges that "every Jew had an idea of the Spirit," and as there is no ob jection to the Father, the only difficulty is the second member, whose absolute deity is already expressed in 16. 16. The Trinitarianism of Matt. 28. 19 is only a brief formula of what is implicit and explicit throughout the whole gospel, and it would have caused no surprise in the earliest Church, in whose consciousness it floated full and clear (Acts 2. 33, 36). (5) The only real stum bling-block is the fact that baptism is always given in the name ofChrist in the New Testament, not in the name of the Trinity. It is not a reply to this to say that in all such passages all that is intended is to express the idea that the baptized embraced Christianity, without implying any thing as to the formula used in their baptism. The uniform use of a part of a formula "in the name of" seems to show that the passage intended something more explicit than that. There is not 14 Crises in the Early Church the least doubt that the baptisms in the Acts were in the name of Jesus only, but that does not necessarily mean that Jesus never spoke Matt. 28. 19. To show that it does mean that, we would have to prove (1) that baptism in the name of Christ did not mediate God and send the Holy Spirit, and (2) that in Matt. 28. 19 Christ was giving a form of words to be actu ally used in every case of baptism, and not, rather, stating a great religious principle in ref erence to which all baptisms should be per formed.1 As we enter the Acts we find exactly what we should expect from the preceding history, name ly, a special activity among the Jews of Jeru salem and Palestine, but with glimpses of a larger field and efforts to cultivate it. In the first ingathering it was said, "The promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off" (Acts 2. 39), which almost seems an echo of the great commission. The gospel was equally for the Jews at home and the Gen tiles abroad, and therefore the apostles and first Christians did not at all feel that they must come out from Judaism. They continued steadfastly in the temple (2. 46) , whither they went up at the hour of prayer (3. 1), preached in Solomon's Porch (3. 11, 12), and interpreted their new 1 See further my remarks In Methodist Review (New York), January, 1910, pp. 14-16. The Jewish Crisis 15 found joy and life as the sincere and cordial chil dren of Abraham, just as Wesley did his epoch- making experience of 1738 in his relation to the Church of England. But in both cases the experiences went deeper j than they knew, and had implications wider than they dreamed. A crystallized and conven tionalized ecclesiasticism cannot well adapt itself to new life, much less the degenerate Judaism of the first century. The miracle of the healing of the lame man, with the speech of Peter that fol lowed it, led to persecution from the Sadducean officials, a persecution which broke out into mo mentary frenzy under the strong and brilliant speech of Stephen, the Hellenist, who promised to be the greatest man in the early Church. (A Hellenist was simply a Greek-speaking Jew.) There was nothing in the address of Stephen to call out the Jewish wrath, if the murderers had been open to the appeal of Old Testament history and had any heart for its lessons. The Stephen' tragedy is an illustration of how the recognized guardians of religion may become so warped, hardened, and skeptical that they do defiance to the fundamental things they profess to believe, and think they are doing God service in their crimes — of all of which Church history furnishes many examples. Farther afield go the apostles and other workers, in the spirit at least of Matt. 28. 19, if 16 Crises in the Early Church not according to the letter. Philip breaks the way into Samaria, and Peter and John receive the converts into the Church on exactly the same basis as the Hebrew Christians (Acts 8. 5, 14ff.). The God-fearer (ioT&s and '"EkXtjvsg, and we shall probably never know which is right) , who responded with alacrity (11. 20, 21). Then Barnabas was sent down by the Jerusalem brethren, who greeted the new for eign Church with joy, confirmed them in the faith, went on to Tarsus to hunt up Paul, and with him returned and labored for some time in that Asiatic Greek city. The Jewish Crisis 17 We now come to an event which precipitated i the Jewish crisis. Paul and Barnabas take up what is called the first missionary journey (A. D. 47), and when they reach Antioch, in Pisidia, they preach with some success and much popular interest. But finally the Jews set themselves strongly against the evangelists, and this opposi tion Paul interpreted as a providential hint to try other doors. "It is necessary," he said, "that the word of God should first be spoken to Jews ; but since ye thrust it from you, lo, we turn to the [pagan] Greeks [Gentiles], for so hath the Lord commanded us [Isa. 49. 6 being the passage the apostle had in mind]. Then the Gentiles were glad when they heard this, and many be lieved, that is, as many as were disposed or set [rerayfievog, by whom it is not said] to eternal life believed" (13. 46, 48) . The apostles followed the same course in Iconium, and once more received pagans into the church (14. 1). After various sufferings they reach the Greek church of An tioch in Syria, and tell them of what has hap pened, especially of the conversion of the Gentiles (verse 27). Unfortunately some of the converts from the Pharisees in Jerusalem had so far for gotten their Isaiah and the deeper trend of Judaism and Christianity as to hold, not that the Gentile mission was unauthorized, but that it must not receive converts except through 18 Crises in the Early Church Mosaism ("needful to circumcise them, and to charge them to keep the law of Moses," 15. 5). In a council held in Jerusalem — the first ever summoned — this whole question was threshed out (chapter 15). We need not be sur prised that in the first set speech delivered to the council Peter took a line in the true spirit of Matt. 28. 19. Paul and Barnabas then gave a history of their work among the Gentiles, and James, uterine brother of Jesus, who held the chief place of honor and influence in the home church, closed the discussion on the same side with Peter and Paul, urging, however, for ex pediency's sake to prevent scandalizing devout Jews, that these Gentile converts, while free from the Mosaic law, should abstain from the sacri ficial meals of pagans with their frequent im morality, from blood, and from things strangled (verses 20-29; 16. 4). This decree referred only to Antioch, Syria, and Cilieia (15. 23), and there fore in places outside of that region Paul and the other workers felt themselves under no obli gation to introduce it. Thus was the first phase of the Jewish crisis passed. "Advanced" critics shy at the fourfold recom mendations of this council to the Gentiles (things sacrificed to idols, blood, etc., verses 20, 29), and the younger Seeberg is so courteous as to say that those who assert the historicalness of Luke's ac count have either not considered tlie subject or The Jewish Crisis 19 are impervious to evidence.1 But even the great] rationalist Pfleiderer admits2 that the prohibit tions fit well into the historical situation ("Such heathen customs or immoralities as were espe cially offensive to the Jew on account of his habit as to legal or moral cleanness, and therefore the intermission of these things on the part of the heathen Christians as a condition of brotherly intercourse, especially of table communion in mixed societies or churches, seemed necessary") much better then than a half century later. Still Pfleiderer does not believe the account historical, for the following reasons: (1) In Paul's account of his visit to Jerusalem in Gal. 2. 10 he says that the only condition of the free carrying out of his Gentile apostleship mentioned by the Jeru salem apostles was the remembering the poor. But it is by no means certain that the visit to Jerusalem of Gal. 2 is the same as that of Acts 15. It may be either the contribution or benevo lence visit of Acts 11. 30 ; 12. 25, or a flying in termediate one not mentioned in the Acts. If the reader will turn to Professor Vernon Bart- let's discussion3 he will find that the ordinary supposition of critics that the visits of Gal. 2 and Acts 15 are the same is by no means neces sary. But only on that supposition are their ob- i Theologisches Literatw-Blcett, 1907, col. 17. » Das Urchristentum, 2 Aufl. 1902, vol. i, p. 507. » Apostolic Age, 1900, pp. 53-62. 20 Crises in the Early Church jections valid. (2) In Antioch, in the strife with Peter, where the question was a related one, that of table communion between Gentile and Jewish Christians, Paul makes no mention of the decree of Acts 15. 29. But if the rebuke was later than the decree, one can readily understand that Paul might prefer to convince Peter of his mistaken step, both as a matter of courtesy and of effective ness, on general religious principles rather than by simply pointing to the decree. (3) In his treatment of eating flesh offered to idols in 1 Cor. 8 and 10 Paul judges of the matter in a spirit more liberal than Acts 15. 29, referring it to each man's conscience, and apparently knowing nothing of the decree. But the decree was especially limited to Syria and adjacent regions (15. 23), not far from the sensitive atmosphere of Palestine; in points more remote, especially in Europe, Paul felt himself perfectly justified in looking at the matter from a larger point of view. (4) In 21. 25 James mentions the decree to Paul in a way which suggests that Paul never heard of it before. Is that so? Quite the contrary, it seems to me. Would such an important decree be referred to so casually, without any introduction or explana tion, if it were unknown to Paul? So much for the objections. I cannot see that they overthrow the essential accuracy of Luke in Acts 15. The rest of the New Testament need not detain us long. It had now been determined that Chris- The Jewish Crisis 21 tianity should go its way among the Gentiles without being hampered by the ceremonial or national laws of Judaism, and that even for the pious Gentiles among the Jews Mosaism had passed. As I have said, this was no breach with Judaism as its noblest representatives viewed it, but was, rather, in the line of the prophets, of John the Baptist and of Christ. There were now Jewish Christian churches and Gentile churches, but between the two there was no conflict as to the heart of Christianity, namely, that salvation came through faith in Christ, Messiah, Re deemer, and Lord. Both held to the sacraments, both built on the Old Testament, both accepted as from God the great leaders of each. The Gen tile church did hot seek to force its ideas on the Jewish, or refuse fellowship with the circumcised, nor did the latter deny the Christian standing of the former. Of course it was inevitable that with the growth of the Church in the Roman world, with the increasing animosity of the Jews to the spreading "sect," ending in the final and total separation from the Christians after 70, and espe cially with the working of the leaven of the great principle accepted at the bottom by all — that men are justified not by works but by faith in Christ — it was inevitable, I say, that Jewish churches as such should entirely disappear. It was in the historical evolution that James the Just should decrease and Paul increase. 22 Crises in the Early Church But this result was not yet. The extreme Jewish Christian party, which wanted everybody to come into Christianity through the Mosaic law, was not dead, and members of it made many bitter moments for Paul. In the Epistle to the Gala tians especially the apostle gives them a Roland for an Oliver in fine style, vindicating forever the absolute freedom of the Gentiles from the Jewish law. Fearing their work also among the Romans, in whose society there were many Jew ish believers, he makes the same plea in his epistle to them. But that does not mean that Paul had grown less catholic toward his own faith, for he never interfered with the Jewish part of the Church, being as loyal as they wished to the law, and himself at times assumed vows and made offerings at the temple (Acts 18. 18; 21. 23-26) . And he ever retained a true patriot's pride in belonging to the greatest race and re ligion known in the history of the world (Rom. 9. 3-5), but it is one of the ironies of history that it was left to the chief man in that race to carry out the program of Christ, and emancipate his religion from the limitations of its birth and en vironment. CHAPTER II The Jewish Crisis — The Post-Apostolic Age The fearful destruction of Jerusalem by the armies of Titus in A. D. 70 broke the spell which in an external way bound the Jewish Christians to Judaism. This was helped along by the re bellion under Bar-Kochba (A. D. 132-135), when the celebrated rabbi Akiba was acknowledged as Messiah. The name of Jerusalem was changed to Aelia Capitolina, heathen institutions and temples were introduced into it, Jews were for bidden to enter it (a law which was kept up for nearly two hundred years), and circumcision, observance of the Sabbath, and instruction in the law were prohibited. Strict watch was to be kept over all the important religious transactions of the Jews. Under this pressure Rabbi Akiba gathered an assembly of scribes and other learned men at Lydda, who passed a resolution to allow the people to overstep the law, except in idolatry, incest, and murder. In the reaction caused by this pagan persecution Judaism became hardened and self-centered, and under national and re-j ligious hate separated itself from anything like the free Greek culture embodied, for instance, by Philo. "Judaism became again Hebrew and fully Pharisaic — the religion of idolatry of the 23 24 Crises in the Early Church letter; the Mosaic law ended in the Talmud and prophetism in the mythical number-play of the Cabbala."1 Of course the Christians did not join in the rebellion of Bar-Kochba, for which refusal they were persecuted by the Jews. The Chris tians were looked upon as apostates, and a spe cial form of curse was devised for them which was pronounced against them three times every Sabbath. To the distinguished rabbi Tarphan was ascribed the saying that a persecuted man might rather flee into an idol temple than into the houses of the Minim (Christians), because an idolater denies God, whom he knows not, while the Minim deny the known truth. Their books also should be burned, even though the name of God does occur in them. The Jews began to circulate calumniations against the Christians, and were the first, says Eusebius,2 to carry wood to the stake where the latter were to be burned for their faith. Before the destruction of Jerusalem the Jewish Christians retired to Pella, on the other side of the Jordan (compare Matt. 24. 15, 16). Some of them remained there. Others returned to the Holy Land, and even to Jerusalem. There James, the brother of Jesus, had already been slain by the Jews, whom he had striven so ear nestly to conciliate by living as a devout Jew- 'Moller-von Schubert, KG., 1902, vol. I, p. 103. 8 Historia Ecclesiastica, 4. 15, 29. The Jewish Crisis 25 Christian — slain, according to Josephus,1 by stoning by the Sanhedrin, according to Hege sippus (in Eusebius, 2. 23, 12ff.), a Christian historian of the second century, by being thrown from the pinnacle of the temple and later dis patched by a blow from a fuller's club when pray ing for his enemies (A. D. 62). After him other relatives of Jesus had a leading part in governing the Jerusalem church. There Simeon the son of Clophas, a cousin of Christ, stood till his martyr death under Trajan, and a later tradition even made him set in by the apostles themselves as the head of that society (3. 11). Also the grandsons of Jude, the brother of Jesus, were leaders (3. 20, 8), of whom the touching story is told by Hegesippus that they were brought before the Emperor Domitian (A. D. 81-96) as being de scendants of David, were interrogated by him as to their possessions and as to the nature of the kingdom of the Messiah, and replied that their property was only thirty-nine acres, that the kingdom was a purely spiritual one, and that the Christ was to come at the end of the world to judge the living and the dead. They then showed their calloused hands as an evidence of their peasant origin and poverty, and were dismissed without being molested. The two kinds of Jewish Christians shown by our New Testament sources continued on 1 Antiquities, 20. 9, 1. 26 Crises in the Early Church in post-apostolic times — the strict party, who wanted every one initiated into Judaism, and the liberals, who did not insist on this for the Gen tiles. In Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho, chapters 46, 47, written perhaps in A. D. 140-150, he discusses matters in this field. Trypho asks if a believer in Christ who wishes to live still as a strict Jew can be saved. Justin answers that (1) it is absolutely impossible now to observe all the laws of Moses, and (2) that there were some laws imposed for the hardness of the people's hearts, which laws now contribute nothing to the performance of righteousness and piety. Trypho then presses his question whether a Christian man who acknowledges all this and yet wishes to observe the institutions of the Jews can be saved. To this Justin replies : "Such an one will be saved if he does not strive in every way to persuade other men — I mean those Gentiles who have been circumcised from error by Christ — to observe the same things as himself, telling them that they will not be saved unless they do so." Justin goes on to say that there are persons who take that narrow view, but there are others who wish for themselves "to observe the institutions given by Moses," but do not insist that other Christians should be circumcised, keep the Sab bath, or "observe other such ceremonies"; with these, says Justin, we ought to join ourselves and hold them as kinsmen and brothers. As to The Jewish Crisis 27 the strict party he does not definitely pronounce whether they will be saved or not, though he acknowledges that those whom they have per suaded to take up Mosaism along with "their confession of God in Christ" shall probably be saved. Those, however, who have given up their Christian confession for Judaism, and "have re pented not before death," shall not be saved, much less regular Jews and especially those Jews who anathematize Christ in the synagogues — certainly an instructive and striking judgment. The discrimination of Justin is hardly illus trated in his earlier contemporary Ignatius (110-117), who roundly rejects any Judaizing. "Be not seduced," he cries out, "by strange doc trines nor by old profitless fables. For if even unto this day we live after the manner of Juda ism, we own that we have not received grace ; for the divine prophets [that is, Christian prophets] lived after [in accordance with, Kara] Christ." Ingnatius then points to a break with Judaism : Those who "had walked in ancient practices have attained unto newness of hope, no longer observ ing Sabbaths, but living according to the Lord's [day] ." Put away then the vile leaven which is sour, and betake yourselves to the new leaven which is Christ. For "it is monstrous to speak Jesus Christ and practice Judaism, for Chris tianity did not believe on Judaism, but Judaism on Christianity, which every tongue believing 28 Crises in the Early Church was gathered unto God."1 Also in his epistle to the Philadelphians (§6) he shows little patience with Judaism. "If any interpret to you Juda ism, hearken not to him, for it is better to hear Christianity from a circumcised man than Juda ism from an uncircumcised." Farther on he speaks of them who say, "If I do not find it in the archives [<£p#e£otf, probably the Old Testament], I do not believe in the gospel." To them Ignatius answers, "It is written"; that is, it is really in the Old Testament. They reply, "That is the question." But Ignatius bursts out : "But to me Jesus Christ is archives. His cross and death and his resurrection and the faith that is through him are the inviolable archives." Perhaps Igna tius is not to be interpreted as denying all right of Jewish Christians to observe their law, but, rather, is thinking of a degenerate Judaism and of a forcing it on others. But his peremptory anti-Jewish tone showed that he wanted no domination of the Christian conscience by Jew or Jewish Christian. More remarkable still is the strange so-called epistle of Barnabas, the date of which no one knows (70-138), but the place of which is per haps Alexandria. It reveals a lack of apprecia tion of Judaism truly colossal, a most inverted and perverted conception of its meaning and his torical place. That whole magnificent revela- > Ad Mag., sections 8-10. The Jewish Crisis 29 tion is an error and impertinence, and God's covenant in the Old Testament did not apply to Jews at all, but to Christians. The author had no historical sympathy or breadth of view, but by a "grotesque and bald typology" he sacrifices the mighty literature of the Old Testament or makes it into a mere "fantastic forestallment of the New." It is singular that such a nar row and unhistoric view should have sprung from the cultured circles of Alexandria, but it shows that then, as now, there were those who had no appreciation of the divine call of Israel and of its place in the purposes of God. But it was in this very Alexandria where Kriiger1 thinks the book was written, that Clement looked up to the epistle of Barnabas as a sacred writing, the work of the apostle Barna bas,2 and that Origen called it a "catholic epis tle"3 and apparently esteemed it highly — which shows that Christian culture is not infallible. But from these three sources — Ignatius, Barna bas, and Justin Martyr — we see how an atmos phere was being created in which Jewish Chris tianity simply could not live. It may be that this pronounced hostility to Ju daism was partly responsible for the increased departure of the strict Jewish Christians from the apostolic norm of teaching, or, vice versa, the 1 History of Early Christian Literature, tr. 1897, p. 20. ' Stromata, 2. 6; 2. 20. • Contra Celsum, 1. 63 30 Crises in the Early Church departure may have accentuated the hostility. At any rate, the cleft was becoming deep and wide. Cerinthus is an illustration. If we follow the oldest aulEorlty, Irenaeus (about A. D. 170), we have the famous story,1 on the authority of Polycarp, that once John found himself in a bath house in Ephesus with Cerinthus, and imme diately rushed out without bathing, crying out, "Let us fly, lest even the bath house fall down, because Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within." This reminds us of John's own words (2 John 10, 11). Certainly, Cerinthus was here tical enough. The earth was made by a subor dinate power, who knew not the supreme God. Jesus was not born of a virgin, but by the ordi nary laws of generation, though he was more righteous, wise, and prudent than other men. After his baptism Christ descended upon Jesus in the form of a dove, and the latter then pro claimed the unknown Father, and performed miracles. At last Christ departed from Jesus, who then suffered and rose again, for Christ could not suffer, as he was spiritual being.2 Cer tainly, such a formidable departure from orignal Christianity as that might well arouse the ani mosity of the orthodox. By and by the members of this extreme Jewish party, cut off from the correcting influence of the body of believers, with whom the Spirit of Truth 1 Adversus Hcereses, 3. 3. iIrenceus, 1. 26. The Jewish Crisis 31 dwells, if anywhere, became a sect — the Ebion- ites, or Humble, or Poor Ones (compare the "Friars Minor, the Franciscans). They held1 that the world was created by the true God, but in regard to Jesus Christ they agreed with Cer inthus. They used the Gospel of Matthew only, repudiating Paul as an apostate from the law. They had their own interpretation of the proph ets, practiced circumcision, observed the law, and were so thoroughly Jewish that they adored Jeru salem as if it were the house of God. From such circles as these sprang the Syriac text of the Gos pels found on Sinai in 1892, which in Matthew omits the virgin birth of Jesus. They endured until the fifth century, shading off into different varieties, one of which2 reacted toward a more Christian view, as they acknowledged Paul as an apostle to the Gentiles and received the virgin birth. Into another Jewish-Christian party heathen influences poured. I refer to the Elkesaites, who played a part in the second and third centuries. They held to circumcision and the Sabbath, to repeated washings, to which a magical cleansing and reconciling meaning was ascribed, to oath- formulas, to magic and astrology, and to Jesus as the Messiah. They baptized for the forgive- 1 Irenmus, 1. 26, 2. ' According to Jerome, Epistle, 112, § 13, who found them in Palestine. 32 Crises in the Early Church ness of sins in the name of the Great and High God and his Son, the Great King, the Messiah, and saw in Jesus an incarnation of the ideal Adam, or First Man, whom they also called the highest archangel — perhaps an attempt to con ceive Christianity as a special revelation and yet as identical with Judaism. Finally we are brought to those perplexing ro mances, the so-called Clementines, the Homilies, and Recognitions, which in their present form probably arose in Rome in the beginning of the third century, and which were founded, it is be lieved by critics, on an older Gnostic Ebionitic original, the Homilies being worked up into a polemic against Marcion's views, and the Recognitions independently into a more defi nitely Christian book, and both having a kin ship to the Antipauline Gnostic Acts of Paul.1 The universality of Christianity is acknowledged, but looked upon as merely a restoration of pure Mosaism. For Gentile Christians baptism takes the place of circumcision. Religious washings are held and abstinence from flesh. Pure re ligion was revealed in Adam, who is looked upon as the representative of the ideal sinless First Man, or of the Holy Spirit of Christ, who ap pears under different names in different periods, until he finally appears in Christ and makes the •Moller-von Schubert, KG., vol. i, p. Ill, whose exposition follows. The Jewish Crisis 33 primitive pure religion universal. He was espe cially in Moses, whose religion became perverted, but was renewed in its purity by Christ. Through the whole Clementines there breathes a religious philosophical theory, which though it wants to exclude Gnosticism proper, yet makes conces sions to it, and so is a "Gnostic" Ebionism. While Jewish monotheism is strictly maintained, a cosmological theory is developed in which Stoic influences play: origin of the world by a transformation of the divine substance, in which also the coming of evil is conceivable, without a special dualism. Mutually connected opposi tions (syzygies) are bound up with the entire world development, which have their origin in the opposition between the devil and the Son of God. The Clementines are the attempt to natu ralize conceptions like these among regular Christians. Thus Jewish Christianity — neither one thing nor the other — ran itself out in thin vanishing lines, until it reappeared in another shape in world-significant movements which sprang from Mani and Mohammed. CHAPTER III The Gnostic Crisis: or, Shall Christianity be Transformed into an Oriental Theosophic Cult or Chris tian Science? There were principles of Christianity which, if pressed in a one-sided way, might lead to openings for Gnosticism (gnosis, knowledge). The idea of different grades of Christian attain ment was at home in Christianity: the mystery which only the perfect could know,1 the en lightenment which God pours into the minds of his elect so that they know all things,2 the special blessing of those deep in the love of God — "unto all riches of the full assurance of understand ing,"3 and the gracious gift of God — to one the word of wisdom through the Spirit, and to an other the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit.4 Grades of knowledge were re flected even in the New Testament literature: in the simple narratives of the first three Gospels, in the Epistles of Paul, opening here and there vistas into profound truth, and finally in the wonderful Gospel of John, which is like a land scape, now charming in its quiet beauty and then > 1 Cor. 2. 6, 7; 3. 1, 2. « « 1 John 2. 20, 21. » Col. 2. 2. *1 Cor. 12.8. 34 The Gnostic Crisis 35 piercing the sky with its peaks, or revealing un- fathomed depths. Looking beyond Christianity for the working of that strange, multiform, many-colored thing we call Gnosticism, it meets us nearest, perhaps, in Philo, the philosophic Jew of Alexandria, who was a young man when Christ was born. To him the higher knowledge (gnosis) was directed to piercing into the alleged deeper meaning of the history, myths, mysteries/aSTlIbcTfmes of re ligion. This seemed an innocent proceeding, but it had in it elements of mischief. The same tendency was illustrated in Christian writers — the uncovering of the deeper sense of Scripture by allegory, "that you might have your knowl edge perfect," says Barnabas (§ 1), which he helps forward by a perfectly luxuriant allegoriz ing of Old Testament laws and facts. Clement of Rome does the same to a less degree to buttress his ideas of church order (§§ 40, 43, etc.), and Justin Martyr explains the nobler meanings of the commonplace passages of the Old Testa ment.1 It was the custom — as with the Stoics, Plutarch, etc. — in the Hellenic world to seek under the hull of the myths and mysteries the deeper religious or philosophical meanings. There was also the inclination to discover the same religious ideas in different,jmythological forms and cults, to adopt or mix the sameTrom 1 Contra Tryphonem, §§ 11 1-113, etc. 36 Crises in the Early Church these various sources (syncretism), and espe cially to study the Oriental cults which seemed to come to them in the light, or with the claim, of the original revelation. , Thus all these fantas tic ideas of the East were brought into the West and got mixed with the whole movement of Western thought. In this religious ferment Christianity also worked with its doctrine of re demption and of the world, and though it made the claim of having absolute validity, it yet united to itself the most different religious views, transforming them and being itself trans formed.1 What were some of the elements of this Gnostic ferment? Syrophcenician ^mogony and the astrology and^magicof the Orient. Man and all the lesser spheres of creation were under the influence of the stars or heavens, Which were thought of as higher spirits standing near to God and ruling the world. Redemption was con- ceived as freeing man from the pressure and power of finiteness, in which these heavenly powers wish to keep fast the soul. There was also the idea of middle beings, angels, etc., as mediating God; behind whom God disappears — an idea which some think came in from such semi-Jewish sects as the Essenes, Samaritans, etc. Then there were borrowings from the Greek, Pythagorean, Philonic, and Stoic philosophies, > See Moller-von Schubert, KG., vol. I, pp. 138ff. (1902). The Gnostic Crisis 37 and finally Christianity itself conceived as a religion of world-redemption. There was, of course, a practical side to all this, a religion of the dedicated, the perfect, an esoteric society, which looks upon religion as a secret mysterious cult in which the members were the select ini tiated, with higher knowledge (compare the de sire "to know" as a motive in the liturgies of some secret orders), perhaps reminding us of the "knowledge falsely so called"1 of those who creep into houses and with specious boasting of superior knowledge lead away silly women and others equally weak minded.2 The success of these apostles of the Higher Science was due in part to the unorganized char acter of the early Church, the lack of responsible officers and teachers, the freedom of speaking in the congregation, the lack of well-defined boun daries of worship, creed, and structure, and the Church's open and frank attitude toward the Spirit, the giver of new truth — what Germans call the "enthusiastic" character of early Chris tianity. There were prophets who spoke under divine afflatus ; there were speakers with tongues ; healers, and those possessed of other heavenly powers. The Gnostics took hold of these helps to their propaganda, exploited to their own taste both the Old Testament and the literature of the apostles, added to or took away arbitrarily from » 1 Tim. 6. 20. > 2 Tim. 3. 6ff. 38 Crises in the Early Church this literature,1 and, in the absence of authorita tive norms of doctrine and of fact, the poor be lievers were the footballs of these "knowing" ones, and were in danger of losing all real hold on their faith. The very historical ground of Chris tianity was in danger of being dissolved from under the feet of Christians, and they foisted away into a fog of hollow speculation. A crisis indeed had come. How grave that crisis was may be seen by a little attention to the nature of this so-called Christian Knowledge, or Science, of the first, second, and third centuries. (1) Christianity, which was originally a practical doctrine of sal vation through faith and love, becomes a specula tive religious theory or science of the universe, a knowledge of the world-process, which knowl- "leclglHeads t^redemptTon"oTtEe spirit.2" (2) The creator of the world and its lawgiver is sepa rated from the highest God, and various emana tions go out from the original divine foundation, the highest God being too glorious to mix him self directly with lesser things. The fall of man itself is such a mixing of the spirit with matter, worked by lower ungodly powers, who may have had to do with present appearance and conditions of the earth and world.3 (3) Redemption, or the free.donL.of . man^gjspirit. is accomplished by > Rev. 22. 18, 19. » Compare Christian Science. > Compare Eph. 6. 12, R. V. The Gnostic Crisis 39 dissolution of the world, by overcoming cosmic powers, and emancipating the spirit from matter. 1(4) A dualistic trait runs through the whole system, though in various degrees, sometimes go ing so far as two original principles, or Gods, and then fading away into a kind of pantheism. (5) The purely religious oppositions between the world and the kingdom of God, between flesh and spirit, are, enlarged into oppositions of cos mic powers, and thus drawn out of the ethical, where only they have any bearing and sense, into the physical. (6) Christ is placed in the turn ing point of the religious history of man, who is lifted up also as the turning point of the whole cosmic development. Christ means the coming in and revealing of the divine spiritual principle in the visible world, the revelation of the hitherto concealed God, and with this the outgoing of a new life for all who take hold of this revelation and understand it, and subject themselves to the necessary ascetic and secret conditions.1 (7) A word further as to Christ. As the Godhead un folds himself in different divine potencies, or aeons, so Christ is thought of as appearing in the world as one of these potencies, or shining out from a mixture of them. But Christ as a heav enly and redeeming potency is always to be dis tinguished from his visible appearance, which latter is to be considered either as a real man i Compare Christian Science. 40 Crises in the Early Church who bears for the time the heavenly Christ, or as only a psychical or spiritual (not material) for mation or image, or as simply an appearance.1 (8) Who are the saved? Here we must distin guish the pneumatics, or spiritual, who are able to receive the divine life and the revelation of the Spirit, and the hylics, or material, who are irre coverably fallen. Some Gnostics define also the psychics, who are incapable of the proper revela tion of the Spirit, but who are able by faith to come to a certain knowledge of the divine, and to a corresponding blessedness. (9) Over against the realistic view of early Christianity as to the visible return of Christ, the resurrection of the body, and the glorious kingdom of Christ, the Gnostics taught the opposite. The end is the freeing the spirit from sensuousness and the pain of finiteness.2 (10) Finally, Gnostic ethics, as may be imagined, is purely dualistic. The op position between matter and spirit is conceived absolutely, not relatively or morally, as in Chris tianity. It receives a metaphysical foundation, and, as in Christian Science, is erected into a fundamental principle. There was a healthy ascetic strain among the first Christians, a volun tary self-denial under special circumstances for a higher good,3 illustrated, for instance, in later » Docetism: compare Christian Science's conception of matter. 1 Compare Hinduism. « Matt. 19. 12; 1 Cor. 7. 7, 8, 26, 29-31; 9. 25-27/ The Gnostic Crisis 41 Church history in the wise resolution of Bishop Asbury to remain single. But this asceticism for moral ends was changed in Gnosticism into an asceticism involved in its basic ideas, meta physically grounded, and driven to its highest point.1 But another side to this asceticism was moral looseness; for the spirit only being essen tial, the ordinary external things of life were in different, whence libertinism or antinomianism. From the above statement the reader can see that there is some truth in Harnack's speaking of Gnosticism as the acute secularizing or Hellen izing of Christianity.2 It might better be called the Hellenizing of Eastern theosophies, with the transfusion of Christian elements and those ele ments perverted in the process. Professor W. Walther is right when he says3 that Gnosticism is a development on heathen ground, "not a Hellenizing of the gospel, but a stealing of some Christian rags to cover heathen nakedness." Seeberg is better still when he says4 that Gnos ticism "sought to elevate Christianity to the po sition of the universal religion by combining in it all the tendencies and energies of the age and thus adapting it to the comprehension of all and satisfying the needs of all. Thus revelation was 1 Compare Hinduism and Buddhism. » History of Dogma, vol. i, pp. 222, 230, note. » Theologischm Literatur-Blatt, 1898, col. 228. * History of Doctrine, vol. i, pp. 94, 100, 101. 42 Crises in the Early Church to be combined with the wisdom of the world, and Christianity by this means became a uni versal religion. It was the first attempt in the history of the Church to bring the world into subjection to the Church by interpreting Chris tianity in harmony with the wisdom of the world. Under the conditions then existing this attempt appeared to be assured of success, and it seemed to oppose to the Gospel of the Church a tremen dous combination of forces. . . . Gnosticism is not merely Gentile Christian in character, but essen tially heathenish. The fundamental problem to which it addresses itself originates in the re ligious thought of the heathen world, as well as the means employed in the solution of the prob lem. Its character is not altered by the fact that it applies the instruments of Christian and Jew ish tradition to the problem in hand. ... It is misleading to speak of it as the acute Helleniz ing of Christianity, or to say with Harnack that. its leaders were the first Christian theologians." Some systems had Hellenistic elements, notably that of Valentine, but, "judged as a historical phenomenon, Gnosticism was the attempt to es tablish the universal religion, in which the re ligious problems of the educated world in that age should be answered by means of the ancient Oriental mythology and magic," with the addi tion of Christian ideas. "We may, accordingly, instead of Hellenizing, speak, rather, of an ethni- The Gnostic Crisis 43 cizing of the gospel." And "ethnicizing" here really means heathenizing. Especially in the system of Marcion (flourished A. D. 155) did Gnosticism present itself to the Church in a fascinating light, as though it would deceive the very elect, reminding us in its subtly dangerous appeal to the susceptibilities of the half-instructed Christians of that day of the modern Marcions (mutatis mutandis) — the "ad vanced" theologians of the present. The God of the Old Testament, of the creation and of the law, appeared to him as the hard, "just," passion ately angry God, finding pleasure in war, child ish in his measures, and contradictory in his con clusions, for he feels penitence, the creator of a by no means perfect world ("without doubt a grand work and a world worthy of God," was the sarcasm of the Marcionists), and also the bringer in of evil ("I am he that creates evil," he says himself in the Old Testament). Unless you ex plain the Old Testament allegorically, there is in it no trace of the God of love. Nevertheless, said Marcion, the God of the Old Testament is not the principle of evil over against the good highest God, but only a lesser, limited God, the world- ruler. But he stands in close relation with the hyle, or matter (conceived as a principle or personfication), out of which he built the world. Over both is the highest good God, secret, hidden, resting in everlasting inac- 44 Crises in the Early Church tivity,1 who has a higher heavenly world around and under him. Suddenly the good God sends his Son Christ in a counterfeit or seeming body, who appeared in the time of Pilate in Judsea, revealed God, and authenticated him self by miracles. As he did away with the law and prophets and all the works of the world- creator, he was crucified by the princes of this world,2 the angel powers of the creator, which crucifixion, however, did not harm him, on ac count of the unreality of his body. He pro claimed the religion of love and of freedom from the law of the creator, though not in a libertine sense. The faithful to whom the good God is revealed must abstain as far as possible from the pleasures and goods of this world, especially from sexual intercourse and the use of flesh, for the body has no part in salvation. As every thing rests upon faith in the divine love, Cain and the evildoers of the Old Testament, as well as all heathen, are saved by the Redeemer de scending to Hades, as they all turn to him with longing, while the pious of the Old Testament have no trust in the proclamation and remain in Hades. As all this was contrary to the gospel the Church had received, Marcion had to sift the tradition, and he did this with a vengeance. He claimed that the Judaizers had falsified the gos- i Compare the religions of India. « 1 ©or. 2. 8. The Gnostic Crisis 45 pel from the beginning, the only genuine written remains of which were the ten epistles of Paul (omitting the pastoral epistles) and the Gospel of Luke, but these only in an amended form. From this the reader will hardly be prepared for Lipsius's favorable description of Marcion- ism as the Protestantism of the ancient Church, for the reason that Protestantism proclaimed fundamental Christianity, while Marcionism pro claimed fundamental heathenism with Christian elements. But it proclaimed its message with such wise adjustment to the spirit of the times, and with such plausibility to those who were ignorant of the true nature of the Old Testament, that it had a wide vogue. By the time of Epiph anius (close of fourth century) it had spread from Persia to Italy, from Pontus to Upper Egypt. It came into sympathetic contact with the mighty movement of Manicheism, and, ac cording to some, formed the basis of the Paulician Church of the seventh century. How was Gnosticism overcome? (1) By direct refutations by the Church fathers. It prompted ^theologicardefense and thus gave birth to Chris- Man theology. The fathers whetted their dia lectic on the Gnostic grindstone. Think of the noble vindications of Christian truth by Ire naeus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Hippolytus — a challenge to the modern minister to a like battle for the faith against present-day 46 Crises in the Early Church errors. (2) The lack of a brief ready confession of the faith made it easy for the Gnostics to win converts from the ignorant. To gather up the apostolic faith in a few short statements, to ex press the fundamental facts of the life of Christ over against Gnostic evaporation — this was a need everywhere felt, and it led, consciously or unconsciously, to the Rule of Faith — little stateM ments of the main things believed by Christians}! which, helped along by baptismal formulas, by catechetical needs, issued in the later creeds. I do not mean that there were not such statements in some churches earlier than the Gnostic prop aganda, and independent of it; but there can be no doubt that the latter helped along the prepara tion and use of creeds and their elevation to Rules of Faith. What gave distinct occasion to1 the Christian society at Rome to make its symbol a creed or rule, says Kattenbusch,1 was Gnosti cism and Marcionism. "The error of these movements was, of course, in many points per ceived. But they were found chiefly in contradic tion with the symbol, the solemn sum of the faith, which could not be very well first formed under the title of a 'sanctuary' (or holy relic — Heil- tums), but very soon became such. It was a r natural growth when the sacramentum of faith | became a wall against gnosis and Marcion." (3) Another weapon was the New Testament ration- » Dos ApostoKsche Symbol, vol. ii (1900), pp. 82, 83. The Gnostic Crisis 47 ally interpreted, and especially the fixing of the limits of that Testament over against the swarm of false Gospels, Acts, and Epistles put out by the errorists, and sometimes — truth to tell — ex ploited by the Church (though this last not al ways done deliberately from a known false book) . One of these was the Gospel of Peter, fragments of which were found by the French diggers in Akhmin, Upper Egypt, in the winter of 1886-7 and first published in Paris in 1892 by Bouriant, the director of the French Archaeological Insti tute in Cairo, as a part of the ninth volume of the Memoires of that Institute (editions by various scholars in 1893), and which made such a noise at the time. It is a mild, Gnostic (Docetic) Gospel written in Syria after the middle of the second century. But to find out for a certainty what the New Testament was, and rightly ex plain it, was a task thrown upon the Christians by the Gnostics. It is an ill wind that blows no one any good. But, besides all these things, Gnosticism was overcome by absorption, not simply individual Gnostics won back into the Church, but their views, methods, etc., taken up by the Church. Their mystery cults influenced the Catholic bap tism and Lord's Supper; their philosophy as to the hidden God and the intermediate beings be tween him and man reacted on the Catholic con ception of the awful and infinite One who better 48 Crises in the Early Church be approached through saints, angels, and espe cially the Virgin Mary; their division of men into pneumatic or spiritual, psychic, and hylic, and their call of the former to abstinence and a lofty, self-denying holiness, worked on Catholic Christianity with mighty force, and helped to produce monasticism and many practical phases of the ancient and mediaeval Church, which are still in evidence on every hand. Then there was an approach to the Church on the part of some Gnostics, as, for instance, Apelles, who said1 that "those who trusted in the Crucified would be saved, if only they were found doing good works," and also that Christ had an actual body and one that could suffer, though a heavenly one. The Docetists, described by Hippolytus,2 could hardly be distinguished from the Church in several of their teachings. It is remarkable also that Tatian (flourished A. D. 160) even after he became a Gnostic (Encratite) enjoyed high honor in the Church. This is shown by the wide acceptance of his Gospel Harmony, or Diates- seron, a blending together in a united story (in Syriac) of our four Gospels, beginning with the first verses of John, but omitting the genealogies in Matthew and Luke and every other passage which shows that the Lord sprang according to the flesh from the seed of David, and occasionally 1 Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica, 5. 13, 5. 8 Philosophumena, 8. 8ff. The Gnostic Crisis 49 incorporating passages not in our Gospels. In the east Syrian Church this Harmony was in favor till the fourth century, suppressed first in the fifth. In the former century the great Church doctor Ephraem wrote a commentary on it, though without mentioning the name of Tatian, copying the most of it in his book. That com mentary was translated into Armenian in the next century, lay in Armenian manuscripts until 1836, when it was published by the Mechitarist Armenian monks of San Lazzaro, Venice, trans lated into Latin by one of them, Father Aucher, in 1841, but not published, and this translation revised and edited and published at Venice in 1876 by Moesinger, one of the theological pro fessors in the Roman Catholic university at Salzburg. It is singular that the significance of this unexpected recovery of a gospel harmony which reaches back to less than a life time of the death of the apostle John escaped the tireless ever-searching eyes of German scholars, the first notice of it being a passing one-line reference of Nestle in the Theologische Literatur-Zeitung, 1878 (December 7), col. 607. An American has the honor of being the first to call the attention of the learned world to this priceless possession — Professor Ezra Abbot (died 1884), in his The Authorship of the Fourth Gospel: External Evidences (Boston, 1880, pp. 52-56). In 1881 Zahn reconstructed the text 50 Crises in the Early Church with fine skill, and in the Zeitschrift fur Kirchen- geschichte for February, 1881 (vol. iv, Heft 4, pp. 471-505), Harnack presents an exhaustive study of it, using Moesinger only, written inde pendently of Abbot and Zahn. It seems to bring those old Gnostics home to us to have one of them who was active A. D. 130-170 construct for us the first gospel harmony ever produced, in which the Gospel of John is used as a book everywhere acknowledged as divine, on a perfect level with Mark and Matthew — this Gospel which Baur said never existed till after A. D. 150. On the other hand, speaking of the absorption of Gnostic ideas and usages by the Church, we must not lay too much weight there. For in stance, Augustine did not get his doctrine of the will and of predestination from the Gnostics or Manicheans, but from a perverted understand ing of Paul. But the second and third century fathers bitterly opposed the Gnostic denial of free will. As Harnack says,1 Gnosticism "was wrecked in the Church on free will, the Old Tes tament, and eschatology." That man is free and responsible, that the Old Testament is from the supreme God, who is also the Creator, that the body is sacred and is to be raised at the last day, and that Christ, who came in actual flesh once, is to come again in power at the end — these were some of the precious possessions of the early » History of Dogma, vol. i, p. 260, note. The Gnostic Crisis 51 Church which were so firmly a part of her very being that with them she overcame the Gnostic peril. Gnostics used the term "of the same sub stance" (bfioovaiog) of Christ in relation to God, just as the Church came to use it later, and they sometimes seem to identify Christ with God, but that does not mean, as Harnack thinks it does,1 that the Church "learned very much in Christol ogy" from them, or that they had a "mighty in fluence on the later Church development of Christology." At the bottom their doctrine of Christ was at an infinite remove from that of the Church, and their idea of "two natures" had nothing in common with the idea of the Church. The absolutely genuine human nature of Christ, who was linked, nevertheless, in indissoluble union with the Father — that was the inexpug nable conviction of primitive Christianity, and on that rock the fantastic theories of Gnosticism, however some of these were refined and Chris tianized by noble and holy men who were "not far from the kingdom," broke in vain. 1 History of Dogma, vol. I, p. 259, note. CHAPTER IV The Montanist Crisis : or, Is Christianity a Progressive Religion? There were some characteristics of primitive Christianity which, as they have passed away or changed their form, are apt to be slurred over by present-day readers. One of these was prophecy, the speaking or writing under the immediate divine afflatus, under the special (whether mirac ulous or not we need not inquire) inspiration of the Holy Spirit, so that the product was directly from God. This was a tremendous force in early Christianity. Nearly every congregation had its prophets, both men and women, held in high honor, whose words were listened to as the very word of God. For a hundred years or so after the founding of the Church on the day of Pentecost there was not a breath of suspicion but that this mighty class of workers had a permanent func tion in the Church, the only question being that of preventing the abuse of that function, and guarding the office from unworthy men, who would selfishly exploit their high reputation. For instance, as late as perhaps A. D. 125 the Didache, or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, in laying down rules for the government of the Church, couples apostles and prophets together 52 The Montanist Crisis 53 as men of equal honor (11.3). It says that every prophet who speaks in the Spirit shall not be proved; that is, no one shall sit in judgment merely on the contents of the prophet's message, as that would be an unforgivable sin. All that is allowed is to judge the prophet's conduct, and from that to receive or reject him. If he orders a table (that is, either an ordinary dinner or a eucharistic meal) in the Spirit and eats of it, he is no true prophet. If he performs a "cosmic mystery" for the Church — probably some striking symbolical act of deep mystical significance — and does not teach others to do the same thing, he shall not be judged. If he asks for money, however, he is to be in stantly rejected, though if he asks for the poor no one is to judge him (11. 7-12). If he de sires to settle among you, see that he gets sup port ; in fact, you shall give the prophets the first fruits of your produce, for they are your chief priests (which last word is not to be interpreted in a sacerdotal sense, which was a later develop ment ; what is meant is, they are the chief of those who receive and offer your gifts, and present the prayers of the society to God ; the prophets were not ordained, being, from the modern point of view, laymen). If you have no prophet, give to the poor (13. 1, 3, 4) — a recommendation which points to a time when the prophets were not in every society, were apparently not as numerous 54 Crises in the Early Church as formerly, but were giving away to the regular Church officers, in whose interest it was to shove them to one side and hurry their extinction. In the eucharistic dinners certain prayers are given which the congregation may use, but the reser vation is distinctly made that the prophets are not at all bound by such forms, "but may give thanks as much as (in what words, Saa) they wish" (10. 7). As Harnack well says,1 in this document the "prophets are the virtuosi of the eucharistic prayer." Another peculiarity of ancient Christianity which largely passed away even in the second century was ecstatic utterance. Prophets and others would give forth revelations or other re ligious communications in a rapt, semiconscious state, as though the soul were borne out of itself, as though the words came from the inner deeps impelled by a higher power. Of course it was not meant that the speaker was in a trance or un conscious, but his utterance was involuntary in the sense of not only not being premeditated but not being the result of reflection or conscious in tellectual effort. Prophets, as a rule, both in apostolic and post-apostolic times spoke in this way, and when we read of "speaking in the Spirit" it refers to ecstatic utterance. In this chill age of intellectual pride and aloofness we 1 In his edition of the Didache (Texte und Vntersuchungen, ii. I), 1884, p. 37. The Montanist Crisis 55 must not assume that there were not real com munications from God in these states. It might easily happen that men who stood in a frank and cordial attitude to the eternal Truth pressing in on them from all sides, at a time when the con trol of the mental processes had not reached a science, when the spiritual atmosphere charged to the utmost with religious forces playing on souls sensitive, eager, expectant, full of faith and hope — it might easily happen, I say, that be lievers naturally endowed with a semiclairvoyant nature, who saw more things than were dreamed of by the philosophy of skeptics, were carried out of themselves by the Spirit Divine, and in a half- conscious state gave forth messages from God. Ye could not read the marvel in his eye, The still serene abstraction; he hath felt The vanities of after and before. . . . He often lying broad awake, and yet Remaining from the body, and apart In intellect and power and will, hath heard Time flowing in the middle of the night, And all things creeping to a day of doom. The early Church was also filled with an en thusiastic belief in the near end of the world and the coming of Christ to set up his kingdom with power and glory. Hardly anything sepa rates more deeply the spiritual feeling of the first and second century Christian from that of the modern than this cleft. The former really be lieved that his Lord would return any day and 56 Crises in the Early Church was looking for it, just as we expect a returning friend, while the latter, with rare exceptions, does not believe that Christ is to return at all, or only spiritually and in historical crises ; or he places his return at the end of the natural life history of this globe, which end, according to scientists, though it is bound to come, will not take place for some millions of years. In the first Church the second coming of Christ was a living reality of faith ; that is, among the devout. Of course there were doubters (2 Pet. 3. 4), but they did not affect the general run. This faith naturally led to self-denials, to ascetic and strenuous achievements in piety and prayer, in life and thought, of which the ancient literature gives us a glimpse now and then. Paul's example was followed by others, in the midst of a corrupt, decaying, persecuting world, at whose door the Christ was standing ! As the second century wore away and there were no signs of his coming, expectancy naturally re laxed, and with that, Church discipline, and with that, morals. While those who had lapsed from the Church on account of the persecution, or other mortal sins, had not been received in again, even though penitent, because their case might soon be taken up by the Great Judge, now that the hope of his coming was growing weak, they were taken back into membership with but light penances. No doubt it is easy to exaggerate the The Montanist Crisis 57 so-called "enthusiasm" of the early Church, the strained and lofty devotion, the indifference to civic duties, the ever looking into the heavens for the descent of the Son of man, the praying with out ceasing, because there is evidence that the Christians then were not so vastly different from what they are to-day. They bought and sold, they married and were given in marriage, they entered into heathen amusements and heathen society, and those of superabundant faith and love were in a minority then, as they have always been. But at the same time it is true that in the first Church the belief in the approaching end gave a spiritual tone, an other-worldliness, and in some cases an ascetic self-discipline, which perished with the loss of that faith. "For we have not here an abiding city," was their cry, "but we seek after the city which is to come" (Heb. 13. 14). Every day that the coming was delayed seemed a call for patience, like a mother who is worn out waiting for her boy. "For ye have need of patience, that, having done the will of God, ye may receive the promise. For yet a very little while, he that cometh shall come, and shall not tarry" (Heb. 10. 36, 37). Therefore do not encumber yourselves with earthly affairs, but lay up your treasures above. "You know that you servants of God dwell in a foreign land, for your city is far from this city. If, then, you know the city where you are to dwell, why pro- 58 Crises in the Early Church vide yourselves here with fields and expensive luxuries and buildings and chambers to no pur pose? He who makes such provision for this city has no mind for his own city. ... So beware that you serve God and have him in your heart; per form his works, mindful of his commandments and of the promises he has made, in the faith that he will perform the latter if the former be ob served. Instead of fields, then, buy souls in trouble; visit widows and orphans; expend on such fields and houses [the poor] which God has given to you your wealth and all your pains."1 "From the very first," says Harnack, "morality was inculcated within the Christian churches in two ways — by the spirit of Christ and by the conception of judgment and recompense. Both were marked by a decided bent to the future, for the Christ of both was he who was to return. To the mind of primitive Christianity the 'present' and the 'future' were sharply opposed to each other and it was their opposition which fur nished the principle of self-control with its most powerful motive. It became, indeed, with many a sort of glowing passion. The Church which prayed at every service, 'May grace come, and this world pass away: maranatha' [Our Lord is come, or, Our Lord is coming] was the Church which gave directions like those we read in the opening parable of Hermas. 'From the lips of 1 Hermas, perhaps A. D. 150, Shepherd, Sim. 1. The Montanist Crisis 59 all Christians this word is to be heard : The world is crucified to me and I to the world.' m Now these things were the historical back ground of Montanism. A change was coming over the Christian Church of the second century, and by A. D. 150 that change was sufficiently marked to cause alarm to serious men. The regular Church officers were magnifying their positions, and whenever possible taking the places of the prophets in honor and influence. Especially was this true of the bishops, whose office in the an cient and mediaeval Church was so frequently as sociated with unchristian ambitions and ideas. They were the "sane," "sound" men, who could be trusted to steer the bark of the Church through troublous waters, while the prophets were so open to the influences of the Spirit, to promptings from eerie voices from the other world, that they were removed from that admin istrative region where good judgment was essen tial, a region which circumstances were ever mak ing more important. The communications given in ecstasy — if they were intelligible — had to be judged (even when in theory the people were not allowed to judge them, their being accepted meant a process of discrimination), and if they were not intelligible they were useless. Ecstatic utterance was going out of favor. The writings 'Celsus, A. D. 177-180; cited by Origen, Contra Celsum, 5. 64: Harnack, Expansion of Christianity, vol. i (1904), pp. 117, 118. 60 Crises in the Early Church of the apostles were taking the place of the chance teachings of the prophets; of course not entirely, for the prophets lived on for some time yet, but that was the tendency. Besides, the ex pectation of the end was partially dying out, and Christians generally began to build upon a longer endurance of the world. So there came a loss of the old self-sacrificing devotion, and worldli ness and vice crept into the Church. Not that these did not exist before, but on account of the postponement of the Parousia, or second coming, there came a widely diffused lowering of spir itual tone, which men viewed with alarm. Montanus, the Phrygian Christian prophet, stepped upon the stage about A. D. 155. It was fitting that the conflict between the new and old ideals should be fought first in Asia Minor. In the second century Christianity and Christian thought was nowhere so active, so expansive as there. There the first great theologians and ecclesiastics were born; there all the first con troversies were precipitated; there the Easter question came out; there men brooded over the Logos, the Word, and the relation of the Christ to the Father; there the office of bishop as dis tinct from presbyter first developed; there the prophets were most active ; there first the bishops tried to supersede them ; and it was natural that just there the Montanist crisis should come to a head. To all this persecution helped. Since The Montanist Crisis 61 about A. D. 150 it grew ever more widely, and persecution always sharpens opposition to the _world. It generally' enhances jilso the jexpecta- tion^of the end and gives a background for pro phetic or similar voices. It has been claimed by some that old heathen Phrygia had something to do with explaining Montanism — certain religious and social char acteristics which stamped themselves on the Christianity of that region. "In the nature re ligion of the ancient Phrygians," says Neander,1 "we recognize the character of this mountain race, inclined to fanaticism and superstition, easily credulous about magic and ecstatic trans ports; and we cannot be surprised to find the Phrygian temperament, which displayed itself in the ecstasies of the priests of Cybele and Bacchus, exhibiting itself once more in the ecstasies and somnambulisms of the Montanists." Now, it is no doubt true that Christianity assumes different phases in different nations; you could not con ceive of Methodism being born in France, or even perhaps in Germany. It is the glory of Chris tianity that it can take on different forms accord ing to social types and yet remain essentially un changed — a fact that we need to remember in our world-wide mission, and not try to make American Christians of Koreans and Russians. But it is a good rule not to seek for remote causes 1 Church History, Torrey's tr., vol. i, p. 513. 62 Crises in the Early Church in things the springs of which lie at your very hand. And it is true that every one of the pecu liarities of Montanism which have been traced back to old Phrygia, her religion and her national traits, it got straight from Christianity. Even as far back as 1841, when the brilliant pupil of Baur, F.C.Albert Schwegler (the same who wrote the History of Philosophy, which has been used so widely as a text-book in English-speaking lands, and who died at the early age of 38), pub lished his learned study,1 scholars have been in clined to place but little emphasis on the Phry gian origins of Montanism, for, as Schwegler says (pp. 82, 83), the Phrygian nature religion offers either too much or too little for our pur pose; too much in that the whole external shape and equipment of that religion is sought for in vain in Montanism, and too little in that it does not explain the constitutive elements of the latter as a Christian movement. While it would be vain to deny Phrygian influence, it is superfluous to look there for any driving impulse. Baur him self had the insight to see this. He says truly2 that "Montanism is rooted altogether in the original Christian faith of the Parousia of Christ, a faith which Paul also shared. The faith in the Parousia of Christ and the reaction against the 1 Der Montanismus und die Christliche Kirche des zweiten Jahr- hunderts, Tub., 1841. 2 Geschichte des Christlichen Kirche, 3 Aufl. 1863, vol. i, p. 235. The Montanist Crisis 63 world view which had already departed from this faith are the two chief elements out of which the origin and character of Montanism is to be ex plained." Anyhow, Montanus came out as the restorer of the old paths. There was first, then, prophecy. He and the prophets and prophetesses associated with him broke out into ecstatic utterances which were looked upon as the immediate communications of God, and which he believed generally, if not al ways, came in this ecstatic way. In these the Spirit speaks in the first person. "See, man is as a lyre, and I strike him as a plectrum. The man sleeps; I awake. See, it is the Lord who in ecstasy removes the hearts of men, who also gives the hearts of men."1 Generally the mes sages came in short, broken sentences, the mo mentary breaking through out of the depths of the Spirit-filled heart. They therefore came in voluntarily, the spirits of the prophet not being subject to the prophets in the Pauline sense (1. Cor. 14. 32; that is, the Spirit-filled prophet, though he may speak in ecstasy, stands in control of his message, and does not speak it forth while others are speaking, but bides his time; the Spirit is in no hurry, but prefers order to con fused and noisy utterances of truth). The the ory of inspiration helped along this mantic method of utterance. i Epiph. 48. 4. 64 Crises in the Early Church What was the content of the prophecy? This will bring us to the full significance of the move ment. As to doctrine, these prophetic voices were in harmony with the general teaching of Scripture and Church. "They confess," says Hippolytus1 "God the Father of all and the Creator of all, just as the Church does, and what the gospel wit nesses concerning Christ." The greatest Mon tanist of history, and one of the greatest men of antiquity, Tertullian, the presbyter of Carthage (flourished A. D. 200), places himself on the Rule of Faith as on an impregnable rock, and looks upon the Scripture and dogmatic tradition as unassailable.2 While on the Trinity some of the utterances argue the ordinary teaching, and others seem to point to Monarchianism, it is evi dent that this is simply because in Asia Minor the development had not cleared itself to a defi nite result, and the voices echo the general feel ing. Montanism had no independent doctrinal significance, but simply joined itself consciously or unconsciously in the regular course of doc trinal development. In this respect it was exactly similar to Methodism, which came out not as an innovation on any of the doctrines re ceived by either the Church of England or the Nonconformist churches, but by a more vital ap prehension of those which agreed with original 1 Phttosophumena 8. 19. * De Virginibvs Velandis I. The Montanist Crisis 65 Christianity to make them again a living power among men. As to Gnosticism, the movement was against it. It vindicated the true body of Christ, the reality of his resurrection and that of our own body. As to eschatology, it was, rather, the emphasis and form than the content in which it differed from the Church teaching. The Mon tanist prophecy was a special gracious outpour ing of the Spirit which should pave the way for the end. It is the peculiar fulfillment of Joel 3. 1, 2. There had been earlier fulfillments, as on the day of Pentecost, but this is a larger and more definite one. There was nothing contrary to regular Church teaching in all this. The Church never held that the outpourings at the beginning of Christianity excluded later ones, and there was nothing at all heretical in the claim that these later ones were more important because presaging the end and preparing men for it. And as far as that end itself was con cerned, Professor Bonwetsch expresses the exact truth when he says1 that the "end of the world by the near advent of Christ was the universal Church faith. We meet it often enough, for ex ample, in a churchman like Cyprian." And though no prophecy of the Montanists depicted the second coming in the special form of chiliasm (the thousand-year reign of Christ on earth with his saints), yet if it had, it would have been noth- 1 In his important Geschichte des Montanismus, Erlangen, 1881, p. 77, 66 Crises in the Early Church ing peculiar, for eminent Christians like Justin and Tertullian were perfectly at home in that idea. The Montanists did indeed prophesy the coming down of the kingdom on Mount Pepuza, but their main thought was the general Christian one, namely, the ultimate glorification of man in body and soul in the presence of God. It was in the realm of discipjline perhaps that the Montanist movement met the most decisive opposition. Here the intention was simply to carry through the logical consequences of its theology. If Christ is soon to appear, then cer tainly it becomes Christians to watch and be sober, to deny themselves, and to take up their cross daily and follow Jesus. The methods of this cross-bearing were in the atmosphere of the time, and partially suggested by what I have spoken of above (p. 40) as an ascetic strain in Christianity itself. But in Montanism they were relentlessly laid down as indispensable conditions of the spir itual life, the true preparation for the Parousia. There must be no truckling with the world, no half measures, but the world must be cast out and crucified. First, in regard to marriage. It is a fact that Montanism had a view of marriage heathen and not Christian. That marriage and all that is legitimately connected with it is not only per missible but honorable, as much so in its sphere as prayer and worship, is fundamental in Chris- The Montanist Crisis 67 tianity (1 Cor. 9. 5; Heb. 13. 4). According to this, a virtuous married life is just as high a state in God's sight as virginity. This principle was rejected by the Montanists, as it soon came to be rejected by the Church. They explicitly re jected only a second marriage, but that re jection, like the Church's for ministers, was founded on a view of the physical side of the mar riage relation absolutely heathen. "You cannot have a perfect Christianity there," they said. The prophetess Prisca praised the Montanists as the Virgin.1 Sexual purity (that is, abstinence) is the most important condition for the reception of the Spirit, for only a holy servant can serve with holiness.2 Of course men are permitted to marry, but this only on account of human weak ness: a human ordinance, not as a divine pre scription, an affair not of the authority of the Lord, but of human valuation or determination.3 Perfect virginity is the ideal.4 Marriage is a kind of whoredom, only law makes the differ ence.6 Tertullian did, indeed, at one time see the matter rightly.8 But he came to feel with his brother Montanists that the further leading of the Spirit had brought the Church to the point where, with the impending end, a more searching ' Eusebius, Hist. Eccl, 5. 18, 3. s Tertullian, De Exhortatione Castitatis, 10. * Tertullian, De Monogamia, 3. * De Exhortatione Castitatis, 3, 4; De Monogamia, 3. 6 De Exhortatione Castitatis, 9. ' De Anima, 27. 68 Crises in the Early Church ethic was on the conscience. This was not in tended as a dogmatic rejection of marriage, for Montanism did not wish here to leave the ground of the Church. The heathen element which it emphasized — not, of course, as heathen, but in the highest Christian interest — was really a part of the Church and soon came to be emphatically so, as we see in monasticism, which was already in the air, and in the great saint and scholar Jerome. Nor did Montanism try to carry out the full logical result of its principles, but only to make real the forms of piety and moral ideals already in the Church. At the bottom the Mon tanist and the general Church ideas of marriage were the same. Both Montanism and the Church had in principle introduced — the one for all ear nest believers, the other for the clergy — a new law and theory of Christianity. The Montanists had also regular fast days in addition to those of the Church, and those of the latter they made more strict and binding. Be sides these they had two weeks of half fast (xerophagia) , in which they abstained from meat, broth, soft fruits, wine, and from the bath. In regard to other matters, the Montanists sharpened Church customs. Women, including virgins, attended divine service veiled, as in Greek lands. Therefore there was no necessity for any ordinance on that subject in Asia Minor. In Africa, however, only married women went The Montanist Crisis 69 veiled, a fact which gave occasion for the demand for the veiling of virgins, for which Tertullian speaks in his De Virginibus Velandis. On the crowning of soldiers the Montanists, as might be expected, took a negative attitude, in this having on their side the tradition of the Church. Mar tyrdom must not be avoided by flight. Church discipline must be kept taut. As a rule, in the Church the three great sins of murder, apostasy, and fornication were not forgiven ; that is, those guilty were not taken in again, but placed in life long penitence and commended to the mercy of God. But exceptions were made, especially by the intercession of martyrs. Montanism in Asia Minor discouraged readmittance, except at the word of the prophet, and except, probably, in the case of minor sins. In Africa the Montanists roundly denied any possibility of Church for giveness for mortal sins. This forgiveness must be left to God.1 Did Montanism have any trouble with the polity of the Church, especially with the develop ment of the episcopate? Did it hark back to the simpler, nonepiscopal forms of early times? Only indirectly and through its emphasis on the prophets. What it wanted was a moral and spir itual reformation on the lines of the earlier time as interpreted to living men by the living Spirit, and it was not concerned, in the first place, with 1 See Tertullian, De Pudicitia, and Bonwetsch, pp. 112-118. 70 Crises in the Early Church organization. But a spiritual conception of the Church is always unfavorable to the episcopal or hierarchical, as it exalts the first-hand rela tion of the believer to God. For that reason Churches that have been great religious forces have been more or less democratic, either in spirit or in form or in both. So it was with the Montanist movement. It said that the nature of the Church is not determined by grace mediated by officials (the Catholic view), but that grace comes through the piety of the members who re ceive prophetic leading; and the government of the Church does not stand in the hands of the officials, such as bishops, but, rather, in those whom the Spirit freely uses as the organs of his inspiration. One could be a bishop and only a psychic, and so unworthy of a decisive voice in the religious affairs of the Church ; only the pneu matics in the special sense, that is, the prophets, are the qualified possessors of the powers of the keys. Besides, it is the inevitable tendency of officialism to broaden the Church morally, to make it more liberal, more lax in regard to sin ners in the fold — especially rich sinners — and to accommodate the Church to the spirit of the times for the sake of enlarging its influence. That is what the bishops did about A. D. 150. Montanism was opposed to that through and through. It is only the Spirit-filled men in the Church who have the right to look after all mat- The Montanist Crisis 71 ters of supreme religious importance. Only the men who are receiving the larger revelations which the Spirit is giving to-day before the end comes — only these have the powers of the keys. Montanism was not interested in throwing over board the episcopate as such ; only indirectly did it work against it. In this respect the early his tory of Methodism much resembled it in its atti tude toward the polity of the Church of England. Finally, the question comes: Did the Church do well to fight Montanism and cast it out? Should the Church have hailed the Montanist crisis as a providential deliverance from her in creasing worldliness, joined with it, and guided it to beneficent spiritual results for herself? We naturally sympathize with the religious earnest ness of the Montanist prophets, and their uncom promising attitude of opposition to every appear ance of evil. However it may have been in Montanus's day, whoever has read the writings of Tertullian and Cyprian knows that the Church was sadly in need of a radical reformation.1 But for all that, I must feel that the Church was guided by a true instinct in rejecting the "New Prophecy," the success of which in the long run would probably have been more disastrous than the progressive Catholicizing of the Church. For, first, the Church was wise in holding herself open to a new light on the second coming of 1 See, for instance, chapter v of my Cyprian, 1906, pp. 47-57. 72 Crises in the Early Church Christ. The assembly of the saints at Pepuza to receive the Lord is not in God's order. There is nothing for mankind in that. Perhaps the Church was illogical in refusing to go to Pepuza, but she was really following the better light (John 4. 21, 23) . The only true preparation for the coming is doing one's daily tasks in the spirit of the Coming One. The first Church had mis understood not the fact but the time and method of the coming, and history — that is, God — was now teaching her a larger lesson. To go to Pepuza would be to turn back the hands on the clock of God's providence. Nor was the Church in error in not heeding the prophetic voices of Montanus, Prisca, and Maximilla. Prophecy was a thoroughly Chris tian institution, as we have seen, and the Mon tanists were orthodox in emphasizing it. But here, again, history was leading the Church to other paths. The Church had the Old Testa ment ; she had here and there many books of the New Testament (I do not here refer to any doc trine of the canon) ; and it was divine guidance which was bringing believers more and more face to face with the written Word, and leaving in the background the immediate revelations of the prophets. In that way the Spirit testifies of the Christ, and to have him brought home to man is worth all the revelations in the world. Besides, two facts made the Montanist prophecy sus- The Montanist Crisis 73 pected: (1) Its ecstatic character. As I have said, this was a common characteristic of Chris tian prophecy; the Montanists in this respect were not innovators. But they emphasized this character as a special mark of genuine revela tion, and it is evident that that special form of prophecy was disappearing. And it was in the divine plan that it should disappear, the sooner the better. (2) The Montanist prophecy claimed to be a higher revelation than the New Testa ment, not different, nor a substitute for it (ex cept where it contradicted it),1 but growing out of it, climaxing it, and really a grander and fuller message. Montanism, as I have said, was en tirely in harmony with the Rule of Faith, was in perfect alignment with the belief of the Church,2 but also claimed to be a more perfect revelation than any heretofore granted. Ritschl, who gave a penetrating and on the whole just estimate of the Montanist movement in one of the great books of modern times, says3 that the "Montanists assert that they have in the New Prophecy re ceived a revelation of God through the Spirit, which, in that it is distinguished from the revela tion in Christ and under certain circumstances is set over against it, makes a claim to a higher validity than that which Christians generally i Tertullian, De Exhortatione Castitatis, 6. 2 De Virginibus Velandis, 1 ; De Monogamia, 2. • Die Enstehung der Altkatholischen Kirche, 2 Aufl., 1857, p. 462. 74 Crises in the Early Church have hitherto thought to be the highest." It is the highest step to which revelation has yet at tained, and as such is, of course, binding on all. So the new disciplinary decrees which the Spirit sanctions are the ripe fruit designed for the per fection of the Church. It is evident from this how different is Montanism from Methodism, whose glory it was to proclaim original Chris tianity in all its essential and spiritual elements, and even from Quakerism, which never placed the inner voice above the Word. And inasmuch as the content of the New Prophecy did not show itself to be superior to the revelation of Christ, I cannot but feel that it was a healthy instinct which finally rejected it, however much we sym pathize with its moral enthusiasm and its mar velous faith. It is of the essence of Christianity that it is a progressive religion. That does not mean that it progresses away from the truth, but with the truth and in the truth to ever larger truth, and to new forms of life and achievement. Nor does it mean that it gets away from the historic facts (the incarnation, the bodily resurrection of Christ, etc.) into a realm of dreams and specula tions, but, rooted in the facts, it grows ever larger in the thoughts and reasonings of men. Montanism denied that fundamental fact in Christianity — progress — and so died as it de served to die. Purer than the Church, it yet had The Montanist Crisis 75 less promise for the future than the Church, which, though morally and doctrinally corrupt, in its devotion to Christ and the apostles had the earnest of a better day, the seeds of a new and grander life. CHAPTER V The Monarchian Crisis : or, Who is Jesus Christ? The fact that in Christ believers had a divine Saviour and Lord rested in the general conscious ness of the early Church, but how to relate him to the supreme and only God, to God the Father, was not thought through. Was he from eternity a part of the essence of God? If so, in what sense? Was he a cosmical Spirit who in eter nity came out from the being of God? Was he the Logos, or Word, or hypostatic so-called "per sonal" principle of expression or creation or re demption, of communication, of light, of truth, of love, etc.? Or was he God himself in another mode, the Eternal Father in human form, in re- demptional manifestation? Was he a heavenly created Being who was incarnated and endowed with the Divine Spirit for his work? Or, finally, was he a man simply, whether born miraculously or not, who received a wonderful endowment from God, either at his birth or at his baptism? The reader will notice that the thought behind all these questions is that of some mysterious actual divinity, in the case of some of them of a substantial identity with God, of others of the supreme God himself, and of others of a moral 76 The Monarchian Crisis 77 elevation to God or interpenetration with God. In all cases a kind of divinity is preserved. The modern notion of Christ as only a finely endowed spiritual teacher of beautiful and lofty character, a kind of better Wesley, a notion which springs from the modern prejudice to the supernatural, did not exist in the old Church. An eminent historian of the liberal school in troduces Monarchianism in this way. The prob lem of Christianity is the Person of its Founder. It was a common conviction among the early Christians that in him there was a perfect reve lation of God, and that one must think of him as one thinks of God,1 though as to his actual relation to God and man there was more or less wavering. Some teachers, such as Bishop Ignatius of Antioch (about A. D. 110), simply set God and Christ in one, without mean ing to deny the real humanity of Jesus; others taught that in him a preexistent heavenly Being (a God, or Divine Spirit, or Word) had come in the flesh;2 others that he was a man in whom God through his holy Christ Spirit had taken his abode and could thus be worshiped.3 The second view came out victorious because it was in har mony with the rising philosophic Logos (Word) idea. The Apologists, the antignostic theolo- 1 uc irepi Qeov, Ancient Homily ™ "2 Clem." Compare Pliny'a quasi deo, Epistle 10. 96 (97). " Ancient Homily, • So this historian interprets Hennas (A. D. 150), 78 Crises in the Early Church gians, and the Alexandrians share in different degrees the idea of a divine self-unfolding in which the Logos is thought of as a second potency or hypostasis ("person") gone out from God and subordinated to him. This idea was the first common achievement of Christian thinkers. But among the simple ones it was looked upon with suspicion, because they were afraid that it was too high strung philosophically, and would en danger faith in one God, in whom, as taught in the Rule of Faith, all believed. "We hold a monarchy [one only supreme Deity]," they said.3 Other attempts were made to solve the Person ot Christ by avoiding anything that looked like ditheism, some of them by lessening the deity of Christ, others by lessening his humanity; and both classes of attempts were called Monarchian- ism, though originally the name was used only of the second.2 It is a favorite contention of so-called liberal scholars that the belief in the divinity of Christ, based on the Trinitarian conception of God, arose from borrowing Jewish theophanies, or God- manifestations, and philosophical ideas of the Greeks, and clothing them with Christian dress; and that the spring of the Monarchian movement was in part a reaction against such high-flown notions in favor of a simpler faith. Thus Har- 1 Tertullian, Adversus Praxeam, 3. * Von Schubert in his edition of Moller, KG., 1892, p, 268f. The Monarchian Crisis 79 nack says,1 that the above belief corresponded to the explanation of the Old Testament theoph- anies, which was taken over by the Alexan drian fathers, and which proved so effective in apologetical use. The Christian Son-of-God doc trine could be most easily accepted by educated heathen in the shape of the Logos doctrine. See the notable confession of Celsus 2. 31 : "If really, according to your teaching, the Word is the Son of God, then we agree with you." This belief in the divinity of Christ is supported by the wit ness of Paul and by a row of primitive writings whose authority was becoming more and more absolute, and — what is not the least — it could with little pains be classified in the same order with the cosmological and theological principles which as the foundation for a rational Christian theology had been borrowed from the religious philosophy of the time. Where belief in the divine Logos for explanation of the origin and history of the world was taken up, there it was already decided by what means the divine honors and the sonship of God of the Redeemer are alone to be determined. In this way the theologians have nothing at all to fear for their monotheism. For the eternal Substance lying back of the world — so they thought of the Deity — can repre- 1 In his elaborate article on Monarchianism (pp. 33) in the third edition of the Herzog Realencyklopadie (edited by Hauck), vol. xiii (1903), pp. 305, 306. 80 Crises in the Early Church sent and unfold himself in different subjects. He can communicate his peculiar uncreated being to different bearers, without being emptied or in his being divided. Finally, the theologians had nothing to fear for the "deity" of Christ, in whom the incarnation of that Logos was to be seen. For the conception of the Logos was capable of being filled with the most manifold content, and for its skillful treatment there was the most abundant preparation. This conception could fit every change and increase of religious in terest, every deepening of speculation, as well as every need of worship — yes, even the new re sults of biblical exegesis. Step by step it re vealed itself as the most convenient variable, which could be immediately determined by every new quantity which was taken up in theological advance. In fact, it came to have a content which was in the sharpest opposition to the thoughts out of which the conception itself sprang, that is, a content which almost com pletely hid the cosmological origin of the con ception. But it lasted long, until this was reached. As long as the Logos was used as a formula under which one conceived it as the original pattern of the world or as the reasonable world law, so long there did not entirely cease a mistrust of the propriety of the conception for fixing the deity of Christ. For it was the deity itself in the Redeemer which the pious wished to The Monarchian Crisis 81 see, and nothing less. Athanasius was the first who made that possible for them by his interpre tation of the formula of the Logos, but, at the same time, if he did not bring the whole concep tion to naught, he really placed it in the back ground (that is, he shelved the ideas that con nected the Logos with the world creation, etc., for those which connected it with the redemption and the Redeemer). And the history of Chris tology from Athanasius to Augustine is the his tory of the substitution of the conception of the Son (as the "other I" of God) for that of the Logos, which, of course, still bore many traits of the old Logos conception. Thus the explana tions of Harnack. All this is most interesting and there is enough truth in it to make it plausible. But two or three other things might be said: (1) It ought not to be anything against a Christian truth — in this case the deity of Christ as the Word or Ex pression or Communicating Love and Power or Mediator or World-side, of God, in eternal hypo static union and communion with him, the con ception of God as a Complex, as a manifold Life instead of a bare unit (Mohammedanism) — that it fitted in with the highest thoughts of Jew and pagan, was prepared for by them, and was the completion and flowering out of their best con ceptions. The kinship of this truth with the highest reaches of Jewish or pagan philosophy 82 Crises in the Early Church should, rather, commend it to those who look upon God as the inspirer and teacher of all his children. (2) But this truth was not borrowed from Jew or Greek. It was part of the original consciousness of the Church, borne in upon be lievers by their Christian experience, by the lead ing of the Spirit, who, it will not be denied, took of the things of Christ and revealed them unto them, and by their daily walk with Christ. It was, indeed, enlarged and deepened on the in tellectual and literary side by the Old Testament, by the later Jewish Alexandrian teachers, by the best things that Greek philosophy had to offer; but all this had only to do with the form, the unfolding, the apologetic statement, the theolog ical shaping, not with the content or essence of the doctrine. "All the truth that you have in your impersonal Logos, or personified Wisdom or Power, etc.," said apostles and others, "we have in Christ, the true Word, the true Revelation and Life of God." (3) The conception of Christ which believers had was not that he had received something from the Substance that lies. back. of t-he^Wofld, as this Substance unfolds himself or itself to different individuals, but that he was himself the peculiar and only begotten Son of God. (4) Their conception of Christ as the Word did not spring from cosmological specula tions but from the conviction — was it not in spired by the Spirit? — that he who was their life The Monarchian Crisis 83 was also the life of the universe, and he who made them made the~world. (5) It was not a trans formation or bringing to naught of the original doctrine of the deity of Christ (the Word, etc.) that, as it is alleged, it went forward from a cos mological to a redemptional reference. Both existed either implicitly or explicitly in the finest and devoutest souls. One was only the reverse or deeper side of the other. At the same time it is interesting to note that Harnack acknowledges that the truth of the deity of Jesus went back to Paul, the first literary champion of Christianity, who claims to have received his gospel direct from Christ, and that it went back to the early Christian witnesses, whose writings were ever being invested with absolute authority in the Church. He also acknowledges that the doctrine was the deepest, the worthiest, the most satisfy ing to religious feeling and needs, the most mani fold in its response to the growing life of Chris tian men, and the most fitting to meet the search- ings and speculations of Christian thinkers; the doctrine which filled most truly the devotions and worship of Christian saints, as well as every advancing knowledge of the Bible. And with every advance in Christian theology that doctrine was not only not outgrown, but it was there to make the advance fruitful for life and for death, for comfort and for light, for salvation and for immortality. 84 Crises in the Early Church Loofs, who belongs to the same general school as Harnack, to whom he dedicates his book, ac knowledges1 that a Trinitarian conception goes back to the New Testament, a conception which saw in the historical Christ and in the Holy Spirit an "economical" unfolding of the self-re vealing God, and, indeed, so that the Logos ap pearing in the Christ, although as Spirit one with God, was before ages (aeons) to be distinguished from him, while the Spirit of God or of Christ in an analogous way was looked upon as a third revelation of God which first went out from the historical Christ ( John 20. 22 ) and is working in the Church. I do not ask whether this covers the New Testament doctrine, but it is interesting as a statement of an eminent scholar of the right Ritschlian wing that that doctrine is a Trinita rian one. It was the noble aim of the Monarchians to prove at all hazards the truth of one God, while, at the same time, guarding in some form the divinity of Jesus. First, a word as to what are called dynamistic (6vvay,ig, power) Monarchians. These start from the historical human person of Jesus; but, knowing that Christ was more than a man, they guarantee the divinity in him by asserting an indwelling power of God. Among these are to be counted the Alogi^aT little com pany of people in Asia Minor, the Boston of the ¦ Dogmengeschichte, 4 Aufl., 1906, pp. 137, 138. The Monarchian Crisis 85 ancient Church, where all kinds of ideas were moving and fermenting, who seem to have been called out by a reaction from the Montanist em phasis on the Spirit, with the various crude ideas which were connected with that emphasis, which was founded partly on John's Gospel. They therefore threw overboard that Gospel and the Logos (Word) Christology which it proclaimed. They were the first rationalistic critics of the New Testament, calling attention to the differ ences between John's and other Gospels, and on the strength of these differences, and of the doc trine of the person of Christ contained in the former (though at bottom no different from the others), rejecting it. How thoroughly out of accord they were with the Christian current is seen by their utter repudiation of the Montanists as an unchristian party. More important was Theodotus, the learned leather-maker, who about A. D. 190 came from Byzantium to Rome. Epiphanius calls him (54. 1) a "torn-off rag of the Alogi heresy," who taught that Jesus was a man, who by the divine decree was born of the Holy Spirit from a virgin, and upon this most pious and just man the Spirit came down at the baptism in the Jordan. This Spirit which thus came down and entered into Jesus is called the Son of God, or Christ. In consequence of this endowment, or kind of post-natal incarnation, Jesus did his miracles. However, it is not to be 86 Crises in the Early Church called an incarnation properly, and this Jesus Christ is not to be called God, or at the most, as some said, only after the resurrection. Although these men seemed to have in other matters the general faith of the Church, and held to the com mon books of the New Testament, including John, and entertained ideas on Christ which some think not far from those of Hermas, whose book enjoyed great favor in Church circles, yet they were excluded from Church fellowship — at least Theodotus was— by Victor, bishop of Rome (A. D. 190ff.), because they made Christ a ¦tyiXbg dvdpomog a mere man. This charge was fair as to Christ's origin, but was not fair as to his later relations to God, which were not at all that of a man. The later inflow of the divine Spirit into Christ made him a kind of God. Under Bishop Zephyrinus (A. D. 202ff.) they formed their own Church society in Rome. f The leather-worker of Byzantium, whose fol lowing was apparently small, whose idea of a human Christ only later divinely filled made no appeal to the general Church consciousness, has had his sweet revenge. For his Christ is coming to be the Christ of many in the so-called orthodox Churches. So long as you hold to the single na ture of Christ — that he is a man only as to his origin and essence — then you can admit almost anything desired as to the fullness with which his beautiful and simple soul received the divine. The Monarchian Crisis 87 Throw out the miraculous conception, for the modern man, it is said, will know nothing of the supernatural; throw out his essential one ness wjth_ God, for the modern man does not know nor care anything about "metaphysics," for anything above historical phenomena and their natural causes; but after that bring in as much of God to explain his marvelous personality and influence as you like. This is the new Christol ogy, which still claims to guard Christ's divin ity; but it is as old as the leather-worker of the Bosporus of the second century. ) But it has never been explained why only one human ever received so much of God as to be either worshiped as God by his followers, or to practically take the place of God for those who would not wish to admit that they worship him. For Theodotus's Christ as a common man1 an idea which Loofs well says (p. 184) was with right looked upon as contrary to the tradition received by the Church, to have met this fate was a far greater miracle than the Christ received from the first in the Church — the Christ who was both man and the Son of God. The other class of Monarchians, to whom prop erly the name belonged, were the modalistic Monarchians, sometimes called the Patripassians (those who believed the Father suffered). Here the start was made from the deity of Christ, and 1 Koivbc hvdpomoc, Hippolytus, Philosophumena, 10. 23. 88 Crises in the Early Church from that as a basis the argument was made backward on the universally received assump tion of only one God to the virtual denial of Christ's^ full humanity, thatnCEfist himself is the I Almighty God and Father, or a mode of him. This doctrine also arose in Asia Minor, and from there sprang over to Rome. Apparently, its first representative was ^No&tus, of Smyrna, in the latter part of the second century. In the region of Polycarp, the pupil of Saint John, where also memories of Ignatius were present, in that Asia Minor where the idea of the absolute deity of Christ was reigning, witnessed by the naive placing of Christ and God in the same category by Ignatius and Irenaeus, a placing which goes back through these and Polycarp to John (Paul) and to Christ — in that region it was easy by over emphasizing his divinity to lose sight of his abso lute humanity, guaranteed by the incarnation, and to make Christ only another mode or form of the one God (the Father). This Noetus did. But it was a true instinct which made the Church as jealous for the real humanity of Christ as for his real divinity, and therefore Noetus was ex cluded from fellowship in spite of his question, "What harm do I glorifying the Christ?" A follower of Noetus and an enemy of the Mon tanists, Praxeas, went to Rome and introduced the doctrine there. Thence he went to Car thage, where, "many sleeping in the simplicity The Monarchian Crisis 89 of doctrine"1 (compare the condition of many Christians to-day over against the Christian Science propaganda), he found a large en trance and raised up against him the most power ful mind of the early Church before Origen, Ter tullian, who met him with arguments (before A. D. 202) and compelled him to retract. Praxeas was a man of no small talent, as in Rome after the bishop there had acknowledged the pro phetic gifts of Montanus, Prisca, and Maximilla, and had bestowed his peace upon the churches of Asia and Phrygia, Praxeas persuaded him, as the Judaizers persuaded his alleged predecessor, Peter, to a change of course, to the deep disgust of Paul (Gal. 2. 11-14), to withdraw his friendly letter and change his cordial feeling, besides ap parently inducing the bishop to a favorable atti tude as to his doctrine of Christ. For, as Ter tullian says (Adv. Prax., 1) in a stinging sen tence, "By this Praxeas did a twofold service to the devil in Rome: he drove away prophecy and brought in heresy ; he put to flight the Paraclete and crucified the Father." Not only so, but, ac cording to Hippolytus, one of the greatest Church fathers of the third century, not only this bishop of Rome (probably Victor), but also his suc cessor, Zepyrinus (about A. D. 202-218), whom Hippolytus calls. — we hope with exaggeration — "an ignorant and shamefully corrupt man," and 1 Tertullian, Adversus Praxeam, 1. 90 Crises in the Early Church again an "ignorant and illiterate person," be came hopelessly involved in the doctrine of Noetus; and even more his successor, Callistus (about A. D. 218), a thorough knave according to Hippolytus, was carried away by the same Christology.1 It is not against these Roman Popes that, of little mental equipment, untrained in theological distinctions, and holding firmly to the old Church teaching of the divinity of Christ, they should have been misled by the plausible dis ciples of Noetus, and that in desiring to maintain the deity of the Saviour they should have leaned backward, so to speak, and become practically or actually Patripassians, as the great bishop affirms. It is only as we measure them by the later dogma of papal infallibility, first officially affirmed in 1870, that they appear incompetent leaders of the Church, blindly leading it into what came to be roundly rejected as heresy. They were not to blame for that dogma, which is shat tered on their history, that is, if we are to assume the substantial accuracy of Hippolytus. The modalistic Christology went a step farther. \ AVhat is called the Father and the Son is one and the same, but the Son is not an arbitrary change of name, but expresses the mode to which God •^determines himself. God himself makes himself a Son. He is born his own Son. According to the time he is either Father or Son. On the cross 1 Philosophumena, 9. 2, 6, 7. The Monarchian Crisis 91 he gave up his spirit to himself; that is, God transforms himself into different modes. If we may believe accounts which are late (Basil, Athanasius), Sabellius was one of the principal men of this view. One and the same is Father and Son. God appears now as Father, now as Son, now as Holy Spirit, according to the neces sity of the divine activity. How far these Per sons or appearances or energies are to be looked upon as the successive coming forth or revelation of the one God in the creative, redeeming, and sanctifying work, cannot be said with certainty. Callistus, bishop of Rome A. D. 217ff ., though really a Patripassian, tried to make a compro mise and bring peace to the Church. In holding to the sameness of essence of Father and Son he satisfied the modalistic Monarchians, but he struck the clever middle ground, namely, that the Father did not suffer, but only suffered with the Son, who in this relation is to be distin guished from the Father, who is Spirit, while the Son is Spirit and flesh, or, briefly, flesh. Hip polytus says (9. 7) that Callistus "alleges that the Logos himself is Son and himself is Father, and though called by a different title he is in reality one indivisible Spirit. The Father is not one Person and the Son another, but they are one and the same. All things are full of the divine Spirit. The Spirit which became incarnate in the virgin is not different from the Father, but 92 Crises in the Early Church one and the same. The Father who subsisted in (the Son) himself, after he had taken to himself our flesh, raised it to the nature of the Deity, by bringing it into union with himself, and made it one; so that the Father and the Son must be styled one God; and this Person being one can not be two." In this way Callistus contends, Hippolytus goes on to say, that the "Father suf fered along with the Son, for he does not wish to assert that the Father suffered and is one Person, being careful to avoid blaspheming the Father. Senseless and knavish fellow, who improvises blasphemies in every direction only that he may not seem to speak in violation of the truth and is not abashed at being at one time betrayed into the tenet of Sabellius, whereas at another in the doctrine of Theodotus." It is evident, what ever exaggeration and bitterness may breathe through the great orthodox bishop's words, that his contemporary moral and theological enemy Callistus was trying to carry water on both shoulders. Von Schubert well describes (i, 237) his formula as an iridescent or changing color (schillernde) one, and neither Sabellius on the one hand nor Hippolytus on the other was satis fied with it, while Tertullian directs a powerful book against the followers of Praxeas, "whom we may well understand to be no one but Callistus and his people." Anyhow, Monarchianism in the West could not stand the onsets of such trench- The Monarchian Crisis ' 93 ant pens as Tertullian and Hippolytus, and was given a finishing stroke in the book on the Trinity by Novatian, independent bishop of Rome, A. D. 251. In the East the mighty spirit of Origen helped to kill it. But it may be that the facing- two-ways formulas of the slippery ecclesiastical politician Callistus were a kind of bridge for the quiet passing over into the Church of the regular Christology, a doctrine of the person of Christ which saved both his humanity and divinity, which went back from the theologians of the first part of the third century through Polycarp, John, Paul, to Christ himself. That preserved the in terest the dynamistic Monarchians were jealous for, the actual manhood of Jesus, providing for his deity in a secondary way, as well as the in terest their modalistic brethren felt uppermost — the absolute Godhead of Jesus. I cannot understand the insistence of Harnack in making1 the conquering Christology the pro duct of the Platonic-Stoic philosophy, except in the sense that all truth is one. Men like Tertul lian and Hippolytus were not inclined to heathen notions as such. No; it was the consciousness of standing in the stream of a living tradition that flowed from the fountain head, in the pos sessing of a Christian experience that meant a divine Redeemer, and face to face with authentic 1 Realencyklopadie fiir protestantische Theologie, 3 Aufl., vol. xiii, pp. 306, 307. 94 Crises in the Early Church documents that from the earliest time bore wit ness that Christ had not only come in the flesh, but that He who had come was the Son of God ; and the Christology that pressed back Monarchi- anism was the most scientific, the most rational, the inevitable expression of these facts. Nor is Harnack right in saying that the history of the fight with Monarchianism is the "history of the supplanting of the historical Christ by the pre- existent, of the living by the imaginary," and that in doctrine it "is the victorious attempt to keep the Christian faith of the laity in leading strings by a theological formula they could not understand, and to set the mystery of the person (of Christ) in the place of the person." Just the contrary is the fact. It was exactly as the genu ine Gospels and Epistles were being more and more scattered and studied, as the knowledge of them was being more and more deepened and en larged, and thus the facts of the historical Christ were becoming more and more a part of the gen eral knowledge, it was exactly when this process was going on that the true doctrine of Christ as over against Theodotus and Noetus was sinking into the universal Christian mind. And would it be said that the fantastic conception of him of Byzantium, namely, that at some one time in his experience God poured himself into Jesus, so that after that time he was divine while not be fore, was a more living, a more real, a more his- The Monarchian Crisis 95 torical conception than that of his opponents? Much less the conception of Noetus of successive transformations of God the Father. Did they correspond with the inner experience of Jesus as set forth in the Gospels? I do not say that there is no mystery in the person of Jesus. Every per sonality is an unfathomable sea. The only differ ence between the mystery of the Monarchians and that of their opponents is that the latter was rational and satisfied the facts, while the former was not and did not. I cannot share, therefore, Harnack's sympathy with the vanquished in this fight. As grossly exaggerated also is Harnack's statement that with the victory of the Logos Christology the "thought of the real human per sonality of the Redeemer was condemned as eccle siastically insufferable." The actual human per sonality of Jesus was fundamental in the Church. In fact, that was one reason for her conflict with both Gnosticism and Monarchianism. But the Church saw that such a real human person ality was not inconsistent with a preexistence in essential oneness with God, but was guaranteed by the incarnation. It is our task to find a place for all the facts. The scheme of the modalistic Monarchians has had a fascination for minds of varied type. An eminent Congregational clergyman writes me that he still holds the doctrine of the Trinity, though he would state it in a modalistic form. 96 Crises in the Early Church It is also said that many in so-called orthodox Churches are really Sabellians. It is not the place here to make an argument in systematic theology. But for those who are drawn to Noetus and his school I would ask that they read the literature his views called out, and to con sider whether there can be, after all, ajay^real modal Trinity unless it rests back on animma- nent__Trinity. But there can be many God- endowed men. CHAPTER VI The Chiliastic Crisis : or, Shall Christianity Fulfill Its Mission by Leavening or by Catastrophe? Chiliasm (xl>\ioi, a thousand; singular, %ikla, used with collective nouns) is the name generally applied to the belief in the thousand-year reign of Christ in person on earth, after which comes the end. The doctrine has assumed large im portance in modern times by an active propa ganda in tracts, pamphlets, books, conferences, conventions, etc., and the claim is frequently made that this was the regular belief of the whole Church in the first centuries. It is one aspect of the second-coming-of-Christ doctrine, which has now three forms : ( 1 ) Christ is never coming in person at all, his second coming having been fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem and of the Jewish Church-State as such in A. D. 70, or in similar historical catastrophes, and that his coming is really his Presence (napovala, Parousia) which is not to be interpreted as a visible and external act, but as his spiritual working in the world. I think the first to set forth this view was the Rev. Dr. Israel P. Warren, editor of The Christian Mirror, Portland, Maine, an eminent Congregational minister, in his The Parousia 97 98 Crises in the Early Church (Portland, 1879, second edition, enlarged, 1884), whose view has able supporters in the Rev. Dr. J. Stuart Russell, a brother Congregationalist, in his The Parousia (London, 1887), and in the late Rev. Dr. William S. Urmy, of the California Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in his Christ Came Again, New York, 1900. The fact that Dr. Urmy was never compelled to re tract his opinion or withdraw his book, and never tried for heresy, has the significance of a revolu tion in the attitude of the Methodist Church to ward heresy. For, speaking historically, it is hardly too much to say that the belief in Christ's first coming has not been more general, more firmly held, more a part of the consciously or un consciously held doctrinal possessions of the Church from the apostolic times till now, than the belief in his second coming at the end of the age or of the world (not simply in A. D. 70) for reign or for judgment or for both. The denying that is something like Kalthoff's denial that Christ ever existed. (2) Christ is coming at the end of the world to wind up the affairs of man kind, to judge the evil and the good, and to de liver over the kingdom to God the Father. (3) Christ is coming at the end of the first Christian world-age to reign in the world for a thousand years (interpreted strictly or loosely), when his saints shall reign with him in gladness and peace, when his kingdom shall win universal obedience, The Chiliastic Crisis 99 after which shall come the end. This is some times called premillennialism, or chiliasm, though it must be remembered that early chil iasm must not be charged with all the views of later teachers of the same trend. Chiliasm is generally associated with a belief in the visible return of Christ for the setting up of an earthly theocracy as the middle point of a perfect world-rule which belongs to Christianity as such, and which is a preparatory step for the other life. It includes annihilation of godless world-powers, which must be ruled by the godly, and generally a double resurrection — that of the pious for the thousand-year kingdom, and that of the rest of the dead for general judgment at the end. The doctrine was commonly thought of as meaning that the pious would have perfect en joyment of spiritual and physical blessings, and share Christ's rule over sinners, or men who do not partake of his glory. Of course the view has suffered various modifications, but, in general, it^ may be said that it rejects the idea of a normal historical development of Christianity, for the millennium is not the result of spiritual work and spiritual laws, but the sudden invasion of Christ and other-life conditions on this bank and shoal of time. Chiliasm is not, however, to be confounded with any special theory of the time of Christ's re turn. I have already referred to the general 100 Crises in the Early Church expectation of the early coming of Christ in the apostolic and post-apostolic times. Men who held that might not be chiliasts or premillenni- alists, though they doubtless often were. The indispensable note of the chiliast is the interme- diate world period of a thousand years under the Imposing and interesting auspices of the personal bodily reign of the Lord. Chiliasm certainly presented a fascinating program : one cannot be surprised at its wide vogue. What were its sources? Parseeism, the religion of Persia as reformed by Zoroaster, was the first to proclaim the thou sand-year reign, when the evil kingdom would be overthrown. Old Testament prophecy did not have the idea. "It simply promised a kingdom of the Messiah in which after a restoration of the Jewish state and uniting of all people in a com mon worship of Jehovah, the happiness of the improved nation would be manifested by external prosperity and glorified peace. Out of this pic ture of the future the materializing spirit of later Judaism, which interpreted the prophets in a sensuous way without distinguishing between fact and picture, took hold with preference of the political side, under pressure of the civil position. But this hope of the future received still a more transcendental character. The idea of world judgment and world destruction, of the resurrec tion of the dead, of the other life, obtained shape The Chiliastic Crisis 101 and influence. An opposition developed between this life and the other, between the old Jewish hope of a happy life of the pious in a happy land and new conceptions of a heavenly kingdom, be fore which the present world passes away. In the interest of overcoming this opposition, the idea of an intermediate kingdom (chiliasm) in which all earthly expectations would be satisfied, and upon which final joys of the other life would follow, may have risen. It was not the prevailing sentiment of the Jews in the time of Christ. Ac cording to Dan. 2. 44 and Psalms of Solomon 17. 4, the Messianic kingdom is the eternal and final one. But the chiliastic sentiment is present in the prophecy of the ten weeks in Enoch 93; 91. 12-19 ; in 4 Ezra 7. 28f ., and in the apocalypse of Baruch 40. 3. The sketch is the most complete in 4 Ezra : the last oppression, the advent of the Messiah, the war of the nations against the Mes siah and their overthrow, descent of the heavenly Jerusalem, gathering together of the scattered Israel, the four-hundred-year kingdom of the Messiah, the seven days silence, the renewing of the world, the general resurrection, the last Judgment, eternal salvation and eternal damna tion. With such an apocalyptic there went the reckoning of the world-periods. The later fa vorite reckoning in the Church of six thousand or seven thousand years was already met with in the translators of the Pentateuch, placed by 102 Crises in the Early Church Lagarde about B. C. 280, and then in the book of Enoch, chapter 33."1 For those readers who have not at their elbows these Apocryphal books of later Judaism I give the words or the tenor of the passages referred to. Psalms of Solomon 17. 4 (B. C. 65-40; to be distinguished from the odes of Solomon recently discovered and published by J. Rendel Harris) : "And the Kingdom of our God shall be over the Gentiles for ever [unto judgment]." Enoch 93 (perhaps B. C. 166-98) gives the seven weeks of sacred history and what will occur at the end of each. At the end of the seventh week the elect will receive sevenfold instruction concerning God's whole creation. Enoch 91. 12-19 gives the doings at the end of the eighth, ninth, and tenth weeks. "In the 10th week in the 7th part there will be the great eternal judgment, in which He will execute vengeance among the angels. And the first heaven will depart and pass away, and a new heaven will appear, and all the powers of the heavens will shine sevenfold forever. And after that there will be many weeks without num ber forever in goodness and righteousness, and sin will be no more mentioned forever." 4 Ezra or Esdras = 2 Ezra 7. 28ff. (after A. D. 70) : "For my own Jesus [better reading, Messias] shall be revealed with those that are with him, and they 1 Semisch-Bratke, art., "Chiliasmus," in Herzog-Hauck, 3 Aufl., vol. iii (1897), pp. 806, 807. The Chiliastic Crisis 103 that remain shall rejoice for four hundred years. And it shall come to pass after these years that my Son Christ shall die, and all men that have breath. And the world shall be turned into the old silence seven days, as in the first beginnings, so that no man shall be left. And it shall come to pass after seven days the world, that yet awaketh not, shall be raised up, and what is cor rupt shall die. And the earth shall restore those that are asleep in her, and the dust those that dwell in silence in it, and the chambers shall deliver those souls that were committed unto them. And the Most High shall be revealed upon the seat of judgment, and mercy shall pass away, and long suffering shall have an end; but judg ment only shall remain, and truth shall stand, and faith shall grow strong, and one's work shall follow, and one's reward shall be shown, and righteous dealings shall be awake, and unright eous dealings sleep [received text, rule] not." Apocalypse of Baruch 40. 3 (after A. D. 70, to be distinguished from the well-known Book of Baruch) : "And his principate will stand forever, until the world of corruption is at an end, and until the times aforesaid are fulfilled." Enoch 33 is probably a misprint for 93. Christ was no chiliast. In Mark 1. 15 he pro claims that the time of the coming of the kingdom is fulfilled, but of a provisionary kingdom, of a distinction between his and his Father's, he 104 Crises in the Early Church knows nothing. His return is no other than the final Judgment itself, which he himself is to carry out, until which the wheat and tares grow together (Matt. 13. 30, 41f.; 16. 27; 24; 25. llf., 31f.). The "resurrection of the just" (Luke 14. 14) does not issue in another world-period which goes before the final coming. With the final Judg ment there is united the world-renewing (Matt. 19. 28) . In the portrayal of the glory of the king dom of heaven he uses ideas and figures easily com prehended by everyone, describes the future con summation in phrases easily gotten hold of, and, instead of mystical suggestions, he comforts his own with the intimation that, according to place and condition, there is a connection between the highest earthly joy and the happiness of the Messianic time (Mark 10. 40; 13. 27; Matt. 5. 4; 8. 11; 22. 1-14; 25. 1-13; Luke 13. 29; 4. 15-24; 22. 16, 30). But as he earned the ingratitude of his people because he disappointed their sensu ous hopes, so he had to make clear to the Sad ducees (Mark 12. 24f.) that they knew neither the Scripture nor the power of God if they be lieved that the other life could and would only repeat the earthly world order, and no new spir itual order set in its place; and in his parting hour he had to bring home to his disciples the fact that the future joys of the kingdom of God are to be spiritual, or supersensuous, when he promised to them that in the consummated king- The Chiliastic Crisis 105 dom of God he would drink of the fruit of Christ vine "new," that is, not again, but as glorified. The Jewish Christians, of course, were open to appeal from apocalyptic, chiliastic visions, hopes, and beliefs. The New Testament as a whole is remarkably free from them. There is the famous passage in Rev. 20. 4ff., which has been both a starting and a returning point for any amount of speculation in this territory. Its true interpre tation I must turn over to exegetical scholars, though I must confess I have considerable sym pathy with the remark of Semisch-Bratke already quoted, that "with the difficulty of distinguish ing between picture and object (or fact) the chiliasm of the Apocalypse remains a hieroglyph, which, in spite of the intensive investigating work which that book has recently received, still awaits satisfactory solution." It is interesting that the later chiliasts did not build much on that passage, but generally on the views and visions of the Old Testament, which, in the lack of scientific exegesis, could be easily turned to their purpose. No doubt the persecutions were another factor in turning the mind to the delights of an earthly reign of Christ. As martyrdom was the sowing, so the kingdom of Christ was the great harvest day of the Church. From the afflictions of the present the gaze was fixed upon the coming thou sand years of joy. If we may believe a quotation 106 Crises in the Early Church in Eusebius1 the great heretic Cerinthus, a con temporary of John, was a strong realistic chil iast, and the views also existed in other societies of Jewish heretics. Among regular Church teachers also views partially chiliastic prevailed. Thus Barnabas (placed by Weizsacker and Lightfoot A. D. 70- 79, by Hilgenfeld A. D. 96-98, by others later), speaking of God resting after his six days' labor, says (chapter 15) : "He meaneth this, that in six thousand years the Lord shall bring all things to an end; for the day with him signifieth a thou sand years ; and this he himself beareth me wit ness, saying, Behold the day of the Lord shall be as a thousand years [2 Pet. 3. 3]. Therefore, children, in six days, that is, in six thousand years, everything shall come to an end." Com menting on "He resteth on the seventh day," he adds: "This he meaneth: when his Son shall come, and shall abolish the time of the Lawless One, and shall judge the ungodly, and shall change the sun and the moon and the stars, then shall he truly rest on the seventh day." Here we have a definite teaching of Christ's return at the end of six thousand years, but no statement of an earthly kingdom. The coming seems to bring the end. The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (about A. D. 100-125) believes firmly in the com ing, but says nothing of millennial reign. "May 1 Historica Ecclesiastica 3. 28, 2. The Chiliastic Crisis 107 grace come and this world pass away" (chapter 10). Speaking of the signs of the end (chapter 16) : "Then all created mankind shall come to the fire of testing, and many shall be offended and perish; but they that endure in their faith shall be saved by the Curse himself [compare Gal. 3. 13]. And then shall the signs of the truth ap pear ; first a sign of a rift in the heaven, then a sign of a voice of a trumpet, and, thirdly, a resur rection of the dead; yet not all, but as it was said : The Lord shall come and all his saints with him [Zech. 14. 5] . Then shall the world see the Lord coming upon the clouds of the heaven" (Matt. 24. 30). The same certainty of the end breathes in the Ancient Homily (= "2 Clement" A. D. 120-140, chapter 12), where the preacher says : "Let us therefore await the kingdom of God betimes in love and righteousness, since we know not the day of God's appearing. For the Lord himself, being asked by a certain person when his kingdom would come, said: when the two shall be one and the outside as the inside, and the male with the female, neither male nor fe male" (quotation probably from the Gospel of the Egyptians). Here also a silence as to the thousand-year kingdom. Papias of Hierapolis, said to have been a hearer of John the apostle, who wrote Exposition of Oracles of the Lord about A. D. 130, unfor tunately lost except for fragments, had a suffi- 108 Crises in the Early Church ciently sensuous idea of the kingdom. His de scription fairly makes one's head swim. Irenaeus (A. D. 160-180) quotes him (5. 33) : "The days will come in which vines shall grow, each having 10,000 shoots, and each shoot 10,000 branches, and on each branch again 10,000 twigs, on each twig 10,000 clusters, and on each cluster 10,000 grapes, and each grape when pressed shall yield twenty-five measures of wine. And when any of the saints shall have taken hold of one of their clusters, another shall cry, I am a better cluster ; take me, bless the Lord through me. Likewise a grain of wheat shall produce 10,000 heads, and every head shall have 10,000 grains, and every grain ten pounds of fine flour bright and clean, and the other fruits, seeds, and grass shall produce in similar proportions; and all the ani mals using the fruits which are products of the soil shall become in their turn peaceable and harmonious, obedient to men in all subjection." Papias does not here in so many words connect this fruitf ulness of the earth and quiet subjection of animals with the personal reign of Christ on earth, but it may fairly be assumed that the con nection exists. Irenaeus himself, a much heavier weight, assents heartily to Papias's faith, and adds on his own responsibility: "The blessing thus foretold belongs undoubtedly to the times of the kingdom, when the righteous shall rise from the dead and reign, and when, too, creation, The Chiliastic Crisis 109 renewed and freed from bondage, shall produce a wealth of food of all kinds from the dew of heaven and from the fatness of the earth." In his Dialogue with Trypho (about A. D. 145- 150), chapter 80, the question is put to Justin Martyr : Do you expect your people to be gathered together and made joyful with Christ and the patriarchs and the prophets, both the men of our nation and the proselytes? Justin replies that many are of this opinion, among others himself, but by no means all; for "many who belong to the pure and pious faith and are true Christians think otherwise." Still "I and others who are right-minded Christians in all points are as sured there will be a resurrection of the dead, of a thousand years in Jerusalem, which will then be built, adorned, enlarged, as the prophets Ezekiel and Isaiah and others declare." I can not but feel that there is a good deal of plausi bility in the remark of Harnack,1 to the effect that a "philosopher like Justin, with a bias to ward a Hellenic construction of the Christian religion, should, nevertheless, have accepted its chiliastic elements is the strongest proof that these enthusiastic expectations were inseparably bound up with the Christian faith down to the middle of the second century." They were cer tainly bound up with it in the thought of some, 1 Art., "Millennium," in Encyclopcedia Britannica, 9th edition, 1884, vol, xvi, p. 328. 110 Crises in the Early Church but Justin himself admits that they were not absolutely essential, as good Christians did not share them. On the other hand, in the writings of Ignatius, Polycarp, Tatian, Athenagoras, and Theophilus of Antiooh there is not a trace of the millennial faith. But perhaps one ought not to build too much on this silence, which may have been due, some suggest, to political caution. From the words quoted in Eusebius 5. 24, 5, con cerning Melito, bishop of Sardis about A. D. 160ff., "who lies in Sardis, awaiting the episco pate from heaven, when he shall rise from the dead," it has been supposed that he too was a chiliast. Tertullian belonged to this school, even independently of his Montanism (Contra Mar- cionem, 3. 24), as well as Hippolytus — two great names in Church history. Chiliasm broke on the spiritual ideas of the Alexandrian fathers. Matter was too much connected with evil to satisfy the lofty idealism of Origen. Therefore the end of redemption must be an entire doing away with the sensuous and rosy-tinted pictures of material bliss painted by the chiliasts. Origen looked upon all such things as stories of Jews or idolatry of the letter (De Principiis 2. 11 ) . Other forces were working against the millennial hope. Just as to-day a theory of evolution and the whole scientific trend is slowly undermining supernatural religion among many minds, so in the second and third The Chiliastic Crisis 111 centuries philosophical and theological thinking was getting beyond the reach of the old catastro phic faith, with its fantastic attachments. As I have shown, Montanism was a reaction against this new theology. The influence of the Alexan drian teachers was dead against the old views. An Egyptian bishop, Nepos, bounded into the breach to save the day for chiliasm in his book eXeyxog aXXeyopioruv (about A. D. 260). Bishop Dionysius, of Alexandria, came out against him, and proved that the prophets must be interpreted allegorically. In this fight the book of Revela tion was appealed to, and Dionysius felt that he must get that book thrown out of the canon of the Bible. He succeeded. "At the time of Eusebius the Greek Church was saturated with prejudice against the book and with doubts as to its can onicity. In the course of the fourth century it was removed from the Greek canon, and thus the troublesome foundation on which chiliasm might have continued to build was gotten rid of." So chiliasm died in the Greek Church, as well as many other Christian things much worthier of life. But the Latin theologians were faithful to the millennial tradition much longer, and by them also the Apocalypse of John was main tained without a doubt. But after the end of the fourth century chiliasm gradually disappeared. This was due to the influence of Greek theology, and to the altered political relations of the 112 Crises in the Early Church Church and world which seemed to give no place to the early hopes. History was teaching an other lesson. Augustine, the great bishop of Hippo (A. D. 3^5ff.) in north Africa, got hold of this idea, and with it brought in a new era. The actual Catholic Church is the eternal king dom of God which is to be set up in the world, and which he has set up, and there is no other. The millennial kingdom began when Christ came, and it is already in the world. The Church must step in and take its rights which the falling em pire is bequeathing to it. With these thoughts Augustine destroyed chiliasm as a faith of in telligent men. It still existed here and there, but it had had its day. Can there be any doubt that in this matter history is a better teacher than misinterpreted prophecy, a safer foundation than an inverted pyramid built on an obscure text of an obscure apocalypse? The kingdom of heaven shall be like unto leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal. That seems the divine plan, the divine philosophy. To work with all our powers to secure the progressive penetration of the world by Christ is both more rational and more Christian than to expect great things from a colossal stroke of state to bolster up a failing cause. But the end shall come and the Judg ment, but the times and seasons God has placed in his. own power. CHAPTER VII The Arian Crisis: or, Have We a Saviour as Divine as He is Human? Is Jesus Christ as truly divine as he is truly human? That was the question raised by the Arian crisis, and perhaps no more important question has ever been raised in the history of religion. On its answer Christianity itself hangs: whether it is one of many religions, a beautiful ethic, fine sentiments uttered by a Galilaean dreamer and prophet, a better Judaism, a better Stoicism, or whether it is the religion of the incarnation, of salvation from sin, of bound less hope and help for lost men and women, a spring of new life, an evangel for individuals as for nations, a message of light and of healing which proclaims that if the soul gets hold of Jesus Christ the arms of the Eternal God him self lifts him up. I do not think we should be frightened by the remark of the eminent Unitarian, Albert Reville, who, like many of his countrymen, long since left Calvin for Socinus, that "if the deity of Jesus Christ were essential to Christianity, this dogma would not have had a distinct history."1 Cer- 1 History of Dogma of Deity of Jesus Christ, tr. London, 1878, p 241. 113 114 Crises in the Early Church tainly, truth may have a history as well as error, and if it is a live truth it will grow. Historically, the only question is, Did the first Christians be lieve in the divinity of Christ? If so, in what sense, and why? If not, why not? Were they mistaken? If it could be shown that the early Christians never dreamed that Christ was divine except in the sense in which good and great men are divine, that would be a most interesting dis covery, a tremendously important fact, and yet it would not necessarily bind our faith, because in matters of religion the all-important thing is, Is it true? Not, has it ever been believed before, and, if so, when? The early Christians were hope lessly divided on important questions, and they believed things which no one believes to-day. The weight placed upon history by Reville and men of his school is not misplaced, but is one sided. It needs balancing by other factors, for the deeper question as to a doctrine is always, Is it true? To answer that, history is very im portant, but other factors are also important. I have already shown that the notion of some that Jesus was only a spiritually gifted genius did not exist in the first centuries. The burden was to reconcile the actual things for which Christianity stood — that there is one God alone, ever living, loving and working, and that Jesus Christ his Son is divine yet human. In making that reconciliation Christians did The Arian Crisis 115 not always reach the same result. $ A very few (who finally shrank away and disap peared) claimed that he was a man and no more, of purely human origin, upon whom God descended and made divine at some point in his history jL Others went further and said that Christ was, indeed, of miraculous birth, but was furnished by God with divinity at his baptism. Others still cut the knot by saying that Christ was simply God the Father himself in one of his appearances or manifestations or unfoldings. These three schools were all trying to keep Christ divine while preserving their monotheism.0lNow, there was a fourth party, just as strongly mono theistic as the others, who, in my judgment, saw the matter more deeply, more consistently, more in accordance with Christian experience, and, as it happened — and this ought not to be held against them — more in accordance with the noblest things in non-Christian philosophy. This party, starting from a richer conception of God and a finer appreciation of Christ, thought of the latter as existing with and in God in the eternities, either from eternity absolutely or as called into being by the will of the Father from his inmost life, and so an actual part of the mani fold essence of the one only God, which, partly for the sake of distinction, might be called his Word (Logos), his Wisdom, his World and Re demption side, and yet existing not simply in 116 Crises in the Early Church thought dr figure or as an attribute, but in actual hypostatic "personal" union and communion (the word "person," of course, not to be inter preted in the ordinary sense of individuals, which would give us two or more Gods) . According to this school, we have arithmetically only one God, but this one God is not merely an arithmetically one God (Mohammedanism), but a one God in a manifold, complex, rich, abundant social life, which in the terms of revelation may be ex pressed, for the lack of better words, in the phrase, "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" — these three -existing in a glorious hypostatic essential union and communion in the life of God, of which analogies may be perceived in the intellect, sensi bilities, and will of man, in the substance, heat, and light of the sun. Now, it might not have happened that this school was the nearest to Christ, both historically and spiritually, but it actually was so. That is the view of Christ em bodied as to its essence in the first three Gospels. I cannot stop to prove this, but it is a fact. That is the view underneath the representations in the Acts; that is the view which flowers out in the pastures of Paul ; that is the view of Peter, and, of course — though not more so in principle, only as to expression — in the writings of John. And when we come to men who may fairly be con sidered as carrying on this Christian tradition from these sources, with more or less mixture, The Arian Crisis 117 with more or less fidelity, we meet the same con ception, colored by their environment, by their education, by their literary purpose, but the same essential conception of the deity of Christ, one with the Father, yet distinct from him, and yet absolutely human — Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Clement of Alexan dria, Origen, Cyprian, Athanasius. In the space at my disposal I cannot give my readers a detailed statement of the views of these men, but must refer them to any history of doc trine within their reach. Sometimes in caring for monotheism there seems a placing of Christ below God, but at other times the writer shows that he holds Christ as essentially divine in the preexistent life of the Godhead. It is a part of the Christian doctrine of God that the Father is the ruler and head and spring of this complex life, and it is not surprising if some of this school emphasized that at times unduly, but the essen tial thing with them was the oneness of Christ in the eternal ground of Deity, and that part of the Christianity of Christ and the apostles they handed down to us. It is easy to exaggerate on one side or the other. For instance, Reville (pp. 80, 81) gives a gross caricature of the views of Origen on Christ. "Origen was essentially a Unitarian. Stated summarily, his views amount to this, that Jesus is one of ourselves united to the Deity in the 118 Crises in the Early Church closest manner by MsmoraLsublimity." Jesus "was man, certainly eternal, but only as we are, and like us in his nature." This thoroughly shal low view of Origen does him great injustice. The Son is the image of the Father, his crown, his wisdom, his Logos, proceeding from him by a process that is part of the being of God, an eter nal generation. He is of one substance with the Father, but is also a distinct hypostasis complete in his own substance. "Therefore we worship the Father of truth and the true Son, being two things in hypostasis, but one in sameness of thought and in harmony, and in sameness of will ( Contra Celsum, 8, 12 ) . But he is subordinate to the Father, is not the highest, but, so to speak, the "second God," dependent upon the Father. This Logos became man, so that we have the God-man.1 There was certainly a variety of elements in the idea of Christ of this marvelously acute, sugges tive, and many-sided thinker, but as to his view \ of the Logos as being one with the Father in the eternal life of God he was a Trinitarian through and through. "The whole fullness of the essence of the Deity" is revealed in Christ (Harnack, vol. ii, p.- 375). Thomasius, who studied with great care the theological ideas of Origen, thus sums up his idea of the Trinity : "There are three divine, independent personalities (hypostases) : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, which 1 OeavdpoTroc, De Principiis, 2. 6. The Arian Crisis 119 constitute the holy trias. What is common to them is the divine being (sein), the G&6rr\g, only with this difference, that in the Father it is origi nal-essential and primitive, in the others derived. The Father is the original ground, alone unbe gotten, and elevated above both in the measure in which they are elevated over all other being. The Son is the_original revelation of the Father apd!the~Mediator o^all further development of absolute life, begotten from the Father in eter nity and, therefore, less. The Holy Spirit, finally, is the first revelation of the Son, and holds himself to him just as the Son to the Father, the three hypostases, therefore, being not one (individual or Person, Einer), but one ( Being, Eins ) . The work of the Father has to do wifh everything that is and consists in the com munication of being; that of the Son in the com munication of reason ; that of the Holy Spirit has to do with the saints, and completes in them the work of illumination, sanctification, and be atitude begun by the Father and mediated through the Son."1 O no; Origen had not thought through the Trinity exactly in the same terms as Athenasius, but he was no Unitarian. Reville is slipshod in other representations as well as in this of Origen, but he does not go as far as Pfleiderer in his lecture delivered at the History of "Religions International Congress in i Origenes, Niirnberg, 1837, p. 150. 120 Crises in the Early Church Amsterdam in September, 1903, expanded into a book, The Early Christian Conception of Christ (1905), who reduces Christ to a level of Oriental myths, and throws all his divine attributes and acts into a scrap heap of fables and legends. I have already referred (p. 84) to what are called the dynamistic Monarchians, who followed a line of thought concerning Christ which has fascinated many. Among others Paul_of Samo sata, so called from his birth in the Syrian city on the Euphrates, who became bishop about A. D. 260 of the most important see of the East, Antioch, then attached to the territories of the famous Queen Zenobia, of Palmyra, for whom he was a kind of vice-regent. For him Jesus was a man and no more as to any essential pre existence with God. But he was very much more than a man (1) in his miraculous birth, (2) in being from birth anointed with the Holy Spirit, and (3) in having received the Logos, or Reason, of God, this Logos not being a separate hypo stasis in the life of God, but an attribute, like the reason in man. On account of these furnishings he was not only born pure and holy, but he re mained thus all his life, achieving a perfect moral union with God. He thus became our Redeemer and won the prize of love. Though Paul thus secured the moral divinity of Christ — if one might so call it — in the strongest way, yet his contemporaries were so dissatisfied with his The Arian Crisis 121 teachings that they called councils in Antioch to consider them, and, as Eusebius says (7. 29), "his false doctrine was clearly shown before all, and he was excommunicated from the Catholic Church under heaven." Many of our modern liberals echo with the necessary variations the ideas of the Samosatan. There was another man in Antioch, probably born in the same town with Paul of Samo sata, who sympathized with his views so far as to withdraw from communion with the bishops who had excommunicated him,1 and whom Theodoret makes the spiritual progenitor of Arius and his followers. In the letter of Arius to Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia, quoted by Theodoret (1. 4), the former calls his friend "my fellow Lucianist." It is evident, therefore, that the able presbyter, Lucian, the head of an exe getical school in Antioch, was the link between Paul of Samosata and Arius. "It is possible," says Harnack,2 "that Lucian not only shared the views of his townsman, but became the head of the national Syrian party in the Antioch church in opposition to the Hellenistic Roman." How ever, the agreement could not have been perfect or enduring, for Lucian must have later taught the premundane creation of the Logos and his full personality in the flesh of Jesus. This is i Theodoret, 1. 3. * In Herzog-Hauck, 3 Aufl., 1902, vol. xi, p. 655. 122 Crises in the Early Church shown both by the Christological ideas of his scholars, and by the different way in which the historian Eusebius, of Caesarea, treats him and Paul, whom he looks upon as a dangerous error- ist. Arius was a presbyter of Alexandria, a pupil of Lucian, a bright, earnest man, tall, lean, with a somber brow, austere and irreproachable in morals, with a smooth, winning address, but ever ready for a theological fight. What his views were he sets forth himself in a letter to his friend and sympathizer, Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia, so interesting and impor tant that I copy it from Blomfield Jackson's translation of Theodoret (1. 4), putting in italics the important parts and revising the translation in places to bring it nearer the original : To his very dear lord, the man of God, the faithful and ortho dox Eusebius, Arius, unjustly persecuted by Alexander the pope [bishop of Alexandria], on account of that all-conquering truth of which you also are a champion, sendeth greeting in the Lord. Ammonius, my father, being about to depart to Nicomedia, I considered myself bound to salute you by him, and withal to inform that natural affection which you bear toward the breth ren for the sake of God and his Christ, that the bishop greatly wastes and persecutes us, and leaves no stone unturned against us [literally, "moves every rope"; the common proverb was, "to let out every reef," or "rope"; also "to move everything," Xiveiv nav xPVh^]. He has driven us out of the city as atheists Jje^cause we do not concur in what he publicly preaches, namely; |<^d always, the Son always; as the Father, so the Son; the Son coexists unbegotten with God; he is everlasting; neither by ) thought, nor by any interval does God precede the Son [it ia doubtful if Alexander would have acknowledged this clause]; The Arian Crisis 123 always God, alwajsSon: he is begotten of the unbegotten; the Son is of God himselfl lllusebius. your brother bishop of Caesarea, Theodotus [bishop^oTTiaodicea in Syria], Paulinus [bishop of Tyre, then of Antioch], Athanasius [bishop of Anazarbus in Cilieia, to be distinguished from his great namesake], Gregorius [bishop of Berytus or Beyrout], Aetius [bishop of Lydda], and all the bishops of the East have been condemned because they say that God had an existence prior to that of his Son; except Philogonicus, Hellenicus, and Macarius, _who are unlearned men, and have embraced heretical opinion^ Some say the Son is an eructation, others that ho is a prWluction, others that he is also unbegotten. These are impieties to which we cannot listen even though the heretics threaten us with a thousand deaths, ^nt we say and beheve, and have taught and do teach, that th^Sm is not unbegotten, nor in any part of the unbegotten, twt from anything underlying, but that by will and counsel he has subsisted before time and before ages as perfect God, only begotten and unchangeable, and that before he was begotten, or created, or purposed, or established, he was not. For he was not unbegotten. We are persecuted because we say that the Son has a beginning, but that God is without beginning./ This is the cause of our persecutions, and likewise because we say that he is of the non existent [£? ovk Svtuv loriv]. And this we say because he is neither part of God nor of anything underlying [et; mroiceifievov rivdc, the same expression as above, and which means, "from any substance, or underlying essence," the intention being to deny Christ's begetting from the essence of God/ Arius holding that he was created out of nothing]; for this we are persecuted; the rest you know. I bid thee farewell in the Lord, remember ing our afflictions, my fellow-Lucianist and true Eusebius. From other expressions of Arius we learn that he believed that the Son is the Logos and wisdom of the Father, but not the Logos immanent in God, but only participating in it. The Logos is divine energy, the Son a created divine Being, through whom the world is created. Through his enjoyment of the divine favor he receives the 124 Crises in the Early Church name "God" and "Son of God." "The Logos is different from and unlike the substance [ovoid] and peculiar nature [ididTTjrog] of the Father in all respects."1 He is by nature mutable, but God saw that he would remain good, and conferred upon him in advance the divine glory that he merited. The doctrine is certainly a strange con glomeration. Loofs quotes2 Hermann Schultz as saying that "it is in content the most baseless and dogmatically worthless of all the Christo- logies that have ever appeared in the history of dogma" — and Schultz is right. A Unitarian scholar and lecturer in Church history at Har vard University, the late Joseph Henry Allen, calls it3 "that nondescript, illogical compro mise," which, made "Christ the Son of God very much in the same way that Jupiter was the son of Saturn and Mars of Jupiter. If Christians are to worship a divinity who is, after all, not the supreme God, what are they better than their enemies?" Arius came out with these views about A. D. 318. Now, it is instructive that no sooner did Arius thus come forth than he evoked a bitter opposi tion. Alexander, his bishop, preached against him with positiveness, showing that the Son can not have come into existence in time, since time •Arius, Thalia, quoted by Athanasius, Oratio Contra Arianos, 1- 2, 8 6. a In Herzog-Hauck, 3 Aufl., vol. ii, p. 11. • Church History, Boston, 1883, 3d edition, 1889, vol. i, pp. 110, 111. The Arian Crisis 125 itself ("all things," John 1. 3) was made by him; Christ is the effulgence of God (Heb. 1. 3), and, therefore, to deny his eternity is to deny the eternity of the Father's light. His sonship is therefore different in kind from that of man. Your view, says Alexander, is related to that of Ebion, Paul of Samosata, and Artemas, and is against the "apostolic doctrines of the Church." Always God, always Son — that is Alexander's talisman. Therefore the Son is worshiped with the Father.1 The bishop was so worked up over his presbyter's views that he called two councils (A. D. 320 or 321), in both of which the latter was condemned. Arius then appealed to his friend in Asia Minor, Lucian and his circle, and a synod in Bithynia favored him — perhaps under the dread of Patripassianism. The strife spread, and Constantine, who had only recently be come sole ruler of the Roman world, and who had the heathen idea of the oneness of religion being necessary to the oneness of the state, or if there were differences, that they should be held peaceably and buried under outward uniformity, felt that measures must be taken to restore peace to the Church. For this purpose he called a council to meet at Nicaea, in Bithynia, where he had a summer palace, twenty miles from his regular capital at Nicomedia. Nicaea was then an important town on the great highway of com- ' Theodoret, Historia Ecclesiastica, 1. 3. 126 Crises in the Early Church merce, and easily accessible by water from all parts of the empire. This is the first ecumenical council (A. D. 325), a turning point in the his tory of the Church, a date which stands with 1517 as the best known in Church history. It was not actually an ecumenical, or universal, council, however, as the number of bishops there were at the most only about three hundred, when there were really about eighteen hundred bishops in the empire. Nor was it representative as to sections of the empire, as the whole Western Church had only seven delegates. Constantine cared for the council with princely generosity. He paid all the traveling expenses of the delegates and of their presbyters and serv ants, and saw to their entertainment in Nicaea. This brought all the delegates under personal obligation to him, and helped to secure the ad hesion of the council to the views indorsed by him. What was the opinion of the majority of the council when they came together? Bernoulli says that the most of them had no decided views one way or the other. Some were ignorant; a few perhaps had never heard of the controversy ; others looked upon Christ as Lord and Saviour without having thought through the theological implications of that belief ; others still were will ing to vote according to the strongest arguments, possibly others according to the emperor's wish. The Aeian Crisis 127 Though not acting as president, the emperor was really moderator of the council, hearing one and then another, trying to calm the Hotspurs, pro ducing reasons himself, and making every effort to get some united decision. It is significant of the strength of the Athana sian view that Constantine, though originally surrounded by those entirely or partially in sym pathy with Arius, changed his opinion. His bishop at Nicomedia (Eusebius) was an Arian; the bishop at Nicaea itself, Theognis, was an Arian ; and the emperor's friend and later pane gyrist, Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, the Church historian, was, at least, not a strong Athanasian, but, rather, a follower of Origen. "He prefer red," says Bernoulli, "the modal theology of the Orient, poorly decked out with philosophical tinsel work; and he could not decide to believe in the unity of the nature of the Son with the Father."1 Naturally, the half-heathen Constan tine would be inclined to the doctrine of Lucian and Arius, which fitted in well with the Roman pantheon. Then he gave Arius, a presbyter con demned by the councils and bishop of his own province, a seat in the council, where he took part in the debates and explained and defended his views. Besides, as just said, the bishops of the East who were nearest to Constantine were Arians and semi-Arians. When we add to all • Das Konzil von Nicosa, Freiberg im Breisgau und Leipzig, 1896, 9, 128 Crises in the Early Church this the fact that the Arians went to the council with unconcealed confidence that they would be victorious, we may be quite sure on whose side Constantine was at the beginning. The fact that, in spite of this tremendous difficulty, the Atha- nasians won both the council and the emperor speaks volumes. Outside of the dummies and other neutrals, there were three parties at the beginning; — the right, center, and left.1 The right wing was the Athanasian, apparently not the largest, but the wisest, the most deeply convinced, the most firm ly intrenched in the Scriptures and in purely re ligious arguments, as well as in Christian ex perience. The members of this party counted, among others, the bishops of most of the apos tolic centers, as, for example, Macarius of Jeru salem ; Sylvester of Rome ; Eustathius of Antioch ; Alexander of Alexandria; as well as Hosius of 1 Seeck, Zeitschrift fur Kirchengeschichte, vol. xvii, p. 10 (1897), says that there were only two parties, and this is true in the sense of the final and logical disposition of the members. But it is not true in the ordinary sense, as may be seen from Eusebius of Csesarea's letter (in Socrates, i, 8 and appendix to Athanasius, De Decretis) compared with Theodoret i, 6. First, the Arians presented their creed through Eusebius of Nicomedia, which was rejected, then the middle party presented the Caesarean creed, which was accepted with the additions insisted upon by Athanasians. The actual num bering in the sources gives two parties (compare ix^TEPov rayfia in Eusebius, Vita Constantini, iii, 13, and Athanasius, De Decretis, ii, 3), while the historical facts in the sources imply three. So with the world outside. See also Gwatkin, Studies of Arianism (London, 1882), p. 52, indorsed by Harnack, History of Dogma, vol, iii, p. 137, note. The Arian Crisis 129 Cordova and Marcellus of Ancyra. The center was the mediatory party (headed by the histo rian, Eusebius, of Caesarea), sometimes called the Origenist party. They were "neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring," but they leaned toward the Athanasian view, it would appear, as in the end they generally drifted toward that party. Some of them had no good clear views in any direction, so they went in the end with the stronger party. Others of this large section of the council believed earnestly in the real deity of Jesus, but cared nothing for scholastic or metaphysical or philosophical terminology. They knew in whom they believed, but they did not know why they believed it, nor what their belief implied. The left was the Arian party, numbering about twenty bishops, and therefore greatly in the minority. They numbered Arius himself, who fought for his views tooth and nail, his old schoolfellow, Eusebius of Nicomedia, later of Constantinople, and the bishops of the places where the first four ecumenical councils were held — Theognis of Nicaea, Maris of Chalce don, and Monophantes of Ephesus. The great opponent of Arius was Athanasius, deacon, and later (A. D. 328) bishop in Alexan dria, who stepped forward with a decisiveness and power never known before for the doctrine of the absolute divinity of Christ, a doctrine which, as I have said, was in line with the purest 130 Crises in the Early Church and straightest tradition, and most in harmony with the New Testament. Partial and defec tive views passed away — of course not imme diately; but Athanasius's polemic, the precision, fullness, largeness, and religious fervor of his defense of the doctrine really created a new epoch in history. I have not space to do justice to his putting of the case; suffice it to say that besides a destructive criticism of Arius's views, he founded his own on (1) a constant reference to the Bible, (2) a showing of the necessity of the entrance of God himself into humanity to secure (a) the full truth concerning God and divine things, (b) fellowship with God, (c) the for giveness of sins and the certainty of salvation, (d) immortality for man, and (e) that union with God which is the glory of man. By the in carnation God himself has entered into our race, and thereby lifted it up into abiding fellow ship. The race as such, therefore, is, in a sense, a saved and deified race. We have secured grace and righteousness, the Holy Spirit, a new life, with it immortality. It is the religious motive and life which animate the discussions of Atha nasius which give them their peculiar appeal. He placed the defense of the divinity of Christ where every true Christian, it seems to me, must feel that it belongs. And as long as Christianity is the religion of redemption, of salvation, of com munion with God, and of eternal life, then it The Arian Crisis 131 must be the religion of the incarnation; and if so, the men who saved that religion in the Arian crisis wrought a work of permanent value for the human race. At an early stage in the proceedings Eusebius of Nicomedia drew up an Arian creed which was read by his namesake of Caesarea, probably as president. Unfortunately, we have no copy of this creed. But we know that it was instantly rejected; in fact, Eusebius was not allowed to read it through, but it was snatched out of his hand and torn in pieces.1 This seems to show that in A. D. 325 the Church was in no mood to accept Arianism. In fact, the con vinced Arians and convinced Athanasians were in a minority in the council, but the latter by sheer power of personality, of reasoning, of logic, and of Christian feeling won over the larger crowd, who were either Origenists or indifferent. If there had been a larger number of bishops from the West in the council, the contest would not have lasted so long. As the Arian creed was rejected, Eusebius of Caesarea at length brought forward a creed which as neither distinctly Arian nor Athanasian he thought might be a basis for united action. He called it "our symbol"; and he says that he learned it from the Scriptures, that he received it from the bishops who preceded him, and that 1 Theodoret, i, 6. 132 Crises in the Early Church it was the basis of instruction in the Church (Theodoret i, 11.) 1 It reads as follows : We beheve in the one God Almighty Father, the creator of all things visible and invisible, and in the one Lord Jesus Christ, the Logos of God, God from God, Light from Light, Life from Life, the only begotten Son, the firstborn of all creation y hegot- ten from God the Father before all times [ai&vuv]. By him have all things become, who for our salvation became flesh, and lived among men, who suffered, on the third day rose from the dead, who went up to his Father, and will come again in glory to judge quick and dead. We beheve also in the Holy Spirit. Even so we beheve that each one has his own being, that the Father is really Father, the Son really Son, the Holy Spirit really Holy Spirit, as our Lord in sending out his disciples to preach also said, Go forth and make disciples of all peoples through baptism in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. And we are determined so to hold and so to think, and to remain faithful in this faith until death, as we also anathematize every godless heresy. Now, outside of all these Nicene controver sies, this is a pretty stiff creed. Unitarians to day would abominate it, the semi-Unitarians in our orthodox Churches could not abide it, and no Ritschlian in the world could sign it. It would create fearful dismay if read in a Liberal Religious Congress. To call Christ the Logos of God, God of God, Light of Light, Life of Life, the only begotten Son, as the middle party were willing to do, is to call him all that one can call 1 The text of this creed and of its enlarged form as adopted by the Council will be found in the appendix to Athanasius's De Decretis, and in the Church Histories of Socrates, i, 8, Theodoret i, 11, etc. See notes of Hahn to both, Bibliothek der Symbole und Glaubensregeln, 3 Aufl., 1897, §§ 123, 142. The Arian Crisis 133 him. It is a Trinitarian confession through and through. In the light of that, the other expres sions that have an Arian look may be interpreted. "The firstborn of all creatures" is a scriptural expression (Col. 1. 15; compare Heb. 1. 5, 6) and refers to the incarnation, foreordained in the very dawn of creation. "Begotten of the Father before all aeons" may refer to Christ's sonship as in thought looking forward from eternity to the incarnation, or it may be simply an equiva lent for "in eternity," as before time is eternity. Still the Arians were ready with their inter pretations, and as they seemed to be willing to accept that creed — probably to stave off some thing worse — the Athanasians were in a quan dary. They were willing to accept the creed of Eusebius, but they must introduce a few changes so as to exclude all possibility of error. They also wanted to add two or three things not given in the Caesarea creed, so as to make assurance doubly sure against Arius :)(11. They were anx ious to put in, "who is from the essence (or "being" obaiag) of the Father"; (2) they added "begotten, not made"; and (3) they clinched the whole thing by the words, "of the same essence with the Father" (6/noovatov t<3 ¦nargi). t Now, all these three additions were really'lncluded in the original "God from God, only begotten Son," etc., but for fear the Arians did not think *so the Athanasians were bound to have them in. 134 Crises in the Early Church But these strong characters who were fighting the battles of the divine Christ against Arius at that council were not even content with these explicit declarations, though they might well have been content. For the victor to press his foe too hardly may cause a reaction, may hasten returning sympathies. To carry your views to their farthest analysis, and then to stuff all your inferences down your opponent's throat, may be stalwart orthodoxy, but it may have conse quences that will return to plague you. At the same time it is fair to say that the slipperiness of the Arians in seeming willing to accept strong expressions of Christ's divinity, which they in terpreted in a way suitable to themselves, made the stalwart party determined to exclude their view (Athanasius, Ad Afros, 5). At any rate, the Athanasians not only insisted on the above additions, but they added a list of the Arian errors, ending with an anathema upon them — fateful anathema! Thus revised and enlarged the Eusebian confession was made the Nicene Creed, the first great deliberately formed creed in history, and it was as follows : We believe in the one God Almighty Father, the creator of all things visible and invisible, and in the one Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God, the one only begotten from the Father, and from f.r^p. substance- |ot""g^ofthe Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, hegotte^ nofr ma/fop of one substance with the Father [6/ioovowv Ty irarpl], through whom all things exist lhave become], which are in heaven and The Arian Crisis 135 which are on earth, who for us men and our salvation came down and became flesh, took on the form of a man, suffered, and on the third day rose from the dead, and went up into heaven, and comes to judge living and dead, and in the Holy Spirit. Those who say, There was when he was not, or, He was not before he was begotten, or, He was made out of nothing [ef ovk bvruni eyevero], or, He was begotten out of another substance or essence, or, The Son of God [is created or] is change able or alterable — these the Cathohc [and apostolic] Church anathematizes. Now, the remarkable thing is that this strong Athanasian Creed won the assent of nearly every member of the council. Only two men stood by Arius and refused to sign (one account says five, of whom two repented and signed). Why this success of the right wing? This question is the more interesting as Constantine is sometimes credited with forcing the matter through against the reluctant will of the Council. "The imperial will," says Professor Karl Muller, "bent almost the whole Council, even the Lucianists."1 Heussi echoes this ("unter dem Druck des Kaisers").2 Loofs will not commit himself thus, but says simply unter abendlandischen Einfluss.3 Deutsch says the same, mentioning Hosius in particular.4 Let us look, then, at the forces which led to the result of A. D. 325. 1. The fact that the middle party became con vinced that their creed (see above) was in agree ment with these Athanasian additions and re- i Kirchengeschichte, vol. i (1892), p. 182. "Ibid., 1907, p. 110. « Ibid., 1901, p. 29. «Ibid., 1909, p. 157. 136 Crises in the Early Church quired them for its proper explanation. This comes out in Eusebius of Caesarea's letter of ex planation to his church.1 This letter shows the deliberation and discussion which these additions received and the fact that they were accepted only because they were the fair inference of their own faith, which, in fact, they were ( "We received them," says Eusebius, "when in mature delibera tion we examined the sense of his words, and they appeared to agree with what we had origi nally proposed as a sound confession"). The remark about forcing one's inferences upon others must not lead us to suppose that the center were precipitately induced against their will to receive the additions. On the contrary, the sources show their calm deliberation and their ultimate and voluntary conviction of the truth of those additions. The Origenists were in the half-way house to the Athanasians, and they must either go backward or forward. Their re luctance to follow the logical implications of their creed was their dread of Sabellianism and their dread of losing the historic Jesus, and they did well to dread both. 2. The profound religious interest which cen tered in the Athanasian view. The Arians had a cosmology, and their view (really semi-Gnostic) fitted admirably into it. But they had no soteri- ology, no philosophy of salvation. But Atha- • Socrates, Historia Ecclesiastica, 1, 8. The Arian Crisis 137 nasius's theology was built on the background of Calvary. It was interwoven with his soteriology. It is necessary to religion, he argued, that an actual real connection or union should exist be tween man and God, between heaven and earth. There is no help for us in a God who is over us in a vast universe, without taking hold of us. If we should express the faith truly, we must de clare the actual incarnation of God, that Jesus Christ really went out from the highest Lord of the heavens. Only then can we be confident in our redemption. It was the feeling of Atha nasius — and he evidently made all his party feel it also — that the very existence of Christianity as a religion of redemption was bound up with the acknowledgment of Christ as truly divine. History has shown that in this he was right. If the first step is a letting-down of Jesus's divinity, the second step is bound to be an explaining away of his atonement. It was this tremendous re ligious interest — "for us men and our salvation" — of the right wing which made them victorious at Nicaea. "It was not for a word or a formula," says Harnack finely,1 "that Athanasius was con cerned, but a crucial thought of his faith, the redemption and raising of humanity to divine life through the God-man. It was only from the certainty that the divinity manifest in Jesus i History of Dogma, vol. iii, pp. 140, 141, 138 Crises in the Early Church Christ possessed the nature of Deity (unity of being), and was on this account alone in a posi tion to raise us to a divine life, that faith was to receive its strength, life its law, and theology its direction. . . . Behind and beside him existed a speculation which led on a shoreless sea, and the ship was in danger of losing its helm. He grasped the rudder." Harnack, indeed, says later (vol. iv, p. 49) that while the result at Nicaea "saved the religious conviction that Chris tianity is the religion of perfect fellowship with God," as over against a "doctrine which had no understanding of the inner essence of religion," the Nicene issue "sacrificed the historical Christ." This was not only not so, but it saved the historical Christ, him whom the genuine records of history describe as not only Son of man but also Son of God. Besides, if Chris tianity was to be preserved as a religion of re demption, of salvation from sin, no other result could have been reached. 3. It was a tribute to personality. Eusebius of Nicomedia was not a strong character, did not have a single eye, or he would not have drawn up an Arian creed and at length signed an Atha nasian one. The head of the middle wing, Euse bius of Caesarea, was a cultured and learned man, but he had, like Erasmus, the scholar's mind, not the theologian's, and his whole inner nature, his religious experience, was not so absorbed in his The Arian Crisis 139 Christology that he felt he must stand by one view rather than by another. He was, therefore, really open to conviction from the Athanasian side. I have already said that the mass of the council were men either open to conviction from the strongest arguments or to pressure from the strongest arm. It is not necessary to say who possessed the arguments. On the other hand, the Athanasians had men of positive influence. Athanasius himself, in the conferences of his party and in the outside meet ings and casual debates with the middle and left wings, must have exercised an enormous influ ence. In the council itself there was Eustathius of Antioch, a great and notable man. There was Alexander of Alexandria, who was no mean an tagonist, but a clear, strong thinker. There was Marcellus of Ancyra, who was a man of iron will and immense power of resistance, whose presence among the Athanasians meant a good deal. There was Hosius of Cordova, an intimate friend of the emperor, who possessed power in concilia tion and persuasion, and who well supplemented the theological work of his colleagues with his diplomatic and skillful mediations and explana tions.1 A doctrine that could train and inspire men like these deserves to win. 1 The Arians are later represented as ascribing immense influence to Hosius in this matter. See Athanasius, Historia Arianorum, § 42. "He put forth the faith in Nicasa," they are supposed to say, though A3 remarked by Loofs, Dogmengeschichte, 4 Aufl., p, 241, not rightly, 140 Crises in the Early Church 4. The Athanasian party were not only con vinced, but they were united, and this, with the additional fact that they possessed the apostolic seats — Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria (tradi tionally Saint Mark's), Rome, etc. — must have at length made an impression on the majority and on the emperor. 5. This leads me to say that another reason for the Athanasian victory was the convincing of the assembly that the older and sounder tradition was on that side. Eusebius says that he "did well to assent" to the idea that Christ was one in essence with the Father because "we were aware that even among the ancients some learned and illustrous bishops and writers have used the term 'one in essence,' in their theological teach ings concerning the Father and the Son."1 Har nack agrees with this, and says (vol. iii, pp. 141, 142) that "there was nothing new in the common sense of the word" in Athanasius's views; "he had really on his side the best part of the tradi tion of the Church. New alone was the fact, the energy and exclusiveness of his view and action at a time when everything threatened to undoing and dissolution." 6. The emperor. We cannot eliminate him from the victory at Nicaea. He was not mainly 1 See his epistle to his church in Csesarea in appendix to Athanasius, De Decretis, and compare Athanasius's own statements as to "testi mony from their fathers, ancient bishops," etc., in Ad Afros, 6, The Arian Crisis 141 responsible, but he was in part responsible. "He advised all present to agree to" the Caesarean creed, says Eusebius, and in his Life of Constan tine (bk.iii, ch. 13) he, doubtless with a courtier's exaggeration, makes him alone responsible for the final unanimity, "urging all to unity of senti ment, until at last he succceeded in bringing them to one mind and judgment respecting every dis puted question." But why did the emperor come over to the right wing, when with his paganism and his court influences at Nicomedia he would naturally have been borne toward Arius? His conversion is to be explained. Was it his homage to strength, his feeling that the men on the right had the deepest convictions, and that finally these convictions thus strongly held by the strongest men must eventually prevail? Was it a dim per ception that, after all, the arguments of Alexan der's party were the more convincing, and that Christianity to be a winning religion over against paganism must have an absolutely divine Saviour and Lord? His own letter to the Alexandrians after the Council (Socrates, i, 9) shows that the almost unanimous decision of so many impressed him deeply ("For that which has commended itself to the judgment Of three hundred bishops cannot be other than the judgment of God," he says; "seeing that the Holy Spirit dwelling in the minds of so many dignified persons has effectu ally enlightened them"). 142 Crises in the Early Church Bernoulli1 says that for their victory the Atha nasians must thank their own energy. But he also says that the victory was due in part to a successful intrigue. When we come, however, to specifications as to what the intrigue was we are left in the dark. He accuses the Athanasians of two things : (1) Of cutting out the biblical for mulas from the Caesarean symbol, and in their place setting in theological statements which guaranteed the exclusion of Arianism in the sharpest way. But if these biblical expressions were used unbiblically to teach unbiblical doc trines, and if the Athanasians must preserve at all hazards the actual deity of Jesus, were they to blame for insisting on their own formulas? (2) Of using their influence on the emperor for the victory of their side. This, he says, was their intrigue. But nothing further is alleged. He does not say they used their influence badly or unfairly. The emperor had to decide for some side. The fact that he did not decide for the side he would naturally have favored speaks for stronger reasons on the side that prevailed. "It was not necessity which drove the judges to their decision," says Athanasius2 "but all vindicated the truth from deliberate purpose." It is the custom long since to decry the historic creeds and to depreciate the men who made them. ' Herzog-Hauck, 3 Aufl., vol. xiv (1904), p. 15. i Epistola ad JEgyptos, 13. The Arian Crisis 143 Certainly, all will admit that the appealing and binding power of the creed is its truth alone, which truth must not be burdened with the meth ods of its advocates. At the same time this must be said : speaking after the manner of men, the Nicene Council and Creed saved the Christian religion. At that council two conceptions of Christianity were in a death struggle 'one that a created mediator was given to help meapfhe other that the eternal Son of God himself was incar nated to redeem men and to unite men and God. One gives an ethical religion, a finer Stoicism, a Gnostic demiurge-theosophy, which would have been utterly helpless in the storms that were to come; the other is the religion of the incarnation, of redemption, of salvation through faith, of eternal life in the Eternal Son. The parties in that struggle at the bottom were two only, the Arians, and the Athanasians, and it was the great service of the latter that they stuck to their guns until they carried the middle party, whose deeper principles they saw logically led to their own views, made that party see that such was the case, and brought almost every man of them to their own Caesarean creed as now first logically expressed. But would it not have been better to do that by argument, by the force of truth itself, without a council and creed, and especially without the ingripping of the State on religious matters, with its disastrous conse- 144 Crises in the Early Church quences? Doubtless. But that method was then historically impossible. To the fact that the be lievers in the deity of Christ fought their fight at that council as God gave them opportunity we owe it to-day that Christianity exists, not alone on ancient records, but as a regnant and regener ating force in humanity. CHAPTER VIII The Catholic Change : or, Will Christianity Remain a Spiritual Religion? In closing this discussion of early Church crises a word should be said on what was not a crisis in the usual sense, on a movement that did not have a turning point or critical moment, but proceeded so gradually, so insensibly, so inevi tably as almost to be unnoticed, as almost to awaken no protest, but which was, nevertheless, one of the most momentous changes, one of the most revolutionary transformations ever known in the history of religion. First, as to doctrine. I suppose the essence of primitive Christianity might be expressed in the classic passage : God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever be lieveth in him should not perish, but have eternal life (John 3. 16). There was hardly a congrega tion throughout the Roman empire in the first century and first half of the second which could not have said on the recitation of this text, "Yes, that is our creed ; by that we stand or fall." But that morning soon passed. The sacraments be gan to practically take the place of faith. Bap tism came to be looked upon as a regenerating 145 146 Crises in the Early Church rite, instead of the symbol of a cleansing already received through faith. The Lord's Supper was changed from a memorial meal or dinner — whether in the family or in the society — in honor of Christ to a solemn ritualistic service in which by a certain transformation in the elements Christ was supposed to enter the communicant in order to impart to his body immortality and to his soul peace. Instead of being a sorrow for sin and an inner attitude toward it, penitence came to be, rather, an external relation to the Church, whether to the prophet or (later) to the bishop. Instead of the penitent being charged simply to live a life of faith and righteousness, various arbitrary duties and tests were imposed upon him. Instead of Christianity being con ceived as a new life springing from faith in Christ, it came to be conceived as a new philoso phy or new morality. As Von Schubert says,1 Christianity took as compared with Paul a de cidedly legalistic turn, of course not Jewish legal istic but moral legalistic. In the moral concep tion there worked also an ascetic world-fleeing in clination to purity, a fighting of the sensuous, especially of sexual pleasure, of worldly posses sions, etc., while at the same time the mighty commandment of love worked among Christians to love of the enemy as well as to brother love. There followed also self-denial, peacefulness, hu- » In Moeller, Kirchengeschichte, 1902, vol. i, pp. 129, 130. The Catholic Change 147 mility and patience, as well as a constant readi ness in benevolence encouraged by the expecta tion of future glory. These moral demands were placed over against sins as the way of life over against the way of death (Didache, chapters 1-6) , and were enjoined on the baptized. Instead of the simple confession of Christ expressed or understood as the only condition of baptism,1 moral prescriptions were placed upon the candir date: "Having first taught all these things [all moral things], baptize ye," etc. (Didache 1.1). "Those who become convinced," says Justin ( I Apologia, 61) , "and believe that the things we teach are true, and promise to live according to them, are instructed to pray to and to entreat God with fasting [compare the probable inser tion of "fasting" by later scribes, perhaps think ing it had been omitted by copyist, in Matt. 17. 21 and Mark 9. 29] for the remission of their sins that are past, we praying and fasting with them. Then they are brought to where there is water and are regenerated," etc. In the vision of Her mas those who "fall near the waters and cannot roll into the waters — wouldest thou know who they are? They are they that heard the word, and would be baptized into the name of the Lord (because your life is saved and shall be saved by water, 3. 3). Then when they call to their re membrance the purity of the truth they change 1 Compare Acts 8. 36, 38, and spurious 37 found only in one unciaL 148 Crises in the Early Church their minds, and go back again to their evil de sires."1 I do not refer to the Rule of Faith as a Catholic evolution, though it was so in a real sense, be cause the content of that rule, as it expressed it self, say, in what we call the Apostles' Creed, especially in its earliest forms, was primitive. There is nothing in that creed but what might be repeated from the heart by the most evangelical Christian, of course placing his own interpreta tion on the later word "Catholic," which inter pretation would be very likely not that of those who inserted it there. It is, indeed, true that the use of a distinct creed as a test of orthodoxy was a characteristic of the ancient Catholic Church, as opposed to the primitive Church, where a free life led by the Spirit, with spiritual guides, prophetic communications and apostolic coun sels, could not be bound by an external yoke. But for all that, there were undoubtedly brief statements of the common faith used in the con gregations, of which 1 Cor. 15. 3; Heb. 1. 4; 10. 23; 1 Pet. 3. 2; 1 Tim. 6. 12, are echoes, and which probably assumed a Trinitarian "form (compare Eph. 2. 19, 20; 4. 4-6; 5. 19; 2 Thess. 2. 13; Jude 20; 1 Pet. 1. 2, etc.2 The younger Seeberg has given a thorough discussion of al leged materials for catechetical instruction in 1 Shepherd, Vision 3. 7. * See Seeberg, History of Doctrine, I, 38-38. The Catholic Change 149 the primitive documents. x He says in his Pref ace: "In this book I hope I have brought for ward the proof that soon after the death of Christ a catechism arose formed out of the words of the Lord. The content of the same was preached by the missionaries in the apostolic age, and taught to those who desired to receive Christian baptism. I have been able to make sure the chief pieces of this catechism, and where it was possible to con struct with more or less certainty the very words." I give no opinion here as to the correct ness of these results. As the years wore on, the controversy with Gnosticism made absolutely necessary the fixing of reliable norms of doctrine and limits of the New Testament canon. In regard to Church organization and officers, the Catholic evolution froze the fluidity of the apostolic times. As late as the The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (perhaps A. D. 125) we find apostles not swallowed up in bishops, as Catholic theory presupposes, but still existing side by side with bishops (or presbyters)", with full rights, but with privileges of continued stay in one place and of money support much curtailed (11. 3-6). If with the Muratonian Canon (about A. D. 175) we place the Shepherd of Hermas at about A. D. 150, we have prophets still in full blast. How then, sir, say I, shall a man know who of them is a prophet and who is a false prophet? Hear, saith he, concerning 1 Der Katechismus der Urchristenheit, Leipzig, 1903. 150 Crises in the Early Church both the prophets; and as I shall tell thee so shalt thou test the prophet and the false prophet. By his life test the man that hath the divine Spirit. In the first place, he that hath the Spirit, which is from above, is gentle and tranquil and humble- minded, abstaineth from all wickedness and from desire of this present world, and holdeth himself inferior to all men, and giv eth no answer to any man when inquired of [for private selfish purposes of the inquirer, as with those who consulted the heathen oracles], nor speaketh in solitude [but only in the congregation], for neither does the Holy Spirit speak when a man wisheth bim to speak. When, then, the man who hath the divine Spirit cometh into an assembly of the righteous men who have faith in a divine Spirit, and intercession is made to God by the gath ering of these men, then the angel of the prophetic spirit, who is attached to him, filleth the man, and the man being filled with the Holy Spirit speaketh to the multitude according as the Lord willeth. In this way, then, the Spirit of the Deity shall be manifest. This, then, is the greatness of the power as touch ing the Spirit of the Deity of the Lord.1 But not only had these charismatic or miracu lously endowed officers not yet given way before the crushing power of the rising bishops, these bishops themselves are in Hermas not yet dis criminated from presbyters or elders. The presi dents of the Churches are the elders (Vision 2. 4) who are the first to take their seats (3. 1) , and when the "squared and white stones that fit to gether in their joints" are mentioned (3. 5), they are said to be the "apostles and bishops and teachers and deacons," where the old position of things as to identity or parity of presbyters and bishops is presupposed. All this goes to show what we learn from other sources that well along 1 Hennas, Shepherd, Mandate 11, Lightfoot's tr. The Catholic Change 151 toward the middle of the second century the bishop as an office of rule distinct from the pres byter (the monarchical episcopate) did not exist in Rome. But forces were driving the Church to- an hierarchical organization, such as the neces sity of some one to represent the Church over against irresponsible wandering prophets and evangelists, heretical teachers, parties formed within the Church itself, as authoritative witness es of genuine doctrinal tradition, all of which was helped by the decay of vital piety and the. naturalization of the Church in a world whence the Lord had departed, not soon — as it now ap peared — to return. Citizenship in heaven (Phil. 3. 20) is not enough. We must build the city of God upon earth, and to do that gradations of officers, as in worldly monarchy, are necessary. The apostolic democracy of a priesthood of be lievers had departed. Priesthood of believers, I say. One of the most significant achievements of the Catholic leaven was the transformation of the clergy from min isters to priests. But it was not accomplished in a day. Clement of Rome at the close of the first century is a stickler for order, and he wants lay men to keep their place, but it is evident that he does not consider ministers priests in the proper (that is, Catholic) sense. Ignatius (A. D. 110- 117), though he lauds the threefold office of bishop, presbyter, and deacon to the skies, does 152 Crises in the Early Church not look upon them as priests. The philosopher Justin (about A. D. 135-160) knows no special priesthood of the clergy. In fact, a Roman Cath olic scholar has shown that it is not till Irenaeus (A. D. 160-180) that we get anything like sacri ficial ideas in the so-called Catholic sense in con nection with the Eucharist, and then only in the Invocation or Consecration, and that merely symbolical, as desiring to express the offering of the body and blood as gifts to God.1 He has shown also that there were no altars in churches till the first part of the third century, when they were regarded with reverence only while the Supper service was going on, after which they were simply tables. It is only in the time of Con stantine (sole emperor A. D. 324-337) that the altar has any permanent religious significance.2 But even earlier than that, by the time of Cyprian (A. D. 250), the theory of a regular priesthood of ministers had strongly asserted itself, a theory which I must believe one of the most false and pernicious for which Catholicism in its numer ous borrowings from Judaism and heathenism has ever been responsible. Striking also is the transformation in Chris tian worship. So far as we can gather from the New Testament, prophets seemed to have the 1 Dr. Franz Wieland, Der vorirenaische Opferbegriff, Miinchen, 1909. 8 Wieland, Mensa und Confessio: Studien uber den Altar der chr. I/Uurgie, Miinchen, 1906. The Catholic Change 153 right of way in the assemblies. To them the be lievers must always listen with attention, nor, if order is preserved, sit in judgment on their mes sage. But this did not mean that other believers were debarred from participation in the worship by prayer, by song, by exhortation, by prophecy, for their rights were carefully guarded by Paul. In fact, the service in Corinth reminds one of an old-fashioned Methodist class meeting or, rather, love feast, where all not only partake of the sacra mental symbols of brotherhood and of union with Christ, but are also equally entitled to contribute to the edification of the meeting, so long as it is done without confusion. By the time of the Didache, or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles more formal methods have been adopted, as a regular prayer is given to be used in connection with the eucharistic dinner, though it is expressly stipu lated that the prophet need have no reference to any such helps; and the prayer itself is vastly different from anything offered by the later liturgies with their somber atmosphere and their solemn priestly tone. In fact, by the end of the \ first century formal prayers were apparently : used in the Church, as in the concluding sections of the Epistle of Clement of Rome to the Corin thians (those sections discovered by Bryennios in the library of the Holy Sepulcher, Fanari, Con stantinople, in 1873, and published by him in 1875, the same batch of manuscript containing 154 Crises in the Early Church the Teaching mentioned above, published at the end of 1883), a long prayer is inserted suitable for use in worship, though no statement is made that it was actually so used. According to Justin1 we could reconstruct a service in his day in this order : I. Prayers. II. Kiss of Peace. III. Bring ing forward to the presiding brother (tu npoBOTun tuv adeXB&v) bread and a cup of wine mixed with water. IV. Thanksgivings and prayers by him, closed by Amen said in common. V. Distribu tion of the bread and mixed wine by the deacons to those present. Or, if we take the notice of Sunday worship in chapter 67, in this order: I. Reading of memoirs of apostles or writings of prophets as long as time permits. II. Exhorta tion or instruction by the president. III. Pray ers, congregation standing. IV. The bringing forward of bread, and wine, and water. V. Thanksgivings and prayers by the president "ac cording to his ability" (Sari Svvafiig avTu)} followed by the Amen in common. VI. Distribution of the eatables to each present, followed (appar ently after the service) by the carrying of por tions by the deacons to the absent members. VII. Collection of contributions (apparently both in money and in kind) brought in by the believers. Ah, what a far cry from this Christian brother hood service of about the middle of the second century to the elaborate liturgical displays, with 1I Apologia, 65-67, about year 138-9. The Catholic Change 155 priestly pomp and various pagan accessories, of later times. Even the service in evangelical churches to-day is formality itself beside the sim ple and affectionate frankness and reality of the first Christian worship. But in the worship of the so-called Catholic Churches (Greek, Arme nian, Russian, Roman, High Anglican, etc.), wa are simply in another world. APPENDIX I Montanist Prophecies That Montanism, though purer than the Church, had no promise of a better future may be seen by the relatively small rehgious and ethical value of its prophecies, which are here collected in EngUsh for the first time, and those from Epiphanius translated for the first time. Bonwetsch has brought them to gether in the original near the end of his book (Geschichte des Montanismus, Erlangen, 1881, pp. 197-200). Pbophecibs op Montanus Man is as a lyre, and I strike as a plectrum; man sleeps, I awake. See, the Lord is he who removes [or deranges, bewitches, egioTavov] the hearts of men and gives the hearts of men. — Epiphanius, Haer. 48. 4, 4, p. 430 Dindorf. What declarest thou respecting the man that is saved? The just one shall shine a hundred times as much as the sun, and the httle ones among you who are saved shall shine a hundred times as much as the moon.— 48. 10, p. 437. Moreover, Montanus spoke thus to the prophets: I the Lord the God the Almighty am residing in man.— 48. 11, p. 437. Then Montanus spoke again that neither an angel nor ambas sador [or elder] but I the Lord God the Father have come. — 48. 11, p. 439. For Montanus, it is declared, said: I am the Father and the Son and the Paraclete. — Didymus, De Trin. 41. 1 (Migne 39. 984). [Montanus from those songs: Christ has one nature and energy before the flesh and in the flesh, so that he was not unlike by the difference and unlikeness of deeds. Nova Collectio vii. p. 69 in Patrum Doctrina de Verbi Incarnatione. Bonwetsch says that this cannot be a real word of Montanus.] Prophecies op Prisca Concerning these the Paraclete speaks excellently through the prophet Prisca: They are carnal and yet they hate the flesh. — Tertullian, De Resur. Carnis 11. 166 Appendix I 157 The gospel is thus preached through the holy prophetess Prisca, and that the holy minister should know how to minister holiness. For purity, she says, is harmonious [concordat], and they see visions, and, placing their face downward, they even hear manifest voices as salutary as they are also secret. — Ter tullian, De Exhort. Cast. 10. For those among the Phrygians said, the PriscilUans in Pepuza or Kointilla or Priscilla — to have lain down to sleep, and Christ to have come, and to have slept together with her in that way, as she the dishonored said: Christ as in a figure in the form of a woman came before me in a shining garment and threw [ivtflaXev] wisdom in me, and revealed to me there the holy place and thus the Jerusalem to come down from heaven. — Epiphanius, Haer. 49. 1, p. 444 Dindorf. Prophecies op Maximilla Straightway Maximilla said: Of me you shall not hear, but of Christ you shall hear.— 48. 12, p. 439. And Maximilla said again, Of this pain [or toil, novou], cov enant and promise the Lord sent me a partisan, an informer [or guide], and ' interpreter, having forced me willing or un willing to learn the knowledge of God. — 48. 13, p. 441. And let it not be said in that same word of Asterius Urbanus [probably Montanist writer] through Maximilla: I am driven away as a wolf from the sheep. I am not a wolf. I am word and spirit and power. — Eusebius, H. E. 5. 16, 17. For the narrator among them tells that Maximilla the prophet said: After me there shall be a prophetess no more, but the end [consummation, awTB.eia\, — Epiphanius, Haer. 48. 2, p. 427. Eusebius quotes a writer against the Montanists as saying that Maximilla prophesied of wars and anarchy. — Eusebius, H. E. 5. 17, 18. Anonymous Prophecies If you ask counsel of the Spirit, what does he approve more than that utterance [that perfect love casts out fear]? For almost all are exhorted to martyrdom not to flight [Bonwetsch, p. 198, says that the reference is to written expressions of the Paraclete which were at hand]. So that we also make mention of 158 Appendix I it. If you are exposed to the public, it is good for thee; for who will not be exposed pubhcly before men will be before the Lord. Do not be ashamed. Righteousness brings you out before all. Why should you be ashamed of gaining glory? Power shall come to you when you are gazed at by men. — Tertullian, De Fuga 9. So also elsewhere [the Spirit says through a Montanist prophet or prophetess]: Seek not to die in beds, nor in miscarriages, nor in fevers, but among the martyrs, that He may be glorified who has suffered for you. — De Fuga 9, at end (substantially the same in De Anima 55). If anyone recognizes the Spirit also he will hear him through the Montanist prophets branding the runaways. — De Fuga 11. I have the Paraclete himself speaking in the new prophets: The Church has power to forgive an offense, but I will not do it lest they commit others. — De Pud. 21 For God sent forth the word, just as the Paraclete teaches, as the root the tree, the fountain the river and the sun the ray. — Adv. Prax. 8. He [the Son] having received from the Father has shed forth the gift [munus], the Holy Spirit, the third name of Divinity, the third degree of majesty, the preacher of the one Monarchy, but also the interpreter of the economy [oiKovoulac'], if any one receives the words of his New Prophecy, and the leader into all truth which is in the Father and Son and Holy Spirit accord ing to the Christian mystery [sacramentum], Adv. Prax. 30 at end. (Origen quotes Celsus concerning certain prophets in Phoe nicia and Palestine, and Ritschl, Enstehung d. altkath. Kirche, 2 Aufl. 490, believes that they are Montanist. Bonwetsch, p. 199, is inclined to agree with him. Celsus is quoted as say ing: "There are many who although of no name, with the great est facility and on the slightest occasion, whether within or without temples, assume the motions and gestures of inspired persons; while others do it in cities or among armies for attract ing attention and exciting surprise. These are accustomed to say each for himself, T am God, or, the Son of God, or, the Divine Spirit. I have come, for the world is perishing, and you, O men, are perishing for your unrighteousness. But I Appendix I 159 wish to save you, and you shall see me returning again with heavenly power. Blessed is he who does me homage [dprioKtvoac], On all the rest I will send down eternal fire, both on cities and countries. And men who know not their punishments shall repent and grieve in vain; while those faithful to me I shall preserve forever.' " Then Celsus adds: "To these threatenings are added strange fanatical and quite unintelligible words of which no rational person can find the meaning, for they are darkness itself." Origen, Cont. Cels. 7. 9. I think it rather doubtful whether these people are Montanists.) APPENDIX II Literature For those who wish to carry on further studies a brief list of modern books is here presented. For larger lists, as well as statement of sources, see (besides the sources and books referred to in text and notes above) the Church histories, histories of doctrine, and encyclopaedia articles. It goes without saying that I do not stand sponsor for the views of all the authorities referred to below. The student of history must keep an inde pendent mind, and care for neither the so-called conservative nor the so-called liberal, but take for his motto the title of the last book of the celebrated Canadian publicist, the late Goldwin Smith, No Refuge but in Truth. He will sometimes find that the interest and stimulus of a book is in inverse proportion to its truth, and sometimes that the trouble with a wrong view is not its falsity but its exaggeration. Unperturbed by new views or old views, he should sit quietly before his problem to find out the facts alone. Chapters I and II On the Jewish-Christian struggle, consult: Fisher, G. P., The Beginnings of Christianity, New York, 1877, pp. 469-505. Reuss, E., History of Christian Theology in the Apostolic Age, tr., London, 1872, vol. i, pp. 255-315. Weizsacker, C. v., The Apostolic Age, tr., London and New York, 1805, vol. ii, pp. 1-31, 339-352, 395-397. McGiffert, A. C, History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age, New York and Edinburgh, 1897, pp. 81-93, 192-234. Wernle, P., Beginnings of Christianity, tr., London and New York, 1904, vol. ii, pp. 25-103. Ropes, J. H., The Apostolic Age, New York, 1906, pp. 65-98. Workman, H. B., Christian Thought to the Reformation, London and New York, 1911, chap. i. And especially: Hoennicke, G., Judenehristentum im 1 and 2 Jahrhunderten, Leipzig, 1908. \ 160 Appendix II ^161 Schmidtke, A., Fragmente und Untersuchungen zu den juden- christlichen Evangelien: ein Beitrag zur Literatur und Ge schichte der Judenchristen, Leipzig, 1911. On the question of the authenticity of Matt. 28. 19, see: Conybeare, F. C, in the Zeitschrift fur neuetestamentliche Wis- senschaft und die Kunde des Urchristentums, 1901, Heft 4, pp. 275-288; and especially: Riggenbach, Eduard, Der Trinitarische Taufbefehl Mt. 28. 19 nach seiner ursprunglicher Textgestalt und seiner Authentie untersucht, Giitersloh, 1903. Riggenbach shows that the alleged quotations of a shorter form from Eusebius are not literal quotations, but free repro ductions, that when he does quote he gives the text as we have it, that he did not change his attitude in this regard after A. D. 325, that there is no trace of any MS. tradition of any other Eusebian text, and that such a shorter form cannot be found before Eusebius. He also makes the point that when we read in the New Testament of baptism in the name of Christ we have before us no precise formula. As to such formulas people were in those days somewhat careless. For example: the Apostles' Creed and the Lord's Prayer. See Haussleiter, Untersuchungen zur Vorgeschichte des apostolischen Glavhensbekenntnisses, Miin chen, 1893. This is the alternative Riggenbach draws from the primitive practice of baptism in the name of Christ. Either the first evangehst has himself invented the Trinitarian form of Matt. 28. 19, though they baptized then in the name of Christ, because he thought he could best thus express the meaning of Christ, or the first Church did not look upon the Trinitarian baptism-command of Christ as a distinct formula, nor con sidered baptism in the name of Christ a deviation from it. Rig genbach decides for the second horn of this dilemma, and be lieves that the practice of baptism in the name of Christ in apostolic times was an instance of Christian liberty. Chapter III For Grosticism, see as above: McGiffert, pp. 502-505; Wernle, pp. 170-204; Workman, pp. 32-39. 162 Appendix II Lightfoot, J. B., Epistle to the Colossians, 1875, 8th edition, 1886, pp. 71-111. Bigg, C, The Origins of Christianity, Oxford, 1909, pp. 129-147} and the following: Mansel, H. L., The Gnostic Heresies, London, 1875. Mead, G. R. S., Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, London, 1900. Bischoff, E., Im Revche der Gnosis, Leipzig, 1906. Bousset, W., Hauptprobleme der Gnosis, Gottingen, 1907. Kohler, W., Die Gnosis, Tubingen, 1911. See literature on p. 60 of this. Chapter IV The first important monograph on the interesting Montanist movement was by Albert Schwegler, the brilhant young dis ciple of Baur, and after him the chief representative of the Tubingen school, which cut such a wide swath in its day. In 1841, at the age of 22, he brought out his Der Montanismus und die christliche Kirche des zweiten Jahrhunderts, a miracle of historical power and learning for so young a man. He made the central principle of Montanism the doctrine of the Paraclete, and the new supernatural epoch of revelation founded in and by him. There are three such epochs — the Old Testament by the Father, the New Testament by the Logos, and the later by the Para clete. The latter founds the Church of the Spirit, all of whose members are priests, who mortify the flesh and reject the un worthy. This brings the end and the millennium. Between the Spirit and the Logos there is a hypostatic difference, and in this movement, says Schwegler, is where you will find the origin of the fourth Gospel and the Church doctrine of the Trinity. Historically, Montanism is a branch of Ebionite Jewish Chris tianity, to which also the pseudo-clementine Homilies belong. In these Homihes, says our young scholar, you get the principle of the whole Montanist movement, namely, that every revela tion of rehgious truth is prophecy. Its ascetism and its chiliasm are also evidences of its Jewish origin, and when the Cathohc Church condemned it she condemned also her own Jewish Christian past, because it "represented the general dogmatic consciousness of the middle of the second century." The theological faculty of the University of Berlin gave a prize to a student of chemistry, Waldemar Belck, for an investigation Appendix II 163 of Montanism which he published: Geschichte des Montanismus, Leipzig, 1883. Belck holds that Montanism was not a reaction toward primitive Christianity, but an advance upon it. This advance consisted in emphasizing universal prophecy instead of the universal priesthood of the early Church, in emphasizing moral discipline toward a complete separation from the world, in a supernaturalism which looked upon God himself as the leader in every Church matter, and in making the Spirit the first member of the Trinity, thus creating a subordination Trinity, but in inverse order. It is hardly necessary to say that both Schwegler and Belck are partly true and partly false. Both Montanism and the Cathohc Church were an advance, but in different ways: the former, looking for the near end of all things, narrowed the boundaries of the Church more and more; the latter, conscious of a world task, broadened them. Over against these one-sided books, Ritschl broke the path for a true view of Montanism in his Die Entstehung der altkatho- lischen Kirche, Bonn, 2 Aufl., 1857, pp. 462-554, and Bonwetsch put the climax in his great monograph Die Geschichte des Mon tanismus, Erlangen, 1881. See also the Histories of Doctrine by Seeberg and Harnack. An Anglican scholar, John de Soyres, did an excellent piece of work in his Montanism and the Primi tive Church, Cambridge, 1878. Chapter V Besides the authorities cited in the text, see the histories of doctrine and of the Church. Chapter VI On Chiliasm, see: Peters, George H. N., The Theocratic Kingdom, New York, 1884, vol. i, pp. 449ff. Atzberger, L., Geschichte der christlichen Eschatologie, Freiburg, 1896. Chapter VII On Arianism, see: Workman, H. B., Christian Thought to the Reformation, London and New York, 1911, pp. 62-83. Rainy, R., The Ancient Catholic Church, London and New York, 1902, pp. 323-357. 164 Appendix II Bright, W., Age of the Fathers, London, 1903, pp. 53-246. And the following special works: Kolling, W., Geschichte der arianischen Haresie bis zur Entschei- dung in Nicaea, 2 vols., Gutersloh, 1874, 1883. Gwatkin, H. M., Studies in Arianism, London, 1882; new edi tion, 1900. Gwatkin, H. M., The Arian Controversy, London and New York, 1891. Snelhnann, P., Anfang des arianischen Streites, Helsingfors, 1904. Rogala, S., Die Anfange des arianischen Streites untersucht, Paderborn, 1907. Chapter VIII Besides the Church histories and histories of doctrine, see: Wernle, P., The Beginnings of Christianity, London and New York, vol. ii, pp. 297-363. Means, S., St. Paul and the Ante-Nicene Church, London, 1903, chaps, iii and v. Fairbairn, A. M., Studies in Religion and Theology, London and New York, 1910, pp. 176-204. INDEX Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, views on Christ . . .7. 124 Alogi, views on Christ 84 Ancient Homily —"2 Clem.," view on Christ's; second coming 107 Arian movement discussed 113 Arius, views on Christ 121 Asia Minor, center of Christian movements 60 Athanasius, points on Divinity of Christ 129 Augustine largely destroyed Chiliasm 112 Baptism a regeneration 147 Christ's command to baptize 11, 160 Bar-Kochba, influence of rebelhon of on Judaism and Christianity 23 Barnabas, epistle of, on Judaism 28 An allegorizer 35 On Christ's second coming 106 Callistus, bishop of Rome, mistaken views on Christ 91 Cerinthus, views of 30 Chiliasm discussed 97 Clementines, the so-called 32 Commission, the Great (Matt. 28. 19) : is it authentic? . 11, 160 Council, the first (Acts 15) 17 Prohibitions of: are they authentic? 18 The first regular Ecumenical 125 Creeds, Gnostic influence on rise of 46 Are the germs of creeds in New Testament? 148 Ecstasy, utterance in 54, 59 Elkesaites 31 Episcopate, growth of 59, 89, 149, 150 Eusebius of Caesarea, his creed 132 His reasons for accepting the Nicene Creed 136 Gnosticism discussed 34 Was it a Hellenizing of the Gospel? 41 Ignatius on Jews and Jewish Christianity 27 Irenseus, views of , on Christ's second coming and kingdom. 108 James, brother of Jesus, fate of 24 Jesus Christ, his attitude on Judaism 9 Gnostic view of 39, 51 Early Christian views of 76 Was he a Chiliast? 103 Was he divine?, 113 165 166 Index PAOE Judaism, Christ's attitude toward 9 Can Jewish Christians be saved? 26 Chiliastic views of later 100 Justin Martyr, on whether Jews and Jewish Christians can be saved 26 Allegorizes Old Testament. 35 Views on Christ's second coming and kingdom 109 Christian worship in his time 154 Life, the Christian, Gnostic influence on 40 Second coming of Christ, influence on 56, 66, 70 Cathohc view of 146 Marcion, views of 43 Marriage, Montanist view of 66 Ministers as priests 151 Monarchianism discussed 76 Montanism discussed 52 Indorsed by bishop of Rome and later repudiated 89 Text of Montanist prophecies 156 Schwegler's views of 161 Belck's views of 162 New Testament, Gnostic influence on determination of books of 47 Nicsea, council of 125 Creed of 134 Reasons for final acceptance of Creed of 135 Noetus, views on Christ 88, 95 Origen, views on Chiliasm 110 On Christ 117 Parseeism, mother of Chiliasm 100 Paul of Samosata, his views on Christ 120 Penitents, receiving again in Church 69 New (Cathohc) view of penitence 146 Peter, the Gospel of 47 Philo, his allegoric method 35 Popes of Rome, mistaken views on Christ 88 See Callistus. Praxeas, views on Christ 88 Prophecy, early Christian 52, 63, 72, 149, 152, 153 Revelation, Book of, feeling of Greek Church toward Ill Sabellius, views on Christ 90 Saved, the classes of (Gnosticism) 40 Second coming of Christ near 55, 60, 62, 65 Chiliastic view of 97 Tatian, his Gospel Harmony 48 Teaching of twelve apostles (Didache) on Prophets 52 On Christ's second coming 106 Theodotus of Byzantium, views on Christ 85, 94 Worship, early Christian not Catholic 152 3 9002 02461 2013 :''¦¦'¦ ¦ ¦