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Copyright 1907 by the
American Baptist Publication Society

Published July, 1907

ffrom tbe Society's own Pvmb

DEDICATED TO
C. S. f.

BY
A FELLOW-PUPIL IN THE SCIENCE
AND ART OF CHRISTIANITY

PREFACE
About fourteen years ago, while a student in
Union Theological Seminary, I began a study of
the Ante-Nicene Fathers, with a view to discover
ing the forces and aims that caused the Christian
Church to form a New Testament. I submitted
an essay at that time, for which I was awarded
the prize in New Testament Introduction. A
few years later I read a paper on the same sub
ject before the American Society of Church His
tory. While a pastor in New Haven I did some
work in the library of Yale University, especially
on the fragments of Heracleon's " Commentary
on John," preserved for us by Origen, on the
ground of authority underlying the Christianity
of Clement of Alexandria, and on several other
subjects closely related to this discussion.
I do not claim for this fruitage of my study an
exhaustive treatment. Such a treatment is prac
tically endless. A hundred related subjects crowd
in upon the question we have set before us. I
have only tried to trace the conflict between the
early principle of an " open vision," and the ec
clesiastical principle of a closed " canon," trying
to avoid the confusion of thought that comes
from a failure to keep the two ideas distinct. As
7

8 PREFACE
far back as the age of the writer of Second Peter
we find a tendency to collect the Epistles of Paul.
This does not mean, however, that the author of
Second Peter regards Paul's Epistles as a closed
canon, or looks upon his own writing as of
inferior value. Indeed, countless books were writ
ten in the early days to which the names of apos
tles were attached. This very act was a tacit ad
mission of the superior authority of the apostles ;
but it was also a proof that the writers did not
regard the age of revelation as closed. What
we are trying to find here is not the time when the
New Testament books were written, nor even
when they were brought together in collections,
but when the idea first arose that no more could
be written, and that the collection was limited to
a definite body of documents.
I am greatly indebted, especially in the early
years of my study, to suggestion and inspiration
received from Prof. A. C. McGiffert, of Union
Theological Seminary. My indebtedness to Prof.
Adolph Harnack, of Berlin, will be manifest to all
who are familiar with his " Dogmengeschichte."
Help has also been received from Professor
Loofs' " Dogmengeschichte." My thanks are due
to the Rev. Charles R. Gillett, d. d., librarian of
Union Theological Seminary, and to Mr. Addi
son Van Name, M. a., librarian of Yale Univer
sity, for courtesies extended to me.
Philadelphia, March 12, 1907. GeoRGE H. FeSSIS.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The New Testament a Selection  1 1
II. The First Norm of Authority  31
III. The Period of Confusion  45
IV. The First Theologians  77
V. The Resentment of the Church  109
VI. Marcion' 8 New Testament  125
VII. The New Prophets  149
VIII. The Catholic Fathers  173
IX. The Acts of the Apostles  197
X. The Voice of Rome  217
XI. The Process Reviewed  235
XII. Conclusions  253

THE NEW TESTAMENT A SELECTION

I
A STUDY of the motives and movements in
the early church that led to the formation
of a New Testament cannot fail to possess a pecu
liar interest. We hear much said about " a New
Testament church," but it is generally forgotten
that a New Testament church is a church with
out a New Testament. The moment we begin
to ask how the documents came to be included in
one book, we see that it takes just as much
" inspiration " in the common conception of that
word, to get the book closed, as to get it written.
And yet the whole question is seldom carried
beyond the problem of the composition of the
documents. A work on the " Canon " is gener
ally nothing but a history of the accepted books,
that endeavors to trace back their origin to the
first century. Seldom is any consideration given
to other books. Not long ago, when a fragment
of the Gospel of Peter was discovered, no little
apprehension was aroused in the minds of many,
because of the treatment it received at the hands
of scholars. Some treated it as if it were authen-

14 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
tic gospel history. Some called attention to the
important place it held in the church in the second
century. Even the more conservative did not
hesitate to contrast its sayings with those of the
Four. Certain preachers, of the liberal sort, se
lected texts for sermons from it.
All this raised the question as to how the num
ber of Gospels became definitely and finally set
tled. Who determined that four was the accepted
number? How was the decision reached? Was
the man who reached it inspired ? Did he receive
a direct revelation, as authoritative as that of
the Gospels themselves? Such questions were
asked quite generally, and were never successfully
answered. The disturbance subsided, and the
church settled down once more, as often, to the
unquestioning acceptance of tradition; settled
down, all but that residuum of earnest and con
scientious minds, left behind by every such period
of questioning, to whom nothing is ever settled
until it is answered. It is to such minds that
we appeal for companionship in the following
investigation. In the middle of the second century we find that
our New Testament books were mixed in with a
great mass of literature, containing epistles, homi-

THE NEW TESTAMENT A SELECTION 1 5
lies, prophecies, apocalyptic visions, apostolic his
tories, and gospel narratives. No effort had been
made to sift this material, and some of these
books were prized even more highly than those
which eventually found an entrance into the
authoritative collection. Those who accept this
collection, as it has come down to us, and
receive without question the group of docu
ments selected by the church, must admit the in
spiration of the church, in a sense just as true
and definite as that of the authors of the books
themselves. The same Spirit that did the writ
ing must have done the separating. If this is
the case, and the inspiration of the church is to
be put on a plane of absolute equality with the
inspiration of the New Testament writers, the
question naturally arises whether that inspiration
continues to this day, or whether it was limited to
that particular period and to that special service.
In order to get a closed canon must we admit
the Catholic doctrine of an inspired church? If
we reject the Catholic doctrine of an inspired
church can we get a closed canon? Indeed, how
did we get our New Testament anyway, and just
what attitude must a man manifest toward it, who
cannot accept it unquestioningly, merely because

l6 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
it has been so accepted for many centuries by the
great Christian body? These are questions of
living interest, involving claims to catholicity
put forth by others than the Roman Church, en
tering into the foundation of every Protestant
body, and raising anew the very problem of the
seat of authority in religion.
Many a strange hypothesis has been advanced
to bridge over the hiatus between the mass of un
collected and unsifted documents, and the New
Testament. The dream of a table in the midst
of a great library, of certain praying saints in a
neighboring room, of the rustling of a mys
terious Spirit among the dusty documents, and of
the final entrance of the holy men into the library
to find on the table the books that constitute our
present New Testament, is one that need not en
gage our attention. And yet, as a matter of fact,
for many centuries some such conception as this
was very generally accepted in the church, even
by scholars. However desirable such an explana
tion may be from the poetic standpoint, and how
ever closely it may seem to connect the method
of the formation of the New Testament with the
popular conception of its composition^ such a
hypothesis is overthrown the moment we open

the new testament A SELECTION 1 7
the pages of patristic literature. Whatever idea
of inspiration the student may hold, when he
enters the writings of Irenaeus and Tertullian he
is forced to abandon the thought that the selec
tion of the documents was made by a method
supernatural and mysterious.
Almost as difficult of acceptance is the theory
that the formation of the New Testament was an
expression of the " Christian consciousness of the
second century." The expression "Christian
consciousness " is somewhat vague, but if it be
taken to mean the general approval of the Chris
tian communities, it is not true that the New Tes
tament was so formed. For example, a book like
the " Shepherd of Hermas " could not have been
excluded by a consensus of popular opinion, for it
was probably more widely read and admired than
any book now in our New Testament. It must
have been repudiated first by certain men in au
thority because of its heretical tendencies, have
been gradually discredited by the church officials,
and finally have been torn out by the roots from
the depths of the Christian heart. This was actu
ally done. In this case the " Christian conscious
ness " means the authority of the bishops. Then
too, there were in existence books that had been

l8 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
written by men like " the apostle Clement," and
" the apostle Barnabas." If the test of a book is
to be its apostolic authorship, and no one ever
thought of questioning this, how can these books
be excluded, and the writings of Mark and Luke
included ? If the " Christian consciousness " had
been allowed to express itself on this point there
can be no doubt that the decision would have
been entirely different. Without utterly ignoring
many of the most significant facts in our sources,
we cannot account for the formation of our New
Testament save by the instrumentality of episco
pal authority, which, for the time being at least,
was equal to that of the writings themselves.
Only those who mean this authority, when they
say " Christian consciousness," have any right to
use the term. The phrase sounds well, and, like
the more poetic explanation of the miracle in the
library, seems to save us a great deal of trouble
and investigation. But the facts of history are
against it. The books were not put to a vote. The
popular consciousness had little to do with the
matter. The sifting was entirely done by men
whose ecclesiastical position put them on a level
of authority with the New Testament writers
themselves.

THE NEW TESTAMENT A SELECTION I9
It will readily be seen that we are here dealing
with a most delicate question. The relation of
the Roman Catholic Church to the New Testa
ment is somewhat of an anomaly to her oppo
nents. It has always been a strong point in
Protestant polemics that her extension of the
period of revelation beyond the time of the canon
leaves no place in her system for the canon itself.
This is true, in a sense, but the books were in ex
istence before the Catholic Church, and some
thing had to be done with them. The Catholic
Church might have dispensed with them, on the
ground that she believed in the continuation
of inspiration through the medium of her officers,
but she was given no choice in the matter. They
were there, and were destined to give Her no end
of trouble as the years went by, because of the
contrast they furnished between primitive and
Catholic Christianity.
On the other hand, those Protestant writers
who use the New Testament as a weapon against
the old church, do not always realize that the
extension of the period of revelation beyond the
apostles, and its confinement to the bishops, was
necessary in the beginning in order to get the
canon closed. They make much ado over " A

20 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
New Testament Church," and forget that the
church had no New Testament. The Catholic
Church gave it to us. If the Protestant theolo
gian takes the ground that the church ought to
have put the matter to a popular vote, he prac
tically admits that we ought to have a different
canon from that one which he so strongly insists
is " the only infallible rule of faith and practice."
So his position becomes just as much of an
anomaly to the Catholic, as is that of a Catholic
to him.
As we shall see, there was a movement in the
early church that opposed the Catholic doctrine
of the confinement of inspiration to the bishops,
a belief in the universal inspiration of believers;
but the claim was easily made against these peo
ple that they had no need of a New Testament
at all. Among the Montanists, the books might
have been put to a popular vote, but the fact that
the prophetic gift was still supposed to be con
tinued among them did away entirely with the
necessity of a closed canon in those circles, and
made them the strong opponents of all efforts to
" set boundary-posts to God."
What, then, did give birth to the necessity for
a New Testament? Why was it that away on

THE NEW TESTAMENT A SELECTION 21
into the middle of the second century the church
grew and expanded with remarkable rapidity,
without giving a thought to collecting and clos
ing her authoritative documents? There is but
one explanation. Up to that time she made no
effort to become a speculative homogeneity. She
had no well-defined system of doctrine. She was
more interested in changing men's lives than in
changing their opinions. She was trying to
make them morally at one with the will of God,
rather than intellectually in agreement over a
theory of the origin of the cosmos. All books
that helped to this end were accepted without
question, and history tells us that the number of
such books was very great. It ought to answer
forever the hypothesis that narrowness is essen
tial to progress, that the period of Christianity
over which hovers the greatest romance, while
she was secretly building up that influence that
was soon to surprise the world, was the period
when her authoritative literature was without
limit. As the years went by, however, there came
into the church a tendency, having its origin in
the spirit of Greece, that made redemption consist
in knowledge, in the acquaintance of the finite

22 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
spirit with the character and the purposes of the
Infinite. This tendency took the emphasis away
from moral conduct, and placed it upon specula
tion. Its passion for redemption became a search
for the true science. What was the Christian
conception of the origin of the universe ? Where
was to be found the system of thought as taught
by Christ? Manifestly only in the writings of
those to whom he taught it. So began an in
vestigation of the Christian Scriptures, with a
view to finding the ontological explanation of the
origin of the cosmos, as contained implicitly in
their teachings. At first the church was shocked.
Christians everywhere cried out against the new
movement. The finding of mysteries about crea
tive powers, and about the battles of personified
ideas in those documents which had heretofore
been but sources of inspired truth, disgusted
them. The Christian conflict had been very real
and tangible up to this time. Persecutions, idola
tries, immoralities, the temptations to apostasy,
the allurements of sense, and all the dangers
of a corrupt society, had made it very plain to
the mind of the average Christian what it meant
to be "redeemed." But suddenly .the word re
ceived a new content. It became a battle of con-

THE NEW TESTAMENT A SELECTION 23
ceptions up in the clouds. It consisted in mystic
union with God through a comprehension of his
method of creation. Redemption was through
" gnosis," or knowledge. However much the
simple Christian might resist this tendency, it
had come into the church to stay. When once
the effort to find a " system " takes possession of
a man or a church, and " faith " is identified with
holding the proper doctrine, there is no stop until
religion is reduced to a formula, and salvation
consists in the holding of the right creed.
So the church began to speculate on its written
memorials. It was taken for granted that there
was a definite body of writings, contained some
where in the mass of Christian literature, that
was a theological unit, and that contained the
Christian " system." All that remained to be
done, in order to form a New Testament, was to
find these books, and bring them together. This
was no easy task, as events proved. Until the
purpose to weed out the heretical books, and to
gather together those that are authoritative, is
born, it is not proper to speak of the existence of
a New Testament. Not until a distinction is
made between those documents from which
men have a legal right to draw their doctrines,

24 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
and those which, though containing a certain
amount of truth, are not authoritative in every
particular, is there present that legal conception
which is expressed by the words " canon," and
" canonical." The term is juridical. There may
exist in the church a vast amount of sacred
literature, of varying degrees of value, which the
different assemblies regard as holy, and read in
their public meetings, some estimating one class
of books most highly, and some another, long
before a canon is in existence. The formation
of a canon implies, not the collection of these
books, but their separation into canonical and
apocryphal. It is very essential to bear this in mind. What
we are seeking is not the origin of the separate
documents, but the origin of the New Testament.
A book may have been in existence long before
it was regarded as a part of a single and authori
tative collection. Its insertion in such a collec
tion does not necessarily imply a change in the
value put upon it, but a change in the use made
of it, and above all, its separation from certain
other books that have hitherto stood on a level
with it. Any work on the " Canon," which ig
nores thi^ distinction, however valuable it may

THE NEW TESTAMENT A SELECTION 25
be as an apologetic account of the antiquity of
the accepted documents, will be utterly valueless
as an account of the formation of the New Testa
ment. On the other hand, to show that this dis
tinction was not made until the latter part of the
second century does not cast any contempt upon
the books, or imply that they were not valued as
the revelations of God for many years previous
to their formation into a New Testament. Such
a formation implies a sifting process for the pur
pose of segregating the doctrinally reliable books,
and also implies the existence of certain ques
tions of a speculative nature which require an
authoritative norm for their settlement. A New
Testament fences off its contents from all out
side literature, and will not allow its documents
to mix freely with outside books, however useful
such books may be for purposes of devotion. A
canon exalts itself as the supreme court of appeal
in doctrinal strife, as the last resort for deter
mining the wisdom and will of the Infinite.
But, granted the assumption that there is a
complete science to be found in the Christian
Scriptures, a difficulty presents itself. These
Scriptures deal primarily with matters of con
duct, and are often nothing but simple accounts

26 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
of the sayings and doings of Jesus. How can a
cosmology be found in such books ? Here the alle
gorical method of interpretation comes in. This
method, which finds great mysteries and hidden
meanings in numbers and symbols, had enabled
Philo to discover the entire Platonic philosophy
in the Pentateuch. In the same way it had long
been customary for the best educated men in the
little Christian communities to prove that the Old
Testament was a Christian book. Up to the time
when Heracleon, the Gnostic, prepared his com
mentary on the Gospel of John, it is impossible
to find any example of such a method of interpre
tation being applied to a Christian book. As
soon as the idea was born that there was a defi
nite system of theology taught by Christ and the
apostles, we find this method used in the interpre
tation of the documents. It became necessary to
prove that all doctrinal strifes were foreseen by
the New Testament, and a norm therein provided
for their settlement. This necessity led the church
Fathers to use the allegorical interpretation with
increasing freedom. As soon as an effort was
made to select an authoritative set of books from
the great mass of literature, and Christian teach
ers, instead of standing upon their own inspired

THE NEW TESTAMENT A SELECTION 27
authority, began to appeal to documents, we find
the beginnings of that method which enabled
each school of thought in Greece to find its tenets
in the fables of Homer, the text-book or Bible of
paganism. At first the Fathers ridiculed it, but
they soon fell into it. We find Irenaeus, in al
most the same chapter, laughing at the philoso
phers, and pilfering their method. Of course, the
New Testament itself was not supposed to con
struct explicitly a system of theology, founded on
a definite cosmological conception of the uni
verse; but it was taken for granted that such a
system was in the mind of the great Author. So
all that remained to be done, in order to construct
such a system, and group Christian thought about
it, was to make explicit that which was implicit in
the canon. For this no better tool could be found
than the old eclectic method of interpretation.
If the New Testament was not formed by a pop
ular vote, but by the power and authority of cer
tain men in ecclesiastical positions in the church,
we cannot refrain from asking, " What sort of
men were they? what motives actuated them?
did they do their work carefully?" Many of
these questions, which naturally come upon us in
great numbers, will be answered implicitly in the

28 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
following pages. One thing, however, we must
not forget : we are not able to hear both sides of
the case. The defendant has been silenced. The
great mass of early Christian literature has been
destroyed, and we are almost invariably depend
ent for the teachings of a heretical writer upon
what is said of him by his theological opponents.
We are forced to say, " Here is a place to hang
up a red light." The polemics of men like Ter
tullian and Epiphanius, whatever we may think
of the earnestness of their spirit or the truth of
their creed, was not of sufficiently high character
to justify implicit confidence in their judgments
of men. We can hardly say that it is safe, even
now, to judge of a man by reading extracts from
his writings made by one of the opposing school
of thought. The reader can easily see what our
attitude must be toward the statements of writers
living in an age when error was considered a
crime. What we are to seek in our investigation is not
the origin of the separate documents, but the
origin of the New Testament. A canon is of ne
cessity a homogeneity, having one real Author,
and not many. To recount the history of the lit
erature contained in it is altogether a different

THE NEW TESTAMENT A SELECTION 29
task from the effort to give an account of its for
mation. We are not trying to discover when the
documents were written, but when they came to be
looked upon as the integral parts of a single and
authoritative volume. Our search is for the birth
of an idea. The Epistles of Paul may have been
regarded as sacred, and may have long been used
in public reading because of their ethical and
spiritual value, without once being looked upon
as parts of a closed collection that is useful, not
only in building men up in the religious life, but
as the " last will and testament " of the apostles,
as a literal authority in settling difficult doctrinal
disputes, and as the repository of thought that is
the key to the explanation of the universe. To
prove that this book or that was very highly
prized, and was quoted by the earliest Christian
writers, has nothing to do with the question as to
how it came to be regarded as a part of a canoni
cal collection, to which appeal must be made in
settling the disputes of a divided Christendom.

II
THE FIRST NORM OF AUTHORITY

II

" T HAVE no commandment of the Lord," said
X. Paul in dealing with a certain question;
" yet I give my judgment, as one that hath ob
tained merCy of the Lord to be faithful " ( i Cor.
7 : 25). One has but to read the context to see
that the apostle refers to a direct spiritual commu
nication, and not to any saying obtained from a
document, when he speaks of a commandment of
the Lord. This source of authority was found in
the church for over a hundred years after the
death of Christ. The Spirit of Christ was sup
posed to be present in his church, inspiring the
heart, informing the mind, and guiding and di
recting the counsels of his people. To be sure, not
all Christians had the fine discrimination of Paul
between the " commandment of the Lord " and
their own judgment. Wild prophets, possessing
the gift of " tongues," or receiving spiritual com
munications by means of dreams and trances,
were found in many Christian communities, and
great importance was attached to the revelations
received through them. The number of " apoca-
c 33

34 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
lypses " far outnumbered the " gospels " in the
literature of the second century. The nature of
these revelations can only be inferred from the
one that was circulated under the name of John,
and that eventually found a place in the New
Testament. Through this, as a window, we can
look in upon the church of the second century,
and obtain a glimpse of the spirit that ruled it.
The favorite vehicle for " commands of the
Lord " was not the more sober history, but the
imaginative work, clothed in highly colored and
figurative language. The reason for this prefer
ence was that the " commands of the Lord " had
not yet become things of the past, but were a
spiritual and present reality. Despite all the gro
tesque and mystical forms which the belief in a
present Christ assumed, there was back of it a
mighty and practical power. Christianity was
not a thing of yesterday to the Christian of the
time of Hadrian. To possess the " mind of
Christ," to allow the " Spirit of Christ to rule in
him," to feel Christ's plans and purposes working
themselves out in his life, was the one great
desire of his heart.
A correction of the abuses to which this doc
trine of a present inspiration was subject, was

THE FIRST NORM OF AUTHORITY 35
found in another and parallel norm of authority.
Men who had walked and talked with Christ
handed down by word of mouth certain sayings
of his, which gradually became common prop
erty, and assumed somewhat the nature of a moral
code. As the days dragged by, and life after life
disappeared, and the survivors of the generation
of Christ became fewer and fewer, the tendency
to make this authority literary, that is to fix these
" commands of the Lord " in documents, slowly
began to supersede the method of oral tradition.
A transformation so radical, however, could not
take place all at once. Indeed, we find Papias, of
Hierapolis, in Phrygia, a Christian writer who
flourished a little before the middle of the second
century, and suffered martyrdom about the
year 160, saying this, " For I did not think that
what was to be gotten from the books would
profit me as much as what came from the living
and abiding voice." ^ Accordingly, he assures us
that if he met some one who had talked with
some one who had seen the Lord, he questioned
him very carefully, because he regarded this tradi
tion as more important and reliable than any
thing he could get from the documents. In this
> Eusebius, H. E., III., 39, 4-

36 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
Papias represents an attitude very common in
earlier times, but one that was dying out in his
day. His work was entitled, " Exegesis of the
Sayings (or Oracles) of the Lord." His norm
of authority was confined to the " commandments
of Christ," but he was willing to gather these
commandments, even after one hundred years,
from some old man who had met and talked with
a disciple, or a hearer of the Master.
This exegetical work of Papias plainly had no
theological purpose, but was solely for the inspira
tion and guidance of the religious life of the
church. Some light is thrown upon his purpose
by what he said of Matthew. He tells us that
this evangelist drew up a collection of the sayings
and doings of Christ " in the Hebrew dialect,"
and that " every one translated it as he was able."
An effort was being made to fix the form of the
Gospel more definitely. These " sayings " of
Christ, which we find distributed through the
other Gospels, but grouped in Matthew, were a
sort of a " new law " to many of the early Chris
tians. Papias gathered together the " Oracles "
of Christ, not for any theological end, but purely
with an ethical and spiritual purpose. To this
day those to whom Christianity is a spirit and a

THE FIRST NORM OF AUTHORITY 37
life, rather than an organization and a theology,
find it made most luminous in the Sermon on
the Mount. The first collections of the " Ora
cles " of Christ can hardly be called an effort to
make Christianity a historical religion, buried in
certain documents, for the sole aim in their pro
duction was to keep alive in the church the in
spiration of the spirit and the mind of Christ.
The study of words and phrases, the discovery of
great world-forming mysteries in a preposition
or an accent, had not yet entered the church.
Christianity was an experience, not a theory ; the
disciple of this period was known by his fruits,
rather than by his creed. Persecution kept the
Christian's faith in a living Christ pure and vital,
and as long as Christ was present in the church
there was no need of looking for him in a book.
When the Didache calls itself " The Teaching
of the Lord Through the Apostles," and exhorts
its readers so frequently to do " as the Lord com
manded," it has no idea that these commands are
fixed in a book, nor does it endeavor to justify
itself by quotation. One has but to read the docu
ment to see that a large number of its commands
must have been received through oral tradition,
or by direct inspiration. The modern reader fre-

38 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
quently asks, " When did Christ say that? " And
yet the effort to fix " the teachings of the Lord
through the apostles " is itself somewhat signifi
cant. The multiplicity of questions of a practi
cal nature, arising in the church, gave birth to a
demand for some more concise, definite, and au
thoritative statement of the nucleus of the teach
ing of Christ. The Didache was simply one of
many efforts to meet this demand. The revela
tions of wandering prophets were not entirely
satisfactory to the more sober and practical Chris
tians. Examples of this tendency might be multi
plied from Polycarp to the Philippians, from the
First Epistle of Clement, and from the homily
called the Second Epistle of Clement, where we
frequently find exhortations to fulfil "the com
mands of the Lord," and where citations are
commonly introduced by, " The Lord declares,"
or " The Lord says." '
The reader cannot fail to see in this a distinct
advance over the conception of Paul, quoted at
the beginning of this chapter, in the question of
the vehicle of inspiration. Paul's thought of a
direct revelation from Christ, through the pres-
' See Polycarp 2:3:1 Clem. 13; 2 Clem. 17 : 3; 3 : 4; 6 : 7;
8 : 4; 4 : S; 9 : 11; S : 2; 6 : I.

THE FIRST NORM OF AUTHORITY 39
ence of his Spirit in the soul, was gradually giv
ing way to an appeal to written " oracles." In
that conception of Christianity as a " new law "
we have the germs of a development that was des
tined to result in the death of spiritual religion,
and in the formation of a great hierarchy. The
imitation of Christ was to become, not a repeti
tion of his spirit, but a painful obedience to his
decrees. The " fruits of the Spirit " were to pass
over from the ripening products of an inner life,
to the copying of an outward pattern, and then to
the performance of a ritual. The germs of a hier
archy are here in these ethical teachers, called
the " Apostolic Fathers."
And yet they were near enough to primitive
Christianity to be free from the conception of a
book religion. In all their references to " com
mands of Christ " they make no effort to estab
lish the authority of any document, or collection
of documents, which profess to contain these
commands. Second Clement quotes from the
Gospel of Peter in exactly the same manner as
from the others.^ Indeed, sayings of Christ are
to be found in great abundance in all the writers
of this period, which cannot possibly be identified,
' See Edition by Lightfoot, Part I., Vol. II., p. 202.

40 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
or be made to parallel, with anything contained
in our Gospels. As we observe their great free
dom in the matter of quotation, and the very
slight regard they have for literal exactitude and
authority, we are forced to admit that they were
very far from being ruled by the conception of a
New Testament. The documents were of value
to them merely as repositories of commands that
were useful in building men up in the Christian
life. They had no theological interest whatever,
and mingled their own exhortations with those
of the apostles and Christ without the least regard
to exactness of statement.
We thus see that there were three sources of
authority in the church previous to the middle of
the second century. The commands of Christ
were received by direct spiritual communication,
, by word of mouth from those who heard him or
i his disciples, and by documents that were in gen
eral acceptance in the churches. No effort was
made to equate these three sources of authority,
or to determine their relative values. " The time
was short." The three could live side by side in
a church that was expecting momentarily a
world-cataclysm, or the end of the aeon. The
" living and abiding voice " was not supposed to

THE FIRST NORM OF AUTHORITY 4I
be at variance with the books, as the latter owed
their very existence in the beginning to the
former. Few churches possessed more than One
copy of the gospel narrative, and a traveling
prophet or teacher, who was acquainted with the
commands of the Lord as recorded in other Gos
pels, was at liberty to change or add to a particu
lar manuscript, as he might deem necessary. In
this way, no doubt, many of the alterations in the
text took place, which gave Origen so much
trouble when he undertook in later years to estab
lish the gospel text. As long as passing events,
like the news of a Roman defeat, the report of a
distant flood, the advance of an invading army, or
a midnight shower of meteors, were looked upon
as the heralds of impending doom, there would
be little discussion of the niceties of textual in
terpretation. Even in more settled and rational
communities, where the old expectation was dis
appearing, the main interest among men from the
common walks of hfe was in questions of con
duct, that were easily settled by an appeal to the
teaching of Jesus, or by some revelation of a
church prophet. The reference to the authority
of the past had no other design than the upbuild
ing of men in the Christian type of character.

42 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
The theological interest had not yet entered the
arena. No cosmological speculations had yet made
it necessary to find volumes of philosophy in one
of those simple " commands of the Lord." The
spread of Christianity did not take place at first
among men who had been influenced by the
doctrines of the philosophical schools.
But suddenly the scene changed. Christianity
became better known, and was no longer despised
as an inhuman and brutal superstition, at whose
feasts it was customary to drink blood. Men of
thought and social standing came into the church.
Among them were scholars from the ranks of
the Platonists, who had been trained to find a
system of philosophy in the poems of Homer.
These men came with a real redemptive interest,
but with a conception of redemption steeped in
the spirit of Greece. The salvation they were
seeking was merely an escape from the entangle
ments of matter, by means of a mystical union
with the Spirit of God. This union was to be
brought about by an intellectual apprehension of
the plans and purposes of the Infinite. Plato
taught that vice was ignorance, and that virtue
consisted in the holding of right opinions. To
him ideas possessed a saving power in themselves.

THE FIRST NORM OF AUTHORITY 43
In the second century certain followers of this
great sage began to find in Christianity the solu
tion of the cosmological and soteriological mys
teries of the universe. They began to write com
mentaries on the Christian books, with a view to
bringing out the essence of the Christian system.
They worked out an elaborate and profound
systematic theology. They introduced the old in
tellectual aristocracy of Greece into the Chris
tian communities, drawing a sharp line between
those who understood the deep mysteries of
Christianity, and those who merely apprehended
it as a system of external commands. The chief
interest of our investigation of these men, how
ever, is the fact that their appeal to the written
memorials of the apostolic age was of necessity
far different from that of the early church during
her period of missionary expansion. It is one
thing to use books as a source of inspiration in
the building up of the Christian life, and it is
quite another to make them the dogmatic basis of
systematic theology, the source of proof-texts to
establish creeds and Confessions, the last appeal
in an effort after a code of canon law.

Ill
THE PERIOD OF CONFUSION

Ill
THE great majority of Christian writers in
the second century have no conception of
the existence of a definite collection of docu
ments, constituting a closed book, and represent
ing the authoritative teaching of the apostles. In
the present chapter we shall endeavor to show
that many of the men who molded the life and
thought of the day were utterly without the idea
of a New Testament. For them there was no set
of writings, which had been collected and equated
and handed over to " the heirs of the apostles,"
as the final authority in establishing the truth.
For them the apostolic college was not a publish
ing house, and the twelve followers of Christ had
not filled up the measure of truth. Indeed their
norm of autho;-ity is not apostolic at all. Many
of them, like the author of the pseudo Cyprian
treatise, " De Aleatoribus," who was doubtless a
writer of this period, estimate the prophetic writ
ings of the Old Testament, together with the
books of the Christian prophets, more highly
than any other class of writings. These constitute 47

48 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
the " divine Scriptures," the " sayings of the Lord
through the prophets." They are of even greater
importance than the Gospels, inasmuch as they
contain more directly the teaching of Christ,
than the simple historical account of what he
said in Galilee. Still other writers regarded the
philosophy of the Greeks as a source of revela
tion, and admitted that whatever was true must
have been inspired. Their Bible was the whole
range of truth, and anything that commended it
self to them as Christian was regarded as a
revelation. Let us take a few concrete examples. Theophi-
lus of Antioch, bishop of that important See in the
East, represents an attitude that was very com
mon in the second century, in places where the
church came into contact with Greek culture. In
the second book to his friend Autolycus, he de
clares that the sibyl has been a bearer of the Holy
Spirit to the Greeks, as was the prophet to the
Hebrews.' This belief was very common among
the early apologists. The effort to reconcile cer
tain elements of Greek philosophy with the Chris
tian system gave birth to this theory. It was en
tirely consonant with the common belief in a
' To Autolycus, II., 9. .

THE PERIOD OF CONFUSION 49
continuance of the prophetic gift. The ground
of authority to men like Theophilus is well illus
trated by words like these, " Wherefore the holy
Scriptures teach us, as do all the Spirit-bearing
men, one of whom, John, says." ^ He has no
fixed and definite norm save that of the inspira
tion of the Spirit, which is just as possible in a
Greek sibyl, as in an apostle. Such an attitude,
on the part of the occupant of the most important
See in the East, is very significant. An educated
Greek who embraced Christianity would natu
rally weave into his argument occasional quota
tions from the cultured writers of his native
tongue. That these quotations should be looked
upon as authoritative and inspired utterances
shows clearly how wide was the notion of sacred
literature in Antioch. Theophilus quotes apocry
phal sayings of Christ, without designating them
as such.^ His first and second books are filled
with Pauline ideas and phrases that are mixed
into the argument in a most free and easy man
ner, with no attempt at literal accuracy. It is
very evident that the thought in the mind of
Theophilus is that he is quoting a " Spirit-bearing
man," and not bolstering up his argument by
• To Autolycus, II., 22. ' To Autolycus, II., 34.
D

50 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
reference to authoritative documents. It is the
" voice of the gospel " that is all important to
him.^ Serapion, who became bishop of Antioch about
A. D. 190, a man of considerable influence and the
author of many writings, represents a distinct
advance upon Theophilus. Discussions of theo
logical questions had arisen in the diocese, and
there was a demand for a little more definite
ground of authority. This ground Serapion lays
down in the words, " For we, brethren, receive
both Peter and the other apostles as Christ." But
the bishop shows how far Antioch was from pos
sessing a settled canon of authority, when he says
of the Gospel of Peter, " As I had not read the
Gospel which they put forth under the name of
Peter, I said, * If this is the only thing which oc
casions littleness of soul among you, let it be
read.' " ^ The whole quarrel of his flock over this
particular form of the gospel narrative he re
garded as a " littleness of soul." His final reason
for the rejection of this Gospel was not because he
had come to learn that the number of the Gospels
was limited to four, but because in this Gospel he
believed that the narrative had been tampered
»To Autolycus, III., 13. = Eusebius, H. E., VI., 12.

THE PERIOD OF CONFUSION 5 1
with in the interest of a sect that was heretical. If
no such tendency had been found in it, it would
have been as authoritative as any other traditional
form of gospel history. He thought he found ele
ments of Docetism in this Gospel, and banished
it from his church for reasons very similar to
those which led the Alogi to reject the Gospel of
John. An important witness to the origin of the New
Testament canon is Tatian, a strolling rhetori
cian who became converted to Christianity in
Rome. Sometime in the latter part of the second
century he went to Syria as a missionary, and con
structed a Gospel that was called the " Diatessa-
ron " ("out of four").^ This document held
its place as an authoritative Gospel in the Syrian
churches for two whole centuries. Theodoret,
who was bishop of Cyrrhus, in Syria, during the
early part of the fifth century, says that in his
diocese alone he caused more than two hundred
copies to be withdrawn. It is just such a book
as a missionary would prepare, who wished to
present the gospel story to a new people in as con
cise and clear a manner as possible. Undoubtedly
'Zabn, " Tatian's Diatessaron," Erlangen, 1881. Julicher, " Ein-
leitung i. d. N. T." S 300. Hemphill, " The Diatessaron of Tatian,"
London, 1888. Edition by Harris. London, 1890.

52 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
Tatian constructed this book in Rome, and took it
with him to Syria. The importance of the Diates
saron as a witness to the fact that the number of
the Gospels in general use in a certain part of the
church, say Rome, was fairly definitely fixed at
four, has obscured its other bearing, viz., on the
estimation in which those Gospels were held. The
book is generally called a " harmony," but such a
word is misleading. If we were to publish such
a " harmony " to-day, and then were to burn up
all existing copies of the separate Gospels, we
would have an analogous state of affairs to that
which existed in nearly all the churches of Syria
for many years. No harmony is intended to sup
plant the work which it harmonizes. Tatian's
work was a creative, not an apologetic act. Euse
bius calls it a " Gospel," ^ and such it was. Pro
fessor Moore, of Andover, compares it to the re
daction of the Pentateuch, saying, " It certainly
is within the bounds of possibility that, if the
Syrian church had been left to itself, without con
stant contact with the greater church of the West,
the knowledge of the separate Gospels might in
the end have been lost, even among the learned.
The parallel to the history of the Pentateuch
> H. E., IV., 29,6.

THE PERIOD OF CONFUSION 53
would then have been complete." ' The Diates
saron was not rejected at last by popular vote,
but was arbitrarily uprooted by the arm of
authority. If, in the days of Tatian, there had been a New
Testament canon, the literal text of which was re
garded as authoritative, the Diatessaron could
never have had such a history. It manifestly rep
resents a time when the sole interest attaching to
the Gospels was the Life they revealed, and very
little regard was had for their literary authorship.
We cannot possibly suppose that the Syrian
church was far enough advanced in doctrinal
strifes over the " Johannine Question," or the
" Synoptic Problem," to be in need of a " har
mony." If we take the situation naturally, we
shall see that the condition of the New Testament
in the Syrian churches was a typical one. Manu
scripts were scarce; churches were springing up;
there was a call for brevity ; and so the docu
ments were treated very freely. All our sources
point to the fact that the original Bible of the
Syrian church was the Old Testament and the
Diatessaron. Says the " Doctrine of Addaei,"
' " Tatian's Diatessaron and the Pentateuch," Journal of Bib.
Lit. IX., 209. For further discussion of the Diatessaron see Har
nack, " Zeitschrift fur Kirchengeschichte," IV., 471 S. " Texte und
Untersuchungen," I., i, and the pamphlet, " Das Neue Testament.

54 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
" But many people assembled day by day and
came to the prayer of the service, and to the read
ing of the Old Testament and the New, viz., the
Diatessaron." ' This attitude is almost exactly
analogous to the development in the rest of Chris
tendom, where the first ground of authority was
" the teaching of the Lord." The only desire for
any documentary authority was for the assistance
it might give in the upbuilding of the religious
life, and the Diatessaron was sufficient for this.
In later years, when the Syrian church became
interested in theological matters, it split up into
two factions, a Bardensian party and an ortho
dox party, that almost completes the analogy to
the prior development in the church at large.
If we turn to Justin Martyr, who was Tatian's
teacher in Rome, we find almost no use made of
any Christian writing except the Gospels. For
Justin there is but one source of authority, the
divine Logos. It was the Logos who spake
through the prophets of old.' It was the Logos
who was the essence of that authority to which
he appeals so frequently, " the Spirit of Proph
ecy." ' Of the Old Testament writers Justin says
'English translation by Phillips, London, 1876, p. 34.
'Apology, I., 34, 36. J
•Apology, I., 35, 36, 39, 41, 42, 44, 51, 59, 60, 63; Dial., 43, etc.

THE PERIOD OF CONFUSION 5$
that they did not speak their utterances them
selves, but by the divine Logos who moved
them." ^ There is no definite and established num
ber of Christian writings to which this same
thought is applied. The Christian documents are
useful to Justin chiefly as a confirmatory record
of what was foretold by the " Spirit of Proph
ecy," and as a repository of the instruction of
Christ. He uses the " Acts of Pilate " ^ and the
" Preaching of Paul " * (or perhaps the Ebionite
Gospel) as authentic records, like the Gospels,
for proving that the predictions of the prophets
in regard to Christ were correct. Of course, Jus
tin makes no distinction between the revelations
of the Logos in the Old Testament, and his more
recent utterances and manifestations in the per
son of Christ. He is never led into a discussion
of the question whether Christianity is a new and
independent revelation. Indeed, in one place, he
makes the prophets sponsors for the writers of the
Gospels, asserting that he believes the things hand
ed down by those who have recorded what con
cerns our Saviour, because through Isaiah " the
Prophetic Spirit " has declared the same things.*
In his dialogue with Trypho the Jew, where he
' Apology, I., 36. ' Apology, I., 35, 48. ' Dial., 88. * Apology, I., 33.

56 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
is constantly led into asserting that there is no
salvation save through Christ, that the ceremonial
law of Israel is unnecessary, that Christ is useless
to those who keep the law, and that the ancients
who were righteous under the law were saved
through Christ, there is not one passage which we
can definitely fix as a quotation from the Epistles
of Paul. Indeed, in all the writings of Justin we
cannot find a quotation from any New Testament
writing, except the Gospels. His only Christian
source of authority is to be found in such expres
sions as the following, in which he abounds, that
the Christians worship God, " and the Son who
came forth from him and taught us these
things " ; ^ that " our teacher of these things is
Jesus Christ, who was born for this purpose " ; ^
that Christians are " taught by Christ and the
prophets who preceded him " ; ^ and that since
their " persuasion by the Word " * they live " con
formably to the good precepts of Christ," " who
" declares whatever we ought to know." *
So little is Justin ruled by the idea of a definite
deposit of authoritative tradition, that he declares
that " every race of men are partakers " of the
•Apology, I., 6, 13. 'Apology, I., 13. 'Apology, I., 23.
'Apology, L, 14. 'Apology, I., 14. "Apology, I., 63.

THE PERIOD OF CONFUSION 57
Logos, and that all who have lived according
to the divine Logos are Christians. Among the
Greeks such men as Socrates and Heraclitus are
to be so classed.^ He tells the emperor, in his
Apology, that he does not wish to weary him by
repeating all the names of those Greek and Ro
man worthies who have been guided and inspired
by the Word. They knew the Logos, but they
did not know the whole Logos, which is Christ.^
" Christ," he says, " was partially known even by
Socrates." * " The Logos, who taught in Soc
rates, afterward took shape and became man, and
was called Jesus Christ." * Stoics, poets, his
torians, and the followers of Plato, all " spake
well in proportion to the share they had in the
spermatic Logos." ^ The sibyls and Hystaspes
also partook of the same revelation." The differ
ence between all these and the 'Christian revela
tion is that the latter is " fuller and more di
vine." '' This stand, that " there are seeds of
truth among all men," * which the church
abandoned when she began to form a hierarchy,
was very common in the early apologists. That
'Apology, I., 46; II., 8, 10. 'Apology, II., 10.
•Apology, II., 10. •Apology, I., 5. 'Apology, II., 10.
" Apology, I., 20. ' Apology, I., 2o. ' Apology, I., 44.

58 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
Christians know the truth better than others Jus
tin proves from this fact — not that they have re
ceived it from the apostles who were given the
authority to publish the true tradition — but be
cause there are among them some who do not
know the form of letters, and even some who are
blind, who have arrived at the highest height of
the attainments of the philosophers, inspired di
rectly by God.' There is very little conception of
a closed canon of revelation in such an argument
as that. Eusebius assures us that Justin over
shadowed all the great men who illumined the
second century, by the splendor of his name.' He
can be taken as a certain testimony to the fact that
in the year a. d. 150 the church in Rome did not
possess a new collection of documents that could
be placed side by side with the Old Testament, as
a canon of authority. Aside from the Old Testa
ment Justin knows nothing whatever of any au
thority, save that which comes from the life and
teaching of Christ.
A similar testimony is borne by Hegesippus,
who wrote his " Memoirs " under Bishop Eleu-
therus, in Rome, somewhere about the year a. d.
170. He says that in every city that is held
•Apology, I., 60. 'Eusebius, H. E., L., 4, 11.

THE PERIOD OF CONFUSION 59
" which is preached by the Law and the Prophets
and the Lord." ^ A later writer greatly strength
ens this testimony by quoting Hegesippus as say
ing that certain men falsely interpret " both the
Holy Scriptures and the Lord." ^ We possess but
a fragment or two of the writings of this author,
which have been preserved for us by Eusebius
and Photius, and it is very significant that in such
scant material we should find two distinct indi
cations that a prominent Roman writer in the
latter part of the second century still held to the
old norm of authority of the Old Testament and
the teaching of Christ. In an investigation like
that which we are conducting, this is all the more
significant because of the fact that in later years,
when the canon had been formed, there was a
tendency to suppress all writings that tended to
undermine the conception that from the very be
ginning the church had possessed a closed col
lection of authoritative and apostolic documents.
If we turn to Africa we find the condition of
affairs very similar to that which obtained in the
West. The words and doings of Christ were re
garded as authoritative, but there was no fixed
collection of documents conveying to the world
* Eusebius, H. E., IV., 22, 3. ^ Photius, Bibliotheca, Cod., 232.

6o FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
his teaching and his life, much less any group of
letters written by apostles, from which it was
legitimate to draw doctrines and precedents. In
the " Acts of the Martyrs of Scillis " the accused
Christians are asked by the proconsul, " What
sort of things are contained in your chests ? " and
they answer, " The Books that are in use among
us ; and in addition to these the epistles of a holy
man named Paul." This separation of " Books,"
(or "Scriptures") and "epistles" indicates
that to their mind the epistolary form of litera
ture was not quite on a level with the historical.
Such a separation was very general. It is not
probable that any Epistles were read in public
worship in the second century. They were con
sidered to be more for private perusal and for
particular instruction. While the Gospels slowly
grew into a position of authority as a result of
being read so continuously in the churches, the
public reading of the Epistles seems to have come
only after they were established as authoritative
writings. This may account for Justin's lack of
familiarity with the Epistles of Paul, as well as
the slight influence of Pauline conceptions upon
the growing hierarchy of the second century.*
' See Cambridge Texts and Studies, I., io6 S.

THE PERIOD OF CONFUSION 6l
Another witness from Africa is that of the
" Gospel according to the Egyptians." This book
bears precisely the same testimony to the esti
mation in which the early documents were held
as that borne by the Diatessaron of Tatian. It
appears to have been a compilation of two Gos
pels, that were substantially like our Matthew and
Luke, being in the interest of asceticism. It was
much used in the middle of the second century,
wherever this tendency was prominent. The
great influence and circulation of the book was
no doubt due to the ascetic spirit that ruled in the
churches throughout Africa. It was used by the
Gnostics ' and the Encratites ' as a recognized
source of Christian teaching and authority. The
homily called the Second Epistle of Clement
quotes from it as from the other Gospels. It was
probably regarded by the writer of the Didache
as a source of teaching of the Lord. Clement
of Alexandria quoted from it.^ Even as late as
the third century the Sabellians appealed to it,
as to an authority.* The book bears a striking
testimony to the freedom with which the gospel
narrative and tradition was used, even to serve a
' Hippolytus, Philosophumena, V., 7.
' Clement, Stromata, III., 9, 13. Exc. ex Thedoto, 67.
' Strom., III., 9. ' Epiphanius, Hxr., 62, 2.

62 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
particular interest. Such a book could not have
been written in an age when the form of the gos
pel story was fixed and definite, and when its
very letter was regarded as of canonical au
thority. The title, " Gospel according to the
Egyptians," together with the fact of its great
authority in that part of the Christian church,
shows that men saw nothing incongruous in that
day in molding the form of the gospel narrative
to meet the needs of a particular portion of the
church. Clement valued it very highly, but after
a careful examination decided that it was not to
be put upon a level with the four Gospels gener
ally recognized. In this he was not governed by
the thought that the number was fixed at four,
but by what seemed to him to be dangerous
tendencies in the book itself.
Clement, who became head of the catechetical
school in Alexandria about the year a. d. 189
is himself an excellent witness to the attitude of a
cultured Greek toward the source of Christian
authority. He boasted that he was a " Gnostic,"
i. e., a " knowledge-seeker," and was in search of
a system of Christian truth. In this he marks a
distinct advance upon any previous writer quoted
in our investigation. Justin was simply writing

THE PERIOD OF CONFUSION 63
an apology to the emperor, endeavoring to justify
Christianity as a movement. Clement was en
deavoring to construct a systematic theology.
What documents he regards as legitimate sources
of authority, is therefore a question of great im
portance. No writer in the early days of Chris
tianity, whose works have been preserved for us
possessed a wider canon than Clement. Wher
ever he found truth, there was to him authority.
He was a " Sicilian bee," whose home was among
the flowers in the great meadows of God, he de
clared. So he abounds in quotations from every
source. " The beginning of knowledge," he says,
" is wondering at objects, as Plato says in the
Theaetetus ; and Matthias, exhorting in the ' Tra
ditions,' says, ' Wonder at what is before you.'
So also in the Gospel to the Hebrews it is written,
' He that wonders shall reign.' " * This is a char
acteristic passage. Plato is authority. The Gos
pel to the Hebrews is used with the introduction
common only to quotations from the Old Testa
ment, " It is written." The " Traditions of
Matthias " is just as valuable in establishing a
doctrine as any other document. He speaks of
" Barnabas the apostle," and regards his epistle
' Strom., II., 9.

64 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
as an authoritative document.* He introduces a
citation from I Clement with the solemn words,
" It is written in the Epistle to the Corinthians,"
and " In the Epistle to the Corinthians the Apostle
Clement says." ^ He regarded the Preaching of
Peter as a source of authentic apostolic history.^
In one place he has a long dissertation upon the
use this document makes of the words " according
to the Greeks." He uses these words just as early
Christian writers used expressions from the Old
Testament in his endeavor to estkblish the impor
tant doctrine that a revelation was made to the
Greeks. Evidently he had no idea that his op
ponents would dispute the fact that the Preach
ing of Peter was an authoritative Christian
book. Of the Shepherd of Hermas he says,
" The divine power which appeared in the vision
to Hermas declared." * Then follows an extended
allegorical interpretation of this divine revelation.
He also held the Apocalypse of Peter in very
high esteem, quoting it with the words, " The
Scripture says." ^ He regards the writings of
the sibyl and Hystaspes as Scripture. " Since,
> Strom., II., 6, 7.
' Strom., IV., 17. See Euseb., H. E., VI., 13 and 14.
'Strom., I., 29; II., is; VI., s, 6, 7, I5-
* Strom., I., 29; see Strom., II., i; XI., 15.
'Eclogse ex Scrip. Proph., 41, 48, 49.

THE PERIOD OF CONFUSION 65
therefore, just as God wished to save the Jews
by giving them prophets, so also he distinguished
the most excellent of the Greeks from the com
mon herd by raising up prophets of their own, in
their own tongue, as they were able to receive
God's beneficence. Besides the Preaching of
Peter the Apostle Paul reveals this to us, say
ing, ' Take also of the Hellenic books, read the
sibyl, how it is shown that God is one and how
the future is revealed. And taking Hystaspes,
read and you will find much more luminously and
distinctly the Son of God described.' " * And
again, " Wherefore Peter says that the Lord said
to the apostles, ' If any one of Israel, then, wishes
to repent and by my name to believe in God, his
sins shall be forgiven him after twelve years.' "
Where did Clement get these sayings of Paul and
Peter? Of their documentary source we are
entirely ignorant, and yet he uses them as
sources of apostolic doctrine, just as valuable as
any words quoted from a book that has come
down to us. His was a very large canon. He
cites words from the Didache with the intro
duction, " It is declared by the Scriptures." ^
We have already seen that he used the Gospel
» Strom., VI., 5. ' Strom., I., 20.
E

66 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
according to the Egyptians very freely. He very
often quotes the saying of Christ, " Be skilful
money changers," as " Scripture." * He speaks of
the Epicurean Methodorus as " inspired." ^ But
far more important than his reference to any sin
gle writer, or his quotation from any single docu
ment, is the fundamental principle of authority
which he expresses so often in words like these,
" All things necessary and profitable for life come
to us from God, and philosophy more especially
was given to the Greeks, as a covenant peculiar to
them, being, as it is, a stepping-stone to the philos
ophy which is according to Christ." " " So, then,
the barbarian and Hellenic philosophy has torn off
a fragment of eternal truth from the theology
of the ever-living Word." * Clement is utterly
lacking in the conception that Christian theology
must justify itself by a reference to apostolic writ
ings. He represents an attitude common not only
to men like Justin, and Theophilus of Antioch,
and other early apologists, but to the men who
were cast out of the church as Gnostics. The
first efforts at an eclecticism that should make the
Christian religion square with Greek philosophy,
' Strom., I., 28; II., 4; v., 10. ' Strom., V., 14.
' Strom., VI., 8. * Strom., I., 13. See L, 5, I9i VI., 5, 8, 11, 17.

THE PERIOD OF CONFUSION 67
were without a definite ground of authority. Nat
urally some men carried this principle of the in
spiration of the Greeks by the Word of God to
greater lengths than did Justin and Clement.
The principle, however, was precisely the same.
The question is simply this, " In our efforts to
systematize Christian truth shall we be limited
in the sources from which we can draw for
authoritative statements ? " To this Clement
answered, " No." The question did not occur
to Justin as definitely, because in presenting a
resume of Christianity to those in authority, in
order to stop that very persecution to which he
eventually fell a victim, he found that the gospel
narratives furnished him all the material he
needed. This was true of all the apologists.
Though the very rise of defenders of the new
faith tended to establish more firmly the authority
of certain Christian writings, because of an ap
peal to them in controversy, still this appeal was
so simple that books like the Epistles of Paul,
that contained almost no tradition of the teaching
of Christ, were not dragged into the controversy.
It was left to other movements to bring these
documents into prominence.
We have reached the following conclusion by

68 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
our investigation: That about the year A. d. 150,
in Rome, and much later in the East, there was
no definite collection of documents, which had
been collected and equated, and bound up into a
single volume whose legal validity was equal to
that of the Old Testament. But there were cer
tain movements in the church which tended this
way. Men were writing to Roman officials, en
deavoring to convince them that the new move
ment was by no means the revolutionary and
inhuman affair it was reported to be. This de
fense, being of necessity more or less systematic,
led to an appeal to history, and so called to the
front authoritative documents. The Gospiels sup
plied this need fully, and all during this period
very little use was made of epistles. Not one
quotation from this form of literature can be
found in the writings of Justin. Although other
writers occasionally refer to epistles, no attention
is called to the personality of the author, nor is
he lifted in any way above the great mass of
Christian teachers. The only Christian authority
is Christ, and the men he has inspired to carry
on his teaching and work. That this authority
has been delegated to apostles, and by them in
turn to the constituted officers of an organization,

THE PERIOD OF CONFUSION 69
is a claim we do not find during the early part of
the second century. Much less do we find the
idea that the apostles were given the task of writ
ing down the memorials of the time of Christ and
publishing them in a closed book, upon which
there was a copyright. The early church took it
for granted that any book that edified was in
spired by the Spirit. In later years this norm
was exactly reversed, and only those books which
were decided upon as inspired were allowed to
be used for edification. The early church took it
for granted that all teachers and prophets who
" spake with authority " were the natural suc
cessors of the apostles. In later years this norm
was exactly reversed, and only the constituted
successors of the apostles were allowed to speak
with authority. These two movements went hand
in hand. As long as the church supposed herself
in possession of the natural successors of the
apostles, who taught as they were inspired by the
living Word, she never imagined that it was nec
essary to justify her power or her methods by a
reference to the " last will and testament " of the
apostles. But this condition of affairs was not destined
to last The dying out of the old expectation of

"JO FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
a return of Christ on clouds of glory, and the
consequent cooling down of feverish hopes, gave
birth to more settled and mechanical methods in
church organization. As a result men began to ap
peal to the historical sayings of Christ more, and a
little less dependence was put upon the words of
every passing prophet. However, it was far
down in the second century, as we have seen, be
fore this appeal to the words and deeds of Christ
became wrapped up in documents. Old men were
living who had seen the apostles. Any oral tra
dition that touched the Life of lives was very
highly prized. But this was a vanishing norm.
Its decrease was accompanied by a corresponding
increase in the emphasis put upon the written
memorials. Papias is a witness to the fact that
at first very little attention was paid to the au
thorship or validity of these documents. It was
enough that they bore the name of an apostle, or
the disciple of an apostle. " Of course I accept
the word of Peter," is the assurance which Ser
apion gives his flock; but he has grave doubts
whether Peter wrote the Gospel existing under
his name, at any rate in its present form.
Another necessity about this time drove the
church into a stronger emphasis upon her written

THE PERIOD OF CONFUSION 7 1
memorials. Complications with the public of
ficials of the Roman government arose, as Chris
tianity spread and became powerful. Grave ru
mors were circulated by her enemies, of horrible
rites, like the drinking of blood, performed as
part of her worship. Investigations and persecu
tions arose. In defending herself she put forth
certain champions who were acquainted not only
with her own life and teaching, but with the cus
toms and culture of the pagan world. These
men did not cast off entirely their old ways of
living and thinking when they entered the church.
Justin, for example, even after he became a Chris
tian teacher, went about still wearing the garb
of a Platonic philosopher. In defending Chris
tianity, therefore, it was natural that men who
had been educated in pagan philosophy should
endeavor to retain as much of their old thought
as was consistent with their comprehension of the
new faith. Many of these men, whose names are
to this day on the list of the saints of the church,
did not hesitate to affirm unequivocally the in
spiration of the Greek philosophers. They had no
thought that in so doing they were untrue to
Christ. The Platonic doctrine of the Logos, in its
conception as the informing and inspiring Word,

72 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
was not only regarded as not inconsistent with tbe
Christian revelation, but was considered one of its
crucial principles. Every truth, wherever found,
was a fragment of the Logos, a portion of the
Word of God. This Word was Christ. He was
the source of all knowledge and all truth. In
thus affirming that the inspiration of Socrates
was received from Christ they thought to exalt
the latter.
As events proved, this principle of eclecticism
gave rise to endless complications. To what an
extreme it can be carried can be easily seen on the
pages of Philo Judseus, who applied the same
principle to Judaism in the early part of the first
century, and found so much of the Platonic
philosophy in the Pentateuch that it is hard to
tell, as one reads, whether his heart is with Plato
or with Moses. It was inevitable, when Christian
teachers began to manifest this same tendency,
that the church should begin to feel a little un
easy about some of the leaders. Were they
Christian or were they pagan? Did they not
lean too far to the side of the philosophers ? Was
there not danger that the gospel narrative would
soon be placed side by side with the myths of
Greece ?

THE PERIOD OF CONFUSION 73
The eclectic method which these men used,
was applied not only to apologetics, but to sys
tematic theology as well. In times of peace,
or in lands where there was little persecution,
men were endeavoring to see how much of the
old cosmologies they could find in documents that
were accepted as authoritative by the church.
They were entirely sincere and earnest in this.
They did not feel satisfied or contented in a
church that possessed no system of theology. A
man who came over to Christianity from some
school of thought would naturally try to win over
his old associates by showing the superiority of
the new system to the old. He would retain the
essential elements of his philosophy, and endeavor
to read them into the Christian documents. Thus
an entirely new basis for Christianity was formed.
Instead of being an appeal to the heart, it began
to shift its emphasis to the understanding. And
this new basis, as the number of these men multi
plied, gave" birth to a new use of the Christian
documents. Just as Philo found the whole system
of Plato in the books accepted as authoritative
among his people, so the teachers of Christianity
now began to find their own documents replete
with the thoughts and dogmas of the various

74 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
schools of the day. In this way a means of trans
formation was found by which that intense
earnestness of early Christianity which had here
tofore manifested itself in working out great
moral and religious changes, could be turned into
the establishing of a system of metaphysics, and
spiritual enthusiasm could be metamorphosed into
theological intolerance.
The student of morals can hardly fail to lay
great stress upon this change. It is extremely
significant that the first Christians to speculate
and to defend Christianity were so very broad in
their conception of authority and inspiration.
Theophilus would include Greeks among " the
Spirit-bearing men." Justin declares that Soc
rates and Heraclitus shared in the inspiration of
the Logos. Clement, despite the lateness of his
day, goes so far as to say that philosophy was a
covenant between God and the Greeks. This
frank admission of an intellectual obligation to
the great sages of that wonderful land was pos
sible as long as the church was mainly interested
in transforming the lives of men. Her passionate
moral earnestness stood in remarkable contrast to
the skepticism and dilettanteism of Roman tolera
tion. She could be tolerant too, just as long as the

THE PERIOD OF CONFUSION 75
two ideas of the transformation of opinions and
the transformation of life were not identified.
But the moment the Platonic conception that
" vice is ignorance " took possession of a body so
full of a deep and passionate regard for the re
form of men, the foundation was laid for one of
the most fanatical and intolerant systems the
world has ever seen.
We shall notice in the next chapter the steps
by which this change was brought about. Up to
the period covered by our investigation thus far
Christians saw no incongruity whatever in rec
ognizing the genuine inspiration of all truth,
wherever found, and especially in the teachings
of the great Greeks. That those teachings had not
transformed the lives of men more effectually
was, of course, supposed to be due to their abstract
character. They were not incarnate. They were
without a Christ. They had no dynamic power.
Only the truth, as it was radiant in the person of
the Son of God, could touch the springs of action.
Philosophy was frozen truth. Christ was the
concrete expression of all revelation, the divine
Logos, the sum total of the wisdom and the
knowledge of God. Did not Plato himself recog
nize in a well-known passage the impotence of

76 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
philosophy until incarnate in a person to redeem
the human race ?
One can scarcely avoid a feeling of regret that
the church ever abandoned this broad platform of
the apologists for the narrower conception of an
inspiration confined to a collection of apostolic
writings. But she felt that to carry this spirit to
its logical conclusion would end by placing Christ
in a niche in the Pantheon. Between the spirit
of those philosophers, who adorned their homes
with the images of Pythagoras and Cleanthes, and
yet called themselves " Christians," and the spirit
of that emperor who placed an image of the Naza-
rene, with the statues of the philosophers, in his
chamber, the gradation was slight. A mere in
tellectual admiration did not satisfy the needs of
a church so filled with moral earnestness and a
passion for the redemption of the whole human
race. It is unfortunate that the church felt that
it had to pass on toward this goal over the path
way of intolerance, of creed formation, of unscru
pulous exploitation of the labors of the philos
ophers, and of the narrowing down of revelation
to a little book that should contain all the light
and wisdom of the infinite God.

IV
THE FIRST THEOLOGIANS

IV
IN endeavoring to discover the origin and to
trace the early history of that effort to give
Christianity a definite and fixed body of doctrine,
which was the source of the conception of a canon,
we at once find ourselves face to face with a
very serious obstacle. We have no knowledge
whatever of the pioneers in the movement, save
that which has come down to us from their most
bitter opponents, who were endeavoring to prove
that they were the very representatives of the
Antichrist. At first, no doubt, they were ignored
by the church at large. But as their followers be
gan to multiply, an effort was made to answer
them — often by men whose zeal for Christianity
was far greater than their knowledge of Greek
philosophy. As was very natural, the effort of
these philosophers to reconcile two systems
seemed to very many to be dividing their alle
giance. They were accused of possessing " images
of Pythagoras, and Plato, and Aristotle, and the
rest," * and it was even hinted that they might
^Tertullian, De Prsescriptione, 42. 79

8o FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
worship them as idols. The theory of Justin that
Socrates and Heraclitus, that the sibyls and Hys
taspes, that poets and historians, were all inspired
by the same Logos that gave Christianity to the
world, was all right when used as an apology to
the emperor, in an effort to stay the hand of per
secution. But when the same theory was ad
vanced in the gatherings of the church, and all
sorts of speculative questions were dividing Chris
tians, and men. began to say, " I am of Basilides ;
and I of Valentinus; and I of Heracleon; and I
of Theodotus," then it seemed as if the church
were in danger of turning aside from her great
purpose, and the accusation was brought against
these teachers that " they made it their business
not to convert the heathen, but to subvert our
people." * To the moral simplicity and earnest
ness of a purely missionary church it seemed as
if they were trying to serve two masters. As a
matter of fact, however, they were engaged in an
effort to make Christianity on its speculative, as
well as on its moral side, a universal religion.
The spirit of that people who spent their time
" in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some
new thing," and who seemed to the Apostle Paul
' Tertullian, De Praescriptione, 42.

THE FIRST THEOLOGIANS 8l
to be " in all things too religious," had crept into
the church. From now on there could be no rest
until a " Christian philosophy " was formulated.
That the pioneers of this movement had no in
tention of forming a separate organization is
shown by the words of Irenasus : " They even
complain to us because, although they hold doc
trines similar to ours, we without cause keep our
selves aloof from their company; and although
they say the same things and hold the same doc
trines, we call them heretics." * These men, who
were called Gnostics — a name which Clement
of Alexandria was proud to own because it indi
cated an emphasis upon knowledge — were the
first systematic theologians of Christianity. They
did not endeavor to enforce their conclusions by
any council or decree, but like Clement, they be
lieved in an " esoteric " Christianity for the
learned, and an " exoteric " for the rabble. This
was a genuine Greek conception. Christianity
was to have its " mysteries." They gathered their
disciples around them and taught the deeper
truths. It is almost impossible for us to obtain
any conception of their teaching, because only its
most absurd and grotesque features have been
' Irenaeus, Contra Hsereses, HI., 15, 2.
F

82 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
preserved for us by Irenaeus, Tertullian, and
Epiphanius. These writers mix up the theories
of teacher and disciple in such a hopeless manner
that the same man is frequently made to utter the
most contradictory statements. But despite this
fact, very suggestive passages frequently come to
light, and it would be an interesting investigation
to trace the philosophical relationship of these
utterances, and to thread out of them the Stoic,
Platonic, and Neo-Pythagorean elements. We
might compare them with the writings of Plotinus
and lamblichus, to see how they are related to
that Neo-Platonic movement which was started
in Alexandria by Ammonius Saccas, a Christian
by birth, who relapsed into heathenism. For ex
ample, nothing could be more Neo-Platonic than
the following, reported to be the doctrine of
Basilides, or his followers : " Since, therefore,
nothing existed — not matter, nor substance, nor
anything insubstantial, nor anything absolute, nor
anything composite, nor anything inconceivable,
nor anything devoid of senses, nor man, nor an
gel — when all things are absolutely removed —
a * non-existent ' God, inconceivably, insensibly,
indeterminately, involuntarily, impassively, un-
actuated by desire, willed to create a cosmos.

THE FIRST THEOLOGIANS 83
In this way a ' non-existent ' God made the
cosmos out of nonentities, casting or depositing
some one seed that contained in itself the entire
spermatic energy of the cosmos." * But with the
systems of these men we have nothing to do in
this investigation save to note the manner in
which they defended their theories, and the rela
tion they bore to the literature of the church of
their day.
Basilides, who was said to be a disciple of
Glaucius, an interpreter of Peter, taught in Alex
andria during the reign of Hadrian, a. d. 117-138.
The few fragments of his writings, and those of
his disciples, which have come down to us, make
his dependence upon the philosophy of Plato and
Zeno beyond dispute. Origen says that he " had
the effrontery to write a Gospel, and to give it
his own name," ^ but the lack of any other au
thority for this statement makes it somewhat im
probable. Eusebius quotes from Agrippa Castor
to the effect that he "wrote twenty-four books
on the gospel." ^ Clement of Alexandria quotes
very copiously from the twenty-third of these
books, to which he gives the name " Exegetics." *
' Hippoljrtus, Philosophumena, Vll., 20. ' Horn., I., in Lucam.
' H. E., IV., 7, 6. * Strom., IV., 12.

84 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
This work of Basilides is very well attested, and
it was beyond a doubt an effort to prove exegeti-
cally that the narrative of the gospel contained
implicitly his system of thought. This is the first
example of which we have any record where the
written tradition of Christianity is brought for
ward to attest any definite metaphysical system.
The method employed by these ancient theolo
gians is a familiar one. For example, Basilides
masses the following proof-texts to prove that the
divine principle of light descended from the Og-
doad to the Hebdomad, and thence to Jesus, the
son of Mary : * " The Holy Spirit will come upon
thee, and the power of the Highest will over
shadow thee " ; '' " By revelation was made known
unto me the mystery " f and " I have heard inex
pressible words, which it is not possible for man
to declare." * That the Archon was instructed by
Christ as to the " non-existent " One is the mys
tery in the scriptural expression, " Not in words
taught of human wisdom, but in those taught of
the Spirit." " That Christ was mentally precon
ceived at the time of the generation of the stars
is indicated by the relation of the Magi to the star
' Philos., VII., 14. ' Luke 1:35. • Eph. 3 : 3-5.
•2 Cor. 12 : 4. 'Philos., VIL, 14.

THE FIRST THEOLOGIANS 85
of Bethlehem.* That more than one Sonship ex
ists in the " non-existent " One is shown by the
words, " Waiting for the manifestation of the
sons of God." ^ The emphasis here laid upon
single words, and the mysterious meanings dis
covered in seemingly simple passages, all indicate
the new use of the Christian documents which
was brought into existence by cosmological specu
lation. Basilides exerted a great influence upon
the church of his day, not only because of his pro
found learning, but also because of the purity of
his character and his unquestioned sincerity. His
followers were numerous, and long after his death
Christian writers were endeavoring to answer
his doctrines in regions as far away as the valley
of the Rhone. Epiphanius declares that he taught
in all the cities of Africa. That he adopted a po
sition that seemed almost impregnable by his
method of exegesis, and by his ingenious adapta
tion of passages from authoritative Christian doc
uments is shown by the methods employed to
silence his followers.
Valentinus, who was reported to be a disciple
of Theodas, a man who was acquainted with the
Apostle Paul, was one of the most influential of
'Philos., VIL, 15. 'Philos., VIL, 13.

86 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
all those teachers who endeavored to put Chris
tian doctrine on a philosophical basis. He first
came into prominence in Egypt somewhere about
the year a. d. 130, and in the early part of the
reign of Antoninus Pius he went to Rome. Here
he entered upon a career sO successful that at one
time he was thought of as bishop for this im
portant See.* The method employed by him and
his followers to establish their philosophical spec
ulations has been well described for us by
Irenaeus. " They endeavor," he says, " to adapt,
with an air of probability, to their own peculiar
assertions the parables of the Lord, the sayings
of the prophets, and the words of the apostles,
in order that their scheme may not seem alto
gether without support." ^ It is evident that even
those who endeavored to answer the Valentinians
regarded this as " a plausible kind of expo
sition." * " By transferring passages, and dress
ing them up anew, and making one thing out of
another," they " adapted the oracles of the Lord
to their own opinions." * Surely this sin is so old
and common that there is scarcely a theologian
in the whole history of Christianity who has a
'Tertullian, Adv. Val., 4. = Iren., I., 8, i.
' Iren., I., 9, i. * Iren., I., 8, 1.

THE FIRST THEOLOGIANS 87
right to " cast the first stone." It almost seems
like listening to a discussion of yesterday to hear
Irenaeus complaining that " collecting a set of ex
pressions and names, scattered here and there,
they twist them from a natural to a non-natural
sense." * He complains that it is just as if an
image of a king had been constructed out of
precious gems, and then some one were to take
the jewels out of their setting and rearrange them
into the form of a dog or fox.^ The very sur
prise of Irenaeus at this perverse method of tear
ing proof-texts from their setting is extremely
suggestive. Such a treatment of the books of
Christianity had never been made before. Fa
miliar as it is in theological discussion even to
this day, it was at that time entirely unknown
as a use of the documents which the early church
had regarded merely as the inspired utterances of
her apostles and prophets, or the ethical and spirit
ual oracles of her Lord. The origin of this
method of interpretation is indicated by these
words of Irenaeus : " In so doing they act like
those who bring forward any kind of hypothesis
they fancy, and then endeavor to support it out
of the poems of Homer, so that the ignorant
' Iren., I., 9, 3. ' Iren., I., 8, 1.

88 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
imagine that Homer actually composed the verses
with a view to that hypothesis." * A concrete
example is then given of this method, and after
the proof-texts have been given Irenaeus adds:
" Now what simple-minded man, I ask, would
not be led by such verses as these to think that
Homer actually framed them so, with reference to
the subject indicated." This solicitude of Iren
aeus, as we shall see later, is not always so keen
and alert when he is endeavoring to establish his
own opinions. The great fact is that an entirely
new use is being made of the written memorials
of Christianity by these theologians, who " with
great craftiness adapt parts of Scripture to their
theories," and " derive proofs for their opinions
from the writings of the evangelists and the
apostles." ^
Let us take a few examples of their method.
That Christ is derived from all the aeons, and is
himself the pleroma, they prove from such pas
sages as these from Paul : * "In whom dwelleth
the pleroma of the Godhead " ; * " Of him, and
through him, and to him, are all things, to whom
be glory unto the aeons " ; " " Christ is all, and in
' Iren., I., 9, 3. ' Iren., I., 3, 6. » Iren., I., 3, 4.
* Col. 2:9. ' Rom. II : 36,

THE FIRST THEOLOGIANS 89
all " ; * " All things are summed up by God in
Christ." ^ The parable of the Laborers Sent into
the Vineyard is found to be an allegory of the
thirty aeons, because some were sent out the first
hour, some the third, some the sixth, some the
ninth, and some the eleventh, while the sum total
of one, three, six, nine, and eleven is just thirty.*
One might easily join in the indignation of Iren
aeus that they thus find their doctrines " in the
multitude of things contained in the Scripture,
which they adapt and accommodate to their base
less speculations," * were it not for the fact that
this is just the method which Irenaeus himself em
ploys to prove that the Gospels cannot be more in
number than four." The Valentinians made much
of such phrases as " Now are things hidden from
thee," * " I thank thee that thou hast hid these
things," ^ to establish their claim to an esoteric
doctrine, and to show that Christ did not ex
plicitly state his system. They claim that Paul
frequently mentions the aeons, and even asserts
their rank in the words, " To all the generations
of the aeons of the .^Eon." * The rank of twelve
aeons, called the Duodecad, is established by the
'Col. 3 : II. 'Eph. I : 10. » Iren., L, i, 3.
'Iren., I., i, 3. 'Iren., III., 11, 8. 'Iren., I., 20, i.
' Iren., I., 20, 3. ' Iren., I., 3, i ; Eph. 3 : 21.

90 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
fact that Christ was twelve years old when he dis
puted in the temple, and made the number of his
disciples just twelve.* This same thing is also in
dicated by the fact that the woman who touched
the hem of his garment had been afflicted just
twelve years.^ In this latter incident the Valen
tinians find a great cosmic mystery. The lost
drachma in the parable is a symbol of the lost
power in the Duodecad.* The story of Geth-
semane and Calvary is filled with indications and
revelations of the struggle of cosmic forces.* The
three measures of meal, in the parable of the
Leaven, is made to symbolize the later Platonic
psychology.^ Simeon in the temple, ready to de
part in peace, is a type of the Demiurge, who
takes his place in the scale of being upon the ar
rival of the Logos.* The parables of the Lost
Sheep and the Lost Piece of Money are made to
teach the dualistic doctrine of a wandering power,
outside the pleroma, who in a state of passion
created matter.''
So did these ancient theologians find all their
doctrines foreshadowed in the Christian Scrip
tures. It was all in vain that Irenaeus declared
'Iren., L, 3, 2. 'Iren., I., 3, 3. 'Iren., I., 16, 1.
'Iren., I., 8, 2. » Iren., I., 8, 3. 'Iren., I., 8, 4.
' Iren., I., 8, 4.

THE FIRST THEOLOGIANS 9I
that it was not " John's intention " to set forth
an Ogdoad and a Tetrad.* The fascination for
speculation had seized the church. The teachings
of Christianity must now have a metaphysical
background. However foreign a theory might
be to the mind of Christ and his followers, it must
justify itself by reference to their words. It may
not have been John's " intention " to set forth
an explicit system of theology ; but one was in his
mind, and he who understands the depths of
Scripture will be able to find it. That this po
sition, first adopted by the Gnostics, was not
abandoned by the orthodox teachers who an
swered them can be seen on almost every page of
their writings.
The assumption that the final system of truth
was in the background of the thought of the
writers of Scripture is one that has not died out
to this day. To be sure the speculations of the
Gnostics now sound strange and remote, but
in their day the language was familiar to all
cultured people, and the proof that their philos
ophy was hinted at, and often plainly declared, in
the sacred books of the church, must have swept
with tremendous force through the various centers
' Iren., I., 9, i.

92 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
of Christian thought. The widespread influ
ence of the teaching of Valentinus is a testimony
to this fact. His followers were found in Egypt,
in Syria, in Mesopotamia, in Cyprus, in Gaul, and
in Rome. Indeed, so many and so various were
the schools of his disciples and the phases of their
thought that the early Fathers who endeavored to
answer them have left us an almost hopeless
tangle. Irenaeus compares the school of Valen
tinus to that many-headed beast, the Lernaean
Hydra.* Epiphanius tells us that even in the
fourth century his followers were found in vari
ous parts of Egypt.^ Of Secundus, one of his first
disciples, very little is known.* Ptolemaeus, anoth
er disciple, was head of the Italic school in the
time of Irenaeus, about A. D. i8o, and no doubt
many of the doctrines attributed to Valentinus
were taken from him or his followers. We have
a fragment of the teaching of this disciple in the
" Epistle of Ptolemaeus to Flora," which is an
effort to answer the question of a female follower
as to the relation of the Mosaic law to Christian
ity. Although it belongs to the " exoteric " teach
ing of the Gnostic leader, and has little to do with
'Iren., I., 30, 15. 'Hasr., 31, 17.
»Tert, Adv. Val., 4; Iren., I., 11, 2; Philast. Haer., 4a

THE FIRST THEOLOGIANS 93
his theological system, still the use made of the
Christian documents is entirely in keeping with
what we have seen of his master Valentinus.
Marcus, another disciple, who taught in Asia, ex
ercised so great an influence that Irenaeus said he
was leading away Christians " even in our own
district of the Rhone." * Of Axionicos, who
taught in Antioch in the early part of the third
century, Tertullian says that he alone " vindicated
the memory of Valentinus by complete keeping of
his rules." ^ Of Theotimus, Alexander, Carpoc-
rates, Isidorus, and many others whose names
are mentioned by the early Fathers as disciples
of Valentinus, we know next to nothing.
By all means the most interesting of all the fol
lowers of Valentinus for our investigation is He
racleon, who was declared by Clement of Alex
andria to be the most influential of his disciples.*
He probably taught in some city in southern Italy
or Sicily, but just where we do not know. The
interest attaching to his name is due to the fact
that he wrote a commentary on the Gospel of
John, which is referred to over sixty times in the
small fragment which we have of Origen's com
mentary on the same Gospel. In these discussions
'Iren., L, 15, 6. 'Ad*. Val., 4. 'Strom., 4, 9.

94 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
of Heracleon we have the clearest and most un
answerable evidence of the fact that the Gnostics
were the first Christians to use the documents of
Christianity in the same manner as that in which
theologians had long been accustomed to use the
Old Testament. Clement discusses at some length
a distinction which Heracleon made between the
use of the dative and accusative case in a certain
saying of Christ.* It is probable that Heracleon
wrote other commentaries besides the one on
John ; but it is enough for our purpose to note his
method of interpretation as revealed in the frag
ments discussed by Origen. In the expression,
" All things were made by him," the preposition is
found to be very significant, and a great Platonic
mystery is found to be hidden in that little word
" by." ^ Just so salvation is " of " the Jews, but
not " in " them. The minuteness and accuracy
of this examination of words is the beginning of
the belief in verbal inspiration. The words " in
him was life " denote the existence of all " pneu
matic " men in the Logos.* In the number of the
husbands of the woman of Samaria, in the two
days spent by Christ in the city of Sychar, in the
seventh hour in which the nobleman's son was
' Strom., 4, 9. ' Com. in Joan., I., 8. ' Com. in Joan., I., 13.

THE FIRST THEOLOGIANS 95
healed, and in other numbers of the text, Herac
leon finds many significant and mysterious les
sons. The nobleman is a type of the Demiurge;
the servants are the angels ; the son is the material
world created by the Demiurge.* The woman
of Samaria represents the " pneumatic " man, in
structed by the Logos; the water of the well,
which she rejected, is Judaism; the husband she
is to call is her spiritual bridegroom from the
pleroma; the watering-pot is the soul, open to
receive instruction from the Saviour,^ and so on.
That Origen regards this as perfectly legitimate
interpretation is evident. Indeed, he expressly
says so. What he objects to is not the method
of interpretation, but the theology it is made to
foster. Again and again he agrees with the opin
ions of Heracleon, and sometimes as one reads on
it is difficult to tell just where the opinions of the
one leave off and those of the other begin. Origen
himself finds great and wonderful mysteries in the
colt of the ass on which Christ rode into Jerusa
lem, in the branches cut from the trees on that
occasion, in the accompanying crowds, and in
other things without end. Indeed, we frequently
find the interpretation of Heracleon far more sane
'XIIL, 58. 'XIIL, II.

96 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
than that of Origen. The latter complains that
the words " whose shoe-latchet I am not worthy
to unloose," receive " much too simple an inter
pretation " by Heracleon.* To be sure the Gnos
tic commentator shows some " largeness of
mind " when he understands the shoe to signify
the cosmos, but he spoils all this by making the
whole thing to mean an admission by the Demi
urge that he is not equal to the Logos.
We might multiply examples of the method of
interpretation employed by Heracleon, but a few
more must suffice. In the words " he went down
to Capernaum," the word Capernaum signifies
those far-away regions of matter into which the
creative power descended, and the phrase " went
down " contains a creative mystery.^ The as
cent of Christ to Jerusalem typifies the going up
of the Saviour from the sinful material realm to
the region of pure spirit.* The scourge of small
cords is an image of the power and energy of the
Holy Spirit; the wooden handle to which the
cords are tied is a symbol of the cross; the mer
chants driven out of the temple are a symbol of
the powers cast out and destroyed by Christ. The
word " lamb " ; * the phrase " in three days " ; "
'VL, 23. 'X., 9. »X., 19. 'XL, 38. 'X., 21.

THE FIRST THEOLOGIANS 97
the expression " ye worship what ye know not " *
— these, and many other things, are freighted
with immense significance.
Nowhere do we have better opportunity to
test the strength of the Gnostic position than in
this commentary of Origen on John. The method
employed by both writers is exactly the same, but
the Gnostic has the advantage of priority. He
found his doctrines taught in Scripture in exactly
the same manner as that employed by his oppo
nent to answer him. Such an advantage in time
accounts for the tremendous power and influence
of the Gnostic schools. " So firm is the ground
upon which these Gospels rests," says Irenaeus,
" that the very heretics themselves bear witness to
them, and starting from them each one of them
endeavors to establish his own peculiar doctrine."^
Between these lines one can read, " So firm is the
ground upon which these scientific theologians
stand, who read in the Gospels their strange mix
ture of Platonism and Orientalism, that the
church must take the books out of their hands,
close up the canon, and then read into it her own
system of doctrine by adopting their method of
interpretation." This is what actually happened.
'XIIL, 19. 'III., II, 7.
G

98 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
The Gnostics were the bridge by which the
church passed over from the period of expansion
into the period of reflection. Their effort to give
Christianity a definite and fixed body of doctrine
was the first step in the direction of creed forma
tion. We soon find a subtle transformation tak
ing place, by which the emphasis is shifted from a
moral and spiritual to an intellectual condition
of church-membership, and the incipient stages
in the development of the so-called " Apostle's
Creed " can be traced in the writings of those who
answered the Gnostics. The emphasis upon
" gnosis " bore its fruit, even though the men who
first advocated it were driven from the church.
Just so did the principle of an esoteric and an ex
oteric truth become established in Christianity,
though the right to the former was confined to the
recognized and ordained officials of the church,
and every man who had a philosophical system
was not at liberty to promulgate it, as formerly.
We thus find three forces working side by side in
the church — the tendency to appeal to an apostolic
and literary norm of authority, to make " faith "
consist in " gnosis," and to confine the teaching
function to regularly constituted authorities.
These three forces resulted in the formation

THE FIRST THEOLOGIANS 99
of a canon, of a creed, and of the monarchical
episcopate. Though our investigation has to do solely with
the first of these forces, we cannot utterly ignore
the other two. The assumption of the Gnostics
that knowledge of the character and purposes of
God constitutes the essence of salvation, and their
appeal to recognized written traditions to justify
their systems, bore fruit in more ways than one.
To be sure, the church at first had no sympathy
with their efforts to form a spiritual aristocracy
of the " knowing ones," because such an act of
necessity cast more or less contempt on the ig
norant and simple folk who had been the main
support of Christianity in the days of its unpopu
larity. But in later years, by the very adoption
of the creeds, and the development of the specu
lative theology of the great doctors, she did the
same thing herself, and to this day the inner mys
teries of the gospel are withheld from the rabble
in the church then formed. That this tendency
was resisted at first, even in the form that eventu
ally triumphed, is shown plainly by the saying of
Tertullian that " the simpler minded, not to say
the ignorant and unlearned men, who always form
the majority of believers, are frightened by the

ICG FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
Economy " * — a name by which this writer desig
nated the philosophical explanation of the Trin
ity. " I am not unaware," says Clement, " of
what is babbled by some, who in their ignorance
are frightened by every noise, and tell us that we
ought to occupy ourselves with what is most nec
essary, and what contains faith; and that we
should pass over the superfluous things that lie
beyond, which wear us out and detain us to no
purpose over matters which contribute nothing to
the great end." ^
Here we have the issue squarely joined between
the speculative and the moral conception of
" faith " ; between the redemption of culture and
the redemption of discipline. To the stern moral
earnestness of the early Christians the speculative
tendency was going " beyond " things necessary,
and was exhausting the energy of the church in a
vain effort to settle things which contribute noth
ing to salvation. There can be no doubt that
great multitudes did not understand the underly
ing assumption of Gnosticism that there is an in
tellectual " redemption," and that the highest sal
vation is only obtained by knowledge of the great
mysteries of the cosmos. The Platonic doctrine
'Adv. Praxeas, 3. 'Strom., I., i.

THE FIRST THEOLOGIANS Id
that vice is ignorance, and that virtue consists in
the holding of right opinions, which is behind
every process of creed formation, was triumphant
in the second century. Aristotle, with a more
modern psychology, had advanced the theory in
the Nicomachean Ethics that vice is a wrong state
of the will, and virtue consists in setting the will
right; but the teachings of this philosopher ex
erted but little influence on the church leaders of
the second century. Beyond a faint trace of his
teachings in the fragments left us of the theories
of Paul of Samosata, and others of the " Adop-
tionists," we can scarcely find a reference to this
philosopher in the writers of this period.
It was thus a speculative interest that started
the movement of sifting the literature of the
church, and forming a fixed and closed canon
of revelation. The only authority recognized in
the church before the year a. d. 125 was the pos
session of the Holy Spirit, and he was supposed
to speak to Christians of the day in precisely the
same manner as he had spoken to the apostles. No
line was drawn between the two revelations, mak
ing the one superior to the other. From the very
beginning followers of Christ had believed them
selves to be in immediate contact with the Spirit,

102 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
and had looked to him to reveal to them such
truth as was needed for the guidance of their
lives. The first Christians to resign this high
privilege were the Gnostics. When Heracleon,
by his commentary on John, undertook to find a
system of philosophy in the teachings of Jesus,
and sought to justify his beliefs by reading them
back into the apostolic age by the allegorical
method of interpretation, he began a movement
that was far-reaching in its consequences. Hence
forth the apostles were to be regarded as the sole
recipients of Christian communications from God,
and their teachings were to become the only
source and standard of truth for the church.
As the century passed on the movement grew,
and other teachers of influence and learning began
to carry the germs of Platonic mysticism and the
elements of various Oriental cults over into the
teachings of the apostles, by the method employed
by Heracleon. It soon became necessary for the
church to settle the question whether these specu
lations were really taught by the apostles or not,
and thus the question of a canon was raised. What
books were of apostolic origin ? What system of
philosophy did they teach? The Gnostics forced
the church to answer these questions. Of course

THE FIRST THEOLOGIANS IO3
the exact limits of the canon could not be found
at once. There were doubts and discussions over
certain books for generations. But this very fact
shows how general was the conception of revela
tion in the early days. To form an authoritative
and exclusive collection from the great mass of
sacred writings was no easy task. To be sure, a
simple norm was furnished in the thought that
the canon must be " apostolic " ; but two of the
Gospels in general circulation could not claim
apostles for authors. The final decision had to be
more or less arbitrary. When the third council
of Carthage, in the year 397, included the Epistle
to the Hebrews among the Epistles of Paul, it
was simply carrying out the principle that was
laid down for the formation of the New Tes
tament in the second century.
Of course the consequences of this step were
momentous. The baneful and pernicious notion
that every doctrine and every practice of the
church must somehow find apostolic authority,
even if it must twist passages out of their context
in order to do it, and find marvelous absurdities in
numbers and trivial objects, like shoe-laces and
whip-cords, utterly destroyed the sense of per
spective in the Gospels, and led the church away

I04 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
from the great spiritual and ethical message of its
Master. So far did it wander that it has not yet
returned. The idea is still widely current that
the church must carry back all its customs, beliefs,
and institutions to the apostolic age. The method
is still widely current of treating the apostles as
a single and composite body, whose individuality
overshadows that of the separate members and
hides their humanity under a mechanical concep
tion of revelation. We still feel the incubus of the
thought that in our day there is " no open vision,"
and unless we can find confirmation of our plans
and discoveries in the canon we must abandon
them. Above all, we are still far from exalting
to the place of supreme authority among us
Christ's conception of his kingdom, because of the
minor matters of the New Testament that ab
sorb all our attention. If ever we return to that
desire of our heart, " a New Testament church,"
it must be by realizing that such a church has no
idea of a New Testament. A church with a New
Testament is a " Gnostic church."
With the conception of a closed epoch of revela
tion we find an entirely new interest centering in
the inspired books. From this time on they are
supposed to contain not only utterances for the

THE FIRST THEOLOGIANS IO5
edification and guidance of men in the religious
life, but symbols and analogies that are freighted
with deep theological mysteries, and implicit dog
mas that explain the origin of the universe and
the true significance of being. It is one thing to
believe that a book reveals to us instruction nec
essary to the realization of a divine life, and it is
quite another to appeal to that same book for
proof-texts to establish a Pythagorean or Platonic
ontology. It was just this difference which grad
ually took place in the second century in the use
made of the Christian documents, and it was this
shift of emphasis that led to the formation of a
closed New Testament. Just as Maximus of
Tyre endeavored to purify and unify the pagan
religion by applying the allegorical method of in
terpretation to the fables of Homer, so now an
effort was made to reduce the Christian religion
to a speculative unit by reading the scientific con
ceptions of the age into the writings of the
apostles. The reader need not be told how easy it is,
by the skilful manipulation of quotations and the
fanciful interpretation of figures, to make the
Scriptures teach the cosmology of any school, or
any age. One who is familiar with the efforts

I06 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
of certain modern interpreters to make the Bible
a text-book of geology and astronomy, a sponsor
for the doctrine of evolution, a revelation of mys
teries about the Paleozoic age, a storehouse of
strange and weird anticipations of every scientific
discovery, will at least understand the efforts of
the Gnostics to find in it some indication of a be
lief in the aeons Aletheia and Zoe. Their science
may sound grotesque to our ears, their conclu
sions may appear wild and incoherent, their whole
thought may seem ridiculous and antiquated, but
their major premise of a Bible that contains the
thought germs of every age is one that the church
inherited from them, and still clings to fondly.
It is easy to ridicule them for their strange con
ceptions of Buthos, and Nous, and Sophia, but
these terms were merely the scientific vernacular
of the day, and nothing is more cheap than the
contempt heaped by one age upon another for its
scientific mistakes.
How thoroughly modern the whole contest was
can be seen by taking some such statement as the
following, which might have been made in the
latter part of the second or the latter part of the
nineteenth century: "When all this seething
speculation shall come to an end, and we shall

THE FIRST THEOLOGIANS I07
reach a true and final conclusion as to just how
God created and fashioned this universe, that
conclusion will in no wise contradict the reve
lation of himself which he has made in the sacred
Scriptures, but will be found to have been mar-
velously anticipated and foretold in the infal
lible visions of the divine Book." Whether these
words were uttered by a preacher in the age of
Valentinus to quiet some of his hearers who had
been disturbed by the speculations of Gnosticism,
or whether they were uttered from a London pul
pit in the age of Herbert Spencer to allay the
doubts raised by the theory of evolution, let the
reader who is familiar with both periods answer.

THE RESENTMENT OF THE CHURCH

WE are compelled to resort almost entirely
to conjecture in our effort to picture to
ourselves the feeling of the church at large at this
new use of the documents. The common Chris
tian had no spokesman. He was at the mercy of
his ecclesiastical superiors. He belonged to the
" exoteric " multitude, and was not considered fit
to settle the great crucial problems that had arisen.
Formerly he had been the strength and pride of
the church. Justin had boasted that in the Chris
tian communities of his day there were some who
did not even know their letters, who had attained
the highest heights of inspired wisdom. Paul
had stopped in the midst of his stormy career to
cry out, "Where are the wise?" The founder
of Christianity himself had thanked his Father
that its deepest truths were hidden from the "wise'
and prudent," and revealed unto "babes." But
now the " wise and prudent " were assuming the
leadership of the church. There is a feeling of
contempt in the reference of Tertullian to those
" simple-minded, not, to say ignorant and un-

112 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
learned men, who always constitute the majority
of believers," and who are frightened at the specu
lative tendencies of the day. Clement treats with
a haughty air those " babblers who in their igno
rance are terrified by every noise," and who insist
that the church cling to essentials and let
cosmological dreams alone.
Every indication points to the fact that the
common Christian -was utterly shocked at the turn
affairs had taken. He was dazed by Ogdoads and
Tetrads, by Pleromas and Kenomas, by the Ave-
lion and the Demiurge. The transformation of
Christianity, by which it was ceasing to be a moral
conflict in the midst of temptations to treachery
and apostasy and licentiousness, and was becom
ing a struggle of aeons, was utterly unreal and re
pulsive to him. He did not believe that the mind
of Christ ha,d been occupied with any such specu
lative foolishness. And yet the philosophers
claimed to find it all in the Gospels, and the best
informed leaders of the church scarcely dared con
tradict them. He was told that his inability to
see was due to his spiritual blindness. He was
told that only the initiated, whose understandings
were trained to apprehend the deep things of God,
could see how the scriptural writers, when they

THE RESENTMENT OF THE CHURCH II3
spake of how Christ went down to Capernaum,
meant the descent of the world-forming aeon into
the far distant realms of sinful matter.
It is very unfortunate that the student has al
most no material from which to glean the senti
ment of the church at large in this important
transition. The suppression of every document
that in any way militated against the conception
of an apostolic church leaves us almost helpless.
And yet we find an occasional suggestive fact or
reference that gives us a glimpse of the feeling
of the " simple minded " at this change from a
basis of redemption by morals to a basis of re
demption by theology. One such fact is found in
the party of the " Alogi." It is hardly fair, how
ever, to call them a party. Epiphanius, two cen
turies later, in his work against all heresies, gave
them this name. He said he called them " Alogi "
because of their oppdsition to the Logos specula
tion. No better testimony could be borne to the
fact that the movement was not regarded in its
day as a heresy. The first step in the condemna
tion of a sect is to give it a name. As long as men
can keep tags off themselves they can remain in
the church undisturbed. They are just " Chris
tians " then. Now whatever these Alogi were.

114 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
they were never driven from the church, but
maintained their position among the body of be
lievers.* Yet Epiphanius says of their attitude
toward the Johannine writings, " They say they
were not written by John, but by Cerinthus, and
are not worthy to be kept in the church." ^ Now
Cerinthus was a Gnostic Jew, and since the Alogi
were the bitter enemies of all Gnostic speculation
over the Logos, they must have believed that the
Johannine writings were a product of this tend
ency. This was not strange. Serapion believed
that the Gospel of Peter had been written in the
interest of Docetism. Tertullian supposed the
Shepherd of Hermas to be a product of Adop-
tionism. The Egyptian Gospel was doubtless
written in the interest of asceticism. It was a
very common thing for a book to be composed to
bolster up some tendency in the church.
The Alogi observed that the favorite book
among the Gnostics was the Gospel of John.
Heracleon wrote a commentary upon it. Perhaps
a Gnostic wrote the book itself. The Alogi were
merely certain Christians who put their empha
sis upon practical matters, and who resisted in
' Epiphanius, Haer., 51. Herzog, Real-Encyc., X., S. 183. See
Harnack, " Zeitschrift f. d. Hist. Theol.," 1874, S. 166.
' Epiphanius, Haer., 51, 3.

THE RESENTMENT OF THE CHURCH II 5
every way the philosophical and speculative tend
encies of the day. The cosmological speculations,
bound up in the doctrine of the Logos, seemed to
them a turning aside from the great prime pur
pose of saving men. They were not very well
informed in matters of criticism, as their funda
mental hypothesis testifies. It is inconceivable,
however, that a party could have arisen in Asia
Minor and have spread even to Rome, and that
made enough impression upon the religious
thought of its day to be deemed worthy of notice
two hundred years later, that attributed the en
tire Johannine writings to the arch-heretic Cerin
thus, and that advocated banishing them from the
churches if there had been in existence at that
time a closed New Testament canon. Such an act
would have shattered into fragments the very
foundation of church unity. But the fact is the
church had no unity, and endless schools of philos
ophy were springing up within her borders. Dis
cussions of points in metaphysics were taking
the place of the old redemptive interest, and it
seemed to the Alogi that Christianity was selling
her birthright for a mess of Greek pottage. They
wanted to banish the whole thing, and it seemed
to them that the quickest way to do it was to burn

Il6 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
up the books that were causing all the trouble.
They did not appreciate the significance or the
depth of the movement.
What sources Epiphanius drew upon for the
doctrines of these people, and just how strong the
movement was we do not know. Undoubtedly
the reason it was not given a name was because
the Alogi were not clearly differentiated from
many other Christians, who proposed all sorts of
remedies for the speculative evil, and who repre
sented various tendencies of feeling and of pur
pose. Not all Christians who objected to the ten
dency of the church to draw off her energies into
metaphysics could have found a solution in the
rejection of the writings of John. It may have
been that only a small fragment of the objectors
favored this remedy. But at any rate the Alogi
enable us to see how the common Christian was
impressed by the effort to make Christianity a
philosophy. To his mind it was ridiculous. It
was " to no purpose." It occupied the time of
Christians with matters that did not "contain
faith." It turned its attention away from the
great population sunk in barbarism and needing
a Saviour to the unprofitable dreams and misty
speculations of the groves of Greece.

THE RESENTMENT OF THE CHURCH II7
To these new interpreters of Scripture the par
able of the Sheep that Went Astray and of the
Lost Piece of Money indicated, not the straying
of some poor human being from the will and pur
pose of the heavenly Father, but the wandering
of the aeon Achamoth beyond the pleroma into
regions of darkness and vacuity, which was the
first act in the drama of creation. How such an
interpretation must have shocked the deep spirit
ual earnestness of every Christian who retained
that passion for men which was the dynamic of
the apostolic church! The fires of Christianity
were about to vanish in the smoke of philosophy.
What profit could there possibly be in an inter
pretation that declared that the story of Simeon
taking the infant Christ in his arms meant the
Demiurge rendering thanks to Buthos for the
arrival of the world-forming aeon? The first
creative Tetrad — Father, Monogenes, Charis, and
Aletheia — was found in the expression, " the
glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of
grace and truth." The second Tetrad — Logos,
Zoe, Anthropos, and Ecclesia — was found in the
statement that the word " was life, and the life
was the light of men."
To one unacquainted with the Platonic

1X8 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
doctrine of creative ideas these speculations
seem like the veriest nonsense. No doubt they so
seemed to the majority of Christians of the second
century. But to the Gnostic they were filled with
significance, and the student of philosophy can
trace directly the connection between this idealism
and the theology of Origen and Athanasius. The
Fathers denounced it, the assemblies scorned it,
the bishops repudiated it, but it triumphed never
theless, and another form of Platonism justified
itself from Scripture by interpretations just as
fanciful as those of Heracleon and Valentinus. It
seemed foolish to common Christians, unin-
structed in the schools^ to say that the daughter of
the ruler of the synagogue was a type of Acha
moth ; that the words, " Why hast thou forsaken
me ? " mean the desertion of Sophia by Horos ;
and that the thirty years of silence in the life of
Christ indicate an Ogdoad, a Decad, and a Duo
decad of Aeons. When Irenaeus said that the
men who use such methods of interpretation en
deavor " to adapt the oracles of God to their base
less fictions, by violently drawing away from their
proper connection, words, expressions, and para
bles, wherever found," * he but told the truth. But
' Iren., I., 8^ ».

THE RESENTMENT OF THE CHURCH II9
he did the same thing himself. And to this day
theology continues to do it. Indeed, the assump
tion that a complete system of doctrine is to be
found in the Scriptures forces her to do it. Yet
the fact remains that a morally earnest church,
whose interest was in men and not in aeons, was
so shocked by this misuse of her documents that
she proceeded to brand her first systematic
theologians as heretics and outcasts.
One other tendency was opposed by the Alogi.
Of the Apocalypse they were wont to say, "Of
what profit is it to me, when the Apocalypse of
John speaks to me concerning seven angels and
seven trumpets ? " We can almost hear them
laugh as they say, " And it says, ' Go and tell the
angel. Loose the four angels that are bound in
the great river Euphrates.' And the number of
the army were two hundred thousand thousand,
and they had breastplates of fire and of jacinth
and of brimstone." Says some good Alogi
brother, " Now, what nonsense that is ! " " These
men," says Epiphanius, " seem to be afraid that
the truth will become ridiculous." * It is evident
that the Alogi had little sympathy with the belief
in the continuance of the prophetic spirit. The
' Epiphanius, Haer., 51, 32.

120 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
speculations over apocalypses, the feverish ex
pectations of unsettled minds, the wild dreams
and visionary hopes, tended just as much to di
vert the energies of the church from her great
work of redemption as did the refining exegesis of
the schools of Gnosticism. To an ordinary Chris
tian, with little insight into theological and his
torical matters, both these tendencies would seem
extremely ridiculous. An untutored mind, inter
ested in matters of a practical nature, would not
make fine distinctions between parties and schools,
but would condemn all movements that were to
" no purpose," and that dealt with things that did
not " concern faith." Irenaeus evidently refers to
the Alogi when he says, " Others, that they may
set at nought the gift of the Spirit, do not admit
that aspect presented by John's Gospel, in which
the Lord promised that he would send the Para
clete, but set aside at once both the gospel and the
prophetic Spirit." *
The Alogi represent the first impulse of the
church toward outward unity. They perceived
that both Montanism and Gnosticism appealed to
the same group of literature in defense of their
dreams of the Paraclete and their speculations on
' Iren., III., ii, 9.

THE RESENTMENT OF THE CHURCH 121
the Logos. The Alogi at once determined that as
these doctrines were creating divisions and were
turning the church aside from its proper work,
they must be wrong, and the documents from
which they were drawn must be falsified. So
they attempted to stop the whole matter by at
tributing the Johannine writings to Cerinthus.
Their remedy was uncritical, and was just the sort
of a solution that would be proposed by minds of
little insight. They thought to find unity by re
moving all foundation from under the dreamers
and philosophers. Had the church possessed a
New Testament, from which it was customary to
justify all doctrines, such an act would have re
moved the foundation from the church itself.
But the church possessed no New Testament.
Her great mass of literature was yet in a chaotic
state. The plan of unity proposed by the Alogi
did not succeed, not because they rejected the Gos
pel of John, but because the doctrines of the Logos
and the Paraclete were too deeply rooted in Chris-
tion history and experience to be treated in a
manner so cavalier. Men who saw more deeply
into the movements of the day must have realized
that the rejection of a group of documents would
not put an end to Gnosticism and Montanism.

122 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
The Alogi existed in- the church for some time.
What their strength was in other places we may
only surmise from their influence in Rome, where
the movement was not native. Theodoret no
doubt belonged to them. There are good reasons
for thinking that Caius derived his objections to
the Apocalypse from them. Hippolytus, who
was Bishop of Portus, near Rome, in the early
part of the third century, attempted a refutation
of their doctrines in his " Philosophumena." We
have seen that Epiphanius, in the latter part of
the fourth century, was writing against them, and
was the first to give them a name. Indeed, all in
dications point to the fact that the movement was
not an organized effort at all, but merely an ex
pression of the body of common Christians, who
did not see deeply into the matter, but who knew
that something was wrong. The Alogi mark a
period in the history of the church when the criti
cism of the documents was very free, when it was
not definitely settled that a good Christian could
not reject the Gospel of John, when men were tol
erated who opposed heretics with the most drastic
measures, when the questions raised by the philos
ophers were becoming common property, and
when the problem of theological unity was

THE RESENTMENT OF THE CHURCH I23
assuming an importance that overshadowed
everything else. They prove conclusively that the
church of their day did not think that the all-im
portant thing about the Gospel of John was that
it belonged to a definite and settled group of
inspired and authoritative documents.
Who shall say that this movement does not give
us a true insight into the " Christian conscious
ness " of the second century? The same men who
objected to the Ogdoad of Valentinus also ob
jected to the Trinity of Tertullian. No such
things were to be found in the documents, they
declared. Either Heracleon's grotesque interpre
tations of John were not correct or else the Gospel
of John was not Christian. This was the di
lemma. Some reached one conclusion and some
another. All were agreed that the metaphysical
movement was a shift of emphasis, that to make
the lost sheep in the parable an aeon instead of a
forsaken and outcast humanity was to Hellenize
Christianity, and that no such " systems " were
to be found in the apostolic writings anyway.
Even the Fathers, whose writings have come
down to us, took this stand when speaking of the
heretics. Their point of divergence from men
like the Alogi consisted in the fact that they did

124 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
not deny that there was a rounded and completed
system of thought to be found in the apostolic
books. What they did deny was that the Gnostics
had found this system. Until the confusion could
be cleared up and some definite theological pro
gramme could be adopted it was sufficient to ad
mit the fundamental hypothesis of the heretics,
and to deny their conclusions. This was done, with
more or less consistency, by both Irenaeus and
Tertullian. They had an easy time in ridiculing
the teaching of the Gnostics, because the judg
ment of the great imthinking mass of Christians
was with them, and the vast majority of the as
semblies were ready to laugh the philosophers out
of court. The falsehood of their position con
sisted in the assumption that the Christian books
contained a final and completed system of the
ology, which eventually must be brought to light
by a process of speculation. The common Chris
tian, to whom Christianity was a vital reality, a
present-day experience, a continuance of the in
spiration of the Spirit, and was not yet bound up
with any set of historical events or documents,
was far nearer the truth than those who led the
church on into the hierarchy.

VI
MARCION'S NEW TESTAMENT

VI
THE first closed canon of Christian writings
was given to the world by Marcion. This
great leader and organizer, who was the son of a
bishop of Sinope, came to Rome some time dur
ing the latter part of the reign of Hadrian. We
cannot enter minutely into his teaching here, save
to show the interest and the motive that led him
to the formation of a New Testament canon. In
deed, it is utterly impossible to trace back to
Marcion a completed and consistent system, or
even the elements of one. His interest was not
speculative. He cared little for theories, and
much for men. He was a strong religious char
acter, and the gospel, to his mind, was not an
explanation of the origin of the world, but a
means of redemption from the world. In this
respect Marcion is to be classed with those old-
fashioned Christians, who resisted the Helleniz-
ing tendencies of the second century. He ex
pressly claimed for his work that it was not an
innovation but a restoration of the gospel.* He
' Tertullian, Adv. Mar., 20, i. 127

128 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
put his emphasis on faith, and not on "gnosis."
He never used the allegorical method of inter
pretation. He had no esoteric and exoteric doc
trines to propound. In short, he is to be regarded,
not as a philosopher, but as a reformer.
Becoming convinced that there was a violent
contrast between the teaching of Paul and the
growing Catholic hierarchy of his day, he set out
to purify Christianity. His point of departure
was the Pauline antithesis between faith and
works, between the gospel and the law, between
the children of wrath and the children of grace.
This contrast, backed by a strong moral and re
demptive dualism, and a mind that loved to dwell
in the paradoxical, led Marcion, as it at one time
led Luther, to certain untenable extremes. Be
ing utterly unable to understand the Pauline sug
gestion that " the law is a schoolmaster to lead
us to Christ," he rejected entirely the Old Testa
ment, attributing it to an evil god — the god of
wrath, who is the direct antithesis of the Chris
tian God of mercy and love. Marcion delighted
in emphasizing the tender attributes of the good
God, who is the Father of the Lord Jesus. The
evil god was the creator of the world. He was a
being whose stern justice was untempered by any

MARCION S NEW TESTAMENT 1 29
mercy, and whose wrath knew no forgiveness.
In striking contrast to him was the God of the
Christian. " Our God," say the Marcionites, " al
though he did not manifest himself from the be
ginning and by means of creation, has yet re
vealed himself in Christ Jesus." * " One work
is sufficient for our God; he has delivered man
by his supreme and most excellent goodness,
which is more important than the creation of
locusts." ^
Tertullian devotes one whole book in his
reply to Marcion to the Christo-centric char
acter of his religion. The revelation of God
in Christ was put before all things else. This
emphasis was no doubt the strength of the po
sition of Marcion. His weakness consisted in the
cavalier and arbitrary manner in which he treated
the great question, which was demanding solu
tion in his day, as to the relation of Judaism and
Christianity. It was Marcion himself who first
put the question, " What new thing did the Lord
bring us by his advent ? " * It was an uncom
fortable question for those who were founding
the Catholic hierarchy. The answer to this
"Adv. Mar., I., 19. 'Adv. Mar., I., 17.
' Iren., IV., 34, i.

130 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
question made by Paul was in direct opposition to
the tendency of the day. That Marcion did not
answer it correctly, either, is no reason for think
ing that his solution was more wide of the mark
than that of the great church. The early ethical
ideal that is found in the Didache, in Barnabas,
and in so many of the first Christian writings
seemed to him to teach the false Jewish doctrine
of salvation by works. Christianity was to the
writers of these documents nothing but a new
law. As Luther would cast out the Epistle of
James as " an epistle of straw," so Marcion would
banish the great mass of the early documents and
consign them to the brush-heap. Even the Gos
pels had been corrupted in the interest of this
false tendency.
Like a good Tiibingen critic, Marcion reveled
in the second chapter of Galatians. Paul had been
obliged to separate himself entirely from the rest
of the apostles, because they would cling to their
Judaism. Tertullian complains that Marcion al
ways makes Jews of the apostles. " On all oc
casions you wish them to be understood to be in
alliance with Judaisim." * Irenaeus says: "He
maintained that the apostles preached the gospel
»Adv. Mar., V., 3.

MARCION S NEW TESTAMENT I3I
while still under the influence of Jewish opin
ions " ; * and elsewhere he says that the Marcion
ites " maintain that the apostles intermingled the
things of the law with the things of the Sa
viour." ^ " The separation of the law and the
gospel," says Tertullian, " is the peculiar and
principal work of Marcion." * This separation
Marcion effected in a work called the " An
titheses," * which was exalted to a place of au
thority among his followers."
Two things led Marcion to this radical posi
tion — the drift of the church away from the sim
plicity of the gospel and in the direction of a
hierarchy, and the lack of any tendency or prin
ciple of reconciliation in his own mind. He
had the rugged nature of a reformer, and he
never used the allegorical method of interpre
tation. His mind was not adjustable. Ter
tullian frequently accuses him of failing to prove
his assertions. This much is to be said for
him, though he did not comprehend Paul's
means of preserving the Old Testament, despite
the fact that the law was no longer of any avail,
'Iren., HI., 2, 2. 'Iren., IIL, 12, 12.
'Adv. Mar., I., 2. See also II., 28; IV., i; Iren., I., 27, :^.
•Adv. Mar., I., 19; II., 28; IV., i; Philos., VII., 30.
'Adv. Mar., I., 19.

132 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
still he did grasp the deep Pauline principle of
justification, which the church of his day had lost.
It is impossible to conceive of the formation
of a New Testament without some preceding dis
cussion as to its relation to the Old Testament.
It was perfectly natural that this discussion should
begin with an emphasis upon the Christianity of
Paul, and with a complete rejection of the Old
Testament. This much we could have reasoned
out if we had never known of Marcion or of the
formation of a hierarchy which he resisted. To
this day the Pauline doctrine of sin and grace,
in the form of Augustinianism, and the Catholic
practice of justification by works, lie side by side
in that old church, with no attempt at reconcilia
tion. How the writer of the " Confessions "
could remain an ardent advocate of the hierarchy
must ever remain a mystery. Even our Prot
estantism is frequently becoming one-sided, and
driving out of its ranks men of strong ethical
tendencies. We must not be too hard on Mar
cion because he could not make the law and the
gospel live together in peace.
His was far from being a weak or nerveless
Christianity. No Christian community in the sec
ond century insisted so strongly on renunciation

MARCION S NEW TESTAMENT 1 33
of the world as did the Marcionites. Union
of the sexes was not allowed; even the married
had to be separated before they could be bap
tized. The most rigid rules in regard to eating
and drinking were enforced. The members of
his church found great joy in martyrdom. In
deed, so preeminent were they for the strictness
of their morality that the church Fathers were
at a great disadvantage in answering them. This
asceticism rooted itself in a strong dualism, which
Marcion justified by the Pauline antithesis of
flesh and spirit, death and life. He made much
of such passages in Paul as the seventh chapter
of the Epistle to the Romans.
Still there was a great deal of the Greek about
Marcion, and his dualism had just a little Platonic
tinge. When we try to find a consistent theory in
his teachings, however, we are lost in a labyrinth
of contradictions and uncertainties. His main in
terest was the preservation of the Pauline doc
trine of redemption, and different theological ten
dencies soon appeared in his church, which were
mutually tolerant of each other, showing that his
movement did not have a speculative foundation,
as did the Gnostic schools. It was a missionary
and reformative effort to persuade men to accept

134 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
the divine mercy offered them in Christ, to get
them to renounce their self-righteous pride for a
life of grace and forgiveness, to lead them to re
ject the law and the Old Testament for the true
gospel as proclaimed by Paul, and to help them
to conquer sin by a strict mortification of the body
and a sincere renunciation of the world.
We can understand now the interest which led
Marcion to the formation of a canon. To purify
the documents from all interpolations, to restore
the gospel to its true Pauline basis, and to make
it impossible for future ages again to corrupt the
stream of tradition, he took up the task of form
ing a closed collection of authoritative Christian
writings. In this he was perfectly sincere, and
possessed the tremendous advantage of being the
first to try to found a " New Testament Church."
His movement possessed no theological basis, and
no new prophets ever appeared among his follow
ers. There was but one course open to him, and
that was an appeal to the written memorials of
Christianity. He was the first to endeavor to fix
the boundaries of inspired Christian documents,
and to exalt a definite collection of writings to the
plane of canonical authority. This does not mean
that he valued the writings any more highly than

MARCION S NEW TESTAMENT I35
did the church at large, but that he made an effort
to settle definitely the number of them that were
authoritative. Without such an effort there can
be no " canon."
The object of Marcion in doing this was to
secure and preserve the Pauline principle of justi
fication and grace, which to him was " the gos
pel," from all future mixtures and corruptions.
When the church at large formed her canon in
later years it was with the desire of keeping in
tact the form of the apostolic teaching. She had
precisely the same motive as had Marcion. Nat
urally the nucleus of his canon was a collection of
the Epistles of Paul. These came in the following
order: Galatians, First Corinthians, Second Cor
inthians, Romans, First Thessalonians, Second
Thessalonians, Ephesians (which Marcion knew
by the name of " Laodiceans "), Colossians, Phil
ippians, and Philemon. He did not recognize the
Pastoral Epistles, nor the Epistle to the Hebrews.
That he did not alter the text much of the ac
cepted Epistles is evident. Even the proofs ad
duced by Tertullian and Epiphanius go to show
that he preserved the Epistles as he found them,
with the slight alteration of a few words.
Beside this collection, which was known as

136 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
" The Apostolicon," hjs canon possessed another
part, which was known as " The Gospel." He
took a manuscript, substantially identical with
our Gospel of Luke, and make corrections and
emendations, in order to eliminate all traces of
Judaism, which he regarded as corruptions of the
text. He was probably attracted to this form
of the gospel narrative because of its frequent
incidents putting Jesus in the light of the Saviour
of sinners. It lent itself beautifully to the re
demptive interest, which was a passion to Mar
cion. Then too, he may have thought that this
Gospel had been influenced less by the false ethical
ideals of the Judaizers. Whether he knew it under
the name of Luke, and whether he was attracted
to it because it had already been connected with
the name of Paul we do not know. We only know
that Marcion called it simply " The Gospel," and
held that it was what Paul had in mind when he
referred to his Gospel.
We have no time, and it would profit us little
if we had, to enter into the discussions of the
Fathers over the textual emendations of Marcion.
His importance in a history of the rise of the
New Testament canon is the fact that he first
endeavored to close the book, and did it on the

MARCION S NEW TESTAMENT I37
basis that it must be an absolute homogeneity.
His conception that a canon must contain no con
tradictory teachings, and that no opposing indi
vidualities must obtrude themselves, was precisely
the idea which the church adopted in later times.
But the church Fathers possessed one advantage
over Marcion; they were able to reconcile the
most diverse statements by their allegorical
method of interpretation, and so could accept a
much larger number of documents. But even in
this there must have been a charm about a rugged
and earnest character who had the courage to
cut out the hard passages instead of explaining
them away. Paul had released Christianity from
the fetters of Judaism ; but his deep mystical con
ception of " faith " had never been grasped by
the church at large. It is safe to infer that there
never would have been a great hierarchy formed
in the second century had Paul been thoroughly
understood. The idea of Christianity as a " new
law " could never have taken such deep root in a
Pauline church. It was this idea that Marcion
was combating, and it was inevitable that the
first effort in the direction of the freedom of
faith should take on certain strong antinomian
tendencies.

138 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
As for the canon, the church had possessed one
in the Old Testament for over a hundred years,
and had been allegorizing Christian truth into it.
We cannot conceive a second closed canon of reve
lation coming into existence without some pre
vious speculation as to the relation of the two. In
such a speculation the Pauline Epistles must stand
in the foreground. No one else had so deeply and
thoroughly entered into the question of the di
vergence of the Christian from the Jewish system.
It was Marcion's task to raise this question anew.
It had slept for nearly a century, and the apostolic
Fathers had gone on enunciating ethical rules that
Luther would have called " straw." The em
phasis Marcion laid upon personal religion, as
opposed to all legalistic and ceremonial enact
ments was genuinely Pauline. That he should
have come at it by a sweeping rejection of the
Old Testament is not so very surprising. How
could there be two authoritative canons? When
they disagreed, as certainly they would in the case
of two such different systems as Christianity and
Judaism, what possible appeal could there be?
The Catholic answer is, " Appeal to the author
ized successors of the apostles." Marcion was
enough of a Protestant to refuse to admit such

MARCION S NEW TESTAMENT 1 39
an appeal. He insisted that the Christian canon
was sufficient. In this again he has the Fathers
at a great disadvantage. They stumble and
quibble in endeavoring to answer him. Their
most frequent and effective answer is simple de
nunciation. He does not accept the Old Testa
ment. What better sign> that he is not a true
Christian? Why he does not accept it is a ques
tion that raises uncomfortable issues, and few of
the Fathers are able to handle such a tremendous
problem. If we had started out with a theory instead
of with an examination of the facts of history,
our knowledge of Christianity would have led us,
no doubt, to predict that there would be a con
flict between the " law " and the " gospel " be
fore two closed volumes of authoritative literature
could be included in one book. That we find
this actually happening in the case of Marcion
is therefore not remarkable. Nor is it remarkable
that Marcion was finally put down by the forma
tion of that strange system that enabled Augustine
to be such a devout believer in the free grace of
God, and such an earnest advocate of the principle
that that grace could only be mediated through
the sacraments of a hierarchy. The church never

140 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
really took hold of the question raised by Marcion,
but put down his movement by main force, bound
up the two canons into one, and left the, two
principles side by side in her system, subordi
nating, of course, the inner life to the outer
ceremonies. The history of Christianity contains the record
of numberless efforts to reverse this subordina
tion, making the form the servant of the spirit.
The Pauline conception, which the great apostle
no doubt obtained from Christ, that the ethical
and ceremonial life is to be regarded as merely
the " fruit " of an inner, spiritual transformation,
has been a most uncomfortable principle to the
hierarchy. By it Luther shook Europe; and by
it the mystics have often tried to overthrow all
organization. Even the Protestant church has not
yet found a way to live with it in comfort. Adopt
ing the principle, first enunciated by Marcion, of
a church founded on the New Testament, she has
found that the thought of an inner authority of
the Spirit has been turned against her author
itative book. Just as the Catholic Church was
driven by Marcion into a compromise that sub
ordinated the Pauline principle to a hierarchy, so
the vagaries of the mystics drove Protestantism

MARCION S NEW TESTAMENT I4I
to a theory by which the inner revelation of
the Spirit was subordinated to that of a book.
We shall see in the next chapter that the church
of the second century met with this problem too.
The very conception of a closed canon of revela
tion was sure to meet with the opposition of the
idea of direct revelations from the Spirit, which
in the beginning had produced the canonical
books. Indeed, the Epistles of Paul, which Mar
cion made the basis of the first canon, contain
a conception of Christianity which has ever been
turned against the very idea of a canon. In view
of all these things we cannot blame Marcion very
strongly because he did not understand the great
principle laid down by the apostle he professed to
follow. The church founded by Marcion grew to most
remarkable proportions. Epiphanius says that in
his day Marcionites were to be found in Rome,
Italy, Egypt, Palestine, Arabia, Syria, Cyprus,
the Thebaid, and even in Persia. Celsus divided
the Christian church into two great bodies, one
of which regarded their God as identical with the
God of the Jews, and the other of which regarded
theirs as a different Deity, and hostile to the
Jews. The former he calls the " Great Church " ;

142 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
the latter are the Marcionites. There can be no
doubt of the fact that soon after the middle of the
second century in every place where a consider
able body of Christians was to be found, there
would be found one of Marcion's churches, with
a simple service, a clean-cut conception of the es
sence of Christianity, a definite canon, whose
limits had been fixed, and a body of believers
noted for their high moral standards and their
willingness to endure martyrdom. Their num
bers, relative to the size of the " great church,"
must have been equal to that of the number of
Protestants to Catholics in the world to-day.
When we consider the severity of their discipline,
and the exacting demands made upon all members
of the Marcionite church, this growth is very
remarkable. Their solidarity must have given
them the advantage for the time-being over the
church at large, which was just then trying to
fuse the most diverse elements into a compact
whole. They had attempted to answer clearly
and finally the question, " What is Christianity? "
and they were not subject to constant checks and
quarrels over new revelations, because their canon
of authority was closed. The free organization
of their churches, the lack of disintegrating

MARCION S NEW TESTAMENT I43
Speculations over metaphysics, the genuinely
spiritual emphasis of their basic principle, the
strong testimony of the purity of their lives, the
missionary earnestness of their Pauline gospel,
and the definite ground of authority furnished by
their canon — all these must have conspired to
increase their strength and growth.
What worked most strongly against the Mar
cionites was the fact that the church was becom
ing secularized, and was feeling the necessity of
adjusting itself to the conditions of this world.
A body aiming at political power could not de
mand of all its members that stern ascetic stand
ard which ruled in the churches of Marcion. A
few anchorites might fly to the desert or the
mountains for the realization of a life of purity,
but mortification of the body, delight in martyr
dom, and rigid rules of fasting were not accept
able to men desirous of entering the world as its
rulers. A double standard of morality had to be
discovered, by which that dualism, which found
adherents in nearly every school of thought of
the day, could be adjusted to well-fed ecclesiastics,
as well as gaunt anchorites. The intense moral
earnestness of the Marcionites led them to ex
tremes that were hardly consistent with the

144 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
followers of One who had, been called " a wine-
bibber, and a friend of publicans and sinners."
The pendulum was swinging away from the ideals
of a persecuted church to those of a great secular
organization. Moral standards that were en
forced when men expected the sudden appearance
of Christ on the clouds were not applicable to a
church that had gained a foothold in the palace
of Caesar, and was about to gain possession of
the Roman scepter itself. The drift of the age
was against the Marcionites, and the very depth
of their earnestness, as well as the purity of their
lives, helped to make their cause increasingly
unpopular. Then too, the fact that they stood for no defi
nite theological explanation of the universe, and
placed their emphasis upon redemption rather
than speculation was a hindrance to their suc
cess. Their Paulinism did not allow them to
make that complete compromise with the Greek
spirit, which was the order of the day. Redemp
tion through knowledge, union with God by
means of science, salvation by contemplation of
the creative methods of the Infinite — these were
conceptions utterly foreign to the rugged evangel
ism of the Marcionite churches. They were too

MARCION S NEW TESTAMENT I45
much engaged with the fact of sin, and with re
sistance to the compromising methods of a
worldly church, to fall in with that ethereal and
theorizing tendency that poured all its energies
into trying to solve the problem of the " creation
of locusts." It was sufficient for them that God
had delivered man " by his supreme and most
excellent goodness," and refinements over the pri
ority of creative aeons must be made subordinate
to faith in Christ. It is not to be wondered at that
the church did not understand this position. Faith
in Christ had come to mean an explanation of his
place in the universe as the creative Logos, and
until this problem could be solved, and an am
bitious church could substitute a creed for a life,
little foothold could be found in it by men like
Marcion. And yet there was an element of weakness in
the fundamental position of Marcion. His very
claim to a restoration of the gospel, and his ef
fort to found a church on a canon, was an appeal
to history, and shifted the basis of authority from
faith to documents. Here the church had him
at a great disadvantage. However pure his life,
and however noble his followers, when the appeal
was made to the apostolic age he had to be ruled

146 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
out of court. He did not accept the documents.
If this is the test of Christianity, and it is right
to appeal to a canon, then the most upright and
honorable life will not avail the Marcionites. It
is all in vain that they abstain from sins of appe
tite and suffer martyrdom. They do not belong
to the apostolic church. They do not build on the
apostolic teaching.
Marcion saw clearly the falsity of such an ap
peal, and realized that the emphasis on " apostolic
Christianity " was making the religion of Christ
a " new law," and was substituting another set of
ethical rules for those given on Sinai, and yet he
was compelled to go back to the apostolic age for
his principle of " justification by faith," and in
so doing he fell into line with that exaltation of
the first century, which was the basic principle of
Gnostics and church Fathers alike. So he helped
to raise the question, " What was the teaching
of the apostles ? " This very question was his un
doing. It drew attention away from that vital
and personal relationship with a living Christ,
which was the strength of his conception of Chris
tianity, and introduced that endless era of criti
cism and exegesis which to this day holds the
church in its grasp. " Apostolic Christianity " is

MARCION S NEW TESTAMENT I47
Still the favorite topic of the schools, and that
deep Pauline conception that regards life's com
mon virtues as the " fruits of the Spirit," that
seeks to enthrone Christ at the seat of the af
fections, that allows the Spirit to work its way
out by " the law of liberty," that cares more for
" the mind of Christ " than for all ceremonies
and rabbinic subtleties, and that makes its point
of departure a present-day inspiration, rather than
a past code of commands, is waiting for the day
of ecclesiastics and theologians to be over.

VII
THE NEW PROPHETS

VII
THE theological chaos was not the only
problem the early church had to face. As
the Christian communities became secularized,
and a gradual adjustment to the life of the em
pire was brought about, it was inevitable that
there should be a lowering of moral standards,
and a consequent reaction in the direction of
primitive simplicity of life. These opposing
forces, of those who favored the naturalization
of Christianity in the world and those who clung
to the ideal of the days when it was expected the
Lord would soon return, naturally came into con
flict. The belief in the continuance of prophecy,
in the possession of the Holy Spirit by the indi
vidual, and in the universal priesthood of believ
ers, had gradually died out in the church. All
these primitive conceptions were revived in Mon
tanism. But this revival of the spirit of prophecy
was just as insubordinate, just as bewildering,
and just as depolarizing as was the multitude of
philosophical schools. Its great strength con
sisted in the fact that it resisted so strongly the
151

152 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
tendency of the church toward a double standard
of morality, and had no sympathy with a propa
ganda that lowered the requirements of sacrifice
in order to conquer the world.
In its inception the movement was more than
a simple revival of primitive ideas. It began in
Asia Minor, with a Christian prophet named
Montanus, who, assisted by prophetesses, set out
to realize the superior things promised in the Gos
pel of John by the coming of the Paraclete. We
have no time in this discussion to enter into the
vagaries and violent demands of the early years
of this movement. As it spread to the West it
took on more moderate forms. The conception
that the New Jerusalem was to come down in
Phrygia was abandoned. No effort was made to
separate from the church at large, and all empha
sis was laid on purity of conduct and character.
This deadened somewhat the first enthusiasm of
the movement, but it enabled it to take in whole
churches, without any appearance of schism or
heresy. The strong and courageous resistance it
made to the effort of Christianity to become a
legal and political power helped it greatly. Its
earnest exhortations for the manifestation of a
pure daily life, its insistence that the Christian

THE NEW PROPHETS 1 53
should be willing to sufifer martyrdom joyfully
for Christ's sake, and its support of these things
by the old belief in a direct inspiration of the
Spirit, all gave it great power and influence.
With the third of these only have we to do in
our discussion. The Montanists believed in a
new prophecy; and this belief was in direct an
tagonism to the conception of a closed period of
revelation and of a canon. We have no record
that they ever insisted upon putting their books
into the bound volume. Indeed, at the beginning
they had no conception whatever of such a vol
ume. If they had been told of a " New Testa
ment," they would have claimed that theirs was
the " Newest Testament." They did actually call
their commands the " newest law." But as the
movement spread through the West, with its de
sire to maintain connection with the great body
of the church, it found difficulty in reconcil
ing its position with the idea of a past period
of revelation, which was becoming generally ac
cepted there. The contest narrowed down to two
points — whether there could be a continuance
of Christian prophecy and whether the laxity of
moral character should be allowed to continue
in the church. As soon as the idea of a New

154 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
Testament was generally accepted, the conception
of a later and superior revelation of the Paraclete
could not be tolerated for a moment. And yet
what could a man do who had been led to believe
in the necessity of a closed canon as a means of
putting an end to the speculation of Gnostic
schools, who yet sympathized with the Monta
nists, because of their ideal of a pure life and
strict moral conduct? A church that allowed
its members too great freedom and looseness of
life could surely make no claim to a complete
preservation of the ideal of the apostles. This
fact would lead an earnest man to sympathize
with the Montanists. On the. other hand, this
same earnest man, observing the secularizing
tendency of Gnosticism, and realizing that a fixed
body of Christian doctrine could not be formed
without a canon of apostolic literature, would
sympathize with the effort to form a New Testa
ment. Such a man would be in an almost hopeless
tangle. There was, in fact, such a man. We have but
to turn to the writings of Tertullian to observe
the conflict of the two principles of a continua
tion of the prophetic gift and a closed period of
revelation. Inasmuch as he tried to be both a

THE NEW PROPHETS 1 55
Montanist and a Catholic Christian, we can best
study in him the antagonism of these two tend
encies. He tried hard to defend his orthodoxy.
" They and we," he said, " have one faith, one
God, the same Christ, the same hope, the same
baptismal sacraments. Let me say it once for
all, we are one church." * This sentiment was
not shared by the church at large. Tertullian was
a great champion in the fight with Gnosticism
and the Marcionites, and so was tolerated; but
the fundamental principle of the " new prophets "
was directly contradictory to the conception of
a canon and an apostolic church. Fo,r example,
what could be more revolutionary than a state
ment like this : " For if Christ abrogated what
Moses enjoined, because from the beginning it
was not so, why may not the Paraclete abrogate
an injunction which Paul granted? " ^ What be
comes of the doctrine of a final deposit of in
spiration, if it is subject to constant corrections
from " modern prophets " ? It hardly seems pos
sible that the man who so flatly and openly as
serts the right to correct the ancient revelation
by more recent commands of the Spirit can turn
about and say something like this : " It is true
'De Virg. Vel., ii. ' De Monog., 14.

156 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
that believers also have the Spirit of God, but not
all believers are apostles. For apostles have the
Holy Spirit properly who have him fully, in the
operations of prophecy, in the efficacy of healing,
and the evidences of tongues, not partially as all
others have." * It is evident that the whole
question is yet in a chaotic state.
A more complete statement of the final author
ity of the Scriptures cannot be found anywhere
than in Tertullian. " The Scriptures deny what
they do not affirm," ^ he says. And yet he tells
us that in the interest of a united church and a
completed sacrament it is very essential " to be
lieve nothing conceded by John which has been
flatly contradicted by Paul." * It is not profitable,
he thinks, to dwell too much " on the authority
of those scriptures which are a sort of cable of
contention with alternate pull in diverse direc
tions, so that one scripture may seem to draw
tight, another to relax, the reins of discipline — in
uncertainty, as it were." * And yet, if any of the
Fathers did this very thing, it was Tertullian.
He devotes whole pages to disputing the meaning
of a preposition or a phrase. His idea that the
» De Ex. Cast., 4. ' De Monog., 4.
» De Pud., 19. * De Pud., z.

THE NEW PROPHETS 1 57
Scriptures deny what they do not affirm made it
absolutely necessary that he over-emphasize every
little disagreement, in a vain effort at reconcilia
tion. The question of marriage — a most impor
tant matter to the Montanists — gave him much
trouble. He says of Paul, " He has introduced
all indulgence in regard to marriage from his
own opinion — that is, from human sense; not
from divine prescript." * He finds himself in a
tangle here, but does not hesitate to say that Paul
makes all his declarations from his own! " personal
suggestion, not from a divine command," and he
assures us that there " is a wide difference be
tween a precept of God and a suggestion of
man." ^ In this way he endeavors to set aside
the whole seventh chapter of First Corinthians,
and transcend it in the interest of the sterner dis
cipline of the Montanists. At times he grows
weary of the whole process of refining exegesis,
and of the undue exaltation of particular passages
of Scripture, and we find him saying, " We pre
fer, if it must be so, to be less wise in the Scrip
tures than to be wise against them." * " I am
content with the fact," he says, " that between
apostles there is a common agreement in rules of
> De Ex. Cast., 3. ' De Ex. Cast., 4. ' De Pud., 9.

158 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
faith and discipline." * And yet this was just
what he tried in vain to find. His stern and
puritanical soul was tried exceedingly by the
looseness of life that had crept into the church,
as it had become a great world power. The lax
Christians, who sought to adjust themselves to
the ways of the world, presented a strange con
trast to the Christians of earlier times. And yet
there was no definite law to which appeal could
be made. Arguments for both laxity and strict
ness could be brought forward from the Scrip
tures. It was this very fact that made the higher
revelations of the Montanist prophets appeal to
the sterner souls in the church. The " new proph
ets " were explicit and definite in their regulations
in regard to morals, in their insistence on absti
nence from second marriage, in their rules dealing
with fasts, and in their exhortation to endure
martyrdom for Christ's sake with a willing heart.
In these respects they actually seemed to be su
perior to the Scriptures. This fact makes Ter
tullian again and again rise to a very lofty and
spiritual conception of authority. He nobly de
fines the church as follows : " The church is the
Spirit himself." ^ Wherever he is, there is the
'De Pud., 19. 'De Pud., 21.

THE NEW PROPHETS 1 59
church. Authority, he declares, rests in this
" church of the Spirit," and not in " the church
which consists of a number of bishops."
It may be asked, " How could a man who held
such views as these be tolerated in the Catholic
Church ? " The only answer is that there was no
Catholic Church. Such a church was in process
of formation, and we do not have to look far to
see how useful Tertullian was in carrying out this
process. We find him caustically accusing the
great Marcionite Church of introducing new ideas
into Christianity. We must remember, when we
read these strange accusations of Tertullian, that
the " new prophecies," which he himself advo
cated, were to his mind simply a return to first
principles, and to a former manner of life. For
this reason he is very severe on the " novelties "
introduced by Marcion. " Schoolboys are proud
of their new shoes," he says, " but their old master
beats their strutting vanity out of them" * So,
he implies, will this Marcionite movement, with its
strange methods and conceptions, be put down
eventually by the lash of authority. That he was
perfectly right in this prophecy no student of
history will deny. The " old master " at last did
•Adv. Mar., I., 8.

l6o FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
beat the " strutting vanity " out of every one of
her refractory pupils, including TertuUian's own
" prophets." He complains bitterly that the church is " set
ting boundary-posts to God." * and declares that
all that remains now is to banish him entirely
from the world. He felt deeply the effect upon
the lives of Christians of the unspiritual concep
tion of a closed era of revelation. Why then,
we ask, did he not find some other weapon with
which to fight Marcion than to take up the Catho
lic cry against the " new revelation " and the
" new God," of the " neophyte," the " shipmaster
of Pontus " ? Evidently he did not always see
the application of this principle of tradition. He
does not agree at all with those members of the
church at large who turn this principle against
the Montanists. He says, " They are constantly
reproaching us with novelty concerning the un
lawfulness of which they lay down a prescriptive
law that either it must be judged heresy^ if it is a
human presumption, or else pronounced pseudo-
prophecy if it is a spiritual declaration." ^ This
he will not admit. And yet when he turns to
answer Marcion he lays down this as the norm
' De Jejun., II. ' De Jejun., i.

THE NEW PROPHETS l6l
that is to determine what is right and what is
wrong : " Now what is to settle the point for us
except it be that principle of time, which rules that
authority lies with that which shall be found to be
more ancient ; and assumes as a fundamental truth
that corruption belongs to the side which shall
be convicted of lateness in origin. For inasmuch
as error is falsification of truth, it must needs be
that truth-therefore preceded error." * This is a
very convenient platform upon which to meet one
who has published an emendation of the gospel
narrative in the interest of a Pauline Christianity.
He can easily prove that Marcion's Gospel is a
" new invention." He can overthrow his antag
onist at once, if the only test of truth is " that
which shall be found to be more ancient."
But how about himself ? If you turn to another
treatise you will find him abandoning this position
entirely, and taking his stand upon the truly
Protestant principle that " Christ surnamed him
self truth, not tradition." " It is not so much
novelty as truth which convicts heresies. What
ever savors of opposition to truth will be heresy,
even if it be an ancient custom." ^ What finer
declaration will be found anywhere, in all the
' Adv. Mar., IV., 4- " De Virg. Vel., ..
L

1 62 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
literature of Christian polemics! It is a great
pity to find this champion of " truth " abandon
ing entirely his lofty platform, and speaking as
follows to Marcion : " Wherefore, O shipmaster
of Pontus, if you have never taken on board your
small craft any contraband goods or smuggler's
cargo, if you have never thrown overboard or
tampered with a freight, you are still more careful
and conscientious, I doubt not, in divine things;
and so I should be glad if you would inform us
under what bill of lading you admitted the Apostle
Paul on board, who ticketed him, what owner
forwarded him, who handed him to you, that so
you may land him without any misgiving." *
He then goes on to show that Marcion, by reject
ing the Acts of the Apostles, and by denying that
Paul went up to Jerusalem to receive his com
mission from the rest of the apostles, has no
foundation whatever upon which to rest his belief
in Paul. It would be interesting to hear what
Paul himself would have to say about this. Im
agine some one asking him under what " bill of
lading " he came into the church, and " who
ticketed him," and " what owner forwarded
him!" Indeed, it would be very interesting to
'Adv. Mar., V., i.

THE NEW PROPHETS 1 63
get the judgment of Paul on this whole move
ment to form a closed canon of revelation. That
very " liberty," which was so dear to his heart,
has to be sacrificed entirely in order to get him
" on board " an apostolic church. From now on
we shall hear much about how he crept up to
Jerusalem, in order to get permission from the
apostles to teach the truth. The apostles " tick
eted him," and so he had a right to proclaim his
message. In no other writer does the conflict of the two
principles of truth and tradition come out more
clearly than in Tertullian. He was two men —
one a Catholic, and one a Montanist — and he
never succeeded in making the two live together.
They could not live together. A compact and
absolute government is an impossibility, if the
rulers are to be constantly subjected to the checks
of prophecy, and the Catholic and the Montanist
principles are as irreconcilable as anarchy and
monarchy. " Whoever thinks his own way of
thinking is Catholic," says Athanasius, " is guilty
of the folly of the Montanists." * They were the
most dangerous people the hierarchy had to
deal with. They declared that the church was
'Socrates, H. E., II., 36.

164 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
" expelling prophecy," that it was " driving out
the Paraclete." This it was certainly doing by its
rejection of the belief that an ordinary Christian,
under the inspiration of the Spirit, could give
utterance to authoritative messages and instruc
tions. Of course the principle was susceptible of
great abuse, and all sorts of fanciful and fanatical
utterances were attributed to the inspiration of
the Spirit. All this was gradually abolished by
the formation of a canon. The conception of a
classical period of Christianity, whose height of
revelation could never be attained by any later
generation, became firmly established in the
church, and the spread of Montanism was
checked. This period of revelation was repre
sented by the New Testament, and the only au
thoritative interpretation of it came through the
apostolic office of the bishops. Later ages miglit
admire it, reverence it, look up to it as an ideal,
but might never think of actually attaining its
transcendent height of knowledge and vision. To
be sure the constituted representatives of the
church were to be placed on a level, in the matter
of authority, with the ancient documents, which
they alone were able to understand. But the rank
and file of Christians could never dream of

THE NEW PROPHETS 1 65
>
possessing the Spirit in the same measure, or even
the same manner, as the apostolic writers and the
apostolic church.
This double system of revelation Tertullian re
sisted with all his might. He saw that it was
working great evil in lowering the requirements
made upon the average Christian in the matter
of conduct. He insisted upon seeing the " vir
ginity of the church " in the fact that it was a holy
community, banded together for the realization
of a life of purity. As soon as men ceased to feel
that they were under the direct guidance of the
Spirit they abandoned that high moral standard
that had come down from the earlier times, and
that had been purified in the fires of martyrdom.
In resisting this tendency toward a secularization
of the church, the Montanists were fighting a los
ing battle. In ages of persecution, like that under
Marcus Aurelius, they flourished; but as soon as
events became more quiet, and Christians sought
to live more comfortably, and the church began
to conform to the ways of the world, every effort
was put forth to get rid of these inconvenient
Puritans. It is unfortunate that we know so little of the
movement. Its earlier history is shrouded in

1 66 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
darkness. We only see it plainly, and have rec
ords of it that are authentic, in its Western
manifestations, where its edge is dulled and its
enthusiasm deadened. In coming West it did
not endeavor to form a new organization, but ac
cepted the conditions found in the church. We
have records of partial, and even whole communi
ties, that went over to the new prophets, and yet
retained their connection with the church at large.
The growing belief in a closed period of revela
tion, which the Montanists were compelled to
accept, was most deadly to their fundamental con
ception. We have already seen in Tertullian the
strange contradiction introduced into his system
by his acceptance of the idea of a New Testa
ment, and by his adherence to the " new proph
ets." Such a contradiction cannot long stand.
Consistency may be the " hobgoblin " of petty
minds, but the world will strive for it, and no
man can long continue to say in the same breath
that the Spirit no longer inspires men, and yet
that it does.
If the Montanists had been able to fight out the
battle on the moral issue alone, they might have
won. The lofty purity of their conduct, the stern
demands they made upon their followers, and the

THE NEW PROPHETS 1 67
joy they manifested in martyrdom, raised them
far above the members of the church at large. In
this respect they were more " apostolic " than the
apostolic church. But that word " apostolic " was
coming to have little to do with conduct. Other
issues come into the conflict. The " virginity of
the church," of which so much had been said in
former times, was coming to be looked upon as
the holding of a deposit of pure doctrine. The
mother church, that had hitherto protected her
children so earnestly from immoralities, was here
after to protect them fanatically from heresies.
The insistence upon the creed of the apostles, and
the effort to make them a publishing-house, whose
mission was to issue a closed volume of authori
tative writings, was the death sentence of the
Montanist movement.
To be sure we cannot say with any degree of
probability that the Montanists were the cause
of the formation of a canon. In fact, the move
ment was more the effect of that secularization
of the church, of which the formation of a canon
was merely a part. The conception that " the
church is the Spirit," and that wherever spiritual
manifestations are found there is a church, is
utterly incompatible with a definite and fixed

l68 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
organization, whose representatives are seeking a
foothold in every sphere of social and political
activity. In every way Montanism was in direct
antagonism to the spirit of the times. Its demo
cratic spirit was hostile to the centralization of
power in the episcopate; its conception that the
virginity of the church consisted in purity of deed,
rather than purity of dogma, was a challenge to
the speculative and metaphysical spirit ; and its be
lief in the continuance of prophecy could not pos
sibly live in peace with the effort to close the
period of revelation, and " seal up the book."
Despite the vagaries of the movement, its founda
tion principle that " Christ surnamed himself
truth, not tradition," and that the appeal to the
age of the apostles for anythiijg but a spiritual
ideal of life was setting " boundary-posts to
God," marks the high tide of second century
Christianity. If this position could have been taken ration
ally instead of hysterically, and could have been
held back from the extremes of a weird and gro
tesque mysticism, it would have been the highest
conception of authority ever held in the Chris
tian church since the days of Paul. But wherever
the fires of Montanism cooled down, and more

THE NEW PROPHETS 169
rational leaders emphasized the moral life as a
manifestation of the Spirit, there its followers
could hardly resist the strong tide toward a Cath
olic Christianity. The very fact that they ad
mitted that their ideal was that of the apostolic
age raised the question as to just what documents
contained that ideal. The historical question
crept in under cover of a great spiritual purpose,
and when once it was in, it proceeded to become
dominant over everything, and to " quench the
Spirit." The Montanists were really striving to
build up a " New Testament church," and that is
why they resisted so strongly the effort to form
a New Testament.
It was all in vain that the Montanist mourned
the degeneracy of the times and exhorted men to
return to the high standard of the apostolic age.
His Catholic opponent simply answered that men
would only return to that standard when they held
the doctrines of the apostolic age. The belief
that the spiritual life is the outgrowth of a meta
physical system was used as a bludgeon to subdue
all independent thought. To the Montanist the
whole thing seemed simple enough. He preferred
to be " less wise in Scripture," rather than to enter
upon a refining exegesis, while making a moral

170 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
compromise with the forces of evil. He believed
that in all essential things there was a " common
agreement among apostles." The Christian ideal
was so plain that the simplest mind could appre
hend it. If anything said by John was " flatly
contradicted by Paul," that thing could not be a
matter of very great consequence. The kind of a
life demanded of a Christian was one about which
there could be very little difference of opinion.
It was written large in the ancient documents.
These men who know so much about Scripture,
and who find such mysterious things in numbers
and prepositions, are the very last of all Chris
tians to go to martyrdom with courage and
cheerfulness. Indeed, do not some of them, like
Heracleon, say that martyrdom is unnecessary?
Evidently, while seeking to become " wise in the
Scripture," they have become " wise against it."
All this was good, sound reasoning in ages of
persecution. But when the times became more
quiet, and the church resumed her temporary task
of conquering thrones and kingdoms, it was found
that a more compromising principle was neces
sary. Energies that in times of danger manifest
themselves in deeds of moral heroism are more
likely to be drained off in speculation in quiet

THE NEW PROPHETS I7I
periods. The Montanist definition that " the
church is the Spirit " will then be supplanted by
the conception that the church is the organization
that holds the true doctrine. Besides all this, men
who are in perfect agreement under persecution,
and who then manifest remarkable solidarity, are
often the first to separate when danger departs.
The mystics are proverbially insubordinate. For
this very reason, no doubt, the Montanists greatly
accelerated that very consolidation and seculariza
tion of the church which they resisted, and by
the disintegrating influences of their " new proph
ecies " helped to hasten that time when the epoch
of revelation should be forever closed, and there
should be formed a " canon of the books of the
New Dispensation."

VIII
THE CATHOLIC FATHERS

VIII
""\ 7S T'E lay it down as our first position," says
V V Tertullian, " that the Evangelical Tes
tament (Evangelium Instrumentum) has apostles
for its authors, to whom was assigned by the
Lord himself this office of publishing the gos
pel." * This claim that Christ gave to certain
men the exclusive right to publish the written
gospel, was put forth for the first time in the
latter half of the second century. The apostles
were the legal and constituted " authors " of the
Christian revelation. They had been commis
sioned by Christ for this work. In view of the
fact that Luke and Mark did not belong to the
Twelve, and in view of the further fact that the
word " apostle " had had such a wide significance,
being still applied in Alexandria to the seventy
and to men like Barnabas and Clement of Rome,
the church had no easy task before her in her
effort to form an apostolic New Testament.
One of the first steps in this process was to limit
the word " apostle " to one of the Twelve. From
*Adv. Mar., IV., 2.

176 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
now on this is done in Rome, and wherever the
monarchical episcopate is becoming more central
ized. Then too, this little group of twelve, as we
have seen above in Tertullian, are now looked
upon as " authors," upon whose writings there is a
copyright, which belongs to their heirs. "I am the
heir of the apostles," * is the confident declara
tion. Who is this " I " ? Manifestly the organi
zation centering in the office of the bishops. The
sum total of the books written by the apostles,
when the number can be determined, is the sum
total of the apostolic teaching, and the content
of the canon. But who is to determine what
books were written by the apostles? Again the
dictatorial " I " comes in. Only the heirs have a
right to determine what the ultimate and authori
tative edition shall contain. With this edition
the measure of revealed truth will be filled up.
Whatsoever cannot be found in the canon will be
pronounced to be " something beyond the truth." "
The work of Tertullian on " The Prescription
of Heretics," contains a luminous passage, re
vealing the forces at work in the church in the
latter part of the second century. " Since you
are close upon Italy," he says, " you have Rome,
' Tert, De Praescr., 37. ' Iren., V., 20, a.

THE CATHOLIC FATHERS 1 77
from which there comes into our own hands
the very authority (of apostles themselves).
How happy is its church on which apostles
poured forth all their doctrine along with their
blood! where Peter endures a passion like his
Lord's! where Paul wins a crown in a death
like John's! where the Apostle John was first
plunged unhurt into burning oil, and thence re
mitted to his island exile! See what she has
learned, what taught, what fellowship she has
had even with churches in Africa. One God
does she acknowledge, the creator of the uni
verse, and Christ Jesus, born of the Virgin Mary,
the Son of God the creator, and the resurrection
of the flesh; the law and the prophets she unites
in one volume, with the writings of evangelists
and apostles, from which she drinks her faith." *
How much is contained in these words! Upon
Rome the apostles have "poured forth all their
doctrine." Rome is beginning to make herself
felt even among " churches in Africa." Rome
is said to be binding up the Christian writings
into one volume with the law and the prophets.
Rome announces to the world that she " acknowl
edges " one God, the Father, and Jesus Christ,
' De Praescr., 36.
M

178 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
his Son, born of the Virgin Mary, the resurrec
tion of the flesh, and other doctrines. In this
little passage we have the acorn from which grew
the great Roman oak. The centralization of the
episcopate, the formation of a canon, and the in
cipient stages of an "apostles' creed," are all here.
Take another passage. Tertullian refuses to
enter into any dispute with the heretics in regard
to what books are authoritative. Despite the fact
that Valentinus came near being elected bishop
of Rome, and despite the fact that his followers
are generally in good standing in the churches,
they are not allowed to express any opinion in
regard to what books shall be placed in the canon.
Why ? The answer is simple. " Not being Chris
tians, they have acquired no right to the Chris
tian Scriptures. It may be very fairly said to
them, ' Who are you ? When and whence did you
come ? As you are none of mine, what have you
to do with that which is mine ? Indeed, Marcion,
by what right do you hew my wood ? By whose
permission, Valentinus, are you diverting the
streams of my fountain? By what power, Apel-
les, are you removing my landmarks? This is
my property. I have long possessed it. I pos
sessed it before you. I hold sure title-deeds from

THE CATHOLIC FATHERS 1 79
the original owners themselves, to whom the
estate belonged. I am the heir of the apostles.
Just as they carefully prepared their last will
and testament and committed it as a trust, even
so do I hold it.' " * The one thing prominent is
the dictatorial " I." This book is " mine." You
are trespassing on " my " property. You are di
verting " my " streams, removing " my " land
marks. I have long possessed this book. It is
hardly a good answer to the commentaries pre
pared so carefully by men like Heracleon, Valen
tinus, and Ptolemaeus, to order them off the
ground. But before Origen can undertake to
answer these commentaries the church must get
possession of the books. The first stage, there
fore, is one of simple denunciation. The here
tics are ordered off the premises. The church
does not deny, what the heretics have already
taken for granted, that the apostles have left an
authoritative New Testament; she simply asserts
that she is the " heir of the apostles."
This conception of a canon is very sudden in
its appearance among orthodox writers. We
look in vain through all previous Christian litera
ture for statements like those just quoted from
^ De Praescr., Z7-

l80 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
Tertullian. That the apostles " carefully pre
pared their last will and testament," and com
mitted it to the church as a " trust," is a thought
that never occurred to any one before the cham
pions of the church began to attack the Gnostics
and Marcion. Tertullian never tires of repeat
ing that the doctrines of the heretics were all an
ticipated in the apostolic writings, and condemned
before they were uttered. " The apostle," he says
in one place, " reprobates likewise such as bid to
abstain from meats; but he does so from the
foresight of the Holy Spirit, precondemning al
ready the heretics who would enjoin perpetual
abstinence to the extent of destroying and despis
ing the works of the Creator ; such as I may find
in the person of a Marcion, or a Tatian." *
" Hence it is," he says in another place, " that the
Holy Spirit, in his greatness, foreseeing clearly all
such interpretations as these, suggests in this
Epistle to the Thessalonians," etc.^ The thought
that every question of Christian doctrine is con
tained in tlie sacred writings, that no appeal can
be made from them to any more recent light or
revelation, and that all controversies were fore
seen by the writers and settled beforehand by
' De Jejun., 15. = De Res. Car., 24.

THE CATHOLIC FATHERS l8l
some mystical or allegorical implication, is now
found for the first time in Christian writers. The
kind of interpretation that now prevails is well
illustrated by the following argument by Tertul
lian : " The Holy Spirit, willing that there should
be no distinction, willed that by the one name of
woman should likewise be understood the virgin;
whom, by not specially naming, he has not sep
arated from the woman, and, by not separating,
has conjoined to her from whom he has not
separated her." * This exegetical contortion
is used to prove that the divine author of Scrip
ture was not only a Catholic, but a Montanist.
How common, in all after literature, this absurd
method of reading doctrines into scriptural pas
sages is to become! It became necessary just as
soon as the idea of a canon entered the church,
and the books from being free and natural ex
pressions of the religious life, became the deposi
tory of all truth and doctrine.
The kind of argument necessary to get the
documents of early Christianity into the hands
of the Catholic Church is well illustrated by Ter
tullian, when he says that the " authority of the
apostolic churches " supports the other Gospels,
' De Virg. Vel., 4.

l82 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
besides Luke, and that Marcion ought to be
brought to account for rejecting them. Indeed,
he says, " It is even more credible that they
existed from the very beginning; for, being the
work of apostles, they were prior and coeval in
origin with the churches themselves." * He thus
makes the churches sponsors for the Gospels, and
the Gospels the foundation of the churches.
This question of priority has always been an in
convenient one to the Catholic Church. Like
the old problem whether the hen came before the
egg, or the egg before the hen, it always raises
a second and unanswerable question. When the
advocate of the Hindu cosmogony was driven
back from the elephant to the tortoise, and then
was asked upon what the tortoise rested, he re
plied that it was " tortoise all the way down."
So the authority of the hierarchy rests upon an
ultimate dogmatic assertion, that is Catholic " all
the way down."
One of the most interesting witnesses to the
growth of the conception of a canon is Irenaeus,
who became bishop of Lyons, in Gaul, about the
year a. d. 177. He prided himself on the fact
that in his very early years he had been a pupil
' Adv. Mar., IV., 5-

THE CATHOLIC FATHERS 183
of Polycarp, in Asia, who had in turn been a
pupil of the Apostle John. " What I heard from
him," he says to Florinus, " that wrote I not on
paper, but in my heart, and by the grace of God,
I constantly bring it fresh to my mind." He puts
little trust, however, in oral tradition. He ex
actly reverses the estimation of Papias, and re
gards the written documents as far more trust
worthy than any report handed down by word of
mouth. " We have learned from none others,"
he declares, " than from those through whom the
gospel has come down to us, which they did at
one time proclaim in public, and at a later period,
by the will of God, handed down to us in the
Scriptures, to be the ground and pillar of our
faith." * The two sources of authority are here
blended in their usual manner. Irenaeus can
boast of his connection with the apostles, and so
he does not hesitate to assert that the Scriptures
are the " ground and pillar " of the Christian's
faith. He will not permit the Gnostics, however,
to have anything to say as to what books are
apostolic. They have no right to the Christian
books. John would not argue with Cerinthus,
nor would Polycarp consent to dispute with
'III., ., ..

184 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
Marcion. The whole matter must be settled by
a dictum. "It is incumbent to obey the presby
ters, who are in the church — those who possess
the succession from the apostles, and have re
ceived genuine gifts of truth. But the heretics,
indeed, who bring strange fire to the altar of God,
namely, strange doctrines, shall be burned up
by the fire from heaven, as were Nadab and
Abihu." *
By such methods as these the bishops managed
to get the reins of authority into their own hands,
as a first step in the direction of the formation
of a canon. Some one must have the legal right
to give to the world a definite statement of what
books are genuine, and who has this right, if not
the ordained successors of the apostles ? The man
who ties himself to the organization is safe.
" Then shall every word also be fixed for him, if
he for his part read the Scriptures in company
with those who are presbyters in the church,
among whom is the apostolic doctrine, as I have
pointed out." ^ Thus was begun in the world that
thought-saving device of ecclesiasticism, by which
men are relieved from the necessity of doing
their own thinking, because every word of the
'IV., 26, I. 'IV., 32, ».

THE CATHOLIC FATHERS 185
Scriptures is " fixed for them " by the constituted
authorities, who possess the " apostolic doctrine."
How clearly does the motive that led to the
formation of a canon shine forth here !
And what arguments are advanced to fix the
number of the books? Take an example. We
are told that it is not possible that the Gospels
should be more or fewer in number than four,
" since there are four zones of the world in which
we live, and four principal winds, while the
church is scattered throughout all the world, and
the pillar and ground of the church is the gospel."
" Then too, the cherubim were four-faced, and
their faces were images of the dispensation of the
Son of God." " The living creatures too (of the
Apocalypse) were fourfold." " For this reason
four principal covenants were given to the human
race." * One might almost fancy that he was
reading an excursus by Philo Judaeus on some
sacred number. By such arguments he proved
that all the doctrines of his favorite Greek phi
losopher were anticipated by Moses. From now
on this method will be increasingly applied to the
Christian documents. In the very chapter in
which Irenaeus gives us the reasons why there
mi., II, 8.

1 86 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
can be but four Gospels, he finds the whole mes
sage of Christ in a mystic symbol of the Apoca
lypse. Evidently he has forgotten how in a
previous book he ridiculed the tendency of the
Gnostics to support their views by twisting pas
sages of Scripture, just as if the words had been
composed " with reference to the subject indi
cated." *
The fact is, the church could only get rid
of the Gnostics by adopting their weapons.
Irenaeus is himself genuinely Gnostic, when, in
opposition to the doctrine of a heavenly .^on
Christ, and a man Jesus, he appeals to the ex
pression of Paul, " one Christ Jesus." ^ His
whole argument hinges on the little word " one."
Paul foresaw that some day certain corrupters
of the truth would try to make two men out of
Christ, and so he used the word " one." Mat
thew also provided for just such an emergency.
He " might certainly have said, ' Now the birth
of Jesus was on this wise,' but the Holy Ghost,
foreseeing the corrupters (of truth), and guard
ing by anticipation against their deceit, says by
Matthew, 'But the birth of Christ was on this
wise.' " * This fact definitely proves that it was
¦I., 9, 4- 'III., i6, 9. »IIL, i6, 2.

THE CATHOLIC FATHERS 187
Christ himself, and not the man Jesus, who was
born of Mary. He spends five chapters discuss
ing the meaning of Paul's words, "Flesh and
blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." *
Such a use of the Epistles is absolutely unheard
of in previous Christian history. Indeed it can
be said that Irenaeus is the first Christian writer,
aside from the Gnostics, to use the Epistles as
Scripture. He says of Paul, that " foreseeing
through the Spirit the subdivisions of evil teach
ers, and being desirous of cutting away from them
all occasion of cavil," he used a certain expres
sion in Romans.^ He introduces a quotation from
Second Corinthians with the phrase, " for the
word says." * He sees in the phrase of Paul,
" as lights in the world," a mystical reference to
the fact that the seed of Abraham should be " as
stars in the heaven," saying that " this is what
Paul meant, when he wrote it." * Examples
might be multiplied without end of this new use
of the Epistles. The literature of the heart is now
becoming the weapon of dogmatics. The simple
and personal message, directed to the end of
spiritual inspiration and the upbuilding of char
acter, is looked upon as a treasure-house of proof-
'V., 9, 14. 'in., 16, 9- °V., 3, I. 'IV., 5, 3-

1 88 FORMATION bF NEW TESTAMENT
texts for the backing up of metaphysical theo
ries — the arsenal from which the contending
theological schools can snatch their weapons.
From Irenaeus to Origen we can trace a gradual
development of this tendency, which began with
the Gnostics and will never end until the Scrip
tures become the inspired literature of the heart
once more.
Irenaeus even tries to tell us the order in which
the four Gospels were written. " Matthew," he
says, " issued a written Gospel among the He
brews in their own language, while Peter and
Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the
foundations of the church. After their departure
Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did
also hand down to us in writing what had been
preached by Peter. Luke also, the companion of
Paul, recorded in a book the gospel preached by
him. Afterward John, the disciple of the Lord,
who also had leaned upon his breast, did himself
publish a Gospel, during his residence at Ephesus
in Asia." * Here is an effort to place on firmer
historical foundation those documents which had
been known to Justin simply as the " memoirs of
the apostles." The question of authorship had
'III., 1, I.

THE CATHOLIC FATHERS 1 89
not been considered an absorbing one heretofore.
The Gospel of Peter, the Gospel according to
the Egyptians, the Gospel according to the He
brews, and many other gospels, were in circula
tion in different parts of the church, all of them
agreeing in the main particulars. Manifestly, if
the test of canonicity were to be established as
apostolic authorship, the Gospel of Peter would
stand higher than the Gospel of Luke.
The task before the church was no easy one.
We can hardly say, after reading a few chapters
in Irenaeus and Tertullian, that the question was
finally settled by a long and careful process of in
vestigation, that entered critically into the claims
of the different books, and at last reached an im
partial and judicial conclusion. The whole mat
ter was settled by the dictatorial " I." It was a
fiat, and not an investigation, that gave to the
world the final decision. As Luther said of the
cardinal legate, who came to meet him at Augs
burg, " He was come to command, not to argue."
Had we the works of heretical writers of the
second century in our possession we might fre
quently find this expression of surprise in their
writings too. The church that issued the fiat had
not the strength in the second century which it

190 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
had in the sixteenth, or else the question of the
canon might have been settled much sooner. But
the command went forth : " And therefore it
was said- to Daniel the prophet, ' Shut up the
words and seal the book even to the time of
consummation, until many learn and knowledge
be completed.' " *
The importance of this decision cannot be over
estimated. We are here at the crossroads of
early Christianity. That everything not con
tained in the book is " something beyond the
truth," is a conception that is to have a long and
fateful history. Before this theory the individ
ualities of the writers vanish, the historical per
spective disappears, the naturalness of inspira
tion is lost, and revelation becomes something
apart from life. An adjective is made to contain,
by implication, an entire metaphysic. Chris
tianity is buried in history, and when the drama
of the first century is explained he who under
stands and accepts is saved. Redemption is a
mental process, with its seat in the understanding.
Men must find the esoteric truth, contained in
the Bible as an allegory, before they can be lifted
into likeness to God. The " ground and pillar
' Irenaeus, IV., 26, 1.

THE CATHOLIC FATHERS I9I
of our faith " is no longer " the witness of God
with our spirit, testifying that we are sons of
God," but is the story of something that happened
in the age of the apostles, and was faithfully re
corded by them. To defend this story as an
actual historical occurrence now became the great
labor of Christianity, and the " defender of the
faith " was no longer the martyr, who witnessed
to its reality by his life, but the philosopher, who
proved its dogmas from the documents. Infi
delity ceased to be lack of faithfulness in conduct,
the absence of charity, of compassion, of gen
tleness, of generosity, of brotherly-kindness, and
became doubt of the historical accuracy of cer
tain statements made in the New Testament. So
strong was the emphasis laid by the early church
upon life, and upon the acceptance of Christianity
as a personal message, that some Christians " in
good and regular standing " rejected the Gos
pel of John entirely without being disciplined,
and others, remarkable for their purity of life,
declared that only a modified form of Luke had
any historical basis of fact. From now on the
emphasis was shifted, and all Christians were
required to accept the finality of the apostolic
documents, while fewer questions were asked as

192 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
to whether they attended the gladiatorial shows,
or abstained from the revelries of the public
festivals. Moreover, the documents had to be read " in
company with the presbyters," and the system of
thought accepted by the authorities had to be
found therein. The average Christian could not
be trusted to discover for himself the esoteric
mysteries of redemption. The essence of Chris
tianity was soon to be fixed in a creed, put forth
by those in authority, and faith would thereafter
consist in the intellectual acceptance of this creed,
despite the incomprehensible mysteries involved
in it. In this way Paul's marvelous conception
of faith, as that spiritual communion with God
by which a transformed nature begins to put
forth the fruits of the Spirit, was supplanted by
the purely formal acceptance of a stereotyped
statement, and the man who " kept the faith "
was no longer the one who followed the inner
guidance of the Infinite, but the one who held
on most consistently to an outer dogmatic
statement. One curious transformation is to be noticed
in this process. There can be no doubt that the
early church valued the utterances of Christian

THE CATHOLIC FATHERS I93
prophets more highly than any document, and
that the estimate of Papias of the spoken above
the written word was then very common. The first
step in the formation of a canon was the exact
reversal of this estimate, and the complete subor
dination of all sources of authority to the docu
ments. Then there came a second step, by which
the two were reversed once more, and the utter
ances of the constituted successors of the apostles,
of the officers of the hierarchy, came to have more
weight than the Book itself. Protestantism, in its
efforts to get back to the Christianity of the apos
tolic age, has generally returned to the first of
these two steps, and there has stopped. It has
taken from the Catholic Church the conception
of an apostolic New Testament, but has rejected
the apostolic authority of the bishops, by which
the New Testament was closed. Instead of em
phasizing the direct witness of God, and the im
pact of the divine life on the human soul, above
all records of past revelation, it has made the
New Testament so supreme in its authority that
God has been imbedded in documents of the
first century, and many keen minds, like that of
Cardinal Newman, have turned to the Catholic
Church in order to find a real and present-day
N

194 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
authority. Here, at least, is an organization that
speaks to our day, and does not take refuge be
hind the authority of ink and Aramaic. To be
sure, the doctrine of " apostolic succession," to
use the crude illustration of another, may seem
" like a great gas-pipe, system, that refuses to
admit that any life can be the * light of the world '
until it is connected with the main," but there will
always be some who see greater advantage in
this system, than in one that shuts up Christianity
in a first-century reservoir, and then abolishes the
main. The latter method leaves us utterly
disconnected, and in the darkness.
The claim that the heretics had no right to
the documents, that the church was the " heir of
the apostles," and that Rome held " sure title-
deeds " to every book, was the sine qua non of a
closed New Testament. There will always seem
to be a fundamental inconsistency in a church that
accepts the result as infallible, and then rejects
the authority by which it was produced. Prot
estantism has taken her closed canon of revela
tion from the Catholic Church, has read theology
into it by the Gnostic and Catholic method of in
terpretation, has taken it for granted that all
questions were anticipated by the writers, has

THE CATHOLIC FATHERS I95
made the essence of Christianity to consist in a
historical and final revelation, has repeated the
Catholic creeds in her services for hundreds of
years, and in short has accepted the whole pro
gramme by which the Catholic Church was
formed, save the one declaration that gave that
programme its power and consistency, viz., " I I
am the heir of the apostles." —J

IX

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES

IX
THE Epistles of Paul, as we have seen, were
becoming an inconvenient heritage to the
church. His ringing declarations of freedom, his
deep spiritual conception of redemption, and the
large liberty he accorded to the churches he
founded, seemed incompatible with the second
century effort at centralization. The spiritual
democracy of those burning centers of light and
revelation, which he kindled in the pagan dark
ness, was a principle exceedingly.dangerous to the
hierarchy. What to do with Paul was the prob
lem of the hour. It was solved by raising the old
question once more, which the great apostle had
faced in his own day, and which he brushed aside
so proudly by calling attention to the spiritual
fruit of his labors, " Where did he get his author
ity as an apostle?" He was not one of the Twelve.
He had not been trained and commissioned by
the Founder of Christianity. He had not been
" ordained." It will readily be seen that this problem raises
the whole question of the seat of authority in
199

200 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
religion. A church that is trying to exclude from
her counsels all teachers who have not been prop
erly ordained by the successors of the apostles,
will be in danger of losing the greatest spiritual
character ever produced by Christianity. WJiat
violence has to be done, by such a church, to the
teaching of Paul, in order to get possession of the
person of Paul, we leave our readers to determine
for themselves as they read the following pages.
The question came squarely before the church
in the latter part of the second century. Can it
be proved, by some old document, that the apos
tles were regarded in the early days as a com
pact body, from which all authority emanated?
Can we furnish any apostolic sanction, upholding
the writings of Paul, and placing them on a
canonical basis? The doctrine of "apostolic
succession " is a chain that must lack no link.
To supply this link the Acts of the Apostles
now comes to the front. In all previous Christian
literature we find only two or three uncertain
quotations from it. It is not surprising that many
critics of a quarter of a century ago took the stand
that the book was actually composed at this time,
to meet the need which it was made to supply.
This theory has been completely abandoned, but

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 20I
the fact remains significant that so little use was
made of it before the end of the second century.
There were many books in circulation, recording
the deeds and doctrines of the different apostles.
Why was this one singled out? Let Tertullian
answer ! " They who reject that book of Scrip
ture can neither belong to the Holy Spirit, seeing
that they cannot acknowledge that the Spirit has
been sent as yet to the disciples, nor can they
pretend to be a church, seeing that they have no
means of proving when and with what infant-
nursing this body was established." * "I may
say here to those who reject this Acts of the
Apostles, ' It is first necessary that you show us
who this Paul was — both what he was before he
became an apostle, and how he became an apos
tle.' " Such statements might be multiplied al
most without end. Again and again is Marcion
reminded that Paul went up to Jerusalem, and re
ceived his authority from the apostolic college.
It was on this visit that he was " ordained," and
received his " apostolic succession."
The importance of this claim can readily be
seen. Marcion was making converts by the thou
sands, upon the basis of a Pauline Christianity
' De Praescr., 22.

202 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
that was torn loose from every apostolic and
Judaistic tie. He misunderstood the great
apostle in many important particulars, to be sure,
but he comprehended his fundamental principle
much better than did the church at large, and he
was making havoc among the followers of the
growing hierarchy because of his earnest and
self-sacrificing devotion to the principle of justi
fication by faith. There was no turning back for
the church. She must show Paul to have been a
loyal and devout Catholic. The method taken to
do this comes out plainly in both Irenaeus and Ter
tullian. Both of these writers take that ringing
declaration of independence in the second chapter
of the Epistle to the Galatians, and completely
change it. Paul no longer says, " To whom we
gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour ! "
We are told that this is " an interpolation of
Scripture." What he really said was, " For an
hour I gave place by subjection." It is a neat
turn. By the simple omission of the negative,
Paul is changed from the " free man of Christ,"
into a submissive and humble believer in apos
tolic succession. For the sake of the great
Catholic Church he bows his head, and receives
from the hands of the apostles that divine

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 203
commission without which a man is a heretic and
an outcast.
This interpretation, which changes the great
emancipator of the first century into a medieval
saint, was no doubt believed in thoroughly by
Irenaeus and Tertullian. They could not imagine
for a moment that Paul would be guilty of an act
of insubordination. The Catholic type of mind,
which is always willing " to give place by sub
jection for an hour," is totally incapable of com
prehending the spirit that cries, " Brethren, ye
have been called unto liberty ! " Believing in a
salvation that has been mediated through external
ceremonies and rituals, it looks upon all resistance
to the organization as an act of pride, to be put
down as the very temptation of the evil one. Paul
could not possibly have said that he resisted the
apostles. The negative must be an interpolation.
Irenaeus and Tertullian well know that changes
in the text of Christian documents were not in
frequent. Just as Marcion believed that the
Gospel of Luke had been tampered with, in cer
tain phrases and incidents, for the sake of the
Catholic view, so the Fathers were perfectly
sincere in their belief that the Epistle to the
Galatians had been altered by some one who was

204 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
seeking to overthrow the doctrine of apostolic
succession. The book of Acts was of great service in the
formation of a New Testament. Together with
the so-called " catholic epistles " it formed the
connecting link between the Gospels and Paul.
It furnished the latter with his authority; it ex
cluded the heretics, because it taught the Catholic
doctrine of the laying on of hands; and it gave
to the whole Christian system its legal validity
and authority from heaven, Pentecost being its
Sinai. Though it really represents the activity
of but two of the apostles — Peter and Paul — it
immediately steps into prominence as being a
history of the twelve apostles. The Muratorian
Fragment calls it the " Acts of all the Apostles " ;
Aphrates cites it with the title, " History of the
Twelve Apostles " ; and the " Doctrine of Ad
daei " refers to it as the " Acts of the Twelve
Apostles." In one chapter, where Irenaeus is
attempting to give " the doctrines of the twelve
apostles," out of thirty-five quotations from the
New Testament thirty are from the book of
Acts. (III., 12.) Nothing is more suggestive of
the method and the motive in the formation of a
New Testament than the sudden prominence

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 205
given to this old document, that had hitherto at
tracted very little attention, and had simply been
one of the large number of books that were used
in the church for ethical instruction and spiritual
improvement. Up to this time no lines had been drawn in the
matter of inspiration, but there must have been a
slight distinction made between those books that
merely related the history of the apostles, and
those that contained the " commands of the
Lord," or the utterances of Christian prophets.
The latter came with more direct and positive
power, and had more the appearance of a per
sonal message, than the mere record of the
journeys and sayings of holy men. To the aver
age Christian of the middle of the second century
the words of the Shepherd of Hermas were
about on a level with the sayings of Jesus. All
through the East the Revelation of Peter was re
garded as Scripture. Apocalypses of Thomas, of
Stephen, of John, fired the heart of the believer.
Now it is utterly inconceivable that if a vote had
been taken as to just what books should be in
cluded in the New Testament these would have
been left out. It is far more probable that a
book like the Acts, which can hardly be traced

206 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
in previous literature at all, and which was far
less popular than the Acts of Paul and Thecla,
would have been excluded. In a very large
collection, and on the basis of a wide conception
of canonicity, it might have been included. If
excluded, it would not have been because of any
lack of confidence in its genuineness and trust
worthiness, but because less interest attached to
historical books than to the declarations of
prophets. But the New Testament was not formed by
popular vote. The interest that closed the book
was theological and ecclesiastical, not religious
and redemptive. To call it " the spontaneous
declaration of the Christian consciousness," is to
confuse in a hopeless manner the ambition of a
hierarchy with the consensus of brethren, the
speculations of philosophers with the faith of
believers. It may be that we have a better New
Testament than if it had been born of the heart
of the early Christian communities, but that we
would have had a ditferent New Testament, had
it been so produced, there can be scarcely the
shadow of a doubt.
There were many books in existence recording
the sayings and doings of the apostles. Clement

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 207
of Alexandria by no means regarded our book
of Acts as the sole source of the history of the
apostles. He seems to have been much more
familiar with the Preaching of Peter, and to
have estimated that book just as highly, if not
higher. He uses, as equally important sources
of apostolic life and doctrine, the Acts of John,
and the Traditions of Matthias.* Tertullian
refers to " this Acts of the Apostles," in a dis
cussion that plainly implies that his readers rec
ognize others.^ Indeed he has no easy task in
attacking those in the Carthaginian church who
derive their authority for the right of women to
practise baptism from the Acts of Paul and
Thecla.* This book was extremely popular,
and was generally looked upon as genuine.
It was placed side by side with the book of Acts
by many in places of authority in the church.
Several of the earlier collections included it in
the canonical list. Tertullian himself appeals to
the Acts of Pilate as an authoritative and
trustworthy source of Christian history.* The
Montanists in the West supported some of their
doctrines by appealing to the Acts of Lucius,
'Hypotyp., I., John i ; i. ' De Praescr., 23.
'De Bap., 17. *Apolog., 21.

208 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
never supposing for an instant that this book was
not firm ground to stand upon.* This Lucius,
about whom so many interesting traditions
were current in the early church, that he was
one of the seventy, that he was the " kinsman "
referred to by Paul in his Epistie to the Romans
(i6 : 21 ), that he was in the congregation to
which Peter preached on the day of Pentecost,
that he was consecrated bishop of Cenchraea by
Paul, and many other things — was included in
the list of " apostles " before the middle of the
second century. The common tradition may have
identified him with Luke. At any rate the Acts
of Lucius was widespread, and was regarded as
an authoritative document.
There were many other books of " Acts." In
the Codex Claromontanus we find the Acts of
Paul included in the list of New Testament
books. Indeed he who tries to thread his way
through all the references to the Acts of Peter,
the Acts of John, the Acts of Thomas, the
Acts of Paul, the Acts of Andrew and John,
the Preaching of Paul and Peter at Rome,
the Doctrine of Peter, the Writings of Bar-
' These were probably the Acts of Peter, John, Thomas, and
Andrew, of which portions have come down to us.

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 209
tholomew, the Acts of the Apostles of Seleu-
cus, the Acts of Lenticius, and countless other
books referred to in the Fathers, will obtain
some slight conception of the exceedingly broad
standard of apostolic authority that must have
obtained in the early church. The literature must
have been endless. As it has nearly all been lost,
with the exception of a few fragments, judgment
upon it is an impossibility. Of course it is easy
to accept the conclusion of the church, and decide
that all these books were spurious, and that not
one of them contained any authentic history of
the apostles. To the fair-minded student, who
is acquainted with the motives and methods that
closed the New Testament, such a conclusion is
somewhat naive. Suffice it to say that the com
mon Christian in the assemblies of the early sec
ond century, when men were witnessing to their
faith by their blood, loved these documents, and
received from them a glow of faith and devotion
that has been rarely equaled in all subsequent
history. Particularly was this true of the apocalyptic
visions of the apostles. There was a Revelation
of Peter, a Revelation of Paul, a Revelation
of Thomas, a Revelation of Stephen, and
o

2IO FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
many others. In circles that retained the primi
tive expectation of a return of the Lord these
prophetic documents must have been more pop
ular than the more prosaic " Acts." Roman
conquests, and the rumors of distant revolutions
fired the imagination of the Christian, and the pre
dictions and visions of apostles assumed unusual
importance. Had we the material at hand, noth
ing would be more interesting than to trace the
rise and fall of the prophetic form of literature,
with the appearance and subsidence of persecu
tion. But we are utterly in the dark. We have
vague glimpses of a whole realm of literature,
that exerted a profound influence on the early
church, and then was lost. Its very nature has
to be surmised. Its spirit and te^aching possessed
a dynamic power that resulted in many deeds of
heroism and endurance. It was backed by the
authority of apostles, and that it came as a real
revelation from God was never questioned by
thousands of Christians. It was far more in
fluential than many books that found a place in
the New Testament.
But it is useless to speculate. Suffice it to say
that all these books existed, and that from a
time reaching back into a period when many of

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 211
our New Testament books were written they had
borne the name of apostles. Were they finally re
jected because, by a minute and scientific investi
gation, it was determined that their origin was
not apostolic? To answer such a question in the
negative we need only read a few pages in Ire
naeus and Tertullian. Only one " Acts," and
only one "Apocalypse," found a place in the
canon. It was a long time before the Apoca
lypse of John firmly and finally established its
right to a place in the second collection, but our
book of Acts sprang into canonical authority
all at once, and held its place ever afterward.
Again and again do Irenaeus and Tertullian re
mind us that "it must be accepted." Why?
Because those who reject it have no means of
proving that they are a church. Because the
doctrine of " apostolic succession " is there
plainly and distinctly taught. Because it shows
that even Paul dare not go forth to preach until
he had gone up to Jerusalem to get credentials
from the apostles. If this was true of the great
messenger to the Gentiles, what shall we say of
those who dare to teach without first asking per
mission from the ordained successors to the
apostles? By spending a few moments looking

212 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
Up the quotations from the Acts in Irenaeus
ami Tertullian, the most careless student can con
vince himself of the motive that dragged the
Acts into the canon. It was not its apostolic
authorship, but its seeming sanction of the idea
of an apostolic church, that gave it its sudden
place of prominence. It was elevated above all
the other histories of the apostles, not because it
was found to be historical, and they were found
to be legendary, but because Marcion in particu
lar, and the Gnostics in general, were dividing the
church, and were forming what seemed to be a
partial and fragmentary Christianity, and some
ground of authority had to be found upon which
to unify Christendom.
This ground was discovered in the doctrine of
" apostolic succession," taught in the book of
Acts. That the book of Acts is a wonderful
document, no one will deny. That its incidents
of faith and heroism have a history in all subse
quent Christian consciousness and life, is scarcely
a matter for discussion after these two thousand
years. But that it found its way into the New
Testament because of a critical examination of
its contents, and a careful comparison of all other
books of Acts, is a theory that is simply absurd.

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 2I3
Who shall say that the Acts of John, and the
Acts of Peter, would not have had a great
history too, had they been included in the New
Testament ? The formation of the canon was not
the result of a critical process, but of an ecclesias
tical movement. Very little careful scholarship
is to be found in the church before the days of
Origen, and then it was simply to establish con
clusions already reached. The hierarchical method
is always to settle questions first by the decree of
the church, and then to call in her scholars to
defend what has already been done. There was
a great deal of discussion over a few particular
books for nearly a century, and the limits of
the canon fluctuated somewhat all the time, but
that was because the Catholic Church was not
definitely formed, and it was not finally settled
just what needed to be supported by the canon.
The great mass of early literature, however, was
never again considered, and all the apostolic Acts
and Visions began to disappear in the darkness.
We cannot pass on without a word of regret.
The Moslem who said that if the books of the
library in Alexandria were in the Koran they
were useless, and if they were not they were per
nicious, has filled the centuries with sorrow.

214 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
Nor can we think, without a feeling of deep dis
appointment, of the loss of that great body of
literature which the church regarded as sacred
in days of so great strength and purity. It
may have contained many childish, ' many gro
tesque, many foolish things. It may have been
as useless and as weird as the book that speaks
of " seven angels and seven trumpets " seemed
to the Alogi. But it must have contained pas
sages of inspired beauty and grandeur, and these
the world can ill afford to lose. To be sure there
are some who say that the elevation of certain
books into a canon was the very thing that pre
served them for us, and that but for this act we
should probably not have any literature of the
early church at all. This, however, even if we
grant it, which is by no means necessary, does
not save us from the regret that the norm of
this canon formation was so narrow, and
merely cheers us with the thought that it
might have been worse. It simply says that
we can never know the whole body of literature
from which Christianity received her inspiration,
at a time when she was filling the whole civilized
world with her spirit and her power. We want
to know more about that transformation, which

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 21 5
constitutes the greatest religious change in the
world's history, which took place unnoticed right
beneath the gaze of some of the most noted his
torians of all time, which was creeping through
the lanes and hovels utterly unobserved by phi
losophers and statesmen, and which only emerges
into clear light when it became a great world-
power and began its period of compromise and
conquest. But most of the literature is lost. If
any consolation is to be found, it must be sought
in the fact that, though the form and methods of
early Christianity can never be determined in
complete outline, we have still enough books pre
served to give us a clear and definite impression
of what it was in its spirit and in its purpose.

X
THE VOICE OF ROME

X
THE moment the assertion was made that
there was a deposit of doctrine contained
in a definite collection of documents, whose in
spired authority it was impossible for after ages to
attain, that moment the idea of a New Testament
was born. We have seen that this assertion was
made in the Western Church, in the latter part of
the second century. But between the birth of an
idea, and its realization as a fact, long periods of
time often intervene. Ideas have to fight for their
lives in the arena of affairs. While the conception
of a New Testament is sudden in its appearance,
the actual realization of a closed book was a long
and difficult process. We find men taking it for
granted that there is a New Testament in the
period with which we are dealing, but we do not
find them in entire accord as to its contents. The
church claims that there is a fenced-off period
of revelation, and that she is the " heir of the
apostles," but she has not yet surveyed the terri
tory and fixed the boundary posts. With the ac
tual accomplishment of a closed New Testament, 219

220 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
and with the decrees of Councils by which the
position of this book and that was established,
we have nothing to do in this investigation. The
limits of our study do not carry us beyond the
birth of the idea, and the steps by which that
idea obtained a foothold in the world of human
speculation and ambition. But to carry out this
purpose we cannot entirely avoid the question
as to just when and how the first list of books
was made.
Thus far we have seen men content with the
simple assertion that there is such a list, and that
the heretics have no right to use its contents.
" You have no right to hew my wood ; you have
no right to draw my water," says the church.
But where is the fence around your forest ? where
is the curb about your well? The church is not
yet centralized herself, and to give to the world
an authoritative statement of the list of New
Testament books is a difficult thing to do. The
leaders are not in entire accord. A bishop of
Antioch would allow the Gospel of Peter to be
read in his churches. The great scholar of Alex
andria would draw doctrine from the philoso
phers of Greece. What is to be done ? The need
is urgent. Is there no one to speak with

THE VOICE OF ROME 221
authority? Will no one give to the world a list
of books? The matter cannot be submitted to a
vote, for the church is filled with all sorts of
vagaries and wild speculations. Even in the days
of Augustine, after years of Catholic triumph,
that writer enumerated eighty-eight Christian
sects. What is needed is an authoritative decree.
The reader is doubtless familiar with that dis
covery of modern science, by which an astrono
mer, after observing certain perturbations among
the planets, told a fellow-observer that if he
would turn his telescope to a certain spot in the
heavens, on a certain night, he would see a
planet that had never been seen before. One who
has followed events with us thus far in the latter
part of the second century, and has marked the
trend of thought as revealed by Irenaeus and
Tertullian, will say : " If you look carefully in
the direction of Rome you will see her issue
a list of the authoritative books of the New
Testament about the year a. d. 190."
This is exactly what she did. In the Ambro-
sian Library at Milan the famous Italian archeol-
ogist, Lodovico Antonio Muratori, discovered in
1740 a fragment, that is an evident attempt
to enumerate what books belong to the New

222 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
Testament.* Its date is fixed in the latter part of
the second century by the words : " The Shepherd,
moreover, did Hermas write very recently, in our
times, in the city of Rome, while his brother
Bishop Pius sat in the chair of the church of
Rome." ^ This " Muratorian Fragment," as it
is called, is beyond a doubt the attempt made by
the Roman Church to close the canon of Chris
tian literature. When Tertullian says of Rome,
" The law and the prophets she unites in one
volume with the writings of evangelists and
apostles, from which she drinks her faith,"
he refers to something more definite than a mere
consensus of opinion. The importance of the
Fragment lies more in the fact that an attempt
at a catalogue of the books of the New Testament
was made at this time, and in this place, than in
anything else, but we may find a few suggestive
things in its contents, despite its brevity.
The writer assures us that Luke wrote his
Gospel under Paul's direction.* He especially
warns his readers against any book of the Valen
tinians or the Marcionites, or any of the heretics.*
' For a more general discussion, see Harnack, " Zeitschrift fur
Kirchengeschichte, 1879, asS ff . ; Tregelles, "Canon Muratorianus,"
Oxford, 1867; Westcott, "On the Canon," 5th edition, p. 521.
'Fol. Ha, II. 'Fol. la, 5. * Fol. Ila, 19.

THE VOICE OF ROME 223
Of the Epistles of Paul he speaks at some length.
We can glean from what he says a slight sug
gestion of the difficulty involved in the insertion
of literature of a private nature, like epistles, into
the canon. There were no epistles in the Old
Testament. Why should there be any in the
New? Paul, he assures us, though writing to
particular churches, and not to the church in
general, yet wrote to seven churches, and seven
is the ecumenical number. " And John too," he
adds, " in the Apocalypse, although he writes to
seven churches, yet addresses all." * As to the
four Epistles to private individuals, although
written from " personal feeling and affection,"
yet they are " hallowed in the esteem of the
catholic church in the regulation of ecclesiasti
cal discipline." ^ This necessity of apologizing
for any " personal feeling and affection " in the
New Testament books is extremely significant.
The conception of a canon is a foe to anything
personal. The writers must lose their individ
uality if they are to gain canonical authority.
The same thing comes out in his treatment of
the Gospels. " Although different points are
taught in the several books of the Gospels," he
' Fol. Ii, 26. ' Fol. 16, 29.

224 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
says, " there is no difference as regards the faith
of believers, inasmuch as in all of them all things
are related under one leading Spirit, concerning
the nativity, the passion, the resurrection, the
conversation with his disciples, and the twofold
advent." * We have here an attempt at a doc
trine of " inspiration." In the interest of homo
geneity the writers are beginning to lose their
identity. When the canon is complete every
word of it will be regarded as written " under
one leading Spirit," and the writers will be simply
the amanuenses. As to the heretical Gospels,
Epistles, and redactions, the Fragmentist enters
into no argument, but simply states that they are
to be rejected. He merely gives as his reason
that " it is not suitable for gall to be mingled with
honey." " This is the general method of procedure
of the church in this whole movement. It is one
long story of denunciation and dogmatism, from
first to last. The frequent recurrence in the
Fragmentist of such words as "we receive,"
and " we reject," is very suggestive. The docu
ment sounds just like the declaration of a
church that is beginning to feel her authority,
and that does not see the need of wearisome
» Fol. lo, 1 6. ' Fol. Ila, s-

THE VOICE OF ROME 225
argumentation over a matter that she prefers to
settle by a decree.
Not only is this list of books to be the limit
of all authority in matters of speculation, but it
is to be the sole source of ethical instruction and
spiritual edification. No other books can be read
in the churches. This is a sweeping declaration.
Up to this time no limit had been set to the pub
lic reading of Christian books. Any document
that edified was allowed in the church services.
Now the norm is reversed, and only the books
that are allowed in the church services are able
to edify. The Fragmentist has no easy time in
dealing with the Shepherd of Hermas, on the
basis of this norm. Here is a book that has
helped multitudes of Christians. He says that
they ought to read it in private, " but it cannot be
made public in the church to the people, nor placed
among the prophets, as their number is complete,
nor among the apostles, to the end of the time." *
The period of revelation is closed. It ceased with
the apostles. The Shepherd was written " very
recently in our time." Such a book, whatever its
beauty and helpfulness, cannot be authoritative.
The number of prophets is complete.
'Fol. Ha, 15.
P

226 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
Of the Acts he says: "The Acts of all the
Apostles are comprised by Luke in one book, and
addressed to the most excellent Theophilus." *
He even goes so far as to say that Luke was an
" eye-witness " of all things therein recorded.
He says nothing whatever of the numerous other
books, purporting to give the history of the
apostles. It is sufficient condemnation of them
to leave them out of the authoritative list. There
is one thing, however, which the Fragmentist
feels called upon to explain. This book, which
is supposed to relate all the doings of all the
apostles, says nothing whatever of the visit of
Peter to Rome. This is a serious defect in a
document that has to play the part of godfather
to an apostolic and Roman Church. Some good
reason must be found for it. This reason, the
Fragmentist assures us, is nothing less than the
unwillingness of New Testament writers to record
anything from mere hearsay. Luke witnessed
everything he records in his book, but he did not
accompany Peter to Rome, and so he does not
speak of it. This one fact, so essential and funda
mental to the conception of " apostolic succes
sion " has to be left to tradition, and to the
'Fol. lb, 3.

THE VOICE OF ROME 227
authoritative declaration of the church. The state
ment that New Testament writers recorded only
what they had seen with their own eyes is one
that the Fragmentist would have had a hard
time in defending. If Paul dictated to Luke the
third Gospel, as he declares, did he only relate
what he had himself witnessed ? In keeping with
this strong assertion is the further declaration of
the Fragmentist that the apostles themselves are
the sole source of New Testament history.* This
claim was now made for the first time. Evidently
Papias, who was willing to talk with any one who
had seen one who had seen the Lord, and who
estimated this testimony higher than that of the
documents, had never heard of such a thing.
Slight though the Muratorian Fragment is,
it is a very suggestive document. We feel in it
the pulse-beat of the authority of Rome. The
solemn declarations that " we accept this," and
" we reject that," and that this other " must not
be read," have their echo in history. Chris
tianity's Caesar has crossed the Rubicon. The
church is to enter upon an entirely new pe
riod. The mistiness, the confusion, the uncer
tainty, of the fog-like speculations of a thousand
'Fol. Ii, sff.

228 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
schools, must cease. The Fragment is like a bolt
of lightning that clears the air. To be sure
the movement is not entirely sudden and new.
Just as the surcharged clouds contain the elec
tricity long before it descends in the bolt of light
ning, so the conception of a hierarchy was in
solution in the church for years before it revealed
itself. Rome only made explicit, what had long
been implicit. We cannot help feeling that the
Muratorian Fragment is the first faint note of
that authority, whose thunderous tones are to be
heard through the centuries in the West.
Contrast the spirit manifested by this document
with the attitude of the same period in the East !
Plow different are these authoritative declara
tions from the spirit of Clement of Alexandria,
with his broad eclecticism, and his exhortations,
" Take the Hellenic books ! read the sibyl ! read
Hystaspes ! " " Philosophy was given to the
Greeks, as a covenant peculiar to them." This
was the common conception of the early apolo
gists. We surely cannot complain of the weak
ness of the church during the period when this
broad interpretation was put upon the doctrine
of revelation. " The Hellenic philosophy," said
Clement, " has torn off a fragment of eternal

THE VOICE OF ROME 229
truth from the theology of the ever-living Word."
It took a long time for this spirit to die out en
tirely in the East. Even as late as the middle of
the third century we find a little of it clinging to
the leaders of thought in Alexandria. Dionysius,
who was surnamed the " Great " because of his
refutation of heresies, who became bishop about
the year A. d. 247, tells of a time when he feared
lest the reading of heretical books might lead him
astray in his own thinking. At this time a vision
came to him, and he was commanded : " Read
everything which thou canst take in hand, for
thou art able to correct and prove all; and this
has been to thee from the beginning the ground of
thy faith." *
What a revolution would have been accom
plished if this " ground of faith " had been ex
tended beyond the episcopal chair ! The right to
read books outside the authoritative list was de
nied by the Fragmentist. Tertullian said that the
Roman Church " drank her faith " from a closed
collection of documents. That faith is a matter
of the understanding, and is to be obtained by
the exegetical interpretation of a definite collec
tion of ancient writings, is a conception that is
1 Euseb., H. E., VII., 7, 3.

230 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
just beginning to take possession of the church.
What wonder the Fragmentist felt that he had
to apologize because a New Testament writer
wrote " from personal feeling and affection ! "
Everything personal is now eliminated from the
content of faith. The royal throne of religion
is no longer set up in the soul of the individual,
but is established without, in manuscripts and
miters and metaphysical statements of truth. It is
all in vain that men are inspired to deeds of com
passion, to acts of heroism, to services of sympa
thy, while reading books outside of the authori
tative list. Such books are not inspired. The
" fruit of the Spirit " is a certain cosmology,
and all noble and moral acts, unaccompanied by
an acceptance of the true doctrine, are worse than
useless. So was born that belief in the guilt of theologi
cal error, that caused the blood of thousands to
be shed over the question of the proper time of
celebrating Easter, and that deprived those men
of the honors of a Christian burial who refused
to admit that the light at the Transfiguration was
uncreated. What a history could be written of
those words of the Fragmentist, " We reject ! "
What scenes it calls up, of fierce monks dragging

THE VOICE OF ROME 23 1
the noble Hypatia into a Christian church, to
tear the flesh from her bones with sharp shells,
and to fling her naked and mangled body into the
flames ; of the mob of followers of the bishop of
Alexandria, who kicked and beat Flavianus,
bishop of Constantinople, until he died, in the
"Robber Council" of Ephesus; of the three
thousand persons who were killed in the riots that
convulsed Constantinople when the Athanasian
Bishop Paul was overthrown by the Arian Mace-
donius; of the fierce and bloody conflicts that
followed the Council of Chalcedon; and of all
the plunders, and murders, and outrages, that
followed the Monophysite, the Pelagian, or the
Donatist controversies. Men who believed that
faith consisted in the acceptance of a proper
metaphysic, could hardly act otherwise. When
Greek speculation took possession of hot-blooded
barbarians, and was made the essence of salva
tion, the conditions were present for one of the
fiercest forms of intolerance the world has ever
seen. Christianity is not Christianity without a
deep passion for the redemption of man. But
when redemption is identified with the acceptance
of a cosmology, toleration becomes a sin.
To be sure all this is not to be attributed to the

232 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
formation of a New Testament, nor must we
overestimate the effect of eliminating from the
documents all " personal feeling and affection."
Other factors, of course, enter into the result.
But the Gnostic tendency to place the emphasis
upon a cosmology, obtained by interpretation
from authoritative documents, which passed over
into the church, and resulted in the formation of
a creed and a canon, is beyond question the be
ginning of all those bloody riots and fierce perse
cutions, which extracted cries of wonder from
Julian, and called down upon Christianity the
ridicule of cultured pagans of Alexandria. They
simply could not understand how men, as Gib
bon had put it, could shed each other's blood over
a diphthong. Why fill the world with carnage
over Homoousian and Homoiousian? The an
swer of the Christian is simple enough, " On the
issue involved in these two words hang all the in
terests of time and eternity, and the redemption
of the whole human race rests on a proper solu
tion." Men like Gibbon, who have no passionate
desire for the salvation of their fellow-men, may
ridicule Christianity if they will, but the fact
remains that the great dynamic power of all im
provement is that intense earnestness, that seems

THE VOICE OF ROME 233
so terrible when it runs in wrong channels. The
pity is not that men believed so intensely, but
that their belief became detached from moral en
tities, and poured all the power of its enthusiasm
into the establishment of fixed metaphysical
formulas of faith. Had not the demand for these
formulas been forced upon Christianity by the
Gnostics, and had not the desire to become a
compact and world-ruling power taken possession
of it, it might have gone on for an unknown
period as the spiritual leaven in the lump of so
ciety, receiving inspiration from every source that
" spake with authority, and not as the scribes."

XI
THE PROCESS REVIEWED

XI
LET us briefly review the development. The
first Christians, in settling their difficult
questions of conduct, naturally appealed to the
" commands of the Lord." It made little differ
ence whether these commands were read from
a document, or were related by an apostle, or
came from one who had been the companion of
an apostle. This state of affairs was elastic
enough to reach down past the first quarter
of the second century. Even as late as that we
have seen men of prominence and scholarship,
leaders in the church, placing greater emphasis
upon the spoken than upon the written word.
But of course the number of men who had walked
and talked with apostles became less and less, and
the written word rose into greater and greater
prominence. Even now, however, it was not held
to with any literalness or exactitude, but was
used in a free and simple manner. This is shown
by the way Tatian took the Gospels he found in
Rome, and made one Gospel out of them, and
went out as a missionary, with this Gospel as his
237

238 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
only Bible. In addition to this we find one of the
most influential bishops in the East willing to
admit the Gospel of Peter into the churches of
his diocese, without any definite idea as to the
number of the gospel narratives; we find a
strong party in the Western Church, whose
leaders had come from the East, and whose mem
bers were not regarded as heretical enough to
be given a name, who rejected the Gospel of
John entirely, in the interest of church unity;
and we find a Gospel according to the Egyp
tians compiled in another part of the church for
the fostering of a certain tendency that had taken
root in that region. It is thus evident that little
emphasis is put upon the form of the gospel
narrative long after the church relinquishes her
dependence upon oral tradition, and falls back
entirely upon the books.
But other kinds of literature grew up. Epis
tles were written by apostles and apostolic men,
and were treasured for their helpfulness and high
spiritual standards long after the circumstances
that gave them birth had passed away. These
documents were circulated in other churches than
the ones to which they were addressed, though
still regarded as somewhat local and particular in

THE PROCESS REVIEWED 239
character. They were written " from personal
regard and affection," and were not to be put in
exactly the same category as the Gospels. There
were also histories of the apostles in abundance.
Just what Peter did on a certain occasion, or just
what John or Thomas said in reply to a certain
question, was found to be a great help in settling
matters of conduct. Triumphant utterances of
the apostles were very comforting too, when
the Christian had to face martyrdom. These
books also were held in high esteem. There were
numerous books of vision in circulation also,
giving the dreams of the apostles, and filled with
highly colored pictures and allegorical figures.
These served to fire the imagination of the more
fervid Christians, and no doubt formed the texts
for the exhortations of countless wandering
prophets. These prophets were often held in
very high regard, and their utterances were
placed on a level with the things contained in
the books. During all this period the sole aim of
the church was the realization of a holy life.
Frequent fires of persecution kept the motives of
her members pure, and she was troubled little
with disintegrating speculations and vexing moral
problems.

240 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
But the fires of persecution died down. Mar
tyrdom bore its fruit in that large class of people
who mistake admiration of heroism for heroism
itself. The church filled up with less serious mem
bers. Men began to try to explain. Christianity
was found to be very interesting on its specula
tive side. Then the question arose, " Just where,
in this mass of Christian literature, shall we find
an authoritative statement of the system of Chris
tian doctrine ? " A man named Heracleon wrote
a commentary on the Gospel of John, the first
commentary on any Christian document. Valen
tinus, one of the most learned men in the church
of Rome, by means of the allegorical interpreta
tion, proved that Christ and the apostles had held
implicitly a curious system of Platonic philoso
phy and Oriental mysticism. The church was
dazed. She had never dreamed that such things
had anything to do with Christianity. What was
the Christian system? A halt must be called.
Nothing could be determined in the midst of
such confusion.
To add to the distraction a man named Mar
cion had discovered a discrepancy between a life
lived according to certain outward precepts, and a
life of freedom from law, as taught by Paul. On

THE PROCESS REVIEWED 24I
the basis of this discovery he set out to reform the
church, and was leading away thousands of her
followers. He seemed to have solved the ques
tion that was in the air everywhere, " Wherein
does Christianity differ from Judaism? " Above
all he had sifted the mass of Christian literature,
and had a definite and fixed collection of writings,
upon which he based his movement.
Besides all this, the tendency to worldliness,
which was inevitable as the church began to take
in all classes, started a movement in the direction
of primitive purity and enthusiasm. The Mon
tanists were charging the church with abandoning
the moral standards of Christ and the apos
tles; the Marcionites were accusing her of
forsaking the principle of Paul which was the very
charter of her liberty ; and the Gnostics were tell
ing her that she had a very elaborate system of
metaphysics hidden in her books, of which she
had never dreamed. What was she to do ? With all
this din sounding in men's ears, she could teach
the world nothing. She regarded herself as a
" schoolmaster," according to the Fathers. She
must call her school to order. She must " beat
the strutting vanity " out of her refractory pupils.
They must become docile, or depart from her
Q

242 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
jurisdiction. Above the noise and confusion
sounds the voice of Rome. It speaks with au
thority. " We accept this ! " " We reject that ! "
it cries. So was born the canon.
That the germs of this development can be
found even in the literature of the first century
must be granted. In the early days there were
" Knowing Ones," who used such catch-words as
these : " I know God ; I dwell in God ; I have
passed from death unto life." It is all right to
call these men " Gnostics," if we bear in mind the
fact that they were merely the forerunners of the
movement. They are far from being the celebrated
schools of later days. They do not bolster up
their theories by documents. The chief charge
against them is that they " care nothing for love,
nothing for widows, nothing for orphans, noth
ing for the sick, nothing for prisoners or freed
captives, nothing for them that hunger and
thirst" (Ignatius). Against these men John
urges that the road to true "gnosis " is love to
the brethren. This battle is entirely different
from the one that arose at a later date. The
opposition to speculation, mysticism, idle philoso
phy, dreams, and theoretical prattle, to be found
in the Pastorals, in James, in the Epistles of John,

THE PROCESS REVIEWED 243
and elsewhere in early Christian literature, is not
at all theological, and has no need whatever for
a canon. This applies equally to the fact that the writers
of the closing years of the first century regarded
the apostolic age as of superior sanctity and au
thority, and so attach the names of apostles to
their books. Such a thing might have gone on
for centuries without a canon being formed.-
Books bearing the apostolic names were written
after the middle of the second century. That
this would have come to an end at last, and a New
Testament have been formed, had there been no
Gnostic schools, no Montanism, no Marcionite
movement, we cannot deny. But in such a hy
pothesis we have little interest, as our effort has
been to discover how it actually did happen.*
To be sure the ecclesiastical tendency, and the
spirit of prophecy, came into conflict before the
first century had come to a close. This was
natural. Prophets and bishops never get along
' Wernle discovers (" Beginnings of Christianity," II., 246)
what he calls " layers " of documents in the first two decades of
the second century. To these he gives the name . " New _Testa-
ment." This seems to me to be juggling with words. It is like
the claim that Jesus and Paul were " Catholics." Wernle
himself discovers a few germs of a hierarchy in Paul. Is it legiti
mate, then, to call Paul a " Roman Catholic '* ? History is im
possible if we use words so loosely. Nothing ever happens. Some
token, some faint foreshadowing of everything, can be found in
previous history. A New Testament implies a closed epoch of
revelation. Where does Wernle find this idea before a. d. 150?

244 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
well in the same church. The busy workers in
the cause of church discipline and order, at the
very beginning of the Christian movement,
clashed with the enthusiasts. Each had a litera
ture to which they appealed. Some of the
" Acts " and " Apocalypses " of the visionaries
were very popular among the laity. The way in
which Montanism swept over the church is a
witness to the mighty influence exercised in the
early days by those who believed in new reve
lations straight from the Spirit of God. Mon
tanism, to be sure, was merely a revival. The
fading out of dramatic fancies took place many
years before, and with it went a weakening of the
spirit of prophecy. This, however, was not due
to a triumph of the ecclesiastical party, but to
the long-delayed coming of Christ on the clouds
of glory. The principle of an " open vision "
was not abandoned in the least, but enthusiasm
died down because prophecy was not fulfilled.
The frequent exhortations in these days to
obedience to the bishop, and the warnings against
" false prophets," bear witness to the fact that
still the fire smoldered, ready to burst into a flame
at any moment. When the Epistle of Jude quotes
apocalyptic writings as Scripture it is only falling

THE PROCESS REVIEWED 245
in line with the thought of the day. Books of
vision were everywhere, and it was many decades
before the church could safely declare the age
of revelation closed.
It is essential for us to remember, however,
that the formation of the New Testament did not
put a higher, but a different value upon the books.
The words of the Lord and of his apostles were
not treasured more devoutly, because suddenly it
was found that they contained great cosmological
mysteries, and solemn warnings against the views
of the false teachers. For a long time the reliance
upon oral tradition had been weakening, and the
books had been coming into greater and greater
prominence. The apostles had always been
looked upon as the founders of Christianity, and
to make their authority literary did not imply
any startlingly new estimate of the books, or of
their authors. What was new was the rejection
of a great mass of literature, that hitherto had
been accepted with all the devotion and reverence
attaching to an apostolic writing. For a long time
writers on the canon contented themselves with
an investigation into the history of the accepted
books, and by showing that these books were
considered sacred and authoritative long before

246 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
a definite collection was made, they endeavored
to prove the existence of a New Testament from
the very beginning of the Christian era.
This is an extremely inadequate treatment of
the subject. It is possible to show that scores
upon scores of other books were also regarded as
sacred and authoritative. The innovation in the
formation of a New Testament is not to be looked
for in any peculiar sanctity attaching to inspired
and apostolic books. The church did not enun
ciate a new theory when it declared that the
writings of the apostles were the ground of
authority. Even the Gnostics admitted this.
No doubt there had been much uncertainty
among more intelligent Christians for some time
as to the genuineness of many books that bore
the name of apostles. It took several decrees to
give the Epistle of Hebrews its Pauline authority.
Some uncertainty must have existed as to the
Johannine authorship of the Apocalypse. Mark
had to be made apostolic by an appeal to oral
tradition. The exaltation of these books over
many others that claimed apostles for their au
thors, and the drawing of a sharp line between
them that could not be passed, was the new step
that was taken when the canon was formed.

THE PROCESS REVIEWED 247
Another new thing was the silencing of the
spirit of prophecy definitely and finally. Up to
this time there was nothing to prevent the pro
duction of new books by one who possessed
the gift of the Spirit. If the statement of the
Fragmentist be true that Hermas wrote the
Shepherd " very recently in our time," then
one of the most highly prized of all the Chris
tian books was a modern production. To be
sure no new thing was said, when it was asserted
that all the books in the list of the Fragmentist
were written " under one leading Spirit." They,
and many more, were believed to be the pro
ductions of the Holy Spirit. There might still
be books produced under the inspiration of the
same "leading" Power. Nor did the church
assert anything new when she declared that in
these books there was " no difference as regards
the faith of believers." All Christians took it for
granted that the inspired books contained no con
tradictions. This was just what was startling
in the speculations of the Gnostics. The church
was dividing on the basis of books that had
been written under the guidance of " one lead
ing Spirit." How was this possible? Could it
be the books were not a unit? No hierarchy

248 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
could admit this. The church seemed to be
taking a firm stand when she said that the
conclusions drawn were false.
In the third new step her ground was not so
firm. She took it for granted that the docu
ments contained a system of theology. If they
were written under " one leading Spirit," she
thought, they must contain, at least by inference,
a single and final theory of the universe. From
the beginning Greek thought had been endeavor
ing to find unity in the cosmos, by reducing it to
a single substance or idea. Thales had said it
was water ; Anaximander had called it " the un
changeable " ; Anaximenes had declared it was
air; Heraclitus had found his explanation in
becoming; and Xenophenes had found his in
being. In this struggle for simplicity Greek
speculation had become very complex. The
Greek thinkers who came to the church could not
leave their nature behind -them, and so they
threw themselves, with all the eagerness of that
wonderful people, into the task of finding the
Christian explanation of the universe. Thus was
born Gnosticism, or the Christian hunt for
knowledge. Previous to this effort, the energies of the

THE PROCESS REVIEWED 249
church had been given to the realization of a holy
life. She did not now deny the assumption of
the Gnostics that her books contained a cosmo
logical explanation of the universe, nor did she
deny their genuinely Greek assumption that the
" holy life " was the one that possessed the true
knowledge. She took the position that the regu
larly ordained officers of the church were the
only ones who had the power to obtain this
" knowledge," and she commanded those officers
to find it as soon as possible. It is not necessary
to enlarge on the results of this assumption that
the Christian writings contained a single and
consistent theological system. Its echoes are in
history. The departure from the primitive be
lief that whatever inspires is inspired, and that
the books were intended to give us inspiration
and not theology, has not accomplished its pur
pose in unifying the church. The Bible may be
a theological unit, but as a matter of fact every
speculative vagary in creation appeals to it, from
polygamy with its reference to the patriarchs
and Christadelphianism with its friendliness for
Daniel, to the dreamy Millenarianism that loves
the Apocalypse and the devout Divine healing that
appeals to nearly every page of the Gospels.

250 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
If we take the third step, taken by the church
at the close of the second century, we can hardly
avoid taking the fourth, the most serious of all.
If we declare that the Christian Scriptures con
tain a theological system, we must withold them
from the people. If our desire for unity leads us
to the assertion that the books are an absolute
homogeneity, despite the fact that every phase of
thought and opinion is able to appeal to them,
we must centralize the interpreting power too,
and instead of allowing people to go to the
books with a mind that is a tabula rasa, we
must either tell them what they are compelled
to find there, or we must take the books away
from them. In all this matter the Catholic
Church has been the one form of Christianity
that can point to an absolutely consistent record.
That church has kept the books from the com
mon people. The average Christian, she says,
is not able to find the deep and underlying unity
that pervades the canon. It would seem, if there
is such a unity, that she is right. Her strength
to this day is in the fact that she can point to
one hundred and fifty Protestant denominations,
and say, " They all appeal to the Scriptures ; do
you think they understand them ? "

THE PROCESS REVIEWED 25 1
I have said that the Catholic Church is the
only form of Christianity that has been con
sistent. This is not entirely correct. The church
that said, " Whatever inspires is inspired," was
much nearer the truth, and was consistent as well.
It was another kind of consistency — consistency
of knowledge, not of life — that was striven for
when the decree went out, " I am the heir of
the apostles ! " From that time on the docu
ments, instead of being productions of the Spirit,
for the spiritual edification of the different assem
blies, were looked upon in the light of legislative
enactments, that were thereafter to form the
basis of canon law.

XII

CONCLUSIONS

XII
THE facts brought out in our investigation
are revolutionary only in their applica
tion to a certain conception of inspiration. The
value and authenticity of the books contained in
our New Testament are by no means injured by
the fact that they were arbitrarily selected, and
bound up in a single volume by the decrees of a
hierarchy. We can even conclude that the best
of early Christian literature was preserved for
us by this process, and so feel grateful. Still, the
idea of a sharp line of demarcation, separating
the age of inspiration from all after-centuries,
receives a decided shock from the facts we have
adduced in the preceding pages. Protestantism
has always turned the New Testament on the
hierarchy, as a most effective weapon. Scholar
ship is just beginning to turn the New Testament
on Protestantism. We are to learn in the years
to come that a " New Testament Church " is a
church without a New Testament. The boun
dary must fall. The first century must take its
place with the others. The age of the apostles
255

256 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
must become part of the great, continuous, unbro
ken plan of God.
A very interesting comparison might be made
between the Epistle to the Hebrews and the
Epistle of Barnabas, both products of the anti-
Jewish apologetic of the early church. The
favorite part of the Old Testament for the writer
of Hebrews is the Pentateuch, while the writer of
Barnabas is attracted much more by the Prophets
and the Psalms. The former, looking with envy
on the ecclesiastical claims and prerogatives of
Judaism, and realizing that Christ is not of
Aaron's line, sets up the counter claim that he
is a High Priest according to the order of Mel-
chisedek. This peculiar method of defending
Jesus by tracing his authority back to a shadowy
figure of the Old Testament makes no appeal
whatever to our modern religious consciousness.
A far higher conception is to be found in the
sixteenth chapter of Barnabas, where the writer
refers to the destruction of the temple at Jeru
salem, declaring that God has found another tem
ple. This temple, he declares, is the Christian,
in whom " God truly dwells." " How? By his
word of faith; by the calling of his promise;
by the wisdom of his statutes ; by the commands

CONCLUSIONS 257
of his teaching; he himself prophesying in us;
he himself dwelling in us." The sublime declara
tion of the abolition of the Jewish sacrifices, to
be found in the second and third chapters of
Barnabas, is almost worthy to be compared with
the great philosophy of history of the eleventh
chapter of Hebrews.
It is needless to go deeper into this comparison.
Both epistles contain much that sounds strange
to our ears. The long controversy in Hebrews,
which takes so much account of the formal claims
of Judaism, trying to give Christianity a higher
ritual, making Christ both its priest and its vic
tim, summing up in his person a rival sacrificial
system, is less in accord with the thought of our
day than the more spiritual idea of Barnabas.
If the reader will take both epistles and carefully
compare them, trying to divest himself of the
training and study that has made him familiar
with one and unfamiliar with the other, and will
ask, " What would have been the result if Barna
bas had been included and Hebrews left out ? "
he will, in all probability, reach the conclusion
that the effects to Christianity, and the loss, would
not have been serious.
Eusebius says of Dionysius of Corinth, " He
R

258 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
makes mention also of Clement's Epistle to the
Corinthians, showing that it has been the custom
from the beginning to read it in the church." * It
would not be harmful to read it to-day. It con
tains splendid declarations. " If a man be faith
ful ; if he be powerful in the utterance of knowl
edge; if he be wise in weighing words; if he be
pure in all his deeds ; yet the more he seems to be
superior to others, the more humble-minded
ought he to be, and to seek the common good "
(chap. 48). " How blessed and wonderful, breth
ren, are the gifts of God! Life in immortality,
splendor in righteousness, truth in perfect liberty,
faith in assurance, self-control in holiness! "
(Chap. 35.) "There is nothing base, nothing
arrogant in love. Love admits of no schism.
Love gives rise to no sedition " (chap. 49). What
could be better for our modern Gnostics than this :
" Consider, brethren, that the greater knowledge
that has been vouchsafed to us, the greater also
the danger to which we are exposed " (chap. 41).
That strife cannot exist between two good men
(chap. 45), is decidedly wholesome doctrine. The
passion of the first century breathes in this decla
ration in regard to Christ : " By him our foolish
'H. E., IV., 23 : II.

CONCLUSIONS 259
and darkened understanding blossoms up anew
toward his marvelous Hght " (chap. 36). The
hymn of harmony in nature (chap. 20), the
figures of resurrection (chap. 24), the declara
tion of justification by faith (chap. 32), and
the massing of Hebrew and Christian history to
show the evil effects of envy (chap. 4, 5), are all
splendid passages. Had this epistle been included
in our New Testament it would have been used
far more frequently, particularly among our di
viding and multiplying Protestant sects, as a
plea for harmony and unity, than some books
contained in the canon.
It is difficult to enter into the spirit of a past
age, and so appreciate its literature, but the true
critic cannot shrink from the effort. In propor
tion to our success in this task, in that proportion
will the beauty and strength of books like the
Didache grow upon us, and we shall even enter
into the spirit of the apocalyptic literature, with
its glorification of martyrdom, and its sense of the
heroic. As we read it to-day it has a far-off sound,
mainly because it is unfamiliar to our ears. If we
had heard its words since childhood, if it had been
read and reverenced in the place of worship and
at the family altar, many of its mysterious and

26o FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
unmeaning phrases would come to us freighted
with the lessons of life and experience.
This is particularly true of the Shepherd of
Hermas. He who reads it sympathetically will
find underneath its strange imagery many re
markable and inspiring utterances. To be sure
it can scarcely be placed on a level with the
Apocalypse, but if it had been included in our
New Testament no one would think of ex
cluding it. Those who allegorize the story of
the temptation of Jesus, who find a mysterious
lesson in his vision of Satan, " as lightning, fall
ing from heaven," and who use Paul's experience
of being " caught up into paradise," where he
heard " unspeakable words," as an inspiring ex
ample of religious idealism, would doubtless dis
cover in this old allegory many a precious lesson
of elevating and transcendent truth. We must
reach the conclusion, therefore, not that the New
Testament books were uninspired writings, but
that their inspiration will suffer no hard line of
separation from the workings of God's Spirit in
all his prophets, apostles, and teachers, through
out all time. Even the age of creed-formation
was not without its "-word of witness," its " open
vision," had it been willing to listen.

CONCLUSIONS 261
The one question asked concerning a book by
the early church was this, "Does it inspire?"
This question was changed, in later years, into
another, " Is it inspired ? " The two questions
were one to primitive Christianity, and, as the
Spirit was still present in the heart of the believer,
it was taken for granted that what inspired to a
better life to-day, had been inspired in its writing
yesterday. The two questions, however, became
separated in the Catholic Church. " Is it in
spired?" came to mean many things. "Can it
be traced back to the apostles? " " Will it help
in the establishing of a definite body of dogma? "
" Does it contain any passage that denies the
authority of the church ? " " Does it help to es
tablish the principle of ' apostolic succession ' ? "
" Above all, can it be used to silence the confu
sion of speculation, to hush the new prophets, and
to answer the arguments of that radical reformer,
' the shipmaster of Pontus ' ? " These questions
imply altogether a different interest in the docu
ments from that which attached to them when
they were used solely as aids to devotion, or the
repositories of the truth of " the ever-living
Word." The distinction is sharp and clear between the

262 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
ecclesiastical view of a book as a legal document,
and the devotional conception of it as a gift of the
Spirit. The eyes that scan the pages for proof-
texts will have a different light in them from
those that read for the purpose of spiritual com
munion with God. The letters which a lover
writes to his sweetheart do not sound the same
when they are taken to a law-office, to play a part
in a suit for " breach of promise." The expres
sions of tenderness and the glowing terms of
affection have a different interest attaching to
them, when they are scanned by the sharp eyes
of an attorney. They are love-letters no longer;
the same words are there but they sound
like totally different productions, when they be
come the ground of litigation, instead of simple
expressions of hope and affection.
The illustration may be homely, but the analogy
is true. Just such a change came over the use of
the Christian documents in the second century.
They became the ground of a legal contest with
the heretics. Formerly they were read with feel
ings of hope and tenderness; now they were
scrutinized for legal subtleties. When the hier
archy took possession of them, they scarcely
seemed like the same books. Indeed, they never

CONCLUSIONS 263
again were the same books until Protestantism
caused their resurrection once more. To the
early Christian they were the simple and living
springs of inspiration, the vital and thrilling mes
sage of the life of yesterday to the life of to-day.
They throbbed with interest; they glowed with
love ; they flashed with commands ; they pictured
the ideal life in terms of truth and beauty. With
the formation of a New Testament all this was
changed, and the interest in them became archaic
and deadened. They were the legal documents of
an inspired age, whose height of truth and
revelation was past and gone, never to be realized
again. That the echo of this belief is still in the
church, we need scarcely be reminded. The ten
dency to let Christianity evaporate in mere ad
miration of the first century, or in dogmatic
speculation over its events, is still with us. Dia
lectical skill, the subtleties of metaphysical genius,
the penetrating analysis of logic, have all been
turned on its pages in an effort to form a satis
factory theory of the " Atonement." Artists
have pictured on canvas its tragic and pathetic
features. Poets have set its crowning story to
rh)rthmic cadence. Schoolmen have discussed its

264 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
teachings in their gatherings, and have left pon
derous tomes to gather dust in monasteries. The
tendency of all this admiration has been to ob
scure the New Testament, by enveloping it more
and more in a golden haze, that soothed the
imagination, satisfied the esthetic sense, de
lighted the powers of reason, but failed to trans
form the life. That the New Testament is not
an epic, not a masterpiece, not a dogma, but a
" voice " calling to a larger and purer life, is a
conception hard to establish in minds that have
isolated it, and lifted it to a region of lonely and
unattainable grandeur.
It is refreshing to find a slight resistance to
this tendency in the second century, even if it
did come from men of little culture and critical
attainment. While the church was being over
awed by men who found Ogdoads and Tetrads
in her documents, it is pleasant to hear the Alogi
asking, "What foolish things are these?" We
can almost hear them say, " The apostles wrote
their books to direct our lives, to revise our
standards, to point us to paths of righteousness,
and not to settle silly disputes about the world-
forming Logos." In this they were nearer
the truth than their opponents. Though they

CONCLUSIONS 265
represent the attitude of the uncritical and ethical
Christian, whose mind had not been Hellenized,
and who resented the tendency to take the docu
ments into court, their significance is in what we
can see back of them. Much more numerous than
the Alogi must have been the great body of
earnest and simple-minded followers of the Naza-
rene, to whom the Christian life was a very plain
thing, an open and loving testimony to the
power of the person of Christ, and to whom the
documents were nothing but the glowing accounts
of the doings and prophecies of certain past wit
nesses. They were, to such men, merely the
literature of an inspired affection. They were
read with no regard for proof-texts, with no ef
fort to silence opponents, with no desire to find
justification for a Platonic conception of the crea
tion, but merely to throw light on present-day
problems, and to learn about Him who is " the
way, the truth, and the life."
It is necessary to know this, in order to see
that it was not a lower estimate, but a different
estimate, that was put on the books, when a New
Testament was formed. It is extremely easy to
go through the records and bring forth passages
to show how high was the respect and reverence

266 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
paid to the documents for decades and genera
tions before the books were collected and equated.
Though their words might be changed by wander
ing prophets, and their number added to contin
ually by " Spirit-bearing men," they were still the
very voice and message of God. As we approach
the end of the second century, when the church
was getting adjusted to the life of the world, the
changes must have been slighter, and the addi
tions fewer. But even then, the Shepherd,
written " in our time," could sweep over the
Western Church with an inspired message from
on high. This tendency the Catholic Church
could only conquer by claiming a continuance of
the prophetic gift, and then by confining it to her
own appointed teachers. By so doing she thrust
the New Testament into the background, and has
consistently tried to keep it there. By limiting
the teaching function, and confining prophecy to
church channels, she has maintained unbroken
that unity which she achieved so many cen
turies ago. The tremendous advantage this gives
her, by presenting a solid doctrinal front to the
disorganized mob of Protestant sects, is seen
every day.
Even that New Testament, which Protestantism

CONCLUSIONS 267
has used so effectually in the interest of free
dom, was furnished her by the Catholic Church.
The inconsistency of her attitude has been shown
again and again by men like Newman, as well as
by her own sons of freedom, who have striven for
a larger liberty. That she has found in the New
Testament the same kind of " authority " sought
by all devout Catholics, she has been very slow
to learn. That, having started on the path of
liberty, she can never go back again, is a lesson
that the centuries are slowly forcing upon her
consciousness. However much she may regret
its evil effects, its twists and turns, its occasional
anarchy and frequent insubordination, it cannot
be put down any more by the arbitrary arm of
authority, or even by the merciless logic that
forges its weapons from a New Testament that
has been sealed and closed forever. To be sure,
we must grant men the right to speculate, and to
seek philosophical unity of thought in their in
terpretation of the universe. To be sure, we can
not avoid their forming theories as to the relation
of this thought to the early documents of our
Christian inheritance. But to make these docu
ments stand sponsor for the science or the meta
physics of any age, whether of the time of

268 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
Irenaeus or Huxley, is to pervert them to unjust
and illegal uses.
The question naturally arises as to the relia
bility of a New Testament formed in the manner
we have stated. We have said that one of the
questions involved in canonicity was this, " Can it
be traced back to the apostles ? " How far then
can we trust the witness of the men of the second
century, that the documents they have handed
down to us are of ancient date and apostolic sanc
tion? To this the careful student will make a
somewhat cautious reply. Self-deception is one
of the most common experiences in times of re
ligious controversy. To tell whether men are
entirely sincere and honest at such times is an
exceedingly difficult matter. However, one is
forced to say that in general the men who formed
our New Testament thought they were getting
together apostolic documents. This may have
been because those documents taught doctrines
they wanted to enforce. It may have been be
cause they lacked critical insight. It may have
been because they were ignorant of the history
of the documents. Whatever the reason, the fact
remains. Despite the bitterness of the contro
versy, and the un worthiness of some of its objects,

CONCLUSIONS 269
we can see in the background of the thought of
the Catholic Fathers a genuine desire to get at
the teaching of the apostles. The methods they
employed were often unworthy, and the sense of
literary honor and integrity is scarcely up to
modern standards, but the purpose seems genuine.
Let us take a concrete case of what we mean.
Tertullian, for example, sends his readers to the
churches of Corinth, Philippi, etc., for the " origi
nal autographs " of Paul's Epistles. Did he
really think they were to be found there? If so
simple-minded, the reader may ask, how can we
trust his judgment in the difficult problems of
literary authorship and documentary authen
ticity ? Perhaps it was just a rhetorical exaggera
tion! If so, where are we to draw the line be
tween his flourishes of rhetoric, and the real
groundwork of fact in his statements in regard
to the canonical books? Worst of all, he may
have known that he was endeavoring to silence
his opponents by a sort of imaginary " pious
fraud." In any case the dilemma is not pleasant
and is sufficient to make us cautious in accepting
unchallenged our sources of information. No
investigation into the tendencies of this period
will be of any value that does not transcend the

270 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
Catholic calendar of "saints." But, when all
deductions have been made, we will be obliged to
admit certain facts.
There were four Gospels in general use in the
Western Church toward the end of the second
century, and in that section they occupied a decided
preeminence over all other forms of the gospel
narrative. In other regions this was not the case.
The Gospel according to Peter, the Gospel ac
cording to the Hebrews, the Gospel according
to the Egyptians, and other forms of the narra
tive, some of them constructed to advance a par
ticular tendency or interest, were read at the serv
ices as Scripture, and were reverenced by scholars,
in other parts of the world. However, it is fairly
certain that our four Gospels, if they did not fur
nish the basis of these books, at least contain
nearly all that was of any essential value in them.
The fragment discovered of the Gospel of Peter
by the French Archaeological Mission, in Akh-
mim, in the year 1885, would not lead us to put
a very high estimate on that form of the narra
tive. It seems to draw on our four Gospels
entirely as its sources. The fragments of the Gos
pel according to the Hebrews preserved by Ori
gen, Eusebius, and Jerome, lead us to a some-

CONCLUSIONS 271
what higher regard for this document. However,
it is useless to carry on a speculation in the dark.
Suffice it to say that as far as our knowledge goes
we have handed down to us nearly all the gospel
tradition that was of any value, that existed about
the year a. d. i 50. The documents used by Luke,
the sources of the fourth Gospel, and all the
phases of the " Synoptic Problem," do not come
within the scope of our study. One old tradition
alone should make us cautious. According to a
tradition preserved in a very early manuscript
(Codex D, at Luke 6:4), Jesus one day saw a
man working on the Sabbath, and said, " If thou
knowest what thou doest, thou art blessed ; but if
thou knowest not, thou art accursed." A nobler
declaration on a very vexing problem cannot be
found in any age, or in any literature.
When we turn to the book of the Acts it is
difficult to make statements as clear and as confi
dent. That this book was written by the same
author as the Gospel of Luke is seldom ques
tioned. That it deserves a place in the New Tes
tament, not alone for its antiquity, but for its
inspiring simplicity and grandeur, no one will
deny. This is not the question. How about the
other books of " Acts " ? The Acts of Paul, of

272 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
Peter, of John, of Thomas, of Andrew, and of
Philip, have all survived in part. The rest have
been lost. Some of these are older than books
that found a way into the canon. They reflect
the ideal of popular piety. They represent the men
of God as converters of the heathen, as ascetics,
as workers of miracles, as martyrs. In fact
they are very sweeping in their asceticism, and
exalt entire continence. They are products of the
dying enthusiasm of the early church, and beyond
a doubt were excluded from the canon, not so
much because of lack of apostolic authorship,
as because they lent such decided aid to Montan
ism. Here again we are face to face with the im
possible problem of transporting ourselves into the
spirit of another time. In all probability, if these
books had been bound up with our New Testa
ment, they would be found helpful to-day. With
the lost books of " Acts " much may have gone
that was genuinely inspiring and noble. We
must avoid the two extremes of a tendency to
idealize them, or of a hasty conclusion that they
were utterly worthless.
This is still more true of the Apocalypse. That
not one of all the books of vision, extant about
the middle of the second century, was worthy a

CONCLUSIONS 273
place in the New Testament, implies a confidence
in the judgment of the Catholic Fathers that only
the most devout adherent of the hierarchy can
give. A portion of the Apocalypse of Peter was
discovered at the same time that the fragment of
the Gospel was found. It contains the end of a
prophecy of Jesus about the " last times," a
vision of the state of the blessed, and a long de
scription of the torments of various kinds of
sinners. The thought of the second century must
have been full of these Orphic visions of heaven
and hell. Here, again, we are in touch with the
ideal of popular piety. The new prophets were
far more highly honored by the people than their
bishops. The Third Epistle of John urges its
readers not to despise the church officials, because
they are just as much deserving of respect as the
prophets and teachers. It is easy to see why the
Catholic Fathers were drawn to the books with an
ecclesiastical tendency, rather than toward the
more popular records of visions. The strife be
tween church officials and prophets began very
early in Christianity. The New Testament was
formed during a complete triumph of the former.
Naturally it turned away from the literature of
the latter. How wide and how authoritative this

274 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
literature was, we can only surmise. It must have
been great. The Epistle of Jude uses the Book of
Enoch and the Ascension of Moses as Scripture.
Barnabas uses the Apocalypse of Ezra. Hermas
quotes the prophecy of Eldad and Medad. Papias
quotes a text from the Apocalypse of Baruch as
a saying of Jesus. The whole Jewish apocalyptic
literature was used by Christians as canonical and
authoritative. To this must be added numberless
adaptations, and new creations.
All this was swept away by the formers of the
New Testament. We cannot picture them ex
amining the books with absolute critical candor,
or spending much time over matters of authen
ticity. In Alexandria, where the nearest attempt
was made at scientific scrutiny, we have seen how
wide was the canon of authority of the great
Fathers of the church. One who reads carefully
the writings of Clement and Origen will find a
presumption strongly in favor of much that was
excluded from our New Testament.
A final question remains. " What, then, is the
secret of the remarkable influence and history of
the New Testament? " The question can be an
swered in one word — " Christ ! " He is the
treasure hid in the field. . He gives the book its

CONCLUSIONS 275
value. It is because the world has found him
there, that it is willing to go and sell every other
book, and buy that book. The most devout ad
herent of the doctrine of verbal inspiration never
makes the mistake of valuing every pebble on its
pages as highly as the Pearl of Great Price. For
one to ask, " How much would the New Testa
ment be worth if Christ were left out of it?"
is tantamount to asking, " What would you give
for the Sistine Madonna without the canvas?"
We have no objection to the frame put on the
picture by devout men of the first century. We
are even grateful for the care and reverence, mis
taken though it sometimes was, that tried to pre
serve it. We only insist that the value is to be
found in the sacred and inspiring image, and not
in the frame.
That the New Testament gives us a true and
reliable picture of the spirit and character of
Christ can hardly be doubted. The one great
truth toward which the ages are working is that
it is the same Spirit, acting on our hearts, that
enables us to recognize the divine image when we
see it in the book. Therefore, no sharp line is
to be drawn between the New Testament times
and ours, save that which existed between the

276 FORMATION OF NEW TESTAMENT
character of Christ, and its unrealized expression
in the church that now bears his name. That this
is vast no one can deny. That the pages that tell
us of Christ constitute the supreme inheritance
of all time, few will dispute. To free those pages
from a perfunctory reverence, and help center
the thought and hope of Christendom on the great
Head of the Church, we hope will be the result of
our study.

INDEX

Acts of the Apostles, i€a, 271, 273.
Acts of the Martyrs of Scillis, 60.
Adoptionism, xoi, 114.
Alogi, the : not an organized effort,
X22 ; so named by Epiphanius, X13 ;
members of, 122 ; church Fathers
and the^ 123, 124; position of, 1x3-
1x5, 1x9; strength of, xx6, 122; re
veal the attitude of early Chris
tians toward philosophy, 116 ;
represent the first effort toward
outward unity in the church, laz.
Anaximander, 240.
Aneximenes, 248.
Apocaljrpses, 34, 35, 272-274.
Apostolic Fathers, 39.
Apostolic succession, 2x2,
Aristotle, lox.
Athanasius, xi8, 163.
Augustine, 139.
Barnabas, epistle of, 256-258,
Basilides : disciple of Glaucius, 83 ;
teacher in Alexandria, 83 ; char
acter of, 85 ; influence of, 85 ;
authority of, 83 ; writings of, 83 ;
methods used by, 84.
Catholicism : development of, X59 ;
the principle of, X64, 165, 192 ; its
effect upon the masses, X65 ; form
of Christianity that is consistent,
251.
Canon : meaning of the term, 24 ;
forces that resulted in the, 99, loi,
X02, X67 : beginning of formation
oft 35* 5i» 68-70; first decision in

formation of, arbitrary, X03 ; rela
tion of New Testament to the Old
Testament involved in formation
of a, 132, 138 ; limits of, not found
at once, 103; Marcion's, X27, 134^
13s; Marcion's motives for form
ing a closed, X34 ; Clement of
Alexandria's, 63-65; New Testa
ment church opposed to the, x6o,
X69 ; effect on Christians of a
closed, 104, 160, X65, 169, 232 ; con
tent of, 176 ; inclusion of Acts in
the, 2X2 ; methods used in, and
motives that led to the formation
of the, 19-22, 25, X35, 185, 204-206,
2x3, 246 ; spirit of those who closed
the, 27, X28, X89, 190, 268, 369;
Christians required to accept the,
191 ; value of books included in
the, 255, 274-276.
Cerinthus, 114.
Christians, the early : character of,
37, 41, 42, 74 ; expectations of, 40,
41 ; effect of decline of their ex
pectations, 70; standard of con
duct, 237 ; their use of Christian
literature, 41 ; textual interpreta
tion used by, 41 ; their conception
of inspiration, 69 ; scholars among
the, 42; their opinion of specula
tion, xoo, X12, 1x6, XX9 ; persecution
of» 37. 71-
Christian consciousness : definition
of the term, 17; formation of the
canon and, 17, 18, 206 ; in the
Alogi, of the second century seen,
X13-X24. 277

278

INDEX

Christian philosophy ; beginning of,
42* 43. 72» 83-85: pioneers of, 42,
43, 66, 67, 71, 81, 86 : methods used
in,43, 73, 88-90; Clement's defense
of, 100, 112 ; spirit of those who de
fended, 74, ^5 ; effect on Chris
tianity of, 75, 76, 79, 80, 117;
refused promulgation, 1x5; with
in the church, 1x5; denounced
by Fathers, xi8, X23 ; triumph of,
118.
Church authority, shown in Mura
torian fragment, 224, 230.
Clement of Alexandria : a Gnostic,
62,81; head of catechetical school,
63 ; teacher of mysteries, 8x ; con
structs systematic theology, 63;
early Christian literature used by,
61-65, ^3. defends Christian phi
losophy, 100, 1X3 ; writings of, pre
served, 83.
Clement : first epistle of, 38, 64 ;
second epistle of, 38, 39.
Commands of the Lord : what they
were, 34 ; fixed in documents, 35,
37* 38 ; gathered by Papias, 36 ;
the Didache and, 37, 38; as a
source of authority, 40.
Creed : first step in the direction of
formation, 98; forces that resulted
in, 98, 99 : Platonic philosophy
and, XOI ; stages in tbe develop
ment of the Apostles', 98, 178 ; in
sistence upon, 167 ; essence of
Christianity fixed in a, 192.
De Aleatoribus, 47.
Diatessaron: a Gospel, 53; Tatian,
author of, 51 ; character of, sx, 53 ;
influence of, 5x, 54 ; arbitrary re
jection of, 53 ; early documents
and the, 6x.
Didache : the teaching of the Lord
through tbe apostles, 37 ; an effort
to meet a. demand of the church

38; Clement quotes from, 65; Dia
tessaron and the, 61 ; among the
first Christian writings, X30.
Docetism, 51, 1x4.
Doctrine of Addaei, 53.
Dionysius, 229.
Early Christian literature : composi
tion of, x4, x6-i8, 34, 64, 207, 208,
210 ; authority of, 15, 17, 22, 3x, 25,
52, 70 ; commands of the Lord in,
35* 37 > Apostolic Fathers' use of,
39 ; Clement of Alexandria's
opinion of, 63-65 ; new use of, 25,
26. 73* 83-85, 91, 102, X05; Mar
cion's attitude toward, 130 ; sifting
of, 23, 24, 59, 60, XOI, 241 ; suppres
sion of, 28, 59, XX3, 313 ; inspiration
of, 26x.
Egyptians, Gospel according to the :
written in the interest of as
ceticism, X14, 270; use of, in
the church, 189; testimony to
early Christian documents ; au
thority of the, 6x, 62; Clement's
use of, 65.
Encratites, 6x,
Epiphanius : polemics of, 28 ; Gnos
tics and, 83; Alogi and, 1x4, 1x6;
Marcionites and, 135, 141.
Eusebius, 58, 59.
Gnostics : pioneers of, 62, 8z ; teach
ings of, preserved, 81, 83 ; position
of, XOI, 102, X33, xx8, X46; gave
Christianity a metaphysical back
ground, 91 ; schools, power, and
influence of, 97; bridge from ex
pansion to reflection, 98; effect
upon tbe church, X30, 154; position
of, still held by Christians, 91, Z04-
Z07 ; Gospel of John favorite book
of, X14.
Hadrian, 34.

INDEX

279

Hebrews, Epistle to, 356.
Hebrews, Gospel according to the,
270.
Hegesippus, 58, 59.
Hierarchy : the germ of, 39 ; forces
that resulted in, 69, 70, 99 ; leaders
of, XIX ; influence of Pauline con
ceptions upon, z6a; Paul's spirit
opposed to, 130, X37 ; opposed by
Marcion, 128, 131 ; conflict of the
law and the gospel in, X40; a prin
ciple dangerous to, X99; methods
used by, 2x3 ; authority of, x82,
X93, 221, 225.
Heracleon : a Gnostic, 36 ; disciple
of Valentinus, 93 ; commentary on
the Gospel of John by, 26, 93 ;
method of interpretation used by,
36, 94-97, 102 ; considered martyr
dom unnecessary, X70.
Hippolytus, 122.
Hystaspes, 64, 65.
Ignatius, 243.
Inspiration : early church's concep
tion of, 33, 34, 39, 74, 75, ixx, 349 ;
opposition to Catholic doctrine of,
20; restriction of, X02, 247 ; second
century conception of, 38-40, 47,
68, 69 ; of Greeks, 48, 49, 67, 7X, 72,
74 ; beginning of belief in verbal,
94 ; opposition of Montanists to
Catholic conception of, 164 ; new
conceptionof, 225, 230; effect upon
Christian character of closing
period of, X65.
Irenaeus : bishop of Lyons, 182 ; pupil
of Polycarp, 182 ; attitude of, to
ward philosophers, 27, 87, 88, 124 ;
aided conception of a canon,
182 ; first to use Epistles as scrip
ture, 187; gave reasons for there
being four Gospels, 185, 186 ;
gave the order of the four Gos
pels, x88.

John, Gospel of, iso, 123, 199.
Johannine question, 53, 1x5.
Justin Martyr: educated in pagan
philosophy, 71 ; teacher of Tatian,
54 ; makes use only of the Gospels,
54, 66-68, 58 ; Logos source of au
thority for, 54, 55, 67 ; believed in
the inspiration of the Greeks, 74,
80 ; education of Christians at the
time of, XIX ; knew nothing about
a closed canon, 58 ; wrote an
apology to the emperor, 62 ; a
victim of persecution, 67.
Logos, the : source of authority for
Justin Martyr, 54-57, 80; Platonic
doctrine of, 72 ; Christ, 75 ; Alogi,
X14-XX9.
Luke, Gospel of, 136, 189.
Luther, X40, 189.
Marcion : son of bishop of Sinope,
127 ; character of, 127, 131, 132 ; a re
former, X28 ; method of interpreta
tion, 128 ; rejected the Old Testa
ment, 128, 129, X38, 139 ; first to
close a canon of Christian writ
ings, 127 ; canon of, 135, 136 ;
teachings of, present contradictions
and uncertainties, 133 ; Tertullian
answers, 139 ; mission of, 133, 134,
14'.
Marcionites : remarkable growth of,
X41, 142; wherein their strength
lay, 129, 132, 143; asceticism of,
133, 142, 143, 146; Pauline char
acter of the, 138; tried to answer
" What is Christianity ? " 142 ;
hindrances to their success, 143-
X45; put down by authority,
159; Tertullian and the, 158, 163,
178.
Marcus Aurelius, 165.
Montanism : Began in Asia Minor,
153 ; opposed Catholic doctrine of

28o

INDEX

inspiration, ao ; appealed to same
group of literature as the Gnostics,
120; spirit of, 151-X53, 158, 166, 167,
Z70; in the church, 152; accusation
against the church, 163 ; checked,
164 : decline of, X65-Z67 ; antago
nistic to the spirit of the times,
168.
Montanus, 152.
Muratorian Fragment : discovered
in 1740, 22X ; written in the second
century, 222 ; is Rome's attempt
to close the canon, 222; warns
against heretics, 222; reveals the
difficulties in closing the canon,
»33, 225 ; shows the authority of
the church, 224-230; effect of the
spirit of, 230, 23X.
Origen : gospel text established by,
41 ; method of interpretation used
by, 95, 1x8, 179; Basilides and, 83.
Papias : a native of Hierapolis in
Phrygia, 35 ; a Christian writer,
35 ; exegesis of " The Sayings of
the Lord" by, 36; purpose of,
in exegesis, 36; norm of authority
for exegesis of, 36, 70, 193.
Paul, Z30, 137, 162, 192, X99.
Paul, Epistles of : mentioned, 67 ;
use of, by Marcion, 133-135, 138,
140; use of, in the church, 29, 88;
new use of, 88, 8g, 187; Justin's
lack of familiarity with,6o; Epistle
to the Hebrews among the, 103.
Peter, apocalypse of, 64.
Peter, 177.
Peter, Gospel of: purpose of its con
struction, 270; fragment of, dis
covered, 13; authorship of, 70;
Second Clement quotes from, 39;
rejection of, 50.
Philo, method used by, 36, 72, 73,
^85.

Plato, 63, 75.
Platonists, 42, 71.
Platonic Doctrine: "Vice is igno
rance," 75, XOI ; behind every proc
ess of creed formation, loi ; tri
umphant in the second century,
loi ; led to a form of Platonism in
the church, xx8 ; foundation of a
fanatical and intolerant system,
75-
Polycarp, 38, 183.
Protestantism : present spirit of, 193,
194 ; method of interpretation used
by, 194 ; holds Catholic doctrine
of inspiration, 195 ; makes New
Testament a weapon against hier
archy, 255 ; scholarship turns New
Testament upon, 255 ; on the path
of liberty 267.
Sabellians, 61.
Serapion, bishop of Antioch, 50,
70.
Shepherd of Hermas : an allegory,
260; considered inspired by Clem
ent, 64 ; product of adoption
ism, 1x4 ; influence of, 17, 225,
260 ; exclusion of, from the canon,
17.
Socrates, 57, 72, 74 80.
Synoptic problem, 53.
Syrian church : Tatian missionary
to, 5x'; used the Diatessaron, 51,
53 ; interest of, in theology, 54.
Tatian : a strolling rhetorician, 51 ;
converted at Rome, 51 ; taught hy
Justin Martyr, 54; Syrian mis
sionary, 52; wrote Gospel called
the '* Diatessaron," sz ; a witness
to the origin of the New Testa
ment, 51 ; considered a heretic by
Tertullian, 180.
Tertullian : the polemics of, 28, 82,
X34, 135 ; replies to Marcion, 129-

INDEX

281

X31, 162 ; conflict between Gnos
ticism and Montanism as seen in,
154-157; authority of, 158, 159;
conception of a canon, 177-179;
insisted on the " Virginity of the
Church," " The Prescription of
Heretics " by, 176 ; apostolic au
thority as viewed by, 175.
Thales. 348.
Theodoret, 51, 122.
Theophilus of Antioch ; theory of.

concerning the Holy Spirit, 48, 74 ;
authority of, 49.
Thessalonians, Epistle to the, x8o.
Valentinus : disciple of Theodas,
85; acquainted with Paul, 85; in
fluence of, 85, 86, 93; method of,
described by Irenaeus, 86-88, 340;
followers of, 92, 93.
Xenophenes, 348.