'¦¦'W if-^'f. ¦.''•¦i ¦:ft^ '¦'*?.'' TCI YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY From the Library of PROFESSOR E. HERSHEY SNEATH Yale '84 Gift of Herbert Camp Sneath and Mrs. Katherine W. Baker ^be 3nternationaI XTbeoIogical Xibrar^, EDITED BY CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D., Edzvard Robinson Professor of Biblical Theology, Union Theological Se^ninary, Nciv York; STEWART D. F. SALMOND, D.D., Professor of Systematic Theology and New Testament Exegesis, Free Church College, Aberdeen. IV. HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. Bv PROF. GEORGE PARK FISHER, D.D., LL.D. PRINTED BY MORRISON ANI> GIBB LIMITED FOR T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH. London: simpkiN; Marshall, Hamilton, kent, and go. limited YfEVi YORK : CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. The Rights of Tra7islatton and of Reproduction are Reserved, INTERNATIONAL THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY. HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTEINE BY GEOEGE PAEK FISHER, D.D., LL.D. PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN YALE UNIVERSITY SECOND EDITION EDINBUEGH T. & T. CLAEK, 38 GEOEGE STEEET ^ V- First Edition Second Edition Third Impression Fourth Impression Fifth Impression . March i8g6 December i8gb November ig02 May igoS March igib A PREFACE Several years have elapsed since I engaged to prepare this work. The unexpected delay in its publication is owing chiefly to the pressure of other and more imperative engagements. One reason for it, however, is the fact that, although the subject is one which I had long studied and on which I had given instruction to many successive classes, more time was required for the compo sition of the book than I had anticipated. This is partly for the reason that it appeared to me, for the present purpose, expedient to abandon, for the most part the method which I had always fol lowed in my Lectures of arranging the matter under the heads of General and Special Doctrinal History. On this topic something more is said in the introductory chapter. This change of plan has involved an entire recasting of the materials to be incorpo rated into this volume. A number of the ablest of the recent German writers on Dog- mengeschichte confine themselves to a description of the rise and establishment of dogmas in the official significance of the term, according to which it denotes simply the accredited tenets of the principal divisions of the Church. The terminus of this branch of study is, therefore, set not later than about the opening of the seventeenth century. In the present work, the history of theolog ical thought is carried forward through the subsequent essays at doctrinal construction down to the present time. In other words, the present work is a history of Doctrine as well as of Dogmas. Those who hold that such a treatise should have a more restricted VI PREFACE aim are at liberty to look on the chapters which cover all the additional ground, as being, to use the lawyers' phrase, obiter dicta. It is, after all, a question of nomenclature. A history of modern doctrinal theology, none will deny, is a legitimate under taking. It is hardly necessary to say how much, in common with all students of Doctrinal History, I owe to the old masters in this department, among whom the names of Neander and Baur have so high a place. I wish to add here that not unfrequently I have received aid from the writings of my lamented friend, Dr. SchafT. MoUer is one of the more recent authors on the general history of the Church who has been specially serviceable. There are three writers of a late date to whom particular acknowledgments are due. These are Harnack, Loofs, and Thomasius. The vigorous and brilliant Dogmengeschichte of Harnack is — whatever opinion may ,be held as to its theological tendencies — an indispensable auxiliary in studies of this nature. The numerous references in the follow ing pages will indicate how much I have been stimulated and instructed by it. From the Leitfaden of Loofs, written from the same general point of view as the volumes of Harnack, I have likewise derived important assistance. The Dogmengeschichte of Thomasius, a conservative Lutheran in his creed, is acknowledged by scholars of all shades of belief to be a work of extraordinary merit. It has been read and consulted by me with no little profit. In particular is it of service side by side with the treatises representing more or less decidedly the prevalent Ritschlian school. I may be permitted to add that I deem the Ritschlian tendency to be justified so far as it lays stress on the fact that in the earlier centuries the types of Greek philosophy then current had no inconsiderable influence in the formulating of doctrine. This, to be sure, is not a new discovery, but has been widely rec ognized by competent historians, like Neander. Yet it may be well that a new emphasis should be attached to it. Moreover, PREFACE yji there is no room for question that the Reformers mingled in their teachings much that was drawn from Scholastic sources. All this should be conceded to the Ritschlian movement, however large the dissent may be from specific conclusions concerning the extent and character of the modifications of Christian doctrine from extrinsic influences, concerning the real purport of the New Testament teaching, and concerning the trustworthiness of the Gospel narratives. The special design of this volume and the limitations of space have compelled the exclusion of a larger amount of critical com ment than its pages contain. The primary aim has been to pre sent in an objective way and in an impartial spirit the course of theological thought respecting the religion of the Gospel. What ever faults or defects may belong to the work, the author can say with a good conscience that nothing has been consciously inserted or omitted under the impulse of personal bias or prejudice. The precept of Othello is applicable to attempts to delineate theolog ical teachers and their systems : " Nothing extenuate. Nor set down aught in malice." In the revisal of the proof-sheets, I am glad to acknowledge the generous assistance which I have received from Professor Egbert Coffin Smyth of the Theological School at Andover, whose learn ing and accuracy eminently qualify him for such a friendly service. I have likewise received a number of valuable suggestions from Professor Arthur Cushman McGiifert of the Union Theological School in New York, who has given in his annotated edition of Eusebius ample proof of the thoroughness of his historical inves tigations. The index has been compiled by Mr. John H. Grant, a member of the Senior Class in the Yale Divinity School. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION PAGE Nature and Scope of the Subject — Theology Possible — Its Relation to Faith — Its Relation to Philosophy — Its Need and Origin — Factors in formulating Christian Truth — Development in Theology — Divi sions in the History of Doctrine — Sketch of its Course — History of the History of Doctrine — The Literature of the Subject . Part I ANCIENT THEOLOGY PERIOD I The Rise and Early Types of Theology to the Complete System of Origen and to the fully established Conception of the Pre-Mundane Personal Logos (c. a.d. 300). CHAPTER I Apostolic Christianity — Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism — Greek Philosophy and Gentile Culture 23 CHAPTER II The Ecclesiastical Writers 34 CHAPTER III Doctrine in the Apostolic Fathers 4' CHAPTER IV The Judaic Separatist Parties — The Gnostic Sects — Marcion . . 48 ix CONTENTS CHAPTER V PAGE The Beginnings of Theology : The Greek Apologists . . . . 6l CHAPTER VI The Rise of the Old Catholic Church. — The Rule of Faith — ihe Canon — The Episcopate — The Rise and the Exclusion of Montanism . 70 CHAPTER VII The Catholic Doctrine in the Asia Minor School: Irenaeus, Melito of Sardis — in the North African School: TertuUian — The Alexandrian Christian Philosophy : Clement CHAPTER VIII Monarchianism — Monarchianism overcome in the East — The System of Origen — Theology after the Death of Origen — Novatian — Dio- nysius of Alexandria and Dionysius of Rome — Methodius PERIOD II The Development of Patristic Theology in the East and in the West. In the East, from A.D. 300 to the Death of John of Damascus (c. 754); in the West, to Gregory I. (c. A.D. 600). CHAPTER I The Controversy with Heathenism — The Danger of Division — The Seat of Authority — The Canon, Scripture and Tradition — The Grounds of Theistic Belief . . . . . . . , . ny CHAPTER II Doctrines converted into Dogmas — Church and State — The Great Controversies — The Ecclesiastical Writers, East and West . 125 CONTENTS xi CHAPTER HI PAGE The Development of the Doctrine of the Trinity to the Council of Con stantinople (a.d. 381) . . . . . . . -134 CHAPTER IV The Development of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ to John of Damascus ............ 148 CHAPTER V The Doctrines not defined in the (Ecumenical Councils . . .161 CHAPTER VI The Theological System of Augustine— The Pelagian Controversy . 176 CHAPTER VII Pelagianism and the Theology of the East on the Controverted Topics — Semi-Pelagianism — Gregory I. . '94 Part II MEDIMVAL THEOLOGY PERIOD III The Development of Roman Catholic Theology in the Middle Ages, and its Reduction to a Systematic Form. CHAPTER I From Gregory I. to Charlemagne — The Work of Mediaeval Theology — Theology in the Eastern Church — Theology and Education in the West — John Scotus '99 xii CONTENTS CHAPTER II PAGE From Charlemagne to tlie Beginnings of Scholasticism — The Adoption Controversy — Gottschalk's Doctrine of Predestination — Radbert's Doctrine of the Lord's Supper — The Penitential System — The Tenth Century — Controversy of Berengarius and Lanfranc on the Lord's Supper . . . 205 CHAPTER III Characteristics of Scholasticism — The Scholastic Maxim — Philosophy: Nominalism and Realism — Scholasticism and the Universities — The Method of Scholasticism ........ 212 CHAFFER IV Subdivisions of the Scholastic Era — The First Section: Anselm; Abe- lard; Bernard; the School of St. Victor — The Books of Sentences — Peter Lombard 216 CHAPTER V The Second Section of the Scholastic Era — St. Francis and the Fran ciscan Piety — Mysticism — Aquinas and Scotus .... 229 CHAPTER VI The Scholastic Doctrines : Natural Theology and Christian Evidences — The Trinity and the Incarnation — Divine and Human Agency — Original Sin 234 CHAPTER VII Scholastic Doctrines : The Atonement — Conversion and Sanctification — Justification — The Church and the Papacy . . . . 245 CHAPTER VIII Scholastic Doctrines : The Sacraments 254 CHAPTER IX The Catharists — The Waldensians — The Mystics — Wesel; Wessel; Savonarola — The Doctrines of Wyclif— Huss — The Renaissance and its Influence — Erasmus 265 CONTENTS xiii Part HI MODERN THEOLOGY PERIOD IV The Principal Types of Protestant Theology — The Age of Polemics — The Crystallizing of Parties and Creeds. CHAPTER I PAGE The Theology of Luther 269 CHAPTER II The Theology of Zwingli — The Eucharistic Controversy — Parties in the Lutheran Church to the Form of Concord (1580) . . . 285 CHAPTER III The Theology of Calvin .... 298 CHAPTER IV Rise and Progress of Protestant Theology in England . . . 310 CHAPTER V Sects in the Wake of the Reformation — The Socinian System . • 3J7 CHAPTER VI The Roman Catholic System restated in the Creed of Trent — The Theology of the Jesuits . . 326 CHAPTER VII The Arminian Revolt against Calvinism — The School of Saumur — Pajonism — The Federal Theology . . .... 337' CHAPTER VIII Theology in England in the Seventeenth Century — " Rational Theol ogy " — The Latitudinarians . 353 xiv CONTENTS CHAPTER IX PACE The Arian Controversy in England — The English Deistic School — The Theology of the Quakers — Efforts on the Continent for the Reunion of Churches ..... ..... 370 PERIOD V Theology as affected by Modern Philosophy and Scientific Researches. From the Philosophy of Locke and Leibnitz to the Present. CHAPTER 1 Philosophy on the Continent after Descartes : Spinoza; Leibnitz — Phi losophy in England: Francis Bacon; Locke; Berkeley; Hume; Reid — The Writings of Butler and Paley — Character of English Theology to the Middle of the Eighteenth Century — The Wesleyan Theology 381 CHAPTER II Theology in America in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries — Theology of the First Settlers — Jonathan Edwards and his School ("The New England Theology ")— The Rise of Unitarianism : Channing; Emerson; Parker — The Rise of Universalism — New Developments in the New England School — The Theology of Horace Bushnell — The Theology of Henry B. Smith — Calvinism in the Presbyterian Church; Charles Hodge 394 CHAPTER III Theology in England in the Nineteenth Century: The Evangelical School in the Established Church — The Philosophy and the Theol ogy of Coleridge — The Early Oriel School: Whateley; Arnold — The Oxford Movement : Its Sources and Leaders; its Principles and Aims; the Tracts; the Hampden Controversy; the Conversion of Newman; the Doctrine of the Eucharist and Other Tenets of the Oxford School; the Gorham Case; Canon Liddon; Canon Gore; J. B. Mozley's Theological Teaching 446 CONTENTS XV CHAPTER IV Theology in England in the Nineteenth Century {continued') : The Broad Churchmen — The "Essays and Reviews" — The Broad Church in Scotland : Thomas Erskine ; McLeod Campbell — Theo logical Opinions of Matthew Arnold — The Christian Agnosticism of Hamilton and Mansel — Positivism — The Revival of Hume's Philosophy : J. S. Mill — The Agnosticism of Herbert Spencer — Influence of Darwinism on Theology — Agnostic Opinions of T. H. Huxley . . . ' 473 CHAPTER V The Anglo-French Deism — Theology in Germany in the Nineteenth Century: Deistic Illuminism in Germany — Zinzendorf and the Moravians — The Theology of Lessing — The Rationalistic Biblical and Historical Criticism : Semler; Eichhorn — "The Theology of the Understanding" — The Philosophy of Kant — The Kantian Ethical Rationalism — Jacobi and Herder — Two Divergent Currents of Theological Thought 492 CHAPTER VI Schleiermacher's Theological System . 5°2 CHAPTER VII The Liberal Evangelical or Mediating School : The Influence of Schleiermacher ; Domer; Julius Miiller ; Nitzsch— The System of Rothe — Lipsius— The Confessional Lutherans— the Ritschlians 512 CHAPTER VIII The Pantheistic Development of Philosophy and Theology in Germany : Fichte ; Schelling ; Hegel— The Hegelian Interpretation of Christianity — The Writings of Strauss — Biedermann — The System of Baur . '53' XVl CONTENTS CHAPTER IX PAGE The Later Roman-Catholic Theology — Indifferentism in the Eighteenth Century — The Fall of the Jesuit Order and its Revival — Liberalism of Lamennais and his Associates — Papal Reign of Pius IX. — The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception — The Vatican Council and the Dogma of Papal Infallibilit) — The Interpretation of the Dogma 536 CHAPTER X Conclusion i Certain Theological Tendencies in Recent Times . . 545 Index , . SS9 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE INTRODUCTION NATURE AND SCOPE OF THE SUBJECT — THEOLOGY POSSIBLE — ITS RELATION TO FAITH — ITS RELATION TO PHILOSOPHY — ITS NEED AND ORIGIN — FACTORS IN FORMULATING CHRISTIAN TRUTH — DEVELOPMENT IN THEOLOGY DIVISIONS IN THE HISTORY OF DOCTRINE — SKETCH OF ITS COURSE — HISTORY OF THE HISTORY OF DOCTRINE — THE LITERATURE OF THE SUBJECT Christianity is the revelation of God through Jesus Christ whereby reconciliation and a new spiritual life in fellowship with Himself are brought to mankind. The religion of Christ is insep arable from the life and character of its Founder and from his per sonal relations to the race and to the community of his followers.* Herein Christianity is differentiated from systems of philosophy. They might remain unaltered were their authors forgotten or never known. Equally is it contrasted with ethnic religions, whether they spring up in the darkness of prehistoric times, or are linked to the names of specific founders, real or imaginary. To under take to dissever Christianity from Christ is to mistake its nature and to ignore some of its essential requirements. Nevertheless, Christianity is composed of teachings which are to be proclaimed, and which call for a clear and connected interpretation. Al though not without ritual observances, it is not a religion of mystic ceremonies, the meaning and effect of which it is impossi- 1 He appears in the character of a second head of the race, the author of a new spiritual creation. See l Cor. xv. 45 (" The last Adam became a life- giving Spirit"). Cf. Rom. v. 12 sq.; also Eph. i. 22, 2 Cor. v. 17 ("a new creature ; the old things are passed away"), Gal. vi. 15. See, also, John xv. 5 (" ye are the branches ") . B X 2 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE ble to state or to understand. Its doctrines do not lie outside the limit of intelligible expression. The History of Christian Doctrine is the record of the series of attempts made in suc cessive periods to embody the contents of the Gospel in clear and self-consistent propositions. The History of Doctrine admits of a wider or a more restricted treatment. It may be the aim simply to exhibit the history of dogmas ; that is, of the definitions of doctrine which have been arrived at either in the Church at large, or in leading branches of it — definitions which, when once reached, were held to be authori tative. A dogma is a distinct conception and perspicuous state ment of a doctrine professed by the body, or by a considerable body, of Christian people. The word 'dogma' denoted in the Greek a tenet or an ordinance. It was either a settled article of faith or a precept sent forth from a recognized authority. In the Bible the term is used in the last of these meanings, — that of an edict or enactment.* Among the Stoics "dogmas" meant fiinda- mental truths which have the character of axioms. Their title to credence was conceived to partake of the sanctity of law. So among the Christian Fathers, " dogmas " were not conceived of as the injunctions of a superior, but rather as verities which orthodox believers are agreed in accepting.^ It is to be borne in mind, then, that dogmas are not the opinions of an individual merely, but are the interpretations of Christian ity which have been cast in an explicit form, and have been raised to the rank of doctrinal standards and tests. The history of dogmas is thus an account of the process of forrnulating the contents of Christianity in the creeds of acknowledged authority. By a number of recent writers, of whom one of the ablest and most conspicuous is Dr. A. Harnack, the function of the history of doctrine is confined to the description of the genesis and de velopment of " dogmas." The plan of Harnack's doctrinal history is conformed to this conception of the subject. The dogmatic interpretation of Christianity, the author justly considers, was at 1 In the Sept., Dan. ii. 13 (" decree " of Nebuchadnezzar), vi. 9 (interdict of Darius), Esther iii. 9, Luke ii. I (" decree " of Augustus), Acts xvi. 4 (" de crees " of the apostles and elders), Eph. ii. 15, Col. ii. 14 (ordinances of O.T. law). 2 On the history of the use of the word ' dogma,' see K. I. Nitzsch, DGM., p. 52; F. Nitzsch, DG., p. I. INTRODUCTION -, first, and to a great extent, a product of Greek thought, work ing from the points of view and in the spirit peculiar to the Hellenic mind. The outcome of this process of thought, which was carried forward through several centuries of controversy, appears in the oecumenical creeds pertaining to the Incarnation and the Trinity. Through Augustine, the system underwent an essential modification. There came in a practically new element, which stamped upon the theology of the West its distinctive char acter. In Augustine the old and the new, the Greek and the Latin elements, stand in juxtaposition. Later through Luther the Pauline type of teaching became a more determining factor in dogmatic construction. Through the great Reformer there was achieved an inchoate, incomplete re-formulating of that dogmatic system which had assumed a definite form in the Middle Ages. The result of the Protestant movement in the dogmatic field was threefold : the Lutheran theology, Socinianism, and the restate ment of the Roman Catholic system at the Council of Trent, — this last system being amplified in recent days, especially through the Vatican Council.* But it has been the custom of former writers to give a broader scope to the History of Doctrine. It may undertake to trace the history of theology, not only so far as theological inquiry and dis cussion have issued in articles of faith, but likewise so far as move ments of religious thought are of signal interest, and are often not unlikely to influence sooner or later the moulding of the Christian creed. The present volume will include a survey, as full as is practicable within the space at command, of the course of modern theology down to the present day. How shall we state concisely the essential truth in Christianity, — that truth which Christian theology seeks to explicate? Light is thrown on this question by the response of Jesus to the declara tion of Peter : " Thou art Christ, the son of the living God." "On this rock," said Jesus, — meaning by the "rock," if not this avowal of Peter, the Apostle himself in the character of a leader in the confession and promulgation of the faith, — "I will build my church."^ This living conviction of Peter, it is added, was inspired from above. Identical in substance with this passage 1 See Harnack, Lehrb. d. DG. (2 ed.), I. i-io; Abriss d. DG. (2 ed.) pp. 1-5, p. 334 sq. 2 Matt. xvi. 16-18. (Cf. John iv. 42.) 4 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE are the words of the Apostle Paul : " No man can say Jesus is 'Lord' but in the Holy Spirit."* In that title Jesus is recog nized as the predicted Messenger of God and the head of the kingdom. By way of protest against the denial of the true human nature and experiences of the Christ the Apostle John propounds the test: "Every spirit which confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God." ^ In the New Testament it is con stantly assumed where it is not expressly affirmed, that mankind in character are ahenated from God, and that Christ is the Deliv erer through whom reconciliation is made and a filial relation reestablished. The substance of Christianity is expressed in the word 'Redemption,' with its postulates and results.* Is theology possible ? Is the human mind capable of forming accurate conceptions and expressions of religious truth ? If not, then the History of Doctrine is nothing more than a register of incessant, but forever abortive, experiments. A denial of the possi bility of theology is heard from the various schools of Agnosticism. Comte, the founder of the Positivist system, who is not counted technically among the Agnostics, denies that we have any evidence of the reality of either efficient or final causes. All science dwin dles to a record of bare phenomena, arranged by their sequence in time and their Hkeness or unlikeness. Of course theology is expunged from the list of sciences and degraded to a level with astrology. Herbert Spencer, affirming the reality of an absolute " Power " at the root of all phenomena, yet asserts that it is utterly inscrutable. It is, but is an " Unknowable." This one step Mr. Spencer takes in advance of the position of Comte. There is, moreover, a theistic and Christian class of Agnostics, who, while they do go farther than barely to admit the existence of the object-matter of theology, still banish it beyond the purview of conceptive thought. We may not know, although we are war ranted in believing. Kant set out to confute the skepticism of Hume, but Kant, in the theoretical part of his philosophy, so far as the point in question is concerned, really organized skepticism. He substituted for custom or imagination as the source of mental intuitions nothing but a purely subjective necessity and univer sality. Sir William Hamilton followed in the path of Kant so far as to pronounce our religious beUefs — our beHef in God and 1 I Cor. xii. 3. ^ I John iv. 2. 2 John i. 12, I John iii. I, 2 Cor. v. 19, Gal. iii. 26, Rom. viii. 15-17, etc. INTRODUCTION c freedom, for example — to be a choice between inconceivables which exclude one another, — this choice finding a warrant in moral grounds alone. Hamilton's theory was carried out in a philosophy of religion by Mansel in his "Limits of Religious Thought." 'Faith without science' is the watchword of this phi losophy. The contention is that all our notions of the infinite and of God, being relative, are merely approximate. They will not answer, therefore, as a basis for reasoning. They constitute no materials for science, strictly so-called. The prop on which Ag nostics lean is the assumed relativity of human knowledge. Our knowledge, it is alleged, is solely of phenomena, of things as they appear to us. It is only symbols, realities transformed into some thing diff"erent from what they are, that the human mind can discern. But phenomena are not masks ; they are revelations of reality, and to know is not to transmute or to create. There are bounds to the knowledge possible to finite intelligence. Em phatically is this true as concerns the spiritual world. But this circumstance does not justify the casting of discredit upon the knowledge of which we are possessed. It affords no reason for affixing to it the stamp of unreality. It has sometimes been contended that theology can never be a science, on account of the infirmities of language. These are said to preclude exact expression. This view was propounded by an eminent American preacher and author, Horace Bushnell.* It is an inference drawn from the material origin of language, by which a merely symbolical character is given to all words denoting spirit ual things. They are attempts to picture things invisible. They are in their very nature figurative — a "fossil poetry." Under neath this opinion there really lies the contention of Occam, the Nominalist leader in the latter part of the Middle Ages, by whom theological nescience was inferred from a denial to man of the con ceptive faculty. If the objection were sound, it would be equally valid, for example, against ethics and political science. Intellectual notions "are at the foundation of all science." It is no doubt an important truth that words which signify spiritual states that involve feeling — since feeling so varies in depth and warmth — mean different things to different persons.^ The impressions 1 God in Christ (1849), Preliminary Essay: Christ in Theology (1851). 2 This fact is instructively dwelt upon by Cardinal Newman, University Sermons, pp. 114, 115, and in his Grammar of Assent. The difference be- 5 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE excited in different minds by the words that denote virtues and vices, and by epithets of praise and blame, differ exceedingly. This difference affects the force of probable reasoning. But, apart from the emotions that are stirred, it is enough to say with J. S. Mill as to abstractions in general, that " in some cases it is not easy to decide precisely how much a particular word does or does not connote." * What is the relation of theology to that faith which, as it is the first demand of the Gospel, is the initial element in Chris tian experience? Discussions concerning the relation of faith to knowledge we shall meet with at every period in the History of Doctrine.^ First, knowledge is not a stage above that of faith, as if faith were a ladder to be dropped when once the ascent by it is made. This idea of the provisional function of faith is suggested by Clement of Alexandria, yet is not by him consistently adhered to.' His partial error is the result of a failure to grasp firmly the Pauline idea of faith. Faith is made by Clement the precursor of knowledge. It is the path to that love and holiness which qualify us to know divine things.^ It follows from this conception that there is an esoteric Christianity. There is a higher plane than that which the ordinary believer attains to. But faith, we are taught by the Apostle, merges at last, not in science, but in sight. Faith " abides " until beyond the veil it is resolved into vision.^ Secondly, there is another view which recognizes that faith has roots of its own, yet holds that scientific knowledge may become, and is destined to become, coextensive with it. That which faith, impelled by the moral nature embraces, theology demonstrates. This is the Scholastic theory. It is traceable to Augustine, and is propounded by Anselm. Stress is laid, however, on the influence of faith in clarifying the intellect and thus empowering it to do its work. Later, in the thirteenth century, the inability of reason to tween knowing certain truths and knowing them as they exist in another individual's mind, is illustrated by J. B. Mozley, Miracles, p. xxviii. 1 Logic, I. ii. § 5. 2 See an excellent essay, " Gedanken iiber Glauben u. Wissen," in Julius Miiller's Dogmatisch. Abhandll., pp. 1-42. 3 Cf. Neander's exposition of Clement, Ch. Hist. (Torry's transl.), I. 529- 541. ^ " In Clement's view the supreme End of all is not Love, but Knowledge." Bigg's The Christian Platonists of Alexandria, p. 88. •• I Cor. xiii. 12, 13, INTRODUCTION - do more than partially to fulfil its task was more explicitly asserted. The goal is approached, but it is never reached. But according to both Anselm and Aquinas, as fast as science advances faith is displaced. From a point of view in general quite different from that of the Scholastic theologians, Lessing, herein the spokesman of a type of modern Rationalism, regards faith as a temporary leaning upon authority up to the time when reason is so far developed as to be able to cast aside this crutch. Hegel comes to the same result in making faith an unscientific apprehension of that truth which the philosopher evolves in its pure form without help from abroad. The orthodox creed is construed as a popular version of the Hegehan metaphysic. The true view is that the faith of the Christian disciple is not the product of science, but science is the intellectual apprehension of its contents. Faith, to be sure, includes a perception of truth. It presupposes ideas, in particular the idea of God and that of moral freedom and responsibility. Its object is Christ, the per sonal Saviour, coming to minister to the needs of the spirit, dying, rising from the dead, reigning, but not forsaking his disciples. In this faith, as a practical expeiisnce, are the materials of theology. It is to be observed, however, that faith is not here taken as in the vocabulary of the Church of Rome, where its object is made to comprehend the entire body of ecclesiastical teaching, which is to be accepted on the ground of authority. What is the relation of Theology to Philosophy? For the reason that their problems are to a considerable extent the same, the point of difference between them is to be carefully observed. Christianity is an historical religion. At the foundation of Chris tian theology are facts which occur within the sphere of freedom, and therefore do not admit of being explained upon any theory of necessary evolution. As students of the Gospel we are in a province where the agency of personal beings is the principal matter. It was the love of God to mankind that led to the mis sion of Christ. It was a free act of love, the bestowal of an " unspeakable gift." The method of salvation is a course of self- sacrifice which culminates in the cross. These things cannot be made links in a metaphysical chain. They are not so many steps on a logical treadmill. Their analogue is to be found in the purest deeds of love, patience, and self-devotion which the annals of humanity contain. Nevertheless, the facts of Christianity are g HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE not barren occurrences. They are capable of an explanation. They are not without a significance. They are in fulfilment of a purpose. Their fitness to the end sought, theology with the aid of Scripture seeks to point out. But philosophy has another start ing-point. It begins with the data of consciousness and builds its structure by a process in which historical events have no place. That there is room for a science of Christian theology is evident for a threefold reason. In the first place, Christianity is set forth in the Scriptures in a popular, as distinguished from a literal and methodical style of teaching. We meet there not the precise phraseology of the schools, but the language of common life. The Gospel was addressed principally to plain people. The Apostles, with a single exception, were not educated men in the ordinary sense of the term. It was for this reason that the impressiveness with which they spoke astonished cultivated hear ers.* The training of the Apostle Paul himself was not acquired from Greek masters. He was a student not of Aristotle, but of Gamaliel. His education was in the lore and by the methods of Rabbinical teachers, although in his case indeed there was mingled a degree of influence from personal contact with Gentile debates and speculation. In the second place, the appeal of Christianity was immediately to the moral and spiritual nature. It did not aspire to rival the Greeks, the seekers of "wisdom,"^ on their own field. The awakening of conscience, the new Ufe of faith, the upHfting hopes kindled by the Gospel, are, to be sure, not inwrought as by a magical spell. They imply perceptions of truth. Yet they are distinctively experiences of the heart. Converts embraced the Gospel from practical motives and in a practical spirit. It was the question, "What shall I do to be saved," to which an answer was craved and rendered. In the third place, there is a diversity, — not a contradiction, — but a diversity in the ways in which the Apostles themselves conceive of the Gospel. For example, there is a Pauline type of doctrine, and a Johannine type of doctrine, an Epistle of James as well as an Epistle to the Romans. There are points of variety as well as of identity, between these various repre sentations of the Christian revelation. It was looked at from differ ent points of view. The foregoing remarks may suffice to show that an open space was left for the researches and generalizations of 1 Acts iv. 13 ; cf. John vii. 15. 3 ^ Qqj. j_ ,2_ INTRODUCTION „ theology. They may serve, also, to make it clear how theology, or the understanding of the Christian Revelation, may be pro gressive, and yet that Revelation itself not be defective or faulty. The incentives to a search for exact and coherent conceptions of Christian truth are not far to seek. We are made to think as well as to feel and to act. The yearning for knowledge, innate in the human mind, could not fail to be stimulated by the teaching of the Gospel and the reception of it. Inquiries would spring up unbidden. Problems would suggest themselves that would press for a solution. Apart from these inducements, opinions clashing with Apostolic teachings and with Christian experience would arise and create a need for definitions of the truth. Theology arose in the Church as a means of self-defence. In resisting assailants, lines of circumvallation are required. These must be related to the positions taken by the attacking force. When, for example, it was asserted, on the one hand, that compliance with the ritual law of the Old Testament is indispensable, and, on the other hand, that the entire Old Testament system is ahen to the Gos pel, the true relation of the Old to the New, of Judaism to Chris tianity, must needs be defined. Other illustrations are needless. Along the whole course of Church History — in a marked way, in the early period — ¦ the menace contained in erratic speculation has been a spur to theological thought and the precursor of dog matic definitions. Doctrinal history includes the history of heresies. Heresy denotes an opinion antagonistic to a fundamental article of the Christian faith. When Christianity is brought into contact with modes of thought and tenets originating elsewhere, either of two effects may follow. It may assimilate them, discarding whatever is at variance with the Gospel, or the tables may be turned and the foreign elements may prevail. In the latter case there ensues a perversion of Christianity, an amalgamation with it of ideas dis cordant with its nature. The product is then a heresy.* But to fill out the conception, it seems necessary that error should be aggressive and should give rise to an effort to build up a party and thus to divide the Church. In the Apostles' use of the term ' heresy ' contains a factious element.^ A heretic was hkewise a schismatic. The word 'sect' — from the root of sequi — means ^ Cf. Rothe, Anfdnge d. Christl. Kirche, p. 333. 2 I Cor. xi. 18, 19 ; Gal. v. 20. 10 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE etymologically the ' following,' or clientele, of a leader, — not a frac tion broken off, as it is sometimes thought to signify (as if it were from the root of secare) . The word ' heresy ' meant originally • choice ' ; then an opinion that is the product of choice or of the will, instead of being drawn from the divine Word. It is a man- made opinion. Hence the term was given as a name to depart ures from orthodox teaching which carried in them a breach of church unity. ' Heresy ' is to be distinguished from defective stages of Christian knowledge. For example, the Jewish believers, including the Apostles themselves, at the outset required the Gen tile believers to be circumcised. They were not on this account chargeable with ' heresy.' Additional light must first come in and be rejected, before that earlier opinion could be thus stigmatized. Moreover, heresies are not to be confounded with tentative and faulty hypotheses broached in a period prior to the scrutiny of a topic of Christian doctrine, and before that scrutiny has led the general mind to an assured conclusion. Such hypotheses — for example, the idea that in the person of Christ the Logos is substi tuted for a rational human spirit — are to be met with in certain early Fathers. Attention to what are called heresies fills a consid erable space in Doctrinal History. This is because they are in themselves interesting, and especially because of their indirect agency in the origination of finally accepted beliefs. It is a sub ject which is handled more fairly and dispassionately than was formerly the case, when the prominent heresiarchs were often held up to execration. At present it is more clear that moral depravity is not of course the concomitant of intellectual error. From age to age, in the spread of Christianity by missionary labor, in the guidance of ecclesiastical affairs, and in the sphere of Christian philanthropy, there have appeared eminent leaders. The same is true in the field of theological thought. Names like those of Origen, Athanasius, Augustine, Luther, are them selves landmarks in the course of doctrinal history. Yet no more than in secular history is the agency of individuals to be magnified. Not only their personal influence, but not less the force of a general current of which it is partly the outflow, is to be taken into the account. They may furnish a voice to wide spread, albeit undefined and unspoken, convictions, and for this reason may evoke responsive assent from Christian people. There are three factors which are, or should be, conjoined in INTRODUCTION j j the framing of theological doctrines. The first is the authorita tive source of knowledge on the subject, namely the Scriptures. Even the Church of Rome holds that the supplementary contents of tradition are found, obscurely at least, in the sacred writings. Normative authority belongs to the Bible. It is the objective rule of faith. It is not robbed of this character in consequence of modified theories of the mode and extent of inspiration. If it be alleged that Christ is the one authority, yet it is through a critical study of the Scriptures, apart from subjective prejudice, that the knowledge of Christ is to be obtained. But Christianity is designed to mould the inward life. Christian experience, the correlate of the written Gospel, has its place as a touchstone for distinguishing Christian truth from error. BeUevers are taught by the Spirit. They are enabled to discern spiritual things, which are presented in verbal form on the page of Scripture.* The In tellect, moreover, has an office to perform. Its function is to translate the truth which the Bible teaches and the soul appro priates in a living experience, into lucid statements. The Word, the Spirit, the Intellect, or Scripture, Experience, Science, are the factors by whose combined agency the Gospel is rendered into systematic expressions of doctrine. When the right relation of these several factors to one another is disturbed, when an undue predominance is accorded to either of them at the cost of its associates, ill consequences ensue. There may be an abuse of the authoritative element. There may be a servile reliance on in herited interpretations of Scripture, or the adoption of meanings having no other ground than ecclesiastical prescription. The result is a traditionalism, which fails to penetrate to the core of Scriptural teaching. This spirit prevailed in the Middle Ages, and is with difficulty exorcised from most of the branches of the Church. There must be scope for the free activity of the Intel lect and of Christian Feeling. When Feeling, however, comes to be considered an immediate fountain of knowledge, the intelli gence is deprived of its rights, and the Bible sinks below its proper level. The result is Mysticism in the objectionable form. This term is not unfrequently used to stigmatize all forms of relig ious experience in which there enters an unusual warmth of emo tion. If it be Mysticism to hold that obedience is the road to 1 For good remarks on the relation of faith to the objective form of Script ure, see Dorner's Hist, of Prot. Theology, Vol. I. Div. ii. c. 4. 12 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE knowledge, in respect to divine things, and to certainty of con viction, or to hold that insight into the reaKties of religious faith presupposes an inward experience, the New Testament is open to the charge of being a mystical book.* " It is plain that the relig ious, the believing, man as such is a Mystic ; for whoever is not conscious of God, does not feel Him, can neither know Him nor revere Him ; but whoever only makes Him an object of thought without loving Him and becoming pure in heart, cannot know Him in a living way." ^ Mysticism may be used as the syno nym of ecstasy, — the transport of feeling in which thought and will are merged. Mysticism, in the sense in which it is produc tive of error in the sphere of Christian doctrine, is the assump tion that to the individual there are vouchsafed visions of truth exceeding the limits of the written Revelation. It involves the assumption that feeling is a direct source of knowledge. " When," says Coleridge, " a man refers to inward feelings and experiences of which mankind at large are not conscious, as evidences of the truth of any opinion, such a man I call a Mystic." ' Illumination is made to stretch over ground not within the circuit of the Chris tian Revelation. Of course, the Mystic is tempted to undervalue the Scriptures. Why take a lamp in our hands when the sun's rays are falling directly upon us? It is likewise natural for the Mystic to disparage reason and science. Why should the under standing explore for truth which we have only to look within to behold ? A third species of perversion in the framing of doctrine arises from the exaggeration of the intellectual factor. The con sequence is Rationalism. Rationalism has been well described as " a usurpation of the understanding." The function of conscience and the affections as auxiliaries in the ascertainment of truth is partially or wholly ignored. The authority of the Scriptures is openly or virtually set aside. The attempt is made to construct theology in the dry light of the understanding, independently of spiritual experience and of objective authority. Under this proc ess the deeper truths of Christianity, which shade off' into mys tery, are likely to be discarded. In the end religion is spun out of the mind through a metaphysical process in which the facts of Reveladon, if recognized at all, are shorn of historical reality. 1 See John vii. 17, xviii. 37 ; Matt. xi. 15, xiii. 16 ; 1 John iv. 8, 2 C. I. Nitzsch, DGM., p. 37. ^ ^ Aids to Reflection (Conclusion). INTRODUCTION j^ Such was the outcome of the modern Pantheistic Schools of speculative Philosophy in Germany. Mysticism and Rationalism are at one in rejecting an objective standard of doctrine, an authority exterior to the individual. The one enthrones feeling, the other enthrones understanding, in the seat of authority. They are different forms of a one-sided subjectivism. But they often afford an illustration of the maxim that extremes meet. An excess of emotion in the one, or the quenching of fervor in the other, leads to an exchange of places. The Mystic cools into the Rationalist ; the Rationalist warms into the Mystic* Writers in past times on the History of Doctrine have remarked that the principal topics or branches of Christian doctrine have each, to the exclusion of the rest, absorbed the attention of a particular people. Theology, or the Person of Christ and the Trinity, engrossed attention in the ancient Greek Church ; Anthro pology, the subject of sin and grace, was the subject of investiga tion in the Latin Church; and Soteriology, or the doctrine of ReconciUation, in the Teutonic Church, the Church of the Refor mation. It has been said that in each case the subject of absorbing interest corresponded to the mental habit of the people by whom it was especially considered and discussed. Athanasius, Augustine, Luther, stand as representatives of tendencies of thought inherent in the nations or races to which they respectively belonged. It has been objected to this representation, that in no period has it been the real intention to take up and solve a single problem, that the general end of Christianity has been conceived of essentially in the same way, and that the purpose has always been — the pur pose of Greek, Latin, and Teuton — to set forth Christianity in its entirety.^ This criticism is just. The statement should rather be that in each of the epochs the prevailing interpretation of Chris tianity has corresponded to the special characteristics of time and race. The historic result, however, has been substantially that which is expressed in the statement that is criticised. Among theories pertaining to the historical development of Christian theology, there have been brought forward in modern 1 " Die Mystik," says Harnack, " ist in der Regel phantastisch ausgefiihrter Rationalismus, und der Rationalismus ist abgeblasste Mystik." DG. Vol. II. 416, N. 2. 2 Ritschl, Die Christl. Lehre d. Rechtfertigung «. Versohnung (2 ed.). Vol. I. p. 3. 14 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE days two, unlike in their character, that are especially worthy of notice. I. The theory of Dr. Baur, the leader of the Tubingen School, was matched to the Hegelian dialectic. In the process of evolu tion, thesis involves and produces antithesis, thesis and antithesis engender a higher unity. This in turn is differentiated and leads on to like triple movements, until the implicit contents of the idea are completely evolved, and the finality, the developed absolute, is reached. Baur assumed an original Petrine, judaizing type of doctrine, of which the Pauline teaching was the antithesis ; thesis and antithesis resolved themselves into a compromising system. By a process of this kind, catholic theology emerges, the final stage of which is the Nicene definitions. In this naturalistic develop ment, which runs through several centuries, most of the New Tes tament canonical writings come in as post-apostolic productions. They are so many landmarks in the progress of the historic evolu tion. In this theory, retrograde movements, aberrations of greater or less moment, are excluded. The course of opinion moves on under a necessary law. The fundamental postulate, which history must be so construed as to verify, is an ideal Pantheism. 2. An interesting theory of development has been brought for ward in later times by distinguished writers of the Roman CathoHc Church. It has served as a means of upholding specific tenets and practices for which it is increasingly difficult to find a basis either in the canonical Scriptures or in the primitive Church. The most eminent expounders of the general theory have been De Maistre in France, Mohler in Germany, and the late Cardinal Newman. We confine our attention here to Newman's exposition. It is pre sented in his Essay on Development, which was written in 1845, simultaneously with his passage from the Anglican over to the Roman Church. The starting-point of Newman's theory is the avowal that the teaching comprised in the original deposit of re vealed truth, which was promulgated by Christ and the Apostles, opens its contents in an explicit form only by degrees and as time advances. There has been a continuous unfolding of the latent contents of the original teaching, and this has gone forward under the guardianship of the infallible Church, by which error is kept out. All ideas, it is said, except such as are on the plane of mathematical truth, — all living ideas, such as have to do with hu man nature or human duty, politics or religion, — are fruitful ideas. INTRODUCTION j- They do not remain inert in the minds into which they fall. They are not passively received. They produce agitation, they are turned over and over in reflection, new lights are cast upon them, new judgments arise respecting them, ferment and confusion ensue. At length from all this commotion definite doctrine emerges. The new idea is looked at in its relation to other doctrines and facts, to other reUgions and philosophies. It is questioned and assailed, it is explained and illustrated. In the case of a moral or theologi cal truth, the final outcome is an ethical code, a theological dogma or system. The point to be observed is that the germ stands to the outcome in a genetic relation. The latter is the just and ade quate representation of the original idea. It was in that idea as the blossom is in the bud. It was what the original idea meant from the first. For example, the Wesleyanism of to-day may be said to be the legitimate growth of the seed sown in the last century by its founder. Newman recognizes the possibility of cor ruption, as in the case of any growth. This interrupts or prevents healthy development. But there are tests which avail to determine whether given phenomena in the religious province are normal or the opposite. These are such as 'preservation of the idea,' 'power of assimilation,' ' logical sequence,' ' chronic continuance,' and so forth. On the basis of this general view, Newman argues that there is an a priori probability of a development in Christianity, and a further probability of the same sort that there will be. a developing Authority to discriminate between that which is sound and that which is corrupt. The main contention is that the Roman CathoUc religion, as we now behold it, is the legitimate heir, successor, and representative of primitive Christianity. There is not a little which is not only striking but well-founded in the preliminary portions of Newman's discussion — that part which deals with the vital character of moral and spiritual truth. But as soon as the possibility of corruption through the introduc tion of alien and false elements is recognized, the question whether there is a constituted authority competent to detect and cast aside what is thus abnormal must be setded, and it must be setried, not by an a priori speculation, but by a searching inquiry into the con sistency of Roman teaching with itself and with the primitive docu ments of the Christian religion. The theory must be brought to ^ the touchstone of history. In such a matter, no merely a priori inference, even if it may seem plausible, can be deemed to be con- 1 6 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE elusive. Another point of much weight was brought forward by Canon Mozley in his answer to Newman.* There may be corrup tion from mere exaggeration. The circumstance that an opinion or a practice grows out of something true and good does not of itself prove that opinion or practice to be true and right. An over growth is in itself an abuse. Aristotle's theory of the virtues is that they are a mean between extremes. For example, rashness is courage in excess ; timidity is caution in excess. That a natural and proper veneration of the Virgin Mary runs into the worship of the Virgin is no sufficient defence of such a practice. The theory of Newman was directly at variance with the position taken by the old polemical writers in behalf of Rome, such as Bellarmine and Bossuet. As was early pointed out, Newman's thesis involves the concession that the Roman Catholicism of to-day is not the same as the faith of the primitive Church. The old ground of a literal identity is forsaken. The limit of the contention is that the sys tem of to-day is an offshoot from the system planted by the Saviour and his Apostles, as that system is disclosed in the documents of the Christian religion and in early Church History.^ It has been customary up to a recent date to divide Doctrinal History into two parts, the General and the Special History of Doctrine, and to complete the account of each period before advancing to the next. Under the General History there is pre sented a sketch of the characteristics of the period, with a notice of the principal themes of discussion and of the principal writers to whom we are to resort for materials. The General History is an outline map of the period to be traversed. Under the Special History the matter is collected under the loci or rubrics of the theological system. This is the method of Miinscher, Neander, also substantially of Baur and of most of the other authors. Baumgarten-Crusius gives the General History as a whole, under successive periods, and lets the Special History follow under like divisions. The same course is pursued by Shedd. Ritschl, in an essay pubhshed in 187 1, objected to the traditional method of 1 J. B. Mozley, Theory of Development, a Criticism of Dr. Newman's Essay, etc. (1879). Ambiguities in Newman's theory, and voices against it from the Roman Catholic side, are referred to by Mozley on pp. 196-223. ^ See Bishop Thirlwall's Charge, Remains, Literary and Theological (Vol. I. pp. 99-144). For a trenchant criticism of Newman's theory, see Fairbairn's The Place of Christ in Modern Theology, B. I. u. i. INTRODUCTION j- separating the General from the Special History, and to the plan of arranging the matter under the topics of the doctrinal system.* He styled it an anatomic as distinguished from an organic or phys iologic method. It fails to give due emphasis to that which is distinctive in the current of thought in each period. Ritschl's essay was a review of the work of F. Nitzsch, who had made an approach to the method approved by him. This method has been exemplified by Harnack and by some other authors. It has the advantage of presenting better in its unity the system of a great theologian, as Origen or Augustine, instead of bringing for ward its parts — the disjecta membra — separated from one another. Thomasius, in the part of his work which covers the patristic age, takes up the three " Central Doctrines," one by one, but he con nects with each leading section, either " peripheral " matter on other topics, or illustrative supplements. In the subsequent periods, this method gives way to a more miscellaneous classification. What ever plan is adopted, the suggestions of Ritschl ought to be kept in mind, and a due perspective and a proper unity to be secured. This is measurably effected — for example, by Neander — through cross-references and brief recapitulation. It is difficult and need less to carry through all the periods a uniform scheme. The chief landmarks in the course of Doctrinal History are easily discerned. The earliest writings of a theological cast were naturally apologetic. Christian truth was defended against assaults without and within the Christian fold. Then followed within the Church widespread controversy on central points of doctrine — especially the Trinity and the Incarnation — the issue of which was the CathoUc theology. In the West there were controversies on Sin and Grace, which settled, on these themes, but with less precision, the bounds of orthodoxy. A period of intellectual stag nancy ensued, not entirely unbroken, but lasting for several cen turies. Then occurred the Rise of Scholasticism, and the opening of a new theological era, which extended to the Reformation. At that point begins the modern period in which criticism and essays at reconstruction are defining characteristics. The Ancient Period, embracing — to speak generally — the first six centuries, was productive as regards the contents of the theo logical system, and certain doctrines were stamped with the seal ^ yahrb. d. deutsch. Theol. (1871, pp. 191-214); reprinted in Ritschl's Gesammelt. Aufsatze (pp. 147-170). C Tg HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE of church authority. The Mediaeval Period set in order trans mitted behefs and reduced them to a systematic form, with the aid of Philosophy and under the eyes of the Roman hierarchy. The Modern Age has witnessed efforts to reconstruct the system in the Ught of the Scriptures and in relation to the discoveries of science in its various departments. During the first three centuries dis cussions went forward without verdicts from a universally recog nized authority. In the several centuries that immediately follow, there intervenes the authoritative action of oecumenical councils. From the end of the Patristic Period to about the middle of the eleventh century there is an interval wherein — save in a brief season in the age of Charlemagne — the products of intellectual activity, except in the form of compilations, are scanty. At that date there springs up a fresh intellectual life, the Scholastic era opens, and the work of organizing the system fairly begins. Prot estantism initiated the attempt to reform the creed on the basis of the exclusive authority of the Bible and of an exchange of the Scholastic theory of Justification for the Pauline teaching. The various Protestant confessions of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen turies were framed on the basis of the principle of the supreme authority of the Scriptures. With the approach of the eighteenth century there are discerned the beginnings of a new era. It may be described, in a general way, as aiming to conform the theological system to the conclusions of scientific inquiry and criti cism, or to bring into unity and harmony the knowledge derived from revelation and that ascertained through man's natural powers. It is the modern era in which we are now living. In warfare with the Church of Rome and with one another the different Protestant bodies intrenched themselves behind elaborate Confessions. There arose in process of time a kind of Protestant Scholasticism. Resistance was awakened. It was more and more felt that the freedom of thought which Protestantism had seemed to promise was unduly restricted. Owing to this discontent, in conjunction with other causes soon to be adverted to, there sprang up an inteUectual revolt. This was unhappily not tempered and kept within bounds by a spirit of practical piety, which had been chilled by theological contention and by the religious wars in the different countries — of which the Thirty Years' War was the most prolonged and destructive. The skeptical tendencies of the Re naissance, which had been stifled for the time by the religious life INTRODUCTION jo of the Protestant Reform, revived in full activity. There were other phenomena of marked effect in the same general direction. Society had advanced to a new epoch in culture. Education was becoming liberated from exclusively clerical control. The partial blight which absorption in theological conflicts had cast for the time upon the literary life of the Renaissance was passing away. Other studies were drawing away a portion of the attention which had been so much concentrated upon theology. Under the auspices of Descartes, philosophy was breaking away from the leading- strings by which it had been held by the Church. The names of Copernicus and Francis Bacon suggest the dawn of the new epoch in the inductive investigation of nature. The cultivation of natural and physical science, and the knowledge thus derived, have brought forward new problems for the theologian to solve. Zeal in his torical inquiry has kept pace with the ardor felt in the studies which pertain to the material world. Traditional beliefs in theol ogy, heretofore unquestioned, are confronted with data gathered by historical researches. It might be expected that in this wide range of curiosity, this quest for knowledge in all directions, the Bible would become the object of a more exhaustive scrutiny. Nor is there cause for wonder if the critical spirit, with no spiritual discernment to accompany it, working solely in the dry light of the understanding, should give rise even to extreme developments of Rationalism. That the modern age is scientific is a truism. Men are everywhere seeking for defined and verified knowl edge. Science, in the comprehensive meaning of the term, requires theology to take account of its teachings and to adjust itself to them. Conflicts thus occasioned, modifications of opin ion thus produced, characterize the present period of Doctrinal History. The Fathers of the second and third centuries who wrote against heresies, especially Ireneeus, Hippolytus, and TertuUian, were the first authors who brought together materials for the History of Doctrine. Epiphanius, in his polemical treatise, the " Panarion," describes not less than eighty heretical parties. The series of the ancient Greek ecclesiastical historians, of whom Eusebius is the first, are sources of knowledge respecting doctrine as well as Church affairs in general. In the eighth century, the Greek theo logian, John of Damascus, presents in his theological treatise both a catalogue of heresies and numerous extracts from the Greek 20 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE Fathers. In the West, a still earlier writer, Isidore of Spain, furnishes a collection of excerpts from the Latin authors, Augus tine, Gregory the Great, and others. The Reformation stimulated researches into the tenets of the early Church as weU as of later ages. In the " Magdeburg Centuries," and in polemical pubHca- tions without number, the history of the doctrines in dispute was discussed, of course commonly in a controversial spirit. The great English divines of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries explored the writings of the patristic and scholastic doctors, and used the learning thus acquired in the contests between Protestant and CathoHc, Churchman and Puritan. The famous scholars of the Arminian School, on the continent, devoted to the early Fathers, as well as to the Scriptures, a critical examination. In the middle of the seventeenth century there appeared the first works treating expressly of the history of doctrine. These were two in number, one by a Protestant, the other by a Roman CathoHc. The first was written by a learned Scotchman, John Forbes of Corse — the fnsfrnctiones Historico-TheologiccB (Amsterdam, 1645). I* was designed to demonstrate the agreement of the tenets of the Re formed Church with primitive orthodoxy. The second is the work of the Jesuit scholar, Dionysius Petavius — De Theobgicis Dog- matibus (Paris, 1644-50). It is not only erudite and acute ; it is written with a certain liveUness of style. The concession that Ante-Nicene Fathers contain statements on points of doctrine which fall below the creeds of later date has led to the hasty infer ence that the author was an Arian in disguise. Bishop Bull's con jecture that his purpose was to compel his readers to fall back on Church authority as the umpire in doctrinal questions, is equally unsupported.* Petavius was not blind to the principle of theo logical development. In the eighteenth century the contributions of Mosheim to the history of doctrine are thorough and candid. The Rationalistic School, of which Semler was the leader, gave to Doctrinal History its distinct place as a branch of theology. But from the point of view of this school it could only be regarded as a record of clashing opinions. In this period, the most merito rious author in this department was Miinscher. His text-books are mostly made up of passages from the ecclesiastical writers, arranged under appropriate topics. It is only during the present century that works have been produced on Doctrinal History > See Bull's collected Works, Vol. V. pp. 12, 13. INTRODUCTION 21 which have exhibited a due insight and attained to a scientific form. The History of Doctrine by Baumgarten-Crusius brings together a mass of concisely stated, accurate information, drawn from original sources. But the scientific character of which we speak belongs eminenriy to Neander's historical writings on the subject, and to the writings of Baur. Gieseler's posthumous frag ment stops at the Reformation. It is not without value as a sup plement to his Church History, in which the history of doctrine is of great value for its documentary references and extracts. Hagen- bach's work contains a store of information, but would be more valuable were it less a conglomerate. The American edition (from the author's fourth edition) was enriched by additions on English and American theology from the pen of Henry B. Smith. The excellent book of Friedrich Nitzsch terminates at the end of the patristic period. The Doctrinal History of Harnack, in which the distinction between the General and Special History dis appears, is a brilliant exposition of the subject, and presents, more especially in the early period, the fruits of a quite thorough investigation of the sources. The author's opinions as to the origin of the New Testament writings and on Christian doctrines are made apparent on its pages. The briefer work of Harnack is a condensed but spirited review of the subject. One of the best of the compendiums is the Leitfaden of Friedrich Loofs. See- berg's Lehrbuch is a valuable aid to students. In Schmid's Lehr- buch (edited by Hauck), the text is brief, but the collection of extracts is judiciously made. The excellent text-book of Thom asius is the production of a scholar versed in the sources, writing from the point of view of evangelical Lutheranism. Renan's series — Histoire des Origines du Christianisme — contains chapters pertaining to doctrine which are well worthy of attention. Shedd's History of Doctrine is a vigorous discussion of leading topics by an earnest defender of Calvinism. It terminates with the rise of the Socinian and Arminian systems. Sheldon's History of Doc trine is lucid and is brought down to a recent date. There is a considerable number of valuable monographs on particular doctrines. Such are Dorner's History of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ, Ritschl on the Doctrine of Justification, Baur on the Trinity and on the Atonement. Treatises not dis tinctively historical contain much historical matter. Such, for example, are Julius Miiller's work on the Doctrine of Sin, Liddon's 22 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE Bampton Lectures on the Divinity of Christ, Fairbairn's "The Place of Christ in Modern Theology." The Protestant Real- Encyklopddie (edited in the new edition by Herzog, PHtt and Hauck), Wetzer and Welte, Kirchenlexikon [Roman Catholic], (2d ed. 1886 sq.). Smith and Wace's Dictionary of Christian Biography, are instructive on the subject of Doctrinal History. As to the first three centuries, the Prolegomena and Notes of Professor McGiffert, pertaining to this subject, in his edition of the Church History of Eusebius (1890), are very valuable. PART I ANCIENT THEOLOGY PERIOD I THE RISE AND EARLY TYPES OF THEOLOGY TO THE COM PLETE SYSTEM OF ORIGEN AND TO THE FULLY ESTAB LISHED CONCEPTION OF THE PRE-MUNDANE PERSONAL LOGOS (C.A.D. 300) CHAPTER I APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY — PALESTINIAN AND HELLENISTIC JUDAISM — GREEK PHILOSOPHY AND GENTILE CULTURE The testimony and teachings of the Apostles constitute the authentic sources of Christian theology. They are comprised in the New Testament writings. The exposition of these documents is the proper work of BibUcal Theology, for which the Introduction to the New Testament prepares the way. It is only brief com ments on the New Testament doctrine that can here find a place. The bond that unites the Old Testament with the New, the religion of Israel with the Gospel, is the idea of the kingdom of God. It is predicted, prefigured, initiated, in the earlier system ; it is realized in the later. The new dispensation is the fulfilment of that which was foretokened in the old. John the Baptist dis cerned that his office was that of a herald of the messianic king dom.* So it was represented by Jesus.^ Jesus Himself appeared 1 Matt. iii. 11. 2 Matt. xi. 13, 14 (Luke xvi. 16); Mark ix. 12, 13 (cf Malachi iii. i). 23 24 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCl'RiNE in the character of the head of the kingdom. If He avoided publicly proclaiming His regal station, it was to preclude popular demonstrations springing from false ideals of the Messiah and the messianic reign. The Sermon on the Mount was the legislation of the new kingdom. The Mount of the Beatitudes succeeded to the Sinai of the Decalogue. Holiness and peace are offered to those who come to Him and surrender themselves to His guidance. The contrast between the course which He pursued and the ideas and expectations even of those who believed in Him, naturally gave rise to doubts and questionings as to His precise rank among divine messengers and the exact import of His mission. So we may account for the conversation at Csesarea Philippi,* and the message of John the Baptist." In the Synoptical Gospels, Jesus stands in such a relation to God that He alone knows God and is known by Him.' He is the organ of the self-revelation of God. The devotion to Him required in His disciples transcends that which is due in the dearest and most sacred human relations.* His acceptance of the designation ' Son of God,' and the added assurance that from that time onward would be made manifest His participation in divine power and honor was felt by the High Priest, who discredited this avowal, to be nothing short of blas phemy.'' By Him were to be determined the allotments of the final judgment.' Rejected by the Jews, He is nevertheless con scious that the deadly blow aimed at His cause wiU open a way to its final victory. His death wiU be the means of spiritual deliverance, a " ransom " for many, the ground of the forgiveness of sin.'' The kingdom is to advance gradually, as leaven and as seed planted in the ground. It is to come, and yet it is a present reality.^ If taken away from the chosen people, it will be carried beyond their limits, even among the heathen.^ It is in the souls of men ; it is a living force in the bosom of society. Yet there is an apocalyptic side in the Synoptical portraiture of the king dom. There is a goal in the future, a consummation, or Second Advent of the Christ to judgment. The Disciples, knowing that 1 Mark viii. 27-31. * Matt. x. 37. 2 Matt. xi. 2, 3. s Matt. xxvi. 64; Mark xiv. 61. * Matt. xi. 27; Luke x. 22. '^ Matt. xxv. 32. ' Matt. XX. 28; Matt. xxvi. 28. ' Matt. V. 3, 10; Mark x. 14, 15; Matt. xxi. 31; xi. 11 (Luke vii. 28). « Matt. xxi. 41 ; Mark xii. 9. ANCIENT THEOLOGY 2? they were living in the " Last Time," the final stage of Revela tion, looked for the speedy coming of the last day. This antici pation is more or less distincriy expressed in almost all of the New Testament writings.* Principally through the agency of the Apostle Paul, the Gospel of the kingdom, with all its privileges, was first proclaimed to the heathen. The older Apostles, moved by the undeniable evidence of God's approbation of his work, gave him "the right hand of fellowship," it being agreed that while they should preach to the Jews, he, with Barnabas, his companion for a while, should "go unto the Gentiles."" In the Synoptical Gospels it is in the Eschatology that the higher nature and dignity of Christ are most apparent. In the Epistles of Paul, the divine side of His being, His preexistence. His agency in the work of creation, are explicitly taught.' The success oi the mission to the Gentiles, the manifest marks of the divine approval of it, the embittered temper of the Jews as time went on, the faU of Jerusalem and the breaking up of the Jewish nationality, had the effect fully to estabUsh that cathoUc interpretation of the Gospel of which Paul had been the fervent, unflinching cham pion. That, after the death of Paul, the Apostle John took up his abode at Ephesus is a fact which is too well attested to admit of a reasonable doubt. The influence of his life and teaching, emanating from that centre, is satisfactorily proved. Whatever opinion may be held respecting the Johannine authorship of the book of Revelation, the circumstance that it was so early attributed to the Apostle John * is a sufficient proof of his residence in Asia Minor and of his authority in the churches of that region. It is impossible to review here the discussion concerning the author ship of the Fourth Gospel and of the First Epistle which bears the name of John. The external proof is a cumulative argument the weight of which has seldom been duly estimated by the opponents of the genuineness of these writings. The necessary and pretty steady retreat backward of the adverse criticism, from the date assigned to the Fourth Gospel by Baur and his followers 1 Matt. xxiv. 29, Luke xviii. 7, 8, John i. 21-23 ; cf. i John ii. 18, i Thess. iv. i6, 17, 2 Thess. ii. 7, Phil. iv. 5, i Cor. xvi. 22, i Peter iv. 7, etc. 2 Gal. ii. 9. ' Phil. ii. 6, 7, 2 Cor. viii. 9, i Cor. viii. 6. * Justin, Dial. t. Tryph., c. 81 ; Iren. -i. 35. 2 ; TertuUian, Adv. Marcion., III. 14, Ibid. IV. S ; De Pressor. Hceret. 33. 26 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE (c. 1 60), renders the problem of accounting for its origin, if it be considered spurious, more and more difficult of solution. It is now frequently admitted by the negative criticism that the Gospel includes authentic traditions of the teaching of John, edited, it may be, by one of his disciples. In the Fourth Gospel and in the Epistle, the conception of the Son of God is deepened and is carried back into a metaphysical relation of Christ to the Father. The preexistence as well as the divinity of the Messiah are plainly set forth. The term ' Logos ' in the prologue is taken up from current phraseology, which had its roots in the Old Testament and the Old Testament Apocrypha, and which the Alexandrian Jewish philosophy did much to diffuse. The term is adopted by the EvangeHst to designate the divine Saviour, the Revealer of God. The new spiritual life through the believer's union with Christ and fellowship with the Father involved therein, is the condensed expression of the benefit imparted by the Gospel. The apocalyptic element, although distinctly present in the Johan nine teaching, is in the background. The reaUty of the Incarna tion is affirmed as a cardinal truth.* Christian believers in common with the Jews received the Old Testament writings as sacred Scriptures. The Disciples of Christ were protected by His teaching from an ensnaring casuistry and from other kinds of sophistry in the interpretation of them. Ex clusion from the synagogue and the antipathy of the Jews operated to keep off the same or like abuses of exegesis. Yet there were traditional ways of explaining the Old Testament which the early Christians could not but share. The rabbinical habit of attaching double meanings to words, or of finding in them a mystic sense of some sort, was not without its influence on Christian minds. A natural fruit of the idea of verbal inspiration was the allegorical treatment of Old Testament passages, or fanciful inferences from the orthography or sound of words. The Haggada — the mass of comment, mingled with legend, which had grown up about the historical, prophetic, and ethical portions of the Old Testament Scriptures — contributed something to the stock of Christian beliefs. In the Jewish commentaries there was a union of two distinct elements. There was the scholastic, casuistic element, and there was the fanciful element. These ampUfied and embel- 1 I John iv. 2, 3. The common authorship of the Gospel and the Epistle is beyond reasonable doubt ANCIENT THEOLOGY 27 lished the writings regarded as inspired. There was, moreover, an influence from the Jewish apocalypses, — for example, the book of Enoch, which underwent modification in the hands of a Christian editor. Other books of this class were the Apocalypse of Baruch, the Fourth Book of Ezra, and, among the Hellenistic Jews, the Sibylline Oracles. Papias repeats a prophecy of the wondrous fruitfulness of the vine in the miUennial times, when it win bear colossal grapes, — a passage taken from the Apocalypse of Baruch. What influence was exerted on Christian thought by speculations in this literature '¦ relative to the preexistence of per sons and things, it is not easy to define." The Jews generally conceived of the Messiah as a mere man. Trypho, the Jew, in Justin Martyr's Dialogue, speaks of the idea of the Messiah's pre existence as absurd.' It was natural that the Hellenistic Jews should be, as a rule, less rigid and more conciliating towards the Gentiles than their Palestinian brethren. To some extent they stood as mediators between the Jewish religion and Gentile thought. This was true especially of that Alexandrian Judaism of which Philo is the fore most representative. He was an old man when he headed a deputation of Jews to the Emperor Caligula (a.d. 38 or 39). The germs of his system were of an earlier date. They are seen in the Wisdom of Solomon, an Alexandrian production. It was at Alexandria, the meeting-place of nations, the confluence of streams of thought from aU directions, that this eclectic system, this union of Biblical teaching with Platonic and Stoic tenets, took its rise. Philo was a believing Jew, without any thought of perverting the Old Testament, but aiming to extract what he con sidered its deeper purport. His opinions in religion and ethics, nevertheless, were imbibed from the Greek philosophic teachers. By means of allegory, he undertook to read into the Hebrew Scriptures the tenets of the Academy and the Porch. Where the Scripture had a literal meaning that was unobjectionable, it might be accepted, but even in such a case there lay beneath it an occult sense which unveiled itself to the discerning. In Philo's teaching there is a sharp antithesis between God and the world. 1 Irenseus, v. 33. 3; Schiirer, CescA. d. Judisch. Volkes, etc.. Vol. II. p. 644, C.48. 2 The "Notion of Preexistence" is discussed by Harnack, DG., I. 710 sq. See, also. Ewald, Gesch. d. Volkes Israel, Vol, V. p. 73 sq. ' c. 48. 28 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE This dualism is taken up from Plato. To God we may attach none of the predicates which characterize finite things. To con nect with Him specific qualities is to divest Him of His supreme rank. There can be no action of God upon the world of matter save through intermediate agents. These are constituted by the Platonic ideas and the efficient causes of the Stoic system, — which are, also, the angels of the Jewish religion and the demons of the Gentile mythology. These intermediate Powers are now spoken of as personal, and again plainly fall short of personality, being, rather, vivid personifications. The conception of the Logos has a central place in Philo's system. The Logos is the Power of God, or the divine Reason, endowed with energy, ac tion, and comprehending in itself all subordinate Powers. Now the Logos is conceived of as personal, and again, to exclude the idea of a separation from God, it is represented as if impersonal.* The Logos is not only the First-Bom of God, the Archangel among angels, the Viceroy of God in the world, but, also, repre sents the world before God, as its High Priest, its Advocate or Paraclete. The world is not created outright, but is moulded out of matter. Hence evil arises. Souls are preexistent ; while in the flesh they are in a prison. Therefore the end to be sought is to break away from sense, to destroy its control. In this life the highest achievement of the wise and virtuous is to rise in a sort of ecstasy to the immediate vision of God. This direct access to the divine Essence in rapturous contemplation, which is ascribed to the sons of God, is something altogether above the blessing which is open to the "sons of the Logos." Their knowledge of God is in symbols ; their intercourse with the Su preme is indirect." The idea of an incarnation of the Logos clashes with the fundamental principles of Philo.' Nor is there a distinct messianic expectation. Peace will be the inheritance of ^ Drummond contends that all ascriptions of personality to the Logos in Philo are figurative. " From first to last, the Logos is the Thought of God, dwelling subjectively in the infinite Mind, planted out and made objective in the universe." The cosmos is " a tissue of rational force," imaging the per fections of God. " The reason of man is the same rational force entering into consciousness," etc. Philo Judamus, etc.. Vol. II. p. 273. 2 Conf. Ling., 28. Cf. Somn. I. u, SS. Ab. et Cain, 38, Leg. All, III. 31. ' On the contrast between Philo's idea of the Logos and the Johannine conception, see Edersheim's Art. " Philo," Diet, of Christ. Biogr. IV. 379 380. ANCIENT THEOLOGY 2Q those who are established in virtue. Especially will the Israelites be blessed and brought together in their own land. The largest influence of the Philonic teaching was, not on the Jew or the heathen, but on Christian schools of thought.* In the age that preceded the introduction of Christianity, the disruption of nationalities, the increased intercourse of peoples with one another, and other kindred causes, had rudely shaken the old fabrics of mythological religion. The rise of scientific and philosophical inquiry had dealt a mortal blow at the tradi tional systems of faith and worship. In the writings of Cicero we are presented incidentally with a picture of the skepticism that prevailed in the cultivated classes. There was a growing ten dency to seek for mental rest through schemes of syncretism, by combining ingredients of various religions and by adopting rites drawn from the most diverse quarters. In the first century there were strong indications of a revival of religious feeling. Augus tus had undertaken religious reforms which were not wholly inef fectual. There were attempts to breathe fresh life into the ances tral forms of worship and to save an almost worn-out creed from extinction. Quite conspicuous was the drift towards monotheism. Faith in a future life and in personal immortality revived from its decay. Serious thinkers, such as Plutarch, whose philosophy was a Platonic eclecticism, made room for the old divinities by reduc ing them to the rank of subordinate beings. Repulsive tales in the legends of the gods Plutarch connected with the action of inferior demons, in which deities of a higher order had no part. He labored to strike out a middle path between the follies of superstition and the gloom of atheism. Philosophers began to assume an office not unlike that of pastors or confessors. Cynics engaged, on the streets and highways, in a distinctively missionary work, addressing their counsels and rebukes to whomsoever they chose to accost. Special attention is required to the influence of the Greek phi losophy on Christian doctrine. Ethical philosophy owed its begin- 1 Respecting Philo and his system, the older works of Gfrorer (2 vols. 1831) and Dahne (2 vols. 1834) are still of value. In the copious recent literature on the subject, among the authors specially worthy of attention are Schurer, Gesch. d. Judisch. Volkes, P. II. pp. 831-886; Zeller, Die Phil d. Griechen, Vol. III.; Drummond's Philo Judizus, or the Jewish Alexandrian Phil. (1888); and Siegfried, Philo von Alexandria, etc. (1875), 30 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE nings to Socrates. He turned his back on the physics and speculative cosmology with which previous philosophers had busied themselves. As a practical reformer, in opposition to the undermining process of the Sophists, he felt the need of laying a scientific basis for morals. By his method of cross-examination he cleared the minds of his auditors of confusion and elicited accurate definitions. In his ethical doctrine in which virtue was identified with knowledge or insight, he introduced a partial truth which gave rise to a one-sided inteUectualism, to the idea of an aristocracy of thinkers. This conception produced far-reaching consequences, not only in the Greek schools, but also within the pale of Christianity. In Plato's doctrine of ideas, there was given to concepts, or abstract general notions, the character of supersensible realities — the abiding realities of which concrete, visible things in the world around us — things that appear only to vanish — somehow partake. Compared with the ideas the world of concrete things is a world of shadows. The ideas are coordi nated and subordinated, until we reach in the upward ascent the supreme idea of " the good." The idea of the good is the cause both of being and of cognition. Sometimes this idea is identified with God. Yet Plato teaches that God is a personal inteUigence, by whom the world is fashioned from the matter which is eternal and is partly intractable. The souls of men enter into material habitations from a preexistence, either conceived of as actual or mythically imagined. Redemption is, therefore, physical or, one might better say, metaphysical, — a release from the bondage of sense. It is reached through enlightenment, wisdom and goodness being regarded as inseparable. In the Platonic theory of ideas there was a door opened for Philosophy to pursue afterwards a Pantheistic direction. The theory of the relation of spirit to mat ter invited to endless vagaries of speculation. The hypostasizing of ideas, through a tendency Oriental in its source, or through an imagination for some other cause lacking in sobriety, might call into being Gnostic mythologies. After the creative epoch of Plato and Aristorie, Philosophy, owing partly to political and social changes, took a decidedly practical turn. Ethical and relig ious inquiries, pertaining to the individual and to the attaining of tranquillity of spirit, were uppermost in the two principal systems that emerged. Epicureanism with its doctrine of a cosmos self- produced from primitive atoms, of deities unconcerned about ANCIENT THEOLOGY ,j mundane affairs, and of a morality synonymous with prudent pleasure-seeking, had littie affinity with the Gospel and little influ ence upon its teachers. Respecting Stoicism the case was differ ent. The metaphysic of Stoicism was borrowed from eariier systems, especially from that of HeracHtus, and had no genetic relation to the nobler system of Stoical ethics. The metaphysical theory was a materialistic Pantheism. But the indwelling force from which all things spring, if it operates blindly, is held to operate rationaUy. The universe is subject to one all-ruUng law. The worid, looked at as an organic unity, is perfect. Evil is relative ; aU things considered, there is no evil. Zeus, like Provi dence and Destiny, is another name for the totaUty of things. There is no space for free agency. Logos, the divine reason or wisdom, designates the power that pervades the universe, yet is corporeal in its nature. It is sometimes styled, according to the analogy of a seed stored with vital energy, the Generative or Seminal Logos. The virtuous man, the Sage, is he who lives according to nature, either his own nature or the nature of the universe, — for the discrimination is not always made. He is calm within, murmurs at nothing that is or that occurs, implicitly obeys reason, uninfluenced by sensibiUty or emotion. The sys tem of Zeno and Chrysippus parted with much of its rigor in the later Stoicism of the Roman School. In Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and the Greek freedman Epictetus, there is a recognition, though not uniform and persistent, of the personality of God, of the real ity of the soul as distinguished from the body, and of the continu ance of personal life after death. The cosmopolitan element in Stoicism, the idea of mankind as a single community, ripens into the conception of the brotherhood of mankind, and of God as a universal Father. In Seneca, precepts enjoining patience, forgive ness, benevolence, approximate to the purity and elevation of the precepts of the Gospel, while the metaphysical setting remains quite diverse. The sense of the need of divine help is a new element grafted into the later Stoicism. It is among the New Platonists that Philosophy assumes the most decidedly reUgious aspect. Philo was a forerunner of this school, Ammonius Saccas its reputed founder ; but it was Plotinus who gave it a systematic form. God was conceived of as the Ineffable One, the undifferen tiated Absolute. He is incomprehensible. He is utterly separate from the world, for the system is thoroughly duaUstic. Asceri- 32 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE cism is the path to the self-purification of the soul. The highest attainment, the ideal blessedness, is the ecstatic state wherein the soul soars to the intuition and embrace of the Supreme Being. The enraptured spirit loses the sense of individuality, and Hes, so to speak, on the bosom of the Infinite. The influence of Greek Philosophy upon the early Christian theology is too obvious to be questioned. The sciences were the creation of the Greek mind, and theology forms no exception to this general statement. There was a " psychological cUmate " in which theology took its form. There was an environment of thought and culture from the influence of which it would have been impossible for the theologians of the Church to escape. The point of most importance is to determine the nature and the ex tent of that influence by which they were necessarily affected. Tliat the/orm of enunciations of doctrine was affected by it, the bare inspection of the ancient oecumenical creeds is sufficient to show. Newman says that the use of the term ' consubstantial ' by the Nicene Council is " the one instance of a scientific word having been introduced into the creed from that day to this." * There are other terms in the creeds, however, such, for example, as the word ' nature,' which imply a classification of our mental faculties that does not conform precisely to our modem views. Aside from the phraseology of the cecumenical creeds, the patris tic teaching is stamped with the traces of philosophical ideas that run back as far as Plato and Aristotle. It has been alleged by some scholars in the past, and the assertion has been renewed by certain recent authors, that the substance as well as the form of Christian theology was essentially modified by the Greek moulds into which Christian tnith was cast. Views tending in this direc tion have been presented of late by two learned scholars. Hatch and Harnack. The question for the student to determine is, how far have the ancient creeds, their authors and expounders, gone beyond an inteUectual equivalent of the New Testament teaching? What is to be referred to the Gospel, and what to Greek philosophical thought? If alloy may be inwrought from alien sources, it is the task of Biblical and historical scholarship to ascertain its nature and limit." 1 Grammar of Assent, p. 138. 2 The influence of the Greek Mysteries on Christian usages is a separate, although kindred, topic. Here the point of chief moment is the disciplina ANCIENT THEOLOGY 3, arcani, embracing the secrecy observed respecting the Baptismal Confession, etc. , and the exclusion of non-communicants from being present at the Sacra ment. Justin describes the Eucharist obviously without any idea of conceal ment in connection with it (Apol. I. 65 sq.). From about a.d. 150, with the development of the Catechumenate, and under the dangers incident to perse cution, this sacred reserve — the disciplina arcani — arose and continued until the Church emerged to a position of safety. But from Justin's time, the Sacraments began to be looked upon after the analogy of the Mysteries, and the effect of this habit of thought is perceptible both upon the language respecting them and, in some degree, on the practices connected with them. Yet the measure of this effect may be exaggerated. On this subject see Zezschwitz's Art., Arkan-Disciplin, in the Real-Encykl., I. p. 637, Moller's Kirchegesch., I. pp. 281, 282. The subject is discussed by Hatch, The Influ ence of Greek Ideas, etc. (Lect. X.), and by Harnack, DG., I. pp. 176 sq., et al. (See the Index at the end of Vol. III.) See, also, Anrich, Das antike Mysterienwesen in seinem Einfluss auf das Christenthum (1894). CHAPTER II THE ECCLESIASTICAL WRITERS I. The Apostolic Fathers. — This is an inaccurate title given to the group of earliest ecclesiastical writers after the Apostles. The designation is owing to the fact that they were supposed to have been immediate pupils of the Apostles. We have an Epistle of Clement, who is designated in the tradition as the first Bishop of Rome. Whether or not he wore this title exclusively, or was simply the leading presbyter, it is no doubt by him that this letter from the Church of Rome to the Church at Corinth was written. Its date is about a.d. 96. It contains moral injunctions of a general nature, which are followed by special exhortations occasioned by discord in the Corinthian Church, which was thought to pay less than due respect to its presbyters. The document styled the Second Epistle of Clement is a Homily, which not unlikely was addressed, either orally or in writing, to the same church, but is the production of an unknown author, who wrote probably as early as a.d. 150. The first distinct mention of it is by Eusebius. It is not ascribed to Clement by the eariy ecclesiastical authors. It is the most ancient of extant homilies. Ifermas, the author of The Shepherd, wrote his book at Rome. Its division into three parts is from a later hand than the author's. It comprises a series of visions, with which are connected precepts, warnings, and parables. The Church, which communicates the revelations made to Hernias, is personi fied as an aged woman. Afterwards, in the guise of a shepherd, the " angel of repentance " appears, by whom are delivered the teachings in the closing parts of the book. The date assigned in the ancient tradition (c. 140-155) seems late, in view of the fact that shorriy after the middle of the second century, the work is known to have been in circulation in the churches of the East and 34 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 5C West. This circumstance, with other indications, leads Zahn and some other critics to place its date as early as about 90-100. It is cited by Irenaeus and by TertuUian, and Clement of Alexandria was famUiar with it. The Epistle with which the name of Barna bas is connected, was written, not by the companion of Paul, but by an unknown writer, probably an Alexandrian. It is strongly anti- Judaic in its spirit. There are widely diff'erent judgments as to its date. It is placed by some as early as a.d. 70 ; by others as late as the beginning of the reign of Hadrian (11 7-138). The determination of the question is partly dependent on the relation of the book to the Didache, with which it has chapters in common. This last named work, the Didache, or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, was discovered in 1873 by Bryennios, an Eastern prelate, but was not published until 1883. It is one of the most interest ing literary discoveries of recent times. It consists of two portions. l^ It is a church manual for catechists and for congregations. The catechetical part, in the first six chapters, presents moral precepts under the scheme of Two Ways, the way of life, and the way of death. The second part contains directions pertaining to worship and church discipline, with statements relating to Eschatology. The first portion of the Didache, the Two Ways, is nearly identi cal with passages in the Epistle of Barnabas, and in the Apostoli cal Canons, a work composed probably as early as the beginning of the third century ; and it is found, also, in a more expanded form, in the Apostolical Constitutions. The Didache is assigned by most critics to a time not later than the beginning of the second century. As to its relation to the Epistle of Barnabas, that it is not dependent on the Epistle has been shown by Zahn and others. Harnack has considerable support in the opinion that both books drew from a common source, but not in the conclusion that the Didache has a much later origin (from 120 to 165). The Epistles of Ignatius, mainly from their bearing on the rise of Episcopacy, have long been a subject of discussion. It was a gain when at last the subject of controversy was narrowed down to the question of the genuineness of the seven shorter Greek Episries. That these are the productions of Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, who was trans ported to Rome and perished under Trajan, has been rendered, to say the least, extremely probable, especially since the publica tion of the works of Zahn and Lightfoot. The objections made to the integrity of the Episties can hardly be made good, especially 36 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE when it is remembered that the Episcopacy for which Ignatius is a zealous champion is not sacerdotal in its character, but is com mended as a means of order and unity, and that he is struggUng to secure for bishops a degree of authority to which, it would seem, they had not as yet attained. The date of the Ignatian Episries, according to Lightfoot, is about no. Harnack is pecul iar in advancing the hypothesis of a much later date for the martyrdom of the author, and so for the composition of his writings. Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, who had personaUy known the Apostle John, died as a martyr in 155 or 156. The Epistle to the Philippians, which was in the hands of Irensus, who had known Polycarp, is unquestionably genuine. Papias, Bishop of HierapoUs, was a contemporary of Polycarp, and is said to have been, like him, a pupil of John the Aposrie. But this statement of Irenaeus is caUed in question, possibly with tmth, by Eusebius. The Martyrdom of Polycarp is an account by the Church of Smyrna of the circumstances of the death of their aged pastor at the hands of Roman executioners. It is enlarged and interpolated by subsequent additions, but there is good reason to conclude that it is essentially genuine. Papias wrote, in five books, the Exposition of the Oracles of the Lord, of which we have preserved to us a few fragments, one of which is the highly interesting and valuable statement in Eusebius respecting the origin of the Gospels of Matthew and of Mark. Besides comments on the teachings of Christ, the work of Papias included information respecting the Gospel histories which he had gathered from oral sources. II. The Apologists. — Only a portion of the writings of the authors who first took up the defence of Christianity are ex tant. These writings were addressed either to individuals, or to heathen readers in general. They belong mostly to the age of the Antonines. Quadratus may have addressed to Hadrian his apology, which is lost. The work addressed to Antoninus Pius by Aristides has lately been in part recovered. We have it in an Armenian translation, also in a Syrian translation, and in an imperfect Greek text. Fragments of an apologetic work of Melito, Bishop of Sardis, addressed to Marcus Aurelius, are preserved in Eusebius. A writing by Claudius Apollinaris, Bishop of HierapoUs, addressed to the same Emperor, and a work of Miltiades, a rhetorician of Athens, addressed to M. ANCIENT THEOLOGY ^» AureUus and L. Verus, have both perished. The most important of the writers of this class in the second century is Justin Martyr. He was a native of Samaria, and was born about a.d. ioo. He had received a philosophical training, and was himself a philoso pher by profession. He was a disciple of the Platonic school, but was influenced, also, by the ethical ideas of the Stoics. We have from his pen two Apologies, a longer and a shorter, which, however, originally formed one work, and the Dialogue with Trypho (a Jew). The Discourse of the Greeks and The Exhortation to the Greeks, which are often ascribed to Justin, are by later writers. The Apologies were written not later than 152 and not earlier than 138. The Dialogue is a little later than the Apologies. Tatian was born in Assyria and was perhaps of Syrian parentage, but was educated in Greek learning. At Rome he came into connection with Justin. He wrote a Discourse to the Greeks, about 152 or 153. The " Diatesseron " was awork by him, formed by combining selections from the Four Gospels. Besides the Commentary upon the work by Ephraim of Edessa (who died in 373), we have two, possibly three, very free translations of it into other languages.* Whether it was first written in Greek or Syrian is uncertain. Tatian became a Gnostic and the leader of an ascetic sect, the Encratites. Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, (168-C. 190) wrote an Apology addressed to Autolycus, a cultivated heathen. It is directed against heathenism in its popular and philosophical forms. The Epistle to Diognet, by an unknown author, written about the end of the second century, is fuU of force and eloquence, but exhibits an antagonism to the Jewish religion. One of the most cogent of the early defences of Christianity is the Octavius of Minucius Felix, which, were we certain of its early date, would be distinguished as the first of the Latin Apologies. Whether it was composed as early as 180, or as late as the middle of the third century, is stUl a litigated point. III. IrencRus and Hippolytus. — By far the most valuable writer, as a source for the History of Doctrine, in the second century, is Irenaeus. Born in Asia Minor, about 125 or 130, separated by only a single link from the Apostle John, whose pupil, Polycarp, he had seen and heard, Irenaeus became first a Presbyter in the Church at Lyons, as the colleague of the aged Pothinus, and afterwards succeeded him in the bishopric. We I See Harnack, Gesch. d. Altchristl. Litt., I. 2, p. 495. 3§ HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE have the record of at least one visit, and probably of two visits, made by him to Rome. Such was his standing that he could address an admonitory letter to Victor, a Roman bishop. His copious work Adversus Hareses was written to confute the Gnostics, about the year i8o. He died probably in 202. The wide acquaintance of Irenaeus with the churches East and West, the sobriety of his character, and his unimpeached reputation for orthodoxy, render him an invaluable witness, both respecting the tenets of the Gnostics and of the Christians of his time. He was clear in his perceptions, practical, and averse to speculation. The work of Irenaeus exists only in a literal and crade Latin transla tion; but we are fortunately in possession of copious extracts from the original in Hippolytus, Eusebius, and Epiphaniiis. Besides this work there are fragments, including the Epistle to Florinus, which contain the reminiscences of Polycarp ; but the " Pfaffian " fragments are of doubtful genuineness. The longest of them is certainly spurious. Hippolytus was a pupil of Irenaeus. Although he was a celebrated man in his day, our information concerning his personal history is scanty. He was a Presbyter at Rome when Zephyrinus and CaUistus were bishops, the first of whom acceded to office in 199, and the last of whom died in 222. Strenuous in maintaining the strictest theory as to Church dis cipline, and energetic in opposing Patripassianism, he waged a contest against these bishops, and would appear to have been a bishop of a seceding party in opposition to them. His Refutation of all Heresies, which was found in 1842, and first published in 1851, under the title of Philo sophumena, throws much light on the opinions of Gnostic sects, whose errors he traces to the heathen phUosophers. Missing parts of the work probably treated of Chaldean and other Oriental opinions. IV. The Latin Writers, TertuUian and Cyprian. — TertuUian was the first to make the Latin language a vehicle for theology. He was a Presbyter at Carthage, was born about 160, and died about 220. At school, in addition to other branches, he learned Greek. He was trained to be an advocate, and one peculiarity of his writings is the frequent occurrence in them of legal ideas and phraseology. Although not unacquainted with phUosophy, he inveighs against the philosophers, going so far as to denounce Plato as the condimentarius of all heretics. Acute and fertUe in thought, he infuses into his writings a vehemence which belongs to ANCIENT THEOLOGY ,g his temperament. Yet his genius shines through the cloud of ex aggeration. An enthusiast by nature, he at length became an avowed Montanist. His numerous works are upon a variety of themes. They embrace polemical and apologetic works, against parties without and within the Church, and discussions of an ascetic and ecclesiastical cast. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, who died as a martyr in 258, was largely influenced by the writings of Tertul- lian. His own literary activity was mainly upon topics relating to Church government and discipline. V. The Alexandrians. — It was at Alexandria, the seat of all science, that philosophical theology first acquired a firm footing. The union of philosophy and theology, of which we see the begin nings in the Apologists, was there consummated. Catechetical instruction, when cultivated and inquisitive heathen converts were to be taught, necessarily assumed a new form. The school for catechumens developed itself into a school for the training of the clergy. The Alexandrian teachers met the educated heathen on their own ground. Instead of pouring out invectives, after the manner of TertuUian, against the Greek philosophers, they recog nized in the teachings of the Greek sages materials which Christian teachers might accept and assimilate. Attainments in knowledge which were above the capacity of all believers might be open at least to a part. The scholarship of the Church was at Alexandria. Pantaenus, the first teacher, who began his work not far from 185, had been an adherent of the Stoic school, while mingling in his creed elements of Platonic doctrine. His writings have perished. In his pupil, Clement, who succeeded him, and who taught — with an interval of absence on account of the Severian persecution — from about 191 untO he retired in 202, the pecuHarities of the Alexandrian type of theology are distinctly marked. He was born in Greece, and had studied phUosophy in different lands and under various masters. In Christianity he found the satisfaction which he had elsewhere sought in vain. In his writings, his large acquisi tions of learning and the fertility of his genius, as well as his lack of system, are apparent. In his Discourse to the Greeks, the superi ority of the Gospel to the heathen systems of worship and of thought is insisted on, with a generous recognition, however, of the truth to be found in their poets and philosophers. The Pce- dagogos was designed for the ethical training of converts, as a preparation for gaining an insight into the deeper mysteries of the 40 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE Christian teaching. Here Clement intermingles ideas drawn from the Stoical morals. The crowning treatise of Clement is the Stromata, or Patchwork — for the term denoted a coverlet made of patches. The author expatiates on the truths of Christianity, without care for systematic arrangement. In a briefer Essay, "Who is the Rich Man that is Saved?" Clement undertakes to evince that not the possession of riches, but an inordinate attach ment to them, debars from the kingdom. At the same time, in this Essay the ascetic feeling as concerns earthly good and the pleasures of sense finds expression. Origen, who in genius stands on a level with Augustine, and is outstripped in power and achievements by none of the Fathers, was a pupil of Clement. Born in 185 of Christian parents, he received a classical as well as a Christian education, and suc ceeded Clement as a teacher, — a post from which he was driven by the Bishop of Alexandria, Demetrius. In consequence of suffer ings inflicted on him in the Decian persecution, he died at Cassa- rea in Cappadocia, in 253. He was initiated into the study of philosophy by Ammonius Saccas, the Neo-platonist ; but he made himself conversant with the tenets of aU the philosophical schools. The writings of this great scholar are exceedingly various. His Hexapla, a comparison of the text of the Septuagint with the Hebrew text of the Old Testament and with other Greek versions, was the fmit of twenty-seven years of labor. His commentaries, of which those on Matthew and John are speciaUy valuable, as exhibiting his theological opinions, extend over nearly aU the Script ures. The treatise De Principiis, or concerning First Tmths, is the earUest systematic treatise on doctrinal theology. We possess it only in the very free translation of Rufinus, who omits, also, parts of the original. In his later days Origen composed his Reply to Celsus, a masterly defence of Christianity against the ablest of its assailants, and a work which demonstrates, if proof were required, that the speculations on doctrine which characterize his numerous treatises had not the effect to loosen his hold on the historical facts and essential verities of the Gospel. CHAPTER HI DOCTRINE EST THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS With the earliest Christian teachers authorship was not a habit or a profession. Like the Apostles themselves, they wrote, as a rule, to meet some exigency. "When the heavens might part asunder at any moment, and reveal the final doom," " there was no care for literary distinction." * The Apostolic Fathers are inter mediate between the New Testament vpriters and distinctively theo logical authors. We miss in them the depth and power of the canonical writers. Like these they have in view practical ends. The light which they throw on the contemporary doctrinal beliefs is incidental. And respecting the early ecclesiastical writings, it must be borne in mind that such of them as survive are the relics of a larger number that have perished. What Grote says of the classical literature of Greece is applicable to the literature of the Early Church : " We possess only what has drifted ashore from the wreck of a stranded vessel."" Yet it is true of at least a portion of the early ecclesiastical writings that remain, that their preserva tion is due to the special value that was attributed to them. Hence there is no occasion to speak slightingly of the aid which they lend us in ascertaining the opinions and the modes of thought prevalent in the sub-apostolic age. The theory, which was advocated by Baur, of a radical antagonism in this period between Petrine and Pauline disciples, is now so generaUy given up that it requires no special confutation. Clement speaks of Peter and Paul as " the good apostles " who merit equal honor.' In like manner, the two Apostolic leaders are placed in conjunction by Ignatius.^ Polycarp makes mention of the wisdom of "the blessed and glorious Paul." ' ' Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers, p. 1. 2 History of Greece, Vol. I. Preface. 3 I Cor. 5. * Rom. 4. "' Phil. 3. 41 42 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE It may be added that Hegesippus, a Christian writer of Jewish birth, in a fragment of his book, which was written about the middle of the second century, refers with approval to Clement's Epistle to the Corinthians. He is a witness, not for, but against the Tubingen hypothesis. The theory of two opposing parties, amalgamated later by methods of compromise, it is no exaggera tion to say " can be upheld only by trampling under foot aU the best authenticated testimony." * A glance at the career and the teachings of a single man, Irenaeus, is of itself sufficient to dis prove it. The ApostoUc Fathers wrote before the writings of the Apostles had been collected into a canon. Although, with a single excep tion," passages obviously taken from them are not introduced by the formula usually prefixed to quotations from the Old Testament, they are nevertheless treated as authoritative. The Apostolic Fathers make no claim to stand on a level with the Apostles. While they contain references to pre-Christian apocryphal writings, we find in them no distinct references to a New Testament Apocrypha. The Apostolic Fathers abound in allusions to the doctrine of free forgiveness through the grace of God in the Gospel. " And so we," writes Clement, " having been caUed through His will in Christ Jesus, are not justified through ourselves or through our own wisdom or understanding or piety, or works which we wrought in holiness of heart, but through faith, whereby the Almighty God justified all men that have been from the beginning.'" This passage is emphatically Pauline in its purport. Yet, at the same time, we meet in Clement, and in the ApostoUc Fathers generaUy, a strain of thought which may be styled legalism, or — to borrow a word from the German — " morahsm." Not only is the Pauline doctrine of justification seldom brought out in so clear and positive a form as in the passage just quoted ; there is besides an emphasis laid upon right conduct, and upon works of obedience, which is somewhat in contrast with the manner of St. Paul when he is defining the method of justification. Even Clement, in the place mentioned above, goes on immediately to insist on the importance of good works. Abraham was found faithful in that he " rendered obedience." " It is not merely that 1 Lightfoot, The Apostol. Fathers, p. 9. s j Cqj.^ ^j. ^ Barnabas, 4. * Clement, i Cor. 10. ANCIENT THEOLOGY ,3 "Faith" and "Love "are often conjoined — which is especially common in Ignatius. There is a lack of a distinct perception of the genetic relation of faith as the root of Christian virtues. Hermas makes continence the daughter of faith, simplicity to spring from continence, guUelessness from simpUcity, etc.* In the Didache, we read of " the knowledge and faith and immortality made known" to us through Christ." Allusions to the cross of Christ, to His death for our sins, to salvation through Him, are quite frequent. Yet more often than is the custom of writers thoroughly imbued with the Pauline spirit, the relation of the death of Christ to the procuring for us of the means of repentance and to opening the way to a new obedience is dwelt upon. A large space is given to the preceptive parts of the New Testament. This tjrpe of evangelical legalism becomes still more marked much later in the century when the nova lex ' of the new dispensation is held up to view as being, along with better promises, its defining characteristic. This peculiarity of the early Christian writers, it is worth whUe to reiterate, springs from no conscious dissatisfaction with the teaching of St. Paul. It must be borne in mind that the Apostle's sharply defined and resolute exclusion of the doctrine of salvation by works of obedience was part and parcel of his warfare against a Pharisaic theology. That contest with Judaism and Judaizing Christianity had now passed by. Whether salvation is through faith or on the ground of obedience was no more "a burning question." The special occasion for an energetic uprising to with stand a narrow and intolerant party, on this subject, no more existed. It must be borne in mind, moreover, that the Apostle Paul himself, when he speaks of the judgment, makes it turn upon " deeds done," upon the personal righteousness or unrighteousness of the individual. The creed of Trent quotes against the Prot estant doctrine the Apostle's anticipation of the " reward," the " crown of righteousness," which the Lord, " the righteous Judge shall give " him.* In short, St. Paul himself uses the terms of the Jewish "scheme of debt and works," — terms, however, which are capable of an interpretation consistent with his teaching elsewhere on the adequacy and the Ufe-giving power of faith.' It is the 1 M. II. 8. ' TertuU., De Prcescr. 13. 2 Didache, 10. * Sess. VI. Decree on Justification, CXVI. ^ On this topic, see the remarks of Stevens, The Pauline Theology, p. 359 sq. 44 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE characteristic of the earliest Christian writers that they bring to gether the teachings of the different Apostles. They may be said, not so much to strike an average, as rather to combine indiscrim inately the various passages in the Apostles which relate to pardon and the new Ufe. There is a failure, notwithstanding the Christian fervor of these authors, to penetrate to the inmost meaning and the mutual connection of these various forms of representation. We find, especially in Hermas, traces of an ascetic drift, which is in a large measure the result of the earnest reaction of the Christian mind against the immorality, in particular the unchastity, so prevalent in heathen society. This ascetic tendency is con joined with the legalism just adverted to. It was a question whether repentance would be of any avail in the case of grievous offences committed after baptism, the rite which was understood to bring with it the remission of past sins. The solution in Hermas is, that a single lapse of this character does not shut the door upon the delinquent ; but this is the limit beyond which the spirit of leniency in the Church will not go.* Second marriages are not forbidden, but abstinence from a second marriage brings "exceed ing honor and great glory before the Lord." " Christian believers faU into different classes as to their degree of holiness, some being on a higher, and others on a lower plane. The distinction between a more exalted and an inferior type of Christian virtue is even more definite in the Didache? If in the Apostolic Fathers we miss a firm grasp of the New Testament teaching on the subject of Justification, no such defect appears in their conception of the doctrine of the person of Christ. Inexact as their phraseology naturally is in comparison with what is observed in authors of a later age, it is evident, as well in their habitual tone as in particular passages, that in their minds Christ is dissociated from the category of creatures. Clement styles Him "the sceptre of the majesty of God," who "came not in the pomp of arrogance or of pride though He might have done so, but in lowliness of mind." * " To whom," he exclaims in another place, "be the glory and the majesty for ever and ever."' In Igna- 1 L. III. Sim. 7. " Thinkest thou that the sins of those that repent are for given forthwith? Certainly not; but the person who repents must torture his own soul," etc. " M. IV. 4. i I Cor. 16. 1 VI. ^. Cf Clem. II. Cor, VII. 6 i Cor. 20. ANCIENT THEOLOGY . - 45 tius, it is a central thought that through Christ man is delivered from the dominion of death and made a partaker of incorruption.* This is through the Incarnation, and the Resurrection following upon the death on the Cross. The divine life in Christ is in veritable humanity. Docetism, the idea that the human Christ is a phantom, is combated. The mystical tendency of Ignatius appears in his conception of the connection of the bishop with his presbyters about him with the like relation of the incarnate Christ to the Apostles." Ignatius asserts the preexistence of Christ. He "was with the Father before the world, and ap peared at the end of time.'" Christ is "His Word (Logos) that proceeded from silence " ; that is, in becoming incarnate. "There is only one physician," Ignatius writes, "of flesh and of spirit, generate and ungenerate, God in man^ . . . Son of Mary and Son of God.'" The eternity of Christ is explicitly affirmed : " Await Him that is above every season, the Eternal, the Invisible, who became visible for our sake, the Impalpable, the Impassible, who suffered for our sake."° Ignatius gives to Christ repeatedly the name "God," not as if He were God absolutely, yet implying proper divinity.^ He is " the Son of the Father," through whom the patriarchs and the whole Church enter in.^ Polycarp declares that " every one who shall not confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is anti-christ," — a passage cor responding to the statement of John (i John iv. 3), from whom it is probably quoted.^ Barnabas refers to the suffering of Christ, though He was the Lord of the whole world, and interprets the words, "Let us make man in our own image" (Gen. i. 26), as spoken to Him.*" Hermas says of " the Son of God " that He " is older than aU His creation, so that He became the Father's adviser in His creation." ** " The Holy Preexistent Spirit," it is said, " which created the whole creation God made to dweU in flesh that He desired."*" Whether the " Spirit " is here a designa- ^ a.dap(xia. 2 See Lightfoot, Apostol. Fathers, P. II. Vol. I. pp. 39, 359, sq. Cf. Gore, The Christian Ministry, p. 302. See, also. Von der Goltz, Ignatius von An- tiochien als Christ, und Theologe. Gebh.u. Harnack's Text. 11. Untersuch., XII. 3. 3 Magn. 6. « Polyc. 3. " Ep. Polyc. 7. * tv aapKi. '' Ephes. Introduct., 18. i" Barnab. 6. "¦ Ephes. 7. * Philad. 9. ** Simil. IX. 12. 12 Simil. V. 6. Cf IX. I. The passage is obscure, partly because " the ser vant " in the Parable is said (6) to be " the Son of God," while another, who 46 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE tion of the preexistent Logos — a usage of which there are not wanting other examples — or, as some think, Hermas considered the Holy Spirit to be one and the same with the preexistent Christ, there is at least here a clear assertion of the Saviour's preexistence and divinity.* The personality and distinct office of the Holy Spirit are cleariy set forth in Ignatius." The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are brought into close connection.' Clement writes : " Have we not one God, and one Christ, and one Spirit of Grace that was shed upon us ? " ^ That Baptism brings the remission of sins and the purifying grace of the Spirit is frequently said or implied in the earUest writers. In one place Ignatius ascribes to the death of Christ a purifying effect upon the baptismal water.' "We go down into the water," says Barnabas, "laden with sins and filth and rise from it, bearing fruit in the heart, resting our fear and hope on Jesus in the spirit." ^ As to the formula used in baptism, it is thought to have been, at the outset, in the Apostolic age, the shorter form in the name of Christ.^ It is remarkable, however, that whUe in the Didache, baptism "into the name of the Lord" is said to be required for admission to the Eucharist,' we have in the directions for administering the rite the injunction to baptize " into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." " This shows that the shorter form does not necessitate the inference that the longer formula was not in use. is called His "beloved son" and "heir" (2), is also spoken of. As to the use of the term "Spirit" (irveO/io) to denote the Logos, see Lightfoot's note, Clem. Rom. IX. 4. On the other view, that Hermas does not, in V. 6 and IX. 4, use this term as the equivalent of Logos, see (against Zahn) Gebhardt and Harnack, Patrum Apostolic, Opera, Fascic. III. p. 150 sq. See, also, Harnack, DG. I. p. 160 — who considers Hermas an Adoptionist — and Prof McGiffert's Ed. of Eusebius, p. 135. Domer has a full discussion of the topic, presenting the opposite interpretation, Gesch. d. Lehre v. d. Person Christi, I. p. 205 sq. But Domer has a different reading of Simil. v. 6 from that adopted (with Lightfoot, Apostol. Fathers') above. 1 On the passage in the Didache (X. 6) — " Hosanna to the God of David " — and the question of the reading (Scy or vli$~), see Schaff, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, p. 197. 2 See Ephes. 9. -i I. Cor. 46. 6 Barnabas, 11. 8 Philad. Introduct. 6 Ephes. XVIII. 5. ' See Acts xix. 5, l Cor. i. 13; cf Neander, Planting and Training of the Church, p. 29 ; Harnack, DG. I. p. 68, n. 3. UX. 5. 9Vn. I. ANCIENT THEOLOGY .j The Lord's Supper, as we infer from the passages bearing on the subject in Ignatius, was stiU connected with the Agape, or Love- Feast, as it was in the days of the Apostles. If it had become dissevered when PUny wrote his letter to Trajan, the separation may, perhaps, have been a local usage, which, it may be, was adopted by the Christians in consequence of the rigid policy introduced by that Emperor. We cannot expect in the Apostolic Fathers clearly defined views respecting the import of the Lord's Supper. Ignatius speaks of the Eucharist as " the flesh of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, which flesh suffered for our sins," * and styles the " one bread " " the medicine of immortality and the antidote that we should not die," " etc. We cannot be at all sure that he is not using symbolical language.' The bread and the wine were gifts of Christian believers for this sacred use, and, in connection with the prayers, were styled an offering ; but with no other significance. From the prayer of thanksgiving, the rite was styled the Eucharist. From the Didache the character of the Eucharistic prayers can be learned. Thanks are given to God for the food and drink, the natural gifts of God to men, as weU as for the " spiritual food and drink " bestowed on beUevers through Christ.* The Second Coming of Christ is looked upon as an event not remote. In one of the parables of Hermas, it is to foUow the building of "the Tower," and "the tower,'' it is said, "wiU soon be built." The post-communion prayer in the Didache ends with "Maranatha" — "The Lord Cometh.'" In Barnabas, the tem poral reign of Christ for a thousand years is expected to follow His advent. Papias, who cherishes the same idea, presented a fantastic picture of miUennial bUss and comfort.^ 1 Smyrn. VII. 2 Ephes. XX. 3 See Philad. V., Trail. VIII. Cf. Lightfoot (ad Smyrn. VII.). A more literal interpretation is given by Thomasius, DG. I. p. 421. *c. X. 5 c. X. 6 (as in I Cor. xvi. 22). Ci. Didache, c.'KNl. " See infra, p. 88. CHAPTER IV the JUDAIC SEPARATIST PARTIES — THE GNOSTIC SECTS — MARCION Before Jerusalem was invested by the army of Titus, there had been a flight of Jewish Christians to places on the east of the Jor dan in the neighborhood of the Dead Sea. There a portion of these fugitives were brought in contact with the Essenes, and probably adopted some of their tenets and customs. When the rites of Jewish worship were excluded from Jerusalem by Hadrian (a.d. 135), there were Jewish Christians — a part of those who had come back to Jerusalem from their temporary exile — who joined with the Christians of GentUe origin, thus giving up the Mosaic ceremonies. But there were Jewish Christians who were not ready to part with the ceremonies prescribed in the ancient Law. These constituted the heretical class who were called Ebi- onites. The name was. not derived, as TertuUian and other Fathers conjectured, from an imaginary founder named "Ebion." The term was from the Hebrew, and was a name early adopted by Jewish disciples, signifying " the poor," in contrast with their Jewish countrymen, who were higher in rank and more favored of fortune. Justin Martyr distinguishes between different types of these sectaries, and Origen makes a like distinction.* The mUder class, Justin tells us, do not turn their backs on their Gen tile brethren who reject circumcision and the Jewish Sabbaths. The more rigid class endeavor to compel Gentile beUevers to conform to the Old Testament rites." It is not said by Justin that any sharp line of division separates these different phases of Judaic Christianity. They aU belong to one group. The name 'Ebi- onites ' and the name ' Nazarenes ' were applied by the Fathers indiscriminately to Jewish Christians, although the differences among them are recognized. The less rigid Ebionites made use 1 C. Celsum, V. bd. 2 Dial., c. 46. 48 ANCIENT THEOLOGY ^n of a Hebrew Gospel of Matthew. They accepted the miraculous birth of Christ. They held that He was conceived of the Spirit of God. They made no objection to suffering and death as connected with the Messiah. To the baptism of Jesus they attached great consequence, as the epoch when He was furnished with qualifications for His messianic work. Unlike the more in tolerant fraction of the Ebionites, they did not deny that Paul was a true Apostle. This class of Moderates are described by Jerome, for in his time they were still in being. They are com monly called, he says, Nazarenes. He sketches their tenets, and adds that in trying to be at once Jews and Christians, they fail of being either.* The rigid, Pharasaic Ebionites insisted that cir cumcision is necessary to salvation, that the Mosaic ceremonial ordinances are stUl binding on Christians. They rejected and hated the Apostle Paul. They denied the miraculous conception of Jesus, and regarded Him as literally the son of Joseph. They looked upon Him as a Jew, whose distinction from others lay in His fulfilment of the Law. His legal piety caused Him to be se lected as Messiah by God ; but of this He, in His humUity, was not conscious untU His baptism. Then the Spirit was given to Him, and He began His messianic work. It was the work of a prophet and teacher. He wrought miracles and enlarged the law by precepts of greater strictness. This class or school of Ebionites was reluctant to think of the Christ as subject to suffering and death, and preferred to dwell on His laws and teachings, and on His future advent in regal splendor. Then He would establish for Himself and His foUowers, especially for the pious Jews, a mUlen- nial kingdom of glory and blessedness. With these intolerant Ebionites, Justin will have no fellowship. He denies to them the hope of salvation. As to the treatment proper for the more charitable branch of the party, he would regard them as brethren, although, he tells us, some other Chris tians were not disposed to do so. At a later day — exacriy when it is impossible to determine — even the moderate class were also banished from Christian feUowship. It is not difficult to recognize in these last, whatever modifications may have come in, the suc cessors of the Jewish Christians of the ApostoUc age who, while observing the ritual for themselves, were not inimical to the Apos- 1 Dum volunt Judsei esse et Christiani, nee Judsei sunt nee Christiani. Ep. cxii., 13 (ad Augustin.). X hq HISTORY OF CHRiSTiAN DOCTRINE tie to the Gentiles ; while the rigid Ebionites are the successors of the Judaizers who denied his claim to be an Apostie and pro nounced the ban on such disciples as failed to conform to the ceremonial parts of the Law. There was a third type of Ebionitism which may be denominated Essenian Ebionitism. It embraced distinctive features of Ebionite doctrine, with an admixture of Gnostic elements. Its nascent ten dencies are clearly seen in the heretical party in the church at Colosse, which is described in St. Paul's Episrie to the Colossians.' How far what are called the Essenian features of the system spmng out of the intercourse of Jewish Christians with the Essenian sect, or were due to indirect agencies of a kindred nature, it is not easy to decide. One faction of the Jewish Christian party, of which the peculiarities are foreshadowed in the Colossian heresy, bears the name of Elkesaites. This tide is derived from Elkesai, which is not the nam.e of a man, but of a book prized by the sect. The characteristics of the Essenian Ebionitism appear in a curious work of a much later date, the Clementine romance, or the Pseudo- Clementine writings, — the Homilies and the Recognitions," the date of which is probably near the beginning of the third century. They contain a story of one Clement, a fictitious creation who is identified with Clement of Rome and figures as the author of the narrative. Clement, after long wanderings, meets his lost parents and brothers. The tale is merely a vehicle for conveying to the reader a set of religious ideas. It is related of this Clement that he was converted by Peter, and listened to disputations of Peter with Simon Magus, the champion of Gnostic heresies. Among the main Ebionite elements in the Clementine romance is the essential identity of Christianity with Judaism. Christ is the restorer of the pure, primitive religion of Moses. Christ is the last of a series of eight prophets, — Abraham, Moses, and Christ being the chief, — by all of whom the same truth has been inculcated. There are traces of hostility to the Apostie Paul, and Peter is represented as the founder of the Roman Church. On the other hand, there is a dis position to find an original religion to which aU religions are trace able ; there is dualism in the idea of matter and respecting the 1 Lightfoot's instructive Dissertations on " The Colossian Heresy " and on " The Essenes," are prefixed to his " Commentary on the Colossians," and are printed also in his Dissertations on the Apostolic Age (1892). 2 The Epitome, the third book in the series, is a briefer writing of later date, ANCIENT THEOLOGV ej nature of sin, a repudiation of sacrifices, and no expectation of an earthly theocratic kingdom. In the absence of authentic information, various hypotheses have been broached respecting the origin of the Clementine writings. Baur conceived that he had found in these productions a warrant for his theory of the prevalence of a Judaic, anti-Pauline theology in the Church of the second century. That no support can be derived from them for such a theory is now generally perceived. Gieseler's conjecture was that a Roman Christian whose mind was distracted by doubts and queries sought and found in the East, among the Elkesaites, religious ideas which were in accord with his predilections, and which he incorporated with opinions having a different source and character.* The most plausible suggestion that can be offered at present to account for the phenomena is that old Elkesaite or other Jewish Christian writings were, to some extent, taken up and read with interest by Christians ; that they were worked over in order to render them more edifying and to eliminate from them heretical ideas, and that such were the sources of the HomiUes and Recognitions. Not unlikely reflections cast upon the Apostle Paul were not wholly excluded, but traces of them were undesignedly left to stand." As Harnack remarks, "the Pseudo-Clementines contribute nothing to our knowledge of the origin of the Catholic Church and doctrine." Even as concerns the knowledge of the tendencies and inner history of the syncre- tistic Jewish Christianity, they "can be used only with great caution."' The Ebionites would have robbed Christianity of its universal character and world-wide destination, and have narrowed it down to the limits of Judaism. The Gnostics, had they gained the day, would have accomplished just the reverse. Gnosticism would have swept away the barriers by which Christianity, as the one absolute religion, fenced off the manifold systems of mythology and philosophy, and the multiform cults which existed among the heathen. Gnosticism may be described as an eclectic philosophy in which heathen, Jewish, and Christian elements are ^ Gieseler, Kirchengesch., I. iii. 2, § 58. ^ See Harnack's Discussion, DG., Vol. I., p. 264 sq. ' Ibid. p. 268. " We are precluded from assigning to the syncretistic Jewish Christianity, on the ground of the Pseudo-Clementines, a place in the history of the origin of the Catholic Church and its doctrine." Ibid. p. 270. S2 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRlNfi commingled in various proportions, giving rise to a diversity of systems ; the ideas of these systems being incorporated in mythical or mythological forms. When we speak of Gnosticism as eclectic and as a philosophy, it is not to be understood that its origin was due either to a skeptical or a merely speculative turn of mind. The Gnostic leaders were for the most part deeply interested, from practical motives, in the problems of religion, and laid stress not by any means exclusively on theoretical tenets, but even more on ritual forms, ascetic practices, and other matters pertaining to conduct. In the second century, the flourishing period of the Gnostic systems, while, as we learn from the explicit testimony of the Fathers, the mass of Christians belonged to the humbler and uneducated classes, there were found culti vated men who could not fail to be inquisitive as to the founda tions of the Christian teaching, and its relations to the origin and constitution of things. Moreover, the all-prevailing drift in the direction of syncretism, the disposition to amalgamate mythology with philosophy, to explain, and to assimilate, as far as might be. Oriental reUgious systems and cults, created a ferment on the borders of the Christian societies everywhere. The authors of the different speculative and theosophic systems, the fruit of this passion for a universal solvent of religious and of philosophical problems, would be glad to discover a warrant for their ideas in an authoritative revelation. The canon of the New Testament had not yet arisen. The Old Testament was an authoritative book in the churches. Already the Judaic propaganda, through the Alexandrian Jewish school, had fused by means of allegorical interpretations the facts and doctrines of the Old Testament with the teachings of Platonism and Stoicism. It had given currency to certain theological conceptions; to the duaUstic idea of an absolute Deity, separated at the widest remove from the world of matter ; to the idea of a chain of intermediate beings ; to the idea of the Logos, as a second deity, a demiurge, stamping by its energy the divine ideas upon the world ; to the idea of an escape from matter as the true deliverance of the soul. The very earliest Gnostic developments were from the Judaic side. Yet the ideas and tendencies just referred to, being common to the metamorphosed Judaism of Philo and to the Hellenic schools from which he borrowed, we cannot attribute the Gnostic systems generally to the Judaic source. The historical circumstances ANCIENT THEOLOGY 53 of their rise would not justify us in this conclusion. The various religions of Syria and Asia Minor furnished copious materials, as well as leaders, to the Gnostical movement. The duaUstic religions of Persia and India made their contribution, although it seems probable that it was through an Hellenic appropriation of such elements that they found their way into the Gnostic creations. There were two main points to which Gnostic thought was directed. The one was the absolute Being. The other was the origin of Evil. How did man become entangled in the fetters of matter, and how should he be delivered? The Gnostics were necessarily led to the consideration of cosmogony, and they were in quest of a satisfactory theodicy. With aU their errors and vagaries, they aspired after a wide view, after a theology in a broad and comprehensive sense, and after a philosophy of history. Underlying the creations of phantasy which puzzle and bewilder us — the "aeons " emanating in a well-nigh endless succession, to span the gulf between the transcendent Deity and brute matter — there were earnest convictions. It was probably the practical side of the Gnostic teaching, the pastoral, so to speak, rather than the didactic office which the Gnostic heresiarchs assumed, that gave them influence over the body of their adherents to whom the region of abstruse speculation was a terra incog?iita. The two prominent and prevaiUng peculiarities of the Gnostic systems are the foUowing: First, the Gnostics laid claim to a deeper insight (-yi/olo-ts), or knowledge of divine things than was open to common believers. This Gnosis stood in contrast with Pistis, or the faith of Christians generally. On this higher plane, the Gnostic alone stood. Dor- ner has styled Gnosticism "the Pelagianism of the inteUect." In essence it was identical with the postulate of the Greek phi losophers, who asserted the existence of a race of inteUectual patricians. There was an esoteric Christianity — something more profound than the popular creed. Second, the Gnostic systems agree in this fundamental dogma, that the Creator of the world is not the Supreme God, but is either a subordinate, but not hostile, instrument, or an inferior, antago nistic being. Hence the God of the Old Testament is not the God who sends the Redeemer into the world, but is another being, the Demiurge, 54 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE In conformity with the requirements of their whole theory respecting the Absolute and the identification of matter with evil, the person of the Redeemer was conceived of in a docetic man ner ; the divine was not really incarnate, but in temporary juxta position with humanity. It is not strange that in the hands of Gnostic teachers utterances of the Apostle Paul were tortured into props of a theory quite alien to his teachings. He had written of a " wisdom " (tro^tii) which was reserved for "the perfect," in contrast with the rudi mentary knowledge imparted by him to the immature,* and of a knowledge (Gnosis) which was possessed in different measures by Christian disciples ; although with the Apostle it was an insight and a practical perception from which none were debarred on account of a deficiency in natural endowments. So the language of the Apostle respecting the law and the Old Testament system, as temporary stepping-stones to something higher, was equally capable of being constmed as a warrant for a radical discoimec- tion of the Old from the New. The loose and flexible method of aUegory which was applied by Christian as well as Judaic teachers to the ancient Scriptures opened the door for the application by Gnostic theologians of a like method to the facts and doctrines of the Gospel. The habit of looking for symbols everywhere, of regarding historical occurrences as having their value in some occult spiritual suggestion, invited speculative minds to transmute the realities of the Evangelical history into materials for their own use. We know that not a few of the Gnostics busied themselves with the interpretation of the ApostoUc writings, and that some of them wrote commentaries upon them. It was not, as a rale, by casting aside these writings, but by devices of exegesis, that they sought for a support for their doctrines." Sometimes, it is true, the documents were altered, and romances in the shape of apocryphal gospels and other apocryphal writings of a kindred character were composed for the diffusion of their ideas. They made much of unwritten traditions of Apostolic teaching. Of the forms and the extent of the influence of the Gnostics, we covet more information than we possess. They were found within the churches. Sometimes they formed a circle or sodality, without separation from the societies of Christian believers. 1 I Cor. ii. 6. '^ See Iren., Adv. Har. HI. ii. 2; TertuUian, De Prascr. Har., c. 14. ANCIENT THEOLOGY cc Often, and more and more, they were organized into distinct bodies, having a cult and discipline of their own. Generally the rites and symbolical ceremonies, and the rules of conduct which were enjoined, formed conspicuous features of Gnosticism in its various ramifications. Traces of Gnosticism in its nascent forms are observable in the New Testament, — in Simon Magus, who afterwards figures prom inently in history and legend ; in the Epistle to the Colossians, where the adversaries of Paul are represented as ascetic, and as holding to a God who reveals himself in ranks of angels, one above another ; in the Epistles to Timothy, in a class who busy themselves with Angelology ; in the First Epistle of John, in those who denied the reality of the incarnation ; in the Nicolaitans of the Apocalypse, and in the false teachers referred to in the Episrie of Jude who fell into an antinomian immorality. Gieseler gives a geographical classification of Gnostic systems, putting in the first class, the Alexandrian, in the second, the Syrian, and in a third class, the Gnostics of Asia Minor and Rome, — including the system of Marcion. In the Syrian systems, the dualism was more pronounced. In the religions of the world, as in human nature, in the room of contrasts of higher and lower, there were held to be absolute contrarieties. Baur's classification is based on the views taken respectively by the several classes of Gnostic systems, of the three principal forms of religion, Christianity, Judaism, and Heathenism. In the first class, these three forms of religion are conjoined ; in the second class are placed the systems which separate Christianity from both of the other reUgions ; and in the third, those which identify Christianity and Judaism, and oppose them both to Heathenism. Under this third class, Baur places the doctrine of the Pseudo-Clementine writings, which we have placed under the head of Ebionitism. Niedner's classification is not essentially diverse from that of Baur. Niedner also has a second classification based on the more friendly or more hostile relations of pistis and gnosis in the several systems. Neander makes two leading divisions, the criterion being the relation of the Gnostic systems to the religion of the Old Testament. The ground of the distinction is a milder or a sharper duaUsm. The principle of the world and the state of the world are conceived of either as only making up a lower sphere, or as wholly foreign and adverse to the Supreme Being. 56 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE There was supposed to be either a continuous development running through pre-Christian and Christian times, or there was the denial of any such unity. There was either a connecting, or a sundering, of the Old and the New Testament. The first division embraces the Alexandrian systems; the second, the Syrian. But in the second division, the opponents of Judaism may, or may not, exhibit a leaning towards Heathenism. Simon Magus is without doubt an historical person whose existence and influence are attested not only in the book of Acts (viu. 9 sq.), but also by Justin Martyr, who was himself a native of Samaria.* Simon was considered by his adherents " that power of God which is great,"" and was reverenced as the incarna tion of the godhead. His companion, who wandered about with him, Helena, was styled Ennoia, the first thought, the creative intelligence of the Deity. Simon mingled in his teachings astrology and the arts of magic. An influential follower was Menander, and another Samaritan leader of like character and pretensions was Dositheus. Cerinthus may be styled an Ebionitic Gnostic, or a Gnostical Ebionite. He derived his ideas from Alexandria, but came to Asia Minor, where he was a contemporary of the Apostle John. He represented the Supreme God as utterly separate from any immediate relation to matter. Between them are ranks of angels, one of whom, in a lower grade, was the maker of the world and the God of the Jews. Cerinthus rejected the miraculous con ception, and held that with Jesus at His baptism a heavenly spirit was united, but forsook Him at the beginning of His sufferings. The Roman writer, Caius, imputes to him a sensuous Chiliastic belief, but this statement may be a mistaken inference. Hippoly tus says that Cerinthus held to circumcision and the Sabbath. We begin now with the Syrian Gnosis. Saturninus lived proba bly in the time of Hadrian. In his system the highest God, the " Father Unknown," creates a realm of spirits in descending gradations, the spirits of the seven planets being on the lowest stage. By them, or by the Demiurge at their head, the -visible world was made, and also man. The Demiurge is the God of the Jews. A divine spark has been imparted by the Supreme to the race of men. Over the realm of matter, or the Hyle, Satan presides. The human race is composed of two classes diamet- 1 Apol. I, 56. 2 Dial, c. Tryp. 130. ANCIENT THEOLOGY ry rically opposed. The good God sends an ^on. Nous, who appears in an unreal body as a Saviour to deliver the spiritual class, not only from Satan, but also from the Demiurge and the associated planetary spirits. The means of deUverance embrace abstinence from marriage and other forms of asceticism. AUied in their conceptions to the Saturninians were the Ophites, in their various branches, — the Naassenes, the Perata, and others. The Ophites paid reverence to the serpent, as the symbol of hidden, divine wisdom. The maker of the world and God of the Jews is laldabaoth, — Product of Chaos, — a narrow, evil being, full of pride, but forced to carry out the plan of the Supreme, as an instrument. To his psychical Christ the Heavenly Christ descends from the pleroma, and, when the for mer is crucified, places himself at the right hand of laldabaoth, where, invisible to the latter, he guides all spiritual life upward from its debasing mixture with matter into the pleroma. The Cainites, who were a branch of the Ophite class, revered the bad characters of the Old Testament as the really good, belonging to the pneumatic natures. Of the Alexandrian type of Gnosticism, Basilides, who, like Saturninus, lived under Hadrian, was the first of the noted leaders. There are two diverse expositions of his system, that given by Irensus, and that of Hippolytus, which is drawn from different sources. According to the latter, Basilides placed at the head of all things the Being who is pure nothing; i.e., nothing concrete, the Ineffable One. From him comes the world- seed, the seminal, chaotic universe, containing in it potentiaUy aU beings, higher and lower, almost numberless, in their distinct spheres. The Archon, who is the God of the Jews, is not hostile to the Supreme, but unconsciously fulfils his designs. The problem is for all beings to develop their nature and to rise each to its appropriate place. It is a scheme of self-evolution. The pneu matic natures, such of them as require purification, — which is the third class of these natures, — are deUvered through the Gospel, which brings in a new period and redemptive influence from the most exalted sources. Jesus is the Soter, a compound " microcosmic " being ; and at His death, the several parts of His being rise each to its proper home. Basilides taught a moderate asceticism in which marriage was not forbidden, although celibacy was commended. He made use of the canonical Gospels, and, 58 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE according to Hippolytus, of the Gospel of John among them; also, of the Episries of Paul. The foremost of his pupils was his son, Isodorus. Later disciples, the Pseudo-BasiUdians, became degenerate and forsook the better tenets of their master. Valentinus was probably an Alexandrian Jew who was con verted to Christianity. He taught in Alexandria and Rome about a.d. 140. His system has clearer logical and philosophical ideas than any other of the Gnostic schemes, and discovers throughout the influence of Platonism. It is the Gnostic system which was most widely diffused and is best known to us. There is an unfold ing of the Absolute into finite forms of being in long succession, and in two spheres, a higher realm, the scene of a theogony, and a lower realm, the sphere of sense. This lower world is the prov ince of the Demiurge, but the human beings formed by him have in them pneumatic elements. Redemption is undertaken by Jesus, the Messiah of the Demiurge, upon whom, at his baptism, the heavenly Soter descends to proclaim divine truth, and by impart ing the Gnosis for the sake of opening the eyes of the pneumatic beings, to aid them in finding their way to the pleroma above. The Demiurge faUs in with the plans of the Soter. The psychical Christ is crucified, but the heavenly Christ prosecutes His redemp tive work to its completion. In all this, Judaism is not presented as antagonistic, but as subordinate, to the supreme powers. Marcion is the most prominent figure among the Anti- Judaic Gnostics. Yet, such are the pecuUarities of his system that he stands in important respects by himself. He was born in Asia Minor, and came to Rome about a.d. 140. His intensely practi cal temper and his moral earnestness are traits which command respect. Deeply moved by the revelation of the merciful char acter of God in the Gospel of Salvation, and by the Apostle Paul's proclamation of the freedom and universaUty of divine grace, Mar cion conceived that the Old Testament system, especially its rep resentations of the character of God, are in contradiction to the truth which had so profoundly stirred his sympathy. He inferred that the Old Testament could not have had the same origin as the Gospel. He magnified the contrast of law and grace into a direct antagonism. Moreover, nature struck him as imperfect, and therefore as not proceeding from the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. Marcion assumed the existence of three principles : Hyle, or matter, which is eternal ; the God of love, incapable of ANCIENT THEOLOGY eg contact with matter ; and the Demiurge, a being of limited power who strives with but partial success to form and shape matter. The resistance of this element to the Demiurge is concentrated in Satan. The Demiurge is a God of justice, but justice, retributive displeasure, penalty, are incompatible with Love. Christianity, therefore, is an utterly new system, standing in no organic connec tion with the former dispensation. It is hostUe alike to Judaism and heathenism. Without an insight into the progressive char acter of divine revelation, and not resorting, like so many of his contemporaries, to allegory as a solvent of difficulties, he had no alternative but altogether to discard the Old Testament. The Demiurge, he held, created men after his own image, giving them material bodies, subject to evil desires, and revealed himself to the Jews whom he chose for his own people. He gave them a law made up of externals, together with a defective system of morals, void of an inner, life-giving principle. He promised them a world-conquering Messiah who should bring the heathen to a rigid judgment. But the good God would not suffer this harsh sentence to be carried out. In the fifteenth year of Tiberius, He suddenly descended to Capernaum, in an unreal body, but styled Himself the Messiah. Jesus, however, was not the Demiurge's Messiah, and disregarded his laws. The Demiurge caused Him to be crucified. But His sufferings were only apparent ; the Demi urge saw himself deceived and his power destroyed. Christ de scended to Hades and transported the poor heathen to the third heaven. He then revealed Himself to the Demiurge and com pelled him to acknowledge his guilt in crucifying an innocent per son. It is only those who reject the feUowship of God who faU under the Demiurge's avenging justice. Marcion regarded Paul as the only true Apostle. The other Apostles had corrupted the Gospel. For this reason he accepted no other Gospel except that of Luke, from which he endeavored to eliminate passages not congraous with his ideas of the Law. With this Gospel, which was acceptable to him parriy on account of the relation of the author to Paul, he joined ten of Paul's Epis tles. Marcion asserted no higher place for a gnosis above the faith of ordinary Christians. His code of morals was ascetic. Marriage and the partaking of flesh and of wine were abjured. His system was an aggressive one and was zealously propa gated. The Marcionites were found in Egypt and Syria, as weU 60 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE as in Italy and Africa. The number of polemical books written against them indicates how wide was the diffusion of the sect in its different branches. Its votaries were stiU found several cen turies after the death of its founder. The danger to which the Church and the Christian religion were exposed from the seductive influences of Gnosticism was far greater than the peril arising from the antipodal heresy of Ebioni tism. Ebionitism was the straggle of an obsolescent system to maintain its standing. It was a desperate effort to cling to a re ceding past. The freedom and catholicity of the Gospel were truths too evident to be obscured, and too precious to be surren dered. The exaltation of Christ in His relation to God was felt to be vitally connected with the Christian experience of Recon ciUation through Him, and too plain in the Apostolic teaching to be given up. But the Gnostic sects professed to furnish a rational and comprehensive system of religious truth, in which redemption through Christ should have a place of honor. They connected with their doctrines the charm of mystery, holding out to the initiated the welcome promise of light, and alluring many by ascetic prescriptions. Christianity manifested its innate power in withstanding this flood of error. The doctrine of one God, of the origin of sin, not in any natural necessity, but in a moral fall, and the doctrine of a real incarnation, proved to be barriers too strong to be swept away. Gnosticism stands on the page of history as a perpetual warning against all endeavors to substitute a physical or metaphysical for an ethical doctrine of sin and redemption. One of the marked effects of the Gnostical theories was the influence exerted by them in stimulating the development of theology within the limits of the Church. It may almost be said that it was in the storm and stress occasioned by the Gnostical move ment that Christian theology was roused to grapple with its most weighty problems. The indirect agency of the Gnostic move ment in determining the character of the old-Catholic church is manifest. CHAPTER V THE BEGINNINGS OF THEOLOGY : THE GREEK APOLOGISTS The beginnings of Christian theology are to be found in the Greek Apologists. These writiers treat Christianity predominantly as a body of teachings pertaining to religion and morals. It is true that we must bear in mind the special regard which they have to the character and situation of those whom they address. This circumstance is not sufficient, however, to explain their pervading tendency. It is really the point of view from which they habitually look at the Gospel. Justin Martyr, in the early part of the First Apology, in a summary way describes Chris tianity as consisting of the doctrine of the true God, in contrast with the superstitions of the heathen — who, with the exception of the philosophers, are misled by the demons — of the doctrine of virtue, and of rewards and punishments in the world hereafter.' The Gospel is a new and improved philosophy the truth of which is attested by revelation. There is this heaven-given guarantee of its trath, which is wholly wanting to the heathen in reference to the beliefs which they have in common with Christians. This claim for Christianity that it is a philosophy, and as such merits attention and respect, pervades the Apologetic literature. Even Tatian, who speaks with scorn of the pride of the Greeks and the boasting and wrangling of the philosophers, professed to be the disciple of an older philosophy, superior in its contents, although of "barbaric origin," and having the peculiar merit of being accessible to aU, "the rich and the poor," even "old women and stripHngs."" The Apologists are at pains to adduce from the heathen sages ideas and precepts coincident with those of the Gospel. Their teachings, it is affirmed, are mixed to some extent 1 Apol. L 9-12. Cf -6-8, 13-20. " Orat. c. xxxii. Cf. xxxv., xiii. 61 62 HISTORY OF CHFLiSTIAN DOCTRINE with error. They are borrowed, it is sometimes alleged, from the older teaching of Moses and the prophets. Yet, Justin emphati cally maintains, what is best in Plato and the other philosophers was imparted by the divine Logos, who did not withhold light even from those guides of the heathen. Christ, says Justin, " is the Logos (or Word) of whom the whole human race are par takers, and those who Uved according to reason are Christians, even though accounted atheists. Such among the Greeks were Socrates and Heraclitus, and those who resembled them." ' Justin is not silent respecting the work of Christ as a Redeemer. It was a part of the mission of Christ to overcome the demons." "He cleansed by His blood those who believed on Him.'" By His blood and the mystery of His cross. He bought us.* Yet in some places there is coupled with expressions of this kind lan guage indicating that, nevertheless, it is the teaching of Christ which holds the central place in Justin's thoughts. In keeping with this way of looking at Christianity as a coUection of tenets respecting God and duty and future rewards and punishments, is the view taken of its proofs. It is true that the Apologists do not fail to refer to the purity and elevation of Christian doctrines, in comparison with ethnic teaching. They dwell, moreover, with emphasis on the restraining and refining power of Christianity as evinced in the lives of its adherents. But the grand proof on which reliance is placed is the miracle of prophecy. The appeal is constantly made to the marveUous correspondence of the history of Christ with the predictions of the Old Testament. Here is the Gibraltar in which the early Greek defenders of the faith plant themselves. We proceed now to speak separately of the leading points in the theology of Justin in their proper order. In his writings a certain contrast is perceptible between what strike us as custom ary phrases respecting the Gospel — expressions used, to be sure, with no lack of sincerity — and the interpretations of Christianity which spring from his own reflection, under the influence of his phUosophical bent.' We find him attributing to God aU the varied personal attributes and agencies which it is usual for * Apol. I. 46. s Apol. I. 32. Cf. Dial. 40, 54. 2 Ibid. I. 45; II. 6; Dial. 131. * Dial. 134. 5 The difference here pointed out is well illustrated by Purves in The Testitnony of fustin Martyr to Early Christianity (1S89). ANCIENT THEOLOGY 63 Christian believers to ascribe to Him. He is the living God, just and compassionate, the Father and Maker of all, knowing all things, ruUng all, caring for the individual as well as for the worid in its totality. Yet we have presented prominently another con ception, Platonic and Alexandrian Jewish, of God as the tran scendent, ineffable One, too exalted to be the subject of definite predicates, the ordinary representations of Him being merely relative to our finite apprehension. It is only through an inter mediate being that He is revealed. It is through the Logos or Word, that God is manifested. Justin knew and used the Fourth Gospel. It is not reasonable to suppose that the identifying of Christ with the Logos in the extent to which he carries it, is to be explained had he not been conscious of a warrant from Apos tolic authority. Yet Justin's particular idea of the Logos is not consonant with that of John, but corresponds to that of Plato and PhUo. The Logos of Justin is not, as in the Palestinian sources, including John, the Word of God, but the divine Reason. The Logos, impersonal in God from the beginning, becomes personal prior to the creation. " God begot of Himself a beginning, before aU creatures, a certain reasonable Power, which is caUed by the Holy Ghost, Glory of the Lord, at other times Son, Wisdom, Angel, God, Lord, and Logos." * In the production of the Son, God was not Himself changed, more than a man's mind is changed by the utterance of a word, or a fire lessened by having another fire kindled from it. He is the only-begotten by the Father of all things." He is from the Father " not by abscission, as if the Father's essence were divided off."' He is not an emanation as the light emanates from the sun.* The language of Justin implies that the inner nature of the Son is identical with that of the Father. The sonship of Christ is thus traced back to the ante-mundane generation of the hypostatic Logos. Moreover, the Logos, next to the Father, is the recipient of divine honors. He is associated with the Father when it is said, " Let us make man in our own image" (Gen. i. 26).' It was the Logos who appeared in the theophanies of the Old Testament. Neverthe less, Justin does not fuUy succeed in taking Christ out of the category of creatures. He is begotten, or assumes a personal form of being, by an act of God's will. He was generated from 1 Dial. 61. 2 ii,iii_ J05. 3 iinci_ 128. ? Ibid. 128. ^ Ibid. 62. ^4 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE the Father " by his power and wiU." * The Logos is another " in number," but not in "mind (or wiU)."" There is a personal distinction, but this is not eternal, and it springs from an act of God's will, anterior to the creation of the world.' To the Son is assigned the second place in relation to the eternal God.* More over, while the " unbegotten God " does not move, nor is he con tained in any place, the Logos enters into the limits of place and time.' In Tatian and Athenagoras, the Logos is from eternity potentially in God, and " came forth to be the idea and energiz ing power of all material things." ^ " By his simple wiU," says Tatian, " the Logos springs forth," " the first-begotten work of the Father," " the beginning of the world." Here is no abscission, there is a participation on the part of the Logos,' a function devolved on the Logos, the power or principle from which he springs being stUl inherent in the Father.' Theophilus distin guishes the internal Logos from the Logos expressed.' The former is said to be not distinguishable from God's mind and thought.'" The Logos is the organ of divine revelation. It is God who creates, but the rationality of the creation springs from the Logos. He bears, according to Justin, the closest relation to the reason of man. The human reason is akin to the divine, and all of its perceptions of truth are derived, in a way that is only vaguely indicated, from the Logos. Justin speaks of the " seminal Logos " of whom all men partake. To the Logos are ascribed functions which a riper theology, in conformity with Scripture, attributes to the Holy Spirit. Justin says that it was the Logos who caused the Virgin Mother to conceive.** Littie space is left in human history for the activity of the Holy Spirit. It is the Logos which inspires the prophets and is everywhere active. Yet Justin speaks 1 Dial. 128, He is /j.oi'oycvris (only-begotten) — Dial. 105. When He is called first-bom (Trpwriro/cos) it is not implied that beings and things below Him are begotten in the same sense. On this topic see the remarks of Engel- hardt (in answer to Weizsacker), p. 146. 2 Cf. Dial. 56, 62, 128, 129. 3 Apol. II. 6. * Dial. 127, cf 34, 60. 5 Ibid. 127 ; cf 34, 60. Athenagoras, to. ^ Athenagoras, 10. ' He comes into being /card /lepuriiiv. Tatian, i;. 5. 8 4vSid9eTos. 10 Ad. Autol. II. 10, 22. " irpo0opiK6s. li Apol. I. 33. ANCIENT THEOLOGY 65 of the Spirit in conjunction with the Father and Christ, in such terms as naturally to imply that the Spirit is regarded as distinct from both, although subordinate to them.* It is evident that his conception of the Holy Spirit and of the relation of the Spirit to the Father and Son is not well defined in his own thoughts." It is clear that Justin considered the humanity of Christ a reality and not an iUusive appearance. But in one particular a question arises respecting his views on this subject. In one passage he 1 Apol. I. 13, 61, 65, 67. Cf Dial. I, 4, 29. 2 In Apol. I. 6, Justin enumerates as the objects of Christian worship the most true God, the Son who came from Him, " and the host of other good angels," and the Spirit of Prophecy. The placing of the angels in the list before the Spirit was probably an accident, being suggested not unlikely by the mention of the Son as sent from God; that is, as a messenger, the literal sense of " angel." But what of the worship which is said to be accorded to angels ? As Justin nowhere else refers to a worship of angels, but asserts that only the Father, Son, and Spirit are to be worshipped (Apol. I. 13, 61, 65, 66), it is probable that the term ' worship ' is used in Apol. I. 6, without reflection, in a loose sense, his aim being here to confute the charge of atheism. The Christians, he would say, are not so destitute, as you assert, of celestial objects of veneration. The apologetic motive leads Justin here to show that these are numerous. (On this point, see Baumgarten-Crusius, DG., p. 175, note I. The various opinions upon the sense of the passage are given in Otto's ed. of Justin, ad loc.') It must be observed, however, that Justin represented mate rial things and the care of men to have been committed to the charge of angels (Apol. II. 5). There is ground for the remark of Neander, that " we may observe a wavering between the idea of the Holy Ghost as one of the members of the Triad, and a spirit standing in some relationship with the angels." {Church History, Vol. I. p. 609. See especially the note on the same page.) On this subject, there is an instructive passage in Engelhardt, p. 146. His quotation from Nitzsch (DG., p. 186) is worthy of attention. Athenagoras makes a part of Christianity, " t4 deoXoyiiibv fi^pos " — or the doc trine of God — the affirmation of a multitude of angels and servants — " mean ing, probably, angels that are servants — whom the Creator has appointed to occupy themselves with the elements, and the heavens and the world and the things that are in it, and with the regulating of them" (Emb. 10. Cf c. 24). Here there seems to be the recognition of divine beings of a secondary class. The subordination of all these to the one God and Father was felt to be adequate to the securing of monotheism. "So fluctuating (fliessend) and indeterminate," says Thomasius (DG., i, 175) "is everything as yet. The above-named Church teachers are themselves still struggling for the expression that shall correspond to the common Christian faith." Or, in the words of Neander, " the common (Christian) feeling did not find at once its correspond ing expression in the forms evolved by the understanding." ( Church History, I. 609.) F 66 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE speaks of Christ as composed of body. Logos, soul.* Since he elsewhere analyzes human nature into three elements, spirit, soul — that is, animal soul — and body, it is inferred that in his con ception of Christ, the Logos takes the place of the rational human spirit. It is not certain, however, that he might not use " soul " in the more comprehensive sense." It is not unlikely that the question was not in his own mind a subject of discriminating thought. Justin asserts creation to have been by an act of the divine will. But it is principaUy to the ordering of the world, the forming of the cosmos, that his attention is directed. There is no explicit rejection of the doctrine of the eternity of the preexisting matter, the chaotic material.' Even if he himself did not hold the Pla tonic view, as did his pupil, Tatian, he nevertheless does not consider that opinion an error of sufficient moment to caU for a denial of it. In common with the other Apologists, Justin is strenuous in his repudiation of Stoic fatalism. His earnestness in asserting the liberty and responsibiUty of the individual carries along with it the failure adequately to perceive the power of sinful habit. Sin, he teaches, was brought into the world by the agency of demons, but hot without the consent of the transgressor in each case of guilt. And it is stUl in the power of men to cast off sin by the exertion of their own wiUs.^ There is no predestination to sin, but simply foreknowledge of it. All men wiU be judged, each for himself, " like Adam and Eve." ' It has been remarked that when Justin makes the ordinary statements respecting the efficacy of the cross, it is not an expia tory work of Christ which is prominent in his mind. It is the Incarnation rather than the Atonement that interests him. Yet a passage quoted by Irenaeus from Justin's lost work against Mar cion, suggests that in the other writings not extant Justin may have had something more definite to teach on this last theme. In this passage, he speaks of the only-begotten Son as sent into 1 (Tu/ia, X670!, fvxi} — Apol. II. 10. 2 The interpretation of Justin is impartially discussed, with a statement of arguments on both sides, by Domer, Person Christi, I. 433 sq. ' The attitude of Justin on this point is well explained by Engelhardt, pp. 139, 140. * Apol. I. 28, 43, 44; Apol. II. 7; Dial, 88, 102, 140. 6 Dial 124. ANCIENT THEOLOGY 67 the worid from the Father, and " gathering in Himself the work of His own hands — suum plasma in semetipsum recapitulans." In Irenaeus, as we shaU see, the gathering up (recapitulatio) of mankind in Christ as their head is the thought at the root of his exposition of the Atonement.* Justin believed in the doctrine of a temporal miUennium, which in the second century was widely diffused. Christ was to come in a -visible advent, and make Jerusalem the centre of His king dom, which was to continue for a thousand years and was to be foUowed by the resurrection and the judgment. In the Dialogue with Trypho he teaches that there will be two resurrections, sepa rated by the interval of the miUennium." The Second Advent was not far distant. The Jews are not described as to be in any way distinguished in the triumphal advent of the Lord. Nothing is said of a restoration of them to Jerusalem. Justin departs from Plato in affirming that souls are not essen tially immortal. Their continuance in being depends forever on the wUl of God. The statement is not seldom reiterated, that punishment in the world to come is eternal. The idea that it is supposed by Justin to terminate, and that immortality in the strict sense is made conditional on being righteous, is erroneously in ferred from what is said of dependence on the will of God for the continuance of being. " Immortality " in Justin, as in other Apologists, includes the vision of God and blessed fellowship with Him. This it is that the wicked are to be forever deprived of. " I affirm," he says, " that souls never perish — • for this would be in truth a godsend to the wicked.'" "We have been taught that they only will attain to immortality who lead holy and vir tuous lives like God ; and we believe that all who live wickedly, and do not repent, wiU be punished in eternal fire."* Of the intermediate state of the condition of souls, whether righteous or wicked, prior to the resurrection, nothing definite is said by Justin. The Church, in Justin's conception of it, was a Gentile commu nity. The number of Jews who had accepted the Gospel is said to be small. He would not deny feUowship to Jewish believers who kept up the Mosaic ceremonies, provided they did not strive to induce Gentile Christians to adopt them. This was the limit 1 Irenaeus, Adv. Hcer. IV. 6, 2. ' 'Y^pp-aiav. Dial. 5. 2DiaL8i, 113. *Apol. I. 21. Cf. Dial. 1 30, Apol. I. 28. 68 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE of his charity in this direction. In his teaching relative to the origin of the new Ufe in the Christian soul, and its continuance, there are found what have been not inaptly caUed Pelagian statements in juxtaposition with teaching of an opposite character. On the one hand, the Christian Ufe is said to begin in the vir tuous choice, a choice that is spoken of as if it were wholly self- originated and self-sustained ; and, on the other hand, there is not whoUy wanting a recognition of an opening of " the gates of life " by divine grace, " the grace of understanding." * Now Baptism is spoken of as ensuing upon a conviction of the truth of Christianity and a self-dedication to a life of virtue, and again it is described as " regeneration " and as bringing " illumination " to the soul." Baptism brings the remission of sins previously committed. It thus clears the way to a hopeful endeavor to voluntary efforts to obtain the rewards of heaven through a course of obedience.' As regards the Lord's Supper, nothing is said of any direct effect of it to remove sin or guUt. But our flesh and blood are said to be nourished by assimilating'' the bread and wine of the sacrament, — nourished, the meaning probably is, with reference to the resurrection and the future life of " incor ruption." The food thus received is said to be " the flesh and blood of Jesus." * The idea of Justin appears to be that the divine Logos is mysteriously present in the bread and wine, as in the Incarnate Christ. There is no probabiUty that literal tran- substantiation is meant. The pearl of the Apologetic literature is the Epistle to Diognetus. None of the early writings of this class rival it in spirit and impres siveness. The author faUs to discern, as it would seem, the pre paratory office of the Mosaic system, and puts the sacrifices and ceremonies of the Jews as on the same level with the external ser vices rendered by the heathen to their divinities. The true char acter of Christian disciples and the cruelty with which they were treated he depicts with nervous eloquence. The incarnation and divinity of Christ are asserted with all earnestness. The Creator of the Universe has sent to men, not an angel or any other subaltern, but "the Artificer and Creator of the Universe Himself," by whom He made and ordered aU things. He sent Him not to ' Dial. 7, 30. 2 Apol. I. 61. 3 /iij_ I 66. * The passage is in Apol. I. 66. This is the sense of /ieTo/SoXi);.. See Otto's fustin, I. p. 180 (ed. 3). ANCIENT THEOLOGY 69 inspire terror. He sent Him to use persuasion, not force. He sent Him "as sending God," and "as [a man] unto men."* " He sent His only-begotten Son." He communicated His merciful plan to His Son alone." He planned everything in His mind with His Son.' "The Word, who was from the beginning. . . . He, I say who was eternal, who to-day was accounted a Son" — by Him the riches of grace are bestowed on the faithful and on aU who seek for it.* If Justin touches lightly the Atonement, the opposite is true of the author of this Epistle. God " in pity took on Him our sins, and Himself parted with His own Son as a ran som for us, the holy for the lawless, the just for the unjust. . . . In whom was it possible for us lawless and ungodly men to have been justified, save only in the Son of God? O the sweet ex change. . . . that the iniquity of many should be concealed in One Righteous Man," etc' The love and pity of God are set forth in glowing words ; yet the penalty that awaits the wicked and unrepenting is "eternal fire.'" 1 Epist. ad Diognet. c. 7. ' c. 8. ' c. 9. * c, 11. " c. 10. CHAPTER VI THE RISE OF THE OLD CATHOLIC CHURCH — THE RULE OF FAITH — THE CANON — THE EPISCOPATE — THE RISE AND THE EXCLUSION OF MONTANISM The course of the development of doctrine is intimately con nected with the rise of the Ancient CathoUc Church. An essen tial element in this historic change is indicated in the new mean ing which came to be attached to the term ' Catholic' In Ignatius it signifies Christians generally, the Church of which Christ is the centre, in contrast vidth each local church, the centre of which is the bishop. The contrast is between the CathoUc Church and a particular body of Christians.* Later, in the age of Irenaeus, the Catholic Church has come to signify orthodox Christianity in its organized form in the world at large, as this Church stands aloof from heretical sects. The three principal topics which we have to consider under the general subject are the Baptismal Confession or "Apostles' Creed" and the "Rules of Faith," Tradition and Scripture, including the rise of the Canon, and organization under the developed Episcopate. I. The authoritative source of Christian knowledge was always considered to be the Teaching of the Lord through the Twelve Apostles, which forms the titie of the Didache. In phraseology of this kind the teaching of the Apostle Paul was understood to be included. The instruction given to the young and to the con verts was not confined to an inculcation of the precepts of the Gospel such as we find in Hermas and the Didache. The baptismal formula, as we find it in Matthew, was early expanded into a brief statement of fundamental truths. As thus enlarged it was repeated by the candidates for baptism and served as the basis of preliminary instruction. Probably as early as the third 1 Smyrn. 8. See Lightfoot, Ignatius and Polycarf, II. i, p. 310. 70 ANCIENT THEOLOGY -j century the story had sprang up that this Confession of faith was not only made up of elements common to the Apostles' teaching, but also that it was composed by the Aposries themselves, each of them contributing a portion. The legend grew until it finally embraced the statement that the creed was brought to Rome by Peter. The oldest form of this Confession of which we have any knowledge is the Roman Symbol. It was in use in the Church at Rome before the middle of the second century. It read as foUows : " I believe in God, the Father Almighty, and in Christ Jesus his only-begotten Son, our Lord, who was born of the Holy Spirit and the Vhgin Mary, was crucified under Pontius Pilate and was buried, on the third day He rose from the dead, (He) as cended into Heaven, (He) sitteth at the right hand of the Father, whence He wiU come to judge the quick and the dead ; and in (the) Holy Spirit, the Holy Church, the remission of sins, the resurrection of the body. Amen."* This creed is thought by Zahn to have been in use in Ephesus as early as 130." There are not wanting arguments in favor of the opinion that it originated in Asia Minor.' Near the end of the century it is found in Smyrna, in Southern Gaul, and in Carthage. In somewhat modi fied forms the creed spread among the churches of the East and West.* In the shape which it assumed in Southern Gaul, probably in the fifth century, it estabHshed itself in the churches in com munion -with Rome, superseding the older forms. In the East it was not ascribed to the Apostles, and since there was no check upon mutations in its text, it melted away, never gaining a perma nent lodgment among the authoritative creeds. Under the influence of the disciplina arcani — the obligation of silence respecting the mysteries of the Christian faith — the Apostles' Creed was not committed to writing or disclosed to the heathen. But under the name of " rales of faith," we find in Irenaeus, TertuUian and Origen, statements of Christian doctrine which are equivalent to a paraphrase or expansion of the creed. 1 Hahn, Biblioth. d. Symb., etc., 15. See the texts and critical remarks in Kattenbusch, Das Apostol. Symbol, I. pp. 59-78. 2 Zahn, Apostol. Symbol, etc. (2 ed. 1893), p. 47. ' Kattenbusch, however, maintains the reverse — that the " Grundstock " of the Oriental symbols is the Roman. Ibid. I. 368-392. * See the collection of these forms in Denziger, Enchirid. Symboll. et Definitt,, pp. 1-8. 72 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE These are the regula. fidei} They are not the same, save as to their substance, in the different writers. In Irenaeus the Rule of Faith is presented, in three places, in as many different forms. In TertuUian also there are three varying forms of the regula. But the Rules of Faith are represented to be the beUef of " the Church, scattered through the whole world," — the belief " which has been received from the Apostles and their Disciples." " In this definite, authoritative teaching, the Church everywhere finds a bulwark against Gnostical innovations and perversions. It is a waU about the Church for defence against open and covert assaults. If one would ascertain what the Apostles taught, we are told that it is only necessary to repair to the churches which they planted and within which their doctrines have been preserved.' These churches are so many witnesses against the novelties of heresy.* II. At the beginning of the second century there was no Canon of the New Testament.' That is to say, there was no body of New Testament writings which were recognized by the churches as authoritative scriptures. As far as writings are concemed, the Old Testament was in the foreground of their thoughts and con stituted their Bible. It was to the Old Testament that they referred their adversaries in proof of the divine mission of Jesus and of the facts of the Gospel. They appealed to the correspond ence between prediction and fulfilment. At first the eyes of Christian believers were directed upwards with a yearning expec tation of the advent of the Lord. For a time tradition did not become in a perceptible degree insecure. The combined influence of oral narration and writings of Apostles and their disciples suf ficed for the understanding of what Christianity was. There was no distinct impression of the fact that the period of revelation had 1 They are collected in Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, II. 12 sq. 2 Iren. Adv. Hcer. I. 10, I. ' TertuUian, de Preiser, u. 36. Iren. Adv. Hcer. III. 3, i sq. * TertuUian, de Prcescr. c. 21. ° The title " Canon " as a designation of the normative Scriptures first appears in the 59th Canon of the Council of Laodicea (a.d. 363) and in the Festal Epistle of Athanasius. On the origin and meaning of the term ' canon,' see Westcott, Hist, of the Canon, p. I and App. A. For the names given to the Bible, — "The Scripture," "The Scriptures," "The Holy Scriptures," "The Scriptures of the Lord" (a! (cupio/cai ypa. De Exhort. Cast. .7. 2 Cheetham, Ch. History, p. 128. G §2 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE of himself as the inspired organ of the promised Paraclete, and the announcement of the restoration of the primitive gifts of the Spirit. The Father and the Son were now really to take up their abode in the souls of beUevers. Prophets and prophetesses were again supernaturally inspired to utter heaven-given messages. Joined with Montanus were two prophetesses conceived to be thus iUuminated, Prisca and Maximilla. The Lord Himself was shortly to come in person, and to establish His kingdom at Pepuza in Phrygia. In this place Christians were summoned by the new prophets to assemble. To prepare for this kingdom, an austere strictness of life was enjoined. Celibacy was to be practiced, fasting was to be strict and was to be regulated by fixed rales. DeUnquents were to be subjected to severe ecclesiastical penalties. Such as were excommunicated from the Church were not to be received back. Montanism spread in Asia Minor and in other places. It attracted a qualified sympathy in the churches of Southern Gaul, and was regarded for a time at Rome with con siderable favor. In North Africa especiaUy, it won numerous con verts, of whom TertuUian is the most famous. Not a few, and among them Irenaeus, were not disposed to question the reaUty of the revived gift of prophecy, but rejected the extravagant notions which the Montanists associated with their tenet on this subject. Montanism was condemned so far as it was unfriendly to the insti tutional system, which was too firmly established to be weakened. The ground taken by TertuUian was that the power of binding and loosing belonged not to the bishop, but that to the prophet as the organ of the Spirit it belonged to determine whether the repenting offender in any case is forgiven of God. He may be thus forgiven without being received back into the communion of the visible Church, which is bound in its discipline to prevent in the future, as far as it can, transgressions of the same character. The contests in the Church on this matter of the discipUne of the excommunicated or of those deserving this sentence, and on the connected question of the authority of the bishop, were strenuous and long continued. It was against the lax principles of CaUistus, the Roman bishop (217-222), respecting the treatment of such as had faUen into mortal sin that Hippolytus led a schismatical party. It was a resistance to what was considered a secularizing spirit that had crept into the Church along with its growth in numbers. In North Africa, Cyprian, who was at first a rigorist on the disci- ANCIENT THEOLOGY 83 pUnary question, engaged in a struggle against the schismatics, led by Felicissimus, who contended that the certificates of faithful confessors of the faith should secure readmission to the Church for such as had forsaken the faith in the Decian persecution. The formidable schism of Novatian was in opposition to Corne lius, Bishop of Rome, who was chosen to this office in 251, and was on the side of leniency. Cyprian was induced to favor on the whole the cause of Cornelius. The Novatians made a distinction between forgiveness by God and reception into the communion of the Church. The one might take place without the other. The Church must guard its purity with sedulous care. It must keep its doors shut against those who had been guilty of a mortal sin. This tenet was a direct denial of the doctrine that without the Church there is no salvation. Numerous Novatian churches were formed. They sprung up in almost all parts of the Empire. The broader theory, which laid stress on the truth that the tares must grow with the wheat, and made higher claims for the hierarchy, prevaUed. But it was not until after the Donatist controversy, near the end of the fourth and in the beginning of the fifth cen tury, that the cathoUc and hierarchical view gained a fully decisive victory. The exclusion of the Montanist societies was only one step in the advance towards it. But Montanism left behind a marked influence upon the spirit and polity of the Catholic Church. The clergy were brought under severe rales of disci pline from which the laity were exempt. An impetus was given to the tendency to recognize two types of Christian Ufe and char acter, the lower or merely salvable type and the ascetic type, standing on a higher plane as to sanctity of conduct and the prospect of heavenly rewards. CHAPTER VII THE CATHOLIC DOCTRINE IN THE ASIA MINOR SCHOOL : IREN^US, MELITO OF SARDIS IN THE NORTH AFRICAN SCHOOL : TERTULLIAN — THE ALEXANDRIAN CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY : CLEMENT Iren^us was born m Asia Minor. With the traditions in the churches there he is famUiar. His type of thought is not -with out traces of the Johannine teaching, the influence of which prevaUed in the region where he spent his youth. In his appre ciation of the truth of redemption through the incarnate Christ, the truth to which is given the central place in his system, he rises above the point of view of the Greek Apologists. Nevertheless, in his writings elements akin to their more rational izing apprehension of Christian doctrine mingle here and there with more positive and profound interpretations of the Gospel. And side by side with views which are incongraous in their tendency he admits the chiliastic tradition in Eschatology. The antagonist of Gnostic speculation, Irenaeus, in the cast of his mind, is intensely practical. We are not to swerve firom the plain teaching of the Scriptures and from the rale of faith which embodies it in outUne.* That is his maxim. What if we cannot discover solutions of all questions ? This is no reason for forsaking what is plainly taught. " Such things we ought to leave to God." Nature, too, is full of mysteries. What causes the rise of the NUe and the ebb and flow of the ocean? Instead of prying into things inscrutable pertaining to God, we should seek to rise to Him in love and devotion. Apostolic teaching, attested by Scripture and tradition, is the norm of faith. The di-vine essence is inconceivable. Our knowledge of God is relative. The language which we utter concerning Him is figurative." 1 Adv. Hcer. II. 27, 28. " j^^^ jj, ,3^ 3, 4. 84 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 85 God creates the world out of nothing.* Sin in men and angels is a free act. Why some faU and others do not is a mystery." Yet Irensus suggests that in order to train men to avoid evil and cleave to the good, it was necessary for them to have a pre liminary experiment of both, God meantime foreknowing what would occur and having in mind His plan of deliverance.' Punishment is the necessary consequence of sin. It is provided for, in the foresight that sin would come in.* There is no inter ference with human freedom. The hardening of Pharaoh's heart is not a direct act of God. It is the incidental result of Pharaoh's own character. The same is true of judicial blindness in those who reject the Gospel.' Christ is the only-begotten Son of God, the Logos, through whom God reveals Himself. He was forever with the Father.^ The idea of emanation is rejected. The mode of the generation of the Son is incomprehensible.' The Logos is included in the divine Being, but the distinction of the immanent and expressed Word is not admitted. There is no separation between the Son and the Father, yet they are not confounded. That the personal distinction of Father and Son is eternal is not distinctly affirmed, but it is implied.' The Holy Spirit is likewise ever with the Father. It is " the Word and Wisdom, Son and Spirit," by whom and in whom God freely does all things.' The Holy Spirit, as well as the Son, is included in God. As there is a certain subordination of the Son to the Father, so the Spirit is subordinate to both.*" But the special offices of the Spirit are left in a measure indefinite. The incarnation had for its end to bring mankind back to feUowship with God. Through sin man is aUenated from God and made a prey to corruption and death. The Son of God becomes man in order to reunite God and man. It is not, in truth, untU after the faU that the union of man to God is, in and through Christ, fully realized. " It became the Mediator between God and man, through his intimate relation ship to both to bring both into friendship and concord, and, whUe presenting man to God, to make God known to men." ** In many 1 Adv. Hcer. II. 28, 3; 30, 9. ' Ibid. II. 28, 4, 5. 2 Ibid. II. 28, 7. ' See Duncker, Des heilig. Iren. Christol, p. 50 sq. ^ Ibid. IV. 39, I. " Irenaeus, Adv. Ha:r. IV. 20, 1. 4 Ibid. II. 28, 7. *° Ibid. I. 3, 5, in the Greek text. See Loofs, p. 127 6 Ibid. IV. 29, 30. " Ibid. III. 18, 7. 6 Ibid. II. 30, 9; III. 18. l; II. 25, 3. 86 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE ways the full humanity of Christ is emphasized. If the reaUty of both the human and the divine nature is not explicitly affirmed, it is clearly implied. When, in insisting on the unity of the person of Christ, it is spoken of as a mixture of the divine and human,* such expressions are not to be construed as implying that there was literally a confusion of the two." Christ, the Son incar nate, is the second head of the race. His relation to mankind is designated as a recapitulatio? By this it is meant that in Christ there is a restitution and renewal of the race, a taking up anew of the development at the point where it was broken off by sin. The term includes the idea that the incarnation and work of Christ exert their influence backward as well as forward. Mankind in Christ reverse the course which was entered upon at the fall. There is a renewal of allegiance to God, a renewal and consumma tion of the Ufe in union with Him. " He [Christ] was made that which we are that He might make us completely what He is." * This is the supreme end which He has in view. Hence it was necessary for Christ to go through the successive stages of human Ufe, from infancy onward, that He might sanctify them aU.' In the conception of the work of Christ there are blended, without analytic separation in the author's mind, the two elements of redemption and reconciliation or atonement. He refers to the death of Christ as a substitution for our death. He speaks of the Lord as having redeemed us with His own blood, and given His soul for our souls and His own flesh for our flesh." ' He gave His life as a " ransom " for those in captivity. His death was the salvation of such as believe in Him.' Yet the context of such passages in dicates that the perfecting of the union of Christ with mankind, and the communion of man with God which is thus consummated, is the most prominent thought. Christ is said to have done the work of a High Priest, propitiating God, dying that man might come out of condemnation.' But this bearing of the Saviour's death is not dwelt upon. It is not carried out in any definite form. The central element in the work of Christ is His obedience, whereby 1 Adv. Hcer. IV. 20, 4. 2 See V. 14, i; III. 17, 4. Cf Loofs, DG. p. 94. ' On this term and the conception involved, see Duncker, Des heilit^. Iren. Christol p. 163 sq. ; also Dorner, Person Christi, I. 485 sq. For the doctrine of Irenaeus, see especially, Adv. Hcer. III. i6, 6; 18, 1, 7; V. 14, 2; 19, i ; 21 I. * Adv. Hcer. V. Pref 6 Ibid. V. i, 2. ' 's 'mJ, i\f_ g^' 2. 6 Ibid. II. 22, 4. ' Ibid. IV. 28, 3. ANCIENT THEOLOGY 8/ the disobedience of Adam is canceUed. The end attained as regards men is the destruction of sin and its consequences, the imparting of a new spiritual life which carries with it incorruption, salvation from death. The dominion of Satan was not subverted by force, but in a way befitting order and righteousness ; that is, by a moral conquest over the souls enslaved by him.* The •' ransom " is not spoken of as a prize given to Satan. This view comes into theology at a later day. WhUe, therefore, Irenaeus appreciates the importance of the death of Christ and conceives it as vicarious, the idea of a penal satisfaction is not prominent. Yet the atonement is objective and has an essential place in the righteous order which sin has invaded. The view taken of the sacraments in Irenaeus is in keeping with his idea of the external Church as the exclusive dweUing- place of the Holy Spirit. Regeneration is inseparably associated with baptism. The same term designates the rite and the new birth itself. " Baptism is our new birth unto God."" In Baptism, we are regenerated.' In one passage there is some reason to think that the baptism of infants is recognized.* In the Lord's Supper, the bread after its consecration "is no longer common bread, but a Eucharist constituted of two things, an earthly and a heavenly."' The heavenly element in the bread and wine is the body and blood which the divine Logos mysteriously connects with them. Thus the bread and wine of the sacrament nourish in us a Ufe out of which springs the incorruptible body at the Resurrection. The bread and wine are brought to God as an offering with a prayer of thanks. The act is a symbol that aU that the believers have, and not a tenth alone, is to be brought to God." The later idea of a specific offering to God by the hands of a priest is not involved in this teaching. " Observing the law of the dead," Christ descended into Hades, where He abode for three days, and thither His followers likewise descend. Thence they come forth at the resurrection of the body.'" Irenaeus holds the chiliastic doctrine, quoting the statement of Papias iThis is probably the sense of "suadelam" (in VI. i, i). See Dorner (against Baur), Person Christi, I. p. 479 n. 2 Adv. Hcer. I. 21, i. ' Il>id. III. 17, I. 4 Ibid. II. 22, 4. See Neander, Church History, I. 311. 5 Ibid. IV. 8, 5. ' Ibid. IV. 32, 2, 6 Ibid. IV. 18, 2. 88 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE relating to the vineyard with its colossal grapes.* The punish ment of the wicked is eternal. The impression that Irenaeus teaches the doctrine of the eventual annihilation of the wicked is founded on a misapprehension of the meaning which he attaches to the term ' continuance ' and to certain other terms, and is contradicted in not a few unambiguous passages." The influence of that ethical, as distinguished from evangeU- cal, apprehension of the Gospel, which we have noticed in the Apologists, appears here and there in Irenaeus. This is seen in the peculiar guilt attached to sins committed after baptism. It is seen in the conception of faith in the place where he says that the eternal reward is given to such as beUeve Christ, "being righteous," — adding, " Now to believe Him is to do His -wiU.'" Faith is more often the synonym of belief in the truths which are brought together in the rale of faith, or the word is used, in an objective way, to denote these truths coUectively considered. "We ought to fear," he says, "lest perchance, after the knowl edge of Christ, we do something which is not pleasing to God, and thus have no further remission of sins, but be excluded from His kingdom."* There are two phases of doctrine in Irenaeus. On the one hand, there is the higher, evangelical conception of the new life through the incarnate Son in whom the grace of the Father is revealed. This conception has gained a lodgment in his mind. On the other hand, there are the traces of the "moralism" of the Apologists, which exalts the teaching ele ment in Christianity and makes everything depend on the free choice of the path of obedience. There is a corresponding dif- 1 Adv. Hcer. V. 31, 2. 2 The opinion that Irenaeus accepts the doctrine of " conditional immortal ity " rests on one passage (II. 34, i, 2, 3), where " continuance " (perseveran- tia) and " length of days " are said to be the exclusive reward of the righteous. But " fife," " length of days," " perseverance," which the wicked forfeit, is the better life which comes to the regenerate. " Separation from God is death"; it is the rejection of the good things of God. (See V. 27, 2. Cf V. 4, 3.) The eternity of punishment is taught in various places. See, especially, IV. 28, I, 2; also, IV. 39, 4; IV. 27, 4; III. 23, 3. In one of the Pfaffian frag ments (XL. ed. Stieren, p. 889), it is said that Christ is to come to destroy all evil and to reconcile all things (reconcilianda universa), that there may be an end of all impurities. This suggests, not annihilation, but restoration; but it is a paraphrase of Col. i. 20, and probably means the purification of the righteous. Moreover, the genuineness of the fragment is quite doubtful. ' Adv. Ha:r. IV. 6, 5. * Ibid. IV. 27, 2. ANCIENT THEOLOGY g_ ference in the explanations given of the relation of the old dis pensation to the new. Now the Old Testament is exalted to the place of equality assigned to it by the Apologists, and now its subordinate, preparatory function is pointed out. The source of the contrast so marked in Irenaeus would appear to be that, not withstanding his abundant citations from Paul, the roots of his religious life were not in the distinctive teaching of the Apostle, to the core of which he did not penetrate with a vivid insight. The whole bent of Irenteus was practical. His attention was con centrated upon the defence of Christianity.* One of the most highly esteemed of all the writers of the Asia Minor School was Melito, Bishop of Sardis." His literary activity began about a.d. 150. Unhappily, of his numerous works there remain only a few fragments. But these furnish valuable materi als for the History of Doctrine. In one of them, it is said that the works of Christ after His baptism " showed His godhead concealed in the flesh." " He concealed the signs of His godhead " before His baptism, "although He was true God from eternity." " Being perfect God and perfect man. He assured us of His two essences," ' His godhead and His manhood. Here is a distinct declaration that in Christ there were two natures, nothing, however, being said of the particular mode of their union. In another fragment, the genuineness of which is extremely probable, Christ is desig nated " the perfect reason, the Word of God, who was begotten before the light, who was Creator together with the Father," who was " in the Father the Son, in God God," God who is of God, " the Son who is of the Father, Jesus Christ, the King for ever and ever." Melito was one of the principal lights in the group which is characterized by Lightfoot as "The Later School of St. John."* 1 On the two Testaments, see Adv. Har. IV. 9, 2 ; IV. 32, 2. On the combination of the " apologist-moral " with the " Biblical-realistic " ingredients in Irenaeus, see Harnack, DG. {Grundriss") , loi sq., and Loofs, DG., p. 95. See especially the important work of Werner, Der Paulinismus d. Irenceus, etc., in Gebhardt u. Harnack's Altchristl. Lit. VI. 3 (1889). 2 On Melito and his writings, see Lightfoot, Essays on Supernatural Religion, p. 223 sq. The subject of the fragments is fully discussed by Har nack, in Gebhardt and Harnack, Texte u. Untersuchungen, etc., p. 240 sq. But see also Harnack in Altchristl. Literatur, I. p. 250, where he concludes that the four Syrian fragments belonged to one work, of which Melito was the author. ^ oi/(rfas. * Contemporary Review, Feb. 1876. Reprinted in Essays on the Work entitled " Supernatural Religion" pp. 217-250. go HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE TertuUian, more than any other, is the founder of Latin the ology. He deserves to be caUed the foreranner of Augustine. He disdains the phUosophers, going so far as to call the serenity of Socrates in the presence of death a forced or affected com posure. Yet he was not ignorant of the philosophers, and his power as a thinker is not less marked than his extravagance. His genius and eloquence atone for his faults of temperament. He was partly Latin and partly African, and he blends in himself the quaUties of his mixed parentage. TertuUian goes farther than Irenaeus in asserting the authority of tradition. He dweUs on the insufficiency of the ApostoUc Scriptures, which heretics can pervert without stint. It is useless to argue with them on the basis of these vmtings, which really belong only to those who have, together with them, the "rule of faith." To this the appeal is to be made. Christ chose and sent out the Apostles ; * these founded churches and made them the depositories of their teaching ; in the churches there have been the successions of bishops, the custodians of the tradition." Hence, heretics are met with a prcescriptio — a demurrer. Their dissent from the doctrine of the churches, the novelty of their teaching, throws them out of court. TertuUian's argument here is an example of his appropriation of legal ideas, a characteristic of his writings. TertuUian was much influenced by the Asia Minor theology. The influence of Stoicism is also quite apparent in his theological conceptions. In agreement with Stoic doctrine is his materialis tic view of the constitution of the soul, which he contends for at length in his treatise De Anima? Indeed, his opinion is that noth ing exists that is not of a corporeal nature. The soul is of a finer species of matter. It is Hke the wind or the breath. It was breathed into man by the Creator. We are not to deny even that it has color and form, — its form being like that of the body. Along with the body it is generated.* It has a seminal beginning. TertuUian was thus a Traducian, in opposition to the doctrine that each soul originates in a distinct, creative act. On the subject of the evidence of the being of God, TertuUian, instead of marshalling, as other Christian Apologists of the time were apt to do, the concessions of heathen writers, points to what 1 De Prcescript. 20, 21. 3 See e.g., cc. 5, 7. 2 See, for example, de Prcescript. 36. * De Anima, 27. ANCIENT THEOLOGY gj he calls the testimony of " the naturally Christian soul " to the divine existence and unity. He invokes the untutored, unsophis ticated soul to give its witness. Its unpremeditated expressions — such as "Which may God grant," "If God will," "May God repay," " God shaU judge between us " — spring out of the depths of the heart and are the best attestation to the truth.* TertuUian insists, also, on the evidence from design." As TertuUian is the first to use the word ' Trinity,' ' so is he the first distinctly to say that tri-personality pertains to the one God as He is in Himself.* He plants himself on this ground in antagonism to the Monarchian theory, which rejected the idea of a diversity of persons as immanent in God. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are "of one substance" ; they are susceptible of number without division.' The Son is from the essence of the Father, proceeding from him, not by emanation, as the Gnostics taught, yet by a self-projection or "prolation." The Son or Logos is eternal, since the Logos is the reason and word of God. The Father projected the Son, as the root the tree, and the foun tain the river, and the sun the ray. But there is no separation." While TertuUian insists on the unity of substance and the tri- plicity of persons, he faUs of reaching the full Trinitarian state ment. The Logos is represented to be the impersonal reason of God (ratio), and does not become the Word (Sermo), does not emerge into personality, until the work of creation is to begin. Moreover, subordinationism in the Trinity is presented in the crude form of a greater and less participation of the divine sub stance on the part of the several persons. "The Spirit is third from God and the Son, as the fruit out of the tree is third from the root, and as the branch from the river is third from the fountain, and as the apex of the sunbeam is third from the sun."' "The Father and the Son," we are told, "differ from one another in measure." ' The meaning is made clear in the next sentence : " For the Father is the whole substance, but the Son a derivation 1 De Test. An. i, 2. 2 ^^j,_ Marc. I. 11-13. 3 Adv. Prax. 3. But Theophilus {ad Autol XV.) has Tp«£5os. 1 Ibid. 2. ' Ibid. 2. " Ibid. 8. 9. An indirect influence of this book of TertuUian on the shaping of the Nicene doctrine will be referred to later. The " unius sub- stantiae " appears as the Homoousion. 7 Ibid. 8. ' Ibid. 9. 92 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE and portion of the whole.'' But the notion of an actual division of the substance is guarded against, when, for example, TertuUian connects with the illustrations just cited (of the branch, the river, the fountain, etc.) the statement: "Yet nothing is parted (alienatur) from the source from which it derives its properties." TertuUian brings out more definitely than any of the Fathers before him — if we except the fragment of Melito — the fuU humanity of Christ and the distinction of the two natures, each retaining its own attributes.* There is no confusion, but a con junction of the human and the divine. This conception of Christ as possessed of a rational human spirit is the only one consistent with his psychology, in which there is no possible disjunction of soul and spirit." This teaching must govern the interpretation of looser expressions in which man in Christ is said to be mixed with God. On the importance of the death of Christ in its relation to human salvation, TertuUian is emphatic' But nothing is said of any transaction with Satan for the release of man. Satan was overcome in the temptation of Jesus. Christ was not cursed of God, but by the Jews. Nor is anything said of a satisfaction rendered by Christ to divine justice, although Tertul- lian conceives of justice as having in it a retributive element. Justice appears even in nature, in the separation of things that differ, as the day from the night.* The power of God creates, the justice of God orders and arranges. The "satisfaction" of which TertuUian speaks is that which is required of the penitent Christian who, having grievously sinned, would be reconcUed to an offended God. TertuUian is fervent in his exaltation of the mercy of God in its relation even to the wayward believer. Yet a certain legalism pervades his teaching on the whole subject of repentance and God's acceptance of the repenting sinner. He speaks of the " reward " offered to repentance, even the repent ance in which the Christian life begins.' He speaks of making "satisfaction" unto the Lord, by repentance, for later sins," of release from penalty as " a compensatory exchange for repent ance." " Satisfaction is made by confession ; by repentance " God is appeased." ' By fasting and other forms of " temporal mortifi cation," the penitent is able "to expunge eternal punishment.'" 1 Adv. Prax. 27. < Ibid. II. 12. ' Ibid. 7. 2 De Anima, 12. ^ De Poenit. 5. 8 Ibid. 9. « Adv. Marc. III. 8. « Ibid 6. ANCIENT THEOLOGY m The expressions of contrition are " a self-chastisemeht in the matter of food and raiment." * TertuUian is cautious about applying the term ' merit ' to repentance : " so far as we can merit," is the phrase which he uses." The freedom of the will is a part of God's image and likeness in man.' There is entire freedom in " both directions " — towards the right and towards the wrong. It is a part of TertuUian's Traducianism that evil is propagated in the soul. There is evil in the soul — malum animce — derived from its corrupt origin — ex originis vitio ; and the evil has become in a sense a second nature. " The corruption of our nature is another nature." * Yet this suggestion of an inborn corruption, in which Augustine is anticipated, is qualified and, in some places, virtually excluded. The offspring of one Christian parent is said to be by " the semmal prerogative " not unclean. In arguing for the post ponement of baptism, it is asked : Why should this innocent age hasten to procure the remission of sins?' It is said that the original good in man is obscured rather than extinguished. " It cannot be extinguished because it is from God." " In the worst men there is something good, and in the best something bad." " As regards regeneration, we are told that the grace of God is more potent than the wiU, which is the faculty within us possessed of autonomy.' " The soul in its second birth is taken up by the Holy Spirit." ' Yet, as on the subject of innate depravity, there are occasional passages which seem to teach that grace is irresist ible ; but these contravene frequent assertions of a reserved power and a concurrent agency in the wiU. Christ, after His death, descends into Hades, the abode where the evU and the good await the resurrection. The martyrs are by themselves in a more exalted place : whether it be within or without the limits of Hades is not quite clear.^ There is a first and a second resurrection. There is a millennial reign of Christ, but aU sensuous, Jewish conceptions of it are repudiated. Tertul- Han dweUs on the spiritual blessings to be enjoyed in that inter mediate state. The Holy Land, he says, is not Judea, but rather 1 De Pcenit. n. ^ De Anima, 41. '' Ibid. 21. 2 Ihid. 6. ' I>e Bapt. 18. ' IHd. 41. 5 Adv. Marc. 7. " De Anima, 41. ' See Adv. Marc. IV. 34, v. 17; De Resurrect. 17, 25. In De Anima, c. 7, the patriarchs and the bosom of Abraham are placed in Hades. 94 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE the flesh of the Lord. The friendship of God is the supreme good. Hell, " the treasure-house of eternal fire," is in the interior of the earth, and the flames issuing from the mouths of volcanoes have their source in hell.* When we pass from TertuUian to Clement of Alexandria we find ourselves in a very different atmosphere. We no longer hear invectives against philosophy. "The multitude,"" he says, "are frightened at the Hellenic philosophy, as children are at masks, fearing lest it should lead them astray.'" Clement, the first of the Alexandrian teachers whose writings have come down to us, is fuU of the thought that the mission of the Christian theologian is to buUd a bridge between the Gospel and Gentile wisdom, to point out the relations of Christianity to universal knowledge, to give to the religion of Christ a scientific form, to show how the believer may rise to the position of the true " Gnostic." Clement is apart from all contact with the teaching of the West. Irenaeus and TertuUian cast their theological thoughts in a polemical form, their aim being to beat back the invasion of error. The Alexan drians undertake a more direct and positive task. It was the work of Origen to fulfil this task of giving to Christian trath the unity of a system. Clement, the precursor of Origen, although copious in suggestions, fails to mould them into a consistent or complete whole. The sources of knowledge respecting divine things, according to Clement, are Scripture and reason. But, as nothing which would cast dishonor upon God is worthy of belief, a high place of authority is given to reason. Moreover, the method of aUegory applied in interpreting Scripture opens a wide door for the intra- sion of subjective speculations. Yet the road to insight, the path upward to the plane of the true Gnostic, is the attaining of purity of heart. Thus knowledge and holy character are not put asun der. Clement abounds in passages in which the phUosophy of the Greeks is said to have sprung from a partial divine revelation, although he occasionally makes their wisdom a plagiarism from the Hebrew prophets.* This is a specimen of the contradictions in his writings. The bond of union between GentUe science and the religion of the Gospel is in the conception of the Logos, which is common to both. Clement follows the Greek masters in repre- 1 De Panit. 12. 3 Stromata, VI. lo. 2 oi TtaWal. 4 E.g. Ibid. V. 14, VI. 7. ANCIENT THEOLOGY qc senting God as incomprehensible, transcendent, above the sphere where distinctions and differences have a place. " Human speech is incapable of uttering God." * The Logos is the Revealer, first in the Creation, in which the Logos takes part, by whom wisdom is stamped upon it ; again, in the Ught of reason imparted to man kind ; then in special disclosures of divine truth ; and, finally, through the Incarnation in Christ. The light derived from the Logos by the Gentiles may serve as the stepping-stone to the height on which shines the fuU effulgence of the Gospel. " The Greek Philosophy," says Clement, "purges the soul, as it were, and pre pares it beforehand for the reception of faith, on which the Truth builds up the edifice of knowledge." " The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the "Holy Triad."' When we seek to ascertain the relations of the Three to one another, the utterances of Clement lack clearness and harmony with one another. There is an essen tial unity between the Father and the Son. This unity has existed forever. But the distinction of Father and Son is affirmed.* Yet in some passages the personal distinction seems to fade out. But the prevailing view is that of the Son as a distinct hypostasis.' The Logos is said to undergo no change, and the distinction of immanent and spoken Logos is rejected." The Logos is conceived of, after the manner of the Stoics, as the seminal reason diffused in all beings to whom reason is given. There is a vagueness on this point as there is in PhUo's conception. The Holy Spirit is spoken of as a distinct hypostasis, but how the Spirit is related to the Father and the Son is not made clear. But there is no ambi guity in the assertion of the true divinity and the true humanity of Christ. " He [Christ] became man that man might become God."' Christ is our ransom;' yet it is not said to whom the ransom is paid. He is our propitiation.^ But the ordinary repre sentation in Clement is that the obstacle to the salvation of men is in themselves. Pardon is made to include deliverance from ignorance, the source of sin. Redemption is not so much the undoing of the past, as the Hfting of man up to a higher state than 1 Strom. VL i8; cf V. ii, I2. ' Ibid. V. 14. 2 Ibid. VII. 3. * Ibid. IV. 25. 5 On this subject, see Dorner, I. p. 443 sq.; especially p. 446; Thomasius, DG. I. 201 sq.; Bigg, p. 67. " Strom. V. i. ¦f Protr. I. For other passages, see the references in Bigg, p. 71. 8 Quis Div. Salv. 37. ^ Pad. III. 12. 96 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE pertained to unfallen man. Man was created upright. The free dom of the wiU belonged to his nature.* In the exercise of it, he sinned. But Adam is the typical example of sin, rather than the foundation whence it is spread through the race. Freedom of choice remains, although the soul depends on the Spirit for its renewal." The regenerated life begins in baptism. It includes the forgiveness of sins. Henceforward there is a twofold possi- bUity. There is a lower stage of Christian character, that of the ordinary believer who attains to hoUness under the influence of fear and hope ; and there is the higher life, where fear is cast out by love. Simply to be saved is something very different from salvation in the nobler sense.' This is the life of knowledge, the life of him to whom divine mysteries are revealed. There is higher truth which may not be communicated even to Chris tians not inwardly prepared to receive it. This is the doctrine of Reserve. Clement was not a mystic. He goes so far as to appropriate from Stoicism the notion of apathy, and love is de picted as being, in relation to our fellow-men, passionless. The true Gnostic does not desire anything. He is free from all per turbations of spirit.* There is but one absolution from mortal sin committed after baptism. Respecting the Eucharist, how vague and indeterminate his explanations are is evident from the cir cumstance that by some he has been thought to regard it as a mere memorial, while others with even less reason have attributed to him the doctrine of transubstantiation.' Justice is divested of the retributive element. The principal design of punishment is the correction of the transgressor. Another object is the restraint of others." After death and until the judgment chastisement con tinues as a cure for sin. Then probation comes to an end. But Christ, and the Apostles after Him, preached the Gospel in Hades. In some places, the preaching is said to have been addressed to such as simply lacked knowledge, the bent of the heart being right ; but the heathen generaUy are also said to have the offer of salvation presented to them in the intermediate state.' It would not be just, it is said, to deprive them of the opportunity to be made acquainted with the way of salvation. At the deluge, 1 Strom. I. 17, II. 15. 4 Ibid. VI. 9. 2 Ibid. II. 19, IV. 26. 5 See Bigg, p. 105 sq. ' Ibid. VL 14. 6 Pied. I. 8; Strom. IV. 24. ' For the principal statements on the subject, see Strom. VI. 6. ANCIENT THEOLOGY 97 punishment was inflicted on the antediluvians for their correction. Clement rejected the Millenarian theory with antipathy. At the Resurrection it is not a literal body of flesh that is raised, but a spiritual body ; * but the Writing of Clement on this special subject is lost. 1 Peed. II. 10. CHAPTER VIII MONARCHIANISM — MONARCHIANISM OVERCOME IN THE EAST — THE SYSTEM OF ORIGEN THEOLOGV AFTER THE DEATH OF ORIGEN — NOVATIAN — DIONYSIUS OF ALEXANDRIA AND DIONYSIUS OF ROME METHODIUS In answering the first and foremost question, " What think ye of Christ?" Christian theology, beginning with Justin and the Apologists, had taken up the conception of the Logos, blending together the Jewish and the Platonic meanings associated with that term. On the basis of this conception the doctrine of the divinity of Christ was moulded. In Irenaeus and TertuUian, the Holy Ghost was so connected with the Father and the Son as to form the Trias. The safeguard set up against dyotheism and tritheism was the idea of subordination and of the precedence of God the Father. But the theological construction which had the Logos for the starting-point did not establish or complete itself without a struggle, and a prolonged struggle, against opposition within the Church. The dissatisfaction with it grew partly out of the feeling that the doctrine of a hypostatic trinity was too meta physical, and savored of Gnosticism, but chiefly arose from the conviction that this doctrine trenched upon monotheism. To this antagonistic opinion, in its different varieties, was given the name of Monarchianism, a term first used by TertuUian.* The opinion held in common by the Monarchians was that God is a single person as well as a single being. But the two principal types of the Monarchian theory were widely distinct from one another. The adherents of the first, the dynamic or adoptionist doctrine, contended that Christ was a mere man, chosen of God 1 On Monarchianism and its different forms, see Harnack, Real-Encykl. VIII. 178 sqq., and DG. I. 604-709; also the elaborate discussion in Dorner, Person Christi, I. 497-562, 697-732. q8 ANCIENT THEOLOGY qq and by Him supernaturally inspired and exalted. He was the Son of God, not in virtue of a metaphysical relationship to the Father, but by adoption. The adherents of the second, on the other hand, maintained that Christ was truly divine, but as divine was indistinguishable from God the Father, being one mode or manifestation of the divine being. These were termed in the West Patripassians. In the East they were usually grouped together under the name of Sabellians. There is no good ground for supposing that the first or humanitarian class was ever numer ous in the Church, whether in the East or the West. But the opposite is the fact respecting the Modalists. It is to these that Origen and TertuUian have reference when they speak of the Monarchians as numerous.* It is of the Modalist opinion — in contrast with the "oeconomy," — that is, with the idea of the trinity as a distinction of persons in the Divine Being Himself in relation to creation and redemption — that TertuUian says : " To be sure, plain people, not to call them ignorant and common — of whom the greater portion of beUevers is always comprised- — inasmuch as the rule of faith withdraws them from the many gods of the [heathen] world to the one and the true God, shrink back from the oeconomy. . . . They are constantly throwing out the accusation that we preach two gods and three gods. . . We hold, they say, the monarchy."" When Monarchianism in either of its two forms took its rise, it is impossible to say. Both types seem to have made their appearance first in Asia Minor, where in the second century there was so much discussion and diversity of opinion. But as all ways led to Rome, so all sorts of doctrine were likely to be carried thither. The dynamic or humanitarian theory resembled the Ebionite opinion : Modalism had a docetic tendency; but the former, as far as can be ascertained, had no historic connection with Ebionitism, nor had Modalism with the 1 Origen, in Johann. T. ii. § 2. TertuUian, Adv. Prax. 3. Hase {Kirchen gesch. p. 99) remarks : " Justinus fiihrt es noch als eine Christliche Meinung an den Herm fiir einen blossen Menschen zu halten, und widerwillig bezeugt TertuUian dass es in seiner Umgebung die Volksmeinung war.'' This is an error respecting TertuUian. As to Justin's words, " Some of our class," etc. (Dial. 48), the reading — 'your' for 'our' — is defended by BuU, Thirlby, and others. It is not rejected by Neander ( Ch. Hist. I. p. 363) . It is not approved by Otto (see his note ad loc), nor in the edition of Justin, in the "Oxford Library of the Fathers," p. 129. But 'your ' is found by Harnack t& be the correct reading. DG. (3d ed.) I. 282 n. " Adv. Prax. 3. IOO HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE docetism of the Gnostics. That Ebionitism was the doctrine of the eariy Church, that the Church of Rome in the second century was Ebionite, that ModaUsm was the fruit of a reaction against that doctrine, that the Logos theology came forward as a mediat ing and reconciUng system, — these propositions, which were in volved in Baur's speculative scheme, have at present no foothold among scholars. In the first class of Monarchians are commonly reckoned the "Alogi."* This designation is a nickname which was given to them by Epiphanius." They appeared about a.d. 170, in Asia Minor. They were prompted, by their extreme antipathy to Montanism, its ideas as to prophecy, and its doctrine of the Para clete, to discard both the Apocalypse and the Gospel of John. The Gospel they ascribed to Cerinthus. It is possible that they rejected the doctrine of the Logos, but it is not clear that they denied the divinity of Christ. They supported their repudiation of the Fourth Gospel by critical objections drawn from a com parison of it with the Synoptics, partly in respect to points of chronology. The brevity and the mildness of the notice of them in Irenaeus warrants the inference that their number was smaU.' The leading opponents of Montanism, both in Asia Minor and elsewhere, were not in accord with the opinion of the Alogi as to the Fourth Gospel. If it were not for the lost writing of Hippolytus concerning the Gospel of John and the Apocal)fpse, and the confutation which Epiphanius borrowed from one or more writings of this Father, we should have no proof that when Hippolytus wrote there was anything left of the opposition of the Alogi to this Gospel.* 1 The Alogi of late have been the subject of much discussion in Germany. The topic is handled by Harnack in his brilliant article on " Monarchianism" in the Real-Encykl. (Vol. X.) and in his DG. It is considered at length in the first half of the first volume of Zahn's History of the New Testament Canon (1888). This last publication called out a polemical review from Harnack, in which the Alogi form one of the prominent themes : Das Neue Test, um das Jahr 200, etc. (1889). In Zahn's brief pamphlet in reply to Harnack (1889), however, this particular topic is not taken up. The subject is interest ing now for its connection with the debate respecting the authorship of the Fourth Gospel. See my Paper in Papers of Am. Ch. Hist. Soc. (1890); also, Sanday, Inspiration (1893), pp. 14, 15, 64. 2 Hier. 51. 3 Irenaeus, Adv. Hcer. III. ii, 9. * Among the lost works of Hippolytus was one bearing the title. Concern ing the Gospel according to John and Apocalypse. According to Eben Jesu ANCIENT THEOLOGY jOj Theodotus, the Currier, came to Rome from Byzantium, and was expelled from the Church by its bishop Victor (about a.d. 195)-^ Theodotus taught that Christ was a mere man. He held to the miraculous conception of Christ and held that at His bap tism the " Holy Spirit " descended upon Him in the form of a dove, but that on this account He could not be called God. Caius, the probable author of the " Little Labyrinth " quoted by Eusebius, styles Theodotus the " inventor " of the humanitarian heresy. Whether or not he was directly connected in any way with the Alogi depends on the interpretation of a doubtful phrase in Epi phanius. He accepted the Gospel of John, but interpreted it in his own peculiar way. Epiphanius cites a comment by him on John viii. 40. His doctrine was not tolerated at Rome. One of his disciples was a second Theodotus, the Money Changer, whose foUowers are said to have taught that the " Holy Spirit " was present in Melchizedek in a higher mode of presence and activity than in Jesus. Hence they were called Melchizedekians. These Monarchians are said to have been students of Aristotle, Theo- (in Asseman) , among the writings of Hippolytus was a defence of the Gospel and the Apocalypse. Probably the title just given was the title of this work. It indicates that there remained some of the Alogi, and adherents to their opinions may have made their way to Rome. The same thing is thought to be implied in what is said of John's Gospel in the Muratorian Canon; but whether the statements there have really an apologetic intent is uncertain. ' Euseb. H. E. V. 28. Eusebius, as above stated, calls Theodotus " the inventor " of the heresy that Christ was a mere man. What is especially important, Hippolytus, in the Ref. Omn. Hcer. (X. 23), expressly states it to be the doctrine of Theodotus that, at the baptism of Jesus, Christ descended upon him in the form of a dove, — precisely the doctrine which Hippolytus, shortly before, ascribes also to Cerinthus. In another passage (VII. 36) Hip polytus likens the opinion of Theodotus to that of the Gnostics. In the former passage, however, he speaks of " that Spirit " which descended [and] which proclaims him to be the Christ. Harnack is disposed to think that Hippoly tus may have erred in denominating the Spirit which was said by Theodotus to have descended "Christ," and to question whether Theodotus did thus designate the Holy Spirit as "Christ" (Harnack, DG. I. 623, n. 2). This last suggestion is connected with Harnack's interpretation of Hermas (Lib. IIL, Simil. v.), which makes him identify the Holy Spirit with the Divine in Christ. It may be added that Epiphanius, after connecting Theodotus with the Alogi, adds that he had converse or communication {ffvyyerd/iems) -with other heretics before named and contemporary with them. Harnack's state ment that nothing more than contemporaneity is here meant, can hardly be justified. 102 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE phrastus and Galen, and to have been addicted to a grammatical exegesis. They made an abortive attempt to set up a separate church. The last representative of the adoptionist creed, who appeared at Rome, was Artemon (about 230 or 240).* The Artemonites were fond of Aristotle. Like other Theodotians, they were critical and rationaUstic Their view of the person of Christ may have somewhat differed from that of the Theodotians. The espousal, by the Bishop of Rome, Zephyrinus, of the Modalistic doctrine, which the Artemonites could with reason pronounce an innovation, enabled them to assert with a color of plausibUity that their doctrine had prevaUed down to the time of Victor ; an assertion which was confuted by their opponents. It is clear that Artemon is to be reckoned with the Adoptionists. After the middle of the second century, the Humanitarian opinion has practically no influence in the West. It reappears in the East in the person of Paul of Samosata. Among the Monarchians of the second class, one of the princi pal names is Praxeas. He was equally inimical to Montanism and to the doctrine of inherent personal distinctions in God. TertuUian alleges that he was the first to import this heresy into Rome. "He drove out the Paraclete and crucified the Father."" He came to Rome from Asia Minor about the end of the second century, and was received with favor by the Roman bishop, Victor. Passing over into Africa, he won a great many adherents. The Modalists were called Patripassianists, for the reason that their doctrine implied that the Father suffered on the cross. This designation belongs preeminently to another leader, Noetus, of Smyrna, who through his foUowers, Epigonus and Cleomenes, acquired much influence at Rome. Zephyrinus and his successor, CaUistus, embraced the Patripassianist opinion. The determined opponent of CaUistus was Hippolytus, who advocated the hypo static doctrine, and refused to accept formulas devised by CaUistus ' for terminating the controversy. CaUistus excommunicated his antagonist, perhaps, also, Sabellius ; so that there were two dis senting parties, at the head of one of which, as a rival bishop, was Hippolytus. Hippolytus tells us that CaUistus combined the notions of the Noetians and the Theodotians.' By Praxeas it was not taught directly that the Father suffered. The Father assumed 1 Eusebius, H.E. V. 28. 2 ^^j,_ p^^^ ,_ ' Ref. Omn. Hcer, X. 27. ANCIENT THEOLOGY IO3 the flesh of humanity and thus became the Son ; but the Spirit in Christ, which is God the Father, did not suffer.* Noetus affirmed that the Father himself " was born and suffered and died." " He maintained that his doctrine " glorified Christ." Beryl, Bishop of Bostra in Arabia, rejected the personal pre existence of Christ, and is probably to be considered a Modalist, with some peculiarities which it is difficult accurately to ascer tain. He certainly held that Christ did not preexist as a divine person distinct from God the Father. He was converted from his opinion by Origen, at a Council held at Bostra in 244.' The most famous representative of Modalism was SabelUus.* He is often said to have been a Libyan by birth, but of this we are not certain. He spent some time at Rome at the beginning of the third century. SabelUanism underwent various modifica tions, and as we have only a few fragments of the writings of Sabellius, it is not easy to define precisely his teaching save in a few chief points. He distinguished between the unity of the divine essence and the plurality of its manifestations. He proba bly advanced upon Noetus in connecting the Holy Spirit with the Father and Son. The three manifestations follow one another in order, like dramatic parts. God as Father is the Creator and Lawgiver ; through the incarnation the same God fulfils the office of Redeemer, up to the time of the ascension ; and, lastly, as Holy Ghost regenerates and sanctifies. The three persons would be thus equalized, each being a mode of action on a level with each of the others.' The SabeUians are said to have compared the triplicity of God to the Sun, the light of the Sun, and its heat. Athanasius ascribes to SabelUus himself the statement that the Father extends or dilates Himself into "Son and Spirit," and hence infers that " the name of the Son and Spirit wiU of necessity cease when the need of them has been suppHed." " If Athanasius is correct, a primacy is here attributed to the Father. For the proper human soul of Christ SabelUanism substituted God Him self, in one mode of manifestation, streaming through a human body. About the year 262, Paul of Samosata was Bishop of Antioch, 1 TertuUian, Adv. Prax. 29. " Hippolyt., Adv. Noet. 1. 3 Eusebius, H.E. VI. 33. * For the sources respecting SabelUanism, see Harnack, Real-Encykl. X. 208. 6 See Athanasius, Adv. Ar. III. 4. « Ibid. IV. 13, i. 104 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE which was then under the rule of Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra.' There he exercised an authority almost equivalent to that of a viceroy. He propounded a peculiar form of the dynamic theory. Denying personal distinctions in the Deity, holding that Christ was a man born of the Virgin, he taught that the Logos inspires Him. But the Logos is an impersonal attribute of the Father, and the light that dwells in Christ is not the Logos in its essence." By this divine power there is effected a union of Christ with God, a union of will, not of essence, a union consisting in a love that is carried to perfection. By reason of this ethical union, Christ is exalted by the Father, is clothed with a divine dignity, and may even be caUed "God." Political influences played an im portant part in the long controversy occasioned by the promulga tion of this novel opinion. Three synods were held at Antioch, by the third of which Paul was declared to be excommunicated and deposed. He continued, however, to retain his position until the conquest of Zenobia by the Romans in 272, when the Emperor AureUan compelled him to give up the church building.' The decisive blow against Monarchianism was strack by the Alexandrian School, through its great representative, Origen. In his work De Principiis — Concerning First Principles, or the fundamental truths of Christianity — we have the first example of a positive and rounded system of doctrine.* Origen argues against the Gnostics and the Monarchians, and against other parties deemed heretical, but all this is incidental to the end in view, which is to present a direct exposition of the body of Chris tian doctrine. In this respect he stands apart from the Apologists, and from Iren^us and TertuUian. His refutation of disbelievers and assailants is given in a special treatise, his Confutation of Celsus. Unfortunately we possess the De Principiis, with the exception of a few passages, only in the diffuse and inaccurate translation of Rufinus. Yet the general tenor of the treatise, and the other writings of its author, render it possible for the 1 For the sources on Paul of Samosata, see Harnack, Real- Encykl.y^.'^.l'jl- 2 So says Athanasius, De Decrett. u. v. 24. ' The Letters of the bishops who condemned him (which are found in Eusebius, H.E. vii. 27-30), give chiefly the personal, rather than the doctrinal, charges against him. But all the proceedings show clearly the strong opposi tion of the Church to the humanitarian doctrine. See Hefele, I. b. i. c. 2, § 9. " Baur argues for the other possible meaning of the title, "First Things." DG. I. 276. ANCIENT THEOLOGY jqc most part to check the translator's deviations from the original. When we take up the De Principiis of Origen, we seem to find ourselves in the presence of a modern man. The atmosphere is free from prejudice and polemical bitterness. The vocabulary of denunciation is sparingly drawn upon. There is a warm appreciation of the value of all knowledge, and of the possibiUty and the importance of discerning the relationship of the Gospel to philosophy and science. Not everything in theology is con sidered to be settled. We are pointed, beyond the borders of ascertained truth, to a broad margin of ground not yet so far explored that differences of opinion are precluded. In reference to problems not yet solved, the author is content to set forth an opinion, freely granting to others the liberty of dissent.* Such open questions, for example, are whether the Traducian view or its opposite is true, whether the Deity is absolutely immate rial or not, the doctrine of the Holy Ghost in some important particulars." But Origen plants himself on the rule of faith. This embodies the justly recognized teaching of the Apostles, preserved by a trastworthy tradition.' Although a free-minded student, and nat urally of a speculative turn, his position is that nothing is to be received which is contrary to the Scriptures or to legitimate de ductions from them. Origen is emphatically a scriptural theolo gian. He has an astonishing familiarity with the contents of the sacred books, and calls up from all parts of them passages apposite to the subject which he is handling. All Christian truth, he holds, is to be traced to Christ, who spoke through the prophets and Apostles.* Yet the allegorical method of interpretation leaves room for an exegesis based really, although not with conscious intention, on suggestions purely subjective in their origin. This aUegorical character of the Bible, Origen supports by appealing to particular interpretations by the Aposrie Paul and by other arguments.' The Scripture has a threefold meaning, answering to the trichot omy, body, soul, and spirit, in man." As to the first, there are not wanting certain narratives which cannot be taken in their literal sense, since the historical meaning implies something offen- 1 See, e.g., De Princip. I. viii. 4. * Ibid. I. i. i. 2 Ibid. I. i. 5, 9. ' Ibid. IV. i. 13. 3 Ibid. I. i. I, 2. " Ibid. IV. i- II. I06 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE sive to Christian feeling, or is, for other reasons, wholly improba ble.* Examples are the story of Lot and his daughters, and the "morning and evening" before the sun was made (Gen. i). Passages of this class are meant to be " stumbling blocks " to drive us to the discovery of a higher significance in them. Fall ing under the second head are the psychic interpretations, which relate to the individual soul in this life, to its ethical relations, including its relations to God. It is the third sense, the occult, spiritual intent of Scripture, which embraces in it the riches of the divine word. This profounder meaning is sealed to all save the mature believer." It is dark to others : it is a mine into which he only can descend. It is the wisdom which is open only to " the perfect." This theory furnishes the warrant for the doctrine of Reserve in communicating truth. Pearls are not to be cast before swine. There are aspects of Christian doctrine of which it is true still that believers not yet ripe in faith and purity " cannot bear them now." One example of this esoteric creed was the doctrine of Restorationism, which it would not be expedient to proclaim abroad.' The Reserve, which is legitimate within due limits, was of course carried to a wrong extreme when it was used as a war rant for a tacit sanction, and, perhaps a more than silent counte nance, of opinions considered by the enUghtened class to be erroneous.* God, as He is in Himself, is incomprehensible. Here the New Platonic conception is appropriated. He reveals Himself to us partially in Nature, more fuUy in Christ. Our knowledge of God being thus relative, it is of course inadequate.' Even ' substance ' in the literal sense is not to be predicated of Him." Absolute causality belongs to Him. The exercise of His attributes, such as omnipotence and righteousness, is conditioned on the creation. In order to be righteous, in any other than a potential sense, there must be things over which He can righteously rule.' Not only must His omnipotence be eternally in exercise; it is in /«// exer cise. He has done all that can be done. Yet He can set ^ De Princip. IV. i. 12 sq. 2 Ibid. I. i. 2. ' Adv. Celsum, VI. 26. -* See Bigg's remarks. The Christ. Platonists of Alexandria, p. 141 sq. 5 Adv. Cels. VI. Ixv. " iTriKiiva. vav Kal oiKrlas. C. Celsum, VII. 38. Cf. De Prin. I. i. 6. Other references in Dorner, Person Christi, I. p. 661, n. 22. ' De Princip. I. ii. 10. ANCIENT THEOLOGY I07 limitations upon the exercise of His attributes. So strenuous is Origen in asserting the freedom of man that he attributes to God a restriction of His own prescience in order to leave unimpaired the Hberty of the human wiU. Creation springs from God's wis dom and benevolence. Inseparable, of course, from Origen's idea of the divine attributes, is his doctrine that creation is eternal. It is creation, not a Gnostic emanation ; but there was never a time when God existed alone, and when the world of rational beings was not. The Mediator between God and the world, through whom the world is made, is the Logos. In the Logos are all the ideas which exist in an inscrutable unity in the Father, and are em bodied in the creation. In relation to the Logos the Father " is one and simple " ; while it is in the Logos that the world finds its unity. The Logos is personal and without beginning.* He is generated of the Father, but this generation is eternal." Origen rejects the proposition which afterwards became a watchword of the Arians, — "There was (a time) when He was noL"' The generation of the Son is, therefore, timeless. It is no momentary act. He is without beginning. God is eternally a Father, — a statement which is fundamental in the later Athanasian theology. The personal Son or Logos is the complete manifestation of the hidden Deity.* He is the Wisdom of God, without which He would not be God. How is the Son generated? Origen dis cards every notion of sensuous emanation, and every notion of division or partition. The Son is likened to the radiance of a torch. The relation of the Son to the Father is compared to the proceeding of the wiU from the mind in man.' He is said, in one place, to be generated from the substance of the Father." There are numerous expressions of this general character which appear to leave nothing wanting to the conception of the trae and proper divinity of the Son. Yet, in Origen's idea, the Father is the foun tain-head of Deity.' The Father, moreover, is God as He is, in and of Himself; the Father is "God" with the article prefixed to 1 De Princip. I. ii. 2. 2 De Princip. I. ii. 4; In Jerem. 9, 4. " Fragment in Athanasius, De Decrett. 27. * De Princip. I. ii. 7, 8. ' Hid. I. ii. 7. « Frag, of Pamphil. ad Hebr. (See Dorner, Person Christi, I. 633) . " Ex ipsa Dei substantia generatur.'' ' In Johann. II. 5, 6, 18. t08 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE the term ; whereas the Son is God, with the article omitted.* He is " the second God," a kind of repetition or dupHcate of God." He is even said to be of another substance or essence.' He is from the wiU of the Father.* In one place He is even called " the most ancient of aU creatures." ' It is in such expressions as these that, at a later day, the Arians found satisfaction. Their opponents appealed to the former class of representations. How to reconcUe Origen with himself on this subject is a question that has naturally provoked much discussion. It must be remembered that the terms involved had not acquired the precision of meaning which they attained subsequently. It must be remembered, likewise, that Origen, whUe insisting on the divinity of Christ, is solicitous to fend off the Monarchian inference of the identity of the Father and the Son, as well as Gnostic theories of emanation. This motive it is which moves him to emphasize the difference between Father and Son. How can the Son be derived from the wiU of God, and yet be not created, but begotten ? It cannot be denied that the two classes of statements in Origen on this subject seem at first to be at hopeless variance with one another. So Baur judges them really to be." But there is a method of reconcUiation which is certainly more than plausible. 'WiU,' like 'spirit,' 'truth,' is embraced in the transcendent, inscratable unity of the divine being. In the objectifying of God the Father, or in His mysterious self-revelation, will becomes explicit in the person of the Son.' Occasionally, as we have seen, the Father is said to be super-substantial.' Even ' substance ' when predicated of Him would be a limitation. Hence the Son is spoken of as another in substance. In this way His 1 In Johann. II. 2. 2 C. Celsum, V. 39. In C. Celsum, VIII. 12, 13, Origen is concerned only to show that the Father and the Son are one in the harmony of their wills. See Thomasius, DG. p. 203, n. 2. * De Orat. I. 15. Others take oiala, here in the sense of hypostasis. So Neander, DG. I. 162; Bigg, 163, 11. 3; Robertson, Athanasius, p. xxxi. * De Princip. I. ii. 6. 6 Hebr. I. 3. Cf C. Celsum, V. 37. " " So vereinigt Origenes die beiden entgegengesetzten Lehrbegriffe, den athanasianischen und den arianischen, im Keime in sich." DG. I. 453. ' See Thomasius, DG. I. 202 sq. 8 Origen says that a discussion about ' substance ' and whether God is " beyond substance," would be long and difficult. C, Celsum, VI. 64. ANCIENT THEOLOGY lOg personal distinction and subordination to the Father are guarded.* "The generation," says Harnack, "is an indescribable act, which can be represented only in inadequate similitudes ; it is no emana tion . . . but is rather to be designated as an internally necessary act of the wiU, which for this very reason is an effluence of the nature."" Two things are plain in the review of Origen's whole teaching on this topic. One is the subordinationism that pervades it. The other is the room left for a diversity of interpretation by the seemingly inharmonious phrases to which we have adverted. Concerning the incarnate Christ, Origen is at pains to show, against the docetic opinion, that He is possessed of a human soul in inseparable unity with the Logos.' This human soul was a pure, unfallen, preexistent spirit, chosen on account of these qualities. Yet its freedom of choice is exercised, after the incarnation, in its victory over temptation, a victory which is carried to completion. To indicate how the Son incarnate is capable of revealing the Father, he uses the illustration of the statue.* There is a colossal statue, so large as to fill the world, which therefore cannot be seen. Yet a small statue precisely like it in form and material would en able us to know what it is. Christ, the express image of the Father, becomes such to us by divesting Himself of His glory. Yet the human nature of Christ is not unaffected by its indissoluble union with the divine Logos, — just as a bar of iron which is in the fire remains iron, although it is different in its effects from what it would be if it were not in the fire. This soul elected to love righteousness, and the holiness which at first depended on the will, was changed by custom into nature.' It is perpetually in the Word, in Wisdom, in God." The Holy Spirit is associated in dignity with the Father and the Son. Whether or not He is created, writes Origen, has not been clearly determined. The Holy Spirit has not that immediate rela tion to the Father which belongs exclusively to the Son. Yet the Holy Spirit has a direct knowledge of the Father, perceiving 1 See Dorner, Person Christi, p. 66i. 2 Harnack, DG. I. 581. See, also, Denis, De la Philosophie d'Origine, p. 93 sq- I'^ -^^ Princip. v. 15, 11, in speaking of Mark x. 18 ("There is none good save one"), Origen says that the Son is, as the Father is, dyaffds, but not a.wapaKk6.KT0ii dyaSbs. The Father is the aboriginal fountain of good ness. The passage was altered by Rufinus. 3 De Princip. II. vi. 3. ' Ibid. II. vi. 5. 4 Ibid. I. ii. 8. " Ibid. II. vi. 6. no HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE directly the deep things in the mind of God. He does not derive this knowledge from the Son.* The Spirit is an object of worship. And if the rendering of Rufinus is here to be trusted, Origen says that he has found no passage in the Scriptures where it is taught that He is a creature." The Holy Spirit is confined in His agency to the souls which He renews and sanctifies.' Christians derive existence from the Father, rational existence from the Son, holiness from the Spirit.* In order to understand Origen's ideas relative to man and to the doctrine of sin, we must keep in mind how uniform and strenuous — in opposition to fatalism — is his assertion of freedom.' The original creation consisted exclusively of rational spirits. They were co-equal as well as co-eternal. A different view would imply that the creation was defective. It would leave unanswered the question why the creation was partly deferred. Moreover, Origen is led by his general views to the conclusion that all inequalities were due originally to " merits and qualities " pertaining respectively to an gelic beings." The preexistence of men is involved in the theory of creation. This supposition alone meets the objections to the divine justice.' The preexistent fall of men from holiness is not only presupposed in their present character from birth ; it is the ground and reason of the existence of the material world.' The fallen rational spirits become souls, and are clothed vidth bodies. The preexistent spirits have an innate capacity to be thus incorpo rated in the flesh, but this potential materiality becomes actual in consequence of their voluntary misdoing. Matter is caUed into being for the purpose of supplying an abode and a means of disci pline and purgation to these fallen spirits. Whether the souls which are supposed to animate the heavenly bodies are tainted with sin, or have special offices to fulfil, not the consequence of any transgression on their part, is not made clear. Thus the worid in which we live is made as a theatre of redemption. Its suffer ings and sorrows and the ordinance of death, are, to be sure, an 1 De Princip. I. iii. 4. 3 md, i. iii. 5. 2 Ibid. I. iii. 3. 4 Hid, I. V. 8. ' See, e.g.. Ibid. II. i. 2, III. i. 2 sq. Passages of like purport abound in Origen's writings. s Ibid. I. viii. i sq. ' Ibid. IIL iii. 5. 8 KOTapoXi) (Matt. xxiv. 21) is said to mean dejection or faU, which gives rise to the present state of being. De Princip. III. v. 34. ANCIENT THEOLOGY HI infliction of justice, but justice is a form of mercy.* The earth is a school for the recovery of the sinful. It is to be observed that, notwithstanding the preexistent fall, even in this life sin does not begin until reason awakes and there is a voluntary election of evil, with no constraint from within or without. Origen is the earnest foe of the doctrine of unconditional predestination. The end and aim of all divine influence, and of the orderings of Providence, is to bring men back to holiness and blessedness. Origen's interpreta tions of St. Paul in the seventh of Romans, of what is said in the Bible of the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, and of what is said respecting the "judicial blindness" to which the wicked are given over, are in general accord with modern Arminianism." Only Origen goes farther in maintaining that in such examples as that of Pharaoh, the method of the divine cure of sin is like that pur sued by physicians in certain physical maladies. It is slow and gradual.' It involves at certain stages severity and the infliction of anguish ; but these are merciful in their intent and in their ultimate effect. Respecting the work of Christ, Origen includes the current view of a conquest by Christ over the powers of evil by which men are delivered from their sway. He broaches the doctrine of a deceit practised on Satan, who accepts the soul of Christ as a ransom, not knowing that he could not endure the presence of a sinless soul.* But this is far from being the exclusive doctrine of Origen in regard to the significance of the Saviour's death. It is a vicarious death in behalf of the race. It is an offering for sin, typified in the sacrifices of the Old Testament. Under this head, he teaches that for sin an atonement is necessary, the value of which is measured by the value of the blood that is shed. The death of Christ is thus vicarious. In his interpretation of Romans in. 25, he makes the death of Jesus to be a propitiation.' It is through the Logos that light goes forth upon mankind, not upon a part alone, but upon all. It is first through natural 1 De Princip. II. v. i. " Ibid. III. i. 10 sq. 3 Ibid III. i. 17. See Origen in Matt. XVI. 8; XII. 28; XIII. 8, 9; Rom. II. 13. For other passages, see the exceUent monograph of Thomasius, p. 223, or' Redepenning's Origenes, p. 405 sq. In this conception, Satan fills the place of the demiurge of the Gnostics. * E.g., C. Celsum, VII. 17, I. 31. 6 Cf. In Johann. J. XXVIII. 14. 112 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE law, and through the specially revealed law, which is given to one nation by way of preparation for the higher light to come through the Logos incarnate. But the redemptive influence of the Logos extends beyond this life. Pharaoh was overwhelmed in the Red Sea, but was not annihUated.* He is stUl under the divine superintendence. Not only men who have Uved on earth and died, but aU faUen spirits, not excluding Satan and evil angels, are visited by the redemptive influences. As a part of esoteric doctrine, of the deeper disclosure of the Gospel, vouchsafed to such as are prepared for it, the restitution of all was accepted by Origen." But so far did he carry his idea of the freedom and mutabiUty of the will that he appears to have held to the possi biUty of renewed faUs hereafter, and of worlds to take the place of the present for the recovery, once more, of inconstant souls.' The conception of the Sacraments is spiritualized in Origen. Baptism is the symbol of the cleansing of the soul by the divine Logos. Yet it is the real beginning of gracious influences for believers who are inwardly fitted to receive them. So the Lord's Supper is the symbol of the living word of truth which is the trae, heavenly bread given of Christ in like manner to aU who are spirituaUy qualified to receive it. To these, but only to these, is the sanctifying influence which is connected with the bread and wine after their consecration of any benefit.* In discarding ChUiasm, Origen cast aside, also, the crass con ception of the nature of the Resurrection. There is a Uving power, a germ, in the present body, which gives to it shape and form, and wiU give rise to a spiritual organism conformed to the nature of the particular soul, be it good or evU, that receives it. It is only a small fraction of disciples to whom the door of blessedness in the vision of God is open immediately at death. Generally speaking, the righteous enter into a state where they are still under training, are advanced higher and higher in the scale of knowledge, and are purified from the remains of sin. Finally they reach the culmination of holiness and bliss. The wicked are subjected to a discipline which has the same end in view, but which includes pains of conscience of which fire 1 De Princip. III. 1,14. 2 E.g., see Ibid. I. vi. i. III. vi. 3. 3 See Jerome's Letter (CXXIV.) to Avitus. Cf. Thomasius, Origenes, P- 259- * See Neander's exposition of Origen's opinion, Ch. History, I. 648, 649. ANCIENT THEOLOGY 113 is the symbol, and they may even suffer outward inflictions. For them the goal is remote, but it is eventually reached. It was far from the intent of Origen to caU in question the essentials of the Christian teaching, to which he was profoundly attached. That teaching, to be sure, comes from him, steeped in an infusion of Greek Philosophy, besides being strongly tinctured with certain other elements, the exclusive product of his own spec ulation. But perhaps what is eccentric in his opinions excites attention somewhat more in a brief sketch of his system than in his own copious expositions. The influence of this great theo logian was wide-spread and lasting. One evidence of this fact is the series of attacks upon his opinions and the heated controver sies respecting his orthodoxy. How attractive and impressive he was when he taught with the living voice, is described by a pupU, the saintly Gregory Thaumaturgus. He gained a new title to reverence through his sufferings and steadfastness in the Decian persecution. As is true of not a few pioneers in theological inquiry, there lay in his writings the seeds of systems not in accord with one another. So powerful was the stimulus imparted by his genius to religious thought. In the West, in the latter half of the third century, the theology of Origen had no considerable influence. Novatian, who after the election of Cornelius as Bishop of Rome (a.d. 251) led the revolt against the relaxation of discipline in the case of the lapsed, was a man of mark, and is praised for his talents and learning by Cyprian. He wrote a treatise on the Trinity, which, with some deviations, reflects the teaching of TertuUian. He is very decided against Monarchianism. He says that the Son was " always in the Father ; else the Father would not always be the Father." * The Son, however, may be said to have a beginning, and in a certain sense the Father precedes Him. Yet the Son was begotten and born when the Father wiUed it, and proceeded from Him of whose wUl "aU things were made." * The Son is in aU things obedient to the Father from whom He derived His beginning. There is a community of substance between the two.* The incarnate Son is God as weU as man. But the true and eternal Father is the one God by whom is imparted the divinity of the Son ; and the Son at the end remits to the Father " the authority of His divin ity." In the incarnation, " the legitimate Son of God " assumes 1 Novatian, De Trinitate, c. 31. ti4 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE that "Holy Thing," and thus makes the Son of man — what He "was not naturally "^ — -the son of God.* It is a proof of the divinity of Christ that the Holy Spirit receives from Him what the Spirit declares, and is thus evidently "less than Christ."" Nowhere was the influence of Origen so great as at Alexandria. One of the most eminent of his pupils was Dionysius, who was bishop there from about 247 to 268. The fragments of his writ ings that remain show him to have been a man of remarkable abili ties. He wrote " Concerning the Promises," in answer to Nepos, an Egyptian bishop, the author of a book defending ChiUasm and opposing the aUegorical interpretation of the Apocalypse. The Alexandrian bishop defended the opinions of Origen. He manifested critical ability in the reasons which he assigned for regarding the book of Revelation as not from the pen of the Apostle John, but as, perhaps, the work of another bearing the same name, and said to have likewise a tomb at Ephesus. In a series of letters to certain bishops in the PentapoHs who held Sabellian opinions, which were still prevalent in that district, Dionysius was led by his zeal in behalf of the distinction of per sons not only to deny that the Son is coessential (Homoousios) with the Father, but to deny also that He is coetemal. He even said that " the Son is a creature ... in essence alien from the Father, just as the husbandman is from the vine, or the ship- buUder from the boat ; for that, being a creature. He was not before He came to be.'" The namesake of the Alexandrian Bishop, Dionysius, Bishop of Rome, informed of what he had said, wrote a letter on the subject to Alexandria, and a personal letter to its bishop. By way of response, the latter composed a book, entitled Refutation and Defence, which was addressed to the Roman Dionysius. Athanasius, from whom we ascertain the contents of this correspondence, defends the orthodoxy of the bishop who was complained of. This he does in his treatise on the Decrees of the Nicene CouncU, and in a short special writing on " the Opinion of Dionysius." Dionysius explains to his Roman brother that in the use of the obnoxious expressions, which he admits might have been more carefully chosen, his intent was to guard on the one hand the distinction of the Son from the Father and, on the other hand, to give emphasis to the fact of the genera- ^ De Trinitate, c. 24. ' Ibid. c. 16. 3 Athanasius, De Sentent. Dionys. 4. ANCIENT THEOLOGY "5 tion of the Son from the Father. The term ' made ' he had used only in a wide and vague sense, — not in the sense of an artificer, but more as a philosopher is said to be the maker of his own dis course, or as men are said to be "doers of the law," or even as it is applied to inward qualities, such as virtue or vice.* At the same time, he had also said that the Word was like " a river from a well, and a shoot from a stock," as "light from light," and "life from life."" He did not object to the word 'Homoousios' if it were not understood as confounding the persons.' It helps to explain the position of Dionysius to bear in mind that the third s)Tiod at Antioch (268), in the case of Paul of Samosata, rejected this term, doubtless for the reason which prompted the objection of Dionysius. How strenuously the Roman bishop protested against all language implying that the Son was made, may be seen in a copious extract given by Athanasius.* He caUs it blas phemy. The "divine triad" is to be preserved, and at the same time " the holy preaching of the Monarchy." ' Both the eminent bishops, who seemed at first to be on the edge of a conflict, were united against whatever called itself SabelUanism. The Alexandrian in answer to objections from the Sabellian side, as was natural, magnified subordinationism. The Roman simply held fast to unity and tripersonality, with no philosophy on the subject. The Asia Minor theology, which was derived from the Apolo gists and from Irenaeus, did not give place at once to the teaching of Origen. That theology was not without its effect as a factor in the subsequent shaping of the orthodox system. The novelties in Origen's teaching could not faU to evoke dissent among some who held him in reverence, and opposition from others who might regard him with less esteem, but whose views in general bore the impress of his influence. Among these partially hostUe critics, forerunners of more vehement assailants to arise afterwards, Methodius should be specially mentioned. He was Bishop of Olympus, and then of Patara in Lycia, and later stiU of Tyre. He died as a martyr in 311. He was a devoted student of the writings of Plato. In several of the writings of Methodius, in particular in his book on " Things Created," and his book on the Resurrection, he attacked certain opinions of Origen. He under- 1 Athan., De Sentent. 20, 21. * De Decrett. VI. 2 Ibid. 19. ' Ibid. 18. * Ibid. VI. xxvi. Il6 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE takes to confute the doctrine of the eternity of the creation, and the conception of the material world as the prison-house of the soul. He combats Origen's spiritualized conception of the Res urrection. He brings forward, also, a doctrine of " recapitulation " allied to the conception of the headship of Christ which was pro pounded by Irenaeus, — a teacher whom Methodius in some other points followed. He presented, moreover, a mystical view of the relation of the Logos to the race, — renewed humanity, as a whole, being looked upon as the second Adam. Within each soul the Logos, coming down once more from Heaven, must effect a mysterious spiritual union with man. As the means of attaining to this mystical union, it is not knowledge that is chiefly valued, but rather asceticism and especially virginity. In the presence of this ideal of self-mortification and inward unity with Christ, His objective work does not, to be sure, disappear, but retires into the background. In one of the fragments of Methodius there is an hypostatic trias not dissimilar to Origen's doctrine. There is the Father Almighty, uncaused and the cause of aU, the begotten Son and Word, and the person of the Spirit and His procession. Methodius is far from discarding aUegory. In opposing interpre tations of Origen, he substitutes one aUegory for another. * There were others besides Methodius who felt called upon to come out against the peculiar views of Origen which clashed with the tradi tional beliefs. One was Peter, Archbishop of Alexandria, appointed to this office a.d. 300, who wrote against Origen's opinion relative to the preexistence of souls. He contended that the body and soul of Adam were contemporaneous in their origin. A striking proof and illustration of the substantial victory of the theology which grew up in connection with the idea of the Logos, a victory which was owing in a great degree to Origen, is the fact of the introduction into the baptismal creed, in the principal churches of the East, even before the close of the third century, of theological statements respecting Christ as the Logos, and His generation from the Father prior to the creation." This orthodoxy — assent to propositions in theology pertaining to the person of Christ — was made part and parcel of the Christian faith. 1 Respecting the opinions of Methodius, see Harnack, DG. I. 696-705. 2 On this point, see Loofs, DG. p. 141 (c). PERIOD II THE DEVELOPMENT OF PATRISTIC THEOLOGY IN THE EAST AND IN THE WEST In the East, from a.d. 300 to the Death of John of Damascus (c. 754) ; IN THE WEST, TO GREGORY I (c. A.D. 6oo) CHAPTER I THE CONTROVERSY WITH HEATHENISM — THE DANGER OF DIVISION THE SEAT OF AUTHORITY THE CANON, SCRIPTURE AND TRA DITION — THE GROUNDS OF THEISTIC BELIEF The Dioclesian persecution proved that Christianity in the Roman Empire was not to be extirpated by force. The Church was inspired with a consciousness of strength. No doubt this was owing in no inconsiderable degree to the political triumph of the Christian cause. It was felt to be safe under the shield of impe rial protection. The result of the reaction under Julian (361-3) plainly showed that heathenism had not vitality enough to enable it to regain its ascendency. Events and changes running through a number of centuries had provided the defenders of the old religion with some new materials for assault, and the Church with some fresh grounds both of attack and defence. This is illus trated in the literary attack of the Emperor Julian and in the refutation of it by Cyril of Alexandria. Julian directs his assault partly against the Old Testament. He charges the narrators of the creation and of the early history of mankind with absurdity. He animadverts upon the Old Testament conception of God as concemed for only one nation, to the exclusion of the rest of mankind, and to the ascription in it of human passions to the Deity. Christians have forsaken the old divinities for Judaism, 117 Jig HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE the religion of a despicable people. Yet they have abandoned its legally ordained rites and have violated its laws by paying divine honors to a deceased man. It was easy for CyrU to meet these and like reproaches by pointing out the paedagogical nature of the old dispensation. But it was not so easy to dispose of the accu sation that Christians had deserted the doctrine of their Master when they persecuted heathen and heretics, worshipped martyrs, and treated as sacred their graves and monuments. The standing accusation of the heathen was that after Christianity had begun to flourish, the Roman Empire had been stripped of its former glory and been afflicted with numberless disasters. At the close of the fourth century this complaint was heard everywhere in the West. It was taken up by Augustine in his great work De Civi- tate Dei, wherein he brings forward the fact that calamities, great and various, had befallen Rome before Christ was born, and the principle that earthly good fortune is not always associated with true virtue. The prosperity which Rome had enjoyed had been bestowed upon her, not by the pagan divinities, but by the only living God. The City of God, the divine State, has been from the beginning the end and aim of God's Providence. This City embraces in it all sincere worshippers of the true God, who wiU finally attain to everlasting blessedness. In contrast with the City of God is the City of the World, composed of the wicked, who may be possessed of earthly bliss, but are destined to everlasting misery. Early apologetic writers, as Tatian and TertuUian, had not confined themselves to the defensive, but had carried the war into the enemy's camp. They had assailed the doctrines and rites of heathenism. The same is true of the later Apologists. The futiUty of the attempt to justify the old religion by an allegorical treatment of its mythology, after faith in it had vanished from cultivated minds, was exposed. Eusebius of Caesarea dweUs on the contradictory character of the symbolical explanations. He insists that by them religion is transformed into physics, and that atheism is the logical outcome. Augustine deals in the same way with the heathen aUegorists. As to the philosophers, they were charged by Christian writers with having borrowed their best ideas from Moses and the prophets, and with being at swords' points among themselves on fundamental issues. They were reproached with hypocrisy for joining in the popular worship when they knew it to be folly. Porphyry, from the New Platonist School, is said ANCIENT THEOLOGY Uq to have been bitter in his tone, but he was certainly one of the keenest assailants of the Scriptures on the ground of alleged incon sistencies. The prophecy in the book of Daniel, he maintained, was not prophecy, but history, the book being by a later Macca- bean author. It is to be regretted that the reply to Porphyry by Eusebius has not been preserved. He was the most learned of the Apologists. The Prtzparatio Evangelica and the Denionstratio Evangelica are really two parts of one work. The earlier part is devoted to showing that in renouncing the Greek religion and phUosophy and in accepting the Hebrew Scriptures, Christians have not been actuated by blind faith, but by good and sufficient reasons. The later part, which we have in an incomplete form, vindicates them for departing from Judaism, and proves the corre spondence of the Christian truths with prophecy. Eusebius shows that the character of Jesus is incompatible with an intention to deceive, and that fraud in the case of the Apostles is out of the question, owing to the injunction to be truthful which Christ had laid upon them, to the circumstance that their testimony brought to them no gain, but only loss, and to the candor with which they record their own faults. The argument from miracles and prophe cies continued to be urged by Apologists. A new force was given to the proof from the spread of Christianity in the face of all its adversaries and from its victory, notwithstanding the seeming weak ness and insignificance of its founders. Its doctrines were con sidered foolish ; yet even the doctrine of the divinity of Christ, who perished on the cross, had won its way to acceptance. The Church in the first three centuries had done more than to maintain itself against violence and coercion, and against the weapons of argument and ridicule. It had so far preserved the integrity of its doctrine as to avoid a fusion or compromise with parties whose creeds incorporated a large admixture of heathen speculation. It had rejected from its theology Ebionitism and SabelUanism. Its teaching respecting Christ had been developed on the basis of the conception of the Logos, and of the instru- mentaUty of the Logos in the work of creation and of redemp tion. The system of Origen and his influence constitute a fact of capital importance in relation to the period of theological history that was now to open. He had distinguished faith from phi losophy. He had avowedly left many problems unsolved. More over, his positive teaching contained elements which, if not 120 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE stricriy inharmonious, were capable of leading different inter preters in diverse directions. We shaU find that, in the progress of theological discussions and conflicts, his distinction of faith and philosophy vanished, that the neutral ground, if one may so term it, was taken within the enclosure of dogma, that his questionable opinions were set aside, and that finally his orthodoxy was widely impeached, the result being the surrender of that inteUectual freedom of which he had been a signal example. Could the Church be kept in unity in its profession of Christian doctrine, or would it break into antagonistic sects ? There were great diversities of mental tendency. The West was not like the East. In the East, where thought was so resriess, and contro versy apt to be so heated, such divisions in matters of belief might arise as would be fatal to unity of organization. The episcopate was not an adequate safeguard of unity. No single bishop was considered infalUble in his doctrinal verdicts. As to the Episcopate, as a whole, how could it be expected to speak with one voice ? In trath the episcopate involved possibilities of endless division. The great patriarchates which arose on the basis of Constantine's division of the Empire into dioceses might be, and often were, at hopeless variance with one another. They might become centres of mutually hostUe sects. They might foment rather than quell emulation and strife. There were these perils, but there were forces at work to counteract them. The course of events took such a turn that the See of Rome, on the whole, maintained its ascendency, and each of the other principal sees were prevented from subjugating the others. The preserva tion of unity in doctrine was the effect of a concurrence of causes, among which the agency of Constantine is to be counted among the most important. He was the powerful guardian of the unity of the Church, and this unity involved the profession of a com mon creed. Another instrument in preventing the perpetuation of dissonant creeds and of keeping Christian theology from taking on a characteristic heathen stamp, was Athanasius, by whom, notwithstanding the fury of the tempest, a final shipwreck was averted. His name, in the relation of a conservator of unity, has not unfitly been coupled with that of Constantine.* Before proceeding to relate the theological history of the period, we have to touch upon those presuppositions in respect 1 Harnack, Grundriss d. DG. p. 142, ANCIENT THEOLOGY j2I to the seat of authority and natural theology, on which interpreta tions of revealed truth were grafted. What were the postulates, themselves experiencing change from time to time, which were tacitly or explicitly assumed in discussions of doctrine ? We begin with Scripture and tradition. Here the first topic is the Canon. Soon after the death of Origen we find that the Epistles of Peter, John, Jude, and James are received as canon ical. They are spoken of as a single group — James being at the head of the list — and bear the name of the " CathoUc epistles." As an effect of Origen's influence, the Epistle to the Hebrews is included among the Pauline writings. The book of Revelation is also received as canonical notwithstanding the critical objections of Dionysius of Alexandria. Eusebius leaves undetermined the question whether it belongs among the Homologoumena. The Council of Nicaea did not take up the question of the author itative sources of doctrine. By the middle of the fourth century the need was felt for fixing the limits of the Canon. As the 6oth Canon of the Council of Laodicea (a.d. 363) is of uncertain genuineness, its enumeration of Biblical books is left in doubt. Athanasius gives the name of Apocrypha exclusively to writings of heretics bearing the name of honored men of the Bible. He makes room for a class of books * which, although not canonical, may profitably be read in Church assemblies and put into the hands of catechumens. This class includes our Old Testament Apocrypha, from which the twenty-two books of the Hebrew Canon are distinguished. As late as Chrysostom the term ' Ca nonical' signifies the books which the Church has fenced off from other writings. But soon this term comes to signify the books which are the rule of faith, and the word ' apocryphal ' is used to designate books which the Church expressly rejects. In the latter half of the fourth century, the Apocalypse is absent from the Hsts of BibHcal books in Cyril of Jerasalem and Gregory of Nazianzum, and from the Canon of the Council of Laodicea ; and no mention of it is made by Chrysostom and Theodoret. Later, it is received by Cyril of Alexandria, by Basil and Gregory of Nyssa, as it had been by Athanasius. In the fifth century, its place in the Canon is no longer doubted, and it stands in the oldest Greek codexes. In the East, at the end of the fourth cen tury, the Canon had acquired definite bounds, with the exception ^ &vay Liftoff Kbi^eva. 122 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE of remaining doubts in respect to the Apocalypse. In the West, the distinction made by Hilary, Rufinus, and Jerome, between the Old Testament Canon and the Apocrypha, had no influence. The CouncU of Hippo (a.d. 393), and that of Carthage (397), put the Old Testament Apocrypha in the same rank with the books of the Canon. In the lists of both these CouncUs, the Epistle to the Hebrews is included. It had gradually been intro duced among the Western Churches during the fourth century, and its general reception was secured by the powerful influence of Augustine. But on the limits and contents of the Canon, there was in the West no verdict possessed of binding authority on the Church as a body. The extent to which the legend was credited that the books of Moses were lost during the ExUe, and restored by the pen of Ezra, through the Holy Ghost, and the credence given to the notion that the authors of the Septuagint version, even in their deviations from the Hebrew text, were divinely guided in order to accommodate the Scriptures to the heathen — a notion accepted by Augustine — indicate the prevailing idea of Biblical inspiration. Augustine, in his " Harmony of the Gospels," illustrates at once his candor and his faith in scriptural inerrancy. Comparing the accounts given of the denials of Peter, he decides that Peter at the moment was not where Jesus could have looked upon him, and concludes that it was not a glance proceeding from the Lord "with the eyes of the human body," but was a look cast from Heaven.* In scholars like Chrysostom and Jerome there are indications of a more critical discernment of the distinction between the human and divine factors in the composition of the Scriptures. It is only in the School of Antioch, however, and especially in Theo dore of Mopsuestia, that we are met by more modern views of the progressive nature of the Biblical revelation, and by consequent qualifications of the doctrine of Inspiration. There was always a conservatism of the past. It was always deemed to be a valid reason for condemning an opinion if it could be shown to be contradictory to what had been handed down. New opinions, when accepted, were regarded as an explication of doctrines held from the beginning. Great writers of the fourth century, Cyril of Jerasalem, Athanasius, Augustine, assert the sufficiency of the Scriptures to acquaint us with whatever is 1 B. IV. c. vi. I.e., the Lord touched his heart. Cf. V. 1681 c, 558 a. ANCIENT THEOLOGY 1 23 essential to faith and conduct. There is no underrating of the necessity of having BibUcal proof for what we are to believe. All this impUes that the contents of the Scriptures and of Catho lic tradition are considered to be essentially coincident. This was the general view, despite occasional statements in certain Fathers that tradition is a source of supplementary truth. In the debates on Christology, tradition was appealed to in support of a certain interpretation of passages in Scripture, and this was made a touchstone of orthodoxy. CouncUs came to be regarded as authorized expounders of the Catholic faith. This was emi nently the fact respecting the general councUs, through which it was assumed that the voice of the Holy Ghost was heard, speaking through and to the Church. The decisions were held by Augustine to advance with the growing insight of the Church at large, the Christian consciousness. He taught that the declara tions of the earlier Councils might be improved by those which are later.* The idea of a progress from a less to a more definite expUcation of doctrine in successive Councils, is set forth by Vincent of Lerins, with whom originates the traditional test of orthodox doctrine ; namely, that it must have been believed always, everywhere, and by aU. With the rise of general councils, the old appeal to Apostolic succession as securing the transmission of Apostolic teaching, fell into the background. In this period it was universally considered that the Church is the ark of safety, within which alone salvation is possible. In the East as in the West it was the visible Church to which this distinction was attached. It is remarkable that in the East, whUe there grew up an immovable orthodoxy resting upon the councUs and the Fathers and embodying likewise the whole system of symbolical rites, comparatively Uttie was done to formulate a doctrine respecting the Church. In the West, on the contrary, in the age of Augustine, in connection with contention against antagonistic parties and opinions, the distinction between the ideal and the actual Church, and the criteria of the Church as distinguished from sects, received, as will be hereafter ex plained, an exposition that became authoritative. The Roman bishops gained an increasing influence as arbiters in doctrinal 1 Cont. Donatist. II. c. 3. ' Emendari ' is the term used. It is not safe to infer that he meant anything more than the determination of points left ambiguous or undecided. See Neander, Ch. Hist., Vol. II. p. 210, 124 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE disputes. Their supreme judicial authority was distinctly asserted by Leo I. That a true knowledge of God is attainable only by Revela tion, and especially through Christ, was the common opinion. This, however, did not deter the Fathers from bringing forward evidences for the being of God from the light of nature. For example, the proof from design in material nature is sometimes urged,* as weU as the cosmological argument from the mutable character of the world of things finite. The lack of purity of soul is said by Athanasius to be the hindrance to the perception of God," and the same thing is taught by Gregory of Nazianzum. Theologians — as Augustine — imbued with New Platonism, found the belief in God on an ontological ground. Yet Augus tine sees a testimony to God in the heavens and the earth and in all things, by which disbelievers are made inexcusable. Like utterances are frequent in both the Greek and Latin Fathers. Where the conception of the Divine Being was New Platonic, our knowledge of Him was made to be not objective, but relative to our Hmited apprehension. Creation was a free act of God, through the Logos, the repository of the ideas realized in cre ation. The end of creation was the manifestation of the divine goodness and the imparting of a share in the divine blessedness. From the end of the third century, angels and demons assume a constantly increasing prominence in the thoughts of Christians. Constantine named a church after Michael, but this was not a dedication of the edifice to him. It only signified that he was believed to appear in it.' The CouncU of Laodicea, about a.d. 360, forbade the worship of angels,* but the only check to the practice was found subsequently in efforts to draw a line between that homage which was admissible and the rendering of divine honors, which was prohibited. 1 E.g. Greg. Naz. Orat. XXVIII. 6, XIV. 33. August. Conf X. 6. 2 Adv. Gent. I. 3. 8 Sozomen. H.E. II. 3. * Canon 35. It forbids " a cultus of the angels " and styles it a " hidden idolatry." Hefele contends that this was not intended to exclude " a regu lated worship of angels." Hist, of Councils, I. p. 317. CHAPTER II DOCTRINES CONVERTED INTO DOGMAS — CHURCH AND STATE THE GREAT CONTROVERSIES — THE ECCLESIASTICAL WRITERS, EAST AND WEST We are now famiUar with the fact that during the first three centuries the straggle of the Church in the field of doctrine was with Judaism and Heathenism, and with systems compounded of both or embracing elements deeply antagonistic to Christian truth. In this period of self-defence, carried forward on the basis of a common faith, there were brought forward doctrinal conceptions, interpretations of the Gospel, more or less tentative and differing from one another. Now the Church, except in the short reign of JuHan, is neither molested by persecution from without, nor, save in a comparatively small degree, by alien speculations arising be yond its borders. The area of controversy is within the Church. Conflicting tendencies are pushed in different directions. Con tests necessarily spring up, which extend far and wide. In the turmoU, while there is much sincerity and honest zeal, human passions inevitably mingle. The grounds of mutual sympathy are frequently forgotten, and inteUectual differences, not reaching to the essentials of the Gospel, provoke bitter warfare and division. In this great productive period of doctrinal history, when so many theological leaders expounded the Gospel in a positive form, or crossed swords in debate, certain main doctrines through the action of oecumenical CouncUs were converted into dogmas. This is one characteristic of the present period in contrast with the era which preceded it. Another defining characteristic is the interference of the State in doctrinal controversies. The Church was contemplated as a unity. Its unity was one of the main pillars of the unity of the Empire. Even on political grounds uniformity in doctrinal 125 126 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE teaching was considered indispensable. Christian Emperors as sume the part of custodians of orthodoxy. More and more, es pecially in the East, where the Empire continued in the vigorous exercise of authority, they use force for the extermination of her esy. Their authority is often invoked by contending parties. It is by the Emperors that the general councils are called together, and in the doings of these assemblies their will is potent. The tide of battle turns to one side or the other, according as one or another Court faction gets the upper hand. At length the Byzantine rulers undertake practically to exercise a kind of Cae sarian papacy. The humiliation of the Roman bishops in the short interval of active Byzantine supremacy in Italy, after its conquest by the generals of Justinian, shows how much the spir itual power of the See of Rome was indebted for its growth to its isolation as regards secular interference. The second period comprises, loosely speaking, the second three centuries. But as far as the East is concerned, it properly includes the MonotheUte Controversy, the last phase of the de bate respecting the two natures of Christ. A not unsuitable ter minus is the death of John of Damascus, the last eminent Greek theologian, about 754, although he might be not unfitly classified among the Scholastic authors. In the West, the second period carries us to the death of Gregory I. (a.d. 604). He stands on the line of division between the ancient and the mediaeval age. In PhUosophy, while Platonism is still largely in the ascendant in the Church, and exerts a proportionate influence on Church doctrine, there is an advance in the influence of Aristotle. Es pecially is this true of the dialectics of the Stagyrite, which we find, from the close of the fourth century, more and more called into service in doctrinal definitions and disputes. Late in this period, on the Latin side, Boethius was a commentator on Aris torie. Occasionally there appeared a kind of religious ideaUsm, derived from a blending of Christian and Platonic elements, as in the writings of Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemais in Egypt, who died in .412 or 413. The writings of Pseudo-Dionysius, composed in Egypt, probably late in the fifth century, are permeated by a peculiar mysticism in which Platonic and Christian teaching, are fused together. An important fact in the doctrinal history of this period is the appearance and enduring influence of two rival schools in theol- ANCIENT THEOLOGY 127 ogy, the school of Alexandria and that of Antioch in Syria. In this place it is sufficient to say that while the Alexandrians made the most of the divine factor in the person of Christ and in re demption, planting themselves on an uncompromising supernat- uralism, the Antiochians attributed to the human factor a larger determining agency. A noteworthy event in this period is the spread in the Roman Empire of Manichaeism, a system originating (245 a.d.) with Mani, a Persian religious teacher. He incorporated in his system notions in religion which were imbibed from the Mandaeans or other sects of "Baptisers," whose creed was tinged with Christian elements. Manichaeism was rather a distinct religion than a Christian heresy. Its groundwork was the Semitic or Babylo nian religion, although Persian beliefs were involved' in it. Mani was put to death in 276 for his deviation from the orthodox Par- sic religion. He held to dualism, — a kingdom of light and a kingdom of darkness. Through Satan, a product of the kingdom of darkness, both these elements were mingled in human nature. Deliverance is accomplished by a physical process, and is the achievement of a succession of prophets, of whom the celestial Christ — not the Jesus of the Jews — is one. Mani himself was the promised Paraclete. The system was ascetic as well as dual- istic At the head of the sect were twelve apostles. The " elect " were a class above the " auditors " or novices. The Manichaean converts were very numerous in the East as well as the West. The curiosity and hope kindled by its mysteries and its promise of illumination attracted many desponding or skeptical minds. For nine years Augustine was an "auditor." From the time of Diocletian, the Manichaeans were under the ban of the civil power. Under Justinian, to be a Manichaean was a capital offence. The interest in the doctrinal history of this period centres in several great controversies respecting cardinal points in the Christian faith. These are, first, the Arian Controversy, on the relation of Christ to God and on the Trinity ; second, the Christ- ological Controversy, on the person of Christ ; third, the Pelagian Controversy, on Sin and the function of Grace in man's recovery. Theology, Christology, Anthropology, are the several themes. The " Origenistic Controversies " were of much moment, and covered incidentally a variety oi topics, besides the question of 128 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE the doctrinal soundness of the great Alexandrian. The course of theological discussion in the East, from the beginning of the fourth century, developed an increasing sense of the importance of orthodoxy in opinion, a growing deference for tradition as dictating what ought to be believed, a narrowing of the space open to speculation and diversity of thought. The idea of prog ress in theology became more and more repugnant. Some of Origen's opinions, as we have seen, had been avowedly esoteric. Portions of his teaching were taken as the starting-point of move ments recognized as heretical. Personal and partisan motives mingled among the causes of the ultimately successful crusade against the theological standing of the Father of Greek Theology, whom Athanasius had held in honor. Like influences were opera tive with simUar results, against the repute of the most eminent leaders of the Antiochian school. In the East, where Greek tendencies prevailed, it was the more speculative side of Christianity, the subjects of the Trinity and the relation of the two natures in the person of Christ, that were ever in the foreground. In the West, it was rather the doctrine of sin, and the subject of the will in relation to Grace, that especially attracted attention. The West was not an indif ferent spectator of the conflicts of the fourth and fifth centuries in the East. It was obliged, especially at important crises, to take some part in them. The position of Rome was not unlike that of a powerful neutral, prone to be steadfast and conservative and able on several great occasions to speak the decisive word. Greek theological writers were introduced by translations and otherwise to the knowledge of Western readers, and perceptibly modified opinion. On the other hand, the great Master of Latin Theology had no influence in the East. The effect of his teaching was confined by Latin boundaries. In speaking of the theological peculiarity of the East, it is necessary to guard against exaggera tion. If the Greek teachers emphasized mainly the Incarnation and the feUowship with God thereby brought to mankind, another side of the work of Christ, that which had among the Latins greater prominence, was far from being ignored. " That the work of Christ was his achievement (Leistung)," says Harnack, "that it culminates in his sacrificial death (Todesopfer) , that it signifies the vanquishing and effacing of the guUt of sin, that salvation consequenriy consists in the forgiveness, the justification, and the ANCIENT THEOLOGY I2q adoption of man, are thoughts which in no Church Father are wholly absent. In some they stand out boldly. In the case of most they make their way into the explication of the dogma of redemption." * It must not be overiooked that the best of the Greek Fathers — Athanasius is a striking example — if they seemed to be contending for a metaphysical distinction, had at heart the interest of practical piety, which they judged to be identified with it. Nevertheless, the love of contention on nice speculative points might easily, even in the popular mind, become a malady quite harmful to genuine devoutness and destructive of Christian charity. A graphic picture of " the rage " for doctrinal disputation at Constantinople, during the Arian Controversy, is drawn by Gregory of Nyssa : " " Every corner and nook of the city is fuU of men who discuss incomprehensible subjects ; the streets, the markets, the people who sell old clothes, those who sit at the tables of the money-changers, those who deal in pro-visions. Ask a man how many oboli it comes to, he gives you a specimen of dogmatizing on generated and unregenerated being. Inquire the price of bread, you are answered, ' the Father is greater than the Son and the Son subordinate to the Father.' Ask if the bath is ready, and you are answered, ' the Son of God was created from nothing.' " We have now to glance at the principal writers in this age, so prolific in authorship. We begin with the Alexandrians. One of the last of the Catechetical Teachers was Didymus, who died in 395. Although he was blind from his childhood, he was one of the most learned men of his time. Of most of his works only fragments remain. Athanasius was bishop from 328 untU his death in 373. His principal writings relate to the Trinity. Among these his four Discourses against the Arians is the work of chief importance. As there is a unity of purpose in his life, so is there a singleness of aim in his Hterary productions. His "immortal name," says Gibbon, "wiU never be separated from the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity, to whose defence he consecrated every moment and every faculty of his being.'" His writings, which are tainted with no false rhetoric, breathe the earnestness that belonged to his character. Unhappily deficient in the spirit of 1 DG. II. 50. 2 De Deitat. Fit. et Spirit. Sanct. See Neander, Ch. Hist. II. 423 n. 3 Decline and Fall, Vol. III. p. 69 (Smith's ed.). I30 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE wisdom and love which characterized the first great foe of the Arians, was the later Alexandrian, the Patriarch Cyril, who died in 444. Among his works, which include a treatise on the Trinity, besides Epistles, Commentaries, etc, the most noteworthy is his polemical production (in five books) against Nestorius. Here we may place a reference to a number of authors who exhibit the tone of the earlier Alexandrian School and Ulustrate the profound influence of Origen. One of them was Eusebius of Cassarea, who was bishop there from 315 to 340. He is best known through his Church History and his eulogistic Life of Constantine ; al though much importance belongs to his apologetic and exegetic writings. Under the same category belong the three Cappado- cian Fathers, who, like Origen, were proficients in classical learn ing, and were likewise imbued with Origen's humane and tolerant temper. Basil, Bishop of Caesarea, called Basil the Great, is famous as an administrator and as the great patron of the mo nastic life, and for his instructive Letters, which afford a picture of the times. Yet he was the author of other works — the Hexse- meron, for example, treating of the Six Days of Creation. In the capacity of a defender of the Nicene doctrine, he wrote his book against Eunomius, and his Writing on the Holy Spirit. Gregory of Nazianzum, for a short time Bishop of Constantinople, the intimate friend of Basil, was surnamed, for the ability of his discussions on the Trinity, " the Theologian." He was a briUiant orator. He wrote against JuHan, and was the author of numerous orations, essays, letters, and poems. He died in 390. Gregory of Nyssa, the brother of Basil, was more speculative in his dog matic writings than the two Fathers just named. His leading work is the treatise against Eunomius. His teaching has always been regarded with profound reverence in the Greejc Church. In connection with a list of disciples of Origen may be put, by the association of contrast, the name of Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, in Cyprus, who died at an advanced age in 403. An ecclesiastic of very wide influence, but of an intolerant spirit, and untiring in his hostility to Origen, he left as his principal work his uncritical but invaluable Panarion, or Drug-Chest. Here he de scribes eighty heresies and undertakes to furnish the proper anti dotes of sound doctrine. Among the most prominent Syrian teachers were Eusebius of Emisa, who died about 360, an effec tive defender of the Nicene theology, Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem ANCIENT THEOLOGY I31 (who died in 386), whose Catechetics exhibits instructively the character of the popular teaching then in vogue, and Ephraim Syrus, who died about 378, a copious author, by whom Greek theological science was introduced into Syria. There are three foremost representatives of the Antiochian school. The first is Chrysostom, who was born in 347 and died in 407, the most cele brated of the ancient preachers. His theology is to be studied in his exegetical homilies, but with due allowance for the circumstance that they are popular discourses. The second is Theodore, Bishop of Mopsuestia from 393 to 428, a great Hght in the Antiochian school, whose commentaries, as far as they are extant, exist partly in the original Greek and partly in Oriental translations. They exemplify the grammatical and historical style of exegesis which was characteristic of the Antiochians, in contrast with the Origen istic and PhUonian method of aUegory. The third of the leading Antiochians is Theodoret, Bishop in Cyrus in Syria (west of the Euphrates) from 423 to his death, about 457. He wrote com mentaries on the whole Old Testament, with the exception of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job, a continuation of the Church History of Eusebius from 322 to 428, apologetic and polemical writings, and numerous letters of value. The other continuators of Eusebius are Socrates (from 306-439), Sozomen (323-423), and Evagrius (431-594). We turn to the Latin Writers of the fourth and fifth centuries. Hilary was bishop in his native place Poictiers, from about 350 to his death in 368. He was a highly cultivated man prior to his conversion to Christianity. A supporter of the Athanasian theology in opposition to Constantine, he was banished and spent a number of years in the Asiatic provinces, where he increased his acquaintance with the Greek language. In his exegetical writings he was influenced in a marked degree by Origen. An able man and independent in his thoughts, he defended in several treatises — as the de Synodis, the de Fide — the Nicene doctrine against its adversaries. Jerome, who was born on the border between Dalmatia and Pannonia, spent his life partly in the East, and became in a scholarly way a connecting link between the East and the West. Originally a disciple of Origen, he was transformed into a vehement opponent. He served the Church mainly through his extensive learning. By revising the old Latin translations of the New Testament, and rendering the Old Testa- 132 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE ment from the Hebrew into the Latin, he became the framer of the Vulgate Version. Rufinus was an ItaUan by birth. He was born about 340. He rendered important service as a trans lator of Origen, of whom he was a devoted admirer and defender. His " Exposition of the Apostolic Symbol " furnishes us with valu able information respecting its history. He died in 410. Am brose, the Archbishop of Milan, was born in 340 and died in 398. As far as his writings relating to doctrine are concerned, he was dependent on Origen, Athanasius, Basil, and others, and in set ting forth the duties of the clergy he did not hesitate to refashion the de Officiis of Cicero. Yet in his teaching, as in ecclesiastical administration, he displayed the qualities of a strong, self-respect ing mind. On the subjects of sin and the relation of the wUl to divine grace, he deviated from the Greek teachers, and paved the way for Augustine. Of the characteristics of Augustine and of his influence more will be said hereafter. He was a voluminous author. His mind was in perpetual motion. He was a deep thinker, but was one who wrote mostly in response to practical exigencies. His opin ions did not remain unaltered, and his Retractationes are a review and partial correction of earlier utterances. He composed works, such as the Contra Academicos, relating chiefly to phi losophy and specifically to the philosophy of religion. His con troversial writings are in opposition to the Manichaeans, the Donatists, and the Pelagians. Apart from polemics, he composed books on subjects of doctrinal theology. His great apologetic treatise is the de Civitate Dei. Beyond the limits of this classifica tion faU his exegetical homilies and other sermons, his numerous epistles, in which religious themes are handled, his Autobiography under the title of Confessions, and so forth. Prosper of Aqui- taine was a zealous advocate of Augustine's opinions, in the Pela gian Controversy. The position of Leo I., Bishop of Rome from 440 to 461, and the active part which he took in relation to the doctrinal disputes of the time, render his letters and sermons of theological value. After the beginning of the sixth century the theological writ ers in the West and the East are reduced to a small number. Boethius, the trusted counsellor of Theodoric, King of the Ostro goths, and a victim (in 525) to his false suspicions, was a man of scholarly tastes and profound acquisitions. Through his studies ANCIENT THEOLOGY I33 in Aristotle and his book on the "Consolations of Philosophy" he stimulated thought and was much esteemed in the Middle Ages. Cassiodorus, who died about 560, was first a statesman under Theodoric and his successors, and then a monk. His writ ings relate to history and theology. John Philoponus, an Aristo telian at Alexandria in the first part of the sixth century, and a Monophysite in his theology, appUed his philosophy in such a way to the Trinity as to expose himself to the charge of being a Tritheist. Gregory, Bishop of Tours (573-595), wrote awork on Miracles — the Miracula — and an Ecclesiastical History of the Franks. The theology of Gregory I., Bishop of Rome (590- 604) , is to be learned from his treatise called Moralia, founded on the book of Job, and from his homilies and letters. CHAPTER III THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY TO THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANTINOPLE (a.D. 38 1 ) Arius was a presbyter in the Church at Alexandria. He had been a pupil of Lucian, who conducted a school of theology at Antioch, and died as a martyr. Some other leading men who were in sympathy with Arius had also been taught by this exegeti cal teacher ; but his own opinions, probably always, certainly in his closing years, were not in accord with the extreme views which they advocated.* He accepted the Origenist doctrine of the Logos. Arius propounded the opinion that in the case of the preexistent Christ, generation is not to be distinguished from creation." He is the first of created beings, through whom aU other things are made. In anticipation of the glory that He was to have finally. He is called the Logos, the Son, the only-begotten. He may be caUed God, although not God in the fuU reaUty implied by the term.' He began to be, not strictly speaking in time, but before time,* since time begins with the creation ; yet He began to be from the non-existent through a momentary act of God's wiU.' Before this, " He was not." " It was on account of the foresight of his victory over temptation, that he was chosen of God. It is a victory achieved by the Logos, since in the incar- 1 Respecting Lucian, see Euseb. H.E. -viii. 13, and ix. 6, and Theodoret, H.E. i. 3 (in the Letter of Alexander), and i. 4 (Letter of Arius to Euseb. of Nic, "his fellow- Lucianist"). See, also, Harnack, DG. II. 184 sq., and Rob ertson's Athanasius (Nic. and Anti-Nic. Fathers), p. xxvii. But a different view is given of Lucian by Gwatkin, Studies of Arianism, p. 18 et al. " There is really nothing against him but the leaning of his disciples to Arianism ; and this can be otherwise accounted for." 2 yendv is voietv. * irph xpi"'^" r.al aldmoiv. 3 dXijAipAs Beis. ' i^ ovk Svtoiv 5i4 SeXiJ^aTos 6eov. ^ ^v lire oiiK ^v or irplv yevvriB^ oi5k ^v. 134 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 1^,. nate Christ the Logos takes the place of a rational human spirit. The rank assigned to Christ in the Arian theology is really that of a demi-god. The demons, the inferior deities, were styled by the heathen 'gods,' and as such received a homage proportional to their rank.* It was not a mistake on the part of the orthodox to look on Arianism as in reality an introduction of a species of poly theism into Christian theology. Arius was possessed of logical acumen, was skilful as a disputant, and his austere life helped to draw to him respect and sympathy. Alexander, the Bishop of Alexandria, met these views with strenuous resistance. In letters to other prominent bishops, he set forth clearly the opposite doc trine of the divinity of Christ, in which the defining characteris tics of the system of Arius are denied and denounced." Arius Hkewise sent out letters to counteract the influence of Alexander and to win support. In 321 or 322, at a large synod at Alexan dria, Arius was deposed and excommunicated. He issued a book caUed Thalia, a miscellaneous collection in prose and verse, and songs for sailors, miUers, and pilgrims. In this method of propa gating his opinions he followed a practice then in vogue. He thus embodied his ideas in a portable and easily remembered form. Eusebius of Nicomedia, who held the same opinion as Arius, wrote a letter to the Bishop of Tyre in his favor. Eusebius of Caesarea, who was an Origenist and much more conservative in his spirit than the Nicomedian bishop, was in favor of tolerating him. Arianism was really a new doctrine. The springs of it can easily be seen in one class of Origen's statements, taken apart from his teaching as a whole, and in expressions like those of Dionysius of Alexandria. Such was the excitement of the conflict in Egypt, and so wide-spread was the agitation elsewhere, that the Emperor Constantine sent Hosius, Bishop of Cordova, his trusted adviser, to Alexandria, with letters to the contending parties. The disputes were petty, the Emperor said. The disputants were agreed on the doctrine of Divine Providence ; let them bear with ' For the sources in respect to what is left of the writings of Arius and the history of the Controversy, see Gwatkin, MoUer (Art. Arius and Arianism in Real-Encykl.l. 620 sq.), and Schmid-Hauck, DG., p. 51; also Kolling, Gsch. d. Ar. Haresie. 2 Letter of Alexander to the Bp. of Const., in Theodoret, H.E. I. 3. The Letter of Alex, to his fellow-ministers of the Catholic Ch. is in Socrates, H.E. i. 6. 136 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE one another as concerns minor differences.* But the conflict was not to be pacified so easily. Hosius had a deeper understanding of the grave nature of the controversy. At length, in 325, the Emperor convoked a General Council at Nicsa." It consisted of not far from three hundred bishops, almost aU from the East, besides a large attendance from lower orders in the ministry. Alexander was there, and with him his archdeacon, Athanasius, who was in fuU sympathy with him and was destined to be the life-long champion of the anti-.Arian doctrine.' The Arians in CouncU stood for their opinion that the Father alone is without beginning, that the Son did not exist prior to His generation, which was by an act of the Father's will, — " before all ages," to be sure, since time began with the creation. Respect ing the person of the incarnate Christ, Arius, as we have said, had espoused the opinion that in Him the Logos takes the place of the rational human spirit. How far Athanasius was personally influential in the Council it is impossible to determine. The conclusions reached were in full accordance with his convictions, and he was afterwards the most renowned and effective expounder of them. His theology centres in his view of redemption. Unless Christ is truly God, is divine in the literal sense. He is a creature. In this case, in feUowship with Him we are brought no nearer to God ; the vital truth of re demption, union to God in virtue of our union, through faith, to Christ, is lost. This is the practical motive which underUes the doctrine of Athanasius. It was the inspiring principle of his undying hostility to the Arian formulas. The Arians discarded Origen's conception of a "timeless" or eternal generation. This Athanasius re-asserted. But the generation of the Son is an inter nal, and therefore an eternal, act of God. The Arian formula "there was [a time] when He was not," is false. Secondly, the 1 Constantine's Letter is given in fuU in Eusebius, Vita Const. II. 64-72, and fragments of it in Socrates, H.E. I. 7. 2 The two principal authorities respecting the doings of the Council are Eusebius of Caesarea, Vita Const. III. 6 sq., Epist. (in Theodoret H.E. I. 11), and Athanasius, De Decrett. Syn. Nic, and Epist. ad Afros. Neither of these witnesses is without a bias. For a full statement of the sources, see Hefele, Counciliengesch. I. b. ii. c. 2, and Gass's Art. Nicaenisch. Koncil (Real-Encykl X. p. 530). 3 For a highly interesting description of the Council, see Stanley's Hist, of the Eastern Church, Lect. II.-VII. ANCIENT THEOLOGY 137 Son is not " from the non-existent," but from the essence of the Father ; and thirdly. He is of the same substance — homoousios with the Father. God is the Father. Fatherhood is essential to His being, — as truly so as omniscience or omnipotence. But were it not for the Son, He would not be the Father. God the Father could not be that which He is without the Son, just as the Son could not be that which He is, without the Father. He is God's son by nature, and not by an act of will.* It is the idea of Atha nasius that one and the same essence belongs to the Father and the Son. This identity or numerical sameness is set forth through the iUustrations of the sun and its radiance, the same light being in both, and of the river and the fountain, the same water being in both. There are direct statements, positive and negative, of the same purport." As to the meaning of generation, the expla- 1 See, e.g., Oratt. C. Ar. III. 60-64. 2 See De Decrett. Nic. 20, Expos. Fidei, i. Or C. Ar. IV. I. In this last passage it is said that while the Father and the Son are two, the Monas of the Deity {6iiTrjTos) is indivisible and inseparable {adialperov Kal iSo-xio-rov), and more to the same effect. In C. Ar. III. 3, the identity {TavrdrriTa) of the Deity (9e6T7/Tos) and the oneness of the essence {Mrrira t^s ovolas) are distinctly asserted. The term oiaia (essence), in Aristotle, signified, first, a thing in the concrete, which is a subject and cannot be a predicate, an indi vidual object, the supporter of attributes; and, secondly, a class, be it a species or a larger class, a genus. (Arist. Categ. 5, p. 2a, Metaphysic, 6, II, p. 1037.) This double capacity of the word to signify either physical or logical unity made the Homoousion a convenient term for the Athanasians to apply to the unity and plurality of the godhead, as the Latins from the same motive em ployed the word ' consubstantial.' (See Hampden, The Scholastic Philosophy, etc., p. 126 sq.) The SabeUians held to a merely logical (or nominal) unity; the Arians, to a merely physical unity; the orthodox, to both. The distinc tion of Father and Son is one of essential relations. The entire Deity is in each. The divine attributes, such as wisdom and power, are not to be spoken of as plural. The whole Deity was " transfused from the Father to the Son." In one place {Expos. Fidei, 2) Athanasius distinguishes Homoovsion. from Monoax&vya.; but this is to exclude the SabeUian idea of the personal oneness of the divine being, the exclusive physical unity, without the logical (Hamp den, Ibid. p. 127). Aquinas insists on the importance of guarding against the notion of the singularity of the divine being. In another passage {De Synodis, 51, 53) men are said by Athanasius to be coessential. Here the point on which he is insisting is the complete, and not merely generic, likeness of the Son to the Father. The context (51, 52) emphasizes the point that the Father and the Son are not divisible, as the analogies adduced might be thought to imply. It is evident from the course of the Arian controversy that the term ' Homoousion ' did not always avail, of itself, to exclude the merely 138 History OF christian doctrine nations of Athanasius are mostly negative. One aim is to shut out materialistic associations of the term. In its own nature, it is inscrutable. The standing figure to represent the relation of the Son to the Father is the radiance of a luminous body — which would not be a luminous body if it did not shine. When it came to the shaping of the creed, neither of the parties comprised at the outset more than a minor portion of the mem bers of the Council. There was a great middle party, constituting a majority, who were far from being agreed among themselves on the questions in debate, but were united in opposing the introduc tion of new terminology. They wanted to frame a statement of belief that would satisfy all, and thus pacify the disputants. They were generally opposed to the Homoousion, — a part from fear of a Sabellian interpretation, and another part because they were Arians from conviction. The middle party found a representa tive in Eusebius of Cffisarea, whom the Emperor regarded with special honor. He brought forward the programme of a creed which was identical with that of his own Church of Caesarea. In generic likeness of Arians, or its antipode, the singularity or solitude of the Sabellians. The safeguard was contained in the idea of 'generation' and in the e/c TTjs oialas. The safeguard was the idea of the co-inherence of the divine persons (John xiv. 1 1), called by the Greeks irepixiiip-qtm and by the Latins circumincessie (see Ath. C. Ar. III. 22, § 3 sq.). Athanasius would not quar rel with those who would shun the word ' Homoousion,' but held to the absolute likeness of the Son to the Father, and the co-inherence. {Tom. ad Antioch. 6, 8.) In truth, he had no special fondness for that word and seldom uses it. Instructive remarks on the history of the word bpiooiaios, on the influence of Rome and the East in reference to it, and on its probable relation to the "unius substantias" of TertuUian (through Hosius), are made in a note of Harnack (DG. II. pp. 228-231). See, also, the references in this note to other passages in Harnack's DG. and to a passage in Bigg, The Christian Platonists (p. 164 sq.). The explanation of terms in Hampden, Lect. III., with the Notes in the Appendix, is valuable. That Athanasius teaches a numerical unity is at present the prevailing opinion of scholars. See Niedner, Kirchengesch. p. 355; Thomasius, DG. 228 sq.; Zahn, Marcellus von Ancyra, p. 20; Harnack, I. 212 sq. Petavius maintained the opposite interpretation. He is supported by Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe (London ed. 1845), Vol. II. 431 sq. The same ground is taken as to the sense of the Nicene Creed (with differ ences, however, as to the particular conception of Athanasius), by Miinscher (in Henke's Neues Magazin, Vol. VI. and in his DG. I. § 74, p. 234 sq.) ; by Meier, Gsch. d. Trinit'dts Lehre, I. p. 157; by Gieseler, DG. pp. 309, 310; and in an article in The New World (Dec. 1894) by L. L. Paine. aNcieNt theology 130 it Christ was styled, " the Word of [or from] God," "God of God, Light of Light, Life of Life," " begotten of the Father before aU the ages." Eusebius relates that his proposal was well received, but that Constantine — who no doubt followed the suggestions of Hosius and the other Homoousion bishops — recommended cer tain amendments. These were adopted. They gave a decisively anti-Arian character to the creed. The Son was declared to be "from the substance of the Father," "begotten, not made," "con substantial (Homoousion) with the Father." Anathemas were appended against those who professed the distinctive Arian for mulas, "once He was not," etc., or held that He is of (or from) another substance — "Usia or Hypostasis," the terms being used as synonymous — than that of the Father. Eusebius, not without delay and with reluctance, accepted the creed as thus amended. In his letter to his church,* he explained his action by minimizing the significance of the terms to which he had at first objected. He had no better reason to give for assenting to the anathemas than that the phrases proscribed were not in Scripture and engen dered controversy. His real opinion was that the Son is a second substance and owed His being to the Father's creative wiU. But he was sincere, if not logical, in shrinking from the conclusions which the Arians drew from the same premises. Arius, with the Egyptian bishops who stood with him, were banished. Later, Eusebius of Nicomedia and Theognis of Nicsea, who refused to break off communion with Arius, were likewise banished. The Nicene Creed was carried in the Council by the pressure of imperial influence, against the judgment and inclinations of the major part of the body. Such an act could not terminate the battle. The defeated middle party, who acquired the name of Homoeousians, or Eusebians (from Eusebius of Nicomedia), con tinued to assert that the true predicate to be attached to the pre existent Son is that of likeness to the Father. The Homoeousians charged their opponents with SabelUanism ; these in tum accused the Homoeousians of tritheism. It only needed a change of mind in Constantine, which was prompted indirectly by his sister, to move him to recall the ban ished bishops and to decree the restoration of Arius to his office. Athanasius, who succeeded Alexander as bishop in 326, interposed resistance. The prejudice of Constantine against him, which was 1 This letter, with his proposed creed, is in Theodoret, I. 12. I40 history OF christian doctrine fomented by false accusations of a political nature, was removed for a time, but only for a time, by a personal interview (332).* Being deposed by a Synod at Tyre (335), he was banished by the Emperor to Treves. In the same year Arius, who was then eighty years old, having presented to Constantine a creed, couched in Scriptural language, was to be solemnly received back into the Church ; but on the evening before the day appointed for the ceremony, he suddenly died. In 337 Constantine himself died. Constantius procured the return of Athanasius to his flock. But the new Emperor, swayed by the Eunuchs, the chamberlains at Court, took the side of the Eusebians. Athanasius was at once involved in new contests with his opponents. He was deposed by the Eusebians at a Synod at Antioch in 341, and Gregory, a rough Cappadocian, was put in his place. The Emperor being hostile, Athanasius, although warmly supported by the greater portion of his people, was obliged to take refuge in the West, where Constans was an adherent of the Nicene confession. The Roman bishop, Julius, was of the same mind, invited the exile to Rome, and with a Synod which met there in 342, gave judgment in his favor. The East and the West were now arrayed against each other. Anxious to avoid a rupture between them, the Orientals, at another Antioch Council, issued, one after the other, a series of symbols." These fell in with the Nicene definitions, with two vital exceptions : they asserted the homoeousion and the generation of the Son by an act of the Father's wiU. The cause of Athanasius was weakened by the approach to SabelUanism of a friend, Marcellus of Ancyra, and by the more radical departure in this direction of Photinus of Sirmium. Mar cellus,' who had been a determined adversary of Arianism at Nicaea, was anxious to dispose of the Arian objections, whUe hold ing fast to the Homoousion. Accordingly he brought forward the opinion that the Logos is immanent and therefore eternal in God, 1 Of this interview Gibbon, who shows a genuine admiration of the charac ter of Athanasius, says : " The haughty spirit of the Emperor was awed by the courage and eloquence of a bishop who implored his justice and awakened his conscience." Decline and Fall, Vol. III. u. xxi. 2 Hahn, Biblioth. d. Symb., pp. 103-105. 3 The best exposition of the doctrine of Marcellus is by Zahn, Marcellus of Ancyra (1867). ANCIENT THEOLOGY 141 but not begotten and not personal. The divine Energy * so named comes forth from the Father to accomplish the work of creation and redemption. Only at the incarnation did the Logos become personal. The incarnation was a union with an impersonal human nature." It is only the incarnate Logos who in Scripture is caUed the Son of God, and when the Saviour's work ends, the Logos returns to its premundane relation to the Father. A like doctrine was held respecting the Spirit; both the Logos and the Spirit being, in the sense defined, consubstantial with the Father. It is not explained what becomes of the body of Christ when the work of redemption is finished. Photinus regarded Christ as a man, the Son of Mary, conceived of the Holy Ghost and under the influence of the divine Logos, his idea being that the Logos, as was held by Marcellus, was an impersonal power of God. In 336, in a Synod at Constantinople, MarceUus was condemned by the Orientals, and Eusebius of Caesarea was charged with the task of preparing a confutation of his opinions. But Athanasius and Julius of Rome persisted in recognizing him as within the pale of orthodoxy. Athanasius at a later day controverted his doctrine, but avoided any attack upon him personally.' The Antiochian Synods (341-345), of which mention has been made, having failed to bridge the chasm between the East and the West, the Western Emperor, Constans, prompted by Julius, the Roman Bishop, persuaded his brother Constantius to call a general Synod. In 347 this was ready to assemble, but the two sections of the Church were deterred by mutual suspicion from meeting in one body. The Orientals demanded in vain a recog nition of the deposition of Athanasius and Marcellus. Accord ingly the Occidentals met at Sardica and the Orientals in a much smaller number at PhUippopolis in Thrace. The latter planted themselves on the fourth Antiochian symbol.* The former de clared for Nicaea and Rome. Julius prevailed on Constans to 1 4v4pyeta SpatTTiK-fi. 2 Zahn, p. 164: "Aber diese impersonliche Menschennatur ist nicht ein todtes Werkzeug, sondern Selbstdarstellung des Logos." 3 It is of the doctrine of Marcellus that Athanasius writes in C. Ar. Oratt. iv. 4-24. This passage is discussed by Zahn, p. 198 sq. It had been consid ered in its relation to Marcellus by two German writers, Rettberg and Kuhn; also by J. H. Newman, Ath. Treatises, pp. 497-511. Cf Gwatkin, p. 82. 4 Hahn, p. 407. The documents framed by the two Synods are fully dis cussed by Hefele, Vol. II. B. IV. 143 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE procure from his brother, who for poUtical reasons did not wish to offend him, the return of Athanasius to Alexandria (346) ; but the death of Constans, in 350, exposed the resolute bishop once more to the intrigues of his enemies. In the proceedings relat ing to Marcellus and Photinus, an occasion was found for all the Anti-Niceans to combine. Photinus was anathematized by the Antiochian Synod of Eusebius in 344. He was condemned after wards in a series of synods held by the Eusebians and by the orthodox. At the first Sirmian Synod (351) a creed, the first of a series of four, framed at the same place, was adopted.* The Sirmian creeds rejected Arian formulas, but avoided the strict definitions of Nicaea. A great effort was made to move Rome and the West to abandon the support of Athanasius. Constan tius, after he conquered Magnentius in 353, was sole Emperor until his death in 361. By cunning management and by force he succeeded in bringing the Western bishops into ecclesiastical feUowship with the Eusebians, through the Synods of Aries and of Milan (355). There were a few of the bishops at Milan who could not be deluded or coerced, and these were sent into banish ment. Athanasius, thus condemned, found a refuge with faithful monks in Egypt. In this way the Anti-Nicene party for the time was everywhere triumphant. Its success was the signal for its disruption. Relieved from external pressure, the union of its really discordant parts was broken up. Two of the Anti-Nicene leaders, Aetius of Antioch and Eunomius of Cyzicus in Mysia, denied the Homoeousion; that is, asserted that the Son is not like God. There sprang up thus the new faction of Anomoeans. And the Eusebians, who opposed them, were further divided among themselves. The " Homceans " would not go a step beyond the affirmation of a " likeness," — meaning a likeness in wiU and active energy. The bishops at the Court were eager to stave off an open rapture in the Eusebian ranks. Their prescription was to abjure the use of the unbiblical word usia, the centre of the contention. In the second Sirmian creed (357), the members of which were Western bishops, it was declared that no more mention should be made of either ' Homoousion ' or ' Homoeousion.' The spirit of the connected statements was decidedly Arian. A Synod of conserva tive Semi-Arians at Ancyra in 358 issued a Letter affirming that 1 For the first two, see Hahn, p. 115 sq. ANCIENT THEOLOGY 1 43 the term ' Father ' impUes in itself the Son's likeness in substance. In a third Sirmian Creed, several symbols were put together — one of which was one of the Antiochian Creeds of 341. The term ' Homoousion ' was avoided. Liberius, the Roman bishop, was induced to agree to this attempt at compromise. A fourth symbol * was composed at Sirmium, in which the Son was pronounced to belike the Father, "according to the Scriptures," — an ambigu ous phrase. The Easterns were assembled in a Council at Seleu- cia and the Westerns at Rimini, by the dictatorial Constantius. The last Sirmian formulary was modified by dropping the phrase " according to the Scriptures." " The use of the words ' Homoou sion ' and ' Homoeousian ' was renounced, and the Anomoeans anathematized. On the accession of Julian, Athanasius returned to his diocese (362). One more banishment he had to endure under Valens, whose wife was an Arian; but Valens was per suaded by Valentinian to desist from persecution. This removed an obstacle to the progress of the Nicene theology. Athanasius, in his latter days, fell in with efforts to unite aU the anti-Arians. The spirit of conciliation characterized a Council at Alexandria assem bled in 362. He did not repulse advocates of the Homoeousion who held to the likeness of the Son to the Father in all respects. There arose a class of moderate Nicaeans, of whom Meletius of Antioch was one, who incurred the displeasure of both extreme parties. A "Younger Nicaean Party" appeared, counting in it leaders who "were heirs" — through Eusebius and his influence — of a Homoeousion tradition, but " owed to Athanasius and the Nicene Creed a more perfect interpretation of their unaltered beHef." They were disciples of the Origenist School. They did much to secure the prevalence of the Nicene doctrine. The principal chiefs were the three eminent Cappadocian bishops, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzum, and Gregory of Nyssa. But their teaching in reality modified the aspect of the Nicene formulas. The term ' hypostasis,' instead of being a synonym of usia, was used to designate a person or personal subject, in distinction from sub stance. This use of the term became current in the East. Per sonal distinctions in the Trinity vi'ere emphasized. The relation of the persons in the godhead was compared by the Gregories to the relation of three men to their common humanity. In the case of 1 See Hahn, p. 124. 2 For the Seleucian Symbol, see Hahn. p. 127, J44 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE Gregory of Nyssa, beneath this representation there was the Platonic or realistic idea of the unity of human nature. It is by an abuse of language, he teUs us, that three human persons are caUed three men, since as respects humanity — essentially — they are one. Inasmuch as the person * of the Father is one, " from whom the Son is generated and the Holy Spirit proceeds, for this reason, properly speaking," we say that He who is the one ground or cause ' of the effects * — i.e., the Son and the Spirit — is one God.' But in interpreting Gregory, it must be kept in mind that there is in his conception a genetic relation among the persons and a mutual 'inhabitation,'" so that neither is conceivable, neither is complete, without the others. In this sense they are together the One God. They constitute an inseparable unity. Hence they are not with strict propriety to be caUed three. They are sepa rated neither in time, nor place, nor will, nor work.' Gregory's iUustration is the rainbow. In both the sunlight and in the rain bow, the Hght is one. The colors of the bow remain in unity, and although distinguishable, pass over inperceptibly into one an other. Yet by the later Nicaeans the mystery was made to lie in the unity of God rather than in the trinity. And the unity, as we see, was secured by a subordinationism carried further than it was carried by Athanasius. Meletius was recognized as the Bishop of Antioch by the younger Nic^ans, but was not acknowledged as such at Rome and in the West. New contention arose on the subject of the Holy Ghost. Arius had held that the Holy Spirit is the first created nature produced by the Son. Athanasius and the Alexandrian Synod of 362 had predicated the Homoousion of the Spirit. The Nicene Creed contained on the subject a single indefinite sentence. In 380, Gregory of Nazianzum writes that concerning the rank of the Holy Spirit and His relation to God there is among theologians a great diversity of opinion, some professing not to know what to think on the matter, the Scriptures not having clearly explained ^ Trp6o'0}irov. 4 alTiaruiv. 2 Kvplas. ^ 'Ek tuv Koivav ivvoidv, T. II. p. 85. " atriov. ^ TrepixtitpT}KO%. * Cyril. Alex. 0pp. Epist. IV. See Hahn, p. 235. 5 The anathemas of Cyril and the correspondence are in Mansi, Cone Coll. Vols. IV. and V., Hahn, p. 238 sq. ^ iyivcTo &vSpuiros, oJ (rvvii6rj dvOpiirw, ANCIENT THEOLOGY 153 of the divine Logos.* This was thought to be a phrase of Athana sius, but was in the treatise against Apollinaris, which was incor rectly ascribed to him. The idea of Cyril is that the flesh, aU the human attributes, have become the attributes of the Logos without the loss of His divine nature. The product is a theanthropic person, not merely God, or merely man, but throughout both in one. There is thus in Christ incarnate a communion of attributes. There is one subject, with one nature, which is divine-human. In this literal sense the Logos has assumed humanity. Hence it can be said that ' God is born,' that ' God suffered,' if only it be added, ' according to the flesh.'" Nestorius argued that such a conception clashes with the distinction between God and man as to essence ; that it annuls the immutabiUty of God by imputing to Him a change of nature, or a mixture with another nature, or a change of place in coming into the flesh. But Cyril persistently asserted that the uniting of the natures is not their fusion ; that ' to have flesh' is not 'to be flesh.' Nestorius sought to repel the infer ence that by his doctrine the unity of person was broken up, since there is a constant, harmonious co-working of the human nature in subordination to the divine. The human shares in the dignity of the divine in virtue of its connection with it. CyrU alleged that to render divine honors to one who is not ' by nature God ' is man-worship. Each party, that of the Alexandrians and that of the Antiochians, contended that its own theory alone fur nished a basis for redemption. Nestorius had explained his objection to the word 'Theotokos.' It was on the ground of its ambiguity. The anathemas of CyrU called out answers from two eminent Antiochians, Andreas, Bishop of Samosata, and Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus. To appease the strife, Theodosius II. summoned a General Council to meet at Ephesus (431). But Cyril, who was attended by a throng of bishops, a great part of them from Egypt, did not wait for the arrival of the Oriental bishops, but proceeded to organize the Council, and, with Memnon of Ephesus to assist him, pronounced Nestorius, despite the protest of the Emperor's Commissioner, guilty of heresy and deposed. The Orientals, when they arrived, organized separately under John, Bishop of Antioch, and proceeded to depose CyrU and his principal auxiliary, Memnon. Theodosius was incensed at the proceeding 1 )dav tpiffiv Tov Seov \tiyov aeaapKtaixivriv. " /coxa adpKa. 154 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE of Cyril, but was won over to his cause by the influence of the monks, and of officers of the Court, who were corrupted by bribes. He had confirmed aU three acts of deposition, but he restored CyrU and Memnon, whUe he left Nestorius in his cloister at Antioch. The rupture between the Orientals proper and other provinces, especially Egypt, led to strenuous efforts to patch up a peace. To promote this purpose, Theodosius exerted his author ity in an arbitrary way. Cyril was steadily gaining ground at the Court and in the Capital. In 433, John of Antioch agreed upon terms of peace. Cyril signed a confession that was drawn up by the Antiochians and contained nothing antagonistic to their opinions. John of Antioch had been a conservative supporter of the anti-CyrilUan theology, although he had expostulated with Nestorius for raising a storm about a word which was capable of an innocent interpretation. Now, however, for the sake of peace, and moved by the threatening attitude of the Emperor, he con sented to the condemnation of Nestorius and of the doctrinal statements which had been proscribed. Nestorius, a persecuted man, was driven from one place of refuge to another. He died in 440. The theological school at Edessa — where the Persian clergy had long been educated — under the lead of Rabulas, a deserter from the Nestorian party, was thrown into confusion. As the final result it was broken up (489). The Nestorian dissentients fled into Persia and established there a separate Church, in which Theodore and the other Antiochian leaders, to the condemnation of whose writings they had refused to con sent, were held in high esteem. There was wide dissatisfaction with the concessions made by John in the treaty with Cyril. But in Egypt there was a prevalent discontent on the other side, and vehement opposition to the doctrine of two natures. The Cyrillian partisans were accused by the Orientals of Apollinarianism. At this point there begins another stage in the prolonged warfare of opinion. Dioscuras, a violent man, the successor of Cyril, and bishop from 444 to 451, oppressed the Nestorians and compelled, where he could, the renunciation of their doctrine. But the ranks of the Cyrillians were broken through the promulgation by Eutyches, an old Archimandrite of a cloister close by Constantinople, of an extreme opinion, an opinion that went too far for all but the zealots of his party. He held that after the Incarnation there is only one ANCIENT THEOLOGY jee nature. Christ, he said, is of two natures, but not in two. Moreover, he held that the body of Christ was not of the same nature (consubstantial) with our human bodies. Prosecuted by Eusebius of Dorylaeum, who had been one of his friends, he was condemned and dismissed from his office by a Synod at Con stantinople (448) over which Flavianus, his bishop, presided. Leo I., the Bishop of Rome, in a long letter to Flavianus, approved of his course, and set forth the doctrine relative to the person of Christ in which there was a distinct assertion of the two natures.* Dioscuras caused a Synod to assemble at Ephesus from which, by means of brutal threats and coercion, a decree in favor of Eutyches was extorted. The date of this Robber Synod, a name given to it by Leo, was 449. Theodosius had exerted his power, in the usual despotic style, in behalf of Eutyches ; but the Emperor's death, in 450, left his sister, Pulcheria, with her husband, Marcianus, on the throne — both hostile to the fanatical Alexandrian bishop and in sympathy with Leo. An CEcumenical Council assembled at Chalcedon in 45 1 . Dioscuras was deposed for his crimes. Cyril was pronounced orthodox. Theodoret, who had been deposed by the Robber Synod, but who had been supported and declared to be reinstated by Leo, was now formally restored, but was first driven by the clamor raised in the CouncU to anathematize not only the doctrine of the " two sons," but, also Nestorius and all others who held it. The antipathy to Nestorius could nowhere be appeased except by a repudiation of him by name. The Council first declared its firm adhesion to the Creed ratified at Nicaea and Constantinople, and the expo sition of it by Cyril at Ephesus. It sanctioned Leo's letter to Flavian, and framed, besides, a creed of its own. The Chalcedon Creed affirmed that the Son is consubstantial " with the Father as to His godhead, and consubstantial with us as to His humanity, that He is the Son of Mary, the Mother of God, as to His humanity, that He is one person in two natures, united " incon- fusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably," ' the property of each nature being preserved in the union, with no parting or dividing into two persons.* Notwithstanding the deference paid by the Chalcedon Fathers to Cyril's teaching, Nestorius might 1 Mansi, V. 1366-1390; Hahn, Biblioth. p. 256 sq. " d/iooiaiov. ^ dffvyx^Ttot, drpiTTTios, dSiatp^rcos, dxtoplo'T