IV.
THE CHRIST OF DOGMA.[1]
THE meagreness of our information concerning the
historic career of Jesus stands in striking contrast
with the mass of information which lies within our reach
concerning the primitive character of Christologic speculation.
First we have the four epistles of Paul, written
from twenty to thirty years after the crucifixion,
which, although they tell us next to nothing about what
Jesus did, nevertheless give us very plain information
as to the impression which he made. Then we have
the Apocalypse, written by John, A. D. 68, which exhibits
the Messianic theory entertained by the earliest
disciples. Next we have the epistles to the Hebrews,
Philippians, Colossians, and Ephesians, besides the four
gospels, constituting altogether a connected chain of
testimony to the progress of Christian doctrine from the
destruction of Jerusalem to the time of the Quartodeciman
controversy (A. D. 70-170). Finally, there is the
vast collection of apocryphal, heretical, and patristic
literature, from the writings of Justin Martyr, the pseudo-Clement, and the pseudo-Ignatius, down to the time of
the Council of Nikaia, when the official theories of
Christ's person assumed very nearly the shape which
they have retained, within the orthodox churches of
Christendom, down to the present day. As we pointed
out in the foregoing essay, while all this voluminous
literature throws but an uncertain light upon the life
and teachings of the founder of Christianity, it
nevertheless furnishes nearly all the data which we could
desire for knowing what the early Christians thought
of the master of their faith. Having given a brief account
of the historic career of Jesus, so far as it can
now be determined, we propose here to sketch the rise
and progress of Christologic doctrine, in its most striking
features, during the first three centuries. Beginning
with the apostolic view of the human Messiah sent to
deliver Judaism from its spiritual torpor, and prepare it
for the millennial kingdom, we shall briefly trace the
progressive metamorphosis of this conception until it
completely loses its identity in the Athanasian theory,
according to which Jesus was God himself, the Creator
of the universe, incarnate in human flesh.
The earliest dogma held by the apostles concerning
Jesus was that of his resurrection from the grave after
death. It was not only the earliest, but the most essential
to the success of the new religion. Christianity
might have overspread the Roman Empire, and maintained
its hold upon men's faith until to-day, without
the dogmas of the incarnation and the Trinity; but
without the dogma of the resurrection it would probably
have failed at the very outset. Its lofty morality would
not alone have sufficed to insure its success. For what
men needed then, as indeed they still need, and will
always need, was not merely a rule of life and a mirror
to the heart, but also a comprehensive and satisfactory
theory of things, a philosophy or theosophy. The times
demanded intellectual as well as moral consolation; and
the disintegration of ancient theologies needed to be
repaired, that the new ethical impulse imparted by
Christianity might rest upon a plausible speculative
basis. The doctrine of the resurrection was but the
beginning of a series of speculative innovations which
prepared the way for the new religion to emancipate
itself from Judaism, and achieve the conquest of the
Empire. Even the faith of the apostles in the speedy
return of their master the Messiah must have somewhat
lost ground, had it not been supported by their belief
in his resurrection from the grave and his consequent
transfer from Sheol, the gloomy land of shadows, to the
regions above the sky.
The origin of the dogma of the resurrection cannot be
determined with certainty. The question has, during
the past century, been the subject of much discussion,
upon which it is not necessary for us here to comment.
Such apparent evidence as there is in favour of the old
theory of Jesus' natural recovery from the effects of the
crucifixion may be found in Salvador's "Jésus-Christ
et sa Doctrine"; but, as Zeller has shown, the theory is
utterly unsatisfactory. The natural return of Jesus to
his disciples never could have given rise to the notion
of his resurrection, since the natural explanation would
have been the more obvious one; besides which, if we
were to adopt this hypothesis, we should be obliged to
account for the fact that the historic career of Jesus
ends with the crucifixion. The most probable explanation,
on the whole, is the one suggested by the accounts
in the gospels, that the dogma of the resurrection is due
originally to the excited imagination of Mary of Magdala.
[2]
The testimony of Paul may also be cited in
favour of this view, since he always alludes to earlier
Christophanies in just the same language which he uses
in describing his own vision on the road to Damascus.
But the question as to how the belief in the resurrection
of Jesus originated is of less importance than the
question as to how it should have produced the effect
that it did. The dogma of the resurrection has, until
recent times, been so rarely treated from the historical
point of view, that the student of history at first finds
some difficulty in thoroughly realizing its import to the
minds of those who first proclaimed it. We cannot
hope to understand it without bearing in mind the theories
of the Jews and early Christians concerning the
structure of the world and the cosmic location of
departed souls. Since the time of Copernicus modern
Christians no longer attempt to locate heaven and hell;
they are conceived merely as mysterious places remote
from the earth. The theological universe no longer corresponds
to that which physical science presents for our
contemplation. It was quite different with the Jew.
His conception of the abode of Jehovah and the angels,
and of departed souls, was exceedingly simple and definite.
In the Jewish theory the universe is like a sort
of three-story house. The flat earth rests upon the
waters, and under the earth's surface is the land of
graves, called Sheol, where after death the souls of all
men go, the righteous as well as the wicked, for the
Jew had not arrived at the doctrine of heaven and hell.
The Hebrew Sheol corresponds strictly to the Greek
Hades, before the notions of Elysium and Tartarus were
added to it,—a land peopled with flitting shadows, suffering
no torment, but experiencing no pleasure, like
those whom Dante met in one of the upper circles of
his Inferno. Sheol is the first story of the cosmic
house; the earth is the second. Above the earth is
the firmament or sky, which, according to the book of
Genesis (chap. i. v. 6, Hebrew text), is a vast plate
hammered out by the gods, and supports a great ocean
like that upon which the earth rests. Rain is caused
by the opening of little windows or trap-doors in the
firmament, through which pours the water of this upper
ocean. Upon this water rests the land of heaven, where
Jehovah reigns, surrounded by hosts of angels. To this
blessed land two only of the human race had ever been
admitted,—Enoch and Elijah, the latter of whom had
ascended in a chariot of fire, and was destined to return
to earth as the herald and forerunner of the Messiah.
Heaven forms the third story of the cosmic house.
Between the firmament and the earth is the air, which
is the habitation of evil demons ruled by Satan, the
"prince of the powers of the air."
Such was the cosmology of the ancient Jew; and his
theology was equally simple. Sheol was the destined
abode of all men after death, and no theory of moral
retribution was attached to the conception. The rewards
and punishments known to the authors of the
Pentateuch and the early Psalms are all earthly rewards
and punishments. But in course of time the prosperity
of the wicked and the misfortunes of the good man furnished
a troublesome problem for the Jewish thinker;
and after the Babylonish Captivity, we find the doctrine
of a resurrection from Sheol devised in order to meet
this case. According to this doctrine—which was borrowed
from the Zarathustrian theology of Persia—the
Messiah on his arrival was to free from Sheol all the
souls of the righteous, causing them to ascend reinvested
in their bodies to a renewed and beautiful earth,
while on the other hand the wicked were to be punished
with tortures like those of the valley of Hinnom,
or were to be immersed in liquid brimstone, like that
which had rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah. Here
we get the first announcement of a future state of retribution.
The doctrine was peculiarly Pharisaic, and the
Sadducees, who were strict adherents to the letter of
Mosaism, rejected it to the last. By degrees this doctrine
became coupled with the Messianic theories of the
Pharisees. The loss of Jewish independence under the
dominion of Persians, Macedonians, and Romans, caused
the people to look ever more earnestly toward the expected
time when the Messiah should appear in Jerusalem
to deliver them from their oppressors. The moral
doctrines of the Psalms and earlier prophets assumed
an increasingly political aspect. The Jews were the
righteous "under a cloud," whose sufferings were symbolically
depicted by the younger Isaiah as the afflictions
of the "servant of Jehovah"; while on the other
hand, the "wicked" were the Gentile oppressors of the
holy people. Accordingly the Messiah, on his arrival,
was to sit in judgment in the valley of Jehoshaphat,
rectifying the wrongs of his chosen ones, condemning
the Gentile tyrants to the torments of Gehenna, and
raising from Sheol all those Jews who had lived and
died during the evil times before his coming. These
were to find in the Messianic kingdom the compensation
for the ills which they had suffered in their first
earthly existence. Such are the main outlines of the
theory found in the Book of Enoch, written about B. C.
100, and it is adopted in the Johannine Apocalypse,
with little variation, save in the recognition of Jesus as
the Messiah, and in the transferrence to his second coming
of all these wonderful proceedings. The manner
of the Messiah's coming had been variously imagined.
According to an earlier view, he was to enter Jerusalem
as a King of the house of David, and therefore of human
lineage. According to a later view, presented in
the Book of Daniel, he was to descend from the sky,
and appear among the clouds. Both these views were
adopted by the disciples of Jesus, who harmonized them
by referring the one to his first and the other to his
second appearance.
Now to the imaginations of these earliest disciples
the belief in the resurrection of Jesus presented itself
as a needful guarantee of his Messiahship. Their faith,
which must have been shaken by his execution and
descent into Sheol, received welcome confirmation by
the springing up of the belief that he had been again
seen upon the face of the earth. Applying the imagery
of Daniel, it became a logical conclusion that he must
have ascended into the sky, whence he might shortly
be expected to make his appearance, to enact the scenes
foretold in prophecy. That such was the actual process
of inference is shown by the legend of the Ascension in
the first chapter of the "Acts," and especially by the
words, "This Jesus who hath been taken up from you
into heaven, will come in the same manner in which ye
beheld him going into heaven." In the Apocalypse,
written A. D. 68, just after the death of Nero, this
second coming is described as something immediately
to happen, and the colours in which it is depicted show
how closely allied were the Johannine notions to those
of the Pharisees. The glories of the New Jerusalem are
to be reserved for Jews, while for the Roman tyrants of
Judæa is reserved a fearful retribution. They are to be
trodden underfoot by the Messiah, like grapes in a
wine-press, until the gushing blood shall rise to the
height of the horse's bridle.
In the writings of Paul the dogma of the resurrection
assumes a very different aspect. Though Paul, like the
older apostles, held that Jesus, as the Messiah, was to
return to the earth within a few years, yet to his catholic
mind this anticipated event had become divested of
its narrow Jewish significance. In the eyes of Paul,
the religion preached by Jesus was an abrogation of
Mosaism, and the truths contained in it were a free gift
to the Gentile as well as to the Jewish world. According
to Paul, death came into the world as a punishment
for the sin of Adam. By this he meant that, had it not
been for the original transgression, all men escaping
death would either have remained upon earth or have
been conveyed to heaven, like Enoch and Elijah, in incorruptible
bodies. But in reality as a penance for disobedience,
all men, with these two exceptions, had suffered
death, and been exiled to the gloomy caverns of
Sheol. The Mosaic ritual was powerless to free men
from this repulsive doom, but it had nevertheless served
a good purpose in keeping men's minds directed toward
holiness, preparing them, as a schoolmaster would prepare
his pupils, to receive the vitalizing truths of Christ.
Now, at last, the Messiah or Christ had come as a second
Adam, and being without sin had been raised by
Jehovah out of Sheol and taken up into heaven, as
testimony to men that the power of sin and death was
at last defeated. The way henceforth to avoid death
and escape the exile to Sheol was to live spiritually like
Jesus, and with him to be dead to sensual requirements.
Faith, in Paul's apprehension, was not an intellectual
assent to definitely prescribed dogmas, but, as Matthew
Arnold has well pointed out, it was an emotional striving
after righteousness, a developing consciousness of
God in the soul, such as Jesus had possessed, or, in
Paul's phraseology, a subjugation of the flesh by the
spirit. All those who should thus seek spiritual perfection
should escape the original curse. The Messiah
was destined to return to the earth to establish the
reign of spiritual holiness, probably during Paul's own
lifetime (1 Cor. xv. 51). Then the true followers of
Jesus should be clothed in ethereal bodies, free from
the imperfections of "the flesh," and should ascend to
heaven without suffering death, while the righteous
dead should at the same time be released from Sheol,
even as Jesus himself had been released.
To the doctrine of the resurrection, in which ethical
and speculative elements are thus happily blended by
Paul, the new religion doubtless owed in great part its
rapid success. Into an account of the causes which
favoured the spreading of Christianity, it is not our
purpose to enter at present. But we may note that the
local religions of the ancient pagan world had partly
destroyed each other by mutual intermingling, and had
lost their hold upon people from the circumstance that
their ethical teaching no longer corresponded to the
advanced ethical feeling of the age. Polytheism, in
short, was outgrown. It was outgrown both intellectually
and morally. People were ceasing to believe in its
doctrines, and were ceasing to respect its precepts. The
learned were taking refuge in philosophy, the ignorant
in mystical superstitions imported from Asia. The
commanding ethical motive of ancient republican times had
been patriotism,—devotion to the interests of the community.
But Roman dominion had destroyed patriotism
as a guiding principle of life, and thus in every way
the minds of men were left in a sceptical, unsatisfied
state,—craving after a new theory of life, and craving
after a new stimulus to right action. Obviously the
only theology which could now be satisfactory to philosophy
or to common-sense was some form of monotheism;—some
system of doctrines which should represent
all men as spiritually subjected to the will of a
single God, just as they were subjected to the temporal
authority of the Emperor. And similarly the only system
of ethics which could have a chance of prevailing
must be some system which should clearly prescribe
the mutual duties of all men without distinction of race
or locality. Thus the spiritual morality of Jesus, and
his conception of God as a father and of all men as
brothers, appeared at once to meet the ethical and speculative
demands of the time.
Yet whatever effect these teachings might have produced,
if unaided by further doctrinal elaboration, was
enhanced myriadfold by the elaboration which they received
at the hands of Paul. Philosophic Stoics and
Epicureans had arrived at the conception of the brotherhood
of men, and the Greek hymn of Kleanthes had
exhibited a deep spiritual sense of the fatherhood of
God. The originality of Christianity lay not so much
in its enunciation of new ethical precepts as in the fact
that it furnished a new ethical sanction,—a commanding
incentive to holiness of living. That it might accomplish
this result, it was absolutely necessary that it
should begin by discarding both the ritualism and the
narrow theories of Judaism. The mere desire for a
monotheistic creed had led many pagans, in Paul's time,
to embrace Judaism, in spite of its requirements, which
to Romans and Greeks were meaningless, and often
disgusting; but such conversions could never have been
numerous. Judaism could never have conquered the
Roman world; nor is it likely that the Judaical Christianity
of Peter, James, and John would have been any
more successful. The doctrine of the resurrection, in
particular, was not likely to prove attractive when
accompanied by the picture of the Messiah treading the
Gentiles in the wine-press of his righteous indignation.
But here Paul showed his profound originality The
condemnation of Jewish formalism which Jesus had
pronounced, Paul turned against the older apostles, who
insisted upon circumcision. With marvellous flexibility
of mind, Paul placed circumcision and the Mosaic
injunctions about meats upon a level with the ritual
observances of pagan nations, allowing each feeble
brother to perform such works as might tickle his
fancy, but bidding all take heed that salvation was not
to be obtained after any such mechanical method, but
only by devoting the whole soul to righteousness, after
the example of Jesus.
This was the negative part of Paul's work. This was
the knocking down of the barriers which had kept men,
and would always have kept them, from entering into
the kingdom of heaven. But the positive part of Paul's
work is contained in his theory of the salvation of men
from death through the second Adam, whom Jehovah
rescued from Sheol for his sinlessness. The resurrection
of Jesus was the visible token of the escape from death
which might be achieved by all men who, with God's
aid, should succeed in freeing themselves from the burden
of sin which had encumbered all the children of
Adam. The end of the world was at hand, and they
who would live with Christ must figuratively die with
Christ, must become dead to sin. Thus to the pure
and spiritual ethics contained in the teachings of Jesus,
Paul added an incalculably powerful incentive to right
action, and a theory of life calculated to satisfy the speculative
necessities of the pagan or Gentile world. To the
educated and sceptical Athenian, as to the critical scholar
of modern times, the physical resurrection of Jesus from
the grave, and his ascent through the vaulted floor of
heaven, might seem foolishness or naïveté. But to the
average Greek or Roman the conception presented no
serious difficulty. The cosmical theories upon which
the conception was founded were essentially the same
among Jews and Gentiles, and indeed were but little
modified until the establishment of the Copernican astronomy.
The doctrine of the Messiah's second coming
was also received without opposition, and for about a
century men lived in continual anticipation of that
event, until hope long deferred produced its usual results;
the writings in which that event was predicted
were gradually explained away, ignored, or stigmatized
as uncanonical; and the Church ended by condemning
as a heresy the very doctrine which Paul and the Judaizing
apostles, who agreed in little else, had alike made
the basis of their speculative teachings. Nevertheless,
by the dint of allegorical interpretation, the belief
has maintained an obscure existence even down to
the present time; the Antiochus of the Book of
Daniel and the Nero of the Apocalypse having given
place to the Roman Pontiff or to the Emperor of the
French.
But as the millenarism of the primitive Church gradually
died out during the second century, the essential
principles involved in it lost none of their hold on men's
minds. As the generation contemporary with Paul died
away and was gathered into Sheol, it became apparent
that the original theory must be somewhat modified,
and to this question the author of the second epistle to
the Thessalonians addresses himself. Instead of literal
preservation from death, the doctrine of a resurrection
from the grave was gradually extended to the case of the
new believers, who were to share in the same glorious
revival with the righteous of ancient times. And thus
by slow degrees the victory over death, of which the
resurrection of Jesus was a symbol and a witness, became
metamorphosed into the comparatively modern
doctrine of the rest of the saints in heaven, while the
banishment of the unrighteous to Sheol was made still
more dreadful by coupling with the vague conception
of a gloomy subterranean cavern the horrible imagery
of the lake of fire and brimstone borrowed from the
apocalyptic descriptions of Gehenna. But in this modification
of the original theory, the fundamental idea
of a future state of retribution was only the more
distinctly emphasized; although, in course of time, the
original incentive to righteousness supplied by Paul
was more and more subordinated to the comparatively
degrading incentive involved in the fear of damnation.
There can hardly be a doubt that the definiteness and
vividness of the Pauline theory of a future life contributed
very largely to the rapid spread of the Christian
religion; nor can it be doubted that to the desire to be
holy like Jesus, in order to escape death and live with
Jesus, is due the elevating ethical influence which, even
in the worst times of ecclesiastic degeneracy, Christianity
has never failed to exert. Doubtless, as Lessing
long, ago observed, the notion of future reward and
punishment needs to be eliminated in order that the incentive
to holiness may be a perfectly pure one. The highest
virtue is that which takes no thought of reward or
punishment; but for a conception of this sort the mind
of antiquity was not ready, nor is the average mind of
to-day yet ready; and the sudden or premature dissolution
of the Christian theory—which is fortunately
impossible—might perhaps entail a moral retrogradation.
The above is by no means intended as a complete
outline of the religious philosophy of Paul. We have
aimed only at a clear definition of the character and
scope of the doctrine of the resurrection of Jesus, at the
time when it was first elaborated. We have now to
notice the influence of that doctrine upon the development
of Christologic speculation.
In neither or the four genuine epistles of Paul is
Jesus described as superhuman, or as differing in nature
from other men, save in his freedom from sin. As Baur
has shown, "the proper nature of the Pauline Christ is
human. He is a man, but a spiritual man, one in whom
spirit or pneuma was the essential principle, so that he
was spirit as well as man. The principle of an ideal
humanity existed before Christ in the bright form of a
typical man, but was manifested to mankind in the person
of Christ." Such, according to Baur, is Paul's
interpretation of the Messianic idea. Paul knows nothing
of the miracles, of the supernatural conception, of
the incarnation, or of the Logos. The Christ whom he
preaches is the man Jesus, the founder of a new and
spiritual order of humanity, as Adam was the father of
humanity after the flesh. The resurrection is uniformly
described by him as a manifestation of the power of
Jehovah, not of Jesus himself. The later conception of
Christ bursting the barred gates of Sheol, and arising
by his own might to heaven, finds no warrant in the
expressions of Paul. Indeed, it was essential to Paul's
theory of the Messiah as a new Adam, that he should
be human and not divine; for the escape of a divine
being from Sheol could afford no precedent and furnish
no assurance of the future escape of human beings. It
was expressly because the man Jesus had been rescued
from the grave because of his spirituality, that other
men might hope, by becoming spiritual like him, to be
rescued also. Accordingly Paul is careful to state that
"since through man came death, through man came also
the resurrection of the dead" (1 Cor. xv. 21); a passage
which would look like an express denial of Christ's
superhuman character, were it probable that any of
Paul's contemporaries had ever conceived of Jesus as
other than essentially human.
But though Paul's Christology remained in this primitive
stage, it contained the germs of a more advanced
theory. For even Paul conceived of Jesus as a man
wholly exceptional in spiritual character; or, in the
phraseology of the time, as consisting to a larger extent
of pneuma than any man who had lived before him.
The question was sure to arise, Whence came this pneuma
or spiritual quality? Whether the question ever
distinctly presented itself to Paul's mind cannot be
determined. Probably it did not. In those writings of
his which have come down to us, he shows himself careless
of metaphysical considerations. He is mainly concerned
with exhibiting the unsatisfactory character of
Jewish Christianity, and with inculcating a spiritual
morality, to which the doctrine of Christ's resurrection
is made to supply a surpassingly powerful sanction.
But attempts to solve the problem were not long in
coming. According to a very early tradition, of which
the obscured traces remain in the synoptic gospels, Jesus
received the pneuma at the time of his baptism, when
the Holy Spirit, or visible manifestation of the essence
of Jehovah, descended upon him and became incarnate
in him. This theory, however, was exposed to the objection
that it implied a sudden and entire transformation
of an ordinary man into a person inspired or
possessed by the Deity. Though long maintained by the
Ebionites or primitive Christians, it was very soon
rejected by the great body of the Church, which asserted
instead that Jesus had been inspired by the Holy Spirit
from the moment of his conception. From this it was
but a step to the theory that Jesus was actually begotten
by or of the Holy Spirit; a notion which the Hellenic
mind, accustomed to the myths of Leda, Anchises,
and others, found no difficulty in entertaining. According
to the Gospel of the Hebrews, as cited by Origen,
the Holy Spirit was the mother of Jesus, and Joseph
was his father. But according to the prevailing opinion,
as represented in the first and third synoptists, the
relationship was just the other way. With greater apparent
plausibility, the divine æon was substituted for the
human father, and a myth sprang up, of which the
materialistic details furnished to the opponents of the new
religion an opportunity for making the most gross and
exasperating insinuations. The dominance of this theory
marks the era at which our first and third synoptic
gospels were composed,—from sixty to ninety years
after the death of Jesus. In the luxuriant mythologic
growth there exhibited, we may yet trace the various
successive phases of Christologic speculation but
imperfectly blended. In "Matthew" and "Luke" we find
the original Messianic theory exemplified in the genealogies
of Jesus, in which, contrary to historic probability
(cf. Matt. xxii. 41-46), but in accordance with a time-honoured tradition, his pedigree is traced back to David;
"Matthew" referring him to the royal line of Judah,
while "Luke" more cautiously has recourse to an assumed
younger branch. Superposed upon this primitive
mythologic stratum, we find, in the same narratives,
the account of the descent of the
pneuma at the time of
the baptism; and crowning the whole, there are the two
accounts of the nativity which, though conflicting in
nearly all their details, agree in representing the divine
pneuma as the father of Jesus. Of these three stages
of Christology, the last becomes entirely irreconcilable
with the first; and nothing can better illustrate the
uncritical character of the synoptists than the fact that
the assumed descent of Jesus from David through his
father Joseph is allowed to stand side by side with the
account of the miraculous conception which completely
negatives it. Of this difficulty "Matthew" is quite
unconscious, and "Luke," while vaguely noticing it (iii.
23), proposes no solution, and appears undisturbed by
the contradiction.
Thus far the Christology with which we have been
dealing is predominantly Jewish, though to some extent
influenced by Hellenic conceptions. None of the successive
doctrines presented in Paul, "Matthew," and
"Luke" assert or imply the pre-existence of Jesus. At
this early period he was regarded as a human being
raised to participation in certain attributes of divinity;
and this was as far as the dogma could be carried by
the Jewish metaphysics. But soon after the date of
our third gospel, a Hellenic system of Christology arose
into prominence, in which the problem was reversed,
and Jesus was regarded as a semi-divine being temporarily
lowered to participation in certain attributes of
humanity. For such a doctrine Jewish mythology supplied
no precedents; but the Indo-European mind was
familiar with the conception of deity incarnate in human
form, as in the avatars of Vishnu, or even suffering
III the interests of humanity, as in the noble myth of
Prometheus. The elements of Christology pre-existing in
the religious conceptions of Greece, India, and Persia,
are too rich and numerous to be discussed here. A very
full account of them is given in Mr. R. W. Mackay's
acute and learned treatise on the "Religious Development
of the Greeks and Hebrews."
It was in Alexandria, where Jewish theology first
came into contact with Hellenic and Oriental ideas, that
the way was prepared for the dogma of Christ's pre-existence. The attempt to rationalize the conception
of deity as embodied in the Jehovah of the Old Testament
gave rise to the class of opinions described as
Gnosis, or Gnosticism. The signification of Gnosis is
simply "rationalism,"—the endeavour to harmonize the
materialistic statements of an old mythology with the
more advanced spiritualistic philosophy of the time.
The Gnostics rejected the conception of an anthropomorphic
deity who had appeared visibly and audibly
to the patriarchs; and they were the authors of the
doctrine, very widely spread during the second and
third centuries, that God could not in person have been
the creator of the world. According to them, God, as
pure spirit, could not act directly upon vile and gross
matter. The difficulty which troubled them was curiously
analogous to that which disturbed the Cartesians
and the followers of Leibnitz in the seventeenth century;
how was spirit to act upon matter, without ceasing, pro
tanto, to be spirit? To evade this difficulty, the Gnostics
postulated a series of emanations from God, becoming
successively less and less spiritual and more and
more material, until at the lowest end of the scale was
reached the Demiurgus or Jehovah of the Old Testament,
who created the world and appeared, clothed in
material form, to the patriarchs. According to some of
the Gnostics this lowest æon or emanation was identical
with the Jewish Satan, or the Ahriman of the Persians,
who is called "the prince of this world," and the creation
of the world was an essentially evil act. But all
did not share in these extreme opinions. In the prevailing,
theory, this last of the divine emanations was
identified with the "Sophia," or personified "Wisdom,"
of the Book of Proverbs (viii. 22-30), who is described
as present with God before the foundation of the world.
The totality of these æons constituted the
pleroma, or
"fulness of God" (Coloss. i. 20; Eph. i. 23), and in a
corollary which bears unmistakable marks of Buddhist
influence, it was argued that, in the final consummation
of things, matter should be eliminated and all spirit
reunited with God, from whom it had primarily flowed.
It was impossible that such views as these should not
soon be taken up and applied to the fluctuating Christology
of the time. According to the "Shepherd of
Hermas," an apocalyptic writing nearly contemporary
with the gospel of "Mark," the æon or son of God who
existed previous to the creation was not the Christ, or
the Sophia, but the Pneuma or Holy Spirit, represented
in the Old Testament as the "angel of Jehovah."
Jesus, in reward for his perfect goodness, was admitted
to a share in the privileges of this Pneuma (Réville,
p. 39). Here, as M. Réville observes, though a Gnostic
idea is adopted, Jesus is nevertheless viewed as ascending
humanity, and not as descending divinity. The
author of the "Clementine Homilies" advances a step
farther, and clearly assumes the pre-existence of Jesus,
who, in his opinion, was the pure, primitive man,
successively incarnate in Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and finally in the Messiah or
Christ. The author protests, in vehement language,
against those Hellenists who, misled by their polytheistic
associations, would elevate Jesus into a god.
Nevertheless, his own hypothesis of pre-existence supplied
at once the requisite fulcrum for those Gnostics who
wished to reconcile a strict monotheism with the ascription
of divine attributes to Jesus. Combining with this
notion of pre-existence the pneumatic or spiritual quality
attributed to Jesus in the writings of Paul, the
Gnosticizing Christians maintained that Christ was an
æon or emanation from God, redeeming men from the
consequences entailed by their imprisonment in matter.
At this stage of Christologic speculation appeared the
anonymous epistle to the "Hebrews," and the pseudo-Pauline epistles to the "Colossians," "Ephesians," and
"Philippians" (A. D. 130). In these epistles, which
originated among the Pauline Christians, the Gnostic
theosophy is skilfully applied to the Pauline conception
of the scope and purposes of Christianity. Jesus is described
as the creator of the world (Coloss. i. 16), the
visible image of the invisible God, the chief and ruler
of the "throues, dominions, principalities, and powers,"
into which, in Gnostic phraseology, the emanations of
God were classified. Or, according to "Colossians"
and "Philippians," all the æons are summed up in him,
in whom dwells the
pleroma, or "fulness of God." Thus
Jesus is elevated quite above ordinary humanity, and a
close approach is made to ditheism, although he is still
emphatically subordinated to God by being made the
creator of the world,—an office then regarded as incompatible
with absolute divine perfection. In the celebrated
passage, "Philippians" ii. 6-11, the æon Jesus is
described as being the form or visible manifestation of
God, yet as humbling himself by taking on the form or
semblance of humanity, and suffering death, in return
for which he is to be exalted even above the archangels.
A similar view is taken in "Hebrews"; and it is probable
that to the growing favour with which these
doctrines were received, we owe the omission of the
miraculous conception from the gospel of "Mark,"—a
circumstance which has misled some critics into assigning
to that gospel an earlier date than to "Matthew"
and "Luke." Yet the fact that in this gospel Jesus
is implicitly ranked above the angels (Mark xiii. 32),
reveals a later stage of Christologic doctrine than that
reached by the first and third synoptists; and it is
altogether probable that, in accordance with the noticeable
conciliatory disposition of this evangelist, the supernatural
conception is omitted out of deference to the
Gnosticizing theories of "Colossians" and "Philippians,"
in which this materialistic doctrine seems to have had
no assignable place. In "Philippians" especially, many
expressions seem to verge upon
Docetism, the extreme
form of Gnosticism, according to which the human body
of Jesus was only a phantom. Valentinus, who was
contemporary with the Pauline writers of the second
century, maintained that Jesus was not born of Mary
by any process of conception, but merely passed through
her, as light traverses a translucent substance. And
finally Marcion (A. D. 140) carried the theory to its
extreme limits by declaring that Jesus was the pure
Pneuma or Spirit, who contained nothing in common
with carnal humanity.
The pseudo-Pauline writers steered clear of this
extravagant doctrine, which erred by breaking entirely
with historic tradition, and was consequently soon condemned
as heretical. Their language, though unmistakably
Gnostic, was sufficiently neutral and indefinite
to allow of their combination with earlier and later
expositions of dogma, and they were therefore eventually
received into the canon, where they exhibit a
stage of opinion midway between that of Paul and that
of the fourth gospel.
For the construction of a durable system of Christology,
still further elaboration was necessary. The
pre-existence of Jesus, as an emanation from God, in
whom were summed up the attributes of the pleroma or
full scale of Gnostic æons, was now generally conceded.
But the relation of this pleroqma to the Godhead of
which it was the visible manifestation, needed to be
more accurately defined. And here recourse was had to
the conception of the "Logos,"—a notion which Philo
had borrowed from Plato, lending to it a theosophic
significance. In the Platonic metaphysics objective
existence was attributed to general terms, the signs of
general notions. Besides each particular man, horse, or
tree, and besides all men, horses, and trees, in the aggregate,
there was supposed to exist an ideal Man, Horse,
and Tree. Each particular man, horse, or tree consisted
of abstract existence plus a portion of the ideal man,
horse, or tree. Sokrates, for instance, consisted of Existence,
plus Animality, plus Humanity, plus Sokraticity.
The visible world of particulars thus existed
only by virtue of its participation in the attributes of
the ideal world of universals. God created the world
by encumbering each idea with an envelopment or
clothing of visible matter; and since matter is vile or
imperfect, all things are more or less perfect as they
partake more or less fully of the idea. The pure
unencumbered idea, the "Idea of ideas," is the Logos, or
divine Reason, which represents the sum-total of the
activities which sustain the world, and serves as a mediator
between the absolutely ideal God and the absolutely
non-ideal matter. Here we arrive at a Gnostic conception,
which the Philonists of Alexandria were not slow
to appropriate. The Logos, or divine Reason, was identified
with the Sophia, or divine Wisdom of the Jewish
Gnostics, which had dwelt with God before the creation
of the world. By a subtle play upon the double meaning
of the Greek term (
logos = "reason" or "word"), a
distinction was drawn between the divine Reason and
the divine Word. The former was the archetypal idea
or thought of God, existing from all eternity; the latter
was the external manifestation or realization of that
idea which occurred at the moment of creation, when,
according to Genesis, God
spoke, and the world was.
In the middle of the second century, this Philonian
theory was the one thing needful to add metaphysical
precision to the Gnostic and Pauline speculations concerning
the nature of Jesus. In the writings of Justin
Martyr (A. D. 150-166), Jesus is for the first time
identified with the Philonian Logos or "Word of God."
According to Justin, an impassable abyss exists between
the Infinite Deity and the Finite World; the one cannot
act upon the other; pure spirit cannot contaminate
itself by contact with impure matter. To meet this
difficulty, God evolves from himself a secondary God,
the Logos,—yet without diminishing himself any more
than a flame is diminished when it gives birth to a
second flame. Thus generated, like light begotten of
light (lumen de lumine), the Logos creates the world,
inspires the ancient prophets with their divine revelations,
and finally reveals himself to mankind in the
person of Christ. Yet Justin sedulously guards himself
against ditheism, insisting frequently and emphatically
upon the immeasurable inferiority of the Logos as
compared with the actual God (ο ο υ τ ω ς
Θ ε ο ς).
We have here reached very nearly the ultimate phase
of New Testament speculation concerning Jesus. The
doctrines enunciated by Justin became eventually, with
slight modification, the official doctrines of the Church;
yet before they could thus be received, some further
elaboration was needed. The pre-existing Logos-Christ
of Justin was no longer the human Messiah of the first
and third gospels, born of a woman, inspired by the
divine
Pneuma, and tempted by the Devil. There was
danger that Christologic speculation might break quite
loose from historic tradition, and pass into the metaphysical
extreme of Docetism. Had this come to pass,
there might perhaps have been a fatal schism in the
Church. Tradition still remained Ebionitish; dogma
had become decidedly Gnostic; how were the two to be
moulded into harmony with each other? Such was the
problem which presented itself to the author of the
fourth gospel (A. D. 170-180). As M. Réville observes,
"if the doctrine of the Logos were really to be applied
to the person of Jesus, it was necessary to remodel the
evangelical history." Tradition must be moulded so as
to fit the dogma, but the dogma must be restrained by
tradition from running into Docetic extravagance. It
must be shown historically how "the Word became
flesh" and dwelt on earth (John i. 14), how the deeds
of Jesus of Nazareth were the deeds of the incarnate
Logos, in whom was exhibited the
pleroma or fulness of
the divine attributes. The author of the fourth gospel
is, like Justin, a Philonian Gnostic; but he differs from
Justin in his bold and skilful treatment of the traditional
materials supplied by the earlier gospels. The
process of development in the theories and purposes of
Jesus, which can be traced throughout the Messianic
descriptions of the first gospel, is entirely obliterated in
the fourth. Here Jesus appears at the outset as the
creator of the world, descended from his glory, but destined
soon to be reinstated. The title "Son of Man"
has lost its original significance, and become synonymous
with "Son of God." The temptation, the transfiguration,
the scene in Gethsemane, are omitted, and
for the latter is substituted a Philonian prayer.
Nevertheless, the author carefully avoids the extremes of
Docetism or ditheism. Not only does he represent the
human life of Jesus as real, and his death as a truly
physical death, but he distinctly asserts the inferiority
of the Son to the Father (John xiv. 28). Indeed, as M.
Réville well observes, it is part of the very notion of the
Logos that it should be imperfect relatively to the absolute
God; since it is only its relative imperfection
which allows it to sustain relations to the world and to
men which are incompatible with absolute perfection,
from the Philonian point of view. The Athanasian doctrine
of the Trinity finds no support in the fourth gospel,
any more than in the earlier books collected in the
New Testament.
The fourth gospel completes the speculative revolution
by which the conception of a divine being lowered
to humanity was substituted for that of a human being
raised to divinity. We have here travelled a long distance
from the risen Messiah of the genuine Pauline
epistles, or the preacher of righteousness in the first
gospel. Yet it does not seem probable that the Church
of the third century was thoroughly aware of the discrepancy.
The authors of the later Christology did not
regard themselves as adding new truths to Christianity,
but merely as giving a fuller and more consistent interpretation
to what must have been known from the outset.
They were so completely destitute of the historic
sense, and so strictly confined to the dogmatic point of
view, that they projected their own theories back into
the past, and vituperated as heretics those who adhered
to tradition in its earlier and simpler form. Examples
from more recent times are not wanting, which show
that we are dealing here with an inveterate tendency of
the human mind. New facts and new theories are at
first condemned as heretical or ridiculous; but when
once firmly established, it is immediately maintained
that every one knew them before. After the Copernican
astronomy had won the day, it was tacitly assumed that
the ancient Hebrew astronomy was Copernican, and the
Biblical conception of the universe as a kind of three-story house was ignored, and has been, except by scholars,
quite forgotten. When the geologic evidence of the
earth's immense antiquity could no longer be gainsaid,
it was suddenly ascertained that the Bible had from the
outset asserted that antiquity; and in our own day we
have seen an elegant popular writer perverting the testimony
of the rocks and distorting the Elohistic cosmogony
of the Pentateuch, until the twain have been made
to furnish what Bacon long ago described as "a heretical
religion and a false philosophy." Now just as in the
popular thought of the present day the ancient Elohist
is accredited with a knowledge of modern geology and
astronomy, so in the opinion of the fourth evangelist
and his contemporaries the doctrine of the Logos-Christ
was implicitly contained in the Old Testament and in
the early traditions concerning Jesus, and needed only
to be brought into prominence by a fresh interpretation.
Hence arose the fourth gospel, which was no more a
conscious violation of historic data than Hugh Miller's
imaginative description of the "Mosaic Vision of Creation."
Its metaphysical discourses were readily accepted
as equally authentic with the Sermon on the Mount.
Its Philonian doctrines were imputed to Paul and the
apostles, the pseudo-Pauline epistles furnishing the needful
texts. The Ebionites—who were simply Judaizing
Christians, holding in nearly its original form the
doctrine of Peter, James, and John—were ejected from the
Church as the most pernicious of heretics; and so
completely was their historic position misunderstood and
forgotten, that, in order to account for their existence, it
became necessary to invent an eponymous heresiarch,
Ebion, who was supposed to have led them astray from
the true faith!
The Christology of the fourth gospel is substantially
the same as that which was held in the next two centuries
by Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and
Arius. When the doctrine of the Trinity was first announced
by Sabellius (A. D. 250-260), it was formally
condemned as heretical, the Church being not yet quite
prepared to receive it. In 269 the Council of Antioch
solemnly declared that the Son was not consubstantial
with the Father,—a declaration which, within sixty
years, the Council of Nikaia was destined as solemnly to
contradict. The Trinitarian Christology struggled long
for acceptance, and did not finally win the victory until
the end of the fourth century. Yet from the outset its
ultimate victory was hardly doubtful. The peculiar
doctrines of the fourth gospel could retain their integrity
only so long as Gnostic ideas were prevalent.
When Gnosticism declined in importance, and its theories
faded out of recollection, its peculiar phraseology
received of necessity a new interpretation. The doctrine
that God could not act directly upon the world
sank gradually into oblivion as the Church grew more
and more hostile to the Neo-Platonic philosophy. And
when this theory was once forgotten, it was inevitable
that the Logos, as the creator of the world, should be
raised to an equality or identity with God himself. In
the view of the fourth evangelist, the Creator was necessarily
inferior to God; in the view of later ages, the
Creator could be none other than God. And so the
very phrases which had most emphatically asserted the
subordination of the Son were afterward interpreted as
asserting his absolute divinity. To the Gnostic formula,
lumen de lumine, was added the Athanasian scholium,
Deum verum de Deo vero; and the Trinitarian dogma
of the union of persons in a single Godhead became
thus the only available logical device for preserving the
purity of monotheism.
February, 1870.
[[1]]
Saint-Paul, par Ernest Renan. Paris, 1869.
Histoire du Dogme de la Divinité de Jesus-Christ, par Albert
Réville. Paris, 1869.
The End of the World and the Day of Judgment. Two Discourses
by the Rev. W. R. Alger. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1870.
[[2]]
See Taine, De l'Intelligence, II. 192.