Above all, they were filled with their Master's own desire to save men. "I am debtor," wrote Paul, "both to Greeks and to barbarians, wise and unwise."[62] If modern criticism is right in detaching the "missionary commission" (in Matthew) from the words of Jesus, the fact remains that the early Christians were "going into all the world" and "preaching the gospel to every creature" for half a century before the words were written. Why? "He that has the word of Jesus truly can hear his silence," said Ignatius; and if Jesus did not speak these words, men heard his silence to the same effect. Celsus, like Julian long after him, was shocked at the kind of people to whom the gospel was preached.[63]
The Christian came to the helpless and hopeless, whom men despised, and of whom men despaired, with a message of the love and tenderness of God, and he brought it home by a new type of love and tenderness of his own. Kindness to friends the world knew; gentleness, too, for the sake of philosophic calm; clemency and other more or less self-contained virtues. The "third race" had other ideas—in all their virtues there was the note of "going out of oneself," the unconsciousness which Jesus loved—an instinctive habit of negating self (aparnésasthai heautón), which does not mean medieval asceticism, nor the dingy modern virtue of self-denial. There was no sentimentalism in it; it was the spirit of Jesus spiritualizing and transforming and extending the natural instinct of brotherliness by making it theocentric. Christians for a century or two never thought of ataraxia or apathy, and, though Clement of Alexandria plays with them, he tries to give them a new turn. Fortunately the Gospels were more read than the Stromateis and "Christian apathy" never succeeded. The heathen recognized sympathy as a Christian characteristic—"How these Christians love each other!" they said. Lucian bears the same testimony to the mutual care and helpfulness of Christians. "You see," wrote Lucian, "these poor creatures have persuaded themselves that they are immortal for all time and will live for ever, which explains why they despise death and voluntarily give themselves up, as a general rule; and then their original law-giver persuaded them that they are all brothers, from the moment that they cross over and deny the gods of Greece and worship their sophist who was gibbeted, and live after his laws. All this they accept, with the result that they despise all worldly goods alike and count them common property." In a later century Julian, perhaps following Maximin Daza, whom he copied in trying to organize heathenism into a new catholic church, urged benevolence on his fellow-pagans, if they wished to compete with the Christians. It was the only thing, he felt, that could revive paganism, and his appeal met with no response. "Infinite love in ordinary intercourse" is the Christian life, and it must come from within or nowhere. No organization can produce it, and, however much we may have to discount Christian charity in some directions as sometimes mechanical, the new spirit of brotherhood in the world presupposed a great change in the hearts of men.
It was not Stoic cosmopolitanism. The Christian was not "the citizen of the world" nor "the Friend of Man"; he was a plain person who gave himself up for other people, cared for the sick and the worthless, had a word of friendship and hope for the sinful and despised, would not go and see men killed in the amphitheatre, and—most curious of all—was careful to have indigent brothers taught trades by which they could help themselves. A lazy Christian was no Christian, he was a "trader in Christ."[64] If the Christians' citizenship was in heaven, he had a social message for this world in the meantime.
Woman
Every great religious movement coincides with a new discovery of truth of some kind, and such discoveries induce a new temper. Men inquire more freely and speak more freely the truth they feel. Mistakes are made and a movement begins for "quenching the spirit." But the gains that have been made by the liberated spirits are not lost. Thus the early Christian rose quickly to a sense of the value of woman. Dr Verrall pronounces that "the radical disease, of which, more than of anything else, ancient civilization perished "was" an imperfect ideal of woman."[65] In the early church woman did a good many things, which in later days the authorities preferred not to mention. Thekla's name is prominent in early story, and the prophetesses of Phrygia, Prisca and Maximilla, have a place in Church History. They were not popular; but the church was committed to the Gospel of Luke and the ministry of women to the Lord. And whatever the Christian priesthood did or said, Jesus and his followers had set woman on a level with man. "There is neither male nor female." The same freedom of spirit is attested by the way in which pagan prophets and their dupes classed Christians with Epicureans[66]—they saw and understood too much. The Christians were the only people (apart from the Jews) who openly denounced the folly of worshipping and deifying Emperors. Even Ignatius, who is most famous for his belief in authority, breaks into independence when men try to make the Gospel dependent on the Old Testament—"for me the documents (tà archeia) are Jesus Christ; my unassailable documents are his cross, and his death and resurrection, and the faith that is through him; in which things I hope with your prayers to be saved."[67] "Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty," as Paul said.
God and immortality were associated in Christian thought. Christians, said a writer using the name of Peter, are to be "partakers of the divine nature." "If the soul," says Tatian, "enters into union with the divine spirit, it is no longer helpless, but ascends to regions whither the spirit guides it; for the dwelling-place of the spirit is above, but the origin of the soul is from beneath."[68] "God sent forth to us the Saviour and Prince of immortality, by whom he also made manifest to us the truth and the heavenly life."[69] The Christian's life is "hid with Christ in God," and Christ's resurrection is to the early church the pledge of immortality—"we shall be ever with the Lord." For the transmigration of souls and "eternal re-dying," life was substituted.[70] "We have believed," said Tatian, "that there will be a resurrection of our bodies, after the consummation of all things—not, as the Stoics dogmatize, that in periodic cycles the same things for ever come into being and pass out of it for no good whatever,—but once for all," and this for judgment. The judge is not Minos nor Rhadamanthus, but "God the maker is the arbiter."[71] "They shall see him (Jesus) then on that day," wrote the so-called Barnabas, "wearing the long scarlet robe upon his flesh, and they will say 'Is this not he whom we crucified, whom we spat upon, and rejected?'"[72] Persecution tempted the thought of what "that day" would mean for the persecutor. But it was a real concern of the Christian himself. "I myself, utterly sinful, not yet escaped from temptation, but still in the midst of the devil's engines,—I do my diligence to follow after righteousness that I may prevail so far as at least to come near it, fearing the judgment that is to come."[73] Immortality and righteousness—the two thoughts go together, and both depend upon Jesus Christ. He is emphatically called "our Hope"—a favourite phrase with Ignatius.[74]
Martyrdom and happiness
Some strong hope was needed—some "anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast."[75] Death lay in wait for the Christian at every turn, never certain, always probable. The dæmons whom he had renounced took their revenge in exciting his neighbours against him.[76] The whim of a mob[77] or the cruelty of a governor[78] might bring him face to face with death in no man knew what horrible form. One writer spoke of "the burning that came for trial,"[79] and the phrase was not exclusively a metaphor. "Away with the atheists—where is Polycarp?" was a sudden shout at Smyrna—the mob already excited with sight of "the right noble Germanicus fighting the wild beasts in a signal way." The old man was sought and found—with the words "God's will be done" upon his lips. He was pressed to curse Christ. "Eighty-six years I have been his slave," he said, "and he has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme my King who saved me?"[80] The suddenness of these attacks, and the cruelty, were enough to unnerve anyone who was not "built upon the foundation." Nero's treatment of the Christians waked distaste in Rome itself. But it was the martyrdoms that made the church. Stephen's death captured Paul. "I delighted in Plato's teachings," says Justin, "and I heard Christians abused, but I saw they were fearless in the face of death and all the other things men count fearful."[81] Tertullian and others with him emphasize that "the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church." It was the death of Jesus over again—the last word that carried conviction with it.
With "the sentence of death in themselves" the early Christians faced the world, and astonished it by more than their "stubbornness." They were the most essentially happy people of the day—Jesus was their hope, their sufficiency was of God, their names were written in heaven, they were full of love for all men—they had "become little children," as Jesus put it, glad and natural. Jesus had brought them into a new world of possibilities. A conduct that ancient moralists dared not ask, the character of Jesus suggested, and the love of Jesus made actual. "I can do all things," said Paul, "in him that strengtheneth me." They looked to assured victory over evil and they achieved it. "This is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith." Very soon a new note is heard in their words. Stoicism was never "essentially musical"; Epictetus announces a hymn to Zeus,[82] but he never starts the tune. Over and over again there is a sound of singing in Paul—as in the eighth chapter of the Romans, and the thirteenth of First Corinthians,[83] and it repeats itself. "Children of joy" is Barnabas' name for his friends.[84] "Doing the will of Christ we shall find rest," wrote the unknown author of "Second Clement."[85] "Praising we plough; and singing we sail," wrote the greater Clement.[86] "Candidates for angelhood, even here we learn the strain hereafter to be raised to God, the function of our future glory," said Tertullian.[87] "Clothe thyself in gladness, that always has grace with God and is welcome to him—and revel in it. For every glad man does what is good, and thinks what is good.... The holy spirit is a glad spirit ... yes, they shall all live to God, who put away sadness from themselves and clothe themselves in all gladness." So said the angel to Hermas,[88] and he was right. The holy spirit was a glad spirit, and gladness—joy in the holy spirit—was the secret of Christian morality. Nothing could well be more gay and happy than Clement's Protrepticus. Augustine was attracted to the church because he saw it non dissolute hilaris. Such happiness in men is never without a personal centre, and the church made no secret that this centre was "Jesus Christ, whom you have not seen, but you love him; whom yet you see not, but you believe in him and rejoice with joy unspeakable and glorified."[89]
Chapter V Footnotes:
[1] See Burkitt's Early Eastern Christianity.
[2] See Justin, Apology, i, 14, a vivid passage on the change of character that has been wrought in men by the Gospel. Cf. Tert. ad Scap. 2, nec aliunde noscibiles quam de emendatione vitiorum pristinorum.
[3] Ephesians iv, 4.
[4] 1 Peter ii, 7.
[5] Tertullian, ad Nationes, i, 8, Plane, tertium genus dicimur ... verum recogitate ne quos tertium genus dicitis principem locum obtineant, siquidem non ulla gens non Christiana.
[6] Cf. Jeremiah xxxi, 31—a favourite passage with Christian apologists.
[7] Professor Percy Gardner (Growth of Christianity, p. 49) illustrates this by comparison of earlier and later stages in Christian Art. On some early Christian sarcophagi Jesus is represented with markedly Jewish features; soon however he is idealized into a type of the highest humanity.
[8] Tatian, 42.
[9] Id. 35.
[10] Tatian, 29. Cf. the account Theophilus gives of the influence upon him of the study of the prophets, i, 14.
[11] 26.
[12] 25.
[13] 35.
[14] Ignatius, Magn. 11; Trall, 9, 10; Smyrn. 1, 2, 3, 12.
[15] Ignatius, Eph. 15, logon Iésoî kekteménos alethôs dynatai kaì tês hesychías autoû akoúeis.
[16] Tatian, 16, 17. Cf. Plutarch (cited on p. 107) on malignant dæmons. See Tertullian, Apol. 22; Justin, Apol. ii. 5; Clem. Alex. Protr. 3, 41, on the works of dæmons.
[17] Tatian, 7, 8.
[18] See Tertullian, de Idol. 9, on the surprising case of a Christian who wished to pursue his calling of astrologer—a claim Tertullian naturally will not allow.
[19] Tatian, 9.
[20] The so-called second letter of Clement of Rome, c. 3.
[21] Clem. Alex. Protr. 3.
[22] 1 Cor. vi, etc.
[23] Justin, Dial. c. Tryph. 30.
[24] Tatian, 33; Justin, Apol. ii, 10. It may be noted that Justin quotes the famous passage in the Timæus (28 C) not quite correctly. Such passages "familiar in his mouth as household words" are very rarely given with verbal accuracy. Tertullian, Apol. 46, and Clement, Strom. v, 78, 92, also quote this passage.
[25] Apol. 46. Compare Theophilus, i, 2; "If you say 'Show me your God,' I would say to you, 'Show me your man and I will show you my God,' or show me the eyes of your soul seeing, and the ears of your heart hearing."
[26] ad Diogn. 8, 1.
[27] Clem. R. 29, 1, tòn epieikê kaì eúsplagchnon patéra hêmôn.
[28] Clem. Alex. Protr. 116.
[29] Clem. Alex. Protr. 25, émphytos archaía koinônia.
[30] Clem. Alex. Protr. 91, citing Iliad, 2, 315 (Cowper).
[31] 2 Cor. i, 22; v, 5.
[32] Cf. Tatian, 15.
[33] Barnabas, 4, 8.
[34] Ign. Eph. 6, 2.
[35] II. Clem. 1, 3-7 (abridged a little).
[36] Clem. R. 7, 4.
[37] Clem. R. 16, 17.
[38] Ign. Eph. 10, 3.
[39] Cf. Socr. e.h. iii, 17, 4, the Antiochenes mocked the Emperor Julian, eurípistoi gàr oi ánthrôpoi eis húbreis.
[40] II. Clem. 14, 2.
[41] See Tertullian, Apol. 22.
[42] Athenagoras, Presbeia, 9.
[43] See a very interesting chapter in Philo's de migr. Abr. 7 (441 M), where he gives a very frequent experience of his own (muriákis pathòn) as a writer. Sometimes, though he "saw clearly" what to say, he found his mind "barren and sterile" and went away with nothing done, with "the womb of his soul closed." At other times he "came empty and suddenly became full, as thoughts were imperceptibly sowed and snowed upon him from above, so that, as if under Divine possession (katochês enthéou), he became frenzied (korubantiân) and utterly knew not the place, nor those present, nor himself, nor what was said or written." See Tert. de Anima, 11, on the spirits of God and of the devil that may come upon the soul.
[44] It may be remarked, in passing, that the contemporary worship of the Emperor is to be explained by the same theory of the possibility of an indwelling daimonion. It was helped out by the practice, which had never so far died out in the East and in Egypt, of regarding the King and his children as gods incarnate. See J. G. Frazer, Early History of Kingship.
[45] Tertullian, adv. Marc, iii, 8, nihil solidam ab inani, nihil plenum a vacuo perfici licuit ... imaginarius operator, imaginariæ operæ.
[46] Tertullian, de carne Christi, 5.
[47] His Tarsiot feeling is perhaps shown by his preference that women should be veiled. Dio Chrysostom (Or. 33, 48) mentions that in Tarsus there is much conservatism shown in the very close veiling of the women's faces.
[48] Tert. Apol. 39, Corpus sumus de conscientia religionis et disciplinæ unitate et spei foedere.
[49] Ign. Eph. 20; Clem. Alex. Protr. 106.
[50] Justin, Apol. i, 66, the use of bread and cup in the mysteries of Mithras; Tertullian, de Bapt. 5, on baptism in the rites of Isis and Mithras, the mysteries of Eleusis, etc.
[51] Carlyle, Signs of the Times, (Centenary edition of Essays, ii, p. 70.)
[52] Clem. R. 2, 2, akórestos póthos eis agathopoíian.
[53] Ign. Eph. 8, 2.
[54] Auctor ad Diognetum, 5-6.
[55] He apologizes for the use of the name, as educated people did in his day, when it was awkward or impossible to avoid using it. It was a vulgarism.
[56] Galen, extant in Arabic in hist. anteislam. Abulfedæ (ed. Fleischer, p. 109), quoted by Harnack, Expansion of Christianity, i, p. 266.
[57] Tertullian, Apol. 45; cf. Justin, Apol. i, 15.
[58] Cf. Justin, Apol. i, 29.
[59] The feeling referred to is associated with the primitive sense of the mystery of procreation and conception surviving, it is said, among the Arunta of Australia, and very widely in the case of twins; see Rendel Harris, Cult of the Dioscuri.
[60] Tim. 2, 15. Cf. Tert. adv. Marc. iv, 17, nihil impudentius si ille nos sibi filio faciet qui nobis filios facere non permisit aufercndo conubium.
[61] de Rossi, cited by Harnack, Expansion, i, 208 n.
[62] Romans 1, 14.
[63] See p. 241; and cf. Justin, Apol. i, 15.
[64] Didache, 12. ei dè ouk échei téchnên, katà tèn synesin humôn pronoésate, pôs mè argòs meth hymôn zésetai christianos. ei dè ou thelei oútô poieîn, christémporós estin prosechete apò tôn toioûton. See Tert. Apol. 39, on provision for the needy and the orphan, the shipwrecked, and those in jails and mines.
[65] Euripides the Rationalist, p. 111 n.
[66] Lucian, Alexander, 38, Alexander said: "If any atheist, or Christian, or Epicurean comes as a spy upon our rites let him flee!" He said éxô christianoús, and the people responded exo Epikoureíous.
[67] Ignatius, Philad. 8.
[68] Tatian, 13.
[69] II. Clem. 20, 5.
[70] See Tertullian, de Testim. Animæ, 4, the Christian opinion much nobler than the Pythagorean.
[71] Tatian, 6. Cf. Justin, Apol. i, 8; and Tertullian, de Spectaculis, 30, quoted on p. 305.
[72] Barnabas, 7, 9. Cf. Rev. i, 7. Behold he Cometh with the clouds and every eye shall see him—and they that pierced him. Cf. Tertullian, de Spect. 30, once more.
[73] II. Clem. 18, 2.
[74] Ignatius, Eph. 21; Magn. 11; Trall. int. 2, 2; Philad. 11.
[75] Hebrews 6, 19.
[76] Justin, Apol. i, 5, the dæmons procured the death of Socrates, kaì homoiôs eph hymôn tò autò energoûoi: 10, they spread false reports against Christians; Apol. ii, 12; Minucius Felix, 27, 8.
[77] The mob, with stones and torches, Tert. Apol. 37; even the dead Christian was dragged from the grave, de asylo quodam mortis, and torn to pieces.
[78] Stories of governors in Tert. ad Scap. 3, 4, 5; one provoked by his wife becoming a Christian.
[79] I. Peter 4, 12.
[80] Martyrium Polycarpi, 3, 7-11.
[81] Justin, Apol. ii, 12.
[82] D. i, 16, the hymn he proposes is quoted on p. 62. It hardly sings itself, and he does not return to it. The verbal parallel of the passage with that in Clement, Strom. vii, 35, heightens the contrast of tone.
[83] See Norden, Kunstprosa, ii, 509.
[84] Barnabas, 7, 1.
[85] II. Clem. 6, 7.
[86] Strom. vii, 35.
[87] de orat. 3.
[88] Hermas, M. 10, 31,—the word is ilaròs; which Clement (l.c.) also uses, conjoining it with semnós. Cf. Synesius, Ep. 57, p. 1389, Migne, who says that when he was depressed about becoming a bishop (410 A.D.), old men told him hos ilarón esti tò pneûma tò hágion kaì ilarúnei toùs metóchous autoû.
[89] 1 Peter, 1, 8.
It is a much discussed question as to how far Jesus realized the profound gulf between his own religious position and that of his contemporaries. Probably, since tradition meant more to them, they were quicker to see declension from orthodox Judaism than a mind more open and experimental; and when they contrived his death, it was with a clear sense of acting in defence of God's Law and God's Covenant with Israel. From their own point of view they were right, for the triumph of the ideas of Jesus was the abolition of tribal religions and their supersession by a new mind or spirit with nothing local or racial about it.
The death of Jesus meant to the little community, which he left behind him, a final cleavage with the system of their fathers, under which they had been born, and with which was associated every religious idea they had known before their great intimacy began. It was a moment of boundless import in the history of mankind. Slowly and reluctantly they moved out into the great unknown,—pilgrim fathers, unconscious of the great issues they carried, but obedient to an impulse, the truth of which history has long since established. Once again it was their opponents who were the quickest to realize what was involved, for affection blinded their own eyes.
The career of Paul raised the whole question between Judaism and Christianity. He was the first to speak decisively of going to the Gentiles. The author of the Acts cites precedents for his action; and, as no great movement in man's affairs comes unheralded, it is easy to believe that even before Paul "the word" reached Gentile ears. None the less the leader in the movement was Paul; and whatever we may imagine might have been the history of Christianity without him, it remains that he declared, decisively and for all time, the church's independence of the synagogue. It is not unlikely that, even before his conversion, he had grasped the fact that church and synagogue were not to be reconciled, and that, when "it pleased God to reveal his Son in him," he knew at once that he was in "a new creation" and that he was to be a prophet of a new dispensation.
The Jewish heritage
There is no doubt that the hostile Jews very quickly realised Paul's significance, but the Christians were not so quick. Paul was a newcomer and very much the ablest man among them—they were "not many wise, not many learned," and Paul, though he does not mention it, was both. He was moreover proposing to take them into regions far beyond their range; he had not personally known "the Lord" and they had; and there was no clear word of Jesus on the Gentile question. There was a conference. What took place, Paul tries in the Galatians to tell; but he is far too quick a thinker to be a master of mere narrative; the question of Christian freedom was too hot in his heart to leave him free for reminiscence, and the matter is not very clear. The author of the Acts was not at the council, and, whatever his authorities may have been, there is a constant suggestion in his writing that he has a purpose in view—a purpose of peace between parties. Whether they liked the result or not, the Christian community seem loyally to have submitted themselves to "the Spirit of Jesus." "It seemed good to the holy spirit and to us" tells the story of their deliberations, whether they put the phrase at the top of a resolution or did not. Paul came to the personal followers of Jesus with a new and strange conception of the religion of their Master. They laid it alongside of their memories of their Master, and they heard him say "Go ye into all the world"; and they went.
The natural outcome of this forward step at once became evident. Paul did not go among the Gentiles to "preach circumcision," and there quickly came into being, throughout Asia Minor and in the Balkan provinces, many groups of Christians of a new type—Gentile in mind and tradition, and in Christian life no less Gentile. They remained uncircumcised, they did not observe the Sabbath nor any other distinctive usage of Judaism—they were a new people, a "third race." Their very existence put Judaism on the defensive; for, if their position was justified, it was hard to see what right Judaism had to be. It was not yet quite clear what exactly the new religion was, nor into what it might develope; but if, as the Gentile Christians and their Apostle claimed, they stood in a new relation to God, a higher and a more tender than the greatest and best spirits in Israel had known, and this without the seal of God's covenant with Israel and independently of his law, then it was evident that the unique privileges of Israel were void, and that, as Paul put it, "there is neither Jew nor Greek."
That part of the Jewish race, and it was the larger part, which did not accept the new religion, was in no mind to admit either Paul's premisses or his conclusions. They stood for God's covenant with Israel. Nor did they stand alone, for it took time to convince even Christian Jews that the old dispensation had yielded to a new one, and that the day of Moses was past. To the one class the rise of the Christian community was a menace, to the other a problem. The one left no means untried to check it. By argument, by appeals to the past, by working on his superstitions, they sought to make the Christian convert into a Jew; and, when they failed, they had other methods in reserve. Themselves everywhere despised and hated, as they are still, for their ability and their foreign air, they stirred up their heathen neighbours against the new race. Again and again, in the Acts and in later documents, we read of the Jews being the authors of pagan persecution.[1] The "unbelieving Jew" was a spiritual and a social danger to the Christian in every city of the East. The converted Jew was, in his way, almost as great a difficulty within the community.
It is not hard to understand the feeling of the Jews within or without the Church. Other races had their ancient histories, and the Jew had his—a history long and peculiar. From the day of Abraham, the friend of God, the chosen race had been the special care of Jehovah. Jehovah had watched over them; he had saved them from their enemies; he had visited them for their iniquities; he had sent them prophets; he had given them his law. In a long series of beautiful images, which move us yet, Jehovah had spoken, through holy men of old, of his love for Israel. To Israel belonged the oracles of God and his promises. For here again the national consciousness of Israel differed from that of every other race. It was something that in the past God had spoken to no human family except the seed of Abraham; it was more that to them, and to them alone, he had assured the future. Deeply as Israel felt the trials of the present, the Roman would yet follow the Persian and the Greek, and the day of Israel would dawn. The Messiah was to come and restore all things.
"He shall destroy the ungodly nations with the word of his mouth, so that at his rebuke the nations may flee before him, and he shall convict the sinners in the thoughts of their hearts.
"And he shall gather together a holy people whom he shall lead in righteousness; and shall judge the tribes of his people that hath been sanctified by the Lord his God.
"And he shall not suffer iniquity to lodge in their midst, and none that knoweth wickedness shall dwell with them....
"And he shall possess the nations of the heathen to serve him beneath his yoke; and he shall glorify the Lord in a place to be seen of the whole earth;
"And he shall purge Jerusalem and make it holy, even as it was in the days of old.
"So that the nations may come from the ends of the earth to see his glory, bringing as gifts her sons that had fainted,
"And may see the glory of the Lord, wherewith God hath glorified her."
So runs one of the Psalms of Solomon written between 70 and 40 B.C.[2] Parallel passages might be multiplied, but one may suffice, written perhaps in the lifetime of Jesus.
"Then thou, O Israel, wilt be happy, and thou wilt mount upon the neck of the eagle, and [the days of thy mourning] will be ended,
"And God will exalt thee, and he will cause thee to approach to the heaven of the stars, and he will establish thy habitation among them,
"And thou wilt look from on high, and wilt see thine enemies in Ge[henna], and thou wilt recognize them and rejoice, and wilt give thanks and confess thy Creator."[3]
No people in the Mediterranean world had such a past behind them, and none a future so sure and so glorious before them—none indeed seems to have had any great hope of the future at all; their Golden Ages were all in the past, or far away in mythical islands of the Eastern seas or beyond the Rhine. And if the Christian doctrine was true, that great past was as dead as Babylon, and the Messianic Kingdom was a mockery—Israel was "feeding on the east wind," and the nation was not Jehovah's chosen. At one stroke Israel was abolished, and every national memory and every national instinct, rooted in a past of suffering and revelation, and watered with tears in a present of pain, were to wither like the gardens of Adonis. No man with a human heart but must face the alternative of surrendering national for Christian ideals, or hating and exterminating the enemy of his race.
So much for the nation, and what Christianity meant for it, but much beside was at stake. There was the seal of circumcision, the hereditary token of God's covenant with Abraham, a sacrament passed on from father to son and associated with generations of faith and piety. Week by week the Sabbath came with its transforming memories—the "Princess Sabbath," for Heine was not the first to feel the magic that at sunset on Friday restores the Jew to the "halls of his royal father, the tents of Jacob." Every one of their religious usages spoke irresistibly of childhood. "When your children shall say unto you 'What mean ye by this service,' ye shall say...," so ran the old law, binding every Jew to his father by the dearest and strongest of all bonds. To become a Christian was thus to be alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, to renounce a father's faith and his home. If the pagan had to suffer for his conversion, the Jew's heritage was nobler and holier, and the harder to forego. Even the friendly Jew pleads, "Cannot a man be saved who trusts in Christ and also keeps the law—keeps it so far as he can under the conditions of the dispersion,—the Sabbath, circumcision, the months, and certain washings?"[4]
The Jewish attack on Jesus
But this was not all. Israel had stood for monotheism and that not the monotheism of Greek philosophy, a dogma of the schools consistent with the cults of Egypt and Phrygia, with hierodules and a deified Antinous. The whole nation had been consecrated to the worship of One God, a personal God, who had, at least where Israel was concerned, no hint of philosophic Apathy. The Jew was now asked by the Christian to admit a second God—a God beside the Creator (állos theòs parà tòn poiêtèn tôn hólôn[5])—and such a God! The Jews knew all about Jesus of Nazareth—it was absurd to try to pass him off even as the Messiah. "Sir," said Trypho, "these scriptures compel us to expect one glorious and great, who receives from 'the Ancient of Days' the 'eternal Kingdom' as 'Son of Man'; but this man of yours—your so-called Christ—was unhonoured and inglorious, so that he actually fell under the extreme curse that is in the law of God; for he was crucified."[6] The whole thing was a paradox, incapable of proof.[7] "It is an incredible thing, and almost impossible that you are trying to prove—that God endured to be begotten and to become a man."[8]
The Jews had a propaganda of their own about Jesus. They sent emissaries from Palestine to supply their countrymen and pagans with the truth.[9] Celsus imagines a Jew disputing with a Christian,—a more life-like Jew, according to Harnack, than Christian apologists draw,—and the arguments he uses came from Jewish sources. Jesus was born, they said, in a village, the bastard child of a peasant woman, a poor person who worked with her hands, divorced by her husband (who was a carpenter) for adultery.[10] The father was a soldier called Panthera. As to the Christian story, what could have attracted the attention of God to her? Was she pretty? The carpenter at all events hated her and cast her out.[11] ("I do not think I need trouble about this argument," is all Origen says.) Who saw the dove, or heard the voice from heaven, at the baptism? Jesus suffered death in Palestine for the guilt he had committed (plemmelésanta). He convinced no one while he lived; even his disciples betrayed him—a thing even brigands would not have done by their chief—so far was he from improving them, and so little ground is there for saying that he foretold to them what he should surfer. He even complained of thirst on the cross. As for the resurrection, that rests on the evidence of a mad woman (pároistros)—or some other such person among the same set of deceivers, dreaming, or deluded, or "wishing to startle the rest with the miracle, and by a lie of that kind to give other impostors a lead." Does the resurrection of Jesus at all differ from those of Pythagoras or Zamolxis or Orpheus or Herakles—"or do you think that the tales of other men both are and seem myths, but that the catastrophe of your play is a well-managed and plausible piece of invention—the cry upon the gibbet, when he died, and the earthquake and the darkness?"[12] The Christians systematically edited and altered the Gospels to meet the needs of the moment;[13] but Jesus did not fulfil the prophecies of the Messiah—"the prophets say he shall be great, a dynast, lord of all the earth and all its nations and armies."[14] There are ten thousand other men to whom the prophecies are more applicable than to Jesus,[15] and as many who in frenzy claim to "come from God."[16] In short the whole story of the Christians rests on no evidence that will stand investigation.
Even men who would refrain from the hot-tempered method of controversy, which these quotations reflect, might well feel the contrast between the historic Jesus and the expected Messiah—between the proved failure of the cross and the world-empire of a purified and glorious Israel. And when it was suggested further that Jesus was God, an effluence coming from God, as light is lit by light—even if this were true, it would seem that the Jew was asked to give up the worship of the One God, which he had learnt of his fathers, and to turn to a being not unlike the pagan gods around him in every land, who also, their apologists said, came from the Supreme, and were his emanations and ministers and might therefore be worshipped.
Thus everything that was distinctive of their race and their religion—the past of Israel, the Messiah and the glorious future, the beautiful symbols of family religion, and the One God Himself—all was to be surrendered by the man who became a Christian. We realize the extraordinary and compelling force of the new religion, when we remember that, in spite of all to hold them back, there were those who made the surrender and "suffered the loss of all things to win Christ and be found in him." Paul however rested, as he said, on revelation, and ordinary men, who were not conscious of any such distinction, who mistrusted themselves and their emotions, and who rested most naturally upon the cumulative religious experience of their race, might well ask whether after all they were right in breaking with a sacred past—whether, apart from subjective grounds, there were any clear warrant from outside to enable them to go forward. The Jew had of course oracles of God given by inspiration (theópneustos[17]), written by "holy men of God, moved by the holy spirit." These were his warrant. Here circumcision, the Sabbath, the Passover, and all his religious life was definitely and minutely prescribed in what was almost, like the original two tables, the autograph of the One God. The law had its own history bound up with that of the race, and the experience and associations of every new generation made it more deeply awful and mysterious. Had the Christian any law? had he any oracles, apart from the unintelligible glossolalies of men possessed (enthousiôntes)? When Justin spoke of the gifts of the Spirit, Trypho interjected, "I should like you to know that you are talking nonsense."[18]
The problem
Not unnaturally then did men say to Ignatius (as we have seen), "If I do not find it in the ancient documents, I do not believe it in the gospel." And when Ignatius rejoined, "It is written"; "That is the problem," said they.[19] It was their problem, though it was not his. For him Judaism is "a leaven old and sour," and "to use the name of Jesus Christ and yet observe Jewish customs is absurd (átopon)" or really "to confess we have not received grace."[20] His documents were Jesus Christ, his cross and death and resurrection, and faith through him.
"That is the problem"—can it be shown from the infallible Hebrew Scriptures that the crucified Jesus is the Messiah of prophecy, that he is a "God beside the Creator," that Sabbath and Circumcision are to be superseded, that Israel's covenant is temporary, and that the larger outlook of the Christian is after all the eternal dispensation of which the Jewish was a copy made for a time? If this could be shown, it might in some measure stop the mouths of hostile Jews, and calm the uneasy consciences of Jews and proselytes who had become Christians. And it might serve another and a distinct purpose. It was one of the difficulties of the Christian that his religion was a new thing in the world. Around him were men who gloried in ancient literatures and historic cults. All the support that men can derive from tradition and authority, or even from the mere fact of having a past behind them, was wanting to the new faith, as its opponents pointed out. If, by establishing his contention against the Jew, the Christian could achieve another end, and could demonstrate to the Greek that he too had a history and a literature, that his religion was no mere accident of a day, but was rooted in the past, that it had been foretold by God himself, and was part of the divine scheme for the destiny of mankind, then, resting on the sure ground of Providence made plain, he could call upon the Greek in his turn to forsake his errors and superstitions for the first of all religions, which should also be the last—the faith of Jesus Christ.
The one method thus served two ends. Justin addressed an Apology to Antoninus Pius, and one-half of his book is occupied with the demonstration that every major characteristic of Christianity had been prophesied and was a fulfilment. The thirty chapters show what weight the sheer miracle of this had with the apologist, though, if the Emperor actually read the Apology, it was probably his first contact with Jewish scripture. Some difference of treatment was necessary, according as the method was directed to Jew or Gentile. For the Jew it was axiomatic that Scripture was the word of God, and, if he did not grant the Christian's postulate of allegory, he was withholding from an opponent what had been allowed to Philo. The Greek would probably allow the allegory, and the first task in his case was to show by chronological reckoning that the greater prophets, and above all Moses, antedated the bloom of Greek literature, and then to draw the inference that it was from Hebrew sources that the best thoughts of Hellas had been derived. Here the notorious interest of early Greek thinkers in Egypt helped to establish the necessary, though rather remote, connexion. When once the priority of the Hebrew prophets had been proved, and, by means of allegory, a coincidence (age by age more striking) had been established between prophecy and event, the demonstration was complete. There could be only one interpretation of such facts.
A number of these refutations of the Jew survive from early times. Justin's Dialogue with Trypho is the most famous, as it deserves to be. It opens in a pleasant Platonic style with a chance meeting one morning in a colonnade at Ephesus.[21] Trypho accosts the philosopher Justin—"When I see a man in your garb, I gladly approach him, and that is why I spoke to you, hoping to hear something profitable from you." When Trypho says he is a Jew, Justin asks in what he expects to be more helped by philosophy than by his own prophets and law-giver. Is not all the philosophers' talk about God? Trypho asks. Justin then tells him of his own wanderings in philosophy,—how he went from school to school, and at last was directed by an old man to read the Jewish prophets, and how "a fire was kindled in my soul, and a passion seized me for the prophets and those men who are Christ's friends; and so, discussing their words with myself, I found this philosophy alone to be safe and helpful. And that is how and why I am a philosopher."[22] Trypho smiled, but, while approving Justin's ardour in seeking after God, he added that he would have done better to philosophize with Plato or one of the others, practising endurance, continence and temperance, than "to be deceived by lies and to follow men who are worthless." Then the battle begins, and it is waged in a courteous and kindly spirit, as befits philosophers, till after two days they part with prayers and goodwill for each other—Trypho unconvinced. Other writers have less skill, and the features of dialogue are sadly whittled away. Others again abandon all pretence of discussion and frankly group their matter as a scheme of proof-texts. In what follows, Justin shall be our chief authority.
We may start with the first point that Trypho raises. "If you will listen to me (for I count you a friend already), first of all be circumcised, and then keep, in the traditional way, the Sabbath and the feasts and new moons of God, and, in a word, do all that is written in the law, and then perhaps God will have mercy upon you. As for Christ, if indeed he has been born and already exists, he is unknown—nay! he does not even know himself yet, nor has he any power, till Elijah come and anoint him and make him manifest to all men. You people have accepted an empty tale, and are imagining a Christ for yourselves, and for the sake of him you are perishing quite aimlessly."[23]
Salvation, according to the Jew, was inconceivable outside the pale of Judaism. "Except ye be circumcised, ye cannot be saved," men had said in Paul's time. Paul's repudiation of this assertion is to be read in his Epistle to the Galatians—in his whole life and mind. But genius such as Paul's was not to be found in the early church, and men looked outside of themselves for arguments to prove what he had seen and known of his own experience and insight.
The letter to Diognetus
Some apologists merely laughed at the Jew. Thus the brilliant and winsome writer known only by his Epistle to Diognetus has a short and ready way of dealing with Jewish usages, which is not conciliatory. "In the next place I think you wish to hear why Christians do not worship in the same way as the Jews. Now the Jews do well in abstaining from the mode of service I have described [paganism], in that they claim to reverence One God of the universe and count Him their master; but, in offering this worship to Him in the same way as those I have mentioned, they go far astray. For the Greeks offer those things to senseless and deaf images and so give an exhibition of folly, while the Jews—considering they are presenting them to God as if He had need of them—ought in all reason to count it foolery and not piety. For He that made the heaven and the earth and all that is in them, and gives freely to every one of us what we need, could not Himself need any of the things which He Himself actually gives to those who imagine they are giving them to Him....
"But again of their nervousness (psophodeés) about meats, and their superstition about the Sabbath, and the quackery (aladoneía) of circumcision, and the pretence (eiróneia) of fasts and new moons—ridiculous and worthless as it all is, I do not suppose you wish me to tell you. For to accept some of the things which God has made for man's need as well created, and to reject others as useless and superfluous, is it not rebellion (athémiston)? To lie against God as if He forbade us to do good on the Sabbath day, is not that impiety? To brag that the mutilation of the flesh is a proof of election—as if God specially loved them for it—ridiculous! And that they should keep a look-out on the stars and the moon and so observe months and days and distinguish the ordinances of God and the changes of the seasons, as their impulses prompt them to make some into feasts and some into times of mourning—who would count this a mark of piety towards God and not much rather of folly?
"That Christians are right to keep aloof from the general silliness and deceit of the Jews, their fussiness and quackery, I think you are well enough instructed. The mystery of their own piety towards God you must not expect to be able to learn from man."[24]
This was to deal with the distinctive usages of Judaism on general principles and from a standpoint outside it. It would doubtless be convincing enough to men who did not need to be convinced, but of little weight with those to whom the Scriptures meant everything. Accordingly the Apologists went to the Scriptures and arrayed their evidence with spirit and system.
We may begin, as the writer to Diognetus begins, with sacrifices. Here the Apologists could appeal to the Prophets, who had spoken of sacrifice in no sparing terms. Tertullian's fifth chapter in his book Against the Jews presents the evidence shortly and clearly. I will give the passages cited in a tabular form:—
Malachi 1, 10: I will not receive sacrifice from your hands, since from the rising sun to the setting my name is glorified among the Gentiles, saith the Lord Almighty, and in every place they offer pure sacrifices to my name.
Psalm 96, 7: Offer to God glory and honour, offer to God the sacrifices of his name; away with victims (tollite) and enter into his court.
Psalm 51, 17: A heart contrite and humbled is a sacrifice for God.
Psalm 50, 14: Sacrifice to God the sacrifice of praise and render thy vows to the Most High.
Isaiah 1, 11: Wherefore to me the multitude of your sacrifices? .... Whole burnt offerings and your sacrifices and the fat of goats and the blood of bulls I will not ... Who has sought these from your hands?
Justin has other passages as decisive. Does not God say by Amos (5, 21) "I hate, I loathe your feasts, and I will not smell [your offerings] in your assemblies. When ye offer me your whole burnt offerings and your sacrifices, I will not receive them," and so forth, in a long passage quoted at length. And again
Jeremiah 7, 21-22: Gather your flesh and your sacrifices and eat, for neither concerning sacrifices nor drink offerings did I command your fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt.[25]
Next as to circumcision and the Sabbath. "You need a second circumcision," says Justin, "and yet you glory in the flesh; the new law bids you keep a perpetual Sabbath, while you idle for one day and suppose you are pious in so doing; you do not understand why it was enjoined upon you. And, if you eat unleavened bread, you say you have fulfilled the will of God."[26] Even by Moses, who gave the law, God cried "You shall circumcise the hardness of your hearts and stiffen your necks no more";[27] and Jeremiah long afterwards said the same more than once.[28] On the Sabbath question, Tertullian and the others distinguished two Sabbaths, an eternal and a temporal,[29] citing:—
Isaiah 1, 14: My soul hates your sabbaths.
Ezekiel 22, 8: Ye have profaned my sabbath.
The Jew is referred back to the righteous men of early days—Was Adam circumcised, or did he keep the Sabbath? or Abel, or Noah, or Enoch, or Melchizedek? Did Abraham keep the Sabbath, or any of the patriarchs down to Moses?[30] "But," rejoins the Jew, "was not Abraham circumcised? Would not the son of Moses have been strangled, had not his mother circumcised him?"[31]
Old law or new covenant
To this the Christian had several replies. Circumcision was merely given for a sign, as is shown by the fact that a woman cannot receive it, "for God has made women as well able as men to do what is just and right." There is no righteousness in being of one sex rather than of the other.[32] Circumcision then was imposed upon the Jews "to mark you off from the rest of the nations and from us, that you alone might suffer what now you are suffering, and so deservedly suffering—that your lands should be desolate and your cities burnt with fire, that strangers should eat your fruits before your faces, and none of you set his foot in Jerusalem. For in nothing are you known from other men apart from the circumcision of your flesh. None of you, I suppose, will venture to say that God did not foresee what should come to pass. And it is all deserved; for you slew the Righteous one and his prophets before him; and now you reject and dishonour—so far as you can—those who set their hopes on him and on the Almighty God, maker of all things, who sent him; and in your synagogues you curse those who believe on Christ."[33] The Sabbath was given to remind the Jews of God; and restrictions were laid on certain foods because of the Jewish proclivity to forsake the knowledge of God.[34] In general, all these commands were called for by the sins of Israel,[35] they were signs of judgment.