But in doing so he did not take into account the sacraments. It was just these, however, which seemed to make it a priori impossible to explain Paulinism exclusively on the basis of Late Judaism. Therefore Wrede and his followers seek other sources. They try to explain the system, not solely from the side of eschatology, but from that of “Comparative Religion,” and hold that it betrays the influence not only of Late-Jewish but also of Oriental ideas generally, such as are found in the Mystery-religions.
No doubt the first question which here arises is whether the methods of Comparative Religion are essentially applicable to the explanation of Paulinism.
To apply the methods of Comparative Religion means to study the individual religions, not in isolation, but with the purpose of investigating the mutual influences which they have openly or covertly exercised on one another.
At bottom, therefore, it is a necessary outcome of the application of scientific methods generally, and it only received a special name because theological scholarship so long shut its doors against it.
Under this distinctive name the method attained to influence and honour in connexion with the critical study of the Old Testament and the Graeco-Oriental cults. In the former department of study it made an end of the prepossession that Judaism had developed entirely by its own inner impulses, and showed how much material of a generally Oriental character it had adopted. In particular it showed that Late-Jewish Apocalyptic is full of conceptions from the Babylonian and the Irano-Zarathustrian religions, and represents a combination of universal cosmological speculations with the future-hope of the ancient Jewish prophetism.145
In the comparative study of the heathen religions it became apparent that the Mystery-religions, which [pg 176] entered on their conquering progress westwards about the same time as Christian Gnosticism, combined Greek religious feeling and a Greek cosmogony with Oriental cultus-ideas.
In both these cases it is a question of contacts and influences which were due to political and cultural relations, and produced their effect in the course of extended periods of time and under favourable historical circumstances. The method cannot simply be applied without more ado to the explanation of the ideas of an individual man, since most of its presuppositions would not here be valid. In the case of religions, syncretism can work its way in and develop; in the case of individuals it can only be recognised in a very limited degree. The taking over and remoulding of foreign conceptions is a process requiring numbers and time. The individual comes into question only so far as he is organically united with a community which is active in this way, and allows its instincts to influence him.
Paul belongs to Late Judaism. Whatever he received in the way of influences such as Comparative Religion takes account of came to him mainly through this channel. The suggestion that apart from this he might be personally and directly affected by “Oriental” influences calls for very cautious consideration. In particular we ought to be very careful to guard against raising this possibility to a certainty by general considerations regarding all that the child of the Diaspora might have seen, heard, and read. The question can only be decided by what we actually find in the Epistles.
It is further to be remarked that Late Judaism was no longer in his time so open to external influences that any and every kind of religious conception which was floating about anywhere in the Orient could necessarily impose itself on Paul’s mind through this medium. The period of assimilation was, speaking generally, at an end. The new material had been—before Paul’s day—worked up along with the old into a set of Apocalyptic conceptions, [pg 177] which, in spite of the elbow-room which the heterogeneous ideas necessarily claimed for themselves, did form a system, and appeared from without as relatively complete and self-sufficing. The Oriental material has been poured into Jewish moulds and received a Jewish impress.
A still further point is that any one whose thought moves in the Apocalyptic system created by the books of Daniel and Enoch is not so much exposed to, as withdrawn from, the action of free Oriental influence. He is already saturated with those elements in regard to receptivity which the Jewish mind possesses and the tendency to assimilation, and possesses it not as something foreign to himself but as Jewish. Apocalyptic tends to produce in him immunisation as against further syncretistic infection.
This assertion is susceptible of historical proof. Late Judaism stands, even before the beginning of our era, apart from the Oriental religious movements. And it continues unaffected by them. Not one of its representatives was concerned in the syncretistic movement. Philo seeks to rationalise Judaism by the aid of Platonico-Stoic philosophy, but he gives no place to the religious and cultural ideas by which he was surrounded in Egypt. It is as though they had no existence for him.
To apply the comparative method to Paul would, therefore, generally speaking, mean nothing more or less than to explain him on the basis of Late Judaism. Those who give due weight to the eschatological character of his doctrine and to the problems and ideas which connect it with works like the Apocalypse of Ezra are the true exponents of “Comparative Religion,” even though they may make no claim to this title. Any one who goes beyond this and tries to bring Paul into direct connexion with the Orient as such commits himself to the perilous path of scientific adventure.
Considerations of that kind were not taken into account by Wrede and his followers. But even if they had become conscious of the difficulties in the way of the application of the method to Paul, they could not have acted otherwise. [pg 178] In spite of all theoretical warnings this path had to be followed.
If once the mystical doctrine of the dying and rising again with Christ is recognised to be “physical,” and the view of baptism and the Supper to be sacramental, and if it is a further datum of the question that Late Judaism knows nothing of mysticism or sacraments; and if one is not content to assume that the Apostle has created or invented this non-Jewish element out of his inner consciousness; there is at first sight no alternative but to make the attempt to explain it from conceptions and suggestions which are supposed to have come into it from without, from some form or other of Oriental syncretism.
Gustav Anrich. Das antike Mysterienwesen in seinem Einfluss auf das Christentum. (The Ancient Mysteries in their Influence on Christianity.) 1894.
Martin Brückner. Der sterbende und auferstehende Gottheiland in den orientalischen Religionen und ihr Verhältnis zum Christentum. (The Saviour-God who dies and rises again in the Oriental Religions; and their Relation to Christianity.) 1908.
Karl Clemen. Religionsgeschichtliche Erklärung des Neuen Testaments. (An Explanation of the New Testament on the basis of Comparative Religion.) 1909.
Franz Cumont. Les Mystères de Mithra. 1899. (E. T. by T. J. McCormack, 1903.) Les Religions orientales dans le paganisme romain. 1906.
Adolf Deissmann. Licht vom Osten. 1908. (E. T. by L. R. M. Strachan, “Light from the Ancient East,” 1910.) Die Urgeschichte des Christentums im Lichte der Sprachforschung. (The Early History of Christianity in the Light of Linguistic Research.) 1910.
Albrecht Dieterich. Abraxas. 1891. Nekyia. 1893. Eine Mithrasliturgie. 1903.
Arthur Drews. Die Christusmythe. 1909. (E. T. by C. D. Burns.)
Albert Eichhorn. Das Abendmahl im Neuen Testament. (The Lord’s Supper in the New Testament.) 1898.
Johannes Geffken. Aus der Werdezeit des Christentums. (From the Formative Period of Christianity), 2nd ed., 1909.
P. Gennrich. Die Lehre von der Wiedergeburt . . in der dogmengeschichtlichen und religionsgeschichtlichen Betrachtung. (The Doctrine of Regeneration . . . from the point of view of the History of Dogma and of Comparative Religion.) 1907.
Otto Gruppe. Die griechischen Kulte und Mythen in ihrer Beziehung zu den orientalischen Religionen. (The Greek Cults and Myths in their Relation to the Oriental Religions), vol. i., 1887. Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte. (Greek Mythology and Comparative Religion), 2 vols., 1906.
Hermann Gunkel. Zum religionsgeschichtlichen Verständnis des Neuen Testaments. (Contributions to the Understanding of the New Testament from the point of view of Comparative Religion.) 1903.
Adolf Harnack. Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten, vol. i., 1906. (E. T. by J. Moffatt, “The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries,” 2nd ed., 1908.)
Hugo Hepding. Attis, seine Mythen und sein Kult. (Attis, his Myths and Cultus.) 1903.
W. Heitmüller. Taufe und Abendmahl bei Paulus. (Baptism and the Lord’s Supper in Paul’s Teaching.) 1903.
Im Namen Jesu. Eine sprach- und religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zum neuen Testament, speziell zur altchristlichen Taufe. 1903. (In the Name of Jesus. A Study of the New Testament from the point of view of the History of Language and of Comparative Religion, with Special Reference to Early Christian Baptism.)
Adolf Jacoby. Die antiken Mysterienreligionen und das Christentum. (The Ancient Mystery-religions and Christianity.) 1910.
Georg Mau. Die Religionsphilosophie Kaiser Julians in seinen Reden auf König Helios und die Göttermutter. (The Emperor Julian’s Philosophy of Religion as shown in his Orations on King Helios and the Dea Mater.) 1908.
Max Maurenbrecher. Von Jerusalem nach Rom. (From Jerusalem to Rome.) 1910.
Salomon Reinach. Cultes, mythes et religions. (1905-1906-1908.)
Richard Reitzenstein. Poimandres. 1904.
Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen. Ihre Grundgedanken und Wirkungen. (The Hellenistic Mystery-Religions. Their fundamental Ideas and their Influence.) 1910.
E. Rohde. Psyche. 1894. 3rd ed. 1903, 2 vols.
H. R. Roscher. Lexikon der griechisch-römischen Mythologie. (Lexicon of Graeco-Roman Mythology.) 3 vols. 1884-1909.
Ernst Eduard Schwartz. Paulus. Charakterköpfe aus der antiken Literatur. (Character Sketches from Ancient Literature.) 1910.
W. B. Smith. Der vorchristliche Jesus nebst weiteren Vorstudien zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Urchristentums. (The pre-Christian Jesus, with other Preliminary Studies for a History of the Origin and Growth of Christianity.)
Wilhelm Soltau. Das Fortleben des Heidentums in der altchristlichen Kirche. (The Survival of Paganism in the Early Christian Church.) 1906.
Hermann Usener. Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen. (Studies in Comparative Religion.) 1889; 1899.
Paul Wendland. Die hellenistisch-römische Kultur in ihren Beziehungen zu Judentum und Christentum. (Hellenistic-Roman Civilisation in Relation to Judaism and Christianity.) 1907.
Paul Wernle. Die Anfänge unserer Religion. 1901. (E. T. by G. A. Bienemann, “The Beginnings of Christianity,” 1903.)
Georg Wobbermin. Religionsgeschichtliche Studien zur Frage der Beeinflussung des Urchristentums durch das antike Mysterienwesen. (Studies in Comparative Religion with reference to the Question of the Influence of the Ancient Mysteries on Primitive Christianity.) 1896.
TO the Bonn philologist Hermann Usener belongs the credit of having been the first to bring the Comparative Study of the pagan religions as they existed at the beginning of the Christian era into contact with theological science.146 In E. Rohde’s Psyche the Greek and late-Greek conceptions regarding ghost-worship and immortality were introduced to a wider circle of readers.
A generally intelligible survey of the cults which come into question is offered by Franz Cumont in his work on the Oriental religions in Roman paganism.147
It was Phrygia in Asia Minor which gave to the world the worship of Attis and the Dea Mater; from Egypt came that of Isis and Serapis; Syria supplied the great sun-god whom Heliogabalus and Aurelian, for reasons of [pg 182] state, proclaimed as the supreme divinity. The religion of Mithra is of Persian origin.
Of these cults, ancient literature, both pagan and Christian, has preserved some records, but it is only since discoveries of inscriptions and papyri have supplemented this information148 that any real understanding of the character and history of these religions has become possible.
The myth on which the worship of Cybele and Attis is based has been handed down in various and conflicting versions.
So much, however, is certain, that Attis, the beloved of the Dea Mater, was represented as having been killed by a boar sent by Zeus, or by the jealous goddess herself. Every year in the spring-time there took place at Pessinus the great orgiastic lamentation for him, which, however, ended with a joyful festival. It seems, therefore, as if a resurrection of the slain Attis was assumed to have taken place, although the myth had nothing to say about that, but only in some of the versions related that he was changed into an evergreen fir tree.
At bottom it is a form of nature-worship, which shows a close relationship with that of the Thracian Dionysus-Sabazios and with that of Adonis as worshipped at Byblos in Syria, and it has in some respects undergone modification due to contact with these. The primary idea underlying both myth and cultus is the decay and revival of vegetable life.
The worship of Cybele and Attis penetrated to Rome as early as the year 204 B.C. In the previous year the Sibylline books had given the oracle that Hannibal would not be driven out of Italy until the sacred stone from Pessinus was brought to Rome. This was done; [pg 183] and the Carthaginians vacated the country. The foreign divinities had a temple assigned to them on the Palatine. But when the Senate came to know of the orgiastic feast which was associated with their worship, it forbade the citizens to take part in it and placed the cult under strict control. Thus, in spite of its official recognition, it led a somewhat obscure existence until Claudius, by the public festival which he established for it—which lasted from the 15th to the 27th March—gave it a high position in public esteem.
In the deepening of its religious character which it underwent in becoming associated with Greek religious feeling of the decadence period, the worship of Attis was brought into connexion with the thought of immortality. In the “Agape,” in which the partakers were handed food in the “tympanon” and drink in the “cymbalon,” they were initiated as “mystae” of Attis and thereby became partakers of a higher life.
Mysteries were also celebrated in which a dying and rising again was symbolised; and there were others based upon the thought of a union with the divinity in the bridal chamber.
From the middle of the second century onward the “taurobolium” appears in connexion with the service of Cybele and Attis. This is a kind of blood-baptism. The “mystes” lies down in a pit, which is covered with boards. Through the interstices there trickles down on him the blood of a bull offered in sacrifice. The lamentation for the dead Attis sounds forth; the “mystes” applies it to himself. Then when the hymn of jubilation follows, he rises out of the grave as one who is now initiate and deified.149
The process by which the worship of Attis was transformed into a mystery-religion which gave guarantees of immortality remains for the most part shrouded in obscurity. In view of the scantiness of our information [pg 184] we are thrown back upon hypothetical reconstruction for the details of the development and the significance of the mysteries.150
The worship of Serapis was a creation of Ptolemy Soter, who desired to unite the Greek and Egyptian populations of his empire by the bond of a common worship. The derivation of the word Serapis is uncertain. Whether it arose from Osiris-Apis or from the Chaldaean Sar-Apsî is a debated point. The cultus language was Greek. Serapis was doubled with Osiris. The new cult went forth into the world as the religion of Serapis and Isis. In Rome it was vehemently opposed as being immoral; the temples of Isis, who was identified with Venus, justified this reputation. It was not officially recognised until the time of Caligula. By this time it was, however, widely diffused wherever the Greek language was spoken. Its adherents were found chiefly among the slaves and freedmen. From the third century onwards it is over-shadowed by the worship of Mithra.
The myth, which was represented annually, makes the mourning Isis seek out the scattered fragments of the corpse of Osiris and raise a lament over it. Then the limbs are laid together and wound round with bandages, whereupon Thoth and Horus raise the slain Osiris to life again, and this is announced amid jubilant outcries.
In the service of Osiris-Serapis the worshipper gains assurance of eternal life. Therein consisted the attraction of this religion.
The early Egyptian doctrine was simple enough. After his resurrection Osiris became lord of the world [pg 185] and at the same time judge of the dead. Those who at their trial before him are not approved fall a prey to destruction; others have eternal life with him in a realm below the earth.
Life—and this was the tremendously serious feature of this religion—was therefore regarded as a preparation for death. This is the thought reflected in the mysteries, no doubt modelled on those of Eleusis,151 which were attached to the Egyptian cultus after the worship of Serapis-Osiris had been ordained by authority. They represent the esoteric element. By means of the tests which he undergoes in the Serapeum, of the ecstasy which he experiences and the ceremonies of initiation in which he takes part the believer wins his way, along with Osiris, from death to life, and acquires the assurance of eternal being.
Distinct from these mysteries is the exoteric religion with its daily acts of worship. These consist in the unveiling, awaking, clothing, and feeding of the statues of the gods. The “liturgy,” which was everywhere punctiliously followed, is derived from the primitive Egyptian religion. Speaking generally, the exoteric form of the worship of Osiris could come to terms with any, even the lowest, forms of paganism.
The Syrian Baal-cults had no doubt from the second century onwards become widely diffused, and in the third century enjoyed the favour of the Emperors. For the development of popular religion, however, they were of less significance than the religions of Attis and Osiris, because they were not capable of becoming ennobled and deepened by the religious yearnings of the Greek spirit.
Mithra was the father of the sun-god.152 The origin of [pg 186] the cult is obscure. It first became known through the pirates who were taken prisoners by Pompey. It spread through the Roman armies which in the first century advanced towards the Euphrates; they took it over from their opponents. Thus Mithra was primarily a soldiers’ god. With the legions he penetrated to the utmost bounds of the Roman Empire. He therefore passed direct from the barbarians into the Roman world without previously becoming at home in the Greek world. From the middle of the third century onwards the new cult spread so vigorously that it was regarded as the strongest rival of Christianity.
In the intervening period, from the first century onward, it adopted in growing measure elements from all the other cults, and in this way became the universal “worship.”
Regarding the myth, little is known; and in the cultus it played no special part. As the “slayer of the bull” Mithra doubtless belongs to the class of star-gods, and represents the supreme sun-god.
The characteristic feature of this religion is its dualism. Mithra, as the supreme, good god, is opposed by the powers of the evil under-world. Hence the earnest character of its ethic, which is not contemplative as in the Osiris cult, but active.
The secret of the power of this new faith lies indeed mainly in the impulse to action which essentially belongs to it, and in the large and simple ethical life to which this conception of the divinity gives rise. The Mithra-religion, differing in this from the Egyptian cults, places the scene of eternal life in an upper realm of light and not in the under-world. The supreme divinity himself guides the souls of departed believers through the seven planetary spheres to the land of the blessed, and thus becomes their “Redeemer.”
As Mysteries there are observed here, as in other cults, sacred meals and baptismal rites. Above these again there was, according to Dieterich, a supreme initiation, [pg 187] which represented a progress to the throne of Mithra. The actions and the formulae used in this ceremony are, he thinks, preserved almost complete in the great Parisian “magic” papyrus. Dieterich, who is opposed on this point by Cumont and Reitzenstein, denominates this document a “Mithra-liturgy,” and supposes the prayers to be used in the course of the ascent which conducts the “mystes” from the world of the four elements through the stars to the realm of the gods, where, under the guidance of the sun-god, he passes through the heaven of the fixed stars and attains to the presence of the highest god.153
This process he conceives as having been represented, as part of the cultus, in the Mithra-grottos, which is rendered not improbable by the discoveries of objects which might have to do with a mise en scène corresponding to this conception. In any case there was some sacramental representation of the heavenward journey of the soul towards the attainment of immortality. It remains questionable whether, as the supreme mystery which the religion possessed, it was “experienced” by the believers only once, or had its regular place in the cultus.
The prayers extol in lofty language re-birth from the mortal to the immortal life. The invocation with which the “mystes” approaches Mithra is highly impressive. “Hail to thee, lord, ruler of the water; hail to thee, stablisher of the earth; hail to thee, disposer of the spirit. Lord, I that am born again take my departure, being exalted on high, and since I am exalted, I die; born by the birth which engenders life, I am redeemed unto death, [pg 188] and go the way which thou hast appointed, as thou hast made for a law and created the sacrament . . .”154 Here the text breaks off. Perhaps later on the return of the initiate to earth was described. Dieterich, however, thinks this improbable.
According to Dieterich the liturgy arose in the second century, and belongs to the Graeco-Egyptian Mithra-cult; about 200 A.D. it was annexed by the “magians” and from that time forward was preserved among them; about 300 it was embodied in the Paris manuscript which has come down to us.
A valuable insight into the feelings and impressions associated with the Mysteries is given by the Hermetic writings, preserved mainly in “Poimandres.”155 They profess to be derived from Hermes, who in the thought of later times became the god of revelation, and in the prominence which they give to the philosophico-religious element they mark a stage in the development of Greek religious thought from the Mystery-religions to Neo-Platonism. In their present form the documents of this later Hermetic religion, which is marked by a certain profundity, doubtless belong to about the third century; but the original form dates, perhaps, from before the beginning of the second century.
These are the cults and religions which have to be taken into account. They are parallel to Christianity in so far that they, like it—though in general doubtless somewhat later—make their appearance in the ancient world as religions of redemption. Certain analogies are not to be denied. The only question is how far these go, and how far the Mystery-religions really exercised an influence upon the views and the [pg 189] cultus-forms of the early, and especially of the primitive, church.156
The first to examine the facts with any closeness was Anrich in his work, “The Ancient Mysteries and their Influence on Christianity.”157
He comes to the conclusion that both the Pauline and the Johannine views of Christianity “are to be understood as in the main original creations of the Christian spirit on the basis of genuine Judaism,” and if they show the influence of Greek thought, it is at most in a secondary fashion. There is, he asserts, “no apparent reason to refer the views on baptism and the communion-meal which meet us in the two cases to influences of the latter character.” It is only at a later time that a real influence comes into question.
This negative conclusion has since been much disputed. That the author, in accordance with the position of Pauline scholarship at that period, did not sufficiently take into account the “physical” element in the mystical doctrine of redemption and in the conception of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and consequently does not give sufficient weight to the analogy between the religion of the Apostle of the Gentiles and that of the Mysteries, is certain. But it ought to be recognised as equally certain that to many points he has given the prominence which they deserved, and that the students of Comparative Religion would have in many respects done better if they had allowed their bold advance to be somewhat checked by his prudent warnings, and had learned something from him in regard to the formulation of the problems.
A point which ought to be more clearly grasped than it has hitherto been, in the investigation of Paul’s relation to the Mystery-religions, is that for purposes of comparison Paulinism must be regarded as a distinct entity; very often Paul’s doctrine has been included in the “Religion of the New Testament” or taken together with the Johannine and the Early Greek theology. On this method only false results can be looked for. Paulinism, and therein lies the special problem which it offers to scholarship, is an original phenomenon which is wholly distinct from Greek theology.
This implies, too, that only the literal sense of the language of the Epistles must be considered, and that it is not permissible to interpret it through the Johannine theology, as is almost always done. It is nothing less than incredible that, to take the most flagrant example, philologists like Dieterich and others in discussing Paulinism, always calmly talk about “Re-birth,” although in the Epistles which rank as certainly genuine, this word and the corresponding verb never occur.158 That [pg 191] many theologians fall into the same confusion is no excuse.159
The surprising thing is precisely that Paul, when he is speaking of the transformation of the man into a new creature, always makes use of the two words death and resurrection, and describes the new thing that comes about as an already experienced resurrection, without ever introducing the conception of re-birth which seems to lie so near at hand. In this limitation lies his as yet unexplained peculiarity, and therewith the problem of his relation to Greek theology and, in general, to everything that can be called Greek religious life.
The Johannine doctrine, that of the earlier Greek Fathers, and the Mystery-religions, have this in common, that they make use of the conception of re-birth. In that, they show themselves to be growths of the same soil, and stand together over against Paulinism. Any one who interprets the language of the Apostle of the Gentiles in accordance with the conception of re-birth, has, by the aid of the Johannine theology, first conformed it to the Mystery-religions, and has himself introduced the conception which forms the common basis.
The same procedure has been followed in regard to other points also. The Paulinism which the students of Comparative Religion have in view is mainly an artificial product which has been previously treated with the acids and reagents of Greek theology.
Another point which calls for close attention is the chronological question in connexion with the history of the Mystery-religions. It is from the beginning of the [pg 192] second century onwards that these cults become widely extended in the Roman empire. It is only at this period—the worship of Serapis as an artificial Graeco-Egyptian creation is perhaps an exception—that they come under the influence of late Greek religious thought and feeling, which developed with the decline of the Stoa, and become transformed from imported cults into universal Mystery-religions. The dates and the inner course of this development are for us obscure. So much, however, is certain, that Paul cannot have known the mystery-religions in the form in which they are known to us, because in this fully-developed form they did not yet exist. Assuming the most favourable case, that from his youth up he had had open eyes and ears for the heathen religions by which he was surrounded, he can only have known the cults as they were in their uncompounded state, not as what they passed into when they became filled with the Greek yearning for redemption, and mutually influenced one another.
Considerations of this kind lead an authority like Cumont to insist again and again upon the difficulties which stand in the way of assuming an influence of the Mystery-cults on the earliest Christianity.160 Especially does he hold it to be quite impossible that the Mithra-religion should have had any point of contact with Paul.
Another point which should be mentioned is that those who are engaged in making these comparisons are rather apt to give the Mystery-religions a greater definiteness and articulation of thought than they really possess, and do not always give sufficient prominence to the distinction between their own hypothetical reconstruction and the medley of statements on which it is based. Almost all the popular writings fall into this kind of inaccuracy. They manufacture out of the various fragments of information a kind of universal [pg 193] Mystery-religion which never actually existed, least of all in Paul’s day.161
In particular, these works aim at getting hold of the idea of a “Greek Redeemer-god” who might serve as an analogue to Jesus Christ. No figure deserving of this designation occurs in any myth or in any Mystery-religion; it is created by a process of generalisation, abstraction, and reconstruction. Before using the phrase Redeemer-God, one should remember that it means a God who for the sake of men came into the world, died and rose again. Having realised that, one may then try how far the Mystery-religions supply anything corresponding to this—the only adequate—definition.162
It is also to be remarked that, on the other hand, there is no “Redeemer-god” in Primitive Christianity. Jesus is, it cannot be sufficiently emphasised, not thought of as a god, but only as a heavenly being, who is entrusted with the mission of bringing in the new world. It was only later in the Greek and Gnostic theology that He was deified. For Paul he is “Son of God” in the simple, Old-Testament and Apocalyptic sense.
We may further recall Cumont’s warning that analogies do not necessarily imply dependence. “Resemblances,” he writes in the preface to his Religions orientales, “do not always imply imitation, and the resemblance of views or usages must often be explained by community of origin, not by any kind of borrowing.” In the same essay he points out that analogies are sometimes exaggerated, if not actually created, by the use of language chosen by the critic.
And Dieterich expresses himself in the following terms against this mania for finding analogies. “It is,” he writes, in his edition of the “Mithra-liturgy,” “one of the worst faults of the science of Comparative Religion, which is at present becoming constantly less cautious, to overlook the most natural explanations, not to say ignore and avoid them, in order to have recourse to the most far-fetched, and, by the most eccentric methods, to drag out analogies which, to the unsophisticated eye, are absolutely invisible.”
These are the principles by which it has to be decided, whether Comparative Religion has hunted down its game according to fair forest-law, or whether its “bag” is poached.
The chief point to which research was at first directed was the discovery of relationships between the two sets of sacramental views.
It seemed so easy to discover common conceptions [pg 195] here, in view of the fact that in both cases cultus-meals and lustrations played a part and had a sacramental value. But, on closer examination, it appears that it is very difficult to get beyond the simple fact of resemblance of a very general character.
Dieterich, in his commentary on the “Mithra-liturgy,” is obliged to admit that we have very little exact knowledge regarding the sacred meals of the Mystery-religions.163 That they were supposed to convey supernatural powers is about the only thing that can be said with safety. Regarding the special conceptions and actions which made this eating and drinking sacramental no information has been preserved. A comparison—not to speak of the establishment of a relation of dependence—is therefore impossible.
As soon as the students of Comparative Religion attempt to bring forward concrete facts, they are obliged to leave the domain of the mystery-religions and draw their material from the primitive Nature-religions. Here they find the primary conception—a man believes that he unites himself with the divinity by eating portions of him, or—this is a secondary stage of the conception—by consuming some substance which has been marked out for this purpose as representative of the divinity and has had his name attached to it.
The following series of examples recurs in all the books:—
The dead Pharaoh, when he enters heaven, causes his servants to seize, bind, and slay the gods, and then devours them in order thus to absorb into himself their strength and wisdom, and to become the strongest of all.
In Egypt anyone who wishes to become truthful swallows a small image of the goddess of truth.
In the Thracian orgiastic worship of Dionysos Sabazios [pg 196] the sacrificial ox is torn to pieces by the participants while yet alive, and swallowed raw.
A Bedouin tribe in the Sinai peninsula slaughters, amid chanting, a camel bound upon the altar, and then eagerly drinks its blood and immediately devours the still bloody flesh half raw.
The Aztecs, before sacrificing and eating their prisoners of war, give them the name of the deity to whom the sacrifice is offered.
Now, by the round-about way of this primitive conception the connexion between Paul’s cultus-feast and that of the Mystery-religions—which cannot be directly shown—is supposed to be established.
It is suggested that this primitive conception of union with the god in the cultus, by an act of eating performed with this special purpose, after it had in the normal development of the various religions been transformed or completely laid aside, came to life again in the mysticism of the Mystery-religions and of Paulinism. Mysticism, according to Dieterich’s view, draws its nourishment from the lowest strata of religious ideas. The belief in the union of God and man which, among the cultured classes, was no longer anything but a metaphor, rises up again from below with irrepressible power. “Rising from below, the old ideas acquire new power in the history of religion. The revolution from beneath creates new religious life within the primeval, indestructible forms.”164
That we have here a combination of two still unproved hypotheses is not sufficiently emphasised. In the Mystery-religions ancient cults certainly enter into direct union with higher religious conceptions, so that the general presupposition on which this hypothesis of Comparative Religion is based is to a certain extent admissible. But whether precisely this primitive conception of the mystic fellowship created by eating and drinking the god awakened to new life in them, must remain an open question, since our information does not suffice to prove [pg 197] it. Of an eating of the god there is nowhere any mention. And the primitive Mysteries were not founded on this idea. Rather, they consist essentially in the representation of the actions performed by the divinity, and rest on the thought that the reproduction of these events will create in the participant some kind of corresponding reality. It is a symbolism which is charged with a certain energy, a drama which becomes real.
This being so, the significance of the cultus-meal comes much less into view than that of the pattern actions which had to be further developed and interpreted. If we possess so few typical statements about the Mystery-feasts, is it not partly because they had no very remarkable features and did not take a very exalted position in the hierarchy of cultus-acts? If in the Paris Magic-papyrus we really possess a Mithra-liturgy, and if the inferences and explanations which Dieterich has attached to it are sound, then we have proof that in this developed cultus of the second century the highest sacrament was a pictorial mystery in which the “mystes” believed that he in some way experienced the heavenly journey of the soul which he, along with others, enacted.
In any case, the assertion that in the Mystery-religions the ancient cultus-conception of a union with the divinity effected by a meal, came to life again, goes far beyond what can be proved. That union is, even in its secondary forms, always closely connected with a sacrificial feast, and cannot properly be detached from it. The sacrificial feast, however, is not a feature in the Mystery-religions, and so far as we can get a glimpse of their beginnings never had any supreme importance in them. The interpretation of these cults on the analogy of the primitive religions of various races, ancient or modern, who devoured oxen, camels, or prisoners of war as substitutes for the divinity, cannot therefore be established.
The vestiges of this ancient conception are to be found, not in the Mystery-religions, but in the ordinary heathen sacrificial worship, in cases where the sacrificial [pg 198] feast has been retained in connexion with it. Here there certainly exists in some form or other the conception of a fellowship with the god set up by eating. It is to be noted that Paul in I Cor. x. draws a parallel between the Lord’s Supper, which unites us to Christ, and these feasts. How expositors have arrived at the idea of making him refer here to the cultus-meal of the Mystery-religions is quite inexplicable.
The hypothesis that the earliest Christian conception of the Lord’s Supper in some way represented the surviving influence of an ancient cultus idea, is at first sight much more plausible than the corresponding hypothesis in the case of the Mystery-religions. At any rate the existence of the desiderated fact is here proved. The conception of the sacramental eating stands in the centre of the belief; by this act, fellowship with a divine Being who has died and risen again is maintained; and what is eaten and drunk is brought into relation to the person of Christ, inasmuch as it is called, in some sense or other, His body and blood.
Nevertheless in the decisive point the alleged facts break down.
Paul knows nothing of an eating and drinking of the body and blood of the Lord. When Dieterich gives it as the Apostle’s view that “Christ is eaten and drunk by the believers and is thereby in them,” and adds that nothing further need be said about the matter, what he has done is, instead of taking Paul’s words as they stand, to interpret Paul through John—and through a misunderstanding of John at that.
It is not of an eating and drinking the body and blood of Christ that Paul speaks in the First Epistle to the Corinthians; he always speaks only of eating and drinking the bread and the cup. He assumes, no doubt, that this somehow or other maintains a communion with the body and blood of Christ (I Cor. x. 16-17), and that anyone who partakes unworthily sins against the body and blood of the Lord (I Cor. xi. 27). He quotes, too, the words [pg 199] in which the Lord, on the historic night, after the Supper, speaks of bread and wine as His body and His blood. But the conception which seems inevitably to arise out of this, that the participant partakes of the body and blood of the Lord, is not found in him.
The recognition of this fact does not make his sacramental doctrine any clearer. It is a question of fulfilling the demand of sound scholarship that we should respect the text, and not interpret it on the basis of inferences which the Apostle neither drew nor could draw. His fundamental view that the feast effects or maintains fellowship with the exalted Christ is perfectly clear. What is not clear is how he brought this view into relation with the historic words of Jesus about the bread and wine as being His body and blood, and interpreted it in accordance therewith. Did it arise out of these words, or did he receive it from some other quarter and afterwards make use of it for the interpretation of the historic words?
The difficulty lies in the fact that for Paul the body and blood of the historic Christ no longer exist, and that, on the other hand, while the glorified Christ has, indeed, a body, it is not a body through which blood flows and which is capable of being consumed on earth. To speak of the body and blood of Christ is, from the stand-point of the Apostle’s doctrine, an absurdity. He cannot in his doctrine of the Supper bring the historic words into harmony with his Christology, and yet is obliged to do so. The compromise remains for us obscure.
It is certain, however, that neither he nor the primitive Christian community held that the body and blood of Christ was partaken of in the Supper. That is evident from the fact that the historic words of Jesus did not form part of the service, and this is the case down to a later date. No kind of consecration of the elements as the body and blood of the Lord occurred in the liturgy.
If there is anything which may be considered as a definite result of recent research, it is that the view of primitive and early Christianity regarding the Lord’s [pg 200] Supper was not arrived at by way of inference from the words of Jesus about bread and wine and flesh and blood, but, strange as it may appear, arose from a different quarter. The Church’s celebration was not shaped by the “words of institution” at the historic Supper; it was the latter, on the contrary, which were explained in accordance with the significance of the celebration.
It is a no less serious error when Dieterich asserts that the Gospel of John in chapter vi. proclaims the Pauline doctrine “only in a still more corporeal fashion.”
In the Evangelist, bread and wine are—as is evident to anyone who will take the trouble to acquaint himself with his presuppositions in the spiritually related works of Ignatius, Justin, and Tertullian—not the body and blood of Christ, but the flesh and blood of the Son of Man. In this change in the expression lies the logic of the thought. The elements of the Lord’s Supper perpetuate the appearance of the Son of Man in the world inasmuch as they, as being the flesh and blood of that historic Personality, possess the capacity of being vehicles of the Spirit. As a combination of matter and Spirit which can be communicated to the corporeity of men, they execute judgment. The elect can in the sacrament become partakers of that spiritual substance, and can thus be prepared for the resurrection; others who are not from above, and are not capable of receiving the Spirit, receive simply earthly food and drink, and fall a prey to corruption. Therefore the Evangelist makes the Lord close His discourse about the eating and drinking of the flesh and blood of the Son of Man with the words, “It is the spirit that giveth life.”
This is the language of the early Greek theology, which explains the working of the sacraments by the combination of the Spirit with matter which takes place therein. The Fourth Evangelist projects this later view back into the discourses of the historic Jesus, and makes Him prophetically announce that after His exaltation a time will come when the Spirit which is now in Him will unite itself [pg 201] with the bread which, by the miracle of the loaves, has just been raised in a significant way out of the category of simple earthly elements, and will subsequently manifest its power in preparing men for the resurrection.
In this sense, as vehicles of the Spirit, the elements carry on the manifestation of the Son of Man; in this sense it is possible to speak of eating and drinking His flesh and blood, and to regard this as necessary to life. But all this is not thought of “corporeally” in the naïve sense of an eating and drinking of the body and blood of Jesus, but can only be understood on the basis of the doctrine of the working of the Spirit in the sacraments. Apart from the Spirit, there is in the Supper no body and no blood of Christ.
That is for the Fourth Evangelist so much a fixed datum that he is obliged to omit the account of the historic Last Supper of Jesus with His disciples. That the Lord could have so designated the bread which was eaten and the wine which was drunk on that occasion, is for him unthinkable. As long as He Himself is alive there is certainly no Spirit; it is only on His exaltation that the Spirit is liberated from the historic personality of the Son of Man and becomes separated from the Logos as the Holy Spirit, in order in the sacraments to lead a new existence—and this time an existence capable of being communicated to others. From this moment onwards bread and wine become, in the Church’s celebration of the sacrament, the flesh and blood of the Son of Man in the sense explained above. Previously this had by no means been the case, any more than there had been a Christian baptism which effected regeneration. The Spirit who associates Himself with the water and produces this effect, did not as yet exist in this form of being. Jesus cannot, therefore, on this view, have baptized, any more than He can celebrate the Supper with His disciples. Therefore, the Fourth Evangelist, in order to guard against possible misunderstandings, definitely asserts that even if the disciples did baptize—a mere baptism with water [pg 202] which is incapable of working regeneration—the Master Himself made no use of water in this fashion.165 His task consisted only in marking out water for this use by the miracle at Cana of Galilee, and, by His discourses about the water of life and regeneration by water and the Spirit, pointing men’s minds to the thought that in the future, water, in association with the Spirit, would be necessary to life and blessedness. In that day “out of his body shall flow rivers of living water” because the Spirit will be present (John vii. 37-39).
The students of Comparative Religion are so far in the right as against ordinary theology that they make an end of the unintelligent spiritualising of the Johannine doctrine, and try to give due weight to the “physical” element in its conception of redemption. They are mistaken, however, in regarding this “physical” element as something primitive, and in thinking to explain it by analogies drawn from the primitive nature-religions.
The Fourth Gospel represents the views of a speculative religious materialism which concerns itself with the problem of matter and spirit, and the permeation of matter by Spirit, and endeavours to interpret the manifestation and the personality of Jesus, the action of the sacraments and the possibility of the resurrection of the elect, all on the basis of one and the same fundamental conception.
According to this theory, Christ came into the world in order to accomplish in His own Person the as yet non-existent union of the Spirit with the fleshly substance of humanity. In consequence of this act the elect among mankind can in the future become partakers of the Spirit. Jesus Himself, however, cannot as yet impart this to them either as the Spirit of knowledge—that is why the disciples are portrayed as so “unintelligent”—or as the Spirit of life. The Spirit always needs, in the world of sense, to [pg 203] be connected with material vehicles. He cannot work directly, in the sense of communicating Himself from Jesus to believers. He must, therefore, in order to enter into the elect, be received by them in combination with some material element. The material media chosen for this purpose are made known by Jesus by means of miracles and by references to the future.
The naïve—and unhistorical—conception that Jesus instituted the sacraments is not recognised by the Johannine gnosis. According to it He did not establish them, but created and predicted them.
By His incarnation the possibility of the union of humanity and Spirit upon which the working of the sacraments depends, is provided. By His action in regard to the food and wine and the words He spoke in connexion therewith, He pointed to a mystery which was to be revealed in connexion with these substances; by His death, resurrection, and exaltation He abolished His earthly mode of existence and set the Spirit free for the new method of working, in virtue of which He was able to prepare men for the resurrection. Jesus, according to this view, came into the world to introduce the era of effectual sacraments. It was thus that He became the Redeemer.
The teaching of the Johannine theology, therefore, rests upon the two principles, that the Spirit can only work upon men in combination with matter, and that it only becomes present in this state as a consequence of the exaltation of the Lord. Anyone who has once recognised these presuppositions will give up once for all the search for a primitive element which is to be explained from the nature-religions. On the other hand, it is certain that Christianity here presents itself as the most highly developed Greek Mystery-religion which it is possible to conceive.
Now for Paul again. Anyone who ascribes to him the conception of a sacramental eating and drinking of the body and blood of Christ does violence to his words. [pg 204] But admitting that he really thought in this way, that would prove nothing. It would first need to be shown that it really was a cultus-conception drawn from the primitive nature-religions which came to life again in him. Now, for the Mystery-religions the necessary presuppositions might appear to be present, since they arise out of ancient cults which sprouted and grew up again in later times. Paul, however, is a Jew, and even as a believer in Christ he stands, in spite of his polemic against the law, wholly and solely on the basis of the absolute, transcendent Jewish conception of God. Any relation on his part to the nature-cults cannot be proved and ought not to be assumed. By what wind were the seeds of this primitive conception wafted to his mind? And how could they suddenly sprout and grow in the stony soil of a Jewish heart? The Apostle would certainly be the first and the only Jewish theologian to fall under the spell of the primitive conception of eating the god! And where was such a conception at that time to be found?
But what matter such prosaic considerations when it is a question of great ideas, of ideas, moreover, fathered by Comparative Religion?
When Heitmüller in the spring of 1903 appeared before the members of the Clergy Theological Society166 in Hanover to give them the latest information about baptism and the Lord’s Supper, he led them abroad, after an introduction on the “physico-hyperphysical” in Paul, first to the Aztecs, then in the clouds of night, by the torch’s gleam, to the Thracian mountain sides, and thence to Sinai.167 And when they had assisted at the slaughtering and devouring of the prisoners of war, the ox, and the camel, he expressed himself to the following effect: “Little as the δεῖπνον κυριακόν of Paul might seem to have in common with these . . . proceedings, and [pg 205] loth as we at first are even to name the Lord’s Supper in the same breath with them, as little is it to me a matter of doubt that, when looked at from the point of view of Comparative Religion, the Lord’s Supper of primitive Christianity has the closest connexion with them. Those pictures supply the background from which the Lord’s Supper stands out; they show us the world of ideas to which the Lord’s Supper belongs in its most primitive, and therefore perspicuous, form.”
Entering more into detail, this “Hylic”168 of the Comparative method explains that the primeval concrete and sensuous conception of the communio established by partaking of the flesh and blood of the animal in which the divinity itself dwelt, comes to light again in the primitive Christian Lord’s Supper, at the highest stage of the development of religion, and under this new form acquires a new life.169 It would be precarious, he further observes, in view of the fragmentary condition of the sources to attempt to prove a direct dependence on definite phenomena—on the cultus feast of the Mithra-mysteries, for example: “It will be safer to point to the general characteristics of the time, which abounded with ideas of that kind. The infant Christianity lived in an atmosphere which, if I may be allowed the expression, was impregnated with Mystery-bacilli, and grew up on a soil which had been fertilised and made friable by the decay and intermixture of the most various religions, and [pg 206] was specially adapted to favour the upgrowth of seeds and spores which had been long in the ground.”
Now, there is no such thing as an atmosphere impregnated with bacteria. Medical science has long since shown that this conception rests on an error, the air being practically free from germs. In theology it is more difficult to get rid of fantastic imaginations, since historical proofs are only available for those who are capable of thinking historically.
It must not be overlooked that the eating and drinking which establishes communion with Christ is only one side of the Pauline conception of the Supper. Alongside of it there exists the other, which sees in the feast a confession of faith in the death and the parousia of the Lord, and is quite as significant as the former. It is—in I Cor. xi.—developed in connexion with the repetition of the historic words of Jesus; on it is based the argument that a careless partaking is a transgression against the body of the Lord. And on the basis of this conception, cases of illness and death in the church are to be understood as a warning chastisement pointing to the Last Judgment. This conception must be somehow or other eschatologically conditioned.
The communion which is established in the Lord’s Supper is a communion of the eagerly-waiting man with the coming Lord of Glory. The only thing which remains obscure is how this is brought about. The confession of faith in the death and parousia which is combined with the act of eating and drinking does not suffice to explain this further effect. Further, it remains inherently obscure how by eating and drinking the dying and return of the Lord can be shown forth, especially as the Early Christian celebration consisted only in a common meal, and in no way reproduced, as present-day celebrations do, the actions and words of Jesus at the Last Supper.
What are the results to which the students of Comparative Religion have to point in regard to the Lord’s Supper? They are obliged at the outset to give up the [pg 207] attempt to explain it from the Mystery-religions, or even to point out in the latter any very close analogies. In place of this they attempt to make intelligible both the meal which formed part of the mystery-cults, and that of Pauline Christianity, as growths which, from scattered seeds of ancient conceptions of the cultus-eating of the divinity, spring up from the soil of syncretism in two different places at the same time. Neither in the one case nor the other, however, can they render this even approximately probable. Up to the present, therefore, neither a direct nor an indirect connexion between the cultus-meal of Paul and those of the Mystery-religions has been shown. The only thing which is certain is that in both cases a cultus-meal existed. About that of the Mysteries we know almost nothing; about that which Paul presupposes we have more information, but not such as to enable us at once to understand it.
The question regarding baptism took from the first a simpler form, since the hypothesis of a renascence of primitive cultus-conceptions has not to be considered.
Both Paul and the Mystery-religions attach a religious significance to washings. That, however, does not suffice to establish a peculiarity which would connect them together, since the attachment of this significance to lustration is bound up with the elemental symbolism of cleansing and is found more or less in all religions.
The real question is whether Paulinism and the Mystery-religions, when they go beyond the most general notions, and advance from the symbolic to the effectively sacramental, follow the same lines and present the same views.
Once again, Paul’s view is the more fully, that of the Mystery-religions the less fully known. Developed baptismal doctrines and rites seem only to have been present in the Egyptian cults. These distinguish between the bath of purification and baptism, the latter consisting [pg 208] in a sprinkling with a few drops of a consecrated and consecrating fluid.170
The advance beyond the idea of purification, where it is to be observed, moves in the direction of the idea of Re-birth, Regeneration. A clear formulation of this developed view—comparable in definiteness with the Early Christian reference to the “bath of regeneration” 171 —does not occur. The thought remains hovering between purification and renewal.
That is as much as to say that, so far as our information goes, no typical points of contact with Paulinism present themselves.
The Apostle implies a baptism in the name of a divine person. Of a baptism performed in the name of Osiris, Attis, or Mithra we know nothing, though no doubt the assumption naturally suggests itself that the lustrations and baptisms practised in these cults were considered to be at the same time acts of confession of faith in the divinity with whose worship they were associated. But this character was by no means so distinctly stamped on them as was the case in Christian baptism—as is, indeed, readily intelligible. In the Mystery-religions the confession of the god is naturally implied; in Christianity there is the special confession of faith in the Messiahship of Jesus. To this there was nothing analogous.
As regards the utterance of the name of the divinity and the magical efficacy attaching thereto according to ancient conceptions, many illustrations can be adduced from Comparative Religion. But the really important point, the association of the utterance of the name with a baptismal rite, cannot be directly shown to have existed in the Mystery-religions.172