Part 2 (1/2)

Like other prophets of his nation, he did not altogether eschew the framework of apocalyptic which was at that time the natural mould for prophecy. But he preached neither the popular nationalism, nor the popular ecclesiasticism, nor the popular ethics. His countrymen rejected him as soon as they understood him. The Gospel was, as St. Paul said, a new creation. It is most significant that it at once introduced a new ethical terminology. The Greek words which we translate love (or charity), joy, peace, hope, humility, are no part of the stock-in-trade of Greek moralists before Christ. Men do not coin new words for old ideas. Taken as a whole the Gospel is profoundly original; and a Christian can find strong evidence for his belief that in Christ a revelation was made to humanity at large, in which the religion of the Spirit, in its purest and most universal form, was for the first time presented to mankind. This revelation has to a considerable extent pa.s.sed into the common consciousness of the civilized world; but its implications in matters of conduct, individual, social, and international, are still imperfectly understood and have never been acted upon, except feebly and sporadically. It is a reproach to us that the teaching of Christ must be regarded as only one of many elements which make up what we call Christianity. The Quakers, as a body, seem to me to come nearest to what a genuinely Christian society would be.

Secondly, the Greeks escaped the evils of priestly government. The Oriental type of theocracy, with which they were familiar in the Egypt of the Pharaohs, was alien to their civilization. Their sacrifices were for the most part of the genial type, a communion-meal with the G.o.d. But even in Greece we must remember the gloomy chthonian rites, and the degradations of Orphism mentioned by Plato in the _Republic_. 'They persuade not only individuals but whole cities that expiations and atonements for sin may be made by sacrifices and amus.e.m.e.nts which fill a vacant hour, and are equally at the service of the living and of the dead; the latter sort they call mysteries, and they redeem us from the pains of h.e.l.l, but if we neglect them no one knows what awaits us.' This exploitation of sacramentalism was common enough in Greece; but the characteristic Caesaro-Papism of Byzantium and modern imperialism was wholly foreign to h.e.l.lenism. It was introduced by Constantine as part of the Orientalizing of the empire begun by Diocletian. As Seeley says, 'Constantine purchased an indefeasible t.i.tle by a charter. He gave certain liberties and received in return pa.s.sive obedience. He gained a sanction for the Oriental theory of government; in return he accepted the law of the Church. He became irresponsible to his subjects on condition of becoming responsible to Christ.'

The Greeks never had a book-religion, in the sense in which Judaism became, and Islam always was, a book-religion. But they were in some danger of treating Homer and Hesiod as inspired scriptures. To us it is plain that a long religious history lies behind Homer, and that the treatment of the G.o.ds in Epic poetry proves that they had almost ceased to be the objects of religious feeling. Some of them are even comic characters, like the devil in Scottish folklore. To turn these poems into sacred literature was to court the ridicule of the Christians. But Homer was never supposed to contain 'the faith once delivered to the saints'; no religion of authority could be built upon him, and Greek speculation remained far more unfettered than the thought of Christendom has been until our own day.

Those who have observed the actual state of Christianity in Mediterranean countries cannot lay much stress on the difference between Christian monotheism and pagan polytheism. The early Church fought against the tendency to interpose objects of wors.h.i.+p between G.o.d and man; but Mariolatry came in through a loophole, and the wors.h.i.+p of the ma.s.ses in Roman Catholic countries is far more pagan than the service-books. In the imagination of many simple Catholics, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph are the chief potentates in their Olympus.

The doctrine of the creation of the world in time, which was denied by most pagan thinkers and affirmed by most Christian divines, belongs to philosophy rather than to religion. The disbelief in the pre-existence of the soul, a doctrine which for Greek thought stands or falls with the belief in survival after death, is more important, and may be partly attributable to Jewish influence. But pre-existence does not seem to have been believed by the majority of Greeks, and in fact almost disappears from Greek thought between Plato and the Neoplatonists. It is possible that the Pythagorean and Platonic doctrine may still have a future.

There are some who will insist that these differences are insignificant by the side of the fact that Christianity was the idealistic side of a revolt of the proletariat against the whole social order of the time.

This notion, which made Christ 'le bon sans-culotte', has again become popular lately; some have even compared the early Christians with Bolsheviks. It is a fair question to ask at what period this was even approximately true. Christ and his apostles belonged to the prosperous peasantry of Galilee, a well-educated and comfortable middle cla.s.s. The domestic slaves of wealthy Romans, who embraced the new faith in large numbers, were legally defenceless, but by no means miserable or degraded. After the second century the comparison of the Christians to modern revolutionists becomes too absurd for discussion. There is a good deal of rhetorical declamation about riches and poverty in the Christian Fathers; but unfortunately the Church seems to have done very little to protest against the crying economic injustices of the fourth and fifth centuries. From first to last there was nothing of the 'Spartacus'

movement about the Catholic Church. As soon as the persecutions ceased, the bishops took their place naturally among the n.o.bility.

When we turn to the obligations of modern religion to Greece, it is difficult to know where to begin.

The conception of philosophy as an _ars vivendi_ is characteristically Greek. Nothing can be further from the truth than to call the Greeks 'intellectualists' in the disparaging sense in which the word is now often used. The object of philosophy was to teach a man to live well, and with that object to think rightly about G.o.d, the world, and himself.

This close union between metaphysics, morals, and religion has remained as a permanent possession of the modern world. Every philosopher is now expected to show the bearing of his system on morality and religion, and the criticism is often justified that however bold the speculations of the thinker, he is careful, when he comes to conduct, to be conventional enough. The h.e.l.lenistic combination of Platonic metaphysics with Stoic ethics is still the dominant type of Christian religious philosophy. It is curious to observe how competing tendencies in these systems--the praise of isolated detachment and of active social sympathy--have continued to struggle against each other within the Christian Church.

The place of asceticism in religion is so important, and so much has been written rather unintelligently about the contrast between h.e.l.lenism and Christianity in this matter, that I propose to deal with it, briefly indeed, but with a little more detail than a strict attention to proportion would justify. It has often been a.s.sumed that a nation of athletes, who made heroes of Heracles and Theseus, Achilles and Hector, could have had nothing but contempt for the ascetic ideal. But in truth asceticism has a continuous history within h.e.l.lenism. Even Homer knows of the priests of chilly Dodona, the Selli, whose bare feet are unwashed, and who sleep on the ground. This is probably not, as Wilamowitz-Moellendorff thinks, a description of savage life, but of an ascetic school of prophets. For the fastdays which introduced the Thesmophoria were observed by the Athenian matrons in the same way; they went unshod and sat on the bare earth; and we may compare the Nudipedalia, ordered by the Romans in time of dearth and mentioned by Petronius and Tertullian. Prophets and prophetesses fasted at Miletus, Colophon, and other places. National fasts were ordered in times of calamity or danger, and Tarentum kept a yearly fast of thankfulness for deliverance from a siege. The flagellation of boys at Sparta hardly comes into account, being probably a subst.i.tute for human sacrifice; but the continuance of the cruel rite till nearly the end of antiquity causes surprise. The wors.h.i.+p of Dionysus Zagreus in Thrace was accompanied by ascetic practices before Pythagoras. Vegetarianism, which has always played an important part in the ascetic life, was obligatory on all Pythagoreans; but in this school there was another motive besides the desire to mortify the flesh. Those who believe in the transmigration of souls into the bodies of animals must regard flesh-eating as little better than cannibalism. The Pythagorean and the Orphic rules of life were well known throughout antiquity, and were probably obeyed by large numbers. The rule of continence was far less strict than in the Catholic 'religious' life; but Empedocles, according to Hippolytus, advised abstinence from marriage and procreation, and the tendency to regard celibacy as part of the 'philosophic life' increased steadily. The Cynic Antisthenes is quoted by Clement of Alexandria as having expressed a wish to 'shoot Aphrodite, who has ruined so many virtuous women'. But the asceticism of the early Cynics and of some Stoics was based not on self-devotion and spirituality but on the desire for independence, and often took repulsive forms. Of some among them it may be said that they did not object to sensual pleasure, they only objected to having to pay for it. Desire for self-sufficiency is always part of asceticism, but in the Christian saints it has been a small part. The Greeks who practised it were from first to last too anxious to be invulnerable; this was the main attraction of the philosophic life from the time of Antisthenes, and it remained the main attraction to the end. But Cynicism and Stoicism (which tend to run together) became gentler, more humane, and more spiritual under the Roman empire. Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius often seem to be half Christian. Direct influence of Christian ethics at this early period is perhaps unlikely; it is enough to suppose that the spirit of the age affected in a similar way all creeds and denominations. Self-mortification tended to a.s.sume more and more violent forms, till it culminated in the strange aberrations of Egyptian eremitism. It is impossible to regard these as either Greek or Christian; they indicate a pathological state of society, which can be partly but not entirely accounted for by the conditions of the time.

After a few centuries a far more wholesome type of monachism supplanted the hermits; the anchorites of the Middle Ages retained the solitary life, but were very unlike the crazy savages of the Thebaid. In modern times, those who have been most under the Greek spirit have generally lived with austere simplicity, but without any of the violent self-discipline which is said to be still practised by some devout Catholics. The a.s.siduous practice of self-mastery and the most sparing indulgence in the pleasures of sense are the 'philosophic life' which the Greek spirit recommends as the highest. The best Greeks would blame the life of an English clergyman, professor, or philosopher as too self-indulgent; we often forget how frugally and hardily the Greeks lived at all times. But here we have to consider the differences of climate, and the apparent necessity of a rather generous diet for the Nordic race.

The influence of the Greek mysteries upon Christianity is a keenly debated question, in which pa.s.sion and prejudice play too large a part.

The information necessary for forming a judgement has been much enlarged by recent discoveries in Egypt and elsewhere, and, as usually happens, the importance of the new facts has been sometimes exaggerated.

Protestant theology has on the whole minimized the influence of the mysteries, and has post-dated it, from an unwillingness to allow that there was already a strong Catholic element in the Christianity of the first century. Orthodox Catholicism has ignored it from different but equally obvious motives. Modernist Catholicism has in my opinion antedated the irruption of crude sacramentalism into the Church, and has greatly overstated its importance in the religion of the first-century Christians. This school practically denies anything more than a half-accidental continuity between the preaching of the historical Christ, whom they strangely suppose to have been a mere apocalyptist, one of the many Messiahs or Mahdis who arose at this period in Palestine, and the Catholic Church, which according to them belonged to the same type of religion as the wors.h.i.+p of Isis and Mithra. Another bone of contention is the value of the mystery-religions of Greece. The very able German scholars who have written on the subject, such as Reitzenstein and still more Rohde, seem to me much too unsympathetic in their treatment of the mystery-cults. Lastly, some competent critics have lately urged that this side of Christianity owed more to Judaism--h.e.l.lenized Judaism, of course--than has been hitherto supposed.

Plato in the _Phaedo_ says that 'those who established our mysteries declare that all who come to Hades uninitiated will lie in the mud; while he who has been purified and initiated will dwell with the G.o.ds'.

For, as they say in the mysteries, 'Many are the thyrsus-bearers, but few are the inspired'. This sacramentalism was not unchallenged, as we have already seen from Plato himself. Diogenes is said to have asked whether the robber Pataecion was better off in the other world than the hero Epaminondas, because the former had been initiated, and the latter had not. But Orphism, though liable to degradation, purified and elevated the old Bacchic rites. As Miss Harrison says, the Baccha.n.a.ls hoped to attain unity with G.o.d by intoxication, the Orphics by abstinence. The way to salvation was now through 'holiness' (?s??t??

{hosiotes}). To the initiated the a.s.surance was given, 'Happy and blessed one! Thou shalt be a G.o.d instead of a mortal.' To be a G.o.d meant for a Greek simply to be immortal; the Orphic saint was delivered from the painful cycle of recurring births and deaths. And Orphic purity was mainly, though not entirely, the result of moral discipline. c.u.mont says that the mystery-cults brought with them two new things--mysterious means of purification by which they proposed to cleanse away the defilements of the soul, and the a.s.surance that an immortality of bliss would be the reward of piety. The truth, says Mr. H. A. Kennedy, was presented to them in the guise of divine revelations, esoteric doctrines to be carefully concealed from the gaze of the profane, doctrines which placed in their hands a powerful apparatus for gaining deliverance from the a.s.saults of malicious demonic influences, and above all for overcoming the relentless tyranny of fate. This demonology was believed everywhere under the Roman empire, the period of which Mr. Kennedy is thinking in this sentence, and it has unfortunately left more traces in St. Paul's epistles than we like to allow. The formation of brotherhoods for mystic wors.h.i.+p was also an important step in the development of Greek religion. These brotherhoods were cosmopolitan, and seem to have flourished especially at great seaports. They were thoroughly popular, drawing most of their support from the lower cla.s.ses, and within them national and social distinctions were ignored. Their ultimate aim cannot be summed up better than in Mr. Kennedy's words--'to raise the soul above the transiency of perishable matter through actual union with the Divine'. It has been usual to distinguish between the dignified and officially recognized mysteries, like those of Eleusis, and the independent voluntary a.s.sociations, some of which became important. But there was probably no essential difference between them. In neither case was there much definite teaching; the aim, as Aristotle says, was to produce a certain emotional state (?? a?e?? t? de?? a??a pa?e?? {ou mathein ti dein alla pathein}). A pa.s.sion-play was enacted amid the most impressive surroundings, and we need not doubt that the moral effect was beneficial and sometimes profound. When the Egyptian mysteries of Isis and Osiris were fused with the h.e.l.lenic, a type of wors.h.i.+p was evolved which was startlingly like Christianity. A famous Egyptian text contains the promise: 'As truly as Osiris lives, shall he [the wors.h.i.+pper] live; as truly as Osiris is not dead, shall he not die.' The thanksgiving to Isis at the end of the _Metamorphoses_ of Apuleius is very beautiful in itself, though it is an odd termination of a licentious novel. The Hermetic literature also contains doctrine of a markedly Johannine type, as notably in a prayer to Isis: 'Glorify me, as I have glorified the name of thy son Horus.' I agree with those critics (c.u.mont, Zielinski, and others) who attach the 'higher' Hermetic teaching to genuinely h.e.l.lenic sources. But it is not necessary to ascribe all the higher teaching to Greece and the lower to Egypt.

Much of St. Paul's theology belongs to the same circle of ideas as these mysteries. Especially important is the psychology which divides human nature into spirit, soul, and body, spirit being the divine element into which those who are saved are transformed by the 'knowledge of G.o.d'.

This knowledge is a supernatural gift, which (in the _Poimandres_) confers 'deification'. St. Paul usually prefers 'Pneuma' as the name of this highest part of human nature; in the Hermetic literature it is not easy to distinguish between Pneuma and Nous, which holds exactly the same place in Neoplatonism. The notion of salvation as consisting in the knowledge of G.o.d is not infrequent in St. Paul; compare, for example, 1 Cor. xiii. 12 and a still more important pa.s.sage, Phil. ii. 8-10. This knowledge was partly communicated by visions and revelations, to which St. Paul attributed some importance; but on the whole he is consistent in treating knowledge as the crown and consummation of faith. The pneumatic transformation of the personality is the centre of St. Paul's eschatology. 'Though our outward man perish, our inward man is renewed day by day.' The 'spiritual body' is the vehicle of the transformed personality; for 'flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of G.o.d'.

The expression 'to be born again' is common in the mystery literature.

It would be easy to find many other parallels in St. Paul's epistles, in the Johannine books which are the best commentary upon them, and in the theology of the Greek Fathers, which prove the close connexion of early Christianity with the mystery-religions of the empire. Twenty years ago it might have been worth while to draw out these resemblances in greater detail, even in so summary a survey as this. But at present the tendency is, if not to over-estimate the debt of the Christian religion to h.e.l.lenistic thought and wors.h.i.+p, at any rate to ignore the great difference between the higher elements in the mystery-religions, which the new faith could gladly and readily a.s.similate, and the lower type, the theosophy, magic, and theurgy, which was not in the line of h.e.l.lenic development, and is not to be found in the New Testament. Wendland, always a judicious critic, has said very truly that St. Paul stands to the mystery-religions as Plato to Orphism; they are not the centre of his religious life, but they gave him effective forms of expression for his religious experience. Or, as Weinel says, 'St. Paul's doctrine of the Spirit and of Christ is not an imitation of mystery-doctrine, but inmost personal experience metaphysically interpreted after the manner of his time.' Writers like Loisy, who say that for St. Paul Jesus was 'a Saviour G.o.d, after the manner of Osiris, Attis, or Mithra', and who proceed to draw out obvious parallels between the sufferings, death, and resurrection of these mythological personages and the gospels of the Christian Church, surely forget that St. Paul was a Jew, and that there are some transformations of which the religious mind is incapable. He never speaks of Christ as a 'Saviour G.o.d'. Even more perverse are the arguments which are used to prove that the centre of St. Paul's religion was a gross and materialistic sacramental magic. The apostle, whose antipathy to ritual in every shape is stamped upon all his writings, who thanks G.o.d that he baptized very few of the Corinthians, who declares that 'Christ sent him not to baptize but to preach the Gospel', is accused of regarding baptism as 'an _opus operatum_ which secures a man's admission into the kingdom apart from the character of his future conduct'. And yet in the Epistle to the Romans, as Weinel says, 'baptism only once enters his mind, and the Lord's Supper not even once'. Baptism for him is no _opus operatum_, but a ceremony of social significance, a symbol conditioning a deeper experience of divine grace, already embraced by faith. These same critics proceed to ill.u.s.trate St. Paul's doctrine of the Lord's Supper by references to the religion of the Aztecs and other barbarians. But it is hardly worth while to argue with those who suppose that a man with St. Paul's upbringing and culture could have dallied with the notion of 'eating a G.o.d'. The 'table of the Lord' is the table at which the Lord is the spiritual host, not the table on which his flesh is placed. Does any one suppose that 'the table of demons' which is contrasted with the 'table of the Lord' is the table at which demons are eaten? Demons had no bodies, as we learn from the ??? e?? da?????? as?at?? {ouk eimi daimonion asomaton} of a well-known pa.s.sage in a New Testament ma.n.u.script.

Crude sacramentalism certainly came in later. Its parentage may be traced, if we will, to those mystery-mongers whom Plato mentions with disapproval. If h.e.l.lenism is the name of a way of thinking, this form of religion is not healthy h.e.l.lenism; that it was held by many h.e.l.lenes cannot be denied.

The biblical doctrine of the Fall of Man, which the Hebrews would never have evolved for themselves, remained an otiose dogma in Jewish religion. It was revivified in Christianity under Greek influence. Man, as Empedocles and others had taught, was 'an exile and vagabond from G.o.d'; his body was his tomb; he is clothed in 'an alien garment of flesh'. He is in a fallen state and needs redemption. h.e.l.lenism had become a religion of redemption; the empire was quite ready to accept this part of Christian doctrine. The sin of Adam became the first scene in the great drama of humanity, which led up to the Atonement. At the same time the whole process was never mere history; its deepest meaning was enacted in the life-story of each individual. Greek thought gave this turn to dogmas which for a Jew would have been a flat historical recital. In modern times the earlier scenes in the story, at any rate, are looked upon as little more than the dramatization of the normal experience of a human soul. But Greek thought, while it remained true to type, never took sin so tragically as Christianity has done. The struggle against evil has become sterner than it ever was for the Greeks. It must, however, be remembered that the large majority of professing Christians do not trouble themselves much about their sins, and that the best of the Greeks were thoroughly in earnest in seeking to amend their lives.

Redemption was brought to earth by a Redeemer who was both G.o.d and Man.

This again was in accordance with Greek ideas. The Mediator between G.o.d and Man must be fully divine, since an intermediate Being would be in touch with neither side. The victory of Athanasius was in no sense a defeat for h.e.l.lenism. The only difficulty for a Greek thinker was that an Incarnate G.o.d ought to be impa.s.sible. This was a puzzle only for philosophers; popular religion saw no difficulty in a _Christus patiens_. The doctrine of the Logos brought Christianity into direct affinity with both Platonism and Stoicism, and the Second Person of the Trinity was invested with the same attributes as the Nous of the Neoplatonists. But the attempts to equate the Trinity with the three divine hypostases of Plotinus was no more successful than the later attempt of Hegel to set the Trinity in the framework of his philosophy.

The subject of eschatology is so vast that it is hopeless to deal with it, even in the most summary fas.h.i.+on, in one paragraph. It is usually said that the resurrection of the body is a Jewish doctrine, the immortality of the soul a Greek doctrine. But the Jews were very slow to bring the idea of a future life into their living faith; to this day it does not seem to be of much importance in Judaism. Some form of Millenarianism--a reign of the saints on earth--would seem to be the natural form for Jewish hopes to take. This belief, which was the earliest mould into which the treasure of the new revelation was poured, has never quite disappeared from the Church, and in times of excitement and upheaval it tends to rea.s.sert itself. The maturest Greek philosophy regards eternity as the divine mode of existence, while mortals are born, live, and die in time. Man is a microcosm, in touch with every rung of the ladder of existence; and he is potentially a 'partic.i.p.ator'

in the divine mode of existence, which he can make his own by living, so far as may be, in detachment from the vain shadows and perishable goods of earth. That this conception of immortality has had a great influence upon Christian thought and practice needs no demonstration. It is and always has been the religion of the mystic. But the Orphic tradition, with its pictures of purgatory and of eternal bliss and torment, has on the whole dominated the other two in popular Christian belief. It has been stripped of its accessories--the belief in reincarnation and the transmigration of souls, doctrines which maintain a somewhat uneasy existence within the scheme of the Neoplatonists. The picture of future retribution is even more terrifying without them. Both the philosophical and the popular beliefs about the other world are far more Greek than Jewish; but the attempt to hold these very discrepant beliefs together has reduced Christian eschatology to extreme confusion, and many Christians have given up the attempt to formulate any theories about what are called the four last things. On such a mysterious subject, definiteness is neither to be expected nor desired. The original Gospel does not encourage the natural curiosity of man to know his future fate; and the three types of eschatology which we have described have all their value as representing different aspects of religious faith and hope. We must after all confess the truth of St. Paul's words, that 'eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive, the things that G.o.d hath prepared for them that love him'. The same apostle reminds us that 'now we see through a mirror, in riddles, and know only in part'; the face to face vision, and the knowledge which unites the knower and the known, may be ours when we have finished our course. In these words, which recall Plato's famous myth of the Cave, St. Paul is fundamentally at one with the Platonists; and it may well be that it is by this path that our contemporaries may recover that belief in eternal life which is at present burning very dimly among us.

In conclusion, what has the religion of the Greeks to teach us that we are most in danger of forgetting? In a word, it is the faith that Truth is our friend, and that the knowledge of Truth is not beyond our reach.

Faith in honest seeking (??t?s?? {zetesis}) is at the heart of the Greek view of life. 'Those who would rightly judge of truth', says Aristotle, 'must be arbitrators, not litigants'. 'Happy is he who has learnt the value of research' (?st???a {historia}), says Euripides in a fragment.

Curiosity, as the Greeks knew and the Middle Ages knew not, is a virtue, not a vice. Nature, for Plato, is G.o.d's vicegerent and revealer, the Soul of the universe. Human nature is the same nature as the divine; no one has proclaimed this more strongly. Nature is for us; chaos and 'necessity' are the enemy. The divorce between religion and humanism began, it must be admitted, under Plato's successors, who unhappily were indifferent to natural science, and did not even follow the best light that was to be had in physical knowledge. In the Dark Ages, when the link with Greece was broken, the separation became absolute. The luxuriant mythology of the early Greeks was not unscientific. In the absence of knowledge gaps were filled up by the imagination, and the 'method of trial and error'. The dramatic fancy which creates myths is the raw material of both poetry and science. Of course religious myths may come to be a bar to progress in science; they do so when, in a rationalizing age, the question comes to be one of fact or fiction. It is a mistake to suppose that the faith of a 'post-rational' age, to use a phrase of Santayana, can be the same as that of an unscientific age, even when it uses the same formulas. The Greek spirit itself is now calling us away from some of the vestments of Greek tradition. The choice before us is between a 'post-rational' traditionalism, fundamentally sceptical, pragmatistic, and intellectually dishonest, and a trust in reason which rests really on faith in the divine Logos, the self-revealing soul of the universe. It is the belief of the present writer that the unflinching eye and the open mind will bring us again to the feet of Christ, to whom Greece, with her long tradition of free and fearless inquiry, became a speedy and willing captive, bringing her manifold treasures to Him, in the well-grounded confidence that He was not come to destroy but to fulfil.