Part 1 (2/2)
Christianity may be said to have attained self-consciousness as a new religion in the great argument directed by Paul along the lines of his own gospel against Peter and the older apostles. Its victory as a universal religion of 'grace' over the limitations of Judaism was due to the common doctrine of 'the Spirit.' This was the one point of agreement, the one hope of ultimate concord among the contending parties. All were agreed that endowment with 'the Spirit' marks the Christian. It was in truth the great inheritance from Jesus shared by all in common. And Peter and James admitted that to deny that uncirc.u.mcized Gentiles had received the Spirit was to ”contend against G.o.d.”
After Paul's death ecclesiastical development took mostly the road of the synagogue. The sense of the presence and authority of 'the Spirit'
grew weaker, the authority of the letter stronger. From the outset even the Pauline churches, in ritual, order, observance, had followed instinctively this pattern. All continued, as a matter of course, to use the synagogue's sacred writings. Paul himself, spite of his protest against ”the letter,” could make no headway against his opponents, save by argument from 'Scripture.' He had found in it antic.i.p.ations and predictions of his own Christian faith; but by an exegesis often only little less forced and fantastic than that of the rabbinic schools in which he had been trained. This was a necessity of the times. The reasoning, fallacious as it seems to-day, had appealed to and strengthened Paul's own faith, and was probably effective with others, even if the faith really rested on other grounds than the reasoning by which it was defended. The results of this biblicism were not all salutary. The claims of written authority were loosened rather than broken. Paul himself had found room enough within these defences for the religion of the Spirit; but a generation was coming with less of the sense of present inspiration. Dependence on past authority would be increased in this new generation in direct proportion to its sense of the superior 'inspiration' of the generation which had gone before. Paul is unhampered by even ”the scriptures of the prophets” because in his view these take all their authority and meaning from ”the Lord, the Spirit.” Hence ”where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” Only the remembered ”word of the Lord” has authority for Paul beyond his own, even when he thinks that he also has the Spirit. With that exception past revelation is for Paul subordinate to present. But Paul's immediate disciple, the author of Hebrews, is already on a lower plane. This writer looks back to a threefold source of authority: G.o.d had spoken in former ages ”by the prophets” and to the present ”by a Son,” but he looks also to an apostolic authority higher than his own: The word ”was confirmed unto us by them that heard, G.o.d also bearing witness with them, both by signs and wonders, and by manifold powers, and by gifts of the Holy Ghost.” Similarly the author of the Pastoral Epistles (90-100?) holds the ”pattern of sound words” heard from Paul as a ”sacred deposit,” which is ”guarded,” rather than revealed, ”by the Holy Spirit.” The ”sound words” in question are defined to be ”the words of our Lord Jesus Christ.” These, taken together with ”the doctrine which is according to G.o.dliness,” fix the standard of orthodoxy. To ”Jude”
(100-110?) the faith is something ”once for all delivered to the saints.” His message is: ”Remember, beloved, the words spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Authority increases, the sense of the revealing Spirit decreases.
It is long before the sense of present inspiration, both in word and work is lost; still longer before the recorded precepts of Jesus, the exhortations and directions of apostles, the visions of ”prophets,” come to take their place alongside the Bible of the synagogue as ”writings of the new covenant.” Melito of Sardis (_c._ 170) is the first to use this expression, and even in his case it does not bear the sense of a canon with definite limits. Tertullian (200-210) is the first to place a definite ”New Testament” over against the Old. We must glance at some of the intermediate steps to appreciate this gradual process of canonization.
At first there is no other 'Scripture' than the synagogue's. Clement of Rome (95) still uses only the Law and the Prophets (including certain apocrypha now lost) as his Bible. He refers to the precepts of Jesus (quoted as in Acts XX. 35 from oral tradition), with the same sense as Paul of their paramount authority, and bids the Corinthians whom he addresses give heed to what the blessed Apostle Paul had written to them ”in the beginning of the gospel service,” to warn them against factiousness. Nor has Clement yet lost the sense of direct inspiration; for he attaches to his own epistle, written in behalf of the church at Rome, the same superhuman authority claimed in Acts XV. 28 for the letter sent by the church at Jerusalem. If the Corinthians disregard the ”words spoken by G.o.d through us” they will ”incur no slight transgression and danger,” for these warnings of a sister church are uttered in the name and by inspiration of the Holy Ghost. Still, Clement does not dream of comparing his authority, even when he writes as agent of the church, with that of ”the oracles of the teaching of G.o.d,” the ”sacred Scriptures,” the ”Scriptures which are true, which were given through the Holy Ghost, wherein is written nothing unrighteous or counterfeit.” He does not even rank his own authority with that of ”the good apostles, Peter and Paul.”
Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, transported to Rome for martyrdom in 110-117, employs a brief stay among the churches of Asia to exhort them to resist the encroachments of heresy by consolidation of church organization, discipline, strict obedience to the bishop. Ignatius, too, still feels the afflatus. His message, he declares with emphasis, was revealed to him, together with the occasion for it, directly from heaven. It was ”the voice of G.o.d and not only of a man” when he cried out among the Philadelphians: ”Give heed to the bishop, and the presbytery and deacons.” Yet Ignatius cannot enjoin the Romans as Peter and Paul did. They were ”apostles.” He is ”a convict.” His inspiration, however undoubted, is of a lower order.
Hermas, a 'prophet' of the same Roman church as Clement, though a generation later, is still so conscious of the superhuman character of his ”Visions,” ”Parables,” and ”Mandates” that he gives them out for circulation as inspired messages of the Spirit; and this not for Rome alone. Clement, then apparently still living, and ”the one to whom this duty is committed,” is to send them ”to foreign cities.” In point of fact the _Shepherd_ of Hermas long held a place for many churches as part of the New Testament canon. Yet less than a generation after Hermas, the claim to exercise the gift of prophecy in the church was looked upon as dangerous if not heretical.
In the nature of the case it was really impossible that the original sense of endowment with ”the Spirit” should survive. Not only did the rapidly growing reverence for the apostles and the Lord open a chasm separating ”the word of wisdom and the word of power” given to that age, from the slighter contemporary claims of miracle and revelation; the very growth and wide dissemination of the gospel message made standardization imperative. Before the middle of the second century Gnostic schism had swept nearly half the church into the vortex of speculative heresy. Marcion at Rome (_c._ 140) carried Pauline anti-legalism to the extreme of an entire rejection of the Old Testament. Judaism and all its works and ways were to be repudiated. The very G.o.d of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was declared other than, and ignorant of, the ”heavenly Father” of Jesus. Against such vagaries there must be some historic standard. Even Marcion himself looked to the past, however recent, as the source of light, and since some written standard must be found, it was he, the heretic, who gave to Christianity its first canon of Christian writings. The Marcionite churches did away with the public reading of the Law and the Prophets, and could only put in their place ”Gospel” and ”Apostle.” Not that Epistles, Gospels, and even 'Revelations' were not also in use among the orthodox; but they are not yet referred to as 'Scripture.' Even gospels are treated merely as aids to the memory in transmitting the teaching of the Lord. This teaching itself is but the authoritative interpretation of Law and Prophets, and is in turn interpreted by the writings of the apostles.
Marcion's 'Gospel' consisted of our Luke, expurgated according to his own ideas. His 'Apostle' contained the Epistles of Paul minus the Pastoral Epistles and a series of pa.s.sages cancelled out from the rest as Jewish interpolations. This was the first Christian Bible distinct from 'the Scriptures' of the synagogue.
Indirectly the growth of Gnostic heresy contributed still more to the increasing authority of apostolic and quasi-apostolic writings. One of its earliest and most obnoxious forms was called 'Doketism,' from its exaggeration of Paulinism into a complete repudiation of the historic Jesus, whose earthly career was stigmatized as mere 'phantasm'
(_dokesis_). Doketism is known to us not only through description by orthodox opponents, but by a few writings of its own. It is the type of heresy antagonized in the Johannine Epistles (_c._ 100) and in those of Ignatius (110-117). Now Ignatius, as we have seen, relied mainly on church organization and discipline. The Pastoral Epistles (90-100), while they emphasize also ”the form of healthful words, even the words of our Lord Jesus” take, on the whole, a similar direction. But 1st John, which relies far less than the Pastoral Epistles or Ignatius on mere church organization, is also driven back upon the life and teaching of Jesus as the historic standard. It _does_, therefore, make formal appeal to the sacred tradition in both its elements, but with a difference characteristic of the Pauline spirit. The redeeming life and death of Jesus are viewed as a manifestation of ”the life, even the eternal life (of the Logos) which was with the Father and was manifested unto us” (the historic body of believers). Again Jesus' one ”new commandment,” the law of love, is the epitome of all righteousness.
In his doctrine of Scripture as in many other respects the Johannine writer shows a breadth and catholicity of mind which almost antic.i.p.ates the development of later ages. His task was in fact the adjustment of the developed Pauline gospel to a type of Christianity more nearly akin to synagogue tradition. This type had grown up under the name of Peter.
On the question of the standard of written authority 'John'[2] leaves room for the freedom of the Spirit so splendidly set forth in the teaching and example of Jesus and Paul, while he resists the erratic licence of ”those that would lead you astray.” The result is a doctrine of historic authority in general, and of that of the Scriptures in particular, sharply differentiated from the Jewish, and deserving in every respect to be treated as the basis of the Christian. In a great chapter of his Gospel (John v.), wherein Jesus debates with the scribes the question of His own authority, the dialogue closes with a denunciation of them because they search the Scriptures with the idea that in them they have eternal life, that is, they treat them as a code of precepts, obedience to which will be thus rewarded. On the contrary, says Jesus, the Scriptures only ”bear witness” to the life that is present in Himself as the incarnate, eternal, Word; ”but ye will not come unto me that ye might have life.”
Footnote 2: In using traditional names and t.i.tles such as ”Luke,”
”John,” ”Matthew,” ”James,” no a.s.sumption is made as to authenticity. The designation is employed for convenience irrespective of its critical accuracy or inaccuracy.
In seeking the life behind the literature as the real revelation, the Johannine writer makes the essential distinction between Jewish and Christian doctrine. He stands between Paul, whose peculiar view was based on an exceptional personal experience, and the modern investigator, who can but treat all literary monuments and records of religious movements objectively, as data for the history and psychology of religion. If the student be devoutly minded the Scriptures will be to him, too, however conditioned by the idiosyncrasies of temporal environment and individual character, manifestations of ”the life, even the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested unto us.”
But the Johannine writer was far deeper and more 'spiritual'[3] than the trend of his age. Ignatius' friend and contemporary, Polycarp, ”the father of the Christians” of Asia, in his Epistle to the Philippians (110-117) urges avoidance of the false teachers who ”pervert the sayings of the Lord to their own l.u.s.ts, denying the (bodily) resurrection and judgment.” But he has no better remedy than to ”turn (probably in a somewhat mechanical way) to the tradition handed down from the beginning” and to study ”the Epistles of Paul.” The former process is in full application in Polycarp's later colleague, Papias of Hierapolis (_c._ 145?), who publishes a little volume ent.i.tled _Interpretation of the Sayings of the Lord_. It is based on carefully authenticated traditions of the 'apostles and elders,' especially a certain contemporary ”Elder John” who speaks for the Jerusalem succession.
According to Papias our two Greek Gospels of Matthew and Mark represent two apostolic sources, the one an Aramaic compilation of the Precepts of Jesus by Matthew, the other anecdotes of his ”sayings and doings”
collated from the preaching of Peter.
Footnote 3: The Fourth Gospel is thus characterized by Clement of Alexandria, meaning that it had a deep symbolic sense.
Grateful as we must be for Papias' efforts to authenticate evangelic tradition, since they are corroborated in their main results by all other ancient tradition as well as by critical study of the doc.u.ments, it is noticeable how they stand in line with the tendencies of the age.
Eusebius (325) characterizes the reign of Trajan (98-117) as a period when many undertook to disseminate in writing ”the divine Gospels.” One of our own evangelists, whose work must probably be referred to the beginning of this period, but is not mentioned by 'the Elder,' alludes to the same phenomenon. The apostles were gone. Hence to Luke[4] the question of ”order” was a perplexity, as the Elder observes that it had already been to Mark. Soon after Luke and Papias comes Basilides with his _Exegetics_, probably based on Luke (120?), and Marcion (140), both engaged from their own point of view with the current questions of Jesus' teaching and ministry.
Footnote 4: See Footnote 3 above.
Thus, at the beginning of the second century, the elements necessary to the formation of a New Testament canon were all at hand. They included the tradition of the teaching and work of Jesus, the letters of apostles and church leaders revered as given by authority of the Spirit and the visions and revelations of 'prophets.' Not only the elements were present, the irresistible pressure of the times was certain to force them into crystallization. The wonder is not that the canon should have been formed, but that it should have been delayed so long.
For there were also resistant factors. Phrygia, the scene of Paul's first great missionary conquests, the immemorial home of religious enthusiasm, became the seat, about the middle of the second century, of a movement of protest against the church policy of consolidation and standardization. Monta.n.u.s arose to maintain the persistence in the church of the gift of prophecy, tracing the succession in both the male and female line back to Silas the companion of Paul and the prophesying daughters of Philip the Evangelist. The 'Phrygians,' as they were called, naturally made much of the writings current in Asia Minor, especially the book of 'prophecy' attributed to 'John.' Theoretically indeed the church was unwilling to acknowledge the disappearance of this gift. To Hermas (130-140) and the _Teaching of the Twelve_ (120-130) it is still a ”sin against the Spirit” to interrupt or oppose a prophet during his ecstatic utterance. On the other hand, the _Teaching_ reiterates the apostolic warnings to ”try the spirits,” with prohibitions of specific excesses of the order. Moreover by the time of Monta.n.u.s and the 'Phrygians' theoretical recognition of revelation through the prophets was rapidly giving way before the practical dangers inseparable from 'revelations' of this enthusiastic character, of which any member of the church, man or woman, ignorant or learned, lay or cleric, might be the recipient. The strict regulative control imposed by both Paul and John[5] upon this type of spiritual gift (1st Thess. v. 20 f.; 1st Cor. xii. 3; xv. 29 f. 32; _cf._ 1st John iv. 1) was found to be doubly necessary in face of the disintegrating tendencies of the post-apostolic age, and after long debate and much protest the movement of Monta.n.u.s was at last decreed heretical at Rome, though Irenaeus (186) interceded for it, and Tertullian (210) became a convert.
Footnote 5: See Footnote 3 above.
The history of this movement in the formative period of the New Testament canon explains why the ”revelations of the prophets” obtained but scant recognition as compared with the ”word of the Lord” and the ”commandment of the apostles.” Last of the three, in order of rank (1st Cor. xii. 28; Eph. iv. 11), last also to be codified in written form, we need not be surprised that our present New Testament retains but a single one of the once current books of 'prophecy.' For a time the _Shepherd_ of Hermas and the _Apocalypse of Peter_ rivalled the claims to canonicity of our own Revelation of John, but were soon dropped. Our own Apocalypse has suffered more opposition than any other New Testament writing, being still excluded from the canon in some branches of the church. Its precarious place at the end of the canon which we moderns have inherited from Athanasius (_ob._ 373) was due, in fact, far less to its author's vigorous a.s.sertions of authority as an inspired ”prophet”
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