History of Dogma, Volume 1

by Adolf von Harnack

The worship in Christian Churches grew out of that in the synagogues, whereas there is no trace of its being influenced by the Jewish Temple service (Duchesne, Origines du Culte Chrétien, p. 45 ff.). Its oldest constituents are accordingly prayer, reading of the scriptures, application of scripture texts, and sacred song. In addition to these we have, as specifically Christian elements, the celebration of the Lord's Supper, and the utterances of persons inspired by the Spirit. The latter manifestations, however, ceased in the course of the second century, and to some extent as early as its first half. The religious services in which a ritual became developed were prayer, the Lord's Supper and sacred song. The Didache had already prescribed stated formulæ for prayer. The ritual of the Lord's Supper was determined in its main features by the memory of its institution. The sphere of sacred song remained the most unfettered, though here also, even at an early period—no later in fact than the end of the first and beginning of the second century—a fixed and a variable element were distinguished; for responsory hymns, as is testified by the Epistle of Pliny and the still earlier Book of Revelation, require to follow a definite arrangement. But the whole, though perhaps already fixed during the course of the second century, still bore the stamp of spirituality and freedom. It was really worship in spirit and in truth, and this and no other was the light in which the Apologists, for instance, regarded it. Ritualism did not begin to be a power in the Church till the end of the second century; though it had been cultivated by the "Gnostics" long before, and traces of it are found at an earlier period in some of the older Fathers, such as Ignatius.

Among the liturgical fragments still preserved to us from the first three centuries two strata may be distinguished. Apart from the responsory hymns in the Book of Revelation, which can hardly represent fixed liturgical pieces, the only portions of the older stratum in our possession are the Lord's Prayer, originating with Jesus himself and used as a liturgy, together with the sacramental prayers of the Didache. These prayers exhibit a style unlike any of the liturgical formulæ of later times; the prayer is exclusively addressed to God, it returns thanks for knowledge and life; it speaks of Jesus the παις θεου (Son of God) as the mediator; the intercession refers exclusively to the Church, and the supplication is for the gathering together of the Church, the hastening of the coming of the kingdom and the destruction of the world. No direct mention is made of the death and resurrection of Christ. These prayers are the peculiar property of the Christian Church. It cannot, however, be said that they exercised any important influence on the history of dogma. The thoughts contained in them perished in their specific shape; the measure of permanent importance they attained in a more general form, was not preserved to them through these prayers.

The second stratum of liturgical pieces dates back to the great prayer with which the first Epistle of Clement ends, for in many respects this prayer, though some expressions in it remind us of the older type (δια του ηγαπημενου παιδος σου Ιησουν Χριστου, "through thy beloved son Jesus Christ "), already exhibits the characteristics of the later liturgy, as is shewn, for example, by a comparison of the liturgical prayer in the Constitutions of the Apostles (see Lightfoot's edition and my own). But this piece shews at the same time that the liturgical prayers, and consequently the liturgy also, sprang from those in the synagogue, for the similarity is striking. Here we find a connection resembling that which exists between the Jewish "Two Ways" and the Christian instruction of catechumens. If this observation is correct, it clearly explains the cautious use of historical and dogmatic material in the oldest liturgies—a precaution not to their disadvantage. As in the prayers of the synagogue, so also in Christian Churches, all sorts of matters were not submitted to God or laid bare before Him, but the prayers serve as a religious ceremony, that is, as adoration, petition and intercession. Συ ει 'ο θεος μονος και Ιησους Χριστος 'ο παις σου και 'ημεις λαος σου και προβατα της νομης σου, (thou art God alone and Jesus Christ is thy son, and we are thy people and the sheep of thy pasture). In this confession, an expressive Christian modification of that of the synagogue, the whole liturgical ceremony is epitomised. So far as we can assume and conjecture from the scanty remains of Ante-Nicene liturgy, the character of the ceremony was not essentially altered in this respect. Nothing containing a specific dogma or theological speculation was admitted. The number of sacred ceremonies, already considerable in the second century (how did they arise?), was still further increased in the third; but the accompanying words, so far as we know, expressed nothing but adoration, gratitude, supplication, and intercession. The relations expressed in the liturgy became more comprehensive, copious and detailed; but its fundamental character was not changed. The history of dogma in the first three centuries is not reflected in their liturgy.

APPENDIX III.

NEOPLATONISM.

The historical significance and position of Neoplatonism.

The political history of the ancient world ends with the Empire of Diocletian and Constantine, which has not only Roman and Greek, but also Oriental features. The history of ancient philosophy ends with the universal philosophy of Neoplatonism, which assimilated the elements of most of the previous systems, and embodied the result of the history of religion and civilisation in East and West. But as the Roman Byzantine Empire is at one and the same time a product of the final effort and the exhaustion of the ancient world, so also Neoplatonism is, on one side, the completion of ancient philosophy, and, on another, its abolition. Never before in the Greek and Roman theory of the world did the conviction of the dignity of man and his elevation above nature, attain so certain an expression as in Neoplatonism; and never before in the history of civilisation did its highest exponents, notwithstanding all their progress in inner observation, so much undervalue the sovereign significance of real science and pure knowledge as the later Neoplatonists did. Judged from the stand-point of pure science, of empirical knowledge of the world, the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle marks a momentous turning-point, the post-Aristotelian a retrogression, the Neoplatonic a complete declension. But judging from the stand-point of religion and morality, it must be admitted that the ethical temper which Neoplatonism sought to beget and confirm, was the highest and purest which the culture of the ancient world produced. This necessarily took place at the expense of science: for on the soil of polytheistic natural religions, the knowledge of nature must either fetter and finally abolish religion, or be fettered and abolished by religion. Religion and ethic, however, proved the stronger powers. Placed between these and the knowledge of nature, philosophy, after a period of fluctuation, finally follows the stronger force. Since the ethical itself, in the sphere of natural religions, is unhesitatingly conceived as a higher kind of "nature", conflict with the empirical knowledge of the world is unavoidable. The higher "physics", for that is what religious ethics is here, must displace the lower or be itself displaced. Philosophy must renounce its scientific aspect, in order that man's claim to a supernatural value of his person and life may be legitimised.

It is an evidence of the vigour of man's moral endowments that the only epoch of culture which we are able to survey in its beginnings, its progress, and its close, ended not with materialism, but with the most decided idealism. It is true that in its way this idealism also denotes a bankruptcy; as the contempt for reason and science, and these are contemned when relegated to the second place, finally leads to barbarism, because it results in the crassest superstition, and is exposed to all manner of imposture. And, as a matter of fact, barbarism succeeded the flourishing period of Neoplatonism. Philosophers themselves no doubt found their mental food in the knowledge which they thought themselves able to surpass; but the masses grew up in superstition, and the Christian Church, which entered on the inheritance of Neoplatonism, was compelled to reckon with that and come to terms with it. Just when the bankruptcy of the ancient civilisation and its lapse into barbarism could not have failed to reveal themselves, a kindly destiny placed on the stage of history barbarian nations, for whom the work of a thousand years had as yet no existence. Thus the fact is concealed, which, however, does not escape the eye of one who looks below the surface, that the inner history of the ancient world must necessarily have degenerated into barbarism of its own accord, because it ended with the renunciation of this world. There is no desire either to enjoy it, to master it, or to know it as it really is. A new world is disclosed for which everything is given up, and men are ready to sacrifice insight and understanding, in order to possess this world with certainty; and, in the light which radiates from the world to come, that which in this world appears absurd becomes wisdom, and wisdom becomes folly.

Such is Neoplatonism. The pre-Socratic philosophers, declared by the followers of Socrates to be childish, had freed themselves from theology, that is, the mythology of the poets, and constructed a philosophy from the observation of nature, without troubling themselves about ethics and religion. In the systems of Plato and Aristotle physics and ethics were to attain to their rights, though the latter no doubt already occupied the first place; theology, that is popular religion, continues to be thrust aside. The post-Aristotelian philosophers of all parties were already beginning to withdraw from the objective world. Stoicism indeed seems to fall back into the materialism that I prevailed before Plato and Aristotle; but the ethical dualism which dominated the mood of the Stoic philosophers, did not in the long run tolerate the materialistic physics; it sought and found help in the metaphysical dualism of the Platonists, and at the same time reconciled itself to the popular religion by means of allegorism, that is, it formed a new theology. But it did not result in permanent philosophic creations. A one-sided development of Platonism produced the various forms of scepticism which sought to abolish confidence in empirical knowledge. Neoplatonism, which came last, learned from all schools. In the first place, it belongs to the series of post-Aristotelian systems and, as the philosophy of the subjective, it is the logical completion of them. In the second place, it rests on scepticism; for it also, though not at the very beginning, gave up both confidence and pure interest in empirical knowledge. Thirdly, it can boast of the name and authority of Plato; for in metaphysics it consciously went back to him and expressly opposed the metaphysics of the Stoics. Yet on this very point it also learned something from the Stoics; for the Neoplatonic conception of the action of God on the world, and of the nature and origin of matter, can only be explained by reference to the dynamic pantheism of the Stoics. In other respects, especially in psychology, it is diametrically opposed to the Stoa, though superior. Fourthly, the study of Aristotle also had an influence on Neoplatonism. That is shewn not only in the philosophic methods of the Neoplatonists, but also, though in a subordinate way, in their metaphysics. Fifthly, the ethic of the Stoics was adopted by Neoplatonism, but this ethic necessarily gave way to a still higher view of the conditions of the spirit. Sixthly and finally, Christianity also, which Neoplatonism opposed in every form (especially in that of the Gnostic philosophy of religion), seems not to have been entirely without influence. On this point we have as yet no details, and these can only be ascertained by a thorough examination of the polemic of Plotinus against the Gnostics.