Footnote 46:[ (return) ]
The Old Testament of itself alone could not have convinced the Græco-Roman world. But the converse question might perhaps be raised as to what results the Gospel would have had in that world without its union with the Old Testament. The Gnostic Schools and the Marcionite Church are to some extent the answer. But would they ever have arisen without the presupposition of a Christian community which recognised the Old Testament?
Footnote 47:[ (return) ]
We here leave out of account learned attempts to expound Paulinism. Nor do we take any notice of certain truths regarding the relation of the Old Testament to the New, and regarding the Jewish religion, stated by the Antignostic church teachers, truths which are certainly very important, but have not been sufficiently utilised.
Footnote 48:[ (return) ]
There is indeed no single writing of the new Testament which does not betray the influence of the mode of thought and general conditions of the culture of the time which resulted from the Hellenising of the east: even the use of the Greek translation of the Old Testament attests this fact. Nay, we may go further, and say that the Gospel itself is historically unintelligible, so long as we compare it with an exclusive Judaism as yet unaffected by any foreign influence. But on the other hand, it is just as clear that, specifically, Hellenic ideas form the presuppositions neither for the Gospel itself, nor for the most important New Testament writings. It is a question rather as to a general spiritual atmosphere created by Hellenism, which above all strengthened the individual element, and with it the idea of completed personality, in itself living and responsible. On this foundation we meet with a religious mode of thought in the Gospel and the early Christian writings, which so far as it is at all dependent on an earlier mode of thought, is determined by the spirit of the Old Testament (Psalms and Prophets) and of Judaism. But it is already otherwise with the earliest Gentile Christian writings. The mode of thought here is so thoroughly determined by the Hellenic spirit that we seem to have entered a new world when we pass from the synoptists, Paul and John, to Clement, Barnabas, Justin or Valentinus. We may therefore say, especially in the frame-work of the history of dogma, that the Hellenic element has exercised an influence on the Gospel first on Gentile Christian soil, and by those who were Greek by birth, if only we reserve the general spiritual atmosphere above referred to. Even Paul is no exception; for in spite of the well-founded statements of Weizsäcker (Apostolic Age, vol. I. Book 11) and Heinrici (Das 2 Sendschreiben an die Korinthier, 1887, p. 578 ff), as to the Hellenism of Paul, it is certain that the Apostle's mode of religious thought, in the strict sense of the word, and therefore also the doctrinal formation peculiar to him, are but little determined by the Greek spirit. But it is to be specially noted that as a missionary and an Apologist he made use of Greek ideas (Epistles to the Romans and Corinthians). He was not afraid to put the Gospel into Greek modes of thought. To this extent we can already observe in him the beginning of the development which we can trace so clearly in the Gentile Church from Clement to Justin, and from Justin to Irenæus.
Footnote 49:[ (return) ]
The complete universalism of salvation is given in the Pauline conception of Christianity. But this conception is singular. Because: (1) the Pauline universalism is based on a criticism of the Jewish religion as religion, including the Old Testament, which was not understood and therefore not received by Christendom in general. (2) Because Paul not only formulated no national anti-Judaism, but always recognised the prerogative of the people of Israel as a people. (3) Because his idea of the Gospel, with all his Greek culture, is independent of Hellenism in its deepest grounds. This peculiarity of the Pauline Gospel is the reason why little more could pass from it into the common consciousness of Christendom than the universalism of salvation, and why the later development of the Church cannot be explained from Paulinism. Baur, therefore, was quite right when he recognised that we must exhibit another and more powerful element in order to comprehend the post-Pauline formations. In the selection of this element, however, he has made a fundamental mistake, by introducing the narrow national Jewish Christianity, and he has also given much too great scope to Paulinism by wrongly conceiving it as Gentile Christian doctrine. One great difficulty for the historian of the early Church is that he cannot start from Paulinism, the plainest phenomenon of the Apostolic age, in seeking to explain the following development, that in fact the premises for this development are not at all capable of being indicated in the form of outlines, just because they were too general. But, on the other hand, the Pauline Theology, this theology of one who had been a Pharisee, is the strongest proof of the independent and universal power of the impression made by the Person of Jesus.
Footnote 50:[ (return) ]
In the main writings of the New Testament itself we have a twofold conception of the Spirit. According to the one he comes upon the believer fitfully, expresses himself in visible signs, deprives men of self-consciousness, and puts them beside themselves. According to the other, the spirit is a constant possession of the Christian, operates in him by enlightening the conscience and strengthening the character, and his fruits are love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, etc. (Gal. V. 22). Paul above all taught Christians to value these fruits of the spirit higher than all the other effects of his working. But he has not by any means produced a perfectly clear view on this point: for "he himself spoke with more tongues than they all." As yet "Spirit" lay within "Spirit." One felt in the spirit of sonship a completely new gift coming from God and recreating life, a miracle of God; further, this spirit also produced sudden exclamations—"Abba, Father;" and thus shewed himself in a way patent to the senses. For that very reason, the spirit of ecstasy and of miracle appeared identical with the spirit of sonship. (See Gunkel, Die Wirkungen d. h. Geistes nach der populären Anschauung der Apostol. Zeit. Göttingen, 1888).
Footnote 51:[ (return) ]
It may even be said here that the αθανασια (ζωη αιωνιος), on the one hand, and the εκκλησια, on the other, have already appeared in place of the Βασιλεια του θεου, and that the idea of Messiah has been finally replaced by that of the Divine Teacher and of God manifest in the flesh.
Footnote 52:[ (return) ]
It is one of the merits of Bruno Bauer (Christus und die Cäsaren, 1877), that he has appreciated the real significance of the Greek element in the Gentile Christianity which became the Catholic Church and doctrine, and that he has appreciated the influence of the Judaism of the Diaspora as a preparation for this Gentile Christianity. But these valuable contributions have unfortunately been deprived of their convincing power by a baseless criticism of the early Christian literature, to which Christ and Paul have fallen a sacrifice. Somewhat more cautious are the investigations of Havet in the fourth volume of Le Christianisme, 1884; Le Nouveau Testament. He has won great merit by the correct interpretation of the elements of Gentile Christianity developing themselves to catholicism, but his literary criticism is often unfortunately entirely abstract, reminding one of the criticism of Voltaire, and therefore his statements in detail are, as a rule, arbitrary and untenable. There is a school in Holland at the present time closely related to Bruno Bauer and Havet, which attempts to banish early Christianity from the world. Christ and Paul are creations of the second century: the history of Christianity begins with the passage of the first century into the second—a peculiar phenomenon on the soil of Hellenised Judaism in quest of a Messiah. This Judaism created Jesus Christ just as the later Greek religious philosophers created their Saviour (Apollonius, for example). The Marcionite Church produced Paul and the growing Catholic Church completed him. See the numerous treatises of Loman, the Verisimilia of Pierson and Naber (1886), and the anonymous English work "Antiqua Mater" (1887), also the works of Steck (see especially his Untersuchung über den Galaterbrief). Against these works see P.V. Schmidt's, "Der Galaterbrief," 1892. It requires a deep knowledge of the problems which the first two centuries of the Christian Church present, in order not to thrust aside as simply absurd these attempts, which as yet have failed to deal with the subject in a connected way. They have their strength in the difficulties and riddles which are contained in the history of the formation of the Catholic tradition in the second century. But the single circumstance that we are asked to regard as a forgery such a document as the first Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, appears to me, of itself, to be an unanswerable argument against the new hypotheses.
Footnote 53:[ (return) ]
It would be a fruitful task, though as yet it has not been undertaken, to examine how long visions, dreams and apocalypses, on the one hand, and the claim of speaking in the power and name of the Holy Spirit, on the other, played a rôle in the early Church; and further to shew how they nearly died out among the laity, but continued to live among the clergy and the monks, and how, even among the laity, there were again and again sporadic outbreaks of them. The material which the first three centuries present is very great. Only a few may be mentioned here: Ignat. ad. Rom. VII. 2; ad. Philad. VII; ad Eph. XX. 1, etc.; 1 Clem. LXIII. 2; Martyr. Polyc.; Acta Perpet. et Felic; Tertull de animo XLVII.; "Major pæne vis hominum e visionibus deum discunt." Orig. c. Celsum. i. 46: πολλοι 'οσπερει ακοντες προσεληλυθασι χριστιανισμω, πνευματος τινος τρεψαντος ... και φαντασιωσαντος αυτους 'υπαρ 'η οναρ (even Arnobius was ostensibly led to Christianity by a dream). Cyprian makes the most extensive use of dreams, visions, etc., in his letters, see for example Ep. XI. 3-5; XVI. 4 ("præter nocturnas visiones per dies quoque impletur apud nos spiritu sancto puerorum innocens aetas, quæ in ecstasi videt," etc.); XXXIX. 1; LXVI 10 (very interesting: "quamquam sciam somnia ridicula et visiones ineptas quibusdam videri, sed utique illis, qui malunt contra sacerdotes credere quam sacerdoti, sed nihil mirum, quando de Joseph fratres sui dixerunt: ecce somniator ille," etc.). One who took part in the baptismal controversy in the great Synod of Carthage writes, "secundum motum animi mei et spiritus sancti." The enthusiastic element was always evoked with special power in times of persecution, as the genuine African martyrdoms, from the second half of the third century, specially shew. Cf. especially the passio Jacobi, Mariani, etc. But where the enthusiasm was not convenient it was called, as in the case of the Montanists, dæmonic. Even Constantine operated with dreams and visions of Christ (see his Vita).
Footnote 54:[ (return) ]
As to the first, the recently discovered "Teaching of the Apostles" in its first moral part, shews a great affinity with the moral philosophy which was set up by Alexandrian Jews and put before the Greek world as that which had been revealed: see Massebieau, L'enseignement des XII. Apôtres, Paris, 1884, and in the Journal "Le Temoignage," 7 Febr. 1885. Usener, in his Preface to the Ges. Abhandl. Jacob Bernays', which he edited, 1885, p.v.f., has, independently of Massebieau, pointed out the relationship of chapters 1-5 of the "Teaching of the Apostles" with the Phocylidean poem (see Bernays' above work, p. 192 ff.). Later Taylor, "The teaching of the twelve Apostles", 1886, threw out the conjecture that the Didache had a Jewish foundation, and I reached the same conclusion independently of him: see my Treatise: Die Apostellehre und die judischen beiden Wege, 1886.
Footnote 55:[ (return) ]
It is well known that Judaism at the time of Christ embraced a great many different tendencies. Beside Pharisaic Judaism as the stem proper there was a motley mass of formations which resulted from the contact of Judaism with foreign ideas, customs, and institutions (even with Babylonian and Persian), and which attained importance for the development of the predominant church as well as for the formation of the so-called gnostic Christian communions. Hellenic elements found their way even into Pharisaic theology. Orthodox Judaism itself has marks which shew that no spiritual movement was able to escape the influence which proceeded from the victory of the Greeks over the east. Besides who would venture to exhibit definitely the origin and causes of that spiritualising of religions and that limitation of the moral standard of which we can find so many traces in the Alexandrian age? The nations who inhabited the eastern shore of the Mediterranean sea had from the fourth century B.C. a common history and therefore had similar convictions. Who can decide what each of them acquired by its own exertions and what it obtained through interchange of opinions? But in proportion as we see this we must be on our guard against jumbling the phenomena together and effacing them. There is little meaning in calling a thing Hellenic, as that really formed an element in all the phenomena of the age. All our great political and ecclesiastical parties to-day are dependent on the ideas of 1789 and again on romantic ideas. It is just as easy to verify this as it is difficult to determine the measure and the manner of the influence for each group. And yet the understanding of it turns altogether on this point. To call Pharisaism or the Gospel or the old Jewish Christianity Hellenic is not paradox but confusion.