Supplement 4.—However similar the eschatological expectations of the Jewish Apocalyptists and the Christians may seem, there is yet in one respect an important difference between them. The uncertainty about the final consummation was first set aside by the Gospel. It should be noted as highly characteristic of the Jewish hopes of the future, even of the most definite, how the beginning of the end, that is, the overthrow of the world-powers and the setting up of the earthly kingdom of God, was much more certainly expressed than the goal and the final end. Neither the general judgment, nor what we, according to Christian tradition, call heaven and hell, should be described as a sure possession of Jewish faith in the primitive Christian period. It is only in the Gospel of Christ, where everything is subordinated to the idea of a higher righteousness and the union of the individual with God, that the general judgment and the final condition after it are the clear, firmly grasped goal of all meditation. No doctrine has been more surely preserved in the convictions and preaching of believers in Christ than this. Fancy might roam ever so much and, under the direction of the tradition, thrust bright and precious images between the present condition and the final end, the main thing continued to be the great judgment of the world, and the certainty that the saints would go to God in heaven, the wicked to hell. But while the judgment, as a rule, was connected with the Person of Jesus himself (see the Romish Symbol: the words κριτης ζωντων και νεκρων, were very frequently applied to Christ in the earliest writings), the moral condition of the individual, and the believing recognition of the Person of Christ were put in the closest relation. The Gentile Christians held firmly to this. Open the Shepherd, or the second Epistle of Clement, or any other early Christian writing, and you will find that the judgment, heaven and hell, are the decisive objects. But that shews that the moral character of Christianity as a religion is seen and adhered to. The fearful idea of hell, far from signifying a backward step in the history of the religious spirit, is rather a proof of its having rejected the morally indifferent point of view, and of its having become sovereign in union with the ethical spirit.
§ 4. The Old Testament as Source of the Knowledge of Faith.[214]
The sayings of the Old Testament, the word of God, were believed to furnish inexhaustible material for deeper knowledge. The Christian prophets were nurtured on the Old Testament, the teachers gathered from it the revelation of the past, present and future (Barn. 1. 7), and were therefore able as prophets to edify the Churches; from it was further drawn the confirmation of the answers to all emergent questions, as one could always find in the Old Testament what he was in search of. The different writers laid the holy book under contribution in very much the same way; for they were all dominated by the presupposition that this book is a Christian book, and contains the explanations that are necessary for the occasion. There were several teachers, e.g., Barnabas, who at a very early period boasted of finding in it ideas of special profundity and value—these were always an expression of the difficulties that were being felt. The plain words of the Lord as generally known, did not seem sufficient to satisfy the craving for knowledge, or to solve the problems that were emerging;[215] their origin and form also opposed difficulties at first to the attempt to obtain from them new disclosures by re-interpretation. But the Old Testament sayings and histories were in part unintelligible, or in their literal sense offensive; they were at the same time regarded as fundamental words of God. This furnished the conditions for turning them to account in the way we have stated. The following are the most important points of view under which the Old Testament was used. (1) The Monotheistic cosmology and view of nature were borrowed from it (see, for example, 1 Clem.). (2) It was used to prove that the appearance and entire history of Jesus had been foretold centuries, nay, thousands of years beforehand, and that the founding of a new people gathered out of all nations had been predicted and prepared for from the very beginning.[216] (3) It was used as a means of verifying all principles and institutions of the Christian Church,—the spiritual worship of God without images, the abolition of all ceremonial legal precepts, baptism, etc. (4) The Old Testament was used for purposes of exhortation according to the formula a minori ad majus; if God then punished and rewarded this or that in such a way, how much more may we expect, who now stand in the last days, and have received the κλησις της επαγγελιας. (5) It was proved from the Old Testament that the Jewish nation is in error, and either never had a covenant with God or has lost it, that it has a false apprehension of God's revelations, and therefore has, now at least, no longer any claim to their possession. But beyond all this, (6) there were in the Old Testament books, above all, in the Prophets and in the Psalms, a great number of sayings—confessions of trust in God and of help received from God, of humility and holy courage, testimonies of a world-overcoming faith and words of comfort, love and communion—which were too exalted for any cavilling, and intelligible to every spiritually awakened mind. Out of this treasure which was handed down to the Greeks and Romans, the Church edified herself, and in the perception of its riches was largely rooted the conviction that the holy book must in every line contain the highest truth.
The point mentioned under (5) needs, however, further explanation. The self-consciousness of the Christian community of being the people of God, must have been, above all, expressed in its position towards Judaism, whose mere existence—even apart from actual assaults—threatened that consciousness most seriously. A certain antipathy of the Greeks and Romans towards Judaism co-operated here with a law of self-preservation. On all hands, therefore, Judaism as it then existed was abandoned as a sect judged and rejected by God, as a society of hypocrites,[217] as a synagogue of Satan,[218] as a people seduced by an evil angel,[219] and the Jews were declared to have no further right to the possession of the Old Testament. Opinions differed, however, as to the earlier history of the nation and its relation to the true God. While some denied that there ever had been a covenant of salvation between God and this nation, and in this respect recognised only an intention of God,[220] which was never carried out because of the idolatry of the people, others admitted in a hazy way that a relation did exist; but even they referred all the promises of the Old Testament to the Christian people.[221] While the former saw in the observance of the letter of the law, in the case of circumcision, sabbath, precepts as to food, etc., a proof of the special devilish temptation to which the Jewish people succumbed,[222] the latter saw in circumcision a sign[223] given by God, and in virtue of certain considerations acknowledged that the literal observance of the law was for the time God's intention and command, though righteousness never came from such observance. Yet even they saw in the spiritual the alone true sense, which the Jews had denied, and were of opinion that the burden of ceremonies was a pædagogic necessity with reference to a people stiff-necked and prone to idolatry, i.e., a defence of monotheism, and gave an interpretation to the sign of circumcision which made it no longer a blessing, but rather the mark for the execution of judgment on Israel.[224]
Israel was thus at all times the pseudo-Church. The older people does not in reality precede the younger people, the Christians, even in point of time; for though the Church appeared only in the last days, it was foreseen and created by God from the beginning. The younger people is therefore really the older, and the new law rather the original law.[225] The Patriarchs, Prophets, and men of God, however, who were favoured with the communication of God's words, have nothing inwardly in common with the Jewish people. They are God's elect who were distinguished by a holy walk, and must be regarded as the forerunners and fathers of the Christian people.[226] To the question how such holy men appeared exclusively, or almost exclusively, among the Jewish people, the documents preserved to us yield no answer.
§ 5. The Knowledge of God and of the World. Estimate of the World.
The knowledge of faith was, above all, the knowledge of God as one, supramundane, spiritual,[227] and almighty (παντοκρατωρ); God is creator and governor of the world and therefore the Lord.[228] But as he created the world a beautiful ordered whole (monotheistic view of nature)[229] for the sake of man,[230] he is at the same time the God of goodness and redemption (θεος σωτηρ), and the true faith in God and knowledge of him as the Father,[231] is made perfect only in the knowledge of the identity of the God of creation and the God of redemption. Redemption, however, was necessary, because at the beginning humanity and the world alike fell under the dominion of evil demons,[232] of the evil one. There was no universally accepted theory as to the origin of this dominion; but the sure and universal conviction was that the present condition and course of the world is not of God, but is of the devil. Those, however, who believed in God, the almighty creator, and were expecting the transformation of the earth, as well as the visible dominion of Christ upon it, could not be seduced into accepting a dualism in principle (God and devil: spirit and matter). Belief in God, the creator, and eschatological hopes, preserved the communities from the theoretic dualism that so readily suggested itself, which they slightly touched in many particular opinions, and which threatened to dominate their feelings. The belief that the world is of God and therefore good, remained in force. A distinction was made between the present constitution of the world, which is destined for destruction, and the future order of the world which will be a glorious "restitutio in integrum." The theory of the world as an articulated whole which had already been proclaimed by the Stoics, and which was strengthened by Christian monotheism, would not, even if it had been known to the uncultured, have been vigorous enough to cope with the impression of the wickedness of the course of this world, and the vulgarity of all things material. But the firm belief in the omnipotence of God, and the hope of the world's transformation grounded on the Old Testament, conquered the mood of absolute despair of all things visible and sensuous, and did not allow a theoretic conclusion, in the sense of dualism in principle, to be drawn from the practical obligation to renounce the world, or from the deep distrust with regard to the flesh.