1. Original Christianity was in appearance Christian Judaism, the creation of a universal religion on Old Testament soil. It retained therefore, so far as it was not hellenised, which never altogether took place, its original Jewish features. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was regarded as the Father of Jesus Christ, the Old Testament was the authoritative source of revelation, and the hopes of the future were based on the Jewish ones. The heritage which Christianity took over from Judaism, shews itself on Gentile Christian soil, in fainter or distincter form, in proportion as the philosophic mode of thought already prevails, or recedes into the background.[403] To describe the appearance of the Jewish, Old Testament, heritage in the Christian faith, so far as it is a religious one, by the name Jewish Christianity, beginning at a certain point quite arbitrarily chosen, and changeable at will, must therefore necessarily lead to error, and it has done so to a very great extent. For this designation makes it appear as though the Jewish element in the Christian religion were something accidental, while it is rather the case that all Christianity, in so far as something alien is not foisted into it, appears as the religion of Israel perfected and spiritualised. We are therefore not justified in speaking of Jewish Christianity, where a Christian community, even one of Gentile birth, calls itself the true Israel, the people of the twelve tribes, the posterity of Abraham; for this transfer is based on the original claim of Christianity and can only be forbidden by a view that is alien to it. Just as little may we designate Jewish Christian the mighty and realistic hopes of the future which were gradually repressed in the second and third centuries. They may be described as Jewish, or as Christian; but the designation Jewish Christian must be rejected; for it gives a wrong impression as to the historic right of these hopes in Christianity. The eschatological ideas of Papias were not Jewish Christian, but Christian; while, on the other hand, the eschatological speculations of Origen were not Gentile Christian, but essentially Greek. Those Christians who saw in Jesus the man chosen by God and endowed with the Spirit, thought about the Redeemer not in a Jewish Christian, but in a Christian manner. Those of Asia Minor who held strictly to the 14th of Nisan as the term of the Easter festival, were not influenced by Jewish Christian, but by Christian or Old Testament, considerations. The author of the "Teaching of the Apostles," who has transferred the rights of the Old Testament priests with respect to the first fruits, to the Christian prophets, shews himself by such transference not as a Jewish Christian, but as a Christian. There is no boundary here; for Christianity took possession of the whole of Judaism as religion, and it is therefore a most arbitrary view of history which looks upon the Christian appropriation of the Old Testament religion, after any point, as no longer Christian, but only Jewish Christian. Wherever the universalism of Christianity is not violated in favour of the Jewish nation, we have to recognise every appropriation of the Old Testament as Christian. Hence this proceeding could be spontaneously undertaken in Christianity, as was in fact done.
2. But the Jewish religion is a national religion, and Christianity burst the bonds of nationality, though not for all who recognised Jesus as Messiah. This gives the point at which the introduction of the term "Jewish Christianity" is appropriate.[404] It should be applied exclusively to those Christians who really maintained in their whole extent, or in some measure, even if it were to a minimum degree, the national and political forms of Judaism and the observance of the Mosaic law in its literal sense, as essential to Christianity, at least to the Christianity of born Jews, or who, though rejecting these forms, nevertheless assumed a prerogative of the Jewish people even in Christianity (Clem., Homil. XI. 26: εαν 'ο αλλοφυλος τον νομον πραξηι, Ιουδαιος εστιν, μη πραξας δε 'Ελλην; "If the foreigner observe the law he is a Jew, but if not he is a Greek.")[405] To this Jewish Christianity is opposed, not Gentile Christianity, but the Christian religion, in so far as it is conceived as universalistic and anti-national in the strict sense of the term (Presupp. § 3), that is, the main body of Christendom in so far as it has freed itself from Judaism as a nation.[406]
It is not strange that this Jewish Christianity was subject to all the conditions which arose from the internal and external position of the Judaism of the time; that is, different tendencies were necessarily developed in it, according to the measure of the tendencies (or the disintegrations) which asserted themselves in the Judaism of that time. It lies also in the nature of the case that, with one exception, that of Pharisaic Jewish Christianity, all other tendencies were accurately parallelled in the systems which appeared in the great, that is, anti-Jewish Christendom. They were distinguished from these, simply by a social and political, that is, a national element. Moreover, they were exposed to the same influences from without as the synagogue, and as the larger Christendom, till the isolation to which Judaism as a nation, after severe reverses condemned itself, became fatal to them also. Consequently, there were besides Pharisaic Jewish Christians, ascetics of all kinds who were joined by all those over whom Oriental religious wisdom and Greek philosophy had won a commanding influence (see above, p. 242 f.)
In the first century these Jewish Christians formed the majority in Palestine, and perhaps also in some neighbouring provinces. But they were also found here and there in the West.
Now the great question is, whether this Jewish Christianity as a whole, or in certain of its tendencies, was a factor in the development of Christianity to Catholicism. This question is to be answered in the negative, and quite as much with regard to the history of dogma as with regard to the political history of the Church. From the stand-point of the universal history of Christianity, these Jewish Christian communities appear as rudimentary structures which now and again, as objects of curiosity, engaged the attention of the main body of Christendom in the East, but could not exert any important influence on it, just because they contained a national element.
The Jewish Christians took no considerable part in the Gnostic controversy, the epoch-making conflict which was raised within the pale of the larger Christendom about the decisive question, whether, and to what extent, the Old Testament should remain a basis of Christianity, although they themselves were no less occupied with the question.[407] The issue of this conflict in favour of that party which recognised the Old Testament in its full extent as a revelation of the Christian God, and asserted the closest connection between Christianity and the Old Testament religion, was so little the result of any influence of Jewish Christianity, that the existence of the latter would only have rendered that victory more difficult, unless it had already fallen into the background, as a phenomenon of no importance.[408] How completely insignificant it was is shewn not only by the limited polemics of the Church Fathers, but perhaps still more by their silence, and the new import which the reproach of Judaising obtained in Christendom after the middle of the second century. In proportion as the Old Testament, in opposition to Gnosticism, became a more conscious and accredited possession in the Church, and at the same time, in consequence of the naturalising of Christianity in the world, the need of regulations, fixed rules, statutory enactments etc., appeared as indispensable, it must have been natural to use the Old Testament as a holy code of such enactments. This procedure was no falling away from the original anti-Judaic attitude, provided nothing national was taken from the book, and some kind of spiritual interpretation given to what had been borrowed. The "apostasy" rather lay simply in the changed needs. But one now sees how those parties in the Church, to which for any reason this progressive legislation was distasteful, raised the reproach of "Judaising,"[409] and further, how conversely the same reproach was hurled at those Christians who resisted the advancing hellenising of Christianity, with regard, for example, to the doctrine of God, eschatology, Christology, etc.[410] But while this reproach is raised, there is nowhere shewn any connection between those described as Judaising Christians and the Ebionites. That they were identified off-hand is only a proof that "Ebionitism" was no longer known. That "Judaising" within Catholicism which appears, on the one hand, in the setting up of a Catholic ceremonial law (worship, constitution, etc.), and on the other, in a tenacious clinging to less hellenised forms of faith and hopes of faith, has nothing in common with Jewish Christianity, which desired somehow to confine Christianity to the Jewish nation.[411] Speculations that take no account of history may make out that Catholicism became more and more Jewish Christian. But historical observation, which reckons only with concrete quantities, can discover in Catholicism, besides Christianity, no element which it would have to describe as Jewish Christian. It observes only a progressive hellenising, and in consequence of this, a progressive spiritual legislation which utilizes the Old Testament, a process which went on for centuries according to the same methods which had been employed in the larger Christendom from the beginning.[412] Baur's brilliant attempt to explain Catholicism as a product of the mutual conflict and neutralising of Jewish and Gentile Christianity, (the latter according to Baur being equivalent to Paulinism) reckons with two factors, of which, the one had no significance at all, and the other only an indirect effect, as regards the formation of the Catholic Church. The influence of Paul in this direction is exhausted in working out the universalism of the Christian religion, for a Greater than he had laid the foundation for this movement, and Paul did not realise it by himself alone. Placed on this height Catholicism was certainly developed by means of conflicts and compromises, not, however, by conflicts with Ebionitism, which was to all intents and purposes discarded as early as the first century, but as the result of the conflict of Christianity with the united powers of the world in which it existed, on behalf of its own peculiar nature as the universal religion based on the Old Testament. Here were fought triumphant battles, but here also compromises were made which characterise the essence of Catholicism as Church and as doctrine.[413]
A history of Jewish Christianity and its doctrines does not therefore, strictly speaking, belong to the history of dogma, especially as the original distinction between Jewish Christianity and the main body of the Church lay, as regards its principle, not in doctrine, but in policy. But seeing that the opinions of the teachers in this Church regarding Jewish Christianity, throw light upon their own stand-point, also that up till about the middle of the second century Jewish Christians were still numerous and undoubtedly formed the great majority of believers in Palestine,[414] and finally, that attempts—unsuccessful ones indeed—on the part of Jewish Christianity to bring Gentile Christians under its sway, did not cease till about the middle of the third century, a short sketch may be appropriate here.[415]
Justin vouches for the existence of Jewish Christians, and distinguishes between those who would force the law even on Gentile-Christians, and would have no fellowship with such as did not observe it, and those who considered that the law was binding only on people of Jewish birth, and did not shrink from fellowship with Gentile Christians who were living without the law. How the latter could observe the law and yet enter into intercourse with those who were not Jews, is involved in obscurity, but these he recognises as partakers of the Christian salvation and therefore as Christian brethren, though he declares that there are Christians who do not possess this large heartedness. He also speaks of Gentile Christians who allowed themselves to be persuaded by Jewish Christians into the observance of the Mosaic law, and confesses that he is not quite sure of the salvation of these. This is all we learn from Justin,[416] but it is instructive enough. In the first place, we can see that the question is no longer a burning one: "Justin here represents only the interests of a Gentile Christianity whose stability has been secured." This has all the more meaning that in the Dialogue Justin has not in view an individual Christian community, or the communities of a province, but speaks as one who surveys the whole situation of Christendom.[417] The very fact that Justin has devoted to the whole question only one chapter of a work containing 142, and the magnanimous way in which he speaks, shew that the phenomena in question have no longer any importance for the main body of Christendom. Secondly, it is worthy of notice that Justin distinguishes two tendencies in Jewish Christianity. We observe these two tendencies in the Apostolic age (Presupp. § 3); they had therefore maintained themselves to his time. Finally, we must not overlook the circumstance that he adduces only the εννομος πολιτεια, "legal polity," as characteristic of this Jewish Christianity. He speaks only incidentally of a difference in doctrine, nay, he manifestly presupposes that the διδαγματα Χριστου, "teachings of Christ," are essentially found among them just as among the Gentile Christians; for he regards the more liberal among them as friends and brethren.[418]