Footnote 122:[ (return) ]
See on this point Overbeck "Abhandlung über die Anfange der patristischen Litteratur," l.c., p. 469. Nevertheless, even after the creation of the New Testament canon, theological authorship was an undertaking which was at first regarded as highly dangerous. See the Antimontanist in Euseb., H. E. V. 16. 3: δεδιως και εξευλαβουμενος, μη πη δοξω πριν επισυγγραφειν η επιδιατασσεσθαι τω της του ευαγγελιου καινης διαθηκης λογω. We find similar remarks in other old Catholic Fathers (see Clemen. Alex.).
Footnote 123:[ (return) ]
But how diverse were the expositions; compare the exegesis of Origen and Tertullian, Scorp. II.
Footnote 124:[ (return) ]
On the extent to which the Old Testament had become subordinated to the New and the Prophets to the Apostles, since the end of the second century, see the following passage from Novatian, de trinit. 29: "Unus ergo et idem spiritus qui in prophetis et apostolis, nisi quoniam ibi ad momentum, hic semper. Ceterum ibi non ut semper in illis inesset, hic ut in illis semper maneret, et ibi mediocriter distributus, hic totus effusus, ibi parce datus, hic large commodatus."
Footnote 125:[ (return) ]
That may be shown in all the old Catholic Fathers, but most plainly perhaps in the theology of Origen. Moreover, the subordination of the Old Testament revelation to the Christian one is not simply a result of the creation of the New Testament, but may be explained by other causes; see chap. 5. If the New Testament had not been formed, the Church would perhaps have obtained a Christian Old Testament with numerous interpolations—tendencies in this direction were not wanting: see vol. I, p. 114 f.—and increased in extent by the admission of apocalypses. The creation of the New Testament preserved the purity of the Old, for it removed the need of doing violence to the latter in the interests of Christianity.
Footnote 126:[ (return) ]
The Catholic Church had from the beginning a very clear consciousness of the dangerousness of many New Testament writings, in fact she made a virtue of necessity in so far as she set up a theory to prove the unavoidableness of this danger. See Tertullian, de præscr. passim, and de resurr. 63.
Footnote 127:[ (return) ]
To a certain extent the New Testament disturbs and prevents the tendency to summarise the faith and reduce it to its most essential content. For it not only puts itself in the place of the unity of a system, but frequently also in the place of a harmonious and complete creed. Hence the rule of faith is necessary as a guiding principle, and even an imperfect one is better than a mere haphazard reliance upon the Bible.
Footnote 128:[ (return) ]
We must not, however, ascribe that to conscious mistrust, for Irenæus and Tertullian bear very decided testimony against such an idea, but to the acknowledgment that it was impossible to make any effective use of the New Testament Scriptures in arguments with educated non-Christians and heretics. For these writings could carry no weight with the former, and the latter either did not recognise them or else interpreted them by different rules. Even the offer of several of the Fathers to refute the Marcionites from their own canon must by no means be attributed to an uncertainty on their part with regard to the authority of the ecclesiastical canon of Scripture. We need merely add that the extraordinary difficulty originally felt by Christians in conceiving the Pauline Epistles, for instance, to be analogous and equal in value to Genesis or the prophets occasionally appears in the terminology even in the third century, in so far as the term "divine writings" continues to be more frequently applied to the Old Testament than to certain parts of the New.
Footnote 129:[ (return) ]
Tertullian, in de corona 3, makes his Catholic opponent say: "Etiam in traditionis obtentu exigenda est auctoritas scripta."
Footnote 130:[ (return) ]
Hatch, Organisation of the early Christian Church, 1883. Harnack, Die Lehre der zwölf Apostel, 1884. Sohm, Kirchenrecht, Vol. I. 1892.
Footnote 131:[ (return) ]
Marcion was the only one who did not claim to prove his Christianity from traditions inasmuch as he rather put it in opposition to tradition. This disclaimer of Marcion is in keeping with his renunciation of apologetic proof, whilst, conversely, in the Church the apologetic proof, and the proof from tradition adduced against the heretics, were closely related. In the one case the truth of Christianity was proved by showing that it is the oldest religion, and in the other the truth of ecclesiastical Christianity was established from the thesis that it is the oldest Christianity, viz., that of the Apostles.