We have only to place these pseudo-Pauline writings side by side with the Epistles of John and Ignatius to recognize the advance of the heresy which soon declared itself as Gnostic Doketism, with the Jew Cerinthus at Ephesus as its principal exponent. Moreover this steadily increasing inward danger of the Pauline mission-field, a danger not merely sporadic like the outbursts of persecution, but constant and increasing, is forcing the two great branches of the Christian brotherhood together on the basis of 'catholicity' and the 'apostolic' tradition. Between the churches of the Ægean and that of Rome, where both parties stand on neutral ground, there are exchanged generous and sympathetic assurances of essential unity of doctrine in the great outbreak of persecution in 85-90. Among the Pauline churches themselves there is an irresistible reaction against the vagaries and moral laxity of heretical teaching toward 'apostolic' tradition and ecclesiastical authority. It appears with almost startling vividness in the Pastoral Epistles, and meets its answer from without, perhaps from Rome, perhaps from Syria, in the homily dressed as an encyclical called the Epistle of James. It is not hard to foresee what sort of Christian unity is destined to come about. Nevertheless the creative spirit and genius of Paul was to find expression in one more splendid product of Ephesus before the Roman unity was to be achieved.—But before we take up the writings of the great 'theologian' of Ephesus we must trace the growth in Syria and at Rome of the Literature of the Church Teacher and Prophet.
PART III
THE LITERATURE OF CATECHIST AND PROPHET
CHAPTER VI
THE MATTHÆAN TRADITION OF THE PRECEPTS OF JESUS
As we have seen in our study of the later literature addressed to, or emanating from, the Pauline mission-field, the church teacher and ecclesiastic who there took up the pen after the death of Paul had scarcely any alternative but to follow the literary model of the great founder of Gentile Christianity. Inevitably the typical literary product of this region became the apostolic letter, framed on the model of Paul's, borrowing his phraseology and ideas, when not actually embodying fragments from his pen and covering itself with his name. Homilies are made over into "epistles." Even 'prophecy,' to obtain literary circulation, must have prefixed epistles of "the Spirit" to the churches; and when at last a gospel is produced, this too is accompanied, as we shall see, by three successive layers of enclosing 'epistles.'
At the seat of 'apostolic' Christianity it was equally inevitable that the literary products should follow a different model. Here, from the beginning, the standard of authority had been the commandment of Jesus. Apostleship had meant ability to transmit his teaching, not endowment with insight into the mystery of the divine purpose revealed in his cross and resurrection. "The gospel" was the gospel of Jesus. The letters of Paul, if they circulated at all in Syria and Cilicia at this early time, have had comparatively small effect on writers like Luke and James. At Rome the case was somewhat different. Here Pauline influence had been effectually superimposed upon an originally Jewish-Christian stock. The Roman Gospel of Mark, accordingly, has just the characteristics we should expect from this Petro-Pauline community. Antioch, too, though at the disruption over the question of table-fellowship it took the side of James, Peter, and Barnabas against Paul, had always had a strong Gentile element. But Jerusalem, the church of the apostles and elders, with its caliphate in the family of Jesus, and its zeal for Jewish institutions and the Law, was the pre-eminent seat of traditional authority. No other gospel, oral or written, could for a moment compare in its eyes with its own cherished treasury of the precepts of Jesus. Its own estimate of itself as conservator of orthodoxy, and custodian of the sacred deposit, vividly reflected from the pages of Hegesippus, was increasingly accepted by the other churches. 'James' and 'Jude' were probably not the real names of the writers of these 'general' or 'catholic' epistles; but they show in what direction men looked when there was need to counteract a widespread tendency to moral relaxation and vain disputations, or to demoralizing heresy.
We have also seen how inevitable was the reaction after Paul's death, even among his own churches, toward a historic standard of authority. Even more marked than the disposition to draw together in fraternal sympathy under persecution, is the reliance shown by the Pastoral Epistles on "health-giving words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1st Tim. vi. 3), and on a consolidated apostolic succession as a bulwark against the disintegrating advance of heresy. In (proconsular) Asia early in the second century there is an unmistakable and sweeping disposition to "turn to the word handed down to us from the beginning" (Ep. of Polyc., vii.) against those who were "perverting the sayings of the Lord to their own lusts." The ancient "word of prophecy" and the former revelations granted to apostolic seers were also turned to account by men like Papias and the author of 2nd Peter against those who "denied the resurrection and judgment."