Christ was evidently regarded by St. Paul as made thus peculiarly the son of God by his possession of God’s spirit. No idea of his having had a miraculous human birth entered into this belief. God in the fulness of time sent forth his son in the likeness of sinful flesh, born under the law, that he might redeem those who were under the law.[76] St. Paul, however, seems to have believed vaguely in Christ’s pre-human existence;[77] but the pre-existence he assigned to Christ was potential rather than actual, Christ existing from the beginning of time as the destined deliverer of mankind.[78]
So the extent of St. Paul’s deification of Christ may be thus generally described. He believed that Christ was in a peculiar sense the son of God—that is, something more than ordinary man. Intermediate between God and man, he was at once God’s agent and man’s representative. But St. Paul clearly makes him inferior to God as well as superior to man, and allows him no power except what is delegated to him by God.[79] Thus as yet there was no sign of the doctrine of the Incarnation, though a path for it was being prepared. For the doctrine of the Incarnation, it must be remembered, is not a mere deification of Christ. It is important, not because it deifies man, but because it humanizes God. St. Paul undoubtedly, so far as he deified—it would be better to say divinised—Christ, helped the Pagan tendencies of later Christianity, but there was nothing actually Pagan in his belief.
The death of St. Paul marked the beginning of the end of Jewish Christianity. As the Jewish leaders died off, the vast Pagan majority seized upon power and impressed their ideas on the doctrines of the Church. Between the undiluted Jewish Christianity of its origin and the Pagan Christianity of the second century, Paulinism served as a link which enabled them finally to remain in nominal connection. In the spurious epistles attributed to St. Paul we can trace the steps of advancing Paganism, and observe the struggle for reconciliation which his followers inherited from him. Paulinism was ultimately lost in the Paganism with which its Jewish opponents had identified it. But it bridged the interval between the Jewish and Pagan periods of Christianity, and so saved the Church from a rupture it could not have survived.
CHAPTER V.
PAGAN CHRISTIANITY.
While the movement within Judaism with which hitherto we have been mainly occupied was tending to create out of it a world-religion, outside of it circumstances were preparing to make this tendency succeed. The later additions to Judaism, the supernatural system of dogma which formed the basis of Christianity, were, as I have already said, favourable to its expansion by reason of their harmony with Pagan ideas. About the time at which they entered strongly into Judaism, began a steady break-up of the religions of the Pagan world. The material power of Rome attacked them from below, by destroying the national foundations on which they rested, while Greek culture and philosophy, advancing under the protection of that power, assailed them from above. Under the double pressure they faded away. In the age of the apostles, over the greater part of the Roman empire religion was a matter of sincere belief only with the lower orders of the people. A few men of thought and learning put it utterly aside. Between these two classes there was the great body of ordinary persons mentioned at the beginning of our first chapter, who had lost faith in the popular religions, but were themselves thoroughly religious. The credulity which always characterizes periods of religious change, when some form of religion is destroyed, though the religious spirit retains its energy, was universal. Besides this break-up of the old religions in consequence of the extension of Roman power, in another way that extension of power more directly prepared a path for a great proselytising system. As national limits were overthrown, of course a religion that ignored national distinctions could more easily overspread the world.[80] Thus when Christianity touched Paganism everything promised it success. In fact, the critical period in the life of Christianity was that which immediately followed its founder’s death. While it existed only in Palestine, it was in great danger. When it spread among the synagogues of Jews in foreign countries, it had a surer footing. And when from these, which served as a means of introducing it to them, it turned to Pagans, it was placed beyond possibility of failure.
It is interesting to note that Christianity failed to conquer the Judaism from which it sprang, while the Paganism seemingly foreign to it everywhere succumbed to it. A few centuries after this time every part of the Roman empire professed Christianity as its religion, while the Jews remained still the same. Paganism was overcome and absorbed by Christianity, but Judaism shook it off as an excrescence without suffering harm. In this fact there is nothing surprising. Judaism was too strong for Christianity to subdue it, while Paganism was a ready prey. The Roman empire, outside Judaism, lay before Christianity like a body without a mind; it needed a unifying religion to match its political unity, and this Christianity supplied.
The general effect likely to be produced on Christianity by its reception of Pagan disciples may now be considered. It is obvious that Pagans, who were steeped in religious ideas very different from those with which the Jews were familiar, would carry with them into Jewish Christianity different principles of religion. To ascertain the extent of this difference, we must compare Judaism and Paganism.
As a pure monotheism, Judaism stood alone in the world. A purely monotheistic religion tends to produce humility and stress on faith. The two great principles of human action, which Mr. Lecky names as the alternative forces that underlie every important movement of mankind,[81] a sense of human dignity and a sense of sin, are distinctive marks of polytheism and monotheism. Monotheism, with its one God so far removed from man, inspires a feeling of human nothingness in comparison with him. Polytheism, with its far more anthropomorphic and less awful gods, does not dwarf man thus, but enables him freely to compare himself with the divinities he worships. And monotheism, by making man appear nothing beside God, necessarily exalts faith above good works as a means of pleasing him; for when the distance between them is so immense, the best that man can do appears a trifle. Both these tendencies of Judaism, as a monotheism, were more than counterbalanced by other circumstances connected with it. The humility the Jews might feel when conscious of the difference between themselves and God was more than outweighed by the pride they felt in their superiority to the rest of mankind as his chosen people who alone had the knowledge of him.[82] Their superiority to other men naturally affected them more than their inferiority to God. The strict legalism of Judaism also prevented stress on faith from being developed in it, as a multitude of petty observances made it peculiarly a religion of works. But both these principles were latent in Judaism, and were only checked by special circumstances attending it as a national religion. These circumstances being removed, the latent principles were sure to be developed. And, in fact, in Jewish Christianity, which was neither formal nor exclusive, their development was unmistakable. Early Christianity was essentially distinguished both by humility and stress on faith, as a glance at the New Testament is sufficient to show.