The next converts were from the disciples of the Pagan theology of Greece and Rome; with them a different method of instruction was needed. Till they knew something of the Divine nature, it was useless to open to them the Divine dispensations. The discourse of Paul at Athens did not therefore begin with announcing the Saviour: if it had, his inquisitive hearers would perhaps have inquired whether this messenger was sent by Jupiter himself, or whether he was a deputy of some of the inferior gods. The Apostle named not the name of Christ till he had taught the fundamental doctrine—that Jehovah is not only supreme, but sole; that all infinite attributes are centered in him; that all dispensations proceed from him; not only those of nature, by which the human race is created and preserved; but—the way being now prepared for the annunciation—that of grace, by which the world is to be redeemed through him whom God had ordained to be a Prince and a Saviour.
The heathen converts of the latter class had much more to learn, before they could become confirmed Christians, than their more enlightened brethren who had been prepared by intercourse with Jews. They were equally ready in admitting the evidence of miracles, but not equally clear as to the object for which those miracles were wrought. When Paul and Barnabas restored the cripple at Lystra, the priests and people could scarcely be restrained from offering sacrifice to them as gods, even after the Apostles had explained to them the true nature of Deity. Yet the true religion, being patiently and faithfully taught, was, at length, fully understood and received; and the three classes of converts, Jews, proselytes, and pagans, were made one in Christ; holding, in undisturbed harmony of conviction, the essential doctrines of the strict Unity of Jehovah, the divine authority of Jesus Christ, and consequently, the divine origin of the Gospel he brought.
This unity of the faith seems to have been first broken in upon by the introduction of a fourth class of converts, who, by incorporating their former philosophical doctrines with the new theology they had embraced, originated the first heresy. There had been disputes, it is true, in the church; but not concerning matters of faith. In these disputes the Apostles themselves had been not only involved, but actually opposed to each other. These questions related to the fancied necessity of the adoption by the Gentiles of the forms of the Jewish law: questions of great importance to the Jews, as affecting their views of the ultimate design of Christianity; to the Gentiles, as involving their spiritual liberties; and to us and the Christian world at large, as throwing light on the transactions of the primitive times, and as having originated some of the Epistles of Paul.
But they bore no relation to the essential doctrines, which were held free from corruption, controversy, or even doubt, till some converts from the philosophical sect of the Gnostics introduced, within twenty years after the death of Christ, the first taint of that corruption from which the true faith has never since been freed.
The fundamental doctrine of the Gnostic philosophy was, that all mind is ultimately derived from the Supreme mind; that the souls of all men have therefore pre-existed; that there is a higher order of spirits, more immediately emanating from the Supreme; that these superior intelligences descend occasionally to inhabit the bodies of men, or to assume their apparent form. This doctrine, to which they were much attached, the Gnostic converts easily contrived to connect with their new theology, believing Jesus to be one of these superior intelligences in a visible form, or that the man Jesus was animated by such a spirit, who was in reality the Christ. Against this corruption of the simplicity of the faith the Apostle John protested in his First and Second Epistles, in which he followed the example of Peter, Paul, and Jude. That the Gnostics were the persons he had in view, is evident from the fact that no other schismatics at that period troubled the peace of the church, and also from his own application of his censure to such as 'confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.' (2 John 7.) The 'fables and endless genealogies' which Paul reprobates (1 Tim. i. 4.) had the same origin; and the practices to which they led, of 'forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats,' are condemned by him as the work of 'seducing spirits.' Of the same class were the 'false teachers,' accused by Peter of bringing in fatal heresies, 'by reason of whom the ways of truth shall be evil spoken of.' All the opinions and practices denounced by Jude, were either publicly maintained by the Gnostics, or generally ascribed to them.
In order to disprove the truth of this representation, it will be necessary to show who besides the Gnostics denied that the man Jesus was the true Christ; who besides the Gnostics propounded fables, originated schisms, and were addicted to superstitious practices, at the times in which the Apostles wrote. This, we conceive, cannot be done.
That the doctrine of the pre-existence of Christ must have been new and strange to the faithful teachers of the church we know, not only from their own intimation that it was so, but from the positive proof which the Scriptures afford of the absence of all preparation for it. The preaching of John the Baptist, and the conduct and discourses of Jesus were such as to give his disciples the idea of his being truly and entirely man; divine indeed in his derived power and spiritual perfection, but human in his nature. His disciples accordingly testified in their words and actions that they had no thought of his being any thing else. They received him as their Messiah; but in all besides they remained Jews, ascribing to God alone all divine attributes, worshiping him alone, and paying honor to Jesus only as his most exalted messenger. If they had been required to regard him as God, the history of their conversion would have been widely different from what it is. A doctrine to them so new and wonderful, would have engrossed their minds, would have banished familiarity from their intercourse with the Saviour, would have pervaded their preachings and writings; and, instead of being wholly omitted in their addresses to their converts, would have been made, as in modern creeds, a primary and essential article of belief. Not till the introduction of oriental superstitions into the church, however, do we find unquestionable evidence that such a doctrine had been conceived by any individual mind; and then the information is conveyed in the form of decided censure of the doctrine on the part of the promulgators and guardians of the new faith. Even after this heresy was introduced, we find no traces of it in the works of the Apostolical Fathers, till nearly a century and a half from the birth of Christ,—except in a very few writings, so uncertain in their date, so wild and allegorical in their composition, and so evidently and extensively interpolated, as to be of little or no authority. We refer to the works commonly ascribed to Barnabus, Hermas, and Ignatius. The only genuine epistle of Clemens Romanus which has come down to us, neither advocates, countenances, nor alludes to any such doctrine.
Even the philosophizing Christians of the first century, against whom the Apostles wrote, went no further than to suppose the Christ to be a superior intelligence, inhabiting a mortal form, or assuming the appearance of one: Cerinthus maintaining that Jesus was a man born of Joseph and Mary, and that at his baptism the Christ descended upon him; while Marcion held that the Son of God took the exterior form of a man, and appeared as a man; and without being born, or gradually growing up to the full stature of a man, he showed himself at once in Galilee as a man grown. It was not till Justin Martyr, himself a philosopher, wrote an apology for Christianity to a philosophical Roman emperor (A. D. 140), that any distinct mention appears to have been made of the doctrine of the Divinity of Christ. It is not surprising that—feeling how great a reproach the death of the cross must be in the eyes of the potentate whom he wished to conciliate, and finding his mode of exposition prepared by the Gnostic Christians, and by the application made by the learned Philo of the Platonic doctrine of the Logos,—Justin Martyr should have been tempted to recommend his new theology by introducing an admixture of that philosophy which has proved, according to the warnings of the Apostle, a 'vain deceit.' Such we have no hesitation in calling it. A doctrine of this nature cannot be in part true, but liable to mistake: it must be absolutely true or absolutely false. We hold it to be the latter; because it was not made a subject of distinct revelation by Christ, a primary article of belief by the Apostles, or even a matter of distinct mention for a century and a half from the birth of Christ.
All that, from the study of the records of Revelation, we hold to be the primary and essential doctrines of Christianity, stand forth conspicuously in the teachings, are confirmed by the deeds, and illustrated in the lives of the Saviour and his followers. We propose to bring them forward, with their evidence, in the following order.
I. The strict Unity of God.