Essays on the work entitled "Supernatural Religion"

by J. B. Lightfoot

In the preceding papers I have investigated the testimony borne by the Churches of Asia Minor to the Canonical Gospels, and more especially to the Fourth Evangelist. The peculiar value of this testimony is due to the close personal relations of these communities with the latest surviving Apostles, more particularly with St John. At the same time I took occasion incidentally to remark on their attitude towards St Paul and his writings, because an assumed antagonism between the Apostle of the Gentiles and the Twelve has been adopted by a modern school of critics as the basis for a reconstruction of early Christian history. I purpose in the present paper extending this investigation to the Churches of Gaul. The Christianity of Gaul was in some sense the daughter of the Christianity of Asia Minor.

Of the history of the Gallican Churches before the middle of the second century we have no certain information. It seems fairly probable indeed that, when we read in the Apostolic age of a mission of Crescens to 'Galatia' or 'Gaul' [251:1], the western country is meant rather than the Asiatic settlement which bore the same name; and, if so, this points to some relations with St Paul himself. But, even though this explanation should be accepted, the notice stands quite alone. Later tradition indeed supplements it with legendary matter, but it is impossible to say what substratum of fact, if any, underlies these comparatively recent stories.

The connection between the southern parts of Gaul and the western districts of Asia Minor had been intimate from very remote times. Gaul was indebted for her earliest civilization to her Greek settlements like Marseilles, which had been colonized from Asia Minor some six centuries before the Christian era; and close relations appear to have been maintained even to the latest times. During the Roman period the people of Marseilles still spoke the Greek language familiarly along with the vernacular Celtic of the native population and the official Latin of the dominant power [252:1]. When therefore Christianity had established her head-quarters in Asia Minor, it was not unnatural that the Gospel should flow in the same channels which had already conducted the civilization and the commerce of the Asiatic Greeks westward.

At all events, whatever we may think of the antecedent probabilities, the fact itself can hardly be disputed. In the year A.D. 177, under Marcus Aurelius, a severe persecution broke out on the banks of the Rhone in the cities of Vienne and Lyons—a persecution which by its extent and character bears a noble testimony to the vitality of the Churches in these places. To this incident we owe the earliest extant historical notice of Christianity in Gaul. A contemporary record of the martyrdoms on this occasion is preserved in the form of a letter from the persecuted Churches, addressed to 'the brethren that are in Asia and Phrygia' [252:2]. The communities thus addressed, it will be observed, belong to the district in which St John's influence was predominant, and which produced all the writers of his school who have been discussed in the preceding papers—Polycarp, Papias, Melito, Apollinaris, Polycrates. Of the references to the Canonical Scriptures in this letter I shall speak presently. For the moment it is sufficient to say that the very fact of their addressing the communication to these distant Churches shows the closeness of the ties which connected the Christians in Gaul with their Asiatic brethren. Moreover, in the body of the letter it is incidentally stated of two of the sufferers, that they came from Asia Minor—Attalus a Pergamene by birth, and Alexander a physician from Phrygia who 'had lived many years in the provinces of Gaul;' while nearly all of them bear Greek names. Among these martyrs the most conspicuous was Pothinus, the aged bishop of Lyons, who was more than ninety years old when he suffered. A later tradition makes him a native of Asia Minor [253:1]; and this would be a highly probable supposition, even if unsupported by any sort of evidence. Indeed it is far from unlikely that the fact was stated in the letter itself, for Eusebius has not preserved the whole of it. But whether an Asiatic Greek or not, he must have been a growing boy when St John died; and through him the Churches of Southern Gaul, when they first appear in the full light of history, are linked directly with the Apostolic age.

Immediately after this persecution the intimate alliance between these distant parts of Christendom was manifested in another way. The Montanist controversy was raging in the Church of Phrygia, and the brethren of Gaul communicated to them their views on the controverted points [253:2]. To this communication they appended various letters of the martyrs, 'which they penned, while yet in bonds, to the brethren in Asia and Phrygia.' About the same time the martyrs sent Irenæus, then a presbyter, as their delegate with letters of recommendation to Eleutherus, bishop of Rome, for the sake of conferring with him on this same subject [253:3].

Some twenty years later, as the century was drawing to a close, another controversy broke out, relating to the observance of Easter, in which again the Asiatic Churches were mainly concerned; and here too we find the Christians of Gaul interposing with their counsels. When Victor of Rome issued his edict of excommunication against the Churches of Asia Minor, Irenæus wrote to remonstrate. The letter sent on this occasion however did not merely represent his own private views, for we are especially told that he wrote 'in the name of the brethren in Gaul over whom he presided.' Nor did he appeal to the Roman bishop alone, but he exchanged letters also with 'very many divers rulers of the Churches concerning the question which had been stirred' [254:1].

Bearing these facts in mind, and inferring from them, as we have a right to infer, that the Churches of Gaul for the most part inherited the traditions of the Asiatic school of St John, we look with special interest to the documents emanating from these communities.

The Epistle of the brotherhoods in Vienne and Lyons, already mentioned, is the earliest of these. The main business of the letter is a narrative of contemporary facts, and any allusions therefore to the Canonical writings are incidental.

But, though incidental, they are unequivocal. Of the references to St Paul, for instance, there can be no doubt. Thus the martyrs and confessors are mentioned as 'showing in very truth that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us,' where a sentence containing fourteen words in the Greek is given verbatim as it stands in Rom. viii. 18. Thus again, they are described as 'imitators of Christ, who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God,' where in like manner a sentence of twelve words stands verbatim as we find it Phil. ii. 6. No one, I venture to think, will question the source of these passages, though they are given anonymously and without any signs of quotation. Nor can there be any reasonable doubt that when Attalus the martyr is called 'the pillar and ground' ([Greek: stulon kai hedraiôma]) of the Christians at Lyons, the expression is taken from 1 Tim. iii. 15; or that when Alcibiades, who had hitherto lived on bread and water, received a revelation rebuking him for 'not using the creatures of God, in obedience to which he 'partook of all things freely and gave thanks to God,' there is a reference to 1 Tim. iv. 3, 4. These passages show the attitude of the author or authors of this letter towards St Paul; but I have cited them also as exhibiting the manner of quotation which prevails in this letter, and thus indicating what we are to expect in other cases.

From the third and fourth Gospels then we find quotations analogous to these.