§ 7.1. The Religious Character of Heathenism.—The hidden powers of the life of nature and the soul, not intellectually apprehended in the form of abstract knowledge, but laid hold of in immediate practice, and developed in speculation and mysticism, in natural magic and soothsaying, and applied to all the relations of human life, seemed revelations of the eternal spirit of nature, and, mostly by means of the intervention of prominent personalities and under the influence of various geographical and ethnographical peculiarities, produced manifold systems of the religion of nature. Common to all, and deeply rooted in the nature of heathenism, is the distinction between the esoteric religion of the priests, and the exoteric religion of the people. The former is essentially a speculative ideal pantheism; the latter is for the most part a mythical and ceremonial polytheism. The religious development of heathenism has nevertheless been by no means stripped of all elements of truth. Apart from casual remnants of the primitive divine revelation, which, variously contorted on their transmission through heathen channels, may lie at the foundation or be inwrought into its religious systems, the hothouse-like development of the religion of nature has anticipated many a religious truth which, in the way of divine revelation, could only slowly and at a late period come to maturity, but has perverted and distorted it to such a degree that it was little better than a caricature. To this class belong, for example, the pantheistic theories of the Trinity and the Incarnation, the dualistic acknowledgment of the reality of evil, etc. To this also especially belongs the offering of human victims which has been practised in all religions of nature without exception,—a terrible and to some extent prophetic cry of agony from God-forsaken men, which is first toned down on Golgotha into hymns of joy and thanksgiving. Witness is given to the power and energy, with which the religions of nature in the time of their bloom took possession of and ruled over the minds and emotions of men, by the otherwise unexampled sacrifices and self-inflictions, such as hecatombs, offerings of children, mutilation, prostitution, etc., to which its votaries submitted, and not less the almost irresistible charm which it exercised again and again upon the people of Israel during the whole course of their earlier history. It also follows from this that the religion of heathenism does not consist in naked lies and pure illusions. There are elements of truth in the lies, which gave this power to the religion of nature. There are anticipations of redemption, though these were demoniacally perverted, which imparted to it this charm.There are mysterious phenomena of natural magic and soothsaying which seemed to establish their divine character. But the worship of nature had the fate of all unnatural, precocious development. The truth was soon swallowed up by the lies, the power of development and life, of which more than could possibly be given was demanded, was soon consumed and used up. The blossoms fell before the fruit had set. Mysteries and oracles, magic and soothsaying, became empty forms, or organs of intentional fraud and common roguery. And so it came to pass that one harauspex could not look upon another without laughing. Unbelief mocked everything, superstition assumed its most absurd and utterly senseless forms, and religions of an irrational mongrel type sought in vain to quicken again a nerveless and soulless heathenism.
§ 7.2. The Moral Character of Heathenism.—Religious character and moral character go always hand in hand. Thus, too, the moral life among heathen peoples was earnest, powerful, and true, or lax, defective, and perverse, in the same proportion as was the religious life of that same period. The moral faults of heathenism flow from its religious faults. It was a religion of the present, to whose gods therefore were also unhesitatingly ascribed all the imperfections of the present. In this way religion lost all its power for raising men out of the mire and dust surrounding them. The partly immoral myths sanctioned or excused by the example of the gods the grossest immoralities. As the type and pattern of reproductive power in the deified life of nature, the gratification of lust was often made the central and main point in divine service. The idea of pure humanity was wholly wanting in heathenism. It could only reach the conception of nationality, and its virtues were only the virtues of citizens. In the East despotism crushed, and in the West fierce national antipathies stifled the acknowledgment of, universal human rights and the common rank of men, so that the foreigner and the slave were not admitted to have any claims. As the worth of man was measured only by his political position, the significance of woman was wholly overlooked and repudiated. Her position was at most only that of the maid of the man, and was degraded to the lowest depths in the East by reason of the prevalent polygamy. Notwithstanding all these great and far-reaching moral faults, heathenism, in the days of its bloom and power, at least in those departments of the moral life, such as politics and municipal matters, in which pantheism and polytheism did not exert their relaxing influence, had still preserved much high moral earnestness and an astonishing energy. But when the religion of their fathers, reduced to emptiness and powerlessness, ceased to be the soul and bearer of those departments of life, all moral power was also withdrawn from them. The moral deterioration reached its culminating point in the dissolute age of the Roman Emperors. In this indescribable state of moral degeneration, the church found heathenism, when it began its spiritual regeneration of the world.
§ 7.3. The Intellectual Culture in Heathenism.—The intellectual culture of heathenism has won in regard to the church a twofold significance. On the one hand it affords a pattern, and on the other it presents a warning beacon. Pagan science and art, in so far as they possess a generally culturing influence and present to the Christian church a special type for imitation, are but the ultimate results of the intellectual activity which manifested itself among the Greeks and Romans in philosophy, poetry and historical writing, which have in two directions, as to form and as to contents, become the model for the Christian church, preparing and breaking up its way. On the one side they produced forms for the exercise of the intellectual life, which by their exactness and clearness, by their variety and many-sidedness, afforded to the new intellectual contents of Christianity a means for its formal exposition and expression. But, on the other side, they also produced, from profound consideration of and research into nature and spirit, history and life, ideas and reflections which variously formed an anticipation of the ideas of redemption and prepared the soil for their reception. The influence, however, on the other hand, which oriental forms of culture had upon the development and construction of the history of redemption, had already exhausted itself upon Judaism. What the symbolism of orientalism had contributed to Judaism, namely the form in which the divine contents communicated by Old Testament prophesy should be presented and unfolded, the dialectic of classical heathenism was to Christianity, in which the symbolic covering of Judaism was to be torn off and the thought of divine redemption to be manifested and to be laid hold of in its purely intellectual form. The influence of heathenism upon the advancing church in the other direction as affording a picture of what was to be avoided, was represented not less by Eastern culture than by the classical culture of the Greeks and Romans. Here it was exclusively the contents, and indeed the ungodly anti-Christian contents, the specifically heathen substance of the pagan philosophy, theosophy, and mysteriosophy, which by means of tolerated forms of culture sought to penetrate and completely paganize Christianity. To heathenism, highly cultured but pluming itself in the arrogance of its sublime wisdom, Christianity, by whose suggestive profundity it had been at first attracted, appeared altogether too simple, unphilosophical, unspeculative, to satisfy the supposed requirements of the culture of the age. There was needed, it was thought, fructification and enriching by the collective wisdom of the East and the West before religion could in truth present itself as absolute and perfect.
§ 7.4. The Hellenic Philosophy.—What is true of Greek-Roman culture generally on its material and formal sides, that it powerfully influenced Christianity now budding into flower, is preeminently true of the Greek Philosophy. Regarded as a prefiguration of Christianity, Greek philosophy presents a negative side in so far as it led to the dissolution of heathenism, and a positive side in so far as it, by furnishing form and contents, contributed to the construction of Christianity. From its very origin Hellenic philosophy contributed to the negative process by undermining the people’s faith in heathenism, preparing for the overthrow of idolatry, and leading heathenism to take a despondent view of its own future. It is with Socrates, who died in B.C. 399, that the positive prefiguring of Christianity on the part of Greek philosophy comes first decidedly into view. His humble confession of ignorance, his founding of the claim to wisdom on the Γνῶθι σεαυτόν, the tracing of his deepest thoughts and yearnings back to divine suggestions (his Δαιμόνιον), his grave resignation to circumstances, and his joyful hope in a more blessed future, may certainly be regarded as faint anticipations and prophetic adumbrations of the phenomena of Christian faith and life. Plato, who died B.C. 348, with independent speculative and poetic power, wrought the scattered hints of his teacher’s wisdom into an organically articulated theory of the universe, which in its anticipatory profundity approached more nearly to the Christian theory of the universe than any other outside the range of revelation. His philosophy leads men to an appreciation of his God-related nature, takes him past the visible and sensible to the eternal prototypes of all beauty, truth and goodness, from which he has fallen away, and awakens in him a profound longing after his lost possessions. In regard to matter Aristotle, who died B.C. 322, does not stand so closely related to Christianity as Plato, but in regard to form, he has much more decidedly influenced the logical thinking and systematizing of later Christian sciences. In these two, however, are reached the highest elevation of the philosophical thinking of the Greeks, viewed in itself as well as in its positive and constructive influence upon the church. As philosophy down to that time, consciously or unconsciously, had wrought for the dissolution of the religion of the people, it now proceeded to work its own overthrow, and brought into ever deeper, fuller and clearer consciousness the despairing estimate of the world regarding itself. This is shown most significantly in the three schools of philosophy which were most widely spread at the entrance of the church into the Græco-Roman world, Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Scepticism. Epicurus, who died B.C. 271, in his philosophy seeks the highest good in pleasure, recognises in the world only a play of fortune, regards the soul as mortal, and supposes that the gods in their blissful retirement no longer take any thought about the world. Stoicism, founded by Zeno, who died in B.C. 260, over against the Epicurean deism set up a hylozoistic pantheism, made the development of the world dependent upon the unalterable necessity of fate, which brings about a universal conflagration, out of which again a new world springs to follow a similar course. To look on pleasure with contempt, to scorn pain, and in case of necessity to end a fruitless life by suicide—these constitute the core of all wisdom. When he has reached such a height in the mastery of self and of the world the wise man is his own god, finding in himself all that he needs. Finally, in conflict with Stoicism arose the Scepticism of the New Academy, at the head of which were Arcesilaus who died B.C. 240 and Carneades who died B.C. 128. This school renounced all knowledge of truth as something really unattainable, and in the moderation (ἐποχή) of every opinion placed the sum of theoretic wisdom, while it regarded the sum of all practical wisdom to consist in the evidence of every passionate or exciting effort.
§ 7.5. The Heathen State.—In the grand endeavour of heathenism to redeem itself by its own resources and according to its own pleasure, the attempt was finally made by the concentration of all forces into one colossal might. To gather into one point all the mental and bodily powers of the whole human race, and through them also all powers of nature and the products of all zones and lands, and to put them under one will, and then in this will to recognise the personal and visible representation of the godhead—to this was heathenism driven by an inner necessity. Hence arose a struggle, and in consequence of the pertinacity with which it was carried on, one kingdom after another was overthrown, until the climax was reached in the Roman empire. Yet even this empire was broken and dissolved when opposed by the spiritual power of the kingdom of God. Like all the endeavours of heathenism, this struggle for absolute sovereignty had a twofold aspect; there are thereby made prominent men’s own ways and God’s ways, the undivine aims of men, and the blessed results which God’s government of the world could secure for them. We have here to do first of all simply with the Roman universal empire, but the powers that rose in succession after it are only rejuvenations and powerful continuations of the endeavour of the earlier power, and so that is true of every state which is true of the Roman. Its significance as a preparer of the way for the church is just this, that in consequence of the articulation of the world into one great state organisation, the various stages and elements of culture found among the several civilized races hitherto isolated, contributed now to one universal civilization, and a rapid circulation of the new life-blood driven by the church through the veins of the nations was made possible and easy. With special power and universal success had the exploits of Alexander the Great in this direction made a beginning, which reached perfection under the Roman empire. The ever advancing prevalence of one language, the Greek, which at the time of the beginning of the church was spoken and understood in all quarters of the Roman empire, which seemed, like a temporary suspension of the doom of the confusion of languages which accompanied the rise of heathenism (Gen. xi.), to celebrate its return to the divine favour, belongs also pre-eminently to those preparatory influences. And as the heathen state sought after the concentration of all might, Industry and Trade, moved by the same principle, sought after the concentration of wealth and profit. But as worldly enterprise for its own ends made paths for universal commerce over wastes and seas, and visited for purposes of trade the remotest countries and climes, it served unwittingly and unintentionally the higher purposes of divine grace by opening a way for the spread of the message of the gospel.
§ 8. Judaism.
In a land which, like the people themselves, combined the character of insular exclusiveness with that of a central position in the ancient world, Israel, on account of the part which it was called to play in universal history, had to be the receiver and communicator of God’s revelations of His salvation, had to live quiet and apart, taking little to do with the world’s business; having, on the other hand, the assurance from God’s promise that disasters threatened by heathenish love of conquest and oppression would be averted. This position and this task were, indeed, only too often forgotten. Only too often did the Israelites mix themselves up in worldly affairs, with which they had no concern. Only too often by their departure from their God did they make themselves like the heathen nations in religion, worship, and conversation, so that for correction and punishment they had often to be put under a heavy yoke. Yet the remnant of the holy seed (Isa. iv. 3; vi. 13) which was never wholly wanting even in times of general apostasy, as well as the long-suffering and faithfulness of their God, ensured the complete realisation of Israel’s vocation, even though the unspiritual mass of the people finally rejected the offered redemption.
§ 8.1. Judaism under special Training of God through the Law and Prophecy.—Abraham was chosen as a single individual (Isa. li. 2), and, as the creator of something new, God called forth from an unfruitful womb the seed of promise. As saviour and redeemer from existing misery He delivered the people of promise from the oppression of Egyptian slavery. In the Holy Land the family must work out its own development, but in order that the family might be able unrestrainedly to expand into a great nation, it was necessary that it should first go down into Egypt. Moses led the people thus disciplined out of the foreign land, and gave them a theocratic constitution, law, and worship as means for the accomplishment of their calling, as a model and a schoolmaster leading on to future perfection (Gal. iii. 24; Heb. x. 1). The going out of Egypt was the birth of the nation, the giving of the law at Sinai was its consecration as a holy nation. Joshua set forth the last condition for an independent people, the possession of a country commensurate with the task of the nation, a land of their own that would awaken patriotic feelings. Now the theocracy under the form of a purely popular institution under the fostering care of the priesthood could and should have borne fruit, but the period of the Judges proves that those two factors of development were not sufficient, and so now two new agencies make their appearance; the Prophetic order as a distinct and regular office, constituted for the purpose of being a mouth to God and a conscience to the state, and the Kingly order for the protecting of the theocracy against hurt from without and for the establishment of peace within her borders. By David’s successes the theocracy attained unto a high degree of political significance, and by Solomon’s building of the temple the typical form of worship reached the highest point of its development. In spite, however, of prophecy and royalty, the people, ever withdrawing themselves more and more from their true vocation, were not able outwardly and inwardly to maintain the high level. The division of the kingdom, internal feuds and conflicts, their untheocratic entanglement in the affairs of the world, the growing tendency to fall away from the worship of Jehovah and to engage in the worship of high places, and calves, and nature, called down incessantly the divine judgments, in consequence of which they fell a prey to the heathen. Yet this discipline was not in vain. Cyrus decreed their return and their independent organization, and even prophecy was granted for a time to the restored community for its establishment and consolidation. Under these political developments has prophecy, in addition to its immediate concern with its own times in respect of teaching, discipline, and exhortation, given to the promise of future salvation its fullest expression, bringing a bright ray of comfort and hope to light up the darkness of a gloomy present. The fading memories of the happy times of the brilliant victories of David and the glorious peaceful reign of Solomon formed the bases of the delineations of the future Messianic kingdom, while the disasters, the suffering and the humiliation of the people during the period of their decay gave an impulse to Messianic longings for a Messiah suffering for the sins of the people and taking on Himself all their misery. And now, after it had effected its main purpose, prophecy was silenced, to be reawakened only in a complete and final form when the fulness of time had come.
§ 8.2. Judaism after the Cessation of Prophecy.—The time had now come when the chosen people, emancipated from the immediate discipline of divine revelation, but furnished with the results and experiences of a rich course of instruction, and accompanied by the law as a schoolmaster and by the light of the prophetic word, should themselves work out the purpose of their calling. The war of extermination which Antiochus Epiphanes in his heathen fanaticism waged against Judaism, was happily and victoriously repelled, and once more the nation won its political independence under the Maccabees. At last, however, owing to the increasing corruption of the ruling Maccabean family, they were ensnared by the craft of the Roman empire. The Syrian religious persecution and the subsequent oppression of the Romans roused the national spirit and the attachment to the religion of their fathers to the most extreme exclusiveness, fanatical hatred, and proud scorn of everything foreign, and converted the Messianic hope into a mere political and frantically carnal expectation. True piety more and more disappeared in a punctilious legalism and ceremonialism, in a conceited self-righteousness and boastful confidence in their own good works. Priests and scribes were eagerly bent on fostering this tendency and increasing the unsusceptibility of the masses for the spirituality of the redemption that was drawing nigh, by multiplying and exaggerating external rules and by perverse interpretation of scripture. But in spite of all these perverting and far-reaching tendencies, there was yet in quiet obscurity a sacred plantation of the true Israel (John i. 47; Luke i. 6; ii. 25, 38, etc.), as a garden of God for the first reception of salvation in Christ.
§ 8.3. The Synagogues.—The institution of the Synagogues was of the greatest importance for the spread and development of post-exilian Judaism. They had their origin in the consciousness that, besides the continuance of the symbolical worship of the temple, a ministry of the word for edification by means of the revelation of God in the law and the prophets was, after the withdrawal of prophecy, all the more a pressing need and duty. But they also afforded a nursery for the endeavour to widen and contract the law of Moses by Rabbinical rules, for the tendency to external legalism and hypocrisy, for the national arrogance and the carnal Messianic expectations, which from them passed over into the life of the people. On the other hand, the synagogues, especially outside of Palestine, among the dispersion, won a far-reaching significance for the church by reason of their missionary tendency. For here where every Sabbath the holy scripture of the Old Testament was read in the Greek translation of the Septuagint and expounded, a convenient opportunity was given to heathens longing for salvation to gain acquaintance with the revelations and promises of God in the Old Covenant, and here there was already a place for the first ministers of the gospel, from which they could deliver their message to an assembled multitude of people from among the Jews and Gentiles. (Schürer, “Hist. of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ.” Div. ii., vol. 2., “The School and Synagogue.” pp. 44-89, Edin., 1885.)