Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity

by Kirsopp Lake

The early development of Christianity in Ephesus is more obscure than it is in Rome; it ceased quite soon to flourish in its place of origin, but lived on elsewhere. The documents which represent the first stages of its growth are the later Pauline epistles, and the Fourth Gospel. They are inextricably involved in critical questions which have as yet received less attention than the synoptic problem.

This is especially true of the later epistles. In them, as distinct from the earlier epistles, we have a cosmical Christology which regards Christ as a pre-existent divine person who became a human being. Of that there is no doubt, nor can it be disputed that there are one or two passages in the earlier epistles which seem to pave the way for this kind of thought; but these passages are very few, and as it were wholly incidental. Thus the critical question arises whether these later epistles were written by the same person as the author of the earlier ones. The point has never been discussed fully in England, and by but a very few scholars on the Continent. The result is that it is only possible at present to say that three solutions are possible and are awaiting discussion. The first is that Paul's thought moved very rapidly in the last years of his life, and that the difference between the earlier and the later epistles only represents the development of his thought. This is certainly a possible solution. There is no literary objection to it which cannot adequately be answered. The only doubt is the psychological question whether the development implied is not so great as to be improbable. A second possibility is that the later epistles are not Pauline but are the work of some of Paul's followers. This is also possible, and from the nature of the case scarcely admits of proof or of refutation. The third possibility was suggested in 1877 by H. J. Holtzmann, who thought that Ephesians represents the work of the second generation, and that Colossians was a genuine epistle interpolated by the author of Ephesians. It is said sometimes that this is an incredibly complicated hypothesis. Undoubtedly it is complicated, but so are the facts, and those who regard it as incredible forget that it is merely the application to the Pauline epistles of exactly the same process as every one knows to have been suffered by the epistles of Ignatius. Therefore this theory also is perfectly possible, and ultimately, unless the interest in critical questions dies out altogether, the discussion of these three possibilities is certain to receive fresh attention.[[15]]

The critical questions concerned with the Fourth Gospel are better known. But whether it is later than the later epistles of Paul, and whether it represents the result of their influence or is a parallel line of thought is another problem which has not yet been fully discussed: in any case, it is cognate with them. No one knows who wrote the Fourth Gospel. Tradition ascribes it to John the son of Zebedee, but all critical probability is against this theory. It seems tolerably clear that the Fourth Gospel was not written by an eye-witness, and that it implies not a knowledge of the historic Jesus so much as an acquaintance with the subapostolic Church. It is apparently an attempt to rewrite the story of Jesus in the interests of a "pre-existent" Christology, and of a high form of sacramental teaching.

Tradition connects both the later Pauline epistles and the Fourth Gospel with the Province of Asia, and especially with Ephesus. There is no reason for doubting this tradition, but it is strange how soon its creative spirit passed to Alexandria, a Church of which the origin is as obscure as the later history is famous.

Tantalising though many of these problems are, there is no doubt as to the main characteristics of the Christianity of Ephesus and its neighbourhood. Its Christology was the reverse of Adoptionist. It did not think of Jesus as a man who had become divine, but as a God who had become human. Moreover, an identification of this pre-existent being with the Logos of the philosopher was gradually approached in the later Epistles, and finally made in the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel.

The word Logos has an intricate and long history which has often been treated in books on the New Testament: it is quite unnecessary to repeat it at length. But it has not usually been sufficiently noted that the difficulty of the problems raised by it are mainly due to its use in different ways in different systems of thought. The popular Stoic philosophy, with its belief in a God immanent in the universe, could use Logos in the sense of the governing principle of the world, and as little less than a synonym, or, perhaps one should say, description of God. On the other hand, a transcendental theology such as Platonism, believing in a God entirely above all existence in the universe, needed a connecting link between God and the world, and could use Logos in this sense. Finally, a mediatising writer such as Cornutus could explain that the Logos was Hermes, and so triumphantly reconcile philosophy and myth, by giving a mythological meaning to a philosophic term.

All this is clear enough; but the difficulty begins when one asks in which sense the writer of the Fourth Gospel used the phrase. Did he mean that the Logos was the anima mundi? The phrase "the true light which lighteth every one" is susceptible of such a meaning. But it seems more probable that his theology was in the main transcendental, and that the Logos was for him the connecting link between God and the world. But how far is the Prologue really metaphysical and not comparable in its identification of Jesus and the Logos to Cornutus,[[16]] with his identification of Hermes and the Logos?

Further problems arise if an effort is made to reconstruct fully the Ephesian Christianity of which the Fourth Gospel is the product. After the Prologue the Logos does not seem to be mentioned again; Jesus appears as the supernatural Lord (though this word is not characteristic of the Gospel) who reveals the Father to men. He offers them salvation by regeneration in baptism, and by eating his flesh and blood in the Eucharist. They become supernaturally the children of God. This is the teaching of the Hellenised Church, not of the historic Jesus. But running through the Gospel there is also another line of thought which regards salvation as due to knowledge rather than sacraments. What is the relation to each other of these two ways of regarding salvation? The problem has scarcely been formulated by the students of the Fourth Gospel, much less adequately discussed.

Obviously the tendency of Ephesian Christianity was to minimise the human characteristics of the historic Jesus, and to merge into Docetism. This can be seen in the Fourth Gospel, and in the allied Johannine Epistles. The writer is fully aware of the danger, and protests against Docetism, but his own writings with very small changes would have been admirably adapted for Docetic purposes.[[17]]

If Ephesian Christianity had never come to Rome, and met its complement in the Adoptionists, it might, in spite of the Fourth Gospel, have degenerated into thorough-going Docetism, or have been represented only by Gnostics. It is hard either to prove or to refute the suggestion that Alexandrian Gnosticism of the Valentinian type came from Ephesus along the Syrian coast, and that the ultimately successful Catholicism of Pantaenus and Clement came from the other stream which passed first northwards and then through Italy to Alexandria. Each of these streams accumulated new ideas on the way: the stream passing through Syria found the Eastern Gnostics of whom Simon Magus is alleged to have been the first. The other stream passed through Rome and found Adoptionism. The combination with this strengthened the belief in the true humanity of Jesus, and in his real divinity, thus providing the groundwork for the Christological development of Irenaeus and his successors in the fourth century.[[18]]