Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity

by Kirsopp Lake

The man who seems to have brought Ephesian Christianity to Rome was Justin Martyr, sometimes called the Philosopher. This title is somewhat unfair to philosophers, for the only claim which Justin could make to the name was that he had dabbled with little profit in many schools before he was converted to Christianity by an old man who gave him the Christian interpretation of the Old Testament.

Justin is in fact not much more philosophic than Hermas. His Christology is the incarnation of the Logos; but Logos is for him merely the name of a second God who is responsible for creation and redemption. Of the many books which he is said to have written only his two Apologies and his Dialogue with Trypho are extant. The latter is a long rambling exposition of the proof from the Old Testament, in the Septuagint version, that there is a "second God," and that his incarnation in Jesus was foretold. The Apologies also are full of proof from the Old Testament, but contain most valuable statements as to the Christian cult and its sacraments. They are also remarkable for insisting that the heathen religions are due to the clumsy efforts of demons to deceive men by false fulfilments of scripture.

Justin was not a man of commanding intellect, but he seems to have brought Ephesian Christianity to Rome, and so began in that city the synthesis with Greek philosophy which the later Pauline epistles and Fourth Gospel began in Ephesus and Origen completed in Alexandria. He appears to have been martyred in Rome, perhaps owing to the hostility of Crescens, a cynic philosopher with whom he had quarrelled. The acts of his martyrdom are extant; the most significant point in them is his dissociation from other bodies of Christians in Rome.[[19]] This is seen from the following extract from his examination by Rusticus the Prefect:

"Rusticus the prefect said, 'Where do you assemble?' Justin said, 'Where inclination and ability lead each of us. For do you really think that we all assemble in the same place? That is not the case, because the God of the Christians is not locally circumscribed, but, though he cannot be seen, fills heaven and earth and receives worship and glorification from the faithful in all places.' Rusticus the prefect said, 'Tell me where you assemble or in what place you collect your disciples.' Justin said, 'I am staying above the baths of a certain Martin, the son of Timothinus, and throughout this period (it is my second visit to Rome) I am unacquainted with any other assembly except that in this house. And if any one wished to come with me, I communicated to him the words of truth.'"[[20]]

It would be possible to fill a volume with the discussion of the development of the Logos doctrine after the time of Justin Martyr. All that can here be done is to note how it passed from Rome to Alexandria—from Justin to Origen—and to compare certain aspects of it with Adoptionist Christianity, and to consider the position which either of these Christologies can take in modern theology.

It is very doubtful whether Justin Martyr or the writer of the Fourth Gospel had any concept of Immaterial Reality. To Justin Martyr, at least, the Logos appears to have been a second God, and his identification of Jesus with the Logos is much more like that of Cornutus—mutatis mutandis—than anything else which we possess. But however this may be, the Logos Christology was invaluable for Origen in finding room in Christian theology for the identification of God with Immaterial Reality. We may paraphrase rather than explain his teaching by saying that he believed in the divinity and unity of Immaterial Reality, but thought also that diversity as well as unity could be predicated of it; that man belonged on one side of his nature to Immaterial Reality, and that, so far as he did so, he shared the attribute of eternity. Like other thinkers, Origen failed to make clear exactly what is the relation between the Immaterial Reality which is eternal and changeless and the Material Reality which is subject to change and time, and is the basis of phenomena. But in some way, he believed, the Logos[[21]] was that power of Immaterial Reality which stretches out and mingles with the world of matter. It is impossible and undesirable to expound at length this general theory; it must suffice to notice its bearings on Christology.

In the first place, it seems to have overcome the tendency of Logos theology to produce Docetism. The earlier forms of this kind of teaching which represented the Logos as a spirit who came down to rescue humanity offered no real reason for maintaining the true humanity of Jesus. It seems to have been the pressure of recognised fact, which had not yet been forgotten, which made the writer of the Fourth Gospel and of the First Epistle of John protest so strongly against Docetism. The tendency of their teaching by itself was all the other way, and the Acts of John, with their completely unreal humanity of Jesus, are the natural, though no doubt unlooked-for, results of the Ephesian school. But that is not the case with Origen, and cannot be the case with any Christology or theology which really understands the doctrine of Immaterial Reality. It is possible to have a spirit, using the word in the popular and material sense, which looks like a human being, but is not really one, but that cannot be so with Immaterial Reality.

Origen achieved a synthesis with Greek philosophy which enabled Christianity to accept a belief in Immaterial Reality without a Docetic Christology, but it must be remembered that Origen was able to do this largely because he stood in the line of succession from the Fourth Gospel and Justin Martyr. He did not take the word Logos in the same sense as Justin had done, and he permanently changed, and indeed partly confused, Christian terminology by giving the meaning of immaterial to the words spirit and spiritual. They have in the main retained this meaning ever since, but students of the New Testament will do well to remember that this is not the meaning of the words in the original, and that Origen, though neither the first nor the last, is probably the ablest of the long line of theologians who have introduced metaphysics into Christian doctrine by a perverse exegesis of the words of Scripture.

The Catholic Christianity which emerged from the struggle between Adoptionism and the Logos Christology was a curious combination of both. In the strict sense of Christology, Adoptionism was completely abandoned. Jesus was regarded as the eternal Logos who became man, not as the inspired and perfect man who became God. But in the sphere of soteriology the legacy of Adoptionism can clearly be seen. The Christian became the adopted son of God, joint heir with Christ, and this remained part of Catholic teaching. It is not, however, really consistent with the Logos doctrine, and is logically part of Adoptionism. The incoherence introduced at this point was met by the splendid paradox of Irenaeus and Athanasius that God became man in order that man might become God. But splendid though this be, it remains a paradox, and it was diluted very considerably in later theology, which seems to have felt that the abandonment of Adoptionism in the sphere of Christology necessitated its abandonment in the doctrine of salvation. Thus, at least in popular theology, the grandiose conception of the apotheosis of humanity has passed into the far more mythological one of becoming an angel after death—a view very widely held, though perhaps never officially recognised.