It is not too much to say that the apologetic used by St. Augustine to extirpate primitive, Chiliastic belief was only made plausable, or even possible, by profound changes, of an economic nature, in the early Church. The central point of Augustine's apologetic is that the Church, as actually existing at the time, was the promised kingdom of Christ and the reign of the Saints on earth. Such an explanation would have been absurd in the days when the Christian Church consisted only of a few, small companies of sectaries, lost among the lower strata of the population of the cities on the Mediterranean litoral. But by Augustine's time the Church was something quite different. It was enormously wealthy; owning farms, orchards, vineyards, olive yards, mines, quarries, timberlands, horses, cattle, sheep, goats, slaves and serfs, to say nothing of the purely ecclesiastical properties like Churches, schools, bishops' residences and similar structures, and the land they occupied.
The possession of this great wealth inevitably brought with it social position, prestige, and political power. The psychical reaction produced by wealth, rank, and power was naturally unfavorable to the growth of any lively desire for the termination of the existing order of things. Indeed it was an active force in displacing and eliminating Chiliasm from the minds of the hierarchy. On the reverse side we have seen that the times of persecution, when the property of the Church was confiscated and the lives and liberty of Christians endangered or lost, coincided with the recrudescence of Messianic expectations. So that, whichever way the subject is approached, it would seem that the contentions of the advocates of the economic interpretation of history can make out a very good case in the instance of the early Christian Church and Chiliasm. Without raising economic determinism to the rank of a dogma and while admitting that it has very real limitations, it would nevertheless appear from the present study, that the following contention of one of its leading exponents contains an important degree of truth. "The relations of men to one another in the matter of making a living are the main, underlying causes of men's habits of thought and feeling, their notions of right, propriety, and legality, their institutions of society and government, their wars and revolutions."[3]
A principle somewhat allied to the doctrine of Economic Determinism, is that of progress by 'Group Conflict.' Perhaps the most notable exponent of this principle is the Austrian sociologist, Ludwig Gumplowicz, who states: "When two distinct (heterogen) groups come together the natural tendency of each is to exploit the other to use the most general expression. This indeed is what gives the first impulse to the social process.[4]
According to this principle we should expect to find the cause of the transformation of early Christianity in the conflicts of various groups within the Christian community and in the conflicts between the Christians as a group, and various other groups in the world of that time. The truth of this is so obvious that it is a mere waste of words to point it out. That Christian theology evolved by a series of conflicts with various pagan theologies on the one side, and with various groups within the Church on the other side, which were successively branded as heretical, is the most patent fact in the theological history. What is true of the theology in general is true of Chiliasm in particular. It was very largely during the conflicts with a long series of heretical groups; Gnostics, Ebionites, Alogi, Montanists and Apolinarians that the blows were given which finally vanquished Chiliasm. Its elimination, or at least the rapidity of its elimination, was very measurably due to the fact that it was involved in these group conflicts, and as it was almost invariably associated with the losing group, it suffered the natural fate of the vanquished.
While the principle of which Gumplowicz was so able a supporter leads us to expect changes in the Chiliastic doctrine wherever it appears in connection with the phenomenon of group conflict, both within and without the Church, this principle does not, in itself, enable us to state anything definitely concerning the nature of these changes.
There is, however, another sociological principle which we can call to our aid—the principle of Imitation. According to M. Tarde: "The unvarying characteristic of every social fact whatever is that it is imitative and this characteristic belongs exclusively to social facts. This imitation however, is not absolute and the various degrees of exactness in imitation and the complexes resulting from the various combinations and oppositions of imitations form the dynamic of progress."[5]
By the help of this principle we can in a certain measure estimate the general nature of the changes which took place in early Christianity during the process of its socialization. The conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity is, according to this principle, merely half of the actual occurrence. The other half might be called the conversion of Christianity to the Roman Empire. The fact that this second conversion took place; that the Christian Church became a hierarchic, bureaucratic, legalistic, monarchical imperialism is evidence enough that the principle of Imitation operated powerfully in early Christian history.
What is true of the early Church as a whole is true of Chiliasm in particular. There was no very powerful Second Adventist or other Chiliastic influence in the heathen world with which the early Christians were in contact. Their beliefs were, therefore according to this theory, weakened by dilution; vice versa the pagans were gradually converted to an enfeebled eschatological belief by imitation of the Christians, but the net result was a compromise, i.e., a far off and indefinite eschatology.
The concrete evidence in support of this contention is not abundant being confined to a few lines in the Sibylline Oracles, Hippolytus, Lactantius and Augustine. Such as the evidence is, however, it is entirely on the side of the theory of imitation. It is moreover a very defensible position that if we were not dealing with such a stereotyped literary form, the evidence would be much stronger. One arresting feature of the Chiliastic passages that have come down to us, is their uniformity. They are repetitions, very often actual, verbal repetitions of one another. What is of real interest in this connection however, is not the form of words, used, but the varying degrees of earnestness, sincerity, and eagerness with which the beliefs, embodied in the form, were held. This is a thing difficult if not impossible of measurement. Practically our only means of arriving at the facts is to compare the relatively slight changes in the form of the Chiliastic tradition. This has already been done[6] and favors the contention which the theory of Imitation seeks to maintain. The passage in the Oracles, while undoubtedly Chiliastic, is doubtfully orthodox and is found in a context showing the influence of paganism in almost every line. Similarly Hippolytus and still more Lactantius and Augustine being situated so as to be peculiarly susceptible to the pagan environment show a marked tendency to make the Second Advent a far off event. St. Augustine, whose contact with the contemporary pagan world was more complete at more points than that of any other Church father, puts the Second Advent out of all connection with his own generation.
Another sociological principle of considerable importance for our purpose is that sometimes spoken of as the transfer of the allegiance of the unproductive laborers. The most prominent upholder of this principle is probably the Italian economist Achille Loria. According to Loria, the history of civilization is the history of the struggle for the economic surplus. The existence of an economic margin above the necessities of subsistence at once divides society into three classes: exploiters, unproductive laborers,[7] and productive laborers. "In order to exert moral suasion enough to pervert the egoism of the oppressed classes, the cooperation of unproductive laborers is required. The decomposition of an established system of capitalistic economy carried with it a progressive diminution of the income from property and consequently involves a corresponding falling off in the unproductive laborers' share therein. This in turn dissolves their partnership with capital and puts an end to their task of psychologically coercing the productive laborers. The bandage is thus suddenly removed from the eyes of the oppressed and the systematic perversion of human egoism up to this time in force, is abruptly brought to an end.