The New Christianity; or, The Religion of the New Age

by Salem Goldworth Bland

The earliest form of Christianity was that which sprang up in Jerusalem immediately after the Resurrection and the ingathering at Pentecost. It was the Christianity of the apostles and of the first disciples. Perhaps it might be called a Christianized Judaism rather than a Jewish Christianity, for it was the old Judaism unchanged except by the acceptance of Jesus of Nazareth as the fulfilment of the national hope. The apostles remained good Jews, even stricter than before in their discharge of the duties of the old faith, and commanding through their strictness the respect of the Jews, James the brother of Jesus, in particular, being held in high esteem for his devoutness.

The chief characteristic of Jewish Christianity, it might almost be said, was its lack of almost all the features which have since been counted essential to a Church.

The ancient Jew, as has often been noted, markedly resembled the modern Englishman in many things, notably in an indifference to theological or philosophical speculation and in a strong sense of the value of the ethical and practical. These earliest Jewish Christians, accordingly, did not seek to analyze and systematize their faith. They did not seek to draw out its philosophical implications. They were interested in the construction neither of a creed nor of a theological system. They were content to hold their faith in Jesus as a vital loyalty and a great hope. Jesus was to them the long desired Messiah who would redeem Israel and establish the Kingdom of God upon the earth. That glorious consummation would take place when He returned, as they confidently expected He would, in the immediate future. Meanwhile, the door into the Kingdom of God stood open to all Jews who would accept Jesus as the Christ, and to such Gentiles as were willing to receive circumcision and identify themselves with Israel.

Overshadowed with the imminence of the Parousia, this Jewish Church of the first years had no interest in a reflective interpretation of its faith or in the elaboration of its organization. The apostles preached; alms were distributed to those of the disciples who were in need. No programme was drawn up for the future; no propaganda among the Gentiles was even dreamed of. The whole attitude was one of almost passive expectancy that clung to the ancient capital, the holy city, where the long-expected Hope of Israel would shortly, descending from the heavens, establish His throne.

Jewish Christianity had only the rudiments of a creed, only the simplest organization, and the most unelaborated and democratic form of worship. It was a seed with the germinating impulse unawakened, a bark launched and rigged but that had no thought of venturing out of the harbour.

This simple, undeveloped, undogmatic, unorganized, and Judaistic character of primitive Jewish Christianity is strikingly displayed in the early chapters of the book of the Acts and in the Epistle of James, which on most, at any rate, of the different hypotheses as to date and authorship is, at least, a witness to early Jewish Christianity.[#]

[#] A later form of Jewish Christianity, the obscure Ebionitism of the second century, does not fall within the limits of this sketch. It was, probably, not so much a development of Christianity as a perversion of it.

2. Greek Christianity.

But the expansive forces residing in this undeveloped Christianity could not long remain inactive.

An important element in the population of Jerusalem in the time of our Lord was the Hellenist. This name was applied to the Jews who for various reasons, mainly for trade, had made their home in the commercial cities of the Levant. Here they had learned to speak the prevailing language of the countries around the Eastern Mediterranean, Greek, and had been, to a varying extent, intellectually broadened and quickened by contact with the Greek world. Large numbers of them returned to Jerusalem for educational purposes or to gratify their devout feelings, but they were regarded by the Palestinean Jews with something approaching contempt for their willingness to live away from the sacred soil of Palestine.