In the second century of the existence of Christian communities (circa 130-230) the development of a tendency towards reconciliation with the state and society is apparent in every direction. This I will proceed to demonstrate as regards (1) the constitution and organisation of the communities; (2) their life; (3) their doctrine; (4) their literature; (5) their form of worship; and (6) their estimate of the state.
(1) As early as the year 140 most Christian communities possessed a system of government widely different from their original organisation. The question of how it came into being is one upon which we cannot enter here. It appears as a combination of monarchical and collegiate government. At the head of the community stood the bishop, with the college of presbyters—in some cases on an equal footing with him and in others his subordinates—at his side; the assistant and executive officers were the deacons. The duties and rights of these clergy extended to matters of discipline, financial administration, the care of souls and the relief of the poor, doctrine, and public worship. The officers were elected by the community, but nevertheless formed a superior class which, decade by decade, assumed more and more the guardianship of the “lay people.” Thus, out of a communion in which the “Spirit” and brotherly love alone were to bear sway, there had arisen a legally constituted community with ordinances in many points analogous to those of municipal administration. The community acquired property and administered it; the officers, under the superintendence of the bishop, cared for the needy; and, together with the oversight of discipline, it exercised a certain amount of jurisdiction in family affairs.
But statutory organisation was not confined to the individual community; the various communities of one province joined in closer bonds and formed a larger confederation. Provincial synods arose, corresponding to the diet of the provinces, met once or twice a year, and dealt with matters of common interest under the direction of a president (the metropolitan). But even this association did not suffice. From the very beginning Christians were conscious of belonging to one great and holy fellowship, to one universal brotherhood. Conceived of, in the first instance, as something ideal and supernatural, it had nevertheless been held with strong and lively convictions, and at this stage the attempt was made to realise it upon earth. The outward conditions were in its favour; Christian doctrine had assumed many forms, a large number of which appeared very questionable in the eyes of the bishops and the majority of the church, and they consequently desired to define their own position in contradistinction to these “pseudo-Christians.” Hence after the end of the second century a great number of communities in the West and East joined to form a single confederation, and presently asserted that only those who belonged to this confederation, the one Holy Catholic church, were real Christians. At the beginning of the third century there was no longer only a heavenly church,—the children of God scattered throughout the world and waiting for the revelation of the kingdom of which they were citizens,—but a visible church extending from the Euphrates to Spain, resting upon fixed laws and ordinances, and thus constituting a political organisation within boundaries that coincided roughly with the frontiers of the Roman Empire.
By this development the church approximated to the state—as its rival in the first instance, it is true; but rivals may become friends. The decisive factor was that Christianity had assumed definite political form.
(2) The Christian life was to be “unspotted from the world.” Most Christians of primitive times interpreted this to mean that they should have as little as possible to do with “the world.” Nor was this a difficult matter, for the greater number of them were people in humble life whose conduct was subject to little outward control if only they performed the hard work required of them. Few of them were “in society”; and hence it was of no consequence what religion they professed or what manner of life they led.
By degrees, however, the situation changed, and the labours of missionaries drew men of all ranks into the church. As early as the reign of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, Christians were numerous in every class, even among officials and scholars and men of rank and wealth. The question of the attitude one should assume towards the world, which had hitherto been a difficult problem only in individual cases, now became pressing to the whole community. In addition to this the state police and the public (especially the mob) took far more heed of Christianity than before. Any man who made an open confession of Christianity exposed himself to great danger, nay, to death itself. What was the church to do? Should she say to the faithful: “You must confess your faith under all circumstances, and avoid all contact, even the most superficial, with idolatry”? The consequences were obvious: the soldier would be bound to leave his colours, for they bore a heathen emblem; the magistrate to resign his office, for he could not protest against the worship of the emperor; the teacher to cease to teach, for he could not avoid mythological subjects; the tiler to abandon his handicraft, since he could not work on the roof of a temple; the goldsmith, the joiner, the merchant—they all ran the risk of abetting idolatry. The austere members of the communities did actually insist that every Christian ought to renounce his calling if it rendered him liable to the risk of the remotest contact with idolatry. Tertullian explicitly makes this demand in his pamphlet, De Idololatria, nor did he suffer himself to be confounded by the retort: “We shall die of starvation.”—“Who is he that hath promised ye shall live?”
But the great majority of Christians, and first and foremost the bishops their leaders, decided otherwise. It was enough for a man to keep God in his heart and to confess him when open confession was required by magisterial authority—it was enough to refrain from actual idolatry; for the rest the Christian might abide in any honest calling, might come, in the pursuit of it, in contact with the externals of idolatry, and ought to conduct himself prudently and discreetly so as neither to defile himself nor call down persecution upon himself and others. The church everywhere adopted this attitude after the beginning of the third century; and the state thus became the richer by numbers of peaceable, law-abiding, and conscientious citizens, who, far from placing difficulties in its way, were pillars of order and peace in society. The fact that the Christians were remarkable for morality was acknowledged by Galen, the famous physician, as early as the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Thus, by abandoning her attitude of uncompromising repudiation of the “world,” the church developed into a force that made for public order.
(3) There was nothing in Christian doctrine, considered on its merits, that either was dangerous to the state or was bound to be judged dangerous by it, except its exclusiveness. The utterances of Christians concerning Christ their “king” might, indeed, have a revolutionary sound; but the fact that they were harmless was soon patent to all observers. It was not what Christianity taught but what it precluded—tolerance of other religions and the worship of the emperors—that roused well-grounded objections. For the rest, Christian doctrine showed a double face, so to speak, to the Greeks and Romans. Its teaching concerning God, the world, the creation, divine providence, immortality, and the freedom, dignity, and responsibility of man, was both sublime and akin to the loftiest intuitions of the honoured philosophers of old; but mixed up with it was much that sounded to them like myth or fable, or seemed actually repulsive. Such, above all, was the history of Christ (his birth of a virgin, miracles, crucifixion, and ascension). Ordinary Christians laid stress upon the latter element, and hence their religion appeared “outlandish,” absurd, and full of lies. After the time of Hadrian, however, there arose men who expounded and brought to light the philosophico-religious element in Christianity,—monotheism more particularly,—and endeavoured to remove the offence excited by the history and worship of Christ by conceiving of him as the corporeal manifestation of the Logos, the existence and operation of which was recognised by many of the Greeks. At the same time they endeavoured to force their opponents to accept the facts of his history by demonstrating them to be the fulfilment of prophecy; for that which has been prophesied is brought about by God himself, and human criticism must keep silent in face thereof.
During the course of the second century Christian doctrine did not abandon its peculiar character, but it assimilated more and more the ideas of Greek philosophy and so rendered itself more intelligible. At the beginning of the third century a great Greek philosopher testified of Origen, the most eminent teacher of the church, that concerning God and the world he thought like a Greek; the philosopher only deplored the intermixture of alien fables. When this same Origen is invited to lecture upon immortality before the queen-mother at Antioch, when another doctor of the church corresponds with an empress upon religious questions, and the emperor Alexander Severus listens with admiring attention to the words of Christ, we cannot but see how “doctrine” is becoming by degrees a connecting link between Hellenism and Christianity. Such a fact could not be devoid of consequences as regards the relations between state and church, for no state can permanently maintain a hostile attitude towards a spiritual movement which is held in high esteem by large bodies of its citizens.
(4) Nor must literature be ignored in this connection. Christianity was never altogether without literature, nay, rather, it possessed from the outset a literary work of the highest rank in the Old Testament, of which it had usurped possession. But its title to ownership was contested by the Jews and the heathen, and moreover early Christians produced the impression that they were unlettered folk. This made their claims appear singularly presumptuous and unjustifiable. But the beginning of the second century witnessed a change; the Christians, who at first would have nothing to do with the scribbling art—for why should one write if the end is at hand?—began to make use of this method.