INTRODUCTION

AMONG Continental theologians of the younger generation there are few, if any, that occupy a more distinguished place than Professor Wernle of the University of Basel, and his work on the Beginnings of the Christian Religion, which is now presented to the English-speaking public, is the most matured and exhaustive product of his scholarship. It may not be possible for all of us to see eye to eye with him in the vast and sometimes obscure field covered by his brilliant study; but it is impossible for any one to withhold admiration from the freshness, the vivacity, the vitality, the penetrating insight which Professor Wernle exhibits in his handling of the origin and primitive development of the Christian faith. The book is addressed to all who are prepared to accept the bolder results of New Testament criticism, and the central idea running through the whole of it is a very simple one. It is first of all to ascertain what the Gospel is as seen in the teaching and character of the Redeemer; and secondly, to measure all the later expositions of vithe Gospel, contained in the teachings of the New Testament writers, by the Gospel itself. In order to ascertain what the Gospel really is, Professor Wernle considers it necessary to liberate its eternal substance from the historic forms in which it is expressed. The Gospel arose under a certain definite set of historic circumstances, and had to act upon the world through the medium of historic conditions. These conditions and circumstances are of necessity of a temporary and transitory character: they are not the Gospel itself, but only its historic envelope, and Professor Wernle strips off this envelope in order to seize hold of the imperishable substance of Christ’s message to mankind. How far he has succeeded in separating the substance from the form of the Redeemer’s message and personality, and (considering the fragmentary nature of the sources) how far it is possible to do so on purely historical grounds, it is for the attentive reader to judge.

According to Professor Wernle, Jesus prepared the ground for a new religious community but did not organise it Himself, and the disciples of the Master who had denationalised the Jewish conception of the kingdom of God were unable to liberate themselves from Judaism or to produce much impression upon the Gentile world. Both of these tasks were the work of St Paul; and as this work was of transcendent importance to the future of the Christian faith, Professor Wernle devotes a considerable part of this viivolume to an examination of the character and theology of the great apostle. His treatment of St Paul’s theology is particularly striking and suggestive. It was a theology which derived its character from the situation in which the apostle was placed. He had to defend himself at once from Gentiles, Jews, and Judaizers, and his theology assumed the form of a powerful apologetic directed in turn against each one of these adversaries. The apologetic form in which Pauline thought is cast, sometimes affects the clearness and purity of the Gospel message, and the comparison which Professor Wernle institutes between the Gospel as understood by St Paul and the Gospel as taught by Jesus, is fresh and illuminating.

St Paul was a trained theologian, the writer of the Apocalypse was a layman, and this volume closes with an analysis and estimate of that remarkable work. It is the oldest and only document springing out of lay Christian enthusiasm, and Professor Wernle thinks that it represents the general lay opinion of the Church in primitive Christian times. At the bottom of this enthusiasm lay the belief that the world was rapidly coming to an end, and that the supreme duty of man was to seek salvation from the coming judgment by watchfulness and repentance. Men in such a condition of mind had no thought of setting up stable ecclesiastical forms and institutions. But these men had a new life in them—a life of viiiself-mastery, a life of love to God and to each other—such as the world had never seen before. And they were conscious that this new life of theirs proceeded neither from ecclesiastical forms nor institutions, but from the living spirit of the Redeemer. Such in brief is Professor Wernle’s conception of the beginnings of the faith and of its effects on the human mind in apostolic times. The entrance of this new faith into the world is the most momentous event in human history, and the manner in which it took place is presented to us in this volume with unusual life, freedom, sympathy, and power.