<div1 type=”Title Page”
title=”History of the Christian Church”>
HISTORY
of the
CHRISTIAN CHURCH*
by
PHILIP SCHAFF
<foreign lang="la">Christianus
sum</foreign>.
<foreign lang="la">Christiani
nihil a me alienum puto</foreign>
VOLUME I
APOSTOLIC CHRISTIAINITY
a.d. 1–100.
————
</div1><div2
type=”Preface” title=”Preface to the Revised Edition”>
PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION
As I appear before the
public with a new edition of my Church History, I feel more than ever the
difficulty and responsibility of a task which is well worthy to occupy the
whole time and strength of a long life, and which carries in it its own rich
reward. The true historian of Christianity is yet to come. But short as I have
fallen of my own ideal, I have done my best, and shall rejoice if my efforts
stimulate others to better and more enduring work.
History should be
written from the original sources of friend and foe, in the spirit of truth and
love, "sine ira et studio,"
"with malice towards none, and charity for all," in clear, fresh,
vigorous style, under the guidance of the twin parables of the mustard seed and
leaven, as a book of life for instruction, correction, encouragement, as the
best exposition and vindication of Christianity. The great and good Neander,
"the father of Church History"—first an Israelite without guile
hoping for the Messiah, then a Platonist longing for the realization of his
ideal of righteousness, last a Christian in head and heart—made such a history
his life-work, but before reaching the Reformation he was interrupted by
sickness, and said to his faithful sister: "Hannchen, I am weary; let us
go home; good night!" And thus
he fell gently asleep, like a child, to awake in the land where all problems of
history are solved.
When, after a long
interruption caused by a change of professional duties and literary labors, I
returned to the favorite studies of my youth, I felt the necessity, before
continuing the History to more recent times, of subjecting the first volume to
a thorough revision, in order to bring it up to the present state of
investigation. We live in a restless and stirring age of discovery, criticism,
and reconstruction. During the thirty years which have elapsed since the
publication of my separate "History of the Apostolic Church," there
has been an incessant activity in this field, not only in Germany, the great
workshop of critical research, but in all other Protestant countries. Almost
every inch of ground has been disputed and defended with a degree of learning,
acumen, and skill such as were never spent before on the solution of historical
problems.
In this process of
reconstruction the first volume has been more than doubled in size and grown
into two volumes. The first embraces Apostolic, the second post-Apostolic or
ante-Nicene Christianity. The first volume is larger than my separate
"History of the Apostolic Church," but differs from it in that it is
chiefly devoted to the theology and literature, the other to the mission work
and spiritual life of that period. I have studiously avoided repetition and
seldom looked into the older book. On two points I have changed my opinion—the
second Roman captivity of Paul (which I am disposed to admit in the interest of
the Pastoral Epistles), and the date of the Apocalypse (which I now assign,
with the majority of modern critics, to the year 68 or 69 instead of 95, as
before).1
I express my deep
obligation to my friend, Dr. Ezra Abbot, a scholar of rare learning and
microscopic accuracy, for his kind and valuable assistance in reading the proof
and suggesting improvements.
The second volume,
likewise thoroughly revised and partly rewritten, is in the hands of the
printer; the third requires a few changes. Two new volumes, one on the History
of Mediaeval Christianity, and one on the Reformation (to the Westphalian
Treaty and the Westminster Assembly, 1648), are in an advanced stage of
preparation.
May the work in this
remodelled shape find as kind and indulgent readers as when it first appeared.
My highest ambition in this sceptical age is to strengthen the immovable
historical foundations of Christianity and its victory over the world.
Philip Schaff
Union Theological
Seminary, New York,
October,1882
</div2><div2
type=”Preface” title=”From the Preface to the First Edition”>
FROM THE PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
———————————
Encouraged by the favorable
reception of my "History of the Apostolic Church," I now offer to the
public a History of the Primitive Church from the birth of Christ to the reign
of Constantine, as an independent and complete work in itself, and at the same
time as the first volume of a general history of Christianity, which I hope,
with the help of God, to bring down to the present age.
The church of the first
three centuries, or the ante-Nicene age, possesses a peculiar interest for
Christians of all denominations, and has often been separately treated, by
Eusebius, Mosheim, Milman, Kaye, Baur, Hagenbach, and other distinguished
historians. It is the daughter of Apostolic Christianity, which itself
constitutes the first and by far the most important chapter in its history, and
the common mother of Catholicism and Protestantism, though materially differing
from both. It presents a state of primitive simplicity and purity unsullied by
contact with the secular power, but with this also, the fundamental forms of
heresy and corruption, which reappear from time to time under new names and
aspects, but must serve, in the overruling providence of God, to promote the
cause of truth and righteousness. It is the heroic age of the church, and
unfolds before us the sublime spectacle of our holy religion in intellectual
and moral conflict with the combined superstition, policy, and wisdom of
ancient Judaism and Paganism; yet growing in persecution, conquering in death,
and amidst the severest trials giving birth to principles and institutions
which, in more matured form, still control the greater part of Christendom.
Without the least
disposition to detract from the merits of my numerous predecessors, to several
of whom I feel deeply indebted, I have reason to hope that this new attempt at
a historical reproduction of ancient Christianity will meet a want in our
theological literature and commend itself, both by its spirit and method, and
by presenting with the author’s own labors the results of the latest German and
English research, to the respectful attention of the American student. Having
no sectarian ends to serve, I have confined myself to the duty of a witness—to
tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; always remembering,
however, that history has a soul as well as a body, and that the ruling ideas
and general principles must be represented no less than the outward facts and
dates. A church history without the life of Christ glowing through its pages
could give us at best only the picture of a temple stately and imposing from
without, but vacant and dreary within, a mummy in praying posture perhaps and
covered with trophies, but withered and unclean: such a history is not worth
the trouble of writing or reading. Let the dead bury their dead; we prefer to
live among the living, and to record the immortal thoughts and deeds of Christ
in and through his people, rather than dwell upon the outer hulls, the trifling
accidents and temporary scaffolding of history, or give too much prominence to
Satan and his infernal tribe, whose works Christ came to destroy.
The account of the
apostolic period, which forms the divine-human basis of the whole structure of
history, or the ever-living fountain of the unbroken stream of the church, is
here necessarily short and not intended to supersede my larger work, although
it presents more than a mere summary of it, and views the subject in part under
new aspects. For the history of the second period, which constitutes the body
of this volume, large use has been made of the new sources of information
recently brought to light, such as the Syriac and Armenian Ignatius, and
especially the Philosophoumena of Hippolytus. The bold and searching criticism
of modern German historians as applied to the apostolic and post-apostolic
literature, though often arbitrary and untenable in its results, has
nevertheless done good service by removing old prejudices, placing many things
in a new light, and conducing to a comprehensive and organic view of the living
process and gradual growth of ancient Christianity in its distinctive
character, both in its unity with, and difference from, the preceding age of
the apostles and the succeeding systems of Catholicism and Protestantism.
And now I commit this
work to the great Head of the church with the prayer that, under his blessing,
it may aid in promoting a correct knowledge of his heavenly kingdom on earth,
and in setting forth its history as a book if life, a storehouse of wisdom and
piety, and surest test of his own promise to his people: "Lo, I am with
you alway, even unto the end of the world."
P. S.
Theological
Seminary, Mercersburg, Pennsylvania,
November, 8, 1858
</div2><div2
type=”Preface” title=”Preface to the Third Revision”>
PREFACE TO THIRD REVISION
———————————
The continued demand for my
Church History lays upon me the grateful duty of keeping it abreast of the
times. I have, therefore, submitted this and the other volumes (especially the
second) to another revision and brought the literature down to the latest date,
as the reader will see by glancing at pages 2, 35, 45, 51–53, 193, 411, 484,
569, 570, etc. The changes have been effected by omissions and condensations,
without enlarging the size. The second volume is now passing through the fifth
edition, and the other volumes will follow rapidly.
This is my last
revision. If any further improvements should be necessary during my lifetime, I
shall add them in a separate appendix.
I feel under great
obligation to the reading public which enables me to perfect my work. The
interest in Church History is steadily increasing in our theological schools
and among the rising generation of scholars, and promises good results for the
advancement of our common Christianity.
The Author
New York, January, 1890.
</div2><div2
type=”Table of Contents” title=”Contents”>
CONTENTS
<added>
<insertContents level=” “ />
</added>
<deleted>
GENERAL
INTRODUCTION
§ 1. Nature of
Church History.
§ 2. Branches of
Church History.
§ 3. Sources of
Church History.
§ 4. Periods of
Church History.
§ 5. Uses of Church
History.
§ 6. Duty of the
Historian.
§ 7. Literature of
Church History.
FIRST
PERIOD
APOSTLIC CHRISTIANITY
A.D. 1–100.
CHAPTER
I.
PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY.
§8. Central Position
of Christ in the History of the World.
§ 9. Judaism.
§ 10. The Law, and
the Prophecy.
§ 11. Heathenism.
§ 12. Grecian
Literature, and the Roman Empire.
§ 13. Judaism and
Heathenism in Contact.
CHAPTER
II.
JESUS CHRIST.
§ 14. Sources and
Literature.
§ 15. The Founder of
Christianity.
§ 16. Chronology of
the Life of Christ.
§ 17. The Land and
the People.
§ 18. Apocryphal
Tradition.
§ 19. The
Resurrection of Christ.
CHAPTER
III.
THE APOSTOLIC AGE.
§ 20. Sources and
Literature of the Apostolic Age.
§ 21. General
Character of the Apostolic Age.
§ 22. The Critical
Reconstruction of the History of the Apostolic Age.
§ 23. Chronology of
the Apostolic Age.
CHAPTER
IV.
ST. PETER AND THE CONVERSION OF THE
JEWS.
§ 24. The Miracle of
Pentecost and the Birthday of the Christian Church.
§ 25. The Church of
Jerusalem and the Labors of Peter.
§ 26. The Peter of
History and the Peter of Fiction.
§ 27. James the
Brother of the Lord.
§ 28. Preparation
for the Mission to the Gentiles.
CHAPTER
V.
ST. PAUL AND THE CONVERSION OF
THE GENTILES.
§ 29. Sources and
Literature on St. Paul and his Work.
§ 30. Paul before
his Conversion.
§ 31. The Conversion
of Paul.
§ 32. The Work of
Paul.
§ 33. Paul’s
Missionary Labors.
§ 34. The Synod of
Jerusalem, and the Compromise between Jewish and Gentile Christianity.
§ 35. The
Conservative Reaction, and the Liberal Victory—Peter and Paul at Antioch.
§ 36. Christianity
in Rome.
CHAPTER
VI.
THE GREAT TRIBULATION.
§ 37. The Roman
Conflagration and the Neronian Persecution.
§ 38. The Jewish War
and the Destruction of Jerusalem.
§ 39. Effects of the
Destruction of Jerusalem on the Christian Church.
CHAPTER
VII.
ST. JOHN, AND THE LAST STADIUM OF THE APOSTOLIC PERIOD – THE
CONSOLIDATION OF JEWISH AND GENTILE CHRISTIANITY.
§ 40. The Johannean
Literature.
§ 41. Life and
Character of John
§ 42. Apostolic
Labors of John.
§ 43. Traditions
Respecting John.
CHAPTER
VIII.
CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE APOSTOLIC
CHURCH.
§ 44. The Power of
Christianity.
§ 45. The Spiritual
Gifts.
§ 46. Christianity
in Individuals.
§ 47. Christianity
and the Family.
§ 48. Christianity
and Slavery.
§ 49. Christianity
and Society.
§ 50. Spiritual
Condition of the Congregations.—The Seven Churches in Asia.
CHAPTER
IX.
WORSHIP IN THE APOSTOLIC AGE.
§ 51. The Synagogue.
§ 52. Christian
Worship.
§ 53. The Several
Parts of Worship.
§ 54. Baptism.
§ 55. The Lord’s
Supper.
§ 56. Sacred Places.
§ 57. Sacred
Times—The Lord’s Day.
CHAPTER
X.
ORGANIZATION OF THE APOSTOLIC
CHURCH.
§ 58. Literature.
§ 59. The Christian
Ministry, and its Relation to the Christian Community.
§ 60. Apostles,
Prophets, Evangelists.
§ 61. Presbyters or
Bishops. The Angels of the Seven Churches. James of Jerusalem.
§ 62. Deacons and
Deaconesses.
§ 63. Church
Discipline.
§ 64. The Council at
Jerusalem.
§ 65. The Church and
the Kingdom of Christ.
CHAPTER
XI.
THEOLOGY OF THE APOSTOLIC
CHURCH.
§ 66. Literature.
§ 67. Unity of
Apostolic Teaching.
§ 68. Different
Types of Apostolic Teaching.
§ 69. The Jewish
Christian Theology—I. James and the Gospel of Law.
§ 70. II. Peter and
the Gospel of Hope.
§ 71. The Gentile
Christian Theology. Paul and the Gospel of Faith.
§ 72. John and the
Gospel of Love.
§ 73. Heretical
Perversions of the Apostolic Teaching.
CHAPTER
XII.
THE NEW TESTAMENT.
§ 74. Literature.
§ 75. Rise of the
Apostolic Literature.
§ 76. Character of
the New Testament.
§ 77. Literature on
the Gospels.
§ 78. The Four
Gospels.
§ 79. The
Synoptists.
§ 80. Matthew.
§ 81. Mark.
§ 82. Luke.
§ 83. John.
§ 84. Critical
Review of the Johannean Problem.
§ 85. The Acts of
the Apostles.
§ 86. The Epistles.
§ 87. The Catholic
Epistles.
§ 88. The Epistles
of Paul
§ 89. The Epistles
to the Thessalonians.
§ 90. The Epistles
to the Corinthians.
§ 91. The Epistles
to the Galatians.
§ 92. The Epistle to
the Romans.
§ 93. The Epistles
of the Captivity.
§ 94. The Epistle to
the Colossians.
§ 95. The Epistle to
the Ephesians.
§ 96. Colossians and
Ephesians Compared and Vindicated.
§ 97. The Epistle to
the Philippians.
§ 98. The Epistle to
Philemon.
§ 99. The Pastoral
Epistles.
§ 100. The Epistle
To The Hebrews.
§ 101. The
Apocalypse.
§ 102. Concluding Reflections.
Faith and Criticism.
Alphabetical Index
</deleted>
</div2><div2
type=”Addenda”>
ADDENDA
Since the third revision
of this volume in 1889, the following works deserving notice have appeared till
September, 1893. (P. S.)
Page 2. After "Nirschl" add:
E. Bernheim Lehrbuch der historischen Methode. Mit Nachweis der
wichtigsten Quellen und Hilfsmittel zum Studium der Geschichte.
Leipzig, 1889.
Edward
Bratke: Wegweiser zur Quellen- und
Literaturkunde der Kirchengeschichte. Gotha, 1890 (282 pp.).
Page 35, line 9:
H. Brueck (Mainz, 5th ed., 1890).
Page 45:
Of the Church History of Kurtz (who died at Marburg, 1890), an
11th revised edition appeared in 1891.
Wilhelm
Moeller (d. at Kiel, 1891): Lehrbuch der
Kirchengeschichte. Freiburg,
1891. 2 vols., down to the Reformation. Vol. III. to be added by Kawerau. Vol.
I. translated by Rutherford. London, 1892.
Karl
Mueller (Professor in Breslau): Kirchengeschichte. Freiburg, 1892. A second volume will complete
the work. An excellent manual from the school of Ritschl-Harnack.
Harnack’s large Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte was completed in 1890 in 3 vols. Of his Grundriss,
a 2d ed. appeared in 1893 (386 pp.); translated by Edwin K. Mitchell, of
Hartford, Conn.: Outlines of the History of Dogma. New York, 1893.
Friedrich
Loofs (Professor of Church History
in Halle, of the Ritschl-Harnack school): Leitfaden zum Studium der
Dogmengeschichte. Halle, 1889;
3d ed., 1893.
Page 51. After "Schaff "add:
5th revision, 1889–93, 7
vols. (including vol. v., which is in press). Page 51. After "Fisher"
add:
John
Fletcher Hurst (Bishop of the
Methodist Episcopal Church): Short History of the Christian Church. New
York, 1893.
Page 61. After "Kittel "add:
Franz
Delitzsch (d. 1890): Messianische
Weissagungen in geschichtlicher Folge. Leipzig, 1890. His last work. Translated by Sam. Ives Curtiss (of
Chicago), Edinb. and New York,
1892.
Page 97:
Samuel
J. Andrews: Life of our Lord.
"A new and wholly revised edition." New York, 1891 (651 pp.). With maps and illustrations.
Maintains the quadripaschal theory. Modest, reverent, accurate, devoted chiefly
to the chronological and topographical relations.
Page 183 add:
On the Apocryphal Traditions of Christ, comp. throughout
Alfred
Resch: Agrapha. Aussercanonische
Evangelienfragmente gesammelt und untersucht. With an appendix of Harnack on the Gospel Fragment of
Tajjum. Leipzig, 1889 (520 pp.). By far the most complete and critical work on
the extra-canonical sayings of our Lord, of which he collects and examines 63
(see p. 80), including many doubtful ones, e.g., the much-discussed passage of
the Didache (I. 6) on the sweating of aloes.
Page 247:
Abbé Constant Fouard: Saint Peter and the
First Years of Christianity. Translated from the second French edition with
the author’s sanction, by George F. X. Griffith. With an Introduction by
Cardinal Gibbons. New York and London, 1892 (pp. xxvi, 422). The most learned
work in favor of the traditional Roman theory of a twenty-five years’
pontificate of Peter in Rome from 42 to 67.
The apocryphal literature of Peter has received an important addition by the discovery
of fragments of the Greek Gospel and Apocalypse of Peter in a tomb at Akhmim in
Egypt. See Harnack’s ed. of the Greek text with a German translation and
commentary, Berlin, 1892 (revised, 1893); Zahn’s edition and discussion,
Leipzig, 1893; and O. von Gebhardt’s facsimile ed., Leipzig, 1893; also the
English translation by J. Rendel Harris, London, 1893.
Page 284. Add to lit. on the life of Paul:
W. H. Ramsey (Professor of Humanity in the
University of Aberdeen): The Church in the Roman Empire before a.d. 170. With Maps and Illustrations.
London and New York, 1893 (494 pp.). An important work, for which the author
received a gold medal from Pope Leo XIII. The first part (pp. 3–168) treats of
the missionary journeys of Paul in Asia Minor, on the ground of careful
topographical exploration and with a full knowledge of Roman history at that
time. He comes to the conclusion that nearly all the books of the New Testament
can no more be forgeries of the second century than the works of Horace and
Virgil can be forgeries of the time of Nero. He assumes all
"travel-document," which was written down under the immediate
influence of Paul, and underlies the account in The Acts of the Apostles (Acts.
13–21), which he calls "an authority of the highest character for an
historian of Asia Minor" (p. 168). He affirms the genuineness of the
Pastoral Epistles, which suit the close of the Neronian period (246 sqq.), and
combats Holtzmann. He puts 2 Peter to the age of "The Shepherd of
Hermas" before 130 (p. 432). As to the First Epistle of Peter, he assumes
that it was written about 80, soon after Vespasian’s resumption of the Neronian
policy (279 sqq.). If this date is correct, it would follow either that Peter
cannot have been the author, or that he must have long outlived the Neronian
persecution. The tradition that he died a martyr in Rome is early and
universal, but the exact date of his death is uncertain.
Page 285 insert:
Of Weizsaecker’s Das Apostolische
Zeitalter, which is chiefly
devoted to Paul, a second edition has appeared in 1892, slightly revised and
provided with an alphabetical index (770 pp.). It is the best critical history
of the Apostolic age from the school of Dr. Baur, whom Dr. Weizsaecker
succeeded as professor of Church history in Tuebingen, but gives no references
to literature and other opinions.
Charles
Carroll Everett: The Gospel of
Paul. New York, 1893.
Page 360:
Rodolfo
Lanciani: Pagan and Christian
Rome. New York, 1893 (pp. x, 374). A very important work which shows from
recent explorations that Christianity entered more deeply into Roman Society in
the first century than is usually supposed.
Page 401 add:
Henry
William Watkins: Modern Criticism
in its relation to the Fourth Gospel; being the Bampton Lectures for 1890.
London, 1890. Only the external evidence, but with a history of opinions since
Breitschneider’s Probabilia.
Paton
J. Gloag: Introduction to the
Johannine Writings. London, 1891 (pp. 440). Discusses the critical
questions connected with the Gospel, the Epistles, and the Apocalypse of John
from a liberal conservative standpoint.
E. Schuerer: On the Genuineness of the Fourth Gospel. In
the "Contemporary Review" for September, 1891.
Page 484:
E. Loening: Die Gemeindeverfassung des Urchristenthums. Halle, 1889—CH. De
Smedt: L’organisation des églises chrétiennes jusqu’au milieu du 3e siècle. 1889.
Page 569. Add to
literature:
Gregory: Prolegomena to Tischendorf, Pt. II., 1890. (Pt.
III. will complete this work.)
Schaff: Companion to the Greek Testament, 4th ed.
revised, 1892.
Salmon: Introduction to the New Testament, 5th ed.,
1890.,
Holtzmann: Introduction to the New Testament, 3d ed.,
1892.
F. Godet: Introduction
au Nouveau Testament. Neuchatel, 1893. The first volume contains the
Introduction to the Pauline Epistles; the second and third will contain the
Introduction to the Gospels, the Catholic Epp. and the Revelation. To be
translated.
Page 576:
Robinson’s Harmony,
revised edition, by M B. Riddle
(Professor in Allegheny Theological Seminary), New York, 1885.
Page 724:
Friedrich
Spitta: Die Apostelgeschichte, ihre
Quellen und ihr historischer Wert. Halle, 1891 (pp. 380). It is briefly criticised by Ramsey.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
</div2><div3 title=”Literature”>
Literature
C. Sagittarius: Introductio in historiam
ecclesiasticam.
Jen. 1694.
F. WALCH: Grundsätze
der zur K. Gesch. nöthigen Vorbereitungslehren u. Bücherkenntnisse. 3d ed.
Giessen, 1793.
Flügge: Einleitung
in das Studium u. die Liter. der K. G.
Gött. 1801.
John G. Dowling: An
Introduction to the Critical Study of Ecclesiastical History, attempted in an
account of the progress, and a short notice of the sources of the history of
the Church. London, 1838.
Möhler (R. C.): Einleitung
in die K. G. 1839 ("Verm.
Schriften," ed. Döllinger, II. 261 sqq.).
Kliefoth: Einleitung
in die Dogmengeschichte. Parchim & Ludwigslust, 1839.
Philip Schaff: What
is Church History? A Vindication
of the Idea of Historical Development. Philad. 1846.
H B. Smith: Nature
and Worth of the Science of Church History. Andover, 1851.
E. P. Humphrey: lnaugural
Address, delivered at the Danville Theol. Seminary. Cincinnati, 1854.
R. Turnbull: Christ
in History; or, the Central Power among Men. Bost. 1854, 2d ed. 1860.
W. G. T. Shedd: Lectures
on the Philosophy of History. Andover, Mass., 1856.
R. D. Hitchcock: The
True Idea and Uses of Church History. N. York, 1856.
C. Bunsen: Gott
in der Geschichte oder der Fortschritt des Glaubens an eine sittliche
Weltordnung. Bd. I. Leipz. 1857. (Erstes Buch. Allg. Einleit. p. 1–134.) Engl. Transl.: God in History. By S. Winkworth.
Lond. 1868. 3 vols.
A. P. Stanley: Three
Introductory Lectures on the Study of Eccles. History Lond. 1857. (Also incorporated in his History of the Eastern
Church 1861.)
Goldwin Smith: Lectures
on the Study of History, delivered in Oxford, 1859–’61. Oxf. and Lond.
(republished in N. York) 1866.
J. Gust. Droysen: Grundriss
der Historik. Leipz. 1868; new ed. 1882.
C. de Smedt (R. C.): Introductio generalis ad
historiam ecclesiasticam critice tractandam. Gandavi (Ghent), 1876 (533 pp.).
E. A. Freeman: The
Methods of Historical Study. Lond 1886.
O. Lorenz: Geschichtswissenschaft.
Berlin, 1886.
Jos. Nirschl (R. C.): Propädeutik
der Kirchengeschichte. Mainz, 1888 (352 pp.).
On the philosophy of
history in general, see the works of Herder (Ideen zur Philosophie der
Gesch. der Menschheit), Fred.
Schlegel, Hegel (1840, transl. by Sibree, 1870), Hermann (1870),
Rocholl (1878),
Flint (The
Philosophy of History in Europe. Edinb., 1874, etc.), Lotze (Mikrokosmus,
bk. viith; 4th ed. 1884; Eng. transl. by Elizabeth Hamilton and E. E. C. Jones,
1885, 3d ed. 1888).
A philosophy of church history is a desideratum. Herder and Lotze come
nearest to it
A fuller
introduction, see in Schaff: History of the
Apostolic Church; with a General Introduction to Ch. H. (N. York, 1853), pp.
1–134.
</div3><div3
type=”Section” n=”1” title=”Nature of Church History”>
§ 1. Nature of Church History.
History has two sides, a divine and a human. On
the part of God, it is his revelation in the order of time (as the creation is
his revelation in the order of space), and the successive unfolding of a plan
of infinite wisdom, justice, and mercy, looking to his glory and the eternal
happiness of mankind. On the part of man, history is the biography of the human
race, and the gradual development, both normal and abnormal, of all its
physical, intellectual, and moral forces to the final consummation at the
general judgment, with its eternal rewards and punishments. The idea of
universal history presupposes the Christian idea of the unity of God, and the
unity and common destiny of men, and was unknown to ancient Greece and Rome. A
view of history which overlooks or undervalues the divine factor starts from
deism and consistently runs into atheism; while the opposite view, which overlooks
the free agency of man and his moral responsibility and guilt, is essentially
fatalistic and pantheistic.
From the human agency we
may distinguish the Satanic, which enters as a third power into the history of
the race. In the temptation of Adam in Paradise, the temptation of Christ in
the wilderness, and at every great epoch, Satan appears as the antagonist of
God, endeavoring to defeat the plan of redemption and the progress of Christ’s
kingdom, and using weak and wicked men for his schemes, but is always defeated
in the end by the superior wisdom of God.
The central current and
ultimate aim of universal history is the Kingdom
of God established by Jesus Christ. This is the grandest and most
comprehensive institution in the world, as vast as humanity and as enduring as
eternity. All other institutions are made subservient to it, and in its
interest the whole world is governed. It is no after-thought of God, no
subsequent emendation of the plan of creation, but it is the eternal
forethought, the controlling idea, the beginning, the middle, and the end of
all his ways and works. The first Adam is a type of the second Adam; creation
looks to redemption as the solution of its problems. Secular history, far from
controlling sacred history, is controlled by it, must directly or indirectly
subserve its ends, and can only be fully understood in the central light of
Christian truth and the plan of salvation. The Father, who directs the history
of the world, "draws to the Son," who rules the history of the church,
and the Son leads back to the Father, that "God may be all in all."
"All things," says St. Paul, "were created through Christ and
unto Christ: and He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
And He is the head of the body, the Church: who is the beginning, the firstborn
from the dead, that in all things He may have the pre-eminence." <scripRef
passage = "Col. 1:16-18">Col. 1:16–18</scripRef>. "The Gospel," says John von Müller, summing
up the final result of his lifelong studies in history, "is the fulfilment
of all hopes, the perfection of all philosophy, the interpreter of all
revolutions, the key of all seeming contradictions of the physical and moral
worlds; it is life—it is immortality."
The history of the
church is the rise and progress of the kingdom of heaven upon earth, for the
glory of God and the salvation of the world. It begins with the creation of
Adam, and with that promise of the serpent-bruiser, which relieved the loss of
the paradise of innocence by the hope of future redemption from the curse of
sin. It comes down through the preparatory revelations under the patriarchs,
Moses, and the prophets, to the immediate forerunner of the Saviour, who
pointed his followers to the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
But this part of its course was only introduction. Its proper starting-point is
the incarnation of the Eternal Word, who dwelt among us and revealed his glory,
the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth; and
next to this, the miracle of the first Pentecost, when the Church took her
place as a Christian institution, filled with the Spirit of the glorified
Redeemer and entrusted with the conversion of all nations. Jesus Christ, the
God-Man and Saviour of the world, is the author of the new creation, the soul
and the head of the church, which is his body and his bride. In his person and
work lies all the fulness of the Godhead and of renewed humanity, the whole
plan of redemption, and the key of all history from the creation of man in the
image of God to the resurrection of the body unto everlasting life.
This is the objective
conception of church history.
In the subjective sense
of the word, considered as theological science and art, church history is the
faithful and life-like description of the origin and progress of this heavenly
kingdom. It aims to reproduce in thought and to embody in language its outward
and inward development down to the present time. It is a continuous commentary
on the Lord’s twin parables of the mustard-seed and of the leaven. It shows at
once how Christianity spreads over the world, and how it penetrates,
transforms, and sanctifies the individual and all the departments and
institutions of social life. It thus embraces not only the external fortunes of
Christendom, but more especially her inward experience, her religious life, her
mental and moral activity, her conflicts with the ungodly world, her sorrows
and sufferings, her joys and her triumphs over sin and error. It records the
deeds of those heroes of faith "who subdued kingdoms, wrought
righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the months of lions, quenched the
violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made
strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of aliens."
From Jesus Christ, since
his manifestation in the flesh, an unbroken stream of divine light and life has
been and is still flowing, and will continue to flow, in ever-growing volume
through the waste of our fallen race; and all that is truly great and good and
holy in the annals of church history is due, ultimately, to the impulse of his
spirit. He is the fly-wheel in the world’s progress. But he works upon the
world through sinful and fallible men, who, while as self-conscious and free
agents they are accountable for all their actions, must still, willing or
unwilling, serve the great purpose of God. As Christ, in the days of his flesh,
was bated, mocked, and crucified, his church likewise is assailed and
persecuted by the powers of darkness. The history of Christianity includes
therefore a history of Antichrist. With an unending succession of works of
saving power and manifestations of divine truth and holiness, it uncovers also
a fearful mass of corruption and error. The church militant must, from its very
nature, be at perpetual warfare with the world, the flesh, and the devil, both
without and within. For as Judas sat among the apostles, so "the man of
sin" sits in the temple of God; and as even a Peter denied the Lord,
though he afterwards wept bitterly and regained his holy office, so do many
disciples in all ages deny him in word and in deed.
But on the other hand,
church history shows that God is ever stronger than Satan, and that his kingdom
of light puts the kingdom of darkness to shame. The Lion of the tribe of Judah
has bruised the head of the serpent. With the crucifixion of Christ his
resurrection also is repeated ever anew in the history of his church on earth;
and there has never yet been a day without a witness of his presence and power
ordering all things according to his holy will. For he has received all power
in heaven and in earth for the good of his people, and from his heavenly throne
he rules even his foes. The infallible word of promise, confirmed by
experience, assures us that all corruptions, heresies, and schisms must, under
the guidance of divine wisdom and love, subserve the cause of truth, holiness,
and peace; till, at the last judgment, Christ shall make his enemies his
footstool, and rule undisputed with the sceptre of righteousness and peace, and
his church shall realize her idea and destiny as "the fullness of him that
filleth all in all."
Then will history
itself, in its present form, as a struggling and changeful development, give
place to perfection, and the stream of time come to rest in the ocean of
eternity, but this rest will be the highest form of life and activity in God
and for God.
</div3><div3 type =
"Section" n=”2” title=”Branches of Church History”>
§ 2. Branches of Church History.
The kingdom of Christ, in its
principle and aim, is as comprehensive as humanity. It is truly catholic or
universal, designed and adapted for all nations and ages, for all the powers of
the soul, and all classes of society. It breathes into the mind, the heart, and
the will a higher, supernatural life, and consecrates the family, the state,
science, literature, art, and commerce to holy ends, till finally God becomes
all in all. Even the body, and the whole visible creation, which groans for
redemption from its bondage to vanity and for the glorious liberty of the
children of God, shall share in this universal transformation; for we look for
the resurrection of the body, and for the new earth, wherein dwelleth
righteousness. But we must not identify the kingdom of God with the visible
church or churches, which are only its temporary organs and agencies, more or
less inadequate, while the kingdom itself is more comprehensive, and will last
for ever.
Accordingly, church
history has various departments, corresponding to the different branches of
secular history and of natural life. The principal divisions are:
I. The history of
missions, or of the spread of Christianity among unconverted nations, whether
barbarous or civilized. This work must continue, till "the fullness of the
Gentiles shall come in," and "Israel shall be saved." The law of
the missionary progress is expressed in the two parables of the grain of
mustard-seed which grows into a tree, and of the leaven which gradually
pervades the whole lump. The first parable illustrates the outward expansion,
the second the all-penetrating and transforming power of Christianity. It is
difficult to convert a nation; it is more difficult to train it to the high
standard of the gospel; it is most difficult to revive and reform a dead or apostate
church.
The foreign mission work
has achieved three great conquests: first, the conversion of the elect remnant
of the Jews, and of civilized Greeks and Romans, in the first three centuries;
then the conversion of the barbarians of Northern and Western Europe, in the
middle ages; and last, the combined efforts of various churches and societies
for the conversion of the savage races in America, Africa, and Australia, and
the semi-civilized nations of Eastern Asia, in our own time. The whole
non-Christian world is now open to missionary labor, except the Mohammedan,
which will likewise become accessible at no distant day.
The domestic or home
mission work embraces the revival of Christian life in corrupt or neglected
portions of the church in old countries, the supply of emigrants in new
countries with the means of grace, and the labors, among the semi-heathenism
populations of large cities. Here we may mention the planting of a purer
Christianity among the petrified sects in Bible Lands, the labors of the Gustavus
Adolphus Society, and the Inner mission of Germany, the American Home
Missionary Societies for the western states and territories, the City Mission
Societies in London, New York, and other fast-growing cities.
II. The history of Persecution by hostile powers; as by
Judaism and Heathenism in the first three centuries, and by Mohammedanism in
the middle age. This apparent repression of the church proves a purifying
process, brings out the moral heroism of martyrdom, and thus works in the end
for the spread and establishment of Christianity. "The blood of martyrs is
the seed of the church."2
There are cases, however, where systematic and persistent persecution
has crushed out the church or reduced it to a mere shadow, as in Palestine,
Egypt, and North Africa, under the despotism of the Moslems.
Persecution, like
missions, is both foreign and domestic. Besides being assailed from without by
the followers of false religions, the church suffers also from intestine wars
and violence. Witness the religious wars in France, Holland, and England, the
Thirty Years’ War in Germany, all of which grew out of the Protestant Reformation
and the Papal Reaction; the crusade against the Albigenses and Waldenses, the
horrors of the Spanish Inquisition, the massacre of the Huguenots, the
dragonnades of Louis XIV., the crushing out of the Reformation in Bohemia,
Belgium, and Southern Europe; but also, on the Protestant side, the persecution
of Anabaptists, the burning of Servetus in Geneva the penal laws of the reign
of Elizabeth against Catholic and Puritan Dissenters, the hanging of witches
and Quakers in New England. More Christian blood has been shed by Christians
than by heathens and Mohammedans.
The persecutions of
Christians by Christians form the satanic chapters, the fiendish midnight
scenes, in the history of the church. But they show also the gradual progress
of the truly Christian spirit of religious toleration and freedom. Persecution
exhausted ends in toleration, and toleration is a step to freedom. The blood of
patriots is the price of civil, the blood of martyrs the price of religious
liberty. The conquest is dear, the progress slow and often interrupted, but
steady and irresistible. The principle of intolerance is now almost universally
disowned in the Christian world, except by ultramontane Romanism (which
indirectly reasserts it in the Papal Syllabus of 1864); but a ruling church,
allied to the state, under the influence of selfish human nature, and, relying
on the arm of flesh rather than the power of truth, is always tempted to impose
or retain unjust restrictions on dissenting sects, however innocent and useful
they may have proved to be.
In the United States all
Christian denominations and sects are placed on a basis of equality before the
law, and alike protected by the government in their property and right of
public worship, yet self-supporting and self-governing; and, in turn, they
strengthen the moral foundations of society by training loyal and virtuous
citizens. Freedom of religion must be recognized as one of the inalienable
rights of man, which lies in the sacred domain of conscience, beyond the
restraint and control of politics, and which the government is bound to protect
as much as any other fundamental right. Freedom is liable to abuse, and abuse
may be punished. But Christianity is itself the parent of true freedom from the
bondage of sin and error, and is the best protector and regulator of freedom.
III. The history of Church Government and Discipline. The
church is not only an invisible communion of saints, but at the same time a
visible body, needing organs, laws, and forms, to regulate its activity. Into
this department of history fall the various forms of church polity: the
apostolic, the primitive episcopal, the patriarchal, the papal, the
consistorial, the presbyterial, the congregational, etc.; and the history of
the law and discipline of the church, and her relation to the state, under all
these forms.
IV. The history of Worship, or divine service, by which the
church celebrates, revives, and strengthens her fellowship with her divine
head. This falls into such subdivisions as the history of preaching, of
catechisms, of liturgy, of rites and ceremonies, and of religious art,
particularly sacred poetry and music.
The history of church
government and the history of worship are often put together under the title of
Ecclesiastical Antiquities or Archaeology, and commonly confined to the
patristic age, whence most of the, Catholic institutions and usages of the
church date their origin. But they may as well be extended to the formative
period of Protestantism.
V. The history of Christian Life, or practical morality
and religion: the exhibition of the distinguishing virtues and vices of
different ages, of the development of Christian philanthropy, the regeneration
of domestic life, the gradual abatement and abolition of slavery and other
social evils, the mitigation and diminution of the horrors of war, the reform
of civil law and of government, the spread of civil and religious liberty, and
the whole progress of civilization, under the influence of Christianity.
VI. The history of Theology, or of Christian learning and
literature. Each branch of theology—exegetical, doctrinal, ethical, historical,
and practical—has a history of its own.
The history of doctrines
or dogmas is here the most important, and is therefore frequently treated by
itself. Its object is to show how the mind of the, church has gradually
apprehended and unfolded the divine truths of revelation, how the teachings of
scripture have been formulated and shaped into dogmas, and grown into creeds
and confessions of faith, or systems of doctrine stamped with public authority.
This growth of the church in the knowledge of the infallible word of God is a
constant struggle against error, misbelief, and unbelief; and the history of
heresies is an essential part of the history of doctrines.
Every important dogma
now professed by the Christian church is the result of a severe conflict with
error. The doctrine of the holy Trinity, for instance, was believed from the
beginning, but it required, in addition to the preparatory labors of the
ante-Nicene age, fifty years of controversy, in which the strongest intellects
were absorbed, until it was brought to the clear expression of the
Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. The Christological conflict was equally long
and intense, until it was brought to a settlement by the council of Chalcedon.
The Reformation of the sixteenth century was a continual warfare with popery.
The doctrinal symbols of the various churches, from the Apostles’ Creed down to
the confessions of Dort and Westminster, and more recent standards, embody the
results of the theological battles of the militant church.
The various departments
of church history have not a merely external and mechanical, but an organic
relation to each other, and form one living whole, and this relation the
historian must show. Each period also is entitled to a peculiar arrangement,
according to its character. The number, order, and extent of the different
divisions must be determined by their actual importance at a given time.
</div3><div3 type =
"Section" n=”3” title=”Sources of Church History”>
§ 3. Sources of Church History.
The sources of church
history, the data on which we rely for our knowledge, are partly divine, partly
human. For the history of the kingdom of God from the creation to the close of
the apostolic age, we have the inspired writings of the Old and New Testaments.
But after the death of the apostles we have only human authorities, which of
course cannot claim to be infallible. These human sources are partly written,
partly unwritten.
I. The written sources
include:
(a) Official documents
of ecclesiastical and civil authorities: acts of councils and synods,
confessions of faith, liturgies, church laws, and the official letters of
popes, patriarchs, bishops, and representative bodies.
(b) Private writings of
personal actors in the history: the works of the church fathers, heretics, and
heathen authors, for the first six centuries; of the missionaries, scholastic
and mystic divines, for the middle age; and of the reformers and their
opponents, for the sixteenth century. These documents are the richest mines for
the historian. They give history in its birth and actual movement. But they
must be carefully sifted and weighed; especially the controversial writings,
where fact is generally more or less adulterated with party spirit, heretical
and orthodox.
(c) Accounts of
chroniclers and historians, whether friends or enemies, who were eye-witnesses
of what they relate. The value of these depends, of course, on the capacity and
credibility of the authors, to be determined by careful criticism. Subsequent
historians can be counted among the direct or immediate sources only so far as
they have drawn from reliable and contemporary documents, which have either
been wholly or partially lost, like many of Eusebius authorities for the period
before Constantine, or are inaccessible to historians generally, as are the
papal regesta and other documents of the Vatican library.
(d) Inscriptions,
especially those on tombs and catacombs, revealing the faith and hope of
Christians in times of persecution. Among the ruins of Egypt and Babylonia
whole libraries have been disentombed and deciphered, containing mythological
and religious records, royal proclamations, historical, astronomical, and
poetical compositions, revealing an extinct civilization and shedding light on
some parts of Old Testament history.
II. The Unwritten sources are far less numerous:
church edifices, works of sculpture and painting, and other monuments,
religious customs and ceremonies, very important for the history of worship and
ecclesiastical art, and significant of the spirit of their age.3
The works of art are
symbolical embodiments of the various types of Christianity. The plain symbols
and crude sculptures of the catacombs correspond to the period of persecution;
the basilicas to the Nicene age; the Byzantine churches to the genius of the
Byzantine state-churchism; the Gothic cathedrals to the Romano-Germanic
catholicism of the middle ages; the renaissance style to the revival of
letters.
To come down to more recent times, the
spirit of Romanism can be best appreciated amidst the dead and living monuments
of Rome, Italy, and Spain. Lutheranism must be studied in Wittenberg, Northern
Germany, and Scandinavia; Calvinism in Geneva, France, Holland, and Scotland;
Anglicanism at Oxford, Cambridge, and London; Presbyterianism in Scotland and
the United States; Congregationalism in England and New England. For in the
mother countries of these denominations we generally find not only the largest
printed and manuscript sources, but also the architectural, sculptural,
sepulchral, and other monumental remains, the natural associations, oral
traditions, and living representatives of the past, who, however they may have
departed from the faith of their ancestors, still exhibit their national
genius, social condition, habits, and customs—often in a far more instructive
manner than ponderous printed volumes.
</div3><div3 type =
"Section" n=”4” title=”Periods of Church History”>
§ 4. Periods of Church History.
The purely chronological or
annalistic method, though pursued by the learned Baronius and his continuators,
is now generally abandoned. It breaks the natural flow of events, separates
things which belong together, and degrades history to a mere chronicle.
The centurial plan,
which prevailed from Flacius to Mosheim, is an improvement. It allows a much
better view of the progress and connection of things. But it still imposes on
the history a forced and mechanical arrangement; for the salient points or
epochs very seldom coincide with the limits of our centuries. The rise of
Constantine, for example, together with the union of church and state, dates
from the year 311; that of the absolute papacy, in Hildebrand, from 1049; the
Reformation from 1517; the peace of Westphalia took place in 1648; the landing
of the Pilgrim Fathers of New England in 1620; the American emancipation in
1776; the French revolution in 1789; the revival of religious life in Germany
began in 1817.
The true division must
grow out of the actual course of the history itself, and present the different
phases of its development or stages of its life. These we call periods or ages.
The beginning of a new period is called an epoch, or a stopping and starting
point.
In regard to the number
and length of periods there is, indeed, no unanimity; the less, on account of
the various denominational differences establishing different points of view,
especially since the sixteenth century. The Reformation, for instance, has less
importance for the Roman church than for the Protestant, and almost none for
the Greek; and while the edict of Nantes forms a resting-place in the history
of French Protestantism, and the treaty of Westphalia in that of German,
neither of these events had as much to do with English Protestantism as the
accession of Elizabeth, the rise of Cromwell, the restoration of the Stuarts,
and the revolution of 1688.
But, in spite of all
confusion and difficulty in regard to details, it is generally agreed to divide
the history of Christianity into three principal parts—ancient, mediaeval, and
modern; though there is not a like agreement as to the dividing epochs, or
points of departure and points of termination.
I. The history of Ancient Christianity, from the birth of
Christ to Gregory the Great. a.d.
1–590.
This is the age of the
Graeco-Latin church, or of the Christian Fathers. Its field is the countries
around the Mediterranean—Western Asia, Northern Africa, and Southern
Europe—just the theatre of the old Roman empire and of classic heathendom. This
age lays the foundation, in doctrine, government, and worship, for all the
subsequent history. It is the common progenitor of all the various confessions.
The Life of Christ and
the Apostolic Church are by far the most important sections, and require
separate treatment. They form the divine-human groundwork of the church, and
inspire, regulate, and correct all subsequent periods.
Then, at the beginning
of the fourth century, the accession of Constantine, the first Christian
emperor, marks a decisive turn; Christianity rising from a persecuted sect to
the prevailing religion of the Graeco-Roman empire. In the history of
doctrines, the first oecumenical council of Nicaea, falling in the midst of
Constantine’s reign, a.d. 325, has
the prominence of an epoch.
Here, then, are three
periods within the first or patristic era, which we may severally designate as
the period of the Apostles, the period of the Martyrs, and the period of the
Christian Emperors and Patriarchs.
II. Medieval Christianity, from Gregory I to
the Reformation. a.d. 590–1517.
The middle age is
variously reckoned—from Constantine, 306 or 311; from the fall of the West
Roman empire, 476; from Gregory the Great, 590; from Charlemagne, 800. But it
is very generally regarded as closing at the beginning of the sixteenth
century, and more precisely, at the outbreak of the Reformation in 1517.
Gregory the Great seems to us to form the most proper ecclesiastical point of
division. With him, the author of the Anglo-Saxon mission, the last of the
church fathers, and the first of the proper popes, begins in earnest, and with
decisive success, the conversion of the barbarian tribes, and, at the same
time, the development of the absolute papacy, and the alienation of the eastern
and western churches.
This suggests the
distinctive character of the middle age: the transition of the church from Asia
and Africa to Middle and Western Europe, from the Graeco-Roman nationality to
that of the Germanic, Celtic, and Slavonic races, and from the culture of the
ancient classic world to the modern civilization. The great work of the church
then was the conversion and education of the heathen barbarians, who conquered
and demolished the Roman empire, indeed, but were themselves conquered and
transformed by its Christianity. This work was performed mainly by the Latin
church, under a firm hierarchical constitution, culminating in the bishop of
Rome. The Greek church though she made some conquests among the Slavic tribes
of Eastern Europe, particularly in the Russian empire, since grown so important,
was in turn sorely pressed and reduced by Mohammedanism in Asia and Africa, the
very seat of primitive Christianity, and at last in Constantinople itself; and
in doctrine, worship, and organization, she stopped at the position of the
oecumenical councils and the patriarchal constitution of the fifth century.
In the middle age the
development of the hierarchy occupies the foreground, so that it may be called
the church of the Popes, as distinct from the ancient church of the Fathers,
and the modern church of the Reformers.
In the growth and decay
of the Roman hierarchy three popes stand out as representatives of as many
epochs: Gregory I., or the Great (590), marks the rise of absolute papacy;
Gregory VII., or Hildebrand (1049), its summit; and Boniface VIII. (1294), its
decline. We thus have again three periods in mediaeval church history. We may
briefly distinguish them as the Missionary, the Papal, and the pre- or
ante-Reformatory4
ages of Catholicism.
III. Modern Christianity, from the
Reformation of the sixteenth century to the present time. a.d. 1517–1880.
Modern history moves
chiefly among the nations of Europe, and from the seventeenth century finds a
vast new theatre in North America. Western Christendom now splits into two
hostile parts—one remaining on the old path, the other striking out a new one;
while the eastern church withdraws still further from the stage of history, and
presents a scene of almost undisturbed stagnation, except in modern Russia and
Greece. Modern church history is the age of Protestantism in conflict with
Romanism, of religious liberty and independence in conflict with the principle
of authority and tutelage, of individual and personal Christianity against an
objective and traditional church system.
Here again three
different periods appear, which may be denoted briefly by the terms,
Reformation, Revolution, and Revival.
The sixteenth century,
next to the apostolic age the most fruitful and interesting period of church
history, is the century of the evangelical renovation of the Church, and the
papal counter-reform. It is the cradle of all Protestant denominations and sects,
and of modern Romanism.
The seventeenth century
is the period of scholastic orthodoxy, polemic confessionalism, and comparative
stagnation. The reformatory motion ceases on the continent, but goes on in the
mighty Puritanic struggle in England, and extends even into the primitive
forests of the American colonies. The seventeenth century is the most fruitful
in the church history of England, and gave rise to the various nonconformist or
dissenting denominations which were transplanted to North America, and have
out-grown some of the older historic churches. Then comes, in the eighteenth
century, the Pietistic and Methodistic revival of practical religion in
opposition to dead orthodoxy and stiff formalism. In the Roman church Jesuitism
prevails but opposed by the half-evangelical Jansenism, and the quasiliberal
Gallicanism.
In the second half of
the eighteenth century begins the vast overturning of traditional ideas and
institutions, leading to revolution in state, and infidelity in church,
especially in Roman Catholic France and Protestant Germany. Deism in England,
atheism in France, rationalism in Germany, represent the various degrees of the
great modern apostasy from the orthodox creeds.
The nineteenth century
presents, in part, the further development of these negative and destructive
tendencies, but with it also the revival of Christian faith and church life,
and the beginnings of a new creation by the everlasting gospel. The revival may
be dated from the third centenary of the Reformation, in 1817.
In the same period North
America, English and Protestant in its prevailing character, but presenting an
asylum for all the nations, churches, and sects of the old world, with a
peaceful separation of the temporal and the spiritual power, comes upon the stage
like a young giant full of vigor and promise.
Thus we have, in all,
nine periods of church history, as follows:
First
Period:
The Life of Christ, and the Apostolic church.
From the Incarnation to the death of St. John. a.d.
1–100.
Second
Period:
Christianity under persecution in the Roman empire.
From the death of St. John to Constantine, the first Christian emperor. a.d. 100–311.
Third
Period:
Christianity in union with the
Graeco-Roman empire, and amidst the storms of the great migration of nations.
From Constantine the Great to Pope Gregory I. a.d.
311–590.
Fourth
Period:
Christianity planted among the
Teutonic, Celtic, and Slavonic nations.
From Gregory I. to Hildebrand, or Gregory VII. a.d.
590–1049.
Fifth
Period:
The Church under the papal
hierarchy, and the scholastic theology.
From Gregory VII. to Boniface VIII. a.d.
1049–1294.
Sixth
Period:
The decay of mediaeval Catholicism, and the preparatory movements for the
Reformation.
From Boniface VIII. to Luther. a.d.
1294–1517.
Seventh
Period:
The evangelical Reformation, and the
Roman Catholic Reaction.
From Luther to the Treaty of Westphalia. a.d.
1517–1648.
Eighth
Period:
The age of polemic orthodoxy and
exclusive confessionalism, with reactionary and progressive movements.
From the Treaty of Westphalia to the French Revolution. a.d. 1648–1790.
Ninth
Period:
The spread of infidelity, and the revival of Christianity in Europe and
America, with missionary efforts encircling the globe.
From the French Revolution to the present time. a.d.
1790–1880.
Christianity has thus
passed through many stages of its earthly life, and yet has hardly reached the
period of full manhood in Christ Jesus. During this long succession of
centuries it has outlived the destruction of Jerusalem, the dissolution of the
Roman empire, fierce persecutions from without, and heretical corruptions from
within, the barbarian invasion, the confusion of the dark ages, the papal
tyranny, the shock of infidelity, the ravages of revolution, the attacks of
enemies and the errors of friends, the rise and fall of proud kingdoms,
empires, and republics, philosophical systems, and social organizations without
number. And, behold, it still lives, and lives in greater strength and wider
extent than ever; controlling the progress of civilization, and the destinies
of the world; marching over the ruins of human wisdom and folly, ever forward
and onward; spreading silently its heavenly blessings from generation to
generation, and from country to country, to the ends of the earth. It can never
die; it will never see the decrepitude of old age; but, like its divine
founder, it will live in the unfading freshness of self-renewing youth and the
unbroken vigor of manhood to the end of time, and will outlive time itself.
Single denominations and sects, human forms of doctrine, government, and
worship, after having served their purpose, may disappear and go the way of all
flesh; but the Church Universal of Christ, in her divine life and substance, is
too strong for the gates of hell. She will only exchange her earthly garments
for the festal dress of the Lamb’s Bride, and rise from the state of
humiliation to the state of exaltation and glory. Then at the coming of Christ
she will reap the final harvest of history, and as the church triumphant in
heaven celebrate and enjoy the eternal sabbath of holiness and peace. This will
be the endless end of history, as it was foreshadowed already at the beginning
of its course in the holy rest of God after the completion of his work of
creation.
</div3><div3 type =
"Section" n=”5” title=”Uses of Church History”>
§ 5. Uses of Church History.
Church history is the most
extensive, and, including the sacred history of the Old and New Testaments, the
most important branch of theology. It is the backbone of theology or which it
rests, and the storehouse from which it derives its supplies. It is the best
commentary of Christianity itself, under all its aspects and in all its
bearings. The fulness of the stream is the glory of the fountain from which it
flows.
Church history has, in
the first place, a general interest for every cultivated mind, as showing the
moral and religious development of our race, and the gradual execution of the
divine plan of redemption.
It has special value for
the theologian and minister of the gospel, as the key to the present condition
of Christendom and the guide to successful labor in her cause. The present is
the fruit of the past, and the germ of the future. No work can stand unless it
grow out of the real wants of the age and strike firm root in the soil of
history. No one who tramples on the rights of a past generation can claim the
regard of its posterity. Church history is no mere curiosity shop. Its facts
are not dry bones, but embody living realities, the general principles and laws
for our own guidance and action. Who studies church history studies
Christianity itself in all its phases, and human nature under the influence of
Christianity as it now is, and will be to the end of time.
Finally, the history of
the church has practical value for every Christian, as a storehouse of warning
and encouragement, of consolation and counsel. It is the philosophy of facts,
Christianity in living examples. If history in general be, as Cicero describes it,
"<foreign
lang="la">testis
temporum, lux veritatis, et magistra vitae</foreign>,"
or, as Diodorus calls it, "the handmaid of providence, the priestess of
truth, and the mother of wisdom," the history of the kingdom of heaven is
all these in the highest degree. Next to the holy scriptures, which are
themselves a history and depository of divine revelation, there is no stronger
proof of the continual presence of Christ with his people, no more thorough
vindication of Christianity, no richer source of spiritual wisdom and
experience, no deeper incentive to virtue and piety, than the history of
Christ’s kingdom. Every age has a message from God to man, which it is of the
greatest importance for man to understand.
The Epistle to the
Hebrews describes, in stirring eloquence, the cloud of witnesses from the old
dispensation for the encouragement of the Christians. Why should not the
greater cloud of apostles, evangelists, martyrs, confessors, fathers,
reformers, and saints of every age and tongue, since the coming of Christ, be
held up for the same purpose? They
were the heroes of Christian faith and love, the living epistles of Christ, the
salt of the earth, the benefactors and glory of our race; and it is impossible
rightly to study their thoughts and deeds, their lives and deaths, without
being elevated, edified, comforted, and encouraged to follow their holy
example, that we at last, by the grace of God, be received into their
fellowship, to spend with them a blessed eternity in the praise and enjoyment
of the same God and Saviour.
</div3><div3 type =
"Section" n=”6” title=”Duty of the Historian”>
§ 6. Duty of the Historian.
The first duty of the
historian, which comprehends all others, is fidelity and justice. He must
reproduce the history itself, making it live again in his representation. His
highest and only aim should be, like a witness, to tell the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth, and, like a judge, to do full justice to
every person and event which comes under his review.
To be thus faithful and
just he needs a threefold qualification—scientific, artistic, and religious.
1. He must master the
sources. For this purpose he must be acquainted with such auxiliary sciences as
ecclesiastical philology (especially the Greek and Latin languages, in which
most of the earliest documents are written), secular history, geography, and
chronology. Then, in making use of the sources, he must thoroughly and
impartially examine their genuineness and integrity, and the credibility and
capacity of the witnesses. Thus only can he duly separate fact from fiction,
truth from error.
The number of sources
for general history is so large and increasing so rapidly, that it is, of
course, impossible to read and digest them all in a short lifetime. Every historian
rests on the shoulders of his predecessors. He must take some things on trust
even after the most conscientious search, and avail himself of the invaluable
aid of documentary collections and digests, ample indexes, and exhaustive
monographs, where he cannot examine all the primary sources in detail. Only he
should always carefully indicate his authorities and verify facts, dates, and
quotations. A want of accuracy is fatal to the reputation of an historical
work.
2. Then comes the
composition. This is an art. It must not simply recount events, but reproduce
the development of the church in living process. History is not a heap of
skeletons, but an organism filled and ruled by a reasonable soul.
One of the greatest
difficulties here lies in arranging the material. The best method is to combine
judiciously the chronological and topical principles of division; presenting at
once the succession of events and the several parallel (and, indeed,
interwoven) departments of the history in due proportion. Accordingly, we first
divide the whole history into periods, not arbitrary, but determined by the
actual course of events; and then we present each of these periods in as many
parallel sections or chapters as the material itself requires. As to the number
of the periods and chapters, and as to the arrangement of the chapters, there
are indeed conflicting opinions, and in the application of our principle, as in
our whole representation, we can only make approaches to perfection. But the
principle itself is, nevertheless, the only true one.
The ancient classical
historians, and most of the English and French, generally present their subject
in one homogeneous composition of successive books or chapters, without
rubrical division. This method might seem to bring out better the living unity
and variety of the history at every point. Yet it really does not. Language,
unlike the pencil and the chisel, can exhibit only the succession in time, not
the local concomitance. And then this method, rigidly pursued, never gives a
complete view of any one subject, of doctrine, worship, or practical life. It
constantly mixes the various topics, breaking off from one to bring up another,
even by the most sudden transitions, till the alternation is exhausted. The
German method of periodical and rubrical arrangement has great practical
advantages for the student, in bringing to view the order of subjects as well
as the order of time. But it should not be made a uniform and monotonous
mechanism, as is done in the Magdeburg Centuries and many subsequent works.
For, while history has its order, both of subject and of time, it is yet, like
all life, full of variety. The period of the Reformation requires a very
different arrangement from the middle age; and in modern history the rubrical division
must be combined with and made subject to a division by confessions and
countries, as the Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed churches in Germany,
France, England, and America.
The historian should aim
then to reproduce both the unity and the variety of history, presenting the
different topics in their separate completeness, without overlooking their
organic connection. The scheme must not be arbitrarily made, and then
pedantically applied, as a Procrustean framework, to the history; but it must
be deduced from the history itself, and varied as the facts require.
Another difficulty even
greater than the arrangement of the material consists in the combination of
brevity and fulness. A general church history should give a complete view of
the progress of Christ’s kingdom in all its departments. But the material is so
vast and constantly increasing, that the utmost condensation should be studied
by a judicious selection of the salient points, which really make up the main
body of history. There is no use in writing books unless they are read. But who
has time in this busy age to weary through the forty folios of Baronius and his
continuators, or the thirteen folios of Flacius, or the forty-five octaves of
Schroeckh? The student of
ecclesiastical history, it is true, wants not miniature pictures only (as in
Hase’s admirable compend), but full-length portraits. Yet much space may be
gained by omitting the processes and unessential details, which may be left to
monographs and special treatises. Brevity is a virtue in the historian, unless
it makes him obscure and enigmatic.5
The historian, moreover,
must make his work readable and interesting, without violating truth. Some
parts of history are dull and wearisome; but, upon the whole, the truth of
history is "stranger than fiction." It is God’s own epos. It needs no
embellishment. It speaks for itself if told with earnestness, vivacity, and
freshness. Unfortunately, church historians, with very few exceptions, are
behind the great secular historians in point of style, and represent the past
as a dead corpse rather than as a living and working power of abiding interest.
Hence church histories are so little read outside of professional circles.
3. Both scientific
research and artistic representation must be guided by a sound moral and
religious, that is, a truly Christian spirit. The secular historian should be
filled with universal human sympathy, the church historian with universal
Christian sympathy. The motto of the former is: "<foreign
lang="la">Homo
sum, nihil humani a me alienum puto</foreign>;"
the motto of the latter: "<foreign lang="la">Christianus sum, nihil Christiani a me alienum
puto</foreign>."
The historian must first
lay aside all prejudice and party zeal, and proceed in the pure love of truth.
Not that he must become a tabula rasa. No man is able, or should attempt, to
cast off the educational influences which have made him what he is. But the
historian of the church of Christ must in every thing be as true as possible to
the objective fact, "<foreign lang="la">sine ira et studio</foreign>;"
do justice to every person and event; and stand in the centre of Christianity,
whence he may see all points in the circumference, all individual persons and
events, all confessions, denominations, and sects, in their true relations to
each other and to the glorious whole. The famous threefold test of catholic
truth—universality of time (<foreign lang="la">semper</foreign>), place (<foreign
lang="la">ubique</foreign>), and number (<foreign
lang="la">ab
omnibus</foreign>)—in its literal sense, is indeed untrue and inapplicable. Nevertheless,
there is a common Christianity in the Church, as well as a common humanity in
the world, which no Christian can disregard with impunity. Christ is the divine
harmony of all the discordant human creeds and sects. It is the duty and the
privilege of the historian to trace the image of Christ in the various
physiognomies of his disciples, and to act as a mediator between the different
sections of his kingdom.
Then he must be in
thorough sympathy with his subject, and enthusiastically devoted thereto. As no
one can interpret a poet without poetic feeling and taste, or a philosopher
without speculative talent, so no one can rightly comprehend and exhibit the
history of Christianity without a Christian spirit. An unbeliever could produce
only a repulsive caricature, or at best a lifeless statue. The higher the
historian stands on Christian ground, the larger is his horizon, and the more
full and clear his view of single regions below, and of their mutual bearings.
Even error can be fairly seen only from the position of truth. "<foreign
lang="la">Verum
est index sui et falsi</foreign>."
Christianity is the absolute truth, which, like the sun, both reveals itself
and enlightens all that is dark. Church history, like the Bible, is its own
best interpreter.
So far as the historian
combines these three qualifications, he fulfils his office. In this life we
can, of course, only distantly approach perfection in this or in any other
branch of study. Absolute success would require infallibility; and this is
denied to mortal man. It is the exclusive privilege of the Divine mind to see
the end from the beginning, and to view events from all sides and in all their
bearings; while the human mind can only take up things consecutively and view
them partially or in fragments.
The full solution of the
mysteries of history is reserved for that heavenly state, when we shall see no
longer through a gloss darkly, but face to face, and shall survey the
developments of time from the heights of eternity. What St. Augustine so aptly
says of the mutual relation of the Old and New Testament, "<foreign
lang="la">Novum
Testamentum in Vetere latet, Vetus in Novo patet</foreign>,"
may be applied also to the relation of this world and the world to come. The
history of the church militant is but a type and a prophecy of the triumphant
kingdom of God in heaven—a prophecy which will be perfectly understood only in
the light of its fulfilment.
</div3><div3 type =
"Section" n=”7” title=”Literature of Church History”>
§ 7. Literature of Church History.
Stäudlin: Geschichte u. Literatur der K. Geschichte.
Hann. 1827.
J. G. Dowling: An Introduction to the
Critical Study of Eccles. History. London, 1838. Quoted p. 1. The work is
chiefly an account of the ecclesiastical historians. pp. 1–212.
F. C. Baur: Die Epochen der
kirchlichen Geschichtschreibung. Tüb. 1852.
Philip Schaff: Introduction to History of
the Apost. Church (N. York, 1853), pp. 51–134.
Engelhardt: Uebersicht der
kirchengeschichtlichen Literatur vom Jahre 1825–1850. In Niedner’s
"Zeitschrift für historische Theologie," 1851.
G. Uhlhorn: Die kirchenhist. Arbeiten
von 1851–1860. In Niedner’s "Zeitschrift für histor. Theologie," for
1866, Gotha, pp. 3–160. The same: Die ältere Kirchengesch. in ihren neueren
Darstellungen. In "Jahrbücher für deutsche Theol." Vol. II. 648 sqq.
Brieger’s "Zeitschrift
für Kirchengeschichte" (begun in 1877 and published in Gotha) contains
bibliographical articles of Ad. Harnack, Möller, and others, on the latest
literature.
Ch. K. Adams: A Manual of Historical
Literature. N. York, 3d ed. 1888.
Like every other science
and art, church historiography has a history of development toward its true
perfection. This history exhibits not only a continual growth of material, but
also a gradual, though sometimes long interrupted, improvement of method, from
the mere collection of names and dates in a Christian chronicle, to critical
research and discrimination, pragmatic reference to causes and motives,
scientific command of material, philosophical generalization, and artistic
reproduction of the actual history itself. In this progress also are marked the
various confessional and denominational phases of Christianity, giving
different points of view, and consequently different conceptions and
representations of the several periods and divisions of Christendom; so that
the development of the Church itself is mirrored in the development of church
historiography.
We can here do no more
than mention the leading works which mark the successive epochs in the growth
of our science.
I. The Apostolic Church.
The first works on
church history are the canonical Gospels of Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John, the inspired biographical memoirs of Jesus Christ,
who is the theanthropic head of the Church universal.
These are followed by Luke’s Acts of the Apostles, which
describes the planting of Christianity among Jews and Gentiles from Jerusalem
to Rome, by the labors of the apostles, especially Peter and Paul.
II. The Greek Church historians.
The first post-apostolic
works on church history, as indeed all branches of theological literature, take
their rise in the Greek Church.
Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, in Palestine, and contemporary with Constantine the
Great, composed a church history in ten books (ejkklhsiastikh; iJstoriva, from the incarnation of the Logos to the year
324), by which he has won the title of the Father of church history, or the
Christian Herodotus. Though by no means very critical and discerning, and far
inferior in literary talent and execution to the works of the great classical
historians, this ante-Nicene church history is invaluable for its learning,
moderation, and love of truth; for its use of so since totally or partially
lost; and for its interesting position of personal observation between the last
persecutions of the church and her establishment in the Byzantine empire.
Eusebius was followed in
similar spirit and on the same plan by Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret in the fifth century, and Theodorus and Evagrius in the sixth, each taking up the thread of the narrative where his
predecessor had dropped it, and covering in part the same ground, from Constantine the Great
till toward the middle of the fifth century.6
Of the later Greek
historians, from the seventh century, to the fifteenth, the "Scriptores
Byzantini," as they are called, Nicephorus
Callisti (son of Callistus, about a.d. 1333) deserves special regard. His
Ecclesiastical History was written with the use of the large library of the
church of St. Sophia in Constantinople, and dedicated to the emperor Andronicus Palaeologus
(d. 1327). It extends in eighteen books (each of which begins with a letter of
his name) from the birth of Christ to the death of Phocas, a.d.
610, and gives in the preface a summary of five books more, which would have
brought it down to 911. He was an industrious and eloquent, but uncritical and
superstitious writer.7
III. Latin Church historians of the middle
ages.
The Latin Church, before
the Reformation, was, in church history, as in all other theological studies,
at first wholly dependent on the Greek, and long content with mere translations
and extracts from Eusebius and his continuators.
The most popular of
these was the Historia Tripartita, composed
by Cassiodorus, prime minister of Theodoric, and afterwards abbot of a convent in Calabria
(d. about a.d. 562). It is a
compilation from the histories of Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret, abridging and harmonizing them, and
supplied—together with the translation of Eusebius by Rufinus—the West for several centuries with its
knowledge of the fortunes of the ancient church.
The middle age produced
no general church history of consequence, but a host of chronicles, and
histories of particular nations, monastic orders, eminent popes, bishops,
missionaries, saints, etc. Though rarely worth much as compositions, these are
yet of great value as material, after a careful sifting of truth from legendary
fiction.
The principal mediaeval
historians are Gregory of Tours (d. 595), who wrote a
church history of the Franks; the Venerable Bede, (d. 735), the father of
English church history; Paulus Diaconus (d. 799), the historian
of the Lombards; Adam of Bremen, the chief authority for Scandinavian church
history from a.d. 788–1072; Haimo (or Haymo, Aimo, a
monk of Fulda, afterwards bishop of Halberstadt, d. 853), who described in ten
books, mostly from Rufinus, the history of the first four centuries (Hist oriae Sacrae Epitome); Anastasius (about 872), the author in part of the Liber
Pontificalis, i.e., biographies of the Popes till Stephen VI.
(who died 891); Bartholomaeus of Lucca. (about 1312), who composed a general church history
from Christ to a.d. 1312; St. Antoninus (Antonio Pierozzi), archbishop of Florence (d.
1459), the author of the largest mediaeval work on secular and sacred history (Summa Historialis),
from the creation to a.d. 1457.
Historical criticism
began with the revival of letters, and revealed itself first in the doubts of Laurentius Valla (d.
1457) and Nicolaus of Cusa (d. 1464) concerning the genuineness of the
donation of Constantine, the Isidorian Decretals, and other spurious documents,
which are now as universally rejected as they were once universally accepted.
IV. Roman Catholic historians.
The Roman Catholic
Church was roused by the shock of the Reformation, in the sixteenth century, to
great activity in this and other departments of theology, and produced some
works of immense learning and antiquarian research, but generally characterized
rather by zeal for the papacy, and against Protestantism, than by the purely
historical spirit. Her best historians are either Italians, and ultramontane in
spirit, or Frenchmen, mostly on the side of the more liberal but less
consistent Gallicanism.
(a) Italians:
First stands the
Cardinal Caesar Baronius (d.
1607), with his Annales Ecclesiastici (Rom.
1588 sqq.), in 12 folio volumes, on which he spent thirty years of unwearied
study. They come down only to the year 1198, but are continued by Raynaldi (to 1565), Laderchi (to 1571), and Theiner (to 1584).8
This truly colossal and
monumental work is even to this day an invaluable storehouse of information
from the Vatican library and other archives, and will always be consulted by
professional scholars. It is written in dry, ever broken, unreadable style, and
contains many spurious documents. It stands wholly on the ground of absolute
papacy, and is designed as a positive refutation of the Magdeburg Centuries,
though it does not condescend directly to notice them. It gave immense aid and
comfort to the cause of Romanism, and was often epitomized and popularized in
several languages. But it was also severely criticized, and in part refuted,
not only by such Protestants as Casaubon, Spanheim, and Samuel Basnage, but by Roman Catholic scholars also, especially
two French Franciscans, Antoine and François Pagi, who corrected the chronology.
Far less known and used
than the Annals of Baronius is the Historia
Ecclesiastica of Caspar Sacharelli, which
comes down to a.d. 1185, and was
published in Rome, 1771–1796, in 25 quarto volumes.
Invaluable contributions
to historical collections and special researches have been made by other
Italian scholars, as Muratori, Zaccagni, Zaccaria, Mansi, Gallandi, Paolo Sarpi, Pallavicini (the last two on the
Council of Trent), the three Assemani, and Angelo Mai.
(b) French Catholic
historians.
Natalis (Noel) Alexander, Professor and Provincial of the Dominican order
(d. 1724), wrote his Historia Ecclesiastica Veteris
et Nova Testamenti to the year 1600 (Paris, 1676, 2d ed. 1699 sqq. 8
vols. fol.) in the spirit of Gallicanism, with great learning, but in dry
scholastic style. Innocent XI. put it in the Index (1684). This gave rise to
the corrected editions.
The abbot Claude Fleury (d. 1723), in his Histoire ecclésiastique (Par. 1691–1720, in 20
vols. quarto, down to a.d. 1414,
continued by Claude Fabre, a very decided Gallican, to a.d.
1595), furnished a much more popular work, commended by mildness of spirit and
fluency of style, and as useful for edification as for instruction. It is a
minute and, upon the whole, accurate narrative of the course of events as they
occurred, but without system and philosophical generalization, and hence
tedious and wearisome. When Fleury was asked why he unnecessarily darkened his
pages with so many discreditable facts, he properly replied that the survival
and progress of Christianity, notwithstanding the vices and crimes of its
professors and preachers, was the best proof of its divine origin.9
Jacques Bénigne Bossuet, the distinguished bishop of Meaux (d. 1704), an
advocate of Romanism on the one hand against Protestantism, but of Gallicanism
on the other against Ultramontanism, wrote with brilliant eloquence, and in the
spirit of the Catholic church, a universal history, in bold outlines for
popular effect.10 This was continued in the German
language by the Protestant Cramer, with less elegance but more thoroughness,
and with special reference to the doctrine history of the middle age.
Sebastien le Nain de Tillemont (d. 1698), a French nobleman and priest, without
office and devoted exclusively to study and prayer—a pupil and friend of the
Jansenists and in partial sympathy with Gallicanism—composed a most learned and
useful history of the first six centuries (till 513), in a series of minute
biographies, with great skill and conscientiousness, almost entirely in the
words of the original authorities, from which he carefully distinguishes his
own additions. It is, as far as it goes, the most valuable church history
produced by Roman Catholic industry and learning.11
Contemporaneously with
Tillemont, the Gallican, L. Ellies Dupin (d. 1719), furnished a biographical and
bibliographical church history down to the seventeenth century.12 Remi Ceillier (d. 1761) followed with a
similar work, which has the advantage of greater completeness and accuracy.13 The
French Benedictines of the congregation of St. Maur, in the seventeenth and
eighteenth century, did immense service to historical theology by the best
critical editions of the fathers and extensive archaeological works. We can
only mention the names of Mabillon, Massuet, Montfaucon, D’achery, Ruinart, Martène, Durand. Among the Jesuits, Sirmond and Petau occupy a prominent place.
The Abbé Rohrbacher. (Professor of
Church History at Nancy, d. 1856) wrote an extensive Universal History of the Church, including that of the Old Testament, down to 1848. It is less liberal
than the great Gallican writers of the seventeenth century, but shows
familiarity with German literature.14
(c) German Catholic
historians.
The pioneer of modern
German Catholic historians of note is a poet and an ex-Protestant, Count Leopold Von Stolberg (d. 1819).
With the enthusiasm of an honest, noble, and devout, but credulous convert, he
began, in 1806, a very full Geschichte der Religion
Jesu Christi, and brought it down in
15 volumes to the year 430. It was continued by F. Kerz (vols. 16–45, to a.d.
1192) and J. N. Brischar (vols. 45–53, to a.d.
1245).
Theod. Katerkamp (d. at Münster, 1834) wrote a church history, in
the same spirit and pleasing style, down to a.d.
1153.15 It remained unfinished, like the work
of Locherer(d.
1837), which extends to 1073.16
Bishop Hefele’s History of the Councils (Conciliengeschichte, 1855–’86; revised edition and continuation, 1873
sqq.) is a most valuable contribution to the history of doctrine and discipline
down to the Council of Trent.17
The best compendious
histories from the pens of German Romanists are produced by Jos. Ign. Ritter,
Professor in Bonn and afterward in Breslau (d. 1857);18 Joh. Adam Möhler, formerly Professor in Tübingen, and then in
Munich, the author of the famous Symbolik (d. 1838);19 Joh. Alzog (d. 1878);20 H. Brück (Mayence, 2d ed., 1877);
F. X. Kraus (Treves, 1873; 3d ed., 1882); Card.
Hergenröther
(Freiburg, 3d ed., 1886, 3 vols.); F. X. Funk (Tübingen, 1886; 2d ed., 1890).
A. F. Gfrörer (d. 1861) began his learned General Church
History as a Protestant, or rather
as a Rationalist (1841–’46, 4 vols., till a.d.
1056), and continued it from Gregory VII. on as a Romanist (1859–’61).
Dr. John Joseph Ignatius Döllinger (Professor in Munich, born 1799), the most
learned historian of the Roman Church in the nineteenth century, represents the
opposite course from popery to anti-popery. He began, but never finished, a Handbook of Christian Church History (Landshut,
1833, 2 vols.) till a.d. 680, and
a Manual of Church History (1836,
2d ed., 1843, 2 vols.) to the fifteenth century, and in part to 1517.21 He
wrote also learned works against the Reformation (Die
Reformation, 1846–’48, in 3 vols.),
on Hippolytus and Callistus (1853), on the preparation for Christianity
(Heidenthum
u Judenthum, 1857), Christianity and the Church in the time of its Founding (1860), The
Church and the Churches (1862), Papal Fables of the Middle Age (1865), The Pope and the Council (under the assumed name of "Janus,"
1869), etc.
During the Vatican
Council in 1870 Döllinger broke with Rome, became the theological leader of the
Old Catholic recession, and was excommunicated by the Archbishop of Munich (his
former pupil), April 17, 1871, as being guilty of "the crime of open and
formal heresy." He knows too much of church history to believe in the
infallibility of the pope. He solemnly declared (March 28, 1871) that "as
a Christian, as a theologian, as a historian, and as a citizen," he could
not accept the Vatican decrees, because they contradict the spirit of the
gospel and the genuine tradition of the church, and, if carried out, must involve
church and state, the clergy and the laity, in irreconcilable conflict.22
V. The Protestant Church historians.
The Reformation of the
sixteenth century is the mother church history as a science and art in the
proper sense of term. It seemed at first to break off from the past and to
depreciate church history, by going back directly to the Bible as the only rule
of faith and practice, and especially to look most unfavorably on the Catholic
middle age, as a progressive corruption of the apostolic doctrine and
discipline. But, on the other hand, it exalted primitive Christianity, and
awakened a new and enthusiastic interest in all the documents of the apostolic
church, with an energetic effort to reproduce its spirit and institutions. It
really repudiated only the later tradition in favor of the older, taking its
stand upon the primitive historical basis of Christianity. Then again, in the
course of controversy with Rome, Protestantism found it desirable and necessary
to wrest from its opponent not only the scriptural argument, but also the
historical, and to turn it as far as possible to the side of the evangelical
cause. For the Protestants could never deny that the true Church of Christ is
built on a rock, and has the promise of indestructible permanence. Finally, the
Reformation, by, liberating the mind from the yoke of a despotic ecclesiastical
authority, gave an entirely new impulse, directly or indirectly to free
investigation in every department, and produced that historical criticism which
claims to clear fact from the accretions of fiction, and to bring out the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, of history. Of course this
criticism may run to the extreme of rationalism and scepticism, which oppose
the authority of the apostles and of Christ himself; as it actually did for a
time, especially in Germany. But the abuse of free investigation proves nothing
against the right use of it; and is to be regarded only as a temporary
aberration, from which all sound minds will return to a due appreciation of
history, as a truly rational unfolding of the plan of redemption, and a
standing witness for the all-ruling providence of God, and the divine character
of the Christian religion.
(a) German, Swiss, and
Dutch historians.
Protestant church
historiography has thus far flourished most on German soil. A patient and
painstaking industry and conscientious love of truth and justice qualify German
scholars for the mining operations of research which bring forth the raw
material for the manufacturer; while French and English historians know best
how to utilize and popularize the material for the general reader.
The following are the
principal works:
Matthias Flacius (d 1575), surnamed
Illyricus, a zealous Lutheran, and
an unsparing enemy of Papists, Calvinists, and Melancthonians, heads the list
of Protestant historians with his great Eccelesiastica
Historia Novi Testamenti, commonly called Centuriae Magdeburgenses (Basle,
1560–’74), covering thirteen centuries of the Christian era in as many folio
volumes. He began the work in Magdeburg, in connection with ten other, scholars
of like Spirit and zeal, and in the face of innumerable difficulties, for the
purpose of exposing the corruptions and, errors of the papacy, and of proving
the doctrines of the Lutheran Reformation orthodox by the "witnesses of
the truth" in all ages. The tone is therefore controversial throughout,
and quite as partial as that of the Annals of Baronius on the papal side. The
style is tasteless and repulsive, but the amount of persevering labor, the
immense, though ill-digested and unwieldy mass of material, and the boldness of
the criticism, are imposing and astonishing. The "Centuries" broke
the path of free historical study, and are the first general church history
deserving of the name. They introduced also a new method. They divide the
material by centuries, and each century by a uniform Procrustean scheme of not
less than sixteen rubrics: "<foreign lang="la">de loco et propagatione ecclesiae; de
persecutione et tranquillitate ecclesiae; de doctrina; de haeresibus; de
ceremoniis; de politia; de schismatibus; de conciliis; de vitis episcoporum; de
haereticis; de martyribus; de miraculis et prodigiis; de rebus Judaicis; de
aliis religionibus; de mutationibus politicis</foreign>." This plan destroys all symmetry, and
occasions wearisome diffuseness and repetition. Yet, in spite of its mechanical
uniformity and stiffness, it is more scientific than the annalistic or
chronicle method, and, with material improvements and considerable curtailment
of rubrics, it has been followed to this day.
The Swiss, J. H. Hottinger (d.
1667), in his Historia Ecclesiastica N. Testamenti (Zurich,
1655–’67, 9 vols. fol.), furnished a Reformed counterpart to the Magdeburg
Centuries. It is less original and vigorous, but more sober and moderate. It
comes down to the sixteenth century, to which alone five volumes are devoted.
From Fred. Spanheim of Holland
(d. 1649) we have a Summa Historia Ecclesiasticae (Lugd. Bat. 1689), coming down to the sixteenth
century. It is based on a thorough and critical knowledge of the sources, and
serves at the same time as a refutation of Baronius.
A new path was broken by
Gottfried Arnold (d. 1714), in his, Impartial History
of the Church and Heretics to a.d.
1688.23 He is the historian of the pietistic
and mystic school. He made subjective piety the test of the true faith, and the
persecuted sects the main channel of true Christianity; while the reigning
church from Constantine down, and indeed not the Catholic church only, but the
orthodox Lutheran with it, he represented as a progressive apostasy, a Babylon
full of corruption and abomination. In this way he boldly and effectually broke
down the walls of ecclesiastical exclusiveness and bigotry; but at the same
time, without intending or suspecting it, he opened the way to a rationalistic
and sceptical treatment of history. While, in his zeal for impartiality and
personal piety, he endeavored to do justice to all possible heretics and
sectaries, he did great injustice to the supporters of orthodoxy and
ecclesiastical order. Arnold was also the first to use the German language
instead of the Latin in learned history; but his style is tasteless and
insipid.
J. L. von Mosheim (Chancellor of the University at Göttingen, d.
1755), a moderate and impartial Lutheran, is the father of church historiography
as an art, unless we prefer to concede this merit to Bossuet. In skilful
construction, clear, though mechanical and monotonous arrangement, critical
sagacity, pragmatic combination, freedom from passion, almost bordering on cool
indifferentism, and in easy elegance of Latin style, he surpasses all his
predecessors. His well-known Institutiones
Historiae Ecclesiasticae antiquae et recentioris (Helmstädt,
1755) follows the centurial plan of Flacius, but in simpler form, and, as
translated and supplemented by Maclaine, and Murdock, is still used extensively
as a text-book in England and America.24
J. M. Schröckh (d. 1808), a pupil of Mosheim, but already
touched with the neological spirit which Semler (d. 1791) introduced into the
historical theology of Germany, wrote with unwearied industry the largest
Protestant church history after the Magdeburg Centuries. He very properly
forsook the centurial plan still followed by Mosheim, and adopted the periodic.
His Christian Church History comprises forty-five volumes, and reaches
to the end of the eighteenth century. It is written in diffuse but clear and
easy style, with reliable knowledge of sources, and in a mild and candid
spirit, and is still a rich storehouse of historical matter.25
The very learned Institutiones Historiae
Ecclesiasticae V. et N. Testamenti
of the Dutch Reformed divine, H. Venema (d. 1787),
contain the history of the Jewish and Christian Church down to the end of the
sixteenth century (Lugd. Bat. 1777–’83, in seven parts).
H. P. C. Henke (d. 1809) is the leading representative of the
rationalistic church historiography, which ignores Christ in history. In his
spirited and able Allgemeine Geschichte der
christlichen Kirche, continued
by Vater (Braunschweig, 1788–1820, 9 vols.), the church appears not as the
temple of God on earth, but as a great infirmary and bedlam.
August Neander. (Professor of Church History in Berlin, d.
1850), the "father of modern church history," a child in spirit, a
giant in learning, and a saint in piety, led back the study of history from the
dry heath of rationalism to the fresh fountain of divine life in Christ, and
made it a grand source of edification as well as instruction for readers of
every creed. His General History of the Christian
Religion and Church begins after the
apostolic age (which he treated in a separate work), and comes down to the
Council of Basle in 1430, the continuation being interrupted by his death.26 It
is distinguished for thorough and conscientious use of the sources, critical
research, ingenious combination, tender love of truth and justice, evangelical
catholicity, hearty piety, and by masterly analysis of the doctrinal systems
and the subjective Christian life of men of God in past ages. The edifying
character is not introduced from without, but naturally grows out of his
conception of church history, viewed as a continuous revelation of Christ’s
presence and power in humanity, and as an illustration of the parable of the
leaven which gradually pervades and transforms the whole lump. The political
and artistic sections, and the outward machinery of history, were not congenial
to the humble, guileless simplicity of Neander. His style is monotonous,
involved, and diffuse, but unpretending, natural, and warmed by a genial glow
of sympathy and enthusiasm. It illustrates his motto: <foreign
lang="la">Pectus
est quod theologum facit</foreign>.
Torrey’s excellent
translation (Rose translated only the first three centuries), published in
Boston, Edinburgh, and London, in multiplied editions, has given Neander’s
immortal work even a much larger circulation in England and America than it has
in Germany itself.
Besides this general
history, Neander’s indefatigable industry produced also special works on the Life of Christ (1837, 4th ed. 1845), the Apostolic Age
(1832, 4th ed. 1842, translated by
J. E. Ryland, Edinburgh, 1842, and again by E. G. Robinson, N. York, 1865), Memorials of Christian Life (1823, 3d ed. 1845, 3 vols.), the Gnostic
Heresies (1818), and biographies of
representative characters, as Julian the Apostate
(1812), St.
Bernard (1813, 2d ed. 1848), St. Chrysostom (1822, 3d ed. 1848), and Tertullian (1825, 2d ed. 1849). His History a
Christian Doctrines was published
after his death by Jacobi (1855), and translated by J. E. Ryland (Lond., 1858).27
From J. C. L. Gieseler
(Professor of Church History in Göttingen, d. 1854), a profoundly learned,
acute, calm, impartial, conscientious, but cold and dry scholar, we have a Textbook of Church History from the birth of Christ
to 1854.28 He takes Tillemont’s method of giving
the history in the very words of the sources; only he does not form the text
from them, but throws them into notes. The chief excellence of this invaluable
and indispensable work is in its very carefully selected and critically
elucidated extracts from the original authorities down to the year 1648 (as far
as he edited the work himself). The skeleton-like text presents, indeed, the
leading facts clearly and concisely, but does not reach the inward life and
spiritual marrow of the church of Christ. The theological views of Gieseler
hardly rise above the jejune rationalism of Wegscheider, to whom he dedicated a
portion of his history; and with all his attempt at impartiality he cannot
altogether conceal the negative effect of a rationalistic conception of
Christianity, which acts like a chill upon the narrative of its history, and
substitutes a skeleton of dry bones for a living organism.
Neander and Gieseler
matured their works in respectful and friendly rivalry, during the same period
of thirty years of slow, but solid and steady growth. The former is perfectly
subjective, and reproduces the original sources in a continuous warm and
sympathetic composition, which reflects at the same time the author’s own mind
and heart; the latter is purely objective, and speaks with the indifference of
an outside spectator, through the <foreign
lang="la">ipsissima
verba</foreign> of
the same sources, arranged as notes, and strung together simply by a slender
thread of narrative. The one gives the history ready-made, and full of life and
instruction; the other furnishes the material and leaves the reader to animate
and improve it for himself. With the one, the text is everything; with the
other, the notes. But both admirably complete each other, and exhibit together
the ripest fruit of German scholarship in general church history in the first
half of the nineteenth century.
Ferdinand Christian Baur (Prof. of Church History in Tübingen, d. 1860)
must be named alongside with Neander and Gieseler in the front rank of German
church historians. He was equal to both in independent and thorough
scholarship, superior in constructive criticism and philosophical
generalization, but inferior in well-balanced judgment and solid merit. He
over-estimated theories and tendencies, and undervalued persons and facts. He
was an indefatigable investigator and bold innovator. He completely
revolutionized the history of apostolic and post-apostolic Christianity, and
resolved its rich spiritual life of faith and love into a purely speculative
process of conflicting tendencies, which started from an antagonism of
Petrinism and Paulinism, and were ultimately reconciled in the compromise of
ancient Catholicism. He fully brought to light, by a keen critical analysis,
the profound intellectual fermentation of the primitive church, but eliminated
from it the supernatural and miraculous element; yet as an honest and serious
sceptic he had to confess at last a psychological miracle in the conversion of
St. Paul, and to bow before the greater miracle of the resurrection of Christ,
without which the former is an inexplicable enigma. His critical researches and
speculations gave a powerful stimulus to a reconsideration and modification of
the traditional views on early Christianity.
We have from his fertile
pen a general History of the Christian Church, in five volumes (1853–1863), three of which
were, published after his death and lack the originality and careful finish of
the first and second, which cover the first six centuries; Lectures on Christian Doctrine History (Dogmengeschichte), published by his son
(1865–’67, in 3 volumes), and a brief Lehrbuch
der Dogmengeschichte, edited
by himself (1847, 2d ed. 1858). Even more valuable are his monographs: on St.
Paul, for whom he had a profound veneration, although he recognized only
four of his Epistles as genuine (1845, 2d ed. by E. Zeller, 1867, 2 vols.,
translated into English, 1875); on Gnosticism, with which he had a
strong spiritual affinity (Die christliche Gnosis
oder die christliche Religionsphilosophie, 1835); the history of the Doctrine of the Atonement (1838, 1 vol.),
and of the Trinity and Incarnation (1841–’43, in 3
vols.), and his masterly vindication
of Protestantism against Möhler’s Symbolik (2d ed. 1836).29
Karl Rudolph Hagenbach (Professor of Church History at Basel, d. 1874)
wrote, in the mild and impartial spirit of Neander, with poetic taste and good
judgment, and in pleasing popular style, a general History of the Christian
Church in seven volumes (4th ed. 1868–’72),30 and a History of Christian Doctrines, in
two volumes (1841, 4th ed. 1857).31
Protestant Germany is
richer than any other country in, manuals and compends of church history for
the use of students. We mention Engelhardt (1834), Niedner (Geschichte der
christl. Kirche, 1846, and Lehrbuch, 1866), Hase (11th ed. 1886), Guericke (9th ed. 1866, 3 vols.), Lindner (1848–’54), Jacobi (1850, unfinished), Fricke (1850), Kurtz (Lehrbuch, 10th ed.
1887, in 2 vols., the larger Handbuch, unfinished), Hasse (edited by Köhler, 1864, in 3 small vols.), Köllner (1864), Ebrard (1866) 2 vols.), Rothe (lectures edited by Weingarten, 1875, 2 vols.), Herzog (1876–’82, 3 vols.), H. Schmid (1881, 2
vols.). Niedner’s Lehrbuch
(1866) stands first for independent and thorough scholarship, but is heavy.
Hase’s Compend is unsurpassed for condensation, wit, point, and artistic taste,
as a miniature picture.32 Herzog’s Abriss keeps the medium
between voluminous fulness and enigmatic brevity, and is written in a candid
Christian spirit. Kurtz is clear, concise, and evangelical.33 A
new manual was begun by Möller, 1889.
The best works on
doctrine history (Dogmengeschichte) are by Münscher, Geiseler, Neander, Baur, Hagenbach, Thomasius, H. Schmid, Nitzsch, and Harnack (1887).
It is impossible to do
justice here to the immense service which Protestant Germany has done to
special departments of church history. Most of the fathers, popes, schoolmen
and reformers, and the principal doctrines of Christianity have been made the
subject of minute and exhaustive historical treatment. We have already
mentioned the monographs of Neander and Baur, and fully equal to them are such
masterly and enduring works as Rothe’s Beginnings of the
Christian Church, Ullmann’s Reformers before the Reformation, Hasse’s Anselm of Canterbury,
and Dorner’s History of
Christology.
(b) French works.
Dr. Etienne L. Chastel (Professor
of Church History in the National Church at Geneva, d. 1886) wrote a complete Histoire du Christianisme (Paris,
1881–’85, 5 vols.).
Dr. Merle D’aubigné (Professor
of Church History in the independent Reformed Seminary at Geneva, d. 1872)
reproduced in elegant and eloquent French an extensive history both of the
Lutheran and Calvinistic Reformation, with an evangelical enthusiasm and a
dramatic vivacity which secured it an extraordinary circulation in England and
America (far greater, than on the Continent), and made it the most popular work
on that important period. Its value as a history is somewhat diminished by polemical
bias and the occasional want of accuracy. Dr. Merle conceived the idea of the
work during the celebration of the third centenary of the German Reformation in
1817, in the Wartburg at Eisenach, where Luther translated, the New Testament
and threw his inkstand at the devil. He labored on it till the year of his
death.34
Dr. Edmund De Pressensé (pastor of a
free church in Paris, member of the National Assembly, then senator of France),
and able scholar, with evangelical Protestant convictions similar to those of
Dr. Merle, wrote a Life of Christ against Renan, and a History of Ancient
Christianity, both of which are translated into English.35
Ernest Renan, the celebrated Orientalist and member of the French Academy, prepared
from the opposite standpoint of sceptical criticism, and mixing history with
romance, but in brilliant, and fascinating style, the Life of Christ, and the
history of the Beginnings of Christianity to the middle of the second century.36
(c) English works.
English literature is
rich in works on Christian antiquity, English church history, and other special
departments, but poor in general histories of Christianity.
The first place among
English historians, perhaps, is due to Edward Gibbon (d. 1794). In his monumental History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (finished
after twenty years’ labor, at Lausanne, June 27,1787), he notices throughout
the chief events in ecclesiastical history from the introduction of the
Christian religion to the times of the crusades and the capture of
Constantinople (1453), with an accurate knowledge of the chief sources and the
consummate skill of a master in the art of composition, with occasional
admiration for heroic characters like Athanasius and Chrysostom, but with a
keener eye to the failings of Christians and the imperfections of the visible
church, and unfortunately without sympathy and understanding of the spirit of
Christianity which runs like a golden thread even through the darkest
centuries. He conceived the idea of his magnificent work in papal Rome, among
the ruins of the Capitol, and in tracing the gradual decline and fall of
imperial Rome, which he calls "the greatest, perhaps, and most awful scene
in the history of mankind," he has involuntarily become a witness to the
gradual growth and triumph of the religion of the cross, of which no historian
of the future will ever record a history of decline and fall, though some
"lonely traveller from New Zealand," taking his stand on "a
broken arch" of the bridge of St. Angelo, may sketch the ruins of St.
Peter’s.37
Joseph Milner (Vicar
of Hull, d. 1797) wrote a History of the Church of
Christ for popular edification, selecting those portions
which best suited his standard of evangelical orthodoxy and piety.
"Nothing," he says in the preface, "but what appears to me to
belong to Christ’s kingdom shall be admitted; genuine piety is the only thing I
intend to celebrate. He may be called the English Arnold, less learned, but
free from polemics and far more readable and useful than the German pietist.
His work was corrected and continued by his brother, Isaac Milner (d.
1820), by Thomas Grantham and Dr. Stebbing.38
Dr. Waddington (Dean of
Durham) prepared three volumes on the history of the Church before the
Reformation (1835) and three volumes on the Continental Reformation (1841).
Evangelical.
Canon James C. Robertson of
Canterbury (Prof. of Church History in King’s College, d. 1882) brings his History of the Christian Church from the Apostolic Age
down to the Reformation (a.d.
64–1517). The work was first published in four octavo volumes (1854 sqq.) and
then in eight duodecimo volumes (Lond. 1874), and is the best, as it is the latest,
general church history written by an Episcopalian. It deserves praise for its
candor, moderation, and careful indication of authorities.
From Charles Hardwick (Archdeacon
of Ely, d. 1859) we have a useful manual of the Church History of the Middle
Age (1853, 3d ed. by Prof. W. Stubbs, 1872), and another on the
Reformation (1856, 3d ed. by W. Stubbs, London, 1873). His History of
the Anglican Articles of Religion (1859) is a valuable contribution to English
church history.
Dr. Trench, Archbishop of Dublin,
has published his Lectures on Mediaeval Church
History (Lond. 1877), delivered
before the girls of Queen’s College, London. They are conceived in a spirit of
devout churchly piety and interspersed with judicious reflections.
Philip Smith’s History of the
Christian Church during the First Ten Centuries (1879), and
during the Middle Ages (1885), in 2 vols., is a skilful and useful manual for
students.39
The most popular and
successful modern church historians in the English or any other language are
Dean Milman of St.
Paul’s, Dean Stanley of Westminster Abbey, and
Archdeacon Farrar of Westminster. They belong to the broad church school of the Church of England, are
familiar with Continental learning, and adorn their chosen themes with all the
charms of elegant, eloquent, and picturesque diction. Henry
Hart Milman (d. 1868) describes, with the stately march of
Gibbon and as a counterpart of his decline and fall of Paganism, the rise and
progress of Ancient and Latin Christianity, with special reference to its
bearing on the progress of civilization.40 Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (d. 1881)
unrolls a picture gallery of great men and events in the Jewish theocracy, from
Abraham to the Christian era, and in the Greek church, from Constantine the
Great to Peter the Great.41 Frederic W.
Farrar (b. 1831) illuminates with classical and
rabbinical learning, and with exuberant rhetoric the Life of Christ, and of the
great Apostle of the Gentiles, and the Early Days of Christianity.42
(d) American works.
American literature is
still in its early youth, but rapidly growing in every department of knowledge.
Prescott, Washington Irving, Motley, and Bancroft have cultivated interesting portions of the
history of Spain, Holland, and the United States, and have taken rank among the
classical historians in the English language.
In ecclesiastical
history the Americans have naturally so far been mostly in the attitude of
learners and translators, but with every prospect of becoming producers. They
have, as already noticed, furnished the best translations of Mosheim, Neander,
and Gieseler.
Henry B. Smith (late Professor in the Union Theol. Seminary, New
York, d. 1877) has prepared the best Chronological Tables of Church History,
which present in parallel columns a synopsis of the external and internal
history of Christianity, including that of America, down to 1858, with lists of
Councils, Popes, Patriarchs, Archbishops, Bishops, and Moderators of General
Assemblies.43
W. G. T. Shedd (Professor in the same institution, b. 1820)
wrote from the standpoint of Calvinistic orthodoxy an eminently readable History of Christian Doctrine (N. York, 1863, 2 vols.), in clear, fresh, and vigorous English, dwelling
chiefly on theology, anthropology, and soteriology, and briefly touching on
eschatology, but entirely omitting the doctrine of the Church and the
sacraments, with the connected controversies.
Philip Schaff is
the author of a special History of the Apostolic
Church, in English and German (N. York, 1853, etc., and
Leipzig, 1854), of a History of the Creeds of
Christendom (N. York, 4th ed., 1884, 3 vols., with documents original and
translated), and of a general History of the Christian Church (N. York and Edinb., 1859–’67,
in 3 vols.; also in German, Leipzig, 1867; rewritten and enlarged, N. Y. and
Edinb., 1882–’88; third revision, 1889, 5 vols.; to be continued).
George P. Fisher (Professor in New Haven, b. 1827) has written the
best manual in the English language: History of the
Christian Church with Maps. N. York, 1887. He has also published a History of the
Reformation (1873); Beginnings of Christianity (1877), and Outlines
of Universal History (1885),—all in
a calm, amiable, and judicious spirit, and a clear, chaste style.
Contributions to
interesting chapters in the history of Protestantism are numerous. Dr. E. H. Gillett (d. 1875)
wrote a Monograph on John Hus (N. York, 1864, 2
vols.), a History of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of
America (Philad. 1864, 2 vols.), and
a History of Natural Theology (God in Human
Thought, N. York, 1874, 2 vols.);
Dr. Abel Stevens, a History of Methodism, viewed as the great religious revival of the
eighteenth century, down to the centenary celebration of 1839 (N. York,
1858–’61, 3 vols.), and a History of the Methodist
Episcopal Church in the United States (1864–’67, 4 vols.); Henry M. Baird, a History of the
Rise and Progress of the Huguenots in France (N. York, 1879, 2 vols.), and The
Huguenots and Henry of Navarre (1886, 2 vols.).
The denominational and
sectarian divisions of American Christianity seem to be unfavorable to the
study and cultivation of general church history, which requires a large-hearted
catholic spirit. But, on the other hand, the social and national intermingling
of ecclesiastical organizations of every variety of doctrine and discipline, on
a basis of perfect freedom and equality before the law, widens the horizon, and
facilitates comparison and appreciation of variety in unity and unity in
variety; while the growth and prosperity of the churches on the principle of
self-support and self-government encourages a hopeful view of the future.
America falls heir to the whole wealth of European Christianity and
civilization, and is in a favorable position to review and reproduce in due
time the entire course of Christ’s kingdom in the old world with the faith and
freedom of the new.44
(e) Finally, we must
mention biblical and ecclesiastical Encyclopaedias which contain a large number
of valuable contributions to church history from leading scholars of the age,
viz.:
1. The Bible Dictionaries
of Winer. (Leipzig, 1820, 3d ed. 1847, 2 vols.); Schenkel (Leipzig, 1869–’75, 5 vols.); Riehm Kitto (Edinb., 1845, third revised ed. by W. L. Alexander, 1862–’65, 3 vols.); Wm. Smith (London, 1860–’64, in 3 vols., American edition much
enlarged and improved by H. Hackett and E. Abbot, N. York, 1870, in 4 vols.); Ph. Schaff (Philadelphia, 1880, with
maps and illustrations; 4th ed., revised, 1887).
2. The Biblical and Historical Dictionaries of
Herzog (Real-Encyklopädie
für Protestantische Theologie und Kirche, Gotha 1854 to 1868, in 22 vols., new ed. thoroughly revised by Herzog, Plitt and Hauck, Leipzig, 1877–’88, in 18 vols.), Schaff-Herzog (Religious Encyclopaedia, based on Herzog but
condensed, supplemented, and adapted to English and American students, edited
by Philip Schaff in connection with Samuel M. Jackson and D. S. Schaff, N. York
and Edinburgh, revised ed., 1887, in 3 vols., with a supplementary vol. on Living
Divines and Christian Workers, 1887); Wetzer and Welte (Roman Catholic Kirchenlexicon, Freiburg i. Breisgau, 1847-l860, in 12 vols.;
second ed. newly elaborated by Cardinal Joseph
Hergenröther
and Dr. Franz Kaulen, 1880 sqq., promised in 10 vols.); Lichtenberger. (Encyclopédie des
sciences religieuses, Paris, 1877–’82, in 13 vols., with supplement); Mcclintock and Strong (Cyclopaedia of
Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, New York, 1867–’81, 10
vols. and two supplementary volumes, 1885 and 1887, largely illustrated). The Encyclopaedia
Britannica (9th ed., completed 1889 in 25 vols.) contains also many elaborate articles on biblical and ecclesiastical
topics.
3. For ancient church
history down to the age of Charlemagne: Smith and Cheetham, Dictionary of
Christian Antiquities (London and Boston, 1875, 2 vols.); Smith and Wace, Dictionary of
Christian Biography, Literature, Sects and Doctrines during the first eight
centuries (London and Boston, 1877–’87, 4 vols.). The articles in these two works are written mostly by scholars of the
Church of England, and are very valuable for fulness and accuracy of
information.
Note.—The study of church history is reviving in the
Greek Church where it began. Philaret Bapheidos has issued a compendious church history under
the title: <foreign lang="el">jEkklhsiastikh;
Jistoriva ajpo; tou' kurivou hJmwn jIhsou' Cristou' mevcri tw'n kaq j
hJma'" crovnwn uJpo;
Filaretou' Bayeivdou, ajrcimavndrivtou D. F. kai; kaqhghtou' th'"
Qeologiva" ejn th/' ejn Cavlkh/ Qeologikh/' Scolh/'. Tovmo"
prw'to". jArcaiva jekklh": iJstoriva. </foreign> a.d.
1–700<foreign
lang="el">. jEn Kwnstantinopovlei, </foreign>1884 (Lorentz & Keil, libraries de S. M. I.
le Sultan), 380 pp. The second vol. embraces the mediaeval church to the fall
of Constantinople, 1453, and has 459 pp. The work is dedicated to Dr.
Philotheos Bryennios, Metropolitan of Nicomedia, the discoverer of the famous
Jerusalem Codex. Nearly all the literature quoted is German Protestant; no
English, very few Latin, and still fewer Greek works are mentioned. Another
compend of Church History in Greek by Diomedes Kyriakos appeared at Athens, 1881, in 2 vols.
</div3><div2
type=”Chapter” n=”I” title=”Preparation for Christianity in the History of the
Jewish”>
FIRST PERIOD
THE CHURCH UNDER THE APOSTLES
AND HEATHEN WORLD.
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST TO THE DEATH OF ST. JOHN,
a.d. 1–100
———————————
CHAPTER I
PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY IN THE HISTORY OF THE JEWISH
AND HEATHEN WORLD.
Literature.
J. L. von Mosheim: Historical
Commentaries on the State of Christianity in the first three centuries. 1753.
Transl. by Vidal and Murdock, vol. i. chs. 1 and 2 (pp. 9–82, of the N. York
ed. 1853).
Neander: Allg. Gesch. der christl.
Religion und Kirche. Vol. 1st (1842). Einleit. (p. 1–116).
J. P. Lange: Das Apost.
Zeitalter. 1853, I. pp. 224–318.
Schaff: Hist. of the Apostolic
Church. pp. 137–188 (New York ed.).
Lutterbeck (R. C.): Die N.
Testamentlichen Lehrbegriffe, oder Untersuchungen über das Zeitalter der
Religionswende, die Vorstufen des Christenthums und die erste Gestaltung
desselben. Mainz, 1852, 2 vols.
Döllinger (R. C.): Heidenthum und
Judenthum. Vorhalle zur Geschichte des Christenthums. Regensb. 1857. Engl.
transl. by N. Darnell under the title: The Gentile and the Jew in the courts of
the Temple of Christ: an Introduction to the History of Christianity. Lond.
1862, 2 vols.
Charles Hardwick (d. 1859): Christ and other Masters. London, 4th ed. by Procter, 1875.
M. Schneckenburger (d. 1848): Vorlesungen über N. Testamentliche Zeitgeschichte, aus dessen
Nachlass herausgegeben von Löhlein, mit Vorwort von Hundeshagen. Frankf. a M.
1862.
A. Hausrath: N. Testamentliche
Zeitgeschichte. Heidelb. 1868 sqq., 2d ed. 1873–’77, 4 vols. The first vol.
appeared in a third ed. 1879. The work includes the state of Judaism and
heathenism in the time of Christ, the apostolic and the post-apostolic age to
Hadrian (a.d. 117). English translation by Poynting and Guenzer, Lond. 1878
sqq.
E. Schürer: Lehrbuch der N.
Testamentlichen Zeitgeschichte. Leipz. 1874. Revised and enlarged under the
title: Gesch. des jüd. Volkes im Zeitalter Christi. 1886, 2 vols. Engl.
translation, Edinb. and N. Y.
H. Schiller: Geschichte des
römischen Kaiserreichs unter der Regierung des Nero. Berlin, 1872.
L. Freidländer: Darstellungen aus
der Sittengeschichte Roms in der Zeit von Augustus bis zum Ausgang der Antonine. Leipzig, 5th ed., revised,
1881, 3 vols. A standard work.
Geo. P. Fisher (of Yale College, New Haven): The Beginnings of Christianity. N. York, 1877. Chs. II.-VII.
Gerhard Uhlhorn: The Conflict of
Christianity with Heathenism. Transl. by Egbert C. Smyth and C. T H. Ropes. N.
York, 1879. Book I. chs. 1 and 2. The German original appeared in a 4th ed.,
1884.
</div2><div3 type =
"Section" n=”8” title=”Central Position of Christ in the History of the
World”>
§ 8. Central Position of Christ in the History of the World.
To see clearly the relation
of the Christian religion to the preceding history of mankind, and to
appreciate its vast influence upon all future ages, we must first glance at the
preparation which existed in the political, moral, and religious condition of
the world for the advent of our Saviour.
As religion is the
deepest and holiest concern of man, the entrance of the Christian religion into
history is the most momentous of all events. It is the end of the old world and
the beginning of the new. It was a great idea of Dionysius
"the Little" to date our
era from the birth of our Saviour. Jesus Christ, the God-Man, the prophet,
priest, and king of mankind, is, in fact, the centre and turning-point not only
of chronology, but of all history, and the key to all its mysteries. Around
him, as the sun of the moral universe, revolve at their several distances, all
nations and all important events, in the religious life of the world; and all must,
directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously, contribute to glorify his
name and advance his cause. The history of mankind before his birth must be
viewed as a preparation for his coming, and the history after his birth as a
gradual diffusion of his spirit and progress of his kingdom. "All things
were created by him, and for him." He is "the desire of all
nations." He appeared in the "fulness of time,"45 when the process of preparation was finished,
and the world’s need of redemption fully disclosed.
This preparation for
Christianity began properly with the very creation of man, who was made in the
image of God, and destined for communion with him through the eternal Son; and
with the promise of salvation which God gave to our first parents as a star of
hope to guide them through the darkness of sin and error.46
Vague memories of a primitive paradise and subsequent fall, and hopes of
a future redemption, survive even in the heathen religions.
With Abraham, about
nineteen hundred years before Christ, the religious development of humanity
separates into the two independent, and, in their compass, very unequal
branches of Judaism and heathenism. These meet and unite—at last in Christ as
the common Saviour, the fulfiller of the types and prophecies, desires and
hopes of the ancient world; while at the same time the ungodly elements of both
league in deadly hostility against him, and thus draw forth the full revelation
of his all—conquering power of truth and love.
As Christianity is the
reconciliation and union of God and man in and through Jesus Christ, the
God-Man, it must have been preceded by a twofold process of preparation, an
approach of God to man, and an approach of man to God. In Judaism the
preparation is direct and positive, proceeding from above downwards, and ending
with the birth of the Messiah. In heathenism it is indirect and mainly, though
not entirely, negative, proceeding from below upwards, and ending with a
helpless cry of mankind for redemption. There we have a special revelation or
self-communication of the only true God by word and deed, ever growing clearer
and plainer, till at last the divine Logos appears in human nature, to raise it
to communion with himself; here men, guided indeed by the general providence of
God, and lighted by the glimmer of the Logos shining in the darkness,47 yet unaided by direct revelation, and left to
"walk in their own ways,"48
"that they should seek God, if haply they might feel after him, and find
him."49 In
Judaism the true religion is prepared for man; in heathenism man is prepared
for the true religion. There the divine substance is begotten; here the human
forms are moulded to receive it. The former is like the elder son in the
parable, who abode in his father’s house; the latter like the prodigal, who
squandered his portion, yet at last shuddered before the gaping abyss of
perdition, and penitently returned to the bosom of his father’s compassionate
love.50
Heathenism is the starry night, full of darkness and fear, but of
mysterious presage also, and of anxious waiting for the light of day; Judaism,
the dawn, full of the fresh hope and promise of the rising sun; both lose
themselves in the sunlight of Christianity, and attest its claim to be the only
true and the perfect religion for mankind.
The heathen preparation
again was partly intellectual and literary, partly political and social. The
former is represented by the Greeks, the latter by the Romans.
Jerusalem, the holy
city, Athens, the city of culture, and Rome, the city of power, may stand for
the three factors in that preparatory history which ended in the birth of
Christianity.
This process of
preparation for redemption in the, history of the world, the groping of
heathenism after the "unknown God"51
and inward peace, and the legal struggle and comforting hope of Judaism, repeat
themselves in every individual believer; for man is made for Christ, and
"his heart is restless, till it rests in Christ."52
</div3><div3 type =
"Section" n=”9” title=”Judaism”>
<index
type = "globalSubject"
subject1 = "Judaism"
/>
§ 9. Judaism.
Literature.
I. Sources.
1. The Canonical Books of the O. and N. Testaments.
2. The Jewish Apocrypha. Best edition by Otto Frid. Fritzsche: Libri Apocryphi Veteris Testamenti Graece. Lips. 1871. German Commentary by Fritzsche and Grimm,
Leipz. 1851–’60 (in the "Exeget. Handbuch zum A. T."); English Com. by Dr. E. C. Bissell, N. York, 1880 (vol. xxv. in Schaff’s ed. of
Lange’s Bible-Work).
3. Josephus (a Jewish
scholar, priest, and historian, patronized by Vespasian and Titus, b. a.d.
37, d. about 103): Antiquitates Judaicae (<foreign lang="el">jArcaiologiva
jIoudaikhv</foreign>), in 20 books, written first (but not preserved)
in Aramaic, and then reproduced in Greek, a.d.
94, beginning with the creation and coming down to the outbreak of the
rebellion against the Romans, a.d.
66, important for the post-exilian period. Bellum Judaicum (<foreign
lang="el">peri; tou' jIoudai>vkou'
polevmou</foreign>), in 7 books, written about 75, from his own
personal observation (as Jewish general in Galilee, then as Roman captive, and
Roman agent), and coming down to the destruction of Jerusalem, a.d. 70. Contra. Apionem, a defence of the Jewish nation
against the calumnies of the grammarian Apion. His Vita or Autobiography was written after a.d. 100.—Editions of Josephus by Hudson,
Oxon. 1720, 2 vols. fol.; Havercamp, Amst. 1726, 2 fol.; Oberthür, Lips. 1785,
3 vols.; Richter, Lips. 1827, 6 vols.; Dindorf, Par. 1849, 2 vols.; Imm.
Bekker, Lips. 1855, 6 vols. The editions of Havercamp and Dindorf are the best.
English translations by Whiston and Traill, often edited, in London, New York,
Philadelphia. German translations by Hedio, Ott, Cotta, Demme.
4. Philo of Alexandria (d. after a.d. 40) represents the learned and philosophical (Platonic)
Judaism. Best ed. by Mangey, Lond. 1742, 2 fol., and Richter, Lips. 1828, 2
vols. English translation by C. D. Yonge, London, 1854, 4 vols. (in Bohn’s
"Ecclesiastical Library").
5. The Talmud (<foreign
lang="he">T'l]mWd </foreign> i.e. Doctrine) represents the traditional,
post-exilian, and anti-Christian Judaism. It consists of the Mishna (<foreign
lang="he">!iv]n:h </foreign>,, <foreign lang="el">deutevrwsi"</foreign> Repetition of the Law), from the end of the
second century, and the Gemara (<foreign lang="he">gÒm;r;a </foreign> i.e. Perfect Doctrine, from <foreign
lang="he">gÉm'r </foreign> to bring to an end). The latter exists in two
forms, the Palestinian Gemara, completed at Tiberias about a.d. 350, and the Babylonian Gemara of
the sixth century. Best eds. of the Talmud by Bomberg, Ven. 1520 sqq. 12
vols. fol., and Sittenfeld, Berlin, 1862–’68, 12 vols. fol. Latin version of
the Mishna by G. Surenhusius, Amst. 1698–1703, 6 vols. fol.; German by J. J. Rabe,
Onolzbach, 1760–’63.
6. Monumental Sources: of Egypt (see the works of Champollion,
Young, Rosellini, Wilkinson, Birch, Mariette, Lepsius, Bunsen, Ebers, Brugsch,
etc.); of Babylon and Assyria (see Botta, Layard, George Smith, Sayce,
Schrader, etc.).
7. Greek and Roman authors: Polybius (d. b.c. 125), Diodorus Siculus
(contemporary of Caesar), Strabo ((d. a.d.
24), Tacitus (d. about 117), Suetonius(d.
about 130), Justinus (d. after a.d.
160). Their accounts are mostly incidental, and either simply derived from
Josephus, or full of error and prejudice, and hence of very little value.
II. Histories.
(a) By Christian authors.
Prideaux (Dean of Norwich, d. 1724): The Old and New
Testament Connected in the History of the Jews and neighboring nations, from the
declension of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah to the time of Christ. Lond.
1715; 11th ed. 1749, 4 vols. (and later eds.). The same in French and German.
J. J. Hess (d. 1828): Geschichte der Israeliten
vor den Zeiten Jesu. Zür. 1766
sqq., 12 vols.
Warburton (Bishop of Gloucester, d. 1779): The Divine
Legation of Moses demonstrated. 5th ed. Lond. 1766; 10th ed. by James Nichols, Lond.
1846, 3 vols. 8vo.
Milman (Dean of St. Paul’s, d. 1868): History of the
Jews. Lond. 1829, 3 vols.; revised ed. Lond. and N. York, 1865, 3 vols.
J. C. K. Hofmann (Prof. in Erlangen, d. 1878): Weissagung und
Erfüllung. Nördl. 1841, 2 vols.
Archibald
Alexander (d. at Princeton, 1851): A
History of the Israelitish Nation. Philadelphia, 1853. (Popular.)
H. Ewald (d. 1874): Geschichte des Volkes Israel bis Christus. Gött. 1843 sqq. 3d ed. 1864–’68, 7 vols. A
work of rare genius and learning, but full of bold conjectures. Engl. transl.
by Russell Martineau and J. E. Carpenter. Lond. 1871–’76, 5 vols. Comp. also
Ewald’s Prophets, and Poetical Books of the O. T.
E. W. Hengstenberg (d. 1869): Geschichte des
Reiches Gottes unter dem Alten Bunde. Berl. 1869–’71, 2 vols. (Posthumous publication.) English transl., Edinburgh (T. & T.
Clark), 1871–272, 2 vols. (Name of the translator not given.)
J. H. Kurtz: Geschichte des Alten Bundes.
Berlin, 1848–’55, 2 vols.
(unfinished). Engl. transl. by Edersheim, Edinb. 1859, in 3 vols. The
same: Lehrbuch der heil. Geschichte. Königsb. 6th ed. 1853; also in English, by C. F. Schäffer. Phil.
1855.
P. Cassel: Israel in der Weltgeschichte. Berlin, 1865 (32 pp.).
Joseph
Langen (R. C.): Das Judenthum in
Palästina zur Zeit Christi. Freiburg
i. B. 1866.
G.
Weber and H. Holtzmann: Geschichte des
Volkes Israel und der Gründung des Christenthums. Leipzig, 1867, 2 vols. (the first vol. by Weber,
the second by Holtzmann).
H. Holtzmann: Die Messiasidee zur Zeit Christi, in the "Jahrbücher für Deutsche
Theologie," Gotha, 1867 (vol. xii. pp. 389–411).
F. Hitzig: Geschichte des Volkes Israel von Anbeginn bis zur
Eroberung Masada’s im J. 72 nach Chr. Heidelb. 1869, 2 vols.
A. Kuenen (Prof. in Leyden): De godsdienst van Israël tot
den ondergang van den joodschen staat. Haarlem, 1870, 2 vols. Transl. into English. The Religion of Israel
to the Fall of the Jewish State, by A. H. May. Lond. (Williams &
Norgate), 1874–’75, 3 vols. Represents the advanced rationalism of Holland.
A. P. Stanley (Dean of Westminster): Lectures
on the History of the Jewish Church. Lond. and N. York, 1863–76, 3 vols.
Based on Ewald.
W. Wellhausen: Geschichte Israels. Berlin, 1878, 3d ed. 1886. Transl. by Black
and Menzies: Prolegomena to the History of Israel. Edinb. 1885.
F. Schürer: Geschichte des jüd. Volkes im Zeitalter Christi. 1886 sq. 2 vols.
A. Edersheim: Prophecy and History in relation to the
Messiah. Lond. 1885.
A. Köhler: Lehrbuch der bibl. Geschichte des A. T. Erlangen, 1875–’88.
C. A. Briggs: Messianic Prophecy. N. York
and Edinb. 1886.
V. H. Stanton: The Jewish, and the
Christian Messiah. Lond. 1886.
B. Stade: Gesch. des Volkes Israel. Berlin, 1888, 2 vols. Radical.
E. Renan: Hist. du peuple d’Israel. Paris, 1887 sqq., 3 vols. Engl. translation,
London, 1888 sqq. Radical.
B. Kittel: Gesch. der Hebräer. Gotha, 1888 sqq. Moderate.
(b) By Jewish authors.
J. M. Jost: Geschichte der Israeliten
seit der Zeit der Maccabäer bis auf unsere Tage. Leipz. 1820–’28, 9 vols. By
the same: Geschichte des Judenthums und seiner Secten. 1857–159, 3 vols.
Salvador: Histoire de la domination Romaine en Judée et de
la ruine de Jerusalem. Par. 1847,
2 vols.
Raphall: Post-biblical History of the Jews from the
close of the 0. T. about the year 420 till the destruction of the second Temple
in the year 70. Lond. 1856, 2 vols.
Abraham
Geiger (a liberal Rabbi at Frankfort
on the M.): Das Judenthum und seine Geschichte. Breslau; 2d ed. 1865–’71, 3 vols. With an appendix on Strauss and Renan.
Comes down to the 16th century. English transl. by Maurice Mayer. N. York,
1865.
L. Herzfeld: Geschichte des Volkes Jizrael. Nordhausen, 1847–’57, 3 vols. The same work,
abridged in one vol. Leipz. 1870.
H. Grätz (Prof. in Breslau): Geschichte der Juden von den
ältesten Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart. Leipz. 1854–’70, 11 vols. (to 1848).
"Salvation is of the
Jews."53
This wonderful people, whose fit symbol is the burning bush, was chosen
by sovereign grace to stand amidst the surrounding idolatry as the bearer of
the knowledge of the only true God, his holy law, and cheering promise, and
thus to become the cradle of the Messiah. It arose with the calling of Abraham,
and the covenant of Jehovah with him in Canaan, the land of promise; grew to a
nation in Egypt, the land of bondage; was delivered and organized into a
theocratic state on the basis of the law of Sinai by Moses in the wilderness;
was led back into Palestine by Joshua; became, after the Judges, a monarchy,
reaching the height of its glory in David and Solomon; split into two hostile
kingdoms, and, in punishment for internal discord and growing apostasy to
idolatry, was carried captive by heathen conquerors; was restored after seventy
years’ humiliation to the land of its fathers, but fell again under the yoke of
heathen foes; yet in its deepest abasement fulfilled its highest mission by
giving birth to the Saviour of the world. "The history of the Hebrew
people," says Ewald, "is, at the foundation, the history of the true
religion growing through all the stages of progress unto its consummation; the
religion which, on its narrow national territory, advances through all
struggles to the highest victory, and at length reveals itself in its full
glory and might, to the end that, spreading abroad by its own irresistible
energy, it may never vanish away, but may become the eternal heritage and
blessing of all nations. The whole ancient world had for its object to seek the
true religion; but this people alone finds its being and honor on earth
exclusively in the true religion, and thus it enters upon the stage of history."54
Judaism, in sharp
contrast with the idolatrous nations of antiquity, was like an oasis in a
desert, clearly defined and isolated; separated and enclosed by a rigid moral
and ceremonial law. The holy land itself, though in the midst of the three
Continents of the ancient world, and surrounded by the great nations of ancient
culture, was separated from them by deserts south and east, by sea on the west,
and by mountain on the north; thus securing to the Mosaic religion freedom to
unfold itself and to fulfil its great work without disturbing influenced from
abroad. But Israel carried in its bosom from the first the large promise, that
in Abraham’s seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed. Abraham, the
father of the faithful, Moses, the lawgiver, David, the heroic king and sacred
psalmist, Isaiah, the evangelist among the prophets, Elijah the Tishbite, who
reappeared with Moses on the Mount of Transfiguration to do homage to Jesus,
and John the Baptist, the impersonation of the whole Old Testament, are the
most conspicuous links in the golden chain of the ancient revelation.
The outward
circumstances and the moral and religious condition of the Jews at the birth of
Christ would indeed seem at first and on the whole to be in glaring
contradiction with their divine destiny. But, in the first place, their very
degeneracy proved the need of divine help. In the second place, the redemption
through Christ appeared by contrast in the greater glory, as a creative act of
God. And finally, amidst the mass of corruption, as a preventive of
putrefaction, lived the succession of the true children of Abraham, longing for
the salvation of Israel, and ready to embrace Jesus of Nazareth as the promised
Messiah and Saviour of the world.
Since the conquest of
Jerusalem by Pompey, b.c. 63 (the year made
memorable by the consulship of Cicero. the conspiracy of Catiline, and the birth of Caesar
Augustus), the Jews had been subject
to the heathen Romans, who heartlessly governed them by the Idumean Herod and his
sons, and afterwards by procurators. Under this hated yoke their Messianic
hopes were powerfully raised, but carnally distorted. They longed chiefly for a
political deliverer, who should restore the temporal dominion of David on a
still more splendid scale; and they were offended with the servant form of
Jesus, and with his spiritual kingdom. Their morals were outwardly far better
than those of the heathen; but under the garb of strict obedience to their law,
they concealed great corruption. They are pictured in the New Testament as a
stiff-necked, ungrateful, and impenitent race, the seed of the serpent, a
generation of vipers. Their own priest and historian, Josephus, who generally
endeavored to present his countrymen to the Greeks and Romans in the most
favorable light, describes them as at that time a debased and wicked people,
well deserving their fearful punishment in the destruction of Jerusalem.
As to religion, the
Jews, especially after the Babylonish captivity, adhered most tenaciously to
the letter of the law, and to their traditions and ceremonies, but without
knowing the spirit and power of the Scriptures. They cherished a bigoted horror
of the heathen, and were therefore despised and hated by them as misanthropic,
though by their judgment, industry, and tact, they were able to gain wealth and
consideration in all the larger cities of the Roman empire.
After the time of the
Maccabees (b.c. 150), they fell
into three mutually hostile sects or parties, which respectively represent the
three tendencies of formalism, skepticism, and mysticism; all indicating the
approaching dissolution of the old religion and the dawn of the new. We may
compare them to the three prevailing schools of Greek philosophy—the Stoic, the
Epicurean, and the Platonic, and also to the three sects of Mohammedanism—the
Sunnis, who are traditionalists, the Sheas, who adhere to the Koran, and the
Sufis or mystics, who seek true religion in "internal divine
sensation."
1. The Pharisees, the "separate,"55 were, so to speak, the Jewish Stoics. They
represented the traditional orthodoxy and stiff formalism, the legal
self-righteousness and the fanatical bigotry of Judaism. They had most
influence with the people and the women, and controlled the public worship.
They confounded piety with theoretical orthodoxy. They overloaded the holy
Scriptures with the traditions of the elders so as to make the Scriptures
"of none effect." They analyzed the Mosaic law to death, and
substituted a labyrinth of casuistry for a living code. "They laid heavy
burdens and grievous to be borne on men’s shoulders," and yet they
themselves would "not move them with their fingers." In the New
Testament they bear particularly the reproach of hypocrisy; with, of course,
illustrious exceptions, like Nicodemus, Gamaliel, and his disciple, Paul.
2. The less numerous Sadducees56 were skeptical, rationalistic, and
worldly-minded, and held about the same position in Judaism as the Epicureans
and the followers of the New Academy in Greek and Roman heathendom. They
accepted the written Scriptures (especially the Pentateuch), but rejected the
oral traditions, denied the resurrection of the body and the immortality of the
soul, the existence of angels and spirits, and the doctrine of an all-ruling
providence. They numbered their followers among the rich, and had for some time
possession of the office of the high-priest. Caiaphas belonged to their party.
The difference between
the Pharisees and Sadducees reappears among modern Jews, who are divided into
the orthodox and the liberal or rationalistic parties.
3. The Essenes (whom we know only from Philo
and Josephus) were not a party, but a mystic and ascetic order or brotherhood,
and lived mostly in monkish seclusion in villages and in the desert Engedi on
the Dead Sea.57
They numbered about 4,000 members. With an arbitrary, allegorical
interpretation of the Old Testament, they combined some foreign theosophic
elements, which strongly resemble the tenets of the new Pythagorean and
Platonic schools, but were probably derived (like the Gnostic and Manichaean
theories) from eastern religions, especially from Parsism. They practised
communion of goods, wore white garments, rejected animal food, bloody
sacrifices, oaths, slavery, and (with few exceptions) marriage, and lived in
the utmost simplicity, hoping thereby to attain a higher degree of holiness. They
were the forerunners of Christian monasticism.
The sect of the Essenes
came seldom or never into contact with Christianity under the Apostles, except
in the shape of a heresy at Colossae. But the Pharisees and Sadducees,
particularly the former, meet us everywhere in the Gospels as bitter enemies of
Jesus, and hostile as they are to each other, unite in condemning him to that
death of the cross, which ended in the glorious resurrection, and became the
foundation of spiritual life to believing Gentiles as well as Jews.
</div3><div3 type =
"Section" n=”10” title=”The Law, and the Prophecy”>
§ 10. The Law, and the Prophecy.
Degenerate and corrupt
though the mass of Judaism was, yet the Old Testament economy was the divine
institution preparatory to the Christian redemption, and as such received
deepest reverence from Christ and his apostles, while they sought by terrible
rebuke to lead its unworthy representatives to repentance. It therefore could
not fail of its saving effect on those hearts which yielded to its discipline,
and conscientiously searched the Scriptures of Moses and the prophets.
Law and prophecy are the
two great elements of the Jewish religion, and make it a direct divine
introduction to Christianity, "the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness,
Prepare ye the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our
God."
1. The law of Moses was
the clearest expression of the holy will of God before the advent of Christ.
The Decalogue is a marvel of ancient legislation, and in its two tables enjoins
the sum and substance of all true piety and morality—supreme love to God, and
love to our neighbor. It set forth the ideal of righteousness, and was thus
fitted most effectually to awaken the sense of man’s great departure from it,
the knowledge of sin and guilt.58 It acted as a schoolmaster to lead men to Christ59 that they might be justified by faith."60
The same sense of guilt
and of the need of reconciliation was constantly kept alive by daily
sacrifices, at first in the tabernacle and afterwards in the temple, and by the
whole ceremonial law, which, as a wonderful system of types and shadows,
perpetually pointed to the realities of the new covenant, especially to the one
all-sufficient atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross.
God in his justice
requires absolute obedience and purity of heart under promise of life and
penalty of death. Yet he cannot cruelly sport with man; he is the truthful
faithful, and merciful God. In the moral and ritual law, therefore, as in a
shell, is hidden the sweet kernel of a promise, that he will one day exhibit
the ideal of righteousness in living form, and give the penitent sinner pardon
for all his transgressions and the power to fulfil the law. Without such
assurance the law were bitter irony.
As regards the law, the
Jewish economy was a religion of repentance.
2. But it was at the
same time, as already, hinted, the vehicle of the divine promise of redemption,
and, as such, a religion of hope. While the Greeks and Romans put their golden
age in the past, the Jews looked for theirs in the future. Their whole history,
their religious, political, and social institutions and customs pointed to the
coming of the Messiah, and the establishment of his kingdom on earth.
Prophecy, or the gospel
under the covenant of the law, is really older than the law, which was added
afterwards and came in between the promise and its fulfilment, between sin and
redemption, between the disease and the cure.61
Prophecy begins in paradise with the promise of the serpent-bruiser
immediately after the fall. It predominates in the patriarchal age, especially
in the life of Abraham, whose piety has the corresponding character of trust
and faith; and Moses, the lawgiver, was at the same time a prophet pointing the
people to a greater successor.62 Without the comfort of the Messianic
promise, the law must have driven the earnest soul to despair. From the time of
Samuel, some eleven centuries before Christ, prophecy, hitherto sporadic, took
an organized form in a permanent prophetical office and order. In this form it
accompanied the Levitical priesthood and the Davidic dynasty down to the
Babylonish captivity, survived this catastrophe, and directed the return of the
people and the rebuilding of the temple; interpreting and applying the law,
reproving abuses in church and state, predicting the terrible judgments and the
redeeming grace of God, warning and punishing, comforting and encouraging, with
an ever plainer reference to the coming Messiah, who should redeem Israel and
the world from sin and misery, and establish a kingdom of peace and
righteousness on earth.
The victorious reign of
David and the peaceful reign of Solomon furnish, for Isaiah and his successors,
the historical and typical ground for a prophetic picture of a far more
glorious future, which, unless thus attached to living memories and present
circumstances, could not have been understood. The subsequent catastrophe and
the sufferings of the captivity served to develop the idea of a Messiah atoning
for the sins of the people and entering through suffering into glory.
The prophetic was an
extraordinary office, serving partly to complete, partly to correct the
regular, hereditary priesthood, to prevent it from stiffening into monotonous
formality, and keep it in living flow. The prophets were, so to speak, the
Protestants of the ancient covenant, the ministers of the spirit and of
immediate communion with God, in distinction from the ministers of the letter
and of traditional and ceremonial mediation.
The flourishing period
of our canonical prophecy began with the eighth century before Christ, some
seven centuries after Moses, when Israel was suffering under Assyrian
oppression. In this period before the captivity, Isaiah ("the salvation of
God"), who appeared in the last years of king Uzziah, about ten years
before the founding of Rome, is the leading figure; and around him Micah, Joel,
and Obadiah in the kingdom of Judah, and Hosea, Amos, and Jonah in the kingdom
of Israel, are grouped. Isaiah reached the highest elevation of prophecy, and
unfolds feature by feature a picture of the Messiah—springing from the house of
David, preaching the glad tidings to the poor, healing the broken-hearted,
opening the eyes to the blind, setting at liberty the captives, offering
himself as a lamb to the slaughter, bearing the sins of the people, dying the
just for the unjust, triumphing over death and ruling as king of peace over all
nations—a picture which came to its complete fulfilment in one person, and one
only, Jesus of Nazareth. He makes the nearest approach to the cross, and his
book is the Gospel of the Old Testament. In the period of the Babylonian exile,
Jeremiah (i.e. "the Lord casts down") stands chief. He is the prophet
of sorrow, and yet of the new covenant of the Spirit. In his denunciations of
priests and false prophets, his lamentations over Jerusalem, his holy grief,
his bitter persecution he resembles the mission and life of Christ. He remained
in the land of his fathers, and sang his lamentation on the ruins of Jerusalem;
while Ezekiel warned the exiles on the river Chebar against false prophets and
carnal hopes, urged them to repentance, and depicted the new Jerusalem and the
revival of the dry bones of the people by the breath of God; and Daniel at the
court of Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon saw in the spirit the succession of the four
empires and the final triumph of the eternal kingdom of the Son of Man. The
prophets of the restoration are Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. With Malachi
who lived to the time of Nehemiah, the Old Testament prophecy ceased, and
Israel was left to himself four hundred years, to digest during this period of
expectation the rich substance of that revelation, and to prepare the
birth-place for the approaching redemption.
3. Immediately before
the advent of the Messiah the whole Old Testament, the law and the prophets,
Moses and Isaiah together, reappeared for a short season embodied in John the
Baptist, and then in unrivalled humility disappeared as the red dawn in the
splendor of the rising sun of the new covenant. This remarkable man, earnestly
preaching repentance in the wilderness and laying the axe at the root of the
tree, and at the same time comforting with prophecy, and pointing to the
atoning Lamb of God, was indeed, as the immediate forerunner of the New
Testament economy, and the personal friend of the heavenly Bridegroom, the
greatest of them that were born of woman; yet in his official character as the
representative of the ancient preparatory economy he stands lower than the
least in that kingdom of Christ, which is infinitely more glorious than all its
types and shadows in the past.
This is the Jewish
religion, as it flowed from the fountain of divine revelation and lived in the
true Israel, the spiritual children of Abraham, in John the Baptist, his
parents and disciples, in the mother of Jesus, her kindred and friends, in the
venerable Simeon, and the prophetess Anna, in Lazarus and his pious sisters, in
the apostles and the first disciples, who embraced Jesus of Nazareth as the
fulfiller of the law and the prophets, the Son of God and the Saviour of the
world, and who were the first fruits of the Christian Church.
</div3><div3 type =
"Section" n=”11” title=”Heathenism”>
<index
type = "globalSubject"
subject1 = "Heathenism"
/>
§ 11. Heathenism.
Literature.
The works of the Greek and Roman Classics from Homer to Virgil and the age of the Antonines.
The monuments of Antiquity.
The writings of the early Christian Apologists, especially Justin Martyr: Apologia I. and II.; Tertullian:
Apologeticus; Minucius Felix: Octavius; Eusebius: Praeparatio
Evangelica; and Augustine (d. 430): De Civitate
Dei (the first ten books).
II. Later Works.
Is. Vossius: De theologia gentili et physiolog. Christ. Frcf. 1675, 2 vols.
Creuzer (d. 1858): Symbolik und
Mythologie der alien Völker.
Leipz. 3d ed, 1837 sqq. 3 vols.
Tholuck (d. 1877): Das Wesen und der
sittliche Einfluss des Heidenthums, besonders unter den Griechen und Römern,
mit Hinsicht auf das Christenthum. Berlin, 1823. In Neander’s Denkwürdigkeiten,
vol. i. of the 1st ed.
Afterwards separately printed. English translation by Emerson in,
"Am. Bibl. Repository" for 1832.
Tzschirner (d. 1828): Der Fall des
Heidenthums, ed. by Niedner.
Leip, 1829, 1st vol.
O. Müller (d. 1840): Prolegomena zu einer wissenschaftl. Mythologie. Gött. 1825. Transl. into English by J. Leitch.
Lond. 1844.
Hegel (d. 1831): Philosphie der
Religion. Berl. 1837, 2 vols.
Stuhr:
Allgem. Gesch. der Religionsformen der heidnischen Völker. Berl. 1836, 1837, 2 vols. (vol. 2d on the
Hellenic Religion).
Hartung: Die Religion der Römer. Erl. 1836, 2 vols.
C. F. Nägelsbach: Homerische Theologie.
Nürnb. 1840; 2d ed. 1861. The same: Die nach-homerische Theologie des
Griechischen Volksglaubens bis auf Alexander. Nürnb. 1857 .
Sepp (R. C.): Das Heidenthum und dessen
Bedeutung für das Christenthum.
Regensb. 1853, 3 vols.
Wuttke: Geschichte des Heidenthums
in Beziehung auf Religion, Wissen, Kunst, Sittlichkeit und Staatsleben. Bresl. 1852 sqq. 2 vols.
Schelling (d. 1854): Einleitung in die
Philosophie der Mythologie. Stuttg. 1856; and Philosophie der Mythologie . Stuttg. 1857.
Maurice (d. 1872): The Religions of the World in their Relations to
Christianity. Lond. 1854 (reprinted in Boston).
Trench: Hulsean Lectures for 1845–’46. No. 2: Christ the Desire of all
Nations, or the Unconscious Prophecies of Heathendom (a commentary on the
star of the wise men, Matt. ii.). Cambr. 4th ed. 1854 (also 1850).
L. Preller: Griechische Mythologie. Berlin, 1854, 3d ed. 1875, 2
vols. By the same; Römische Mythologie. Berlin, 1858; 3d ed., by Jordan,
1881–83, 2 vols.
M. W. Heffter: Griech. und Röm. Mythologie. Leipzig, 1854.
Döllinger: Heidenthum und Judenthum, quoted in § 8.
C. Schmidt: Essai historique sur la societé civil dans le monde
romain et sur sa transformation par le christianisme. Paris, 1853.
C. G. Seibert: Griechenthum und Christenthum, oder der Vorhof des
Schönen und das Heiligthum der Wahrheit. Barmen, 1857.
Fr. Fabri: Die Entstehung des
Heidenthums und die Aufgabe der Heidenmission. Barmen, 1859.
W. E. Gladstone (the English
statesman): Studies on Homer and Homeric Age. Oxf. 1858, 3 vols. (vol. ii. Olympus;
or the Religion of the Homeric Age). The same: Juventus Mundi: the Gods and Men
of the Heroic Age. 2d ed. Lond. 1870. (Embodies the results of the larger
work, with several modifications in the ethnological and mythological
portions.)
W. S. Tyler (Prof. in
Amherst Coll., Mass.): The Theology of the Greek Poets. Boston, 1867.
B. F. Cocker: Christianity
and Greek Philosophy; or the Relation between Reflective Thought in Greece and
the Positive Teaching of Christ and his Apostles. N. York, 1870.
Edm. Spiess: Logos spermaticós. Parallelstellen zum N. Text. aus
den Schriften der alten Griechen. Ein Beitrag zur christl. Apologetik und zur
vergleichenden Religionsforschung. Leipz. 1871.
G. Boissier: La religion romaine d’Auguste aux Antonins. Paris, 1884, 2 vols.
J Reville: La religion à Rome sous les Sévères. Paris, 1886.
Comp. the histories of Greece by Thirlwall,
Grote, and Curtius; the histories of Rome by Gibbon, Niebuhr, Arnold, Merivale, Schwegler, Ihne, Duruy (transl. from the French by
W. J. Clarke), and Mommsen. Ranke’s Weltgeschichte. Th. iii.
1882. Schiller’s Gesch. der römischen Kaiserzeit. 1882.
Heathenism is religion in
its wild growth on the soil of fallen human nature, a darkening of the original
consciousness of God, a deification of the rational and irrational creature,
and a corresponding corruption of the moral sense, giving the sanction of
religion to natural and unnatural vices.63
Even the religion of
Greece, which, as an artistic product of the imagination, has been justly
styled the religion of beauty, is deformed by this moral distortion. It utterly
lacks the true conception of sin and consequently the true conception of
holiness. It regards sin, not as a perverseness of will and an offence against
the gods, but as a folly of the understanding and an offence against men, often
even proceeding from the gods themselves; for "Infatuation," or Moral
Blindness (<foreign lang="el"> [Ath</foreign>), is a "daughter of Jove," and a
goddess, though cast from Olympus, and the source of all mischief upon earth.
Homer knows no devil, but he put, a devilish element into his deities. The
Greek gods, and also the Roman gods, who were copied from the former, are mere
men and women, in whom Homer and the popular faith saw and worshipped the
weaknesses and vices of the Grecian character, as well as its virtues, in
magnified forms. The gods are born, but never die. They have bodies and senses,
like mortals, only in colossal proportions. They eat and drink, though only
nectar and ambrosia. They are awake and fall asleep. They travel, but with the
swiftness of thought. They mingle in battle. They cohabit with human beings,
producing heroes or demigods. They are limited to time and space. Though
sometimes honored with the attributes of omnipotence and omniscience, and
called holy and just, yet they are subject to an iron fate (Moira), fall under
delusion, and reproach each other with folly and crime. Their heavenly
happiness is disturbed by all the troubles of earthly life. Even Zeus or
Jupiter, the patriarch of the Olympian family, is cheated by his sister and
wife Hera (Juno), with whom he had lived three hundred years in secret marriage
before he proclaimed her his consort and queen of the gods, and is kept in
ignorance of the events before Troy. He threatens his fellows with blows and
death, and makes Olympus tremble when he shakes his locks in anger. The gentle
Aphrodite or Venus bleeds from a spear-wound on her finger. Mars is felled with
a stone by Diomedes. Neptune and Apollo have to serve for hire and are cheated.
Hephaestus limps and provokes an uproarious laughter. The gods are involved by
their marriages in perpetual jealousies and quarrels. They are full of envy and
wrath, hatred and lust prompt men to crime, and provoke each other to lying,
and cruelty, perjury and adultery. The Iliad and Odyssey, the most popular
poems of the Hellenic genius, are a chronique scandaleuse of the gods. Hence
Plato banished them from his ideal Republic. Pindar, Aeschylus, and Sophocles
also rose to loftier ideas of the gods and breathed a purer moral atmosphere;
but they represented the exceptional creed of a few, while Homer expressed the
popular belief. Truly we have no cause to long with Schiller for the return of
the "gods of Greece," but would rather join the poet in his joyful
thanksgiving:
<foreign
lang="de">"Einen zu bereichern
unter allen,
Musste diese Götterwelt vergehen."
</foreign>
Notwithstanding this
essential apostasy from truth and holiness, heathenism was religion, a groping
after "the unknown God." By its superstition it betrayed the need of
faith. Its polytheism rested on a dim monotheistic background; it subjected all
the gods to Jupiter, and Jupiter himself to a mysterious fate. It had at bottom
the feeling of dependence on higher powers and reverence for divine things. It
preserved the memory of a golden age and of a fall. It had the voice of
conscience, and a sense, obscure though it was, of guilt. It felt the need of
reconciliation with deity, and sought that reconciliation by prayer, penance,
and sacrifice. Many of its religious traditions and usages were faint echoes of
the primal religion; and its mythological dreams of the mingling of the gods
with men, of demigods, of Prometheus delivered by Hercules from his helpless
sufferings, were unconscious prophecies and fleshly anticipations of Christian
truths.
This alone explains the
great readiness with which heathens embraced the gospel, to the shame of the
Jews.64
There was a spiritual
Israel scattered throughout the heathen world, that never received the
circumcision of the flesh, but the unseen circumcision of the heart by the hand
of that Spirit which bloweth where it listeth, and is not bound to any human
laws and to ordinary means. The Old Testament furnishes several examples of
true piety outside of the visible communion with the Jewish church, in the
persons of Melchisedec, the friend of Abraham, the royal priest, the type of
Christ; Jethro, the priest of Midian; Rahab, the Canaanite woman and hostess of
Joshua and Caleb; Ruth, the Moabitess and ancestress of our Saviour; King
Hiram, the friend of David; the queen of Sheba, who came to admire the wisdom
of Solomon; Naaman the Syrian; and especially Job, the sublime sufferer, who
rejoiced in the hope of his Redeemer.65
The elements of truth,
morality, and piety scattered throughout ancient heathenism, may be ascribed to
three sources. In the first place, man, even in his fallen state, retains some
traces of the divine image, a knowledge of God,66 however weak, a moral sense or conscience,67 and a longing for union with the Godhead, for
truth and for righteousness.68 In this view we may, with Tertullian, call the
beautiful and true sentences of a Socrates, a Plato, an Aristotle, of Pindar,
Sophocles, Cicero, Virgil, Seneca, Plutarch, "the testimonies of a soul
constitutionally Christian,"69
of a nature predestined to Christianity. Secondly, some account must be made of
traditions and recollections, however faint, coming down from the general
primal revelations to Adam and Noah. But the third and most important source of
the heathen anticipations of truth is the all-ruling providence of God, who has
never left himself without a witness. Particularly must we consider, with the
ancient Greek fathers, the influence of the divine Logos before his
incarnation,70 who was the tutor of mankind, the original light
of reason, shining in the darkness and lighting every man, the sower scattering
in the soil of heathendom the seeds of truth, beauty, and virtue.71
The flower of paganism,
with which we are concerned here, appears in the two great nations of classic
antiquity, Greece and Rome. With the language, morality, literature, and
religion of these nations, the apostles came directly into contact, and through
the whole first age the church moves on the basis of these nationalities.
These, together with the Jews, were the chosen nations of the ancient world,
and shared the earth among them. The Jews were chosen for things eternal, to
keep the sanctuary of the true religion. The Greeks prepared the elements of
natural culture, of science and art, for the use of the church. The Romans developed
the idea of law, and organized the civilized world in a universal empire, ready
to serve the spiritual universality of the gospel. Both Greeks and Romans were
unconscious servants of Jesus Christ, "the unknown God."
These three nations, by
nature at bitter enmity among themselves, joined hands in the superscription on
the cross, where the holy name and the royal title of the Redeemer stood
written, by the command of the heathen Pilate, "in Hebrew and Greek and
Latin."72
</div3><div3 type =
"Section" n=”12” title=”Grecian Literature, and the Roman Empire”>
<index
type = "globalSubject"
subject1 = "Greek
Literature" />
<index
type = "globalSubject"
subject1 = "Roman
Empire" />
§ 12. Grecian Literature, and the Roman Empire.
The literature of the
ancient Greeks and the universal empire of the Romans were, next to the Mosaic
religion, the chief agents in preparing the world for Christianity. They
furnished the human forms, in which the divine substance of the gospel,
thoroughly prepared in the bosom of the Jewish theocracy, was moulded. They
laid the natural foundation for the supernatural edifice of the kingdom of
heaven. God endowed the Greeks and Romans with the richest natural gifts, that
they might reach the highest civilization possible without the aid of
Christianity, and thus both provide the instruments of human science, art, and
law for the use of the church, and yet at the same time show the utter
impotence of these alone to bless and save the world.
The Greeks, few in number, like the Jews,
but vastly more important in history than the numberless hordes of the Asiatic
empires, were called to the noble task of bringing out, under a sunny sky and
with a clear mind, the idea of humanity in its natural vigor and beauty, but
also in its natural imperfection. They developed the principles of science and
art. They liberated the mind from the dark powers of nature and the gloomy
broodings of the eastern mysticism. They rose to the clear and free
consciousness of manhood, boldly investigated the laws of nature and of spirit,
and carried out the idea of beauty in all sorts of artistic forms. In poetry,
sculpture, architecture, painting, philosophy, rhetoric, historiography, they
left true masterpieces, which are to this day admired and studied as models of
form and taste.
All these works became
truly valuable and useful only in the hands of the Christian church, to which
they ultimately fell. Greece gave the apostles the most copious and beautiful
language to express the divine truth of the Gospel, and Providence had long
before so ordered political movements as to spread that language over the world
and to make it the organ of civilization and international intercourse, as the
Latin was in the middle ages, as the French was in the eighteenth century and
as the English is coming to be in the nineteenth. "Greek," says Cicero, "is read in
almost all nations; Latin is confined by its own narrow boundaries." Greek
schoolmasters and artists followed the conquering legions of Rome to Gaul and
Spain. The youthful hero Alexander the Great, a Macedonian indeed by birth, yet an
enthusiastic admirer of Homer, an emulator of Achilles, a disciple of the
philosophic world-conqueror, Aristotle, and thus the truest Greek of his age,
conceived the sublime thought of making Babylon the seat of a Grecian empire of
the world; and though his empire fell to pieces at his untimely death, yet it
had already carried Greek letters to the borders of India, and made them a
common possession of all civilized nations. What Alexander had begun Julius Caesar completed.
Under the protection of the Roman law the apostles could travel everywhere and
make themselves understood through the Greek language in every city of the
Roman domain.
The Grecian philosophy,
particularly the systems of Plato and Aristotle, formed the natural basis for
scientific theology; Grecian eloquence, for sacred oratory; Grecian art, for
that of the Christian church. Indeed, not a few ideas and maxims of the
classics tread on the threshold of revelation and sound like prophecies of
Christian truth; especially the spiritual soarings of Plato,73
the deep religious reflections of Plutarch,74
the sometimes almost Pauline moral precepts of Seneca.75 To many of the greatest church fathers,
Justin Martyr,
Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and in some measure even to Augustine, Greek philosophy was a bridge to the Christian
faith, a scientific schoolmaster leading them to Christ. Nay, the whole ancient
Greek church rose on the foundation of the Greek language and nationality, and
is inexplicable without them.
Here lies the real
reason why the classical literature is to this day made the basis of liberal
education throughout the Christian world. Youth are introduced to the
elementary forms of science and art, to models of clear, tasteful style, and to
self-made humanity at the summit of intellectual and artistic culture, and thus
they are at the same time trained to the scientific apprehension of the
Christian religion, which appeared when the development of Greek and Roman
civilization had reached its culmination and began already to decay. The Greek
and Latin languages, as the Sanskrit and Hebrew, died in their youth and were
embalmed and preserved from decay in the immortal works of the classics. They
still furnish the best scientific terms for every branch of learning and art
and every new invention. The primitive records of Christianity have been
protected against the uncertainties of interpretation incident upon the
constant changes of a living language.
But aside from the
permanent value of the Grecian literature, the glory of its native land had, at
the birth of Christ, already irrecoverably departed. Civil liberty and
independence had been destroyed by internal discord and corruption. Philosophy
had run down into skepticism and refined materialism. Art had been degraded to
the service of levity and sensuality. Infidelity or superstition had supplanted
sound religious sentiment. Dishonesty and licentiousness reigned among high and
low.
This hopeless state of
things could not but impress the more earnest and noble souls with the
emptiness of all science and art, and the utter insufficiency of this natural
culture to meet the deeper wants of the heart. It must fill them with longings
for a new religion.
The Romans were the practical and political
nation of antiquity. Their calling was to carry out the idea of the state and
of civil law, and to unite the nations of the world in a colossal empire,
stretching from the Euphrates to the Atlantic, and from the Libyan desert to
the banks of the Rhine. This empire embraced the most fertile and civilized
countries of Asia, Africa, and Europe, and about one hundred millions of human
beings, perhaps one-third of the whole race at the time of the introduction of
Christianity.76 To
this outward extent corresponds its historical significance. The history of
every ancient nation ends, says Niebuhr, as the history of every modern nation begins,
in that of Rome. Its history has therefore a universal interest; it is a vast
storehouse of the legacies of antiquity. If the Greeks had, of all nations, the
deepest mind, and in literature even gave laws to their conquerors, the Romans
had the strongest character, and were born to rule the world without. This
difference of course reached even into the moral and religious life of the two
nations. Was the Greek, mythology the work of artistic fantasy and a religion
of poesy, so was the Roman the work of calculation adapted to state purposes,
political and utilitarian, but at the same time solemn, earnest, and energetic.
"The Romans had no love of beauty, like the Greeks. They held no communion
with nature, like the Germans. Their one idea was Rome—not ancient, fabulous,
poetical Rome, but Rome warring and conquering; and <foreign
lang="la">orbis
terrarum domina. S. P. Q. R.</foreign> is
inscribed on almost every page of their literature."77
The Romans from the
first believed themselves called to govern the world. They looked upon all
foreigners—not as barbarians, like the cultured Greeks, but—as enemies to be
conquered and reduced to servitude. War and triumph were their highest
conception of human glory and happiness. The "<foreign
lang="la">Tu,
regere imperio populos, Romane, memento!</foreign>"had been their motto, in fact, long before
Virgil thus gave it form. The very name of the <foreign
lang="la">urbs
aeterna</foreign>, and the characteristic
legend of its founding, prophesied its future. In their greatest straits the
Romans never for a moment despaired of the commonwealth. With vast energy,
profound policy, unwavering consistency, and wolf-like rapacity, they pursued
their ambitious schemes, and became indeed the lords, but also, as their
greatest historian, Tacitus, says, the insatiable robbers of the world.78
Having conquered the
world by the sword, they organized it by law, before whose majesty every people
had to bow, and beautified it by the arts of peace. Philosophy, eloquence,
history, and poetry enjoyed a golden age under the setting sun of the republic
and the rising sun of the empire, and extended their civilizing influence to
the borders of barbarianism. Although not creative in letters and fine arts,
the Roman authors were successful imitators of Greek philosophers, orators,
historians, and poets. Rome was converted by Augustus from a city of brick huts
into a city of marble palaces.79 The finest paintings and sculptures
were imported from Greece, triumphal arches and columns were erected on public
places, and the treasures of all parts of the world were made tributary to, the
pride, beauty, and luxury of the capital. The provinces caught the spirit of
improvement, populous cities sprung up, and the magnificent temple of Jerusalem
was rebuilt by the ambitious extravagance of Herod. The rights of persons and
property were well protected. The conquered nations, though often and justly
complaining of the rapacity of provincial governors, yet, on the whole, enjoyed
greater security against domestic feuds and foreign invasion, a larger share of
social comfort, and rose to a higher degree of secular civilization. The ends
of the empire were brought into military, commercial, and literary
communication by carefully constructed roads, the traces of which still exist
in Syria, on the Alps, on the banks of the Rhine. The facilities and security
of travel were greater in the reign of the Caesars than in any subsequent
period before the nineteenth century. Five main lines went out from Rome to the
extremities of the empire, and were connected at seaports with maritime routes.
"We may travel," says a Roman writer, "at all hours, and sail
from east to west." Merchants brought diamonds from the East, ambers from
the shores of the Baltic, precious metals from Spain, wild animals from Africa,
works of art from Greece, and every article of luxury, to the market on the banks
of the Tiber, as they now do to the banks of the Thames. The Apocalyptic seer,
in his prophetic picture of the downfall of the imperial mistress of the world,
gives prominence to her vast commerce: "And the merchants of the
earth," he says, "weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their
merchandise any more: merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stone, and
pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet; and all thine wood,
and every vessel of ivory, and every vessel made of most precious wood, and of
brass, and iron, and marble; and cinnamon, and spice, and incense, and
ointment, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and
cattle, and sheep; and merchandise of horses and chariots and slaves; and souls
of men. And the fruits that thy soul desired are departed from thee, and all
things which were dainty and sumptuous are perished from thee, and men shall
find them no more at all."80
Heathen Rome lived a
good while after this prediction, but, the causes of decay were already at work
in the first century. The immense extension and outward prosperity brought with
it a diminution of those domestic and civil virtues which at first so highly
distinguished the Romans above the Greeks. The race of patriots and deliverers,
who came from their ploughs to the public service, and humbly returned again to
the plough or the kitchen, was extinct. Their worship of the gods, which was
the root of their virtue, had sunk to mere form, running either into the most absurd
superstitions, or giving place to unbelief, till the very priests laughed each
other in the face when they met in the street. Not unfrequently we find
unbelief and superstition united in the same persons, according to the maxim
that all extremes touch each other. Man must believe something, and worship
either God or the devil.81 Magicians and necromancers abounded,
and were liberally patronized. The ancient simplicity and contentment were
exchanged for boundless avarice and prodigality. Morality and chastity, so
beautifully symbolized in the household ministry of the virgin Vesta, yielded
to vice and debauchery. Amusement came to be sought in barbarous fights of
beasts and gladiators, which not rarely consumed twenty thousand human lives in
a single month. The lower classes had lost all nobler feeling, cared for
nothing but "<foreign lang="la">panem et circenses</foreign>,"
and made the proud imperial city on the Tiber a slave of slaves. The huge
empire of Tiberius and of Nero was but a giant body without a soul, going, with steps slow but sure, to
final dissolution. Some of the emperors were fiendish tyrants and monsters of
iniquity; and yet they were enthroned among the gods by a vote of the Senate,
and altars and temples were erected for their worship. This characteristic
custom began with Caesar, who even during his lifetime was honored as
"Divus Julius" for his brilliant victories, although they cost more
than a million of lives slain and another million made captives and slaves.82 The
dark picture which St. Paul, in addressing the Romans, draws of the heathenism
of his day, is fully sustained by Seneca, Tacitus, Juvenal, Persius, and other heathen writers of that age, and
shows the absolute need of redemption. "The world," says Seneca, in a famous
passage, "is full of crimes and vices. More are committed than can be
cured by force. There is an immense struggle for iniquity. Crimes are no longer
bidden, but open before the eyes. Innocence is not only rare, but nowhere."83
Thus far the negative. On the other hand, the universal empire of Rome
was a positive groundwork for the universal empire of the gospel. It served as
a crucible, in which all contradictory and irreconcilable peculiarities of the
ancient nations and religions were dissolved into the chaos of a new creation.
The Roman legions razed the partition-walls among the ancient nations, brought
the extremes of the civilized world together in free intercourse, and united
north and south and east and west in the bonds of a common language and
culture, of common laws and customs. Thus they evidently, though unconsciously,
opened the way for the rapid and general spread of that religion which unites
all nations in one family of God by the spiritual bond of faith and love.
The idea of a common
humanity, which underlies all the distinctions of race, society and education,
began to dawn in the heathen mind, and found expression in the famous line of Terentius, which was
received with applause in the theatre:
"<foreign
lang="la">Homo
sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto</foreign>."
This spirit of humanity
breathes in Cicero and Virgil. Hence the veneration paid to the poet of the Aeneid by the fathers and
throughout the middle ages. Augustine calls him the noblest of poets, and Dante, "the glory
and light of other poets," and "his master," who guided him
through the regions of hell and purgatory to the very gates of Paradise. It was
believed that in his fourth Eclogue he had prophesied the advent of Christ.
This interpretation is erroneous; but "there is in Virgil," says an
accomplished scholar,84
"a vein of thought and sentiment more devout, more humane, more akin to
the Christian than is to be found in any other ancient poet, whether Greek or
Roman. He was a spirit prepared and waiting, though he knew it not, for some
better thing to be revealed."
The civil laws and
institutions, also, and the great administrative wisdom of Rome did much for
the outward organization of the Christian church. As the Greek church rose on
the basis of the Grecian nationality, so the Latin church rose on that of
ancient Rome, and reproduced in higher forms both its virtues and its defects.
Roman Catholicism is pagan Rome baptized, a Christian reproduction of the universal
empire seated of old in the city of the seven hills.
</div3><div3 type =
"Section" n="13" title="Judaism and Heathenism in
Contact">
§ 13. Judaism and Heathenism in Contact.
The Roman empire, though
directly establishing no more than an outward political union, still promoted
indirectly a mutual intellectual and moral approach of the hostile religious of
the Jews and Gentiles, who were to be reconciled in one divine brotherhood by
the supernatural power of the cross of Christ.
1. The Jews, since the
Babylonish captivity, had been scattered over all the world. They were as
ubiquitous in the Roman empire in the first century as they are now throughout,
Christendom. According to Josephus and Strabo, there was no country where they did not make up
a part of the population.85 Among the witnesses of the
miracle of Pentecost were "Jews from every nation under heaven ...
Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and the dwellers of Mesopotamia, in Judaea
and Cappadocia, in Pontus and Asia, in Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt and the
parts of Libya about Cyrene, and sojourners from Rome, both Jews and
proselytes, Cretans and Arabians."86 In spite of the antipathy of the
Gentiles, they had, by talent and industry, risen to wealth, influence, and
every privilege, and had built their synagogues in all the commercial cities of
the Roman empire. Pompey brought a considerable number of Jewish captives from Jerusalem to the
capital (b.c. 63), and settled
them on the right bank of the Tiber (Trastevere). By establishing this
community he furnished, without knowing it, the chief material for the Roman
church. Julius Caesar was the great protector of the Jews; and they showed
their gratitude by collecting for many nights to lament his death on the forum
where his murdered body was burnt on a funeral pile.87 He
granted them the liberty of public worship, and thus gave them a legal status
as a religious society. Augustus confirmed these privileges. Under his reign
they were numbered already by thousands in the city. A reaction followed; Tiberius and Claudius expelled them
from Rome; but they soon returned, and succeeded in securing the free exercise
of their rites and customs. The frequent satirical allusions to them prove
their influence as well as the aversion and contempt in which they were held by
the Romans. Their petitions reached the ear of Nero through his wife Poppaea, who seems to have inclined to their faith; and
Josephus, their most distinguished scholar, enjoyed the favor of three
emperors—Vespasian, Titus,
and Domitian.
In the language of Seneca (as quoted by Augustin) "the conquered Jews gave laws to their
Roman conquerors."
By this dispersion of
the Jews the seeds of the knowledge of the true God and the Messianic hope were
sown in the field of the idolatrous world. The Old Testament Scriptures were
translated into Greek two centuries before Christ, and were read and expounded
in the public worship of God, which was open to all. Every synagogue was a
mission-station of monotheism, and furnished the apostles an admirable place
and a natural introduction for their preaching of Jesus Christ as the fulfiller
of the law and the prophets.
Then, as the heathen
religious had been hopelessly undermined by skeptical philosophy and popular
infidelity, many earnest Gentiles especially multitudes of women, came over to
Judaism either, wholly or in part. The thorough converts, called
"proselytes of righteousness,"88
were commonly still more bigoted and fanatical than the native Jews. The
half-converts, "proselytes of the gate"89 or "fearers of God,"90 who adopted only the monotheism, the principal
moral laws, and the Messianic hopes of the Jews, without being circumcised,
appear in the New Testament as the most susceptible hearers of the gospel, and
formed the nucleus of many of the first Christian churches. Of this class were
the centurion of Capernaum, Cornelius of Caesarea, Lydia of Philippi, Timothy,
and many other prominent disciples.
2. On the other hand,
the Graeco-Roman heathenism, through its language, philosophy, and literature,
exerted no inconsiderable influence to soften the fanatical bigotry of the
higher and more cultivated classes of the Jews. Generally the Jews of the
dispersion, who spoke the Greek language—the "Hellenists," as they
were called—were much more liberal than the proper "Hebrews," or
Palestinian Jews, who kept their mother tongue. This is evident in the Gentile
missionaries, Barnabas of Cyprus and Paul of Tarsus, and in the whole church of
Antioch, in contrast with that at Jerusalem. The Hellenistic form of Christianity
was the natural bridge to the Gentile.
The most remarkable
example of a transitional, though very fantastic and Gnostic-like combination
of Jewish and heathen elements meets us in the educated circles of the Egyptian
metropolis, Alexandria, and in the system of Philo, who was born about b.c. 20, and lived till after a.d. 40, though he never came in contact with Christ or the
apostles. This Jewish, divine sought to harmonize the religion of Moses with
the philosophy of Plato by the help of an ingenious but arbitrary allegorical
interpretation of the Old Testament; and from the books of Proverbs and of
Wisdom he deduced a doctrine of the Logos so strikingly like that of John’s
Gospel, that many expositors think it necessary to impute to the apostle an
acquaintance with the writings, or at least with the terminology of Philo. But
Philo’s speculation is to the apostle’s "Word made flesh" as a shadow
to the body, or a dream to the reality. He leaves no room for an incarnation,
but the coincidence of his speculation with the great fact is very remarkable.91
The Therapeutae or Worshippers, a mystic and
ascetic sect in Egypt, akin to the Essenes in Judaea, carried this Platonic
Judaism into practical life; but were, of course, equally unsuccessful in
uniting the two religions in a vital and permanent way. Such a union could only
be effected by a new religion revealed from heaven.92
Quite independent of the
philosophical Judaism of Alexandria were the Samaritans, a mixed race, which
also combined, though in a
different way, the elements of Jewish and Gentile religion.93
They date from the period of the exile. They held to the Pentateuch, to
circumcision, and to carnal Messianic hopes; but they had a temple of their own
on Mount Gerizim, and mortally hated the proper Jews. Among these Christianity,
as would appear from the interview of Jesus with the woman of Samaria,94 and the preaching of Philip,95 found ready access, but, as among the Essenes
and Therapeutae fell easily into a heretical form. Simon Magus, for example,
and some other Samaritan arch-heretics, are represented by the early Christian
writers as the principal originators of Gnosticism.
3. Thus was the way for
Christianity prepared on every side, positively and negatively, directly and
indirectly, in theory and in practice, by truth and by error, by false belief
and by unbelief—those hostile brothers, which yet cannot live apart—by Jewish
religion, by Grecian culture, and by Roman conquest; by the vainly attempted
amalgamation of Jewish and heathen thought, by the exposed impotence of natural
civilization, philosophy, art, and political power, by the decay of the old
religions, by the universal distraction and hopeless misery of the age, and by
the yearnings of all earnest and noble souls for the religion of salvation.
"In the fulness of
the time," when the fairest flowers of science and art had withered, and
the world was on the verge of despair, the Virgin’s Son was born to heal the
infirmities of mankind. Christ entered a dying world as the author of a new and
imperishable life.
</div3><div 2
type=”Chapter” n=”II” title=”Jesus Christ”>
CHAPTER II.
<index type = "globalSubject"
subject1 = "Jesus
Christ" />
JESUS CHRIST.
</div><div3 type =
"Section" n="14" title="Sources and
Literature">
§ 14. Sources and Literature.
A. Sources.
Christ himself wrote
nothing, but furnished endless material for books and songs of gratitude and
praise. The living Church of the redeemed is his book. He founded a religion of
the living spirit, not of a written code, like the Mosaic law. ( His letter to
King Abgarus of Edessa, in Euseb., Hist. Eccl., I. 13, is a worthless
fabrication.) Yet his words and
deeds are recorded by as honest and reliable witnesses as ever put pen to
paper.
I. Authentic Christian
Sources.
(1) The four Canonical Gospels. Whatever their origin
and date, they exhibit essentially the same divine-human life and character of
Christ, which stands out in sharp contrast with the fictitious Christ of the
Apocryphal Gospels, and cannot possibly have been invented, least of all by
illiterate Galileans. They would never have thought of writing books without
the inspiration of their Master.
(2) The Acts of Luke, the Apostolic Epistles, and the
Apocalypse of John. They presuppose, independently of the written
Gospels, the main facts of the gospel-history, especially the crucifixion and
the resurrection, and abound in allusions to these facts. Four of the Pauline
Epistles (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians) are admitted as genuine by
the most extreme of liberal critics (Baur and the Tübingen School), and from
them alone a great part of the life of Christ might be reconstructed. (See the
admissions of Keim, Gesch. Jesu v. Naz., I. 35 sqq.)
II. Apocryphal Gospels:
The Apocryphal Gospels are
very numerous (about 50), some of them only known by name, others in fragments,
and date from the second and later centuries. They are partly heretical
(Gnostic and Ebionite) perversions or mutilations of the real history, partly
innocent compositions of fancy, or religious novels intended to link together the
disconnected periods of Christ’s biography, to satisfy the curiosity concerning
his relations, his childhood, his last days, and to promote the glorification
of the Virgin Mary. They may be divided into four classes: (1) Heretical
Gospels (as the Evangelium
Cerinthi, Ev. Marcionis, Ev. Judae Ischariotae, Ev. secundum Hebraeos, etc.);
(2) Gospels of Joseph and Mary, and the birth of Christ (Protevangelium Jacobi,
Evang. Pseudo-Mathaei sive liber de Ortu Beatae Mariae et Infantia Salvatoris,
Evang. de Nativitate Mariae, Historia Josephi Fabri lignarii, etc.); (3)
Gospels of the childhood of Jesus from the flight to Egypt till his eighth or
twelfth year (Evang. Thomae, of Gnostic origin, Evang. Infantiae Arabicum,
etc.); (4) Gospels of the passion and the mysterious triduum in Hades (Evang.
Nicodemi, including the Gesta or Acta Pilati and the Descensus ad Inferos,
Epistola Pilati, a report of Christ’s passion to the emperor Tiberius,
Paradosis Pilati, Epistolae Herodis ad Pilatum and Pilati ad Herodem, Responsum
Tiberii ad Pilatum, Narratio Josephi Arimathiensis, etc.). It is quite probable that Pilate sent an
account of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus to his master in Rome (as Justin
Martyr and Tertullian confidentially assert), but the various documents bearing
his name are obviously spurious, including the one recently published by Geo.
Sluter (The Acta Pilati, Shelbyville, Ind. 1879), who professes to give
a translation from the supposed authentic Latin copy in the Vatican Library.
These apocryphal productions
have no historical, but considerable apologetic value; for they furnish by
their contrast with the genuine Gospels a very strong negative testimony to the
historical truthfulness of the Evangelists, as a shadow presupposes the light,
a counterfeit the real coin, and a caricature the original picture. They have
contributed largely to mediaeval art (e.g., the ox and the ass in the history
of the nativity), and to the traditional Mariology and Mariolatry of the Greek
and Roman churches, and have supplied Mohammed with his scanty knowledge of
Jesus and Mary.
See the collections of the
apocryphal Gospels by Fabricius (Codex Apocryphus Novi Testamenti, Hamburg, 1703, 2d ed. 1719), Thilo (Cod. Apocr. N. Ti., Lips.
1832), Tischendorf (Evangelia Apocrypha, Lips. 1853), W. Wright
(Contributions to the Apocr. Lit. of the N. T. from Syrian MSS. in the
British Museum, Lond. 1865), B. Harris
Cowper (The Apocryphal Gospels, translated, London, 1867), and Alex. Walker (Engl. transl. in Roberts
& Donaldson’s "Ante-Nicene Library," vol. xvi., Edinb. 1870; vol.
viii. of Am. ed., N. Y. 1886).
Comp. the dissertations of
Tischendorf: De Evang. aproc. origine et usu (Hagae, 1851),
and Pilati circa Christum judicio quid lucis offeratur ex Actis Pilati (Lips. 1855). Rud.
Hofmann: Das Leben Jesu nach den Apokryphen (Leipz. 1851), and his art.,
Apokryphen des N. T, in Herzog
& Plitt, "R. Encykl.," vol. i. (1877), p. 511. G. Brunet: Les évangiles apocryphes, Paris, 1863. Michel
Nicolas: Études sur les évangiles apocryphes, Paris, 1866. Lipsius: Die Pilatus-Acten,
Kiel, 1871; Die edessenische Abgar-Sage, 1880; Gospels, Apocr., in
Smith & Wace, I. 700 sqq.; Holtzmann Einl. in’s N. T., pp.
534–’54.
III. Jewish Sources.
The O. Test. Scriptures
are, in type and prophecy, a preparatory history of Christ, and become fully
intelligible only in him who came "to fulfill the law and the
prophets."
The Apocryphal and
post-Christian Jewish writings give us a full view of the outward framework of
society and religion in which the life of Christ moved, and in this way they
illustrate and confirm the Gospel accounts.
IV. The famous testimony
of the Jewish historian Josephus
(d. after a.d. 103) deserves
special consideration. In his Antiqu. Jud., 1. xviii. cap. 3,§ 3, he
gives the following striking summary of the life of Jesus:
"Now there rose about
this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a
doer of wonderful works (<foreign lang="el">paradovxwn
e[rgwn poihthv"</foreign>), a teacher of such men as receive the truth
with gladness. He carried away with him many of the Jews and also many of the
Greeks. He was the Christ (<foreign lang="el">oJ
Cristo;" ou|to" h\n</foreign>). And after Pilate, at the suggestion of the
principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, his first adherents did
not forsake him. For he appeared to them alive again the third day (<foreign
lang="el">ejfavnh ga;r aujtoi'" trivthn
e[cwn hJmevran pavlin zw'n</foreign>); the divine prophets having foretold these and
ten thousand other wonderful things (<foreign
lang="el">a[lla muriva qaumavsia</foreign>) concerning him. And the tribe of those called
Christians, after him, is not extinct to this day."
This testimony is first
quoted by Eusebius, twice, without a misgiving (Hist. Eccl., I. II; and
Demonstr. Evang., III. 5), and was considered genuine down to the 16th
century, but has been disputed ever since. We have added the most doubtful
words in Greek.
The following are the
arguments for the genuineness:
(1) The testimony is found
in all the MSS. of Josephus.
But these MSS. were
written by Christians, and we have none older than from the 11th century.
(2) It agrees with the
style of Josephus.
(3) It is extremely
improbable that Josephus, in writing a history of the Jews coming down to a.d. 66, should have ignored Jesus; all
the more since he makes favorable mention of John the Baptist (Antiqu.,
XVIII. 5, 2), and of the martyrdom of James "the Brother of Jesus called
the Christ" (Antiqu. XX 9, 1: <foreign
lang="el">to;n ajdelfo;n jIhsou' tou' legomevnou Cristou', jjIavkabo" o[noma aujtw/).</foreign>
Both passages are generally accepted as genuine, unless the words <foreign
lang="el">tou' legomevnou Cristou'</foreign> should be an interpolation.
Against this may be said
that Josephus may have had prudential reasons for ignoring Christianity
altogether.
Arguments against the
genuineness:
(1) The passage interrupts
the connection.
But not necessarily.
Josephus had just recorded a calamity which befell the Jews under Pontius
Pilate, in consequence of a sedition, and he may have regarded the crucifixion
of Jesus as an additional calamity. He then goes on (§ 4 and 5) to record
another calamity, the expulsion of the Jews from Rome under Tiberius.
(2) It betrays a
Christian, and is utterly inconsistent with the known profession of Josephus as
a Jewish priest of the sect of the Pharisees. We would rather expect him to
have represented Jesus as an impostor, or as an enthusiast.
But it may be urged, on
the other hand, that Josephus, with all his great literary merits, is also
known as a vain and utterly unprincipled man, as a renegade and sycophant who
glorified and betrayed his nation, who served as a Jewish general in the revolt
against Rome, and then, after having been taken prisoner, flattered the Roman
conquerors, by whom he was richly rewarded. History furnishes many examples of
similar inconsistencies. Remember Pontius Pilate who regarded Christ as
innocent, and yet condemned him to death, the striking testimonies of Rousseau
and Napoleon I. to the divinity of Christ, and also the concessions of Renan,
which contradict his position.
(3) It is strange that the
testimony should not have been quoted by such men as Justin Martyr, Clement of
Alexandria, Tertullian, or any other writer before Eusebius (d. 340),
especially by Origen, who expressly refers to the passages of Josephus on John
the Baptist and James (Contra Cels., I. 35, 47). Even Chrysostom (d.
407), who repeatedly mentions Josephus, seems to have been ignorant of this
testimony.
In view of these
conflicting reasons, there are different opinions:
(1) The passage is
entirely genuine. This old view is defended by Hauteville, Oberthür,
Bretschneider, Böhmert, Whiston, Schoedel (1840), Böttger (Das Zeugniss des
Jos., Dresden, 1863).
(2) It is wholly
interpolated by a Christian hand. Bekker (in his ed. of Jos., 1855), Hase (1865
and 1876), Keim (1867), Schürer (1874).
(3) It is partly genuine,
partly interpolated. Josephus probably wrote <foreign
lang="el">Xristo;" ou\to" ejlevgeto</foreign> (as in the passage on James), but not <foreign
lang="el">h|n</foreign> and all other Christian sentences were added by
a transcriber before Eusebius, for apologetic purposes. So Paulus, Heinichen,
Gieseler (I. § 24, p. 81, 4th Germ. ed.), Weizsäcker, Renan, Farrar. In the
introduction to his Vie de Jésus (p. xii.), Renan says: "<foreign
lang="fr">Je crois le passage sur Jésus authentique. Il est
parfaitement dans le goût de Joseph, et si cet historian a fait mention de
Jésus, c’est bien comme cela qu’il a dû en parler. On sent seulement qu’une
main chrétienne a retouché le morceau, y a ajouté quelques mots sans lesquels
il eút été presque blasphématoire, a peut-étre retranché ou modifié quelques expressions</foreign>."
(4) It is radically
changed from a Jewish calumny into its present Christian form. Josephus
originally described Jesus as a pseudo-Messiah, a magician, and seducer of the
people, who was justly crucified. So Paret and Ewald (Gesch. Christus’, p. 183, 3d ed.).
It is difficult to resist
the conclusion that Josephus must have taken some notice of the greatest event
in Jewish history (as he certainly did of John the Baptist and of James), but
that his statement—whether non-committal or hostile—was skillfully enlarged or
altered by a Christian hand, and thereby deprived of its historical value.
In other respects, the
writings of Josephus contain, indirectly, much valuable testimony, to the truth
of the gospel history. His History of the Jewish War is undesignedly a
striking commentary on the predictions of our Saviour concerning the
destruction of the city and the temple of Jerusalem; the great distress and
affliction of the Jewish people at that time; the famine, pestilence, and
earthquake; the rise of false prophets and impostors, and the flight of his
disciples at the approach of these calamities. All these coincidences have been
traced out in full by the learned Dr. Lardner, in his Collection of Ancient
Jewish and Heathen Testimonies to the Truth of the Christian Religion, first
published 1764–’67, also in vol. vi. of his Works, ed. by Kippis, Lond.
1838.
V. Heathen testimonies are
few and meagre. This fact must be accounted for by the mysterious origin, the
short duration and the unworldly character of the life and work of Christ,
which was exclusively devoted to the kingdom of heaven, and, was enacted in a
retired country and among a people despised by the proud Greeks and Romans.
The oldest heathen
testimony is probably in the Syriac letter of Mara,
a philosopher, to his son Serapion, about a.d.
74, first published by Cureton, in Spicilegium Syriacum, Lond.
1855, and translated by Pratten in the "Ante-Nicene Library," Edinb.
vol. xxiv. (1872), 104–114. Here Christ is compared to Socrates and Pythagoras,
and called "the wise king of the Jews," who were justly punished for
murdering him. Ewald (l.c. p. 180) calls this testimony "very
remarkable for its simplicity and originality as well as its antiquity."
Roman authors of the 1st
and 2d centuries make only brief and incidental mention of Christ as the
founder of the Christian religion, and of his crucifixion under Pontius Pilate,
in the reign of Tiberius. Tacitus,
Annales, I. xv. cap. 44, notices him in connection with his account of
the conflagration at Rome and the Neronian persecution, in the words: "<foreign
lang="la">Auctor
nominis ejus [Christiani] Christus Tiberio imperitante per procuratorem Pontium
Pilatum supplicio affectus erat," and calls the Christian religion an
exitiabilis superstitio.</foreign> Comp.
his equally contemptuous misrepresentation of the Jews in Hist., v. c.
3–5. Other notices are found in Suetonius: Vita Claudii, c. 25; Vita Neronis, c. 16; Plinius,
jun.: Epist., X. 97, 98; Lucian:
De morte Peregr., c. 11; Lampridius:
Vita Alexandri Severi, c. 29, 43.
The heathen opponents of
Christianity, Lucian, Celsus, Porphyry,
Julian the Apostate, etc., presuppose the principal facts of the
gospel-history, even the miracles of Jesus, but they mostly derive them, like
the Jewish adversaries, from evil spirits. Comp. my book on the Person of
Christ, Appendix, and Dr. Nath.
Lardner’s Credibility, and Collection of Testimonies.
B. Biographical and
Critical.
The numerous Harmonies of
the Gospel began already a.d. 170,
with Tatian’s <foreign
lang="el"><foreign lang="el">to;
dia; tessavrwn</foreign></foreign> (on which Ephraem Syrus, in the fourth century,
wrote a commentary, published in Latin from an Armenian version in the Armenian
convent at Venice, 1876). The first biographies of Christ were ascetic or
poetic, and partly legendary. See Hase, Leben Jesu, § 17–19. The
critical period began with the infidel and infamous attacks of Reimarus,
Bahrdt, and Venturini, and the noble apologetic works of Hess, Herder, and
Reinhard. But a still greater activity was stimulated by the Leben Jesu of Strauss, 1835 and again by Renan’s Vie de Jésus, 1863.
J. J. Hess (Antistes at Zürich, d. 1828): Lebensgeschichte
Jesu. Zürich, 1774; 8th ed.
1823, 3 vols. Translated into Dutch and Danish. He introduced the psychological
and pragmatic treatment.
F. V. Rienhard (d. 1812): Versuch über den
Plan Jesu. Wittenberg, 1781; 5th
ed. by Heubner, 1830. English translation, N. York, 1831. Reinhard
proved the originality and superiority of the plan of Christ above all the
conceptions of previous sages and benefactors of the race.
J. G. Herder (d. 1803): Vom Erlöser der
Menschen nach unsern 3 ersten Evang. Riga, 1796. The same: Von Gottes Sohn, der
Welt Heiland, nach Joh. Evang. Riga,
1797.
H. E. G. Paulus (Prof. in Heidelberg, d. 1851): Leben Jesu als
Grundlage einer reinen Geschichte des Urchristenthums. Heidelb. 1828, 2 vols. Represents the
"vulgar" rationalism superseded afterwards by the speculative
rationalism of Strauss.
C. Ullmann (d. 1865): Die Sündlosigkeit Jesu. Hamb. 1828; 7th ed. 1864. Eng. translation (of
7th ed.) by Sophia Taylor, Edinb. 1870. The best work on the sinlessness
of Jesus. Comp. also his essay (against Strauss), Historisch oder
Mythisch? Gotha, 1838.
Karl
Hase: Das Leben Jesu. Leipz. 1829; 5th ed. 1865. The same:
Geschichte Jesu. Leipz. 1876.
Schleiermacher (d. 1834): Vorlesungen über das Leben
Jesu, herausgeg. von Rütenik. Berlin, 1864. The lectures were delivered 1832,
and published from imperfect manuscripts. "Eine Stimme aus vergangenen Tagen."
Comp. the critique of D. F. Strauss in Der Christus des Glaubens und der Jesus
der Geschichte. Berlin, 1865.
D. F. Strauss (d. 1874): Das Leben Jesu
kritisch bearbeitet. Tübingen,
1835–’36; 4th ed. 1840, 2 vols. French transl. by Emile Littré, Par.
1856 (2d ed.); Engl. transl. by Miss Marian Evans (better known under
the assumed name George Eliot), Lond. 1846, in 3 vols., republ.
in N. York, 1850. The same: Das Leben Jesu für das deutsche Volk bearbeitet. Leipz. 1864; 3d ed. 1875. In both these famous
works Strauss represents the mythical theory. It has been popularized in the
third volume of The Bible for Learners by Oort and Hooykaas, Engl. transl., Boston ed. 1879.
A. Neander (d. 1850): Das Leben Jesu. Hamb. 1837; 5th ed. 1852. A positive refutation of Strauss. The same in
English by McClintock and Blumenthal, N. York, 1848.
Joh.
Nep. Sepp (R. C.): Das Leben Jesu
Christi. Regensb. 1843 sqq. 2d
ed. 1865, 6 vols. Much legendary matter.
Jordan
Bucher (R. C.): Das Leben Jesu
Christi. Stuttgart, 1859.
A. Ebrard: Wissenschaftliche Kritik der evangelischen
Geschichte. Erl. 1842; 3d ed.
1868. Against Strauss, Bruno Bauer, etc. Condensed English translation, Edinb.
1869.
J. P. Lange: Das Leben Jesu. Heidelb. 1844–’47, 3 parts in 5 vols. Engl.
transl. by Marcus Dods and others, in 6 vols., Edinb. 1864. Rich and
suggestive.
J. J. van Oosterzee: Leven van Jesus.
First publ. in 1846–’51, 3 vols. 2d ed. 1863–’65. Comp. his Christologie, Rotterdam,
1855–’61, 3 vols., which describe the Son of God before his incarnation, the
Son of God in the flesh, and the Son of God in glory. The third part is
translated into German by F. Meyering: Das Bild Christi nach der Schrift, Hamburg, 1864.
Chr.
Fr. Schmid: Biblische Theologie des N. Testaments. Ed. by Weizsäcker. Stuttgart, 1853 (3d ed. 1854), 2 vols. The first
volume contains the life and doctrine of Christ. The English translation by
G. H. Venables (Edinb. 1870) is an abridgment.
H. Ewald: Geschichte Christus’ und seiner Zeit. Gött. 1854; 3d ed 1867 (vol. v. of his Hist. of
Israel). Transl. into Engl. by O. Glover, Cambridge, 1865.
J. Young: The Christ of History. Lond. and N. York,
1855. 5th ed., 1868.
P. Lichtenstein: Lebensgeschichte Jesu in chronolog. Uebersicht.
Erlangen, 1856.
C. J. Riggenbach: Vorlesungen über das Leben
Jesu.
Basel, 1858.
M. Baumgarten: Die Geschichte Jesu für das Verständniss der
Gegenwart. Braunschweig, 1859.
W. F. Gess: Christi Person und Werk
nach Christi Selbstzeugniss und den Zeugnissen der Apostel. Basel, 1878, in several parts. (This supersedes
his first work on the same subject, publ. 1856.)
Horace
Bushnell (d. 1878): The Character
of Jesus: forbidding his possible classification with men. N. York, 1861.
(A reprint of the tenth chapter of his work on, "Nature and the
Supernatural," N. York, 1859.)
It is the best and most useful product of his genius.
C. J. Elliott (Bishop): Historical Lectures
on the Life of our Lord Jesus Christ, being the Hulsean Lect. for 1859. 5th
ed. Lond. 1869; republ. in Boston, 1862.
Samuel
J. Andrews: The Life of our Lord
upon the earth, considered in its historical, chronological, and geographical
relations. N. York, 1863; 4th ed. 1879
Ernest
Renan: Vie de Jésus. Par. 1863, and often publ. since (13th ed. 1867)
and in several translations. Strauss popularized and Frenchified. The legendary
theory. Eloquent, fascinating, superficial, and contradictory.
Daniel
Schenkel: Das Characterbild
Jesu. Wiesbaden, 1864; 4th ed.
revised 1873. English transl. by W. H. Furness. Boston, 1867, 2 vols. By
the same: Das Christusbild der Apostel und der nachapostolischen
Zeit. Leipz. 1879. See also his
art., Jesus Christus, in Schenkel’s "Bibel-Lexikon," III. 257 sqq.
Semi-mythical theory. Comp. the sharp critique of Strauss on the Characterbild: Die
Halben und die Ganzen. Berlin,
1865.
Philip
Schaff: The Person of Christ: the
Perfection of his Humanity viewed as a Proof of his Divinity. With a Collection
of Impartial Testimonies. Boston and N. York, 1865; 12th ed., revised, New
York, 1882. The same work in German, Gotha, 1865; revised ed., N. York (Am.
Tract Soc.), 1871; in Dutch by Cordes, with an introduction by J. J.
van Oosterzee. Groningen, 1866; in French by Prof. Sardinoux, Toulouse,
1866, and in other languages. By the same: Die Christusfrage. N. York and Berlin, 1871.
Ecce Homo: A Survey of
the Life and Work of Jesus Christ.
[By Prof. J. R. Seeley, of
Cambridge.] Lond. 1864, and several editions and translations. It gave rise also
to works on Ecce Deus, Ecce Deus
Homo, and a number of reviews
and essays (one by Gladstone).
Charles
Hardwick (d. 1859): Christ and
other Masters. Lond., 4th ed., 1875. (An extension of the work of Reinhard;
Christ compared with the founders of the Eastern religions.)
E. H. Plumptre: Christ and Christendom. Boyle
Lectures. Lond. 1866
E. de Pressensé: Jésus Christ, son temps, sa vie, son oeuvre. Paris, 1866. (Against Renan.) The same transl. into English by Annie
Harwood (Lond., 7th ed. 1879), and into German by Fabarius (Halle, 1866).
F. Delitzsch: Jesus und Hillel. Erlangen, 1867; 3rd ed. revised, 1879.
Theod.
Keim (Prof. in Zürich, and then in
Giessen, d. 1879); Geschichte Jesu von Nazara. Zürich, 1867–’72, 3 vols. Also an abridgment in
one volume, 1873, 2d ed. 1875. (This 2d ed. has important additions,
particularly a critical Appendix.)
The large work is translated into English by Geldart and Ransom.
Lond. (Williams & Norgate), 1873–82, 6 vols. By the same author: Der geschichtliche
Christus. Zürich, 3d ed. 1866.
Keim attempts to reconstruct a historical Christ from the Synoptical Gospels,
especially Matthew, but without John.
Wm. HANNA: The Life of our Lord. Edinb.
1868–’69, 6 vols.
Bishop Dupanloup (R. C.): Histoire de noire
Sauveur Jésus Christ. Paris,
1870.
Fr.
W. Farrar (Canon of Westminster): The
Life of Christ. Lond. and N. York, 1874, 2 vols. (in many editions, one
with illustrations).
C. Geikie: The Life and Words of Christ. Lond. and N.
York, 1878,·2 vols. (Illustrated. Several editions.)
Bernhard
Weis (Prof. in Berlin): Das Leben Jesu. Berlin, 1882, 2 vols., 3d ed. 1888. English
transl. Edinb. 1885, 3 vols.
Alfred
Edersheim: The Life and Times of
Jesus the Messiah. London and N. Y. 1884, 2 vols. Strictly orthodox.
Valuable for rabbinical illustrations.,
W. Beyschlag: Das Leben Jesu. Halle, 1885–’86, 2 vols.; 2d ed. 1888.
The works of Paulus, Strauss, and Renan (also Joseph
Salvador, a learned Jew in France, author of Jésus Christ et sa doctrine,
Par. 1838) represent the various
phases of rationalism and destructive criticism, but have called forth also a
copious and valuable apologetic literature. See the bibliography in Hase’s Leben Jesu, 5th ed.
p. 44 sqq., and in his Geschichte Jesu, p. 124 sqq. Schleiermacher,
Gfrörer, Weisse, Ewald, Schenkel, Hase, and Keim occupy, in various
degrees and with many differences, a middle position. The great Schleiermacher
almost perished in the sea of scepticism, but, like Peter, he caught the saving
arm of Jesus extended to him (Matt. 14:30, 31). Hase is very valuable for the
bibliography and suggestive sketches, Ewald and Keim for independent research
and careful use of Josephus and the contemporary history. Keim rejects, Ewald
accepts, the Gospel of John as authentic; both admit the sinless perfection of
Jesus, and Keim, from his purely critical and synoptical standpoint, goes so
far as to say (vol. iii. 662) that Christ, in his gigantic elevation above his
own and succeeding ages, "makes the impression of mysterious loneliness,
superhuman miracle, divine creation (den Eindruck geheimnissvoller Einsamkeit,
übermenschlichen Wunders, göttlicher Schöpfung)." Weiss and Beyschlag mark a still greater
advance, and triumphantly defend the genuineness of John’s Gospel, but make
concessions to criticism in minor details.
C. Chronological.
Kepler: De Jesu Christi Servatoris nostri vero anno
natalicio. Frankf. 1606. De vero anno quo aeternus Dei Filius humanam naturam
in utero benedicitae Virginis Mariae assumpsit. Frcf. 1614.
J. A. Bengel: Ordo Temporum. Stuttgart, 1741, and 1770.
Henr. Sanclemente: De
Vulgaris Aerae Emendatione libri quatuor.
C. Ideler: Handbuch der Chronologie.
Berlin, 1825–226, 2 vols. By the same: Lehrbuch der Chronologie, 1831
Fr. Münter: Der Stern der Weisen. Kopenhagen, 1827.
K. Wieseler: Chronolog. Synopse der vier Evangelien. Hamb. 1843. Eng. trans. by Venables, 2d
ed., 1877. Supplemented by his Beiträge zur richtigen Würdigung der Evangelien. Gotha, 1869.
Henry
Browne: Ordo Saeclorum. London, 1844. Comp. his art. Chronology, in
the 3d ed. of Kitto’s "Cycl. of Bib. Lit."
Sam.
F. Jarvis (historiographer of the
Prot. Episc. Ch. in the U. S., d. 1851): A Chronological Introduction to the
History of the Church. N. York, 1845.
G. Seyffarth: Chronologia
sacra, Untersuchungen über das Geburtsjahr des Herrn. Leipzig, 1846.
Rud.
Anger: Der Stern der Weisen und das
Geburtsjahr Christi. Leipz. 1847. By the same. Zur Chronologie des Lehramtes
Christi. Leipz. 1848.
Henry
F. Clinton: Fasti Romani. Oxford, 1845–’50, 2 vols.
Thomas
Lewin: Essay on the Chronology of
the New Testament. Oxford, 1854. The same: Fasti Sacri (from b.c. 70 to a.d. 70). Lond. 1865.
F. Piper: Das Datum der Geburt Christi, in his "Evangel. Kalender" for 1856,
pp. 41 sqq.
Henri
Lutteroth: Le recensement de Quirinius
en Judée. Paris, 1865 (134 pp.).
Gust.
Rösch: Zum Geburtsjahr Jesu, in
the "Jahrbücher für Deutsche Theol." Gotha, 1866, pp. 3–48.
Ch. Ed. Caspari:
Chronologisch-Geographische Einleitung in das Leben J.
C. Hamb. 1869 (263 pp.). English translation by M. J. Evans. Edinburgh (T. Clark), 1876.
Francis
W. Upham: The Wise Men. N. York,
1869 (ch. viii. 145, on Kepler’s Discovery). Star of Our Lord, by the same
author. N. Y., 1873.
A. W. Zumpt: Das Geburtsjahr Christi. Leipz. 1869 (306 pp.). He makes much account of
the double governorship of Quirinus, Luke 2:2. Comp. Pres. Woolsey in Bibl. Sacra, April, 1870.
Herm.
Sevin: Chronologie des Lebens Jesu.
Tübingen, 2d. ed., 1874.
Florian
Riess: (Jesuit): Das Geburtsjahr
Christi. Freiburg i. Br. 1880.
Peter
Schegg: (R. C.): Das Todesjahr des
Königs Herodes und das Todesjahr Jesu Christi. Against Riess. München, 1882.
Florian
Riess: Nochmals das Geburtsjahr
Jesu Christi. Reply to Schegg.
Freib. im Br. 1883.
Bernhard
Matthias: Die römische Grundsteuer
und das Vectigalrecht. Erlangen,
1882.
H. Lecoultre: De
censu Quiriniano et anno nativitatis Christi secundum Lucam evangelistam
Dissertatio. Laussanne, 1883.
</div3><div3 type =
"Section" n="15" title="The Founder of
Christianity">
§ 15. The Founder of Christianity.
When "the fulness of
the time" was come, God sent forth his only-begotten Son, "the Desire
of all nations," to redeem the world from the curse of sin, and to
establish an everlasting kingdom of truth, love, and peace for all who should
believe on his name.
In Jesus Christ a
preparatory history both divine and human comes to its close. In him culminate
all the previous revelations of God to Jews and Gentiles; and in him are fulfilled
the deepest desires and efforts of both Gentiles and Jews for redemption. In
his divine nature, as Logos, he is, according to St. John, the eternal Son of
the Father, and the agent in the creation and preservation of the world, and in
all those preparatory manifestations of God, which were completed in the
incarnation. In his human nature, as Jesus of Nazareth, he is the ripe fruit of
the religions growth of humanity, with an earthly ancestry, which St. Matthew
(the evangelist of Israel) traces to Abraham, the patriarch of the Jews, and
St. Luke (the evangelist of the Gentiles), to Adam, the father of all men. In
him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily; and in him also is realized
the ideal of human virtue and piety. He is the eternal Truth, and the divine
Life itself, personally joined with our nature; he is our Lord and our God; yet
at the same time flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone. In him is solved the
problem of religion, the reconciliation and fellowship of man with God; and we must
expect no clearer revelation of God, nor any higher religious attainment of
man, than is already guaranteed and actualized in his person.
But as Jesus Christ thus
closes all previous history, so, on the other hand, he begins an endless
future. He is the author of a new creation, the second Adam, the father of
regenerate humanity, the head of the church, "which is his body, the
fulness of him, that filleth all in all." He is the pure fountain of that
stream of light and life, which has since flowed unbroken through nations and
ages, and will continue to flow, till the earth shall be full of his praise,
and every tongue shall confess that he is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
The universal diffusion and absolute dominion of the spirit and life of Christ
will be also the completion of the human race, the end of history, and the
beginning of a glorious eternity.
It is the great and
difficult task of the biographer of Jesus to show how he, by external and
internal development, under the conditions of a particular people, age, and
country, came to be in fact what he was in idea and destination, and what he
will continue to be for the faith of Christendom, the God-Man and Saviour of
the world. Being divine from eternity, he could not become God; but as man he
was subject to the laws of human life and gradual growth. "He advanced in
wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man."96
Though he was the Son of God, "yet he learned obedience by the
things which he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the author of
eternal salvation unto all them that obey him."97
There is no conflict between the historical Jesus of Nazareth and the
ideal Christ of faith. The full understanding of his truly human life, by its
very perfection and elevation above all other men before and after him, will
necessarily lead to an admission of his own testimony concerning his divinity.
"Deep strike thy roots, O heavenly Vine,
Within our earthly sod!
Most human and yet most divine,
The flower of man and God!"
Jesus
Christ came into the world under Caesar Augustus, the
first Roman emperor, before the death of king Herod the
Great, four years before the
traditional date of our Dionysian aera. He was born at Bethlehem of Judaea, in
the royal line of David, from Mary, "the wedded Maid and Virgin
Mother." The world was at peace, and the gates of Janus were closed for
only the second time in the history of Rome. There is a poetic and moral
fitness in this coincidence: it secured a hearing for the gentle message of
peace which might have been drowned in the passions of war and the clamor of
arms. Angels from heaven proclaimed the good tidings of his birth with songs of
praise; Jewish shepherds from the neighboring fields, and heathen sages from
the far east greeted the newborn king and Saviour with the homage of believing
hearts. Heaven and earth gathered in joyful adoration around the Christ-child,
and the blessing of this event is renewed from year to year among high and low,
rich and poor, old and young, throughout the civilized world.
The idea of a perfect
childhood, sinless and holy, yet truly human and natural, had never entered the
mind of poet or historian before; and when the legendary fancy of the
Apocryphal Gospels attempted to fill out the chaste silence of the Evangelists,
it painted an unnatural prodigy of a child to whom wild animals, trees, and
dumb idols bowed, and who changed balls of clay into flying birds for the
amusement of his playmates.
The youth of Jesus is
veiled in mystery. We know only one, but a very significant fact. When a boy of
twelve years he astonished the doctors in the temple by his questions and
answers, without repelling them by immodesty and premature wisdom, and filled
his parents with reverence and awe by his absorption in the things of his
heavenly Father, and yet was subject and obedient to them in all things. Here,
too, there is a clear line of distinction between the supernatural miracle of
history and the unnatural prodigy of apocryphal fiction, which represents Jesus
as returning most learned answers to perplexing questions of the doctors about
astronomy, medicine, physics, metaphysics, and hyperphysics.98
The external condition
and surroundings of his youth are in sharp contrast with the amazing result of
his public life. He grew up quietly and unnoticed in a retired Galilean
mountain village of proverbial insignificance, and in a lowly carpenter-shop,
far away from the city of Jerusalem, from schools and libraries, with no means
of instruction save those which were open to the humblest Jew—the care of godly
parents, the beauties of nature, the services of the synagogue, the secret
communion of the soul with God, and the Scriptures of the Old Testament, which
recorded in type and prophecy his own character and mission. All attempts to
derive his doctrine from any of the existing schools and sects have utterly
failed. He never referred to the traditions of the elders except to oppose
them. From the Pharisees and Sadducees he differed alike, and provoked their
deadly hostility. With the Essenes he never came in contact. He was independent
of human learning and literature, of schools and parties. He taught the world
as one who owed nothing to the world. He came down from heaven and spoke, out
of the fulness of his personal intercourse with the great Jehovah. He was no
scholar, no artist, no orator; yet was he wiser than all sages, he spake as
never man spake, and made an impression on his age and all ages after him such
as no man ever made or can make. Hence the natural surprise of his countrymen
as expressed in the question: "From whence hath this men these things?"
"How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?"99
He began his public
ministry in the thirtieth year of his age, after the Messianic inauguration by
the baptism of John, and after the Messianic probation in the wilderness—the
counterpart of the temptation of the first Adam in Paradise. That ministry
lasted only three years—and yet in these three years is condensed the deepest
meaning of the history of religion. No great life ever passed so swiftly, so
quietly, so humbly, so far removed from the noise and commotion of the world;
and no great life after its close excited such universal and lasting interest.
He was aware of this contrast: he predicted his deepest humiliation even to the
death on the cross, and the subsequent irresistible attraction of this cross,
which may be witnessed from day to day wherever his name is known. He who could
say, "If I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men unto
myself,"100 knew more of the course of history and of the
human heart than all the sages and legislators before and after him.
He chose twelve apostles
for the Jews and seventy disciples for the Gentiles, not from among the
scholars and leaders, but from among the illiterate fishermen of Galilee. He
had no home, no earthly possessions, no friends among the mighty and the rich.
A few pious women from time to time filled his purse; and this purse was in the
bands of a thief and a traitor. He associated with publicans and sinners, to
raise them up to a higher and nobler life, and began his reformation among them
lower classes, which were despised and neglected by the proud: hierarchy of the
day. He never courted the favor of the great, but incurred their hatred and
persecution. He never flattered, the prejudices of the age, but rebuked sin and
vice among the high and the low, aiming his severest words at the blind leaders
of the blind, the self-righteous hypocrites who sat on Moses’ seat. He never
encouraged the carnal Messianic hopes of the people, but withdrew when they
wished to make him a king, and declared before the representative of the Roman
empire that his kingdom was not of this world. He announced to his disciples
his own martyrdom, and promised to them in this life only the same baptism of
blood. He went about in Palestine, often weary of travel, but never weary of
his work of love, doing good to the souls and bodies of men, speaking words of
spirit and life, and working miracles of power and mercy.
He taught the purest
doctrine, as a direct revelation of his heavenly Father, from his own intuition
and experience, and with a power and authority which commanded unconditional
trust and obedience. He rose above the prejudices of party and sect, above the
superstitions of his age and nation. He addressed the naked heart of man and
touched the quick of the conscience. He announced the founding of a spiritual
kingdom which should grow from the smallest seed to a mighty tree, and, working
like leaven from within, should gradually pervade all nations and countries.
This colossal idea, had never entered the imagination of men, the like of which
he held fast even in the darkest hour of humiliation, before the tribunal of
the Jewish high-priest and the Roman governor, and when suspended as a
malefactor on the cross; and the truth of this idea is illustrated by every
page of church history and in every mission station on earth.
The miracles or signs
which accompanied his teaching are supernatural, but not unnatural, exhibitions
of his power over man and nature; no violations of law, but manifestations of a
higher law, the superiority of mind over matter, the superiority of spirit over
mind, the superiority of divine grace over human nature. They are all of the
highest moral and of a profoundly symbolical significance, prompted by pure
benevolence, and intended for the good of men; in striking contrast with
deceptive juggler works and the useless and absurd miracles of apocryphal
fiction. They were performed without any ostentation, with such simplicity and
ease as to be called simply his "works." They were the practical
proof of his doctrine and the natural reflex of his wonderful person. The
absence of wonderful works in such a wonderful man would be the greatest
wonder.
His doctrine and
miracles were sealed by the purest and holiest life in private and public. He
could challenge his bitterest opponents with the question: "Which of you
convinceth me of sin?" well knowing that they could not point to a single
spot.
At last he completed his
active obedience by the passive obedience of suffering in cheerful resignation
to the holy will of God. Hated and persecuted by the Jewish hierarchy, betrayed
into their hands by Judas, accused by false witnesses, condemned by the
Sanhedrin, rejected by the people denied by Peter, but declared innocent by the
representative of the Roman law and justice, surrounded by his weeping mother
and faithful disciples, revealing in those dark hours by word and silence the
gentleness of a lamb and the dignity of a God, praying for his murderers, dispensing
to the penitent thief a place in paradise, committing his soul to his heavenly
Father he died, with the exclamation: "It is finished!" He died before he had reached the prime
of manhood. The Saviour of the world a youth! He died the shameful death of the cross the just for the
unjust, the innocent for the guilty, a free self, sacrifice of infinite love,
to reconcile the world unto God. He conquered sin and death on their own
ground, and thus redeemed and sanctified all who are willing to accept his
benefits and to follow his example. He instituted the Lord’s Supper, to
perpetuate the memory of his death and the cleansing and atoning power of his
blood till the end of time.
The third day he rose
from the grave, the conqueror of death and hell, the prince of life and
resurrection. He repeatedly appeared to his disciples; he commissioned them to
preach the gospel of the resurrection to every creature; he took possession of
his heavenly throne, and by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit he established the
church, which he has ever since protected, nourished, and comforted, and with
which he has promised to abide, till he shall come again in glory to judge the
quick and the dead.
This is a meagre outline
of the story which the evangelists tell us with childlike simplicity, and yet
with more general and lasting effect than could be produced by the highest art
of historical composition. They modestly abstained from adding their own
impressions to the record of the words and acts of the Master whose "glory
they beheld, the glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace
and truth."
Who would not shrink
from the attempt to describe the moral character of Jesus, or, having attempted
it, be not dissatisfied with the result?
Who can empty the ocean into a bucket? Who (we may ask with Lavater) "can paint the glory of
the rising sun with a charcoal?"
No artist’s ideal comes up to the reality in this case, though his
ideals may surpass every other reality. The better and holier a man is, the
more he feels his need of pardon, and how far he falls short of his own
imperfect standard of excellence. But Jesus, with the same nature as ours and
tempted as we are, never yielded to temptation; never had cause for regretting
any thought, word, or action; he never needed pardon, or conversion, or reform;
he never fell out of harmony with his heavenly Father. His whole life was one
unbroken act of self-consecration to the glory of God and the eternal welfare
of his fellow-men. A catalogue of virtues and graces, however complete, would
give us but a mechanical view. It is the spotless purity and sinlessness of
Jesus as acknowledged by friend and foe; it is the even harmony and symmetry of
all graces, of love to God and love to man, of dignity and humility of strength
and tenderness, of greatness and simplicity, of self-control and submission, of
active and passive virtue; it is, in one word, the absolute perfection which
raises his character high above the reach of all other men and makes it an
exception to a universal rule, a moral miracle in history. It is idle to
institute comparisons with saints and sages, ancient or modern. Even the
infidel Rousseau was forced to exclaim: "If Socrates lived and died like a sage,
Jesus lived and died like a God." Here is more than the starry heaven
above us, and the moral law within us, which filled the soul of Kant with
ever-growing reverence and awe. Here is the holy of holies of humanity, here is
the very gate of heaven.
Going so far in
admitting the human perfection of Christ—and how can the historian do
otherwise?—we are driven a step farther, to the acknowledgment of his amazing
claims, which must either be true, or else destroy all foundation for
admiration and reverence in which he is universally held. It is impossible to construct
a life of Christ without admitting its supernatural and miraculous character.
The divinity of Christ,
and his whole mission as Redeemer, is an article of faith, and, as such, above
logical or mathematical demonstration. The incarnation or the union of the
infinite divinity and finite humanity in one person is indeed the mystery of
mysteries. "What can be more glorious than God? What more vile than flesh? What more wonderful than God in the flesh?"101 Yet
aside from all dogmatizing which lies outside of the province of the historian,
the divinity of Christ has a self-evidencing power which forces itself
irresistibly upon the reflecting mind and historical inquirer; while the denial
of it makes his person an inexplicable enigma.
It is inseparable from
his own express testimony respecting himself, as it appears in every Gospel,
with but a slight difference of degree between the Synoptists and St. John.
Only ponder over it! He claims to
be the long-promised Messiah who fulfilled the law and the prophets, the
founder and lawgiver of a new and universal kingdom, the light of the world,
the teacher of all nations and ages, from whose authority there is no appeal. He
claims to have come into this world for the purpose to save the world from
sin—which no merely human being can possibly do. He claims the power to forgive
sins on earth; he frequently exercised that power, and it was for the sins of
mankind, as he foretold, that he shed his own blood. He invites all men to
follow him, and promises peace and life eternal to every one that believes in
him. He claims pre-existence before Abraham and the world, divine names,
attributes, and worship. He disposes from the cross of places in Paradise. In
directing his disciples to baptize all nations, he coordinates himself with the
eternal Father and the Divine Spirit, and promises to be with them to the
consummation of the world and to come again in glory as the Judge of all men.
He, the humblest and meekest of men, makes these astounding pretensions in the
most easy and natural way; he never falters, never apologizes, never explains;
he proclaims them as self-evident truths. We read them again and again, and
never feel any incongruity nor think of arrogance and presumption.
And yet this testimony,
if not true, must be downright blasphemy or madness. The former hypothesis
cannot stand a moment before the moral purity and dignity of Jesus, revealed in
his every word and work, and acknowledged by universal consent. Self-deception
in a matter so momentous, and with an intellect in all respects so clear and so
sound, is equally out of the question. How could He be an enthusiast or a
madman who never lost the even balance of his mind, who sailed serenely over
all the troubles and persecutions, as the sun above the clouds, who always
returned the wisest answer to tempting questions, who calmly and deliberately
predicted his death on the cross, his resurrection on the third day, the outpouring
of the Holy Spirit, the founding of his Church, the destruction of
Jerusalem—predictions which have been literally fulfilled? A character so
original, so complete, so uniformly consistent, so perfect, so human and yet so
high above all human greatness, can be neither a fraud nor a fiction. The poet,
as has been well said, would in this case be greater than the hero. It would
take more than a Jesus to invent a Jesus.
We are shut up then to
the recognition of the divinity of Christ; and reason itself must bow in silent
awe before the tremendous word: "I and the Father are one!" and
respond with skeptical Thomas: "My Lord and my God!"
This conclusion is
confirmed by the effects of the manifestation of Jesus, which far transcend all
merely human capacity and power. The history of Christianity, with its
countless fruits of a higher and purer life of truth and love than was ever
known before or is now known outside of its influence, is a continuous
commentary on the life of Christ, and testifies on every page to the
inspiration of his holy example. His power is felt on every Lord’s Day from ten
thousand pulpits, in the palaces of kings and the huts of beggars, in
universities and colleges, in every school where the sermon on the Mount is
read, in prisons, in almshouses, in orphan asylums, as well as in happy homes,
in learned works and simple tracts in endless succession. If this history of
ours has any value at all, it is a new evidence that Christ is the light and
life of a fallen world.
And there is no sign that
his power is waning. His kingdom is more widely spread than ever before, and
has the fairest prospect of final triumph in all the earth. Napoleon at St. Helena is
reported to have been struck with the reflection that millions are now ready to
die for the crucified Nazarene who founded a spiritual empire by love, while no
one would die for Alexander, or Caesar, or himself, who founded temporal
empires by force. He saw in this contrast a convincing argument for the
divinity of Christ, saying: "I know men, and I tell you, Christ was not a
man. Everything about Christ astonishes me. His spirit overwhelms and confounds
me. There is no comparison between him and any other being. He stands single
and alone.102 And
Goethe,
another commanding genius, of very different character, but equally above
suspicion of partiality for religion, looking in the last years of his life
over the vast field of history, was constrained to confess that "if ever
the Divine appeared on earth, it was in the Person of Christ," and that
"the human mind, no matter how far it may advance in every other
department, will never transcend the height and moral culture of Christianity
as it shines and glows in the Gospels."
The rationalistic,
mythical, and legendary attempts to explain the life of Christ on purely human
and natural grounds, and to resolve the miraculous elements either into common
events, or into innocent fictions, split on the rock of Christ’s character and
testimony. The ablest of the infidel biographers of Jesus now profess the
profoundest regard for his character, and laud him as the greatest sage and
saint that ever appeared on earth. But, by rejecting his testimony concerning
his divine origin and mission, they turn him into a liar; and, by rejecting the
miracle of the resurrection, they make the great fact of Christianity a stream
without a source, a house without a foundation, an effect without a cause.
Denying the physical miracles, they expect us to believe even greater
psychological miracles; yea, they substitute for the supernatural miracle of
history an unnatural prodigy and incredible absurdity of their imagination.
They moreover refute and supersede each other. The history of error in the
nineteenth century is a history of self-destruction. A hypothesis was scarcely
matured before another was invented and substituted, to meet the same fate in
its turn; while the old truth and faith of Christendom remains unshaken, and
marches on in its peaceful conquest against sin and error
Truly, Jesus Christ, the
Christ of the Gospels, the Christ of history, the crucified and risen Christ,
the divine-human Christ, is the most real, the most certain, the most blessed
of all facts. And this fact is an ever-present and growing power which pervades
the church and conquers the world, and is its own best evidence, as the sun
shining in the heavens. This fact is the only solution of the terrible mystery
of sin and death, the only inspiration to a holy life of love to God and man,
and only guide to happiness and peace. Systems of human wisdom will come and
go, kingdoms and empires will rise and fall, but for all time to come Christ
will remain "the Way, the Truth, and the Life."
</div3><div3 type =
"Section" n="16" title="Chronology of the Life of
Christ">
§16. Chronology of the Life of Christ.
See the Lit. in §14, p. 98, especially Browne, Wieseler, Zumpt, Andrews,
and Keim
We briefly consider the
chronological dates of the life of Christ.
I. The Year of the Nativity.—This must be
ascertained by historical and chronological research, since there is no certain
and harmonious tradition on the subject. Our Christians aera, which was
introduced by the Roman abbot Dionysius Exiguus, in the sixth century, and came into general use
two centuries later, during the reign of Charlemagne, puts the Nativity Dec.
25, 754 Anno Urbis, that is, after the founding of the city of Rome.103
Nearly all chronologers agree that this is wrong by at least four years.
Christ was born a.u. 750 (or b.c. 4), if not earlier.
This is evident from the
following chronological hints in the Gospels, as compared with and confirmed by
Josephus and contemporary writers, and by astronomical calculations.
The Death of Herod.
(1) According to Matthew
2:1 (Comp. Luke 1:5, 26), Christ
was born "in the days of king Herod" I. or the Great, who died,
according to Josephus, at Jericho, a.u. 750, just
before the Passover, being nearly seventy years of age, after a reign of
thirty-seven years104 This date has been verified by the
astronomical calculation of the eclipse of the moon, which took place March 13,
a.u. 750, a few days before
Herod’s death.105
Allowing two months or more for the events between the birth of Christ
and the murder of the Innocents by Herod, the Nativity must be put back at
least to February or January, a.u.
750 (or b.c. 4), if not earlier.
Some infer from the
slaughter of the male children in Bethlehem, "from two years old and
under,"106 that Christ must have been born two years before
Herod’s death; but he counted from the time when the star was first seen by the
Magi (Matt. 2:7), and wished to make sure of his object. There is no good
reason to doubt the fact itself, and the flight of the holy family to Egypt,
which is inseparably connected with it. For, although the horrible deed is
ignored by Josephus, it is in keeping with the well-known cruelty of Herod, who
from jealousy murdered Hyrcanus, the grandfather of his favorite wife,
Mariamne; then Mariamne herself, to whom he was passionately attached; her two
sons, Alexander and Aristobulus, and, only five days before his death, his
oldest son, Antipater; and who ordered all the nobles assembled around him in
his last moments to be executed after his decease, so that at least his death
might be attended by universal mourning. For such a monster the murder of one
or two dozen infants in a little town107
was a very small matter, which might easily have been overlooked, or, owing to
its connection with the Messiah, purposely ignored by the Jewish historian. But
a confused remembrance of it is preserved in the anecdote related by Macrobius
(a Roman grammarian and probably a heathen, about a.d. 410), that Augustus, on hearing of Herod’s murder of
"boys under two years" and of his own son, remarked "that it was
better to be Herod’s swine than his son."108 The
cruel persecution of Herod and the flight into Egypt were a significant sign of
the experience of the early church, and a source of comfort in every period of
martyrdom.
The Star of the Magi.
(2) Another
chronological hint of Matthew 2:1–4, 9, which has been verified by astronomy,
is the Star of the Wise Men, which appeared before the death of Herod, and
which would naturally attract the attention of the astrological sages of the
East, in connection with the expectation of the advent of a great king among
the Jews. Such a belief naturally arose from Balaam’s prophecy of "the
star that was to rise out of Jacob" (Num. 24:17), and from the Messianic
prophecies of Isaiah and Daniel, and widely prevailed in the East since the
dispersion of the Jews.109
The older interpretation
of that star made it either a passing meteor, or a strictly miraculous
phenomenon, which lies beyond astronomical calculation, and was perhaps visible
to the Magi alone. But Providence usually works through natural agencies, and
that God did so in this case is made at least very probable by a remarkable
discovery in astronomy. The great and devout Kepler observed in the years 1603 and 1604 a
conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, which was made more rare and luminous by the
addition of Mars in the month of March, 1604. In the autumn of the same year
(Oct. 10) he observed near the planets Saturn, Jupiter and Mars a new (fixed)
star of uncommon brilliancy, which appeared "in triumphal pomp, like, some
all-powerful monarch on a visit to the metropolis of his realm." It was
blazing and glittering "like the most beautiful and glorious torch ever
seen when driven by a strong wind," and seemed to him to be "an
exceedingly wonderful work of God."110
His genius perceived that this
phenomenon must lead to the determination of the year of Christ’s birth, and by
careful calculation he ascertained that a similar conjunction of Jupiter and
Saturn, with the later addition of Mars, and probably some, extraordinary star,
took place repeatedly a.u. 747 and
748 in the sign of the Pisces.
It is worthy of note
that Jewish astrologers ascribe a special signification to the conjunction of
the planets Jupiter and Saturn in the sign of the Pisces, and connect it with the
advent of the Messiah.111
The discovery of Kepler
was almost forgotten till the nineteenth century, when it was independently
confirmed by several eminent astronomers, Schubert of Petersburg, Ideler and
Encke of Berlin, and Pritchard of London. It is pronounced by Pritchard to be "as
certain as any celestial phenomenon of ancient date." It certainly makes
the pilgrimage of the Magi to Jerusalem and Bethlehem more intelligible.
"The star of astrology has thus become a torch of chronology" (as Ideler says), and an
argument for the truthfulness of the first Gospel.112
It is objected that
Matthew seems to mean a single star (<foreign
lang="el"><foreign lang="el">ajsthvr</foreign></foreign>, comp. Matt. 2:9) rather than a combination of
stars (<foreign
lang="el"><foreign lang="el">a[stron</foreign></foreign>). Hence Dr. Wieseler supplements the calculation of Kepler and Ideler
by calling to aid a single comet which appeared from February to April, a.u. 750, according to the Chinese
astronomical tables, which Pingré and Humboldt acknowledge as historical. But this is rather
far-fetched and hardly necessary; for that extraordinary star described by
Kepler, or Jupiter at its most luminous appearance, as described by Pritchard,
in that memorable conjunction, would sufficiently answer the description of a
single star by Matthew, which must at all events not be pressed too literally;
for the language of Scripture on the heavenly bodies is not scientific, but
phenomenal and popular. God condescended to the astrological faith of the Magi,
and probably made also an internal revelation to them before, as well as after
the appearance of the star (comp. 2:12).
If we accept the result
of these calculations of astronomers we are brought to within two years of the
year of the Nativity, namely, between a.u.
748 (Kepler) and 750 (Wieseler). The difference arises, of course, from the
uncertainty of the time of departure and the length of the journey of the Magi.
As this astronomical
argument is often very carelessly and erroneously stated, and as the works of
Kepler and Ideler are not easy of access, at least in America (I found them in
the Astor Library), I may be permitted to state the case more at length. John
Kepler wrote three treatises on the year of Christ’s birth, two in Latin (1606
and 1614), one in German (1613), in which he discusses with remarkable learning
the various passages and facts bearing on that subject. They are reprinted in Dr. Ch. Frisch’s edition
of his Opera Omnia (Frcf. et Erlang. 1858–’70, 8
vols.), vol. IV. pp. 175 sqq.; 201 sqq.; 279 sqq. His astronomical observations on the constellation which led him to this
investigation are fully described in his treatises De
Stella Nova in Pede Serpentarii (Opera, vol. II. 575 sqq.), and Phenomenon
singulare seu Mercurius in Sole (ibid. II. 801 sqq.). Prof. Ideler, who was himself an astronomer and chronologist,
in his Handbuch der mathemat. und technischen
Chronologie (Berlin, 1826, vol. III. 400 sqq.), gives the following clear summary of Kepler’s and of his own
observations:
"It is usually
supposed that the star of the Magi was, if not a fiction of the imagination,
some meteor which arose accidentally, or ad hoc. We will belong neither
to the unbelievers nor the hyper-believers (<foreign
lang="de">weder zu den Ungläubigen noch zu den Uebergläubigen</foreign>), and
regard this starry phenomenon with Kepler to be real and well ascertainable by
calculation, namely, as a conjunction of the Planets Jupiter and Saturn.
That Matthew speaks only of a star (<foreign
lang="el"><foreign lang="el">ajsthvr</foreign></foreign>), not a constellation (<foreign
lang="el">a[stron</foreign>), need not trouble us, for the two words are not
unfrequently confounded. The just named great astronomer, who was well
acquainted with the astrology of his and former times, and who used it
occasionally as a means for commending astronomy to the attention and respect
of the laity, first conceived this idea when he observed the conjunction of the
two planets mentioned at the close of the year 1603. It took place Dec. 17. In
the spring following Mars joined their company, and in autumn 1604 still
another star, one of those fixed star-like bodies (<foreign
lang="de">einer jener fixstern-artigen Körper</foreign>) which grow to a considerable degree of
brightness, and then gradually disappear without leaving a trace behind. This
star stood near the two planets at the eastern foot of Serpentarius (<foreign
lang="de">Schlangenträger</foreign>), and appeared when last seen as a star
of the first magnitude with uncommon splendor. From month to month it waned in
brightness, and at the end of 1605 was withdrawn from the eyes which at that
time could not yet be aided by good optical instruments. Kepler wrote a special
work on this Stella nova in pede Serpentarii
(Prague, 1606), and there he first
set forth the view that the star of the Magi consisted in a conjunction of
Saturn, Jupiter and some other extraordinary star, the nature of which he does
not explain more fully." Ideler then goes on to report (p. 404) that
Kepler, with the imperfect tables at his disposal, discovered the same
conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn a.u.
747 in June, August and December, in the sign of the Pisces; in the next year,
February and March, Mars was added, and probably another extraordinary star,
which must have excited the astrologers of Chaldaea to the highest degree. They
probably saw the new star first, and then the constellation.
Dr. Münter, bishop of Seeland, in 1821 directed new attention to this remarkable
discovery, and also to the rabbinical commentary of Abarbanel on Daniel,
according to which the Jewish astrologers expected a conjunction of the planets
Jupiter and Saturn in the sign of the Pisces before the advent of the Messiah,
and asked the astronomers to reinvestigate this point. Since then Schubert of
Petersburg (1823), Ideler and Encke of Berlin (1826 and 1830), and more
recently Pritchard of London, have verified Kepler’s calculations.
Ideler describes the result of his calculation (vol. II. 405) thus: I have made
the calculation with every care .... The results are sufficiently remarkable.
Both planets [Jupiter and Saturn] came in conjunction for the first time a.u. 747, May 20, in the 20th degree of
Pisces. They stood then on the heaven before sunrise and were only one degree
apart. Jupiter passed Saturn to the north. In the middle of September both came
in opposition to the sun at midnight in the south. The difference in longitude
was one degree and a half. Both were retrograde and again approached each
other. On the 27th of October a second conjunction took place in the sixteenth
degree of the Pisces, and on the 12th of November, when Jupiter moved again
eastward, a third in the fifteenth degree of the same sign. In the last two
constellations also the difference in longitude was only about one degree, so
that to a weak eye both planets might appear as one star. If the Jewish
astrologers attached great expectations to conjunction of the two upper planets
in the sign of the Pisces, this one must above all have appeared to them as
most significant."
In his shorter Lehrbuch der Chronologie, which appeared Berlin 1831 in one vol., pp.
424–431, Ideler gives substantially the same account somewhat abridged, but
with slight changes of the figures on the basis of a new calculation with still
better tables made by the celebrated astronomer Encke, who puts the first
conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn a.u.
747, May 29th, the second Sept. 30th, the third Dec. 5th. See the full table of
Encke, p. 429.
We supplement this
account by an extract from an article on the Star of the Wise Men by the Rev. Charles Pritchard,
M.A., Hon. Secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society, who made a fresh
calculation of the constellation in a.u.
747, from May to December, and published the results in Memoirs of Royal Ast. Society, vol. xxv., and in Smith’s
"Bible Dictionary," p. 3108, Am. ed., where he says: "At that time [end of Sept., b.c. 7] there can be no doubt Jupiter
would present to astronomers, especially in so clear an atmosphere, a
magnificent spectacle. It was then at its most brilliant apparition, for it was
at its nearest approach both to the sun and to the earth. Not far from it would
be seen its duller and much less conspicuous companion, Saturn. This glorious
spectacle continued almost unaltered for several days, when the planets again
slowly separated, then came to a halt, when, by reassuming a direct motion,
Jupiter again approached to a conjunction for a third time with Saturn, just as
the Magi may be supposed to have entered the Holy City. And, to complete the
fascination of the tale, about an hour and a half after sunset, the two planets
might be seen from Jerusalem, hanging as it were in the meridian, and suspended
over Bethlehem in the distance. These celestial phenomena thus described are,
it will be seen, beyond the reach of question, and at the first impression they
assuredly appear to fulfil the conditions of the Star of the Magi." If
Pritchard, nevertheless, rejects the identity of the constellation with the
single star of Matthew, it is because of a too literal understanding of
Matthew’s language, that the star <foreign
lang="el">proh'gen aujtouv"</foreign> and <foreign
lang="el">ejstavqh ejpavnw</foreign>, which would make it miraculous in either case.
The Fifteenth Year of Tiberius.
(3) Luke 3:1, 23, gives
us an important and evidently careful indication of the reigning powers at the
time when John the Baptist and Christ entered upon their public ministry,
which, according to Levitical custom, was at the age of thirty.113
John the Baptist began his ministry "in the fifteenth year of the
reign of Tiberius,"114 and Jesus, who was only about six months younger
than John (comp. Luke 1:5, 26), was baptized and began to teach when he was
"about thirty years of age."115 Tiberius began to reign jointly with
Augustus, as "collega imperii," a.u.
764 (or, at all events, in the beginning of 765), and independently, Aug. 19, a.u. 767 (a.d. 14); consequently, the fifteenth year of his reign was
either a.u. 779, if we count from
the joint reign (as Luke probably did, using the more general term <foreign
lang="el">hJgemoniva</foreign> rather than <foreign
lang="el">monarciva</foreign> or <foreign
lang="el">basileiva</foreign>116 or 782, if we reckon from the independent reign
(as was the usual Roman method).117
Now, if we reckon back
thirty years from a.u. 779 or 782,
we come to a.u. 749 or 752 as the
year of John’s birth, which preceded that of Christ about six months. The
former date (749) is undoubtedly to be preferred, and agrees with Luke’s own
statement that Christ was born under Herod (Luke 1:5, 26).118
Dionysius probably (for
we have no certainty on the subject) calculated from the independent reign of
Tiberius; but even that would not bring us to 754, and would involve Luke in
contradiction with Matthew and with himself.119
The other dates in Luke
3:1 generally agree with this result, but are less definite. Pontius Pilate was ten
years governor of Judaea, from a.d.
26 to 36. Herod Antipas was deposed by Caligula, a.d.
39. Philip, his brother, died a.d.
34. Consequently, Christ must have died before a.d.
34, at an age of thirty-three, if we allow three years for his public ministry.
The Census of Quirinius.
(4) The Census of Quirinius Luke 2:2.120
Luke gives us another chronological date by the incidental remark that
Christ was born about the time of that census or enrolment, which was ordered
by Caesar Augustus, and which was "the first made when Quirinius
(Cyrenius) was governor [enrolment] of Syria."121 He
mentions this fact as the reason for the journey of Joseph and Mary to
Bethlehem. The journey of Mary makes no difficulty, for (aside from the
intrinsic propriety of his company for protection) all women over twelve years
of age (and slaves also) were subject in the Roman empire to a head-tax, as
well as men over fourteen) till the age of sixty-five.122
There is some significance in the coincidence of the birth of the King
of Israel with the deepest humiliation of Israel. and its incorporation in the
great historical empire of Rome.
But the statement of
Luke seems to be in direct conflict with the fact that the governorship and
census of Quirinius began a.d. 6,
i.e., ten years after the birth of Christ.123
Hence many artificial interpretations.124 But
this difficulty is now, if not entirely removed, at least greatly diminished by
archaeological and philological research independent of theology. It has been
proved almost to a demonstration by Bergmann, Mommsen, and especially by Zumpt,
that Quirinius was twice governor of Syria—first, a.u. 750 to 753, or b.c.
4 to 1 (when there happens to be a gap in our list of governors of Syria), and
again, a.u. 760–765 (a.d. 6–11). This double legation is
based upon a passage in Tacitus,125
and confirmed by an old monumental inscription discovered between the Villa
Hadriani and the Via Tiburtina.126 Hence Luke might very properly call the
census about the time of Christ’s birth "the first" (prwvth) under Quirinius, to distinguish it from the
second and better known, which he himself mentions in his second treatise on
the history of the origin of Christianity (Acts 5:37). Perhaps the experience
of Quirinius as the superintendent of the first census was the reason why he
was sent to Syria a second time for the same purpose.
There still remain,
however, three difficulties not easily solved: (a) Quirinius cannot have been
governor of Syria before autumn a.u.
750 (b.c. 4), several months after
Herod’s death (which occurred in March, 750), and consequently after
Christ’s birth; for we know from coins that Quintilius Varus was governor from a.u. 748 to 750 (b.c. 6–4), and left his post after the death of
Herod.127 (b)
A census during the first governorship of Quirinius is nowhere mentioned but in
Luke. (c) A Syrian governor could not well carry out a census in Judaea during
the lifetime of Herod, before it was made a Roman province (i.e., a.u. 759).
In reply to these
objections we may say: (a) Luke did not intend to give an exact, but only an
approximate chronological statement, and may have connected the census with the
well-known name of Quirinius because be completed it, although it was begun
under a previous administration. (b) Augustus ordered several census populi between a.u. 726 and 767,
partly for taxation, partly for military and statistical purposes;128 and, as a good statesman and financier, he
himself prepared a <foreign lang="la">rationarium or breviarium totius imperii</foreign>, that
is, a list of all the resources of the empire, which was read, after his death,
in the Senate.129 (c)
Herod was only a tributary king (<foreign lang="la">rex sosius</foreign>), who could exercise no act of
sovereignty without authority from the emperor. Judaea was subject to taxation
from the time of Pompey, and it seems not to have ceased with the accession of
Herod. Moreover, towards the end of his life he lost the favor of Augustus, who
wrote him in anger that "whereas of old he had used him as his friend, he
would now use him as his subject."130
It cannot, indeed, be
proven by direct testimony of Josephus or the Roman historians, that Augustus
issued a decree for a universal census, embracing all the Provinces ("that
all the world," i.e., the Roman world, "should be taxed," Luke
2:1), but it is in itself by no means improbable, and was necessary to enable
him to prepare his <foreign lang="la">breviarium totius imperii</foreign>.131
In the nature of the case, it would take several years to carry out such a
decree, and its execution in the provinces would be modified according to
national customs. Zumpt assumes that Sentius Saturninus,132 who was sent as governor to Syria a.u. 746 (b.c. 9), and remained there till 749 (b.c. 6), began a census in Judaea with a
view to substitute a head tax in money for the former customary tribute in
produce; that his successor, Quintilius Varus (b.c.
6–4), continued it, and that Quirinius (b.c.
4) completed the census. This would explain the confident statement of
Tertullian, which he must have derived from some good source, that enrolments
were held under Augustus by Sentius Saturninus in Judaea.133
Another, but less probable view is that Quirinius was sent to the East
as special commissioner for the census during the administration of his
predecessor. In either case Luke might call the census "the first"
under Quirinius, considering that he finished the census for personal taxation
or registration according to the Jewish custom of family registers, and that
afterwards he alone executed the second census for the taxation of property
according to the Roman fashion.
The problem is not quite
solved; but the establishment of the fact that Quirinius was prominently
connected with the Roman government in the East about the time of the Nativity,
is a considerable step towards the solution, and encourages the hope of a still
better solution in the future.134
The Forty-Six Years of Building of Herod’s Temple.
(5) St. John, 2:20,
furnishes us a date in the remark of the Jews, in the first year of Christ’s
ministry: "Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou
raise it up in three days?"
We learn from Josephus
that Herod began the reconstruction of the temple in Jerusalem in the
eighteenth year of his reign, i.e., a.u.
732, if we reckon from his appointment by the Romans (714), or a.u. 735, if we reckon from the death of
Antigonus and the conquest of Jerusalem (717).135 The
latter is the correct view; otherwise Josephus would contradict himself, since,
in another passage, he dates the building from the fifteenth year, of Herod’s
reign.136
Adding forty-six years to 735, we have the year a.u. 781 (a.d.
27) for the first year of Christ’s ministry; and deducting thirty and a half or
thirty-one years from 781, we come back to a.u.
750 (b.c. 4) as the year of the
Nativity.
The Time of the Crucifixion.
(6) Christ was crucified
under the consulate of the two Gemini (i.e., C. Rubellius Geminus and C. Fufius
Geminus), who were consuls a.u.
782 to 783 (a.d. 28 to 29). This
statement is made by Tertullian, in connection with an elaborate calculation of
the time of Christ’s birth and passion from the seventy weeks of Daniel.137 He
may possibly have derived it from some public record in Rome. He erred in
identifying the year of Christ’s passion with the first year of his ministry
(the 15th year of Tiberius, Luke 3:1). Allowing, as we must, two or three years
for his public ministry, and thirty-three years for his life, we reach the year
750 or 749 as the year of the Nativity.
Thus we arrive from
these various incidental notices of three Evangelists, and the statement of Tertullian essentially at
the same conclusion, which contributes its share towards establishing the
credibility of the gospel history against the mythical theory. Yet in the
absence of a precise date, and in view of uncertainties in calculation, there
is still room for difference of opinion between the years a.u. 747 (b.c. 7), as the earliest, and a.u. 750 (b.c.
4), as the latest, possible date for the year of Christ’s birth. The French
Benedictines, Sanclemente, Münter, Wurm, Ebrard, Jarvis, Alford, Jos. A.
Alexander, Zumpt, Keim, decide for a.u.
747; Kepler (reckoning from the conjunction of Jupiter, Saturn and Mars in that
year), Lardner, Ideler, Ewald, for 748; Petavius, Ussher, Tillemont, Browne,
Angus, Robinson, Andrews, McClellan, for 749; Bengel, Wieseler, Lange,
Lichtenstein, Anger, Greswell, Ellicott, Plumptre, Merivale, for 750.
II. The Day of the Nativity.—The only
indication of the season of our Saviour’s birth is the fact that the Shepherds
were watching their flocks in the field at that time, Luke 2:8. This fact
points to any other season rather than winter, and is therefore not favorable
to the traditional date, though not conclusive against it. The time of
pasturing in Palestine (which has but two seasons, the dry and the wet, or
summer and winter) begins, according to the Talmudists, in March, and lasts
till November, when the herds are brought in from the fields, and kept under
shelter till the close of February. But this refers chiefly to pastures in the
wilderness, far away from towns and villages,138 and admits of frequent exceptions in the close
neighborhood of towns, according to the character of the season. A succession
of bright days in December and January is of frequent occurrence in the East,
as in Western countries. Tobler, an experienced traveller in the Holy Land,
says that in Bethlehem the weather about Christmas is favorable to the feeding of
flocks and often most beautiful. On the other hand strong and cold winds often
prevail in April, and. explain the fire mentioned John 18:18.
No certain conclusion
can be drawn from the journey of Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem, and to Egypt;
nor from the journey of the Magi. As a rule February, is the best time for
travelling in Egypt, March the best in the Sinaitic Peninsula, April and May,
and next to it autumn, the best in Palestine; but necessity knows no rule.
The ancient tradition is
of no account here, as it varied down to the fourth century. Clement of
Alexandria relates that some regarded the 25th Pachon. (i.e. May 20), others
the 24th or 25th Pharmuthi (April 19 or 20), as the day of Nativity.
(1) The traditional 25th
of December is defended by Jerome, Chrysostom, Baronius, Lamy, Ussher,
Petavius, Bengel (Ideler), Seyffarth and Jarvis. It has no historical authority
beyond the fourth century, when the Christmas festival was introduced first in
Rome (before a.d. 360), on the
basis of several Roman festivals (the Saturnalia, Sigillaria, Juvenalia, Brumalia, or Dies natalis
Invicti Solis), which
were held in the latter part of December in commemoration of the golden age of
liberty and equality, and in honor of the sun, who in the winter solstice is,
as it were, born anew and begins his conquering march. This phenomenon in
nature was regarded as an appropriate symbol of the appearance of the Sun of
Righteousness dispelling the long night of sin and error. For the same reason
the summer solstice (June 24) was afterwards selected for the festival of John
the Baptist, as the fittest reminder of his own humble self-estimate that he
must decrease, while Christ must increase (John 3:30). Accordingly the 25th of
March was chosen for the commemoration of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary,
and the 24th of September for that of the conception of Elizabeth.139
(2) The 6th of January
has in its favor an older tradition (according to Epiphanius and Cassianus),
and is sustained by Eusebius. It was celebrated in the East from the third
century as the feast of the Epiphany, in commemoration of the Nativity as well
as of Christ’s baptism, and afterwards of his manifestation to the Gentiles
(represented by the Magi).
(3) Other writers have
selected some day in February (Hug, Wieseler, Ellicott), or March (Paulus,
Winer), or April (Greswell), or August (Lewin), or September (Lightfoot, who
assumes, on chronological grounds, that Christ was born on the feast of
Tabernacles, as he died on the Passover and sent the Spirit on Pentecost), or
October (Newcome). Lardner puts the birth between the middle of August and the
middle of November; Browne December 8; Lichtenstein in summer; Robinson leaves
it altogether uncertain.
III. The Duration of Christ’s Life.—This is
now generally confined to thirty-two or three years. The difference of one or
two years arises from the different views on the length of his public ministry.
Christ died and rose again in the full vigor of early manhood and so continues
to live in the memory of the church. The decline and weakness of old age is
inconsistent with his position as the Renovator and Saviour of mankind.
Irenaeus, otherwise (as
a disciple of Polycarp, who was a disciple of St. John) the most trustworthy
witness of apostolic traditions among the fathers, held the untenable opinion
that Christ attained to the ripe age of forty or fifty years and taught over
ten years (beginning with the thirtieth), and that he thus passed through all
the stages of human life, to save and sanctify "old men" as well as
"infants and children and boys and youths."140 He
appeals for this view to tradition dating from St. John141 and supports it by an unwarranted inference from
the loose conjecture of the Jews when, surprised at the claim of Jesus to have
existed before Abraham was born, they asked him: "Thou art not yet fifty
years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?"142 A similar inference from another
passage, where the Jews speak of the "forty-six years" since the
temple of Herod began to be constructed, while Christ spoke of the, temple his
body (John 2:20), is of course still less conclusive.
IV. Duration of Christ’s Public Ministry.—It
began with the baptism by John and ended with the crucifixion. About the length
of the intervening time there are (besides the isolated and decidedly erroneous
view of Irenaeus) three theories, allowing respectively one, two, or three
years and a few months, and designated as the bipaschal, tripaschal, and
quadripaschal schemes, according to the number of Passovers. The Synoptists mention
only the last Passover during the public ministry of our Lord, at which he was
crucified, but they intimate that he was in Judaea more than once.143
John certainly mentions three Passovers, two of which (the first and the
last) Christ did attend,144
and perhaps a fourth, which he also attended.145
(1) The bipaschal scheme
confines the public ministry to one year and a few weeks or months. This was
first held by the Gnostic sect of the Valentinians (who connected it with their
fancy about thirty aeons), and by several fathers, Clement of Alexandria,
Tertullian) and perhaps by Origen and Augustine (who express themselves
doubtfully). The chief argument of the fathers and those harmonists who follow
them, is derived from the prophecy of "the acceptable year of the
Lord," as quoted by Christ,146
and from the typical meaning of the paschal lamb, which must be of "one
year" and without blemish.147 Far more important is the argument
drawn by some modern critics from the silence of the synoptical Gospels
concerning the other Passovers.148 But this silence is not in itself
conclusive, and must yield to the positive testimony of John, which cannot be
conformed to the bipaschal scheme.149 Moreover, it is simply impossible to
crowd the events of Christ’s life, the training of the Twelve, and the
development of the hostility of the Jews, into one short year.
(2) The choice therefore
lies between the tripaschal and the quadripaschal schemes. The decision depends
chiefly on the interpretation of the unnamed "feast of the Jews,"
John 5:1, whether it was a Passover, or another feast; and this again depends
much (though not exclusively) on a difference of reading (the feast, or a
feast).150 The
parable of the barren fig-tree, which represents the Jewish people, has been
used as an argument in favor of a three years’ ministry: "Behold, these
three year I come seeking fruit on this fig-tree, and find none."151 The
three years are certainly significant; but according to Jewish reckoning two
and a half years would be called three years. More remote is the reference to
the prophetic announcement of Daniel 9:27: "And he shall confirm the
covenant with many for one week, and in the midst of the week he shall cause
the sacrifice and the oblation to cease." The tripaschal theory is more
easily reconciled with the synoptical Gospels, while the quadripaschal theory
leaves more room for arranging the discourses and miracles of our Lord, and has
been adopted by the majority of harmonists.152
But even if we extend
the public ministry to three years, it presents a disproportion between
duration and effect without a parallel in history and inexplicable on purely
natural grounds. In the language of an impartial historian, "the simple
record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and
soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the
exhortations of moralists. This has indeed been the wellspring of whatever is
best and purest in the Christian life."153
V. The Date of the Lord’s Death.—The day of
the week on which Christ suffered on the cross was a Friday,154 during the week of the Passover, in the month of
Nisan, which was the first of the twelve lunar months of the Jewish year, and
included the vernal equinox. But the question is whether this Friday was the
14th, or the 15th of Nisan, that is, the day before the feast or the first day
of the feast, which lasted a week. The Synoptical Gospels clearly decide for
the 15th, for they all say (independently) that our Lord partook of the paschal
supper on the legal day, called the "first day of unleavened bread,"155 that is on the evening of the 14th, or rather at
the beginning of the 15th (the paschal lambs being slain "between the two
evenings," i.e. before and after sunset, between 3 and 5 p.m. of the
14th).156
John, on the other hand, seems at first sight to point to the 14th, so
that the death of our Lord would very nearly have coincided with the slaying of
the paschal lamb.157 But the three or four passages which
look in that direction can, and on closer examination, must be harmonized with
the Synoptical statement, which admits only of one natural interpretation.158 It
seems strange, indeed, that, the Jewish priests should have matured their
bloody counsel in the solemn night of the Passover, and urged a crucifixion on
a great festival, but it agrees, with the satanic wickedness of their crime.159
Moreover it is on the other hand equally difficult to explain that they,
together with the people, should have remained about the cross till late in the
afternoon of the fourteenth, when, according to the law, they were to kill the
paschal lamb and prepare for the feast; and that Nicodemus and Joseph of
Arimathaea, with the pious women, should have buried the body of Jesus and so
incurred defilement at that solemn hour.
The view here advocated
is strengthened by astronomical calculation, which shows that in a.d. 30 the probable year of the
crucifixion, the 15th of Nisan actually fell on a Friday (April 7);and this was
the case only once more between the years a.d.
28 and 36, except perhaps also in 33. Consequently Christ must have been
Crucified a.d. 30.160
To sum up the results,
the following appear to us the most probable dates in the earthly life of our
Lord:
Birth
a.u. 750 (Jan.?) or 749
(Dec.?) b.c. 4 or 5.
Baptism
a.u.
780 (Jan.?)
a.d. 27.
Length of Public
Ministry
(three years and three
or
four months)
a.u. 780–783
a.d. 27–30.
Crucifixion
a.u. 783 (15th of Nisan)
a.d. 30 (April 7)
</div3><div3 type =
"Section" n="17" title="The Land and the
People">
§ 17. The Land and the People.
Literature.
I. The geographical and
descriptive works on the Holy Land by Reland (1714), Robinson (1838 and 1856),
Ritter (1850–1855), Raumer (4th ed. 1860), Tobler (several monographs from 1849
to 1869), W. M. Thomson (revised ed. 1880), Stanley (1853, 6th ed. 1866),
Tristram (1864), Schaff (1878; enlarged ed. 1889), Guérin (1869, 1875, 1880).
See Tobler’s Bibliographia
geographica Palaestinae (Leipz.
1867) and the supplementary lists of more recent works by Ph. Wolff in the
"Jahrbücher für deutsche Theologie, " 1868 and 1872, and by Socin in
the "Zeitschrift des deutschen Palaestina-Vereins," 1878, p. 40, etc.
II. The "Histories of
New Testament Times" (Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte, a special department of historical theology
recently introduced), by Schneckburger (1862), Hausrath (1868 sqq.), and
Schürer (1874).
See Lit. in § 8, p. 56.
There is a wonderful
harmony between the life of our Lord as described by the Evangelists, and his
geographical and historical environment as known to us from contemporary
writers, and illustrated and confirmed by modern discovery and research. This
harmony contributes not a little to the credibility of the gospel history. The
more we come to understand the age and country in which Jesus lived, the more we
feel, in reading the Gospels, that we are treading on the solid ground of real
history illuminated by the highest revelation from heaven. The poetry of the
canonical Gospels, if we may so call their prose, which in spiritual beauty
excels all poetry, is not (like that of the Apocryphal Gospels) the poetry of
human fiction—"no fable old, no mythic lore, nor dream of bards and
seers;" it is the poetry of revealed truth, the poetry of the sublimest
facts the poetry of the infinite wisdom and love of God which, ever before had
entered the imagination of man, but which assumed human flesh and blood in
Jesus of Nazareth and solved through his life and work the deepest problem of
our existence.
The stationary character of Oriental countries and peoples enables us to infer from their present aspect and condition what they were two thousand years ago. And in this we are aided by the multiplying discoveries which make even stones and mummies eloquent witnesses of the past. Monumental evidence appeals to the senses and overrules the critical conjectures and combinations of unbelieving skepticism, however ingenious and acute they may be. Who will doubt the history of the Pharaohs when it can be read in the pyramids and sphinxes, in the ruins of temples and rock-tombs, in hieroglyphic inscriptions and papyrus rolls which antedate the founding of Rome and the exodus of Moses and the Israelites? Who will deny the biblical records of Babylon and Nineveh after these cities have risen from the grave of centuries to tell their own story through cuneiform inscriptions, eagle-winged lions and human-headed bulls, ruins of temples and palaces disentombed from beneath the earth? We might as well erase Palestine from the map and remove it to fairy-land, as to blot out the Old and New Testament from history and resolve them into airy myths and legends.161
The Land.
Jesus spent his life in
Palestine. It is a country of about the size of Maryland, smaller than
Switzerland, and not half as large as Scotland,162 but favored with a healthy climate, beautiful
scenery, and great variety and fertility of soil, capable of producing fruits
of all lands from the snowy north to the tropical south; isolated from other
countries by desert, mountain and sea, yet lying in the centre of the three
continents of the eastern hemisphere and bordering on the Mediterranean highway
of the historic nations of antiquity, and therefore providentially adapted to
develop not only the particularism of Judaism, but also the universalism of
Christianity. From little Phoenicia the world has derived the alphabet, from
little Greece philosophy and art, from little Palestine the best of all—the
true religion and the cosmopolitan Bible. Jesus could not have been born at any
other time than in the reign of Caesar Augustus, after the Jewish religion, the
Greek civilization, and the Roman government had reached their maturity; nor in
any other land than Palestine, the classical soil of revelation, nor among any
other people than the Jews, who were predestinated and educated for centuries
to prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah and the fulfilment of the law
and the prophets. In his infancy, a fugitive from the wrath of Herod, He passed
through the Desert (probably by the short route along the Mediterranean coast)
to Egypt and back again; and often may his mother have spoken to him of their
brief sojourn in "the land of bondage," out of which Jehovah had led
his people, by the mighty arm of Moses, across the Red Sea and through
"the great and terrible wilderness" into the land of promise. During
his forty days of fasting "in the wilderness" he was, perhaps, on
Mount Sinai communing with the spirits of Moses and Elijah, and preparing
himself in the awfully eloquent silence of that region for the personal
conflict with the Tempter of the human race, and for the new legislation of
liberty from the Mount of Beatitudes.163 Thus the three lands of the Bible,
Egypt, the cradle of Israel, the Desert, its school and playground, and Canaan,
its final home, were touched and consecrated by "those blessed feet which,
eighteen centuries ago, were nailed for our advantage on the bitter
cross."
He travelled on his
mission of love through Judaea, Samaria, Galilee, and Peraea; he came as far
north as mount Hermon, and once he crossed beyond the land of Israel to the
Phoenician border and healed the demonized daughter of that heathen mother to
whom he said, "O woman, great is thy faith: be it done unto thee even as
thou wilt."
We can easily follow him
from place to place, on foot or on horseback, twenty or thirty miles a day,
over green fields and barren rocks over hill and dale among flowers and
thistles, under olive and fig-trees, pitching our tent for the night’s rest,
ignoring the comforts of modern civilization, but delighting in the unfading
beauties of God’s nature, reminded at every step of his wonderful dealings with
his people, and singing the psalms of his servants of old.
We may kneel at his
manger in Bethlehem, the town of Judaea where Jacob buried his beloved Rachel,
and a pillar, now a white mosque, marks her grave; where Ruth was rewarded for
her filial devotion, and children may still be seen gleaning after the reapers
in the grainfields, as she did in the field of Boaz; where his ancestor, the
poet-king, was born and called from his father’s flocks to the throne of Israel;
where shepherds are still watching the sheep as in that solemn night when the
angelic host thrilled their hearts with the heavenly anthem of glory to God,
and peace on earth to men of his good pleasure; where the sages from the far
East offered their sacrifices in the name of future generations of heathen
converts; where Christian gratitude has erected the oldest church in
Christendom, the "Church of the Nativity," and inscribed on the solid
rock in the "Holy Crypt," in letters of silver, the simple but
pregnant inscription: "<foreign lang="la">Hic de Virgine Maria Jesus Christus natus est</foreign>." When all the surroundings correspond with
the Scripture narrative, it is of small account whether the traditional grotto
of the Nativity is the identical spot—though pointed out as such it would seem
already in the middle of the second century.164
We accompany him in a
three days’ journey from Bethlehem to Nazareth, his proper home, where he spent
thirty silent years of his life in quiet preparation for his public work,
unknown in his divine character to his neighbors and even the members of his
own household (John 7:5), except his saintly parents. Nazareth is still there,
a secluded, but charmingly located mountain village, with narrow, crooked and
dirty streets, with primitive stone houses where men, donkeys and camels are huddled
together, surrounded by cactus hedges and fruitful gardens of vines, olive,
fig, and pomegranates, and favorably distinguished from the wretched villages
of modern Palestine by comparative industry, thrift, and female beauty; the
never failing "Virgin’s Fountain," whither Jesus must often have
accompanied his mother for the daily supply of water, is still there near the
Greek Church of the Annunciation, and is the evening rendezvous of the women
and maidens, with their water-jars gracefully poised on the head or shoulder,
and a row of silver coins adorning their forehead; and behind the village still
rises the hill, fragrant with heather and thyme, from which he may often have
cast his eye eastward to Gilboa, where Jonathan fell, and to the graceful, cone-like
Tabor—the Righi of Palestine—northward to the lofty Mount Hermon—the Mont Blanc
of Palestine—southward to the fertile plain of Esdraëlon—the classic
battle-ground of Israel—and westward to the ridge of Carmel, the coast of Tyre
and Sidon and the blue waters of the Mediterranean sea—the future highway of
his gospel of peace to mankind. There he could feast upon the rich memories of
David and Jonathan, Elijah and Elisha, and gather images of beauty for his
lessons of wisdom. We can afford to smile at the silly superstition which
points out the kitchen of the Virgin Mary beneath the Latin Church of the
Annunciation, the suspended column where she received the angel’s message, the
carpenter shop of Joseph and Jesus, the synagogue in which he preached on the
acceptable year of the Lord, the stone table at which he ate with his
disciples, the Mount of Precipitation two miles off, and the stupendous
monstrosity of the removal of the dwelling-house of Mary by angels in the air
across the sea to Loretto in Italy!
These are childish fables, in striking contrast with the modest silence
of the Gospels, and neutralized by the rival traditions of Greek and Latin
monks; but nature in its beauty is still the same as Jesus saw and interpreted
it in his incomparable parables, which point from nature to nature’s God and
from visible symbols to eternal truths.165
Jesus was inaugurated
into his public ministry by his baptism in the fast-flowing river Jordan, which
connects the Old and New Covenant. The traditional spot, a few miles from
Jericho, is still visited by thousands of Christian pilgrims from all parts of
the world at the Easter season, who repeat the spectacle of the multitudinous
baptisms of John, when the people came "from Jerusalem and all Judaea and
all the region round about the Jordan" to confess their sins and to
receive his water-baptism of repentance.
The ruins of Jacob’s
well still mark the spot where Jesus sat down weary of travel, but not of his
work of mercy and opened to the poor woman of Samaria the well of the water of
life and instructed her in the true spiritual worship of God; and the
surrounding landscape, Mount Gerizim, and Mount Ebal, the town of Shechem, the
grain-fields whitening to the harvest, all illustrate and confirm the narrative
in the fourth chapter of John; while the fossil remnant of the Samaritans at
Nablous (the modern Shechem) still perpetuates the memory of the paschal
sacrifice according to the Mosaic prescription, and their traditional hatred of
the Jews.
We proceed northward to
Galilee where Jesus spent the most popular part of his public ministry and
spoke so many of his undying words of wisdom and love to the astonished
multitudes. That province was once thickly covered with forests, cultivated
fields, plants and trees of different climes, prosperous villages and an
industrious population.166 The rejection of the Messiah and the
Moslem invasion have long since turned that paradise of nature into a desolate
wilderness, yet could not efface the holy memories and the illustrations of the
gospel history. There is the lake with its clear blue waters, once whitened
with ships sailing from shore to shore, and the scene of a naval battle between
the Romans and the Jews, now utterly forsaken, but still abounding in fish, and
subject to sudden violent storms, such as the one which Jesus commanded to
cease; there are the hills from which he proclaimed the Sermon on the Mount,
the Magna Charta of his kingdom, and to which he often retired for prayer;
there on the western shore is the plain of Gennesaret, which still exhibits its
natural fertility by the luxuriant growth of briers and thistles and the bright
red magnolias overtopping them; there is the dirty city of Tiberias, built by
Herod Antipas, where Jewish rabbis still scrupulously search the letter of the
Scriptures without finding Christ in them; a few wretched Moslem huts called
Mejdel still indicate the birth-place of Mary Magdalene, whose penitential
tears and resurrection joys are a precious legacy of Christendom. And although
the cities of Capernaum, Bethsaida and Chorazim, "where most of his mighty
works were done" have utterly disappeared from the face of the earth, and
their very sites are disputed among scholars, thus verifying to the letter the
fearful prophecy of the Son of Man,167
yet the ruins of Tell Hum and Kerazeh bear their eloquent testimony to the
judgment of God for neglected privileges, and the broken columns and friezes
with a pot of manna at Tell Hum are probably the remains of the very synagogue
which the good Roman centurion built for the people of Capernaum, and in which
Christ delivered his wonderful discourse on the bread of life from heaven.168
Caesarea Philippi,
formerly and now called Banias (or Paneas, Paneion, from the heathen sanctuary
of Pan), at the foot of Hermon, marks the northern termination of the Holy Land
and of the travels of the Lord, and the boundary-line between the Jews and the
Gentiles; and that Swiss-like, picturesque landscape, the most beautiful in
Palestine, in full view of the fresh, gushing source of the Jordan, and at the
foot of the snow-crowned monarch of Syrian mountains seated on a throne of
rock, seems to give additional force to Peter’s fundamental confession and
Christ’s prophecy of his Church universal built upon the immovable rock of his
eternal divinity.
The closing scenes of
the earthly life of our Lord and the beginning of his heavenly life took place
in Jerusalem and the immediate neighborhood, where every spot calls to mind the
most important events that ever occurred or can occur in this world. Jerusalem,
often besieged and destroyed, and as often rebuilt "on her own heap,"
is indeed no more the Jerusalem of Herod, which lies buried many feet beneath
the rubbish and filth of centuries; even the site of Calvary is disputed, and
superstition has sadly disfigured and obscured the historic associations.169
"Christ is not there, He is risen."170
There is no more melancholy sight in the world than the present
Jerusalem as contrasted with its former glory, and with the teeming life of
Western cities; and yet so many are the sacred memories clustering around it
and perfuming the very air, that even Rome must yield the palm of interest to
the city which witnessed the crucifixion and the resurrection. The Herodian
temple on Mount Moriah, once the gathering place of pious Jews from all the
earth, and enriched with treasures of gold and silver which excited the avarice
of the conquerors, has wholly disappeared, and "not one stone is left upon
another," in literal fulfilment of Christ’s prophecy;171 but the massive foundations of Solomon’s
structure around the temple area still bear the marks of the Phoenician
workmen; the "wall of wailing" is moistened with the tears of the
Jews who assemble there every Friday to mourn over the sins and misfortunes of
their forefathers; and if we look down from Mount Olivet upon Mount Moriah and
the Moslem Dome of the Rock, the city even now presents one of the most
imposing, as well as most profoundly affecting sights on earth. The brook
Kedron, which Jesus crossed in that solemn night after the last Passover, and
Gethsemane with its venerable olive-trees and reminiscences of the agony, and
Mount Olivet from which he rose to heaven, are still there, and behind it the
remnant of Bethany, that home of peace and holy friendship which sheltered him
the last nights before the crucifixion. Standing on that mountain with its
magnificent view, or at the turning point of the road from Jericho and Bethany,
and looking over Mount Moriah and the holy city, we fully understand why the
Saviour wept and exclaimed, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the
prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have
gathered thy children together even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her
wings, and ye would not! Behold,
your house is left unto you desolate!
Thus the Land and the Book illustrate and confirm each other. The Book is still full of life and omnipresent in the civilized world; the Land is groaning under the irreformable despotism of the "unspeakable" Turk, which acts like a blast of the Sirocco from the desert. Palestine lies under the curse of God. It is at best a venerable ruin "in all the imploring beauty of decay," yet not without hope of some future resurrection in God’s own good time. But in its very desolation it furnishes evidence for the truth of the Bible. It is "a fifth Gospel," engraven upon rocks.172
The People.
Is there a better
argument for Christianity than the Jews?
Is there a more patent and a more stubborn fact in history than that
intense and unchangeable Semitic nationality with its equally intense
religiosity? Is it not truly
symbolized by the bush in the desert ever burning and never consumed? Nebuchadnezzar, Antiochus Epiphanes,
Titus, Hadrian exerted their despotic power for the extermination of the Jews;
Hadrian’s edict forbade circumcision and all the rites of their religion; the
intolerance of Christian rulers treated them for ages with a sort of revengeful
cruelty, as if every Jew were personally responsible for the crime of the
crucifixion. And, behold, the race still lives as tenaciously as ever,
unchanged and unchangeable in its national traits, an omnipresent power in
Christendom. It still produces, in its old age, remarkable men of commanding
influence for good or evil in the commercial, political, and literary world; we
need only recall such names as Spinoza, Rothschild, Disraeli, Mendelssohn,
Heine, Neander. If we read the accounts of the historians and satirists of
imperial Rome about the Jews in their filthy quarter across the Tiber, we are
struck by the identity of that people with their descendants in the ghettos of
modern Rome, Frankfurt, and New York. Then they excited as much as they do now
the mingled contempt and wonder of the world; they were as remarkable then for
contrasts of intellectual beauty and striking ugliness, wretched poverty and
princely wealth; they liked onions and garlic, and dealt in old clothes, broken
glass, and sulphur matches, but knew how to push themselves from poverty and
filth into wealth and influence; they were rigid monotheists and scrupulous
legalists who would strain out a gnat and swallow a camel; then as now they were
temperate, sober, industrious, well regulated and affectionate in their
domestic relations and careful for the religious education of their children.
The majority were then, as they are now, carnal descendants of Jacob, the
Supplanter, a small minority spiritual children of Abraham, the friend of God
and father of the faithful. Out of this gifted race have come, at the time of
Jesus and often since, the bitterest foes and the warmest friends of
Christianity.
Among that peculiar
people Jesus spent his earthly life, a Jew of the Jews, yet in the highest
sense the Son of Man, the second Adam, the representative Head and Regenerator
of the whole race. For thirty years of reserve and preparation he hid his
divine glory and restrained his own desire to do good, quietly waiting till the
voice of prophecy after centuries of silence announced, in the wilderness of
Judaea and on the banks of the Jordan, the coming of the kingdom of God, and
startled the conscience of the people with the call to repent. Then for three years
he mingled freely with his countrymen. Occasionally he met and healed Gentiles
also, who were numerous in Galilee; he praised their faith the like of which he
had not found in Israel, and prophesied that many shall come from the east and
the west and shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of
heaven, while the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer
darkness.173 He
conversed with a woman of Samaria, to the surprise of his disciples, on the
sublimest theme, and rebuked the national prejudice of the Jews by holding up a
good Samaritan as a model for imitation.174 It was on the occasion of a visit from
some "Greeks," shortly before the crucifixion, that he uttered the
remarkable prophecy of the universal attraction of his cross.175 But these were exceptions. His mission, before
the resurrection, was to the lost sheep of Israel.176
He associated with all
ranks of Jewish society, attracting the good and repelling the bad, rebuking
vice and relieving misery, but most of his time he spent among the middle
classes who constituted the bone and sinew of the nation, the farmers and
workingmen of Galilee, who are described to us as an industrious, brave and
courageous race, taking the lead in seditious political movements, and holding
out to the last moment in the defence of Jerusalem.177 At
the same time they were looked upon by the stricter Jews of Judaea as
semi-heathens and semi-barbarians; hence the question, "Can any good come
out of Nazareth, and "Out of Galilee ariseth no prophet."178 He
selected his apostles from plain, honest, unsophisticated fishermen who became
fishers of men and teachers of future ages. In Judaea he came in contact with
the religious leaders, and it was proper that he should close his ministry and
establish his church in the capital of the nation.
He moved among the
people as a Rabbi (my Lord) or a Teacher, and under this name he is usually
addressed.179 The
Rabbis were the intellectual and moral leaders of the nation, theologians,
lawyers, and preachers, the expounders of the law, the keepers of the
conscience, the regulators of the daily life and conduct; they were classed
with Moses and the prophets, and claimed equal reverence. They stood higher
than the priests who owed their position to the accident of birth, and not to
personal merit. They coveted the chief seats in the synagogues and at feasts;
they loved to be greeted in the markets and to be called of men, "Rabbi,
Rabbi." Hence our Lord’s warning: "Be not ye called ’Rabbi:’ for one
is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren."180
They taught in the temple, in the synagogue, and in the schoolhouse (Bethhamidrash),
and introduced their pupils, sitting on the floor at their feet, by asking, and
answering questions, into the intricacies of Jewish casuistry. They accumulated
those oral traditions which were afterwards embodied in the Talmud, that huge repository
of Jewish wisdom and folly. They performed official acts gratuitously.181
They derived their support from an honorable trade or free gifts of
their pupils, or they married into rich families. Rabbi Hillel warned against
making gain of the crown (of the law), but also against excess of labor,
saying, "Who is too much given to trade, will not become wise." In
the book of Jesus Son of Sirach (which was written about 200 b.c.) a trade is represented as
incompatible with the vocation of a student and teacher,182 but the prevailing sentiment at the time of
Christ favored a combination of intellectual and physical labor as beneficial
to health and character. One-third of the day should be given to study
one-third to prayer, one third to work. "Love manual labor," was the
motto of Shemaja, a teacher of Hillel. "He who does not teach his son a
trade," said Rabbi Jehuda, "is much the same as if he taught him to
be a robber." "There is no trade," says the Talmud, "which
can be dispensed with; but happy is he who has in his parents the example of a
trade of the more excellent sort."183
Jesus himself was not
only the son of a carpenter, but during his youth he worked at that trade
himself.184
When he entered upon his public ministry the zeal for God’s house
claimed all his time and strength, and his modest wants were more than supplied
by a few grateful disciples from Galilee, so that something was left for the
benefit of the poor.185 St. Paul learned the trade of
tentmaking, which was congenial to his native Cilicia, and derived from it his
support even as an apostle, that he might relieve his congregations and
maintain a noble independence.186
Jesus availed himself of
the usual places of public instruction in the synagogue and the temple, but preached
also out of doors, on the mountain, at the, sea-side, and wherever the people
assembled to hear him. "I have spoken openly to the world; I ever taught
in synagogues and in the temple, where all the Jews come together; and in
secret spake I nothing.187 Paul likewise taught in the synagogue
wherever he had an opportunity on his missionary journeys.188 The
familiar mode of teaching was by disputation, by asking and answering questions
on knotty points, of the law, by parables and sententious sayings, which easily
lodged in the memory; the Rabbi sat on a chair, the pupils stood or sat on the
floor at his feet.189 Knowledge of the Law of God was general
among the Jews and considered the most important possession. They remembered
the commandments better than their own name.190 Instruction began in early childhood in
the family and was carried on in the school and the synagogue. Timothy learned
the sacred Scriptures on the knees of his mother and grandmother.191
Josephus boasts, at the expense of his superiors, that when only
fourteen years of age he had such an exact knowledge of the law that he was
consulted by the high priest and the first men of Jerusalem.192
Schoolmasters were appointed in every town, and children were taught to
read in their sixth or seventh year, but writing was probably a rare
accomplishment.193
The synagogue was the
local, the temple the national centre of religious and social life; the former
on the weekly Sabbath (and also on Monday and Thursday), the latter on the
Passover and the other annual festivals. Every town had a synagogue, large
cities had many, especially Alexandria and Jerusalem.194 The
worship was very simple: it consisted of prayers, singing, the reading of
sections from the Law and the Prophets in Hebrew, followed by a commentary and
homily in the vernacular Aramaic. There was a certain democratic liberty of
prophesying, especially outside of Jerusalem. Any Jew of age could read the
Scripture lessons and make comments on invitation of the ruler of the
synagogue. This custom suggested to Jesus the most natural way of opening his
public ministry. When he returned from his baptism to Nazareth, "he
entered, as his custom was, into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up
to read. And there was delivered unto him the roll of the prophet Isaiah. And
he opened the roll and found the place where it was written (61:1, 2) ’The
Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me to preach good tidings to
the poor; he hath sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovering
of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to proclaim the
acceptable year of the Lord.’ And
he closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down: and the
eyes of all in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he began to say unto
them, ’To-day hath this scripture been fulfilled in your ears.’ And all bare witness unto him, and
wondered at the words of grace which proceeded out of his mouth: and they said,
Is not this Joseph’s son?"195
On the great festivals
he visited from his twelfth year the capital of the nation where the Jewish
religion unfolded all its splendor and attraction. Large caravans with trains
of camels and asses loaded with provisions and rich offerings to the temple,
were set in motion from the North and the South, the East and the West for the
holy city, "the joy of the whole earth;" and these yearly
pilgrimages, singing the beautiful Pilgrim Psalms (Ps, 120 to 134), contributed
immensely to the preservation and promotion of the common faith, as the Moslem
pilgrimages to Mecca keep up the life of Islam. We may greatly reduce the
enormous figures of Josephus, who on one single Passover reckoned the number of
strangers and residents in Jerusalem at 2,700,000 and the number of slaughtered
lambs at 256,500, but there still remains the fact of the vast extent and
solemnity of the occasion. Even now in her decay, Jerusalem (like other
Oriental cities) presents a striking picturesque appearance at Easter, when
Christian pilgrims from the far West mingle with the many-colored Arabs, Turks,
Greeks, Latins, Spanish and Polish Jews, and crowd to suffocation the Church of
the Holy Sepulchre. How much more grand and dazzling must this cosmopolitan
spectacle have been when the priests (whose number Josephus estimates at
20,000) with the broidered tunic, the fine linen girdle, the showy turban, the
high priests with the ephod of blue and purple and scarlet, the breastplate and
the mitre, the Levites with their pointed caps, the Pharisees with their broad
phylacteries and fringes, the Essenes in white dresses and with prophetic mien,
Roman soldiers with proud bearing, Herodian courtiers in oriental pomposity,
contrasted with beggars and cripples in rags, when pilgrims innumerable, Jews
and proselytes from all parts of the empire, "Parthians and Medes and
Elamites and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, in Judaea and Cappadocia, in Pontus
and Asia, in Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt and parts of Libya about Cyrene,
and sojourners from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans, and
Arabians,"196
all wearing their national costume and speaking a Babel of tongues, surged
through the streets, and pressed up to Mount Moriah where "the glorious
temple rear’d her pile, far off appearing like a mount of alabaster, topp’d
with golden spires" and where on the fourteenth day of the first month
columns of sacrificial smoke arose from tens of thousands of paschal lambs, in
historical commemoration of the great deliverance from the land of bondage, and
in typical prefiguration of the still greater redemption from the slavery of
sin and death.197
To the outside observer
the Jews at that time were the most religious people on earth, and in some
sense this is true. Never was a nation so ruled by the written law of God;
never did a nation so carefully and scrupulously study its sacred books, and
pay greater reverence to its priests and teachers. The leaders of the nation
looked with horror and contempt upon the unclean, uncircumcised Gentiles, and
confirmed the people in their spiritual pride and conceit. No wonder that the
Romans charged the Jews with the <foreign lang="la">odium generis humani</foreign>.
Yet, after all, this
intense religiosity was but a shadow of true religion. It was a praying corpse
rather than a living body. Alas! the Christian Church in some ages and sections
presents a similar sad spectacle of the deceptive form of godliness without its
power. The rabbinical learning and piety bore the same relation to the living
oracles of God as sophistic scholasticism to Scriptural theology, and
Jesuitical casuistry to Christian ethics. The Rabbis spent all their energies
in "fencing" the law so as to make it inaccessible. They analyzed it
to death. They surrounded it with so many hair-splitting distinctions and
refinements that the people could not see the forest for the trees or the roof
for the tiles, and mistook the shell for the kernel.198
Thus they made void the Word of God by the traditions of men.199 A
slavish formalism and mechanical ritualism was substituted for spiritual piety,
an ostentatious sanctimoniousness for holiness of character, scrupulous
casuistry for genuine morality, the killing letter for the life-giving spirit,
and the temple of God was turned into a house of merchandise.
The profanation and
perversion of the spiritual into the carnal, and of the inward into the
outward, invaded even the holy of holies of the religion of Israel, the
Messianic promises and hopes which run like a golden thread from the
protevangelium in paradise lost to the voice of John the Baptist pointing to
the Lamb of God. The idea of a spiritual Messiah who should crush the serpent’s
head and redeem Israel from the bondage of sin, was changed into the conception
of a political deliverer who should re-establish the throne of David in
Jerusalem, and from that centre rule over the Gentiles to the ends of the
earth. The Jews of that time could not separate David’s Son, as they called the
Messiah, from David’s sword, sceptre and crown. Even the apostles were affected
by this false notion, and hoped to secure the chief places of honor in that
great revolution; hence they could not understand the Master when he spoke to
them of his, approaching passion and death.200
The state of public
opinion concerning the Messianic expectations as set forth in the Gospels is
fully confirmed by the preceding and contemporary Jewish literature, as the
Sibylline Books (about b.c. 140),
the remarkable Book of Enoch (of uncertain date, probably from b.c. 130–30), the Psalter of Solomon (b.c. 63–48), the Assumption of Moses,
Philo and Josephus, the Apocalypse of Baruch, and the Fourth Book of Esdras.201 In
all of them the Messianic kingdom, or the kingdom of God, is represented as an
earthly paradise of the Jews, as a kingdom of this world, with Jerusalem for
its capital. It was this popular idol of a pseudo-Messiah with which Satan
tempted Jesus in the wilderness, when he showed him all the kingdoms of the
world; well knowing that if he could convert him to this carnal creed, and
induce him to abuse his miraculous power for selfish gratification, vain
ostentation, and secular ambition, he would most effectually defeat the scheme
of redemption. The same political aspiration was a powerful lever of the
rebellion against the Roman yoke which terminated in the destruction of
Jerusalem, and it revived again in the rebellion of Bar-Cocheba only to end in
a similar disaster.
Such was the Jewish
religion at the time of Christ. He was the only teacher in Israel who saw
through the hypocritical mask to the rotten heart. None of the great Rabbis, no
Hillel, no Shammai, no Gamaliel attempted or even conceived of a reformation;
on the contrary, they heaped tradition upon tradition and accumulated the
talmudic rubbish of twelve large folios and 2947 leaves, which represents the
anti-Christian petrifaction of Judaism; while the four Gospels have regenerated
humanity and are the life and the light of the civilized world to this day.
Jesus, while moving
within the outward forms of the Jewish religion of his age, was far above it and
revealed a new world of ideas. He, too, honored the law of God, but by
unfolding its deepest spiritual meaning and fulfilling it in precept and
example. Himself a Rabbi, he taught as one having direct authority from God,
and not as the scribes. How he arraigned those hypocrites seated on Moses’
seat, those blind leaders of the blind, who lay heavy burdens on men’s
shoulders without touching them with their finger; who shut the kingdom of
heaven against men, and will not enter themselves; who tithe the mint and the
anise and the cumin, and leave undone the weightier matters of the law, justice
and mercy and faith; who strain out the gnat and swallow the camel; who are
like unto whited sepulchres which outwardly appear beautiful indeed, but
inwardly are full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. But while he
thus stung the pride of the leaders, he cheered and elevated the humble and
lowly. He blessed little children, he encouraged the poor, he invited the
weary, he fed the hungry he healed the sick, he converted publicans and
sinners, and laid the foundation strong and deep, in God’s eternal love, for a
new society and a new humanity. It was one of the sublimest as well as
loveliest moments in the life of Jesus when the disciples asked him, Who is the
greatest in the kingdom of heaven? and when he called a little child, set him
in the midst of them and said, "Verily I say unto you, Except ye be
converted and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the
kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little
child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoso shall receive
one such little child in my name receiveth me."202 And
that other moment when he thanked his heavenly Father for revealing unto babes
the things of the kingdom which were hid from the wise, and invited all that
labor and are heavy laden to come to him for rest.203
He knew from the beginning
that he was the Messiah of God and the King of Israel. This consciousness
reached its maturity at his baptism when he received the Holy Spirit without
measure.204 To
this conviction he clung unwaveringly, even in those dark hours of the apparent
failure of his cause, after Judas had betrayed him, after Peter, the confessor
and rock-apostle, had denied him, and everybody had forsaken him. He solemnly
affirmed his Messiahship before the tribunal of the Jewish highpriest; he
assured the heathen representative of the Roman empire that he was a king,
though not of this world, and when hanging on the cross he assigned to the
dying robber a place in his kingdom.205 But before that time and in the days of
his greatest popularity he carefully avoided every publication and
demonstration which might have encouraged the prevailing idea of a political
Messiah and an uprising of the people. He chose for himself the humblest of the
Messianic titles which represents his condescension to our common lot, while at
the same time it implies his unique position as the representative head of the
human family, as the ideal, the perfect, the universal, the archetypal Man. He
calls himself habitually "the Son of Man" who "hath not where to
lay his head," who "came not to be ministered unto but to minister
and to give his life a ransom for many," who "hath power to forgive
sins," who "came to seek and to save that which was lost."206
When Peter made the great confession at Caesarea Philippi, Christ
accepted it, but immediately warned him of his approaching passion and death,
from which the disciple shrunk in dismay.207 And with the certain expectation of his
crucifixion, but also of his triumphant resurrection on the third day, he
entered in calm and sublime fortitude on his last journey to Jerusalem which
"killeth the prophets," and nailed him to the cross as a false
Messiah and blasphemer. But in the infinite wisdom and mercy of God the
greatest crime in history was turned into the greatest blessing to mankind.
We must conclude then
that the life and work of Christ, while admirably adapted to the condition and
wants of his age and people, and receiving illustration and confirmation from
his environment, cannot be explained from any contemporary or preceding
intellectual or moral resources. He learned nothing from human teachers. His
wisdom was not of this world. He needed no visions and revelations like the prophets
and apostles. He came directly from his great Father in heaven, and when he
spoke of heaven he spoke of his familiar home. He spoke from the fullness of
God dwelling in him. And his words were verified by deeds. Example is stronger
than precept. The wisest sayings remain powerless until they are incarnate in a
living person. It is the life which is the light of men. In purity of doctrine
and holiness of character combined in perfect harmony, Jesus stands alone,
unapproached and unapproachable. He breathed a fresh life from heaven into his
and all subsequent ages. He is the author of a new moral creation.
Jesus
and Hillel.—The infinite elevation
of Christ above the men of his time and nation, and his deadly conflict with
the Pharisees and scribes are so evident that it seems preposterous and absurd
to draw a parallel between him and Hillel or any other Rabbi. And yet this has
been done by some modern Jewish Rabbis, as Geiger, Grätz, Friedlander, who
boldly affirm, without a shadow of historical proof, that Jesus was a Pharisee,
a pupil of Hillel, and indebted to him for his highest moral principles. By
this left-handed compliment they mean to depreciate his originality. Abraham Geiger (d. 1874)
says, in his Das Judenthum und seine Geschichte
(Breslau, 2d ed. 1865, vol. I. p. 117): <foreign
lang="de">"Jesus war ein Jude,
ein pharisäischer Jude mit galiläischer Färbung, ein Mann der die Hofnungen der
Zeit theilte und diese Hoffnungen in sich erfüllt glaubte. Einen neuen Gedanken
sprach er keineswegs aus [!], auch brach er nicht etwa die Schranken der
Nationalität .... Er hob nicht im Entferntesten etwas vom Judenthum auf; er war
ein Pharisäer, der auch in den Wegen Hillels ging." This view is repeated
by Rabbi Dr. M. H. Friedlander, in his Geschichtsbilder aus der Zeit der
Tanaite n und Amoräer. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Talmuds (Brünn, 1879, p. 32): "Jesus, oder
Jeschu, war der Sohn eines Zimmermeisters, Namens Josef, aus Nazareth. Seine
Mutter hiess Mirjam oder Maria. Selbst der als conservativer Katholik [sic!]
wie als bedeutender Gelehrter bekannte Ewald nennt ihn ’Jesus den Sohn
Josef’,.... Wenn auch Jesus’
Gelehrsamkeit nicht riesig war, da die Galiläer auf keiner hohen Stufe der
Cultur standen, so zeichnete er sich doch durch Seelenadel, Gemüthlichkeit und
Herzensgü te vortheilhaft aus. Hillel I. scheint sein Vorbild und Musterbild
gewesen zu sein; denn der
hillelianische Grundsatz: ’Was dir nicht recht ist, füge, deinen Nebenmenschen
nicht zu,’ war das Grundprincip seiner Lehren."</foreign> Renan
makes a similar assertion in his Vie de Jésus
(Chap. III. p. 35), but with
considerable qualifications: "<foreign
lang="fr">Par sa pauvreté humblement supportée, par la douceur
de son caractère, par l’opposition qu’il faisait aux hypocrites et aux prêtres,
Hillel fut le vrai maître de Jésus, s’il est permis de parler de maître, quand
il s’agit d’une si haute originalité.</foreign>" This comparison has been effectually
disposed of by such able scholars as Dr. Delitzsch, in his valuable pamphlet Jesus und Hillel (Erlangen, 3d revised ed. 1879, 40 pp.); Ewald,
V. 12–48 (Die Schule Hillel’s und deren Geqner); Keim I. 268–272; Schürer, p. 456; and Farrar, Life of Christ, II.
453–460. All these writers come to the same conclusion of the perfect independence
and originality of Jesus. Nevertheless it is interesting to examine the facts
in the case.
Hillel and Shammai are
the most distinguished among the Jewish Rabbis. They were contemporary founders
of two rival schools of rabbinical theology (as Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus
of two schools of scholastic theology). It is strange that Josephus does not
mention them, unless he refers to
them under the Hellenized names of Sameas and Pollion; but these
names agree better with Shemaja and Abtalion, two celebrated
Pharisees and teachers of Hillel and Shammai; moreover he designates Sameas as
a disciple of Pollion. (See Ewald, v. 22–26; Schürer, p. 455). The Talmudic
tradition has obscured their history and embellished it with many fables.
Hillel I. or the Great was a descendant of the royal family of David, and born at
Babylon. He removed to Jerusalem in great poverty, and died about a.d. 10. He is said to have lived 120
years, like Moses, 40 years without learning, 40 years as a student, 40 years
as a teacher. He was the grandfather of the wise Gamaliel in whose family the
presidency of the Sanhedrin was hereditary for several generations. By his
burning zeal for knowledge, and his pure, gentle and amiable character, he
attained the highest renown. He is said to have understood all languages, even
the unknown tongues of mountains, hills, valleys, trees, wild and tame beasts,
and demons. He was called "the gentle, the holy, the scholar of
Ezra." There was a proverb: "Man should be always as meek as Hillel,
and not quick-tempered as Shammai." He differed from Rabbi Shammai by a
milder interpretation of the law, but on some points, as the mighty question
whether it was right or wrong to eat an egg laid on a Sabbath day, he took the
more rigid view. A talmudic tract is called Beza, The Egg, after this
famous dispute. What a distance from him who said: "The Sabbath was made
for man, and not man for the Sabbath: so then the Son of Man is Lord even of
the Sabbath."
Many wise sayings,
though partly obscure and of doubtful interpretation, are attributed to Hillel
in the tract Pirke Aboth (which is embodied in the Mishna and enumerates, in
ch. 1, the pillars of the legal traditions from Moses down to the destruction
of Jerusalem). The following are the best:
"Be a disciple of
Aaron, peace-loving and peace-making; love men, and draw them to the law."
"Whoever abuses a
good name (or, is ambitious of aggrandizing his name) destroys it."
"Whoever does not
increase his knowledge diminishes it."
"Separate not
thyself from the congregation, and have no confidence in thyself till the day
of thy death."
"If I do not care
for my soul, who will do it for me?
If I care only for my own soul, what am I? If not now, when then?"
"Judge not thy
neighbor till thou art in his situation."
"Say not, I will
repent when I have leisure, lest that leisure should never be thine."
"The passionate man
will never be a teacher."
"In the place where
there is not a man, be thou a man."
Yet his haughty
Pharisaism is clearly seen in this utterance: "No uneducated man easily
avoids sin; no common person is pious." The enemies of Christ in the
Sanhedrin said the same (John 7:49): "This multitude that knoweth not the
law are accursed." Some of his teachings are of doubtful morality, e.g.
his decision that, in view of a vague expression in Deut. 24:1, a man might put
away his wife "even if she cooked his dinner badly." This is,
however, softened down by modern Rabbis so as to mean: "if she brings
discredit on his home."
Once a heathen came to
Rabbi Shammai and promised to become a proselyte if he could teach him the
whole law while he stood on one leg. Shammai got angry and drove him away with
a stick. The heathen went with the same request to Rabbi Hillel, who never lost
his temper, received him courteously and gave him, while standing on one leg,
the following effective answer:
Do not to thy neighbor
what is disagreeable to thee. This is the whole Law; all the rest is
commentary: go and do that." (See Delitzsch, p. 17; Ewald, V. 31, Comp.
IV. 270).
This is the wisest word
of Hillel and the chief ground of a comparison with Jesus. But
1. It is only the
negative expression of the positive precept of the gospel, "Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself," and of the golden rule, "All things
whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, even so do ye also to
them"(Matt. 7:12; Luke 6:31). There is a great difference between not
doing any harm, and doing good. The former is consistent with selfishness and
every sin which does not injure our neighbor. The Saviour, by presenting God’s
benevolence (Matt. 7:11) as the guide of duty, directs us to do to our neighbor
all the good we can, and he himself set the highest example of self-denying
love by sacrificing his life for sinners.
2. It is disconnected
from the greater law of supreme love to God, without which true love to our
neighbor is impossible. "On these two commandments," combined
and inseparable, hang all the law and the prophets" (Matt. 22:37–40).
3. Similar sayings are found long before Hillel, not only in the Pentateuch
and the Book of Tobith 4:15: (<foreign lang="el">o}
misei'" mhdeni; poihvsh/"</foreign>, "Do that to no man which thou
hatest"), but substantially even among the heathen (Confucius, Buddha,
Herodotus, Isocrates, Seneca, Quintilian), but always either in the negative
form, or with reference to a particular case or class; e.g. Isocrates, Ad Demonic. c. 4:
"Be such towards your parents as thou shalt pray thy children shall be
towards thyself;" and the same In Aeginet. c.
23: "That you would be such
judges to me as you would desire to obtain for yourselves." See Wetstein
on Matt. 7:12 (Nov. Test. I. 341 sq.). Parallels to this and other
biblical maxims have been gathered in considerable number from the Talmud and
the classics by Lightfoot, Grotius, Wetstein, Deutsch, Spiess, Ramage; but what
are they all compared with the Sermon on the Mount? Moreover, <foreign lang="la">si duo idem dicunt, non est idem</foreign>. As
to the rabbinical parallels, we must remember that they were not committed to
writing before the second century, and that, Delitzsch says (Ein Tag in
Capernaum, p. 137), "not a few
sayings of Christ, circulated by Jewish Christians, reappeared anonymously or
under false names in the Talmuds and Midrashim."
4. No amount of detached
words of wisdom constitute an organic system of ethics any, more than a heap of
marble blocks constitute a palace or temple; and the best system of ethics is
unable to produce a holy life, and is worthless without it.
We may admit without
hesitation that Hillel was "the greatest and best of all Pharisees" (Ewald), but he was far
inferior to John the Baptist; and to compare him with Christ is sheer blindness
or folly. Ewald calls such comparison "utterly perverse" (grundverkehrt, v. 48). Farrar remarks that the distance between Hillel and
Jesus is "a distance absolutely immeasurable, and the resemblance of his
teaching to that of Jesus is the resemblance of a glow-worm to the sun"
(II. 455). "The fundamental tendencies of both," says Delitzsch (p.
23), "are as widely apart as he and earth. That of Hillel is legalistic,
casuistic, and nationally contracted; that of Jesus is universally religious,
moral and human. Hillel lives and moves in the externals, Jesus in the spirit
of the law." He was not even a reformer, as Geiger and Friedlander would
make him, for what they adduce as proofs are mere trifles of interpretation,
and involve no new principle or idea.
Viewed as a mere human
teacher, the absolute originality of Jesus consists in this, "that his
words have touched the hearts of all men in all ages, and have regenerated the
moral life of the world" (Farrar, II. 454). But Jesus is far more than a
Rabbi, more than a sage and saint more than a reformer, more than a benefactor;
he is the author of the true religion, the prophet, priest and king, the
renovator, the Saviour of men, the founder of a spiritual kingdom as vast as
the race and as long as eternity.
</div3><div3 type =
"Section" n="18" title="Aprocyphal
Traditions">
§ 18. Apocryphal Traditions.
We add some notes of minor
interest connected with the history of Christ outside of the only authentic
record in the Gospel.
I. The Apocryphal Sayings of our Lord.—The
canonical Gospels contain all that is necessary for us to know about the words
and deeds of our Lord, although many more might have been recorded (John 20:30;
21:25). Their early composition and reception in the church precluded the
possibility of a successful rivalry of oral tradition. The extra-biblical
sayings of our Lord are mere fragments, few in number, and with one exception
rather unimportant, or simply variations of genuine words.
They have been collected
by Fabricius, in Codex Apocr. N. T., I pp. 321–335; Grabe:
Spicilegium SS. Patrum, ed. alt. I. 12 sqq., 326 sq.; Koerner: De
sermonibus Christi ajgravfoi" (Lips. 1776); Routh,
in Reliq. Sacrae, vol. I. 9–12, etc.; Rud. Hofmann, in Das Leben Jesu nach den Apokryphen (Leipz. 1851, § 75, pp. 317–334); Bunsen, in Anal. ante-Nic. I.
29 sqq.; Anger, in Synops.
Evang. (1852); Westcott: Introd.
to the Study of the Gospels, Append. C. (pp. 446 sqq. of the Boston ed.
by Hackett); Plumptre, in
Ellicott’s Com. for English Readers, I. p. xxxiii.; J. T. Dodd: Sayings ascribed to our Lord by
the Fathers (1874); E. B. Nicholson:
The Gospel according to the Hebrews (Lond. 1879, pp. 143–162). Comp. an
essay of Ewald in his "Jahrbücher der Bibl. Wissenschaft," VI. 40 and
54 sqq., and Geschichte Christus’, p.
288. We avail ourselves chiefly of the collections of Hofmann, Westcott,
Plumptre, and Nicholson.
<scripCom passage=”Acts 20:35” type=”Commentary”/>(1) "It is more blessed to give than to
receive." Quoted by Paul, Acts 20:35. Comp. Luke 6:30, 31; also
Clement of Rome, Ad Cor. c. 2,
<foreign
lang="el">h[dion didovnte" h]
lambavnonte"</foreign>, "more gladly giving than receiving."
This is unquestionably authentic, pregnant with rich meaning, and shining out
like a lone star all the more brilliantly. It is true in the highest sense of
the love of God and Christ. The somewhat similar sentences of Aristotle, Seneca,
and Epicurus, as quoted by Plutarch (see the passages in Wetstein on Acts
20:35), savor of aristocratic pride, and are neutralized by the opposite
heathen maxim of mean selfishness: "Foolish is the giver, happy the
receiver." Shakespeare may have had the sentence in his mind when he put
into the mouth of Portia the golden words:
"The quality of mercy
is not strained,
It droppeth as the gentle
rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it
is twice blessed;
It blesseth him that gives
and him that takes;
’Tis mightiest in the
mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better
than his crown."
<scripCom passage=”Luke 6:4” type=”Commentary”/> (2) "And on the same day Jesus saw a man
working at his craft on the Sabbath-day, and He said unto him, ’O man, if thou
knowest what thou doest, then art thou blessed; but if thou knowest not, then
art thou accursed, and art a transgressor of the Law.’ " An addition to <scripRef passage =
"Luke 6:4">Luke
6:4</scripRef>, in Codex D. or Bezae (in the University library
at Cambridge), which contains several remarkable additions. See Tischendorf’s apparatus
in ed. VIII. Luc. 6:4, and Scrivener, lntrod. to Criticism of the N. T. p. 8. <foreign
lang="el">ejpikatavrato"</foreign> is used <scripRef passage =
"John 7:49">John
7:49</scripRef> (text. rec.) by the Pharisees of the people who
know not the law (also <scripRef passage = "Gal. 3:10, 13">Gal. 3:10, 13</scripRef> in quotations from the O. T.); <foreign
lang="el">parabavth" tou' novmou</foreign> by Paul (<scripRef passage =
"Rom. 2:25, 27">Rom.
2:25, 27</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Gal.
2:18">Gal. 2:18</scripRef>) and <scripRef passage =
"James 2:9, 11">James
(2:9, 11)</scripRef>. Plumptre regards the narrative as authentic, and remarks
that "it brings out with a marvellous force the distinction between the
conscious transgression of a law recognized as still binding, and the assertion
of a higher law as superseding the lower. Comp. also the remarks of Hofmann,
l.c. p. 318.
<scripCom passage=”Matt. 20:28” type=”Commentary”/> (3) "But ye seek (or, in the imperative,
seek ye, <foreign
lang="el">zhtei'te</foreign>) to increase from little, and (not) from greater
to be less." An addition in Codex D. to <scripRef passage =
"Matt 20:28">Matt
20:28</scripRef>. See Tischendorf. Comp. <scripRef passage =
"Luke 14:11">Luke
14:11</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "John
5:44">John 5:44</scripRef>. Westcott regards this as a genuine fragment.
Nicholson inserts "not," with the Curetonian Syriac, D; all other
authorities omit it. Juvencus has incorporated the passage in his poetic Hist.
Evang. III. 613 sqq., quoted by Hofmann, p. 319.
(4) "Be ye
trustworthy money-changers, or, proved bankers (<foreign
lang="el">trapezi'tai dovkimoi</foreign>); i.e. expert in distinguishing the genuine coin
from the counterfeit. Quoted by Clement of Alexandria (several times), Origen
(in Joann, xix.), Eusebius, Epiphanius, Cyril of Alexandria, and many others.
Comp. <scripRef
passage = "1 Thess. 5:21">1 Thess. 5:21</scripRef>: "Prove all things, hold fast the
good," and the parable of the talents, <scripRef passage =
"Matt. 25:27">Matt.
25:27</scripRef>. Delitzsch, who with many others regards this
maxim as genuine, gives it the meaning: Exchange the less valuable for the more
valuable, esteem sacred coin higher than common coin, and highest of all the
one precious pearl of the gospel.(Ein Tag in Capernaum, p. 136.) Renan likewise
adopts it as historical, but explains it in an Ebionite and monastic sense as
an advice of voluntary poverty. "Be ye good bankers (soyez de bons banquiers), that is to say: Make good investments for the
kingdom of God, by giving your goods to the poor, according to the ancient
proverb (<scripRef
passage = "Prov. 19:17">Prov. 19:17</scripRef>): ’He that hath pity upon the poor, lendeth to
the Lord’ " (Vie de Jésus, ch. XI. p. 180,
5th Par. ed.).
[(5) "The Son of
God says,(?) ’Let us resist all iniquity, and hold it in abhorrence.’ "
From the <scripRef
passage = "Epistle of Barnabas, c. 4">Epistle of Barnabas, c. 4</scripRef>. This Epistle, though incorporated in the Codex
Sinaiticus, is probably not a work of the apostolic Barnabas. Westcott and
Plumptre quote the passage from the Latin version, which introduces the
sentence with the words: <foreign lang="la">sicut dicit Filius Dei</foreign>. But this seems to be a mistake for <foreign
lang="la">sicut
decet filios Dei</foreign>, "as becometh the sons of God." This
is evident from the Greek original (brought to light by the discovery of the
Codex Sinaiticus), which reads, <foreign lang="el">wJ"
prevpei uiJoi'" qeou</foreign>' and
connects the words with the preceding sentence. See the edition of Barnabae
Epistula by Gebhardt and Harnack in Patr. Apost. Op. I. 14. For the sense comp.
<scripRef
passage = "2 Tim. 2:19">2 Tim. 2:19</scripRef>: <foreign lang="el">ajpostavtw
ajpo; ajdikiva"</foreign> <scripRef passage = "James
4:7">James 4:7</scripRef>: <foreign lang="el">ajnivsthte
tw/' diabovlw/</foreign>, <scripRef passage = "Ps.
119:163">Ps. 119:163</scripRef>: <foreign lang="el">ajdikivan
ejmivshsa</foreign>.]
(6) "They who wish
to see me, and to lay hold on my kingdom, must receive me with affliction and
suffering." From the <scripRef passage = "Epistle of Barnabas, c.
7">Epistle of
Barnabas, c. 7</scripRef>, where the words are introduced by "Thus he [Jesus] saith," <foreign
lang="el">fhsivn</foreign>. But it is doubtful whether they are meant as a
quotation or rather as a conclusion of the former remarks and a general
reminiscence of several passages. Comp. <scripRef passage =
"Matt. 16:24; 20:3">Matt. 16:24; 20:3</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Acts
14:22">Acts 14:22</scripRef>: "We must through much tribulation enter
into the kingdom of God."
(7) "He that
wonders [<foreign
lang="el">oJ qaumavsa"</foreign> with the wonder of reverential faith] shall
reign, and he that reigns shall be made to rest." From the "Gospel of
the Hebrews," quoted by Clement of Alexandria (Strom. II. 9, § 45). The
Alexandrian divine quotes this and the following sentence to show, as Plumptre
finely says, "that in the teaching of Christ, as in that of Plato, wonder
is at once the beginning and the end of knowledge."
(8) "Look with
wonder at the things that are before thee (<foreign
lang="el">qauvmason ta pavronta</foreign>)." From Clement of Alexandria (Strom. II.
9, § 45.).
(9) "I came to
abolish sacrifices, and unless ye cease from sacrificing, the wrath [of God]
will not cease from you." From the <scripRef passage =
"Gospel of the Ebionites">Gospel of the Ebionites</scripRef> (or rather Essaean Judaizers), quoted by
Epiphanius (Haer. xxx. 16). Comp. <scripRef passage =
"Matt. 9:13">Matt.
9:13</scripRef>, "I will have mercy and not
sacrifice."
(10) "Ask great
things, and the small shall be added to you: ask heavenly and there shall be
added unto you earthly things."
Quoted by Clement of Alexandria (Strom. I. 24, § 154; comp. IV. 6, § 34)
and Origen (de Oratione, c. 2), with slight differences. Comp. <scripRef
passage = "Matt. 6:33">Matt. 6:33</scripRef>, of which it is probably a free quotation from
memory. Ambrose also quotes the sentence (Ep. xxxvi. 3): "<foreign
lang="la">Denique
scriptum est: ’Petite magna, et
parva adjicientur vobis. Petite coelestia, et terrena adjicientur.’</foreign> "
(11) "In the things
wherein I find you, in them will I judge you." Quoted by Justin Martyr
(Dial. c. Tryph. c. 47), and Clement of Alexandria (Quis dives, § 40). Somewhat
different Nilus: "Such as I find thee, I will judge thee, saith the Lord."
The parallel passages in <scripRef passage = "Ezekiel 7:3, 8; 18:30;
24:14; 33:20">Ezekiel
7:3, 8; 18:30; 24:14; 33:20</scripRef> are not sufficient to account for this sentence.
It is probably taken from an apocryphal Gospel. See Hofmann, p. 323.
(12) "He who is
nigh unto me is nigh unto the fire: he who is far from me is far from the
kingdom. From Origen (Comm. in Jer. III. p. 778), and Didymus of Alexandria (in
<scripRef
passage = "Ps. 88:8">Ps. 88:8</scripRef>). Comp, <scripRef passage = "Luke 12:49">Luke 12:49</scripRef>. Ignatius (Ad Smyrn. c. 4) has a similar saying,
but not as a quotation, "To be near the sword is to be near God" (<foreign
lang="el">ejgguv" macaivra"
ejgguv" qeou'</foreign>).
(13) "If ye kept
not that which is little, who will give you that which is great? For I say unto you, he that is faithful
in the least is faithful also in much." From the homily of Pseudo-Clement of Rome (ch. 8). Comp. <scripRef
passage = "Luke 16:10-12">Luke 16:10–12</scripRef> and <scripRef passage =
"Matt, 25:21, 23">Matt, 25:21, 23</scripRef>. Irenaeus (II. 34, 3) quotes similarly, probably
from memory: "<foreign lang="la">Si in modico fideles non fuistis, quod magnum est
quis dabit nobis?</foreign>"
(14) "Keep the
flesh pure, and the seal [probably baptism] without stain that we (ye) may
receive eternal life." From Pseudo-Clement, ch. 8. But as this is
connected with the former sentence by <foreign
lang="el">a[ra ou\n tou'to le;gei</foreign>, it seems to be only an explanation ("he
means this") not a separate quotation. See Lightfoot, St. Clement of Rome,
pp. 200 and 201, and his Appendix containing the newly recovered Portions, p.
384:. On the sense comp. <scripRef passage = "2 Tim. 2:19">2 Tim. 2:19</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Rom.
4:11">Rom. 4:11</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Eph. 1:13;
4:30">Eph. 1:13; 4:30</scripRef>.
(15) Our Lord, being
asked by Salome when His kingdom should come, and the things which he had
spoken be accomplished, answered, "When the two shall be one, and the
outward as the inward, and the male with the female, neither male nor
female." From Clement of Alexandria, as a quotation from "the Gospel
according to the Egyptians" (Strom.III. 13, § 92), and the homily of
Pseudo-Clement of Rome (ch. 12). Comp. <scripRef passage =
"Matt. 22:30">Matt.
22:30</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Gal.
3:28">Gal. 3:28</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "1 Cor.
7:29">1 Cor. 7:29</scripRef>. The sentence has a mystical coloring which is
alien to the genuine Gospels, but suited the Gnostic taste.
(16) "For those that
are infirm was I infirm, and for those that hunger did I hunger, and for those
that thirst did I thirst." From Origen (in Matt. xiii. 2). Comp. <scripRef
passage = "Matt. 25:35, 36">Matt. 25:35, 36</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "1 Cor.
9:20–22">1 Cor.
9:20–22</scripRef>.
(17) "Never be ye
joyful, except when ye have seen your brother [dwelling] in love." Quoted
from the Hebrew Gospel by Jerome (in Eph. v. 3).
(18) "Take hold,
handle me, and see that I am not a bodiless demon [i.e. spirit]." From Ignatius
(Ad Symrn. c. 3), and Jerome, who quotes it from the Nazarene Gospel (De Viris
illustr. 16). Words said to have been spoken to Peter and the apostles after
the resurrection. Comp. <scripRef passage = "Luke 24:39">Luke 24:39</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "John
20:27">John 20:27</scripRef>.
(19) "Good must
needs come, but blessed is he through whom it cometh; in like manner evil must
needs come, but woe to him through whom it cometh." From the
"Clementine Homilies," xii. 29. For the second clause comp. <scripRef
passage = "Matt. 18:7">Matt. 18:7</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Luke
17:1">Luke 17:1</scripRef>.
(20) "My mystery is
for me, and for the sons of my house." From Clement of Alexandria (Strom.
V. 10, § 64), the Clementine Homilies (xix. 20), and Alexander of Alexandria
(Ep. ad Alex. c. 5, where the words are ascribed to the Father). Comp. <scripRef
passage = "Isa. 24:16">Isa. 24:16</scripRef> (Sept.); <scripRef passage =
"Matt. 13:11">Matt.
13:11</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Mark
4:11">Mark 4:11</scripRef>.
(21) "If you do not
make your low things high and your crooked things straight ye shall not enter
into my kingdom." From the Acta Philippi in Tischendorf’s Acta Apost.
Apocr. p. 90, quoted by Ewald, Gesch. Christus, p. 288, who calls these words a
weak echo of more excellent sayings.
(22) "I will choose
these things to myself. Very excellent are those whom my Father that is in
heaven hath given to me." From the Hebrew Gospel, quoted by Eusebius
(Theophan. iv. 13).
(23) "The Lord
said, speaking of His kingdom, ’The days will come in which vines will spring
up, each having ten thousand stocks, and on each stock ten thousand branches,
and on each branch ten thousand shoots, and on each shoot ten thousand bunches,
and on each bunch ten thousand grapes, and each grape when pressed shall give
five-and-twenty measures of wine. And when any saint shall have laid hold on
one bunch, another shall cry, I am a better bunch, take me; through me bless
the Lord.’ Likewise also [he
said], ’that a grain of wheat shall produce ten thousand ears of corn, and each
grain ten pounds of fine pure flour; and so all other fruits and seeds and each
herb according to its proper nature. And that all animals, using for food what
is received from the earth, shall live in peace and concord with one another,
subject to men with all subjection.’ " To this description Papias adds:
"These things are credible to those who believe. And when Judas the
traitor believed not and asked, ’How shall such products come from the Lord?’
the Lord said, ’They shall see who come to me in these times.’ " From the
"weak-minded" Papias (quoted by Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. V. 33, 3). Comp.
<scripRef
passage = "Isa. 11:6-9">Isa. 11:6–9</scripRef>.
This is a strongly
figurative description of the millennium. Westcott thinks it is based on a real
discourse, but to me it sounds fabulous, and borrowed from the Apocalypse of
Baruch which has a similar passage (cap. 29, first published in Monumenta Sacra et Profana opera collegii Doctorum
Bibliothecae Ambrosianae, Tom. I. Fasc. II. Mediol. 1866, p. 80, and then in
Fritzsche’s ed. of Libri Apocryphi
Veteris Test. Lips. 1871, p. 666): "<foreign
lang="la">Etiam
terra dabit fructus suos unum in decem millia, et in vite una erunt Mille palmites,
et unus palmes faciet mille botros, et botrus unus faciet mille acinos, et unus
acinus faciet corum vini. Et qui esurierunt jucundabuntur, iterum autem
videbunt prodigia quotidie .... Et erit in illo tempore, descendet iterum
desuper thesaurus manna, et comedent ex eo in istis annis</foreign>."
Westcott quotes eleven
other apocryphal sayings which are only loose quotations or perversions of
genuine words of Christ, and may therefore be omitted. Nicholson has gathered
the probable or possible fragments of the Gospel according to the Hebrews,
which correspond more or less to passages in the canonical Gospels.
Mohammedan tradition has
preserved in the Koran and in other writings several striking words of Christ,
which Hofmann, l.c. pp. 327–329, has collected. The following is the best:
"Jesus, the Son of
Mary, said, ’He who longs to be rich is like a man who drinks sea-water; the
more he drinks the more thirsty he becomes, and never leaves off drinking till
he perishes."
II. Personal Appearance of Jesus. None of the Evangelists, not even the
beloved disciple and bosom-friend of Jesus, gives us the least hint of his
countenance and stature, or of his voice, his manner, his food, his dress, his
mode of daily life. In this respect our instincts of natural affection have
been wisely overruled. He who is the Saviour of all and the perfect exemplar
for all should not be identified with the particular lineaments of one race or
nationality or type of beauty. We should cling to the Christ in spirit and in
glory rather than to the Christ in the flesh So St. Paul thought (<scripRef
passage = "2 Cor. 5:16">2 Cor. 5:16</scripRef>; Comp. <scripRef passage =
"1 Pet. 1:8">1
Pet. 1:8</scripRef>). Though unseen, he is loved beyond all human
beings.
I see Thee not, I hear Thee not,
Yet art Thou oft with me;
And earth hath ne’er so dear a spot,
As when I meet with Thee."
Jesus no doubt
accommodated himself in dress and general appearance to the customs of his age
and people, and avoided all ostentation. He probably passed unnoticed through
busy crowds. But to the closer observer he must have revealed a spiritual
beauty and an overawing majesty in his countenance and personal bearing. This
helps to explain the readiness with which the disciples, forsaking all things,
followed him in boundless reverence and devotion. He had not the physiognomy of
a sinner. He had more than the physiognomy of a saint. He reflected from his
eyes and countenance the serene peace and celestial purity of a sinless soul in
blessed harmony with God. His presence commanded reverence, confidence and
affection.
In the absence of
authentic representation, Christian art in its irrepressible desire to exhibit
in visible form the fairest among the children of men, was left to its own
imperfect conception of ideal beauty. The church under persecution in the first
three centuries, was averse to pictorial representations of Christ, and
associated with him in his state of humiliation (but not in his state of
exaltation) the idea of uncomeliness, taking too literally the prophetic
description of the suffering Messiah in the twenty-second Psalm and the
fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. The victorious church after Constantine,
starting from the Messianic picture in the forty-fifth Psalm and the Song of
Solomon, saw the same Lord in heavenly glory, "fairer than the children of
men" and "altogether lovely." Yet the difference was not so
great as it is sometimes represented. For even the ante-Nicene fathers
(especially Clement of Alexandria), besides expressly distinguishing between
the first appearance of Christ in lowliness and humility, and his second
appearance in glory and, majesty, did not mean to deny to the Saviour even in
the days of his flesh a higher order of spiritual beauty, "the glory of
the only-begotten of the Father full of grace and truth," which shone
through the veil of his humanity, and which at times, as on the mount of
transfiguration, anticipated his future glory. "Certainly," says
Jerome, "a flame of fire and starry brightness flashed from his eye, and the
majesty of the God head shone in his face."
The earliest pictures of
Christ, in the Catacombs, are purely symbolic, and represent him under the
figures of the Lamb, the good Shepherd, the Fish. The last has reference to the
Greek word Ichthys, which contains the initials of the words <foreign
lang="el">jIhsou'" Cristov" Qeou'
JUio;" Swth;r</foreign>. "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour."
Real pictures of Christ in the early church would have been an offence to the
Jewish, and a temptation and snare to the heathen converts.
The first formal
description of the personal appearance of Christ, which, though not authentic
and certainly not older than the fourth century, exerted great influence on the
pictorial representations, is ascribed to the heathen Publius
Lentulus, a supposed contemporary of
Pilate and "President of the people of Jerusalem" (there was no such
office), in an apocryphal Latin letter to the Roman Senate, which was first
discovered in a MS. copy of the writings of Anselm of Canterbury in the twelfth
century, and published with slight variations by, Fabricius, Carpzov, Gabler,
etc. It is as follows:
"In this time
appeared a man, who lives till now, a man endowed with great powers. Men call
him a great prophet; his own disciples term Him the Son of God. His name is
Jesus Christ. He restores the dead to life, and cures the sick of all manner of
diseases. This man is of noble and well-proportioned stature, with a face full
of kindness and yet firmness, so that the beholders both love Him and fear Him.
His hair is of the color of wine, and golden at the root; straight, and without
lustre, but from the level of the ears curling and glossy, and divided down the
centre after the fashion of the Nazarenes [Nazarites?]. His forehead is even
and smooth, his face without wrinkle or blemish, and glowing with delicate
bloom. His countenance is frank and kind. Nose and mouth are in no way faulty.
His beard is full, of the same hazel color as his hair, not long, but forked.
His eyes are blue, and extremely brilliant. In reproof and rebuke he is
formidable; in exhortation and teaching, gentle and amiable. He has never been
seen to laugh, but oftentimes to weep, (<foreign
lang="la">numquam
visus est ridere, flere autem saepe</foreign>). His person is tall and erect; his hands and
limbs beautiful and straight. In speaking he is deliberate and grave, and
little given to loquacity. In beauty he surpasses the children of men."
Another description is
found in the works of the Greek theologian, John
of Damascus, of the 8th century (Epist. ad Theoph. Imp. de venerandis Imag., spurious), and a similar one in the Church
History of Nicephorus (I. 40), of
the 14th century. They represent Christ as resembling his mother, and ascribe
to him a stately person though slightly stooping, beautiful eyes, blond, long,
and curly hair, pale, olive complexion, long fingers, and a look expressive of
nobility, wisdom, and patience.
On the ground of these
descriptions, and of the Abgar and the Veronica legends, arose a vast number of
pictures of Christ, which are divided into two classes: the Salvator
pictures, with the expression of calm serenity and dignity, without the
faintest mark of grief, and the Ecce
Homo pictures of the suffering
Saviour with the crown of thorns. The greatest painters and sculptors have
exhausted the resources of their genius in representations of Christ; but
neither color nor chisel nor pen can do more than produce a feeble reflection of
the beauty and glory of Him who is the Son of God and the Son of Man.
Among modern biographers
of Christ, Dr. Sepp (Rom. Cath., Das Leben Jesu Christi, 1865, vol. VI. 312 sqq.) defends the legend of
St. Veronica of the Herodian family, and the genuineness of the picture, of the
suffering Saviour with the crown of thorns which he impressed on her silken
veil. He rejects the philological explanation of the legend from "the true
image" (vera <foreign
lang="el">eijkw;n</foreign> = Veronica), and derives the name from <foreign
lang="el">ferenivkh </foreign>(Berenice), the Victorious. But Bishop Hefele
(Art. Christusbilder, in the
Cath. Kirchen-Lexikon of Wetzer and Welte, II. 519–524) is inclined,
with Grimm, to identify Veronica with the Berenice who is said to have erected
a statue to Christ at Caesarea Philippi (Euseb. VII. 18), and to see in the
Veronica legend only the Latin version of the Abgar legend of the Greek Church.
Dr. Hase (Leben Jesu, p. 79)
ascribes to Christ manly beauty, firm health, and delicate, yet not very
characteristic features. He quotes John 20:14 and Luke 24:16, where it is said
that his friends did not recognize him, but these passages refer only to the
mysterious appearances of the risen Lord. Renan (Vie de Jésus, ch. X-XIV. p. 403) describes him in the
frivolous style of a novelist, as a <foreign
lang="fr">doux Galilèen</foreign>, of calm and dignified attitude, as a <foreign
lang="fr">beau jeune homme</foreign> who made a deep impression upon women, especially
Mary of Magdala; even a proud Roman lady, the wife of Pontius Pilate, when she
caught a glimpse of him from the window (?), was enchanted, dreamed of him in
the night and was frightened at the prospect of his death. Dr. Keim (I. 463)
infers from his character, as described in the Synoptical Gospels, that he was
perhaps not strikingly handsome, yet certainly noble, lovely, manly, healthy
and vigorous, looking like a prophet, commanding reverence, making men, women,
children, sick and poor people feel happy in his presence. Canon Farrar (I.
150) adopts the view of Jerome and Augustine, and speaks of Christ as
"full of mingled majesty and tenderness in—
’That
face
How beautiful, if sorrow had
not made
Sorrow more beautiful than
beauty’s self.’ "
On artistic
representations of Christ see J. B. Carpzov:
De oris et corpor is J. Christi
forma Pseudo-Lentuli, J. Damasceni et Nicephori proso - pographiae. Helmst.
1777. P. E. Jablonski: De origine imaginum Christi Domini. Lugd. Batav.
1804. W. Grimm: Die Sage vom
Ursprung der Christusbilder. Berlin,
1843. Dr. Legis Glückselig: Christus-Archäologie;
Das Buch von Jesus Christus und seinem wahren Ebenbilde. Prag, 1863 4to. Mrs. Jameson and Lady Eastlake:
The History of our Lord as exemplified in Works of Art (with illustrations).
Lond., 2d ed. 1865 2 vols. Cowper:
Apocr. Gospels. Lond. 1867, pp. 217–226. Hase:
Leben
Jesu, pp. 76–80 (5th ed.), Keim: Gesch. Jesu von Naz. I. 459–464. Farrar:
Life of Christ. Lond. 1874, I. 148–150, 312–313; II. 464.
III. The Testimony of Josephus on John the Baptist.
Antiq. Jud. xviii. c. 5, § 2.
Whatever may be thought of the more famous passage of Christ which we have
discussed in § 14 (p. 92), the passage on John is undoubtedly genuine and so
accepted by most scholars. It fully and independently confirms the account of
the Gospels on John’s work and martyrdom, and furnishes, indirectly, an
argument in favor of the historical character of their account of Christ, for
whom he merely prepared the way. We give it in Whiston’s translation: "Now
some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod’s army came from God,
and that very justly, as a punishment of what he did against John, who was
called the Baptist; for Herod slew him, who was a good man (<foreign
lang="el">ajgaqo;n a[ndra</foreign>), and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue,
both as to righteousness towards one another, and piety towards God, and so to
come to baptism; for that the washing [with water] would be acceptable to him,
if they made use of it, not in order to the putting away [or the remission] of
some sins [only], but for the purification of the body: supposing still that
the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness. Now when [many]
others came in crowds about him, for they were greatly moved [or pleased] by
hearing his words, Herod, who feared lest the great influence John had over the
people might put it into his power and inclination to raise a rebellion (for
they seemed ready to do anything he should advise), thought it best, by putting
him to death, to prevent any mischief he might cause, and not bring himself
into difficulties, by sparing a man who might make him repent of it when it
should be too late. Accordingly he was sent a prisoner, out of Herod’s
suspicious temper, to Machaerus, the castle I before mentioned, and was there
put to death. Now the Jews had an opinion that the destruction of this army was
sent as a punishment upon Herod, and a mark of God’s displeasure to him."
IV. The Testimony of Mara to Christ, a.d. 74. This extra-biblical notice of
Christ, made known first in 1865, and referred to above § 14 p. 94) reads as
follows (as translated from the Syriac by Cureton and Pratten):
"What are we to
say, when the wise are dragged by force by hands of tyrants, and their wisdom
is deprived of its freedom by slander, and they are plundered for their
[superior] intelligence, without [the opportunity of making] a defence? [They are not wholly to be pitied.] For what benefit did the Athenians
obtain by putting Socrates to death, seeing that they received as retribution
for it famine and pestilence? Or
the people of Samos by the burning of Pythagoras, seeing that in one hour the
whole of their country was covered with sand? Or The Jews [by the murder] of their Wise King, seeing that from that very time their
kingdom was driven away [from them]?
For with justice did God grant a recompense to the wisdom of [all] three
of them. For the Athenians died by famine; and the people of Samos were covered
by the sea without remedy; and the Jews, brought to destruction and expelled
from their kingdom, are driven away into every land. [Nay], Socrates did not
die, because of Plato; nor yet Pythagoras, because of the statue of Hera; nor
yet The Wise King, because of the new
laws he enacted.
The nationality and
position of Mara are unknown. Dr. Payne Smith supposes him to have been a
Persian. He wrote from prison and wished to die, "by what kind of death
concerns me not." In the beginning of his letter Mara says: "On this
account, lo, I have written for thee this record, [touching] that which I have
by careful observation discovered in the world. For the kind of life men lead
has been carefully observed by me. I tread the path of learning, and from the
study of Greek philosophy have I found out all these things, although they
suffered shipwreck when the birth of life took place." The birth of life
may refer to the appearance of Christianity in the world, or to Mara’s own
conversion. But there is no other indication that he was a Christian. The advice
he gives to his son is simply to "devote himself to wisdom, the fount of
all things good, the treasure that fails not."
</div3><div3 type =
"Section" n="19" title="The Resurrection of
Christ">
<index
type = "globalSubject"
subject1 =
"Resurrection" />
§ 19. The Resurrection of Christ.
The resurrection of Christ
from the dead is reported by the four Gospels, taught in the Epistles, believed
throughout Christendom, and celebrated on every "Lord’s Day," as an
historical fact, as the crowning miracle and divine seal of his whole work, as
the foundation of the hopes of believers, as the pledge of their own future
resurrection. It is represented in the New Testament both as an act of the
Almighty Father who raised his Son from the dead,208 and as an act of Christ himself, who had the
power to lay down his life and to take it again.209 The
ascension was the proper conclusion of the resurrection: the risen life of our
Lord, who is "the Resurrection and the Life," could not end in
another death on earth, but must continue in eternal glory in heaven. Hence St.
Paul says, "Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death no more
hath dominion over him. For the death that he died he died unto sin once: but
the life that he liveth, he liveth unto God."210
The Christian church
rests on the resurrection of its Founder. Without this fact the church could
never have been born, or if born, it would soon have died a natural death. The
miracle of the resurrection and the existence of Christianity are so closely
connected that they must stand or fall together. If Christ was raised from the
dead, then all his other miracles are sure, and our faith is impregnable; if he
was not raised, he died in vain and our faith is vain. It was only his
resurrection that made his death available for our atonement, justification and
salvation; without the resurrection, his death would be the grave of our hopes;
we should be still unredeemed and under the power of our sins. A gospel of a
dead Saviour would be a contradiction and wretched delusion. This is the
reasoning of St. Paul, and its force is irresistible.211
The resurrection of
Christ is therefore emphatically a test question upon which depends the truth
or falsehood of the Christian religion. It is either the greatest miracle or
the greatest delusion which history records.212
Christ had predicted
both his crucifixion and his resurrection, but the former was a stumbling-block
to the disciples, the latter a mystery which they could not understand till
after the event.213 They no doubt expected that he would soon
establish his Messianic kingdom on earth. Hence their utter disappointment and
downheartedness after the crucifixion. The treason of one of their own number,
the triumph of the hierarchy, the fickleness of the people, the death and
burial of the beloved Master, had in a few hours rudely blasted their Messianic
hopes and exposed them to the contempt and ridicule of their enemies. For two
days they were trembling on the brink of despair. But on the third day, behold,
the same disciples underwent a complete revolution from despondency to hope,
from timidity to courage, from doubt to faith, and began to proclaim the gospel
of the resurrection in the face of an unbelieving world and at the peril of
their lives. This revolution was not isolated, but general among them; it was
not the result of an easy credulity, but brought about in spite of doubt and
hesitation;214 it was not superficial and momentary, but
radical and lasting; it affected, not only the apostles, but the whole history
of the world. It reached even the leader of the persecution, Saul of Tarsus one
of the clearest and strongest intellects, and converted him into the most devoted
and faithful champion of this very gospel to the hour of his martyrdom.
This is a fact patent to
every reader of the closing chapters of the Gospels, and is freely admitted
even by the most advanced skeptics.215
The question now rises
whether this inner revolution in the, life of the disciples, with its
incalculable effects upon the fortunes of mankind, can be rationally explained
without a corresponding outward revolution in the history of Christ; in other
words, whether the professed faith of the disciples in the risen Christ was
true and real, or a hypocritical lie, or an honest self-delusion.
There are four possible
theories which have been tried again and again, and defended with as much
learning and ingenuity as can be summoned to their aid. Historical questions
are not like mathematical problems. No argument in favor of the resurrection
will avail with those critics who start with the philosophical assumption that
miracles are impossible, and still less with those who deny not only the
resurrection of the body, but even the immortality of the soul. But facts are
stubborn, and if a critical hypothesis can be proven to be psychologically and
historically impossible and unreasonable, the result is fatal to the philosophy
which underlies the critical hypothesis. It is not the business of the
historian to construct a history from preconceived notions and to adjust it to
his own liking, but to reproduce it from the best evidence and to let it speak
for itself.
1. The Historical view, presented by the
Gospels and believed in the Christian church of every denomination and sect.
The resurrection of Christ was an actual though miraculous event, in harmony
with his previous history and character, and in fulfilment of his own
prediction. It was a re-animation of the dead body of Jesus by a return of his
soul from the spirit-world, and a rising of body and soul from the grave to a
new life, which after repeated manifestations to believers during a short
period of forty days entered into glory by the ascension to heaven. The object
of the manifestations was not only to convince the apostles personally of the
resurrection, but to make them witnesses of the resurrection and heralds of
salvation to all the world.216
Truth compels us to
admit that there are serious difficulties in harmonizing the accounts of the
evangelists, and in forming a consistent conception of the nature of Christ’s,
resurrection-body, hovering as it were between heaven and earth, and oscillating
for forty days between a natural and a supernatural state of the body clothed
with flesh and blood and bearing the wound-prints, and yet so spiritual as to
appear and disappear through closed doors and to ascend visibly to heaven. But
these difficulties are not so great as those which are created by a denial of
the fact itself. The former can be measurably solved, the latter cannot. We, do
not know all the details and circumstances which might enable us to clearly
trace the order of events. But among all the variations the great central fact
of the resurrection itself and its principal features "stand out all the
more sure."217 The period of the forty days is in the
nature of the case the most mysterious in the life of Christ, and transcends
all ordinary Christian experience. The Christophanies resemble in some respect,
the theophanies of the Old Testament, which were granted only to few believers,
yet for the general benefit. At all events the fact of the resurrection
furnishes the only key for the solution of the psychological problem of the
sudden, radical, and permanent change in the mind and conduct of the disciples;
it is the necessary link in the chain which connects their history before and
after that event. Their faith in the resurrection was too clear, too strong,
too steady, too effective to be explained in any other way. They showed the
strength and boldness of their conviction by soon returning to Jerusalem, the
post of danger, and founding there, in the very face of the hostile Sanhedrin,
the mother-church of Christendom.
2. The Theory of Fraud. The apostles stole and
hid the body of Jesus, and deceived the world.218
This infamous lie
carries its refutation on its face: for if the Roman soldiers who watched the
grave at the express request of the priests and Pharisees, were asleep, they
could not see the thieves, nor would they have proclaimed their military crime;
if they, or only some of them, were awake, they would have prevented the theft.
As to the, disciples, they were too timid and desponding at the time to venture
on such a daring act, and too honest to cheat the world. And finally a
self-invented falsehood could not give them the courage and constancy of faith
for the proclamation of the resurrection at the peril of their lives. The whole
theory is a wicked absurdity, an insult to the common sense and honor of
mankind.
3. The Swoon-Theory. The physical life of Jesus
was not extinct, but only exhausted, and was restored by the tender care of his
friends and disciples, or (as some absurdly add) by his own medical skill; and
after a brief period he quietly died a natural death.219
Josephus, Valerius
Maximus, psychological and medical authorities have been searched and appealed
to for examples of such apparent resurrections from a trance or asphyxy,
especially on the third day, which is supposed to be a critical turning-point
for life or putrefaction.
But besides insuperable
physical difficulties—as the wounds and loss of blood from the very heart
pierced by the spear of the Roman soldier—this theory utterly fails to account
for the moral effect. A brief sickly existence of Jesus in need of medical
care, and terminating in his natural death and final burial, without even the
glory of martyrdom which attended the crucifixion, far from restoring the faith
of the apostles, would have only in the end deepened their gloom and driven
them to utter despair.220
4. The Vision-Theory. Christ rose merely in the
imagination of his friends, who mistook a subjective vision or dream for actual
reality, and were thereby encouraged to proclaim their faith in the
resurrection at the risk of death. Their wish was father to the belief, their
belief was father to the fact, and the belief, once started, spread with the
power of a religious epidemic from person to person and from place to place.
The Christian society wrought the miracle by its intense love for Christ.
Accordingly the resurrection does not belong to the history of Christ at all,
but to the inner life of his disciples. It is merely the embodiment of their
reviving faith.
This hypothesis was
invented by a heathen adversary in the second century and soon buried out of
sight, but rose to new life in the nineteenth, and spread with epidemical
rapidity among skeptical critics in Germany, France, Holland and England.221
The advocates of this
hypothesis appeal first and chiefly to the vision of St. Paul on the way to
Damascus, which occurred several years later, and is nevertheless put on a
level with the former appearances to the older apostles (<scripRef
passage = "1 Cor. 15:8">1 Cor. 15:8</scripRef>); next to supposed analogies in the history of religious
enthusiasm and mysticism, such as the individual visions of St. Francis of
Assisi, the Maid of Orleans, St. Theresa (who believed that she had seen Jesus
in person with the eyes of the soul more distinctly than she could have seen
him with the eyes of the body), Swedenborg, even Mohammed, and the collective
visions of the Montanists in Asia Minor, the Camisards in France, the spectral
resurrections of the martyred Thomas à Becket of Canterbury and Savonarola of
Florence in the excited imagination of their admirers, and the apparitions of
the Immaculate Virgin at Lourdes.222
Nobody will deny that
subjective fancies and impressions are often mistaken for objective realities.
But, with the exception of the case of St. Paul—which we shall consider in its
proper place, and which turns out to be, even according to the admission of the
leaders of skeptical criticism, a powerful argument against the mythical or
visionary theory—these supposed analogies are entirely irrelevant; for, not to
speak of other differences, they were isolated and passing phenomena which left
no mark on history; while the faith in the resurrection of Christ has
revolutionized the whole world. It must therefore be treated on its own merits
as an altogether unique case.
(a) The first
insuperable argument against the visionary nature, and in favor of the
objective reality, of the resurrection is the empty tomb of Christ. If he did
not rise, his body must either have been removed, or remained in the tomb. If
removed by the disciples, they were guilty of a deliberate falsehood in
preaching the resurrection, and then the vision-hypothesis gives way to the
exploded theory of fraud. If removed by the enemies, then these enemies had the
best evidence against the resurrection, and would not have failed to produce it
and thus to expose the baselessness of the vision. The same is true, of course,
if the body had remained in the tomb. The murderers of Christ would certainly
not have missed such an opportunity to destroy the very foundation of the hated
sect.
To escape this
difficulty, Strauss removes the origin of the illusion away off to Galilee,
whether the disciples fled; but this does not help the matter, for they
returned in a few weeks to Jerusalem, where we find them all assembled on the
day of Pentecost.
This argument is fatal
even to the highest form of the vision hypothesis, which admits a spiritual
manifestation of Christ from heaven, but denies the resurrection of his body.
(b) If Christ did not really
rise, then the words which he spoke to Mary Magdalene, to the disciples of
Emmaus, to doubting Thomas, to Peter on the lake of Tiberias, to all the
disciples on Mount Olivet, were likewise pious fictions. But who can believe
that words of such dignity and majesty, so befitting the solemn moment of the
departure to the throne of glory, as the commandment to preach the gospel to
every creature, to baptize the nations in the name of the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Spirit, and the promise to be with his disciples alway to the end of
the world—a promise abundantly verified in the daily experience of the
church—could proceed from dreamy and self-deluded enthusiasts or crazy fanatics
any more than the Sermon on the Mount or the Sacerdotal Prayer! And who, with any spark of historical
sense, can suppose that Jesus never instituted baptism, which has been
performed in his name ever since the day of Pentecost, and which, like the
celebration of the Lord’s Supper, bears testimony to him every day as the
sunlight does to the sun!
(c) If the visions of
the resurrection were the product of an excited imagination, it is
unaccountable that they should suddenly have ceased on the fortieth day (Acts
1:15), and not have occurred to any of the disciples afterwards, with the
single exception of Paul, who expressly represents his vision of Christ as
"the last." Even on the day of Pentecost Christ did not appear to
them, but, according to his promise, "the other Paraclete" descended
upon them; and Stephen saw Christ in heaven, not on earth.223
(d) The chief objection
to the vision-hypothesis is its intrinsic impossibility. It makes the most
exorbitant claim upon our credulity. It requires us to believe that many
persons, singly and collectively, at different times, and in different places,
from Jerusalem to Damascus, had the same vision and dreamed the same dream;
that the women at the open sepulchre early in the morning, Peter and John soon
afterwards, the two disciples journeying to Emmaus on the afternoon of the
resurrection day, the assembled apostles on the evening in the absence of
Thomas, and again on the next Lord’s Day in the presence of the skeptical
Thomas, seven apostles at the lake of Tiberias, on one occasion five hundred
brethren at once most of whom were still alive when Paul reported the fact,
then James, the brother of the Lord, who formerly did not believe in him, again
all the apostles on Mount Olivet at the ascension, and at last the clearheaded,
strong-minded persecutor on the way to Damascus—that all these men and women on
these different occasions vainly imagined they saw and heard the self-same
Jesus in bodily shape and form; and that they were by this baseless vision
raised all at once from the deepest gloom in which the crucifixion of their
Lord had left them, to the boldest faith and strongest hope which impelled them
to proclaim the gospel of the resurrection from Jerusalem to Rome to the end of
their lives! And this illusion of
the early disciples created the greatest revolution not only in their own views
and conduct, but among Jews and Gentiles and in the subsequent history of
mankind! This illusion, we are
expected to believe by these unbelievers, gave birth to the most real and most
mighty of all facts, the Christian Church which has lasted these eighteen hundred
years and is now spread all over the civilized world, embracing more members
than ever and exercising more moral power than all the kingdoms and all other
religions combined!
The vision-hypothesis,
instead of getting rid of the miracle, only shifts it from fact to fiction; it
makes an empty delusion more powerful than the truth, or turns all history
itself at last into a delusion. Before we can reason the resurrection of Christ
out of history we must reason the apostles and Christianity itself out of
existence. We must either admit the miracle, or frankly confess that we stand
here before an inexplicable mystery.
Remarkable
Concessions.—The ablest advocates of
the vision-theory are driven against their wish and will to admit some
unexplained objective reality in the visions of the risen or ascended Christ.
Dr. Baur, of Tübingen (d. 1860), the
master-critic among sceptical church historians, and the corypheus of the
Tübingen school, came at last to the conclusion (as stated in the revised
edition of his Church History of the First Three Centuries, published shortly
before his death, 1860) that "nothing but the miracle of the resurrection
could disperse the doubts which threatened to drive faith itself into the
eternal night of death (<foreign lang="de">Nur
das
Wunder der Auferstehung konnte die Zweifel zerstreuen, welche den Glauben
selbst in die ewige Nacht des Todes verstossen zu müssen schienen</foreign>)."
Geschichte der christlichen Kirche, I. 39. It is true he adds that the nature of the resurrection
itself lies outside of historical investigation ("<foreign
lang="de">Was die Auferstehung an sich ist, liegt ausserhalb
des Kreises der geschichtlichen Untersuchung</foreign>"), but also, that "for the faith of
the disciples the resurrection of Jesus became the most solid and most
irrefutable certainty. In this faith only Christianity gained a firm foothold
of its historical development. (<foreign lang="de">In diesem Glauben hat erst das Christenthum den
festen Grund seiner geschichtlichen Entwicklung gewonnen</foreign>.)
What history requires as the necessary prerequisite of all that follows
is not so much the fact of the resurrection itself [?] as the faith in that
fact. In whatever light we may consider the resurrection of Jesus, whether as
an actual objective miracle or as a subjective psychological one (<foreign
lang="de">als ein objectiv geschehenes Wunder, oder als ein
subjectiv psychologisches</foreign>), even granting the possibility of such a
miracle, no psychological analysis can penetrate the inner spiritual process by
which in the consciousness of the disciples their unbelief at the death of
Jesus was transformed into a belief of his resurrection .... We must rest
satisfied with this, that for them the resurrection of Christ was a fact of
their consciousness, and had for them all the reality of an historical
event." (Ibid., pp. 39, 40.)
Baur’s remarkable conclusion concerning the conversion of St. Paul
(ibid., pp. 44, 45) we shall consider in its proper place.
Dr. Ewald, of Göttingen (d. 1874), the great
orientalist and historian of Israel, antagonistic to Baur, his equal in
profound scholarship and bold, independent, often arbitrary criticism, but
superior in religious sympathy with the genius of the Bible, discusses the resurrection
of Christ in his History of the Apostolic Age (Gesch. des Volkes Israel, vol. VI. 52 sqq.), instead of his Life of
Christ, and resolves it into a purely spiritual, though long continued
manifestation from heaven. Nevertheless he makes the strong statement (p. 69)
that "nothing is historically more certain than that Christ rose from the
dead and appeared to his own, and that this their vision was the beginning of
their new higher faith and of an their Christian labors." "<foreign
lang="de">Nichts steht geschichtlich fester</foreign>," he says, "<foreign
lang="de">als dass Christus aus den Todten auferstanden den
Seinigen wiederschien und dass dieses ihr wiedersehen der anfang ihres neuen
höhern glaubens und alles ihres Christlichen wirkens selbst war. Es ist aber
ebenso gewiss dass sie ihn nicht wie einen gewöhnlichen menschen oder wie einen
aus dem grabe aufsteigenden schatten oder gespenst wie die sage von solchen
meldet, sondern wie den einzigen Sohn Gottes, wie ein durchaus schon
übermächtiges und übermenschliches wesen wiedersahen und sich bei späteren
zurückerinnerungen nichts anderes denken konnten als dass jeder welcher ihn
wiederzusehen gewürdigt sei auch sogleich unmittelbar seine einzige göttliche
würde erkannt und seitdem felsenfest daran geglaubt habe. Als den ächten König
und Sohn Gottes hatten ihn aber die Zwölfe und andre schon im leben zu erkennen
gelernt: der unterschied ist nur der dass sie ihn jetzt auch nach seiner rein
göttlichen seite und damit auch als den über den tod siegreichen erkannt zu
haben sich erinnerten. Zwischen jenem gemeinen schauen des irdischen Christus
wie er ihnen sowohl bekannt war und diesem höhern tieferregten entzückten
schauen des himmlischen ist also dock ein innerer zusammenhang, so dass sie ihn
auch jetzt in diesen ersten tagen und wochen nach seinem tode nie als den
himmlischen Messias geschauet hätten wenn sie ihn nicht schon vorher als den
irdischen so wohl gekannt hätten</foreign>."
Dr. Keim, of Zürich (d. at Giessen, 1879),
an independent pupil of Baur, and author of the most elaborate and valuable
Life of Christ which the liberal critical school has produced, after giving
every possible advantage to the mythical view of the resurrection, confesses
that it is, after all, a mere hypothesis and fails to explain the main point.
He says (Geschichte Jesu von Nazara, III. 600): "<foreign
lang="de">Nach allen diesen Ueberlegungen wird man zugestehen
müssen, dass auch die neuerdings beliebt gewordene Theorie nur eine Hypothese
ist, welche Einiges erklärt, die Hauptsache nicht erklärt, ja im Ganzen und
Grossen das geschichtlich Bezeugte schiefen und hinfälligen Gesichtspunkten
unterstellt. Misslingt aber gleichmässig der Versuch, die überlieferte Aufs
Auferstehungsgeschichte festzuhalten, wie das Unternehmen, mit Hilfe der
paulinischen Visionen eine natürliche Erklärung des Geschehenen aufzubauen, so
bleibt für die Geschichte zunächst kein Weg übrig als der des Eingeständnisses,
dass die Sagenhaftigkeit der redseligen Geschichte und die dunkle Kürze der
glaubwürdigen Geschichte es nicht gestattet, über die räthselhaften Ausgange
des Lebens Jesu, so wichtig sie an
und für sich und in der Einwirkung auf die Weltgeschichte gewesen sind, ein
sicheres unumstössliches Resultat zu geben. Für die Geschichte, sofern sie nur
mit benannten evidenten Zahlen und mit Reihen greifbarer anerkannter Ursachen
und Wirkungen rechnet, existirt als das Thatsächliche und Zweifellose lediglich
der feste Glaube der Apostel, dass Jesus auferstanden, und die ungeheure
Wirkung dieses Glaubens, die Christianisirung der Menschheit</foreign>. On
p. 601 he expresses the conviction that "it was the crucified and living
Christ who, not as the risen one, but rather as the divinely glorified one (<foreign
lang="de">als der wenn nicht Auferstandene, so doch vielmehr
himmlisch Verherrlichte</foreign>), gave visions to his disciples and
revealed himself to his society." In his last word on the great problem,
Keim, in view of the exhaustion and failure of the natural explanations, comes
to the conclusion, that we must either, with Dr. Baur, humbly confess our
ignorance, or return to the faith of the apostles who "have seen the
Lord" (<scripRef passage = "John 20:25">John 20:25</scripRef>). See the third and last edition of his abridged
Geschichte Jesu, Zürich, 1875, p. 362.
Dr. Schenkel, of Heidelberg, who in his Charakterbild Jesu (third ed. 1864, pp. 231 sqq.) had adopted the
vision-theory in its higher form as a purely spiritual, though real
manifestation from heaven, confesses in his latest work, Das Christusbild der
Apostel (1879, p. 18), his
inability to solve the problem of the resurrection of Christ, and says: "<foreign
lang="de">Niemals
wird es der Forschung gelingen, das Räthsel des Auferstehungsglaubens zu
ergründen. Nichts aber steht fester in der Geschichte als die Thatsache dieses
Glaubens; auf ihm beruht die Stiftung der christlichen
Gemeinschaft ... Der Visionshypothese, welche die Christuserscheinungen der
Jünger aus Sinnestäuschungen erklären will, die in einer Steigerung des
’Gemüths und Nervenlebens’ ihre physische und darum auch psychische Ursache
hatten,... steht vor allem die Grundfarbe der Stimmung in
den Jüngern, namentlich in Petrus, im Wege: die tiefe Trauer, das gesunkene
Selbstvertrauen, die nagende Gewissenspein, der verlorne Lebensmuth. Wie
soll aus einer solchen Stimmung das verklärte Bild des Auferstandenen
hervorgehen, mit dieser unverwüstlichen Sicherheit und unzerstörbaren
Freudigkeit, durch welche der Auferstehungsglaube die Christengemeinde in allen
Stürmen und Verfolgungen aufrecht zu erhalten vermochte?</foreign>"
</div3><div2
type=”Chapter” n=”III” title=”The Apostolic Age”>
CHAPTER III.
THE APOSTOLIC AGE
</div2><div3
type=”Section” n=”20” title=”Sources and Literature of the Apostolic Age”>
§ 20. Sources and Literature of the Apostolic Age.
I. Sources.
1.
The Canonical Books of the New Testament.—The twenty-seven books of the New Testament are better supported than
any ancient classic, both by a chain of external testimonies which reaches up
almost to the close of the apostolic age, and by the internal evidence of a
spiritual depth and unction which raises them far above the best productions of
the second century. The church has undoubtedly been guided by the Holy Spirit
in the selection and final determination of the Christian canon. But this does,
of course, not supersede the necessity of criticism, nor is the evidence
equally strong in the case of the seven Eusebian Antilegomena. The Tübingen and
Leyden schools recognized at first only five books of the New Testament as
authentic, namely, four Epistles of Paul-Romans, First and Second Corinthians,
and Galatians—and the Revelation of John. But the progress of research leads
more and more to positive results, and nearly all the Epistles of Paul now find
advocates among liberal critics. (Hilgenfeld and Lipsius admit seven, adding
First Thessalonians, Philippians, and Philemon; Renan concedes also Second
Thessalonians, and Colossians to be Pauline, thus swelling the number of
genuine Epistles to nine.) The
chief facts and doctrines of apostolic Christianity are sufficiently guaranteed
even by those five documents, which are admitted by the extreme left of modern
criticism.
The Acts of
the Apostles give us the external, the Epistles the internal history of
primitive Christianity. They are independent contemporaneous compositions and
never refer to each other; probably Luke never read the Epistles of Paul, and
Paul never read the Acts of Luke, although he no doubt supplied much valuable
information to Luke. But indirectly they illustrate and confirm each other by a
number of coincidences which have great evidential value, all the more as these
coincidences are undesigned and incidental. Had they been composed by post-apostolic
writers, the agreement would have been more complete, minor disagreements would
have been avoided, and the lacunae in the Acts supplied, especially in regard
to the closing labors and death of Peter and Paul.
The Acts bear on the face all the marks of
an original, fresh, and trustworthy narrative of contemporaneous events derived
from the best sources of information, and in great part from personal
observation and experience. The authorship of Luke, the companion of Paul, is
conceded by a majority of the best modern scholars, even by Ewald. And this
fact alone establishes the credibility. Renan (in his St. Paul, ch. 1)
admirably calls the Acts "a book of joy, of serene ardor. Since the
Homeric poems no book has been seen full of such fresh sensations. A breeze of
morning, an odor of the sea, if I dare express it so, inspiring something
joyful and strong, penetrates the whole book, and makes it an excellent
compagnon de voyage, the exquisite breviary for him who is searching for
ancient remains on the seas of the south. This is the second idyl of
Christianity. The Lake of Tiberias and its fishing barks had furnished the
first. Now, a more powerful breeze, aspirations toward more distant lands, draw
us out into the open sea."
2. The Post-Apostolic and Patristic writings
are full of reminiscences of, and references to, the apostolic books, and as
dependent on them as the river is upon its fountain.
3. The Apocryphal and Heretical literature. The
numerous Apocryphal Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypses were prompted by the
same motives of curiosity and dogmatic interest as the Apocryphal Gospels,
and have a similar apologetic, though very little historical, value. The
heretical character is, however, more strongly marked. They have not yet been
sufficiently investigated. Lipsius (in Smith and Wace’s, "Dict. of Christ.
Biog." vol. I. p. 27) divides the Apocryphal Acts into four classes: (1)
Ebionitic; (2) Gnostic; (3) originally Catholic; (4) Catholic adaptations or
recensions of heretical documents. The last class is the most numerous, rarely
older than the fifth century, but mostly resting on documents from the second
and third centuries.
(a) Apocryphal Acts: Acta Petri et Pauli (of Ebionite origin, but
recast), Acta Pauli et
Theclae (mentioned by Tertullian at the end of the second century, of Gnostic
origin), Acta Thomae (Gnostic), Acta Matthaei, Acta Thaddei, Martyrium
Bartholomaei, Acta Barnabae, Acta Andreae, Acta Andreae et Mathiae, Acta
Philippi, Acta Johannis, Acta Simonis et Judae, Acta Thaddaei, The Doctrine of
Addai, the Apostle (ed. in
Syriac and English by Dr. G. Phillips, London, 1876).
(b) Apocryphal Epistles:
the correspondence between Paul and Seneca (six by Paul and eight by Seneca,
mentioned by Jerome and Augustine), the third Epistle of Paul to the
Corinthians, Epistolae Mariae, Epistolae Petri ad Jacobum.
(c) Apocryphal
Apocalypses: Apocalypsis
Johannis, Apocalypsis Petri, Apocalypsis Pauli (or <foreign
lang="el">ajnabatiko;n Pauvlou</foreign>, based on the report of his rapture into
Paradise, 2 Cor. 12:2–4), Apocalypsis
Thomae, Apoc. Stephani, Apoc. Mariae, Apoc. Mosis, Apoc. Esdrae.
Editions and
Collections:
Fabricius: Codex
Apocryphus Novi Testamenti. Hamburg,
1703, 2d ed. 1719, 1743, 3 parts in 2 vols. (vol. II.)
Grabe: Spicilegium
Patrum et Haereticorum. Oxford,
1698, ed. II. 1714.
Birch: Auctarium
Cod. Apoc. N. Ti Fabrician. Copenh.
1804 (Fasc. I.). Contains the pseudo-Apocalypse of John.
Thilo: Acta Apost. Petri et Pauli. Halis, 1838.
Acta Thomae. Lips. 1823.
Tischendorf: Acta
Apostolorum Apocrypha. Lips.
1851.
Tischendorf: Apocalypses
Apocryphae Mosis, Esdrae, Pauli, Joannis, item Mariae Dormitio. Lips. 1866.
R. A. Lipsius: Die apokryph Apostel geschichten und Apostel legenden. Leipz. 1883 sq. 2 vols.
4. Jewish sources: Philo and Josephus, see
§ 14, p. 92. Josephus is all-important for the history of the Jewish war and
the destruction of Jerusalem, a.d.
70, which marks the complete rapture of the Christian Church with the Jewish
synagogue and temple. The apocryphal Jewish, and the Talmudic literature
supplies information and illustrations of the training of the Apostles and the
form of their teaching and the discipline and worship of the primitive church.
Lightfoot, Schöttgen, Castelli, Delitzsch, Wünsche, Siegfried, Schürer, and a
few others have made those sources available for the exegete and historian.
Comp. here also the Jewish works of Jost,
Graetz, and Geiger, mentioned § 9, p. 61, and Hamburger’s Real-Ecyclopädie des
Judenthums (für Bibel und Talmud),
in course of publication.
5. Heathen writers: Tacitus, Pliny, Suetonius,
Lucian, Celsus, Porphyry, Julian. They furnish only fragmentary, mostly
incidental, distorted and hostile information, but of considerable apologetic
value.
Comp. Nath. Lardner (d. 1768): Collection
of Ancient Jewish and Heathen Testimonies to the Truth of the Christian
Religion. Originally published in 4 vols. Lond. 1764–’67, and then in the
several editions of his Works (vol. VI. 365–649, ed. Kippis).
II. Histories of the Apostolic Age.
William
Cave (Anglican, d. 1713): Lives of
the Apostles, and the two Evangelists, St. Mark and St. Luke. Lond. 1675, new
ed. revised by H. Cary, Oxford, 1840 (reprinted in New York, 1857). Comp. also Cave’s Primitive Christianity, 4th ed.
Lond. 1862.
Joh.
Fr. Buddeus (Luth., d. at Jena,
1729): Ecclesia Apostolica. Jen. 1729.
George
Benson (d. 1763): History of the
First Planting of the Christian Religion. Lond. 1756, 3 vols. 4to (in German by
Bamberger, Halle, 1768).
J. J. Hess (d. at Zurich, 1828): Geschichte der
Apostel Jesu. Zür. 1788; 4th ed.
1820.
Gottl.
Jac. Planck (d. in Göttingen, 1833):
Geschichte
des Christenthums in der Periode seiner Einführung in die Welt durch Jesum und
die Apostel. Göttingen, 1818, 2
vols.
*Aug. Neander (d. in Berlin, 1850): Geschichte der Pflanzung und
Leitung der Christlichen Kirche durch die Apostel. Hamb. 1832. 2 vols.; 4th ed.
revised 1847. The same in English (History of the Planting and Training of the
Christ. Church), by J. E. Ryland, Edinb. 1842, and in Bohn’s Standard Library,
Lond. 1851; reprinted in Philad. 1844; revised by E. G. Robinson, N. York, 1865. This book marks an epoch and is still
valuable.
F. C. Albert Schwegler (d. at Tübingen, 1857):
Das
nachapostolische Zeitalter in den Hauptmomenten seiner Entwicklung. Tübingen, 1845, 1846, 2 vols. An ultra-critical
attempt to transpose the apostolic literature (with the exception of five
books) into the post-apostolic age.
*Ferd. Christ. Baur (d. 1860): Das Christenthum und die
christliche Kirche der drei ersten Jahrhunderte. Tübingen, 1853, 2d revised ed.
1860 (536 pp.). The third edition is a mere reprint or title edition of the
second and forms the first volume of his General Church History, edited by his
son, in 5 vols. 1863. It is the last and ablest exposition of the Tübingen
reconstruction of the apostolic history from the pen of the master of that
school. See vol. I. pp. 1–174. English translation by Allen Menzies, in 2 vols.
Lond. 1878 and 1879. Comp. also Baur’s Paul, second ed. by Ed. Zeller, 1866 and
1867, and translated by A. Menzies, 2 vols. 1873, 1875. Baur’s critical
researches have compelled a thorough revision of the traditional views on the
apostolic age, and have so far been very useful, notwithstanding their
fundamental errors.
A. P. Stanley (Dean of Westminster): Sermons
and Essays on the Apostolic Age. Oxford, 1847. 3d ed. 1874.
*Heinrich W. J. Thiersch (Irvingite, died 1885 in Basle): Die Kirche im
apostolischen Zeitalter. Francf. a. M. 1852; 3d ed. Augsburg, 1879,
"improved," but very slightly. (The same in English from the first
ed. by Th. Carlyle. Lond. 1852.)
*J. P. Lange (d. 1884):Das apostolische Zeitalter. Braunschw. 1854. 2 vols.
Philip
Schaff: History of the Apostolic
Church, first in German, Mercersburg, Penns. 1851; 2d ed. enlarged, Leipzig,
1854; English translation by Dr. E. D. Yeomans, N. York, 1853, in 1 vol.;
Edinb. 1854, in 2 vols.; several editions without change. (Dutch translation
from the second Germ. ed. by T. W. Th. Lublink Weddik, Tiel, 1857.)
*G. V. Lechler (Prof. in Leipzig): Das apostolische und
das nachapostolische Zeitalter. 2d ed. 1857; 3d ed. thoroughly revised,
Leipzig, 1885. Engl. trsl. by Miss Davidson, Edinb. 1887. Conservative.
*Albrecht Ritschl (d. in Göttingen, 1889): Die Entstehung der
altkatholischen Kirche. 2d ed. Bonn,
1857. The first edition was in harmony with the Tübingen School; but the second
is materially improved, and laid the foundation for the Ritschl School.
*Heinrich Ewald (d. at Göttingen, 1874): Geschichte des Volkes Israel, vols. VI. and VII.
2d ed. Göttingen, 1858 and 1859. Vol. VI. of this great work contains the
History of the Apostolic Age to the destruction of Jerusalem; vol. VII. the
History of the post-Apostolic Age to the reign of Hadrian. English translation
of the History of Israel by R. Martineau and J. E. Carpenter. Lond. 1869 sqq. A
trans. of vols. VI. and VII. is not intended. Ewald (the "Urvogel von
Göttingen") pursued an independent path in opposition both to the
traditional orthodoxy and to the Tübingen school, which he denounced as worse
than heathenish. See Preface to vol. VII.
*E. de Pressensé: Histoire des trois premiers
siècles de l’église chrétienne. Par.
1858 sqq. 4 vols. German translation by E. Fabarius (Leipz. 1862–’65); English
translation by Annie Harwood-Holmden (Lond. and N. York, 1870, new ed. Lond.
1879). The first volume contains the first century under the title Le siècle
apostolique; rev. ed. 1887.
*Joh. Jos. Ign. von Döllinger (Rom. Cath., since 1870 Old
Cath.): Christenthum
und Kirche in der Zeit der Gründung.
Regensburg, 1860. 2d ed. 1868. The same translated into English by H. N.
Oxenham. London, 1867.
C. S. Vaughan: The Church of the First Days.
Lond. 1864–’65. 3 vols. Lectures on the Acts of the Apostles.
N. Sepp (Rom. Cath.): Geschichte der Apostel Jesu his zur Zerstörung
Jerusalems. Schaffhausen, 1866.
C. Holsten: Zum Evangelium des Paulus und des Petrus. Rostock, 1868 (447 pp.).
Paul
Wilh. Schmidt und Franz v. Holtzendorf: Protestanten-Bibel
Neuen Testaments. Zweite, revid. Auflage.
Leipzig, 1874. A popular exegetical summary of the Tübingen views with
contributions from Bruch, Hilgenfeld,
Holsten, Lipsius, Pfleiderer and others.
A. B. Bruce (Professor in Glasgow): The
Training of the Twelve. Edinburgh, 1871, second ed. 1877.
*Ernest Renan (de l’Académie Francaise): Histoire des
origines du Christianisme. Paris,
1863 sqq. The first volume is Vie de Jésus, 1863, noticed in § 14 (pp. 97 and
98); then followed II. Les Apôtres, 1866; III. St. Paul, 1869; IV.
L’Antechrist, 1873; V. Les Évangiles, 1877; VI. L’Église Chrétienne, 1879; VII.
and last volume, Marc-Auréle, 1882. The II., III., IV., and V. volumes belong
to the Apostolic age; the last two to the next. The work of a sceptical
outsider, of brilliant genius, eloquence, and secular learning. It increases in
value as it advances. The Life of Jesus is the most interesting and popular,
but also by far the most objectionable volume, because it deals almost
profanely with the most sacred theme.
Emil
Ferriére: Les Apôtres. Paris, 1875.
Supernatural
Religion. An Inquiry into the
Reality of Divine Revelation. Lond. 1873, (seventh), "complete ed.,
carefully revised," 1879, 3 vols. This anonymous work is an English
reproduction and repository of the critical speculations of the Tübingen School
of Baur, Strauss, Zeller, Schwegler, Hilgenfeld, Volkmar, etc. It may be called
an enlargement of Schwegler’s Nachapostolisches Zeitalter. The first volume is
mostly taken up with a philosophical discussion of the question of miracles;
the remainder of vol. I. (pp. 212–485) and vol. II. contain an historical
inquiry into the apostolic origin of the canonical Gospels, with a negative
result. The third volume discusses the Acts, the Epistles and the Apocalypse,
and the evidence for the Resurrection and Ascension, which are resolved into
hallucinations or myths. Starting with the affirmation of the antecedent
incredibility of miracles, the author arrives at the conclusion of their
impossibility; and this philosophical conclusion determines the historical investigation
throughout. Dr. Schürer, in the "Theol. Literaturzeitung" for 1879,
No. 26 (p. 622), denies to this work scientific value for Germany, but gives it
credit for extraordinary familiarity with recent German literature and great
industry in collecting historical details. Drs. Lightfoot, Sanday, Ezra Abbot,
and others have exposed the defects of its scholarship, and the false premises
from which the writer reasons. The rapid sale of the work indicates the
extensive spread of skepticism and the necessity of fighting over again, on
Anglo-American ground, the theological battles of Germany and Holland; it is to
be hoped with more triumphant success.
*J. B. Lightfoot (Bishop of Durham since 1879):
A series of elaborate articles against "Supernatural Religion," in
the "Contemporary Review" for 1875 to 1877. They should be
republished in book form. Comp. also the reply of the anonymous author in the
lengthy preface to the sixth edition. Lightfoot’s Commentaries on Pauline
Epistles contain valuable Excursuses on several historical questions of the
apostolic age, especially St. Paul and the Three, in the Com. on the Galatians,
pp. 283–355.
W. Sanday: The Gospels in the Second Century. London, 1876.
This is directed against the critical part of "Supernatural
Religion." The eighth chapter on Marcion’s Gnostic mutilation and
reconstruction of St. Luke’s Gospel (pp. 204 sqq.) had previously appeared in
the "Fortnightly Review" for June, 1875, and finishes on English soil,
a controversy which had previously been fought out on German soil, in the
circle of the Tübingen School. The preposterous hypothesis of the priority of
Marcion’s Gospel was advocated by Ritschl, Baur and Schwegler, but refuted by
Volkmar and Hilgenfeld, of the same school; whereupon Baur and Ritschl
honorably abandoned their error. The anonymous author of "Supernatural
Religion," in his seventh edition, has followed their example. The Germans
conducted the controversy chiefly under its historic and dogmatic aspects;
Sanday has added the philological and textual argument with the aid of
Holtzmann’s analysis of the style and vocabulary of Luke.
A.
Hausrath (Prof. in Heidelberg): Neutestamentliche
Zeitgeschichte. Heidelberg, 1873 sqq. Parts II. and III. (second ed. 1875)
embrace the apostolic times, Part IV. (1877) the post-apostolic times. English
translation by Poynting and Quenzer.
Lond. 1878 sqq. H. belongs to the School of Tübingen.
Dan.
Schenkel (Prof. in Heidelberg): Das Christusbild der
Apostel und der nachapostolischen Zeit. Leipz. 1879. Comp. the review by H.
Holtzmann in Hilgenfeld’s
"Zeitschrift für wissensch. Theol." 1879, p. 392.
H. Oort and I. Hooykaas: The Bible for Learners, translated
from the Dutch by Philip H. Wicksteed, vol. III. (the New Test., by Hooykaas),
Book III. pp. 463–693 of the Boston ed. 1879. (In the Engl. ed. it is vol.
VI.) This is a popular digest of
the rationalistic Tübingen and Leyden criticism under the inspiration of Dr. A.
Kuenen, Professor of Theology at Leyden. It agrees substantially with the
Protestanten-Bibel noticed above.
*George P. Fisher (Prof. in Yale College, New Haven): The
Beginnings of Christianity. N. York, 1877. Comp. also the author’s former work:
Essays on the Supernatural Origin of Christianity, with special reference to the
Theories of Renan, Strauss, and the Tübingen School. New York, 1865. New ed.
enlarged, 1877.
*C. Weizsäcker (successor of Baur in
Tübingen): Das Apostolische Zeitalter.
Freiburg, 1886. Critical and very able.
*O. Pfleiderer (Prof. in Berlin): Das Urchristenthum,
seine Schriften und Lehren. Berlin,
1887. (Tübingen School.)
III. The Chronology of the Apostolic Age.
Rudolph
Anger: De temporum in Actis Apostolorum ratione. Lips.
1833 (208 pp.).
Henry
Browne: Ordo Saeculorum. A Treatise on the Chronology of the
Holy Scriptures. Lond. 1844. Pp. 95–163.
Karl
Wieseler: Chronologie des
apostolischen Zeitalters. Göttingen,
1848 (606 pp.).
The older and special
works are noticed in Wieseler, pp. 6–9. See also the elaborate Synopsis of the
dates of the Apostolic Age in Schäffer’s translation of Lechler on Acts (in the
Am. ed. of Lange’s Commentary); Henry B. Smith’s Chronological Tables of Church
History (1860); and Weingarten: Zeittafeln zur
K-Gesch. 3d ed. 1888.
§21. General Character of the Apostolic Age.
"Der
Schlachtruf, der St. Pauli Brust entsprungen,
Rief
nicht sein Echo auf zu tausend Streiten?
Und
welch’ ein Friedensecho hat geklungen
Durch
tausend Herzen von Johannis Saiten!
Wie
viele rasche Feuer sind entglommen
Als
Wiederschein von Petri Funkensprühen!
Und
sieht man Andre still mit Opfern kommen,
Ist’s,
weil sie in Jakobi Schul’gediehen:—
Ein Satz ist’s, der in Variationen
Vom
ersten Anfang forttönt durch Aeonen."
(Tholuck.)
Extent and Environment of
the Apostolic Age.
The apostolic period
extends from the Day of Pentecost to the death of St. John, and covers about
seventy years, from a.d. 30 to
100. The field of action is Palestine, and gradually extends over Syria, Asia
Minor, Greece, and Italy. The most prominent centres are Jerusalem, Antioch,
and Rome, which represent respectively the mother churches of Jewish, Gentile,
and United Catholic Christianity. Next to them are Ephesus and Corinth. Ephesus
acquired a special importance by the residence and labors of John, which made
themselves felt during the second century through Polycarp and Irenaeus.
Samaria, Damascus, Joppa, Caesarea, Tyre, Cyprus, the provinces of Asia Minor,
Troas, Philippi, Thessalonica, Beraea, Athens, Crete, Patmos, Malta, Puteoli,
come also into view as points where the Christian faith was planted. Through
the eunuch converted by Philip, it reached Candace, the queen of the
Ethiopians.224 As
early as a.d. 58 Paul could say:
"From Jerusalem and round about even unto Illyricum, I have fully preached
the gospel of Christ."225 He afterwards carried it to Rome, where
it had already been known before, and possibly as far as Spain, the western
boundary of the empire.226
The nationalities
reached by the gospel in the first century were the Jews, the Greeks, and the
Romans, and the languages used were the Hebrew or Aramaic, and especially the
Greek, which was at that time the organ of civilization and of international
intercourse within the Roman empire.
The contemporary secular
history includes the reigns of the Roman Emperors from Tiberius to Nero and
Domitian, who either ignored or persecuted Christianity. We are brought
directly into contact with King Herod Agrippa I. (grandson of Herod the Great),
the murderer of the apostle, James the Elder; with his son King Agrippa II.
(the last of the Herodian house), who with his sister Bernice (a most corrupt
woman) listened to Paul’s defense; with two Roman governors, Felix and Festus;
with Pharisees and Sadducees; with Stoics and Epicureans; with the temple and
theatre at Ephesus, with the court of the Areopagus at Athens, and with
Caesar’s palace in Rome.
Sources of Information.
The author of Acts records
the heroic march of Christianity from the capital of Judaism to the capital of
heathenism with the same artless simplicity and serene faith as the Evangelists
tell the story of Jesus; well knowing that it needs no embellishment, no
apology, no subjective reflections, and that it will surely triumph by its
inherent spiritual power.
The Acts and the Pauline
Epistles accompany us with reliable information down to the year 63. Peter and
Paul are lost out of sight in the lurid fires of the Neronian persecution which
seemed to consume Christianity itself. We know nothing certain of that satanic
spectacle from authentic sources beyond the information of heathen historians.227 A
few years afterwards followed the destruction of Jerusalem, which must have
made an overpowering impression and broken the last ties which bound Jewish
Christianity to the old theocracy. The event is indeed brought before us in the
prophecy of Christ as recorded in the Gospels, but for the terrible fulfilment
we are dependent on the account of an unbelieving Jew, which, as the testimony
of an enemy, is all the more impressive.
The remaining thirty
years of the first century are involved in mysterious darkness, illuminated
only by the writings of John. This is a period of church history about which we
know least and would like to know most. This period is the favorite field for
ecclesiastical fables and critical conjectures. How thankfully would the
historian hail the discovery of any new authentic documents between the
martyrdom of Peter and Paul and the death of John, and again between the death
of John and the age of Justin Martyr and Irenaeus.
Causes of Success.
As to the numerical
strength of Christianity at the close of the first century, we have no
information whatever. Statistical reports were unknown in those days. The
estimate of half a million among the one hundred millions or more inhabitants
of the Roman empire is probably exaggerated. The pentecostal conversion of
three thousand in one day at Jerusalem,228
and the "immense multitude" of martyrs under Nero,229 favor a high estimate. The churches in Antioch
also, Ephesus, and Corinth were strong enough to bear the strain of controversy
and division into parties.230 But the majority of congregations were
no doubt small, often a mere handful of poor people. In the country districts
paganism (as the name indicates) lingered longest, even beyond the age of
Constantine. The Christian converts belonged mostly to the middle and lower
classes of society, such as fishermen, peasants, mechanics, traders, freedmen,
slaves. St. Paul says: "Not many wise after the flesh, not many mighty,
not many noble were called, but God chose the foolish things of the world, that
he might put to shame them that are wise; and God chose the weak things of the
world that he might put to shame the things that are strong; and the base
things of the world, and the things that are despised, did God choose, yea, and
the things that are not, that he might bring to naught the things that are:
that no flesh should glory before God."231 And yet these poor, illiterate churches
were the recipients of the noblest gifts, and alive to the deepest problems and
highest thoughts which can challenge the attention of an immortal mind.
Christianity built from the foundation upward. From the lower ranks come the
rising men of the future, who constantly reinforce the higher ranks and prevent
their decay.
At the time of the
conversion of Constantine, in the beginning of the fourth century, the number
of Christians may have reached ten or twelve millions, that is about one-tenth
of the total population of the Roman empire. Some estimate it higher.
The rapid success of
Christianity under the most unfavorable circumstances is surprising and its own
best vindication. It was achieved in the face of an indifferent or hostile
world, and by purely spiritual and moral means, without shedding a drop of
blood except that of its own innocent martyrs. Gibbon, in the famous fifteenth
chapter of his "History," attributes the rapid spread to five causes,
namely: (1) the intolerant but enlarged religious zeal of the Christians
inherited from the Jews; (2) the doctrine of the immortality of the soul,
concerning which the ancient philosophers had but vague and dreamy ideas; (3)
the miraculous powers attributed to the primitive church; (4) the purer but
austere morality of the first Christians; (5) the unity and discipline of the
church, which gradually formed a growing commonwealth in the heart of the
empire. But every one of these causes, properly understood, points to the
superior excellency and to the divine origin of the Christian religion, and
this is the chief cause, which the Deistic historian omits.
Significance of the Apostolic Age.
The life of Christ is the
divine-human fountainhead of the Christian religion; the apostolic age is the
fountainhead of the Christian church, as an organized society separate and
distinct from the Jewish synagogue. It is the age of the Holy Spirit, the age
of inspiration and legislation for all subsequent ages.
Here springs, in its
original freshness and purity, the living water of the new creation.
Christianity comes down front heaven as a supernatural fact, yet long predicted
and prepared for, and adapted to the deepest wants of human nature. Signs and wonders
and extraordinary demonstrations of the Spirit, for the conversion of
unbelieving Jews and heathens, attend its entrance into the world of sin. It
takes up its permanent abode with our fallen race, to transform it gradually,
without war or bloodshed, by a quiet, leaven-like process, into a kingdom of
truth and righteousness. Modest and humble, lowly and unseemly in outward
appearance, but steadily conscious of its divine origin and its eternal
destiny; without silver or gold, but rich in supernatural gifts and powers,
strong in faith, fervent in love, and joyful in hope; bearing in earthen
vessels the imperishable treasures of heaven, it presents itself upon the stage
of history as the only true, the perfect religion, for all the nations of the
earth. At first an insignificant and even contemptible sect in the eyes of the
carnal mind, hated and persecuted by Jews and heathens, it confounds the wisdom
of Greece and the power of Rome, soon plants the standard of the cross in the
great cities of Asia, Africa, and Europe, and proves itself the hope of the
world.
In virtue of this
original purity, vigor, and beauty, and the permanent success of primitive
Christianity, the canonical authority of the single but inexhaustible volume of
its literature, and the character of the apostles, those inspired organs of the
Holy Spirit, those untaught teachers of mankind, the apostolic age has an
incomparable interest and importance in the history of the church. It is the
immovable groundwork of the whole. It has the same regulative force for all the
subsequent developments of the church as the inspired writings of the apostles
have for the works of all later Christian authors.
Furthermore, the apostolic Christianity is preformative, and contains the living germs of all the following periods, personages, and tendencies. It holds up the highest standard of doctrine and discipline; it is the inspiring genius of all true progress; it suggests to every age its peculiar problem with the power to solve it. Christianity can never outgrow Christ, but it grows in Christ; theology cannot go beyond the word of God, but it must ever progress in the understanding and application of the word of God. The three leading apostles represent not only the three stages of the apostolic church, but also as many ages and types of Christianity, and yet they are all present in every age and every type.232
<index type = "globalSubject"
subject1 = "Apostles" />
The Representative Apostles.
Peter,
Paul, and John stand out most
prominently as the chosen Three who accomplished the great work of the
apostolic age, and exerted, by their writings and example, a controlling
influence on all subsequent ages. To them correspond three centres of
influence, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Rome.
Our Lord himself had
chosen Three out of the Twelve for his most intimate companions, who alone
witnessed the Transfiguration and the agony in Gethsemane. They fulfilled all
the expectations, Peter and John by their long and successful labors, James the
Elder by drinking early the bitter cup of his Master, as the proto-martyr of
the Twelve.233
Since his death, a.d. 44,
James, "the brother of the Lord" seems to have succeeded him, as one
of the three "pillars" of the church of the circumcision, although he
did not belong to the apostles in the strict sense of the term, and his
influence, as the head of the church at Jerusalem, was more local than
oecumenical.234
Paul was called last and
out of the regular order, by the personal appearance of the exalted Lord from
heaven, and in authority and importance he was equal to any of the three
pillars, but filled a place of his own, as the independent apostle of the
Gentiles. He had around him a small band of co-laborers and pupils, such as
Barnabas, Silas, Titus, Timothy, Luke.
Nine of the original
Twelve, including Matthias, who was chosen in the place of Judas, labored no
doubt faithfully and effectively, in preaching the gospel throughout the Roman
empire and to the borders of the barbarians, but in subordinate positions, and
their labors are known to us only from vague and uncertain traditions.235
The labors of James and
Peter we can follow in the Acts to the Council of Jerusalem, a.d. 50, and a little beyond; those of
Paul to his first imprisonment in Rome, a.d.
61–63; John lived to the close of the first century. As to their last labors we
have no authentic information in the New Testament, but the unanimous testimony
of antiquity that Peter and Paul suffered martyrdom in Rome during or after the
Neronian persecution, and that John died a natural death at Ephesus. The Acts
breaks off abruptly with Paul still living and working, a prisoner in Rome,
"preaching the kingdom of God and teaching the things concerning the Lord
Jesus Christ, with all boldness, none forbidding him." A significant
conclusion.
It would be difficult to
find three men equally great and good, equally endowed with genius sanctified
by grace, bound together by deep and strong love to the common Master, and
laboring for the same cause, yet so different in temper and constitution, as
Peter, Paul, and John. Peter stands out in history as the main pillar of the
primitive church, as the Rock-apostle, as the chief of the twelve foundation-stones
of the new Jerusalem; John as the bosom-friend of the Saviour, as the son of
thunder, as the soaring eagle, as the apostle of love; Paul as the champion of
Christian freedom and progress, as the greatest missionary, with "the care
of all the churches" upon his heart, as the expounder of the Christian
system of doctrine, as the father of Christian theology. Peter was a man of
action, always in haste and ready to take the lead; the first to confess
Christ, and the first to preach Christ on the day of Pentecost; Paul a man
equally potent in word and deed; John a man of mystic contemplation. Peter was
unlearned and altogether practical; Paul a scholar and thinker as well as a
worker; John a theosophist and seer. Peter was sanguine, ardent, impulsive,
hopeful, kind-hearted, given to sudden changes, "consistently
inconsistent" (to use an Aristotelian phrase); Paul was choleric,
energetic, bold, noble, independent, uncompromising; John some what
melancholic, introverted, reserved, burning within of love to Christ and hatred
of Antichrist. Peter’s Epistles are full of sweet grace and comfort, the result
of deep humiliation and rich experience; those of Paul abound in severe thought
and logical argument, but rising at times to the heights of celestial eloquence,
as in the seraphic description of love and the triumphant paean of the eighth
chapter of the Romans; John’s writings are simple, serene, profound, intuitive,
sublime, inexhaustible.
We would like to know
more about the personal relations of these pillar-apostles, but must be
satisfied with a few hints. They labored in different fields and seldom met
face to face in their busy life. Time was too precious, their work too serious,
for sentimental enjoyments of friendship. Paul went to Jerusalem a.d. 40, three years after his
conversion, for the express purpose of making the personal acquaintance of
Peter, and spent two weeks with him; he saw none of the other apostles, but
only James, the Lord’s brother.236 He met the pillar-apostles at the
Conference in Jerusalem, a.d. 50,
and concluded with them the peaceful concordat concerning the division of
labor, and the question of circumcision; the older apostles gave him and
Barnabas "the right hands of fellowship" in token of brotherhood and
fidelity.237 Not
long afterwards Paul met Peter a third time, at Antioch, but came into open
collision with him on the great question of Christian freedom and the union of
Jewish and Gentile converts.238 The collision was merely temporary, but
significantly reveals the profound commotion and fermentation of the apostolic
age, and foreshadowed future antagonisms and reconciliations in the church.
Several years later (a.d. 57) Paul
refers the last time to Cephas, and the brethren of the Lord, for the right to
marry and to take a wife with him on his missionary journeys.239
Peter, in his first Epistle to Pauline churches, confirms them in their
Pauline faith, and in his second Epistle, his last will and testament, he
affectionately commends the letters of his "beloved brother Paul,"
adding, however, the characteristic remark, which all commentators must admit
to be true, that (even beside the account of the scene in Antioch) there are in
them "some things hard to be understood."240
According to tradition (which varies considerably as to details), the
great leaders of Jewish and Gentile Christianity met at Rome, were tried and
condemned together, Paul, the Roman citizen, to the death by the sword on the
Ostian road at Tre Fontane; Peter, the Galilean apostle, to the more degrading
death of the cross on the hill of Janiculum. John mentions Peter frequently in
his Gospel, especially in the appendix,241
but never names Paul; he met him, as it seems, only once, at Jerusalem, gave
him the right hand of fellowship, became his successor in the fruitful field of
Asia Minor, and built on his foundation.
Peter was the chief
actor in the first stage of apostolic Christianity and fulfilled the prophecy
of his name in laying the foundation of the church among the Jews and the
Gentiles. In the second stage he is overshadowed by the mighty labors of Paul;
but after the apostolic age he stands out again most prominent in the memory of
the church. He is chosen by the Roman communion as its special patron saint and
as the first pope. He is always named before Paul. To him most of the churches
are dedicated. In the name of this poor fisherman of Galilee, who had neither
gold nor silver, and was crucified like a malefactor and a slave, the
triple-crowned popes deposed kings, shook empires, dispensed blessings and
curses on earth and in purgatory, and even now claim the power to settle
infallibly all questions of Christian doctrine and discipline for the Catholic
world.
Paul was the chief actor
in the second stage of the apostolic church, the apostle of the Gentiles, the
founder of Christianity in Asia Minor and Greece, the emancipator of the new
religion from the yoke of Judaism, the herald of evangelical freedom, the
standard-bearer of reform and progress. His controlling influence was felt also
in Rome, and is clearly seen in the genuine Epistle of Clement, who makes more
account of him than of Peter. But soon afterwards he is almost forgotten,
except by name. He is indeed associated with Peter as the founder of the church
of Rome, but in a secondary line; his Epistle to the Romans is little read and
understood by the Romans even to this day; his church lies outside of the walls
of the eternal city, while St. Peter’s is its chief ornament and glory. In
Africa alone he was appreciated, first by the rugged and racy Tertullian, more
fully by the profound Augustine, who passed through similar contrasts in his
religious experience; but Augustine’s Pauline doctrines of sin and grace had no
effect whatever on the Eastern church, and were practically overpowered in the
Western church by Pelagian tendencies. For a long time Paul’s name was used and
abused outside of the ruling orthodoxy and hierarchy by anti-catholic heretics
and sectaries in their protest against the new yoke of traditionalism and
ceremonialism. But in the sixteenth century he celebrated a real resurrection
and inspired the evangelical reformation. Then his Epistles to the Galatians
and Romans were republished, explained, and applied with trumpet tongues by
Luther and Calvin. Then his protest against Judaizing bigotry and legal bondage
was renewed, and the rights of Christian liberty asserted on the largest scale.
Of all men in church history, St. Augustine not excepted, Martin Luther, once a
contracted monk, then a prophet of freedom, has most affinity in word and work
with the apostle of the Gentiles, and ever since Paul’s genius has ruled the
theology and religion of Protestantism. As the gospel of Christ was cast out
from Jerusalem to bless the Gentiles, so Paul’s Epistle to the Romans was
expelled from Rome to enlighten and to emancipate Protestant nations in the
distant North and far West.
St. John, the most
intimate companion of Jesus, the apostle of love, the seer who looked back to
the ante-mundane beginning and forward to the post-mundane end of all things,
and who is to tarry till the coming of the Lord, kept aloof from active part in
the controversies between Jewish and Gentile Christianity. He appears prominent
in the Acts and the Epistle to the Galatians, as one of the pillar-apostles,
but not a word of his is reported. He was waiting in mysterious silence, with a
reserved force, for his proper time, which did not come till Peter and Paul had
finished their mission. Then, after their departure, he revealed the hidden
depths of his genius in his marvellous writings, which represent the last and
crowning work of the apostolic church. John has never been fully fathomed, but
it has been felt throughout all the periods of church history that he has best
understood and portrayed the Master, and may yet speak the last word in the
conflict of ages and usher in an era of harmony and peace. Paul is the heroic
captain of the church militant, John the mystic prophet of the church triumphant.
Far above them all,
throughout the apostolic age and all subsequent ages, stands the one great
Master from whom Peter, Paul, and John drew their inspiration, to whom they
bowed in holy adoration, whom alone they served and glorified in life and in
death, and to whom they still point in their writings as the perfect image of
God, as the Saviour from sin and death, as the Giver of eternal life, as the
divine harmony of conflicting creeds and schools, as the Alpha and Omega of the
Christian faith.
</div3><div3 type =
"Section" n="22" title="The Critical Reconstruction of
the History of the Apostolic Age">
§22. The Critical Reconstruction of the History of the Apostolic Age.
</foreign>(Goethe.)
Never before in the history
of the church has the origin of Christianity, with its original documents, been
so thoroughly examined from standpoints entirely opposite as in the present
generation. It has engaged the time and energy of many of the ablest scholars
and critics. Such is the importance and the power of that little book which
"contains the wisdom of the whole world," that it demands ever new
investigation and sets serious minds of all shades of belief and unbelief in
motion, as if their very life depended upon its acceptance or rejection. There
is not a fact or doctrine which has not been thoroughly searched. The whole
life of Christ, and the labors and writings of the apostles with their
tendencies, antagonisms, and reconciliations are theoretically reproduced among
scholars and reviewed under all possible aspects. The post-apostolic age has by
necessary connection been drawn into the process of investigation and placed in
a new light.
The great biblical
scholars among the Fathers were chiefly concerned in drawing from the sacred
records the catholic doctrines of salvation, and the precepts for a holy life;
the Reformers and older Protestant divines studied them afresh with special
zeal for the evangelical tenets which separated them from the Roman church; but
all stood on the common ground of a reverential belief in the divine
inspiration and authority of the Scriptures. The present age is preëminently
historical and critical. The Scriptures are subjected to the same process of
investigation and analysis as any other literary production of antiquity, with
no other purpose than to ascertain the real facts in the case. We want to know
the precise origin, gradual growth, and final completion of Christianity as an
historical phenomenon in organic connection with contemporary events and
currents of thought. The whole process through which it passed from the manger
in Bethlehem to the cross of Calvary, and from the upper room in Jerusalem to
the throne of the Caesars is to be reproduced, explained and understood
according to the laws of regular historical development. And in this critical
process the very foundations of the Christian faith have been assailed and
undermined, so that the question now is, "to be or not to be." The
remark of Goethe is as profound as it is true: "The conflict of faith and
unbelief remains the proper, the only, the deepest theme of the history of the
world and mankind, to which all others are subordinated."
The modern critical
movement began, we may say, about 1830, is still in full progress, and is
likely to continue to the end of the nineteenth century, as the apostolic
church itself extended over a period of seventy years before it had developed
its resources. It was at first confined to Germany (Strauss, Baur, and the
Tübingen School), then spread to France (Renan) and Holland (Scholten, Kuenen),
and last to England ("Supernatural Religion") and America, so that
the battle now extends along the whole line of Protestantism.
There are two kinds of
biblical criticism, verbal and historical.
Textual Criticism.
The verbal or textual
criticism has for its object to restore as far as possible the original text of
the Greek Testament from the oldest and most trustworthy sources, namely, the
uncial manuscripts (especially, the Vatican and Sinaitic), the ante-Nicene
versions, and the patristic quotations. In this respect our age has been very
successful, with the aid of most important discoveries of ancient manuscripts.
By the invaluable labors of Lachmann, who broke the path for the correct theory
(Novum Testament. Gr., 1831, large Graeco-Latin edition, 1842–50, 2
vols.), Tischendorf (8th critical ed., 1869–72, 2 vols.), Tregelles (1857,
completed 1879), Westcott and Hort (1881, 2 vols.), we have now in the place of
the comparatively late and corrupt textus receptus of Erasmus and his
followers (Stephens, Beza, and the Elzevirs), which is the basis of au Protestant
versions in common use, a much older and purer text, which must henceforth be
made the basis of all revised translations. After a severe struggle between the
traditional and the progressive schools there is now in this basal department
of biblical learning a remarkable degree of harmony among critics. The new text
is in fact the older text, and the reformers are in this case the restorers.
Far from unsettling the faith in the New Testament, the results have
established the substantial integrity of the text, notwithstanding the one
hundred and fifty thousand readings which have been gradually gathered from all
sources. It is a noteworthy fact that the greatest textual critics of the
nineteenth century are believers, not indeed in a mechanical or magical
inspiration, which is untenable and not worth defending, but in the divine
origin and authority of the canonical writings, which rest on fax stronger
grounds than any particular human theory of inspiration.
Historical Criticism.
The historical or inner
criticism (which the Germans call the "higher criticism," <foreign
lang="de">höhere
Kritik</foreign>) deals with the origin, spirit, and aim of the New Testament writings,
their historical environments, and organic place in the great intellectual and
religious process which resulted in the triumphant establishment of the
catholic church of the second century. It assumed two very distinct shapes
under the lead of Dr. Neander in
Berlin (d. 1850), and Dr. Baur in
Tübingen (d. 1860), who labored in the mines of church history at a respectful
distance from each other and never came into personal contact. Neander and Baur
were giants, equal in genius and learning, honesty and earnestness, but widely
different in spirit. They gave a mighty impulse to historical study and left a
long line of pupils and independent followers who carry on the
historico-critical reconstruction of primitive Christianity. Their influence is
felt in France, Holland and England. Neander published the first edition of his
Apostolic Age in 1832, his Life of Jesus (against Strauss) in
1837 (the first volume of his General Church History had appeared already in
1825, revised ed. 1842); Baur wrote his essay on the Corinthian Parties in
1831, his critical investigations on the canonical Gospels in 1844 and 1847,
his "Paul" in 1845 (second ed. by Zeller, 1867), and his
"Church History of the First Three Centuries" in 1853 (revised
1860). His pupil Strauss had preceded him with his first Leben Jesu (1835),
which created a greater sensation than any of the works mentioned, surpassed
only by that of Renan’s Vie de Jésus, nearly thirty years later (1863).
Renan reproduces and popularizes Strauss and Baur for the French public with
independent learning and brilliant genius, and the author of "Supernatural
Religion" reëchoes the Tübingen and
Leyden speculations in England. On the other hand Bishop Lightfoot, the leader
of conservative criticism; declares that he has learnt more from the German
Neander than from any recent theologian ("Contemp. Review" for 1875,
p. 866. Matthew Arnold says (Literature and Dogma, Preface, p. xix.): "To get the
facts, the data, in all matters of science, but notably in theology and
Biblical learning, one goes to Germany. Germany, and it is her high honor, has
searched out the facts and exhibited them. And without knowledge of the facts,
no clearness or fairness of mind can in any study do anything; this cannot be
laid down too rigidly." But he denies to the Germans "quickness and
delicacy of perception." Something more is necessary than learning and
perception to draw the right conclusions from the facts: sound common sense and
well-balanced judgment. And when we deal with sacred and supernatural facts, we
need first and last a reverential spirit and that faith which is the organ of
the supernatural. It is here where the two schools depart, without difference
of nationality; for faith is not a national but an individual gift.
The Two Antagonistic Schools.
The two theories of the
apostolic history, introduced by Neander and Baur, are antagonistic in
principle and aim, and united only by the moral bond of an honest search for
truth. The one is conservative and reconstructive, the other radical and
destructive. The former accepts the canonical Gospels and Acts as honest,
truthful, and credible memoirs of the life of Christ and the labors of the
apostles; the latter rejects a great part of their contents as unhistorical
myths or legends of the post-apostolic age, and on the other hand gives undue
credit to wild heretical romances of the second century. The one draws an
essential line of distinction between truth as maintained by the orthodox
church, and error as held by heretical parties; the other obliterates the lines
and puts the heresy into the inner camp of the apostolic church itself. The one
proceeds on the basis of faith in God and Christ, which implies faith in the
supernatural and miraculous wherever it is well attested; the other proceeds
from disbelief in the supernatural and miraculous as a philosophical
impossibility, and tries to explain the gospel history and the apostolic
history from purely natural causes like every other history. The one has a
moral and spiritual as well is intellectual interest in the New Testament, the
other a purely intellectual and critical interest. The one approaches the
historical investigation with the subjective experience of the divine truth in
the heart and conscience, and knows and feels Christianity to be a power of
salvation from sin and error; the other views it simply as the best among the
many religions which are destined to give way at last to the sovereignty of
reason and philosophy. The controversy turns on the question whether there is a
God in History or not; as the contemporaneous struggle in natural science turns
on the question whether there is a God in nature or not. Belief in a personal
God almighty and omnipresent in history and in nature, implies the possibility
of supernatural and miraculous revelation. Absolute freedom from prepossession
(Voraussetzungslosigkeit such as Strauss demanded) is absolutely
impossible, "<foreign lang="la">ex nihilo nihil fit</foreign>."
There is prepossession on either side of the controversy, the one positive, the
other negative, and history itself must decide between them. The facts must
rule philosophy, not philosophy the facts. If it can be made out that the life
of Christ and the apostolic church can be psychologically and historically
explained only by the admission of the supernatural element which they claim,
while every other explanation only increases the difficulty, of the problem and
substitutes an unnatural miracle for a supernatural one, the historian has
gained the case, and it is for the philosopher to adjust his theory to history.
The duty of the historian is not to make the facts, but to discover them, and
then to construct his theory wide enough to give them all comfortable room.
The Alleged Antagonism in the Apostolic Church.
The theory of the Tübingen
school starts from the assumption of a fundamental antagonism between Jewish or
primitive Christianity represented by Peter, and Gentile or progressive
Christianity represented by Paul, and resolves all the writings of the New
Testament into tendency writings (Tendenzschriften), which give us not history pure and simple, but adjust it to a
doctrinal and practical aim in the interest of one or the other party, or of a
compromise between the two.242
The Epistles of Paul to the Galatians, Romans, First and Second Corinthians—which
are admitted to be genuine beyond any doubt, exhibit the anti-Jewish and
universal Christianity, of which Paul himself must be regarded as the chief
founder. The Apocalypse, which was composed by the apostle John in 69, exhibits
the original Jewish and contracted Christianity, in accordance with his
position as one of the "pillar"-apostles of the circumcision (<scripRef
passage = "Gal. 2:9">Gal. 2:9</scripRef>), and it is the only authentic document of the older apostles.
Baur (Gesch. der
christl. Kirche, I., 80 sqq.) and Renan (St. Paul, ch. X.) go so far
as to assert that this genuine John excludes Paul from the list of the apostles
(<scripRef
passage = "Rev. 21:14">Apoc. 21:14</scripRef>, which leaves no room for more than twelve), and
indirectly attacks him as a "false Jew" (<scripRef passage =
"Rev. 2:9; 3:9">Apoc.
2:9; 3:9</scripRef>), a "false apostle" (<scripRef
passage = "Rev. 2:2">2:2</scripRef>), a "false prophet" (<scripRef
passage = "Rev. 2:20">2:20</scripRef>), as "Balaam" (<scripRef passage = "Rev. 2:2, 6, 14,
15">2:2, 6, 14, 15</scripRef>; comp. <scripRef passage =
"Jude 11">Jude
11</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "2 Pet.
2:15">2 Pet. 2:15</scripRef>); just as the Clementine Homilies assail him
under the name of Simon the Magician and arch-heretic. Renan interprets also
the whole Epistle of Jude, a brother of James, as an attack upon Paul, issued
from Jerusalem in connection with the Jewish counter-mission organized by
James, which nearly ruined the work of Paul.
The other writings of
the New Testament are post-apostolic productions and exhibit the various phases
of a unionistic movement, which resulted in the formation of the orthodox
church of the second and third centuries. The Acts of the Apostles is a
Catholic Irenicon which harmonizes Jewish and Gentile Christianity by
liberalizing Peter and contracting or Judaizing Paul, and concealing the
difference between them; and though probably based on an earlier narrative of
Luke, it was not put into its present shape before the close of the first
century. The canonical Gospels, whatever may have been the earlier records on
which they are based, are likewise post-apostolic, and hence untrustworthy as
historical narratives. The Gospel of John is a purely ideal composition of some
unknown Gnostic or mystic of profound religious genius, who dealt with the
historic Jesus as freely as Plato in his Dialogues dealt with Socrates, and who
completed with consummate literary skill this unifying process in the age of
Hadrian, certainly not before the third decade of the second century. Baur
brought it down as late as 170; Hilgenfeld put it further back to 140, Keim to
130, Renan to the age of Hadrian.
Thus the whole
literature of the New Testament is represented as the living growth of a
century, as a collection of polemical and irenical tracts of the apostolic and
post-apostolic ages. Instead of contemporaneous, reliable history we have a
series of intellectual movements and literary fictions. Divine revelation gives
way to subjective visions and delusions, inspiration is replaced by
development, truth by a mixture of truth and error. The apostolic literature is
put on a par with the controversial literature of the Nicene age, which
resulted in the Nicene orthodoxy, or with the literature of the Reformation period,
which led to the formation of the Protestant system of doctrine.
History never repeats
itself, yet the same laws and tendencies reappear in ever-changing forms. This
modern criticism is a remarkable renewal of the views held by heretical schools
in the second century. The Ebionite author of the pseudo-Clementine Homilies
and the Gnostic Marcion likewise assumed an irreconcilable antagonism between
Jewish and Gentile Christianity, with this difference, that the former opposed
Paul as the arch-heretic and defamer of Peter, while Marcion (about 140)
regarded Paul as the only true apostle, and the older apostles as Jewish
perverters of Christianity; consequently he rejected the whole Old Testament
and such books of the New Testament as he considered Judaizing, retaining in
his canon only a mutilated Gospel of Luke and ton of the Pauline Epistles
(excluding the Pastoral Epistles and the Epistle to the Hebrews). In the eyes
of modern criticism these wild heretics are better historians of the apostolic
age than the author of the Acts of the Apostles.
The Gnostic heresy, with
all its destructive tendency, had an important mission as a propelling force in
the ancient church and left its effects upon patristic theology. So also this
modern gnosticism must be allowed to have done great service to biblical and
historical learning by removing old prejudices, opening new avenues of thought,
bringing to light the immense fermentation of the first century, stimulating
research, and compelling an entire scientific reconstruction of the history of
the origin of Christianity and the church. The result will be a deeper and
fuller knowledge, not to the weakening but to the strengthening of our faith.
Reaction.
There is considerable
difference among the scholars of this higher criticism, and while some pupils
of Baur (e.g. Strauss, Volkmar) have gone even beyond his positions, others
make concessions to the traditional views. A most important change took place
in Baur’s own mind as regards the conversion of Paul, which he confessed at
last, shortly before his death (1860), to be to him an insolvable psychological
problem amounting to a miracle. Ritschl, Holtzmann, Lipsius, Pfleiderer, and
especially Reuss, Weizsäcker, and Keim (who are as free from orthodox
prejudices as the most advanced critics) have modified and corrected many of
the extreme views of the Tübingen
school. Even Hilgenfeld, with all his zeal for the "Fortschrittstheologie" and against
the "Rückschrittstheologie," admits seven instead of four Pauline
Epistles as genuine, assigns an earlier date to the Synoptical Gospels and the
Epistle to the Hebrews (which he supposes to have been written by Apollos
before 70), and says: "It cannot be denied that Baur’s criticism went
beyond the bounds of moderation and inflicted too deep wounds on the faith of
the church" (Hist. Krit. Einleitung in das N. T. 1875, p. 197).
Renan admits nine Pauline Epistles, the essential genuineness of the Acts, and
even the, narrative portions of John, while he rejects the discourses as pretentious,
inflated, metaphysical, obscure, and tiresome! (See his last discussion of the subject in L’église chrétienne, ch. I-V. pp. 45 sqq.) Matthew Arnold and other critics reverse the proposition and
accept the discourses as the sublimest of all human compositions, full of
"heavenly glories" (himmlische Herrlichkeiten, to use an
expression of Keim, who, however, rejects the fourth Gospel altogether).
Schenkel (in his Christusbild der Apostel, 1879) considerably moderates the antagonism
between Petrinism and Paulinism, and confesses (Preface, p. xi.) that in the
progress of his investigations he has been "forced to the conviction that
the Acts of the Apostles is a more trustworthy source of information than is
commonly allowed on the part of the modern criticism; that older documents
worthy of credit, besides the well known We-source (Wirquelle)
are contained in it; and that the Paulinist who composed it has not
intentionally distorted the facts, but only placed them in the light in which
they appeared to him and must have appeared to him from the time and
circumstances under which he wrote. He has not, in my opinion, artificially
brought upon the stage either a Paulinized Peter, or a Petrinized Paul, in
order to mislead his readers, but has portrayed the two apostles just as he
actually conceived of them on the basis of his incomplete information."
Keim, in his last work (Aus dem Urchristenthum, 1878, a year before his
death), has come to a similar conclusion, and proves (in a critical essay on
the Apostelkonvent, pp. 64–89) in opposition to Baur, Schwegler, and
Zeller, yet from the same standpoint of liberal criticism, and allowing later
additions, the substantial harmony between the Acts and the Epistle to the
Galatians as regards the apostolic conference and concordat of Jerusalem. Ewald
always pursued his own way and equalled Baur in bold and arbitrary criticism,
but violently opposed him and defended the Acts and the Gospel of John.
To these German voices
we may add the testimony of Matthew Arnold, one of the boldest and broadest of
the broad-school divines and critics, who with all his admiration for Baur
represents him as an "unsafe guide," and protests against his
assumption of a bitter hatred of Paul and the pillar-apostles as entirely inconsistent
with the conceded religious greatness of Paul and with the nearness of the
pillar-apostles to Jesus (God and the Bible, 1875, Preface, vii-xii). As
to the fourth Gospel, which is now the most burning spot of this burning
controversy, the same author, after viewing it from without and from within,
comes to the conclusion that it is, "no fancy-piece, but a serious and
invaluable document, full of incidents given by tradition and genuine ’sayings
of the Lord’ "(p. 370), and that "after the most free criticism has
been fairly and strictly applied,... there is yet left an authentic residue
comprising all the profoundest, most important, and most beautiful things in
the fourth Gospel" (p. 372 sq.).
The Positive School.
While there are signs of
disintegration in the ranks of destructive criticism, the historic truth and
genuineness of the New Testament writings have found learned and able defenders
from different standpoints, such as Neander, Ullmann, C. F. Schmid (the
colleague of Baur in Tübingen), Rothe, Dorner, Ebrard, Lechler, Lange,
Thiersch, Wieseler, Hofmann (of Erlangen), Luthardt, Christlieb, Beyschlag,
Uhlhorn, Weiss, Godet, Edm. de Pressensé.
The English and American
mind also has fairly begun to grapple manfully and successfully, with these
questions in such scholars as Lightfoot, Plumptre, Westcott, Sanday, Farrar, G.
P. Fisher, Ezra Abbot (on the Authorship of the Fourth Gospel, 1880).
English and American theology is not likely to be extensively demoralized by
these hypercritical speculations of the Continent. It has a firmer foothold in
an active church life and the convictions and affections of the people. The
German and French mind, like the Athenian, is always bent upon telling and
hearing something new, while the Anglo-American mind cares more for what is
true, whether it be old or new. And the truth must ultimately prevail.
St. Paul’s Testimony to Historical Christianity.
Fortunately even the most
exacting school of modern criticism leaves us a fixed fulcrum from which we can
argue the truth of Christianity, namely, the four Pauline Epistles to the
Galatians, Romans, and Corinthians, which are pronounced to be unquestionably
genuine and made the Archimedean point of assault upon the other parts of the
New Testament. We propose to confine ourselves to them. They are of the utmost
historical as well as doctrinal importance; they represent the first Christian
generation, and were written between 54 and 58, that is within a quarter of the
century after the crucifixion, when the older apostles and most of the
principal eye-witnesses of the life of Christ were still alive. The writer
himself was a contemporary of Christ; he lived in Jerusalem at the time of the
great events on which Christianity rests; he was intimate with the Sanhedrin
and the murderers of Christ; he was not blinded by favorable prejudice, but was
a violent persecutor, who had every motive to justify his hostility; and after
his radical conversion (a.d. 37)
he associated with the original disciples and could learn their personal
experience from their own lips (<scripRef passage = "Gal. 1:18;
2:1–11">Gal. 1:18;
2:1–11</scripRef>).
Now in these admitted
documents of the best educated of the apostles we have the clearest evidence of
all the great events and truths of primitive Christianity, and a satisfactory
answer to the chief objections and difficulties of modern skepticism.243
They prove
1. The leading facts in
the life of Christ, his divine mission, his birth from a woman, of the royal
house of David, his holy life and example, his betrayal, passion, and death for
the sins of the world, his resurrection on the third day, his repeated
manifestations to the disciples, his ascension and exaltation to the right hand
of God, whence he will return to judge mankind, the adoration of Christ as the
Messiah, the Lord and Saviour from sin, the eternal Son of God; also the
election of the Twelve, the institution of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the
mission of the Holy Spirit, the founding of the church. Paul frequently alludes
to these facts, especially the crucifixion and resurrection, not in the way of
a detailed narrative, but incidentally and in connection with doctrinal
expositions arid exhortations as addressed to men already familiar with them
from oral preaching and instruction. Comp. <scripRef passage =
"Gal 3:13; 4:4–6; 6:14">Gal 3:13; 4:4–6; 6:14</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Rom. 1:3; 4:24,
25; 5:8–21; 6:3–10; 8:3–11, 26, 39; 9:5; 10:6, 7; 14:5; 15:3">Rom. 1:3; 4:24, 25; 5:8–21; 6:3–10; 8:3–11, 26,
39; 9:5; 10:6, 7; 14:5; 15:3</scripRef> <scripRef passage = "1 Cor. 1:23;
2:2, 12; 5:7; 6:14; 10:16; 11:23–26; 15:3–8, 45–49">1 Cor. 1:23; 2:2, 12; 5:7; 6:14; 10:16; 11:23–26;
15:3–8, 45–49</scripRef>; <scripRef
passage = "2 Cor. 5:21">2 Cor. 5:21</scripRef>.
2. Paul’s own conversion
and call to the apostleship by the personal appearance to him of the exalted
Redeemer from heaven. <scripRef passage = "Gal. 1:1, 15,
16">Gal. 1:1, 15, 16</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "1 Cor. 9:1;
15:8">1 Cor. 9:1;
15:8</scripRef>.
3. The origin and rapid
progress of the Christian church in all parts of the Roman empire, from
Jerusalem to Antioch and Rome, in Judaea, in Syria, in Asia Minor, in Macedonia
and Achaia. The faith of the Roman church, he says, was known "throughout
the world," and "in every place "there were worshippers of Jesus
as their Lord. And these little churches maintained a lively and active
intercourse with each other, and though founded by different teachers and
distracted by differences of opinion and practice, they worshipped the same
divine Lord, and formed one brotherhood of believers. <scripRef passage =
"Gal. 1:2, 22; 2:1, 11">Gal. 1:2, 22; 2:1, 11</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Rom. 1:8; 10:18;
16:26">Rom. 1:8;
10:18; 16:26</scripRef>; <scripRef
passage = "1 Cor. 1:12; 8:1; 16:19">1 Cor. 1:12; 8:1; 16:19</scripRef>, etc.
4. The presence of
miraculous powers in the church at that time. Paul himself wrought the signs
and mighty deeds of an apostle. Rom. 15:18, 19; 1 Cor. 2:4; 9:2; 2 Cor. 12:12.
He lays, however, no great stress on the outer sensible miracles, and makes
more account of the inner moral miracles and the constant manifestations of the
power of the Holy Spirit in regenerating and sanctifying sinful men in an
utterly corrupt state of society. <scripRef passage =
"1 Cor. 12-14; 6:9–11">1 Cor. 12 to 14; 6:9–11</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Gal.
5:16–26">Gal. 5:16–26</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Rom. 6,
8">Rom. 6 and 8</scripRef>.
5. The existence of much
earnest controversy in these young churches, not indeed about the great facts
on which their faith was based, and which were fully admitted on both sides,
but about doctrinal and ritual inferences from these facts, especially the
question of the continued obligation of circumcision and the Mosaic law, and
the personal question of the apostolic authority of Paul. The Judaizers
maintained the superior claims of the older apostles and charged him with a
radical departure from the venerable religion of their fathers; while Paul used
against them the argument that the expiatory death of Christ and his
resurrection were needless and useless if justification came from the law. <scripRef
passage = "Gal. 2:21; 5:2–4">Gal. 2:21; 5:2–4</scripRef>.
6. The essential
doctrinal and spiritual harmony of Paul with the elder apostles,
notwithstanding their differences of standpoint and field of labor. Here the
testimony of the Epistle to the <scripRef passage = "Galatians
2:1–10">Galatians
2:1–10</scripRef>, which is the very bulwark of the skeptical
school, bears strongly against it. For Paul expressly states that the,
"pillar"-apostles of the circumcision, James, Peter, and John, at the
conference in Jerusalem a.d. 50,
approved the gospel he had been preaching during the preceding fourteen years;
that they "imparted nothing" to him, gave him no new instruction,
imposed on him no now terms, nor burden of any kind, but that, on the contrary,
they recognized the grace of God in him and his special mission to the
Gentiles, and gave him and Barnabas "the right hands of fellowship"
in token of their brotherhood and fidelity. He makes a clear and sharp
distinction between the apostles and "the false brethren privily brought
in, who came to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they
might bring us into bondage," and to whom he would not yield, "no,
not for an hour." The hardest words he has for the Jewish apostles are
epithets of honor; he calls them, the pillars of the church, "the men in
high repute" (<foreign lang="el">oiJ
stu'loi, oiJ dokou'nte"</foreign>, <scripRef passage = "Gal. 2:6,
9">Gal. 2:6, 9</scripRef>); while he considered himself in sincere
humility "the least of the apostles," because he persecuted the
church of God (<scripRef passage = "1 Cor. 15:9">1 Cor. 15:9</scripRef>).
This statement of Paul
makes it simply impossible and absurd to suppose (with Baur, Schwegler, Zeller,
and Renan) that John should have so contradicted and stultified himself as to
attack, in the Apocalypse, the same Paul whom he had recognized as a brother
during his life, as a false apostle and chief of the synagogue of Satan after
his death. Such a reckless and monstrous assertion turns either Paul or John
into a liar. The antinomian and antichristian heretics of the Apocalypse who
plunged into all sorts of moral and ceremonial pollutions (<scripRef
passage = "Rev. 2:14, 15">Apoc. 2:14, 15</scripRef>) would have been condemned by Paul as much as by
John; yea, he himself, in his parting address to the Ephesian elders, had
prophetically foreannounced and described such teachers as "grievous
wolves" that would after his departure enter in among them or rise from
the midst of them, not sparing the flock (<scripRef passage =
"Acts 20:29, 30">Acts
20:29, 30</scripRef>). On the question of fornication he was in
entire harmony with the teaching of the Apocalypse (<scripRef passage =
"1 Cor. 3:15, 16; 6:15–20">1 Cor. 3:15, 16; 6:15–20</scripRef>); and as to the question of eating meat offered
in sacrifice to idols Gr215(rA fi8coX6zvra), though he regarded it as a thing indifferent in
itself, considering the vanity of idols, yet he condemned it whenever it gave
offence to the weak consciences of the more scrupulous Jewish converts (<scripRef
passage = "1 Cor. 8:7–13; 10:23–33">1 Cor. 8:7–13; 10:23–33</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Rom. 14:2,
21">Rom. 14:2, 21</scripRef>); and this was in accord with the decree of the
Apostolic Council (<scripRef passage = "Acts 15:29">Acts 15:29</scripRef>).
7. Paul’s collision with
Peter at Antioch, <scripRef passage = "Gal. 2:11–14">Gal. 2:11–14</scripRef>. which is made the very bulwark of the Tübingen
theory, proves the very reverse. For it was not a difference in principle and
doctrine; on the contrary, Paul expressly asserts that Peter at first freely
and habitually (mark the imperfect <foreign lang="el">sunhvsqien</foreign>, <scripRef passage = "Gal.
2:12">Gal. 2:12</scripRef>) associated with the Gentile converts as
brethren in Christ, but was intimidated by emissaries from the bigoted Jewish
converts in Jerusalem and acted against his better conviction which he had
entertained ever since the vision at Joppa (<scripRef passage =
"Acts 10:10–16">Acts
10:10–16</scripRef>), and which he had so boldly confessed at the
Council in Jerusalem (<scripRef passage = "Acts 15:7–11">Acts 15:7–11</scripRef>) and carried out in Antioch. We have here the
same impulsive, impressible, changeable disciple, the first to confess and the
first to deny his Master, yet quickly returning to him in bitter repentance and
sincere humility. It is for this inconsistency of conduct, which Paul called by
the strong term of dissimulation or hypocrisy, that he, in his uncompromising
zeal for the great principle of Christian liberty, reproved him publicly before
the church. A public wrong had to be publicly rectified. According to the
Tübingen hypothesis the hypocrisy would have been in the very opposite conduct
of Peter. The silent submission of Peter on the occasion proves his regard for
his younger colleague, and speaks as much to his praise as his weakness to his
blame. That the alienation was only temporary and did not break up their
fraternal relation is apparent from the respectful though frank manner in
which, several years after the occurrence, they allude to each other as fellow
apostles, Comp. <scripRef passage = "Gal. 1:18, 19; 2:8,
9">Gal. 1:18, 19;
2:8, 9</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "1 Cor.
9:5">1 Cor. 9:5</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "2 Pet. 3:15,
16">2 Pet. 3:15, 16</scripRef>, and from the fact that Mark and Silas were
connecting links between them and alternately served them both.244
The Epistle to the
Galatians then furnishes the proper solution of the difficulty, and essentially
confirms the account of the Acts. It proves the harmony as well as the
difference between Paul and the older apostles. It explodes the hypothesis that
they stood related to each other like the Marcionites and Ebionites in the
second century. These were the descendants of the heretics of the
apostolic age, of the "false brethren insidiously brought in" (<foreign
lang="el">Yeudavdelfoi pareivsaktoi</foreign>, <scripRef passage =
"Gal. 2:4">Gal.
2:4</scripRef>); while the true apostles recognized and
continued to recognize the same grace of God which wrought effectually through
Peter for the conversion of the Jews, and through Paul for the conversion of
the Gentiles. That the Judaizers should have appealed to the Jewish apostles,
and the antinomian Gnostics to Paul, as their authority, is not more surprising
than the appeal of the modern rationalists to Luther and the Reformation.
We have thus discussed
at the outset, and at some length, the fundamental difference of the two
standpoints from which the history of the apostolic church is now viewed, and
have vindicated our own general position in this controversy.
It is not to be supposed
that all the obscure points have already been satisfactorily cleared up, or
ever will be solved beyond the possibility of dispute. There must be some room
left for faith in that God who has revealed himself clearly enough in nature
and in history to strengthen our faith, and who is concealed enough to try our
faith. Certain interstellar spaces will always be vacant in the firmament of
the apostolic age that men may gaze all the more intensely at the bright stars,
before which the post-apostolic books disappear like torches. A careful study
of the ecclesiastical writers of the second and third centuries, and especially
of the numerous Apocryphal Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypses, leaves on the mind
a strong impression of the immeasurable superiority of the New Testament in
purity and truthfulness, simplicity and majesty; and this superiority points to
a special agency of the Spirit of God, without which that book of books is an
inexplicable mystery.
</div3><div3 type =
"Section" n="23" title="Chronology of the Apostolic
Age">
§ 23. Chronology of the Apostolic Age.
See the works quoted in
§ 20 p. 193, 194, especially Wieseler.
Comp. also, Hackett on Acts, pp. 22 to 30 (third ed.).
The chronology of the
apostolic age is partly certain, at least within a few years, partly
conjectural: certain as to the principal events from a.d. 30 to 70, conjectural as to intervening points and the
last thirty years of the first century. The sources are the New Testament
(especially the Acts and the Pauline Epistles), Josephus, and the Roman
historians. Josephus ( b. 37, d. 103) is especially valuable here, as he wrote
the Jewish history down to the destruction of Jerusalem.
The following dates are
more or less certain and accepted by most historians:
1. The founding of the
Christian Church on the feast of Pentecost in May a.d. 30. This is on the assumption that Christ was born b.c. 4 or 5, and was crucified in April a.d. 30, at an age of thirty-three.
2. The death of King
Herod Agrippa I. a.d. 44
(according to Josephus). This settles the date of the preceding martyrdom of
James the elder, Peter’s imprisonment and release Acts 12:2, 23).
3. The Apostolic Council
in Jerusalem, a.d. 50 (Acts 15:1
sqq.; Gal. 2:1–10). This date is ascertained by reckoning backwards to Paul’s
conversion, and forward to the Caesarean captivity. Paul was probably converted
in 37, and "fourteen years" elapsed from that event to the Council.
But chronologists differ on the year of Paul’s conversion, between 31 and 40.245
4. The dates of the
Epistles to the Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans, between 56 and 58. The date
of the Epistle to the Romans can be fixed almost to the month from its own
indications combined with the statements of the Acts. It was written before the
apostle had been in Rome, but when he was on the point of departure for
Jerusalem and Rome on the way to Spain,246
after having finished his collections in Macedonia and Achaia for the poor
brethren in Judaea;247
and he sent the epistle through Phebe, a deaconess of the congregation in the
eastern port of Corinth, where he was at that time.248
These indications point clearly to the spring of the year 58, for in
that year he was taken prisoner in Jerusalem and carried to Caesarea.
5. Paul’s captivity in
Caesarea, a.d. 58 to 60, during
the procuratorship of Felix and Festus, who changed places in 60 or 61, probably
in 60. This important date we can ascertain by combination from several
passages in Josephus, and Tacitus.249 It enables us at the same time, by
reckoning backward, to fix some preceding events in the life of the apostle.
6. Paul’s first
captivity in Rome, a.d. 61 to 63.
This follows from the former date in connection with the statement in Acts
28:30.
7. The Epistles of the
Roman captivity, Philippians, Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon, a.d. 61–63.
8. The Neronian
persecution, a.d. 64 (the tenth
year of Nero, according to Tacitus). The martyrdom of Paul and Peter occurred
either then, or (according to tradition) a few years later. The question
depends on the second Roman captivity of Paul.
9. The destruction of
Jerusalem by Titus, a.d. 70
(according to Josephus and Tacitus).
10. The death of John
after the accession of Trajan, a.d.
98 (according to general ecclesiastical tradition).
The dates of the
Synoptical Gospels, the Acts, the Pastoral Epistles, the Hebrews, and the
Epistles of Peter, James, and Jude cannot be accurately ascertained except that
they were composed before the destruction of Jerusalem, mostly between 60 and 70.
The writings of John were written after that date and towards the close of the
first century, except the Apocalypse, which some of the best scholars, from
internal indications assign to the year 68 or 69, between the death of Nero and
the destruction of Jerusalem.
The details are given in
the following table:
Chronological Table of the Apostolic Age.
a.d.
Scripture History
Events In Palestine
Events In The Roman Empire
a.d.
b.c. 5 or 4
Birth of Christ
Death of Herod I. or the Great (a.u. 750, or b.c. 4).
Augustus Emperor of Rome, B. C. 27-a.d. 14.
6
a.d. 8
His visit to the Temple at twelve years of age
Cyrenius (Quirinius), Governor of Syria (for the second time). The registration, or "taxing." Acts 5:37. Revolt of "Judas of Galilee." Coponius Procurator of Judaea. Marcus Ambivius Procurator.
9
Tiberius colleague of Augustus
12
Annius Rufus Procurator (about)
13
Valerius Gratus Procurator
Augustus dies. Tiberius sole emperor (14–37)
14
Pontius Pilate Procurator from a.d. 26
26
27
Christ’s Baptism.
Caiaphas high priest from a.d. 26
27–30
His three years’ ministry.
30
His Crucifixion, Resurrection (April), and Ascension (May).
Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Birthday of the
Church (May). <scripRef
passage = "Acts 2">Acts, ch. 2.</scripRef>
Marcellus Procurator. Pilate sent to Rome by the Prefect of Syria.
36
37
Martyrdom of Stephen. <scripRef passage = "Acts 7">Acts, ch 7</scripRef>. Peter and John in Samaria. <scripRef passage = "Acts 8">Acts, ch. 8</scripRef>. Conversion of Saul. <scripRef passage = "Acts 9">Acts, ch. 9</scripRef>, comp. <scripRef passage = "Acts 22, 26">22 and 26</scripRef>, and <scripRef passage = "Gal. 1:16">Gal. 1:16</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "1 Cor. 15:8">1 Cor. 15:8</scripRef>.
Maryllus appointed Hipparch.
Herod Agrippa I King of Judea and Samaria
Caligula Emperor (37–41)
37
40
Saul’s escape from Damascus, and first visit to Jerusalem (after his conversion). <scripRef passage = "Gal. 1:18">Gal. 1:18</scripRef>. Admission of Cornelius into the Church. <scripRef passage = "Acts 10, 11">Acts, chs. 10 and 11</scripRef>.
Philo at Rome
40
Claudius Emperor (41-54).
41
44
Persecution of the Church in Jerusalem. James the Elder, the son of Zebedee, beheaded. Peter imprisoned and delivered. He leaves Palestine. <scripRef passage = "Acts 12:2–23">Acts 12:2–23</scripRef>. Paul's second visit to Jerusalem, with alms from the church at Antioch. <scripRef passage = "Acts 11:30">Acts 11:30</scripRef>.
Herod Agrippa I dies at Caesarea
Conquest of Britain, 43-51.
44
45
Paul is set apart as an apostle. <scripRef passage = "Acts 13:2">Acts 13:2</scripRef>.
Cuspius Fadus Procurator of Judea. Tiberius Alexander Procurator
46
Ventidius Cumanus Procurator
47
50
Paul's first missionary journey with Barnabas and Mark, Cyprus, Pisidia, Lystra, Derbe. Return to Antioch. <scripRef passage = "Acts 13, 14">Acts chs. 13 and 14</scripRef>. The Epistle of James (variously dated from 44 to 62). The apostolic council of Jerusalem. Conflict between Jewish and Gentile Christianity. Paul's third visit to Jerusalem with Barnabas and Titus. Peaceful adjustment of the quesiton of circumcision. <scripRef passage = "Acts 15">Acts, ch. 15</scripRef> and <scripRef passage = "Gal. 2:1-10">Gal. 2:1-10</scripRef>. Temporary collision with Peter and Barnabas at Antioch. <scripRef passage = "Gal. 2:11-14">Gal. 2:11-14</scripRef>.
51
Paul sets out on his second missionary journey from Antioch to Asia Minor (Cilicia, Lycaonia, Galatia, Troas) and Greece (Philippi, Thessalonica, Beraea, Athens, Corinth). The Christianization of Europe. <scripRef passage = "Acts 15:36 - 18:22">Acts, 15:36 to 18:22</scripRef>.
Antonius Felix Procurator
51
52–53
Paul at Corinth a year and a half. Writes First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians from Corinth.
The Tetrarchy of Trachonitis given to Herod Agrippa II (the last of the Herodian family).
Decree of Claudius banishing Jews from Rome.
52
54
Paul’s, fourth visit to Jerusalem (spring). Short stay at Antioch. Enters (autumn, 54) on his third missionary journey, occupying about four years. Paul at Ephesus, 54 to 57. <scripRef passage = "Acts 19">Acts, ch. 19</scripRef>.
Nero Emperor (54-68).
54
Revolt of the Sicarii, headed by an Egyptian (<scripRef passage = "Acts 21:38">Acts, 21:38</scripRef>).
55
56
Paul writes to the Galatians (?) from Ephesus, or from some part of Greece on his journey to Corinth (57). <scripRef passage = "Acts 20">Acts, ch. 20</scripRef>.
57
Paul writes First Epistle to the Corinthians from Ephesus; starts for Macedonia and writes Second Epistle to the Corinthians from Macedonia.
58
Epistle to the Romans from Corinth, where he spent three months. He visits (the fifth time) Jerusalem; is apprehended, brought before Felix, and imprisoned at Caesarea for two years. <scripRef passage = "Acts 21:37 - 26:31">Acts, 21:37 to 26:31</scripRef>.
60
Paul appears before Festus, appeals to Caesar, is sent to Italy (in autumn). Shipwreck at Malta. <scripRef passage = "Acts 27, 28">Acts, chs. 27 and 28</scripRef>.
Porcius Festus Procurator
60
61
Arrives a prisoner at Rome (in spring).
Embassy from Jerusalem to Rome respecting the wall.
War with Boadicea in Britian
61
61–63
Paul writes to the Philippians, Ephesians, Colossians, Philemon, from his prison in Rome.
Apollonius of Tyana at the Olympic games
61
62
Martyrdom of James, the Lord’s brother, at Jerusalem (according to Josephus, or 69 according to Hegesippus).
Josephus at Rome
62
63
Paul is supposed to have been released. <scripRef passage =
"Acts 28:30">Acts, 28:30</scripRef>
Albinus Procurator
63
64
Epistle to the Hebrews, written from Italy after the release of Timothy (ch. 13:23).
Gessius Florus Procurator
Great fire at Rome (in July); first imperial persecution of the Christians (martyrdom of Peter and Paul)
64
64–67
First Epistle of Peter. Epistle of Jude (?). Second Epistle of Peter.
60–70
The Synoptical Gospels and Acts.
Seneca and Lucan put to death by Nero
65
Beginning of the great war between the Romans and the Jews
66
64–67
Paul visits Crete and Macedonia, and writes First Epistle to Timothy, and Epistle to Titus (?).250 Paul writes Second Epistle to Timothy (?).
Vespasian General in Palestine
67
65–67
Paul’s and Peter’s martyrdom in Rome (?).
68–69
The Revelation of John (?).
Galba Emperor
68
Otho and Vitellius Emperors
69
Vespasian Emperor
69
Destruction of Jerusalem by Titus
70
(Josephus released.)
Coliseum begun
76
Destruction of Pompeii and Heraculaneum
79
Titus Emperor
79
80–90
John writes his Gospel and Epistles (?).
Domitian Emperor
91
95
John writes the Revelation (?).
Persecution of Christians
95
Nerva Emperor
96
Death of Apollonius
97
98–100
Death of John.
Trajan Emperor
98
</div3><div2
type=”Chapter” n=”IV” title=”St. Peter and the Conversion of the Jews”>
CHAPTER
IV.
ST.
PETER AND THE CONVERSION OF THE JEWS
</div2><div3 type =
"Section" n="24" title="The Miracle of Pentecost and
the Birthday of the Christian Church. A.D. 30.">
§ 24. The Miracle of Pentecost and the Birthday of the Christian Church. a.d. 30.
<foreign lang="el">Kai; ejplhvsqhsan pavnte" pneuvmato" aJgivou,
kai; h[rxanto lalei'n eJtevrai" glwvssai", Kaqw;" to; pneu'ma
ejdivdou ajpofqevggesqai aujtoi'" </foreign>—<scripRef passage =
"Acts 2:4">Acts 2:4</scripRef>
"The first Pentecost which the disciples celebrated
after the ascension of our Saviour, is, next to the appearance of the Son of
God on earth, the most significant event. It is the starting-point of the
apostolic church and of that new spiritual life in humanity which proceeded
from Him, and which since has been spreading and working, and will continue to
work until the whole humanity is transformed into the image of Christ."—Neander (Geschichte
der Pflanzung und Leitung der
christlichen Kirche durch die Apostel., I. 3, 4).
Literature.
I. Sources: Acts 2:1–47.
Comp. 1 Cor. 12 and 14. See Commentaries on the Acts by Olshausen, De Wette,
Meyer, Lechler, Hackett, Alexander, Gloag, Alford, Wordsworth, Plumptre
Jacobson, Howson and Spence, etc., and on the Corinthians by Billroth, Kling,
Stanley, Heinrici, Edwards, Godet, Ellicott.
II. Special treatises o
the Pentecostal Miracle and the Gift of Tongues (glossolalia) by Herder (Die Gabe der
Sprachen, Riga, 1794) Hase (in Winer’s
"Zeitschrift für wissenschaftl. Theol." 1827), Bleek in "Studien
und Kritiken" for 1829 and 1830), Baur in the "Tübinger Zeitschrift
für Theol." for 1830 and 1831, and in the "Studien und Krit."
1838), Schneckenburger (in his Beiträge zur
Einleitung in das N. T. 1832), Bäumlein (1834), Dav. Schulz (1836), Zinsler (1847),
Zeller (Acts of the Apostles, I. 171, of the E. translation by J. Dare),
Böhm (Irvingite, Reden mit Zungen und
Weissagen, Berlin, 1848), Rossteuscher (Irvingite, Gabe der Sprachen im apost.
Zeitalter, Marburg, 1855), Ad. Hilgenfeld (Glossolalie, Leipz. 1850), Maier (Glossolalie des apost. Zeitalters, 1855), Wieseler (in "Stud. u. Krit." 1838 and
1860), Schenkel (art. Zungenreden in his "Bibel-Lex." V. 732), Van
Hengel (De gave der talen, Leiden,
1864), Plumptre (art. Gift of Tongues in Smith’s, "B. D." IV.
3305, Am. ed.), Delitzsch (art. Pfingsten in Riehm’s "H. B.
A." 1880, p. 1184); K. Schmidt (in Herzog, 2d ed., xvii., 570 sqq.).
Comp. also Neander (I. 1),
Lange (II. 13), Ewald (VI. 106), Thiersch (p. 65, 3d ed.), Schaff (191 and
469), Farrar (St. Paul, ch. V. vol. I. 83).
The ascension of Christ to
heaven was followed ten days afterwards by the descent of the Holy Spirit upon
earth and the birth of the Christian Church. The Pentecostal event was the
necessary result of the Passover event. It could never have taken place without
the preceding resurrection and ascension. It was the first act of the
mediatorial reign of the exalted Redeemer in heaven, and the beginning of an
unbroken series of manifestations in fulfilment of his promise to be with his
people "alway, even unto the end of the world." For his ascension was
only a withdrawal of his visible local presence, and the beginning of his
spiritual omnipresence in the church which is "his body, the fulness of
him that filleth all in all." The Easter miracle and the Pentecostal
miracle are continued and verified by the daily moral miracles of regeneration
and sanctification throughout Christendom.
We have but one
authentic account of that epoch-making event, in the second chapter of Acts,
but in the parting addresses of our Lord to his disciples the promise of the
Paraclete who should lead them into the whole truth is very prominent,251 and the entire history of the apostolic church
is illuminated and heated by the Pentecostal fire.252
Pentecost, i.e. the
fiftieth day after the Passover-Sabbath,253
was a feast of joy and gladness, in the loveliest season of the year, and
attracted a very large number of visitors to Jerusalem from foreign lands.254 It
was one of the three great annual festivals of the Jews in which all the males
were required to appear before the Lord. Passover was the first, and the feast
of Tabernacles the third. Pentecost lasted one day, but the foreign Jews, after
the period of the captivity, prolonged it to two days. It was the "feast
of harvest," or "of the first fruits," and also (according to
rabbinical tradition) the anniversary celebration of the Sinaitic legislation,
which is supposed to have taken place on the fiftieth day after the Exodus from
the land of bondage.255
This festival was
admirably adapted for the opening event in the history of the apostolic church.
It pointed typically to the first Christian harvest, and the establishment of
the new theocracy in Christ; as the sacrifice of the paschal lamb and the
exodus from Egypt foreshadowed the redemption of the world by the crucifixion
of the Lamb of God. On no other day could the effusion of the Spirit of the
exalted Redeemer produce such rich results and become at once so widely known.
We may trace to this day not only the origin of the mother church at Jerusalem,
but also the conversion of visitors from other cities, as Damascus, Antioch,
Alexandria, and Rome, who on their return would carry the glad tidings to their
distant homes. For the strangers enumerated by Luke as witnesses of the great
event, represented nearly all the countries in which Christianity was planted
by the labors of the apostles.256
The Pentecost in the
year of the Resurrection was the last Jewish (i.e. typical) and the first
Christian Pentecost. It became the spiritual harvest feast of redemption from
sin, and the birthday of the visible kingdom of Christ on earth. It marks the
beginning of the dispensation of the Spirit, the third era in the history of
the revelation of the triune God. On this day the Holy Spirit, who had hitherto
wrought only sporadically and transiently, took up his permanent abode in
mankind as the Spirit of truth and holiness, with the fulness of saving grace,
to apply that grace thenceforth to believers, and to reveal and glorify Christ
in their hearts, as Christ had revealed and glorified the Father.
While the apostles and
disciples, about one hundred and twenty (ten times twelve) in number, no doubt
mostly Galilaeans,257
were assembled before the morning devotions of the festal day, and were waiting
in prayer for the fulfilment of the promise, the exalted Saviour sent from his
heavenly throne the Holy Spirit upon them, and founded his church upon earth.
The Sinaitic legislation was accompanied by "thunder and lightning, and a
thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud, and
all the people that was in the camp trembled."258 The
church of the new covenant war, ushered into existence with startling signs
which filled the spectators with wonder and fear. It is quite natural, as
Neander remarks, that "the greatest miracle in the inner life of mankind
should have been accompanied by extraordinary outward phenomena as sensible
indications of its presence." A supernatural sound resembling that of a
rushing mighty wind,259
came down from heaven and filled the whole house in which they were assembled;
and tongues like flames of fire, distributed themselves among them, alighting
for a while on each head.260 It is not said that these phenomena
were really wind and fire, they are only compared to these elements,261 as the form which the Holy Spirit assumed at the
baptism of Christ is compared to a dove.262 The tongues of flame were gleaming, but
neither burning nor consuming; they appeared and disappeared like electric
sparks or meteoric flashes. But these audible and visible signs were
appropriate symbols of the purifying, enlightening, and quickening power of the
Divine Spirit, and announced a new spiritual creation. The form of tongues
referred to the glossolalia, and the apostolic eloquence as a gift of
inspiration.
"And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit."
This is the real inward miracle, the main fact, the central idea of the
Pentecostal narrative. To the apostles it was their baptism, confirmation, and
ordination, all in one, for they received no other.263 To
them it was the great inspiration which enabled them hereafter to be
authoritative teachers of the gospel by tongue and pen. Not that it superseded
subsequent growth in knowledge, or special revelations on particular points (as
Peter receive at Joppa, and Paul on several occasions); but they were endowed
with such an understanding of Christ’s words and plan of salvation as they
never had before. What was dark and mysterious became now clear and full of
meaning to them. The Spirit revealed to them the person and work of the
Redeemer in the light of his resurrection and exaltation, and took full
possession of their mind and heart. They were raised, as it were, to the mount
of transfiguration, and saw Moses and Elijah and Jesus above them, face to
face, swimming in heavenly light. They had now but one desire to gratify, but
one object to live for, namely, to be witnesses of Christ and instruments of
the salvation of their fellow-men, that they too might become partakers of
their "inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away,
reserved in heaven."264
But the communication of
the Holy Spirit was not confined to the Twelve. It extended to the brethren of
the Lord, the mother of Jesus, the pious women who had attended his ministry,
and the whole brotherhood of a hundred and twenty souls who were assembled in
that chamber.265
They were "all" filled with the Spirit, and all spoke with
tongues;266 and Peter saw in the event the promised
outpouring of the Spirit upon "all flesh," sons and daughters, young
men and old men, servants and handmaidens.267 It is characteristic that in this
spring season of the church the women were sitting with the men, not in a
separate court as in the temple, nor divided by a partition as in the synagogue
and the decayed churches of the East to this day, but in the same room as equal
sharers in the spiritual blessings. The beginning was a prophetic anticipation
of the end, and a manifestation of the universal priesthood and brotherhood of
believers in Christ, in whom all are one, whether Jew or Greek, bond or free,
male or female.268
This new spiritual life,
illuminated, controlled, and directed by the Holy Spirit, manifested itself
first in the speaking with tongues towards God, and then in the prophetic
testimony towards the people. The former consisted of rapturous prayers and
anthems of praise, the latter of sober teaching and exhortation. From the Mount
of Transfiguration the disciples, like their Master, descended to the valley
below to heal the sick and to call sinners to repentance.
The mysterious gift of
tongues, or glossolalia, appears here for the first time, but became, with
other extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, a frequent phenomenon in the apostolic
churches, especially at Corinth, and is fully described by Paul. The
distribution of the flaming tongues to each of the disciples caused the
speaking with tongues. A new experience expresses itself always in appropriate
language. The supernatural experience of the disciples broke through the
confines of ordinary speech and burst out in ecstatic language of praise and
thanksgiving to God for the great works he did among them.269 It
was the Spirit himself who gave them utterance and played on their tongues, as
on new tuned harps, unearthly melodies of praise. The glossolalia was here, as
in all cases where it is mentioned, an act of worship and adoration, not an act
of teaching and instruction, which followed afterwards in the sermon of Peter.
It was the first Te Deum of the new-born church. It expressed itself in
unusual, poetic, dithyrambic style and with a peculiar musical intonation. It
was intelligible only to those who were in sympathy with the speaker; while
unbelievers scoffingly ascribed it to madness or excess of wine. Nevertheless
it served as a significant sign to all and arrested their attention to the
presence of a supernatural power.270
So far we may say that
the Pentecostal glossolalia was the same as that in the household of Cornelius
in Caesarea after his conversion, which may be called a Gentile Pentecost,271 as that of the twelve disciples of John the
Baptist at Ephesus, where it appears in connection with prophesying,272 and as that in the Christian congregation at
Corinth.273
But at its first
appearance the speaking with tongues differed in its effect upon the hearers by
coming home to them at once in their own mother-tongues; while in
Corinth it required an interpretation to be understood. The foreign spectators,
at least a number of them, believed that the unlettered Galilaeans spoke
intelligibly in the different dialects represented on the occasion.274 We
must therefore suppose either that the speakers themselves, were endowed, at
least temporarily, and for the particular purpose of proving their divine mission,
with the gift of foreign languages not learned by them before, or that the Holy
Spirit who distributed the tongues acted also as interpreter of the tongues,
and applied the utterances of the speakers to the susceptible among the
hearers.
The former is the most
natural interpretation of Luke’s language. Nevertheless I suggest the other
alternative as preferable, for the following reasons: 1. The temporary
endowment with a supernatural knowledge of foreign languages involves nearly
all the difficulties of a permanent endowment, which is now generally
abandoned, as going far beyond the data of the New Testament and known facts of
the early spread of the gospel. 2. The speaking with tongues began before the
spectators arrived, that is before there was any motive for the employment of
foreign languages.275 3. The intervening agency of the Spirit
harmonizes the three accounts of Luke, and Luke and Paul, or the Pentecostal
and the Corinthian glossolalia; the only difference remaining is that in
Corinth the interpretation of tongues was made by men in audible speech,276 in Jerusalem by the Holy Spirit in inward
illumination and application. 4. The Holy Spirit was certainly at work among
the hearers as well as the speakers, and brought about the conversion of three
thousand on that memorable day. If he applied and made effective the sermon of
Peter, why not also the preceding doxologies and benedictions? 5. Peter makes no allusion to foreign
languages, nor does the prophecy of Joel which he quotes. 6. This view best
explains the opposite effect upon the spectators. They did by no means all
understand the miracle, but the mockers, like those at Corinth,277 thought the disciples were out of their right
mind and talked not intelligible words in their native dialects, but
unintelligible nonsense. The speaking in a foreign language could not have been
a proof of drunkenness. It may be objected to this view that it implies a
mistake on the part of the hearers who traced the use of their mother-tongues
directly to the speakers; but the mistake referred not to the fact itself, but
only to the mode. It was the same Spirit who inspired the tongues of the
speakers and the hearts of the susceptible hearers, and raised both above the
ordinary level of consciousness.
Whichever view we take
of this peculiar feature of the Pentecostal glossolalia, in this diversified
application to the cosmopolitan multitude of spectators, it was a symbolical
anticipation and prophetic announcement of the universalness of the Christian
religion, which was to be proclaimed in all the languages of the earth and to
unite all nations in one kingdom of Christ. The humility and love of the church
united what the pride and hatred of Babel had scattered. In this sense we may
say that the Pentecostal harmony of tongues was the counterpart of the
BabyIonian confusion of tongues..278
The speaking with
tongues was followed by the sermon of Peter; the act of devotion, by an act of
teaching; the rapturous language of the soul in converse with God, by the sober
words of ordinary self-possession for the benefit of the people.
While the assembled
multitude wondered at this miracle with widely various emotions, St. Peter, the
Rock-man, appeared in the name of all the disciples, and addressed them with
remarkable clearness and force, probably in his own vernacular Aramaic, which
would be most familiar to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, possibly in Greek,
which would be better understood by the foreign visitors.279 He
humbly condescended to refute the charge of intoxication by reminding them of
the early hour of the day, when even drunkards are sober, and explained from
the prophecies of Joel and the sixteenth Psalm of David the meaning of the
supernatural phenomenon, as the work of that Jesus of Nazareth, whom the Jews
had crucified, but who was by word and deed, by his resurrection from the dead,
his exaltation to the right hand of God, and the effusion of the Holy Ghost, accredited
as the promised Messiah, according to the express prediction of the Scripture.
Then he called upon his hearers to repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus,
as the founder and head of the heavenly kingdom, that even they, though they
had crucified him, the Lord and the Messiah, might receive the forgiveness of
sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost, whose wonderful workings they saw and
heard in the disciples.
This was the first
independent testimony of the apostles, the first Christian sermon: simple,
unadorned, but full of Scripture truth, natural, suitable, pointed, and more
effective than any other sermon has been since, though fraught with learning
and burning with eloquence. It resulted in the conversion and baptism of three
thousand persons, gathered as first-fruits into the garners of the church.
In these first-fruits of
the glorified Redeemer, and in this founding of the new economy of Spirit and
gospel, instead of the old theocracy of letter and law, the typical meaning of
the Jewish Pentecost was gloriously fulfilled. But this birth-day of the
Christian church is in its turn only the beginning, the type and pledge, of a
still greater spiritual harvest and a universal feast of thanksgiving, when, in
the full sense of the prophecy of Joel, the Holy Spirit shall be poured out on
all flesh, when all the sons and daughters of men shall walk in his light, and
God shall be praised with new tongues of fire for the completion of his
wonderful work of redeeming love.
Notes.
<index
type=”globalSubject”
subject1=”Spiritual Gifts”
subject2=”Tongues” />
I. Glossolalia.—The Gift of Tongues is the
most difficult feature of the Pentecostal miracle. Our only direct source of
information is in <scripRef passage = "Acts 2">Acts 2</scripRef>, but the gift itself is mentioned in two other
passages, <scripRef passage = "Acts 10:46; 19:6">10:46 and 19:6</scripRef>, in the concluding section of <scripRef
passage = "Mark 16">Mark 16</scripRef> (of disputed genuineness), and fully described by Paul in <scripRef
passage = "1 Corinthians 12 and 14">1 Corinthians 12 and 14</scripRef>. There can be no doubt as to the existence of
that gift in the apostolic age, and if we had only either the account of
Pentecost, or only the account of Paul, we would not hesitate to decide as to
its nature, but the difficulty is in harmonizing the two.
(1) The terms
employed for the strange tongues are "new tongues" (<foreign
lang="el">kainai; glw'ssai</foreign>, <scripRef passage =
"Mark 16:17">Mark
16:17</scripRef>, where Christ promises the gift), "other
tongues," differing from ordinary tongues (<foreign
lang="el">e{terai gl</foreign>. <scripRef passage = "Acts
2:4">Acts 2:4</scripRef>, but nowhere else), "kinds" or
"diversities of tongues" (<foreign
lang="el">gevnh glwssw'n</foreign>, <scripRef passage = "1 Cor.
12:28">1 Cor. 12:28</scripRef>), or simply, "tongues" (<foreign
lang="el">glw'ssai,</foreign> <scripRef passage = "1 Cor.
14:22">1 Cor. 14:22</scripRef>), and in the singular, "tongue" (<foreign
lang="el">glw'ssa</foreign>, <scripRef passage = "1 Cor. 14:2, 13,
19, 27">14:2, 13, 19,
27</scripRef>, in which passages the E. V. inserts the
interpolation "unknown tongue"). To speak in tongues is called <foreign
lang="el">glwvssai"</foreign> or<foreign lang="el">
glwvssh/ lalei'n</foreign> (<scripRef passage = "Acts 2:4; 10:46;
19:6">Acts 2:4;
10:46; 19:6</scripRef>; <scripRef
passage = "1 Cor. 14:2, 4, 13, 14, 19, 27">1 Cor. 14:2, 4, 13, 14, 19, 27</scripRef>). Paul uses also the phrase to "pray with
the tongue" (<foreign lang="el">proseuvcesqai
glwvssh/</foreign>), as equivalent to "praying and singing
with the spirit" (<foreign lang="el">Proseuvcesqai
</foreign>and<foreign lang="el">
yavllein tw'/ pneuvmati</foreign>, and as distinct from <foreign
lang="el">proseuvcesqai</foreign> and <foreign
lang="el">yavllein tw'/ noi>v</foreign>, <scripRef passage =
"1 Cor. 14:14, 15">1 Cor. 14:14, 15</scripRef>). The plural and the term
"diversities" of tongues, as well as the distinction between tongues
of "angels" and tongues of "men" (<scripRef passage =
"1 Cor. 13:1">1
Cor. 13:1</scripRef>) point to different manifestations (speaking,
praying, singing), according to the individuality, education, and mood of the
speaker, but not to various foreign languages, which are excluded by
Paul’s description.
The term tongue has been
differently explained.
(a) Wieseler (and Van
Hengel): the organ of speech, used as a passive instrument; speaking with the
tongue alone, inarticulately, and in a low whisper. But this does not
explain the plural, nor the terms "new" and "other"
tongues; the organ of speech remaining the same.
(b) Bleek: rare,
provincial, archaic, poetic words, or glosses (whence our
"glossary"). But this technical meaning of <foreign
lang="el">glw'ssai</foreign> occurs only in classical writers (as Aristotle,
Plutarch, etc.) and among grammarians, not in Hellenistic Greek, and the
interpretation does not suit the singular <foreign
lang="el">glw'ssa</foreign> and <foreign
lang="el">glwvssh/ lalei'n</foreign>, as <foreign
lang="el">glw'ssa</foreign> could only mean a single gloss.
(c) Most commentators:
language or dialect (<foreign lang="el">diavlekto"</foreign>, comp. <scripRef passage =
"Acts 1:19; 2:6, 8; 21:40; 26:14">Acts 1:19; 2:6, 8; 21:40; 26:14</scripRef>). This is the correct view. "Tongue"
is an abridgment for "new tongue" (which was the original
term, Mark 16:17). It does not necessarily mean one of the known languages of
the earth, but may mean a peculiar handling of the vernacular dialect of the
speaker, or a new spiritual language never known before, a language of
immediate inspiration in a state of ecstasy. The "tongues" were
individual varieties of this language of inspiration.
(2) The glossolalia in
the Corinthian church, with which that at Caesarea in Acts 10:46, and
that at Ephesus, 19:6, are evidently identical, we know very well from the
description of Paul. It occurred in the first glow of enthusiasm after
conversion and continued for some time. It was not a speaking in foreign
languages, which would have been entirely useless in a devotional meeting of
converts, but a speaking in a language differing from all known languages, and
required an interpreter to be intelligible to foreigners. It had nothing to do
with the spread of the gospel, although it may, like other devotional
acts, have become a means of conversion to susceptible unbelievers if such were
present. It was an act of self-devotion, an act of thanksgiving,
praying, and singing, within the Christian congregation, by individuals who
were wholly absorbed in communion with God, and gave utterance to their
rapturous feelings in broken, abrupt, rhapsodic, unintelligible words. It was
emotional rather than intellectual, the language of the excited imagination,
not of cool reflection. It was the language of the spirit (<foreign
lang="el">pneu'ma</foreign>) or of ecstasy, as distinct from the language of
the understanding (<foreign lang="el">nou'"</foreign>). We might almost illustrate the difference by a
comparison of the style of the Apocalypse which was conceived<foreign
lang="el"> ejn pneuvmati</foreign> (<scripRef passage = "Rev.
1:10">Apoc. 1:10</scripRef>) with that of the Gospel of John, which was
written <foreign
lang="el">ejn noi>v</foreign>. The
speaker in tongues was in a state of spiritual intoxication, if we may use this
term, analogous to the poetic "frenzy" described by Shakespeare and
Goethe. His tongue was a lyre on which the divine Spirit played celestial
tunes. He was unconscious or only half conscious, and scarcely knew whether he
was, "in the body or out of the body." No one could understand this
unpremeditated religious rhapsody unless he was in a similar trance. To an
unbelieving outsider it sounded like a barbarous tongue, like the uncertain sound
of a trumpet, like the raving of a maniac (<scripRef passage =
"1 Cor. 14:23">1
Cor. 14:23</scripRef>), or the incoherent talk of a drunken man (<scripRef passage =
"Acts 2:13, 15">Acts
2:13, 15</scripRef>). "He that speaketh in a tongue speaketh not
to men, but to God; for no one understandeth; and in the spirit he
speaketh mysteries; but he that prophesieth speaketh unto men edification, and
encouragement, and comfort. He that speaketh in a tongue edifieth himself; but
he that prophesieth edifieth the church" (<scripRef passage =
"1 Cor. 14:2–4">1
Cor. 14:2–4</scripRef>; comp. 26–33).
The Corinthians
evidently overrated the glossolalia, as a showy display of divine power; but it
was more ornamental than useful, and vanished away with the bridal season of
the church. It is a mark of the great wisdom of Paul who was himself a master
in the glossolalia (<scripRef passage = "1 Cor. 14:18">1 Cor. 14:18</scripRef>), that he assigned to it a subordinate and
transient position, restrained its exercise, demanded an interpretation of it,
and gave the preference to the gifts of permanent usefulness in which God
displays his goodness and love for the general benefit. Speaking with tongues
is good, but prophesying and teaching in intelligible speech for the
edification of the congregation is better, and love to God and men in active
exercise is best of all (<scripRef passage = "1 Cor. 13">1 Cor. 13</scripRef>).
We do not know how long
the glossolalia, as thus described by Paul, continued. It passed away gradually
with the other extraordinary or strictly supernatural gifts of the apostolic
age. It is not mentioned in the Pastoral, nor in the Catholic Epistles. We have
but a few allusions to it at the close of the second century. Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. 1. v. c. 6, § 1) speaks of "many brethren" whom he heard in the church having
the gift of prophecy and of speaking in "diverse tongues" (<foreign
lang="el">Pantodapai'" glwvssai"</foreign>), bringing the hidden things of men (<foreign
lang="el">Ta; kpuvfia tw'n ajnqpwvpwn</foreign>) to light and expounding the mysteries of God (<foreign
lang="el">tav musthvria tou' qeou'</foreign>). It is not clear whether by the term
"diverse," which does not elsewhere occur, he means a speaking in
foreign languages, or in diversities of tongues altogether peculiar, like those
meant by Paul. The latter is more probable. Irenaeus himself had to learn the
language of Gaul. Tertullian (Adv. Marc. V. 8;
comp. De Anima, c. 9) obscurely
speaks of the spiritual gifts, including the gift of tongues, as being still
manifest among the Montanists to whom he belonged. At the time of Chrysostom it
had entirely disappeared; at least he accounts for the obscurity of the gift
from our ignorance of the fact. From that time on the glossolalia was usually
misunderstood as a miraculous and permanent gift of foreign languages for
missionary purposes. But the whole history of missions furnishes no clear
example of such a gift for such a purpose.
Analogous phenomena, of
an inferior kind, and not miraculous, yet serving as illustrations, either by
approximation or as counterfeits, reappeared from time to time in seasons of
special religious excitement, as among the Camisards and the prophets of the
Cevennes in France, among the early Quakers and Methodists, the Mormons, the
Readers ("Läsare") in Sweden in 1841 to 1843, in the Irish revivals
of 1859, and especially in the "Catholic Apostolic Church," commonly
called Irvingites, from 1831 to 1833, and even to this day. See Ed. Irving’s
articles on Gifts of the Holy Ghost called Supernatural, in his
"Works," vol. V., p. 509, etc.; Mrs. Oliphant’s Life of Irving, vol.
II.; the descriptions quoted in my Hist. Ap. Ch. § 55, p. 198; and from
friend and foe in Stanley’s Com. on Corinth., p. 252, 4th ed.;
also Plumptre in Smith’s, "Bible Dict.," IV. 3311, Am. ed. The
Irvingites who have written on the subject (Thiersch, Böhm, and Rossteuscher)
make a marked distinction between the Pentecostal glossolalia in foreign
languages and the Corinthian glossolalia in devotional meetings; and it is the
latter only which they compare to their own experience. Several years ago I
witnessed this phenomenon in an Irvingite congregation in New York; the words
were broken, ejaculatory and unintelligible, but uttered in abnormal,
startling, impressive sounds, in a state of apparent unconsciousness and
rapture, and without any control over the tongue, which was seized as it were
by a foreign power. A friend and colleague (Dr. Briggs), who witnessed it in
1879 in the principal Irvingite church at London, received the same impression.
(3) The Pentecostal glossolalia
cannot have been essentially different from the Corinthian: it was
likewise an ecstatic act of worship, of thanksgiving and praise for the great
deeds of God in Christ, a dialogue of the soul with God. It was the purest and
the highest utterance of the jubilant enthusiasm of the new-born church of
Christ in the possession of the Holy Spirit. It began before the spectators
arrived (comp. Acts 2:4 and 6), and was followed by a missionary discourse of
Peter in plain, ordinary language. Luke mentions the same gift twice again
(Luke 10 and 19) evidently as an act of devotion, and not of teaching.
Nevertheless, according
to the evident meaning of Luke’s narrative, the Pentecostal glossolalia differed
from the Corinthian not only by its intensity, but also by coming home to the
hearers then present in their own vernacular dialects, without the
medium of a human interpreter. Hence the term "different" tongues,
which Paul does not use, nor Luke in any other passage; hence the astonishment
of the foreigners at hearing each his own peculiar idiom from the lips of those
unlettered Galileans. It is this heteroglossolalia, as I may term it,
which causes the chief difficulty. I will give the various views which either
deny, or shift, or intensify, or try to explain this foreign element.
(a) The rationalistic
interpretation cuts the Gordian knot by denying the miracle, as a mistake of
the narrator or of the early Christian tradition. Even Meyer surrenders the heteroglossolalia,
as far as it differs from the Corinthian glossolalia, as an unhistorical
tradition which originated in a mistake, because he considers the sudden
communication of the facility of speaking foreign languages as "logically
impossible, and psychologically and morally inconceivable" (Com. on Acts
2:4, 4th ed.). But Luke, the companion of Paul, must have been familiar with
the glossolalia in the apostolic churches, and in the two other passages where
he mentions it he evidently means the same phenomenon as that described by
Paul.
(b) The
heteroglossolalia was a mistake of the hearers (a Hörwunder), who
in the state of extraordinary excitement and profound sympathy imagined
that they heard their own language from the disciples; while Luke simply narrates
their impression without correcting it. This view was mentioned (though not
adopted) by Gregory of Nyssa, and held by Pseudo-Cyprian, the venerable Bede,
Erasmus, Schneckenburger and others. If the pentecostal language was the
Hellenistic dialect, it could, with its composite character, its Hebraisms and
Latinisms, the more easily produce such an effect when spoken by persons
stirred in the inmost depth of their hearts and lifted out of themselves. St.
Xavier is said to have made himself understood by the Hindoos without knowing
their language, and St. Bernard, St. Anthony of Padua, St. Vincent Ferrer were
able, by the spiritual power of their eloquence, to kindle the enthusiasm and
sway the passions of multitudes who were ignorant of their language. Olshausen
and Bäumlein call to aid the phenomena of magnetism and somnambulism, by which
people are brought into mysterious rapport.
(c) The glossolalia was
speaking in archaic, poetic glosses, with an admixture of foreign words. This
view, learnedly defended by Bleek (1829), and adopted with modifications by
Baur (1838), has already been mentioned above (p. 233), as inconsistent with
Hellenistic usage, and the natural meaning of Luke.
(d) The mystical
explanation regards the Pentecostal Gift of Tongues in some way as a
counterpart of the Confusion of Tongues, either as a temporary restoration of
the original language of Paradise, or as a prophetic anticipation of the
language of heaven in which all languages are united. This theory, which is
more deep than clear, turns the heteroglossolalia into a homoglossolalia, and
puts the miracle into the language itself and its temporary restoration or
anticipation. Schelling calls the Pentecostal miracle "Babel reversed" (das umgekehrte Babel), and says: "<foreign lang="de">Dem Ereigniss der
Sprachenverwirrung lässt sich in der ganzen Folge der religiösen Geschichte nur
Eines an die Seite stellen, die momentan wiederhergestellte Spracheinheit (<foreign lang="el">oJmoglwssiva</foreign>) am Pfingstfeste, mit dem das Christenthum, bestimmt
das ganze Menschengeschlecht durch die Erkenntniss des Einen wahren Gottes
wieder zur Einheit zu verknüpfen, seinen grossen Weg beginnt</foreign>." (Einl. in d.
Philos. der Mythologie, p. 109). A
similar view was defended by Billroth (in his Com. on 1
Cor. 14, p. 177), who suggests that
the primitive language combined elements of the different derived languages, so
that each listener heard fragments of his own. Lange (II. 38) sees here the normal language of the
inner spiritual life which unites the redeemed, and which runs through all ages
of the church as the leaven of languages, regenerating, transforming, and
consecrating them to sacred uses, but he assumes also, like Olshausen, a
sympathetic rapport between speakers and hearers. Delitzsch (l.c. p. 1186) says: "<foreign
lang="de">Die apostolische Verkündigung erging damals in einer
Sprache des Geistes, welche das Gegenbild der in Babel zerschellten Einen Menschheitssprache
war und von allen ohne Unterschied der Sprachen gleichmässig verstanden wurde.
Wie das weisse Licht alle Farben aus sich erschliesst, so fiel die
geistgewirkte Apostelsprache wie in prismatischer Brechung verständlich in
aller Ohren und ergreifend in aller Herzen. Es war ein Vorspiel der Einigung,
in welcher die von Babel datirende Veruneinigung sich aufheben wird. Dem
Sivan-Tag des steinernen Buchstabens trat ein Sivan-Tag des lebendigmachenden
Geistes entgegen. Es war der Geburtstag der Kirche, der Geistesgemeinde im
Unterschiede von der altestamentlichen Volksgemeinde; darum nennt Chrysostomus
in einer Pfingsthomilie die Pentekoste die Metropole der Feste</foreign>." Ewald’s view (VI. 116 sqq.) is likewise mystical, but
original and expressed with his usual confidence. He calls the glossolalia an
"<foreign
lang="de">Auflallen und Aufjauchzen der Christlichen
Begeisterung, ein stürmisches Hervorbrechen aller der verborgenen Gefühle und
Gedanken in ihrer vollsten Unmittelbarkeit und Gewalt</foreign>." He says that on the day of Pentecost the
most unusual expressions and synonyms of different languages (as <foreign
lang="el">ajbbav oJ pathvr</foreign>, <scripRef passage =
"Gal. 4:6">Gal.
4:6</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Rom.
8:15">Rom. 8:15</scripRef>, and <foreign
lang="el">mara;n ajqav</foreign> <scripRef passage = "1 Cor.
16:22">1 Cor. 16:22</scripRef>), with reminiscences of words of Christ as
resounding from heaven, commingled in the vortex of a new language of the
Spirit, and gave utterance to the exuberant joy of the young Christianity in
stammering hymns of praise never heard before or since except in the weaker
manifestations of the same gift in the Corinthian and other apostolic churches.
(e) The Pentecostal
glossolalia was a permanent endowment of the apostles with a miraculous
knowledge of all those foreign languages in which they were to preach the
gospel. As they were sent to preach to all nations, they were gifted with the
tongues of all nations. This theory was first clearly brought out by the
fathers in the fourth and fifth centuries, long after the gift of tongues had
disappeared, and was held by most of the older divines, though with different
modifications, but is now abandoned by nearly all Protestant commentators
except Bishop Wordsworth, who defends it with patristic quotations. Chrysostom
supposed that each disciple was assigned the particular language which he
needed for his evangelistic work (Hom. on Acts 2). Augustine went much
further, saying (De Civ. Dei, XVIII. c. 49): "Every one of them spoke in the
tongues of all nations; thus signifying that the unity of the catholic church
would embrace all nations, and would in like manner speak in all tongues."
Some confined the number of languages to the number of foreign nations and
countries mentioned by Luke (Chrysostom), others extended it to 70 or 72
(Augustine and Epiphanius), or 75, after the number of the sons of Noah (Gen.
10), or even to 120 (Pacianus), after the number of the disciples present.
Baronius mentions these opinions in Annal. ad Ann. 34, vol. I. 197. The
feast of languages in the Roman Propaganda perpetuates this theory, but turns
the moral miracle of spiritual enthusiasm into a mechanical miracle of acquired
learning in unknown tongues. Were all the speakers to speak at once, as on the
day of Pentecost, it would be a more than Babylonian confusion of tongues.
Such a stupendous
miracle as is here supposed might be justified by the far-reaching importance
of that creative epoch, but it is without a parallel and surrounded by
insuperable difficulties. The theory ignores the fact that the glossolalia
began before the spectators arrived, that is, before there was any necessity of
using foreign languages. It isolates the Pentecostal glossolalia and brings
Luke into conflict with Paul and with himself; for in all other cases the gift
of tongues appears, as already remarked, not as a missionary agency, but as an
exercise of devotion. It implies that all the one hundred disciples present,
including the women—for a tongue as of fire "sat upon each of
them"—were called to be traveling evangelists. A miracle of that kind was
superfluous (a Luxuswunder); for since the conquest of Alexander the
Great the Greek language was so generally understood throughout the Roman
empire that the apostles scarcely needed any other—unless it was Latin and
their native Aramaean—for evangelistic purposes; and the Greek was used in fact
by all the writers of the New Testament, even by James of Jerusalem, and in a
way which shows that they had learnt it like other people, by early training
and practice. Moreover there is no trace of such a miraculous knowledge, nor
any such use of it after Pentecost.280 On the contrary, we must infer that
Paul did not understand the Lycaonian dialect (<scripRef passage =
"Acts 14:11–14">Acts
14:11–14</scripRef>), and we learn from early ecclesiastical
tradition that Peter used Mark as an interpreter (<foreign
lang="el">eJrmhneuv" </foreign>or<foreign lang="el">
eJrmhneuthv"</foreign>, interpres, according to Papias,
Irenaeus, and Tertullian). God does not supersede by miracle the learning of
foreign languages and other kinds of knowledge which can be attained by the
ordinary use of our mental faculties and opportunities.
(f) It was a temporary
speaking in foreign languages confined to the day of Pentecost and passing
away with the flame-like tongues. The exception was justified by the object,
namely, to attest the divine mission of the apostles and to foreshadow the
universalness of the gospel. This view is taken by most modern commentators who
accept the account of Luke, as Olshausen (who combines with it the theory b),
Baumgarten, Thiersch, Rossteuscher, Lechler, Hackett, Gloag, Plumptre (in his Com.
on Acts), and myself (in H. Ap. Ch.), and accords best
with the plain sense of the narrative. But it likewise makes an essential
distinction between the Pentecostal and the Corinthian glossolalia, which is
extremely improbable. A temporary endowment with the knowledge of foreign
languages unknown before is as great if not a greater miracle than a permanent
endowment, and was just as superfluous at that time in Jerusalem as afterwards
at Corinth; for the missionary sermon of Peter, which was in one language only,
was intelligible to all.
(g) The Pentecostal
glossolalia was essentially the same as the Corinthian glossolalia, namely, an
act of worship, and not of teaching; with only a slight difference in the
medium of interpretation: it was at once internally interpreted and applied by
the Holy Spirit himself to those hearers who believed and were converted, to
each in his own vernacular dialect; while in Corinth the interpretation was
made either by the speaker in tongues, or by one endowed with the gift of
interpretation.
I can find no authority
for this theory, and therefore suggest it with modesty, but it seems to me to
avoid most of the difficulties of the other theories, and it brings Luke into
harmony with himself and with Paul. It is certain that the Holy Spirit moved
the hearts of the hearers as well as the tongues of the speakers on that first
day of the new creation in Christ. In a natural form the Pentecostal
heteroglossolalia is continued in the preaching of the gospel in all tongues,
and in more than three hundred translations of the Bible.
II. False interpretations of the Pentecostal
miracle.
(1) The older
rationalistic interpretation resolves the wind into a thunderstorm or a
hurricane surcharged with electricity, the tongues of fire into flashes of
lightning falling into the assembly, or electric sparks from a sultry
atmosphere, and the glossolalia into a praying of each in his own vernacular,
instead of the sacred old Hebrew, or assumes that some of the disciples knew
several foreign dialects before and used them on the occasion. So Paulus,
Thiess, Schulthess, Kuinöl, Schrader, Fritzsche, substantially also Renan, who
dwells on the violence of Oriental thunderstorms, but explains the glossolalia
differently according to analogous phenomena of later times. This view makes
the wonder of the spectators and hearers at such an ordinary occurrence a
miracle. It robs them of common sense, or charges dishonesty on the narrator.
It is entirely inapplicable to the glossolalia in Corinth, which must certainly
be admitted as an historical phenomenon of frequent occurrence in the apostolic
church. It is contradicted by the comparative <foreign
lang="el">w{sper </foreign>and<foreign lang="el">
wJseiv</foreign> of the narrative, which distinguishes the sound
from ordinary wind and the tongues of flame from ordinary fire; just as the
words, "like a dove," to which all the Gospels compare the appearance
of the Holy Spirit at Christ’s baptism, indicate that no real dove is intended.
(2) The modern
rationalistic or mythical theory resolves the miracle into a subjective vision
which was mistaken by the early Christians for an objective external fact. The
glossolalia of Pentecost (not that in Corinth, which is acknowledged as
historical) symbolizes the true idea of the universalness of the gospel and the
Messianic unification of languages and nationalities (<foreign
lang="el">eij\" lao;" Kurivou kai;
glw'ssa miva </foreign> as the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs expresses it). It is an
imitation of the rabbinical fiction (found already in Philo) that the Sinaitic
legislation was proclaimed through the bath-kol, the echo of the voice
of God, to all nations in the seventy languages of the world. So Zeller (Contents
and Origin of the Acts, I. 203–205), who thinks that the whole pentecostal
fact, if it occurred at all. "must have been distorted beyond recognition
in our record." But his chief argument is: "the impossibility and
incredibility of miracles," which he declares (p. 175, note) to be
"an axiom" of the historian; thus acknowledging the negative
presupposition or philosophical prejudice which underlies his historical
criticism. We hold, on the contrary, that the historian must accept the facts
as he finds them, and if he cannot explain them satisfactorily from natural
causes or subjective illusions, he must trace them to supernatural forces. Now
the Christian church, which is certainly a most palpable and undeniable fact,
must have originated in a certain place, at a certain time, and in a certain
manner, and we can imagine no more appropriate and satisfactory account of its
origin than that given by Luke. Baur and Zeller think it impossible that three
thousand persons should have been converted in one day and in one place. They
forget that the majority of the hearers were no skeptics, but believers in a
supernatural revelation, and needed only to be convinced that Jesus of Nazareth
was the promised Messiah. Ewald says against Zeller, without naming him (VI.
119) "Nothing can be more
perverse than to deny the historical truth of the event related in Acts
2." We hold with Rothe (Vorlesungen über Kirchengeschichte I. 33)
that the Pentecostal event was a real miracle ("ein eigentliches Wunder"),
which the Holy Spirit wrought on the disciples and which endowed them with the
power to perform miracles (according to the promise, <scripRef passage =
"Mark 16:17, 18">Mark
16:17, 18</scripRef>). Without these miraculous powers Christianity
could not have taken hold on the world as it then stood. The Christian church
itself, with its daily experiences of regeneration and conversion at home and
in heathen lands, is the best living and omnipresent proof of its supernatural
origin.
III. Time and Place, of Pentecost. Did it
occur on a Lord’s Day (the eighth after Easter), or on a Jewish Sabbath? In a private house, or in the temple
? We decide for the Lord’s Day,
and for a private house. But opinions are much divided, and the arguments
almost equally balanced.
(1) The choice of the day
in the week depends partly on the interpretation of "the morrow after the
(Passover) Sabbath" from which the fiftieth day was to be counted,
according to the legislative prescription in <scripRef passage =
"Lev. 23:11, 15, 16">Lev. 23:11, 15, 16</scripRef>—namely, whether it was the morrow following the first
day of the Passover, i.e. the 16th of Nisan, or the day after the regular
Sabbath in the Passover week; partly on the date of Christ’s crucifixion,
which took place on a Friday, namely, whether this was the 14th or 15th of
Nisan. If we assume that the Friday of Christ’s death was the 14th of Nisan,
then the 15th was a Sabbath, and Pentecost in that year fall on a Sunday;
but if the Friday of the crucifixion was the 15th of Nisan (as I hold myself,
see § 16, p. 133), then Pentecost fell on a Jewish Sabbath (so Wieseler,
who fixes it on Saturday, May 27, a.d.
30), unless we count from the end of the 16th of Nisan (as Wordsworth
and Plumptre do, who put Pentecost on a Sunday). But if we take the "Sabbath"
in Lev. 23 in the usual sense of the weekly Sabbath (as the Sadducees and
Karaites did), then the Jewish Pentecost fell always on a Sunday.
At all events the Christian church has uniformly observed Whit-Sunday on the
eighth Lord’s Day after Easter, adhering in this case, as well as in the
festivals of the resurrection (Sunday) and of the ascension (Thursday), to the
old tradition as to the day of the week when the event occurred.
This view would furnish an additional reason for the substitution of Sunday, as
the day of the Lord’s resurrection and the descent of the Holy Spirit, for the
Jewish Sabbath. Wordsworth: "Thus the first day of the week has been
consecrated to all the three Persons of the ever-blessed and undivided Trinity;
and the blessings of Creation, Redemption, and Sanctification are commemorated
on the Christian Sunday." Wieseler assumes, without good reason, that the
ancient church deliberately changed the day from opposition to the Jewish
Sabbath; but the celebration of Pentecost together with that of the
Resurrection seems to be as old as the Christian church and has its precedent
in the example of Paul, <scripRef passage = "Acts 18:21;
20:16">Acts 18:21;
20:16</scripRef>.—Lightfoot (Horae Hebr. in Acta Ap. 2:1;
Opera II. 692) counts Pentecost from the 16th of Nisan, but nevertheless
puts the first Christian Pentecost on a Sunday by an unusual and questionable
interpretation of <scripRef passage = "Acts 2:1">Acts 2:1</scripRef> <foreign lang="el">ejn
tw'/ sunplhrou'sqai th;n hJmevran th'" Penthkosth'"</foreign>, which he makes to mean "when the day of
Pentecost was fully gone," instead of "was fully come."
But whether Pentecost fell on a Jewish Sabbath or on a Lord’s Day, the
coincidence in either case was significant.
(2) As to the place,
Luke calls it simply a "house" (<foreign
lang="el">oi\ko",</foreign> <scripRef passage = "Acts
2:2">Acts 2:2</scripRef>), which can hardly mean the temple (not
mentioned till 2:46). It was probably the same "upper room" or
chamber which he had mentioned in the preceding chapter, as the well known
usual meeting place of the, disciples after the ascension, <foreign
lang="el">to; uJperw'/on</foreign> ...<foreign
lang="el">ou| h\san katamevnonte"</foreign>, 1:13). So Neander, Meyer, Ewald, Wordsworth,
Plumptre, Farrar, and others. Perhaps it was the same chamber in which our Lord
partook of the Paschal Supper with them (<scripRef passage =
"Mark 14:14, 15">Mark
14:14, 15</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Matt.
26:28">Matt. 26:28</scripRef>). Tradition locates both events in the
"Coenaculum," a room in an irregular building called "David’s
Tomb," which lies outside of Zion Gate some distance from Mt. Moriah. (See
William M. Thomson, The Land and the Book, new ed. 1880, vol. I. p. 535
sq.). But Cyril of Jerusalem (Catech. XVI. 4) states that the apartment where
the Holy Spirit descended was afterwards converted into a church. The uppermost
room under the flat roof of Oriental houses. (<foreign
lang="el">uJperw'/on</foreign>, <foreign lang="he">[}liYh</foreign>) as often used as a place of devotion (comp.
Acts 20:8). But as a private house could not possibly hold so great a
multitude, we must suppose that Peter addressed the people in the street from
the roof or from the outer staircase.
Many of the older divines,
as also Olshausen, Baumgarten, Wieseler, Lange, Thiersch (and myself in first
ed. of Ap. Ch., p. 194), locate the Pentecostal scene in the temple, or
rather in one of the thirty side buildings around it, which Josephus calls
"houses" (<foreign lang="el">oi[kou"</foreign>) in his description of Solomon’s temple (Ant.
VIII. 3, 2), or in Solomon’s porch, which remained from the first temple, and
where the disciples assembled afterwards (<scripRef passage =
"Acts 5:12">Acts
5:12</scripRef>, comp. <scripRef passage =
"Acts 3:11">3:11</scripRef>). In favor of this view may be said, that it
better agrees with the custom of the apostles (<scripRef passage =
"Luke 24:53">Luke
24:53</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Acts 2:46; 5:12,
42">Acts 2:46; 5:12,
42</scripRef>), with the time of the miracle (the morning hour
of prayer), and with the assembling of a large multitude of at least three
thousand hearers, and also that it seems to give additional solemnity to the
event when it took place in the symbolical and typical sanctuary of the old
dispensation. But it is difficult to conceive that the hostile Jews should have
allowed the poor disciples to occupy one of those temple buildings and not
interfered with the scene. In the dispensation of the Spirit which now began, the
meanest dwelling, and the body of the humblest Christian becomes a temple of
God. Comp. <scripRef passage = "John 4:24">John 4:24</scripRef>.
IV. Effects of the Day of Pentecost. From Farrar’s Life and Work of St. Paul (I. 93): "That this first Pentecost marked an eternal moment in the destiny
of mankind, no reader of history will surely deny. Undoubtedly in every age
since then the sons of God have, to an extent unknown before, been taught by
the Spirit of God. Undoubtedly since then, to an extent unrealized before, we
may know that the Spirit of Christ dwelleth in us. Undoubtedly we may enjoy a
nearer sense of union with God in Christ than was accorded to the saints of the
Old Dispensation, and a thankful certainty that we see the days which kings and
prophets desired to see and did not see them, and hear the truths which they
desired to hear and did not hear them. And this New Dispensation began
henceforth in all its fulness. It was no exclusive consecration to a separated
priesthood, no isolated endowment of a narrow apostolate. It was the
consecration of a whole church—its men, its women, its children—to be all of
them ’a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar
people;’ it was an endowment, of which the full free offer was meant ultimately
to be extended to all mankind. Each one of that hundred and twenty was not the
exceptional recipient of a blessing and witness of a revelation, but the
forerunner and representative of myriads more. And this miracle was not merely
transient, but is continuously renewed. It is not a rushing sound and gleaming
light, seen perhaps for a moment, but it is a living energy and an unceasing
inspiration. It is not a visible symbol to a gathered handful of human souls in
the upper room of a Jewish house, but a vivifying wind which shall henceforth
breathe in all ages of the world’s history; a tide of light which is rolling,
and shall roll, from shore to shore until the earth is fall of the knowledge of
the Lord as the waters cover the sea."
</div3><div3 type =
"Section" n="25" title="The Church of Jerusalem and
the Labors of Peter">
<index
type = "globalSubject"
subject1 = "Apostles"
subject2 = "Peter"
/>
§ 25. The Church of Jerusalem and the Labors of Peter.
<foreign
lang="el">Su; ei|
Pevtro", kai; ejpi; tauvth/ pevtra/ oikodomhvsw mou th;n ejkklhsivan, kai;
puvlai a{/dou ouj katiscuvsousin aujth'"</foreign>.—<scripRef passage =
"Matt. 16:18">Matt. 16:18</scripRef>.
Literature.
I. Genuine sources:
Acts 2 to 12; Gal. 2; and two Epistles of Peter.
Comp. the Commentaries on
Acts, and the Petrine Epistles.
Among the commentators of
Peter’s Epp. I mention Archbishop Leighton
(in many editions, not critical, but devout and spiritual), Steiger (1832,
translated by Fairbairn, 1836), John Brown (1849, 2 vols.), Wiesinger
(1856 and 1862, in Olshausen’s Com.), Schott
(1861 and 1863), De Wette (3d ed. by Brückner, 1865), Huther (in Meyer’s
Com., 4th ed. 1877), Fronmüller
(in Lange’s Bibelwerk, transl. by Mombert, 1867), Alford (3d ed. 1864), John Lillie (ed. by
Schaff, 1869), Demarest (Cath. Epp 1879), Mason and Plumptre (in Ellicott’s Com., 1879), Plumptre (in the "Cambridge Bible,"
1879, with a very full introduction, pp. 1–83), Salmond (in Schaff’s Pop.
Com. 1883). Comp. also the corresponding sections in the works on the Apostolic
Age mentioned in §20, and my H. Ap. Ch. pp. 348–377.
II. Apocryphal
sources: <foreign
lang="el">Eujaggevlion kata; Pevtron of
Ebionite origin, Khvrugma Pevtrou , Pravxei" Pevtrou, jApokavluyi" Pevtrou, Perivodoi
Pevtrou</foreign> (Itinerarium
Petri), <foreign lang="el">Pravxei"
tw'n aJgivwn ajpostovlwn Pevtrou kai; Pauvlou</foreign> (Acta
Petri et Pauli). See Tischendorf’s Acta Apost. Apocr 1–39, and Hilgenfeld’s Novum Testamentum extra canonem
receptum (1866), IV. 52 sqq. The
Pseudo-Clementine "Homilies" are a glorification of Peter at the
expense of Paul; the, "Recognitions" are a Catholic recension and
modification of the "Homilies." The pseudo-Clementine literature will
be noticed in the second Period.
III. Special works on
Peter:
E. Th. Mayerhoff: Historisch-Kritische Einleitung in die Petrinischen
Schriften. Hamb. 1835.
Windischmann (R. C.): Vindiciae Petrinae. Ratisb. 1836.
Stenglein (R. C.): Ueber den 25 jahrigen
Aufenthalt des heil. Petrus in Rom. In the "Tübinger Theol. Quartalschrift," 1840.
J. Ellendorf: 1st Petrus in Rom und Bishof der römischen Gemeinde
gewesen? Darmstadt, 1841. Transl. in the "Bibliotheca
Sacra," Andover, 1858, No. 3. The author, a liberal R. Cath., comes to the
conclusion that Peter’s presence in Rome can never be proven.
Carlo
Passaglia (Jesuit): De Praerogativis Beati Petri, Apostolorum
Principis. Ratisbon, 1850.
Thomas
W. Allies (R. C.): St. Peter, his
Name and his Office as set forth in Holy Scripture. London, 1852. Based
upon the preceding work of Father Passaglia.
Bernh.
Weiss: Der Petrinische Lehrbegriff. Berlin, 1855. Comp. his Bibl. Theol. des N. T,
3d ed. 1880, and his essay, Die
petrinische Frage in "Studien und Kritiken," 1865, pp. 619–657, 1866, pp. 255–308, and
1873, pp. 539–546.
Thos.
Greenwood: Cathedra Petri. Lond., vol. I. 1859, chs. I and II. pp. 1–50.
Perrone (R. C.): S. Pietro in Roma. Rome, 1864.
C. Holsten (of the Tübingen School): Zum Evangelium des Paulus und des Petrus. Rostock, 1868.
R. A. Lipsius: Die Quellen der röm.
Petrussage. Kiel, 1872. By the same: Chronologie der röm Bischöfe. Kiel, 1869. Lipsius examines carefully the
heretical sources of the Roman Peter-legend, and regards it as a fiction from
beginning to end. A summary of his view is given by
Samuel
M. Jackson: Lipsius on the Roman
Peter-Legend. In the "Presbyterian Quarterly and Princeton
Review" (N. York) for 1876, pp. 265 sqq.
G. Volkmar: Die römische Papstmythe. Zürich, 1873.
A. Hilgenfeld: Petrus in Rom und Johannes in Kleinasien. In his
"Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Theol." for 1872. Also his
Einleitung in das N. T., 1875,
pp. 618 sqq.
W. Krafft: Petrus in Rom. Bonn, 1877. In the "Theol. Arbeiten des
rhein. wissenschaftl. Predigervereins,
" III. 185–193.
Joh.
Friedrich (Old Cath.): Zur ältesten Gesch.
des Primates in der Kirche. Bonn,
1879.
William
M. Taylor: Peter the Apostle. N. York,
1879.
The congregation of
Jerusalem became the mother church of Jewish Christianity, and thus of all
Christendom. It grew both inwardly and outwardly under the personal direction
of the apostles, chiefly of Peter, to whom the Lord had early assigned a
peculiar prominence in the work of building his visible church on earth. The
apostles were assisted by a number of presbyters, and seven deacons or persons
appointed to care for the poor and the sick. But the Spirit moved in the whole
congregation, bound to no particular office. The preaching of the gospel, the
working of miracles in the name of Jesus, and the attractive power of a holy walk
in faith and love, were the instruments of progress. The number of the
Christians, or, as they at first called themselves, disciples, believers,
brethren, saints, soon rose to five thousand. They continued steadfastly under
the instruction and in the fellowship of the apostles, in the daily worship of
God and celebration of the holy Supper with their agapae or love-feasts. They
felt themselves to be one family of God, members of one body under one head,
Jesus Christ; and this fraternal unity expressed itself even in a voluntary
community of goods—an anticipation, as it were, of an ideal state at the end of
history, but without binding force upon any other congregation. They adhered as
closely to the temple worship and the Jewish observances as the new life admitted
and as long as there was any hope of the conversion of Israel as a nation. They
went daily to the temple to teach, as their Master had done, but held their
devotional meetings in private houses.281
The addresses of Peter
to the people and the Sanhedrin282
are remarkable for their natural simplicity and adaptation. They are full of
fire and vigor, yet full of wisdom and persuasion, and always to the point.
More practical and effective sermons were never preached. They are testimonies
of an eye-witness so timid a few weeks before, and now so bold and ready at any
moment to suffer and die for the cause. They are an expansion of his confession
that Jesus is the Christ the Son of the living God, the Saviour. He preached no
subtle theological doctrines, but a few great facts and truths: the crucifixion
and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah, already known to his hearers for his
mighty signs and wonders, his exaltation to the right hand of Almighty God, the
descent and power of the Holy Spirit, the fulfilment of prophecy, the
approaching judgment and glorious restitution of all things, the paramount
importance of conversion and faith
in Jesus as the only name whereby we can be saved. There breathes in them an
air of serene joy and certain triumph.
We can form no clear
conception of this bridal season of the Christian church when no dust of earth
soiled her shining garments, when she was wholly absorbed in the contemplation
and love of her divine Lord, when he smiled down upon her from his throne in
heaven, and added daily to the number of the saved. It was a continued
Pentecost, it was paradise restored. "They did take their food with
gladness and singleness of heart, praising God, and having favor with all the
people."283
Yet even in this
primitive apostolic community inward corruption early appeared, and with it
also the severity of discipline and self-purification, in the terrible sentence
of Peter on the hypocritical Ananias and Sapphira.
At first Christianity
found favor with the people. Soon, however, it had to encounter the same
persecution as its divine founder had undergone, but only, as before, to
transform it into a blessing and a means of growth.
The persecution was
begun by the skeptical sect of the Sadducees, who took offence at the doctrine
of the resurrection of Christ, the centre of all the apostolic preaching.
When Stephen, one of the
seven deacons of the church at Jerusalem, a man full of faith and zeal, the
forerunner of the apostle Paul, boldly assailed the perverse and obstinate
spirit of Judaism, and declared the approaching downfall of the Mosaic economy,
the Pharisees made common cause with the Sadducees against the gospel. Thus
began the emancipation of Christianity from the temple-worship of Judaism, with
which it had till then remained at least outwardly connected. Stephen himself
was falsely accused of blaspheming Moses, and after a remarkable address in his
own defence, he was stoned by a mob (a.d.
37), and thus became the worthy leader of the sacred host of martyrs, whose
blood was thenceforth to fertilize the soil of the church. From the blood of
his martyrdom soon sprang the great apostle of the Gentiles, now his bitterest
persecutor, and an eye-witness of his heroism and of the glory of Christ in his
dying face.284
The stoning of Stephen
was the signal for a general persecution, and thus at the same time for the spread
of Christianity over all Palestine and the region around. And it was soon
followed by the conversion of Cornelius of Caesarea, which opened the door for
the mission to the Gentiles. In this important event Peter likewise was the
prominent actor.
After some seven years
of repose the church at Jerusalem suffered a new persecution under king Herod
Agrippa (a.d. 44). James the
elder, the brother of John, was beheaded. Peter was imprisoned and condemned to
the same fate; but he was miraculously liberated, and then forsook Jerusalem,
leaving the church to the care of James the "brother of the Lord."
Eusebius, Jerome, and the Roman Catholic historians assume that he went at that
early period to Rome, at least on a temporary visit, if not for permanent residence.
But the book of Acts (<scripRef passage = "Acts 12:17">12:17</scripRef>) says only: "He departed, and went into
another place." The indefiniteness of this expression, in connection
with a remark of Paul. <scripRef passage = "1 Cor. 9:5">1 Cor. 9:5</scripRef>, is best explained on the supposition that he
had hereafter no settled home, but led the life of a travelling missionary like
most of the apostles.
The Later Labors of Peter.
Afterwards we find Peter
again in Jerusalem at the apostolic council (a.d.
50);285 then at Antioch (51); where he came into
temporary collision with Paul;286
then upon missionary tours, accompanied by his wife (57);287 perhaps among the dispersed Jews in Babylon or
in Asia Minor, to whom he addressed his epistles.288 Of
a residence of Peter in Rome the New Testament contains no trace, unless, as
the church fathers and many modern expositors think, Rome is intended by the
mystic "Babylon" mentioned in 1 Pet. 5:13 (as in the Apocalypse), but
others think of Babylon on the Euphrates, and still others of Babylon on the
Nile (near the present Cairo, according to the Coptic tradition). The entire silence
of the Acts of the Apostles 28, respecting Peter, as well as the silence of
Paul in his epistle to the Romans, and the epistles written from Rome during
his imprisonment there, in which Peter is not once named in the salutations, is
decisive proof that he was absent from that city during most of the time
between the years 58 and 63. A casual visit before 58 is possible, but
extremely doubtful, in view of the fact that Paul labored independently and
never built on the foundation of others;289
hence he would probably not have written his epistle to the Romans at all,
certainly not without some allusion to Peter if he had been in any proper sense
the founder of the church of Rome. After the year 63 we have no data from the
New Testament, as the Acts close with that year, and the interpretation of
"Babylon" at the end of the first Epistle of Peter is doubtful,
though probably meant for Rome. The martyrdom of Peter by crucifixion was
predicted by our Lord, John 21:18, 19, but no place is mentioned.
We conclude then that
Peter’s presence in Rome before 63 is made extremely doubtful, if not
impossible, by the silence of Luke and Paul, when speaking of Rome and writing
from Rome, and that His presence after 63 can neither be proved nor disproved
from the New Testament, and must be decided by post-biblical testimonies.
It is the uniform
tradition of the eastern and western churches that Peter preached the gospel in
Rome, and suffered martyrdom there in the Neronian persecution. So say more or less
clearly, yet not without admixture of error, Clement of Rome (who mentions the
martyrdom, but not the place), at the close of the first century; Ignatius of
Antioch (indistinctly), Dionysius of Corinth, Irenaeus of Lyons, Caius of Rome,
in the second century; Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Hippolytus, Tertullian,
in the third; Lactantius, Eusebius, Jerome, and others, in the fourth. To these
patristic testimonies may be added the apocryphal testimonies of the
pseudo-Petrine and pseudo-Clementine fictions, which somehow connect Peter’s
name with the founding of the churches of Antioch, Alexandria, Corinth, and
Rome. However these testimonies from various men and countries may differ in
particular circumstances, they can only be accounted for on the supposition of
some fact at the bottom; for they were previous to any use or abuse of this,
tradition for heretical or for orthodox and hierarchical purposes. The chief
error of the witnesses from Dionysius and Irenaeus onward is that Peter is
associated with Paul as "founder" of the church of Rome; but this may
be explained from the very probable fact that some of the
"strangers from Rome" who witnessed the Pentecostal miracle and heard
the sermon of Peter, as also some disciples who were scattered abroad by the
persecution after the martyrdom of Stephen, carried the seed of the gospel to
Rome, and that these converts of Peter became the real founders of the
Jewish-Christian congregation in the metropolis. Thus the indirect agency of
Peter was naturally changed into a direct agency by tradition which forgot the
names of the pupils in the glorification of the teacher.
The time of Peter’s
arrival in Rome, and the length of his residence there, cannot possibly be
ascertained. The above mentioned silence of the Acts and of Paul’s Epistles
allows him only a short period of labor there, after 63. The Roman tradition of
a twenty or twenty-five years’ episcopate of Peter in Rome is unquestionably a
colossal chronological mistake.290 Nor can we fix the year of his
martyrdom, except that it must have taken place after July, 64, when the Neronian
persecution broke out (according to Tacitus). It is variously assigned to every
year between 64 and 69. We shall return to it again below, and in connection
with the martyrdom of Paul, with which it is associated in tradition.291
</div3><div3 type =
"Section" n="26" title="The Peter of History and the
Peter of Fiction">
§ 26. The Peter of History and the Peter of Fiction.
No character in the New
Testament is brought before us in such life-like colors, with all his virtues
and faults, as that of Peter. He was frank and transparent, and always gave
himself as he was, without any reserve.
We may distinguish three
stages in his development. In the Gospels, the human nature of Simon appears
most prominent the Acts unfold the divine mission of Peter in the founding of
the church, with a temporary relapse at Antioch (recorded by Paul); in his
Epistles we see the complete triumph of divine grace. He was the strongest and
the weakest of the Twelve. He had all the excellences and all the defects of a
sanguine temperament. He was kind-hearted, quick, ardent, hopeful, impulsive,
changeable, and apt to run from one extreme to another. He received from Christ
the highest praise and the severest censure. He was the first to confess him as
the Messiah of God, for which he received his new name of Peter, in prophetic
anticipation of his commanding position in church history; but he was also the
first to dissuade him from entering the path of the cross to the crown, for
which he brought upon himself the rebuke, "Get thee behind me,
Satan." The rock of the church had become a rock of offence and a
stumbling-block. He protested, in presumptive modesty, when Christ would wash
his feet; and then, suddenly changing his mind, he wished not his feet only,
but his hands and head to be washed. He cut off the ear of Malchus in carnal
zeal for his Master; and in a few minutes afterwards he forsook him and fled.
He solemnly promised to be faithful to Christ, though all should forsake him;
and yet in the same night he betrayed him thrice. He was the first to cast off
the Jewish prejudices against the unclean heathen and to fraternize with the
Gentile converts at Caesarea and at Antioch; and he was the first to withdraw
from them in cowardly fear of the narrow-minded Judaizers from Jerusalem, for
which inconsistency he had to submit to a humiliating rebuke of Paul.292
But Peter was as quick
in returning to his right position as in turning away from it. He most
sincerely loved the Lord from the start and had no rest nor peace till he found
forgiveness. With all his weakness he was a noble, generous soul, and of the
greatest service in the church. God overruled his very sins and inconsistencies
for his humiliation and spiritual progress. And in his Epistles we find the
mature result of the work of purification, a spirit most humble, meek, gentle,
tender, loving, and lovely. Almost every word and incident in the gospel
history connected with Peter left its impress upon his Epistles in the way of
humble or thankful reminiscence and allusion. His new name, "Rock,"
appears simply as a "stone" among other living stones in the temple
of God, built upon Christ, "the chief corner-stone."293 His
charge to his fellow-presbyters is the same which Christ gave to him after the
resurrection, that they should be faithful "shepherds of the flock"
under Christ, the chief "shepherd and bishop of their souls."294 The
record of his denial of Christ is as prominent in all the four Gospels, as
Paul’s persecution of the church is in the Acts, and it is most prominent—as it
would seem under his own direction—in the Gospel of his pupil and
"interpreter" Mark, which alone mentions the two cock-crows, thus
doubling the guilt of the denial,295
and which records Christ’s words of censure ("Satan"), but omits
Christ’s praise ("Rock").296 Peter made as little effort to conceal
his great sin, as Paul. It served as a thorn in his flesh, and the remembrance
kept him near the cross; while his recovery from the fall was a standing proof
of the power and mercy of Christ and a perpetual call to gratitude. To the
Christian Church the double story of Peter’s denial and recovery has been ever
since an unfailing source of warning and comfort. Having turned again to his
Lord, who prayed for him that his personal faith fail not, he is still
strengthening the brethren.297
As to his official
position in the church, Peter stood from the beginning at the head of the
Jewish apostles, not in a partisan sense, but in a large-hearted spirit of
moderation and comprehension. He never was a narrow, contracted, exclusive
sectarian. After the vision at Joppa and the conversion of Cornelius he
promptly changed his inherited view of the necessity of circumcision, and
openly professed the change at Jerusalem, proclaiming the broad principle
"that God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he that feareth
him and worketh righteousness is acceptable to him;" and "that Jews
and Gentiles alike are saved only through the grace of the Lord Jesus
Christ."298 He
continued to be the head of the Jewish Christian church at large, and Paul
himself represents him as the first among the three "pillar"-apostles
of the circumcision299 But he stood mediating between James,
who represented the right wing of conservatism, and Paul, who commanded the
left wing of the apostolic army. And this is precisely the position which Peter
occupies in his Epistles, which reproduce to a great extent the teaching of
both Paul and James, and have therefore the character of a doctrinal Irenicum; as
the Acts are a historical Irenicum, without violation of truth or fact.
The Peter of Fiction.
No character of the
Bible, we may say, no personage in all history, has been so much magnified,
misrepresented and misused for doctrinal and hierarchical ends as the plain
fisherman of Galilee who stands at the head of the apostolic college. Among the
women of the Bible the Virgin Mary has undergone a similar transformation for
purposes of devotion, and raised to the dignity of the queen of heaven. Peter
as the Vicar of Christ, and Mary as the mother of Christ, have in this
idealized shape become and are still the ruling powers in the polity and
worship of the largest branch of Christendom.
In both cases the work
of fiction began among the Judaizing heretical sects of the second and third
centuries, but was modified and carried forward by the Catholic, especially the
Roman church, in the third and fourth centuries.
1. The Peter of the
Ebionite fiction. The historical basis is Peter’s encounter with Simon
Magus in Samaria,300
Paul’s rebuke of Peter at Antioch,301
and the intense distrust and dislike of the Judaizing party to Paul.302
These three undoubted facts, together with a singular confusion of Simon
Magus with an old Sabine deity, Semo Sancus, in Rome,303 furnished the material and prompted the motive
to religious tendency—novels written about and after the middle of the second
century by ingenious semi-Gnostic Ebionites, either anonymously or under the
fictitious name of Clement of Rome, the reputed successor of Peter.304 In
these productions Simon Peter appears as the great apostle of truth in conflict
with Simon Magus, the pseudo-apostle of falsehood, the father of all heresies,
the Samaritan possessed by a demon; and Peter follows him step by step from
Caesarea Stratonis to Tyre, Sidon, Berytus, Antioch, and Rome, and before the
tribunal of Nero, disputing with him, and refuting his errors, until at last
the impostor, in the daring act of mocking Christ’s ascension to heaven, meets
a miserable end.
In the pseudo-Clementine
Homilies the name of Simon represents among other heresies also the free gospel
of Paul, who is assailed as a false apostle and hated rebel against the
authority of the Mosaic law. The same charges which the Judaizers brought
against Paul, are here brought by Peter against Simon Magus, especially the
assertion that one may be saved by grace alone. His boasted vision of Christ by
which he professed to have been converted, is traced to a deceptive vision of
the devil. The very words of Paul against Peter at Antioch, that he was
"self-condemned" (Gal. 2:11), are quoted as an accusation against
God. In one word, Simon Magus is, in part at least, a malignant Judaizing
caricature of the apostle of the Gentiles.
<index
type=”globalSubject”
subject1=”Papacy”/>
2. The Peter of the
Papacy. The orthodox version of the Peter-legend, as we find it partly in
patristic notices of Irenaeus, Origen, Tertullian, and Eusebius, partly in
apocryphal productions,305
retains the general story of a conflict of Peter with Simon Magus in Antioch
and Rome, but extracts from it its anti-Pauline poison, associates Paul at the
end of his life with Peter as the joint, though secondary, founder of the Roman
church, and honors both with the martyr’s crown in the Neronian persecution on
the same day (the 29th of June), and in the same year or a year apart, but in
different localities and in a different manner.306
Peter was crucified like his Master (though head-downwards 307), either on the hill of Janiculum (where the
church S. Pietro in Montorio stands), or more probably on the Vatican hill (the
scene of the Neronian circus and persecution);308 Paul, being a Roman citizen, was beheaded on the
Ostian way at the Three Fountains (Tre Fontane), outside of the city. They even
walked together a part of the Appian way to the place of execution. Caius (or
Gaius), a Roman presbyter at the close of the second century, pointed to their
monuments or trophies309
on the Vatican, and in the via Ostia. The solemn burial of the remains of Peter
in the catacombs of San Sebastiano, and of Paul on the Via Ostia, took place
June 29, 258, according to the Kalendarium of the Roman church from the time of
Liberius. A hundred years later the remains of Peter were permanently
transferred to the Basilica of St. Peter on the Vatican, those of St. Paul to
the Basilica of St. Paul (San Paolo fuori le mura) outside of the Porta
Ostiensis (now Porta San Paolo).310
The tradition of a
twenty-five years’ episcopate in Rome (preceded by a seven years’ episcopate in
Antioch) cannot be traced beyond the fourth century (Jerome), and arose, as
already remarked, from chronological miscalculations in connection with the
questionable statement of Justin Martyr concerning the arrival of Simon Magus
in Rome under the reign of Claudius (41–54). The "Catalogus
Liberianus," the oldest list of popes (supposed to have been written
before 366), extends the pontificate of Peter to 25 years, 1 month, 9 days, and
puts his death on June 29, 65 (during the consulate of Nerva and Vestinus),
which would date his arrival in Rome back to a.d.
40. Eusebius, in his Greek Chronicle as far as it is preserved, does not fix
the number of years, but says, in his Church History, that Peter came to Rome
in the reign of Claudius to preach against the pestilential errors of Simon
Magus.311 The
Armenian translation of his Chronicle mentions "twenty" years;312 Jerome, in his translation or paraphrase rather,
"twenty-five" years, assuming, without warrant, that Peter left
Jerusalem for Antioch and Rome in the second year of Claudius (42; but <scripRef
passage = "Acts 12:17">Acts 12:17</scripRef> would rather point to the year 44), and died in
the fourteenth or last year of Nero (68).313 Among modern Roman Catholic historians
there is no agreement as to the year of Peter’s martyrdom: Baronius puts it in
69;314 Pagi and Alban Butler in 65; Möhler, Gams, and
Alzog indefinitely between 66 and 68. In all these cases it must be assumed
that the Neronian persecution was continued or renewed after 64, of which we
have no historical evidence. It must also be assumed that Peter was
conspicuously absent from his flock during most of the time, to superintend the
churches in Asia Minor and in Syria, to preside at the Council of Jerusalem, to
meet with Paul in Antioch, to travel about with his wife, and that he made very
little impression there till 58, and even till 63, when Paul, writing to and
from Rome, still entirely ignores him. Thus a chronological error is made to
overrule stubborn facts. The famous saying that "no pope shall see the
(twenty-five) years of Peter," which had hitherto almost the force of law,
has been falsified by the thirty-two years’ reign of the first infallible pope)
Pius IX., who ruled from 1846 to 1878.
Note. — On the Claims of the Papacy.
On this tradition and on
the indisputable preëminence of Peter in the Gospels and the Acts, especially
the words of Christ to him after the great confession (Matt. 16:18), is built
the colossal fabric of the papacy with all its amazing pretensions to be the
legitimate succession of a permanent primacy of honor and supremacy of
jurisdiction in the church of Christ, and—since 1870—with the additional claim
of papal infallibility in all official utterances, doctrinal or moral. The
validity of this claim requires three premises:
1. The presence of Peter
in Rome. This may be admitted as an historical fact, and I for my part cannot
believe it possible that such a rock-firm and world-wide structure as the
papacy could rest on the sand of mere fraud and error. It is the underlying
fact which gives to fiction its vitality, and error is dangerous in proportion
to the amount of truth which it embodies. But the fact of Peter’s presence in
Rome, whether of one year or twenty-five, cannot be of such fundamental
importance as the papacy assumes it to be: otherwise we would certainly have
some allusion to it in the New Testament. Moreover, if Peter was in Rome, so
was Paul, and shared with him on equal terms the apostolic supervision of the
Roman congregation, as is very evident from his Epistle to the Romans.
2. The transferability
of Peter’s preëminence on a successor. This is derived by inference from the
words of Christ: "Thou art Rock, and on this rock I will build my church,
and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it."315
This passage, recorded only by Matthew, is the exegetical rock of
Romanism, and more frequently quoted by popes and papists than any other
passage of the Scriptures. But admitting the obvious reference of petra to
Peter, the significance of this prophetic name evidently refers to the
peculiar mission of Peter in laying the foundation of the church once and for
all time to come. He fulfilled it on the day of Pentecost and in the conversion
of Cornelius; and in this pioneer work Peter can have no successor any more
than St. Paul in the conversion of the Gentiles, and John in the consolidation
of the two branches of the apostolic church.
3. The actual transfer
of this prerogative of Peter—not upon the bishops of Jerusalem, or Antioch,
where he undoubtedly resided—but upon the bishop of Rome, where he cannot be
proven to have been from the New Testament. Of such a transfer history knows
absolutely nothing. Clement, bishop of Rome, who first, about a.d. 95, makes mention of Peter’s
martyrdom, and Ignatius of Antioch, who a few years later alludes to Peter and
Paul as exhorting the Romans, have not a word to say about the transfer. The
very chronology and succession of the first popes is uncertain.
If the claims of the
papacy cannot be proven from what we know of the historical Peter, there are,
on the other hand, several undoubted facts in the real history of Peter which
bear heavily upon those claims, namely:
1. That Peter was
married, <scripRef
passage = "Matt. 8:14">Matt. 8:14</scripRef>, took his wife with him on his missionary tours,
<scripRef
passage = "1 Cor. 9:5">1 Cor. 9:5</scripRef>, and, according to a possible interpretation of
the "coëlect" (sister), mentions her in <scripRef passage =
"1 Pet. 5:13">1
Pet. 5:13</scripRef>. Patristic tradition ascribes to him children,
or at least a daughter (Petronilla). His wife is said to have suffered
martyrdom in Rome before him. What right have the popes, in view of this
example, to forbid clerical marriage?
We pass by the equally striking contrast between the poverty of Peter,
who had no silver nor gold (Acts 3:6) and the gorgeous display of the
triple-crowned papacy in the middle ages and down to the recent collapse of the
temporal power.
2. That in the Council
at Jerusalem (<scripRef passage = "Acts 15:1–11">Acts 15:1–11</scripRef>), Peter appears simply as the first speaker and
debater, not as president and judge (James presided), and assumes no special
prerogative, least of all an infallibility of judgment. According to the
Vatican theory the whole question of circumcision ought to have been submitted
to Peter rather than to a Council, and the decision ought to have gone out from
him rather than from "the apostles and elders, brethren" (or
"the elder brethren," <scripRef passage = "Acts
15:23">15:23</scripRef>).
3. That Peter was openly
rebuked for inconsistency by a younger apostle at Antioch (<scripRef
passage = "Gal. 2:11–14">Gal. 2:11–14</scripRef>). Peter’s conduct on that occasion is
irreconcilable with his infallibility as to discipline; Paul’s conduct is
irreconcilable with Peter’s alleged supremacy; and the whole scene, though
perfectly plain, is so inconvenient to Roman and Romanizing views, that it has
been variously distorted by patristic and Jesuit commentators, even into a
theatrical farce gotten up by the apostles for the more effectual refutation of
the Judaizers!
4. That, while the
greatest of popes, from Leo I. down to Leo XIII. never cease to speak of their
authority over all the bishops and all the churches, Peter, in his speeches in
the Acts, never does so. And his Epistles, far from assuming any superiority
over his "fellow-elders" and over "the clergy" (by which he
means the Christian people), breathe the spirit of the sincerest humility and
contain a prophetic warning against the besetting sins of the papacy, filthy
avarice and lordly ambition (<scripRef passage = "1 Pet.
5:1–3">1 Pet. 5:1–3</scripRef>). Love of money and love of power are
twin-sisters, and either of them is "a root of all evil."
It is certainly very
significant that the weaknesses even more than the virtues of the natural
Peter—his boldness and presumption, his dread of the cross, his love for
secular glory, his carnal zeal, his use of the sword, his sleepiness in
Gethsemane—are faithfully reproduced in the history of the papacy; while the
addresses and epistles of the converted and inspired Peter contain the most
emphatic protest against the hierarchical pretensions and worldly vices of the
papacy, and enjoin truly evangelical principles—the general priesthood and
royalty of believers, apostolic poverty before the rich temple, obedience to
God rather than man, yet with proper regard for the civil authorities,
honorable marriage, condemnation of mental reservation in Ananias and Sapphira,
and of simony in Simon Magus, liberal appreciation of heathen piety in
Cornelius, opposition to the yoke of legal bondage, salvation in no other name
but that of Jesus Christ.
</div3><div3 type =
"Section" n="27" title="James the Brother of the
Lord">
<index
type = "globalSubject"
subject1 = "James"
/>
§ 27. James the Brother of the Lord.
<foreign
lang="el">JH pivsti"
cwri;" e[rgwn nekrav ejstin.</foreign>—<scripRef passage =
"James 2:26
">James 2:26
</scripRef>
Sources.
I. Genuine sources: Acts
12:17; 15:13; 21:18; 1 Cor. 15:7; Gal. 1:19; 2:9, 12. Comp. James "the
brother of the Lord," Matt. 13:55; Mark 6:3; Gal. 1:19.
The Epistle of James.
II. Post-apostolic: Josephus: Ant. XX. 9, 1.—Hegesippus in Euseb. Hist. Ecc. II.
ch. 23.—Jerome: Catal. vir.
ill. c. 2, under "Jacobus." Epiphanius,
Haer. XXIX. 4; XXX. 16; LXXVIII. 13 sq.
III. Apocryphal: Protevangelium Jacobi, ed. in Greek by
Tischendorf, in "Evangelia
Apocrypha," pp. 1–49, comp. the Prolegg. pp. xii-xxv. James is honorably
mentioned in several other apocryphal Gospels.—Epiphanius, Haer. XXX. 16,
alludes to an Ebionite and strongly anti-Pauline book, the Ascents of James (<foreign lang="el">
jAnabaqmoi; jIakwvbou</foreign>), descriptions of his ascension to heaven,
which are lost.—The Liturgy of James, ed. by W. Trollope, Edinb. 1848.
Composed in the third century, after the Council of Nicaea (as it contains the
terms <foreign
lang="el">oJmoouvsio" and qeotovko"</foreign>), but resting on some older traditions.
It was intended for the church of Jerusalem, which is styled "the mother
of all churches." It is still used once a year on the festival of St.
James, Oct. 23, in the Greek Church at Jerusalem. (See vol. II. 527 sqq.)
Exegetical and Doctrinal.
Commentaries on the
Epistle of James by Herder
(1775), Storr (1784), Gebser (1828), Schneckenburger (1832), Theile (1833),
Kern (1838), De Wette (1849, 3d ed. by Brückner, 1865), Cellerier (1850),
Wiesinger (in Olshausen’s Com., 1854), Stier (1845), Huther and
Beyschlag (in Meyer’s Com., 1858, 4th ed. 1882), Lange and Van Oosterzee
(in Lange’s Bibelwerk, 1862, Engl. transl. enlarged by Mombert, 1867),
Alford, Wordsworth, Bassett (1876, ascribes the Ep. to James of Zebedee),
Plumptre (in the Cambridge series, 1878), Punchard (in Ellicott’s Com.
1878), Erdmann (1882), GLOAG (1883).
Woldemar G. Schmidt: Der Lehrgehalt des
Jakobusbriefes. Leipzig, 1869.
W. Beyschlag: Der Jacobusbrief als
urchristliches Geschichtsdenkmal. In the "Stud. u. Kritiken," 1874,
No. 1, pp. 105–166. See his Com.
Comp. also the expositions
of the doctrinal type of James in Neander, Schmid, Schaff, Weiss (pp. 176–194,
third ed.).
Historical and Critical.
Blom: De <foreign
lang="el">toi'" ajdelqoi'" </foreign>et <foreign
lang="el">tai'" ajdelfai'" Kurivou</foreign>. Leyden, 1839. (I have not seen this tract,
which advocates the brother-theory. Lightfoot says of it: "Blom gives the
most satisfactory statement of the patristic authorities, and Schaff discusses
the scriptural arguments most carefully.")
Schaff: Jakobus Alphäi, und Jakobus der Bruder des Herrn. Berlin, 1842 (101 pages).
Mill: The Accounts of our Lord’s Brethren in the
New Test. vindicated. Cambridge, 1843. (Advocates the cousin-theory of the
Latin church.)
Lightfoot: The Brethren of the Lord. Excursus in his
Com. on Galatians. Lond. 2d ed. 1866, pp. 247–282. (The ablest defence of
the step-brother-theory of the Greek Church.)
H. Holtzmann: Jakobus der Gerechte und seine Namensbrüder, in Hilgenfeld’s "Zeitschrift für
wissenschaftl. Theol." Leipz. 1880, No. 2.
Next to Peter, who was the
oecumenical leader of Jewish Christianity, stands James, the brother, of the Lord (also called by post-apostolic
writers "James the Just," and "Bishop of Jerusalem"), as
the local head of the oldest church and the leader of the most conservative
portion of Jewish Christianity. He seems to have taken the place of James the
son of Zebedee, after his martyrdom, a.d.
44. He became, with Peter and John, one of the three "pillars" of the
church of the circumcision. And after the departure of Peter from Jerusalem
James presided over the mother church of Christendom until his death. Though
not one of the Twelve, he enjoyed, owing to his relationship to our Lord and
his commanding piety, almost apostolic authority, especially in Judaea and
among the Jewish converts.316 On one occasion even Peter yielded to
his influence or that of his representatives, and was misled into his
uncharitable conduct towards the Gentile brethren.317
James was not a believer
before the resurrection of our Lord. He was the oldest of the four
"brethren" (James, Joseph, Judas, Simon), of whom John reports with
touching sadness: "Even his brethren did not believe in him."318 It
was one of the early and constant trials of our Lord in the days of his nomination
that he was without honor among his fellow-townsmen, yea, "among his own
kin, and in his own house."319 James was no doubt imbued with the
temporal and carnal Messianic misconceptions of the Jews, and impatient at the
delay and unworldliness of his divine brother. Hence the taunting and almost
disrespectful language: "Depart hence and go into Judaea .... If thou
doest these things, manifest thyself to the world." The crucifixion could
only deepen his doubt and sadness.
But a special personal
appearance of the risen Lord brought about his conversion, as also that of his
brothers, who after the resurrection appear in the company of the apostles.320
This turning-point in his life is briefly but significantly alluded to
by Paul, who himself was converted by a personal appearance of Christ.321 It
is more fully reported in an interesting fragment of the, "Gospel
according to the Hebrews" (one of the oldest and least fabulous of the
apocryphal Gospels), which shows the sincerity and earnestness of James even
before his conversion.322 He had sworn, we are here told,
"that he would not eat bread from that hour wherein the Lord had drunk the
cup [of his passion]323
until he should see him rising from the dead." The Lord appeared to him
and communed with him, giving bread to James the Just and saying: "My
brother, eat thy bread, for the Son of man is risen from them that sleep."
In the Acts and in the
Epistle to the Galatians, James appears as the most conservative of the Jewish
converts, at the head of the extreme right wing; yet recognizing Paul as the
apostle of the Gentiles, giving him the right hand of fellowship, as Paul
himself reports, and unwilling to impose upon the Gentile Christians the yoke
of circumcision. He must therefore not be identified with the heretical
Judaizers (the forerunners of the Ebionites), who hated and opposed Paul, and
made circumcision a condition of justification and church membership. He
presided at the Council of Jerusalem and proposed the compromise which saved a
split in the church. He probably prepared the synodical letter which agrees
with his style and has the same greeting formula peculiar to him.324
He was an honest,
conscientious, eminently practical, conciliatory Jewish Christian saint, the
right man in the right place and at the right time, although contracted in his
mental vision as in his local sphere of labor.
From an incidental
remark of Paul we may infer that James, like Peter and the other brothers of
the Lord, was married.325
The mission of James was
evidently to stand in the breach between the synagogue and the church, and to
lead the disciples of Moses gently to Christ. He was the only man that could do
it in that critical time of the approaching judgment of the holy city. As long
as there was any hope of a conversion of the Jews as a nation, he prayed for it
and made the transition as easy as possible. When that hope vanished his
mission was fulfilled.
According to Josephus he
was, at the instigation of the younger Ananus, the high priest, of the sect of
the Sadducees, whom he calls "the most unmerciful of all the Jews in the
execution of judgment," stoned to death with some others, as
"breakers of the law," i.e. Christians, in the interval between the procuratorship
of Festus and that of Albinus, that is, in the year 63. The Jewish historian
adds that this act of injustice created great indignation among those most
devoted to the law (the Pharisees), and that they induced Albinus and King
Agrippa to depose Ananus (a son of the Annas mentioned in Luke 3:2; John
18:13). He thus furnishes an impartial testimony to the high standing of James
even among the Jews.326
Hegesippus, a Jewish
Christian historian about a.d.
170, puts the martyrdom a few years later, shortly before the destruction of
Jerusalem (69).327 He relates that James was first thrown
down from the pinnacle of the temple by the Jews and then stoned to death. His
last prayer was an echo of that of his brother and Lord on the cross:
"God, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."
The dramatic account of
James by Hegesippus328
is an overdrawn picture from the middle of the second century, colored by
Judaizing traits which may have been derived from the "Ascents of
James" and other apocryphal sources. He turns James into a Jewish priest
and Nazirite saint (comp. his advice to Paul, <scripRef passage =
"Acts 21:23, 24">Acts
21:23, 24</scripRef>), who drank no wine, ate no flesh, never shaved,
nor took a bath, and wore only linen. But the biblical James is Pharisaic and
legalistic rather than Essenic and ascetic. In the pseudo-Clementine writings,
he is raised even above Peter as the head of the holy church of the Hebrews, as
"the lord and bishop of bishops," as "the prince of
priests." According to tradition, mentioned by Epiphanius. James, like St.
John at Ephesus, wore the high-priestly petalon, or golden plate on the
forehead, with the inscription: "Holiness to the Lord" (<scripRef
passage = "Ex. 28:36">Ex. 28:36</scripRef>). And in the Liturgy of St. James, the brother of Jesus is raised
to the dignity of "the brother of the very God" (<foreign
lang="el">ajdelfovqeo"</foreign>). Legends gather around the memory of great men,
and reveal the deep impression they made upon their friends and followers. The
character which shines through these James-legends is that of a loyal, zealous,
devout, consistent Hebrew Christian, who by his personal purity and holiness
secured the reverence and affection of all around him.
But we must carefully
distinguish between the Jewish-Christian, yet orthodox, overestimate of James
in the Eastern church, as we find it in the fragments of Hegesippus and in the
Liturgy of St. James, and the heretical perversion of James into an enemy of
Paul and the gospel of freedom, as he appears in apocryphal fictions. We have
here the same phenomenon as in the case of Peter and Paul. Every leading
apostle has his apocryphal shadow and caricature both in the primitive church
and in the modern critical reconstruction of its history. The name and
authority of James was abused by the Judaizing party in undermining the work of
Paul, notwithstanding the fraternal agreement of the two at Jerusalem.329 The
Ebionites in the second century continued this malignant assault upon the
memory of Paul under cover of the honored names of James and Peter; while a
certain class of modern critics (though usually from the opposite ultra- or
pseudo-Pauline point of view) endeavor to prove the same antagonism from the
Epistle of James (as far as they admit it to be genuine at all).330
The Epistle in our
canon, which purports to be written by "James, a bond-servant of God and
of Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes of the dispersion," though not
generally acknowledged at the time of Eusebius and Jerome, has strong internal
evidence of genuineness. It precisely suits the character and position of the
historical James as we know him from Paul and the Acts, and differs widely from
the apocryphal James of the Ebionite fictions.331 It
hails undoubtedly from Jerusalem, the theocratic metropolis, amid the scenery
of Palestine. The Christian communities appear not as churches, but as
synagogues, consisting mostly of poor people, oppressed and persecuted by the
rich and powerful Jews. There is no trace of Gentile Christians or of any
controversy between them and the Jewish Christians. The Epistle was perhaps a
companion to the original Gospel of Matthew for the Hebrews, as the first
Epistle of John was such a companion to his Gospel. It is probably the oldest
of the epistles of the New Testament.332 It represents, at all events, the
earliest and meagerest, yet an eminently practical and necessary type of
Christianity, with prophetic earnestness, proverbial sententiousness, great
freshness, and in fine Greek. It is not dogmatic but ethical. It has a strong
resemblance to the addresses of John the Baptist and the Lord’s Sermon on the
Mount, and also to the book of Ecclesiasticus and the Wisdom of Solomon.333 It
never attacks the Jews directly, but still less St. Paul, at least not his
genuine doctrine. It characteristically calls the gospel the "perfect law
of liberty,"334
thus connecting it very closely with the Mosaic dispensation, yet raising it by
implication far above the imperfect law of bondage. The author has very
little to say about Christ and the deeper mysteries of redemption, but
evidently presupposes a knowledge of the gospel history, and reverently calls
Christ "the Lord of glory," and himself humbly his
"bond-servant."335 He represents religion throughout in
its practical aspect as an exhibition of faith by good works. He undoubtedly
differs widely from Paul, yet does not contradict, but supplements him, and
fills an important place in the Christian system of truth which comprehends all
types of genuine piety. There are multitudes of sincere, earnest, and faithful
Christian workers who never rise above the level of James to the sublime
heights of Paul or John. The Christian church would never have given to the
Epistle of James a place in the canon if she had felt that it was
irreconcilable with the doctrine of Paul. Even the Lutheran church did not
follow her great leader in his unfavorable judgment, but still retains James
among the canonical books.
After the martyrdom of James
he was succeeded by Symeon, a son of Clopas and a cousin of Jesus (and of
James). He continued to guide the church at Jerusalem till the reign of Trajan,
when he died a martyr at the great age of a hundred and twenty years.336 The
next thirteen bishops of Jerusalem, who came, however, in rapid succession,
were likewise of Jewish descent.
Throughout this period
the church of Jerusalem preserved its strongly Israelitish type, but joined
with it "the genuine knowledge of Christ," and stood in communion
with the Catholic church, from which the Ebionites, as heretical Jewish
Christians, were excluded. After the line of the fifteen circumcised bishops
had run out, and Jerusalem was a second time laid waste under Hadrian, the mass
of the Jewish Christians gradually merged in the orthodox Greek Church.
Notes
I. James and the Brothers of the Lord. –
There are three, perhaps four, eminent persons in the New Testament bearing the
name of James (abridged from Jacob, which from patriarchal memories
was a more common name among the Jews than any other except Symeon or Simon,
and Joseph or Joses):
1. James (the son) of
Zebedee, the brother of John and one of the three favorite apostles, the
proto-martyr among the Twelve (beheaded a.d.
44, see <scripRef
passage = "Acts 12:2">Acts 12:2</scripRef>), as his brother John was the survivor of all the apostles. They were
called the "sons of thunder."
2. James (the son) of Alphaeus, who was likewise one of the Twelve, and is mentioned
in the four apostle-catalogues, <scripRef passage = "Matt.
10:3">Matt. 10:3</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Mark
3:10">Mark 3:10</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Luke
6:15">Luke 6:15</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Acts
1:13">Acts 1:13</scripRef>.
3. James the Little, <scripRef
passage = "Mark 15:40">Mark 15:40</scripRef> (<foreign lang="el">oJ
mikrov"</foreign>, not, "the Less," as in the E. V.), probably so called from
his small stature (as Zacchaeus, <scripRef passage = "Luke
19:3">Luke 19:3</scripRef>), the son of a certain Mary and brother of
Joseph, <scripRef
passage = "Matt. 27:56">Matt. 27:56</scripRef> (<foreign lang="el">Maria
hJ tou' jIakwvbou kai; jIwsh;f mhvthr </foreign>); <scripRef passage = "Mark 15:40, 47;
16:1">Mark 15:40, 47;
16:1</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Luke
24:10">Luke 24:10</scripRef>. He is usually identified with James the son of
Alphaeus, on the assumption that his mother Mary was the wife of Clopas,
mentioned <scripRef passage = "John 19:25">John 19:25</scripRef>, and that Clopas was the same person as
Alphaeus. But this identification is at least very problematical.
4. James, simply so called, as the most
distinguished after the early death of James the Elder, or with the honorable
epithet Brother of the Lord (<foreign
lang="el">oJ ajdelfo;" tou' Kurivou</foreign>), and among post-apostolic writers, the Just, also Bishop of Jerusalem. The title connects him at once with the
four brothers and the unnamed sisters of our Lord, who are repeatedly mentioned
in the Gospels, and he as the first among them. Hence the complicated question
of the nature of this relationship. Although I have fully discussed this
intricate subject nearly forty years ago (1842) in the German essay above
mentioned, and then again in my annotations to Lange on Matthew (Am. ed.
1864, pp. 256–260), I will briefly sum up once more the chief points with
reference to the most recent discussions (of Lightfoot and Renan).
There are three theories
on James and the brothers of Jesus. I would call them the brother-theory,
the half-brother-theory, and the cousin-theory. Bishop Lightfoot
(and Canon Farrar) calls them after their chief advocates, the Helvidian
(an invidious designation), the Epiphanian, and the Hieronymian
theories. The first is now confined to Protestants, the second is the Greek,
the third the Roman view.
(1) The brother-theory takes the term <foreign
lang="el">ajdelfoiv</foreign> the usual sense, and regards the brothers as
younger children of Joseph and Mary, consequently as full brothers of Jesus in
the eyes of the law and the opinion of the people, though really only
half-brothers, in view of his supernatural conception. This is exegetically the
most natural view and favored by the meaning of <foreign
lang="el">ajdelfov"</foreign> (especially when used as a standing
designation), the constant companionship of these brethren with Mary (<scripRef
passage = "John 2:12">John 2:12</scripRef>; <scripRef
passage = "Matt. 12:46; 13:55">Matt. 12:46; 13:55</scripRef>), and by the obvious meaning of <scripRef
passage = "Matt. 1:25">Matt. 1:25</scripRef> (<foreign lang="el">oujk
ejgivnwsken aujth;n eJw" ou},</foreign>
comp. <scripRef passage = "Matt. 1:18">1:18</scripRef> <foreign lang="el">privn
h] sunelqei'n aujtouv"</foreign>) and <scripRef passage =
"Luke 2:7">Luke
2:7</scripRef> (<foreign lang="el">prwtovtoko"</foreign>), as explained from the standpoint of the
evangelists, who used these terms in full view of the subsequent history
of Mary and Jesus. The only serious objection to it is of a doctrinal and
ethical nature, viz., the assumed perpetual virginity of the mother of our Lord
and Saviour, and the committal of her at the cross to John rather than her own
sons and daughters (<scripRef passage = "John 19:25">John 19:25</scripRef>). If it were not for these two obstacles the
brother-theory would probably be adopted by every fair and honest exegete. The
first of these objections dates from the post-apostolic ascetic overestimate of
virginity, and cannot have been felt by Matthew and Luke, else they would have
avoided those ambiguous terms just noticed. The second difficulty presses also
on the other two theories, only in a less degree. It must therefore be solved
on other grounds, namely, the profound spiritual sympathy and congeniality of
John with Jesus and Mary, which rose above carnal relationships, the probable
cousinship of John (based upon the proper interpretation of the same passage, <scripRef
passage = "John 19:25">John 19:25</scripRef>), and the unbelief of the real brethren at the
time of the committal.
This theory was held by
Tertullian (whom Jerome summarily disposes of as not being a, "homo
ecclesiae," i.e. a schismatic), defended by Helvidius at Rome about 380
(violently attacked as a heretic by Jerome), and by several individuals and
sects opposed to the incipient worship of the Virgin Mary; and recently by the
majority of German Protestant exegetes since Herder, such as Stier, De Wette,
Meyer, Weiss, Ewald, Wieseler, Keim, also by Dean Alford, and Canon Farrar (Life
of Christ, I. 97 sq.). I advocated the same theory in my German tract, but
admitted afterwards in my Hist. of Ap. Ch., p. 378, that I did not give
sufficient weight to the second theory.
(2) The half-brother-theory
regards the brethren and sisters of Jesus as children of Joseph by a former
wife, consequently as no blood-relations at all, but so designated simply as
Joseph was called the father of Jesus, by an exceptional use of the term
adapted to the exceptional fact of the miraculous incarnation. This has the
dogmatic advantage of saving the perpetual virginity of the mother of our Lord
and Saviour; it lessens the moral difficulty implied in <scripRef passage =
"John 19:25">John
19:25</scripRef>; and it has a strong traditional support in the
apocryphal Gospels and in the Eastern church. It also would seem to explain
more easily the patronizing tone in which the brethren speak to our Lord in <scripRef
passage = "John 7:3, 4">John 7:3, 4</scripRef>. But it does not so naturally account for the
constant companionship of these brethren with Mary; it assumes a former
marriage of Joseph nowhere alluded to in the Gospels, and makes Joseph an old
man and protector rather than husband of Mary; and finally it is not free from
suspicion of an ascetic bias, as being the first step towards the dogma of the
perpetual virginity. To these objections may be added, with Farrar, that if the
brethren had been elder sons of Joseph, Jesus would not have been regarded as
legal heir of the throne of David (<scripRef passage =
"Matt. 1:16">Matt.
1:16</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Luke
1:27">Luke 1:27</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Rom.
1:3">Rom. 1:3</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "2 Tim.
2:8">2 Tim. 2:8</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Rev.
22:16">Rev. 22:16</scripRef>).
This theory is found
first in the apocryphal writings of James (the Protevangelium Jacobi, the
Ascents of James, etc.), and then among the leading Greek fathers (Clement of
Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius, Gregory of Nyssa, Epiphanius, Cyril of
Alexandria); it is embodied in the Greek, Syrian, and Coptic services, which
assign different dates to the commemoration of James the son of Alphaeus (Oct.
9), and of James the Lord’s brother (Oct. 23). It may therefore be called the
theory of the Eastern church. It was also held by some Latin fathers before
Jerome (Hilary of Poitiers and Ambrose), and has recently been ably advocated
by Bishop Lightfoot (l.c.), followed by Dr. Plumptre (in the
introduction to his Com. on the Ep. of James).
(3) The cousin-theory regards the brethren as
more distant relatives, namely, as children of Mary, the wife of Alphaeus and
sister of the Virgin Mary, and identifies James, the brother of the Lord, with
James the son of Alphaeus and James the Little, thus making him (as well as also
Simon and Jude) an apostle. The exceptive <foreign
lang="el">eij mhv</foreign>, <scripRef passage = "Gal.
1:19">Gal. 1:19</scripRef> (but I saw only James), does not prove this, but
rather excludes James from the apostles proper (comp. <foreign
lang="el">eij mhv</foreign> in <scripRef passage =
"Gal. 2:16">Gal.
2:16</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Luke 4:26,
27">Luke 4:26, 27</scripRef>).
This theory was first
advanced by Jerome in 383, in a youthful polemic tract against Helvidius,
without any traditional support,337
but with the professed dogmatic and ascetic aim to save the virginity of both Mary
and Joseph, and to reduce their marriage relation to a merely nominal
and barren connection. In his later writings, however, after his residence in
Palestine, he treats the question with less confidence (see Lightfoot, p. 253).
By his authority and the still greater weight of St. Augustin, who at first
(394) wavered between the second and third theories, but afterwards adopted
that of Jerome, it became the established theory of the Latin church and was
embodied in the Western services, which acknowledge only two saints by the name
of James. But it is the least tenable of all and must be abandoned, chiefly for
the following reasons:
(a) It contradicts the
natural meaning of the word "brother," when the New Testament has the
proper term for cousin <scripRef passage = "Col. 4:10">Col. 4:10</scripRef>, comp. also <foreign
lang="el">suggenhv"</foreign> <scripRef passage = "Luke 2:44;
21:16">Luke 2:44;
21:16</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Mark
6:4">Mark 6:4</scripRef>, etc.), and the obvious sense of the passages
where the brothers and sisters of Jesus appear as members of the holy family.
(b) It assumes that two
sisters had the same name, Mary, which is extremely improbable.
(c) It assumes the
identity of Clopas and Alphaeus, which is equally doubtful; for <foreign
lang="el">jAlfai'o"</foreign> is a Hebrew name (<foreign
lang="he">jlpy</foreign>), while <foreign
lang="el">Klwpa'"</foreign>, like <foreign
lang="el">Kleovpa"</foreign>, <scripRef passage = "Luke
24:18">Luke 24:18</scripRef>, is an abbreviation of the Greek <foreign
lang="el">Kleovpatro"</foreign>, as Antipas is contracted from Antipatros.(d) It
is absolutely irreconcilable with the fact that the brethren of Jesus, James
among them, were before the resurrection unbelievers, <scripRef passage =
"John 7:5">John
7:5</scripRef>, and consequently none of them could have been
an apostle, as this theory assumes of two or three.
Renan’s theory.—I notice, in conclusion, an original combination
of the second and third theories by Renan, who discusses the question of the
brothers and cousins of Jesus in an appendix to his Les évangiles, 537–540.
He assumes four Jameses, and distinguishes the son of Alphaeus from the
son of Clopas. He holds that Joseph was twice married, and that Jesus had
several older brothers and cousins as follows:
1. Children of Joseph from
the first marriage, and older brothers of Jesus:
a. James, the brother of the Lord, or Just,
or Obliam. his is the one mentioned <scripRef passage =
"Matt. 13:55">Matt.
13:55</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Mark
6:3">Mark 6:3</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Gal. 1:19; 2:9,
12">Gal. 1:19; 2:9,
12</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "1 Cor.
15:7">1 Cor. 15:7</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Acts
12:17">Acts 12:17</scripRef>, etc.; <scripRef passage =
"James 1:1">James
1:1</scripRef> <scripRef passage = "Jude
1:1">Jude 1:1</scripRef>, and in Josephus and Hegesippus.
b. Jude, mentioned <scripRef passage =
"Matt. 13:55">Matt.
13:55</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Mark
6:3">Mark 6:3</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Jude
1:1">Jude 1:1</scripRef>; Hegesippus in Eusebius’ Hist. Eccl. III.
19, 20, 32. From him were descended those two grandsons, bishops of different
churches, who were presented to the emperor Domitian as descendants of David
and relations of Jesus. Hegesippus in Euseb. III. 19, 20, 32
c. Other sons and
daughters unknown. <scripRef passage = "Matt. 13:56">Matt. 13:56</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Mark
6:3">Mark 6:3</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "1 Cor.
9:5">1 Cor. 9:5</scripRef>.
2. Children of Joseph (?)
from the marriage with Mary:
Jesus.
3. Children of Clopas,
and cousins of Jesus, probably from the father’s side, since Clopas,
according to Hegesippus, was a brother of Joseph, and may have married also a
woman by the name of Mary (<scripRef passage = "John 19:25">John 19:25</scripRef>).
a. James the Little (<foreign
lang="el">oJ mikrov"</foreign>), so called to distinguish him from his older
cousin of that name. Mentioned <scripRef passage = "Matt.
27:56">Matt. 27:56</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Mark 15:40;
16:1">Mark 15:40;
16:1</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Luke
24:10">Luke 24:10</scripRef>; otherwise unknown.
b. Joses, <scripRef passage =
"Matt. 27:56">Matt.
27:56</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Mark 15:40,
47">Mark 15:40, 47</scripRef>, but erroneously (?) numbered among the brothers
of Jesus: <scripRef passage = "Matt. 13:55">Matt. 13:55</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Mark
6:3">Mark 6:3</scripRef>; otherwise unknown.
c. Symeon, the second bishop of Jerusalem
(Hegesippus in Eus. III. 11, 22, 32; IV. 5, 22), also erroneously (?) put among
the brothers of Jesus by <scripRef passage = "Matt. 13:55">Matt. 13:55</scripRef>; Mark 6:3.
d. Perhaps other sons and
daughters unknown.
II. The description of
James by Hegesippus (from
Eusebius, H. E. II. 23)." Hegesippus also, who flourished
nearest the days of the apostles, gives (in the fifth book of his Memorials)
this most accurate account of him:
" ’Now James, the
brother of the Lord, who (as there are many of this name) was surnamed the Just
by all (<foreign lang="el">oJ
ajdelfov" tou' Kurivou jIavkwbo" oJ ojnomasqei;" uJpo; pavntwn
divkaio"</foreign>), from the Lord’s time even to our own, received the government of the
church with (or from) the apostles [<foreign
lang="el">metav</foreign>, in conjunction with, or according to another
reading, <foreign
lang="el">para; tw'n ajpostovlwn</foreign>, which would more clearly distinguish him from
the apostles]. This man [<foreign lang="el">ou|to"</foreign> not this apostle] was consecrated from
his mother’s womb. He drank neither wine nor strong drink, and abstained from
animal food. No razor came upon his head, he never anointed himself with oil,
and never used a bath [probably the luxury of the Roman bath, with its <foreign
lang="la">sudatorium,
frigidarium</foreign>, etc., but not excluding
the usual ablutions practised by all devout Jews]. He alone was allowed to
enter the sanctuary [not the holy of holies, but the court of priests]. He wore
no woolen, but linen garments only. He was in the habit of entering the temple
alone, and was often found upon his bended knees, and interceding for the
forgiveness of the people; so that his knees became as hard as a camel’s, on
account of his constant supplication and kneeling before God. And indeed, on
account of his exceeding great piety, he was called the Just [Zaddik]
and Oblias [<foreign lang="el">divkaio"
kai; wjbliva", </foreign>probably a corruption of the Hebrew Ophel am,
Tower of the People], which signifies justice and the bulwark of the
people (<foreign
lang="el">perioch; tou' laou'</foreign>); as the prophets declare concerning him. Some
of the seven sects of the people, mentioned by me above in my Memoirs,
used to ask him what was the door, [probably the estimate or doctrine] of
Jesus? and he answered that he was the Saviour. And of these some believed that
Jesus is the Christ. But the aforesaid sects did not believe either a
resurrection, or that he was coming to give to every one according to his
works; as many, however, as did believe, did so on account of James. And when
many of the rulers also believed, there arose a tumult among the Jews, Scribes,
and Pharisees, saying that the whole people were in danger of looking for Jesus
as the Messiah. They came therefore together, and said to James: We entreat
thee, restrain the people, who are led astray after Jesus, as though he were
the Christ. We entreat thee to persuade all that are coming to the feast of the
Passover rightly concerning Jesus; for we all have confidence in thee. For we
and all the people bear thee testimony that thou art just, and art no respecter
of persons. Persuade therefore the people not to be led astray by Jesus, for we
and all the people have great confidence in thee. Stand therefore upon the
pinnacle of the temple, that thou mayest be conspicuous on high, and thy words
may be easily heard by all the people; for all the tribes have come together on
account of the Passover, with some of the Gentiles also. The aforesaid Scribes
and Pharisees, therefore, placed James upon the pinnacle of the temple, and
cried out to him: "O thou just man, whom we ought all to believe, since
the people are led astray after Jesus that was crucified, declare to us what is
the door of Jesus that was crucified." And he answered with a loud voice:
"Why do ye ask me respecting Jesus the Son of Man? He is now sitting in the heavens, on
the right hand of the great Power, and is about to come on the clouds of
heaven." And as many were confirmed, and gloried in this testimony of
James, and said:, "Hosanna to the Son of David," these same priests
and Pharisees said to one another: "We have done badly in affording such
testimony to Jesus, but let us go up and cast him down, that they may dread to
believe in him." And they cried out: "Ho, ho, the Just himself is
deceived." And they fulfilled that which is written in Isaiah, "Let
us take away the Just, because he is offensive to us; wherefore they shall eat
the fruit of their doings." [Comp. <scripRef passage =
"Isa. 3:10">Is.
3:10</scripRef>.]
And going up, they cast
down the just man, saying to one another: "Let us stone James the
Just." And they began to stone him, as he did not die immediately when
cast down; but turning round, he knelt down, saying:, I entreat thee, O Lord
God and Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Thus they
were stoning him, when one of the priests of the sons of Rechab, a son of the
Rechabites, spoken of by Jeremiah the prophet (<scripRef passage =
"Jer. 35:2">Jer.
35:2</scripRef>), cried out, saying: "Cease, what are you
doing? The Just is praying for
you." And one of them, a fuller, beat out the brains of the Just with the
club that he used to beat out clothes. Thus he suffered martyrdom, and they
buried him on the spot where his tombstone is still remaining, by the temple.
He became a faithful witness, both to the Jews and Greeks, that Jesus is the
Christ. Immediately after this, Vespasian invaded and took Judaea.’ "
"Such," adds
Eusebius, "is the more ample testimony of Hegesippus, in which he fully
coincides with Clement. So admirable a man indeed was James, and so celebrated
among all for his justice, that even the wiser part of the Jews were of opinion
that this was the cause of the immediate siege of Jerusalem, which happened to
them for no other reason than the crime against him. Josephus also has not
hesitated to superadd this testimony in his works: ’These things,’ says he,
’happened to the Jews to avenge James the Just, who was the brother of him that
is called Christ and whom the Jews had slain, notwithstanding his preeminent
justice.’ The same writer also relates his death, in the twentieth book of his Antiquities,
in the following words,’ " etc.
Then Eusebius gives the
account of Josephus.
</div3><div3 type =
"Section" n="28" title="Preparation for the Mission to
the Gentiles">
§ 28. Preparation for the Mission to the Gentiles.
The planting of the church
among the Gentiles is mainly the work of Paul; but Providence prepared the way
for it by several steps, before this apostle entered upon his sublime mission.
1. By the conversion of
those half-Gentiles and bitter enemies of the Jews, the Samaritans, under the
preaching and baptism of Philip the evangelist, one of the seven deacons of
Jerusalem, and under the confirming instruction of the apostles Peter and John.
The gospel found ready entrance into Samaria, as had been prophetically hinted
by the Lord in the conversation at Jacob’s well.338 But
there we meet also the first heretical perversion of Christianity by Simon
Magus, whose hypocrisy and attempt to degrade the gift of the Holy Spirit
received from Peter a terrible rebuke. (Hence the term simony, for sordid traffic
in church offices and dignities.)
This encounter of the prince of the apostles with the arch-heretic was
regarded in the ancient church, and fancifully represented, as typifying the
relation of ecclesiastical orthodoxy to deceptive heresy.
2. Somewhat later
(between 37 and 40) occurred the conversion of the noble centurion, Cornelius of Caesarea, a pious proselyte
of the gate, whom Peter, in consequence of a special revelation, received into
the communion of the Christian church directly by baptism, without
circumcision. This bold step the apostle had to vindicate to the strict Jewish
Christians in Jerusalem, who thought circumcision a condition of salvation, and
Judaism the only way to Christianity. Thus Peter laid the foundation also of
the Gentile-Christian church. The event marked a revolution in Peter’s mind,
and his emancipation from the narrow prejudices of Judaism.339
3. Still more important
was the rise, at about the same time, of the church at Antioch the capital of
Syria. This congregation formed under the influence of the Hellenist Barnabas
of Cyprus and Paul of Tarsus, seems to have consisted from the first of
converted heathens and Jews. It thus became the mother of Gentile Christendom,
as Jerusalem was the mother and centre of Jewish. In Antioch, too, the name
"Christian" first appeared, which was soon everywhere adopted, as
well denoting the nature and mission as the followers of Christ, the
divine-human prophet, priest, and king.340
The other and older
designations were disciples (of Christ the only Master), believers (in Christ
as their Saviour), brethren (as members of the same family of the redeemed,
bound together by a love which springs not from earth and will never cease),
and saints (as those who are purified and consecrated to the service of God and
called to perfect holiness).
</div3><div2
type=”Chapter” n=”V” title=”St. Paul and the Conversion of the Gentiles”>
CHAPTER V.
ST. PAUL AND THE CONVERSION OF THE GENTILES.
<foreign
lang="el">cavriti qeou'
eivmi; o{ eijmi, kai; hJ cavri" auvtou' hJ eij" ejme; ouj kenh;
ejgenhvqÀh, ajlla; perissovteron aujtw'n pavntwn ejkopivasa, ojuk ejgw; de;,
ajlla; hJ cavri" tou' qeou' su;n ejmoiv</foreign>.—<scripRef passage =
"1 Cor. 15:10">1 Cor. 15:10</scripRef>.
<foreign
lang="el">Cristo;"
jIhsou'" h\lqen eij"
to;n kovsmon aJmartwlou;" sw'sai, w}n prw'tov" eijmi ejgwv</foreign>.—<scripRef passage =
"1 Tim. 1:15">1 Tim. 1:15</scripRef>.
"Paul’s mind was naturally and perfectly adapted
to take up into itself and to develop the free, universal, and absolute
principle of Christianity."—Dr. Baur (Paul,
II. 281, English translation).
"Did St. Paul’s life end with his own life? May we not rather believe that in a
sense higher than Chrysostom ever dreamt of [when he gave him the glorious name
of ’the Heart of the world’], the pulses of that mighty heart are still the
pulses of the world’s life, still beat in these later ages with even greater
force than ever?"—Dean Stanley (Sermons and Essays on the
Apostolic Age. p. 166).
</div2><div3 type =
"Section" n="29" title="Sources and Literature on St.
Paul and his Work">
§ 29. Sources and Literature on St. Paul and his Work.
I. Sources.
1. The authentic
sources:
The Epistles of Paul, and
the Acts of the Apostles 9:1–30 and 13 to 28. Of the Epistles of Paul the four
most important Galatians, Romans, two Corinthians—are universally acknowledged
as genuine even by the most exacting critics; the Philippians, Philemon,
Colossians, and Ephesians are admitted by nearly all critics; the Pastoral
Epistles, especially First Timothy, and Titus, are more or less disputed, but even
they bear the stamp of Paul’s genius.
On the coincidences
between the Acts and the Epistles see the section on the Acts. Comp. also § 22,
pp. 213 sqq.
2. The legendary and
apocryphal sources:
Acta
Pauli et Theclae, edition in Greek
by E. Grabe (from a Bodleian MS. in Spicileg. SS. PP., Oxon. 1698, tom. I.
pp. 95–128; republished by Jones, 1726), and by Tischendorf (from three Paris
MSS, in Acta Apost. Apocrypha, Lips. 1851); in Syriac, with an English version
by W. Wright (in Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, Lond. 1871); Engl. transl. by
Alex. Walker (in Clark’s "Ante-Nicene Christian Library," vol.
XVI. 279 sqq.). Comp. C. Schlau: Die Acten des Paulus
und der Thecla und die ältere Thecla-Legende, Leipz. 1877.
The Acts of Paul and
Thecla strongly advocate celibacy. They are probably of Gnostic origin and
based on some local tradition. They were originally written, according to
Tertullian (De Bapt. cap. 17, comp. Jerome, Catal. cap. 7), by a
presbyter in Asia "out of love to Paul," and in support of the heretical
opinion that women have the right to preach and to baptize after the example of
Thecla; hence the author was deposed. The book was afterwards purged of its
most obnoxious features and extensively used in the Catholic church. (See the
patristic quotations in Tischendorf’s Prolegomena, p. xxiv.) Thecla is
represented as a noble virgin of Iconium, in Lycaonia, who was betrothed to
Thamyris, converted by Paul in her seventeenth year, consecrated herself to
perpetual virginity, was persecuted, carried to the stake, and thrown before
wild beasts, but miraculously delivered, and died 90 years old at Seleucia. In
the Greek church she is celebrated as the first female martyr. Paul is
described at the beginning of this book (Tischend. p. 41) as "little in
stature, bald-headed, bow-legged, well-built (or vigorous), with knitted
eye-brows, rather long-nosed, full of grace, appearing now as a man, and now
having the face of an angel." From this description Renan has borrowed in
part his fancy-sketch of Paul’s personal appearance.
Acta
Pauli (<foreign
lang="el">Pravxei" Pauvlou¼, </foreign>used by Origen and
ranked by Eusebiu" with the Antilegomena »or <foreign
lang="el">novqa</foreign> rather). They are, like the Acta Petri (<foreign
lang="el">Pravxei"</foreign>, or<foreign
lang="el"> Perivodoi Pevtrou</foreign>), a Gnostic reconstruction of the canonical Acts
and ascribed to the authorship of St. Linus. Preserved only in fragments.
Acta
Petri et Pauli. A Catholic
adaptation of an Ebionite work. The Greek and Latin text was published first in
a complete form by Thilo, Halle, 1837-’38, the Greek by Tischendorf (who
collated six MSS.) in his Acta Apost. Apoc. 1851, 1–39; English transl. by
Walker in "Ante-Nicene Libr., " XVI. 256 sqq. This book records
the arrival of Paul in Rome, his meeting with Peter and Simon Magus, their
trial before the tribunal of Nero, and the martyrdom of Peter by crucifixion,
and of Paul by decapitation. The legend of Domine quo vadis is here
recorded of Peter, and the story of Perpetua is interwoven with the martyrdom
of Paul.
The pseudo-Clementine Homilies, of the middle of
the second century or later, give a malignant Judaizing caricature of Paul
under the disguise of Simon Magus (in part at least), and misrepresent him as
an antinomian arch-heretic; while Peter, the proper hero of this romance, is
glorified as the apostle of pure, primitive Christianity.
The Correspondence
of Paul and Seneca, mentioned by Jerome (De vir. ill. c. 12) and
Augustin (Ep. ad Maced. 153, al. 54), and often copied, though with many
variations, edited by Fabricius, Cod. Apocr. N. T., and in several
editions of Seneca. It consists of eight letters of Seneca and six of Paul.
They are very poor in thought and style, full of errors of chronology and
history, and undoubtedly a forgery. They arose from the correspondence of the
moral maxims of Seneca with those of Paul, which is more apparent than real,
and from the desire to recommend the Stoic philosopher to the esteem of the
Christians, or to recommend Christianity to the students of Seneca and the
Stoic philosophy. Paul was protected at Corinth by Seneca’s brother, Gallio
(Acts 18:12–16), and might have become acquainted with the philosopher who
committed suicide at Rome in 65, but there is no trace of such acquaintance.
Comp. Amédée Fleury: Saint-Paul et
Sénèque (Paris, 1853, 2 vols.);
C. Aubertin: Étude critique sur
les rapports supposé entre Sénèque et Saint-Paul (Par. 1887); F. C. Baur: Seneca und Paulus, 1858 and 1876; Reuss: art. Seneca
in Herzog, vol. XIV. 273 sqq.;
Lightfoot: Excursus in Com. on Philippians, pp 268–331; art. Paul
and Seneca, in "Westminster Review," Lond. 1880, pp. 309 sqq.
II. Biographical and Critical.
Bishop Pearson (d. 1686): Annales Paulini. Lond. 1688. In the various editions of his works, and also separately: Annals of St. Paul, transl. with geographical and
critical notes. Cambridge, 1825.
Lord Lyttleton (d. 1773): The Conversion
and Apostleship of St. Paul. 3d ed. Lond. 1747. Apologetic as an argument
for the truth of Christianity from the personal experience of the author.
Archdeacon William Paley (d. 1805): Horae Paulinae: or The Truth of the Scripture
History of Paul evinced by a comparison of the Epistles which bear his name,
with the Acts of the Apostles and with one another. Lond. 1790 (and subsequent editions). Still
valuable for apologetic purposes.
J. Hemsen: Der Apostel Paulus. Gött. 1830.
Carl
Schrader: Der Apostel Paulus. Leipz. 1830-’36. 5 Parts. Rationalistic.
F. Chr. Baur (d. 1860): Paulus, der Apostel Jesu
Christi. Tüb. 1845, second ed. by E. Zeller, Leipzig, 1866-’67, in 2 vols. Transl. into English by Allan Menzies.
Lond. (Williams & Norgate) 1873 and ’75, 2 vols. This work of the great
leader of the philosophico-critical reconstruction of the Apostolic Age (we may
call him the modern Marcion) was preceded by several special treatises on the
Christ-Party in Corinth (1831), on the Pastoral Epistles (1835), on the Epistle
to the Romans (1836), and a Latin programme on Stephen’s address before the
Sanhedrin (1829). It marks an epoch in the literature on Paul and opened new
avenues of research. It is the standard work of the Tübingen school of critics.
Conybeare
and Howson: The Life and Epistles
of St. Paul. Lond. 1853, 2 vols., and N. York, 1854; 2d ed. Lond. 1856, and
later editions; also an abridgment in one vol. A very useful and popular work,
especially on the geography of Paul’s travels. Comp. also Dean Howson: Character of St. Paul (Lond.
1862; 2d ed. 1864); Scenes from the Life of St. Paul (1867); Metaphors of St. Paul
(1868); The Companions of St. Paul (1871). Most of these books were
republished in America.
Ad. Monod (d. 1856): Saint Paul. Six sermons. See his
Sermons, Paris, 1860, vol. II. 121–296. The same in German and English.
W. F. Besser: Paulus. Leipz. 1861.
English transl. by F. Bultmann, with Introduction by J. S. Howson. Lond.
and N. York, 1864.
F. Bungener: St. Paul, sa vie, son oeuvre et ses épitres. Paris, 1865.
A. Hausrath: Der Apostel Paulus. Heidelb. 1865; 2d ed. 1872.
Comp. also his N. T. liche Zeitgeschichte, Part III.
M. Krenkel: Paulus, der Apostel der Heiden. Leipz. 1869.
Ernest
Renan: Saint Paul. Paris,
1869. Transl. from the French by J. Lockwood, N. York, 1869. Very
fresh and entertaining, but full ,of fancies and errors.
Thomas
Lewin (author of "Fasti
Sacri") The Life and Epistles of St. Paul, new ed. Lond. and N.
York, 1875, 2 vols. A magnificent work of many years’ labor, with 370
illustrations.
Canon F. W. Farrar: The Life and Work of St.
Paul. Lond. and N. York, 1879, 2 vols. Learned and eloquent.
W. M. Taylor: Paul as a Missionary. N. York,
1881.
As biographies, the works
of Conybeare and Howson, Lewin, and Farrar are the most complete and
instructive.
Also the respective
sections in the Histories of the Ap. Age by Neander, Lechler, Thiersch, Lange,
Schaff (226–347 and 634–640), Pressensé.
III. Chronological.
Thomas
Lewin: Fasti Sacri, a Key to the Chronology of the New
Testament. London, 1865. Chronological Tables from b.c. 70 to a.d. 70.
Wieseler: Chronologie des apostolischen Zeitalters. Göttingen, 1848.
IV. Doctrinal and Exegetical.
L. Usteri: Entwicklung des Paulinischen Lehrbegriffs. Zürich, 1824, 6th ed. 1851.
A. P. Dähne: Entwicklung des
Paulinischen Lehrbegriffs. Halle,
1835.
Baur: Paulus. See above.
R. A. Lipsius: Die Paulinische
Rechtfertigungslehre. Leipz. 1853.
C. Holsten: Zum Evangelium des Paulus und des Petrus. Rostock, 1868. This book, contains: 1. An essay
on the Christusvision
des Paulus und die Genesis des paulinischen Evangeliums, which had previously appeared in Hilgenfeld’s
"Zeitschrift," 1861, but is here enlarged by a reply to Beyschlag; 2.
Die
Messiasvision des Petrus (new); 3.
An analysis of the Epistle to the Galatians (1859); 4. A discussion of the
meaning of <foreign lang="el">savrx</foreign> in Paul’s system (1855). By the same: Das Evangelium des
Paulus. Part I. Berlin, 1880.
TH. Simar (R. C.): Die Theologie des heil.
Paulus. Freiberg, 1864.
Ernesti: Die Ethik des Ap. Paulus. Braunschweig, 1868; 3d ed. 1880.
R. Schmidt: Die Christologie des Ap. Paulus. Gött., 1870.
Matthew
Arnold: St. Paul and Protestantism.
Lond. 1870; 3d ed. 1875.
William
I. Irons (Episcop.): Christianity as
taught by St. Paul. Eight Bampton Lectures for 1870. Oxf. and Lond. 1871; 2d
ed. 1876.
A. Sabatier: L’apôtre Paul. Esquisse d’une histoire de sa pensée. Strasb. and Paris, 1870.
Otto
Pfleiderer (Prof. in Berlin): Der Paulinismus. Leipzig, 1873. Follows Baur and Holsten in
developing the doctrinal system of Paul from his conversion. English translation
by E. Peters. Lond. 1877, 2 vols. Lectures on the Influence of the Apostle Paul
on the Development of Christianity (The Hibbert Lectures). Trsl. by J. Fr.
Smith. Lond. and N. Y. 1885. Also his Urchristenthum, 1887.
C. Weizsäcker: D. Apost. Zeitalter (1886), pp. 68–355.
Fr.
Bethge: Die Paulinischen Reden der
Apostelgesch. Göttingen, 1887.
V. Commentaries.
The Commentators on
Paul’s Epistles (in whole or in part) are so numerous that we can only mention
some of the most important:
1. On all the
Pauline Epp.: Calvin, Beza, Estius
(b.c.), Corn. A Lapide (R. C.), Grotius, Wetstein, Bengel, Olshausen, De Wette,
Meyer, Lange (Am. ed. enlarged), Ewald, Von Hofmann, Reuss (French), Alford,
Wordsworth, Speaker’s Com., Ellicott
(Pop. Com.), Schaff (Pop. Com., vol. III. 1882). Compare also P.
J. Gloag: Introduction to the
Pauline Epistles. Edinburgh, 1874.
2. On single Epp.: Romans
by Tholuck (5th ed. 1856), Fritzsche
(3 vols. in Latin), Reiche, Rückert, Philippi (3d ed. 1866, English
transl. by Banks, 1878-’79, 2 vols.), Mos.
Stuart, Turner, Hodge, Forbes, Jowett, Shedd (1879), Godet (L’épitre aux
Romains, 1879 and 1880, 2 vols).—Corinthians by Neander, Osiander, Hodge,
Stanley, Heinrici, Edwards, Godet, Ellicott.—Galatians by Luther, Winer, Wieseler, Hilgenfeld, Holsten,
Jowett, Eadie, Ellicott, Lightfoot.—Ephesians by Harless, Matthies, Stier, Hodge, Eadie,
Ellicott, J. L. Davies.—Other minor Epp. explained by Bleek (Col., Philemon, and Eph.),
Koch (Thess.), van Hengel (Phil.), Eadie (Col.), Ellicott (Phil., Col., Thess.,
Philem.), Lightfoot (Phil,
Col., Philemon).—Pastoral Epp. by Matthies,
Mack (R. C.), Beck (ed. Lindenmeyer, 1879), Holtzmann (1880), Fairbairn,
Ellicott, Weiss (1886), Knoke (1887), Kölling (1887).
3. The Commentaries on the
second part of Acts by De Wette,
Meyer, Baumgarten, Alexander, Hackett, Lechler, Gloag, Plumptre, Jacobson,
Lumby, Howson and Spence.
</div3><div3 type =
"Section" n="30" title="Paul before his
Conversion">
<index
type = "globalSubject"
subject1 = "Apostles"
subject2 = "Paul" />
§ 30. Paul before his Conversion.
His Natural Outfit.
We now approach the apostle
of the Gentiles who decided the victory of Christianity as a universal
religion, who labored more, both in word and deed, than all his colleagues, and
who stands out, in lonely grandeur, the most remarkable and influential
character in history. His youth as well as his closing years are involved in
obscurity, save that he began a persecutor and ended a martyr, but the midday
of his life is better known than that of any other apostle, and is replete with
burning thoughts and noble deeds that can never die, and gather strength with
the progress of the gospel from age to age and country to country.
Saul or Paul341 was of strictly Jewish parentage, but was born,
a few years after Christ,342
in the renowned Grecian commercial and literary city of Tarsus, in the province
of Cilicia, and inherited the rights of a Roman citizen. He received a learned
Jewish education at Jerusalem in the school of the Pharisean Rabbi, Gamaliel, a
grandson of Hillel, not remaining an entire stranger to Greek literature, as
his style, his dialectic method, his allusions to heathen religion and
philosophy, and his occasional quotations from heathen poets show. Thus, a
"Hebrew of the Hebrews,"343
yet at the same time a native Hellenist, and a Roman citizen, be combined in
himself, so to speak, the three great nationalities of the ancient world, and
was endowed with all the natural qualifications for a universal apostleship. He
could argue with the Pharisees as a son of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin,
and as a disciple of the renowned Gamaliel, surnamed "the Glory of the
Law." He could address the Greeks in their own beautiful tongue and with
the convincing force of their logic. Clothed with the dignity and majesty of
the Roman people, he could travel safely over the whole empire with the proud
watchword: <foreign lang="la">Civis Romanus sum</foreign>.
This providential outfit
for his future work made him for a while the most dangerous enemy of
Christianity, but after his conversion its most useful promoter. The weapons of
destruction were turned into weapons of construction. The engine was reversed,
and the direction changed; but it remained the same engine, and its power was
increased under the new inspiration.
The intellectual and
moral endowment of Saul was of the highest order. The sharpest thinking was
blended with the tenderest feeling, the deepest mind with the strongest will.
He had Semitic fervor, Greek versatility, and Roman energy. Whatever he was, he
was with his whole soul. He was totus
in illis, a man of one idea and
of one purpose, first as a Jew, then as a Christian. His nature was martial and
heroic. Fear was unknown to him—except the fear of God, which made him fearless
of man. When yet a youth, he had risen to high eminence; and had he remained a
Jew, he might have become a greater Rabbi than even Hillel or Gamaliel, as he
surpassed them both in original genius and fertility of thought.
Paul was the only
scholar among the apostles. He never displays his learning, considering it of
no account as compared with the excellency of the knowledge of Christ, for whom
he suffered the loss of all things,344
but he could not conceal it, and turned it to the best use after his
conversion. Peter and John had natural genius, but no scholastic education;
Paul had both, and thus became the founder of Christian theology and
philosophy.
His Education.
His training was
thoroughly Jewish, rooted and grounded in the Scriptures of the Old Covenant,
and those traditions of the elders which culminated in the Talmud.345 He
knew the Hebrew and Greek Bible almost by heart. In his argumentative epistles,
when addressing Jewish converts, he quotes from the Pentateuch, the Prophets,
the Psalms, now literally, now freely, sometimes ingeniously combining several
passages or verbal reminiscences, or reading between the lines in a manner
which betrays the profound student and master of the hidden depths of the word
of God, and throws a flood of light on obscure passages.346 He
was quite familiar with the typical and allegorical methods of interpretation;
and he occasionally and incidentally uses Scriptural arguments, or
illustrations rather, which strike a sober scholar as far-fetched and fanciful,
though they were quite conclusive to a Jewish reader.347 But
he never bases a truth on such an illustration without an independent argument;
he never indulges in the exegetical impositions and frivolities of those
"letter-worshipping Rabbis who prided themselves on suspending dogmatic
mountains by textual hairs." Through the revelation of Christ, the Old
Testament, instead of losing itself in the desert of the Talmud or the
labyrinth of the Kabbala, became to him a book of life, full of types and
promises of the great facts and truths of the gospel salvation. In Abraham he
saw the father of the faithful, in Habakkuk a preacher of justification by
faith, in the paschal lamb a type of Christ slain for the sins of the world, in
the passage of Israel through the Red Sea a prefigurement of Christian baptism,
and in the manna of the wilderness a type of the bread of life in the Lord’s
Supper.
The Hellenic culture of
Paul is a matter of dispute, denied by some, unduly exalted by others. He no
doubt acquired in the home of his boyhood and early manhood348 a knowledge of the Greek language, for Tarsus
was at that time the seat of one of the three universities of the Roman empire,
surpassing in some respects even Athens and Alexandria, and furnished tutors to
the imperial family. His teacher, Gamaliel, was comparatively free from the
rabbinical abhorrence and contempt of heathen literature. After his conversion
he devoted his life to the salvation of the heathen, and lived for years at
Tarsus, Ephesus, Corinth, and other cities of Greece, and became a Greek to the
Greeks in order to save them. It is scarcely conceivable that a man of
universal human sympathies, and so wide awake to the deepest problems of
thought, as he, should have under such circumstances taken no notice of the
vast treasures of Greek philosophy, poetry, and history. He would certainly do
what we expect every missionary to China or India to do from love to the race
which he is to benefit, and from a desire to extend his usefulness. Paul very
aptly, though only incidentally, quotes three times from Greek poets, not only
a proverbial maxim from Menander,349
and a hexameter from Epimenides,350
which may have passed into common use, but also a half-hexameter with a
connecting particle, which he must have read in the tedious astronomical poem
of his countryman, Aratus (about b.c.
270), or in the sublime hymn of Cleanthes to Jupiter, in both of which the
passage occurs.351 He borrows some of his favorite
metaphors from the Grecian games; he disputed with Greek philosophers of
different schools and addressed them from the Areopagus with consummate wisdom
and adaptation to the situation; some suppose that he alludes even to the
terminology of the Stoic philosophy when he speaks of the "rudiments"
or "elements of the world."352 He handles the Greek language, not
indeed with classical purity and elegance, yet with an almost creative vigor,
transforming it into an obedient organ of new ideas, and pressing into his
service the oxymoron, the paronomasia, the litotes, and other rhetorical figures.353 Yet
all this does by no means prove a regular study or extensive knowledge of Greek
literature, but is due in part to native genius. His more than Attic urbanity
and gentlemanly refinement which breathe in his Epistles to Philemon and the
Philippians, must be traced to the influence of Christianity rather than his
intercourse with accomplished Greeks. His Hellenic learning seems to have been
only casual, incidental, and altogether subordinate to his great aim. In this
respect he differed widely from the learned Josephus, who affected Attic purity
of style, and from Philo, who allowed the revealed truth of the Mosaic religion
to be controlled, obscured, and perverted by Hellenic philosophy. Philo
idealized and explained away the Old Testament by allegorical impositions which
he substituted for grammatical expositions; Paul spiritualized the Old
Testament and drew out its deepest meaning. Philo’s Judaism evaporated in
speculative abstractions, Paul’s Judaism was elevated and transformed into
Christian realities.
His Zeal for Judaism.
Saul was a Pharisee of
the strictest sect, not indeed of the hypocritical type, so witheringly rebuked
by our Saviour, but of the honest, truth-loving and truth-seeking sort, like
that of Nicodemus and Gamaliel. His very fanaticism in persecution arose from
the intensity of his conviction and his zeal for the religion of his fathers.
He persecuted in ignorance, and that diminished, though it did not abolish, his
guilt. He probably never saw or heard Jesus until he appeared to him at
Damascus. He may have been at Tarsus at the time of the crucifixion and
resurrection.354 But
with his Pharisaic education he regarded Jesus of Nazareth, like his teachers,
as a false Messiah, a rebel, a blasphemer, who was justly condemned to death.
And he acted according to his conviction. He took the most prominent part in
the persecution of Stephen and delighted in his death. Not satisfied with this,
he procured from the Sanhedrin, which had the oversight of all the synagogues
and disciplinary punishments for offences against the law, full power to
persecute and arrest the scattered disciples. Thus armed, he set out for
Damascus, the capital of Syria, which numbered many synagogues. He was
determined to exterminate the dangerous sect from the face of the earth, for
the glory of God. But the height of his opposition was the beginning of his
devotion to Christianity.
His External Relations and Personal Appearance.
On the subordinate
questions of Paul’s external condition and relations we have no certain
information. Being a Roman citizen, he belonged to the respectable class of
society, but must have been poor; for he depended for support on a trade which
he learned in accordance with rabbinical custom; it was the trade of
tent-making, very common in Cilicia, and not profitable except in large cities.355
He had a sister living
at Jerusalem whose son was instrumental in saving his life.356
He was probably never
married. Some suppose that he was a widower. Jewish and rabbinical custom, the
completeness of his moral character, his ideal conception of marriage as
reflecting the mystical union of Christ with his church, his exhortations to
conjugal, parental, and filial duties, seem to point to experimental knowledge
of domestic life. But as a Christian missionary moving from place to place, and
exposed to all sorts of hardship and persecution, he felt it his duty to abide
alone.357 He sacrificed the blessings of home and family
to the advancement of the kingdom of Christ.358
His "bodily
presence was weak, and his speech contemptible" (of no value), in the
superficial judgment of the Corinthians, who missed the rhetorical ornaments,
yet could not help admitting that his "letters were weighty and
strong."359
Some of the greatest men have been small in size, and some of the purest
souls forbidding in body. Socrates was the homeliest, and yet the wisest of
Greeks. Neander, a converted Jew, like Paul, was short, feeble, and strikingly
odd in his whole appearance, but a rare humility, benignity, and heavenly
aspiration beamed from his face beneath his dark and bushy eyebrows. So we may
well imagine that the expression of Paul’s countenance was highly intellectual
and spiritual, and that he looked "sometimes like a man and sometimes like
an angel."360
He was afflicted with a
mysterious, painful, recurrent, and repulsive physical infirmity, which he
calls a "thorn in the flesh, " and which acted as a check upon
spiritual pride and self-exultation over his abundance of revelations.361 He
bore the heavenly treasure in an earthly vessel and his strength was made
perfect in weakness.362 But all the more must we admire the
moral heroism which turned weakness itself into an element of strength, and
despite pain and trouble and persecution carried the gospel salvation
triumphantly from Damascus to Rome.
</div3><div3 type =
"Section" n="31" title="The Conversion of
Paul">
§ 31. The Conversion of Paul.
<foreign lang="el">Eujdovkhsen oJ qeo" ... ajpokaluvyai to;n uiJo;n aujtou' ejn ejmoi;,
iJna eujaggelivzwmai aujto;n ejn toi'" ej[qnesin </foreign> <scripRef passage =
"Gal. 1:15, 16">Gal. 1:15, 16</scripRef>.
The conversion of Paul
marks not only a turning-point in his personal history, but also an important
epoch in the history of the apostolic church, and consequently in the history
of mankind. It was the most fruitful event since the miracle of Pentecost, and
secured the universal victory of Christianity.
The transformation of
the most dangerous persecutor into the most successful promoter of Christianity
is nothing less than a miracle of divine grace. It rests on the greater miracle
of the resurrection of Christ. Both are inseparably connected; without the
resurrection the conversion would have been impossible, and on the other hand
the conversion of such a man and with such results is one of the strongest
proofs of the resurrection.
The bold attack of
Stephen—the forerunner of Paul—upon the hard, stiff-necked Judaism which had
crucified the Messiah, provoked a determined and systematic attempt on the part
of the Sanhedrin to crucify Jesus again by destroying his church. In this struggle
for life and death Saul the Pharisee, the bravest and strongest of the rising
rabbis, was the willing and accepted leader.
After the martyrdom of
Stephen and the dispersion of the congregation of Jerusalem, he proceeded to
Damascus in suit of the fugitive disciples of Jesus, as a commissioner of the
Sanhedrin, a sort of inquisitor-general, with full authority and determination
to stamp out the Christian rebellion, and to bring all the apostates he could
find, whether they were men or women, in chains to the holy city to be
condemned by the chief priests.
Damascus is one of the
oldest cities in the world, known in the days of Abraham, and bursts upon the
traveller like a vision of paradise amidst a burning and barren wilderness of
sand; it is watered by the never-failing rivers Abana and Pharpar (which Naaman
of old preferred to all the waters of Israel), and embosomed in luxuriant
gardens of flowers and groves of tropical fruit trees; hence glorified by
Eastern poets as "the Eye of the Desert."
But a far higher vision
than this earthly paradise was in store for Saul as he approached the city. A
supernatural light from heaven, brighter than the Syrian sun, suddenly flashed
around him at midday, and Jesus of Nazareth, whom he persecuted in his humble
disciples, appeared to him in his glory as the exalted Messiah, asking him in
the Hebrew tongue: "Shaûl, Shaûl, why persecutest thou Me?363 It
was a question both of rebuke and of love, and it melted his heart. He fell
prostrate to the ground. He saw and heard, he trembled and obeyed, he believed
and rejoiced. As he rose from the earth he saw no man. Like a helpless child,
blinded by the dazzling light, he was led to Damascus, and after three days of
blindness and fasting he was cured and baptized—not by Peter or James or John,
but—by one of the humble disciples whom he had come to destroy. The haughty,
self-righteous, intolerant, raging Pharisee was changed into an humble,
penitent, grateful, loving servant of Jesus. He threw away self-righteousness,
learning, influence, power, prospects, and cast in his lot with a small,
despised sect at the risk of his life. If there ever was an honest, unselfish,
radical, and effective change of conviction and conduct, it was that of Saul of
Tarsus. He became, by a creative act of the Holy Spirit, a "new creature
in Christ Jesus."364
We have three full
accounts of this event in the Acts, one from Luke, two from Paul himself, with
slight variations in detail, which only confirm the essential harmony.365
Paul also alludes to it five or six times in his Epistles.366 In
all these passages he represents the change as an act brought about by a direct
intervention of Jesus, who revealed himself in his glory from heaven, and
struck conviction into his mind like lightning at midnight. He compares it to
the creative act of God when He commanded the light to shine out of darkness.367 He
lays great stress on the fact that he was converted and called to the apostolate
directly by Christ, without any human agency; that he learned his gospel of
free and universal grace by revelation, and not from the older apostles, whom
he did not even see till three years after his call.368
The conversion, indeed,
was not a moral compulsion, but included the responsibility of assent or
dissent. God converts nobody by force or by magic. He made man free, and acts
upon him as a moral being. Paul might have "disobeyed the heavenly
vision."369 He might
have "kicked against the goads," though it was "hard"
(not impossible) to do so.370 These words imply some psychological
preparation, some doubt and misgiving as to his course, some moral conflict
between the flesh and the spirit, which he himself described twenty years
afterwards from personal experience, and which issues in the cry of despair:
"O wretched man that I am!
Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"371 On
his journey from Jerusalem to Damascus, which takes a full week on foot or
horseback—the distance being about 140 miles—as he was passing, in the solitude
of his own thoughts, through Samaria, Galilee, and across Mount Hermon, he had
ample time for reflection, and we may well imagine how the shining face of the
martyr Stephen, as he stood like a holy angel before the Sanhedrin, and as in
the last moment he prayed for his murderers, was haunting him like a ghost and
warning him to stop his mad career.
Yet we must not overrate
this preparation or anticipate his riper experience in the three days that
intervened between his conversion and his baptism, and during the three years
of quiet meditation in Arabia. He was no doubt longing for truth and for
righteousness, but there was a thick veil over his mental eye which could only
be taken away by a hand from without; access to his heart was barred by an iron
door of prejudice which had to be broken in by Jesus himself. On his way to
Damascus he was "yet breathing threatening and slaughter against the disciples
of the Lord," and thinking he was doing "God service;" he was,
to use his own language, "beyond measure" persecuting the church of
God and endeavoring to destroy it, "being more exceedingly zealous for the
traditions of his fathers" than many of his age, when "it pleased God
to reveal his Son in him." Moreover it is only in the light of faith that
we see the midnight darkness of our sin, and it is only beneath the cross of
Christ that we feel the whole crushing weight of guilt and the unfathomable depth
of God’s redeeming love. No amount of subjective thought and reflection could
have brought about that radical change in so short a time. It was the objective
appearance of Jesus that effected it.
This appearance implied
the resurrection and the ascension, and this was the irresistible evidence of
His Messiahship, God’s own seal of approval upon the work of Jesus. And the
resurrection again shed a new light upon His death on the cross, disclosing it
as an atoning sacrifice for the sins of the world, as the means of procuring
pardon and peace consistent with the claims of divine justice. What a
revelation! That same Jesus of
Nazareth whom he hated and persecuted as a false prophet justly crucified
between two robbers, stood before Saul as the risen, ascended, and glorified
Messiah! And instead of crushing
the persecutor as he deserved, He pardoned him and called him to be His witness
before Jews and Gentiles! This revelation was enough for an orthodox Jew waiting
for the hope of Israel to make him a Christian, and enough for a Jew of such
force of character to make him an earnest and determined Christian. The logic
of his intellect and the energy of his will required that he should love and
promote the new faith with the same enthusiasm with which he had hated and
persecuted it; for hatred is but inverted love, and the intensity of love and
hatred depends on the strength of affection and the ardor of temper.
With all the suddenness
and radicalness of the transformation there is nevertheless a bond of unity
between Saul the Pharisee and Paul the Christian. It was the same person with
the same end in view, but in opposite directions. We must remember that he was
not a worldly, indifferent, cold-blooded man, but an intensely religious man.
While persecuting the church, he was "blameless" as touching the
righteousness of the law.372 He resembled the rich youth who had
observed the commandments, yet lacked the one things needful, and of whom Mark
says that Jesus "loved him."373 He was not converted from infidelity to
faith, but from a lower faith to a purer faith, from the religion of Moses to
the religion of Christ, from the theology of the law to the theology of the
gospel. How shall a sinner be justified before the tribunal of a holy God? That was with him the question of
questions before as well as after his conversion; not a scholastic question
merely, but even far more a moral and religious question. For righteousness, to
the Hebrew mind, is conformity to the will of God as expressed in his revealed
law, and implies life eternal as its reward. The honest and earnest pursuit
of righteousness is the connecting link between the two periods of Paul’s life.
First he labored to secure it by works of the law, then obedience of faith.
What he had sought in vain by his fanatical zeal for the traditions of Judaism,
he found gratuitously and at once by trust in the cross of Christ: pardon and
peace with God. By the discipline of the Mosaic law as a tutor he was led
beyond its restraints and prepared for manhood and freedom. Through the law
he died to the law that he might live unto God. His old self, with its lusts,
was crucified with Christ, so that henceforth he lived no longer himself, but
Christ lived in him.374 He was mystically identified with his
Saviour and had no separate existence from him. The whole of Christianity, the
whole of life, was summed up to him in the one word: Christ. He determined to
know nothing save Jesus Christ and Him crucified for our sins, and risen again
for our justification.375
His experience of
justification by faith, his free pardon and acceptance by Christ were to him the
strongest stimulus to gratitude and consecration. His great sin of persecution,
like Peter’s denial, was overruled for his own good: the remembrance of it kept
him humble, guarded him against temptation, and intensified his zeal and
devotion. "I am the least of the apostles," he said in unfeigned
humility that am not meet to be
called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of
God I am what I am; and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain;
but I labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God
which was with me."376 This confession contains, in epitome,
the whole meaning of his life and work.
The idea of
justification by the free grace of God in Christ through a living faith which
makes Christ and his merits our own and leads to consecration and holiness, is
the central idea of Paul’s Epistles. His whole theology, doctrinal, ethical,
and practical, lies, like a germ, in his conversion; but it was actually
developed by a sharp conflict with Judaizing teachers who continued to trust in
the law for righteousness and salvation, and thus virtually frustrated the
grace of God and made Christ’s death unnecessary and fruitless.
Although Paul broke
radically with Judaism and opposed the Pharisaical notion of legal
righteousness at every step and with all his might, he was far from opposing
the Old Testament or the Jewish people. Herein he shows his great wisdom and
moderation, and his infinite superiority over Marcion and other ultra- and
pseudo-Pauline reformers. He now expounded the Scriptures as a direct
preparation for the gospel, the law as a schoolmaster leading to Christ,
Abraham as the father of the faithful. And as to his countrymen after the
flesh, he loved them more than ever before. Filled with the amazing love of
Christ who had pardoned him, "the chief of sinners," he was ready for
the greatest possible sacrifice if thereby he might save them. His startling
language in the ninth chapter of the Romans is not rhetorical exaggeration, but
the genuine expression of that heroic self-denial and devotion which animated
Moses, and which culminated in the sacrifice of the eternal Son of God on the
cross of Calvary.377
Paul’s conversion was at
the same time his call to the apostleship, not indeed to a place among the
Twelve (for the vacancy of Judas was filled), but to the independent
apostleship of the Gentiles.378 Then followed an uninterrupted activity
of more than a quarter of a century, which for interest and for permanent and
ever-growing usefulness has no parallel in the annals of history, and affords
an unanswerable proof of the sincerity of his conversion and the truth of
Christianity.379
Analogous Conversions.
God deals with men
according to their peculiar character and condition. As in Elijah’s vision on
Mount Horeb, God appears now in the mighty rushing wind that uproots the trees,
now in the earthquake that rends the rocks, now in the consuming fire, now in
the still small voice. Some are suddenly converted, and can remember the place
and hour; others are gradually and imperceptibly changed in spirit and conduct;
still others grow up unconsciously in the Christian faith from the mother’s
knee and the baptismal font. The stronger the will the more force it requires
to overcome the resistance, and the more thorough and lasting is the change. Of
all sudden and radical conversions that of Saul was the most sudden and the
most radical. In several respects it stands quite alone, as the man himself and
his work. Yet there are faint analogies in history. The divines who most
sympathized with his spirit and system of doctrine, passed through a similar
experience, and were much aided by his example and writings. Among these Augustin,
Calvin, and Luther are the most conspicuous.
St. Augustin, the son of a pious mother and a heathen father, was led astray into
error and vice and wandered for years through the labyrinth of heresy and
scepticism, but his heart was restless and homesick after God. At last, when he
attained to the thirty-third year of his life (Sept., 386), the fermentation of
his soul culminated in a garden near Milan, far away from his African home,
when the Spirit of God, through the combined agencies of the unceasing prayers
of Monica, the sermons of Ambrose, the example of St. Anthony, the study of
Cicero and Plato, of Isaiah and Paul, brought about a change not indeed as
wonderful—for no visible appearance of Christ was vouchsafed to him—but as
sincere and lasting as that of the apostle. As he was lying in the dust of
repentance and wrestling with God in prayer for deliverance, be suddenly heard
a sweet voice as from heaven, calling out again and again: ’Take and read, take
and read!" He opened the holy
book and read the exhortation of Paul: "Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof." It was
a voice of God; he obeyed it, he completely changed his course of life, and
became the greatest and most useful teacher of his age.
Of Calvin’s conversion we
know very little, but he himself characterizes it as a sudden change (subita conversio) from papal superstition to the evangelical
faith. In this respect it resembles that of Paul rather than Augustin. He was
no sceptic, no heretic, no immoral man, but as far as we know, a pious Romanist
until the brighter life of the Reformation burst on his mind from the Holy
Scriptures and showed him a more excellent way. "Only one haven of
salvation is left for our souls," he says, "and that is the mercy of
God in Christ. We are saved by grace—not by our merits, not by our works."
He consulted not with flesh and blood, and burned the bridge after him. He
renounced all prospects of a brilliant career, and exposed himself to the danger
of persecution and death. He exhorted and strengthened the timid Protestants of
France, usually closing with the words of Paul If God be for us, who can be against us?" He prepared in Paris a flaming address
on reform, which was ordered to be burned; he escaped from persecution in a
basket from a window, like Paul at Damascus, and wandered for two years as a
fugitive evangelist from place to place until he found his sphere of labor in
Geneva. With his conversion was born his Pauline theology, which sprang from
his brain like Minerva from the head of Jupiter. Paul never had a more logical
and theological commentator than John Calvin.380
But the most Paul-like
man in history is the leader of the German Reformation, who combined in almost
equal proportion depth of mind, strength of will, tenderness of heart, and a
fiery vehemence of temper, and was the most powerful herald of evangelical freedom;
though inferior to Augustin and Calvin (not to say Paul) in self-discipline,
consistency, and symmetry of character.381
Luther’s
commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, though not a grammatical or logical
exposition, is a fresh reproduction and republication of the Epistle against
the self-righteousness, and bondage of the papacy. Luther’s first conversion
took place in his twenty-first year (1505), when, as a student of law at
Erfurt, on his return from a visit to his parents, he was so frightened by a
fearful thunder-storm and flashes of lightning that he exclaimed: "Help,
dear St. Anna, I will become a monk!" But that conversion, although it has often been compared
with that of the apostle, had nothing to do with his Paulinism and
Protestantism; it made him a pious Catholic, it induced him to flee from the
world to the retreat of a convent for the salvation of his soul. And he became
one of the most humble, obedient, and self-denying of monks, as Paul was one of
the most earnest and zealous of Pharisees. "If ever a monk got to heaven
by monkery," says Luther, "I ought to have gotten there." But
the more he sought righteousness and peace by ascetic self denial and penal
exercises, the more painfully he felt the weight of sin and the wrath of God,
although unable to mention to his confessor any particular transgression. The
discipline of the law drove him to the brink of despair, when by the kind
interposition of Staupitz he was directed away from himself to the cross of
Christ, as the only source of pardon and peace, and found, by implicit faith in
His all-sufficient merits, that righteousness which he had vainly sought in his
own strength.382
This, his second conversion, as we may call it, which occurred several
years later (1508), and gradually rather than suddenly, made him an evangelical
freeman in Christ and prepared him for the great conflict with Romanism, which
began in earnest with the nailing of the ninety-nine theses against the traffic
in indulgences (1517). The intervening years may be compared to Paul’s sojourn
in Arabia and the subordinate labors preceding his first great missionary tour.
False Explanations.
Various attempts have
been made by ancient heretics and modern rationalists to explain Paul’s
conversion in a purely natural way, but they have utterly failed, and by their
failure they indirectly confirm the true view as given by the apostle himself
and as held in all ages by the Christian church.383
1. The Theory of Fraud.—The heretical and
malignant faction of the Judaizers was disposed to attribute Paul’s conversion
to selfish motives, or to the influence of evil spirits.
The Ebionites spread the
lie that Paul was of heathen parents, fell in love with the daughter of the
high priest in Jerusalem, became a proselyte and submitted to circumcision in
order to secure her, but failing in his purpose, he took revenge and attacked
the circumcision, the sabbath, and the whole Mosaic law.384
In the pseudo-Clementine
Homilies, which represent a speculative form of the Judaizing heresy, Paul is
assailed under the disguise of Simon Magus, the arch-heretic, who struggled
antinomian heathenism into the church. The manifestation of Christ was either a
manifestation of his wrath, or a deliberate lie.385
2. The Rationalistic Theory of Thunder and
Lightning.—It attributes the conversion to physical causes, namely, a
violent storm and the delirium of a burning Syrian fever, in which Paul superstitiously
mistook the thunder for the voice of God and the lightning for a heavenly
vision.386 But the record says nothing about thunderstorm
and fever, and both combined could not produce such an effect upon any sensible
man, much less upon the history of the world. Who ever heard the thunder speak
in Hebrew or in any other articulate language? And had not Paul and Luke eyes and
ears and common sense, as well as we, to distinguish an ordinary phenomenon of
nature from a supernatural vision?
3. The Vision-Hypothesis resolves the
conversion into a natural psychological process and into an honest
self-delusion. It is the favorite theory of modern rationalists, who scorn all
other explanations, and profess the highest respect for the intellectual and
moral purity and greatness of Paul.387
It is certainly more rational and creditable than the second hypothesis,
because it ascribes the mighty change not to outward and accidental phenomena
which pass away, but to internal causes. It assumes that an intellectual and
moral fermentation was going on for some time in the mind of Paul, and resulted
at last, by logical necessity, in an entire change of conviction and conduct,
without any supernatural influence, the very possibility of which is denied as
being inconsistent with the continuity of natural development. The miracle in
this case was simply the mythical and symbolical reflection of the commanding
presence of Jesus in the thoughts of the apostle.
That Paul saw a vision,
he says himself, but he meant, of course, a real, objective, personal
appearance of Christ from heaven, which was visible to his eyes and audible to
his ears, and at the same time a revelation to his mind through the medium of
the senses.388 The
inner spiritual manifestation389
was more important than the external, but both combined produced conviction.
The vision-theory turns the appearance of Christ into a purely subjective imagination,
which the apostle mistook for an objective fact.390
It is incredible that a
man of sound, clear, and keen mind as that of Paul undoubtedly was, should have
made such a radical and far reaching blunder as to confound subjective
reflections with an objective appearance of Jesus whom he persecuted, and to
ascribe solely to an act of divine mercy what he must have known to be the
result of his own thoughts, if he thought at all.
The advocates of this
theory throw the appearances of the risen Lord to the older disciples, the
later visions of Peter, Philip, and John in the Apocalypse, into the same
category of subjective illusions in the high tide of nervous excitement and
religious enthusiasm. It is plausibly maintained that Paul was an enthusiast,
fond of visions and revelations,391
and that he justifies a doubt concerning the realness of the resurrection
itself by putting all the appearances of the risen Christ on the same level
with his own, although several years elapsed between those of Jerusalem and
Galilee, and that on the way to Damascus.
But this, the only
possible argument for the vision-hypothesis, is entirely untenable. When Paul
says: "Last of all, as unto an untimely offspring, Christ appeared to
me also," he draws a clear line of distinction between the personal
appearances of Christ and his own later visions, and closes the former with
the one vouchsafed to him at his conversion.392
Once, and once only, he claims to have seen the Lord in visible form and to
have heard his voice; last, indeed, and out of due time, yet as truly and
really as the older apostles. The only difference is that they saw the risen
Saviour still abiding on earth, while he saw the ascended Saviour coming down
from heaven, as we may expect him to appear to all men on the last day. It is
the greatness of that vision which leads him to dwell on his personal
unworthiness as "the least of the apostles and not worthy to be called an
apostle, because he persecuted the church of God." He uses the realness of
Christ’s resurrection as the basis for his wonderful discussion of the future
resurrection of believers, which would lose all its force if Christ had not
actually been raised from the dead.393
Moreover his conversion
coincided with his call to the apostleship. If the former was a delusion, the
latter must also have been a delusion. He emphasizes his direct call to the
apostleship of the Gentiles by the personal appearance of Christ without any
human intervention, in opposition to his Judaizing adversaries who tried to
undermine his authority.394
The whole assumption of
a long and deep inward preparation, both intellectual and moral, for a change,
is without any evidence, and cannot set aside the fact that Paul was, according
to his repeated confession, at that time violently persecuting Christianity in
its followers. His conversion can be far less explained from antecedent causes,
surrounding circumstances, and personal motives than that of any other
disciple. While the older apostles were devoted friends of Jesus, Paul was his
enemy, bent at the very time of the great change on an errand of cruel
persecution, and therefore in a state of mind most unlikely to give birth to a
vision so fatal to his present object and his future career. How could a
fanatical persecutor of Christianity, "breathing threatenings and
slaughter against the disciples of the Lord," stultify and contradict
himself by an imaginative conceit which tended to the building up of that very
religion which he was laboring to destroy!395
But supposing (with
Renan) that his mind was temporarily upset in the delirium of feverish
excitement, he certainly soon recovered health and reason, and had every
opportunity to correct his error; he was intimate with the murderers of Jesus,
who could have produced tangible evidence against the resurrection if it had
never occurred; and after a long pause of quiet reflection he went to
Jerusalem, spent a fortnight with Peter, and could learn from him and from
James, the brother of Christ, their experience, and compare it with his own.
Everything in this case is against the mythical and legendary theory which
requires a change of environment and the lapse of years for the formation of
poetic fancies and fictions.
Finally, the whole
life-work of Paul, from his conversion at Damascus to his martyrdom in Rome, is
the best possible argument against this hypothesis and for the realness of his
conversion, as an act of divine grace. "By their fruits ye shall know
them." How could such an effective change proceed from an empty dream? Can an illusion change the current of
history? By joining the Christian
sect Paul sacrificed everything, at last life itself, to the service of Christ.
He never wavered in his conviction of the truth as revealed to him, and by his
faith in this revelation he has become a benediction to all ages.
The vision-hypothesis
denies objective miracles, but ascribes miracles to subjective imaginations,
and makes a he more effect ive and beneficial than the truth.
All rationalistic and
natural interpretations of the conversion of Paul turn out to be irrational and
unnatural; the supernatural interpretation of Paul himself, after all, is the
most rational and natural.
Remarkable Concessions.
Dr. Baur, the master-spirit of skeptical criticism and the founder of the
"Tübingen School," felt constrained, shortly before his death (1860),
to abandon the vision-hypothesis and to admit that "no psychological or
dialectical analysis can explore the inner mystery of the act in which God
revealed his Son in Paul (<foreign lang="de">keine, weder
psychologische noch dialektische Analyse kann das innere Geheimniss des Actes
erforschen, in welchem Gott seinen Sohn in ihm enthülte</foreign>). In the same connection he says that in,
"the sudden transformation of Paul from the most violent adversary of
Christianity into its most determined herald" he could see "nothing
short of a miracle (Wunder);" and adds that "this miracle
appears all the greater when we remember that in this revulsion of his
consciousness he broke through the barriers of Judaism and rose out of its
particularism into the universalism of Christianity."396
This frank confession is creditable to the head and heart of the late
Tübingen critic, but is fatal to his whole anti-supernaturalistic theory of
history. <foreign
lang="la">Si
falsus in uno, falsus in
omnibus</foreign>. If we admit the miracle
in one case, the door is opened for all other miracles which rest on equally
strong evidence.
The late Dr. Keim, an independent
pupil of Baur, admits at least spiritual manifestations of the ascended Christ from
heaven, and urges in favor of the objective reality of the Christophanies as
reported by Paul, <scripRef passage = "1 Cor. 15:3">1 Cor. 15:3</scripRef> sqq., "the whole character of Paul, his
sharp understanding which was not weakened by his enthusiasm, the careful,
cautious, measured, simple form of his statement, above all the favorable total
impression of his narrative and the mighty echo of it in the unanimous,
uncontradicted faith of primitive Christendom."397
Dr. Schenkel, of Heidelberg, in his latest stage of development, says that Paul, with
full justice, put his Christophany on a par with the Christophanies of the
older apostles; that all these Christophanies are not simply the result of
psychological processes, but "remain in many respects psychologically
inconceivable," and point back to the historic background of the person of
Jesus; that Paul was not an ordinary visionary, but carefully distinguished the
Christophany at Damascus from his later visions; that he retained the full
possession of his rational mind even in the moments of the highest exaltation;
that his conversion was not the sudden effect of nervous excitement, but
brought about by the influence of the divine Providence which quietly prepared
his soul for the reception of Christ; and that the appearance of Christ
vouchsafed to him was "no dream, but reality."398
Professor Reuss, of Strasburg, likewise an independent critic of
the liberal school, comes to the same conclusion as Baur, that the conversion
of Paul, if not an absolute miracle, is at least an unsolved psychological
problem. He says: "<foreign lang="fr">La conversion de
Paul, après tout ce qui en a été dit de notre temps, reste toujours, si ce
n’est un miracle absolu, dans le sens traditionnel de ce mot (c’est-à-dire un événement qui arrête ou change
violemment le cours naturel des choses, un effet sans autre cause que
l’intervention arbitraire et immédiate de Dieu), du moins un problème psychologique aujourd’hui
insoluble. L’explication dite naturelle, qu’elle fasse intervenir un orage on
qu’elle se retranche dans le domaine des hallucinations ... ne nous donne pas
la clef de cette crise elle-même, qui a décidé la métamorphose du pharisien en
chrétien</foreign>."399
Canon Farrar says (I. 195): "One fact remains upon any hypothesis and that is,
that the conversion of St. Paul was in the highest sense of the word a miracle,
and one of which the spiritual consequences have affected every subsequent age
of the history of mankind."
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="32" title="The Work of
Paul">
§ 32. The Work of Paul.
"He who can part from country and from kin,
And scorn delights, and tread the thorny way,
A heavenly crown, through toil and pain, to win—
He who reviled can tender love repay,
And buffeted, for bitter foes can pray—
He who, upspringing at his Captain’s call,
Fights the good fight, and when at last the day
Of fiery trial comes, can nobly fall—
Such were a saint—or more—and such the holy
Paul!"
—Anon.
The conversion of Paul was
a great intellectual and moral revolution, yet without destroying his identity.
His noble gifts and attainments remained, but were purged of Selfish motives,
inspired by a new principle, and consecrated to a divine end. The love of
Christ who saved him, was now his all-absorbing passion, and no sacrifice was
too great to manifest his gratitude to Him. The architect of ruin became an
architect of the temple of God. The same vigor, depth and acuteness of mind,
but illuminated by the Holy Spirit; the same strong temper and burning zeal,
but cleansed, subdued and controlled by wisdom and moderation; the same energy
and boldness, but coupled with gentleness and meekness; and, added to all this,
as crowning gifts of grace, a love and humility, a tenderness and delicacy of
feeling such as are rarely, if ever, found in a character so proud, manly and
heroic. The little Epistle to Philemon reveals a perfect Christian gentleman, a
nobleman of nature, doubly ennobled by grace. The thirteenth chapter of the
first Epistle to the Corinthians could only be conceived by a mind that had
ascended on the mystic ladder of faith to the throbbing heart of the God of
love; yet without inspiration even Paul could not have penned that seraphic
description of the virtue which beareth all things, believeth all things,
hopeth all things, endureth all things, which never faileth, but will last for
ever the greatest in the triad of celestial graces: faith, hope, love.
Saul converted became at
once Paul the missionary. Being saved himself, he made it his life-work to save
others. "Straight way" he proclaimed Christ in the synagogues, and
confounded the Jews of Damascus, proving that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah,
the Son of God.400 But this was only a preparatory
testimony in the fervor of the first love. The appearance of Christ, and the
travails of his soul during the three days and nights of prayer and fasting,
when he experienced nothing less than a spiritual death and a spiritual
resurrection, had so shaken his physical and mental frame that he felt the need
of protracted repose away from the noise and turmoil of the world. Besides
there must have been great danger threatening his life as soon as the
astounding news of his conversion became known at Jerusalem. He therefore went
to the desert of Arabia and spent there three years,401 not in missionary labor (as Chrysostom thought),
but chiefly in prayer, meditation and the study of the Hebrew Scriptures in the
light of their fulfilment through the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth.
This retreat took the place of the three years’ preparation of the Twelve in
the school of Christ. Possibly he may have gone as far as Mount Sinai, among
the wild children of Hagar and Ishmael.402
On that pulpit of the great lawgiver of Israel, and in view of the surrounding
panorama of death and desolation which reflects the terrible majesty of
Jehovah, as no other spot on earth, he could listen with Elijah to the thunder
and earthquake, and the still small voice, and could study the contrast between
the killing letter and the life-giving spirit, between the ministration of
death and the ministration of righteousness.403
The desert, like the ocean, has its grandeur and sublimity, and leaves the
meditating mind alone with God and eternity.
"Paul was a unique
man for a unique task."404
His task was twofold: practical and theoretical. He preached the gospel of free
and universal grace from Damascus to Rome, and secured its triumph in the Roman
empire, which means the civilized world of that age. At the same time he built
up the church from within by the exposition and defence of the gospel in his
Epistles. He descended to the humblest details of ecclesiastical administration
and discipline, and mounted to the sublimest heights of theological
speculation. Here we have only to do with his missionary activity; leaving his
theoretical work to be considered in another chapter.
Let us first glance at
his missionary spirit and policy.
His inspiring motive was
love to Christ and to his fellow-men. "The love of Christ," he says,
"constraineth us; because we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore
all died: and He died for all that they who live should no longer live unto
themselves, but unto him who for their sakes died and rose again." He
regarded himself as a bondman and ambassador of Christ, entreating men to be
reconciled to God. Animated by this spirit, he became "as a Jew to the
Jews, as a Gentile to the Gentiles, all things to all men that by all means he
might save some."
He made Antioch, the
capital of Syria and the mother church of Gentile Christendom, his point of
departure for, and return from, his missionary journeys, and at the same time
he kept up his connection with Jerusalem, the mother church of Jewish
Christendom. Although an independent apostle of Christ, he accepted a solemn
commission from Antioch for his first great missionary tour. He followed the
current of history, commerce, and civilization, from East to West, from Asia to
Europe, from Syria to Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, and perhaps as far as Spain.405 In
the larger and more influential cities, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, Rome, he
resided a considerable time. From these salient points he sent the gospel by
his pupils and fellow-laborers into the surrounding towns and villages. But he
always avoided collision with other apostles, and sought new fields of labor
where Christ was not known before, that he might not build on any other man’s
foundation. This is true independence and missionary courtesy, which is so
often, alas! violated by missionary societies inspired by sectarian rather than
Christian zeal.
His chief mission was to
the Gentiles, without excluding the Jews, according to the message of Christ
delivered through Ananias: "Thou shalt bear my name before the Gentiles,
and kings, and the children of Israel." Considering that the Jews had a
prior claim in time to the gospel,406
and that the synagogues in heathen cities were pioneer stations for Christian
missions, he very naturally addressed himself first to the Jews and proselytes,
taking up the regular lessons of the Old Testament Scriptures, and
demonstrating their fulfilment in Jesus of Nazareth. But almost uniformly he
found the half-Jews, or "proselytes of the gate," more open to the
gospel than his own brethren; they were honest and earnest seekers of the true
religion, and formed the natural bridge to the pure heathen, and the nucleus of
his congregations, which were generally composed of converts from both religions.
In noble self-denial he
earned his subsistence with his own hands, as a tent-maker, that he might not
be burthensome to his congregations (mostly belonging to the lower classes),
that he might preserve his independence, stop the mouths of his enemies, and
testify his gratitude to the infinite mercy of the Lord, who had called him
from his headlong, fanatical career of persecution to the office of an apostle
of free grace. He never collected money for himself, but for the poor Jewish
Christians in Palestine. Only as an exception did he receive gifts from his
converts at Philippi, who were peculiarly dear to him. Yet he repeatedly
enjoins upon the churches to care for the liberal temporal support of their
teachers who break to them the bread of eternal life. The Saviour of the world
a carpenter! the greatest preacher of the gospel a tent-maker!
Of the innumerable
difficulties, dangers, and sufferings which he encountered with Jews, heathens,
and false brethren, we can hardly form an adequate idea; for the book of Acts
is only a summary record. He supplements it incidentally. "Of the Jews
five times received I forty stripes save one. Three times was I beaten with
rods, once was I stoned, three times I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day
have I been in the deep; in journeyings often, in perils of rivers, in perils
of robbers, in perils from my countrymen, in perils from the heathen, in perils
in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among
false brethren: in labor and toil, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in
fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Besides those things that are without,
there is that which presseth upon me daily, the anxious care for all the
churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak?
Who is offended, and I burn not?"407
Thus he wrote reluctantly to the Corinthians, in self-vindication
against his calumniators, in the year 57, before his longest and hardest trial
in the prisons of Caesarea and Rome, and at least seven years before his
martyrdom. He was "pressed on every side, yet not straitened; perplexed,
yet not in despair; pursued, yet not forsaken; smitten down, yet not
destroyed."408 His whole public career was a
continuous warfare. He represents the church militant, or "marching and
conquering Christianity." He was "unus versus mundum,"
in a far higher sense than this has been said of Athanasius the Great when
confronted with the Arian heresy and the imperial heathenism of Julian the
Apostate.
Yet he was never
unhappy, but full of joy and peace. He exhorted the Philippians from his prison
in Rome: "Rejoice in the Lord alway; again I will say, Rejoice." In
all his conflicts with foes from without and foes from within Paul was
"more than conqueror" through the grace of God which was sufficient
for him. "For I am persuaded," he writes to the Romans in the strain
of a sublime ode of triumph, "that neither death, nor life, nor angels,
nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor
height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the
love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."409 And
his dying word is an assurance of victory: "I have fought the good fight,
I have finished the course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up
for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall
give me at that day: and not only to me, but also to all them that have loved
his appearing."410
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="33" title="Paul’s Missionary
Labors">
§ 33. Paul’s Missionary Labors.
The public life of Paul,
from the third year after his conversion to his martyrdom, a.d. 40–64, embraces a quarter of a
century, three great missionary campaigns with minor expeditions, five visits
to Jerusalem, and at least four years of captivity in Caesarea and Rome. Some
extend it to a.d. 67 or 68. It may
be divided into five or six periods, as follows:
1. a.d. 40–44. The period of preparatory
labors in Syria and his native Cilicia, partly alone, partly in connection with
Barnabas, his senior fellow-apostle among the Gentiles.
On his return from the
Arabian retreat Paul began his public ministry in earnest at Damascus,
preaching Christ on the very spot where he had been converted and called. His
testimony enraged the Jews, who stirred up the deputy of the king of Arabia
against him, but he was saved for future usefulness and let down by the
brethren in a basket through a window in the wall of the city.411
Three years after his conversion he went up to Jerusalem to make the
acquaintance of Peter and spent a fortnight with him. Besides him he saw James
the brother of the Lord. Barnabas introduced him to the disciples, who at first
were afraid of him, but when they heard of his marvellous conversion they
"glorified God" that their persecutor was now preaching the faith he
had once been laboring to destroy.412 He did not come to learn the gospel,
having received it already by revelation, nor to be confirmed or ordained,
having been called "not from men, or through man, but through Jesus
Christ." Yet his interview with Peter and James, though barely mentioned,
must have been fraught with the deepest interest. Peter, kind-hearted and
generous as he was, would naturally receive him with joy and thanksgiving. He
had himself once denied the Lord—not malignantly but from weakness—as Paul had
persecuted the disciples—ignorantly in unbelief. Both had been mercifully
pardoned, both had seen the Lord, both were called to the highest dignity, both
could say from the bottom of the heart: "Lord thou knowest all things;
thou knowest that I love thee." No doubt they would exchange their
experiences and confirm each other in their common faith.
It was probably on this
visit that Paul received in a vision in the temple the express command of the
Lord to go quickly unto the Gentiles.413 Had he stayed longer at the seat of the
Sanhedrin, he would undoubtedly have met the fate of the martyr Stephen.
He visited Jerusalem a
second time during the famine under Claudius, in the year 44, accompanied by
Barnabas, on a benevolent mission, bearing a collection of the Christians at
Antioch for the relief of the brethren in Judaea.414 On
that occasion he probably saw none of the apostles on account of the
persecution in which James was beheaded, and Peter imprisoned.
The greater part of
these four years was spent in missionary work at Tarsus and Antioch.
2. a.d. 45–50. First missionary journey. In
the year 45 Paul entered upon the first great missionary journey, in company
with Barnabas and Mark, by the direction of the Holy Spirit through the
prophets of the congregation at Antioch. He traversed the island of Cyprus and
several provinces of Asia Minor. The conversion of the Roman proconsul, Sergius
Paulus, at Paphos; the rebuke and punishment of the Jewish sorcerer, Elymas;
the marked success of the gospel in Pisidia, and the bitter opposition of the
unbelieving Jews; the miraculous healing of a cripple at Lystra; the idolatrous
worship there offered to Paul and Barnabas by the superstitious heathen, and
its sudden change into hatred against them as enemies of the gods; the stoning
of the missionaries, their escape from death, and their successful return to
Antioch, are the leading incidents of this tour, which is fully described in
Acts 13 and 14.
This period closes with
the important apostolic conference at Jerusalem, a.d. 50, which will require separate consideration in the
next section.
3. From a.d. 51–54. Second missionary journey.
After the council at Jerusalem and the temporary adjustment of the difference
between the Jewish and Gentile branches of the church, Paul undertook, in the
year 51, a second great journey, which decided the Christianization of Greece.
He took Silas for his companion. Having first visited his old churches, he
proceeded, with the help of Silas and the young convert, Timothy, to establish
new ones through the provinces of Phrygia and Galatia, where, notwithstanding
his bodily infirmity, he was received with open arms like an angel of God.
From Troas, a few miles
south of the Homeric Troy and the entrance to the Hellespont, he crossed over
to Greece in answer to the Macedonian cry: "Come over and help us!" He preached the gospel with great success, first in Philippi,
where he converted the purple dealer, Lydia, and the jailor, and was imprisoned
with Silas, but miraculously delivered and honorably released; then in
Thessalonica, where he was persecuted by the Jews, but left a flourishing
church; in Beraea, where the converts showed exemplary zeal in searching the
Scriptures. In Athens, the metropolis of classical literature, he reasoned with
Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, and unveiled to them on Mars’ Hill
(Areopagus), with consummate tact and wisdom, though without much immediate
success, the "unknown God," to whom the Athenians, in their
superstitious anxiety to do justice to all possible divinities, had
unconsciously erected an altar, and Jesus Christ, through whom God will judge
the world in righteousness.415 In Corinth, the commercial bridge
between the East and the West, a flourishing centre of wealth and culture, but
also a sink of vice and corruption, the apostle spent eighteen months, and
under almost insurmountable difficulties he built up a church, which exhibited
all the virtues and all the faults of the Grecian character under the influence
of the gospel, and which he honored with two of his most important Epistles.416
In the spring of 54 he
returned by way of Ephesus, Caesarea, and Jerusalem to Antioch.
During this period he
composed the two Epistles to the Thessalonians, which are the earliest of his
literary remains excepting his missionary addresses preserved in the Acts.
4. a.d. 54–58. Third missionary tour.
Towards the close of the year 54 Paul went to Ephesus, and in this renowned
capital of proconsular Asia and of the worship of Diana, he fixed for three
years the centre of his missionary work. He then revisited his churches in
Macedonia and Achaia, and remained three months more in Corinth and the vicinity.
During this period he
wrote the great doctrinal Epistles to the Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans,
which mark the height of his activity and usefulness.
5. a.d. 58–63. The period of his two
imprisonments, with the intervening winter voyage from Caesarea to Rome. In the
spring of 58 he journeyed, for the fifth and last time, to Jerusalem, by way of
Philippi, Troas, Miletus (where he delivered his affecting valedictory to the
Ephesian presbyter-bishops), Tyre, and Caesarea, to carry again to the poor
brethren in Judaea a contribution from the Christians of Greece, and by this
token of gratitude and love to cement the two branches of the apostolic church
more firmly together.
But some fanatical Jews,
who bitterly bated him as an apostate and a seducer of the people, raised an
uproar against him at Pentecost; charged him with profaning the temple, because
he had taken into it an uncircumcised Greek, Trophimus; dragged him out of the
sanctuary, lest they should defile it with blood, and would undoubtedly have
killed him had not Claudius Lysias, the Roman tribune, who lived near by, come
promptly with his soldiers to the spot. This officer rescued Paul, out of
respect for his Roman citizenship, from the fury of the mob, set him the next
day before the Sanhedrin, and after a tumultuous and fruitless session of the
council, and the discovery of a plot against his life, sent him, with a strong
military guard and a certificate of innocence, to the procurator Felix in
Caesarea.
Here the apostle was
confined two whole years (58–60), awaiting his trial before the Sanhedrin,
uncondemned, occasionally speaking before Felix, apparently treated with
comparative mildness, visited by the Christians, and in some way not known to
us promoting the kingdom of God.417
After the accession of
the new and better procurator, Festus, who is known to have succeeded Felix in
the year 60, Paul, as a Roman citizen, appealed to the tribunal of Caesar and
thus opened the way to the fulfilment of his long-cherished desire to preach
the Saviour of the world in the metropolis of the world. Having once more
testified his innocence, and spoken for Christ in a masterly defence before
Festus, King Herod Agrippa II. (the last of the Herods), his sister Bernice,
and the most distinguished men of Caesarea, he was sent in the autumn of the
year 60 to the emperor. He had a stormy voyage and suffered shipwreck, which
detained him over winter at Malta. The voyage is described with singular
minuteness and nautical accuracy by Luke as an eye-witness. In the month of
March of the year 61, the apostle, with a few faithful companions, reached
Rome, a prisoner of Christ, and yet freer and mightier than the emperor on the
throne. It was the seventh year of Nero’s reign, when he had already shown his
infamous character by the murder of Agrippina, his mother, in the previous
year, and other acts of cruelty.
In Rome Paul spent at
least two years till the spring of 63, in easy confinement, awaiting the
decision of his case, and surrounded by friends and fellow-laborers "in
his own hired dwelling." He preached the gospel to the soldiers of the
imperial body-guard, who attended him; sent letters and messages to his distant
churches in Asia Minor and Greece; watched over all their spiritual affairs,
and completed in bonds his apostolic fidelity to the Lord and his church.418
In the Roman prison he
wrote the Epistles to the Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Philemon.
6. a.d. 63 and 64. With the second year of
Paul’s imprisonment in Rome the account of Luke breaks off, rather abruptly,
yet appropriately and grandly. Paul’s arrival in Rome secured the triumph of
Christianity. In this sense it was true, "Roma locuta est, causa finita est."
And he who spoke at Rome is not dead; he is still "preaching
(everywhere) the kingdom of God and teaching the things concerning the Lord
Jesus Christ, with all boldness, none forbidding him."419
But what became of him
after the termination of those two years in the spring of 63? What was the result of the trial so
long delayed? Was he condemned to
death? or was he released by Nero’s tribunal, and thus permitted to labor for
another season? This question is
still unsettled among scholars. A vague tradition says that Paul was acquitted
of the charge of the Sanhedrin, and after travelling again in the East, perhaps
also into Spain, was a second time imprisoned in Rome and condemned to death.
The assumption of a second Roman captivity relieves certain difficulties in the
Pastoral Epistles; for they seem to require a short period of freedom between
the first and a second Roman captivity, and a visit to the East,420 which is not recorded in the Acts, but which the
apostle contemplated in case of his release.421 A visit to Spain, which he intended, is
possible, though less probable.422 If he was set at liberty, it must have
been before the terrible persecution in July, 64, which would not have spared
the great leader of the Christian sect. It is a remarkable coincidence that
just about the close of the second year of Paul’s confinement, the celebrated
Jewish historian, Josephus, then in his 27th year, came to Rome (after a
tempestuous voyage and shipwreck), and effected through the influence of Poppaea
(the wife of Nero and a half proselyte of Judaism) the release of certain
Jewish priests who had been sent to Rome by Felix as prisoners.423 It
is not impossible that Paul may have reaped the benefit of a general release of
Jewish prisoners.
The martyrdom of Paul
under Nero is established by the unanimous testimony of antiquity. As a Roman
citizen, he was not crucified, like Peter, but put to death by the sword.424 The
scene of his martyrdom is laid by tradition about three miles from Rome, near
the Ostian way, on a green spot, formerly called Aquae Salviae, afterwards Tre Fontane, from the three fountains which are said to have
miraculously gushed forth from the blood of the apostolic martyr. His relics
were ultimately removed to the basilica of San Paolo-fuori-le-Mura, built by
Theodosius and Valentinian in 388, and recently reconstructed. He lies outside
of Rome, Peter inside. His memory is celebrated, together with that of Peter,
on the 29th and 30th of June.425 As to the year of his death, the views
vary from a.d. 64 to 69. The
difference of the place and manner of his martyrdom suggests that he was
condemned by a regular judicial trial, either shortly before, or more probably
a year or two after the horrible wholesale massacre of Christians on the
Vatican hill, in which his Roman citizenship would not have been regarded. If
he was released in the spring of 63, he had a year and a half for another visit
to the East and to Spain before the outbreak of the Neronian persecution (after
July, 64); but tradition favors a later date. Prudentius separates the
martyrdom of Peter from that of Paul by one year. After that persecution the
Christians were everywhere exposed to danger.426
Assuming the release of
Paul and another visit to the East, we must locate the First Epistle to Timothy
and the Epistle to Titus between the first and second Roman captivity, and the
Second Epistle to Timothy in the second captivity. The last was evidently
written in the certain view of approaching martyrdom; it is the affectionate
farewell of the aged apostle to his beloved Timothy, and his last will and
testament to the militant church below in the bright prospect of the unfading
crown in the church triumphant above.427
Thus ended the earthly
course of this great teacher of nations, this apostle of victorious faith, of
evangelical freedom, of Christian progress. It was the heroic career of a
spiritual conqueror of immortal souls for Christ, converting them from the
service of sin and Satan to the service of the living God, from the bondage of
the law to the freedom of the gospel, and leading them to the fountain of life
eternal. He labored more abundantly than all the other apostles; and yet, in sincere
humility, he considered himself "the least of the apostles," and
"not meet to be called an apostle," because he persecuted the church
of God; a few years later he confessed: "I am less than the least of all
saints," and shortly before his death: "I am the chief of
sinners."428 His
humility grew as he experienced God’s mercy and ripened for heaven. Paul passed
a stranger and pilgrim through this world, hardly observed by the mighty and
the wise of his age. And yet how infinitely more noble, beneficial, and
enduring was his life and work than the dazzling march of military conquerors,
who, prompted by ambitions absorbed millions of treasure and myriads of lives,
only to die at last in a drunken fit at Babylon, or of a broken heart on the
rocks of St. Helena! Their empires
have long since crumbled into dust, but St. Paul still remains one of the
foremost benefactors of the human race, and the pulses of his mighty heart are
beating with stronger force than ever throughout the Christian world.
Note on the Second Roman Captivity of Paul.
The question of a second
Roman captivity of Paul is a purely historical and critical problem, and has no
doctrinal or ethical bearing, except that it facilitates the defence of the
genuineness of the Pastoral Epistles. The best scholars are still divided on
the subject. Neander, Gieseler, Bleek, Ewald, Lange, Sabatier, Godet, also
Renan (Saint Paul, p. 560, and L’Antechrist, p. 106), and nearly
all English biographers and commentators, as Alford, Wordsworth, Howson, Lewin,
Farrar, Plumptre, Ellicott, Lightfoot, defend the second captivity, and thus
prolong the labors of Paul for a few years. On the other hand not only radical
and skeptical critics, as Baur, Zeller, Schenkel, Reuss, Holtzmann, and all who
reject the Pastoral Epistles (except Renan), but also conservative exegetes and
historians, as Niedner, Thiersch, Meyer, Wieseler, Ebrard, Otto, Beck,
Pressensé, deny the second captivity. I have discussed the problem at length in
my Hist. of the Apost. Church, § 87, pp. 328–347, and spin in my
annotations to Lange on Romans, pp. 10–12. I will restate the chief
arguments in favor of a second captivity, partly in rectification of my former
opinion.
1. The main argument are
the Pastoral Epistles, if genuine, as I hold them to be, notwithstanding all
the objections of the opponents from De Wette (1826) and Baur (1835) to Renan
(1873) and Holtzmann (1880). It is, indeed, not impossible to assign them to
any known period in Paul’s life before his captivity, as during his
three years’ sojourn in Ephesus (54–57), or his eighteen months’ sojourn in
Corinth (52–53), but it is very difficult to do so. The Epistles presuppose
journeys of the apostle not mentioned in Acts, and belong apparently to an
advanced period in his life, as well as in the history of truth and error in
the apostolic church.
2. The release of
Timothy from a captivity in Italy, probably in Rome, to which the author of the
Epistle to the Hebrews 13:23 alludes, may have some connection with the release
of Paul, who had probably a share in the inspiration, if not in the composition,
of that remarkable production.
3. The oldest
post-apostolic witness is Clement of Rome, who wrote about 95:, Paul ... having
come to the limit of the West (<foreign
lang="el">ejpi; to; tevrma th'"
duvsew" ejlqwn</foreign>) and borne witness before the magistrates (<foreign
lang="el">marturhvsa" epi; tw'n
hJgoumevnwn</foreign>, which others translate,
"having suffered martyrdom under the rulers"), departed from the
world and went to the holy place, having furnished the sublimest model of
endurance" (Ad Corinth. c. 5). Considering that Clement wrote in
Rome, the most natural interpretation of <foreign
lang="el">tevrma th'" duvsew"</foreign>, "the
extreme west," is Spain or Britain; and as Paul intended to carry
the gospel to Spain, one would first think of that country, which was in
constant commercial intercourse with Rome, and had produced distinguished
statesmen and writers like Seneca and Lucan. Strabo (II. 1) calls the pillars
of Hercules <foreign lang="el">pevrata
th'" oijkoumevnh"</foreign>; and
Velleius Paterc. calls Spain "<foreign
lang="la">extremus
nostri orbis terminus</foreign>."
See Lightfoot, St. Clement, p. 50. But the inference is weakened by the
absence of any trace or tradition of Paul’s visit to Spain.429
Still less can he have suffered martyrdom there, as the logical order of
the words would imply. And as Clement wrote to the Corinthians, he may,
from their geographical standpoint, have called the Roman capital the
end of the West. At all events the passage is rhetorical (it speaks of seven
imprisonments, <foreign lang="el">eJptavki"
desma; forevsa"</foreign>), and proves nothing for further labors in the
East.430
4. An incomplete passage
in the fragmentary Muratorian canon (about a.d.
170): "<foreign lang="la">Sed profectionem Pauli ab urbe ad Spaniam
proficiscentis ...</foreign>" seems to imply a journey of Paul to Spain,
which Luke has omitted; but this is merely a conjecture, as the verb has to be
supplied. Comp., however, Westcott, The Canon of the N. Test., p. 189,
and Append. C., p. 467, and Renan, L’Antechrist, p. 106 sq.
5. Eusebius (d. 310) first
clearly asserts that "there is a tradition (<foreign
lang="el">lovgo" e[cei</foreign>) that the apostle, after his defence, again set
forth to the ministry of his preaching and having entered a second time the
same city [Rome], was perfected by his martyrdom before him [Nero]." Hist.
Eccl. II. 22 (comp. ch. 25). But the force of this testimony is weakened
first by its late date; secondly, by the vague expression <foreign
lang="el">lovgo" e[cei</foreign>, "it is said," and the absence of any
reference to older authorities (usually quoted by Eusebius); thirdly, by his
misunderstanding of 2 Tim. 4:16, 17, which he explains in the same connection
of a deliverance from the first imprisonment (as if <foreign
lang="el">ajpologiva</foreign> were identical with <foreign
lang="el">aijcmalwsiva</foreign>); and lastly by his chronological mistake as to
the time of the first imprisonment which, in his "Chronicle,"
he misdates a.d. 58, that is,
three years before the actual arrival of Paul in Rome. On the other hand he
puts the conflagration of Rome two years too late, a.d. 66, instead of 64, and the Neronian persecution, and
the martyrdom of Paul and Peter, in the year 70.
6. Jerome (d. 419):
"Paul was dismissed by Nero that he might preach Christ’s gospel also in
the regions of the West (in Occidentis quoque partibus). De Vir. ill.
sub Paulus. This echoes the <foreign
lang="el">tevrma th'" duvsew"</foreign> of Clement. Chrysostom (d. 407), Theodoret, and
other fathers assert that Paul went to Spain (Rom. 15:28), but without adducing
any proof.
These post-apostolic
testimonies, taken together, make it very probable, but not historically
certain, that Paul was released after the spring of 63, and enjoyed an Indian
summer of missionary work before his Martyrdom. The only remaining monuments,
as well as the best proof, of this concluding work are the Pastoral Epistles,
if we admit them to be genuine. To my mind the historical difficulties of the
Pastoral Epistles are an argument for rather than against their Pauline origin.
For why should a forger invent difficulties when he might so easily have fitted
his fictions in the frame of the situation known from the Acts and the other
Pauline Epistles? The linguistic
and other objections are by no means insurmountable, and are overborne by the
evidence of the Pauline spirit which animates these last productions of his
pen.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="34" title="The Synod of Jerusalem,
and the Compromise between Jewish and Gentile Christianity">
§ 34. The Synod of Jerusalem, and the Compromise between Jewish and Gentile Christianity.
Literature.
I. Acts 15, and Gal. 2,
and the Commentaries thereon.
II. Besides the general
literature already noticed (in §§ 20 and 29), compare the following special
discussions on the Conference of the Apostles, which tend to rectify the
extreme view of Baur (Paulus, ch. V.) and Overbeck (in the fourth edition of
De Wette’s Com. on Acts) on the conflict between Acts 15 and Gal. 2, or
between Petrinism and Paulinism, and to establish the true historic view of
their essential unity in diversity.
Bishop Lightfoot: St. Paul and the Three, in
Com. on Galat., London, 1866 (second ed.), pp. 283–355. The ablest critical
discussion of the problem in the English language.
R. A. Lipsius: Apostelconvent, in
Schenkel’s Bibel-Lexikon, I. (1869), pp. 194–207. A clear and sharp statement
of eight apparent contradictions between Acts 15 and Gal. 2. He admits,
however, some elements of truth in the account of Acts, which he uses to
supplement the account of Paul. Schenkel, in his Christusbild der Apostel,
1879, p. 38, goes further, and says, in opposition to Overbeck, who regards the
account of Acts as a Tendenz- Roman, or partisan fiction: "The narrative of Paul is certainly
trustworthy, but one-sided, which was unavoidable, considering his personal
apologetic aim, and passes by in silence what is foreign to that aim. The
narrative of Acts follows oral and written traditions which were already
influenced by later views and prejudices, and it is for this reason unreliable
in part, yet by no means a conscious fiction."
Otto Pfleiderer:
Der
Paulinismus. Leipzig, 1873, pp.
278 sqq. and 500 sqq. He tones down the differences to innocent inaccuracies of
the Acts, and rejects the idea of "intentional invention."
C. Weizsäcker (successor of Dr. Baur in Tübingen, but partly
dissenting from him): Das Apostelconcil in the "Jahrbücher für deutsche
Theologie" for 1873, pp.
191–246. And his essay on Paulus und die Gemeinde in Korinth, ibid., 1876, pp. 603–653. In the last article he
concludes (p. 652) that the real opponents of Paul, in Corinth as well as in
Galatia, were not the primitive apostles (as asserted by Baur, Schwegler,
etc.), but a set of fanatics who abused the authority of Peter and the name of
Christ, and imitated the agitation of Jewish proselytizers, as described by
Roman writers.
K. Schmidt: Der Apostel-Konvent, in Herzog and Plitt, R. E. I. (1877), 575–584. Conservative.
Theod. Keim:
Aus
dem Urchristenthum. Zürich, 1879, Der Apostelkonvent, pp. 64–89. (Comp.
Hilgenfeld’s review in the "Zeitschrift für wissenschaftl.
Theologie," 1879, pp. 100f sqq.)
One of the last efforts of the author of the Leben Jesu von Nazara. Keim goes a step further than Weizsäcker,
strongly maintains the public as well as the private character of the apostolic
agreement, and admits the circumcision of Timothy as a fact. He also entirely
rejects the view of Baur, Weizsäcker, and Overbeck that the author of Acts
derived his information from the Ep. to the Galatians, and perverted it for his
irenic purpose.
F. W. Farrar: The Life and Work of Paul (Lond.,
1879), chs. XXII.-XXIII. (I. 398–454).
Wilibald Grimm:
Der
Apostelconvent, in the "Theol. Studien und
Kritiken" (Gotha), for 1880,
pp. 405–432. A critical discussion in the right direction. The exegetical essay
of Wetzel on Gal. 2:14, 21, in the
same periodical, pp. 433 sqq., bears in part on the same subject.
F. Godet: Com. on the Ep. to the Romans, vol. I. (1879),
pp. 3742, English translation. Able and sound.
Karl Wieseler:
Zur Gesch. der N. T.lichen
Schrift und des Urchristenthums. Leipzig,
1880, pp. 1–53, on the Corinthian parties and their relation to the errorists
in the Galatians and the Nicolaitans in the Apocalypse. Learned, acute, and
conservative.
Comp. above § 22, pp. 213
sqq.; my Hist. of the Apost. Church, §§ 67–70, pp. 245–260; and Excursus on
the Controversy between Peter and Paul, in my Com. on the Galat. 2:11–14.
The question of
circumcision, or of the terms of admission of the Gentiles to the Christian
church, was a burning question of the apostolic age. It involved the wider
question of the binding authority of the Mosaic law, yea, the whole relation of
Christianity to Judaism. For circumcision was in the synagogue what baptism is
in the church, a divinely appointed sign and seal of the covenant of man with
God, with all its privileges and responsibilities, and bound the circumcised
person to obey the whole law on pain of forfeiting the blessing promised. Upon
the decision of this question depended the peace of the church within, and the
success of the gospel without. With circumcision, as a necessary condition of
church membership, Christianity would forever have been confined to the Jewish
race with a small minority of proselytes of the gate, or half-Christians while
the abrogation of circumcision and the declaration of the supremacy and sufficiency
of faith in Christ ensured the conversion of the heathen and the catholicity of
Christianity. The progress of Paul’s mission among the Gentiles forced the
question to a solution and resulted in a grand act of emancipation, yet not
without great struggle and temporary reactions.
All the Christians of
the first generation were converts from Judaism or heathenism. It could not be
expected that they should suddenly lose the influence of opposite kinds of
religious training and blend at once in unity. Hence the difference between
Jewish and Gentile Christianity throughout the apostolic age, more or less
visible in all departments of ecclesiastical life, in missions, doctrine,
worship, and government. At the head of the one division stood Peter, the
apostle of the circumcision; at the head of the other, Paul, to whom was
intrusted the apostleship of the uncircumcision. In another form the same
difference even yet appears between the different branches of Christendom. The
Catholic church is Jewish-Christian or Petrine in its character; the
Evangelical church is Gentile or Pauline. And the individual members of these
bodies lean to one or the other of these leading types. Where-ever there is
life and motion in a denomination or sect, there will be at least two tendencies
of thought and action—whether they be called old and new school, or high church
and low church, or by any other party name. In like manner there is no free
government without parties. It is only stagnant waters that never run and
overflow, and corpses that never move.
The relation between
these two fundamental forms of apostolic Christianity is in general that of
authority and freedom, law and gospel, the conservative and the progressive,
the objective and the subjective. These antithetic elements are not of
necessity mutually exclusive. They are mutually complemental, and for perfect
life they must co-exist and co-operate. But in reality they often run to
extremes, and then of course fall into irreconcilable contradiction. Exclusive
Jewish Christianity sinks into Ebionism; exclusive Gentile Christianity into
Gnosticism. And these heresies were by no means confined to the apostolic and
post-apostolic ages; pseudo-Petrine and pseudo-Pauline errors, in ever-varying
phases, run more or less throughout the whole history of the church.
The Jewish converts at
first very naturally adhered as closely as possible to the sacred traditions of
their fathers. They could not believe that the religion of the Old Testament,
revealed by God himself, should pass away. They indeed regarded Jesus as the
Saviour of Gentiles as well as Jews; but they thought Judaism the necessary
introduction to Christianity, circumcision and the observance of the whole
Mosaic law the sole condition of an interest in the Messianic salvation. And,
offensive as Judaism was, rather than attractive, to the heathen, this
principle would have utterly precluded the conversion of the mass of the
Gentile world.431 The
apostles themselves were at first trammelled by this Judaistic prejudice, till
taught better by the special revelation to Peter before the conversion of
Cornelius.432
But even after the
baptism of the uncircumcised centurion, and Peter’s defence of it before the
church of Jerusalem, the old leaven still wrought in some Jewish Christians who
had formerly belonged to the rigid and exclusive sect of the Pharisees.433
They came from Judaea to Antioch, and taught the converts of Paul and
Barnabas: "Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot
be saved." They no doubt appealed to the Pentateuch, the universal Jewish
tradition, the circumcision of Christ, and the practice of the Jewish apostles,
and created a serious disturbance. These ex-Pharisees were the same whom Paul,
in the heat of controversy, more severely calls "false brethren
insidiously or stealthily foisted in," who intruded themselves into the
Christian brotherhood as spies and enemies of Christian liberty.434 He
clearly distinguishes them not only from the apostles, but also from the great
majority of the brethren in Judaea who sincerely rejoiced in his conversion and
glorified God for it.435 They were a small, but very active and
zealous minority, and full of intrigue. They compassed sea and land to make one
proselyte. They were baptized with water, but not with the Holy Spirit. They
were Christians in name, but narrow-minded and narrow-hearted Jews in fact.
They were scrupulous, pedantic, slavish formalists, ritualists, and
traditionalists of the malignant type. Circumcision of the flesh was to them of
more importance than circumcision of the heart, or at all events an
indispensable condition of salvation.436 Such men could, of course, not
understand and appreciate Paul, but hated and feared him as a dangerous radical
and rebel. Envy and jealousy mixed with their religious prejudice. They got
alarmed at the rapid progress of the gospel among the unclean Gentiles who
threatened to soil the purity of the church. They could not close their eyes to
the fact that the power was fast passing from Jerusalem to Antioch, and from
the Jews to the Gentiles, but instead of yielding to the course of Providence,
they determined to resist it in the name of order and orthodoxy, and to keep
the regulation of missionary operations and the settlement of the terms of
church membership in their own hands at Jerusalem, the holy centre of
Christendom and the expected residence of the Messiah on his return.
Whoever has studied the
twenty-third chapter of Matthew and the pages of church history, and knows
human nature, will understand perfectly this class of extra-pious and
extra-orthodox fanatics, whose race is not dead yet and not likely to die out.
They serve, however, the good purpose of involuntarily promoting the cause of
evangelical liberty.
The agitation of these
Judaizing partisans and zealots brought the Christian church, twenty years
after its founding, to the brink of a split which would have seriously impeded
its progress and endangered its final success.
The Conferences in Jerusalem.
To avert this calamity
and to settle this irrepressible conflict, the churches of Jerusalem and
Antioch resolved to hold a private and a public conference at Jerusalem. Antioch
sent Paul and Barnabas as commissioners to represent the Gentile converts.
Paul, fully aware of the gravity of the crisis, obeyed at the same time an
inner and higher impulse.437 He also took with him Titus, a native
Greek, as a living specimen of what the Spirit of God could accomplish without
circumcision. The conference was held a.d.
50 or 51 (fourteen years after Paul’s conversion). It was the first and in some
respects the most important council or synod held in the history of
Christendom, though differing widely from the councils of later times. It is
placed in the middle of the book of Acts as the connecting link between the two
sections of the apostolic church and the two epochs of its missionary history.
The object of the
Jerusalem consultation was twofold: first, to settle the personal relation
between the Jewish and Gentile apostles, and to divide their field of labor;
secondly, to decide the question of circumcision, and to define the relation
between the Jewish and Gentile Christians. On the first point (as we learn from
Paul) it effected a complete and final, on the second point (as we learn from
Luke) a partial and temporary settlement. In the nature of the case the public
conference in which the whole church took part, was preceded and accompanied by
private consultations of the apostles.438
1. Apostolic
Recognition. The pillars of the Jewish Church, James, Peter, and John439—whatever their views may have been before—were
fully convinced by the logic of events in which they recognized the hand of
Providence that Paul as well as Barnabas by the extraordinary success of his
labors had proven himself to be divinely called to the apostolate of the
Gentiles. They took no exception and made no addition to his gospel. On the
contrary, when they saw that God who gave grace and strength to Peter for the
apostleship of the circumcision, gave grace and strength to Paul also for the
conversion of the uncircumcision, they extended to him and to Barnabas the
right hand of fellowship, with the understanding that they would divide as far
as practicable the large field of labor, and that Paul should manifest his
brotherly love and cement the union by aiding in the support of the poor, often
persecuted and famine-stricken brethren of Judaea. This service of charity he
had cheerfully done before, and as cheerfully and faithfully did afterward by raising
collections among his Greek congregations and carrying the money in person to
Jerusalem.440
Such is the unequivocal testimony of the fraternal understanding among
the apostles from the mouth of Paul himself. And the letter of the council
officially recognizes this by mentioning "beloved" Barnabas441 and Paul, as "men who have hazarded their
lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." This double testimony of the
unity of the apostolic church is quite conclusive against the modern invention
of an irreconcilable antagonism between Paul and Peter.442
2. As regards the
question of circumcision and the status of the Gentile Christians, there was a
sharp conflict of opinions in open debate, under the very shadow of the
inspired apostles.443 There was strong conviction and feeling
on both sides, plausible arguments were urged, charges and countercharges made,
invidious inferences drawn, fatal consequences threatened. But the Holy Spirit
was also present, as he is with every meeting of disciples who come together in
the name of Christ, and overruled the infirmities of human nature which will
crop out in every ecclesiastical assembly.
The circumcision of
Titus, as a test case, was of course strongly demanded by the Pharisaical
legalists, but as strongly resisted by Paul, and not enforced.444 To
yield here even for a moment would have been fatal to the cause of Christian
liberty, and would have implied a wholesale circumcision of the Gentile
converts, which was impossible.
But how could Paul
consistently afterwards circumcise Timothy?445 The answer is that he circumcised
Timothy as a Jew, not as a Gentile, and that he did it as a voluntary act of
expediency, for the purpose of making Timothy more useful among the Jews, who
had a claim on him as the son of a Jewish mother, and would not have allowed
him to teach in a synagogue without this token of membership; while in the case
of Titus, a pure Greek, circumcision was demanded as a principle and as a
condition of justification and salvation. Paul was inflexible in resisting the
demands of false brethren, but always willing to accommodate himself to weak
brethren, and to become as a Jew to the Jews and as a Gentile to the
Gentiles in order to save them both.446 In genuine Christian freedom he cared
nothing for circumcision or uncircumcision as a mere rite or external
condition, and as compared with the keeping of the commandments of God and the
new creature in Christ.447
In the debate Peter, of
course, as the oecumenical chief of the Jewish apostles, although at that time
no more a resident of Jerusalem, took a leading part, and made a noble speech
which accords entirely with his previous experience and practice in the house
of Cornelius, and with his subsequent endorsement of Paul’s doctrine.448 He
was no logician, no rabbinical scholar, but he had admirable good sense and
practical tact, and quickly perceived the true line of progress and duty. He
spoke in a tone of personal and moral authority, but not of official primacy.449 He
protested against imposing upon the neck of the Gentile disciples the
unbearable yoke of the ceremonial law, and laid down, as clearly as Paul, the
fundamental principle that "Jews as well as Gentiles are saved only by the
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ."450
After this bold speech,
which created a profound silence in the assembly, Barnabas and Paul reported,
as the best practical argument, the signal miracles which God had wrought among
the Gentiles through their instrumentality.
The last and weightiest
speaker was James, the brother of the Lord, the local head of the Jewish
Christian church and bishop of Jerusalem, who as such seems to have presided
over the council. He represented as it were the extreme right wing of the
Jewish church bordering close on the Judaizing faction. It was through his
influence chiefly no doubt that the Pharisees were converted who created this
disturbance. In a very characteristic speech he endorsed the sentiments of
Symeon—he preferred to call Peter by his Jewish name—concerning the conversion
of the Gentiles as being in accordance with ancient prophecy and divine
fore-ordination; but he proposed a compromise to the effect that while the
Gentile disciples should not be troubled with circumcision, they should yet be
exhorted to abstain from certain practices which were particularly offensive to
pious Jews, namely, from eating meat offered to idols, from tasting blood, or
food of strangled animals, and from every form of carnal uncleanness. As to the
Jewish Christians, they knew their duty from the law, and would be expected to
continue in their time-honored habits.
The address of James
differs considerably from that of Peter, and meant restriction as well as
freedom, but after all it conceded the main point at issue—salvation without
circumcision. The address entirely accords in spirit and language with his own
epistle, which represents the gospel as law, though "the perfect law of
freedom," with his later conduct toward Paul in advising him to assume the
vow of the Nazarites and thus to contradict the prejudices of the myriads of
converted Jews, and with the Jewish Christian tradition which represents him as
the model of an ascetic saint equally revered by devout Jews and Christians, as
the "Rampart of the People" (Obliam), and the intercessor of Israel
who prayed in the temple without ceasing for its conversion and for the
aversion of the impending doom.451 He had more the spirit of an ancient
prophet or of John the Baptist than the spirit of Jesus (in whom he did not
believe till after the resurrection), but for this very reason he had most
authority over the Jewish Christians, and could reconcile the majority of them
to the progressive spirit of Paul.
The compromise of James
was adopted and embodied in the following brief and fraternal pastoral letter
to the Gentile churches. It is the oldest literary document of the apostolic
age and bears the marks of the style of James:452
"The apostles and
the elder brethren453
unto the brethren who are of the Gentiles in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia,
greeting: Forasmuch as we have heard, that some who went out from us have
troubled you with words, subverting your souls, to whom we gave no commandment,
it seemed good unto us, having come to be of one accord, to choose out men and
send them unto you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men that have hazarded
their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have sent therefore Judas
and Silas, who themselves also shall tell you the same things by word of mouth.
For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us, to lay upon you no greater
burden than these necessary things: that ye abstain from meats sacrificed to
idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication; from
which if ye keep yourselves, it shall be well with you. Farewell."454
The decree was delivered
by four special messengers, two representing the church at Antioch, Barnabas
and Paul, and two from Jerusalem, Judas Barsabbas and Silas (or Silvanus), and
read to the Syrian and Cilician churches which were agitated by the
controversy.455 The
restrictions remained in full force at least eight years, since James reminded
Paul of them on his last visit to Jerusalem in 58.456 The
Jewish Christians observed them no doubt with few exceptions till the downfall
of idolatry,457 and the Oriental church even to this day
abstains from blood and things strangled; but the Western church never held
itself bound to this part of the decree, or soon abandoned some of its
restrictions.
Thus by moderation and
mutual concession in the spirit of peace and brotherly love a burning
controversy was settled, and a split happily avoided.
Analysis of the Decree.
The decree of the
council was a compromise and had two aspects: it was emancipatory, and
restrictive.
(1.) It was a decree of
emancipation of the Gentile disciples from circumcision and the bondage of the
ceremonial law. This was the chief point in dispute, and so far the decree was
liberal and progressive. It settled the question of principle once and
forever. Paul had triumphed. Hereafter the Judaizing doctrine of the necessity
of circumcision for salvation was a heresy, a false gospel, or a perversion of
the true gospel, and is denounced as such by Paul in the Galatians.
(2.) The decree was
restrictive and conservative on questions of expediency and comparative
indifference to the Gentile Christians. Under this aspect it was a wise and
necessary measure for the apostolic age, especially in the East, where the
Jewish element prevailed, but not intended for universal and permanent use. In
Western churches, as already remarked, it was gradually abandoned, as we learn
from Augustine. It imposed upon the Gentile Christians abstinence from meat
offered to idols, from blood, and from things strangled (as fowls and other
animals caught in snares). The last two points amounted to the same thing.
These three restrictions had a good foundation in the Jewish abhorrence of
idolatry, and every thing connected with it, and in the Levitical prohibition.458
Without them the churches in Judaea would not have agreed to the
compact. But it was almost impossible to carry them out in mixed or in purely
Gentile congregations; for it would have compelled the Gentile Christians to
give up social intercourse with their unconverted kindred and friends, and to
keep separate slaughter-houses, like the Jews, who from fear of contamination
with idolatrous associations never bought meat at the public markets. Paul
takes a more liberal view of this matter—herein no doubt dissenting somewhat
from James—namely, that the eating of meat sacrificed to idols was in itself
indifferent, in view of the vanity of idols; nevertheless he likewise commands
the Corinthians to abstain from such meat out of regard for tender and weak
consciences, and lays down the golden rule: "All things are lawful, but
all things are not expedient; all things are lawful, but all things edify not.
Let no man seek his own, but his neighbor’s good."459
It seems strange to a
modern reader that with these ceremonial prohibitions should be connected the
strictly moral prohibition of fornication.460 But it must be remembered that the
heathen conscience as to sexual intercourse was exceedingly lax, and looked
upon it as a matter of indifference, like eating and drinking, and as sinful
only in case of adultery where the rights of a husband are invaded. No heathen
moralist, not even Socrates, or Plato, or Cicero, condemned fornication
absolutely. It was sanctioned by the worship of Aphrodite at Corinth and
Paphos, and practised to her honor by a host of harlot-priestesses! Idolatry or spiritual whoredom is
almost inseparable from bodily pollution. In the case of Solomon polytheism and
polygamy went hand in hand. Hence the author of the Apocalypse also closely
connects the eating of meat offered to idols with fornication, and denounces
them together.461
Paul had to struggle against this laxity in the Corinthian congregation,
and condemns all carnal uncleanness as a violation and profanation of the
temple of God.462 In
this absolute prohibition of sexual impurity we have a striking evidence of the
regenerating and sanctifying influence of Christianity. Even the ascetic
excesses of the post-apostolic writers who denounced the second marriage as
"decent adultery" (<foreign lang="el">eujpreph;"
moiceiva</foreign>), and glorified celibacy as a higher and better
state than honorable wedlock, command our respect, as a wholesome and necessary
reaction against the opposite excesses of heathen licentiousness.
So far then as the
Gentile Christians were concerned the question was settled.
The status of the Jewish
Christians was no subject of controversy, and hence the decree is silent about
them. They were expected to continue in their ancestral traditions and customs
as far as they were at all consistent with loyalty to Christ. They needed no
instruction as to their duty, "for," said James, in his address to
the Council, "Moses from generations of old has in every city those who
preach him, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath."463 And
eight years afterwards he and his elders intimated to Paul that even he, as a
Jew, was expected to observe the ceremonial law, and that the exemption was
only meant for the Gentiles.464
But just here was a
point where the decree was deficient. It went far enough for the temporary
emergency, and as far as the Jewish church was willing to go, but not far
enough for the cause of Christian union and Christian liberty in its legitimate
development.
Notes.
1. The Apostolic Conference at Jerusalem.—This
has been one of the chief battle-fields of modern historical criticism. The
controversy of circumcision has been fought over again in German, French,
Dutch, and English books and essays, and the result is a clearer insight both
into the difference and into the harmony of the apostolic church.
We have two accounts of
the Conference, one from Paul in the second chapter of the Galatians, and one
from his faithful companion, Luke, in Acts 15. For it is now almost universally
admitted that they refer to the same event. They must be combined to make up a
full history. The Epistle to the Galatians is the true key to the position, the
Archimedian <foreign lang="el">pou'
stw'.</foreign>
The accounts agree as to
the contending parties—Jerusalem and Antioch—the leaders on both sides, the
topic of controversy, the sharp conflict, and the peaceful result.
But in other respects
they differ considerably and supplement each other. Paul, in a polemic
vindication of his independent apostolic authority against his Judaizing
antagonists in Galatia, a few years after the Council (about 56), dwells
chiefly on his personal understanding with the other apostles and their
recognition of his authority, but he expressly hints also at public
conferences, which could not be avoided; for it was a controversy between the
churches, and an agreement concluded by the leading apostles on both sides was
of general authority, even if it was disregarded by a heretical party. Luke, on
the other hand, writing after the lapse of at least thirteen years (about 63) a
calm and objective history of the primitive church, gives (probably from
Jerusalem and Antioch documents, but certainly not from Paul’s Epistles) the official
action of the public assembly, with an abridgment of the preceding debates,
without excluding private conferences; on the contrary he rather includes them;
for he reports in Acts 15:5, that Paul and Barnabas "were received by the
church and the apostles and elders and declared all things that God had done
with them," before he gives an account of the public consultation,
ver. 6. In all assemblies, ecclesiastical and political, the more important
business is prepared and matured by Committees in private conference for public
discussion and action; and there is no reason why the council in Jerusalem
should have made an exception. The difference of aim then explains, in part at
least, the omissions and minor variations of the two accounts, which we have
endeavored to adjust in this section.
The ultra- and
pseudo-Pauline hypercriticism of the Tübingen school in several discussions (by
Baur, Schwegler, Zeller, Hilgenfeld, Volkmar, Holsten, Overbeck, Lipsius,
Hausrath, and Wittichen) has greatly exaggerated these differences, and used
Paul’s terse polemic allusions as a lever for the overthrow of the credibility
of the Acts. But a more conservative critical reaction has recently taken
place, partly in the same school (as indicated in the literature above), which
tends to harmonize the two accounts and to vindicate the essential consensus of
Petrinism and Paulinism.
2. The Circumcision of Titus.—We hold with most
commentators that Titus was not circumcised. This is the natural sense
of the difficult and much disputed passage, <scripRef passage =
"Gal. 2:3–5">Gal.
2:3–5</scripRef>, no matter whether we take <foreign
lang="el">dev</foreign> in <scripRef passage =
"Gal. 2:4">2:4</scripRef> in the explanatory sense (nempe, and that),
or in the usual adversative sense (autem, sed, but). In
the former case the sentence is regular, in the latter it is broken, or
designedly incomplete, and implies perhaps a slight censure of the other
apostles, who may have first recommended the circumcision of Titus as a
measure of prudence and conciliation out of regard to conservative scruples,
but desisted from it on the strong remonstrance of Paul. If we press the <foreign
lang="el">hjnagkavsqh</foreign> compelled, in 2:3, such an inference
might easily be drawn, but there was in Paul’s mind a conflict between the duty
of frankness and the duty of courtesy to his older colleagues. So Dr. Lightfoot
accounts for the broken grammar of the sentence, "which was wrecked on the
hidden rock of the counsels of the apostles of the circumcision."
Quite another view was
taken by Tertullian (Adv. Marc., V. 3), and recently by Renan (ch. III.
p. 89) and Farrar (I. 415), namely, that Titus voluntarily submitted to
circumcision for the sake of peace, either in spite of the remonstrance of
Paul, or rather with his reluctant consent. Paul seems to say that Titus
was not circumcised, but implies that he was. This view is based
on the omission of <foreign lang="el">oi\"
oujdev</foreign> in 2:5. The passage then would have to be
supplemented in this way: "But not even Titus was compelled to be
circumcised, but [he submitted to circumcision voluntarily] on account
of the stealthily introduced false brethren, to whom we yielded by way of
submission for an hour [i.e., temporarily]." Renan thus explains the
meaning: "If Titus was circumcised, it is not because he was forced, but
on account of the false brethren, to whom we might yield for a moment without
submitting ourselves in principle." He thinks that <foreign lang="el">pro"
w{ran</foreign> is opposed to the following <foreign
lang="el">diameivnh/.</foreign> In other words, Paul stooped to conquer. He
yielded for a moment by a stretch of charity or a stroke of policy, in order to
save Titus from violence, or to bring his case properly before the Council and
to achieve a permanent victory of principle. But this view is entirely
inconsistent not only with the frankness and firmness of Paul on a question of
principle, with the gravity of the crisis, with the uncompromising tone of the
Epistle to the Galatians, but also with the addresses of Peter and James, and
with the decree of the council. If Titus was really circumcised, Paul would
have said so, and explained his relation to the fact. Moreover, the testimony
of Irenaeus and Tertullian against <foreign
lang="el">oi|" oujdev</foreign> must give way to the authority of the best
uncials (<foreign
lang="he">a</foreign> B A C, etc) and versions in favor
of these words. The omission can be better explained from carelessness or
dogmatic prejudice rather than the insertion.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="35" title="The Conservative
Reaction, and the Liberal Victory – Peter and Paul at Antioch">
§ 35. The Conservative Reaction, and the Liberal Victory—
Peter and Paul at Antioch.
The Jerusalem compromise,
like every other compromise, was liable to a double construction, and had in it
the seed of future troubles. It was an armistice rather than a final
settlement. Principles must and will work themselves out, and the one or the
other must triumph.
A liberal construction
of the spirit of the decree seemed to demand full communion of the Jewish
Christians with their uncircumcised Gentile brethren, even at the Lord’s table,
in the weekly or daily agapae, on the basis of the common saving faith in
Christ, their common Lord and Saviour. But a strict construction of the letter
stopped with the recognition of the general Christian character of the Gentile
converts, and guarded against ecclesiastical amalgamation on the ground of the
continued obligation of the Jewish converts to obey the ceremonial law,
including the observance of circumcision, of the Sabbath and new moons, and the
various regulations about clean and unclean meats, which virtually forbid
social intercourse with unclean Gentiles.465
The conservative view
was orthodox, and must not be confounded with the Judaizing heresy which
demanded circumcision from the Gentiles as well as the Jews, and made it a term
of church membership and a condition of salvation. This doctrine had been
condemned once for all by the Jerusalem agreement, and was held hereafter only
by the malignant pharisaical faction of the Judaizers.
The church of Jerusalem,
being composed entirely of Jewish converts, would naturally take the
conservative view; while the church of Antioch, where the Gentile element
prevailed, would as naturally prefer the liberal interpretation, which had the
certain prospect of ultimate success. James, who perhaps never went outside of
Palestine, far from denying the Christian character of the Gentile converts,
would yet keep them at a respectful distance; while Peter, with his impulsive,
generous nature, and in keeping with his more general vocation, carried out in
practice the conviction he had so boldly professed in Jerusalem, and on a visit
to Antioch, shortly after the Jerusalem Council (a.d. 51), openly and habitually communed at table with the
Gentile brethren.466 He had already once before eaten in the
house of the uncircumcised Cornelius at Caesarea, seeing that "God is no
respecter of persons, but in every nation he that feareth him and worketh
righteousness is acceptable to him."467
But when some delegates
of James468 arrived from Jerusalem and remonstrated with him
for his conduct, he timidly withdrew from fellowship with the uncircumcised
followers of Christ, and thus virtually disowned them. He unwittingly again
denied his Lord from the fear of man, but this time in the persons of his
Gentile disciples. The inconsistency is characteristic of his impulsive temper,
which made him timid or bold according to the nature of the momentary
impression. It is not stated whether these delegates simply carried out the
instructions of James or went beyond them. The former is more probable from
what we know of him, and explains more easily the conduct of Peter, who would
scarcely have been influenced by casual and unofficial visitors. They were
perhaps officers in the congregation of Jerusalem; at all events men of weight,
not Pharisees exactly, yet extremely conservative and cautious, and afraid of
miscellaneous company, which might endanger the purity and orthodoxy of the
venerable mother church of Christendom. They did, of course, not demand the
circumcision of the Gentile Christians, for this would have been in direct
opposition to the synodical decree, but they no doubt reminded Peter of the
understanding of the Jerusalem compact concerning the duty of Jewish
Christians, which he above all others should scrupulously keep. They
represented to him that his conduct was at least very hasty and premature, and
calculated to hinder the conversion of the Jewish nation, which was still the
object of their dearest hopes and most fervent prayers. The pressure must have
been very strong, for even Barnabas, who had stood side by side with Paul at
Jerusalem in the defence of the rights of the Gentile Christians, was
intimidated and carried away by the example of the chief of the apostles.
The subsequent separation
of Paul from Barnabas and Mark, which the author of Acts frankly relates, was
no doubt partly connected with this manifestation of human weakness.469
The sin of Peter roused
the fiery temper of Paul, and called upon him a sharper rebuke than he had
received from his Master. A mere look of pity from Jesus was enough to call
forth bitter tears of repentance. Paul was not Jesus. He may have been too
severe in the manner of his remonstrance, but he knew Peter better than we, and
was right in the matter of dispute, and after all more moderate than some of
the greatest and best men have been in personal controversy. Forsaken by the
prince of the apostles and by his own faithful ally in the Gentile mission, he
felt that nothing but unflinching courage could save the sinking ship of
freedom. A vital principle was at stake, and the Christian standing of the
Gentile converts must be maintained at all hazards, now or never, if the world
was to be saved and Christianity was not to shrink into a narrow corner as a
Jewish sect. Whatever might do in Jerusalem, where there was scarcely a heathen
convert, this open affront to brethren in Christ could not be tolerated for a
moment at Antioch in the church which was of his own planting and full of
Hellenists and Gentiles. A public scandal must be publicly corrected. And so
Paul confronted Peter and charged him with downright hypocrisy in the face of
the whole congregation. He exposed his misconduct by his terse reasoning, to
which Peter could make no reply.470 "If thou," he said to him in
substance, "who art a Jew by nationality and training, art eating with the
Gentiles in disregard of the ceremonial prohibition, why art thou now, by the
moral force of thy example as the chief of the Twelve, constraining the Gentile
converts to Judaize or to conform to the ceremonial restraints of the
elementary religion? We who are
Jews by birth and not gross sinners like the heathen, know that justification
comes not from works of the law, but from faith in Christ. It may be objected
that by seeking gratuitous justification instead of legal justification, we
make Christ a promoter of sin.471 Away with this monstrous and
blasphemous conclusion! On the
contrary, there is sin in returning to the law for justification after we have
abandoned it for faith in Christ. I myself stand convicted of transgression if
I build up again (as thou doest now) the very law which I pulled down (as thou
didst before), and thus condemn my former conduct. For the law itself taught me
to exchange it for Christ, to whom it points as its end. Through the Mosaic law
as a tutor leading me beyond itself to freedom in Christ, I died to the Mosaic
law in order that I might live a new life of obedience and gratitude to God. I
have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer my old self that lives,
but it is Christ that lives in me; and the new life of Christ which I now live
in this body after my conversion, I live in the faith of the Son of God who
loved me and gave himself for me. I do not frustrate the grace of God; for if
the observance of the law of Moses or any other human work could justify and
save, there was no good cause of Christ’s death his atoning sacrifice on the
cross was needless and fruitless."
From such a conclusion
Peter’s soul shrank back in horror. He never dreamed of denying the necessity
and efficacy of the death of Christ for the remission of sins. He and Barnabas
stood between two fires on that trying occasion. As Jews they seemed to be
bound by the restrictions of the Jerusalem compromise on which the messengers
of James insisted; but by trying to please the Jews they offended the Gentiles,
and by going back to Jewish exclusiveness they did violence to their better
convictions, and felt condemned by their own conscience.472
They no doubt returned to their more liberal practice.
The alienation of the
apostles was merely temporary. They were too noble and too holy to entertain
resentment. Paul makes honorable mention afterwards of Peter and Barnabas, and
also of Mark, who was a connecting link between the three.473
Peter in his Epistles endorses the teaching of the "beloved brother
Paul," and commends the wisdom of his Epistles, in one of which his own
conduct is so severely rebuked, but significantly adds that there are some
"things in them hard to be understood, which the ignorant and unsteadfast
wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, to their own destruction."474
The scene of Antioch
belongs to these things which have been often misunderstood and perverted by
prejudice and ignorance in the interest both of heresy and orthodoxy. The
memory of it was perpetuated by the tradition which divided the church at
Antioch into two parishes with two bishops, Evodius and Ignatius, the one
instituted by Peter, the other by Paul. Celsus, Porphyry, and modern enemies of
Christianity have used it as an argument against the moral character and
inspiration of the apostles. The conduct of Paul left a feeling of intense
bitterness and resentment in the Jewish party which manifested itself even a
hundred years later in a violent attack of the pseudo-Clementine Homilies
and Recognitions upon Paul, under the disguise of Simon Magus. The conduct
of both apostles was so unaccountable to Catholic taste that some of the
fathers substituted an unknown Cephas for Peter;475 while others resolved the scene into a
hypocritical farce gotten up by the apostles themselves for dramatic effect
upon the ignorant congregation.476
The truth of history
requires us to sacrifice the orthodox fiction of moral perfection in the
apostolic church. But we gain more than we lose. The apostles themselves never
claimed, but expressly disowned such perfection.477
They carried the heavenly treasure in earthen vessels, and thus brought
it nearer to us. The infirmities of holy men are frankly revealed in the Bible
for our encouragement as well as for our humiliation. The bold attack of Paul
teaches the right and duty of protest even against the highest ecclesiastical
authority, when Christian truth and principle are endangered; the quiet
submission of Peter commends him to our esteem for his humility and meekness in
proportion to his high standing as the chief among the pillar-apostles; the
conduct of both explodes the Romish fiction of papal supremacy and
infallibility; and the whole scene typically foreshadows the grand historical
conflict between Petrine Catholicism and Pauline Protestantism, which, we
trust, will end at last in a grand Johannean reconciliation.
Peter and Paul, as far
as we know, never met afterwards till they both shed their blood for the
testimony of Jesus in the capital of the world.
The fearless
remonstrance of Paul had probably a moderating effect upon James and his
elders, but did not alter their practice in Jerusalem.478
Still less did it silence the extreme Judaizing faction; on the
contrary, it enraged them. They were defeated, but not convinced, and fought
again with greater bitterness than ever. They organized a countermission, and
followed Paul into almost every field of his labor, especially to Corinth and
Galatia. They were a thorn, if not the thorn, in his flesh. He has them
in view in all his Epistles except those to the Thessalonians and to Philemon.
We cannot understand his Epistles in their proper historical sense without this
fact. The false apostles were perhaps those very Pharisees who caused the
original trouble, at all events men of like spirit. They boasted of their
personal acquaintance with the Lord in the days of his flesh, and with the
primitive apostles; hence Paul calls these "false apostles"
sarcastically "super-eminent" or "over-extra-apostles."479
They attacked his apostolate as irregular and spurious, and his gospel
as radical and revolutionary. They boldly told his Gentile converts that the,
must submit to circumcision and keep the ceremonial law; in other words, that
they must be Jews as well as Christians in order to insure salvation, or
at all events to occupy a position of pre-eminence over and above mere
proselytes of the gate in the outer court. They appealed, without foundation,
to James and Peter and to Christ himself, and abused their name and authority
for their narrow sectarian purposes, just as the Bible itself is made
responsible for all sorts of heresies and vagaries. They seduced many of the
impulsive and changeable Galatians, who had all the characteristics of the
Keltic race. They split the congregation in Corinth into several parties and
caused the apostle the deepest anxiety. In Colossae, and the churches of
Phrygia and Asia, legalism assumed the milder form of Essenic mysticism and asceticism.
In the Roman church the legalists were weak brethren rather than false
brethren, and no personal enemies of Paul, who treats them much more mildly
than the Galatian errorists.
This bigoted and most
persistent Judaizing reaction was overruled for good. It drew out from the
master mind of Paul the most complete and most profound vindication and
exposition of the doctrines of sin and grace. Without the intrigues and
machinations of these legalists and ritualists we should not have the
invaluable Epistles to the Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans. Where error
abounded, truth has still more abounded.
At last the victory was
won. The terrible persecution under Nero, and the still more terrible
destruction of Jerusalem, buried the circumcision controversy in the Christian
church. The ceremonial law, which before Christ was "alive but not
life-giving," and which from Christ to the destruction of Jerusalem was
"dying but not deadly," became after that destruction "dead and
deadly."480 The
Judaizing heresy was indeed continued outside of the Catholic church by the
sect of the Ebionites during the second century; and in the church itself the
spirit of formalism and bigotry assumed new shapes by substituting Christian
rites and ceremonies for the typical shadows of the Mosaic dispensation. But
whenever and wherever this tendency manifests itself we have the best antidote
in the Epistles of Paul.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="36" title="Christianity in
Rome">
§ 36. Christianity in Rome.
I. On the general, social,
and moral condition of Rome under the Emperors:
Ludwig
Friedländer: Sittengeschichte
Roms. Leipzig, 1862, 5th ed.
revised and enlarged, 1881, 3 vols.
Rod.
Lanciani: Ancient Rome in the
Light of Recent Discoveries. Boston, 1889 (with 100 illustrations).
II. On the Jews in Rome
and the allusions of Roman Writers to Them:
Renan: Les Apôtres, 287–293; Merivale:
History of the Romans, VI., 203 sqq.; Friedländer:
l.c. III., 505 sqq.; Hausrath:
Neutestamentliche
Zeitgeschichte, III., 383–392
(2d ed.); Schürer: Lehrbuch der
Neutestamentlichen Zeitgeschichte, pp. 624 sq., and Die Gemeindeverfassung der Juden
in Rom in der Kaiserzeit, Leipz.,
1879; Huidekoper: Judaism at
Rome, 1876. Also John Gill:
Notices of the Jews and their Country by the Classic Writers of Antiquity. 2d
ed. London, 1872. On Jewish Roman inscriptions see Garrucci (several articles in Italian since 1862), von Engeström
(in a Swedish work, Upsala, 1876), and Schürer (1879).
III. On the Christian
Congregation in Rome:
The Histories of the
Apostolic Age (see pp. 189 sqq.); the Introductions to the Commentaries on Romans
(mentioned p. 281), and a number of critical essays on the origin and
composition of the Church of Rome and the aim of the Epistle to the Romans, by Baur (Ueber Zweck und Veranlassung
des Römerbriefs, 1836; reproduced in his Paul, I., 346 sqq., Engl. transl.), Beyschlag (Das geschichtliche Problem
des Römerbriefs in the
"Studien und Kritiken" for 1867), Hilgenfeld
(Einleitung
in das N. T., 1875, pp. 302
sqq.), C. Weizsäcker (Ueber die älteste
römische Christengemeinde, 1876, and his Apost. Zeitalter, 1886, pp. 415–467).
W. Mangold: Der Römerbrief und seine gesch. Voraussetzungen, Marburg, 1884. Defends the Jewish origin and
character of the Roman church (against Weizsäcker).
Rud. Seyerlen:
Entstehung
und erste Schicksale der Christengemeinde in Rom. Tübingen, 1874.
Adolf
Harnack: Christianity and
Christians at the Court of the Roman Emperors before the Time of Constantine. In
the "Princeton Review," N. York, 1878, pp. 239–280.
J. Spencer Northcote and W. R. Brownlow (R. C.): Roma Sotterranea, new ed., London, 1879, vol. I., pp. 78–91. Based
upon Caval. de Rossi’s large
Italian work under the same title (Roma, 1864–1877,
in three vols. fol.). Both important for the remains of early Roman
Christianity in the Catacombs.
Formby: Ancient Rome and its Connect. with the Chr.
Rel. Lond., 1880.
Keim: Rom. u. das Christenthum. Berlin, 1881.
[MAP INSET] From
"Roma Sotteranea," by Northcote and Brownlow.
<index
type = "globalSubject"
subject1 =
"Rome" />
The City of Rome.
The city of Rome was to the
Roman empire what Paris is to France, what London to Great Britain: the ruling
head and the beating heart. It had even a more cosmopolitan character than
these modern cities. It was the world in miniature, "orbis in urbe." Rome had conquered nearly all the nationalities of the then
civilized world, and drew its population from the East and from the West, from
the North and from the South. All languages, religious, and customs of the
conquered provinces found a home there. Half the inhabitants spoke Greek, and
the natives complained of the preponderance of this foreign tongue, which,
since Alexander’s conquest, had become the language of the Orient and of the
civilized world.481 The palace of the emperor was the chief
centre of Oriental and Greek life. Large numbers of the foreigners were
freedmen, who generally took the family name of their masters. Many of them
became very wealthy, even millionnaires. The rich freedman was in that age the
type of the vulgar, impudent, bragging upstart. According to Tacitus, "all
things vile and shameful" were sure to flow from all quarters of the
empire into Rome as a common sewer. But the same is true of the best elements:
the richest products of nature, the rarest treasures of art, were collected
there; the enterprising and ambitious youths, the men of genius, learning, and
every useful craft found in Rome the widest field and the richest reward for
their talents.
With Augustus began the
period of expensive building. In his long reign ofpeace and prosperity he
changed the city of bricks into a city of marble. It extended in narrow and
irregular streets on both banks of the Tiber, covered the now desolate and
feverish Campagna to the base of the Albanian hills, and stretched its arms by
land and by sea to the ends of the earth. It was then (as in its ruins it is
even now) the most instructive and interesting city in the world. Poets,
orators, and historians were lavish in the praises of the <foreign
lang="la">urbs
aeterna</foreign>,
"<foreign
lang="la">qua
nihil posis visere majus</foreign>."482
The estimates of the population of imperial Rome are guesswork, and vary from one to four millions. But in all probability it amounted under Augustus to more than a million, and increased rapidly under the following emperors till it received a check by the fearful epidemic of 79, which for many days demanded ten thousand victims a day.483 Afterwards the city grew again and reached the height of its splendor under Hadrian and the Antonines.484
The Jews in Rome.
The number of Jews in
Rome during the apostolic age is estimated at twenty or thirty thousand souls.485
They all spoke Hellenistic Greek with a strong Hebrew accent. They had,
as far as we know, seven synagogues and three cemeteries, with Greek and a few
Latin inscriptions, sometimes with Greek words in Latin letters, or Latin words
with Greek letters.486 They inhabited the fourteenth region,
beyond the Tiber (Trastevere), at the base of the Janiculum, probably also the
island of the Tiber, and part of the left bank towards the Circus Maximus and
the Palatine hill, in the neighborhood of the present Ghetto or Jewry. They
were mostly descendants of slaves and captives of Pompey, Cassius, and Antony.
They dealt then, as now, in old clothing and broken ware, or rose from poverty
to wealth and prominence as bankers, physicians, astrologers, and
fortunetellers. Not a few found their way to the court. Alityrus, a Jewish
actor, enjoyed the highest favor of Nero. Thallus, a Samaritan and freedman of
Tiberius, was able to lend a million denarii to the Jewish king, Herod Agrippa.487 The
relations between the Herods and the Julian and Claudian emperors were very
intimate.
The strange manners and
institutions of the Jews, as circumcision, Sabbath observance, abstinence from
pork and meat sacrificed to the gods whom they abhorred as evil spirits,
excited the mingled amazement, contempt, and ridicule of the Roman historians
and satirists. Whatever was sacred to the heathen was profane to the Jews.488
They were regarded as enemies of the human race. But this, after all,
was a superficial judgment. The Jews had also their friends. Their indomitable
industry and persistency, their sobriety, earnestness, fidelity and
benevolence, their strict obedience to law, their disregard of death in war,
their unshaken trust in God, their hope of a glorious future of humanity, the
simplicity and purity of their worship, the sublimity and majesty of the idea
of one omnipotent, holy, and merciful God, made a deep impression upon
thoughtful and serious persons, and especially upon females (who escaped the
odium of circumcision). Hence the large number of proselytes in Rome and
elsewhere. Horace, Persius, and Juvenal, as well as Josephus, testify that many
Romans abstained from all business on the Sabbath, fasted and prayed, burned
lamps, studied the Mosaic law, and sent tribute to the temple of Jerusalem.
Even the Empress Poppaea was inclined to Judaism after her own fashion, and
showed great favor to Josephus, who calls her "devout" or
"God-fearing" (though she was a cruel and shameless woman).489
Seneca, who detested the Jews (calling them sceleratissima gens), was constrained to say that this conquered race
gave laws to their conquerors.490
The Jews were twice
expelled from Rome under Tiberius and Claudius, but soon returned to their
transtiberine quarter, and continued to enjoy the privileges of a religio licita, which were granted to them by heathen emperors,
but were afterwards denied them by Christian popes.491
When Paul arrived in
Rome he invited the rulers of the synagogues to a conference, that he might
show them his good will and give them the first offer of the gospel, but they
replied to his explanations with shrewd reservation, and affected to know nothing
of Christianity, except that it was a sect everywhere spoken against. Their
best policy was evidently to ignore it as much as possible. Yet a large number
came to hear the apostle on an appointed day, and some believed, while the
majority, as usual, rejected his testimony.492
Christianity in Rome.
From this peculiar
people came the first converts to a religion which proved more than a match for
the power of Rome. The Jews were only an army of defense, the Christians an
army of conquest, though under the despised banner of the cross.
The precise origin of
the church of Rome is involved in impenetrable mystery. We are informed of the
beginnings of the church of Jerusalem and most of the churches of Paul, but we
do not know who first preached the gospel at Rome. Christianity with its
missionary enthusiasm for the conversion of the world must have found a home in
the capital of the world at a very early day, before the apostles left
Palestine. The congregation at Antioch grew up from emigrant and fugitive
disciples of Jerusalem before it was consolidated and fully organized by
Barnabas and Paul.
It is not impossible,
though by no means demonstrable, that the first tidings of the gospel were
brought to Rome soon after the birthday of the church by witnesses of the
pentecostal miracle in Jerusalem, among whom were "sojourners from Rome,
both Jews and proselytes."493 In this case Peter, the preacher of the
pentecostal sermon, may be said to have had an indirect agency in the
founding of the church of Rome, which claims him as the rock on which it is
built, although the tradition of his early visit (42) and twenty or twenty-five
years’ residence there is a long exploded fable.494
Paul greets among the brethren in Rome some kinsmen who had been
converted before him, i.e., before 37.495 Several names in the list of Roman
brethren to whom he sends greetings are found in the Jewish cemetery on the
Appian Way among the freedmen of the Empress Livia. Christians from Palestine,
Syria, Asia Minor, and Greece must have come to the capital for various
reasons, either as visitors or settlers.
The Edict of Claudius.
The first historic trace
of Christianity in Rome we have in a notice of the heathen historian Suetonius,
confirmed by Luke, that Claudius, about a.d.
52, banished the Jews from Rome because of their insurrectionary disposition
and commotion under the instigation of "Chrestus" (misspelt for
"Christus").496
This commotion in all
probability refers to Messianic controversies between Jews and Christians who
were not yet clearly distinguished at that time. The preaching, of Christ, the
true King of Israel, would naturally produce a great commotion among the Jews,
as it did at Antioch, in Pisidia, in Lystra, Thessalonica, and Beraea; and the
ignorant heathen magistrates would as naturally infer that Christ was a
political pretender and aspirant to an earthly throne. The Jews who rejected
the true Messiah looked all the more eagerly for an imaginary Messiah that
would break the yoke of Rome and restore the theocracy of David in Jerusalem.
Their carnal millennarianism affected even some Christians, and Paul found it
necessary to warn them against rebellion and revolution. Among those expelled
by the edict of Claudius were Aquila and Priscilla, the hospitable friends of
Paul, who were probably converted before they met him in Corinth.497
The Jews, however, soon
returned, and the Jewish Christians also, but both under a cloud of suspicion.
To this fact Tacitus may refer when he says that the Christian superstition
which had been suppressed for a time (by the edict of Claudius) broke out again
(under Nero, who ascended the throne in 54).
Paul’s Epistle.
In the early part of Nero’s reign (54–68) the Roman congregation was already well known throughout Christendom, had several meeting places and a considerable number of teachers.498 It was in view of this fact, and in prophetic anticipation of its future importance, that Paul addressed to it from Corinth his most important doctrinal Epistle (a.d. 58), which was to prepare the way for his long desired personal visit. On his journey to Rome three years later he found Christians at Puteoli (the modern Puzzuolo at the bay of Naples), who desired him to tarry with them seven days.499 Some thirty or forty miles from the city, at Appii Forum and Tres Tabernae (The Three Taverns), he was met by Roman brethren anxious to see the writer of that marvellous letter, and derived much comfort from this token of affectionate regard.500
Paul in Rome.
His arrival in Rome,
early in the year 61, which two years later was probably followed by that of
Peter, naturally gave a great impulse to the growth of the congregation. He
brought with him, as he had promised, "the fulness of the blessing of
Christ." His very bonds were overruled for the progress of the gospel,
which he was left free to preach under military guard in his own dwelling.501 He
had with him during the whole or a part of the first Roman captivity his
faithful pupils and companions: Luke, "the beloved physician" and
historian; Timothy, the dearest of his spiritual sons; John Mark, who had
deserted him on his first missionary tour, but joined him at Rome and mediated
between him and Peter; one Jesus, who is called Justus, a Jewish Christian, who
remained faithful to him; Aristarchus, his fellow-prisoner from Thessalonica;
Tychicus from Ephesus; Epaphras and Onesimus from Colossae; Epaphroditus from
Philippi; Demas, Pudens, Linus, Eubulus, and others who are honorably mentioned
in the Epistles of the captivity.502 They formed a noble band of evangelists
and aided the aged apostle in his labors at Rome and abroad. On the other hand
his enemies of the Judaizing party were stimulated to counter-activity, and
preached Christ from envy and jealousy; but in noble self-denial Paul rose
above petty sectarianism, and sincerely rejoiced from his lofty standpoint if
only Christ was proclaimed and his kingdom promoted. While he fearlessly
vindicated Christian freedom against Christian legalism in the Epistle to the
Galatians, he preferred even a poor contracted Christianity to the heathenism
which abounded in Rome.503
The number which were
converted through these various agencies, though disappearing in the heathen
masses of the metropolis, and no doubt much smaller than the twenty thousand
Jews, must have been considerable, for Tacitus speaks of a "vast
multitude" of Christians that perished in the Neronian persecution in 64;
and Clement, referring to the same persecution, likewise mentions a "vast
multitude of the elect," who were contemporary with Paul and Peter, and
who, "through many indignities and tortures, became a most noble example
among ourselves" (that is, the Roman Christians).504
Composition and Consolidation of the Roman Church.
The composition of the
church of Rome has been a matter of much learned controversy and speculation.
It no doubt was, like most congregations outside of Palestine, of a mixed
character, with a preponderance of the Gentile over the Jewish element, but it
is impossible to estimate the numerical strength and the precise relation which
the two elements sustained to each other.505
We have no reason to suppose
that it was at once fully organized and consolidated into one community. The
Christians were scattered all over the immense city, and held their devotional
meetings in different localities. The Jewish and the Gentile converts may have
formed distinct communities, or rather two sections of one Christian community.
Paul and Peter, if they
met together in Rome (after 63), would naturally, in accordance with the
Jerusalem compact, divide the field of supervision between them as far as
practicable, and at the same time promote union and harmony. This may be the
truth which underlies the early and general tradition that they were the joint
founders of the Roman church. No doubt their presence and martyrdom cemented
the Jewish and Gentile sections. But the final consolidation into one organic
corporation was probably not effected till after the destruction of Jerusalem.
This consolidation was
chiefly the work of Clement, who appears as the first presiding presbyter of
the one Roman church. He was admirably qualified to act as mediator between the
disciples of Peter and Paul, being himself influenced by both, though more by
Paul. His Epistle to the Corinthians combines the distinctive features of the
Epistles of Paul, Peter, and James, and has been called "a typical
document, reflecting the comprehensive principles and large sympathies which
had been impressed upon the united church of Rome."506
In the second century we
see no more traces of a twofold community. But outside of the orthodox church,
the heretical schools, both Jewish and Gentile, found likewise au early home in
this rendezvous of the world. The fable of Simon Magus in Rome reflects this
fact. Valentinus, Marcion, Praxeas, Theodotus, Sabellius, and other
arch-heretics taught there. In heathen Rome, Christian heresies and sects
enjoyed a toleration which was afterwards denied them by Christian Rome, until,
in 1870, it became the capital of united Italy, against the protest of the
pope.
Language.
The language of the Roman
church at that time was the Greek, and continued to be down to the third
century. In that language Paul wrote to Rome and from Rome; the names of the
converts mentioned in the sixteenth chapter of the Romans, and of the early
bishops, are mostly Greek; all the early literature of the Roman church was
Greek; even the so-called Apostles’ Creed, in the form held by the church of
Rome, was originally Greek. The first Latin version of the Bible was not made
for Rome, but for the provinces, especially for North Africa. The Greeks and
Greek speaking Orientals were at that time the most intelligent, enterprising,
and energetic people among the middle classes in Rome. "The successful
tradesmen, the skilled artisans, the confidential servants and retainers of
noble houses—almost all the activity and enterprise of the common people,
whether for good or for evil, were Greek."507
Social Condition.
The great majority of
the Christians in Rome, even down to the close of the second century, belonged
to the lower ranks of society. They were artisans, freedmen, slaves. The proud
Roman aristocracy of wealth, power, and knowledge despised the gospel as a
vulgar superstition. The contemporary writers ignored it, or mentioned it only
incidentally and with evident contempt. The Christian spirit and the old Roman
spirit were sharply and irreconcilably antagonistic, and sooner or later had to
meet in deadly conflict.
But, as in Athens and
Corinth, so there were in Rome also a few honorable exceptions.
Paul mentions his
success in the praetorian guard and in the imperial household.508
It is possible, though
not probable, that Paul became passingly acquainted with the Stoic philosopher,
Annaeus Seneca, the teacher of Nero and friend of Burrus; for he certainly knew
his brother, Annaeus Gallio, proconsul at Corinth, then at Rome, and had
probably official relations with Burrus, as prefect of the praetorian guard, to
which he was committed as prisoner; but the story of the conversion of Seneca,
as well as his correspondence with Paul, are no doubt pious fictions, and, if
true, would be no credit to Christianity, since Seneca, like Lord Bacon, denied
his high moral principles by his avarice and meanness.509
Pomponia Graecina, the wife of Aulus Plautius, the conqueror of Britain, who was arraigned for "foreign superstition" about the year 57 or 58 (though pronounced innocent by her husband), and led a life of continual sorrow till her death in 83, was probably the first Christian lady of the Roman nobility, the predecessor of the ascetic Paula and Eustochium, the companions of Jerome.510 Claudia and Pudens, from whom Paul sends greetings (2 Tim. 4:21), have, by an ingenious conjecture, been identified with the couple of that name, who are respectfully mentioned by Martial in his epigrams; but this is doubtful.511 A generation later two cousins of the Emperor Domitian (81–96), T. Flavius Clemens, consul (in 95), and his wife, Flavia Domitilla, were accused of "atheism, " that is, of Christianity, and condemned, the husband to death, the wife to exile (a.d. 96).512 Recent excavations in the catacomb of Domitilla, near that of Callistus, establish the fact that an entire branch of the Flavian family had embraced the Christian faith. Such a change was wrought within fifty or sixty years after Christianity had entered Rome.513
</div3><div2
type=”Chapter” n=”VI” title=”The Great Tribulation (Matt. 24:21)”>
CHAPTER VI.
THE GREAT TRIBULATION. (<scripRef passage = "Matt. 24:21">MATT. 24:21</scripRef>.)
</div2><div3
type = "Section" n="37" title="The Roman Conflagration
and the Neronian Persecution">
§ 37. The Roman Conflagration and the Neronian Persecution.
"And I saw the
woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs
of Jesus. And when I saw her, I wondered with a great wonder."—<scripRef
passage = "Rev. 17:6">Apoc. 17:6</scripRef>.
Literature.
I. Tacitus: Annales, 1. XV., c. 38–44.
Suetonius: Nero, chs. 16 and 38 (very brief).
Sulpicius Severus: Hist. Sacra, 1. II., c. 41. He gives to the
Neronian persecution a more general character.
II. Ernest Renan: L’Antechrist. Paris,
deuxième ed., 1873. Chs. VI. VIII, pp. 123 sqq. Also his Hibbert Lectures, delivered in London, 1880, on Rome and
Christianity.
L. Friedländer: Sittengeschichte Roms, I. 6, 27; III. 529.
Hermann
Schiller: Geschichte der röm.
Kaiserzeit unter der Regierung des Nero. Berlin, 1872 (173–179; 424 sqq.; 583 sqq.).
Hausrath: N. T.liche Zeitgeschichte, III. 392 sqq. (2d ed., 1875).
Theod.
Keim: Aus dem Urchristenthum. Zürich, 1878, pp.
171–181. Rom u. das Christenthum, 1881, pp. 132 sqq.
Karl
Wieseler: Die Christenverfolgungen der
Cäsaren. 1878.
G. Uhlhorn: The Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism. Engl.
transl. by Smyth and Ropes, N. Y. 1879, pp. 241–250.
C. F. Arnold: Die Neron.
Christenverfolgung. Leipz. 1888.
The preaching of Paul and Peter in Rome was an epoch in the history of the church. It gave an impulse to the growth of Christianity. Their martyrdom was even more effective in the end: it cemented the bond of union between the Jewish and Gentile converts, and consecrated the soil of the heathen metropolis. Jerusalem crucified the Lord, Rome beheaded and crucified his chief apostles and plunged the whole Roman church into a baptism of blood. Rome became, for good and for evil, the Jerusalem of Christendom, and the Vatican hill the Golgotha of the West. Peter and Paul, like a new Romulus and Remus, laid the foundation of a spiritual empire vaster and more enduring than that of the Caesars. The cross was substituted for the sword as the symbol of conquest and power.514
But the change was
effected at the sacrifice of precious blood. The Roman empire was at first, by
its laws of justice, the protector of Christianity, without knowing its true
character, and came to the rescue of Paul on several critical occasions, as in
Corinth through the Proconsul Annaeus Gallio, in Jerusalem through the Captain Lysias,
and in Caesarea through the Procurator Festus. But now it rushed into deadly
conflict with the new religion, and opened, in the name of idolatry and
patriotism, a series of intermittent persecutions, which ended at last in the
triumph of the banner of the cross at the Milvian bridge. Formerly a
restraining power that kept back for a while the outbreak of Antichrist,515 it now openly assumed the character of
Antichrist with fire and sword.516
Nero.
The first of these
imperial persecutions with which the Martyrdom of Peter and Paul is connected
by ecclesiastical tradition, took place in the tenth year of Nero’s reign, a.d. 64, and by the instigation of that
very emperor to whom Paul, as a Roman citizen, had appealed from the Jewish
tribunal. It was, however, not a strictly religious persecution, like those
under the later emperors; it originated in a public calamity which was wantonly
charged upon the innocent Christians.
A greater contrast can
hardly be imagined than that between Paul, one of the purest and noblest of
men, and Nero, one of the basest and vilest of tyrants. The glorious first five
years of Nero’s reign (54–59) under the wise guidance of Seneca and Burrhus,
make the other nine (59–68) only more hideous by contrast. We read his life
with mingled feelings of contempt for his folly, and horror of his wickedness.
The world was to him a comedy and a tragedy, in which he was to be the chief
actor. He had an insane passion for popular applause; he played on the lyre; he
sung his odes at supper; he drove his chariots in the circus; he appeared as a
mimic on the stage, and compelled men of the highest rank to represent in
dramas or in tableaux the obscenest of the Greek myths. But the comedian was
surpassed by the tragedian. He heaped crime upon crime until he became a
proverbial monster of iniquity. The murder of his brother (Britannicus), his
mother (Agrippina), his wives (Octavia and Poppaea), his teacher (Seneca), and
many eminent Romans, was fitly followed by his suicide in the thirty-second
year of his age. With him the family of Julius Caesar ignominiously perished, and
the empire became the prize of successful soldiers and adventurers.517
The Conflagration in Rome.
For such a demon in
human shape, the murder of a crowd of innocent Christians was pleasant sport.
The occasion of the hellish spectacle was a fearful conflagration of Rome, the
most destructive and disastrous that ever occurred in history. It broke out in
the night between the 18th and 19th of July,518
among the wooden shops in the south-eastern end of the Great Circus, near the
Palatine hill.519
Lashed by the wind, it defied all exertions of the firemen and soldiers,
and raged with unabated fury for seven nights and six days.520
Then it burst out again in another part, near the field of Mars, and in
three days more laid waste two other districts of the city.521
The calamity was
incalculable. Only four of the fourteen regions into which the city was
divided, remained uninjured; three, including the whole interior city from the
Circus to the Esquiline hill, were a shapeless mass of ruins; the remaining
seven were more or less destroyed; venerable temples, monumental buildings of
the royal, republican, and imperial times, the richest creations of Greek art
which had been collected for centuries, were turned into dust and ashes; men
and beasts perished in the flames, and the metropolis of the world assumed the
aspect of a graveyard with a million of mourners over the loss of irreparable
treasures.
This fearful catastrophe
must have been before the mind of St. John in the Apocalypse when he wrote his
funeral dirge of the downfall of imperial Rome (Apoc. 18).
The cause of the
conflagration is involved in mystery. Public rumor traced it to Nero, who
wished to enjoy the lurid spectacle of burning Troy, and to gratify his
ambition to rebuild Rome on a more magnificent scale, and to call it Neropolis.522
When the fire broke out he was on the seashore at Antium, his
birthplace; he returned when the devouring element reached his own palace, and
made extraordinary efforts to stay and then to repair the disaster by a
reconstruction which continued till after his death, not forgetting to replace
his partially destroyed temporary residence (domus transitoria) by "the golden house" (<foreign
lang="la">domus
aurea</foreign>), as
a standing wonder of architectural magnificence and extravagance.
The Persecution of the Christians.
To divert from himself
the general suspicion of incendiarism, and at the same time to furnish new
entertainment for his diabolical cruelty, Nero wickedly cast the blame upon the
hated Christians, who, meanwhile, especially since the public trial of Paul and
his successful labors in Rome, had come to be distinguished from the Jews as a <foreign
lang="la">genus
tertium</foreign>, or as the most dangerous offshoot from that race. They were certainly
despisers of the Roman gods and loyal subjects of a higher king than Caesar,
and they were falsely suspected of secret crimes. The police and people, under
the influence of the panic created by the awful calamity, were ready to believe
the worst slanders, and demanded victims. What could be expected of the
ignorant multitude, when even such cultivated Romans as Tacitus, Suetonius, and
Pliny, stigmatized Christianity as a vulgar and pestiferous superstition. It
appeared to them even worse than Judaism, which was at least an ancient
national religion, while Christianity was novel, detached from any particular
nationality, and aiming at universal dominion. Some Christians were arrested,
confessed their faith, and were "convicted not so much," says
Tacitus, "of the crime of incendiarism as of hating the human race."
Their Jewish origin, their indifference to politics and public affairs, their
abhorrence of heathen customs, were construed into an "<foreign
lang="la">odium
generis humani</foreign>,"
and this made an attempt on their part to destroy the city sufficiently
plausible to justify a verdict of guilty. An infuriated mob does not stop to
reason, and is as apt to run mad as an individual.
Under this wanton charge
of incendiarism, backed by the equally groundless charge of misanthropy and
unnatural vice, there began a carnival of blood such as even heathen Rome never
saw before or since.523 It was the answer of the powers of hell
to the mighty preaching of the two chief apostles, which had shaken heathenism
to its centre. A "vast multitude" of Christians was put to death in
the most shocking manner. Some were crucified, probably in mockery of the
punishment of Christ,524
some sewed up in the skins of wild beasts and exposed to the voracity of mad
dogs in the arena. The satanic tragedy reached its climax at night in the
imperial gardens on the slope of the Vatican (which embraced, it is supposed,
the present site of the place and church of St. Peter): Christian men and
women, covered with pitch or oil or resin, and nailed to posts of pine, were
lighted and burned as torches for the amusement of the mob; while Nero, in
fantastical dress, figured in a horse race, and displayed his art as
charioteer. Burning alive was the ordinary punishment of incendiaries; but only
the cruel ingenuity of this imperial monster, under the inspiration of the
devil, could invent such a horrible system of illumination.
This is the account of
the greatest heathen historian, the fullest we have—as the best description of
the destruction of Jerusalem is from the pen of the learned Jewish historian.
Thus enemies bear witness to the truth of Christianity. Tacitus incidentally
mentions in this connection the crucifixion of Christ under Pontius Pilate, in
the reign of Tiberius. With all his haughty Roman contempt for the Christians
whom he knew only from rumor and reading, he was convinced of their innocence
of incendiarism, and notwithstanding his cold stoicism, he could not suppress a
feeling of pity for them because they were sacrificed not to the public good,
but to the ferocity of a wicked tyrant.
Some historians have
doubted, not indeed the truth of this terrible persecution, but that the
Christians, rather than the Jews, or the Christians alone, were the sufferers.
It seems difficult to understand that the harmless and peaceful Christians,
whom the contemporary writers, Seneca, Pliny, Lucan, Persius, ignore, while
they notice the Jews, should so soon have become the subjects of popular
indignation. It is supposed that Tacitus and Suetonius, writing some fifty
years after the event, confounded the Christians with the Jews, who were
generally obnoxious to the Romans, and justified the suspicion of incendiarism
by the escape of their transtiberine quarter from the injury of the fire.525
But the atrocious act
was too public to leave room for such a mistake. Both Tacitus and Suetonius
distinguish the two sects, although they knew very little of either; and the
former expressly derives the name Christians from Christ, as the founder of the
new religion. Moreover Nero, as previously remarked, was not averse to the
Jews, and his second wife, Poppaea Sabina, a year before the conflagration, had
shown special favor to Josephus, and loaded him with presents. Josephus speaks
of the crimes of Nero, but says not a word of any persecution of his
fellow-religionists.526 This alone seems to be conclusive. It
is not unlikely that in this (as in all previous persecutions, and often
afterwards) the fanatical Jews, enraged by the rapid progress of Christianity,
and anxious to avert suspicion from themselves, stirred up the people against
the hated Galilaeans, and that the heathen Romans fell with double fury on
these supposed half Jews, disowned by their own strange brethren.527
The Probable Extent of the Persecution.
The heathen historians,
if we are to judge from their silence, seem to confine the persecution to the
city of Rome, but later Christian writers extend it to the provinces.528 The
example set by the emperor in the capital could hardly be without influence in
the provinces, and would justify the outbreak of popular hatred. If the
Apocalypse was written under Nero, or shortly after his death, John’s exile to
Patmos must be connected with this persecution. It mentions imprisonments in
Smyrna, the martyrdom of Antipas in Pergamus, and speaks of the murder of
prophets and saints and all that have been slain on the earth.529 The
Epistle to the Hebrews 10:32–34, which was written in Italy, probably in the
year 64, likewise alludes to bloody persecutions, and to the release of Timothy
from prison, 13:23. And Peter, in his first Epistle, which may be assigned to
the same year, immediately after the outbreak of the persecution, and shortly
before his death, warns the Christians in Asia Minor of a fiery trial which is
to try them, and of sufferings already endured or to be endured, not for any
crime, but for the name of "Christians."530 The
name "Babylon"531
for Rome is most easily explained by the time and circumstances of composition.
Christianity, which had
just reached the age of its founder, seemed annihilated in Rome. With Peter and
Paul the first generation of Christians was buried. Darkness must have
overshadowed the trembling disciples, and a despondency seized them almost as deep
as on the evening of the crucifixion, thirty-four years before. But the morning
of the resurrection was not far distant, and the very spot of the martyrdom of
St. Peter was to become the site of the greatest church in Christendom and the
palatial residence of his reputed successors.532
The Apocalypse on the Neronian Persecution.
None of the leading
apostles remained to record the horrible massacre, except John. He may have
heard of it in Ephesus, or he may have accompanied Peter to Rome and escaped a
fearful death in the Neronian gardens, if we are to credit the ancient
tradition of his miraculous preservation from being burnt alive with his
fellow-Christians in that hellish illumination on the Vatican hill.533 At
all events he was himself a victim of persecution for the name of Jesus, and
depicted its horrors, as an exile on the lonely island of Patmos in the vision
of the Apocalypse.
This mysterious
book—whether written between 68 and 69, or under Domitian in 95—was undoubtedly
intended for the church of that age as well as for future ages, and must have
been sufficiently adapted to the actual condition and surroundings of its first
readers to give them substantial aid and comfort in their fiery trials. Owing
to the nearness of events alluded to, they must have understood it even better,
for practical purposes, than readers of later generations. John looks, indeed,
forward to the final consummation, but he sees the end in the beginning. He
takes his standpoint on the historic foundation of the old Roman empire in
which he lived, as the visions of the prophets of Israel took their departure
from the kingdom of David or the age of the Babylonian captivity. He describes
the heathen Rome of his day as "the beast that ascended out of the abyss,"
as "a beast coming out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads"
(or kings, emperors), as "the great harlot that sitteth among many
waters," as a "woman sitting upon a scarlet-colored beast, full of
names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns," as "Babylon
the great, the mother of the harlots and of the abominations of the
earth."534 The
seer must have in view the Neronian persecution, the most cruel that ever
occurred, when he calls the woman seated on seven hills, "drunken with the
blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus,"535 and prophesied her downfall as a matter of
rejoicing for the "saints and apostles and prophets."536
Recent commentators
discover even a direct allusion to Nero, as expressing in Hebrew letters (Neron
Kesar) the mysterious number 666, and as being the fifth of the seven heads
of the beast which was slaughtered, but would return again from the abyss as
Antichrist. But this interpretation is uncertain, and in no case can we
attribute to John the belief that Nero would literally rise from the dead as
Antichrist. He meant only that Nero, the persecutor of the Christian church,
was (like Antiochus Epiphanes) the forerunner of Antichrist, who would be
inspired by the same bloody spirit from the infernal world. In a similar sense
Rome was a second Babylon, and John the Baptist another Elijah.
Notes.
I. The Accounts of the Neronian Persecution.
1. From heathen
historians.
We have chiefly two
accounts of the first imperial persecution, from Tacitus, who was born about eight years before the event,
and probably survived Trajan (d. 117), and from Suetonius,
who wrote his XII. Caesares a little later, about a.d. 120. Dion Cassius (born circa a.d.
155), in his History of Rome (<foreign
lang="el"> JRwmaikh; jIstoriva</foreign> , preserved in fragments, and in the abridgment
of the monk Xiphilinus), from the arrival of Aeneas to a.d. 229, mentions the conflagration of Rome, but ignores
the persecutions of the Christians.
The description of Tacitus is in his terse, pregnant, and
graphic style, and beyond suspicion of interpolation, but has some obscurities.
We give it in full, from Annal., XV. 44
"But not all the
relief of men, nor the bounties of the emperor, nor the propitiation of the
gods, could relieve him [Nero] from the infamy of being believed to have
ordered the conflagration. Therefore, in order to suppress the rumor, Nero
falsely charged with the guilt, and punished with the most exquisite tortures,
those persons who, hated for their crimes, were commonly called Christians (<foreign
lang="la">subdidit
reos, et quaesitissimis poenis affecit, quos per flagitia invisos vulgus
’Christianos’ appellabat</foreign>). The
founder of that name, <foreign lang="la">Christus</foreign>, had
been put to death (<foreign lang="la">supplicio affectus erat</foreign>) by
the procurator of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, in the reign of Tiberius; but the
pernicious superstition (<foreign lang="la">exitiabilis superstitio</foreign>), repressed
for a time,537 broke out again, not only through Judaea, the
source of this evil, but also through the city [of Rome], whither all things
vile and shameful flow from all quarters, and are encouraged (<foreign
lang="la">quo
cuncta undique atrocia aut pudenda confluunt celebranturque</foreign>). Accordingly, first, those only were arrested
who confessed.538
Next, on their information, a vast multitude (<foreign
lang="la">multitudo
ingens</foreign>), were convicted, not so much of the crime of incendiarism as of hatred
of the human race (<foreign lang="la">odio humani generis</foreign>).539
And in their deaths they were made the subjects of sport; for they were wrapped
in the hides of wild beasts and torn to pieces by dogs, or nailed to crosses,
or set on fire, and when day declined, were burned to serve for nocturnal
lights (<foreign
lang="la">in
usum nocturni luminis urerentur</foreign>). Nero had offered his own gardens [on the
Vatican] for this spectacle, and also exhibited a chariot race on the occasion,
now mingling in the crowd in the dress of a charioteer, now actually holding
the reins. Whence a feeling of compassion arose towards the sufferers, though
justly held to be odious, because they seemed not to be cut off for the public
good, but as victims to the ferocity of one man."
The account of Suetonius, Nero, c. 16, is very
short and unsatisfactory: "<foreign
lang="la">Afflicti
suppliciis Christiani, genus hominum superstitionis novae ac maleficaea</foreign>." He does not connect the persecution with
the conflagration, but with police regulations.
Juvenal, the satirical poet, alludes, probably as an
eye-witness, to the persecution, like Tacitus, with mingled feelings of
contempt and pity for the Christian sufferers (Sat. I. 155):
"Dar’st thou speak of
Tigellinus’ guilt?
Thou too shalt shine like
those we saw
Stand at the stake with
throat transfixed
Smoking and burning."
2. From Christians.
Clement
of Rome, near the close of the first
century, must refer to the Neronian persecution when he writes of the
"vast multitude of the elect "who suffered, many indignities and
tortures, being the victims of jealousy; "and of Christian women who were
made to personate "Danaides" and "Dirces," Ad Corinth., c.
6. I have made no use of this passage in the text. Renan amplifies and weaves
it into his graphic description of the persecution (L’Antechrist, pp.
163 sqq., almost literally repeated in his Hibbert Lectures). According
to the legend, Dirce was bound to a raging bull and dragged to death. The scene
is represented in the famous marble group in the museum at Naples. But the
Danaides can furnish no suitable parallel to Christian martyrs, unless, as
Renan suggests, Nero had the sufferings of the Tartarus represented. Lightfoot,
following the bold emendation of Wordsworth (on Theocritus, XXVI. 1), rejects
the reading <foreign lang="el">Danai>vde"
kai; Divrkai</foreign> (which is retained in all editions, including that of Gebhardt and
Harnack), and substitutes for it <foreign lang="el">neanivde",
paidivskai</foreign>, so that Clement would say:, Matrons (<foreign
lang="el">gunai'ke"</foreign>) maidens, slave-girls, being
persecuted, after suffering cruel and unholy insults, safely reached the goal
in the race of faith, and received a noble reward, feeble though they were in
body."
Tertullian (d. about 220) thus alludes to the Neronian
persecution, Ad Nationes, I. ch. 7: "This name of ours took its
rise in the reign of Augustus; under Tiberius it was taught with all clearness
and publicity; under Nero it was ruthlessly condemned (<foreign
lang="la">sub
Nerone damnatio invaluit</foreign>), and
you may weigh its worth and character even from the person of its persecutor.
If that prince was a pious man, then the Christians are impious; if he was
just, if he was pure, then the Christians are unjust and impure; if he was not
a public enemy, we are enemies of our country: what sort of men we are, our
persecutor himself shows, since he of course punished what produced hostility
to himself. Now, although every other institution which existed under Nero has
been destroyed, yet this of ours has firmly remained—righteous, it would seem,
as being unlike the author [of its persecution]."
Sulpicius
Severus, Chron. II. 28, 29,
gives a pretty full account, but mostly from Tacitus. He and Orosius (Hist. VII. 7) first
clearly assert that Nero extended the persecution to the provinces.
II. Nero’s Return as Antichrist.
Nero, owing to his
youth, beauty, dash, and prodigality, and the startling novelty of his
wickedness (Tacitus calls him "<foreign
lang="la">incredibilium
cupitor</foreign>," Ann. XV.
42), enjoyed a certain popularity with the vulgar democracy of Rome. Hence,
after his suicide, a rumor spread among the heathen that he was not actually
dead, but had fled to the Parthians, and would return to Rome with an army and
destroy the city. Three impostors under his name used this belief and found
support during the reigns of Otho, Titus, and Domitian. Even thirty years later
Domitian trembled at the name of Nero. Tacit., Hist. I. 2; II. 8, 9;
Sueton., Ner. 57; Dio Cassius, LXIV. 9; Schiller, l.c., p. 288.
Among the Christians the
rumor assumed a form hostile to Nero. Lactantius (De Mort. Persecut., c.
2) mentions the Sibylline saying that, as Nero was the first persecutor, he
would also be the last, and precede the advent of Antichrist. Augustin (De
Civil. Dei, XX. 19) mentions that at his time two opinions were still
current in the church about Nero: some supposed that he would rise from the
dead as Antichrist, others that he was not dead, but concealed, and would live
until he should be revealed and restored to his kingdom. The former is the
Christian, the latter the heathen belief. Augustin rejects both. Sulpicius
Severus (Chron., II. 29) also mentions the belief (unde creditur)
that Nero, whose deadly wound was healed, would return at the end of the world
to work out "the mystery of lawlessness" predicted by Paul (<scripRef
passage = "2 Thess. 2:7">2 Thess. 2:7</scripRef>).
Some commentators make
the Apocalypse responsible for this absurd rumor and false belief, while others
hold that the writer shared it with his heathen contemporaries. The passages
adduced are <scripRef passage = "Rev. 17:8">Apoc. 17:8</scripRef>: "The beast was, and is not, and is about
to come up out of the abyss and to go into perdition" ... "the beast
was, and is not, and shall be present" (<foreign
lang="el">kai; pavrestai, </foreign>not<foreign lang="el">
kaivper ejstivn</foreign>, "and yet is," as the E. V. reads with the text. ec.); <scripRef
passage = "Rev. 17:11">17:11</scripRef>: "And the beast that was, and is not, is himself also an eighth,
and is of the seven; and he goeth into perdition;" and <scripRef
passage = "Rev. 13:3">13:3</scripRef>: "And I saw one of his heads as though it had been smitten unto death;
and his death-stroke was healed: and the whole world wondered after the
beast."
But this is said of the
beast, i.e., the Roman empire, which is throughout clearly distinguished from
the seven heads, i.e., the emperors. In Daniel, too, the beast is collective.
Moreover, a distinction must be made between the death of one ruler (Nero) and
the deadly wound which thereby was inflicted on the beast or the empire, but
from which it recovered (under Vespasian).
</div3>
<div3
type = "Section" n="38" title="The Jewish War and the
Destruction of Jerusalem. A.D. 70">
§ 38. The Jewish War and the Destruction of Jerusalem. a.d. 70.
"And as He went
forth out of the temple, one of his disciples saith unto Him, Master, behold,
what manner of stones and what manner of buildings! And Jesus said unto him, Seest thou these great
buildings? There shall not be
left here one stone upon another, which shall not be thrown down."—<scripRef
passage = "Mark 13:1,2">Mark 13:1,2</scripRef>.
Sources.
Josephus: Bell. Jud., in 7 books; and Vita, c.
4–74. The history of the Jewish war was written by him as eye-witness about a.d. 75. English translations by W. Whiston, in Works of Jos., and by
Rob. Traill, ed. by Isaac Taylor, new
ed., Lond., 1862. German translations by Gfrsörer and W. Hoffmann, Stuttgart,
1836; and Paret, Stuttg., 1855; French translations by Arnauld d’andilly, 1667,
Joachim Gillet, 1756, and Abbé Glaire, 1846.
Rabbinical traditions in Derenbourg: Histoire de la Palestine
depuis Cyrus jusqu’à Adrien. Paris, 1867 (first part of his L’Histoire et la
géographie de la Palestine d’après les Thalmuds et les autres sources
rabbiniques), pp. 255–295.
Tacitus: Hist., II. 4; V. 1–13. A mere fragment,
full of errors and insults towards the vanquished Jews. The fifth book, except
this fragment, is lost. While Josephus, the Jew, is filled with admiration for
the power and greatness of Rome, Tacitus, the heathen, treats Jews and
Christians with scorn and contempt, and prefers to derive his information from
hostile Egyptians and popular prejudice rather than from the Scriptures, and
Philo, and Josephus.
Sulpicius
Severus: Chronicon, II. 30
(p. 84, ed. Halm). Short.
Literature.
Milman: The History of the Jews, Books XIV.-XVII. (New York ed., vol. II., 219
sqq.).
Ewald: Geschichte des Folkes Israel, VI. 705–753 (second ed.).
Grätz: Geschichte der Juden, III. 336–414.
Hitzig: Geschichte des Volkes Israel, II. 594–629.
Lewin: The Siege of Jerusalem by Titus. With the
Journal of a recent Visit in the Holy City, and a general Sketch of the
Topography of Jerusalem from the Earliest Times down to the Siege. London,
1863.
Count
de Champagny: Rome et la Judie au
temps de la chute de Néron (ans 66–72 après Jésus-Christ), 2. éd., Paris, 1865. T. I., pp. 195–254; T. II., pp.
55–200.
Charles
Merivale: History of the Romans
under the Empire, ch. LIX. (vol. VI., 415 sqq., 4th ed., New York, 1866).
De
Saulcy: Les derniers jours de
Jérusalem. Paris, 1866.
E. Renan: L’Antechrist (ch. X.-XX., pp. 226–551). Paris, second ed., 1873.
Emil
Schürer: Lehrbuch der
neutestamentlichen Zeitgeschichte (Leipzig, 1874), pp. 323–350. He also gives the literature.
A. Hausrath: Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte, Part III., second ed., Heidelberg, 1875, pp. 424
487.
Alfred
J. Church: The Story of the Last
Days of Jerusalem, from Josephus. With illustrations. London, 1880.
There is scarcely another period in history so full of vice, corruption, and disaster as the six years between the Neronian persecution and the destruction of Jerusalem. The prophetic description of the last days by our Lord began to be fulfilled before the generation to which he spoke had passed away, and the day of judgment seemed to be close at hand. So the Christians believed and had good reason to believe. Even to earnest heathen minds that period looked as dark as midnight. We have elsewhere quoted Seneca’s picture of the frightful moral depravity and decay under the reign of Nero, his pupil and murderer. Tacitus begins his history of Rome after the death of Nero with these words: "I proceed to a work rich in disasters, full of atrocious battles, of discord and rebellion, yea, horrible even in peace. Four princes [Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Domitian] killed by the sword; three civil wars, several foreign wars; and mostly raging at the same time. Favorable events in the East [the subjugation of the Jews], unfortunate ones in the West. Illyria disturbed, Gaul uneasy; Britain conquered and soon relinquished; the nations of Sarmatia and Suevia rising against us; the Parthians excited by the deception of a pseudo-Nero. Italy also weighed down by Dew or oft-repeated calamities; cities swallowed up or buried in ruins; Rome laid waste by conflagrations, the old temples burned up, even the capitol set on fire by citizens; sanctuaries desecrated; adultery rampant in high places. The sea filled with exiles; the rocky islands contaminated with murder. Still more horrible the fury in the city. Nobility, riches, places of honor, whether declined or occupied, counted as crimes, and virtue sure of destruction.540
The Approaching Doom.
The most unfortunate
country in that period was Palestine, where an ancient and venerable nation
brought upon itself unspeakable suffering and destruction. The tragedy of
Jerusalem prefigures in miniature the final judgment, and in this light it is
represented in the eschatological discourses of Christ, who foresaw the end
from the beginning.
The forbearance of God
with his covenant people, who had crucified their own Saviour, reached at last
its limit. As many as could be saved in the usual way, were rescued. The mass
of the people had obstinately set themselves against all improvement. James the
Just, the man who was fitted, if any could be, to reconcile the Jews to the
Christian religion, had been stoned by his hardened brethren, for whom he daily
interceded in the temple; and with him the Christian community in Jerusalem had
lost its importance for that city. The hour of the "great
tribulation" and fearful judgment drew near. The prophecy of the Lord
approached its literal fulfilment: Jerusalem was razed to the ground, the
temple burned, and not one stone was left upon another.541
Not long before the
outbreak of the Jewish war, seven years before the siege of Jerusalem (a.d. 63), a peasant by the name of
Joshua, or Jesus, appeared in the city at the Feast of Tabernacles, and in a
tone of prophetic ecstasy cried day and night on the street among the people:,
A voice from the morning, a voice from the evening! A voice from the four winds! A voice of rain against Jerusalem and the Temple! A voice against the bridegrooms and the
brides! A voice against the whole
people! Woe, woe to
Jerusalem! "The magistrates,
terrified by this woe, had the prophet of evil taken up and scourged. He
offered no resistance, and continued to cry his "Woe." Being brought
before the procurator, Albinus, he was scourged till his bones could be seen,
but interposed not a word for himself; uttered no curse on his enemies; simply
exclaimed at every blow in a mournful tone: "Woe, woe to Jerusalem!" To the governor’s question, who and
whence he was, He answered nothing. Finally they let him go, as a madman. But
he continued for seven years and five months, till the outbreak of the war,
especially at the three great feasts, to proclaim the approaching fall of
Jerusalem. During the siege he was singing his dirge, for the last time, from
the wall. Suddenly he added: "Woe, woe also to me!"—and a stone of
the Romans hurled at his head put an end to his prophetic lamentation.542
The Jewish Rebellion.
Under the last governors,
Felix, Festus, Albinus, and Florus, moral corruption and the dissolution of all
social ties, but at the same time the oppressiveness of the Roman yoke,
increased every year. After the accession of Felix, assassins, called
"Sicarians" (from sica,
a dagger), armed with daggers
and purchasable for any crime, endangering safety in city and country, roamed
over Palestine. Besides this, the party spirit among the Jews themselves, and
their hatred of their heathen oppressors, rose to the most insolent political
and religious fanaticism, and was continually inflamed by false prophets and
Messiahs, one of whom, for example, according to Josephus, drew after him
thirty thousand men. Thus came to pass what our Lord had predicted: "There
shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall lead many
astray."
At last, in the month of
May, a.d. 66, under the last
procurator, Gessius Florus (from 65 onward), a wicked and cruel tyrant who, as
Josephus says, was placed as a hangman over evil-doers, an organized rebellion
broke out against the Romans, but it the same time a terrible civil war also
between different parties of the revolters themselves, especially between the
Zealots, and the Moderates, or the Radicals and Conservatives. The ferocious
party of the Zealots had all the fire and energy which religious and patriotic
fanaticism could inspire; they have been justly compared with the Montagnards
of the French Revolution. They gained the ascendancy in the progress of the
war, took forcible possession of the city and the temple and introduced a reign
of terror. They kept up the Messianic expectations of the people and hailed
every step towards destruction as a step towards deliverance. Reports of
comets, meteors, and all sorts of fearful omens and prodigies were interpreted
as signs of the common of the Messiah and his reign over the heathen. The
Romans recognized the Messiah in Vespasian and Titus.
To defy Rome in that
age, without a single ally, was to defy the world in arms; but religious
fanaticism, inspired by the recollection of the heroic achievements of the
Maccabees, blinded the Jews against the inevitable failure of this mad and
desperate revolt.
The Roman Invasion.
The emperor Nero,
informed of the rebellion, sent his most famous general, Vespasian, with a
large force to Palestine Vespasian opened the campaign in the year 67 from the
Syrian port-town, Ptolemais (Acco), and against a stout resistance overran
Galilee with an army of sixty thousand men. But events in Rome hindered him
from completing the victory, and required him to return thither. Nero had
killed himself. The emperors, Galba, Otho, and Vitellius followed one another
in rapid succession. The latter was taken out of a dog’s kennel in Rome while
drunk, dragged through the streets, and shamefully put to death. Vespasian, in
the year 69, was universally proclaimed emperor, and restored order and
prosperity.
His son, Titus, who
himself ten years after became emperor, and highly distinguished himself by his
mildness and philanthropy,543
then undertook the prosecution of the Jewish war, and became the instrument in
the hand of God of destroying the holy city and the temple. He had an army of
not less than eighty thousand trained soldiers, and planted his camp on Mount
Scopus and the adjoining Mount Olivet, in full view of the city and the temple,
which from this height show to the best advantage. The valley of the Kedron
divided the besiegers from the besieged.
In April, a.d. 70, immediately after the Passover,
when Jerusalem was filled with strangers, the siege began. The zealots
rejected, with sneering defiance, the repeated proposals of Titus and the
prayers of Josephus, who accompanied him as interpreter and mediator; and they
struck down every one who spoke of surrender. They made sorties down the valley
of the Kedron and tip the mountain, and inflicted great loss oil the Romans. As
the difficulties multiplied their courage increased. The crucifixion of
hundreds of prisoners (as many as five hundred a day) only enraged them the
more. Even the famine which began to rage and sweep away thousands daily, and
forced a woman to roast her own child,544
the cries of mothers and babes, the most pitiable scenes of misery around them,
could not move the crazy fanatics. History records no other instance of such
obstinate resistance, such desperate bravery and contempt of death. The Jews
fought, not only for civil liberty, life, and their native land, but for that
which constituted their national pride and glory, and gave their whole history
its significance—for their religion, which, even in this state of horrible
degeneracy, infused into them an almost superhuman power of endurance.
The Destruction of the City and the Temple.
At last, in July, the
castle of Antonia was surprised and taken by night. This prepared the way for
the destruction of the Temple in which the tragedy culminated. The daily
sacrifices ceased July 17th, because the hands were all needed for defence. The
last and the bloodiest sacrifice at the altar of burnt offerings was the
slaughter of thousands of Jews who had crowded around it.
Titus (according to
Josephus) intended at first to save that magnificent work of architecture, as a
trophy of victory, and perhaps from some superstitious fear; and when the
flames threatened to reach the Holy of Holies he forced his way through flame
and smoke, over the dead and dying, to arrest the fire.545 But
the destruction was determined by a higher decree. His own soldiers, roused to
madness by the stubborn resistance, and greedy of the golden treasures, could
not be restrained from the work of destruction. At first the halls around the
temple were set on fire. Then a firebrand was hurled through the golden gate.
When the flames arose the Jews raised a hideous yell and tried to put out the
fire; while others, clinging with a last convulsive grasp to their Messianic
hopes, rested in the declaration of a false prophet, that God in the midst of
the conflagration of the Temple would give a signal for the deliverance of his
people. The legions vied with each other in feeding the flames, and made the
unhappy people feel the full force of their unchained rage. Soon the whole
prodigious structure was in a blaze and illuminated the skies. It was burned on
the tenth of August, a.d. 70, the
same day of the year on which, according to tradition, the first temple was
destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. "No one," says Josephus, "can
conceive a louder, more terrible shriek than arose from all sides during the
burning of the temple. The shout of victory and the jubilee of the legions
sounded through the wailings of the people, now surrounded with fire and sword,
upon the mountain, and throughout the city. The echo from all the mountains
around, even to Peraea (?), increased the deafening roar. Yet the misery itself
was more terrible than this disorder. The hill on which the temple stood was
seething hot, and seemed enveloped to its base in one sheet of flame. The blood
was larger in quantity than the fire, and those that were slain more in number
than those that slew them. The ground was nowhere visible. All was covered with
corpses; over these heaps the soldiers pursued the fugitives."546
The Romans planted their
eagles on the shapeless ruins, over against the eastern gate, offered their
sacrifices to them, and proclaimed Titus Imperator with the greatest
acclamations of joy. Thus was fulfilled the prophecy concerning the abomination
of desolation standing in the holy place."547
Jerusalem was razed to
the ground; only three towers of the palace of Herod—Hippicus (still standing),
Phasael, and Mariamne—together with a portion of the western wall, were left as
monuments of the strength of the conquered city, once the centre of the Jewish
theocracy and the cradle of the Christian Church.
Even the heathen Titus
is reported to have publicly declared that God, by a special providence, aided
the Romans and drove the Jews from their impregnable strongholds.548
Josephus, who went through the war himself from beginning to end, at
first as governor of Galilee and general of the Jewish army, then as a prisoner
of Vespasian, finally as a companion of Titus and mediator between the Romans
and Jews, recognized in this tragical event a divine judgment and admitted of
his degenerate countrymen, to whom he was otherwise sincerely attached: "I
will not hesitate to say what gives me pain: I believe that, had the Romans
delayed their punishment of these villains, the city would have been swallowed
up by the earth, or overwhelmed with a flood, or, like Sodom, consumed with
fire from heaven. For the generation which was in it was far more ungodly than
the men on whom these punishments had in former times fallen. By their madness
the whole nation came to be ruined."549
Thus, therefore, must
one of the best Roman emperors execute the long threatened judgment of God, and
the most learned Jew of his time describe it, and thereby, without willing or
knowing it, bear testimony to the truth of the prophecy and the divinity of the
mission of Jesus Christ, the rejection of whom brought all this and the
subsequent misfortune upon the apostate race.
The destruction of
Jerusalem would be a worthy theme for the genius of a Christian Homer. It has
been called "the most soul-stirring struggle of all ancient history."550 But
there was no Jeremiah to sing the funeral dirge of the city of David and
Solomon. The Apocalypse was already written, and had predicted that the heathen
"shall tread the holy city under foot forty and two months."551 One
of the master artists of modern times, Kaulbach, has made it the subject of one
of his greatest paintings in the museum at Berlin. It represents the burning
temple: in the foreground, the high-priest burying his sword in his breast;
around him, the scenes of heart-rending suffering; above, the ancient prophets
beholding the fulfilment of their oracles; beneath them, Titus with the Roman
army as the unconscious executor of the Divine wrath; below, to the left,
Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew of the mediaeval legend, driven by furies into the
undying future; and to the right the group of Christians departing in peace
from the scene of destruction, and Jewish children imploring their protection.
The Fate of the Survivors, and the Triumph in Rome.
After a siege of five
months the entire city was in the hands of the victors. The number of the Jews
slain during the siege, including all those who had crowded into the city from
the country, is stated by Josephus at the enormous and probably exaggerated
figure of one million and one hundred thousand. Eleven thousand perished from
starvation shortly after the close of the siege. Ninety-seven thousand were
carried captive and sold into slavery, or sent to the mines, or sacrificed in
the gladiatorial shows at Caesarea, Berytus, Antioch, and other cities. The
strongest and handsomest men were selected for the triumphal procession in
Rome, among them the chief defenders and leaders of the revolt, Simon Bar-Giora and John of Gischala.552
Vespasian and Titus
celebrated the dearly bought victory together (71). No expense was spared for
the pageant. Crowned with laurel, and clothed in purple garments, the two
conquerors rode slowly in separate chariots, Domitian on a splendid charger, to
the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, amid the shouts of the people and the
aristocracy. They were preceded by the soldiers in festive attire and seven
hundred Jewish captives. The images of the gods, and the sacred furniture of
the temple—the table of show-bread, the seven-armed candlestick, the trumpets
which announced the year of jubilee, the vessel of incense, and the rolls of
the Law—were borne along in the procession and deposited in the newly built
Temple of Peace,553
except the Law and the purple veils of the holy place, which Vespasian reserved
for his palace. Simon Bar-Giora was thrown down from the Tarpeian Rock; John of
Gischala doomed to perpetual imprisonment. Coins were cast with the legend Judaea capta, Judaea devicta. But neither
Vespasian nor Titus assumed the victorious epithet Judaeus; they despised a people which had lost its
fatherland.
Josephus saw the pompous
spectacle of the humiliation and wholesale crucifixion of his nation, and
described it without a tear.554 The thoughtful Christian, looking at
the representation of the temple furniture borne by captive Jews on the
triumphal arch of Titus, still standing between the Colosseum and the Forum, is
filled with awe at the fulfilment of divine prophecy.
The conquest of
Palestine involved the destruction of the Jewish commonwealth. Vespasian retained
the land as his private property or distributed it among his veterans. The
people were by the five years’ war reduced to extreme poverty, and left without
a magistrate (in the Jewish sense), without a temple, without a country. The
renewal of the revolt under the false Messiah, Bar-Cocheba, led only to a still
more complete destruction of Jerusalem and devastation of Palestine by the army
of Hadrian (132–135). But the Jews still had the law and the prophets and the
sacred traditions, to which they cling to this day with indestructible tenacity
and with the hope of a great future. Scattered over the earth, at home
everywhere and nowhere; refusing to mingle their blood with any other race,
dwelling in distinct communities, marked as a peculiar people in every feature
of the countenance, in every rite of religion; patient, sober, and industrious;
successful in every enterprise, prosperous in spite of oppression, ridiculed
yet feared, robbed yet wealthy, massacred yet springing up again, they have
outlived the persecution of centuries and are likely to continue to live to the
end of time: the object of the mingled contempt, admiration, and wonder of the
world.
</div3>
<div3
type = "Section" n="39" title="Effects of the
Destruction of Jerusalem on the Christian Church">
§ 39. Effects of the Destruction of Jerusalem on the Christian Church.
The Christians of
Jerusalem, remembering the Lord’s admonition, forsook the doomed city in good
time and fled to the town of Pella in the Decapolis, beyond the Jordan, in the
north of Peraea, where king Herod Agrippa II., before whom Paul once stood,
opened to them a safe asylum. An old tradition says that a divine voice or
angel revealed to their leaders the duty of flight.555
There, in the midst of a population chiefly Gentile, the church of the
circumcision was reconstructed. Unfortunately, its history is hidden from us.
But it never recovered its former importance. When Jerusalem was rebuilt as a
Christian city, its bishop was raised to the dignity of one of the four
patriarchs of the East, but it was a patriarchate of honor, not of power, and
sank to a mere shadow after the Mohammedan invasion.
The awful catastrophe of
the destruction of the Jewish theocracy must have produced the profoundest
sensation among the Christians, of which we now, in the absence of all
particular information respecting it, can hardly form a true conception.556 It
was the greatest calamity of Judaism and a great benefit to Christianity; a
refutation of the one, a vindication and emancipation of the other. It not only
gave a mighty impulse to faith, but at the same time formed a proper epoch in
the history of the relation between the two religious bodies. It separated them
forever. It is true the apostle Paul had before now inwardly completed this
separation by the Christian universality of his whole system of doctrine; but
outwardly he had in various ways accommodated himself to Judaism, and had more
than once religiously visited tile temple. He wished not to appear as a
revolutionist, nor to anticipate the natural course of history, tile ways of
Providence.557 But
now the rupture was also outwardly consummated by the thunderbolt of divine
omnipotence. God himself destroyed the house, in which he had thus far dwelt,
in which Jesus had taught, in which the apostles had prayed; he rejected his
peculiar people for their obstinate rejection of the Messiah; he demolished the
whole fabric of the Mosaic theocracy, whose system of worship was, in its very
nature, associated exclusively with the tabernacle at first and afterwards with
the temple; but in so doing he cut the cords which had hitherto bound, and
according to the law of organic development necessarily bound the infant church
to the outward economy of the old covenant, and to Jerusalem as its centre.
Henceforth the heathen could no longer look upon Christianity as a mere sect of
Judaism, but must regard and treat it as a new, peculiar religion. The
destruction of Jerusalem, therefore, marks that momentous crisis at which the
Christian church as a whole burst forth forever from the chrysalis of Judaism,
awoke to a sense of its maturity, and in government and worship at once took
its independent stand before the world.558
This breaking away from
hardened Judaism and its religious forms, however, involved no departure from
the spirit of the Old Testament revelation. The church, on the contrary,
entered into the inheritance of Israel. The Christians appeared as genuine
Jews, as spiritual children of Abraham, who, following the inward current of
the Mosaic religion, had found Him, who was the fulfilment of the law and the
prophets; the perfect fruit of the old covenant and the living germ of the new;
the beginning and the principle of a new moral creation.
It now only remained to
complete the consolidation of the church in this altered state of things; to
combine the premises in their results; to take up the conservative tendency of
Peter and the progressive tendency of Paul, as embodied respectively in the
Jewish-Christian and the Gentile-Christian churches, and to fuse them into a
third and higher tendency in a permanent organism; to set forth alike the unity
of the two Testaments in diversity, and their diversity in unity; and in this
way to wind up the history of the apostolic church.
This was the work of
John, the apostle of completion.
</div3><div2
type=”Chapter” n=”VII” title=”St. John, and the Last Stadium of the Apostolic
Period. The Consolidation of
Jewish and Gentile Christianity”>
CHAPTER VII.
ST. JOHN, AND THE LAST STADIUM OF THE APOSTOLIC PERIOD.
THE CONSOLIDATION OF JEWISH AND GENTILE CHRISTIANITY.
<foreign
lang="el">Kai; oJ
lovgo" sa;rx ejgevneto kai; ejskhvnwsen ejn hmi'n, kai; eqeasavmeqa th;n
dovxan autou'.</foreign>—<scripRef passage = "John 1:14">John 1:14</scripRef>.
</div2>
<div3
type = "Section" n="40" title="The Johannean
Literature">
§ 40. The Johannean Literature.
I. Sources.
1. The Gospel,
Epistles, and Revelation of John.
The notices of John in the Synoptical Gospels, in the Acts, and in Gal. 2:9.
(See the passages in Young’s Analytical Concordance.)
2. Patristic traditions. Irenaeus: Adv. Haer. II. 22, 5
(John lived to the age of Trajan); III. 1, 1 (John at Ephesus); III. 3, 4 (John
and Cerinthus); V. 30, 3 (John and the Apocalypse). Clemens Alex.: Quis
dives salvus, c. 42 (John and
the young robber). Polycrates of
Ephesus in Eus. Hist. Eccl., III. 31; V. 24 (John, one of the <foreign
lang="el">mevgala stoicei'a, and a iJereu;"
to; pevtalon peforhkwv"</foreign>). Tertullian:
De praescr. haer., c. 36 (the legend of John’s martyrdom in Rome by being
steeped in oil, and his miraculous preservation). Eusebius: Hist. Eccl, III.
chs. 18, 23, 31; IV. 14; V. 24 (the paschal controversy). Jerome: Ad Gal. 6:10 (the last words
of John); De vir. ill., c. 9. Augustin:
Tract. 124 in Evang. Joann. (Opera III. 1970, ed. Migne). Nicephorus Cal.: Hist. Eccl., II.
42.
II. Apocryphal Traditions.
Acta Johannis, ed. Const. Tischendorf, in his Acta Apost. Apocr., Lips., 1851, pp. 266–276. Comp. Prolegg. LXXIII.
sqq., where the patristic testimonies on the apocryphal Acts of John are
collected.
Acta Joannis, unter Benutzung von C. v. Tischendorf’s Nachlass bearbeitet
von Theod. Zahn. Erlangen, 1880 (264 pages and clxxii. pages of
Introd.).
The "Acta
"contain the <foreign lang="el">pravxei"
tou' ... jIwavnnou tou' qeolovgou </foreign>Prochorus, who professes to be one of the Seventy
Disciples, one of the Seven Deacons of Jerusalem (Acts 6:5), and a pupil of St.
John; and fragments of the <foreign lang="el">perivodoi
jIwavnnou</foreign>, "the Wanderings of John," by Leucius Charinus, a friend and pupil of
John. The former work is a religious romance, written about 400 years after the
death of John; the latter is assigned by Zahn to an author in Asia Minor before
160, and probably before 140; it uses the fourth as well as the Synoptical
Gospels, and so far has some apologetic value. See p. cxlviii.
Max Bonnet, the French
philologist, promises a new critical edition of the Acts of John. See E.
Leroux’s "Revue critique," 1880, p. 449.
Apocalypsis Johannis, in Tischindorf’s
Apocalypses Apocryphae Mosis,
Esdrae, Pauli, Johannis, item Mariae Dormitio. Lips., 1866, pp. 70–94.
This pseudo-Johannean
Apocalypse purports to have been written shortly after the ascension of Christ,
by St. John, on Mount Tabor. It exists in MS. from the ninth century, and was
first edited by A. Birch, 1804.
On the legends of St. John
comp. Mrs. Jameson: Sacred and
Legendary Art, I. 157–172, fifth edition.
III. Biographical and Critical.
Francis
Trench: Life and Character of St.
John the Evangelist. London, 1850.
Dean
Stanley (d. 1881): Sermons and
Essays on the Apostolic Age. Oxford and London, 1847, third ed., 1874, pp.
234–281.
Max
Krenkel: Der Apostel Johannes. Leipzig, 1871.
James
M. Macdonald: The Life and Writings
of St. John. With Introduction by Dean Howson. New York, 1877 (new ed. 1880).
Weizsäcker: Das Apost. Zeitalter. 1886, pp. 493–559.
Comp. the biographical
sketches in the works on the Apostolic Church, mentioned § 20 (p. 189); and the
Introductions to the Commentaries of Lücke,
Meyer, Lange, Luthardt, Godet, Westcott, Plummer.
IV. Doctrinal.
The Johannean type of
doctrine is expounded by Neander (in his work on the Apost. Age, 4th ed., 1847;
E. transl. by Robinson, N. York, 1865, pp. 508–531); Frommann (Der Johanneische
Lehrbegriff, Leipz., 1839); C.
Reinh. Köstlin (Der Lehrbegriff des Ev. und der Briefe Johannis, Berlin, 1843); Reuss (Die Johann. Theologie, in the
Strasburg "Beiträge zu den Theol. Wissenschaften," 1847, in La Théologie johannique, Paris, 1879, and in his Theology of the
Apost. Age, 2d ed. 1860, translated from the third French ed. by Annie
Harwood, Lond. 1872–74, 2 vols.); Schmid (in his Bibl. Theol. des N. T, Stuttg. 1853); Baur (in Vorlesungen über N. T.
Theol, Leipz. 1864); Hilgenfeld
(1849 and 1863); B. Weiss (Der Johanneische Lehrbegriff, Berlin, 1862, and in
his Bibl. Theol. des N. T., 4th ed. 1884). There are also special treatises
on John’s Logos-doctrine and Christology by Weizsäcker (1862), Beyerschlag
(1866), and others.
V. Commentaries on the Gospel of John.
The Literature on the
Gospel of John and its genuineness, from 1792 to 1875 (from Evanson to
Luthardt), is given with unusual fulness and accuracy by Dr. Caspar René Gregory (an American scholar), in
an appendix to his translation of Luthardt’s St. John, the Author of
the Fourth Gospel. Edinb. 1875, pp. 283–360. Comp. also the very careful
lists of Dr. Ezra Abbot (down to
1869) in the article John, Gospel of, in the Am. ed. of Smith’s
"Dict. of the Bible," I. 1437–1439.
Origen
(d. 254) Chrysostom (407); Augustin (430); Cyril of Alexandria (444) Calvin
(1564); Lampe (1724, 3 vols.); Bengel
(Gnomen, 1752); Lücke (1820, 3d
ed. 1843); Olshausen (1832, 4th ed. by Ebrard, 1861) Tholuck (1827, 7th ed.
1857); Hengstesnberg (1863, 2d, I. 1867 Eng. transl. 1865); Luthardt (1852, 2d
ed. entirely rewritten 1875; Eng. transl. by Gregory, in 2 vols., and a special
volume on the Authorship of the Fourth Gospel, 1875) De Wette-Brückner (5th ed.
1863); Meyer (5th and last ed. of Meyer, 1869; 6th ed. by Weiss, 1880); Ewald (1861);
Alford (6th ed. 1868; Wordsworth (5th ed. 1866), Godet (1865, 2 vols., 2d ed.
1877, Eng. transl. in 3 vols.; 3d edition, Paris, 1881, trsl. by T. Dwight,
1886); Lange (as translated and enlarged by Schaff, N. Y. and Edinb. 1871);
Watkins (in Ellicott’s "N.T. Com. for English Readers," 1878);
Westcott (in "Speaker’s
Commentary," 1879, and separately); Milligan and Moulton (in
"Schaff’s Popul. Com.," 1880); Keil (1881); Plummer (1881); Thoma
(Die
Genesis des Joh. Evangeliums,
1882); Paul Schanz (Tübingen,
1885).
VI. Special Treatises on the Genuineness and Credibility
of the
Fourth Gospel.
We have no room to give
all the titles of books, or the pages in the introductions to Commentaries, and
refer to the lists of Abbot and Gregory.
a. Writers against the
Genuineness:
E. Evanson (The Dissonance of the Four generally received
Evangelists, Gloucester, 1792). K. G. Bretschneider
(Probabilia
de Ev. et Ep. Joh. Ap. Indole et Origine, Leips. 1820, refuted by Schott, Eichhorn, Lücke, and others; retracted by
the author himself in 1828). D. F. Strauss
(in his Leben Jesu, 1835;
withdrawn in the 3d ed. 1838, but renewed in the 4th, 1840 in his Leben Jesu für das
deutsche Volk, 1864); Lützelberger
(1840); Bruno Baum (1840).—F. Chr. BAUR (first in a very acute and ingenious
analysis of the Gospel, in the "Theol.
Jahrbücher," of Tübingen, 1844, and again in 1847, 1848, 1853, 1855, 1859). He
represents the fourth Gospel as the ripe result of a literary development, or
evolution, which proceeded, according to the Hegelian method, from thesis to
antithesis and synthesis, or from Judaizing Petrinism to anti-Jewish Paulinism
and (pseudo-) Johannean reconciliation. He was followed by the whole Tübingen
School; Zeller (1845, 1847, 1853); Schwegler (1846); Hilgenfeld (1849, 1854,
1855, 1875); Volkmar (1870, 1876); Schenkel (1864 and 1873); Holtzmann (in Schenkel’s "Bibellexikon." 1871,
and Einleitung, 1886). Keim
(Gesch. Jesu v. Nazara, since 1867, vol. I., 146 sqq.; 167 sqq., and in
the 3d ed. of his abridgement, 1875, p. 40); Hausrath
(1874); Mangold (in the 4th ed. of Bleek’s Introd., 1886); Thoma (1882). In Holland, Scholten (Leyden,
1865, and again 1871). In England, J. J. Tayler (London, 1867); Samuel Davidson
(in the new ed. of his Introduction to the N. T., 1868, II. 323 sqq. and
357 sqq.); the anonymous author of Supernatural Religion (vol. II. 251
sqq., of the 6th ed., London, 1875); and E. A. A. (Edwin A. Abbott, D. D., of
London, in art. Gospels, "Encycl. Brit.," vol. X., 1879, pp.
818–843).
The dates assigned to the
composition of the Fourth Gospel by these opponents vary from 110 to 170, but
the best scholars among them are more and more forced to retreat from 170
(Baur’s date) to 130 (Keim), or to the very beginning of the second century
(110). This is fatal to their theory; for at that time many of the personal
friends and pupils of John must have been still living to prevent a literary
fiction from being generally accepted in the church as a genuine work of the
apostle.
Reuss (in his Théologie johannique, 1879, in the sixth
part of his great work, "La Bible" and in the Sixth edition of his
Geschichte
der heil. Schriften N. T., 1887,
pp. 249 sqq.) leaves the question undecided, though inclining against the
Johannean authorship. Sabatier,
who had formerly defended the authenticity (in his Essai sur les sources de la
vie de Jésus, 1866), follows the steps of Reuss, and comes to a negative conclusion (in
his art. Jean in
Lichtenberger’s "Encycl. des Sciences Relig.," Tom. VII., Paris,
1880, pp. 173 sqq.).
Weisse (1836), Schweizer
(1841), Weizsäcker (1857, 1859, 1862, 1886), Hase (in his Geschichte Jesu, 1875, while in his earlier writings he had
defended the genuineness), and Renan
(1863, 1867, and 1879) admit genuine portions in the Fourth Gospel, but differ
among themselves as to the extent. Some defend the genuineness of the
discourses, but reject the miracles. Renan, on the contrary, favors the
historical portions, but rejects the discourses of Christ, in a special
discussion in the 13th ed. of his Vie de Jésus, pp. 477 sqq. He changed his
view again in his L’église chrétienne, 1879, pp. 47 sqq. "Ce qui
paraît le plus probable," he says, "c’est qu’un disciple de
l’apôtre, dépositaire de plusieurs de ses souvenirs, se crut autorisé à parler
en son nom et à écrire, vingt-cinq ou trente ans aprés sa mort, ce que l’on
regrettait qu’il n’eût pas lui-même fixé de son vivant." He is disposed to ascribe the composition to the
"Presbyter John" (whose very existence is doubtful) and to Aristion,
two Ephesian disciples of John the Apostle. In characterizing the discourses in
the Gospel of John he shows his utter incapacity of appreciating its spirit. Matthew Arnold (God and the Bible, p.
248) conjectures that the Ephesian presbyters composed the Gospel with the aid
of materials furnished by John.
It should be remarked that
Baur and his followers, and Renan, while they reject the authenticity of the
Fourth Gospel, strongly defend the Johannean origin of the Apocalypse, as one
of the certain documents of the apostolic age. But Keim, by denying the whole
tradition of John’s sojourn at Ephesus, destroys the foundation of Baur’s
theory.
b. The genuineness has been defended by the
following writers:
Jos. Priestley
(Unitarian, against Evanson, 1793). Schleiermacher and his school, especially
Lücke (1820 and 1840), Bleek (1846 and 1862), and De Wette (after some
hesitation, 1837, 5th ed., by Brückner, 1863). Credner (1836); Neander (Leben Jesu, 1837) Tholuck (in Glaubwürdigkeit der evang.
Geschichte, against Strauss,
1837); Andrews Norton (Unitarian,
in Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels, 1837–1844, 3 vols., 2d
ed. 1846, abridged ed., Boston, 1875); Ebrard
(1845, against Baur; again 1861, 1868, and 1880, in Herzog’s
"Encykl." Thiersch (1845, against Baur); Schneider (1854);
Hengstenberg (1863); Astié, (1863); Hofstede de Groot (Basilides, 1863;
Germ. transl. 1868); Van Oosterzee
(against Scholten, Germ. ed. 1867; Engl. transl. by Hurst); Tischendorf
(Wann
wurden unsere Evangelien verfasst?
1865, 4th ed. 1866; also
translated into English, but very poorly); Riggenbach
(1866, against Volkmar). Meyer (Com., 5th ed. 1869); Weiss (6th ed. of Meyer, 1880); Lange
(in his Leben Jesu, and in his Com., 3d ed. 1868, translated and
enlarged by Schaff, 1871); Sanday
(Authorship and Historical Character of the Fourth Gospel, London,
1872); Beyschlag (in the "Studien
und Kritiken" for 1874 and 1875); Luthardt (2d ed. 1875); Lightfoot
(in the Contemporary Review, " 1875–1877, against Supernatural Religion);
Geo. P. Fisher (Beginnings of
Christianity, 1877, ch. X., and art. The Fourth Gospel, in "The
Princeton Review" for July, 1881, pp. 51–84); Godet (Commentaire sur l’Évangile de Saint Jean, 2d ed. 1878; 3d ed.
"complètement revue," vol. I., Introduction historique et
critique, Paris, 1881, 376
pages); Westcott (Introd. to
the Gospels, 1862, 1875, and Com. 1879); McClellan (The Four Gospels, 1875); Milligan (in several articles in the
"Contemp. Review" for 1867, 1868, 1871, and in his and Moulton’s
Com., 1880); Ezra Abbot (The
Authorship of the Fourth Gospel, Boston, 1880; republished in his
Critical Essays, Boston, 1888; conclusive on the external evidences,
especially the important testimony of Justin Martyr); George Salmon (Historical Introd. to the N. T.,
London, 1886; third ed. 1888, pp. 210 sqq.). See also A. H. Francke: Das Alte Test. bei Johannes,
Göttingen, 1885.
VIII. Commentaries on the Epistles of John.
Oecumenius (1000);
Theophylact (1071); Luther; Calvin; Bullinger; Lücke (3d ed. 1856); De Wette
(1837, 5th ed. by Brückner, 1863); Neander (1851, Engl. transl. by Mrs. Conant,
1852); Düsterdieck 1852–1856, 2 vols.); Huther (in Meyer’s Com., 1855,
4th ed. 1880); F. D. Maurice, (1857); Ebrard (in Olshausen’s Com., 1859,
transl. by W. B. Pope, Edinb. 1860); Ewald (1861); Braune (in Lange’s Com.,
1865, Engl. ed. by Mombert, 1867); Candlish (1866); Erich Haupt
(1869, Engl. transl. by W. B. Pope, Edinb., 1879); R. Rothe (posthumous
ed. by K. Mühlhäuser, 1879); W. B. Pope (in Schaff’s Pop. Com., 1883);
Westcott (1883).
IX. Commentaries on the Apocalypse of John.
Bullinger (1535, 6th ed.
1604); Grotius (1644); Jos. Mede (Clavis Apocalyptica, 1682); Bossuet
(R. C., 1689); Vitringa (1719); Bengel (1740, 1746, and new ed. 1834); Herder
(1779); Eichhorn (1791); E. P. Elliott (Horae Apocalypticae, or, a Com. on
the Apoc., 5th ed., Lond., 1862, 4 vols.) Lücke (1852); Ewald (1828 and
1862); Züllig (1834 and 1840) Moses Stuart (1845, 2 vols.); De Wette (1848, 3d
ed. 1862); Alford (3d ed. 1866); Hengstenberg (1849 and 1861); Ebrard (1853);
Auberlen (Der Prophet Daniel und die Offenbarung Johannis, 1854; Engl. transl. by Ad. Saphir, 1856, 2d Germ.
ed. 1857); Düsterdieck (1859, 3d ed. 1877); Bleek (1820 and 1862); Luthardt
(1861); Volkmar (1862); Kienlen (1870); Lange (1871, Am. ed., with large
additions by Craven, 1874); Cowles (1871); Gebhardt (Der Lehrbegriff der
Apocalypse, 1873; Engl. transl., The Doctrine of the Apocalypse, by J. Jefferson, 1878); Kliefoth (1874); Lee
(1882); Milligan (in Schaff’s Internat. Com., 1883, and in Lectures on
the Revel., 1886); Spitta (1889). Völter (1882) and Vischer (1886) deny the
unity of the book. Vischer makes it a Jewish Apocalypse worked over by a
Christian, in spite of the warning, Apoc. 22:18, 19, which refutes this
hypothesis.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="41" title="Life and Character of
John">
<index
type = "globalSubject"
subject1 = "Apostles"
subject2 = "John" />
§ 41. Life and Character of John
"Volat avis sine meta,
Quo nec votes nec propheta
Evolavit altius:
Tam implenda quam impleta,
Numquam vidit tot secreta
Purus homo purius.
(Adam of St. Victor.)
The Mission of John.
Peter, the Jewish apostle
of authority, and Paul, the Gentile apostle of freedom, had done their work on
earth before the destruction of Jerusalem—had done it for their age and for all
ages to come; had done it, and by the influence of their writings are doing it
still, in a manner that can never be superseded. Both were master-builders, the
one in laying the foundation, the other in rearing the superstructure, of the
church of Christ, against which the gates of Hades can never prevail.
But there remained a
most important additional work to be done, a work of union and consolidation.
This was reserved for the apostle of love, the bosom-friend of Jesus, who had
become his most perfect reflection so far as any human being can reflect the
ideal of divine-human purity and holiness. John was not a missionary or a man
of action, like Peter and Paul. He did little, so far as we know, for the
outward spread of Christianity, but all the more for the inner life and growth
of Christianity where it was already established. He has nothing to say about
the government, the forms, and rites of the visible church (even the name does
not occur in his Gospel and first Epistle), but all the more about the
spiritual substance of the church—the vital union of believers with Christ and
the brotherly communion of believers among themselves. He is at once the
apostle, the evangelist, and the seer, of the new covenant. He lived to the
close of the first century, that he might erect on the foundation and
superstructure of the apostolic age the majestic dome gilded by the light of
the new heaven.
He had to wait in silent meditation till the church was ripe for his sublime teaching. This is intimated by the mysterious word of our Lord to Peter with reference to John: "If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?"559 No doubt the Lord did come in the terrible judgment of Jerusalem. John outlived it personally, and his type of doctrine and character will outlive the earlier stages of church history (anticipated and typified by Peter and Paul) till the final coming of the Lord. In that wider sense he tarries even till now, and his writings, with their unexplored depths and heights still wait for the proper interpreter. The best comes last. In the vision of Elijah on Mount Horeb, the strong wind that rent the mountains and brake in pieces the rocks, and the earthquake, and the fire preceded the still small voice of Jehovah.560 The owl of Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, begins its flight at twilight. The storm of battle prepares the way for the feast of peace. The great warrior of the apostolic age already sounded the keynote of love which was to harmonize the two sections of Christendom; and John only responded to Paul when he revealed the inmost heart of the supreme being by the profoundest of all definitions: "God is love."561
John in the Gospels.
John was a son (probably
the younger son) of Zebedee and Salome, and a brother of the elder James, who
became the protomartyr of the apostles.562 He may have been about ten years
younger than Jesus, and as, according to the unanimous testimony of antiquity,
he lived till the reign of Trajan, i.e., till after 98, he must have
attained an age of over ninety years. He was a fisherman by trade, probably of
Bethsaida in Galilee (like Peter, Andrew, and Philip). His parents seem to have
been in comfortable circumstances. His father kept hired servants; his mother
belonged to the noble band of women who followed Jesus and supported him with
their means, who purchased spices to embalm him, who were the last at the cross
and the first at the open tomb. John himself was acquainted with the high
priest, and owned a house in Jerusalem or Galilee, into which he received the
mother of our Lord.563
He was a cousin of
Jesus, according to the flesh, from his mother, a sister of Mary.564
This relationship, together with the enthusiasm of youth and the fervor
of his emotional nature, formed the basis of his intimacy with the Lord.
He had no rabbinical
training, like Paul, and in the eyes of the Jewish scholars he was, like Peter
and the other Galilaean disciples, an "unlearned and ignorant man."565 But
he passed through the preparatory school of John the Baptist who summed up his
prophetic mission in the testimony to Jesus as the "Lamb of God that
taketh away the sin of the world," a testimony which he afterwards
expanded in his own writings. It was this testimony which led him to Jesus on
the banks of the Jordan in that memorable interview of which, half a century
afterwards, he remembered the very hour.566 He was not only one of the Twelve, but
the chosen of the chosen Three. Peter stood out more prominently before the
public as the friend of the Messiah; John was known in the private circle as
the friend of Jesus.567 Peter always looked at the official
character of Christ, and asked what he and the other apostles should do; John
gazed steadily at the person of Jesus, and was intent to learn what the Master
said. They differed as the busy Martha, anxious to serve, and the pensive Mary,
contented to learn. John alone, with Peter and his brother James, witnessed the
scene of the transfiguration and of Gethsemane—the highest exaltation and the
deepest humiliation in the earthly life of our Lord. He leaned on his breast at
the last Supper and treasured those wonderful farewell discourses in his heart
for future use. He followed him to the court of Caiaphas. He alone of all the
disciples was present at the crucifixion, and was intrusted by the departing
Saviour with the care of his mother. This was a scene of unique delicacy and
tenderness: the Mater dolorosa and the beloved disciple gazing at the cross, the
dying Son and Lord uniting them in maternal and filial love. It furnishes the
type of those heaven-born spiritual relationships, which are deeper and
stronger than those of blood and interest. As John was the last at the cross,
so he was also, next to Mary Magdalene, the first of the disciples who,
outrunning even Peter, looked into the open tomb on the resurrection morning;
and he first recognized the risen Lord when he appeared to the disciples on the
shore of the lake of Galilee.568
He seems to have been
the youngest of the apostles, as he long outlived them all; he certainly was
the most gifted and the most favored. He had a religious genius of the highest
order—not indeed for planting, but for watering; not for outward action and
aggressive work, but for inward contemplation and insight into the mystery of
Christ’s person and of eternal life in him. Purity and simplicity of character,
depth and ardor of affection, and a rare faculty of spiritual perception and
intuition, were his leading traits, which became ennobled and consecrated by
divine grace.
There are no violent
changes reported in John’s history; he grew silently and imperceptibly into the
communion of his Lord and conformity to his example; he was in this respect the
antipode of Paul. He heard more and saw more, but spoke less, than the other disciples.
He absorbed his deepest sayings, which escaped the attention of others; and
although he himself did not understand them at first, he pondered them in his
heart till the Holy Spirit illuminated them. His intimacy with Mary must also
have aided him in gaining an interior view of the mind and heart of his Lord.
He appears throughout as the beloved disciple, in closest intimacy and in
fullest sympathy with the Lord.569
The Son of Thunder and the Beloved Disciple.
There is an apparent
contradiction between the Synoptic and the Johannean picture of John, as there
is between the Apocalypse and the fourth Gospel; but on closer inspection it is
only the twofold aspect of one and the same character. We have a parallel in
the Peter of the Gospels and the Peter of his Epistles: the first youthful,
impulsive, hasty, changeable, the other matured, subdued, mellowed, refined by
divine grace.
In the Gospel of Mark,
John appears as a Son of Thunder (Boanerges).570
This surname, given to him and to his elder brother by our Saviour, was
undoubtedly an epithet of honor and foreshadowed his future mission, like the
name Peter given to Simon. Thunder to the Hebrews was the voice of God.571 It
conveys the idea of ardent temper, great strength and vehemence of character
whether for good or for evil, according to the motive and aim. The same thunder
which terrifies does also purify the air and fructify the earth with its
accompanying showers of rain. Fiery temper under the control of reason and in
the service of truth is as great a power of construction as the same temper,
uncontrolled and misdirected, is a power of destruction. John’s burning zeal
and devotion needed only discipline and discretion to become a benediction and
inspiration to the church in all ages.
In their early history
the sons of Zebedee misunderstood the difference between the law and the
gospel, when, in an outburst of holy indignation against a Samaritan village
which refused to receive Jesus, they were ready, like Elijah of old, to call
consuming fire from heaven.572 But when, some years afterwards, John
went to Samaria to confirm the new converts, he called down upon them the fire
of divine life and light, the gift of the Holy Spirit.573 The
same mistaken zeal for his Master was at the bottom of his intolerance towards
those who performed a good work in the name of Christ, but outside of the
apostolic circle.574 The desire of the two brothers, in
which their mother shared, for the highest positions in the Messianic kingdom,
likewise reveals both their strength and their weakness, a noble ambition to be
near Christ, though it be near the fire and the sword, yet an ambition that was
not free from selfishness and pride, which deserved the rebuke of our Lord, who
held up before them the prospect of the baptism of blood.575
All this is quite
consistent with the writings of John. He appears there by no means as a soft
and sentimental, but as a positive and decided character. He had no doubt a
sweet and lovely disposition, but at the same time a delicate sensibility,
ardent feelings, and strong convictions. These traits are by no means incompatible.
He knew no compromise, no division of loyalty. A holy fire burned within him,
though he was moved in the deep rather than on the surface. In the Apocalypse,
the thunder rolls loud and mighty against the enemies of Christ and his
kingdom, while on the other hand there are in the same book episodes of rest
and anthems, of peace and joy, and a description of the heavenly Jerusalem,
which could have proceeded only from the beloved disciple. In the Gospel and
the Epistles of John, we feel the same power, only subdued and restrained. He
reports the severest as well as the sweetest discourses of the Saviour,
according as he speaks to the enemies of the truth, or in the circle of the
disciples. No other evangelist gives us such a profound inside-view of the antagonism
between Christ and the Jewish hierarchy, and of the growing intensity of that
hatred which culminated in the bloody counsel; no apostle draws a sharper line
of demarcation between light and darkness, truth and falsehood, Christ and
Antichrist, than John. His Gospel and Epistles move in these irreconcilable
antagonisms. He knows no compromise between God and Baal. With what holy horror
does he speak of the traitor, and the rising rage of the Pharisees against
their Messiah! How severely does
he, in the words of the Lord, attack the unbelieving Jews with their murderous
designs, as children of the devil!
And, in his Epistles, he terms every one who dishonors his Christian
profession a liar; every one who hates his brother a murderer; every one who
wilfully sins a child of the devil; and he earnestly warns against teachers who
deny the mystery of the incarnation, as Antichrists, and he forbids even to
salute them.576 The
measure of his love of Christ was the measure of his hatred of antichrist. For
hatred is inverted love. Love and hatred are one and the same passion, only
revealed in opposite directions. The same sun gives light and heat to the
living, and hastens the decay of the dead.
Christian art has so far
well understood the double aspect of John by representing him with a face of
womanly purity and tenderness, but not weakness, and giving him for his symbol
a bold eagle soaring with outspread wings above the clouds.577
The Apocalypse and the Fourth Gospel.
A proper appreciation of
John’s character as thus set forth removes the chief difficulty of ascribing
the Apocalypse and the fourth Gospel to one and the same writer.578 The
temper is the same in both: a noble, enthusiastic nature, capable of intense
emotions of love and hatred, but with the difference between vigorous manhood
and ripe old age, between the roar of battle and the repose of peace. The
theology is the same, including the most characteristic features of Christology
and soteriology.579 By no other apostle is Christ called
the Logos. The Gospel is, "the Apocalypse spiritualized," or
idealized. Even the difference of style, which is startling at first sight,
disappears on closer inspection. The Greek of the Apocalypse is the most
Hebraizing of all the books of the New Testament, as may be expected from its
close affinity with Hebrew prophecy to which the classical Greek furnished no
parallel, while the Greek of the fourth Gospel is pure, and free from irregularities;
yet after all John the Evangelist also shows the greatest familiarity with, and
the deepest insight into, the Hebrew religion, and preserves its purest and
noblest elements; and his style has all the childlike simplicity and
sententious brevity of the Old Testament; it is only a Greek body inspired by a
Hebrew soul.580
In accounting for the
difference between the Apocalypse and the other writings of John, we must also
take into consideration the necessary difference between prophetic composition
under direct inspiration, and historical and didactic composition, and the
intervening time of about twenty years; the Apocalypse being written before the
destruction of Jerusalem, the fourth Gospel towards the close of the first
century, in extreme old age, when his youth was renewed like the eagle’s, as in
the case of some of the greatest poets, Homer, Sophocles, Milton, and Goethe.
Notes.
I. The Son of Thunder and the Apostle of Love.
I quote some excellent
remarks on the character of John from my friend, Dr.
Godet (Com.
I. 35, English translation by Crombie and Cusin):
"How are we to
explain two features of character apparently so opposite? There exist profound receptive natures
which are accustomed to shut up their impressions within themselves, and this
all the more that these impressions are keen and thrilling. But if it happens
that these persons once cease to be masters of themselves, their
long-restrained emotions then burst forth in sudden explosions, which fill the
persons around them with amazement. Does not the character of John belong to
this order? And when Jesus gave to
him and his brother the surname of Boanerges, sons of thunder (Mark 3:17),
could he have described them better?
I cannot think that, by that surname, Jesus intended, as all the old
writers have believed, to signalize the eloquence which distinguished them.
Neither can I allow that he desired by that surname to perpetuate the
recollection of their anger in one of the cases indicated. We are led by what
precedes to a more natural explanation, and one more worthy of Jesus himself.
As electricity is stored up by degrees in the cloud until it bursts forth
suddenly in the lightning and thunderbolt, so in those two loving and
passionate natures impressions silently accumulated till the moment when the
heart overflowed, and they took an unexpected and violent flight. We love to
represent St. John to ourselves as of a gentle rather than of an energetic
nature, tender even to weakness. Do not his writings insist before and above
all else upon love? Were not the
last sermons of the old man ’Love one another?’ That is true; but we forget other features of a different
kind, during the first and last periods of his life, which reveal something
decisive, sharp, absolute, even violent in his disposition. If we take all the
facts stated into consideration, we shall recognize in him one of those
sensitive, ardent souls, worshippers of an ideal, who attach themselves at
first sight, and without reservation, to that being who seems to them to
realize that of which they have dreamt, and whose devotion easily becomes
exclusive and intolerant. They feel themselves repelled by everything which is
not in sympathy with their enthusiasm. They no longer understand a division of
heart which they themselves know not how to practice. All for all! such is
their motto. Where that all is not, there is in their eyes nothing. Such
affections do not subsist without including an alloy of impure egoism. A divine
work is needed, in order that the true devotion, which constitutes the basis of
such, may shine forth at the last in all its sublimity. Such was, if we are not
deceived, the inmost history of John." Comp. the third French ed. of
Godet’s Com., I. p. 50.
Dr. Westcott (in his Com., p. xxxiii.): "John knew that to be with Christ was
life, to reject Christ was death; and he did not shrink from expressing the
thought in the spirit of the old dispensation. He learned from the Lord, as
time went on, a more faithful patience, but he did not unlearn the burning
devotion which consumed him. To the last, words of awful warning, like the
thunderings about the throne, reveal the presence of that secret fire. Every
page of the Apocalypse is inspired with the cry of the souls beneath the altar,
’How long’ (<scripRef passage = "Rev. 6:10">Rev. 6:10</scripRef>); and nowhere is error as to the person of
Christ denounced more sternly than in his Epistles (<scripRef passage =
"2 John 10">2
John 10</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "1 John
4:1ff">1 John 4:1ff</scripRef>.)." Similar passages in Stanley.
II. The Mission of John.
Dean Stanley (Sermons and Essays on the Apost. Age, p.
249 sq., 3d ed.): "Above all
John spoke of the union of the soul with God, but it was by no mere process of
oriental contemplation, or mystic absorption; it was by that word which now for
the first time took its proper place in the order of the world—by Love. It has been reserved for St. Paul
to proclaim that the deepest principle in the heart of man was Faith; it was
reserved for St. John to proclaim that the essential attribute of God is Love.
It had been taught by the Old Testament that ’the beginning of wisdom was the
fear of God;’ it remained to be taught by the last apostle of the New Testament
that ’the end of wisdom was the love of God.’ It had been taught of old time by Jew and by heathen, by
Greek philosophy and Eastern religion, that the Divinity was well pleased with
the sacrifices, the speculations, the tortures of man; it was to St. John that
it was left to teach in all its fulness that the one sign of God’s children is
’the love of the brethren.’ And as
it is Love that pervades our whole conception of his teaching, so also it
pervades our whole conception of his character. We see him—it surely is no
unwarranted fancy—we see him declining with the declining century; every sense
and faculty waxing feebler, but that one divinest faculty of all burning more
and more brightly; we see it breathing through every look and gesture; the one
animating principle of the atmosphere in which he lives and moves; earth and
heaven, the past, the present, and the future alike echoing to him that dying
strain of his latest words, ’We love Him because He loved us.’ And when at last he disappears from our
view in the last pages of the sacred volume, ecclesiastical tradition still
lingers in the close: and in that touching story, not the less impressive
because so familiar to us, we see the aged apostle borne in the arms of his
disciples into the Ephesian assembly, and there repeating over and over again
the same saying, ’Little children, love one another;’ till, when asked why he
said this and nothing else, he replied in those well known words, fit indeed to
be the farewell speech of the Beloved Disciple, ’Because this is our Lord’s
command and if you fulfil this, nothing else is needed.’ "
</div3>
<div3
type = "Section" n="42" title="Apostolic Labors of
John">
§ 42. Apostolic Labors of John.
John in the Acts.
In the first stadium of
Apostolic Christianity John figures as one of the three pillars of the church
of the circumcision, together with Peter and James the brother of the Lord;
while Paul and Barnabas represented the Gentile church.581
This seems to imply that at that time he had not yet risen to the full
apprehension of the universalism and freedom of the gospel. But he was the most
liberal of the three, standing between James and Peter on the one hand, and
Paul on the other, and looking already towards a reconciliation of Jewish and
Gentile Christianity. The Judaizers never appealed to him as they did to James,
or to Peter.582
There is no trace of a Johannean party, as there is of a Cephas party
and a party of James. He stood above strife and division.
In the earlier chapters
of the Acts he appears, next to Peter, as the chief apostle of the new
religion; he heals with him the cripple at the gate of the temple; he was
brought with him before the Sanhedrin to bear witness to Christ; he is sent
with him by the apostles from Jerusalem to Samaria to confirm the Christian
converts by imparting to them the Holy Spirit; he returned with him to
Jerusalem.583 But
Peter is always named first and takes the lead in word and act; John follows in
mysterious silence and makes the impression of a reserved force which will
manifest itself at some future time. He must have been present at the
conference of the apostles in Jerusalem, a.d.
50, but he made no speech and took no active part in the great discussion about
circumcision and the terms of church membership.584 All
this is in entire keeping with the character of modest and silent prominence
given to him in the Gospels.
After the year 50 he
seems to have left Jerusalem. The Acts no more mention him nor Peter. When Paul
made his fifth and last visit to the holy City (a.d.
58) he met James, but none of the apostles.585
John at Ephesus.
The later and most
important labors of John are contained in his writings, which we shall fully
consider in another chapter. They exhibit to us a history that is almost
exclusively inward and spiritual, but of immeasurable reach and import. They
make no allusion to the time and place of residence and composition. But the
Apocalypse implies that he stood at the head of the churches of Asia Minor.586
This is confirmed by the unanimous testimony of antiquity which is above
all reasonable doubt, and assigns Ephesus to him as the residence of his latter
years.587 He
died there in extreme old age during the reign of Trajan, which began in 98.
His grave also was shown there in the second century.
We do not know when he
removed to Asia Minor, but he cannot have done so before the year 63. For in
his valedictory address to the Ephesian elders, and in his Epistles to the
Ephesians and Colossians and the second to Timothy, Paul makes no allusion to
John, and speaks with the authority of a superintendent of the churches of Asia
Minor. It was probably the martyrdom of Peter and Paul that induced John to
take charge of the orphan churches, exposed to serious dangers and trials.588
Ephesus, the capital of
proconsular Asia, was a centre of Grecian culture, commerce, and religion;
famous of old for the songs of Homer, Anacreon, and Mimnermus, the philosophy
of Thales, Anaximenes, and Anaximander, the worship and wonderful temple of
Diana. There Paul had labored three years (54–57) and established an
influential church, a beacon-light in the surrounding darkness of heathenism.
From there he could best commune with the numerous churches he had planted in
the provinces. There he experienced peculiar joys and trials, and foresaw great
dangers of heresies that should spring up from within.589 All
the forces of orthodox and heretical Christianity were collected there.
Jerusalem was approaching its downfall; Rome was not yet a second Jerusalem.
Ephesus, by the labors of Paul and of John, became the chief theatre of church
history in the second half of the first and during the greater part of the
second century. Polycarp, the patriarchal martyr, and Irenaeus, the leading
theologian in the conflict with Gnosticism, best represent the spirit of John
and bear testimony to his influence. He alone could complete the work of Paul
and Peter, and give the church that compact unity which she needed for her
self-preservation against persecution from without and heresy and corruption
from within.
If it were not for the
writings of John the last thirty years of the first century would be almost an
entire blank. They resemble that mysterious period of forty days between the
resurrection and the ascension, when the Lord hovered, as it were, between
heaven and earth, barely touching the earth beneath, and appearing to the
disciples like a spirit from the other world. But the theology of the second
and third centuries evidently presupposes the writings of John, and starts from
his Christology rather than from Paul’s anthropology and soteriology, which
were almost buried out of sight until Augustin, in Africa, revived them.
John at Patmos.
John was banished to the
solitary, rocky, and barren island of Patmos (now Patmo or Palmosa), in the
Aegean sea, southwest of Ephesus. This rests on the testimony of the
Apocalypse, 1:9, as usually understood: "I, John, your brother and
partaker with you in the tribulation and kingdom and patience in Jesus, was in
the isle that is called Patmos, for (on account of) the word of God and the
testimony of Jesus."590 There he received, while "in the
spirit, on the Lord’s day," those wonderful revelations concerning the
struggles and victories of Christianity.
The fact of his
banishment to Patmos is confirmed by the unanimous testimony of antiquity.591 It
is perpetuated in the traditions of the island, which has no other
significance. "John—that is the thought of Patmos; the island belongs to
him; it is his sanctuary. Its stones preach of him, and in every heart, he
lives."592
The time of the exile is
uncertain, and depends upon the disputed question of the date of the
Apocalypse. External evidence points to the reign of Domitian, a.d. 95; internal evidence to the reign
of Nero, or soon after his death, a.d.
68.
The prevailing—we may
say the only distinct tradition, beginning with so respectable a witness as
Irenaeus about 170, assigns the exile to the end of the reign of Domitian, who
ruled from 81 to 96.593 He was the second Roman emperor who
persecuted Christianity, and banishment was one of his favorite modes of
punishment.594
Both facts give support to this tradition. After a promising beginning
he became as cruel and bloodthirsty as Nero, and surpassed him in hypocrisy and
blasphemous self-deification. He began his letters: "Our Lord and God
commands," and required his subjects to address him so.595 He
ordered gold and silver statues of himself to be placed in the holiest place of
the temples. When he seemed most friendly, he was most dangerous. He spared
neither senators nor consuls when they fell under his dark suspicion, or stood in
the way of his ambition. He searched for the descendants of David and the
kinsmen of Jesus, fearing their aspirations, but found that they were poor and
innocent persons.596 Many Christians suffered martyrdom
under his reign, on the charge of atheism—among them his own cousin, Flavius
Clemens, of consular dignity, who was put to death, and his wife Domitilla, who
was banished to the island of Pandateria, near Naples.597 In
favor of the traditional date may also be urged an intrinsic propriety that the
book which closes the canon, and treats of the last things till the final
consummation, should have been written last.
Nevertheless, the
internal evidence of the Apocalypse itself, and a comparison with the fourth
Gospel, favor an earlier date, before the destruction of Jerusalem, and during
the interregnum which followed the death of Nero (68), when the beast, that is
the Roman empire, was wounded, but was soon to be revived (by the accession of
Vespasian). If there is some foundation for the early tradition of the intended
oil-martyrdom of John at Rome, or at Ephesus, it would naturally point to the
Neronian persecution, in which Christians were covered with inflammable
material and burned as torches. The unmistakable allusions to imperial
persecutions apply much better to Nero than to Domitian. The difference between
the Hebrew coloring and fiery vigor of the Apocalypse and the pure Greek and
calm repose of the fourth Gospel, to which we have already alluded, are more
easily explained if the former was written some twenty years earlier. This view
has some slight support in ancient tradition,598 and has been adopted by the majority of modern
critical historians and commentators.599
We hold, then, as the
most probable view, that John was exiled to Patmos under Nero, wrote the
Apocalypse soon after Nero’s death, a.d.
68 or 69, returned to Ephesus, completed his Gospel and Epistles several
(perhaps twenty) years later, and fell asleep in peace during the year of
Trajan, after a.d. 98.
The faithful record of
the historical Christ in the whole fulness of his divine-human person, as the
embodiment and source of life eternal to all believers, with the accompanying
epistle of practical application, was the last message of the Beloved Disciple
at the threshold of the second century, at the golden sunset of the apostolic
age. The recollections of his youth, ripened by long experience, transfigured
by the Holy Spirit, and radiant with heavenly light of truth and holiness, are
the most precious legacy of the last of the apostles to all future generations
of the church.
</div3>
<div3
type = "Section" n="43" title="Traditions Respecting
John">
§ 43. Traditions Respecting John.600
The memory of John sank
deep into the heart of the church, and not a few incidents more or less
characteristic and probable have been preserved by the early fathers.
Clement of Alexandria,
towards the close of the second century, represents John as a faithful and
devoted pastor when, in his old age, on a tour of visitation, he lovingly
pursued one of his former converts who had become a robber, and reclaimed him
to the church.
Irenaeus bears testimony
to his character as "the Son of Thunder" when he relates, as from the
lips of Polycarp, that, on meeting in a public bath at Ephesus the Gnostic
heretic Cerinthus,601
who denied the incarnation of our Lord, John refused to remain under the same
roof, lest it might fall down. This reminds one of the incident recorded in <scripRef
passage = "Luke 9:49">Luke 9:49</scripRef>, and the apostle’s severe warning in <scripRef passage =
"2 John 10, 11">2
John 10 and 11</scripRef>. The story exemplifies the possibility of uniting the deepest love of
truth with the sternest denunciation of error and moral evil.602
Jerome pictures him as the disciple of love, who in his extreme old age was
carried to the meeting-place on the arms of his disciples, and repeated again
and again the exhortation, "Little children, love one another,"
adding: "This is the Lord’s command, and if this alone be done, it is
enough." This, of all the traditions of John, is the most credible and the
most useful.
In the Greek church John
bears the epithet "the theologian (<foreign
lang="el">qeolovgo"</foreign>), for teaching most clearly the divinity of
Christ (<foreign
lang="el">th;n qeovthta tou' lovgou</foreign>). He is also called "the virgin" (<foreign
lang="el">parqevno"</foreign>),603
for his chastity and supposed celibacy. Augustin says that the singular
chastity of John from his early youth was supposed by some to be the ground of
his intimacy with Jesus.604
The story of John and
the huntsman, related by Cassian, a monk of the fifth century, represents him as
gently playing with a partridge in his hand, and saying to a huntsman, who was
surprised at it: "Let not this brief and slight relaxation of my mind
offend thee, without which the spirit would flag from over-exertion and not be
able to respond to the call of duty when need required." Childlike
simplicity and playfulness are often combined with true greatness of mind.
Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, at the close of the second century, relates
(according to Eusebius) that John introduced in Asia Minor the Jewish practice
of observing Easter on the 14th of Nisan, irrespective of Sunday. This fact
entered largely into the paschal controversies of the second century, and into
the modern controversy about the genuineness of the Gospel of John.
The same Polycrates of
Ephesus describes John as wearing the plate, or diadem of the Jewish
high-priest (<scripRef passage = "Ex. 28:36, 37; 39:30, 31">Ex. 28:36, 37; 39:30, 31</scripRef>). It is probably a figurative expression of
priestly holiness which John attaches to all true believers (Comp. <scripRef
passage = "Rev. 2:17">Rev. 2:17</scripRef>), but in which he excelled as the patriarch.605
From a misunderstanding
of the enigmatical word of Jesus, <scripRef passage =
"John 21:22">John
21:22</scripRef>, arose the legend that John was only asleep in
his grave, gently moving the mound as he breathed, and awaiting the final
advent of the Lord. According to another form of the legend he died, but was
immediately raised and translated to heaven, like Elijah, to return with him as
the herald of the second advent of Christ.606
</div3><div2
type=”Chapter” n=”VIII” title=”Christian Life in the Apostolic Church”>
CHAPTER VIII.
CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH.
Sources.
The teaching and example
of Christ as exhibited in the Gospels, and of the apostles in the Acts and
Epistles; compared and contrasted with the rabbinical ethics and the state
of Jewish society, and with the Greek systems of philosophy and the moral
condition of the Roman empire, as described in the writings of Seneca, Tacitus,
the Roman satirists, etc.
Literature.
I. The respective sections
in the Histories of the Apost. Church by Neander:
I. 229–283 (Germ. ed.); Schaff: §§
109–123 (pp. 433–492); Lange: II. 495–534; Weizsäcker: 647–698.
II The works on the Theology
of the Apostolic Age, by Schmid,
Reuss, Baur, Weiss, etc.
III. The Systems of Christian
Ethics by Schleiermacher, Rothe, Neander, Schmid, Wuttke, Harless, Martensen, Luthardt, and Lecky’s
History of European Morals (1869), vol I. 357 sqq.
IV. A. Thoma (pastor in Mannheim): Geschichte der
christlichen Sittenlehre in der Zeit des Neuen Testamentes, Haarlem, 1879 (380 pp.). A crowned prize-essay of
the Teyler Theol. Society. The first attempt of a separate critical history of
N. T. ethics, but written from the negative standpoint of the Tübingen school,
and hence very unsatisfactory. It is divided in three parts: I. The Ethics of
Jesus; II. The Ethics of Paul; III. The Ethics of the Congregation.
V. Works which treat of
Christian life in the post-apostolic age (Cave,
Arnold, Schmidt, Chastel, Pressensé, etc.) will be noticed in the second
period.
</div2>
<div3
type = "Section" n="44" title="The Power of
Christianity">
§ 44. The Power of Christianity.
Practical Christianity is
the manifestation of a new life; a spiritual (as distinct from intellectual and
moral) life; a supernatural (as distinct from natural) life; it is a life of
holiness and peace; a life of union and communion with God the Father, the Son,
and the Spirit; it is eternal life, beginning with regeneration and culminating
in the resurrection. It lays hold of the inmost centre of man’s personality,
emancipates him from the dominion of sin, and brings him into vital union with
God in Christ; from this centre it acts as a purifying, ennobling, and
regulating force upon all the faculties of man—the emotions, the will, and the
intellect—and transforms even the body into a temple of the Holy Spirit.
Christianity rises far
above all other religions in the theory and practice of virtue and piety. It
sets forth the highest standard of love to God and to man; and this not merely
as an abstract doctrine, or an object of effort and hope, but as a living fact
in the person of Jesus Christ, whose life and example have more power and
influence than all the maxims and precepts of sages and legislators. Deeds
speak louder than words. <foreign lang="la">Praecepta docent, exempla trahunt</foreign>. The
finest systems of moral philosophy have not been able to regenerate and conquer
the world. The gospel of Christ has done it and is doing it constantly. The
wisest men of Greece and Rome sanctioned slavery, polygamy, concubinage,
oppression, revenge, infanticide; or they belied their purer maxims by their
conduct. The ethical standard of the Jews was much higher; yet none of their
patriarchs, kings, or prophets claimed perfection, and the Bible honestly
reports the infirmities and sins, as well as the virtues, of Abraham, Jacob,
Moses, David, and Solomon.
But the character of
Christ from the manger to the cross is without spot or blemish; he is above
reproach or suspicion, and acknowledged by friend and foe to be the purest as
well as the wisest being that ever appeared on earth. He is the nearest
approach which God can make to man, and which man can make to God; he
represents the fullest imaginable and attain able harmony of the ideal and
real, of the divine and human. The Christian church may degenerate in the hands
of sinful men, but the doctrine and life of her founder are a never-failing
fountain of purification.
The perfect life of
harmony with God and devotion to the welfare of the human race, is to pass from
Christ to his followers. Christian life is an imitation of the life of Christ.
From his word and spirit, living and ruling in the church, an unbroken stream
of redeeming, sanctifying, and glorifying power has been flowing forth upon
individuals, families, and nations for these eighteen centuries, and will
continue to flow till the world is transformed into the kingdom of heaven, and
God becomes all in all.
One of the strongest
proofs of the supernatural origin of Christianity, is its elevation above the
natural culture and moral standard of its first professors. The most perfect
doctrine and life described by unschooled fishermen of Galilee, who never
before had been outside of Palestine, and were scarcely able to read and to
write! And the profoundest
mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, the incarnation, redemption, regeneration,
resurrection, taught by the apostles to congregations of poor and illiterate
peasants, slaves and freedmen! For
"not many wise after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble" were
called, "but God chose the foolish things of the world, that he might put
to shame them that are wise; and God chose the weak things of the world, that
he might put to shame the things that are strong; and the base things of the
world, and the things that are despised, did God choose, yea, and the things
that are not, that he might bring to naught the things that are: that no flesh
should glory before God. But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made unto
us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption: that,
according as it is written, he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord."607
If we compare the moral
atmosphere of the apostolic churches with the actual condition of surrounding
Judaism and heathenism, the contrast is as startling as that between a green
oasis with living fountains and lofty palm trees, and a barren desert of sand
and stone. Judaism in its highest judicatory committed the crime of crimes, the
crucifixion of the Saviour of the world, and hastened to its doom. Heathenism
was fitly represented by such imperial monsters as Tiberius, Caligula, Nero,
and Domitian, and exhibited a picture of hopeless corruption and decay, as
described in the darkest colors not only by St. Paul, but by his heathen
contemporary, the wisest Stoic moralist, the teacher and victim of Nero.608
Notes.
The rationalistic author
of Supernatural Religion (vol. II. 487) makes the following remarkable concession:
"The teaching of Jesus carried morality to the sublimest point attained,
or even attainable, by humanity. The influence of his spiritual religion has
been rendered doubly great by the unparalleled purity and elevation of his
character. Surpassing in his sublime simplicity and earnestness the moral
grandeur of Sâkya Muni, and putting to the blush the sometimes sullied, though
generally admirable, teaching of Socrates and Plato, and the whole round of
Greek philosophers, he presented the rare spectacle of a life, so far as we can
estimate it, uniformly noble and consistent with his own lofty principles, so
that the ’imitation of Christ’ has become almost the final word in the
preaching of his religion, and must continue to be one of the most powerful
elements of its permanence."
Lecky, likewise a rationalistic writer and historian of great ability and
fairness, makes this weighty remark in his History
of European Morals (vol. II. 9):,
"It was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an ideal
character, which through all the changes of eighteen centuries has inspired the
hearts of men with an impassioned love; has shown itself capable of acting on
all ages, nations, temperaments, and conditions; has been not only the highest
pattern of virtue, but the strongest incentive to its practice, and has
exercised so deep an influence that it may be truly said that the simple record
of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and to soften
mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of
moralists. This has, indeed, been the wellspring of whatever is best and purest
in Christian life. Amid all the sins and failings, amid all the priestcraft and
persecution and fanaticism that have defaced the Church, it has preserved, in
the character and example of its Founder, an enduring principle of
regeneration."
To this we may add the
testimony of the atheistic philosopher, John Stuart
Mill from his essay on Theism,
written shortly before his death (1873), and published, 1874, in Three Essays on Religion. (Am. ed., p. 253): "Above all, the most valuable part of the
effect on the character which Christianity has produced, by holding up in a
divine person a standard of excellence and a model for imitation, is available
even to the absolute unbeliever, and can never more be lost to humanity. For it
is Christ rather than God whom Christianity has held up to believers as the
pattern of perfection for humanity. It is the God incarnate more than the God
of the Jews, or of nature, who, being idealized, has taken so great and salutary
a hold on the modem mind. And whatever else may be taken away from us by
rational criticism, Christ is still left; a unique figure, not more unlike all
his precursors than all his followers, even those who had the direct benefit of
his personal teaching. It is of no use to say that Christ, as exhibited in the
Gospels, is not historical, and that we know not how much of what is admirable
has been super-added by the tradition of his followers. The tradition of
followers suffices to insert any number of marvels, and may have inserted all
the miracles which he is reputed to have wrought. But who among his disciples,
or among their proselytes, was capable of inventing the sayings ascribed to
Jesus, or of imagining the life and character revealed in the Gospels? Certainly not the fishermen of Galilee;
as certainly not St. Paul, whose character and idiosyncrasies were of a totally
different sort; still less the early Christian writers, in whom nothing is more
evident than that the good which was in them was all derived, as they always
professed that it was derived, from the higher source."
<index
type=”globalSubject”
subject1 = “Church”
subject2 = “Spiritual Gifts” />
</div3>
<div3
type = "Section" n="45" title="The Spiritual
Gifts">
§ 45. The Spiritual Gifts.
Comp. the Commentaries on <scripRef passage =
"Rom. 12:3–9">Rom. 12:3–9</scripRef>,
and <scripRef
passage = "1 Cor. 12–14">1 Cor. 12–14</scripRef>.
The apostolic church was
endowed from the day of Pentecost with all the needful spiritual gifts for the
moral regeneration of the world. They formed, as it were, her bridal garment
and her panoply against Jewish and Gentile opposition. They are called charisms609 or gifts of grace, as distinguished from, though
not opposed to, natural endowments. They are certain special energies and
manifestations of the Holy Spirit in believers for the common good.610
They are supernatural, therefore, in their origin; but they correspond
to natural virtues, and in operation they follow all the mental and moral
faculties of Dian, raising them to higher activity, and consecrating them to
the service of Christ. They all rest on faith, that "gift of gifts."
The spiritual gifts may
be divided into three classes: first, intellectual gifts of knowledge, mainly
theoretical in their character, and concerned primarily with doctrine and
theology; secondly, emotional gifts of feeling, appearing chiefly in divine
worship and for immediate edification; and thirdly, practical gifts of will, devoted
to the organization, government, and discipline of the church. They are not,
however, abstractly separate, but work together harmoniously for the common
purpose of edifying the body of Christ. In the New Testament ten charisms are
specially mentioned; the first four have to do chiefly, though not exclusively,
with doctrine, the next two with worship, and the remaining four with
government and practical affairs.
1. The gift of Wisdom and Knowledge,611 or of deep insight into the nature and system of
the divine word and the doctrines of the Christian salvation.
2. The gift of Teaching.612 or of practically applying the gift of
knowledge; the power of clearly expounding the Scriptures for the instruction
and edification of the people.
3. The gift of Prophecy,613 akin to the two preceding, but addressed rather
to pious feeling than to speculative reflection, and employing commonly the
language of higher inspiration, rather than that of logical exposition and
demonstration. It is by no means confined to the prediction of future events,
but consists in disclosing the hidden counsel of God, the deeper sense of the
Scriptures, the secret state of the heart, the abyss of sin, and the glory of
redeeming grace. It appears particularly in creative periods, times of mighty
revival; while the gift of reaching suits better a quiet state of natural
growth in the church. Both act not only in the sphere of doctrine and theology,
but also in worship, and might in this view be reckoned also among the gifts of
feeling.
4. The gift of Discerning Spirits,614 serves mainly as a guide to the third gift, by
discriminating between true prophets and false, between divine inspiration and
a merely human or satanic enthusiasm. In a wider sense it is a deep discernment
in separating truth and error, and in judging of moral and religious character;
a holy criticism still ever necessary to the purity of Christian doctrine and
the administration of the discipline of the church.
5. The gift of Tongues,615 or of an utterance proceeding from a state of
unconscious ecstasy in the speaker, and unintelligible to the hearer unless
interpreted—thus differing from prophecy, which requires a self-conscious
though highly elevated state of feeling, serves directly to profit the
congregation, and is therefore preferred by Paul.616 The
speaking with tongues is an involuntary psalm-like prayer or song, uttered from
a spiritual trance, and in a peculiar language inspired by the Holy Spirit. The
soul is almost entirely passive, an instrument on which the Spirit plays his
heavenly melodies. This gift has, therefore, properly, nothing to do with the
spread of the church among foreign peoples and in foreign languages, but is
purely an act of worship, for the edification primarily of the speaker himself,
and indirectly, through interpretation, for the hearers. It appeared, first,
indeed, on the day of Pentecost, but before Peter’s address to the people,
which was the proper mission-sermon; and we meet with it afterwards in the
house of Cornelius and in the Corinthian congregation, as a means of
edification for believers, and not, at least not directly, for unbelieving
hearers, although it served to them as a significant sign,617 arresting their attention to the supernatural
power in the church.
6. The gift of Interpretation 618 is the supplement of the glossolalia, and makes
that gift profitable to the congregation by translating the prayers and songs
from the language of the spirit and of ecstasy619 into that of the understanding and of sober
self-consciousness.620 The preponderance of reflection here
puts this gift as properly in the first class as in the second.
7. The gift of Ministry and Help,621 that is, of special qualification primarily for
the office of deacon and deaconess, or for the regular ecclesiastical care of
the poor and the sick, and, in the wide sense, for all labors of Christian
charity and philanthropy.
8. The gift of church Government and the Care of souls,622 indispensable to all pastors and rulers of the
church, above all to the apostles and apostolic men, in proportion to the
extent of their respective fields of labor. Peter warns his co-presbyters
against the temptation to hierarchical arrogance and tyranny over conscience, of
which so many priests, bishops, patriarchs, and popes have since been guilty;
and points them to the sublime example of the great Shepherd and Archbishop,
who, in infinite love, laid down his life for the sheep.623
9. The gift of Miracles624 is the power possessed by the apostles and
apostolic men, like Stephen, to heal all sorts of physical maladies, to cast
out demons, to raise the dead, and perform other similar works, in virtue of an
extraordinary energy or faith, by word, prayer, and the laying on of hands in
the name of Jesus, and for his glory. These miracles were outward credentials
and seals of the divine mission of the apostles in a time and among a people
which required such sensible helps to faith. But as Christianity became
established in the world, it could point to its continued moral effects as the
best evidence of its truth, and the necessity for outward physical miracles
ceased.
10. Finally, the gift of
Love, the greatest, most precious,
most useful, most needful, and most enduring of all, described and extolled by
St. Paul in the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians with the pen of an angel in
the vision and enjoyment of the God of infinite love himself.625
Love is natural kindness and affection sanctified and raised to the
spiritual sphere, or rather a new heavenly affection created in the soul by the
experience of the saving love of God in Christ. As faith lies at the bottom of
all charisms, so love is not properly a separate gift, but the soul of all the
gifts, guarding them from abuse for selfish and ambitious purposes, making them
available for the common good, ruling, uniting, and completing them. It alone
gives them their true value, and without love even the speaking with tongues of
angels, and a faith which removes mountains, are nothing before God. It holds
heaven and earth in its embrace. It "believeth all things," and when
faith fails, it "hopeth all things," and when hope fails, it "endureth
all things," but it "never fails." As love is the most needful
of all the gifts on earth, so it will also outlast all the others and be the
ornament and joy of the saints in heaven. For love is the inmost essence, the
heart, as it were, of God, the ground of all his attributes, and the motive of
all his works. It is the beginning and the end of creation, redemption, and
sanctification—the link which unites us with the triune God, the cardinal
virtue of Christianity, the fulfilling of the law, the bond of perfectness, and
the fountain of bliss.
</div3>
<div3
type = "Section" n="46" title="Christianity in
Individuals">
§ 46. Christianity in Individuals.
The transforming spiritual
power of Christianity appears first in the lives of individuals. The apostles
and primitive Christians rose to a morality and piety far above that of the
heroes of heathen virtue and even that of the Jewish saints. Their daily walk
was a living union with Christ, ever seeking the glory of God and the salvation
of men. Many of the cardinal virtues, humility, for example, and love for
enemies, were unknown before the Christian day.
Peter, Paul, and John
represent the various leading forms or types of Christian piety, as well as of
theology. They were not without defect, indeed they themselves acknowledged
only one sinless being, their Lord and Master, and they confessed their own
shortcomings;626 yet they were as nearly perfect as it is
possible to be in a sinful world; and the moral influence of their lives and
writings on all generations of the church is absolutely immeasurable. Each
exhibits the spirit and life of Christ in a peculiar way. For the gospel does
not destroy, but redeems and sanctifies the natural talents and tempers of men.
It consecrates the fire of a Peter, the energy of a Paul, and the pensiveness
of a John to the same service of God. It most strikingly displays its new
creating power in the sudden conversion of the apostle of the Gentiles from a
most dangerous foe to a most efficient friend of the church. Upon Paul the
Spirit of God came as an overwhelming storm; upon John, as a gentle, refreshing
breeze. But in all dwelt the same new, supernatural, divine principle of life.
All are living apologies for Christianity, whose force no truth-loving heart
can resist.
Notice, too, the moral
effects of the gospel in the female characters of the New Testament.
Christianity raises woman from the slavish position which she held both in
Judaism and in heathendom, to her true moral dignity and importance; makes her
an heir of the same salvation with man,627
and opens to her a field for the noblest and loveliest virtues, without
thrusting her, after the manner of modern pseudo-philanthropic schemes of
emancipation, out of her appropriate sphere of private, domestic life, and thus
stripping her of her fairest ornament and peculiar charm.
The Virgin Mary marks
the turning point in the history of the female sex. As the mother of Christ,
the second Adam, she corresponds to Eve, and is, in a spiritual sense, the
mother of all living.628 In her, the "blessed among
women," the whole sex wass blessed, and the curse removed which had hung
over the era of the fall. She was not, indeed, free from actual and native sin,
as is now, taught, without the slightest ground in Scripture, by the Roman
church since the 8th of December, 1854. On the contrary, as a daughter of Adam,
she needed, like all men, redemption and sanctification through Christ, the
sole author of sinless holiness, and she herself expressly calls God her
Saviour.629 But
in the mother and educator of the Saviour of the world we no doubt may and
should revere, though not worship, the model of female Christian virtue, of
purity, tenderness, simplicity, humility, perfect obedience to God, and
unreserved surrender to Christ. Next to her we have a lovely group of female
disciples and friends around the Lord: Mary, the wife of Clopas; Salome, the
mother of James and John; Mary of Bethany, who sat at Jesus’ feet; her busy and
hospitable sister, Martha; Mary of Magdala, whom the Lord healed of a
demoniacal possession; the sinner, who washed his feet with her tears of
penitence and wiped them with her hair; and all the noble women, who ministered
to the Son of man in his earthly poverty with the gifts of their love,630 lingered last around his cross,631 and were the first at his open sepulchre on the,
morning of the resurrection.632
Henceforth we find woman
no longer a slave of man and tool of lust, but the pride and joy of her
husband, the fond mother training her children to virtue and godliness, the
ornament and treasure of the family, the faithful sister, the zealous servant
of the congregation in every work of Christian charity, the sister of mercy,
the martyr with superhuman courage, the guardian angel of peace, the example of
purity, humility, gentleness, patience, love, and fidelity unto death. Such
women were unknown before. The heathen Libanius, the enthusiastic eulogist of
old Grecian culture, pronounced an involuntary eulogy on Christianity when he
exclaimed, as he looked at the mother of Chrysostom: "What women the
Christians have!"
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="47" title="Christianity and the
Family">
§ 47. Christianity and the Family.
H. Gregoire: De l’influence du christianisme sur la condition des
femmes. Paris, 1821.
F. Münter: Die Christin im heidnischen Hause vor den Zeiten
Constantin’s des Grossen. Kopenhagen,
1828.
Julia
Kavanagh: Women of Christianity,
Exemplary for Acts of Piety and Charity. Lond., 1851; N. York, 1866.
Thus raising the female sex
to its true freedom and dignity, Christianity transforms and sanctifies the
entire family life. It abolishes polygamy, and makes monogamy the proper form
of marriage; it condemns concubinage with all forms of unchastity and impurity.
It presents the mutual duties of husband and wife, and of parents and children,
in their true light, and exhibits marriage as a copy of the mystical union of
Christ with his bride, the church; thus imparting to it a holy character and a
heavenly end.633
Henceforth the family,
though still rooted, as before, in the soil of nature, in the mystery of sexual
love, is spiritualized and becomes a nursery of the purest and noblest virtues,
a miniature church, where the father, as shepherd, daily leads his household
into the pastures of the divine word, and, as priest, offers to the Lord the
sacrifice of their common petition, intercession, thanksgiving, and praise.
With the married state,
the single also, as an exception to the rule, is consecrated by the gospel to
the service of the kingdom of God; as we see in a Paul, a Barnabas, and a John,634 and in the history of missions and of ascetic
piety. The enthusiasm for celibacy, which spread so soon throughout the ancient
church, must be regarded as a one-sided, though natural and, upon the whole,
beneficial reaction against the rotten condition and misery of family life
among the heathen.
<index
type=”globalSubject”
subject1=”Slavery” />
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="48" title="Christianity and
Slavery">
§ 48. Christianity and Slavery.
Literature.
H. Wallon (Prof. of Modern History in Paris): Histoire de l’esclavage
dans l’antiquité, Par. 1879, 3
vols., treats very thoroughly of Slavery in the Orient, among the Greeks and
the Romans, with an Introduction on modern negro slavery in the Colonies.
Augustin
Cochin (ancien maire et conseiller
municipal de la Ville de Paris): L’abolition de l’esclavage, Paris, 1862, 2 vols. This work treats not only of
the modern abolition of slavery, but includes in vol. II., p. 348–470, an able
discussion of the relation of Christianity and slavery.
Möhler (R. C., d. 1848): Bruchstücke aus der
Geschichte der Aufhebung der Sklaverei, 1834. ("Vermischte Schriften," vol. II., p. 54.)
H. Wiskemann: Die Sklaverei. Leiden, 1866. A crowned prize-essay.
P. Allard: Les esclaves chrétiens depuis les premiers temps de
l’église jusqu’ à la fin de la domination romaine en Occident Paris, 1876 (480 pp.).
G. V. Lechler: Sklaverei und Christenthum. Leipz. 1877–78.
Ph.
Schaff: Slavery and the Bible,
in his "Christ and Christianity," N. York and London, 1885, pp.
184–212.
Compare the Commentaries
on the Epistle of Paul to Philemon, especially Braune,
and Lightfoot (in Colossians and Philemon, 1875).
The numerous American
works on slavery by Channing, Parker, Hodge, Barnes, Wilson, Cheever, Bledsoe,
and others, relate to the question of negro slavery, now providentially
abolished by the civil war of 1861–65.
To Christianity we owe the
gradual extinction of slavery.
This evil has rested as
a curse on all nations, and at the time of Christ the greater part of the
existing race was bound in beastly degradation—even in civilized Greece and
Rome the slaves being more numerous than the free-born and the freedmen. The
greatest philosophers of antiquity vindicated slavery as a natural and
necessary institution; and Aristotle declared all barbarians to be slaves by
birth, fit for nothing but obedience. According to the Roman law, "slaves
had no head in the State, no name, no title, no register;" they had no
rights of matrimony, and no protection against adultery; they could be bought
and sold, or given away, as personal property; they might be tortured for
evidence, or even put to death, at the discretion of their master. In the
language of a distinguished writer on civil law, the slaves in the Roman empire
"were in a much worse state than any cattle whatsoever." Cato the
elder expelled his old and sick slaves out of house and home. Hadrian, one of
the most humane of the emperors, wilfully destroyed the eye of one of his
slaves with a pencil. Roman ladies punished their maids with sharp iron
instruments for the most trifling offences, while attending half-naked, on
their toilet. Such legal degradation and cruel treatment had the worst effect
upon the character of the slaves. They are described by the ancient writers as
mean, cowardly, abject, false, voracious, intemperate, voluptuous, also as hard
and cruel when placed over others. A proverb prevailed in the Roman empire:
"As many slaves, so many enemies." Hence the constant danger of
servile insurrections, which more than once brought the republic to the brink
of ruin, and seemed to justify the severest measures in self-defence.
Judaism, indeed, stood
on higher ground than this; yet it tolerated slavery, though with wise
precautions against maltreatment, and with the significant ordinance, that in
the year of jubilee, which prefigured the renovation of the theocracy, all
Hebrew slaves should go free.635
This system of permanent
oppression and moral degradation the gospel opposes rather by its whole spirit
than by any special law. It nowhere recommends outward violence and
revolutionary measures, which in those times would have been worse than
useless, but provides an internal radical cure, which first mitigates the evil,
takes away its sting, and effects at last its entire abolition. Christianity
aims, first of all, to redeem man, without regard to rank or condition, from
that worst bondage, the curse of sin, and to give him true spiritual freedom;
it confirms the original unity of all men in the image of God, and teaches the
common redemption and spiritual equality of all before God in Christ;636 it insists on love as the highest duty and
virtue, which itself inwardly levels social distinctions; and it addresses the
comfort and consolation of the gospel particularly to all the poor, the
persecuted, and the oppressed. Paul sent back to his earthly master the
fugitive slave, Onesimus, whom he had converted to Christ and to his duty, that
he might restore his character where he had lost it; but he expressly charged
Philemon to receive and treat the bondman hereafter as a beloved brother in Christ,
yea, as the apostle’s own heart. It is impossible to conceive of a more radical
cure of the evil in those times and within the limits of established laws and
customs. And it is impossible to find in ancient literature a parallel to the
little Epistle to Philemon for gentlemanly courtesy and delicacy, as well as
for tender sympathy with a poor slave.
This Christian spirit of
love, humanity, justice, and freedom, as it pervades the whole New Testament,
has also, in fact, gradually abolished the institution of slavery in almost all
civilized nations, and will not rest till all the chains of sin and misery are
broken, till the personal and eternal dignity of man redeemed by Christ is
universally acknowledged, and the evangelical freedom and brotherhood of men
are perfectly attained.
Note on the Number and Condition of Slaves in Greece and Rome.
Attica numbered,
according to Ctesicles, under the governorship of Demetrius the Phalerian (309 b.c.), 400,000 slaves, 10,000
foreigners, and only 21,000 free citizens. In Sparta the disproportion was
still greater.
As to the Roman empire,
Gibbon estimates the number of slaves under the reign of Claudius at no less
than one half of the entire population, i.e., about sixty millions (I.
52, ed. Milman, N. Y., 1850). According to Robertson there were twice as many
slaves as free citizens, and Blair (in his work on Roman slavery, Edinb. 1833,
p. 15) estimates over three slaves to one freeman between the conquest of
Greece (146 b.c.) and the reign of
Alexander Severna (a.d. 222–235).
The proportion was of course very different in the cities and in the rural
districts. The majority of the plebs urbana were poor and unable to keep
slaves; and the support of slaves in the city was much more expensive than in
the country. Marquardt assumes the proportion of slaves to freemen in Rome to
have been three to two. Friedländer (Sittengeschichte Roms. l. 55,
fourth ed.) thinks it impossible to make a correct general estimate, as we do
not know the number of wealthy families. But we know that Rome a.d. 24 was thrown into consternation by
the fear of a slave insurrection (Tacit. Ann. IV. 27). Athenaeus, as
quoted by Gibbon (I. 51) boldly asserts that he knew very many (<foreign
lang="el">pavmpolloi</foreign>) Romans who possessed, not for use, but
ostentation, ten and even twenty thousand slaves. In a single palace at Rome,
that of Pedanius Secundus, then prefect of the city, four hundred slaves were
maintained, and were all executed for not preventing their master’s murder
(Tacit. Ann. XIV. 42, 43).
The legal condition of
the slaves is thus described by Taylor on Civil Law, as quoted in
Cooper’s Justinian, p. 411: "Slaves were held <foreign
lang="la">pro
nullis, pro mortuis, pro quadrupedibus</foreign>; nay, were in a much worse state than any cattle
whatsoever. They had no head in the state, no name, no title, or register; they
were not capable of being injured; nor could they take by purchase or descent;
they had no heirs, and therefore could make no will; they were not entitled to
the rights and considerations of matrimony, and therefore had no relief in case
of adultery; nor were they proper objects of cognation or affinity, but of
quasi-cognation only; they could be sold, transferred, or pawned, as goods or
personal estate, for goods they were, and as such they were esteemed; they
might be tortured for evidence, punished at the discretion of their lord, and
even put to death by his authority; together with many other civil incapacities
which I have no room to enumerate." Gibbon (I. 48) thinks that
"against such internal enemies, whose desperate insurrections had more
then once reduced the republic to the brink of destruction, the most severe
regulations and the most cruel treatment seemed almost justifiable by the great
law of self-preservation."
The individual treatment
of slaves depended on the character of the master. As a rule it was harsh and
cruel. The bloody spectacles of the amphitheatre stupefied the finer
sensibilities even in women. Juvenal describes a Roman mistress who ordered her
female slaves to be unmercifully lashed in her presence till the whippers were
worn out; Ovid warns the ladies not to scratch the face or stick needles into
the naked arms of the servants who adorned them; and before Hadrian a mistress
could condemn a slave to the death of crucifixion without assigning a reason.
See the references in Friedländer, I. 466. It is but just to remark that the
philosophers of the first and second century, Seneca, Pliny, and Plutarch,
entertained much milder views on this subject than the older writers, and
commend a humane treatment of the slaves; also that the Antonines improved
their condition to some extent, and took the oft abused jurisdiction of life
and death over the slaves out of private hands and vested it in the
magistrates. But at that time Christian principles and sentiments already
freely circulated throughout the empire, and exerted a silent influence even
over the educated heathen. This unconscious atmospheric influence, so to speak,
is continually exerted by Christianity over the surrounding world, which
without this would be far worse than it actually is.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="49" title="Christianity and
Society">
§ 49. Christianity and Society.
Christianity enters with
its leaven-like virtue the whole civil and social life of a people, and leads
it on the path of progress in all genuine civilization. It nowhere prescribes,
indeed, a particular form of government, and carefully abstains from all
improper interference with political and secular affairs. It accommodates
itself to monarchical and republican institutions, and can flourish even under
oppression and persecution from the State, as the history of the first three
centuries sufficiently shows. But it teaches the true nature and aim of all
government, and the duties of rulers and subjects; it promotes the abolition of
bad laws and institutions, and the establishment of good; it is in principle
opposed alike to despotism and anarchy; it tends, under every form of government,
towards order, propriety, justice, humanity, and peace; it fills the ruler with
a sense of responsibility to the supreme king and judge, and the ruled with the
spirit of loyalty, virtue, and piety.
Finally, the Gospel
reforms the international relations by breaking down the partition walls of
prejudice and hatred among the different nations and races. It unites in
brotherly fellowship and harmony around the same communion table even the Jews
and the Gentiles, once so bitterly separate and hostile. The spirit of
Christianity, truly catholic or universal, rises above all national
distinctions. Like the congregation at Jerusalem, the whole apostolic church
was of "one heart and of one soul."637 It
had its occasional troubles, indeed, temporary collisions between a Peter and a
Paul, between Jewish and Gentile Christians; but instead of wondering at these,
we must admire the constant victory of the spirit of harmony and love over the
remaining forces of the old nature and of a former state of things. The poor
Gentile Christians of Paul’s churches in Greece sent their charities to the
poor Jewish Christians in Palestine, and thus proved their gratitude for the
gospel and its fellowship, which they had received from that mother church.638 The
Christians all felt themselves to be "brethren," were constantly
impressed with their common origin and their common destiny, and considered it
their sacred duty to "keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of
peace."639
While the Jews, in their spiritual pride and "<foreign
lang="la">odium
generis humani</foreign>" abhorred all Gentiles; while the Greeks
despised all barbarians as only half men; and while the Romans, with all their
might and policy, could bring their conquered nations only into a mechanical
conglomeration, a giant body without a soul; Christianity, by purely moral
means) founded a universal spiritual empire and a communion of saints, which
stands unshaken to this day, and will spread till it embraces all the nations
of the earth as its living members, and reconciles all to God.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="50" title="Spiritual Condition of
the Congregations.—The Seven Churches in Asia">
§ 50. Spiritual Condition of the Congregations.—The Seven Churches in Asia.
We must not suppose that
the high standard of holiness set up in doctrine and example by the evangelists
and apostles was fully realized in their congregations. The dream of the
spotless purity and perfection of the apostolic church finds no support in the
apostolic writings, except as an ideal which is constantly held up before our
vision to stimulate our energies. If the inspired apostles themselves disclaimed
perfection, much less can we expect it from their converts, who had just come
from the errors and corruptions of Jewish and heathen society, and could not be
transformed at once without a miracle in violation of the ordinary laws of
moral growth.
We find, in fact, that
every Epistle meets some particular difficulty and danger. No letter of Paul
can be understood without the admission of the actual imperfection of his
congregations. He found it necessary to warn them even against the vulgar sins
of the flesh as well as against the refined sins of the spirit. He cheerfully
and thankfully commended their virtues, and as frankly and fearlessly condemned
their errors and vices.
The same is true of the
churches addressed in the Catholic Epistles, and in the Revelation of John.640
The seven Epistles in
the second and third chapters of the Apocalypse give us a glimpse of the church
in its light and shade in the last stage of the apostolic age—primarily in Asia
Minor, but through it also in other lands. These letters are all very much
alike in their plan, and present a beautiful order, which has been well pointed
out by Bengel. They contain (1) a command of Christ to write to the
"angel" of the congregation. (2) A designation of Jesus by some
imposing title, which generally refers to his majestic appearance (Rev. 1:13
sqq.), and serves as the basis and warrant of the subsequent promises and
threatenings. (3) The address to the angel, or the responsible head of the
congregation, be it a single bishop or the college of pastors and teachers. The
angels are, at all events, the representatives of the people committed to their
charge, and what was said to them applies at the same time to the churches.
This address, or the epistle proper, consists always of (a) a short
sketch of the present moral condition of the congregation—both its virtues and
defects—with commendation or censure as the case may be; (b) an
exhortation either to repentance or to faithfulness and patience, according to
the prevailing character of the church addressed; (c) a promise to him
who overcomes, together with the admonition: "He that hath an ear, let him
hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches," or the same in the reverse
order, as in the first three epistles. This latter variation divides the seven
churches into two groups, one comprising the first three, the other the
remaining four, just as the seven seals, the seven trumpets, and the seven
vials are divided. The ever-recurring admonition: "He that hath an ear,"
etc., consists of ten words. This is no unmeaning play, but an application of
the Old Testament system of symbolical numbers, in which three was the symbol
of the Godhead; four of the world or humanity; the indivisible number seven,
the sum of three and four (as also twelve, their product), the symbol of the
indissoluble covenant between God and man; and ten (seven and three), the round
number, the symbol of fulness and completion.
As to their moral and
religious condition, the churches and the representatives fall, according to
the Epistles, into three classes:
1. Those which were predominantly
good and pure, viz., those of Smyrna and Philadelphia. Hence, in the
messages to these two churches we find no exhortation to repentance in the
strict sense of the word, but only an encouragement to be steadfast, patient,
and joyful under suffering.
The church of Smyrna (a
very ancient, still flourishing commercial city in Ionia, beautifully located
on the bay of Smyrna) was externally poor and persecuted, and had still greater
tribulation in view, but is cheered with the prospect of the crown of life. It
was in the second century ruled by Polycarp, a pupil of John, and a faithful
martyr.
Philadelphia (a city
built by king Attalus Philadelphus, and named after him, now Ala-Schär), in the
province of Lydia, a rich wine region, but subject to earthquakes, was the seat
of a church likewise poor and small outwardly, but very faithful and
spiritually flourishing—a church which was to have all the tribulations and
hostility it met with on earth abundantly rewarded in heaven.
2. Churches which were
in a predominantly evil and critical condition, viz., those of Sardis
and Laodicea. Here accordingly we find severe censure and earnest exhortation
to repentance.
The church at Sardis
(till the time of Croesus the flourishing capital of the Lydian empire, but now
a miserable hamlet of shepherds) had indeed the name and outward form of
Christianity, but not its inward power of faith and life. Hence it was on the
brink of spiritual death. Yet Rev. 3:4 sq., distinguishes from the corrupt mass
a few souls which had kept their walk undefiled, without, however, breaking
away from the congregation as separatists, and setting up an opposition sect
for themselves.
The church of Laodicea
(a wealthy commercial city of Phrygia, not far from Colosse and Hierapolis,
where now stands only a desolate village by the name of Eski-Hissar) proudly
fancied itself spiritually rich and faultless, but was in truth poor and blind
and naked, and in that most dangerous state of indifference and lukewarmness
from which it is more difficult to return to the former decision and ardor,
than it was to pass at first from the natural coldness to faith. Hence the
fearful threatening: "I will spew thee out of my mouth." (Lukewarm
water produces vomiting.) Yet even
the Laodiceans are not driven to despair. The Lord, in love, knocks at their
door and promises them, on condition of thorough repentance, a part in the
marriage-supper of the lamb (3:20).
3. Churches of a
mixed character, viz., those of Ephesus, Pergamum, and Thyatira. In these
cases commendation and censure, promise and threatening are united.
Ephesus, then the
metropolis of the Asian church, had withstood, indeed, the Gnostic errorists
predicted by Paul, and faithfully maintained the purity of the doctrine
delivered to it; but it had lost the ardor of its first love, and it is,
therefore, earnestly exhorted to repent. It thus represents to us that state of
dead, petrified orthodoxy, into which various churches oftentimes fall. Zeal
for pure doctrine is, indeed, of the highest importance, but worthless without
living piety and active love. The Epistle to the angel of the church of Ephesus
is peculiarly applicable to the later Greek church as a whole.
Pergamum in Mysia (the
northernmost of these seven cities, formerly the residence of the kings of Asia
of the Attalian dynasty, and renowned for its large library of 200,000 volumes
and the manufacture of parchment; hence the name charta Pergamena;—now Bergamo, a village inhabited by Turks,
Greeks, and Armenians) was the seat of a church, which under trying
circumstances had shown great fidelity, but tolerated in her bosom those who
held dangerous Gnostic errors. For this want of rigid discipline she also is
called on to repent.
The church of Thyatira
(a flourishing manufacturing and commercial city in Lydia, on the site of which
now stands a considerable Turkish town called Ak-Hissar, or "the White
Castle," with nine mosques and one Greek church) was very favorably
distinguished for self-denying, active love and patience, but was likewise too
indulgent towards errors which corrupted Christianity with heathen principles
and practices.
The last two churches,
especially that of Thyatira, form thus the exact counterpart to that of
Ephesus, and are the representatives of a zealous practical piety in union with
theoretical latitudinarianism. As doctrine always has more or less influence on
practice, this also is a dangerous state. That church alone is truly sound and
flourishing in which purity of doctrine and purity of life, theoretical
orthodoxy and practical piety are harmoniously united and promote one another.
With good reason have
theologians in all ages regarded these, seven churches of Asia Minor as a miniature
of the whole Christian church. "There is no condition, good, bad, or
mixed, of which these epistles do not present a sample, and for which they do
not give suitable and wholesome direction." Here, as everywhere, the word
of God and the history of the apostolic church evince their applicability to
all times and circumstances, and their inexhaustible fulness of instruction,
warning, and encouragement for all states and stages of religious life.
<index
type=”globalSubject”
subject1=”Worship” />
</div3><div2
type=”Chapter” n=”IX” title=”Worship in the Apostolic Age”>
CHAPTER IX.
WORSHIP IN THE APOSTOLIC AGE.
Literature.
Th
Harnack: Der christliche
Gemeindegottesdienst im Apost. und altkathol. Zeitalter. Erlangen, 1854. The
same: Prakt. Theol., I. 1877.
P. Probst (R. C.): Liturgie der drei ersten Jahrhunderte. Tüb., 1870.
W. L. Volz: Anfänge des christl.
Gottesdienstes, in "Stud. und
Krit." 1872.
H. Jacoby: Die constitutiven Factoren des Apost. Gottesdienstes, in "Jahrb. für deutsche Theol." for
1873.
C. Weizsäcker: Die Versammlungen der ältesten Christengemeinden,
1876; and Das Apost. Zeitalter,
1886, pp. 566 sqq.
Th
Zahn: Gesch. des Sonntags in der
alten Kirche. Hann., 1878.
Schaff: Hist. of the Apost. Ch., pp. 545–586.
Comp. the Lit. on Ch. X.,
and on the Didache, vol. II. 184.
</div2><div3
type = "Section" n="51" title="The Synagogue">
<index
type = "globalSubject"
subject1 = "Synagogue"
/>
§ 51. The Synagogue.
Campeg.
Vitringa (d. at Franeker, 1722): De Synagoga Vetere libri tres. Franeker, 1696. 2 vols. (also Weissenfels, 1726).
A standard work, full of biblical and rabbinical learning. A condensed
translation by J. L. Bernard: The
Synagogue and the Church. London, 1842.
C. Bornitius: De
Synagogis veterum Hebraeorum.
Vitemb., 1650. And in Ugolinus: Thesaurus Antiquitatum sacrarum (Venet., 1744–69), vol. XXI. 495–539.
Ant.
Th. Hartmann: Die enge Verbindung
des A. Testamenes mit dem Neuen.
Hamburg, 1831 (pp. 225–376).
Zunz (a Jewish Rabbi): Die gottesdienstlichen
Vorträge der Juden. Berlin, 1832
The Histories of the
Jews, by Jost, Herzfeld, and Milman.
The Histories of N. T.
Times, by Hausrath (I. 73 sqq. 2d
ed.) and Schürer (463–475, and the literature there given).
Art. "Synag.,"
by Ginsburg in "Kitto";
Plumptre: in "Smith" (with additions by Hackett, IV. 3133, Am. ed.);
Leyrer in "Herzog" (XV. 299, first ed.); Kneuker in
"Schenkel" (V. 443).
As the Christian Church
rests historically on the Jewish Church, so Christian worship and the
congregational organization rest on that of the synagogue, and cannot be well
understood without it.
The synagogue was and is
still an institution of immense conservative power. It was the local centre of
the religious and social life of the Jews, as the temple of Jerusalem was the
centre of their national life. It was a school as well as a church, and the
nursery and guardian of all that is peculiar in this peculiar people. It dates
probably from the age of the captivity and of Ezra.641 It
was fully organized at the time of Christ and the apostles, and used by them as
a basis of their public instruction.642 It survived the temple, and continues
to this day unaltered in its essential features, the chief nursery and
protection of the Jewish nationality and religion.643
The term
"synagogue" (like our word church) signifies first the congregation,
then also the building where the congregation meet for public worship.644
Every town, however small, had a synagogue, or at least a place of
prayer in a private house or in the open air (usually near a river or the
sea-shore, on account of the ceremonial washings). Ten men were sufficient to
constitute a religious assembly. "Moses from generations of old hath in
every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every
Sabbath."645 To
erect a synagogue was considered a work of piety and public usefulness.646 In
large cities, as Alexandria and Rome, there were many; in Jerusalem, about four
hundred for the various sects and the Hellenists from different countries.647
1. The building
was a plain, rectangular ball of no peculiar style of architecture, and in its
inner arrangement somewhat resembling the Tabernacle and the Temple. It had
benches, the higher ones ("the uppermost seats") for the elders and
richer members,648
a reading-desk or pulpit, and a wooden ark or closet for the sacred rolls
(called "Copheret" or Mercy Seat, also "Aaron"). The last
corresponded to the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle and the Temple. A sacred
light was kept burning as a symbol of the divine law, in imitation of the light
in the Temple, but there is no mention made of it in the Talmud. Other lamps
were brought in by devout worshippers at the beginning of the Sabbath (Friday
evening). Alms-boxes were provided near the door, as in the Temple, one for the
poor in Jerusalem, another for local charities. Paul imitated the example by
collecting alms for the poor Christians in Jerusalem.
There was no artistic
(except vegetable) ornamentation; for the second commandment strictly forbids
all images of the Deity as idolatrous. In this, as in many other respects, the
Mohammedan mosque, with its severe iconoclastic simplicity, is a second edition
of the synagogue. The building was erected on the most elevated spot of the
neighborhood, and no house was allowed to overtop it. In the absence of a
commanding site, a tall pole from the roof rendered it conspicuous.649
2. Organization.—Every
synagogue had a president,650
a number of elders (Zekenim) equal in rank,651
a reader and interpreter,652
one or more envoys or clerks, called "messengers" (Sheliach),653 and a sexton or beadle (Chazzan) for the humbler mechanical services.654 There were also deacons (Gabae zedaka) for the collection of alms in money and produce. Ten or more wealthy
men at leisure, called Batlanim, represented the congregation at every service.
Each synagogue formed an independent republic, but kept up a regular
correspondence with other synagogues. It was also a civil and religious court,
and had power to excommunicate and to scourge offenders.655
3. Worship.—It was simple, but rather
long, and embraced three elements, devotional, didactic, and ritualistic. It
included prayer, song, reading, and exposition of the Scripture, the rite of
circumcision, and ceremonial washings. The bloody sacrifices were confined to
the temple and ceased with its destruction; they were fulfilled in the eternal
sacrifice on the cross. The prayers and songs were chiefly taken from the
Psalter, which may be called the first liturgy and hymn book.
The opening prayer was
called the Shema or Keriath
Shema, and consisted of two
introductory benedictions, the reading of the Ten Commandments (afterward
abandoned) and several sections of the Pentateuch, namely, <scripRef
passage = "Deut. 6:4–9; 11:13–21">Deut. 6:4–9; 11:13–21</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Num.
15:37–41">Num.
15:37–41</scripRef>. Then followed the eighteen prayers and
benedictions (Berachoth). This is one of them: "Bestow peace,
happiness, blessing, grace, mercy, and compassion upon us and upon the whole of
Israel, thy people. Our Father, bless us all unitedly with the light of thy
countenance, for in the light of thy countenance didst thou give to us, O Lord
our God, the law of life, lovingkindness, justice, blessing, compassion, life,
and peace. May it please thee to bless thy people lsrael at all times, and in
every moment, with peace. Blessed art thou, O Lord, who blessest thy people
Israel with peace." These benedictions are traced in the Mishna to the one
hundred and twenty elders of the Great Synagogue. They were no doubt of gradual
growth, some dating from the Maccabean struggles, some from the Roman
ascendancy. The prayers were offered by a reader, and the congregation
responded "Amen." This custom passed into the Christian church.656
The didactic and
homiletical part of worship was based on the Hebrew Scriptures. A lesson from
the Law (called parasha),657
and one from the Prophets (haphthara) were read in the original,658 and followed by a paraphrase or commentary and
homily (midrash) in the vernacular Aramaic or Greek. A
benediction and the "Amen" of the people closed the service.
As there was no proper
priesthood outside of Jerusalem, any Jew of age might get up to read the
lessons, offer prayer, and address the congregation. Jesus and the apostles
availed themselves of this democratic privilege to preach the gospel, as the
fulfilment of the law and the prophets.659 The strong didactic element which
distinguished this service from all heathen forms of worship, had the effect of
familiarizing the Jews of all grades, even down to the servant-girls, with
their religion, and raising them far above the heathen. At the same time it
attracted proselytes who longed for a purer and more spiritual worship.
The days of public
service were the Sabbath, Monday, and Thursday; the hours of prayer the third
(9 a.m.), the sixth (noon), and
the ninth (3 p.m.).660
The sexes were divided
by a low wall or screen, the men on the one side, the women on the other, as
they are still in the East (and in some parts of Europe). The people stood
during prayer with their faces turned to Jerusalem.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="52" title="Christian
Worship">
<index
type = "globalSubject"
subject1 = "Worship"
/>
§ 52. Christian Worship.
Christian worship, or
cultus, is the public adoration of God in the name of Christ; the celebration
of the communion of believers as a congregation with their heavenly Head, for
the glory of the Lord, and for the promotion and enjoyment of spiritual life.
While it aims primarily at the devotion and edification of the church itself,
it has at the same time a missionary character, and attracts the outside world.
This was the case on the Day of Pentecost when Christian worship in its
distinctive character first appeared.
As our Lord himself in
his youth and manhood worshipped in the synagogue and the temple, so did his
early disciples as long as they were tolerated. Even Paul preached Christ in
the synagogues of Damascus, Cyprus, Antioch in Pisidia, Amphipolis, Beraeea,
Athens, Corinth, Ephesus. He "reasoned with the Jews every sabbath in the
synagogues" which furnished him a pulpit and an audience.
The Jewish Christians,
at least in Palestine, conformed as closely as possible to the venerable forms
of the cultus of their fathers, which in truth were divinely ordained, and were
an expressive type of the Christian worship. So far as we know, they
scrupulously observed the Sabbath, the annual Jewish feasts, the hours of daily
prayer, and the whole Mosaic ritual, and celebrated, in addition to these, the
Christian Sunday, the death and the resurrection of the Lord, and the holy
Supper. But this union was gradually weakened by the stubborn opposition of the
Jews, and was at last entirely broken by the destruction of the temple, except
among the Ebionites and Nazarenes.
In the Gentile-Christian
congregations founded by Paul, the worship took from the beginning a more
independent form. The essential elements of the Old Testament service were
transferred, indeed, but divested of their national legal character, and
transformed by the spirit of the gospel. Thus the Jewish Sabbath passed into
the Christian Sunday; the typical Passover and Pentecost became feasts of the
death and resurrection of Christ, and of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit; the
bloody sacrifices gave place to the thankful remembrance and appropriation of
the one, all-sufficient, and eternal sacrifice of Christ on the cross, and to
the personal offering of prayer, intercession, and entire self-consecration to the
service of the Redeemer; on the ruins of the temple made without hands arose
the never ceasing worship of the omnipresent God in spirit and in truth.661 So
early as the close of the apostolic period this more free and spiritual cultus
of Christianity had no doubt become well nigh universal; yet many Jewish
elements, especially in the Eastern church, remain to this day.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="53" title="The Several Parts of
Worship">
§ 53. The Several Parts of Worship.
The several parts of public
worship in the time of the apostles were as follows:
1. The Preaching of the gospel. This appears in
the first period mostly in the form of a missionary address to the unconverted;
that is, a simple, living presentation of the main facts of the life of Jesus,
with practical exhortation to repentance and conversion. Christ crucified and
risen was the luminous centre, whence a sanctifying light was shed on all the
relations of life. Gushing forth from a full heart, this preaching went to the
heart; and springing from an inward life, it kindled life—a new, divine life—in
the susceptible hearers. It was revival preaching in the purest sense. Of this
primitive Christian testimony several examples from Peter and Paul are
preserved in the Acts of the Apostles.
The Epistles also may be
regarded in the wider sense as sermons, addressed, however, to believers, and
designed to nourish the Christian life already planted.
2. The Reading of portions of the Old
Testament,662 with practical exposition and application;
transferred from the Jewish synagogue into the Christian church.663 To
these were added in due time lessons from the New Testament; that is, from the
canonical Gospels and the apostolic Epistles, most of which were addressed to
whole congregations and originally intended for public use.664 After
the death of the apostles their writings became doubly important to the church,
as a substitute for their oral instruction and exhortation, and were much more
used in worship than the Old Testament.
3. Prayer, in its various forms of
petition, intercession, and thanksgiving. This descended likewise from Judaism,
and in fact belongs essentially even to all heathen religions; but now it began
to be offered in childlike confidence to a reconciled Father in the name of
Jesus, and for all classes and conditions, even for enemies and persecutors.
The first Christians accompanied every important act of their public and
private life with this holy rite, and Paul exhorts his readers to "pray
without ceasing." On solemn occasions they joined fasting with prayer, as
a help to devotion, though it is nowhere directly enjoined in the New
Testament.665
They prayed freely from the heart, as they were moved by the Spirit,
according to special needs and circumstances. We have an example in the fourth
chapter of Acts. There is no trace of a uniform and exclusive liturgy; it would
be inconsistent with the vitality and liberty of the apostolic churches. At the
same time the frequent use of psalms and short forms of devotion, as the Lord’s
Prayer, may be inferred with certainty from the Jewish custom, from the Lord’s
direction respecting his model prayer,666
from the strong sense of fellowship among the first Christians, and finally
from the liturgical spirit of the ancient church, which could not have so
generally prevailed both in the East and the West without some apostolic and
post-apostolic precedent. The oldest forms are the eucharistic prayers of the Didache, and the petition for rulers in the first Epistle of Clement, which
contrasts most beautifully with the cruel hostility of Nero and Domitian.667
4. The Song, a form of prayer, in the festive
dress of poetry and the elevated language of inspiration, raising the
congregation to the highest pitch of devotion, and giving it a part in the
heavenly harmonies of the saints. This passed immediately, with the psalms of
the Old Testament, those inexhaustible treasures of spiritual experience,
edification, and comfort, from the temple and the synagogue into the Christian
church. The Lord himself inaugurated psalmody into the new covenant at the
institution of the holy Supper,668
and Paul expressly enjoined the singing of "psalms and hymns and spiritual
songs," as a means of social edification.669 But
to this precious inheritance from the past, whose full value was now for the
first time understood in the light of the New Testament revelation, the church,
in the enthusiasm of her first love, added original, specifically Christian
psalms, hymns, doxologies, and benedictions, which afforded the richest
material for Sacred poetry and music in succeeding centuries; the song of the
heavenly hosts, for example, at the birth of the Saviour;670 the "Nunc dimittis" of Simeon;671 the "Magnificat" of the Virgin Mary;672 the "Benedictus" of Zacharias;673 the thanksgiving of Peter after his miraculous
deliverance;674 the speaking with tongues in the apostolic
churches, which, whether song or prayer, was always in the elevated language of
enthusiasm; the fragments of hymns scattered through the Epistles;675 and the lyrical and liturgical passages, the
doxologies and antiphonies of the Apocalypse.676
5. Confession Of Faith. All the
above-mentioned acts of worship are also acts of faith. The first express
confession of faith is the testimony of Peter, that Jesus was the Christ, the
Son of the living God. The next is the trinitarian baptismal formula. Out of
this gradually grew the so-called Apostles’ Creed, which is also trinitarian in
structure, but gives the confession of Christ the central and largest place.
Though not traceable in its present shape above the fourth century, and found
in the second and third in different longer or shorter forms, it is in
substance altogether apostolic, and exhibits an incomparable summary of the
leading facts in the revelation of the triune God from the creation of the
world to the resurrection of the body; and that in a form intelligible to all,
and admirably suited for public worship and catechetical use. We shall return
to it more fully in the second period.
6. Finally, the
administration of the Sacraments,
or sacred rites instituted by Christ, by which, under appropriate symbols and
visible signs, spiritual gifts and invisible grace are represented, sealed, and
applied to the worthy participators.
The two sacraments of
Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the antitypes of circumcision and the passover
under the Old Testament, were instituted by Christ as efficacious signs,
pledges, and means of the grace of the new covenant. They are related to each
other as regeneration and sanctification, or as the beginning and the growth of
the Christian life. The other religious rites mentioned in the New Testament,
as confirmation and ordination, cannot be ranked in dignity with the
sacraments, as they are not commanded by Christ.
<index
type=”globalSubject”
subject1 = “Baptism” />
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="54" title="Baptism">
§ 54. Baptism.
Literature.
The commentaries on <scripRef
passage = "Matt. 28:19">Matt. 28:19</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Mark
16:16">Mark 16:16</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "John
3:5">John 3:5</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Acts 2:38; 8:13,
16, 18, 37">Acts
2:38; 8:13, 16, 18, 37</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Rom.
6:4">Rom. 6:4</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Gal.
3:27">Gal. 3:27</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Tit.
3:5">Tit. 3:5</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "1 Pet
3:21">1 Pet 3:21</scripRef>.
G. J. Vossius: De Baptismo Disputationes XX. Amsterdam, 1648.
W. Wall (Episcopalian): The History of Infant Baptism (a
very learned work), first published in London, 1705, 2 vols., best edition by
H. Cotton, Oxford, 1836, 4 vols., and 1862, 2 vols., together with Gale’s (Baptist)
Reflections and Wall’s Defense. A Latin translation by Schlosser appeared,
vol. I., at Bremen, 1743, and vol. II at Hamburg, 1753.
F. Brenner (R. Cath.): Geschichtliche Darstellung
der Verrichtung der Taufe von Christus his auf unsere Zeiten. Bamberg, 1818.
Moses
Stuart (Congregat.): Mode of
Christian Baptism Prescribed in the New Testament. Andover, 1833 (reprinted
1876).
Höfling (Lutheran): Das Sacrament der Taufe. Erlangen, 1846 and 1848, 2 vols.
Samuel
Miller (Presbyterian): Infant
Baptism Scriptural and Reasonable; And Baptism By Sprinkling Or Affusion, The
Most Suitable and Edifying Mode. Philadelphia, 1840.
Alex.
Carson (Baptist): Baptism in its
Mode and Subjects. London, 1844; 5th Amer. ed., Philadelphia, 1850.
Alex.
Campbell (founder of the Church of
the Disciples, who teach that baptism by immersion is regeneration): Christian
Baptism, with its Antecedents and Consequents. Bethany, 1848, and
Cincinnati, 1876.
T. J. Conant (Baptist): The Meaning and Use
of Baptism Philologically and Historically Investigated for the American (Baptist)
Bible Union. New York, 1861.
James
W. Dale (Presbyterian, d. 1881): Classic
Baptism. An inquiry into the meaning of the word baptizo. Philadelphia,
1867. Judaic Baptism, 1871. Johannic Baptism, 1872. Christic and
Patristic Baptism, 1874. In all, 4 vols. Against the immersion theory.
R. Ingham (Baptist): A Handbook on Christian Baptism, in
2 parts. London, 1868.
D. B. Ford (Baptist): Studies on Baptism.
New York, 1879. (Against Dale.)
G. D. Armstrong (Presbyterian minister at
Norfolk, Va.): The Sacraments of the New Testament, as Instituted by Christ.
New York, 1880. (Popular.)
Dean
Stanley: Christian Institutions.
London and Now York, 1881. Chap. I.
On the (post-apostolic)
archaeology of baptism see the archaeological works of Martene (De Antiquis Eccles. Ritibus), Goar (Euchologion Graecorum), Bingham, Augusti, Binterim, Siegel, Martigny,
and Smith and Cheetham (Dict. of Christ. Ant., I., 155 sqq.).
On the baptismal pictures
in the catacombs see the works of De
Rossi, Garrucci, and Schaff on the Didache, pp. 36 sqq.
1. The Idea of Baptism. It was solemnly
instituted by Christ, shortly before his ascension, to be performed in the name
of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It took the place of circumcision
as a sign and seal of church membership. It is the outward mark of Christian
discipleship, the rite of initiation into the covenant of grace. It is the
sacrament of repentance (conversion), of remission of sins, and of regeneration
by the power of the Holy Spirit.677 In the nature of the case it is to be
received but once. It incorporates the penitent sinner in the visible church,
and entitles him to all the privileges, and binds him to all the duties of this
communion. Where the condition of repentance and faith is wanting, the blessing
(as in the case of the holy Supper, and the preaching of the Word) is turned
into a curse, and what God designs as a savor of life unto life becomes, by the
unfaithfulness of man, a savor of death unto death.
The necessity of baptism
for salvation has been inferred from <scripRef passage =
"John 3:5">John
3:5</scripRef> and <scripRef passage =
"Mark 16:16">Mark
16:16</scripRef>; but while we are bound to God’s ordinances, God
himself is free and can save whomsoever and by whatsoever means he pleases. The
church has always held the principle that the mere want of the sacrament does
not condemn, but only the contempt. Otherwise all unbaptized infants that die
in infancy would be lost. This horrible doctrine was indeed inferred by St.
Augustin and the Roman church, from the supposed absolute necessity of baptism,
but is in direct conflict with the spirit of the gospel and Christ’s treatment
of children, to whom belongs the kingdom of heaven.
The first administration
of this sacrament in its full Christian sense took place on the birthday of the
church, after the first independent preaching of the apostles. The baptism of
John was more of a negative sort, and only preparatory to the baptism with the
Holy Spirit. In theory Christian baptism is preceded by conversion, that is the
human act of turning from sin to God in repentance and faith, and followed by
regeneration, that is the divine act of forgiveness of sin and inward cleansing
and renewal. Yet in practice the outward sign and inward state and effect do
not always coincide; in Simon Magus we have an example of the baptism of water
without that of the Spirit, and in Cornelius an example of the communication of
the Spirit before the application of the water. In the case of infants,
conversion, as a conscious act of the will, is impossible and unnecessary. In
adults the solemn ordinance was preceded by the preaching of the gospel, or a
brief instruction in its main facts, and then followed by more thorough
inculcation of the apostolic doctrine. Later, when great caution became
necessary in receiving proselytes, the period of catechetical instruction and
probation was considerably lengthened.
2. The usual Form of baptism was immersion. This is
inferred from the original meaning of the Greek <foreign lang="el">baptivzein
and baptismov"</foreign>;678
from the analogy of John’s baptism in the Jordan; from the apostles’ comparison
of the sacred rite with the miraculous passage of the Red Sea, with the escape
of the ark from the flood, with a cleansing and refreshing bath, and with
burial and resurrection; finally, from the general custom of the ancient church
which prevails in the East to this day.679 But sprinkling, also, or copious
pouring rather, was practised at an early day with sick and dying persons, and
in all such cases where total or partial immersion was impracticable. Some
writers suppose that this was the case even in the first baptism of the three
thousand on the day of Pentecost; for Jerusalem was poorly supplied with water
and private baths; the Kedron is a small creek and dry in summer; but there are
a number of pools and cisterns there. Hellenistic usage allows to the relevant
expressions sometimes the wider sense of washing, bathing, sprinkling, and
ceremonial cleansing.680 Unquestionably, immersion expresses the
idea of baptism, as a purification and renovation of the whole man, more
completely than pouring or sprinkling; but it is not in keeping with the genius
of the gospel to limit the operation of the Holy Spirit by the quantity or the
quality of the water or the mode of its application. Water is absolutely
necessary to baptism, as an appropriate symbol of the purifying and
regenerating energy of the Holy Spirit; but whether the water be in large
quantity or small, cold or warm, fresh or salt, from river, cistern, or spring,
is relatively immaterial, and cannot affect the validity of the ordinance.
3. As to the Subjects of baptism: the apostolic
origin of infant baptism is denied not only by the Baptists, but also by
many paedobaptist divines. The Baptists assert that infant baptism is contrary
to the idea of the sacrament itself, and accordingly, an unscriptural
corruption. For baptism, say they, necessarily presupposes the preaching of the
gospel on the part of the church, and repentance and faith on the part of the
candidate for the ordinance; and as infants can neither understand preaching,
nor repent and believe, they are not proper subjects for baptism, which is
intended only for adult converts. It is true, the apostolic church was a
missionary church, and had first to establish a mother community, in the bosom
of which alone the grace of baptism can be improved by a Christian education.
So even under the old covenant circumcision was first performed on the adult
Abraham; and so all Christian missionaries in heathen lands now begin with
preaching, and baptizing adults. True, the New Testament contains no express
command to baptize infants; such a command would not agree with the free spirit
of the gospel. Nor was there any compulsory or general infant baptism before
the union of church and state; Constantine, the first Christian emperor,
delayed his baptism till his deathbed (as many now delay their repentance); and
even after Constantine there were examples of eminent teachers, as Gregory
Nazianzen, Augustin, Chrysostom, who were not baptized before their conversion in
early manhood, although they had Christian mothers.
But still less does the
New Testament forbid infant baptism; as it might be expected to do in
view of the universal custom of the Jews, to admit their children by
circumcision on the eighth day after birth into the fellowship of the old
covenant.
On the contrary, we have
presumptive and positive arguments for the apostolic origin and character of
infant baptism, first, in the fact that circumcision as truly prefigured
baptism, as the passover the holy Supper; then in the organic relation between
Christian parents and children; in the nature of the new covenant, which is
even more comprehensive than the old; in the universal virtue of Christ, as the
Redeemer of all sexes, classes, and ages, and especially in the import of his
own infancy, which has redeemed and sanctified the infantile age; in his
express invitation to children, whom he assures of a title to the kingdom of
heaven, and whom, therefore, he certainly would not leave without the sign and
seal of such membership; in the words, of institution, which plainly look to
the Christianizing, not merely of individuals, but of whole nations, including,
of course, the children; in the express declaration of Peter at the first
administration of the ordinance, that this promise of forgiveness of sins and
of the Holy Spirit was to the Jews "and to their children;" in the
five instances in the New Testament of the baptism of whole families, where the
presence of children in most of the cases is far more probable than the absence
of children in all; and finally, in the universal practice of the early church,
against which the isolated protest of Tertullian proves no more, than his other
eccentricities and Montanistic peculiarities; on the contrary, his violent protest
implies the prevailing practice of infant baptism. He advised delay of baptism
as a measure of prudence, lest the baptized by sinning again might forever
forfeit the benefit of this ordinance; but he nowhere denies the apostolic
origin or right of early baptism.
We must add, however,
that infant baptism is unmeaning, and its practice a profanation, except on the
condition of Christian parentage or guardianship, and under the guarantee of a
Christian education. And it needs to be completed by an act of personal
consecration, in which the child, after due instruction in the gospel,
intelligently and freely confesses Christ, devotes himself to his service, and
is thereupon solemnly admitted to the full communion of the church and to the
sacrament of the holy Supper. The earliest traces of confirmation are supposed
to be found in the apostolic practice of laying on hands, or symbolically
imparting the Holy Spirit. after baptism.681
<index
type=”globalSubject”
subject1 = “The Lord’s Supper” />
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="5." title="he Lord’s
Supper">
§ 55. The Lord’s Supper.
The commentaries on <scripRef
passage = "Matt. 26:26">Matt. 26:26</scripRef> sqq., and the parallel passages in Mark and
Luke; <scripRef
passage = "1 Cor. 10:16, 17; 11:23 sqq.">1 Cor. 10:16, 17; 11:23 sqq.</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "John 6:47–58,
63">John 6:47–58, 63</scripRef>.
D. Waterland (Episcopal., d. 1740): A Review of the Doctrine
of the Eucharist, a new edition, 1868 (Works, vols. IV. and V.).
J. Döllinger: Die Lehre von der Eucharistie in den drei ersten
Jahrhunderten. Mainz, 1826.
(Rom. Cath.)
Ebrard: Das Dogma vom
heil. Abendmahl u. seine Geschichte. Frankf. a. M., 1845, 2 vols., vol. I., pp. 1–231. (Reformed.)
J. W. Nevin: The Mystical Presence. A
Vindication of the Reformed or Calvinistic soctrine of the Holy Eucharist. Philadelphia,
1846, pp. 199–256. (Reformed.)
Kahnis: Die Lehre vom
heil. Abendmahl. Leipz., 1851.
(Lutheran.)
Robert
Wilberforce: The Doctrine of the
Holy Eucharist. London, 1853. (Anglican, or rather Tractarian or
Romanizing.)
L. Imm. Ruckert: Das Abendmahl. Sein Wesen und seine Geschichte in der
alten Kirche. Leipz., 1856.
(Rationalistic.)
E. B. Pusey: The Doctrine of the Real Presence,
as contained in the Fathers, from St. John to the Fourth General Council.
Oxford, 1855. (Anglo-Catholic.)
Philip
Freeman: The Principles of Divine
Service. London, 1855–1862, in two parts. (Anglican, contains much
historical investigation on the subject of eucharistic worship in the ancient
Catholic church.)
Thos.
S. L. Vogan: The True Doctrine of
the Eucharist. London, 1871.
John
Harrison: An Answer to Dr.
Pusey’s Challenge respecting the Doctrine of the Real Presence. London,
1871, 2 vols. (Anglican, Low Church. Includes the doctrine of the Scripture and
the first eight centuries.)
Dean
Stanley: Christian Institutions,
London and New York, 1881, chs. IV., V., and VI. (He adopts the Zwinglian view,
and says of the Marburg Conference of 1529: "Everything which could be
said on behalf of the dogmatic, coarse, literal interpretation of the
institution was urged with the utmost vigor of word and gesture by the stubborn
Saxon. Everything which could be said on behalf of the rational, refined,
spiritual construction was urged with a union of the utmost acuteness and
gentleness by the sober-minded Swiss.")
L. Gude (Danish Lutheran): Den hellige Nadvere. Copenhagen, 1887, 2 vols. Exegetical and
historical. Reviewed in Luthardt’s "Theol. Literaturblatt.," 1889, Nos.
14 sqq.
The sacrament of the holy
Supper was instituted by Christ under the most solemn circumstances, when he
was about to offer himself a sacrifice for the salvation of the world. It is
the feast of the thankful remembrance and appropriation of his atoning death,
and of the living union of believers with him, and their communion among
themselves. As the Passover kept in lively remembrance the miraculous
deliverance from the land of bondage, and at the same time pointed forward to
the Lamb of God; so the eucharist represents, seals, and applies the now
accomplished redemption from sin and death until the end of time. Here the
deepest mystery of Christianity is embodied ever anew, and the story of the
cross reproduced before us. Here the miraculous feeding of the five thousand is
spiritually perpetuated. Here Christ, who sits at the right hand of God, and is
yet truly present in his church to the end of the world, gives his own body and
blood, sacrificed for us, that is, his very self, his life and the virtue of
his atoning death, as spiritual food, as the true bread from heaven, to all
who, with due self-examination, come hungering and thirsting to the heavenly
feast. The communion has therefore been always regarded as the inmost sanctuary
of Christian worship.
In the apostolic period
the eucharist was celebrated daily in connection with a simple meal of
brotherly love (agape), in which the Christians, in communion with their
common Redeemer, forgot all distinctions of rank, wealth, and culture, and felt
themselves to be members of one family of God. But this childlike exhibition of
brotherly unity became more and more difficult as the church increased, and led
to all sorts of abuses, such as we find rebuked in the Corinthians by Paul. The
lovefeasts, therefore, which indeed were no more enjoined by law than the
community of goods at Jerusalem, were gradually severed from the eucharist, and
in the course of the second and third centuries gradually disappeared.
The apostle requires the
Christians682 to prepare themselves for the Lord’s Supper by
self-examination, or earnest inquiry whether they have repentance and faith,
without which they cannot receive the blessing from the sacrament, but rather
provoke judgment from God. This caution gave rise to the appropriate custom of
holding special preparatory exercises for the holy communion.
In the course of time
this holy feast of love has become the subject of bitter controversy, like the
sacrament of baptism and even the Person of Christ himself. Three conflicting
theories—transubstantiation, consubstantiation, and spiritual presence of
Christ-have been deduced from as many interpretations of the simple words of
institution ("This is my body," etc.), which could hardly have been
misunderstood by the apostles in the personal presence of their Lord, and in
remembrance of his warning against carnal misconception of his discourse on the
eating of his flesh.683 The eucharistic controversies in the
middle ages and during the sixteenth century are among the most unedifying and
barren in the history of Christianity. And yet they cannot have been in vain.
The different theories represent elements of truth which have become obscured
or perverted by scholastic subtleties, but may be purified and combined. The
Lord’s Supper is: (1) a commemorative ordinance, a memorial of Christ’s atoning
sacrifice on the cross; (2) a feast of living union of believers with the
Saviour, whereby they truly, that is spiritually and by faith, receive Christ,
with all his benefits, and are nourished with his life unto life eternal; (3) a
communion of believers with one another as members of the same mystical body of
Christ; (4) a eucharist or thankoffering of our persons and services to Christ,
who died for us that we might live for him.
Fortunately, the blessing
of the holy communion does not depend upon the scholastic interpretation and
understanding of the words of institution, but upon the promise of the Lord and
upon childlike faith in him. And therefore, even now, Christians of different
denominations and holding different opinions can unite around the table of
their common Lord and Saviour, and feel one with him and in him.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="56" title="Sacred Places">
§ 56. Sacred Places.
Although, as the
omnipresent Spirit, God may be worshipped in all places of the universe, which
is his temple,684 yet our finite, sensuous nature, and the need of
united devotion, require special localities or sanctuaries consecrated to his
worship. The first Christians, after the example of the Lord, frequented the
temple at Jerusalem and the synagogues, so long as their relation to the Mosaic
economy allowed. But besides this, they assembled also from the first in
private houses, especially for the communion and the love feast. The church
itself was founded, on the day of Pentecost, in the upper room of an humble
dwelling.
The prominent members
and first converts, as Mary, the mother of John Mark in Jerusalem, Cornelius in
Caesarea, Lydia in Philippi, Jason in Thessalonica, Justus in Corinth,
Priscilla in Ephesus, Philemon in Colosse, gladly opened their houses for
social worship. In larger cities, as in Rome, the Christian community divided
itself into several such assemblies at private houses,685 which, however, are always addressed in the
epistles as a unit.
That the Christians in
the apostolic age erected special houses of worship is out of the question,
even on account of their persecution by Jews and Gentiles, to say nothing of
their general poverty; and the transition of a whole synagogue to the new faith
was no doubt very rare. As the Saviour of the world was born in a stable, and
ascended to heaven from a mountain, so his apostles and their successors down
to the third century, preached in the streets, the markets, on mountains, in
ships, sepulchres, eaves, and deserts, and in the homes of their converts. But
how many thousands of costly churches and chapels have since been built and are
constantly being built in all parts of the world to the honor of the crucified
Redeemer, who in the days of his humiliation had no place of his own to rest
his head!686
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="57" title="Sacred Times—The Lord’s
Day">
§ 57. Sacred Times—The Lord’s Day.
Literature.
George
Holden: The Christian Sabbath.
London, 1825. (See ch. V.)
W. Henstenberg: The Lord’s Day. Transl. from the German
by James Martin, London, 1853. (Purely exegetical; defends the continental
view, but advocates a better practical observance.)
John
T. Baylee: History of the Sabbath.
London, 1857. (See chs. X. XIII.)
James
Aug. Hessey: Sunday: Its Origin,
History, and Present Obligation. Bampton Lectures, preached before the
University of Oxford, London, 1860. (Defends the Dominican and moderate
Anglican, as distinct both from the Continental latitudinarian, and from the
Puritanic Sabbatarian, view of Sunday, with proofs from the church fathers.)
James
Gilfillan: The Sabbath viewed in
the Light of Reason, Revelation, and History, with Sketches of its Literature.
Edinb. 1861, republished and widely circulated by the Am. Tract Society and the
"New York Sabbath Committee," New York, 1862. (The fullest and ablest
defence of the Puritan and Scotch Presbyterian theory of the Christian Sabbath,
especially in its practical aspects.)
Robert
Cox (F.S.A.): Sabbath Laws and
Sabbath Duties. Edinb. 1853. By the same: The Literature of the Sabbath
Question. Edinb. 1865, 2 vols. (Historical, literary, and liberal.)
Th.
Zahn: Geschichte des Sonntags in
der alten Kirche. Hannover,
1878.
There is a very large
Sabbath literature in the English language, of a popular and practical
character. For the Anglo-American theory and history of the Christian Sabbath,
compare the author’s essay, The Anglo-American Sabbath, New York, 1863 (in
English and German), the publications of the New York Sabbath Committee from
1857–1886, the Sabbath Essays, ed. by Will. C. Wood, Boston
(Congreg. Publ. Soc.), 1879; and A. E. Waffle:
The Lord’s Day, Philad. 1886.
As every place, so is every
day and hour alike sacred to God, who fills all space and all time, and can be
worshipped everywhere and always. But, from the necessary limitations of our
earthly life, as well as from the nature of social and public worship, springs
the use of sacred seasons. The apostolic church followed in general the Jewish
usage, but purged it from superstition and filled it with the spirit of faith
and freedom.
1. Accordingly, the Jewish
Hours of daily prayer,
particularly in the morning and evening, were observed as a matter of habit,
besides the strictly private devotions which are bound to no time.
2. The Lord’s Day took the place of the Jewish
Sabbath as the weekly day of public worship. The substance remained, the
form was changed. The institution of a periodical weekly day of rest for the
body and the soul is rooted in our physical and moral nature, and is as old as
man, dating, like marriage, from paradise.687 This is implied in the profound saying
of our Lord: "The Sabbath is made for man."
It is incorporated in
the Decalogue, the moral law, which Christ did not come to destroy, but to
fulfil, and which cannot be robbed of one commandment without injury to all the
rest.
At the same time the
Jewish Sabbath was hedged around by many national and ceremonial restrictions,
which were not intended to be permanent, but were gradually made so prominent
as to overshadow its great moral aim, and to make man subservient to the
sabbath instead of the sabbath to man. After the exile and in the hands of the
Pharisees it became a legal bondage rather than a privilege and benediction.
Christ as the Lord of the Sabbath opposed this mechanical ceremonialism and
restored the true spirit and benevolent aim of the institution.688
When the slavish, superstitious, and self-righteous sabbatarianism of
the Pharisees crept into the Galatian churches and was made a condition of
justification, Paul rebuked it as a relapse into Judaism.689
The day was transferred
from the seventh to the first day of the week, not on the ground of a
particular command, but by the free spirit of the gospel and by the power of
certain great facts which he at the foundation of the Christian church. It was
on that day that Christ rose from the dead; that he appeared to Mary, the
disciples of Emmaus, and the assembled apostles; that he poured out his Spirit
and founded the church;690
and that he revealed to his beloved disciple the mysteries of the future.
Hence, the first day was already in the apostolic age honorably designated as
"the Lord’s Day." On that day Paul met with the disciples at Troas
and preached till midnight. On that day he ordered the Galatian and Corinthian
Christians to make, no doubt in connection with divine service, their weekly
contributions to charitable objects according to their ability. It appears,
therefore, from the New Testament itself, that Sunday was observed as a day of
worship, and in special commemoration of the Resurrection, whereby the work of
redemption was finished.691
The universal and
uncontradicted Sunday observance in the second century can only be explained by
the fact that it had its roots in apostolic practice. Such observance is the
more to be appreciated as it had no support in civil legislation before the age
of Constantine, and must have been connected with many inconveniences,
considering the lowly social condition of the majority of Christians and their
dependence upon their heathen masters and employers. Sunday thus became, by an
easy and natural transformation, the Christian Sabbath or weekly day of rest,
at once answering the typical import of the Jewish Sabbath, and itself forming
in turn a type of the eternal rest of the people of God in the heavenly Canaan.692 In
the gospel dispensation the Sabbath is not a degradation, but an elevation, of
the week days to a higher plane, looking to the consecration of all time and
all work. It is not a legal ceremonial bondage, but rather a precious gift of
grace, a privilege, a holy rest in God in the midst of the unrest of the world,
a day of spiritual refreshing in communion with God and in the fellowship of
the saints, a foretaste and pledge of the never-ending Sabbath in heaven.
The due observance of
it, in which the churches of England, Scotland, and America, to their
incalculable advantage, excel the churches of the European continent, is a
wholesome school of discipline, a means of grace for the people, a safeguard of
public morality and religion, a bulwark against infidelity, and a source of
immeasurable blessing to the church, the state, and the family. Next to the
Church and the Bible, the Lord’s Day is the chief pillar of Christian society.
Besides the Christian
Sunday, the Jewish Christians observed their ancient Sabbath also, till
Jerusalem was destroyed. After that event, the Jewish habit continued only
among the Ebionites and Nazarenes.
As Sunday was devoted to
the commemoration of the Saviour’s resurrection, and observed as a day of
thanksgiving and joy, so, at least as early as the second century, if not
sooner, Friday came to be observed as a day of repentance, with prayer and
fasting, in commemoration of the sufferings and death of Christ.
3. Annual festivals. There is no injunction
for their observance, direct or indirect, in the apostolic writings, as there
is no basis for them in the Decalogue. But Christ observed them, and two of the
festivals, the Passover and Pentecost, admitted of an easy transformation
similar to that of the Jewish into the Christian Sabbath. From some hints in
the Epistles,693 viewed in the light of the universal and
uncontradicted practice of the church in the second century it may be inferred
that the annual celebration of the death and the resurrection of Christ, and of
the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, originated in the apostolic age. In truth,
Christ crucified, risen, and living in the church, was the one absorbing
thought of the early Christians; and as this thought expressed itself in the
weekly observance of Sunday, so it would also very naturally transform the two
great typical feasts of the Old Testament into the Christian Easter and
Whit-Sunday. The Paschal controversies of the second century related not to the
fact, but to the time of the Easter festival, and Polycarp of Smyrna and Anicet
of Rome traced their customs to an unimportant difference in the practice of
the apostles themselves.
Of other annual festivals,
the New Testament contains not the faintest trace. Christmas came in during the
fourth century by a natural development of the idea of a church year, as a sort
of chronological creed of the people. The festivals of Mary, the Apostles,
Saints, and Martyrs, followed gradually, as the worship of saints spread in the
Nicene and post-Nicene age, until almost every day was turned first into a holy
day and then into a holiday. As the saints overshadowed the Lord, the saints’
days overshadowed the Lord’s Day.
</div3><div2
type=”Chapter” n=”X” title=”Organization of the Apostolic Church”>
CHAPTER X.
ORGANIZATION OF THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH.
</div2><div3
type = "Section" n="58" title="Literature">
§ 58. Literature.
I. Sources.
The Acts represent the
first, the Pastoral Epistles the second stage of the apostolic church
polity. Baur (Die sogenannten
Pastoralbriefe des Ap. Paulus, 1835),
Holtzmann (Die Pastoralbriefe, 1880, pp. 190 sqq.), and others, who deny the
Pauline authorship of the Epistles to Timothy and Titus, date the organization
laid down there from the post-apostolic age, but it belongs to the period from a.d. 60–70. The Epistles to the Corinthians
(1 Cor. 12:28) and to the Ephesians (4:11), and the Apocalyptic
Epistles (Rev. 2 and 3) contain important hints on the church offices.
Comp. the Didache, and the Epp. of Clement and
Ignatius.
II. General Works.
Comp. in part the works
quoted in ch. IX. (especially Vitringa), and the respective sections in the
"Histories of the Apostolic Age" by Neander Thiersch (pp. 73, 150, 281), Lechler, Lange,
and Schaff, (Amer. ed, pp. 495–545).
III. Separate Works.
Episcopal and Presbyterian
writers during the seventeenth century, and more recently, have paid most
attention to this chapter, generally with a view of defending their theory of
church polity.
Richard
Hooker (called "the
Judicious," moderate Anglican, d. 1600): Ecclesiastical Polity, 1594,
and often since, best edition by Keble, 1836, in 4 vols. A standard work
for Episcopal churchmen,
Jos.
Bingham (Anglican, d. 1668): Origines
Ecclesiasticae; or, The Antiquities of the Christian Church, first
published 1710–22, in 10 vols. 8vo, and often since, Books; II.-IV. Still an
important work.
Thomas
Cartwright (the father of English
Presbyterianism, d. 1603). Directory o f Church Government anciently
contended for, written in 1583, published by authority of the Long
Parliament in 1644.
In the controversy during
the Long Parliament and the Westminster Assembly, Bishop Hall and Archbishop Ussher were the most
learned champions of episcopacy; while the five Smectymnians (so called
from their famous tract Smectymnuus, 1641, in reply to Hall), i.e., Stephen
Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew
Newcomen, and William Spurstow, were the most
prominent Presbyterians trying to "demonstrate the parity of bishops and
presbyters in Scripture, and the antiquity of ruling elders." See also
A Vindication of the Presbyterian Government and Ministry, London, 1650,
and Jus Divinum Ministerii Evangelici, or the Divine Right of the Gospel
Ministry, London, 1654, both published by the Provincial Assembly of
London. These books have only historical interest.
Samuel
Miller (Presbyterian d. 1850): Letters
concerning the Constitution and Order of the Christian Ministry, 2d ed.,
Philadelphia, 1830.
James
P. Wilson (Presbyterian): The Primitive
Government of Christian Churches. Philadelphia, 1833 (a learned and able
work).
Joh.
Adam Möhler (Rom. Cath., d. 1848): Die Einheit der
Kirche, oder das Princip des Katholicismus, dargestellt im Geiste der
Kirchenvater der drei ersten Jahrhunderte. Tübingen, 1825 (new ed. 1844). More important for the post-apostolic age.
Rich.
Rothe (d. 1866): Die Anfänge der
christlichen Kirche u. ihrer Verfassung, vol. I. Wittenb., 1837, pp. 141 sqq. A Protestant
counterpart of Möhler’s treatise, exceedingly able, learned, and acute, but
wrong on the question of church and state, and partly also on the origin of the
episcopate, which he traces back to the apostolic age.
F.
Chr. Baur: Ueber den Ursprung des
Episcopates in der christl. Kirche. Tübingen, 1838. Against Rothe.
William
Palmer (Anglo-Catholic): A
Treatise on the Church of Christ. London, 1838, 2 vols., 3d ed., 1841.
Amer. ed., with notes, by Bishop Whittingham, New York, 1841.
W. Löhe (Luth.): Die N. T. lichen Aemter u. ihr Verhältniss zur
Gemeinde. Nürnb. 1848. Also: Drei Bücher von der Kirche, 1845.
Fr.
Delitzsch (Luth.): Vier Bücher von der
Kirche. Leipz., 1847.
J. Köstlin (Luth.): Das Wesen der Kirche nach Lehre und Geschiche des N.
T., Gotha, 1854; 2d ed. 1872.
Samuel
Davidson (Independent): The
Ecclesiastical Polity of the New Testament. London, 1848; 2d ed. 1854.
Ralph
Wardlaw (Independent): Congregational
Independency, in contradistinction to Episcopacy and Presbyterianism, the
Church Polity of the New Testament. London, 1848.
Albert
Barnes (Presbyterian, d. 1870): Organization
and Government of the Apostolic Church. Philadelphia, 1855.
Charles
Hodge (Presbyterian, d. 1878) and
others: Essays on the Primitive Church Offices, reprinted from the
"Princeton Review," N. York, 1858. Also Ch. Hodge: Discussions in Church Polity. Selected from
the "Princeton Review," and arranged by W. Durant. New York,
1878.
Bishop Kaye (Episc.): Account of the
External Discipline and Government of the Church of Christ in the First Three
Centuries. London, 1855.
K. Lechler (Luth.): Die N. Testamentliche Lehre vom heil. Amte. Stuttgart, 1857.
Albrecht
Ritschl: Die Entstehung der
altkatholischen Kirche, 2d ed.,
thoroughly revised, Bonn, 1857 (605 pp.). Purely historical and critical.
James
Bannerman (Presbyterian): The
Church of Christ. A Treatise on the Nature, Powers, Ordinances, Discipline, and
Government of the Christian Church. Edinburgh, 1868, 2 vols.
John
J. McElhinney (Episc.): The
Doctrine of the Church. A Historical Monograph. Philadelphia, 1871. It
begins after the apostolic age, but has a useful list of works on the doctrine
of the Church from a.d. 100 to
1870.
G. A. Jacob (Low Church Episc.):
Ecclesiastical Polity of the New Testament: Study for the Present Crisis in the
Church of England. London, 1871; 5th Amer. ed., New York (Whittaker), 1879.
J. B. Lightfoot (Evangelical Broad Church
Episcop., Bishop of Durham, very learned, able, and fair): The Christian
Ministry. Excuraus to his Commentary on Philippians. London, 1868, 3d ed.
London, 1873, pp. 179–267; also separately printed in New York (without notes),
1879.
Charles
Wordsworth (High Church Episcop.,
Bishop of St. Andrews) The Outlines of the Christian Ministry. London,
1872.
Henry
Cotherill (Bishop of Edinburgh): The
Genesis of the Church. Edinburgh and London, 1872.
W. Beyschlag: Die christliche Gemeindeverfassung im Zeitalter des
N. Testaments (Crowned prize
essay). Harlem, 1876.
C. Weizsäcker: Die Versammlungen der ältesten Christengemeinden. In the
"Jahrbücher für Deutsche Theologie," Gotha, 1876, pp. 474–530. His
Apost. Zeitalter (1886), pp.
606–645.
Henry
M. Dexter (Congregationalist): Congregationalism.
4th ed. Boston, 1876.
E. Mellor: Priesthood in the Light of the New Testament. Lond.,
1876.
J. B. Paton: The Origin of the Priesthood
in the Christian Church. London, 1877.
H. Weingarten: Die Umwandlung der urspranglichen christl.
Gemeindeorganisation zur katholischen Kirche, in Sybel’s "Histor. Zeitschrift" for
1881, pp. 441–467.
Edwin
Hatch (Broad Church Episcop.): The
Organization of the Early Christian Churches. Bampton Lectures for 1880.
Oxford and Cambridge, 1881. Discusses the post-apostolic organization (Bishops,
Deacons, Presbyters, Clergy and Laity, Councils, etc.). A learned and
independent work, which endeavors to show that the development of the
organization of the church was gradual; that the elements of which it was
composed were already existing in human society; that the form was originally a
democracy and became by circumstances a monarchy; and that the Christian church
has shown its vitality and its divinity by readjusting its form in successive
ages. German translation by Ad. Harnack,
Giessen, 1883.
P. Stanley (Broad Church Episc., d. 1881): Christian
Institutions, London and New York, 1881. Ch. X. on the Clergy.
Ch.
Gore: The Ministry of the Church,
London, 1889 (Anglo-Catholic).
Articles on the
Christian Ministry by Sanday,
Harnack, Milligan, Gore, Simcox,
Salmon, and others, in "The Expositor," London, 1887 and 1888.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="59" title="The Christian Ministry,
and its Relation to the Christian Community">
<index
type = "globalSubject"
subject1 = "Church"
subject2 = "Christian
Ministry" />
§ 59. The Christian Ministry, and its Relation to the Christian Community.
Christianity exists not
merely as a power or principle in this world, but also in an institutional and
organized form which is intended to preserve and protect (not to obstruct) it.
Christ established a visible church with apostles, as authorized teachers and
rulers, and with two sacred rites, baptism and the holy communion, to be
observed to the end of the world.694
At the same time he laid
down no minute arrangements, but only the simple and necessary elements of an
organization, wisely leaving the details to be shaped by the growing and
changing wants of the church in different ages and countries. In this respect
Christianity, as a dispensation of the Spirit, differs widely from the Mosaic
theocracy, as a dispensation of the letter.
The ministerial office
was instituted by the Lord before his ascension, and solemnly inaugurated on
the first Christian Pentecost by the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, to be the
regular organ of the kingly power of Christ on earth in founding, maintaining,
and extending the church. It appears in the New Testament under different
names, descriptive of its various functions:—the "ministry of the word,"
"of the Spirit," "of righteousness," "of
reconciliation." It includes the preaching of the gospel, the
administration of the sacraments, and church discipline or the power of the
keys, the power to open and shut the gates of the kingdom of heaven, in other
words, to declare to the penitent the forgiveness of sins, and to the unworthy
excommunication in the name and by the authority of Christ. The ministers of
the gospel are, in an eminent sense, servants of God, and, as such, servants of
the churches in the noble spirit of self-denying love according to the example
of Christ, for the eternal salvation of the souls intrusted to their charge.
They are called—not exclusively, but emphatically—the light of the world, the
salt of the earth, fellow-workers with God, stewards of the mysteries of God,
ambassadors for Christ. And this unspeakable dignity brings with it
corresponding responsibility. Even a Paul, contemplating the glory of an
office, which is a savor of life unto life to believers and of death unto death
to the impenitent, exclaims: "Who is sufficient for these things?"695 and ascribes all his sufficiency and success to
the unmerited grace of God.
The internal call to the
sacred office and the moral qualification for it must come from the Holy
Spirit,696 and be recognized and ratified by the church
through her proper organs. The apostles were called, indeed, immediately by
Christ to the work of founding the church; but so soon as a community of
believers arose, the congregation took an active part also in all religious
affairs. The persons thus inwardly and outwardly designated by the voice of
Christ and his church, were solemnly set apart and inducted into their
ministerial functions by the symbolical act of ordination; that is, by prayer
and the laying on of the hands of the apostles or their representatives,
conferring or authoritatively confirming and sealing the appropriate spiritual
gifts.697
Yet, high as the sacred
office is in its divine origin and import, it was separated by no impassable
chasm from the body of believers. The Jewish and later Catholic antithesis of
clergy and laity has no place in the apostolic age. The ministers, on the one
part, are as sinful and as dependent on redeeming grace as the members of the
congregation; and those members, on the other, share equally with the ministers
in the blessings of the gospel, enjoy equal freedom of access to the throne of
grace, and are called to the same direct communion with Christ, the head of the
whole body. The very mission of the church is, to reconcile all men with God,
and make them true followers of Christ. And though this glorious end can be
attained only through a long process of history, yet regeneration itself
contains the germ and the pledge of the final perfection. The New Testament,
looking at the principle of the now life and the high calling of the Christian,
styles all believers "brethren," "saints," a
"spiritual temple," a "peculiar people," a "holy and
royal priesthood." It is remarkable, that Peter in particular should
present the idea of the priesthood as the destiny of all, and apply the term clerus not to the ministerial order as distinct from the laity, but to the
community; thus regarding every Christian congregation as a spiritual tribe of
Levi, a peculiar people, holy to the Lord.698
The temporal
organization of the empirical church is to be a means (and not a hindrance, as
it often is) for the actualization of the ideal republic of God when all
Christians shall be prophets, priests, and kings, and fill all time and all
space with his praise.
Notes.
1. Bishop Lightfoot begins
his valuable discussion on the Christian ministry (p. 179) with this broad and
liberal statement: "The kingdom of Christ, not being a kingdom of this
world, is not limited by the restrictions which fetter other societies,
political or religious. It is in the fullest sense free, comprehensive,
universal. It displays this character, not only in the acceptance of all comers
who seek admission, irrespective of race or caste or sex, but also in the
instruction and treatment of those who are already its members. It has no
sacred days or seasons, no special sanctuaries, because every time and every
place alike are holy. Above all it has no sacerdotal system. It interposes no
sacrificial tribe or class between God and man, by whose intervention alone God
is reconciled and man forgiven. Each individual member holds personal communion
with the Divine Head. To Him immediately he is responsible, and from Him
directly he obtains pardon and draws strength."
But he immediately proceeds
to qualify this statement, and says that this is simply the ideal view—"a
holy season extending the whole year round, a temple confined only by the
limits of the habitable world, a priesthood co-extensive with the
race"—and that the Church of Christ can no more hold together without
officers, rules, and institutions than any other society of men. "As
appointed days and set places are indispensable to her efficiency, so also the
Church could not fulfil the purposes for which she exists without rulers and
teachers, without a ministry of reconciliation, in short, without an order of
men who may in some sense be designated a priesthood. In this respect the
ethics of Christianity present an analogy to the politics. Here also the ideal
conception and the actual realization are incommensurate and in a manner
contradictory."
2. Nearly all
denominations appeal for their church polity to the New Testament, with about
equal right and equal wrong: the Romanists to the primacy of Peter; the Irvingites
to the apostles and prophets and evangelists, and the miraculous gifts; the
Episcopalians to the bishops, the angels, and James of Jerusalem; the
Presbyterians to the presbyters and their identity with the bishops; the
Congregationalists to the independence of the local congregations and the
absence of centralization. The most that can be said is, that the apostolic age
contains fruitful germs for various ecclesiastical organizations subsequently
developed, but none of them can claim divine authority except for the gospel
ministry, which is common to all. Dean Stanley asserts that no existing church
can find any pattern or platform of its government in the first century, and
thus strongly contrasts the apostolic and post-apostolic organizations (l.c.):
"It is certain that the officers of the apostolical or of any subsequent
church, were not part of the original institution of the Founder of our
religion; that of Bishop, Presbyter, and Deacon; of Metropolitan, Patriarch,
and Pope, there is not the shadow of a trace in the four Gospels. It is certain
that they arose gradually out of the preexisting institutions either of the
Jewish synagogue, or of the Roman empire, or of the Greek municipalities, or
under the pressure of local emergencies. It is certain that throughout the
first century, and for the first years of the second, that is, through the
later chapters of the Acts, the Apostolical Epistles, and the writings of
Clement and Hermas. Bishop and Presbyter were convertible terms, and that the
body of men so-called were the rulers—so far as any permanent rulers existed—of
the early church. It is certain that, as the necessities of the time demanded,
first at Jerusalem, then in Asia Minor, the elevation of one Presbyter above
the rest by the almost universal law, which even in republics engenders a
monarchial element, the word ’Bishop’ gradually changed its meaning, and by the
middle of the second century became restricted to the chief Presbyter of the
locality. It is certain that in no instance were the apostles called ’Bishops’
in any other sense than they were equally called ’Presbyters’ and ’Deacons.’ It
is certain that in no instance before the beginning of the third century the
title or function of the Pagan or Jewish priesthood is applied to the Christian
pastors .... It is as sure that nothing like modern Episcopacy existed before
the close of the first century as it is that nothing like modern
Presbyterianism existed after the beginning of the second. That which was once
the Gordian knot of theologians has at least in this instance been untied, not
by the sword of persecution, but by the patient unravelment of
scholarships."
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="60" title="Apostles, Prophets,
Evangelists">
§ 60. Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists.
The ministry originally
coincided with the apostolate; as the church was at first identical with the
congregation of Jerusalem. No other officers are mentioned in the Gospels and
the first five chapters of the Acts. But when the believers began to number
thousands, the apostles could not possibly perform all the functions of
teaching, conducting worship, and administering discipline; they were obliged
to create new offices for the ordinary wants of the congregations, while they
devoted themselves to the general supervision and the further extension of the
gospel. Thus arose gradually, out of the needs of the Christian church, though
partly at the suggestion of the existing organization of the Jewish synagogue,
the various general and congregational offices in the church. As these all have
their common root in the apostolate, so they partake also, in different
degrees, of its divine origin, authority, privileges, and responsibilities.
We notice first, those
offices which were not limited to any one congregation, but extended over the
whole church, or at least over a great part of it. These are apostles,
prophets, and evangelists. Paul mentions them together in this order.699 But
the prophecy was a gift and function rather than an office, and the evangelists
were temporary officers charged with a particular mission under the direction
of the apostles. All three are usually regarded as extraordinary officers and
confined to the apostolic age; but from time to time God raises extraordinary
missionaries (as Patrick, Columba, Boniface, Ansgar), divines (as Augustin,
Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Luther, Melancthon, Calvin), and revival preachers (as
Bernard, Knox, Baxter, Wesley, Whitefield), who may well be called apostles,
prophets, and evangelists of their age and nation.700
1. Apostles. These were originally twelve
in number, answering to the twelve tribes of Israel. In place of the traitor,
Judas, Matthias was chosen by lot, between the ascension and Pentecost.701
After the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, Paul was added as the
thirteenth by the direct call of the exalted Saviour. He was the independent
apostle of the Gentiles, and afterward gathered several subordinate helpers
around him. Besides these there were apostolic men, like Barnabas, and James
the brother of the Lord, whose standing and influence were almost equal to that
of the proper apostles. The Twelve (excepting Matthias, who, however, was an
eye-witness of the resurrection) and Paul were called directly by Christ,
without human intervention, to be his representatives on earth, the inspired
organs of the Holy Spirit, the founders and pillars of the whole church. Their
office was universal, and their writings are to this day the unerring rule of
faith and practice for all Christendom. But they never exercised their divine
authority in arbitrary and despotic style. They always paid tender regard to
the rights, freedom, and dignity of the immortal souls under their care. In
every believer, even in a poor slave like Onesimus, they recognized a member of
the same body with themselves, a partaker of their redemption, a beloved
brother in Christ. Their government of the church was a labor of meekness and
love, of self-denial and unreserved devotion to the eternal welfare of the
people. Peter, the prince of the apostles, humbly calls himself a
"fellow-presbyter," and raises his prophetic warning against the
hierarchical spirit which so easily takes hold of church dignitaries and
alienates them from the people.
2. Prophets. These were inspired and
inspiring teachers and preachers of the mysteries of God. They appear to have
had special influence on the choice of officers, designating the persons who
were pointed out to them by the Spirit of God in their prayer and fasting, as
peculiarly fitted for missionary labor or any other service in the church. Of
the prophets the book of Acts names Agabus, Barnabas, Symeon, Lucius, Manaen,
and Saul of Tarsus, Judas and Silas.702 The gift of prophecy in the wider sense
dwelt in all the apostles, pre-eminently in John, the seer of the new covenant
and author of the Revelation. It was a function rather than an office.
3. Evangelists, itinerant preachers, delegates, and
fellow-laborers of the apostles—such men as Mark, Luke, Timothy, Titus, Silas,
Epaphras, Trophimus, and Apollos.703 They may be compared to modern missionaries. They were
apostolic commissioners for a special work. "It is the conception of a
later age which represents Timothy as bishop of Ephesus, and Titus as bishop of
Crete. St. Paul’s own language implies that the position which they held was
temporary. In both cases their term of office is drawing to a close when the
apostle writes."704
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="61" title="Presbyters or Bishops.
The Angels of the Seven Churches. James of Jerusalem">
§ 61. Presbyters or Bishops. The Angels of the Seven Churches. James of Jerusalem.
We proceed to the
officers of local congregations who were charged with carrying forward in
particular places the work begun by the apostles and their delegates. These
were of two kinds, Presbyters or Bishops, and Deacons or Helpers. They
multiplied in proportion as Christianity extended, while the number of the
apostles diminished by death, and could, in the nature of the case, not be
filled up by witnesses of the life and resurrection of Christ. The
extraordinary officers were necessary for the founding and being of the church,
the ordinary officers for its preservation and well-being.
The terms Presbyter (or Elder)705 and Bishop (or Overseer, Superintendent)706 denote in the New Testament one and the same
office, with this difference only, that the first is borrowed from the
Synagogue, the second from the Greek communities; and that the one signifies
the dignity, the other the duty.707
1. The identity
of these officers is very evident from the following facts:
a. They appear always as a plurality or as a
college in one and the same congregation, even in smaller cities) as Philippi.708
b. The same officers of the church of Ephesus are
alternately called presbyters709
and bishops.
c. Paul sends greetings to the "bishops"
and "deacons" of Philippi, but omits the presbyters because they were
included in the first term; as also the plural indicates.710
d. In the Pastoral Epistles, where Paul intends to
give the qualifications for all church officers, he again mentions only two,
bishops and deacons, but uses the term presbyter afterwards for bishop.711
Peter urges the
"presbyters" to "tend the flock of God," and to
"fulfil the office of bishops" with disinterested devotion and
without "lording it over the charge allotted to them."712
e. The interchange of terms continued in use to the
close of the first century, as is evident from the Epistle of Clement of Rome
(about 95), and the Didache, and still lingered towards the close of the
second.713
With the beginning of
the second century, from Ignatius onward, the two terms are distinguished and
designate two offices; the bishop being regarded first as the head of a
congregation surrounded by a council of presbyters, and afterwards as the head
of a diocese and successor of the apostles. The episcopate grew out of the
presidency of the presbytery, or, as Bishop Lightfoot well expresses it:
"The episcopate was formed, not out of the apostolic order by
localization, but out of the presbyteral by elevation; and the title, which
originally was common to all, came at length to be appropriated to the chief
among them."714 Nevertheless, a recollection of the
original identity was preserved by the best biblical scholars among the
fathers, such as Jerome (who taught that the episcopate rose from the
presbyterate as a safeguard against schism), Chrysostom, and Theodoret.715
The reason why the title
bishop (and not presbyter) was given afterwards to the superior officer, may be
explained from the fact that it signified, according to monumental inscriptions
recently discovered, financial officers of the temples, and that the bishops
had the charge of all the funds of the churches, which were largely charitable
institutions for the support of widows and orphans, strangers and travellers,
aged and infirm people in an age of extreme riches and extreme poverty.716
2. The origin of
the presbytero-episcopal office is not recorded in the New Testament, but when
it is first mentioned in the congregation at Jerusalem, a.d. 44, it appears already as a settled institution.717 As
every Jewish synagogue was ruled by elders, it was very natural that every
Jewish Christian congregation should at once adopt this form of government;
this may be the reason why the writer of the Acts finds it unnecessary to give
an account of the origin; while he reports the origin of the deaconate which
arose from a special emergency and had no precise analogy in the organization
of the synagogue. The Gentile churches followed the example, choosing the
already familiar term bishop. The first thing which Paul and Barnabas did after
preaching the gospel in Asia Minor was to organize churches by the appointment
of elders.718
3. The office of the
presbyter-bishops was to teach and to rule the particular congregation
committed to their charge. They were the regular "pastors and
teachers."719 To them belonged the direction of
public worship, the administration of discipline, the care of souls, and the
management of church property. They were usually chosen from the first
converts, and appointed by the apostles or their delegates, with the approval
of the congregation, or by the congregation itself, which supported them by
voluntary contributions. They were solemnly introduced into their office by the
apostles or by their fellow presbyters through prayers and the laying on of
hands.720
The presbyters always
formed a college or corporation, a presbytery; as at Jerusalem, at Ephesus, at
Philippi, and at the ordination of Timothy.721 They no doubt maintained a relation of
fraternal equality. The New Testament gives us no information about the
division of labor among them, or the nature and term of a presidency. It is
quite probable that the members of the presbyteral college distributed the
various duties of their office among themselves according to their respective
talents, tastes, experience, and convenience. Possibly, too, the president,
whether temporary or permanent, was styled distinctively the bishop; and from
this the subsequent separation of the episcopate from the presbyterate may
easily have arisen. But so long as the general government of the church was in
the hands of the apostles and their delegates, the bishops were limited in
their jurisdiction either to one congregation or to a small circle of
congregations.
The distinction of
"teaching presbyters" or ministers proper, and "ruling
presbyters" or lay-elders, is a convenient arrangement of Reformed
churches, but can hardly claim apostolic sanction, since the one passage on
which it rests only speaks of two functions in the same office.722
Whatever may have been the distribution and rotation of duties, Paul
expressly mentions ability to teach among the regular requisites for the
episcopal or presbyteral office.723
4. The Angels of the Seven Churches in Asia
Minor must be regarded as identical with the presbyter-bishops or local
pastors. They represent the presiding presbyters, or the corps of regular
officers, as the responsible messengers of God to the congregation.724 At
the death of Paul and Peter, under Nero, the congregations were ruled by a
college of elders, and if the Apocalypse, as the majority of critical
commentators now hold, was written before the year 70, there was too little
time for a radical change of the organization from a republican to a
monarchical form. Even if we regard the "angels" as single persons,
they were evidently confined to a single church, and subject to St. John;
hence, not successors of the apostles, as the latter diocesan bishops claim to
be. The most that can be said is that the angels were congregational, as
distinct from diocesan bishops, and mark one step from the primitive presbyters
to the Ignatian bishops, who were likewise congregational officers, but in a
monarchical sense as the heads of the presbytery, bearing a patriarchal
relation to the congregation and being eminently responsible for its spiritual
condition.725
5. The nearest approach
to the idea of the ancient catholic episcopate may be found in the unique
position of James, the Brother of the Lord. Unlike the apostles, he confined
his labors to the mother church of Jerusalem. In the Jewish Christian
traditions of the second century he appears both as bishop and pope of the
church universal.726 But in fact he was only primus inter pares. In his last visit to Jerusalem, Paul was received
by the body of the presbyters, and to them he gave an account of his missionary
labors.727
Moreover, this authority of James, who was not an apostle, was
exceptional and due chiefly to his close relationship with the Lord, and his
personal sanctity, which won the respect even of the unconverted Jews.
The institution of episcopacy
proper cannot be traced to the apostolic age, so far as documentary evidence
goes, but is very apparent and well-nigh universal about the middle of the
second century. Its origin and growth will claim our attention in the next
period.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="62" title="Deacons and
Deaconesses">
§ 62. Deacons and Deaconesses.
Deacons,728
or helpers, appear first in the church of Jerusalem, seven in number. The
author of the Acts 6 gives us an account of the origin of this office, which is
mentioned before that of the presbyters. It had a precedent in the officers of
the synagogue who had charge of the collection and distribution of alms.729 It
was the first relief of the heavy burden that rested on the shoulders of the
apostles, who wished to devote themselves exclusively to prayer and the
ministry of the word. It was occasioned by a complaint of the Hellenistic
Christians against the Hebrew or Palestinian brethren, that their widows were
neglected in the daily distribution of food (and perhaps money). In the
exercise of a truly fraternal spirit the congregation elected seven Hellenists
instead of Hebrews, if we are to judge from their Greek names, although they
were not uncommon among the Jews in that age. After the popular election they
were ordained by the apostles.
The example of the
mother church was followed in all other congregations, though without
particular regard to the number. The church of Rome, however, perpetuated even
the number seven for several generations.730 In Philippi the deacons took their rank
after the presbyters, and are addressed with them in Paul’s Epistle.
The office of there
deacons, according to the narrative in Acts, was to minister at the table in
the daily love-feasts, and to attend to the wants of the poor and the sick. The
primitive churches were charitable societies, taking care of the widows and
orphans, dispensing hospitality to strangers, and relieving the needs of the
poor. The presbyters were the custodians, the deacons the collectors and
distributors, of the charitable funds. To this work a kind of pastoral care of
souls very naturally attached itself, since poverty and sickness afford the
best occasions and the most urgent demand for edifying instruction and
consolation. Hence, living faith and exemplary conduct were necessary
qualifications for the office of deacon.731
Two of the Jerusalem
deacons, Stephen and Philip, labored also as preachers and evangelists, but in
the exercise of a personal gift rather than of official duty.
In post-apostolic times,
when the bishop was raised above the presbyter and the presbyter became priest,
the deacon was regarded as Levite, and his primary function of care of the poor
was lost in the function of assisting the priest in the subordinate parts of
public worship and the administration of the sacraments. The diaconate became
the first of the three orders of the ministry and a stepping-stone to the
priesthood. At the same time the deacon, by his intimacy with the bishop as his
agent and messenger, acquired an advantage over the priest.
Deaconesses,732
or female helpers, had a similar charge of the poor and sick in the female
portion of the church. This office was the more needful on account of the rigid
separation of the sexes at that day, especially among the Greeks and Orientals.
It opened to pious women and virgins, and chiefly to widows, a most suitable
field for the regular official exercise of their peculiar gifts of self-denying
charity and devotion to the welfare of the church. Through it they could carry
the light and comfort of the gospel into the most private and delicate
relations of domestic life, without at all overstepping their natural sphere.
Paul mentions Phoebe as a deaconess of the church of Cenchreae, the port of
Corinth, and it is more than probable that Prisca (Priscilla), Mary, Tryphaena,
Tryphosa, and Persis, whom he commends for their labor in the Lord, served in
the same capacity at Rome.733
The deaconesses were usually
chosen from elderly widows. In the Eastern churches the office continued to the
end of the twelfth century.734
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="63" title="Church Discipline">
§ 63. Church Discipline.
Holiness, like unity and
catholicity or universality, is an essential mark of the Church of Christ, who
is himself the one, holy Saviour of all men; but it has never yet been
perfectly actualized in her membership on earth, and is subject to gradual
growth with many obstructions and lapses. The church militant, as a body, like
every individual Christian, has to pass through a long process of
sanctification, which cannot be complete till the second coining of the Lord.
Even the apostles, far
as they tower above ordinary Christians, and infallible as they are in giving
all the instruction necessary to salvation, never during their earthly life
claimed sinless perfection of character, but felt themselves oppressed with
manifold infirmities, and in constant need of forgiveness and purification.
Still less can we expect
perfect moral purity in their churches. In fact, all the Epistles of the New
Testament contain exhortations to progress in virtue and piety, warnings
against unfaithfulness and apostasy, and reproofs respecting corrupt practices
among the believers. The old leaven of Judaism and heathenism could not be
purged away at once, and to many of the blackest sins the converts were for the
first time fully exposed after their regeneration by water and the Spirit. In
the churches of Galatia many fell back from grace and from the freedom of the
gospel to the legal bondage of Judaism and the "rudiments of the
world." In the church of Corinth, Paul had to rebuke the carnal spirit of
sect, the morbid desire for wisdom, participation in the idolatrous feasts of
the heathen, the tendency to uncleanness, and a scandalous profanation of the
holy Supper or the love-feasts connected with it. Most of the churches of Asia
Minor, according to the Epistles of Paul and the Apocalypse, were so infected
with theoretical errors or practical abuses, as to call for the earnest
warnings and reproofs of the Holy Spirit through the apostles.735
These facts show how
needful discipline is, both for the church herself and for the offenders. For
the church it is a process of self-purification, and the assertion of the
holiness and moral dignity which essentially belong to her. To the offender it
is at once a merited punishment and a means of repentance and reform. For the
ultimate end of the agency of Christ and his church is the salvation of souls;
and Paul styles the severest form of church discipline the delivering of the
backslider "to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may
be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus."736
The means of discipline
are of various degrees of severity; first, private admonition, then public
correction, and, finally, when these prove fruitless, excommunication, or
temporary exclusion from all the means of grace and from Christian intercourse.737
Upon sincere repentance, the fallen one is restored to the communion of
the church. The act of discipline is that of the whole congregation in the name
of Christ; and Paul himself, though personally absent, excommunicated the
fornicator at Corinth with the concurrence of the congregation, and as being,
in spirit united with it. In one of the only two passages where our Lord uses
the term ecclesia, he speaks of it as a court which, like the
Jewish synagogue, has authority to decide disputes and to exercise discipline.738 In
the synagogue, the college of presbyters formed the local court for judicial as
well as administrative purposes, but acted in the name of the whole
congregation.
The two severest cases of
discipline in the apostolic church were the fearful punishment of Ananias and
Sapphira by Peter for falsehood and hypocrisy in the church of Jerusalem in the
days of her first love,739 and the excommunication of a member of the Corinthian
congregation by Paul for adultery and incest.740 The latter case affords also an instance of restoration.741
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="64" title="The Council at
Jerusalem">
§ 64. The Council at Jerusalem.
(Comp. § 34, pp. 835 sqq. and 346 sq.)
The most complete outward
representation of the apostolic church as a teaching and legislative body was
the council convened at Jerusalem in the year 50, to decide as to the authority
of the law of Moses, and adjust the difference between Jewish and Gentile
Christianity.742
We notice it here simply
in its connection with the organization of the church.
It consisted not of the
apostles alone, but of apostles, elders, and brethren. We know that Peter,
Paul, John, Barnabas, and Titus were present, perhaps all the other apostles.
James—not one of the Twelve—presided as the local bishop, and proposed the
compromise which was adopted. The transactions were public, before the
congregation; the brethren took part in the deliberations; there was a sharp
discussion, but the spirit of love prevailed over the pride of opinion; the
apostles passed and framed the decree not without, but with the elders and with
the whole church and sent the circular letter not in their own name only, but
also in the name of "the brother elders" or "elder
brethren" to "the brethren" of the congregations disturbed by
the question of circumcision.743
All of which plainly
proves the right of Christian people to take part in some way in the government
of the church, as they do in the acts of worship. The spirit and practice of
the apostles favored a certain kind of popular self-government, and the
harmonious, fraternal co-operation of the different elements of the church. It
countenanced no abstract distinction of clergy and laity. All believers are
called to the prophetic, priestly, and kingly offices in Christ. The bearers of
authority and discipline should therefore never forget that their great work is
to train the governed to freedom and independence, and by the various spiritual
offices to build them up unto the unity of faith and knowledge, and to the
perfect manhood of Christ.
The Greek and Roman
churches gradually departed from the apostolic polity and excluded not only the
laity, but also the lower clergy from all participation in the legislative
councils.
The conference of
Jerusalem, though not a binding precedent, is a significant example, giving the
apostolic sanction to the synodical form of government, in which all classes of
the Christian community are represented in the management of public affairs and
in settling controversies respecting faith and discipline. The decree which it
passed and the pastoral letter which it sent, are the first in the long line of
decrees and canons and encyclicals which issued from ecclesiastical
authorities. But it is significant that this first decree, though adopted
undoubtedly under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and wisely adapted to the
times and circumstances of the mixed churches of Jewish and Gentile converts,
was after all merely "a temporary expedient for a temporary
emergency," and cannot be quoted as a precedent for infallible decrees of
permanent force. The spirit of fraternal concession and harmony which dictated
the Jerusalem compromise, is more important than the letter of the decree
itself. The kingdom of Christ is not a dispensation of law, but of spirit and
of life.
Notes.
I. There is an
interesting difference of reading in <scripRef passage =
"Acts 15:23">Acts
15:23</scripRef> (see the critical editions), but it does not
affect the composition of the conference, at least as far as the elders are
concerned. The textus receptus reads: <foreign
lang="el">oiJ ajpovstoloi, kai; oiJ presbuvteroi, kai; oiJ ajdelfoiv</foreign> (<foreign lang="he">a</foreign>’, H, L, P, Syr., etc.), "The apostles, and
the elders, and the brethren send greeting unto the brethren," etc.
So the E. V., except that it omits the article twice. The Revised V., following
the better attested reading: <foreign lang="el">oiJ
ajpovstoloi, kai; oiv presbuvteroi
ajdelfoiv</foreign>, renders in the text: "The apostles, and
the elders, brethren," and in the margin: "The apostles and the elder
brethren" (omitting the comma). But it may also be translated: "The
apostles, and brother-elders," considering that Peter addresses the elders
as <foreign
lang="el">sumpresbuvtero",</foreign> or "fellow-elder" (<scripRef
passage = "1 Pet. 5:1">1 Pet. 5:1</scripRef>). The textus rec. agrees better with <scripRef
passage = "Acts 15:22">Acts 15:22</scripRef>, and the omission of <foreign
lang="el">kai; oiJ</foreign> may possibly have arisen from a desire to
conform the text to the later practice which excluded the laity from synods,
but it is strongly supported by <foreign lang="he">a</foreign>Bellarmin and other Roman Catholic and certain
Episcopal divines get over the fact of the participation of the elders and
brethren in a legislative council by allowing the elders and brethren simply a
silent consent. So Becker (as quoted by Bishop Jacobson, in Speaker’s
Commentary on <scripRef passage = "Acts 15:22">Acts 15:22</scripRef>):, "The apostles join the elders and
brethren with themselves ... not to allow them equal authority, but merely to
express their concurrence." Very different is the view of Dr. Plumptre on
Acts 15:22: "The latter words [’with the whole church’] are important as
showing the position occupied by the laity. If they concurred in the latter, it
must have been submitted to their approval, and the right to approve involves
the power to reject and probably to modify." Bishop Cotterill (Genesis
of the Church, p. 379) expresses the same view. "It was
manifestly," he says, "a free council, and not a mere private meeting
of some office-bearers. It was in fact much what the Agora was in
archaic times, as described in Homer: in which the council of the nobles
governed the decisions, but the people were present and freely expressed their
opinion. And it must be remembered that the power of free speech in the
councils of the church is the true test of the character of these assemblies.
Free discussion, and arbitrary government, either by one person or by a
privileged class, have been found, in all ages and under all polities, to be
incompatible with each other. Again, not only were the multitude present, but
we are expressly told that the whole church concurred in the decision and in
the action taken upon it."
II. The authority of
the Jerusalem conference as a precedent for regular legislative councils and
synods has been often overrated. On the other hand, Canon
Farrar (Life
and Work of St. Paul, I. 431)
greatly underrates it when he says: "It is only by an unwarrantable
extension of terms that the meeting of the church of Jerusalem can be called a
’council,’ and the word connotes a totally different order of conceptions to
those that were prevalent at that early time. The so-called Council of
Jerusalem in no way resembled the General Councils of the Church, either in its
history, its constitution, or its object. It was not a convention of ordained
delegates, but a meeting of the entire church of Jerusalem to receive a
deputation from the church of Antioch. Even Paul and Barnabas seem to have had
no vote in the decision, though the votes of a promiscuous body could certainly
not be more enlightened than theirs, nor was their allegiance due in any way to
James. The church of Jerusalem might out of respect be consulted, but it had no
claim to superiority, no abstract prerogative to bind its decisions on the free
church of God. The ’decree’ of the ’council’ was little more than the wise
recommendation of a single synod, addressed to a particular district, and
possessing only a temporary validity. It was, in fact, a local concordat.
Little or no attention has been paid by the universal church to two of its
restrictions; a third, not many years after, was twice discussed and settled by
Paul, on the same general principles, but with a by no means identical
conclusion. The concession which it made to the Gentiles, in not insisting on
the necessity of circumcision, was equally treated as a dead letter by the
Judaizing party, and cost Paul the severest battle of his lifetime to maintain.
If this circular letter is to be regarded as a binding and final decree, and if
the meeting of a single church, not by delegates, but in the person of all its
members, is to be regarded as a council, never was the decision of a council
less appealed to, and never was a decree regarded as so entire inoperative
alike by those who repudiated the validity of its concessions, and by those who
discussed, as though they were still an open question, no less than three of
its four restrictions."
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="65" title="The Church and the
Kingdom of Christ">
§ 65. The Church and the Kingdom of Christ.
Thus the apostolic
church appears as a free, independent, and complete organism, a system of
supernatural, divine life in a human body. It contains in itself all the
offices and energies required for its purposes. It produces the supply of its
outward wants from its own free spirit. It is a self-supporting and
self-governing institution, within the state, but not of the state. Of a union
with the state, either in the way of hierarchical supremacy or of Erastian
subordination, the first three centuries afford no trace. The apostles honor
the civil authority as a divine institution for the protection of life and
property, for the reward of the good and the punishment of the evil-doer; and
they enjoin, even under the reign of a Claudius and a Nero, strict obedience to
it in all civil concerns; as, indeed, their heavenly Master himself submitted
in temporal matters to Herod and to Pilate, and rendered unto Caesar the things
that were Caesar’s. But in their spiritual calling they allowed nothing to be
prescribed or forbidden to them by the authorities of the state. Their
principle was, to "obey God rather than men." For this principle, for
their allegiance to the King of kings, they were always ready to suffer
imprisonment, insult, persecution, and death, but never to resort to carnal
weapons, or stir up rebellion and revolution. "The weapons of our
warfare," says Paul, "are not carnal, but mighty through God."
Martyrdom is a far nobler heroism than resistance with fire and sword, and
leads with greater certainty at last to a thorough and permanent victory.
The apostolic church, as
to its membership, was not free from impurities, the after-workings of Judaism
and heathenism and the natural man. But in virtue of an inherent authority it
exercised rigid discipline, and thus steadily asserted its dignity and
holiness. It was not perfect; but it earnestly strove after the perfection of
manhood in Christ, and longed and hoped for the reappearance of the Lord in
glory, to the exaltation of his people. It was as yet not actually universal,
but a little flock compared with the hostile hosts of the heathen and Jewish
world; yet it carried in itself the principle of true catholicity, the power
and pledge of its victory over all other religions, and its final prevalence
among all nations of the earth and in all classes of society.
Paul defines the church
as the body of Jesus Christ.744 He thus represents it as an organic
living system of various members, powers, and functions, and at the same time
as the abode of Christ and the organ of his redeeming and sanctifying influence
upon the world. Christ is, in one view, the ruling head, in another the
all-pervading soul, of this body. Christ without the church were a head without
a body, a fountain without a stream, a king without subjects, a captain without
soldiers, a bridegroom without a bride. The church without Christ were a body
without soul or spirit—a lifeless corpse. The church lives only as Christ lives
and moves and works in her. At every moment of her existence she is dependent
on him, as the body on the soul, or the branches on the vine. But on his part
he perpetually bestows upon her his heavenly gifts and supernatural powers,
continually reveals himself in her, and uses her as his organ for the spread of
his kingdom and the christianizing of the world, till all principalities and
powers shall yield free obedience to him, and adore him as the eternal Prophet,
Priest, and King of the regenerate race. This work must be a gradual process of
history. The idea of a body, and of all organic life, includes that of
development, of expansion and consolidation. And hence the same Paul speaks
also of the growth and edification of the body of Christ, "till we all
attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God,
unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of
Christ."745
This sublime idea of the
church, as developed in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, and especially in
the Epistle to the Ephesians, when Paul was a prisoner chained to a heathen
soldier, soars high above the actual condition of the little flocks of
peasants, freedmen, slaves, and lowly, uncultured people that composed the
apostolic congregations. It has no parallel in the social ideals of ancient
philosophers and statesmen. It can only be traced to divine inspiration.
We must not confound
this lofty conception of the church as the body of Christ with any particular
ecclesiastical organization, which at best is only a part of the whole, and an
imperfect approach to the ideal. Nor must we identify it with the still higher
idea of the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven. A vast amount of
presumption, bigotry, and intolerance has grown out of such confusion. It is
remarkable that Christ speaks only once of the church in the organic or
universal sense.746 But be very often speaks of the
kingdom, and nearly all his parables illustrate this grand idea. The two
conceptions are closely related, yet distinct. In many passages we could not
possibly substitute the one for the other without manifest impropriety.747 The
church is external, visible, manifold, temporal; the kingdom of heaven is
internal, spiritual, one, and everlasting. The kingdom is older and more
comprehensive; it embraces all the true children of God on earth and in heaven,
before Christ and after Christ, inside and outside of the churches and sects.
The historical church with its various ramifications is a paedagogic
institution or training-school for the kingdom of heaven, and will pass away as
to its outward form when its mission is fulfilled. The kingdom has come in
Christ, is continually coming, and will finally come in its full grown strength
and beauty when the King will visibly appear in his glory.
The coming of this kingdom in
and through the visible churches, with varying conflicts and victories, is the
proper object of church history. It is a slow, but sure and steady progress,
with many obstructions, delays, circuitous turns and windings, but constant
manifestations of the presence of him who sits at the helm of the ship and
directs it through rain, storm, and sunshine to the harbor of the other and
better world.
</div3><div2
type=”Chapter” n=”XI” title=”Theology of the Apostolic Church”>
CHAPTER XI.
THEOLOGY OF THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH.
</div2><div3
type = "Section" n="66" title="Literature">
§ 66. Literature.
I. Works on the Theology
of the whole New Testament.
August
Neander (d. 1850): Geschichte der
Pflanzung und Leitung der christl. Kirche durch die Apostel. Hamburg, 1832; 4th
ed., 1847, 2 vols. (in the second vol.); Engl. transl. by J. A. Ryland,
Edinb., 1842; revised and corrected by E. G. Robinson, New York, 1865. Neander and Schmid take the
lead in a historical analysis of the different types of Apostolic doctrine
(James, Peter, Paul, John).
Sam.
Lutz: Biblische Dogmatik,
herausgeg. von R. Rüetschi. Pforzheim,
1847.
Christ.
Friedr. Schmidt (an independent co-laborer of Neander, d. 1852):
Biblische
Theologie des Neuen Testaments. Ed.
by Weizsäcker. Stuttg., 1853, 2d ed. 1859. 2 vols. (The Engl. translation by G.
H. Venables, Edinb., 1870, is merely an abridgment.)
Edward
Reuss (Prof. in Strassburg): Histoire de la
théologie chétienne au siécle apostolique. Strassb., 1852. 3d ed.,
Paris, 1864. 2 vols. English translation from the third French ed. by Annie
Harwood. London, 1872. 2 vols.
Lutterbeck (a liberal Rom. Cath.): Die N. T. lichen
Lehrbegriffe, oder Untersuchungen über das Zeitalter der Religionswende. Mainz, 1852. 2 vols.
G. L. Hahn: Die Theologie des Neuen
Testaments. Bd. I. Leipzig, 1854.
H. Messner: Die Lehre der Apostel. Leipz., 1856. Follows in the path of Neander.
P. Chr. Baur (d. 1860): Vorlesungen über
neutestamentliche Theologie. Leipz.,
1864. Published after his death, by his son. Sums up the bold critical
speculations of the founder of the Tübingen School. The most important part is
the section on the system of Paul.
W. Beyschlag: Die Christologie des Neuen Testaments. Berlin, 1866 (260 pages).
Thomas
Dehaney Bernsard: Progress of
Doctrine in the New Testament. Lectures on the Bampton Foundation. London
and Boston, 1867.
H. Ewald: Die Lehre der Bibel von Gott oder die Theologie des
alten und neuen Bundes. Leipzig,
1871–76. 4 vols. (More important for the Old Test. than for the New.)
A. Immer: Theologie des neuen Testaments. Bern, 1877.
J. J. van Oosterzee: Biblische Theol. des N. T. (translated from the
Dutch). Elberf., 1868. Engl. transl. by Prof. G. E. Day. New Haven,
1870. Another English translation by Maurice J. Evans: The Theology of the
New Test., etc. London, 1870.
Bernh.
Weiss: Bibl. Theologie des Neuen
Testaments. Berlin, 1868; 4th ed., 1884. Engl.
translation, Edinb., 1883, 2 vols.
II. Separate works on the
doctrinal types of the several apostles, by W. G. Schmidt, and Beyerschlag, on James; by Mayerhoff, Weiss, and
Morich, on Peter; by Usteri, Pfleiderer, Holsten, Leathes, Irons, on Paul; by
Reihm, on Hebrews; by Frommann, Köstlin, Weiss, Leathes, on John—quoted
in previous sections.
III. The doctrinal
sections in the Histories of the Apostolic Church by Lange, Lechler, Thiersch, Stanley, and Schaff (pp. 614–679),
besides Neander already mentioned. Comp. also Charles A. Briggs: The
idea, history and importance of Biblical Theology, in the
"Presbyterian Review," New York, July, 1882.
IV. For the contrast
between the apostolic and the rabbinical theology, see Ferd. Weber (a missionary among the Jews, d. 1879): System der
altsynagogalen paltästinsichen Theologie, aus Targum, Midrasch, und Talmud
dargestellt. Nach des Verf. Tode herausgeg. von Frz. Delitzsch und G.
Schnedermann. Leipz., 1880.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="67" title="Unity of Apostolic
Teaching">
§ 67. Unity of Apostolic Teaching.
Christianity is
primarily not merely doctrine, but life, a new moral creation, a saving fact,
first personally embodied in Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word, the God-man, to
spread from him and embrace gradually the whole body of the race, and bring it
into saving fellowship with God. The same is true of Christianity as it exists
subjectively in single individuals. It begins not with religious views and
notions simply; though it includes these, at least in germ. It comes as a new
life; as regeneration, conversion, and sanctification; as a creative fact in
experience, taking up the whole man with all his faculties and capacities,
releasing him from the guilt and the power of sin, and reconciling him with
God, restoring harmony and peace to the soul, and at last glorifying the body
itself. Thus, the life of Christ is mirrored in his people, rising gradually,
through the use of the means of grace and the continued exercise of faith and love
to its maturity in the resurrection.
But the new life
necessarily contains the element of doctrine, or knowledge of the truth. Christ
calls himself "the way, the truth, and the life." He is himself the
personal revelation of saving truth, and of the normal relation of man to God.
Yet this element of doctrine itself appears in the New Testament, not in the
form of an abstract theory, the product of speculation, a scientific system of
ideas subject to logical and mathematical demonstration; but as the fresh,
immediate utterance of the supernatural, divine life, a life-giving power,
equally practical and theoretical, coming with divine authority to the heart,
the will, and the conscience, as well as to the mind, and irresistibly drawing
them to itself. The knowledge of God in Christ, as it meets us here, is at the
same time eternal life.748 We must not confound truth with dogma.
Truth is the divine substance, doctrine or dogma is the human apprehension and
statement of it; truth is a living and life-giving power, dogma a logical
formula; truth is infinite, unchanging, and eternal; dogma is finite,
changeable, and perfectible.
The Bible, therefore, is
not only, nor principally, a book for the learned, but a book of life for every
one, an epistle written by the Holy Spirit to mankind. In the words of Christ
and his apostles there breathes the highest and holiest spiritual power, the
vivifying breath of God, piercing bone and marrow, thrilling through the heart
and conscience, and quickening the dead. The life, the eternal life, which was
from the beginning with the Father, and is manifested to us, there comes upon
us, as it were, sensibly, now as the mighty tornado, now as the gentle zephyr;
now overwhelming and casting us down in the dust of humility and penitence, now
reviving and raising us to the joy of faith and peace; but always bringing
forth a new creature, like the word of power, which said at the first creation.
"Let there be light!"
Here verily is holy ground. Here is the door of eternity, the true
ladder to heaven, on which the angels of God are ascending and descending in
unbroken line. No number of systems of Christian faith and morals, therefore,
indispensable as they are to the scientific purposes of the church and of
theology, can ever fill the place of the Bible, whose words are spirit and
life.
When we say the New
Testament is no logically arranged system of doctrines and precepts, we are far
from meaning that it has no internal order and consistency. On the contrary, it
exhibits the most beautiful harmony, like the external creation, and like a
true work of art. It is the very task of the historian, and especially of the
theologian, to bring this hidden living order to view, and present it in
logical and scientific forms. For this work Paul, the only one of the apostles
who received a learned education, himself furnishes the first fruitful
suggestions, especially in his epistle to the Romans. This epistle follows a
logical arrangement even in form, and approaches as nearly to a scientific
treatise as it could consistently with the fervent, direct, practical, popular
spirit and style essential to the Holy Scriptures and inseparable from their
great mission for all Christendom.
The substance of all the
apostolic teaching is the witness of Christ, the gospel, and the free message
of that divine love and salvation, which appeared in the person of Christ, was
secured to mankind by his work, is gradually realized in the kingdom of God on
earth, and will be completed with the second coming of Christ in glory. This
salvation also comes in close connection with Judaism, as the fulfilment of the
law and the prophets, the substance of all the Old Testament types and shadows.
The several doctrines entering essentially into this apostolic preaching are
most beautifully and simply arranged and presented in what is called the
Apostles’ Creed, which, though not in its precise form, yet, as regards its
matter, certainly dates from the primitive age of Christianity. On all the
leading points, the person of Jesus as the promised Messiah, his holy life, his
atoning death, his triumphant resurrection and exaltation at the right hand of
God, and his second coming to judge the world, the establishment of the church
as a divine institution, the communion of believers, the word of God, and the
sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s supper, the work of the Holy Spirit, the
necessity of repentance and conversion, of regeneration and sanctification, the
final completion of salvation in the day of Jesus Christ, the resurrection of
the body, and the life everlasting—on all these points the apostles are
perfectly unanimous, so far as their writings have come down to us.
The apostles all drew
their doctrine in common from personal contact with the divine-human history of
the crucified and risen Saviour, and from the inward illumination of the Holy
Spirit, revealing the person and the work of Christ in them, and opening to
them the understanding of his words and acts. This divine enlightenment is
inspiration, governing not only the composition of the sacred writings, but
also the oral instructions of their authors; not merely an act, but a permanent
state. The apostles lived and moved continually in the element of truth. They
spoke, wrote, and acted from the spirit of truth; and this, not as passive
instruments, but as conscious and free organs. For the Holy Spirit does not
supersede the gifts and peculiarities of nature, which are ordained by God; it
sanctifies them to the service of his kingdom. Inspiration, however, is
concerned only with moral and religious truths, and the communication of what
is necessary to salvation. Incidental matters of geography, history,
archeology, and of mere personal interest, can be regarded as directed by
inspiration only so far as they really affect religious truth.
The revelation of the
body of Christian truth essential to salvation coincides in extent with the
received canon of the New Testament. There is indeed constant growth and development
in the Christian church, which progresses outwardly and inwardly in proportion
to the degree of its vitality and zeal, but it is a progress of apprehension
and appropriation by man, not of communication or revelation by God. We may
speak of a secondary inspiration of extraordinary men whom God raises
from time to time, but their writings must be measured by the only infallible
standard, the teaching of Christ and his apostles. Every true advance in
Christian knowledge and life is conditioned by a deeper descent into the mind
and spirit of Christ, who declared the whole counsel of God and the way of
salvation, first in person, and then through his apostles.
The New Testament is thus but
one book, the teaching of one mind, the mind of Christ. He gave to his
disciples the words of life which the Father gave him, and inspired them with
the spirit of truth to reveal his glory to them. Herein consists the unity and
harmony of the twenty-seven writings which constitute the New Testament, for
all emergencies and for perpetual use, until the written and printed word shall
be superseded by the reappearance of the personal Word, and the beatific vision
of saints in light.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="68" title="Different Types of
Apostolic Teaching">
§ 68. Different Types of Apostolic Teaching.
With all this harmony,
the Christian doctrine appears in the New Testament in different forms
according to the peculiar character, education, and sphere of the several
sacred writers. The truth of the gospel, in itself infinite, can adapt itself
to every class, to every temperament, every order of talent, and every habit of
thought. Like the light of the sun, it breaks into various colors according to
the nature of the bodies on which it falls; like the jewel, it emits a new
radiance at every turn.
Irenaeus speaks of a
fourfold "Gospel."749 In like manner we may distinguish a
fourfold "Apostle,"750
or four corresponding types of apostolic doctrine.751 The
Epistle of James corresponds to the Gospel of Matthew; the Epistles of Peter
and his addresses in the Acts to that of Mark; the Epistles of Paul to the
Gospel of Luke and his Acts; and the Epistles of John to the Gospel of the same
apostle.
This division, however,
both as regards the Gospels and the Epistles, is subordinate to a broader
difference between Jewish and Gentile Christianity, which runs through the
entire history of the apostolic period and affects even the doctrine, the
polity, the worship, and the practical life of the church. The difference rests
on the great religious division of the world, before and at the time of Christ,
and continued until a native Christian race took the place of the first
generation of converts. The Jews naturally took the Christian faith into
intimate association with the divinely revealed religion of the old covenant,
and adhered as far as possible to their sacred institutions and rites; while
the heathen converts, not having known the law of Moses, passed at once from
the state of nature to the state of grace. The former represented the
historical, traditional, conservative principle; the latter, the principle of
freedom, independence, and progress.
Accordingly we have two
classes of teachers: apostles of the Jews or of the circumcision, and apostles
of the Gentiles or of the uncircumcision. That this distinction extends farther
than the mere missionary field, and enters into all the doctrinal views and
practical life of the parties, we see from the accounts of the apostolic
council which was held for the express purpose of adjusting the difference
respecting the authority of the Mosaic law.
But the opposition was
only relative, though it caused collisions at times, and even temporary
alienation, as between Paul and Peter at Antioch.752 As
the two forms of Christianity had a common root in the full life of Christ, the
Saviour of both Gentiles and Jews, so they gradually grew together into the
unity of the catholic church. And as Peter represents the Jewish church, and
Paul the Gentile, so John, at the close of the apostolic age, embodies the
higher union of the two.
With this difference of
standpoint are connected subordinate differences, as of temperament, style,
method. James has been distinguished as the apostle of the law or of works;
Peter, as the apostle of hope; Paul, as the apostle of faith; and John, as the
apostle of love. To the first has been assigned the phlegmatic (?) temperament,
in its sanctified Christian state, to the second the sanguine, to the third the
choleric, and to the fourth the melancholic; a distribution, however, only
admissible in a very limited sense. The four gospels also present similar
differences; the first having close affinity to the position of James, the
second to that of Peter, the third to that of Paul, and the fourth representing
in its doctrinal element the spirit of John.
If we make the difference
between Jewish and Gentile Christianity the basis of classification, we may
reduce the books of the New Testament to three types of doctrine: the Jewish
Christian, the Gentile Christian, and the ideal or unionistic Christian. The
first is chiefly represented by Peter, the second by Paul, the third by John.
As to James, he must be ranked under the first type as the local head of the
Jerusalem wing of the conservative school, while Peter war, the oecumenical
head of the whole church of the circumcision.753
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="69" title="The Jewish Christian
Theology—I. James and the Gospel of Law">
§ 69. The Jewish Christian Theology—I. James and the Gospel of Law.
(Comp. § 27, and the Lit. given there.)
The Jewish Christian type
embraces the Epistles of James, Peter, and Jude, the Gospels of Matthew and
Mark, and to some extent the Revelation of John; for John is placed by Paul
among the "pillars" of the church of the circumcision, though in his
later writings he took an independent position above the distinction of Jew and
Gentile. In these books, originally designed mainly, though not exclusively,
for Jewish Christian readers, Christianity is exhibited in its unity with the
Old Testament, as the fulfilment of the same. They unfold the fundamental idea
of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:17), that Christ did not come to destroy
the law or the prophets, but to "fulfil." The Gospels, especially
that of Matthew, show historically that Jesus is the Messiah, the lawgiver, the
prophet, priest, and king of Israel.
On this historical basis
James and Peter build their practical exhortations, with this difference, that
the former shows chiefly the agreement of the gospel with the law, the latter
with the prophets.
James, the brother of the Lord, in keeping with his
life-long labors in Jerusalem, his speech at the Council, and the letter of the
Council—which he probably wrote himself—holds most closely to the Mosaic
religion, and represents the gospel itself as law, yet as the "perfect
law of liberty."754 Herein lies the difference as well as
the unity of the two dispensations. The "law" points to the harmony,
the qualifying "perfect" and "liberty" to the superiority
of Christianity, and intimates that Judaism was imperfect and a law of
bondage, from which Christ has set us free. Paul, on the contrary,
distinguishes the gospel as freedom from the law, as a system of slavery;755 but he re-establishes the law on the basis of
freedom, and sums up the whole Christian life in the fulfilment of the law of
love to God and to our neighbor; therein meeting James from the opposite
starting-point.756
James, the Christian
legalist, lays great stress on good works which the law requires, but he
demands works which are the fruit of faith in Him, whom he, as his servant,
reverently calls "the Lord of glory," and whose words as reported by
Matthew are the basis of his exhortations.757 Such faith, moreover, is the result of
it new birth, which he traces to "the will of God" through the agency
of "the word of truth," that is, the gospel.758 As
to the relation between faith and works and their connection with justification
at the tribunal of God, he seems to teach the doctrine of justification by
faith and works; while Paul teaches the doctrine of justification by faith
alone, to be followed by good works, as the necessary evidence of faith.
The two views as thus stated are embodied in the Roman Catholic and the
evangelical Protestant confessions, and form one of the chief topics of
controversy. But the contradiction between James and Paul is verbal rather than
logical and doctrinal, and admits of a reconciliation which lies in the
inseparable connection of a living faith and good works, or of justification
and sanctification, so that they supplement and confirm each other, the one
laying the true foundation in character, the other insisting on the practical
manifestation. James wrote probably long before he had seen any of Paul’s
Epistles, certainly with no view to refute his doctrine or even to guard it
against antinomian abuse; for this was quite unnecessary, as Paul did it
clearly enough himself, and it would have been quite useless for Jewish
Christian readers who were exposed to the danger of a barren legalism, but not
of a pseudo-Pauline liberalism and antinomianism. They cannot, indeed, be made
to say precisely the same thing, only using one or more of the three terms,
"to justify," "faith," "works" in different
senses; but they wrote from different standpoints and opposed different errors,
and thus presented two distinct aspects of the same truth. James says: Faith is
dead without works. Paul says: Works are dead without faith. The one insists on
a working faith, the other on faithful works. Both are right: James in
opposition to the dead Jewish orthodoxy, Paul in opposition to self-righteous
legalism. James does not demand works without faith, but works prompted by
faith;759 While Paul, on the other hand, likewise declares
a faith worthless which is without love, though it remove mountains,760 and would never have attributed a justifying
power to the mere belief in the existence of God, which James calls the
trembling faith of demons.761 But James mainly looks at the fruit,
Paul at the root; the one is concerned for the evidence, the other for the
principle; the one takes the practical and experimental view, and reasons from
the effect to the cause, the other goes deeper to the inmost springs of action,
but comes to the same result: a holy life of love and obedience as the
necessary evidence of true faith. And this, after all, is the ultimate standard
of judgment according to Paul as well as James.762
Paul puts the solution of the difficulty in one sentence: "faith
working through love." This is the Irenicon of contending apostles and
contending churches.763
The Epistle of James
stands at the head of the Catholic Epistles, so called, and represents the
first and lowest stage of Christian knowledge. It is doctrinally very meagre,
but eminently practical and popular. It enjoins a simple, earnest, and devout
style of piety that visits the orphans and widows, and keeps itself unspotted
from the world.764
The close connection
between the Epistle of James and the Gospel of Matthew arises naturally from
their common Jewish Christian and Palestinian origin.
Notes
I. James and Paul.. The apparent
contradiction in the doctrine of justification appears in <scripRef
passage = "James 2:14–26">James 2:14–26</scripRef>, as compared with <scripRef passage =
"Rom. 3:20 sqq.; 4:1 sqq.">Rom. 3:20 sqq.; 4:1 sqq.</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Gal. 2:16
sqq.">Gal. 2:16 sqq.</scripRef> Paul says (<scripRef passage =
"Rom. 3:28">Rom.
3:28</scripRef>): "Man is justified by faith apart from
works of law" (<foreign lang="el">pivstei
cwri;" e[rgwn novmou</foreign>), comp. <scripRef passage =
"Gal. 2:16">Gal.
2:16</scripRef> (<foreign lang="el">ouj
dikaiou'tai a[nqrwpo" ejz e[rgwn novmou eja;n mh; dia; pivstew"
Cristou' jIhsou'</foreign>), and appeals to the example of Abraham, who was
justified by faith before he was circumcised (<scripRef passage =
"Gen. 17:10">Gen.
17:10</scripRef>). <scripRef passage = "James
2:24">James 2:24</scripRef> says: "By works a man is justified, and not
only by faith" (<foreign lang="el">ejx
e[rgwn dikaiou'tai, a[nqrwpo" kai; oujk ejk pivstew'" movnon</foreign>), and appeals to the example of the same Abraham
who showed his true faith in God by offering up his son Isaac upon the altar (<scripRef
passage = "Gen. 22:9, 12">Gen. 22:9, 12</scripRef>). Luther makes the contradiction worse by
unnecessarily inserting the word <foreign lang="de">allein</foreign> (<foreign
lang="la">sola
fide</foreign>) in <scripRef passage =
"Rom. 3:28">Rom.
3:28</scripRef>, though not without precedent (see my note on
the passage in the Am. ed. of Lange on Romans, p. 136). The great Reformer
could not reconcile the two apostles, and rashly called the Epistle of James an
"epistle of straw" (<foreign lang="de">eine recht ströherne Epistel</foreign>, Pref.
to the New Test., 1524).
Baur, from a purely
critical point of view, comes to the same conclusion; he regards the Epistle of
James as a direct attack upon the very heart of the doctrine of Paul, and
treats all attempts at reconciliation as vain. (Vorles. über neutestam.
Theol., p. 277). So also Renan and Weiffenbach. Renan (St. Paul, ch.
10) asserts without proof that James organized a Jewish counter-mission to
undermine Paul. But in this case, James, as a sensible and practical man, ought
to have written to Gentile Christians, not to "the twelve tribes,"
who needed no warning against Paul and his doctrine. His Epistle represents
simply an earlier and lower form of Christianity ignorant of the higher, yet
preparatory to it, as the preaching of John the Baptist prepared the way for
that of Christ. It was written without any reference to Paul, probably before
the Council of Jerusalem and before the circumcision controversy, in the
earliest stage of the apostolic church as it is described in the first chapters
of the Acts, when the Christians were not yet clearly distinguished and finally
separated from the Jews. This view of the early origin of the Epistle is
maintained by some of the ablest historians and commentators, as Neander,
Schneckenburger, Theile, Thiersch, Beyschlag, Alford, Basset, Plumptre,
Stanley. Weiss also says very confidently (Bibl. Theol. 3d ed., p. 120):
"<foreign
lang="de">Der Brief gehört der vorpaulinischen Zeit an und
steht jedenfalls zeitlich wie inhaltlich dem ersten Brief Petri am nächsten</foreign>." He therefore treats both James and Peter
on their own merits, without regard to Paul’s teaching. Comp. his Einleitung
in d. N. T. (1886), p. 400.
II. James and Matthew. The correspondence
has often been fully pointed out by Theile and other commentators. James
contains more reminiscences of the words of Christ than any other Epistle,
especially from the Sermon on the Mount. Comp. <scripRef passage =
"James 1:2">James
1:2</scripRef> with <scripRef passage =
"Matt. 5:10–12">Matt.
5:10–12</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "James
1:4">James 1:4</scripRef> with <scripRef passage =
"Matt. 5:48">Matt.
5:48</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "James
1:17">James 1:17</scripRef> with <scripRef passage =
"Matt. 7:11">Matt.
7:11</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "James
1:20">James 1:20</scripRef> with <scripRef passage =
"Matt. 5:22">Matt.
5:22</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "James 1:22
sqq">James 1:22 sqq</scripRef>. with <scripRef passage =
"Matt. 7:21 sq.">Matt.
7:21 sq.</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "James
1:23">James 1:23</scripRef> with <scripRef passage =
"Matt. 7:26">Matt.
7:26</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "James
2:13">James 2:13</scripRef> with <scripRef passage =
"Matt. 6:14 sq.">Matt.
6:14 sq.</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "James
2:14">James 2:14</scripRef> with <scripRef passage =
"Matt. 7:21–23">Matt.
7:21–23</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "James
3:2">James 3:2</scripRef> with <scripRef passage =
"Matt. 12:36, 37">Matt. 12:36, 37</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "James 3:17,
18">James 3:17, 18</scripRef> with <scripRef passage =
"Matt. 5:9">Matt.
5:9</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "James
4:3">James 4:3</scripRef> with <scripRef passage =
"Matt. 7:7">Matt.
7:7</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "James
4:4">James 4:4</scripRef> with <scripRef passage =
"Matt. 6:24">Matt.
6:24</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "James 5:12">James 5:12</scripRef> with <scripRef passage =
"Matt. 5:34">Matt.
5:34</scripRef>. According to a notice in the pseudo-Athanasian
Synopsis, James "the Bishop of Jerusalem" translated the Gospel of
Matthew from the Aramaic into the Greek. But there are also parallelisms
between James and the first Epistle of Peter, and even between James and the
apocryphal books of Ecclesiasticus and the Wisdom of Solomon. See Plumptre, Com.
on James, pp. 32 sq.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="70" title="II. Peter and the
Gospel of Hope">
§ 70. II. Peter and the Gospel of Hope.
(Comp. the Lit. in §§ 25 and 26.)
Peter stands between James and Paul, and forms the
transition from the extreme conservatism of the one to the progressive
liberalism of the other. The germ of his doctrinal system is contained in his
great confession that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God.765 A
short creed indeed, with only one article, but a fundamental and
all-comprehensive article, the corner-stone of the Christian church. His
system, therefore, is Christological, and supplements the anthropological type
of James. His addresses in the Acts and his Epistles are full of the fresh
impressions which the personal intercourse with Christ made upon his noble,
enthusiastic, and impulsive nature. Christianity is the fulfilment of all the
Messianic prophecies; but it is at the same time itself a prophecy of the
glorious return of the Lord. This future glorious manifestation is so certain
that it is already anticipated here in blessed joy by a lively hope which
stimulates to a holy life of preparation for the end. Hence, Peter eminently
deserves to be called "the Apostle of hope."766
I. Peter began his
testimony with the announcement of the historical facts of the resurrection of
Jesus and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and represents these facts as the
divine seal of his Messiahship, according to the prophets of old, who bear
witness to him that through his name every one that believes shall receive
remission of sins. The same Jesus whom God raised from the dead and exalted to
his right hand as Lord and Saviour, will come again to judge his people and to
bring in seasons of refreshing from his presence and the apokatastasis or
restitution of all things to their normal and perfect state, thus completely
fulfilling the Messianic prophecies. There is no salvation out of the Lord
Jesus Christ. The condition of this salvation is the acknowledgment of his
Messiahship and the change of mind and conduct from the service of sin to
holiness.767
These views are so
simple, primitive, and appropriate that we cannot conceive how Peter could have
preached differently and more effectively in that early stage of Christianity.
We need not wonder at the conversion of three thousand souls in consequence of
his, pentecostal sermon. His knowledge gradually widened and deepened with the
expansion of Christianity and the conversion of Cornelius. A special revelation
enlightened him on the question of circumcision and brought him to the
conviction that "in every nation he that fears God and works
righteousness, is acceptable to him," and that Jews and Gentiles are saved
alike by the grace of Christ through faith, without the unbearable yoke of the
ceremonial law.768
II. The Epistles of
Peter represent this riper stage of knowledge. They agree substantially with
the teaching of Paul. The leading idea is the same as that presented in his
addresses in the Acts: Christ the fulfiller of the Messianic prophecies, and
the hope of the Christian. Peter’s christology is free of all speculative
elements, and simply derived from the impression of the historical and risen
Jesus. He emphasizes in the first Epistle, as in his earlier addresses, the
resurrection whereby God "begat us again unto a lively hope, unto an
inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in
heaven," when "the chief shepherd shall be manifested," and we
"shall receive the crown of glory." And in the second Epistle he
points forward to "new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness."769 He
thus connects the resurrection of Christ with the final consummation of which
it is the sure pledge. But, besides the resurrection, he brings out also the
atoning efficacy of the death of Christ almost as strongly and clearly as Paul.
Christ "suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he
might bring us to God;" he himself "bare our sins in his body upon
the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness;"
he redeemed us "with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and
without spot."770 Christ is to him the only Saviour, the
Lord, the Prince of life, the Judge of the world. He assigns him a majestic
position far above all other men, and brings him into the closest contact with
the eternal Jehovah, though in subordination to him. The doctrine of the
pre-existence seems to be intimated and implied, if not expressly stated, when
Christ is spoken of as being "foreknown before the foundation of the
world" and "manifested at the end of the time," and his Spirit
as dwelling in the prophets of old and pointing them to his future sufferings
and glory.771
III. Peter extends the
preaching, judging, and saving activity of Christ to the realm of the departed
spirits in Hades during the mysterious triduum between the crucifixion and the
resurrection.772 The
descent into Hades is also taught by Paul (Eph. 4:9, 10).
IV. With this theory
correspond the practical exhortations. Subjective Christianity is represented
as faith in the historical Christ and as a lively hope in his, glorious
reappearance, which should make the Christians rejoice even amidst trials and
persecution, after the example of their Lord and Saviour.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="71" title="The Gentile Christian
Theology. Paul and the Gospel of Faith">
§ 71. The Gentile Christian Theology. Paul and the Gospel of Faith.
(See the Lit. in § 29, pp. 280 sqq.)
The Gentile Christian type
of the gospel is embodied in the writings of Paul and Luke, and in the anonymous
Epistle to the Hebrews.
The sources of Paul’s
theology are his discourses in the Acts (especially the speech on the
Areopagus) and his thirteen Epistles, namely, the Epistles to the
Thessalonians—the earliest, but chiefly practical; the four great Epistles to
the Corinthians, Galatians, and Romans, which are the mature result of his
conflict with the Judaizing tendency; the four Epistles of the captivity; and
the Pastoral Epistles. These groups present as many phases of development of
his system and discuss different questions with appropriate variations of
style, but they are animated by the same spirit, and bear the marks of the same
profound and comprehensive genius.
Paul is the pioneer of
Christian theology. He alone among the apostles had received a learned
rabbinical education and was skilled in logical and dialectical argument. But
his logic is vitalized and set on fire. His theology springs from his heart as
well as from his brain; it is the result of his conversion, and all aglow with
the love of Christ; his scholasticism is warmed and deepened by mysticism, and
his mysticism is regulated and sobered by scholasticism; the religious and
moral elements, dogmatics, and ethics, are blended into a harmonious whole. Out
of the depths of his personal experience, and in conflict with the Judaizing
contraction and the Gnostic evaporation of the gospel be elaborated the fullest
scheme of Christian doctrine which we possess from apostolic pens. It is
essentially soteriological, or a system of the way of salvation. It goes far
beyond the teaching of James and Peter, and yet is only a consistent
development of the teaching of Jesus in the Gospels.773
The Central Idea.
Paul’s personal
experience embraced intense fanaticism for Judaism, and a more intense
enthusiasm for Christianity. It was first an unavailing struggle of legalism
towards human righteousness by works of the law, and then the apprehension of
divine righteousness by faith in Christ. This dualism is reflected in his
theology. The idea of righteousness or conformity to God’s holy will is the
connecting link between the Jewish Saul and the Christian Paul. Law and works,
was the motto of the self-righteous pupil of Moses; gospel and faith, the motto
of the humble disciple of Jesus. He is the emancipator of the Christian
consciousness from the oppressive bondage of legalism and bigotry, and the
champion of freedom and catholicity. Paul’s gospel is emphatically the gospel
of saving faith, the gospel of evangelical freedom, the gospel of universalism,
centring in the person and work of Christ and conditioned by union with Christ.
He determined to know nothing but Christ and him crucified; but this included
all—it is the soul of his theology. The Christ who died is the Christ who was
raised again and ever lives as Lord and Saviour, and was made unto us wisdom
from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.774 A
dead Christ would be the grave of all our hopes, and the gospel of a dead
Saviour a wretched delusion. "If Christ has not been raised then is our
preaching vain, your faith also is vain."775 His
death becomes available only through his resurrection. Paul puts the two facts
together in the comprehensive statement: "Christ delivered up for our
trespasses, and raised for our justification."776 He
is a conditional universalist; he teaches the universal need of salvation, and
the divine intention and provision for a universal salvation, but the actual
salvation of each man depends upon his faith or personal acceptance and
appropriation of Christ. His doctrinal system, then, turns on the great
antithesis of sin and grace. Before Christ and out of Christ is the reign of
sin and death; after Christ and in Christ is the reign of righteousness and
life.
We now proceed to an
outline of the leading features of his theology as set forth in the order of
the Epistle to the Romans, the most methodical and complete of his writings.
Its central thought is: The Gospel of Christ, a power of God for the
salvation of all men, Jew and Gentile.777
1. The Universal Need of Salvation.—It
arises from the fall of Adam and the whole human race, which was included in
him as the tree is included in the seed, so that his one act of disobedience
brought sin and death upon the whole posterity. Paul proves the depravity of
Gentiles and Jews without exception to the extent that they are absolutely
unable to attain to righteousness and to save themselves. "There is none
righteous, no, not one." They are all under the dominion of sin and under
the sentence of condemnation.778 He recognizes indeed, even among the
heathen, the remaining good elements of reason and conscience,779 which are the connecting links for the
regenerating work of divine grace; but for this very reason they are
inexcusable, as they sin against better knowledge. There is a conflict between
the higher and the lower nature in man (the <foreign
lang="el">nou'"</foreign>, which tends to God who gave it, and the <foreign
lang="el">savrx</foreign>, which tends to sin), and this conflict is stimulated
and brought to a crisis by the law of God; but this conflict, owing to the
weakness of our carnal, fallen, depraved nature, ends in defeat and despair
till the renewing grace of Christ emancipates us from the curse and bondage of
sin and gives us liberty and victory. In the seventh chapter of the Romans,
Paul gives from his personal experience a most remarkable and truthful
description of the religious history of man from the natural or heathen state
of carnal security (without the law, <scripRef passage =
"Rom. 7:7–9">Rom.
7:7–9</scripRef>) to the Jewish state under the law which calls
out sin from its hidden recess, reveals its true character, and awakens the
sense of the wretchedness of slavery under sin (<scripRef passage =
"Rom. 7:10–25">7:10–25</scripRef>), but in this very way prepares the way for the
Christian state of freedom (<scripRef passage = "Rom. 7:24">7:24</scripRef> and <scripRef passage =
"Rom. 8">Rom. 8</scripRef>).780
II. The Divine Intention and Provision of Universal
Salvation.—God sincerely wills (<foreign
lang="el">qevlei</foreign>) that all men, even the greatest of sinners,
should be saved, and come to the knowledge of truth through Christ, who gave
himself a ransom for all.781 The extent of Christ’s righteousness
and life is as universal as the extent of Adam’s sin and death, and its
intensive power is even greater. The first and the second Adam are perfectly
parallel by contrast in their representative character, but Christ is much
stronger and remains victor of the field, having slain sin and death, and
living for ever as the prince of life. Where sin abounds there grace
super-abounds. As through the first Adam sin (as a pervading force) entered
into the world, and death through sin, and thus death passed unto all men,
inasmuch as they all sinned (in Adam generically and potentially, and by actual
transgression individually); so much more through Christ, the second Adam,
righteousness entered into the world and life through righteousness, and thus
righteousness passed unto all men on condition of faith by which we partake of
his righteousness.782 God shut up all men in disobedience,
that he might have mercy upon all that believe.783
(1.) The Preparation for this salvation was the
promise and the law of the Old dispensation. The promise given to Abraham and
the patriarchs is prior to the law, and not set aside by the law; it contained
the germ and the pledge of salvation, and Abraham stands out as the father of
the faithful, who was justified by faith even before he received circumcision
as a sign and seal. The law came in besides, or between the promise and the
gospel in order to develop the disease of sin, to reveal its true character as
a transgression of the divine will, and thus to excite the sense of the need of
salvation. The law is in itself holy and good, but cannot give life; it
commands and threatens, but gives no power to fulfil; it cannot renew the
flesh, that is, the depraved, sinful nature of man; it can neither justify nor
sanctify, but it brings the knowledge of sin, and by its discipline it prepares
men for the freedom of Christ, as a schoolmaster prepares children for
independent manhood.784
(2.) The Salvation itself is comprehended in the person
and work of Christ. It was accomplished in the fulness of the time by
the sinless life, the atoning death, and the glorious resurrection and
exaltation of Christ, the eternal Son of God, who appeared in the likeness of
the flesh of sin and as an offering for sin, and thus procured for us pardon,
peace, and reconciliation. "God spared not his own Son, but delivered him
up for us all." This is the greatest gift of the eternal love of the
Father for his creatures. The Son of God, prompted by the same infinite love,
laid aside his divine glory and mode of existence, emptied himself exchanged
the form of God for the form of a servant, humbled himself and became obedient,
even unto the death of the cross. Though he was rich, being equal with God, yet
for our sakes he became poor, that we through his poverty might become rich. In
reward for his active and passive obedience God exalted him and gave him a name
above every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every
tongue confess that he is Lord.785
Formerly the cross of
Christ had been to the carnal Messianic expectations and self-righteousness of
Paul, as well as of other Jews, the greatest stumbling-block, as it was the
height of folly to the worldly wisdom of the heathen mind.786 But
the heavenly vision of the glory of Jesus at Damascus unlocked the key for the
understanding of this mystery, and it was confirmed by the primitive apostolic
tradition,787 and by his personal experience of the failure of
the law and the power of the gospel to give peace to his troubled conscience.
The death of Christ appeared to him now as the divinely appointed means for
procuring righteousness. It is the device of infinite wisdom and love to
reconcile the conflicting claims of justice and mercy whereby God could justify
the sinner and yet remain just himself.788 Christ, who knew no sin, became sin for
us that we might become righteousness of God in him. He died in the place and
for the benefit (<foreign lang="el">uJpevr,
periv</foreign>) of sinners and enemies, so that his death has a
universal significance. If one died for all, they all died.789 He
offered his spotless and holy life as a ransom (<foreign
lang="el">luvtron</foreign>) or price (<foreign
lang="el">timhv</foreign>) for our sins, and thus effected our redemption
(<foreign
lang="el">ajpoluvtrwsi"</foreign>), as prisoners of war are redeemed by the
payment of an equivalent. His death, therefore, is a vicarious sacrifice, an
atonement, an expiation or propitiation <foreign
lang="el">iJlasmov", iJlasthvrion</foreign>, sacrificium
expiatorium) for the sins of the
whole world, and secured full and final remission (<foreign
lang="el">a[fesi"</foreign>) and reconciliation between God and man (<foreign
lang="el">katallaghv</foreign>). This the Mosaic law and sacrifices could not
accomplish. They could only keep alive and deepen the sense of the necessity of
an atonement. If righteousness came by the law, Christ’s death would be
needless and fruitless. His death removes not only the guilt of sin, but it
destroyed also its power and dominion. Hence the great stress Paul laid on the
preaching of the cross (<foreign lang="el">oJ
lovgo" tou' staurou'</foreign>) in which alone he would glory.790
This rich doctrine of the
atonement which pervades the Pauline Epistles is only a legitimate expansion of
the word of Christ that he would give his life as a ransom for sinners and shed
his blood for the remission of sins.
(3.) While Christ
accomplished the salvation, the Holy Spirit
appropriates it to the believer. The Spirit is the religious and moral
principle of the new life. Emanating from God, he dwells in the Christian as a
renewing, sanctifying, comforting energy, as the higher conscience, as a divine
guide and monitor. He mediates between Christ and the church as Christ mediates
between God and the world; be is the divine revealer of Christ to the
individual consciousness and the source of all graces (<foreign
lang="el">carivsmata</foreign>) through which the new life manifests itself.
"Christ in us" is equivalent to having the "Spirit of
Christ." It is only by the inward revelation of the Spirit that we can
call Christ our Lord and Saviour, and God our Father; by the Spirit the love of
God is shed abroad in our hearts; the Spirit works in us faith and all virtues;
it is the Spirit who transforms even the body of the believer into a holy
temple; those who are led by the Spirit are the sons of God and heirs of
salvation; it is by the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus that we are
made free from the law of sin and death and are able to walk in newness of
life. Where the Spirit of God is there is true liberty.791
(4.) There is, then, a
threefold cause of our salvation: the Father who sends his Son, the Son who
procures salvation, and the Holy Spirit who applies it to the believer. This
threefold agency is set forth in the benediction, which comprehends all divine
blessings: "the grace (<foreign lang="el">cavri"</foreign>) of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the (<foreign
lang="el">ajgavph</foreign>) of God, and the communion (<foreign
lang="el">koinwniva</foreign>) of the Holy Spirit."792
This is Paul’s practical view of the Holy Trinity as revealed in the
gospel. The grace of Christ is mentioned first because in it is exhibited to us
the love of the Father in its highest aspect as a saving power; to the Holy
Spirit is ascribed the communion because he is the bond of union between the
Father and the Son, between Christ and the believer, and between the believers
as members of one brotherhood of the redeemed.
To this divine trinity
corresponds, we may say, the human trinity of Christian graces: faith, hope,
love.793
III. The Order of Salvation.—(1.) Salvation has its
roots in the eternal counsel of God, his Foreknowledge (<foreign
lang="el">provgnwsi"</foreign>), and his Foreordination
(<foreign
lang="el">proorismov", provqesi"</foreign>); the former an act of his omniscient intellect,
the latter of his omnipotent will. Logically, foreknowledge precedes
foreordination, but in reality both coincide and are simultaneous in the divine
mind, in which there is no before nor after.794
Paul undoubtedly teaches
an eternal election by the sovereign grace of God, that is an
unconditioned and unchangeable predestination of his children to holiness and
salvation in and through his Son Jesus Christ.795 He
thus cuts off all human merit, and plants the salvation upon an immovable rock.
But he does not thereby exclude human freedom and responsibility; on the
contrary, he includes them as elements in the divine plan, and boldly puts them
together.796
Hence he exhorts and warns men as if salvation might be gained or lost
by their effort. Those who are lost, are lost by their own unbelief. Perdition
is the righteous judgment for sin unrepented of and persisted in. It is a
strange misunderstanding to make Paul either a fatalist or a particularist; he
is the strongest opponent of blind necessity and of Jewish particularism, even
in the ninth chapter of Romans. But he aims at no philosophical solution of a
problem which the finite understanding of man cannot settle; he contents
himself with asserting its divine and human aspects, the religious and ethical
view, the absolute sovereignty of God and the relative freedom of man, the free
gift of salvation and the just punishment for neglecting it. Christian
experience includes both truths, and we find no contradiction in praying as if
all depended on God, and in working as if all depended on man. This is Pauline
theology and practice.
Foreknowledge and
foreordination are the eternal background of salvation: call, justification,
sanctification, and glorification mark the progressive steps in the time of
execution, and of the personal application of salvation.797
(2.) The Call (<foreign lang="el">klh'si"</foreign>) proceeds from God the Father through the
preaching of the gospel salvation which is sincerely offered to all. Faith
comes from preaching, preaching from preachers, and the preachers from God who
sends them.798
The human act which
corresponds to the divine call is the conversion (<foreign
lang="el">metavnoia</foreign>) of the sinner; and this includes repentance or
turning away from sin, and faith or turning to Christ, under the influence of
the Holy Spirit who acts through the word.799 The Holy Spirit is the objective principle
of the new life of the Christian. Faith is the free gift of God, and at the
same time the highest act of man. It is unbounded trust in Christ, and the
organ by which we apprehend him, his very life and benefits, and become as it
were identified with him, or mystically incorporated with him.800
(3.) Justification (<foreign lang="el">dikaivwsi"</foreign>) is the next step. This is a vital doctrine in
Paul’s system and forms the connecting link as well as the division line
between the Jewish and the Christian period of his life. It was with him always
a burning life-question. As a Jew he sought righteousness by works of the law,
honestly and earnestly, but in vain; as a Christian he found it, as a free gift
of grace, by faith in Christ. Righteousness (<foreign
lang="el">dikaiosuvnh</foreign>), as applied to man, is the normal relation of
man to the holy, will of God as expressed in his revealed law, which requires
supreme love to God and love to our neighbor; it is the moral and religious
ideal, and carries in itself the divine favor and the highest happiness. It is
the very end for which man was made; he is to be conformed to God who is
absolutely holy and righteous. To be god-like is the highest conception of
human perfection and bliss.
But there are two kinds
of righteousness, or rather two ways of seeking it: one of the law, and sought
by works of the law; but this is imaginary, at best very defective, and cannot
stand before God; and the righteousness of Christ, or the righteousness of
faith, which is freely communicated to the believer and accepted by God.
Justification is the act of God by which he puts the repenting sinner in
possession of the righteousness of Christ. It is the reverse of condemnation;
it implies the remission of sins and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness.
It is based upon the atoning sacrifice of Christ and conditioned by faith, as
the subjective organ of apprehending and appropriating Christ with all his
benefits. We are therefore justified by grace alone through faith alone; yet
faith remains not alone, but is ever fruitful of good works.
The result of justification
is peace (<foreign lang="el">eijrhvnh</foreign>) with God, and the state of adoption (<foreign
lang="el">uiJoqesiva</foreign>) and this implies also the heirship (<foreign
lang="el">klhronomiva</foreign>) of eternal life. "The Spirit itself beareth
witness with our spirit that we are children of God: and if children, then
heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with
him, that we may be also glorified with him."801 The
root of Paul’s theory of justification is found in the teaching of Christ: he
requires from his disciples a far better righteousness than the legal
righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, as a condition of entering the
kingdom of heaven, namely, the righteousness of God; he holds up this
righteousness of God as the first object to be sought; and teaches that it can
only be obtained by faith, which he everywhere presents as the one and only
condition of salvation on the part of man.802
(4.) Sanctification (<foreign
lang="el">aJgiasmov"</foreign>).803 The divine act of justification is
inseparable from the conversion and renewal of the sinner. It affects the will
and conduct as well as the feeling. Although gratuitous, it is not unconditional.
It is of necessity the beginning of sanctification, the birth into a new life
which is to grow unto full manhood. We are not justified outside of Christ, but
only in Christ by a living faith, which unites us with him in his death unto
sin and resurrection unto holiness. Faith is operative in love and must produce
good works as the inevitable proof of its existence. Without love, the greatest
of Christian graces, even the strongest faith would be but "sounding brass
or clanging cymbal."804
Sanctification is not a
single act, like justification, but a process. It is a continuous growth of the
whole inner man in holiness from the moment of conversion and justification to
the reappearance of Jesus Christ in glory.805 On the part of God it is insured, for
he is faithful and will perfect the good work which he began; on the part of
man it involves constant watchfulness, lest he stumble and fall. In one view it
depends all on the grace of God, in another view it depends all on the exertion
of man. There is a mysterious co-operation between the two agencies, which is
expressed in the profound paradox: "Work out your own salvation with fear
and trembling; for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for
his good pleasure."806 The believer is mystically identified
with Christ from the moment of his conversion (sealed by baptism). He died with
Christ unto sin so as to sin no more; and he rose with him to a new life unto
God so as to live for God; he is crucified to the world and the world to him;
he is a new creature in Christ; the old man of sin is dead and buried, the new
man lives in holiness and righteousness. "It is no longer I (my own sinful
self) that lives, but it is Christ that lives in me: and that life which I now
live in the flesh, I live in faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave
himself up for me."807
Here is the whole doctrine of
Christian life: it is Christ in us, and we in Christ. It consists in a
vital union with Christ, the crucified and risen Redeemer, who is the
indwelling, all-pervading, and controlling life of the believer; but the union
is no pantheistic confusion or absorption; the believer continues to live as a
self-conscious and distinct personality. For the believer "to live is
Christ, and to die is gain." "Whether we live, we live unto the Lord;
whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are
the Lord’s."808
In Romans 12, Paul sums
up his ethics in the idea of gratitude which manifests itself in a cheerful
sacrifice of our persons and services to the God of our salvation.809
(5.) Glorification (<foreign
lang="el">doxavzein</foreign>). This is the final completion of the work of
grace in the believer and will appear at the parousia of our Lord. It cannot be
hindered by any power present or future, visible or invisible, for God and
Christ are stronger than all our enemies and will enable us to come out more
than conquerors from the conflict of faith.
This lofty conviction of
final victory finds most eloquent expression in the triumphal ode which closes
the eighth chapter of Romans.810
IV. The Historical Progress of the gospel of
salvation from Jews to Gentiles and back again to the Jews.811
Salvation was first intended for and offered to the Jews, who were for
centuries prepared for it by the law and the promise, and among whom the
Saviour was born, lived, died, and rose again. But the Jews as a nation
rejected Christ and his apostles, and hardened their hearts in unbelief. This
fact filled the apostle with unutterable sadness, and made him willing to
sacrifice even his own salvation (if it were possible) for the salvation of his
kinsmen.
But he sees light in
this dark mystery. First of all, God has a sovereign right over all his
creatures and manifests both his mercy and his righteousness in the successive
stages of the historical execution of his wise designs. His promise has not
failed, for it was not given to all the carnal descendants of Abraham and
Isaac, but only to the spiritual descendants, the true Israelites who have the
faith of Abraham, and they have been saved, as individual Jews are saved to
this day. And even in his relation to the vessels of wrath who by unbelief and
ingratitude have fitted themselves for destruction, he shows his long-suffering.
In the next place, the
real cause of the rejection of the body of the Jews is their own rejection of
Christ. They sought their own righteousness by works of the law instead of
accepting the righteousness of God by faith.
Finally, the rejection
of the Jews is only temporary and incidental in the great drama of history. It
is overruled for the speedier conversion of the Gentiles, and the conversion of
the full number or the organic totality of the Gentiles (not all individual
Gentiles) will lead ultimately to the conversion of Israel. "A hardening
in part has befallen Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in; and
so all Israel shall be saved."
With this hopeful
prophecy, which seems yet far off, but which is steadily approaching
fulfilment, and will be realized in God’s own time and way, the apostle closes
the doctrinal part of the Epistle to the Romans. "God has shut up all men
(<foreign
lang="el">tou;" pavnta"¼ unto
disobedience that he might have mercy upon all men. O the depth of the
riche" both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God[ how unsearchable are
hi" judgment", and hi" way" past tracing out[ ... For of
Him »ejx aujtou'¼ and through Him »dij aujtou'</foreign>), and unto Him (<foreign
lang="el">eij" aujtonv</foreign>) are all things. To Him be the glory forever.
Amen."812
Before this glorious
consummation, however, there will be a terrible conflict with Antichrist or
"the man of sin," and the full revelation of the mystery of
lawlessness now held in check. Then the Lord will appear as the conqueror in
the field, raise the dead, judge the world, destroy the last enemy, and restore
the kingdom to the Father that God may be all in all (<foreign
lang="el">ta; pavnta ejn pa'sin</foreign>).813
Notes.
I. The Pauline System of Doctrine has been more
frequently explained than any other.
Among the earlier
writers Neander, Usteri, and Schmid take the lead, and are still valuable.
Neander and Schmid are in full sympathy with the spirit and views of Paul.
Usteri adapted them somewhat to Schleiermacher’s system, to which he adhered.
Next to them the
Tübingen school, first the master, Baur (twice, in his Paul, and in his New
Test. Theology), and then his pupils, Pfleiderer and Holsten, have
done most for a critical reproduction. They rise far above the older
rationalism in an earnest and intelligent appreciation of the sublime theology
of Paul, and leave the impression that he was a most profound, bold, acute, and
consistent thinker on the highest themes. But they ignore the supernatural
element of inspiration, they lack spiritual sympathy with the faith of
the apostle, overstrain his antagonism to Judaism (as did Marcion of old), and
confine the authentic sources to the four anti-Judaic Epistles to the
Galatians, Romans, and Corinthians, although recognizing in the minor Epistles
the "paulinische Grundlage."
The more moderate followers of Baur, however, now admit the
genuineness of from seven to ten Pauline Epistles, leaving only the three
Pastoral Epistles and Ephesians in serious doubt.
The Paulinismus
of Weiss (in the third ed. of his Bibl. Theol., 1881, pp.
194–472) is based upon a very careful philological exegesis in detail, and is
in this respect the most valuable of all attempts to reproduce Paul’s theology.
He divides it into three sections: 1st, the system of the four great doctrinal
and polemical Epistles; 2d, the further development of Paulinism in the
Epistles of the captivity; 3d, the doctrine of the Pastoral Epistles. He doubts
only the genuineness of the last group, but admits a progress from the first to
the second.
Of French writers,
Reuss, Pressensé, and Sabatier give the best expositions of the Pauline system,
more or less in imitation of German labors. Reuss, of Strasburg, who writes in
German as well, is the most independent and learned; Pressensé is more in
sympathy with Paul’s belief, but gives only a meagre summary; Sabatier leans to
the Tübingen school. Reuss discusses Paul’s system (in vol. III., 17–220) very
fully under these heads: righteousness; sin; the law; the gospel; God; the
person of Christ; the work of Christ; typical relation of the old and new
covenant; faith; election; calling and the Holy Spirit; regeneration;
redemption; justification and reconciliation; church; hope and trial; last
times; kingdom of God. Sabatier (L’apôtre Paul, pp. 249–318, second ed.,
1881) more briefly but clearly develops the Pauline theology from the
Christological point of view (<foreign lang="fr">la personne de Christ Principe générateur de la
conscience chrétienne</foreign>) under three heads: lot, the Christian principle
in the psychological sphere (anthropology); 2d, in the social and historical
sphere (religious philosophy of history); 3d, in the metaphysical sphere
(theology), which culminates in the <foreign
lang="el">qeo;" ta; pavnta ejn pa'sin</foreign> "<foreign
lang="fr">Ainsi
naît et grandit cet arbre magnifique de la pensée de Paul, dont les racines
plongent dans le sol de la conscience chrétienne et dont la cime est dans les
cieux</foreign>."
Renan, who professes so
much sentimental admiration for the poetry and wisdom of Jesus, "the
charming Galilaean peasant," has no organ for the theology of Paul any
more than Voltaire had for the poetry of Shakespeare. He regards him as a bold
and vigorous, but uncouth and semi-barbarous genius, full of rabbinical
subtleties, useless speculations, and polemical intolerance even against good
old Peter at Antioch.
Several doctrines of
Paul have been specially discussed by German scholars, as Tischendorf: Doctrina Pauli apostoli de
Vi Mortis Christi Satisfactoria (Leipz.,
1837); Räbiger: De Christologia
Paulina (Breslau, 1852); Lipsius:
Die
paulinische Rechtfertigunglehre (Leipz.,
1853); Ernesti: Vom Ursprung der Sünde
nach paulinischem Lehrgehalt (Wolfenbüttel,
1855); Die Ethik des Paulus (Braunschweig,
1868; 3d ed., 1881); W. Beyschlag Die paulinische
Theodicee (Berlin, 1868); R. Schmidt: Die Christologie des Ap.
Paulus (Gött., 1870); A. Delitzsch: Adam und Christus (Bonn, 1871); H. Lüdemann:
Die
Anthropologie des Ap. Paulus (Kiel,
1872); R. Stähelin: Zur paulinischen
Eschatologie (1874); A. Schumann: Der weltgeschichtl.
Entwickelungsprocess nach dem Lehrsystem des Ap. Paulus (Crefeld, 1875); Fr.
Köstlin: Die Lehre des Paulus von der
Auferstehung (1877); H. H. Wendt: Die Begriffe Fleisch und
Geist in biblischen Sprachgebrauch (Gotha, 1878).
II. The Christology of Paul is closely
interwoven with his soteriology. In Romans and Galatians the soteriological
aspect prevails, in Philippians and Colossians the christological. His
christology is very rich, and with that of the Epistle to the Hebrews prepares
the way for the christology of John. It is even more fully developed than
John’s, only less prominent in the system.
The chief passages on
the person of Christ are: <scripRef passage = "Rom. 1:3, 4">Rom. 1:3, 4</scripRef> (<foreign lang="el">ejk
spevrmato" Dauei;d kata; savrka ... uiJo" qeou' kata; pneu'ma
aJgiwsuvnh"</foreign>); <scripRef passage = "Rom.
8:3">8:3</scripRef> (<foreign lang="el">oJ
qeo;" to;n ejautou' uiJo;n pemya" ejn oJmoiwvmati savrko"
aJmartiva"</foreign>) 8:32 (<foreign lang="el">o}"
tou' ijdivou uiJou' oujk ejfeivsato</foreign>) <scripRef passage = "Rom.
9:5">9:5</scripRef> (<foreign lang="el">ejx
w|n oJ Cristo;" to; kata; savrka, oJ w]n epi; pavntwn, qe;o"
eujloghto;" eij" tou;" aijwna"</foreign>—but the punctuation and consequently the
application of the doxology—whether to God or to Christ—are disputed); <scripRef
passage = "1 Cor. 1:19">1 Cor. 1:19</scripRef> (<foreign lang="el">oJ
kuvrio" hJmw'n</foreign>, a
very frequent designation); <scripRef passage = "2 Cor. 5:21">2 Cor. 5:21</scripRef> (<foreign lang="el">to;n
mh; gnovnta aJmartivan</foreign>); <scripRef passage = "2 Cor.
8:9">8:9</scripRef> (<foreign lang="el">ejptwceusen
plouvsio" w[n, i{na uJmei'" th/' ejkeivnou ptwceiva/ plouthvshte</foreign> ); <scripRef passage =
"Philippians 2:5–11">Phil. 2:5–11</scripRef> (the famous passage about the<foreign
lang="el"> kevnwsi"</foreign>); <scripRef passage = "Col.
1:15–18">Col. 1:15–18</scripRef> (<foreign lang="el">o{"
ejstin eijkw;n tou' qeou' tou' ajoravtou prwtovtoko" pavsh"
krivsew", o{ti ejn aujtw/' ejkrivsqh ta; panvta ... ta; pavnta dij aujtou'
kai;i; eij" aujto;n e[ktistai</foreign> ...); <scripRef passage =
"Col. 2:9">2:9</scripRef> (<foreign lang="el">ejn
aujtw/' katoikei' pa'n to; plhvrwma th'" qeovthto" swmatikw'"</foreign> ); <scripRef passage =
"1 Tim. 3:16">1
Tim. 3:16</scripRef> (<foreign lang="el">o}"
ejfanerwvqh ejn sarkiv</foreign> ...); <scripRef
passage = "Tit.2:13">Tit.2:13</scripRef> (<foreign
lang="el">tou' megavlou qeou' kai;
swth'ro" hJmw'n Cristou' jIhsou'</foreign>, where, however, commentators differ in the
construction, as in <scripRef passage = "Rom. 9:5">Rom. 9:5</scripRef>).
From these and other
passages the following doctrinal points may be inferred:
1.The eternal pre-existence
of Christ as to his divine nature. The pre-existence generally is implied
in <scripRef
passage = "Rom. 8:3, 32">Rom. 8:3, 32</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "2 Cor.
5:21">2 Cor. 5:21</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Philippians
2:5">Phil. 2:5</scripRef>; the pre-existence before the creation is
expressly asserted, <scripRef passage = "Col. 1:15">Col. 1:15</scripRef>; the eternity of this pre-existence is a
metaphysical inference from the nature of the case, since an existence before
all creation must be an uncreated, therefore a divine or eternal existence
which has no beginning as well as no end. (John carefully distinguishes between
the eternal <foreign lang="el">h\n</foreign> of the pre-existent Logos, and the temporal <foreign
lang="el">ejgevneto</foreign> of the incarnate Logos, <scripRef passage =
"John 1:1, 14">John
1:1, 14</scripRef>; comp. <scripRef passage =
"John 8:58">8:58</scripRef>.)
This is not inconsistent with the designation of Christ as "the
first-born of all creation," <scripRef passage =
"Col. 1:15">Col.
1:15</scripRef>; for <foreign
lang="el">prwtovtoko"</foreign> is different from <foreign
lang="el">prwtovktisto"</foreign> (first-created), as the Nicene
fathers already remarked, in opposition to Arius, who inferred from the passage
that Christ was the first creature of God and the creator of all
other creatures. The word first-born corresponds to the Johannean <foreign lang="el">monogenhv",</foreign> only-begotten. "Both express,"
as Lightfoot says (Com. on Col.) "the same eternal fact; but
while <foreign
lang="el">monogenhv"</foreign> states it in itself, <foreign
lang="el">prwtovtoko"</foreign> places it in relation to the
universe." We may also
compare the <foreign lang="el">protovgono",</foreign> first-begotten, which Philo applies to
the Logos, as including the original archetypal idea of the created world.
"The first-born," used absolutely (<foreign
lang="el">prwtovtoko"</foreign> <foreign lang="he">B]kror </foreign> <scripRef passage = "Ps.
89:28">Ps. 89:28</scripRef>), became a recognized title of the Messiah.
Moreover, the genitive <foreign lang="el">pavsh"
ktivsew"</foreign> is not the partitive, but the comparative genitive: the first-born as
compared with, that is, before, every creature. So Justin Martyr (<foreign
lang="el">pro; pavntwn tw'n ktismavtwn</foreign>), Meyer, and Bp. Lightfoot, in loc.; also Weiss,
Bibl. Theol. d. N. T., p. 431 (who refutes the opposite view of Usteri,
Reuss, and Baur, and says: "<foreign lang="de">Da <foreign
lang="el">pavsh" krivsew"</foreign> jede einzelne
Creatur bezeichnet, so kann der Genii. nur comparativ genommen werden, und nur
besagen, dass er im Vergleich mit jeden Creatur der Erstgeborne war</foreign>"). The words immediately following, <scripRef
passage = "John 1:16, 17">John 1:16, 17</scripRef>, exclude the possibility of regarding Christ
himself as a creature. Lightfoot, in his masterly Comm. (p. 212 sq.), very
fully explains the term as teaching the absolute pre-existence of the Son, his
priority to and sovereignty over all creation.
The recent attempt of
Dr. Beyschlag (Christologie des N. T., pp. 149 sqq., 242 sqq.) to
resolve the pre-existent Christ of Paul and John into an ideal principle, instead
of a real personality, is an exegetical failure, like the similar attempts of
the Socinians, and is as far from the mark as the interpretation of some of the
Nicene fathers (e.g., Marcellus) who, in order to escape the Arian
argument, understood prototokos of the incarnate Logos as the
head of the new spiritual creation.
2. Christ is the mediator
and the end of creation. "All things were created in him, in the
heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible ...; all things
have been created through him (<foreign
lang="el">di j aujtou'</foreign> and unto him (<foreign
lang="el">eij" aujtovn</foreign>); and he is before all things, and in
him all things consist," <scripRef passage =
"Col. 1:15–18">Col.
1:15–18</scripRef>. The same doctrine is taught in <scripRef
passage = "1 Cor. 8:6">1 Cor. 8:6</scripRef> ("Jesus Christ, through whom are all
things"); <scripRef passage = "1 Cor. 10;9; 15:47">10;9; 15:47</scripRef>; as well as in the Ep. to the <scripRef
passage = "Hebrews 1:2">Hebrews 1:2</scripRef>: ("through whom he also made the
worlds" or "ages"), and in <scripRef passage =
"John 1:3">John
1:3</scripRef>.
3. The divinity of
Christ is clearly implied in the constant co-ordination of Christ with the
Father as the author of "grace and peace," in the salutations of the
Epistles, and in such expressions as, "the image of the invisible
God" (<scripRef passage = "Col. 1:15">Col. 1:15</scripRef>); "in him dwells the fulness of the Godhead
bodily" (2:9): "existing in the form of God," and "being on
an equality with God" (<scripRef passage = "Philippians
2:6">Phil. 2:6</scripRef>). In two passages he is, according to the usual
interpretation, even called "God" (<foreign
lang="el">qeov"</foreign>), but, as already remarked, the exegetes are
still divided on the reference of <foreign
lang="el">qeov"</foreign> in <scripRef passage =
"Rom. 9:5">Rom.
9:5</scripRef> and <scripRef passage =
"Tit. 2:13">Tit.
2:13</scripRef>. Meyer admits that Paul, according to his
christology, could call Christ "God" (as predicate, without the
article, <foreign
lang="el">qeov"</foreign> not <foreign
lang="el">oJ qeov"</foreign>); and Weiss, in the 6th edition of Meyer
on Romans (1881), adopts the prevailing orthodox punctuation and interpretation
in <scripRef
passage = "Rom. 9:5">Rom. 9:5</scripRef> as the most natural, on purely exegetical grounds (the necessity of a
supplement to <foreign lang="el">kata;
savrka</foreign>, and the position of <foreign
lang="el">eujlovghto"</foreign> after <foreign
lang="el">qeov"</foreign>): "Christ as concerning the flesh, who [at
the same time according to his higher nature] is over all, even God blessed for
ever." Westcott and Hort are
not quite agreed on the punctuation. See their note in Greek Test., Introd.
and Appendix, p. 109.
4. The incarnation.
This is designated by the terms "God sent his own Son (<scripRef
passage = "Rom. 8:3">Rom. 8:3</scripRef>, comp. <scripRef passage = "Rom. 8:32">8:32</scripRef>); Christ "emptied himself, taking the form
of a servant, being made in the likeness of men" (<scripRef passage =
"Philippians 2:7">Phil. 2:7</scripRef>). Without entering here into the Kenosis controversy (the older one
between Giessen and Tübingen, 1620–1630, and the recent one which began with
Thomasius, 1845), it is enough to say that the Kenosis, or self-exinanition,
refers not to the incarnate, but to the pre-existent Son of God, and implies a
certain kind of self-limitation or temporary surrender of the divine mode of
existence during the state of humiliation. This humiliation was followed by
exaltation as a reward for his obedience unto death (<scripRef passage =
"Philippians 2:9–11">Phil 2:9–11</scripRef>); hence he is now "the Lord of glory"
(<scripRef
passage = "1 Cor. 2:8">1 Cor. 2:8</scripRef>). To define the limits of the Kenosis, and to
adjust it to the immutability of the Godhead and the intertrinitarian process,
lies beyond the sphere of exegesis and belongs to speculative dogmatics.
5. The true, but sinless
humanity of Christ. He appeared "in the likeness of the flesh of
sin" (<scripRef passage = "Rom. 8:3">Rom. 8:3</scripRef>); he is a son of David "according to the
flesh" (<scripRef passage = "Rom. 1:3">1:3</scripRef>), which includes the whole human nature, body,
soul, and spirit (as in <scripRef passage = "John 1:14">John 1:14</scripRef>); he is called a man (<foreign
lang="el">a[nqrwpo"</foreign>) in the full sense of the term (<scripRef
passage = "1 Cor. 15:21">1 Cor. 15:21</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Rom.
5:15">Rom. 5:15</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Acts
17:31">Acts 17:31</scripRef>). He was "born of a woman, born under the
law"(<scripRef passage = "Gal. 4:4">Gal. 4:4</scripRef>); he was "found in fashion as a man"
and became "obedient even unto death" (<scripRef passage =
"Philippians 2:8">Phil. 2:8</scripRef>), and he truly suffered and died, like other men. But he "knew no
sin" (<scripRef passage = "2 Cor. 5:21">2 Cor. 5:21</scripRef>). He could, of course, not be the Saviour of
sinners if he himself were a sinner and in need of salvation.
Of the events of
Christ’s life, Paul mentions especially and frequently his death and
resurrection, on which our salvation depends. He also reports the institution
of the Lord’s Supper, which perpetuates the memory and the blessing of the
atoning sacrifice on the cross (<scripRef passage = "1 Cor.
11:23–30">1 Cor.
11:23–30</scripRef>). He presupposes, of course, a general knowledge
of the historical Christ, as his Epistles are all addressed to believing
converts; but he incidentally preserves a gem of Christ’s sayings not reported
by the Evangelists, which shines like a lone star on the firmament of uncertain
traditions:, "It is more blessed to give than to receive" (<scripRef
passage = "Acts 20:35">Acts 20:35</scripRef>).
III. Paul’s Doctrine of Predestination.—Eternal
foreknowledge of all persons and things is necessarily included in God’s
omniscience, and is uniformly taught in the Bible; eternal foreordination
or predestination is included in his almighty power and sovereignty, but must
be so conceived as to leave room for free agency and responsibility, and to
exclude God from the authorship of sin. Self-limitation is a part of freedom
even in man, and may be exercised by the sovereign God for holy purposes and
from love to his creatures; in fact it is necessary, if salvation is to be a
moral process, and not a physical or mechanical necessity. Religion is worth
nothing except as the expression of free conviction and voluntary devotion.
Paul represents sometimes the divine sovereignty, sometimes the human
responsibility, sometimes, as in <scripRef passage = "Philippians
2:12, 13">Phil. 2:12,
13</scripRef>, he combines both sides, without an attempt to
solve the insolvable problem which really lies beyond the present capacity of
the human mind. "He does not deal with speculative extremes; and in
whatever way the question be speculatively adjusted, absolute dependence and
moral self-determination are both involved in the immediate Christian
self-consciousness," Baur, Paul, II. 249. "Practical
teaching," says Reuss (II. 532) to the same effect, "will always be
constrained to insist upon the fact that man’s salvation is a free gift of God,
and that his condemnation is only the just punishment of sin." Comp. also Farrar, St. Paul, II.
243, 590; Weiss, p. 356 sqq.; Beyschlag, Die paulinische Theodicee (Berlin,
1868). Weiss thus sums up Paul’s doctrine of predestination: "<foreign
lang="de">An sich hat Gott das absolute Becht, die Menschen von
vornherein zum Heil oder zum Verderben zu erschaffen und durch freie
Machtwirkung diesem Ziele zuzuführen; aber er hat sich in Betreff des
christlichen Heils dieses Rechtes nur insofern bedient, als er unabhängig von
allem menschlichen Thun und Verdienen nach seinem unbeschränkten Willen
bestimmt, an welche Bedingung er seine Gnade knüpfen will. Die Bedingung, an
welche er seine Erwählung gebunden hat, ist nun nichts anders als die Liebe zu
ihm, welche er an den empfänglichen Seelen vorhererkennt. Die Erwählten aber
werden berufen, indem Gott durch das Evangelium in ihnen den Glauben wirkt</foreign>."
There can be no doubt
that Paul teaches an eternal election to eternal salvation by free grace, an
election which is to be actualized by faith in Christ and a holy life of
obedience. But he does not teach a decree of reprobation or a predestination to
sin and perdition (which would indeed be a "<foreign
lang="la">decretum
horribile</foreign>," if <foreign
lang="la">verum</foreign>). This is a logical invention of supralapsarian
theologians who deem it to be the necessary counterpart of the decree of
election. But man’s logic is not God’s logic. A decree of reprobation is
nowhere mentioned. The term <foreign lang="el">ajdovkimo",</foreign> disapproved, worthless, reprobate, is
used five times only as a description of character (twice of things). <scripRef
passage = "Romans 9">Romans 9</scripRef> is the Gibraltar of supralapsarianism, but it must be explained in connection
with <scripRef
passage = "Rom. 10–11">Rom. 10–11</scripRef>, which present the other aspects. The strongest
passage is <scripRef passage = "Rom. 9:22">Rom. 9:22</scripRef>, where Paul speaks of <foreign
lang="el">skeuvh ojrgh'" kathrtismevna
eij" ajpwvleian</foreign>. But he significantly uses here the passive: "fitted
unto destruction," or rather (as many of the best commentators from
Chrysostom to Weiss take it) the middle: "who fitted themselves for
destruction," and so deserved it; while of the vessels of mercy he says
that God "before prepared" them unto glory (<foreign
lang="el">skeuvh ejlevou" a}
prohtoivmasen</foreign>, <scripRef
passage = "Rom. 9:23">9:23</scripRef>). He studiously avoids to say of the vessels of wrath: <foreign
lang="el">a} kathvrtisen</foreign>, which would have corresponded to <foreign
lang="el">a} prohtoivmasen</foreign>, and thus he exempts God from a direct and
efficient agency in sin and destruction. When in <scripRef passage =
"Rom. 9:17">9:17</scripRef>, he says of Pharaoh, that God raised him up
for the very purpose (<foreign lang="el">eij"
auvto; tou'tov ejxhvgeirav se</foreign>) that he might show in him His power, he does
not mean that God created him or called him into existence (which would require
a different verb), but, according to the Hebrew (Ex. 9:16, the hiphil of <foreign
lang="he">[;m'd</foreign>), that "he caused him to stand forth"
as actor in the scene; and when he says with reference to the same history that
God "hardens whom he will" (<scripRef passage =
"Rom. 9:18">Rom.
9:18</scripRef>. <foreign lang="el">o}n
dev qevlei sklhruvnei</foreign>), it must be remembered that Pharaoh had already
repeatedly hardened his own heart (<scripRef passage =
"Ex. 8:15, 32; 9:34, 35">Ex. 8:15, 32; 9:34, 35</scripRef>), so that God punished him for his sin and
abandoned him to its consequences. God does not cause evil, but he bends,
guides, and overrules it and often punishes sin with sin. "<foreign
lang="de">Das
ist der Fluch der bösen That, dass sie, fortzeugend, immer Böses muss gebären</foreign>." (Schiller.)
In this mysterious
problem of predestination Paul likewise faithfully carries out the teaching of
his Master. For in the sublime description of the final judgment, Christ says
to the "blessed of my Father:" "Inherit the kingdom
prepared for you from the foundation of the world" (<scripRef
passage = "Matt. 25:34">Matt. 25:34</scripRef>), but to those on the left hand he says,
"Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for
the devil and his angels" (<scripRef passage = "Matt.
25:41">25:41</scripRef>). The omission of the words "of my
Father," after "ye cursed," and of the words, for you,
"and, from the foundation of the world," is very significant, and implies
that while the inheritance of the kingdom is traced to the eternal favor of
God, the damnation is due to the guilt of man.
IV. The doctrine of Justification. This occupies a prominent
space in Paul’s system, though by no means to the disparagement of his doctrine
of sanctification, which is treated with the same fulness even in Romans (comp.
<scripRef
passage = "Rom. 6–8">Rom. 6–8</scripRef> and <scripRef passage = "Rom. 12–15">12–15</scripRef>). Luther, in conflict with Judaizing Rome,
overstated the importance of justification by faith when he called it the articulus
stantis vel cadentis ecclesiae. This can only be said of Christ (comp. <scripRef
passage = "Matt. 16:16">Matt. 16:16</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "1 Cor.
3:11">1 Cor. 3:11</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "1 John 4:2,
3">1 John 4:2, 3</scripRef>). It is not even the theme of the Epistle to the
Romans, as often stated (e.g., by Farrar, St. Paul, II. 181); for
it is there subordinated by <foreign lang="el">gavr</foreign> to the broader idea of salvation (<foreign
lang="el">swthriva</foreign>), which is the theme (<scripRef passage =
"Rom 1:16, 17">Rom
1:16, 17</scripRef>). Justification by faith is the way by which
salvation can be obtained.
The doctrine of
justification may be thus illustrated:
<foreign lang="el">Dikaiosuvnh</foreign>
( <foreign
lang="he">qd,x, </foreign>,<foreign lang="he"> hq;d;x]</foreign> )
<foreign lang="el">Dikaiosuvnh
tou' novmou</foreign>
<foreign
lang="el">Dikaiosuvnh tou' qeou'
</foreign>
<foreign
lang="el">ejx e[rgwn</foreign>
<foreign
lang="el">ejk qeou'
</foreign>
<foreign
lang="el">ijdiva.</foreign>
<foreign
lang="el">th' " pivstew"
</foreign>
<foreign
lang="el">ejk th' " pivstew"
</foreign> <foreign
lang="el">dia; pivstew" Cristou'</foreign>.
The cognate words are <foreign
lang="el">dikaivwsi", dikaivwma,
divkaio", dikaiovw</foreign>. The
Pauline idea of righteousness is derived from the Old Testament, and is
inseparable from the conception of the holy will of God and his revealed law.
But the classical usage is quite consistent with it, and illustrates the
biblical usage from a lower plane. The Greek words are derived from jus,
right, and further back from. <foreign
lang="el">divca</foreign>, or div", two-fold, in two parts
(according to Aristotle, Eth. Nic., v. 2); hence they indicate a
well-proportioned relation between parts or persons where each has his due. It
may then apply to the relation between God and man, or to the relation between
man and man, or to both at once. To the Greeks a righteous man was one who
fulfils his obligations to God and man. It was a Greek proverb: "In
righteousness all virtue is contained."
<foreign lang="el">Dikaiosuvnh</foreign> (<foreign lang="he">qd,x, hq;d;x]</foreign>) is an attribute of God, and a
corresponding moral condition of man, i.e., man’s conformity to the will
of God as expressed in his holy law. It is therefore identical with true
religion, with piety and virtue, as required by God, and insures his favor and
blessing. The word occurs (according to Bruder’s Concord.) sixty times
in all the Pauline Epistles, namely: thirty-six times in Romans, four times in
Galatians, seven times in 2 Corinthians, once in 1 Corinthians, four times in
Philippians, three times in Ephesians, three times in 2 Timothy, once in 1
Timothy, and once in Titus.
<foreign lang="el">Divkaio"</foreign> (<foreign lang="he">qyDix;</foreign>) righteous (rechtbeschaffen), is
one who fulfils his duties to God and men, and is therefore well pleasing to
God. It is used seventeen times by Paul (seven times in Romans), and often
elsewhere in the New Testament.
<foreign lang="el">Dikaivwsi"</foreign> occurs only twice in the New Test. (<scripRef
passage = "Rom. 4:25; 5:18">Rom. 4:25; 5:18</scripRef>). It signifies justification, or the act
of God by which he puts the sinner into the possession of righteousness.
<foreign lang="el">Dikaivwma</foreign>, which is found <scripRef passage =
"Rom. 1:32; 2:26; 5:16, 18; 8:4">Rom. 1:32; 2:26; 5:16, 18; 8:4</scripRef> means a righteous decree, or judgment.
Aristotle (Eth. Nicom., v. 10) defines it as <foreign
lang="el">to; ejpanovrqwma tou'
ajdikhvmato",</foreign> the amendment of an evil deed, or a legal
adjustment; and this would suit the passage in Rom. 5:16, 18.
The verb <foreign
lang="el">dikaiovw</foreign> (<foreign lang="he">iq]Dex </foreign>, <foreign
lang="he">qyDix]hi</foreign>)occurs twenty-seven times in Paul, mostly in
Romans, several times in the Synoptical Gospels, once in Acts, and three times
in <scripRef
passage = "James 2:21, 24, 25">James 2:21, 24, 25</scripRef>. It may mean, etymologically, to make just,
justificare (for the verbs in <foreign
lang="el">ovw</foreign>, derived from adjectives of the second
declension, indicate the making of what the adjective denotes, e.g., <foreign
lang="el">dhlovw</foreign>, to make clear, <foreign
lang="el">fanerovw</foreign>, to reveal,<foreign
lang="el"> tuflovw</foreign>, to blind); but in the Septuagint and the Greek Testament it hardly, ever
has this meaning ("<foreign lang="la">haec significatio</foreign>," says Grimm, "<foreign lang="la">admodum rara, nisi prorsus dubia est</foreign>"), and is used in a forensic or judicial
sense: to declare one righteous (<foreign
lang="la">aliquem
justum declarare, judicare</foreign>). This justification of the sinner is, of
course, not a legal fiction, but perfectly true, for it is based on the real
righteousness of Christ which the sinner makes his own by faith, and must prove
his own by a life of holy obedience, or good works. For further expositions see
my annotations to Lange on Romans, pp. 74, 130, 136, 138; and my Com
on Gal. 2:16, 17. On the imputation controversies see my essay in Lange on Romans
5:12, pp. 190–195. On the relation of Paul’s doctrine of justification to that
of James, see § 69 of this vol.
V. Paul’s doctrine of
the Church has been stated in § 65
of this vol. But it requires more than one book to do anything like justice to
the wonderful theology of this wonderful
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="72" title="John and the Gospel of
Love">
§72. John and the Gospel of Love.
(See the Lit. in § 40 p. 405.)
General Character.
The unity of Jewish
Christian and Gentile Christian theology meets us in the writings of John, who,
in the closing decades of the first century, summed up the final results of the
preceding struggles of the apostolic age and transmitted them to posterity. Paul
had fought out the great conflict with Judaism and secured the recognition of
the freedom and universality of the gospel for all time to come. John disposes
of this question with one sentence: "The law was given through Moses;
grace and truth came through Jesus Christ."814 His
theology marks the culminating height of divine knowledge in the apostolic age.
It is impossible to soar higher than the eagle, which is his proper symbol.815 His
views are so much identified with the words of his Lord, to whom he stood more
closely related than any other disciple, that it is difficult to separate them;
but the prologue to his Gospel contains his leading ideas, and his first
Epistle the practical application. The theology of the Apocalypse is also
essentially the same, and this goes far to confirm the identity of authorship.816
John was not a logician,
but a seer; not a reasoner, but a mystic; he does not argue, but assert; he
arrives at conclusions with one bound, as by direct intuition. He speaks from
personal experience and testifies of that which his eyes have seen and his ears
heard and his hands have handled, of the glory of the Only-begotten of the
Father full of grace and truth.817
John’s theology is
marked by artless simplicity and spiritual depth. The highest art conceals art.
As in poetry, so in religion, the most natural is the most perfect. He moves in
a small circle of ideas as compared with Paul, but these ideas are fundamental
and all-comprehensive. He goes back to first principles and sees the strong
point without looking sideways or taking note of exceptions. Christ and
Antichrist, believers and unbelievers, children of God and children of the
devil, truth and falsehood, light and darkness, love and hatred, life and
death: these are the great contrasts under which he views the religious world.
These he sets forth again and again with majestic simplicity.
John and Paul.
John’s type of doctrine
is less developed and fortified than Paul’s, but more ideal. His mind was
neither so rich nor so strong, but it soared higher and anticipated the
beatific vision. Although Paul was far superior to him as a scholar (and
practical worker), yet the ancient Greek church saw in John the ideal
theologian.818
John’s spirit and style may be compared to a calm, clear mountain-lake
which reflects the image of the sun) moon, and stars, while Paul resembles the
mountain-torrent that rushes over precipices and carries everything before it;
yet there are trumpets of war in John, and anthems of peace in Paul. The one
begins from the summit, with God and the Logos, the other from the depths of
man’s sin and misery; but both meet in the God-man who brings God down to man
and lifts man up to God. John is contemplative and serene, Paul is aggressive
and polemical; but both unite in the victory of faith and the never-ending
dominion of love. John’s theology is Christological, Paul’s soteriological;
John starts from the person of Christ, Paul from his work; but their
christology and soteriology are essentially agreed. John’s ideal is life
eternal, Paul’s ideal is righteousness; but both derive it from the same
source, the union with Christ, and find in this the highest happiness of man.
John represents the church triumphant, Paul the church militant of his day and
of our day, but with the full assurance of final victory even over the last
enemy.
The Central Idea.
John’s Christianity
centres in the idea of love and life, which in their last root are identical.
His dogmatics are summed up in the word: God first loved us; his ethics in the
exhortation: Therefore let us love Him and the brethren. He is justly called
the apostle of love. Only we must not understand this word in a sentimental,
but in the highest and purest moral sense. God’s love is his self-communication
to man; man’s love is a holy self-consecration to God. We may recognize—in
rising stages of transformation—the same fiery spirit in the Son of Thunder who
called vengeance from heaven; in the Apocalyptic seer who poured out the vials
of wrath against the enemies of Christ; and in the beloved disciple who knew no
middle ground, but demanded undivided loyalty and whole-souled devotion to his
Master. In him the highest knowledge and the highest love coincide: knowledge
is the eye of love, love the heart of knowledge; both constitute eternal life,
and eternal life is the fulness of happiness.819
The central truth of John and the central fact in Christianity itself is the incarnation of the eternal Logos as the highest manifestation of God’s love to the world. The denial of this truth is the criterion of Antichrist.820
The Principal Doctrines.
I. The doctrine of God. He is spirit (<foreign
lang="el">pneu'ma</foreign>), he is light (<foreign
lang="el">fw'"</foreign>) he is love (<foreign
lang="el">ajgavph</foreign>).821 These are the briefest and yet the
profoundest definitions which can be given of the infinite Being of all beings.
The first is put into the mouth of Christ, the second and third are from the
pen of John. The first sets forth God’s metaphysical, the second his
intellectual, the third his moral perfection; but they are blended in one.
God is spirit, all
spirit, absolute spirit (in opposition to every materialistic conception and
limitation); hence omnipresent, all-pervading, and should be worshipped,
whether in Jerusalem or Gerizim or anywhere else, in spirit and in truth.
God is light, all light
without a spot of darkness, and the fountain of all light, that is of truth,
purity, and holiness.
God is love; this John
repeats twice, looking upon love as the inmost moral essence of God, which
animates, directs, and holds together all other attributes; it is the motive
power of his revelations or self-communications, the beginning and the end of
his ways and works, the core of his manifestation in Christ.
II. The doctrine of Christ’s Person. He is the eternal and
the incarnate Logos or Revealer of God. No man has ever yet seen God (<foreign
lang="el">qeovn</foreign>, without the article, God’s nature, or God as
God); the only-begotten Son (or God only-begotten),822 who is in the bosom823 of the Father, he and he alone (<foreign
lang="el">ekei'no"</foreign>) declared him and brought to light, once and
forever, the hidden mystery of his being.824
This perfect knowledge
of the Father, Christ claims himself in that remarkable passage in <scripRef
passage = "Matthew 11:27">Matthew 11:27</scripRef>, which strikingly confirms the essential harmony
of the Johannean and Synoptical representations of Christ.
John (and he alone)
calls Christ the "Logos" of God, i.e., the embodiment of God
and the organ of all his revelations.825 As the human reason or thought is
expressed in word, and as the word is the medium of making our thoughts known
to others, so God is known to himself and to the world in and through Christ as
the personal Word. While "Logos" designates the metaphysical and
intellectual relation, the term "Son" designates the moral relation
of Christ to God, as a relation of love, and the epithet
"only-begotten" or "only-born" (<foreign
lang="el">monogenhv"</foreign>) raises his sonship as entirely unique above
every other sonship, which is only a reflection of it. It is a blessed relation
of infinite knowledge and infinite love. The Logos is eternal, he is personal,
he is divine.826 He
was in the beginning before creation or from eternity. He is, on the one hand,
distinct from God and in the closest communion with him (<foreign
lang="el">pro;" to;n qeovn</foreign>); on the other hand he is himself essentially
divine, and therefore called "God" (<foreign
lang="el">qeov"</foreign>, but not <foreign
lang="el">oJ qeov"</foreign>).827
This pre-existent Logos
is the agent of the creation of all things visible and invisible.828 He
is the fulness and fountain of life (<foreign
lang="el">hJ zwhv</foreign>, the true, immortal life, as distinct from <foreign
lang="el">bivo"</foreign>, the natural, mortal life), and light (<foreign
lang="el">to; fw'",</foreign> which includes intellectual and moral truth,
reason and conscience) to all men. Whatever elements of truth, goodness, and
beauty may be found shining like stars and meteors in the darkness of
heathendom, must be traced to the Logos, the universal Life-giver and
Illuminator.
Here Paul and John meet
again; both teach the agency of Christ in the creation, but John more clearly
connects him with all the preparatory revelations before the incarnation. This
extension of the Logos revelation explains the high estimate which some of the
Greek fathers, (Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Origen) put upon the
Hellenic, especially the Platonic philosophy, as a training-school of the
heathen mind for Christ.
The Logos revealed
himself to every man, but in a special manner to his own chosen people; and
this revelation culminated in John the Baptist, who summed up in himself the
meaning of the law and the prophets, and pointed to Jesus of Nazareth as
"the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world."
At last the Logos became
flesh.829 He
completed his revelation by uniting himself with man once and forever in all
things, except sin.830 The Hebraizing term "flesh"
best expresses his condescension to our fallen condition and the complete
reality of his humanity as an object of sense, visible and tangible, in strong
contrast with his immaterial divinity. It includes not only the body (<foreign
lang="el">sw'ma</foreign>), but also a human soul (<foreign
lang="el">yuchv</foreign>) and a rational spirit (<foreign
lang="el">nou'"</foreign>, <foreign lang="el">pneu'ma</foreign>); for John ascribes them all to Christ. To use a
later terminology, the incarnation (<foreign
lang="el">ejnsavrkwsi",</foreign>incarnatio) is only a stronger term for the assumption of humanity (<foreign
lang="el">ejnanqrwvphsi",</foreign>Menschwerdung). The Logos became man—not partially but totally,
not apparently but really, not transiently but permanently, not by ceasing to
be divine, nor by being changed into a man, but by an abiding, personal union
with man. He is henceforth the Godman. He tabernacled on earth as the true
Shekinah, and manifested to his disciples the glory of the only begotten which
shone from the veil of his humanity.831 This is the divine-human glory in the
state of humiliation as distinct from the divine glory in his preexistent
state, and from the final and perfect manifestation of his glory in the state
of exaltation in which his disciples shall share.832
The fourth Gospel is a
commentary on the ideas of the Prologue. It was written for the purpose that
the readers may believe "that Jesus is the Christ (the promised Messiah),
the Son of God (in the sense of the only begotten and eternal Son), and that
believing they may have life in his name."833
III. The Work of Christ (Soteriology). This
implies the conquest over sin and Satan, and the procurement of eternal life.
Christ appeared without sin, to the end that he might destroy the works of the
devil, who was a liar and murderer from the beginning of history, who first
fell away from the truth and then brought sin and death into mankind.834
Christ laid down his life and shed his blood for his sheep. By this
self-consecration in death he became the propitiation (<foreign
lang="el">iJlasmov"</foreign>) for the sins of believers and for the sins of
the whole world.835 His blood cleanses from all the guilt
and contamination of sin. He is (in the language of the Baptist) the Lamb of
God that bears and takes away the sin of the world; and (in the unconscious
prophecy of Caiaphas) he died for the people.836 He
was priest and sacrifice in one person. And he continues his priestly
functions, being our Advocate in Heaven and ready to forgive us when we sin and
come to him in true repentance.837
This is the negative
part of Christ’s work, the removal of the obstruction which separated us from
God. The positive part consists in the revelation of the Father, and in the
communication of eternal life, which includes eternal happiness. He is himself
the Life and the Light of the world.838 He calls himself the Way, the Truth,
and the Life. In him the true, the eternal life, which was from the beginning
with the Father, appeared personally in human form. He came to communicate it
to men. He is the bread of life from heaven, and feeds the believers everywhere
spiritually without diminishing, as He fed the five thousand physically with
five loaves. That miracle is continued in the mystical self-communication of
Christ to his people. Whosoever believes in him has eternal life, which begins
here in the new birth and will be completed in the resurrection of the body.839
Herein also the
Apocalypse well agrees with the Gospel and Epistles of John. Christ is
represented as the victor of the devil.840 He is the conquering Lion of the tribe
of Judah, but also the suffering Lamb slain for us. The figure of the lamb,
whether it be referred to the paschal lamb, or to the lamb in the Messianic
passage of Isaiah 53:7, expresses the idea of atoning sacrifice which is fully
realized in the death of Christ. He "washed" (or, according to
another reading, he "loosed") "us from our sins by his
blood;" he redeemed men "of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and
nation, and made them to be unto our God a kingdom and priests." The countless multitude of the redeemed
"washed their robes and made them white (bright and shining) in the blood
of the Lamb." This implies
both purification and sanctification; white garments being the symbols of
holiness.841
Love was the motive which prompted him to give his life for his people.842
Great stress is laid on the resurrection, as in the Gospel, where he is
called the Resurrection and the Life. The exalted Logos-Messiah has the keys of
death and Hades.843 He is a sharer in the universal
government of God; he is the mediatorial ruler of the world, "the Prince
of the kings of the earth" "King of kings and Lord of lords."844 The
apocalyptic seer likewise brings in the idea of life in its highest sense as a
reward of faith in Christ to those who overcome and are faithful unto death,
Christ will give "a crown of life," and a seat on his throne. He
"shall guide them unto fountains of waters of life; and God shall wipe
away every tear from their eyes."845
IV. The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit
(Pneumatology). This is most fully set forth in the farewell discourser, of our
Lord, which are reported by John exclusively. The Spirit whom Christ promised
to send after his return to the Father, is called the Paraclete, i.e., the
Advocate or Counsellor, Helper, who pleads the cause of the believers, directs,
supports, and comforts them.846 He is "another Advocate" (<foreign
lang="el">a[llo" paravklhto"</foreign>), Christ himself being the first Advocate who
intercedes for believers at the throne of the Father, as their eternal High
priest. The Spirit proceeds (eternally) from the Father, and was sent by the
Father and the Son on the day of Pentecost.847 He reveals Christ to the heart and
glorifies him (<foreign lang="el">ejme;
doxavsei¼_ he bear" witnes" to him »marturhvsei peri; ejmou'¼_ he
call" to remembrance and explain" hi" teaching »uJma'"
didavxei pavnta kai; uJpomnhvsei uJma'" pavnta a{ ei|pon uJmi'n ejgwv</foreign>); he leads the disciples into the whole
truth (<foreign
lang="el">oJdhghvsei uJma'" eij"
th;n ajlhvqeian pa'san¼_ he take" out of the fulnes" of Christ and
show" it to them »ejk tou' ejmou' lambavnei kai; ajnaggelei' uJmi'n ¼. The
Holy Spirit i" the Mediator and Intercessor between Christ and the
believer, a" Christ i" the Mediator between God and the world. He
i" the Spirit of truth and of holines". He convict" »ejlevgcei¼
the world, that i" all men who come under hi" influence, in respect
of sin »peri; aJmartiva"¼, of righteousnes" »dikaiosuvnh"¼, and
of judgment »krivsew"¼_ and thi" conviction will result either in the
conversion, or in the impenitence of the sinner. The operation of the Spirit
accompanie" the preaching of the word, and i" alway" internal in
the sphere of the heart and conscience. He i" one of the three
witnesse" and give" efficacy to the other two witnesse" of
Christ on earth, the baptism »to; u}dwr</foreign>), and the atoning death (<foreign
lang="el">to; ai|ma</foreign>) of Christ.848
V. Christian Life. It begins with a new
birth from above or from the Holy Spirit. Believers are children of God who are
"born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man,
but of God."849 It is a "new" birth compared
with the old, a birth "from God," as compared with that from man, a
birth from the Holy "Spirit," in distinction from carnal birth, a
birth "from heaven," as opposed to earthly birth. The life of the
believer does not descend through the channels of fallen nature, but requires a
creative act of the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the gospel. The life
of the regenerate is free from the principle and power of sin. "Whosoever
is begotten of God doeth no sin, because his seed abideth in him; and he cannot
sin because he is begotten of God."850 Over him the devil has no power.851
The new life is the life
of Christ in the soul. It is eternal intrinsically and as to duration. Eternal
life in man consists in the knowledge of the only true God and of Jesus
Christ—a knowledge which implies full sympathy and communion of love.852 It
begins here in faith; hence the oft-repeated declaration that he who believes
in Christ has (<foreign lang="el">e[cei</foreign>) eternal life.853 But
it will not appear in its full development till the time of his glorious
manifestation, when we shall be like him and see him even as he is.854
Faith is the medium of communication, the bond of union with Christ.
Faith is the victory over the world, already here in principle.855
John’s idea of life
eternal takes the place of Paul’s idea of righteousness, but both agree in the
high conception of faith as the one indispensable condition of securing it by
uniting us to Christ, who is both righteousness and life eternal.856
The life of the
Christian, moreover, is a communion with Christ and with the Father in the Holy
Spirit. Our Lord prayed before his passion that the believers of that and all
future ages might be one with him, even as he is one with the Father, and that
they may enjoy his glory. John writes his first Epistle for the purpose that
his readers may have "fellowship with the Father, and with his Son Jesus
Christ, and that thus their joy may be made full."857
This fellowship is only another word for love, and love to God is inseparable
from love to the brethren. "If God so loved us, we also ought to love one
another." "God is love;
and he that abideth in love abideth in God and God abideth in him." Love to the brethren is the true test
of practical Christianity.858 This brotherly fellowship is the true
essence of the Church, which is nowhere even mentioned in John’s Gospel and
First Epistle.859
Love to God and to the
brethren is no mere sentiment, but an active power, and manifests itself in the
keeping of God’s commandments.860
Here again John and Paul meet in the idea of love, as the highest of the Christian graces which abides forever when faith shall have passed into sight, and hope into fruition.861
Notes.
The incarnation is expressed by John briefly
and tersely in the phrase "The Word became flesh" (<scripRef
passage = "John 1:14">John 1:14</scripRef>).
I. The meaning of <foreign
lang="el">savrx</foreign>. Apollinaris confined "flesh" to the
body, including the animal soul, and taught that the Logos occupied the place
of the rational soul or spirit (<foreign lang="el">nou'",
pneu'ma</foreign>) in Christ; that consequently he was not a full
man, but a sort of middle being between God and man, half divine and haIf
human, not wholly divine and wholly human. This view was condemned as heretical
by the Nicene church, but renewed substantially by the Tübingen school, as
being the doctrine of John. According to Baur (l.c., p. 363) <foreign
lang="el">savrx ejgeneto</foreign> is not equivalent to (<foreign
lang="el">a[nqrwpo" ejgevneto</foreign>, but means that the Logos assumed a human body
and continued otherwise the same. The incarnation was only an incidental
phenomenon in the unchanging personality of the Logos. Moreover the flesh of
Christ was not like that of other men, but almost immaterial, so at; to be able
to walk on the lake (<scripRef passage = "John 6:16">John 6:16</scripRef>; Comp. <scripRef passage =
"John 7:10, 15; 8:59 10:39">7:10, 15; 8:59 10:39</scripRef>). To this exegesis we object:
1. John expressly
ascribes to Christ a soul, <scripRef passage =
"John 10:11, 15, 17; 12:27">John 10:11, 15, 17; 12:27</scripRef> (<foreign lang="el">hJ
yuch/' mou tetavraktai</foreign>), and a spirit, <scripRef passage =
"John 11:33">11:33</scripRef> (<foreign lang="el">ejnebrimhvsato
tw/' pneuvmati</foreign>); <scripRef
passage = "John 13:21">13:21</scripRef> (<foreign
lang="el">ejtaracqh tw/' pneuvmati</foreign>); <scripRef passage = "John
19:30">19:30</scripRef> (<foreign lang="el">parevdwken
to; pneu'ma</foreign>). It may be said that pneu’ma is here nothing more than the animal soul,
because the same affection is attributed to both, and because it was
surrendered in death. But Christ calls himself in John frequently "the Son
of man" <scripRef passage = "John 1:51">1:51</scripRef>, etc.), and once "a man" (<foreign
lang="el">a[nqrwpo",</foreign> <scripRef passage = "John
8:40">8:40</scripRef>), which certainly must include the more
important intellectual and spiritual part as well as the body.
2. "Flesh" is
often used in the Old and New Testament for the whole man, as in the phrase
"all flesh" (<foreign lang="el">pa'sa
savrx</foreign>, every mortal man), or <foreign
lang="el">miva sarvx</foreign> (<scripRef passage = "John
17:2">John 17:2</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Rom.
3:20">Rom. 3:20</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "1 Cor.
1:29">1 Cor. 1:29</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Gal.
2:16">Gal. 2:16</scripRef>). In this passage it suited John’s idea better
than <foreign
lang="el">a[nqrwpo",</foreign> because it more strongly expresses the
condescension of the Logos to the human nature in its present condition, with
its weakness, trials, temptations, and sufferings. He completely identified
himself with our earthly lot, and became homogeneous with us, even to the
likeness, though not the essence, of sin (<scripRef passage =
"Rom. 8:3">Rom.
8:3</scripRef>; comp. <scripRef passage =
"Heb. 2:14; 5:8, 9">Heb. 2:14; 5:8, 9</scripRef>). "Flesh" then, when ascribed to
Christ, has the same comprehensive meaning in John as it has in Paul (comp.
also <scripRef
passage = "1 Tim. 3:16">1 Tim. 3:16</scripRef>). It is animated flesh, and the soul of that
flesh contains the spiritual as well as the physical life.
II. Another difficulty
is presented by the verb <foreign lang="el">ejgevneto</foreign>. The champions of the modern Kenosis theory
(Thomasius, Gess, Ebrard, Godet, etc.), while differing from the Apollinarian
substitution of the Logos for a rational human soul in Christ, assert that the
Logos himself because a human soul by voluntary transformation; and so they
explain ejgevneto and the famous Pauline phrase <foreign lang="el">eJauto;n
ejkevnwsen, morfh;n douvlou labwvn</foreign> (<scripRef passage = "Philippians
2:7">Phil. 2:7</scripRef>). As the water was changed into wine at Cana (<scripRef
passage = "John 2:9">John 2:9</scripRef>: <foreign
lang="el">To; u{dwr oi|non gegenhmevnon</foreign>), so the Logos in infinite self-denial
changed his divine being into a human being during the state of his
humiliation, and thus led a single life, not a double life (as the Chalcedonian
theory of two complete natures simultaneously coexisting in the same person
from the manger to the cross seems to imply). But
1. The verb <foreign
lang="el">ejgevneto</foreign> must be understood in agreement with the
parallel passages:, "he came in the flesh," <scripRef
passage = "1 John 4:2">1 John 4:2</scripRef> (<foreign lang="el">ejn
sarki; ejlhluqovta</foreign>); <scripRef passage = "2 John
7">2 John 7</scripRef> (<foreign lang="el">ejrcovmenon
ejn sarkiv</foreign>), with this difference, that "became" indicates the realness
of Christ’s manhood, "came" the continuance of his godhood. Compare
also Paul’s expression, <foreign lang="el">ejfanerwvqh
ejn sarkiv</foreign>, <scripRef passage = "1 Tim. 3:16">1 Tim. 3:16</scripRef>.
2. Whatever may be the
objections to the Chalcedonian dyophysitism, they cannot be removed by running
the Kenosis to the extent of a self-suspension of the Logos or an actual
surrender of his essential attributes; for this is a metaphysical
impossibility, and inconsistent with the unchangeableness of God and the
intertrinitarian process. The Logos did not cease to be God when he entered
into the human state of existence, nor did he cease to be man when he returned
to the state of divine glory which he had with the Father before the foundation
of the world.
III. Beyschlag (Die
Christologie des N. T, p. 168) denies the identity of the Logos with
Christ, and resolves the Logos into a divine principle, instead of a person.
"<foreign
lang="de">Der
Logos ist nicht die Person Christi ... sondern er ist das gottheitliche Princip
dieser menschlichen Persönlichkeit</foreign>."
He assumes a gradual unfolding of the Logos principle in the human
person of Christ. But the personality of the Logos is taught in <scripRef
passage = "John 1:1–3">John 1:1–3</scripRef>, and <foreign
lang="el">ejgevneto</foreign> denotes a completed act. We must remember,
however, that personality in the trinity and personality of the Logos are
different from personality of man. Human speech is inadequate to express the
distinction.
</div3>
<div3
type = "Section" n="73" title="Heretical Perversions
of the Apostolic Teaching">
§ 73. Heretical Perversions of the Apostolic Teaching.
(Comp. my Hist. of the Ap. Ch., pp. 649–674.)
The three types of doctrine
which we have briefly unfolded, exhibit Christianity in the whole fulness of
its life; and they form the theme for the variations of the succeeding ages of
the church. Christ is the key-note, harmonizing all the discords and resolving
all the mysteries of the history of his kingdom.
But this heavenly body
of apostolic truth is confronted with the ghost of heresy; as were the divine
miracles of Moses with the satanic juggleries of the Egyptians, and as Christ
was with demoniacal possessions. The more mightily the spirit of truth rises,
the more active becomes the spirit of falsehood. "Where God builds a
church the devil builds, a chapel close by." But in the hands of
Providence all errors must redound to the unfolding and the final victory of
the truth. They stimulate inquiry and compel defence. Satan himself is that
"power which constantly wills the bad, and works the
good." Heresies in a
disordered world are relatively necessary and negatively justifiable; though
the teachers of them are, of course, not the less guilty. "It must needs
be, that scandals come; but woe to that man by whom the scandal cometh."862
The heresies of the
apostolic age are, respectively, the caricatures of the several types of the
true doctrine. Accordingly we distinguish three fundamental forms of heresy,
which reappear, with various modifications, in almost every subsequent period.
In this respect, as in others, the apostolic period stands as the type of the
whole future; and the exhortations and warnings of the New Testament against
false doctrine have force for every age.
1. The Judaizing tendency is the heretical
counterpart of Jewish Christianity. It so insists on the unity of Christianity
with Judaism, as to sink the former to the level of the latter, and to make the
gospel no more than an improvement or a perfected law. It regards Christ as a
mere prophet, a second Moses; and denies, or at least wholly overlooks, his
divine nature and his priestly and kingly offices. The Judaizers were Jews in
fact, and Christians only in appearance and in name. They held circumcision and
the whole moral and ceremonial law of Moses to be still binding, and the
observance of them necessary to salvation. Of Christianity as a new, free, and
universal religion, they had no conception. Hence they hated Paul, the liberal
apostle of the Gentiles, as a dangerous apostate and revolutionist, impugned
his motives, and everywhere, especially in Galatia and Corinth, labored to
undermine his authority in the churches. The epistles of Paul, especially that
to the Galatians, can never be properly understood, unless their opposition to
this false Judaizing Christianity be continually kept in view.
The same heresy, more
fully developed, appears in the second century under the name of Ebionism.
2. The opposite extreme
is a false Gentile Christianity, which may be called the Paganizing or Gnostic heresy. It is as
radical and revolutionary as the other is contracted and reactionary. It
violently breaks away from the past, while the Judaizing heresies tenaciously
and stubbornly cling to it as permanently binding. It exaggerates the Pauline
view of the distinction of Christianity from Judaism, sunders Christianity from
its historical basis, resolves the real humanity of the Saviour into a
Doketistic illusion, and perverts the freedom of the gospel into antinomian
licentiousness. The author, or first representative of this baptized
heathenism, according to the uniform testimony of Christian antiquity, is Simon
Magus, who unquestionably adulterated Christianity with pagan ideas and
practices, and gave himself out, in pantheistic style, for an emanation of God.863
Plain traces of this error appear in the later epistles of Paul (to the
Colossians, to Timothy, and to Titus), the second epistle of Peter, the first
two epistles of John, the epistle of Jude, and the messages of the Apocalypse
to the seven churches.
This heresy, in the
second century, spread over the whole church, east and west, in the various
schools of Gnosticism.
3. As attempts had
already been made, before Christ, by Philo, by the Therapeutae and the Essenes,
etc., to blend the Jewish religion with heathen philosophy, especially that of
Pythagoras and Plato, so now, under the Christian name, there appeared confused
combinations of these opposite systems, forming either a Paganizing Judaism, i.e., Gnostic
Ebionism, or a Judaizing Paganism i.e.,
Ebionistic Gnosticism, according as the Jewish or the heathen element
prevailed. This Syncretistic
heresy was the caricature of John’s theology, which truly reconciled Jewish and
Gentile Christianity in the highest conception of the person and work of
Christ. The errors combated in the later books of the New Testament are almost
all more or less of this mixed sort, and it is often doubtful whether they come
from Judaism or from heathenism. They were usually shrouded in a shadowy
mysticism and surrounded by the halo of a self-made ascetic holiness, but
sometimes degenerated into the opposite extreme of antinomian licentiousness.
Whatever their
differences, however, all these three fundamental heresies amount at last to a
more or less distinct denial of the central truth of the gospel—the incarnation
of the Son of God for the salvation of the world. They make Christ either a
mere man, or a mere superhuman phantom; they allow, at all events, no real and
abiding union of the divine and human in the person of the Redeemer. This is
just what John gives as the mark of antichrist, which existed even in his day
in various forms.864 It plainly undermines the foundation of
the church. For if Christ be not God-man, neither is he mediator between God
and men; Christianity sinks back into heathenism or Judaism. All turns at last
on the answer to that fundamental question: "What think ye of
Christ?" The true solution of
this question is the radical refutation of every error.
Notes.
"It has often been
remarked that truths and error keep pace with each other. Error is the shadow
cast by truth, truth the bright side brought out by error. Such is the relation
between the heresies and the apostolical teaching of the first century. The
Gospels indeed, as in other respects, so in this, rise almost entirely above
the circumstances of the time, but the Epistles are, humanly speaking, the
result of the very conflict between the good and the evil elements which
existed together in the bosom of the early Christian society. As they exhibit
the principles afterward to be unfolded into all truth and goodness, so the
heresies which they attack exhibit the principles which were afterward to grow
up into all the various forms of error, falsehood and wickedness. The energy,
the freshness, nay, even the preternatural power which belonged to the one
belonged also to the other. Neither the truths in the writings of the Apostles,
nor the errors in the opinions of their opponents, can be said to exhibit the
dogmatical form of any subsequent age. It is a higher and more universal good
which is aimed at in the former; it is a deeper and more universal principle of
evil which is attacked in the latter. Christ Himself, and no subordinate truths
or speculations concerning Him, is reflected in the one; Antichrist, and not
any of the particular outward manifestations of error which have since
appeared, was justly regarded by the Apostles as foreshadowed in the
other." — Dean Stanley (Apostolic Age, p.
182).
Literature.—The heresies of the Apostolic Age have been
thoroughly investigated by Neander and Baur in connection with the history of
Ebionism and Gnosticism (see next vol.), and separately in the introductions to
critical commentaries on the Colossians and Pastoral Epistles; also by
Thiersch, Lipsius, Hilgenfeld. Among English writers we mention Burton: Inquiry into the Heresies of
the Apostolic Age, in eight Sermons (Bampton Lectures). Oxford, 1829. Dean Stanley: Sermons and Essays on the
Apostolic Age, pp. 182–233, 3d ed. Oxford, 1874. Bishop Lightfoot: Com. on St. Paul’s Ep. to
the Colossians and to Philemon, pp. 73–113 (on the Colossian heresy and its
connection with Essenism). London, 1875. Comp. also Hilgenfeld: Die Ketzergeschichte des Urchristenthums.
Leipzig, 1884 (642 pages).
</div3><div2
type=”Chapter” n=”XII” title=”The New Testament”>
CHAPTER XII.
THE NEW TESTAMENT.
</div2>
<div3
type = "Section" n="74" title="Literature">
§ 74. Literature.
Comp. the Lit. on the Life of Christ, § 14, and on the
Apostolic Age, § 20.
I. The Critical Editions
of the Greek Testament by Lachmann (1842–50, 2 vols.); Tischendorf (ed.
octava critics major, 1869–72, 2 vols., with Prolegomena by C. R.
Gregory, Part I., Leipz., 1884); Tregelles (1857–79); Westcott and Hort (1881,
with a vol. of Introd. and Appendix. Cambridge and New York, revised ed. 1888).
Lachmann laid the
foundation; Tischendorf and Tregelles greatly enlarged and carefully sifted the
critical apparatus; Westcott and Hort restored the cleanest text from the
oldest attainable sources; all substantially agree in principle and result, and
give us the ancient uncial instead of the mediaeval cursive text.
Two bilingual editions
also deserve special mention in connection with the recent revision of Luther’s
and King James’s versions. Oskar von Gebhardt, Novum Testamentum Graece et
Germanice, Lips., 1881, gives the last text of Tischendorf (with the readings of
Tregelles, and Westcott and Hort below) and the revised translation of Luther.
His Greek text is also separately issued with an "Adnotatio critica,"
not contained in the diglott edition. The Greek-English New Testament,
containing Westcott and Hort’s Greek Text and the Revised English Version on
opposite pages, with introduction by Schaff. New York (Harper & Brothers), 1882, revised ed. 1888.
II. The historico-critical
Introductions, or literary Histories of the New Testament by Hug, De Wette,
Credner, Guericke, Horne, Davidson, Tregelles, Grau, Hilgenfeld, Aberle, (R.
Cath.), Bleek (4th ed. by Mangold, 1886), Reuss (6th ed. 1887), Holtzmann (2d
ed. 1886), Weiss (1886), Salmon (3d ed. 1888).
III. Thiersch: Herstellung des
historischen Standpunktes für die Kritik der neutestamentl. Schriften. Erlangen, 1845. (Against Baur and the Tübingen
School.)—Edward C. Mitchell: Critical Handbook to the New Test. (on
Authenticity, Canon, etc.). Lond. and Andover, 1880; French translation, Paris,
1882.—J. P. Lange: Grundriss der Bibelkunde. Heidelberg, 1881.—Philip
Schaff: Companion to the Greek Testament and the English Version. N. Y. and Lond., 1883, 3d ed. revised 1888.—G. D.
Ladd: The Doctrine of Sacred Scripture, N. York, 1883, 2 vols.
The same, abridged, 1888.
IV. The works quoted below
on the Gospels and Epistles.
V. On the Canon of the New
Test., the works of Kirchhofer (Quellensammlung, etc. Zürich, 1844,
Engl. transl. enlarged by Charteris: Canonicity, etc. Edinb., 1881);
Credner (Zur Gesch. des Kanon. Halle, 1847; Geschichte des Neutest. Kanon,
herausg. von Volkmar. Berlin,
1860); Gaussen (Engl. transl., London, 1862; abridged transl. by Kirk, Boston,
1862); Tregelles (Canon Muratorianus. Oxford, 1867); Sam. Davidson
(Lond., 1878, 3d ed., 1880); Westcott (Cambridge and London, 1855; 6th ed.,
1889); Reuss (Histoire du canon des S. Écritures. Strasb., 2d ed., 1864); Ad. Harnack (Das muratorische Fragment
und die Entstehung einer Sammlung Apost.-katholischer Schriften, in Brieger’s "Zeitschrift f.
Kirchengeschichte," 1879, III., 358 sqq.; comp. 595 sqq.); F. Overbeck (Zur Geschichte des
Kanons. Chemnitz, 1880); Réville
(French, 1881); Theod. Zahn (Forschungen zur Geschichte des neutestamentl. Kanons, Part I-III., 1881–84;
and Geschichte des Kanons d. N. T., Leipz., 1888 sqq., 3 vols). Comp. Harnack: Das N. T. um das
Jahr. 200, Freiburg, 1889
(against Zahn), and Zahn’s reply, Leipz., 1889.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="75" title="Rise of the Apostolic
Literature">
§ 75. Rise of the Apostolic Literature.
Christ is the book of life
to be read by all. His religion is not an outward letter of command, like the
law of Moses, but free, quickening spirit; not a literary production, but a
moral creation; not a new system of theology or philosophy for the learned, but
a communication of the divine life for the redemption of the whole world.
Christ is the personal Word of God, the eternal Logos, who became flesh and
dwelt upon earth as the true Shekinah, in the veiled glory of the only begotten
from the Father, full of grace and truth. He spoke; and all the words of his
mouth were, and still are, spirit and life. The human heart craves not a
learned, letter-writing, literary Christ, but a wonder-working, cross-bearing,
atoning Redeemer, risen, enthroned in heaven, and ruling the world; furnishing,
at the same time, to men and angels an unending theme for meditation,
discourse, and praise.
So, too, the Lord chose
none of his apostles, with the single exception of Paul, from the ranks of the
learned; he did not train them to literary authorship, nor give them,
throughout his earthly life, a single express command to labor in that way.
Plain fishermen of Galilee, unskilled in the wisdom of this world, but filled
with the Holy Spirit of truth and the powers of the world to come, were
commissioned to preach the glad tidings of salvation to all nations in the
strength and in the name of their glorified Master, who sits on the right hand
of God the Father Almighty, and has promised to be with them to the end of
time.
The gospel, accordingly,
was first propagated and the church founded by the personal oral teaching and
exhortation, the "preaching," "testimony,"
"word," "tradition," of the apostles and their disciples;
as, in fact, to this day the living word is the indispensable or, at least, the
principal means of promoting the Christian religion. Nearly all the books of
the New Testament were written between the years 50 and 70, at least twenty
years after the resurrection of Christ, and the founding of the church; and the
Gospel and Epistles of John still later.
As the apostles’ field
of labor expanded, it became too large for their personal attention, and
required epistolary correspondence. The vital interests of Christianity and the
wants of coming generations demanded a faithful record of the life and teaching
of Christ by perfectly reliable witnesses. For oral tradition, among fallible
men, is liable to so many accidental changes, that it loses in certainty and
credibility as its distance from the fountain-head increases, till at last it
can no longer be clearly distinguished from the additions and corruptions
collected upon it. There was great danger, too, of a wilful distortion of the
history and doctrine of Christianity by Judaizing and paganizing errorists, who
had already raised their heads during the lifetime of the apostles. An
authentic written record of the words and acts of Jesus and his disciples was
therefore absolutely indispensable, not indeed to originate the church, but to
keep it from corruption and to furnish it with a pure standard of faith and
discipline.
Hence seven and twenty
books by apostles and apostolic men, written under the special influence and
direction of the Holy Spirit. These afford us a truthful picture of the
history, the faiths, and the practice of primitive Christianity, "for
teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness."865
The collection of these
writings into a canon, in distinction both from apocryphal or pseudo-apostolic
works, and from orthodox yet merely human productions, was the work of the
early church; and in performing it she was likewise guided by the Spirit of God
and by a sound sense of truth. It was not finished to the satisfaction of all
till the end of the fourth century, down to which time seven New Testament
books (the "Antilegomena" of Eusebius), the second Epistle of Peter,
the second and third Epistles of John, the anonymous Epistle to the Hebrews,
the Epistles of James and Jude, and in a certain sense also the Apocalypse of
John, were by some considered of doubtful authorship or value. But the
collection was no doubt begun, on the model of the Old Testament canon, in the
first century;866 and the principal books, the Gospels, the Acts,
the thirteen Epistles of Paul, the first Epistle of Peter, and the first of
John, in a body, were in general use after the middle of the second century,
and were read, either entire or by sections, in public worship, after the
manner of the Jewish synagogue, for the edification of the people.
The external testimony of
tradition alone cannot (for the Protestant Christian) decide the apostolic
origin and canonical character of a book; it must be confirmed by the internal
testimony of the book itself. But this is not wanting, and the general voice of
Christendom for these eighteen hundred years has recognized in the little
volume, which we call the New Testament, a book altogether unique in spiritual
power and influence over the mind and heart of man, and of more interest and
value than all the ancient and modern classics combined. If ever God spoke and
still speaks to man, it is in this book.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="76" title="Character of the New
Testament">
§ 76. Character of the New Testament.
In these inspired writings we
have, not indeed an equivalent, but a reliable substitute for the personal
presence and the oral instruction of Christ and his apostles. The written word
differs from the spoken only in form; the substance is the same, and has
therefore the same authority and quickening power for us as it had for those
who heard it first. Although these books were called forth apparently by
special and accidental occasions, and were primarily addressed to particular
circles of readers and adapted to peculiar circumstances, yet, as they present
the eternal and unchangeable truth in living forms, they suit all circumstances
and conditions. Tracts for the times, they are tracts for all times; intended
for Jews and Greeks of the first century, they have the same interest for
Englishmen and Americans of the nineteenth century. They are to this day not
only the sole reliable and pure fountain of primitive Christianity, but also
the infallible rule of Christian faith and practice. From this fountain the
church has drunk the water of life for more than fifty generations, and will
drink it till the end of time. In this rule she has a perpetual corrective for
an her faults, and a protective against all error. Theological systems come and
go, and draw from that treasury their larger or smaller additions to the stock
of our knowledge of the truth; but they can never equal that infallible word of
God, which abideth forever.
"Our little systems
have their day,
They have their day and
cease to be:
They are but broken lights
of Thee,
And Thou, O God, art more
than they."
The New Testament
evinces its universal design in its very, style, which alone distinguishes it
from all the literary productions of earlier and later times. It has a Greek
body, a Hebrew soul, and a Christian spirit which rules both. The language is
the Hellenistic idiom; that is, the Macedonian Greek as spoken by the Jews of
the dispersion in the time of Christ; uniting, in a regenerated Christian form,
the two great antagonistic nationalities and religions of the ancient world.
The most beautiful language of heathendom and the venerable language of the
Hebrews are here combined, and baptized with the spirit of Christianity, and
made the picture of silver for the golden apple of the eternal truth of the
gospel. The style of the Bible in general is singularly adapted to men of every
class and grade of culture, affording the child the simple nourishment for its
religious wants, and the profoundest thinker inexhaustible matter of study. The
Bible is not simply a popular book, but a book of all nations, and for all
societies, classes, and conditions of men. It is more than a book, it is an
institution which rules the Christian world.
The New Testament
presents, in its way, the same union of the divine and human as the person of
Christ. In this sense also "the word became flesh, and dwells among
us." As Christ was like us in
body, soul, and spirit, sin only excepted, so the Scriptures, which "bear
witness of him," are thoroughly human (though without doctrinal and
ethical error) in contents and form, in the mode of their rise, their
compilation, their preservation, and transmission; yet at the same time they
are thoroughly divine both in thoughts and words, in origin, vitality, energy,
and effect, and beneath the human servant-form of the letter, the eye of faith
discerns the glory of "the only begotten from the Father, full of grace
and truth."
The apostolic writings
are of three kinds: historical, didactic, and prophetic. To the first class
belong the Gospels and Acts; to the second, the Epistles; to the third, the
Revelation. They are related to each other as regeneration, sanctification, and
glorification; as foundation, house, and dome. Jesus Christ is the beginning,
the middle, and the end of all. In the Gospels he walks in human form upon the
earth, and accomplishes the work of redemption. In the Acts and Epistles he
founds the church, and fills and guides it by his Spirit. And at last, in the
visions of the Apocalypse, he comes again in glory, and with his bride, the
church of the saints, reigns forever upon the new earth in the city of God.
This order corresponds
with the natural progress of the Christian revelation and was universally
adopted by the church, with the exception of a difference in the arrangement of
the Epistles. The New Testament was not given in the form of a finished volume,
but the several books grew together by recognition and use according to the law
of internal fitness. Most of the ancient Manuscripts, Versions, and Catalogues
arrange the books in the following order: Gospels, Acts, Catholic Epistles,
Pauline Epistles, Apocalypse.867 Some put the Pauline Epistles before
the Catholic Epistles.868 Our English Bible follows the order of
the Latin Vulgate.869
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="77" title="Literature on the
Gospels">
§ 77. Literature on the Gospels.
I. Harmonies of the Gospels.
They begin with Tatian’s Diatessaron, a.d. 170. See lists of older works in
Fabricius, Bibl. Gr., III. 212; Hase, Leben Jesu, pp. 22–31 (fifth ed.);
Robinson, Harmony, pp. v. and vi.; Darling, Cyclopaedia Bibliog. (I. Subjects,
cols. 761–767); and McClintock and Strong (Cyclop., IV. 81). We give the chief
works from Griesbach to Rushbrooke.
Griesbach (Synopsis, Halle, 1774, etc., 1822); Newcome (Dublin, 1778 and often; also Andover,
1834); Jos. Priestley (in Greek, London, 1778; in English, 1780); Jos. White
(Diatessaron, Oxford, 1799, 1803); De
Wette and Lücke (1818, 1842); Rödiger (1829, 1839); Greswell (Harmonia
Evangelica, 1830, 5th ed. Oxford, 1856; Dissertations upon an Harmony, etc., 2d
ed., Oxford, 1837, 4 vols.); Macbride
(Diatessaron, Oxford, 1837); Wieseler
(Chronolog. Synopse, Hamb., 1843); Krafft
(d. 1845; Chronologie u. Harmonie der 4 Evang. Erlangen, 1848; edit. by
Burger); Tischendorf (Synopsis
Evang. Lips., 1851, 1854; 4th ed., 1878); Rud.
Anger (Lips., 1852); Stroud (comprising a Synopsis and a Diatessaron, London,
1853) E. Robinson (A Harmony of the Four Gospels in Greek, according to
the text of Hahn, Boston, 1845, 1851; revised ed., 1862; in English, 1846); James Strong (in English, New York, 1852; in
Greek, 1854); R. Mimpriss (London, 1855); Douglas (1859); Sevin (Wiesbaden,
1866); Fr. Gardiner (A Harmony of the Four Gospels in Greek, according
to the text of Tischendorf, with a Collation of the Textus Receptus, etc.
Andover, 1876; also his Diatessaron, The Life of our Lord in the Words of the
Gospels, Andover, 1871); J. R. Gilmore
and Lyman Abbott (The Gospel History: being a Complete Chronological
Narrative of the Life of our Lord, New York, 1881); W. G. Rushbrooke (Synopticon: an Exposition of
the Common Matter in the Synoptic Gospels, Cambridge, 1880–81, 2 parts; the
Greek text of Tischendorf, corrected from Westcott and Hort). The last work is
unique and superbly printed. It marks the differences of the narratives by
different types and color, namely, the matter common to all Evangelists in red
type, the matter common to each pair in black spaced type or capitals, the
matter peculiar to each in ordinary black type. It furnishes the best basis for
a detailed comparison and critical analysis.
II. Critical Discussions.
Nathaniel
Lardner (1684–1768, a dissenting
minister of great learning): The Credibility of the Gospel History. First
published in 17 vols. 8vo, London, 1727–1757, and in his collected Works,
ed. by A. Kippis, London, 1788 (in 11 vols.), vols. I.-V. Unsurpassed for honest
and solid learning, and still valuable.
J. G. Eichhorn (d. 1827): Allgem.
Bibliothek der Bibl. Liter., vol. V. (1794), pp. 759 sqq. Einleitung in das N.
Testament., 1804, vol. I., 2d ed., 1820. Here he brought out his new idea of an
Urevangelium.
Herbert
Marsh (Bishop of Peterborough, d.
1839): An Illustration of the Hypothesis proposed in the Dissertation on the
Origin and Composition of our Three First Canonical Gospels. Cambridge, 1803.
Also his translation of J. D. Michaelis: Introduction to the New Test., with a
Dissertation on the Origin and Composition of the Three First Gospels.
London, 1802. A modification of Eichhorn’s hypothesis.
Fr.
Schleiermacher: Kritischer Versuch
über die Schriften des Lucas. Berlin, 1817 (Werke I. 2, pp. 1–220); trans. by
Thirlwall, Lond., 1825. Comp. his Einleitung in das N. Testament. (posthumous).
J. C. L. Gieseler: Historisch-kritischer
Versuch über die Entstehung und die frühesten Schicksale der schriftlichen
Evangelien. Leipz., 1818.
Andrews
Norton (a conservative Unitarian,
died at Cambridge, 1853): The Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels.
Boston, 1837; 2d ed., Cambridge, Mass., 1846–1848, 3 vols. Abridged ed. in 1
vol., Boston (Am. Unitar. Assoc.), 1867 and 1875. By the same: Internal
Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels (posthumous). Boston. 1855.
With special reference to Strauss.
Fr.
Bleek (d. 1859): Beiträge zur
Evangelien-Kritik. Berlin, 1846.
F. Chr. Baur (d. 1860): Kritische Untersuchungen
über die kanonischen Evangelien. 1847. Comp. the first volume of his Church
History (Germ. ed., pp. 22 sqq.,
148 sqq.).
Isaac
Da Costa: The Four Witnesses:
being a Harmony of the Gospels on a New Principle. Transl. (from the Dutch) by
David Scott, 1851; New York ed., 1855. Against Strauss.
Ad. Hilgenfeld
(Tübingen School): Die Evangelien nach ihrer Entstehung und geschichtl.
Bedeutung. Leipz., 1854. His Einleitung, 1875.
Canon
Westcott: Introduction to the
Study of the Gospels. London and Boston, 1860; 7th ed., London, 1888. Very
useful.
Const.
Tischendorf (d. 1874): Wann wurden unsere
Evangelien verfasst? Leipz., 4th
ed., 1866 (Engl. transl. by W. L. Gage, Boston, 1868).
H. Jul. Holtzmann: Die synoptischen Evangelien, ihr Ursprung und
geschichtl. Charakter. Leipz., 1863.
See also his art. Evangelien in Schenkel’s "Bibel-Lex.," II. 207, and
two articles on the Synoptic Question in the "Jahrbücher für Protest.
Theol.," 1878, pp. 145 sqq. and 533 sqq.; but especially his Einleitung in
das N. T., 2d ed., 1886.
C. Weizsäcker (successor of Dr. Baur, but less radical): Untersuchungen über
die evang. Gesch., ihre Quellen,
etc. Gotha, 1864.
Gustave
d’Eichthal: Les Évangiles. Paris, 1863. 2 vols.
L. A. Sabatier: Essai sur les sources de la
vie de Jésus. Paris, 1866.
Andrew
Jukes: The Characteristic
Differences of the Four Gospels. London, 1867.
Edward
A. Thomson: The Four Evangelists;
with the Distinctive Characteristics of their Gospels. Edinburgh, 1868.
C. A. Row: The Historical Character of the
Gospels Tested by an Examination of their Contents. 1865–67. The Jesus of the
Evangelists. London, 1868.
Karl
Wieseler: Beiträge zur richtigen
Würdigung der Evangelien und der evangel. Geschichte. Gotha, 1869.
Supernatural Religion (anonymous). London, 1873, 7th ed., 1879, vol.
I., Part II., pp. 212 sqq., and vol. III. Comp. the careful review and
refutation of this work by Bishop Lightfoot
in a series of articles in the "Contemporary Review," 1875, sqq.
P. Godet: The Origin o f the Four Gospels. In his
"Studies on the New Test.," 1873. Engl. transl. by W. H. Lyttelton.
London, 1876. See also his Commentary on the Gospel of St. Luke, Introd.
and Appendix, Eng. trans. from 2d French ed. Edinb., 1875.
W. Sanday: The Gospels in the Second Century. London,
1876.
Bernhard
Weiss (Professor in Berlin): Das Marcusevangelium
und seine synoptischen Parallelen. Berlin, 1872. Das Matthäusevangelium und
seine Lucas-Parallelen erklärt. Halle, 1876. Two very thorough critical works.
Comp. also his reply to Holtzmann in the "Jahrbücher for Protest.
Theologie," 1878; and his Einleitung in’s N. T., 1886.
D. S. Gregory: Why Four Gospels? or, the Gospels for all the World. New
York, 1877.
E. Renan: Les évangiles et la seconde génération Chrétienne. Paris, 1877.
Geo.
P. Fisher (Professor in New Haven): The
Beginnings of Christianity. New York, 1877. Chs. VIII.-XII. Also several
articles on the Gospels in the "Princeton Review" for 1881.
Wm.
Thomson (Archbishop of York): The
Gospels. General Introduction to Speaker’s "Com. on the New Test.," vol.
I., pp. xiii.-lxxv. London and New York, 1878.
Edwin
A. Abbott (Head Master, City of
London School): Gospels, in the ninth edition of the "Encyclopaedia
Britannia," vol. X., pp. 789–843. Edinburgh and New York, 1879.
Fred.
Huidekoper (Unitar. Theol. Seminary,
Meadville, Pa.): Indirect Testimony of History to the Genuineness of the
Gospels. New York, 2d ed., 1879.
John
Kennedy (D. D.): The Four
Gospels: their Age and Authorship. Traced from the Fourth Century into the
First. London; Am. ed., with an introduction by Edwin W. Rice.
Philadelphia, 1880 (Am. Sunday School Union).
J. H. Scholten: Das Paulinische Evangelium.
Transl. from the Dutch by E. B.
Redepenning. Elberfeld, 1881.
C. Holsten: Die drei ursprünglichen, noch ungeschriebenen
Evangelien. Leipzig, 1883 (79
pages). A modification of Baur’s tendency-hypothesis. Holsten assumes three
forms of the original oral Gospel—the Pauline, the Petrine, and the Judaistic.
Norton, Tischendorf,
Wieseler, Ebrard, Da Costa, Westcott, Lightfoot, Sanday, Kennedy, Thomson,
Godet, Ezra Abbot, and Fisher are conservative and constructive, yet critical;
Baur, Hilgenfeld, Holtzmann, Keim, Renan, Scholten, Davidson, and the author of
"Supernatural Religion" are radical but stimulating and negatively
helpful especially Baur, Reim, and Renan. Bleek, Ewald, Reuss, Meyer, and Weiss
occupy independent middle ground, but all defend the genuineness of John except
Reuss, who hesitates.
III. Commentaries.
1. Ancient Works: Origen
(in Math., Luc., etc., fragmentary); Chrysostom
(Hom. in Matth., ed. Fr. Field, 1839); Jerome
(in Matth.; in Luc.); Augustine (Quaestionum Evangeliorum libri II.); Theophylact
(Comment, in 4 Evang., Gr. et Lat.); Euthymius
Zigabenus (Com. in 4 Evang., Gr. et Lat.); Thomas Aquinas (Catena
aurea in Evan .; English edition by Pusey, Keble, and Newman. Oxford, 1841–45,
4 vols.).
2. Since the Reformation: Calvin (Harmonia, and Ev. Joa., 1553; Engl. ed., Edinb., 1846, 3 vols.); Maldonatus (R. Cath., Com. in quatuor
Evang., 1615); Pasquier Quesnel (Jansenist;
The Four Gospels, French and English, several editions); John Lightfoot (Horae Hebraicae et Talmudicae in quatuor
Evangelistas, and Harmonia quatuor Evangelistarum tum inter se, tum cum Veteri
Testamento, in his Opera. London, 1684; also Leipz., 1675; Rotterdam, 1686;
London, 1825); J. Macknight (Harm.
of the Four Gospels, with Paraphrase and Notes. London, 1756; 5th ed., 1819, 2
vols.); George Campbell (d. 1796;
The Four Gospels, with Dissertations and Notes. Aberdeen, 1814, 4 vols.;
Andover, 1837, 2 vols.).
3. In the nineteenth
century: Olshausen (d. 1839; 3d ed., 1837
sqq. revised and completed by Ebrard and others; Engl. transl., Edinb. and Now
York); De Wette (d. 1849; Exeget. Handbuch zum N. T., 1837; 5th ed. by
Brückner and others, 1863 sqq.); Bleek
(d. 1859; Synopt. Erklärung der 3 ersten Evang., 1862, 2 vols.); Meyer (d. 1874; 6th ed., 1876–80, Matthew by
Meyer Mark, Luke and John revised by Weiss); Lange (Am. ed. enlarged, New York
and Edinb., 1864 sqq., 3 vols.); Alford (d. 1871; 6th ed., 1868; new ed.,
1877); Wordsworth (5th ed., 1866); Jos. A. Alexander (d. 1859; Mark and
Matthew, the latter unfinished); McClellan
(The Four Gospels, with the Chronological and Analytical Harmony. London,
1875); Keil (Matthew, Mark, Luke,
and John, 1877–1881); Morison
(Matthew and Mark, the latter in a third ed., 1882); Godet (Luke and John, French and English), Strack and Zöckler (1888). For English readers:
Speaker’s Com., Ellicott’s
Com., Schaff’s Revision Com.,
1882, etc.
Comp. a list of Com. on
the Gospels in the English transl. of Meyer on Matthew (Edinb., 1877, pp.
xxiv.-xliii).
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="78" title="The Four
Gospels">
§ 78. The Four Gospels.
General Character and Aim of the Gospels.
Christianity is a cheerful
religion and brings joy and peace from heaven to earth. The New Testament opens
with the gospel, that is with the authentic record of the history of all
histories, the glad tidings of salvation through the life, death, and
resurrection of Jesus Christ.870 The four canonical Gospels are only
variations of the same theme, a fourfold representation of one and the same
gospel, animated by the same spirit.871 They are not full biographies,872 but only memoirs or a selection of
characteristic features of Christ’s life and work as they struck each
Evangelist and best suited his purpose and his class of readers.873
They are not photographs which give only the momentary image in a single
attitude, but living pictures from repeated sittings, and reproduce the varied
expressions and aspects of Christ’s person.
The style is natural,
unadorned, straightforward, and objective. Their artless and naïve simplicity
resembles the earliest historic records in the Old Testament, and has its
peculiar and abiding charm for all classes of people and all degrees of
culture. The authors, in noble modesty and self-forgetfulness, suppress their
personal views and feelings, retire in worshipful silence before their great
subject, and strive to set it forth in all its own unaided power.
The first and fourth
Gospels were composed by apostles and eye-witnesses, Matthew and John; the
second and third, under the influence of Peter and Paul, and by their disciples
Mark and Luke, so as to be indirectly likewise of apostolic origin and
canonical authority. Hence Mark is often called the Gospel of Peter, and Luke
the Gospel of Paul.
The common practical aim of the Evangelists is to lead the reader to a saving faith in Jesus of Nazareth as the promised Messiah and Redeemer of the world.874
Common Origin.
The Gospels have their
common source in the personal intercourse of two of the writers with Christ,
and in the oral tradition of the apostles and other eye-witnesses. Plain fishermen
of Galilee could not have drawn such a portrait of Jesus if he had not sat for
it. It would take more than a Jesus to invent a Jesus. They did not create the
divine original, but they faithfully preserved and reproduced it.
The gospel story, being
constantly repeated in public preaching and in private circles, assumed a
fixed, stereotyped form; the more readily, on account of the reverence of the
first disciples for every word of their divine Master. Hence the striking
agreement of the first three, or synoptical Gospels, which, in matter and form,
are only variations of the same theme. Luke used, according to his own
statement, besides the oral tradition, written documents on certain parts of
the life of Jesus, which doubtless appeared early among the first disciples.
The Gospel of Mark, the confidant of Peter, is a faithful copy of the gospel
preached and otherwise communicated by this apostle; with the use, perhaps, of
Hebrew records which Peter may have made from time to time under the fresh
impression of the events themselves.
Individual Characteristics.
But with all their
similarity in matter and style, each of the Gospels, above all the fourth, has
its peculiarities, answering to the personal character of its author, his
special design, and the circumstances of his readers. The several evangelists
present the infinite fulness of the life and person of Jesus in different
aspects and different relations to mankind; and they complete one another. The
symbolical poesy of the church compares them with the four rivers of Paradise,
and with the four cherubic representatives of the creation, assigning the man
to Matthew, the lion to Mark, the ox to Luke, and the eagle to John.
The apparent
contradictions of these narratives, when closely examined, sufficiently solve
themselves, in all essential points, and serve only to attest the honesty,
impartiality, and credibility of the authors. At the same time the striking
combination of resemblances and differences stimulates close observation and
minute comparison, and thus impresses the events of the life of Christ more
vividly and deeply upon the mind and heart of the reader than a single
narrative could do. The immense labor of late years in bringing out the
comparative characteristics of the Gospels and in harmonizing their
discrepancies has not been in vain, and has left a stronger conviction of their
independent worth and mutual completeness.
Matthew wrote for Jews,
Mark for Romans, Luke for Greeks, John for advanced Christians; but all are
suited for Christians in every age and nation.875 The
first Gospel exhibits Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah and Lawgiver of the
kingdom of heaven who challenges our obedience; the second Gospel as the mighty
conqueror and worker of miracles who excites our astonishment; the third Gospel
as the sympathizing Friend and Saviour of men who commands our confidence; the
fourth Gospel as the eternal Son of God who became flesh for our salvation and
claims our adoration and worship, that by believing in him we may have eternal
life. The presiding mind which planned this fourfold gospel and employed the
agents without a formal agreement and in conformity to their talents, tastes,
and spheres of usefulness, is the Spirit of that Lord who is both the Son of
Man and the Son of God, the Saviour of us all.
Time Of Composition.
As to the time of
composition, external testimony and internal evidence which modern critical
speculations have not been able to invalidate, point to the seventh decade of
the first century for the Synoptic Gospels, and to the ninth decade for the
Gospel of John.
The Synoptic Gospels
were certainly written before a.d.
70; for they describe the destruction of Jerusalem as an event still future,
though nigh at hand, and connect it immediately with the glorious appearing of
our Lord, which it was thought might take place within the generation then
living, although no precise date is fixed anywhere, the Lord himself declaring
it to be unknown even to him. Had the Evangelists written after that terrible
catastrophe, they would naturally have made some allusion to it, or so arranged
the eschatological discourses of our Lord (Matt. 24; Mark 13; Luke 21) as to
enable the reader clearly to discriminate between the judgment of Jerusalem and
the final judgment of the world, as typically foreshadowed by the former.876
On the other hand, a
considerable number of years must have elapsed after the resurrection. This is
indicated by the fact that several imperfect attempts at a gospel history had
previously been made (Luke 1:1), and by such a phrase as: "until this
day" (<scripRef passage = "Matt. 27:8; 28:15">Matt. 27:8; 28:15</scripRef>).
But it is quite
impossible to fix the precise year of composition. The silence of the Epistles
is no conclusive argument that the Synoptists wrote after the death of
James, Peter, and Paul; for there is the same silence in the Acts concerning
the Epistles of Paul, and in the Epistles concerning the Acts. The apostles did
not quote each other’s writings. the only exception is the reference of Peter
to the Epistles of Paul. In the multiplicity of their labors the Evangelists
may have been engaged for several years in preparing their works until they
assumed their present shape. The composition of a life of Christ now may well
employ many years of the profoundest study.
The Hebrew Matthew was
probably composed first; then Mark; the Greek Matthew and Luke cannot be far
apart. If the Acts, which suddenly break off with Paul’s imprisonment in Rome
(61–63), were written before the death of the apostle, the third Gospel, which
is referred to as "the first treatise" (<scripRef passage =
"Acts 1:1">Acts
1:1</scripRef>), must have been composed before a.d. 65 or 64, perhaps, in Caesarea,
where Luke had the best opportunity to gather his material during Paul’s
imprisonment between 58 and 60; but it was probably not published till a few
years afterwards. Whether the later Synoptists knew and used the earlier will
be discussed in the next section.
John, according to the
universal testimony of antiquity, which is confirmed by internal evidence,
wrote his Gospel last, after the fall of Jerusalem and after the final
separation of the Christians from the Jews. He evidently presupposes the
Synoptic Gospels (although he never refers to them), and omits the
eschatological and many other discourses and miracles, even the institution of
the sacraments, because they were already sufficiently known throughout the
church. But in this case too it is impossible to fix the year of composition.
John carried his Gospel in his heart and memory for many years and gradually
reduced it to writing in his old age, between a.d.
80 and 100; for he lived to the close of the first century and, perhaps, saw
the dawn of the second.
Credibility.
The Gospels make upon
every unsophisticated reader the impression of absolute honesty. They tell the
story without rhetorical embellishment, without any exclamation of surprise or
admiration, without note and comment. They frankly record the weaknesses and
failings of the disciples, including themselves, the rebukes which their Master
administered to them for their carnal misunderstandings and want of faith,
their cowardice and desertion in the most trying hour, their utter despondency
after the crucifixion, the ambitious request of John and James, the denial of
Peter, the treason of Judas. They dwell even with circumstantial minuteness
upon the great sin of the leader of the Twelve, especially the Gospel of Mark,
who derived his details no doubt from Peter’s own lips. They conceal nothing,
they apologize for nothing, they exaggerate nothing. Their authors are utterly
unconcerned about their own fame, and withhold their own name; their sole
object is to tell the story of Jesus, which carries its own irresistible force
and charm to the heart of every truth-loving reader. The very discrepancies in
minor details increase confidence and exclude the suspicion of collusion; for
it is a generally acknowledged principle in legal evidence that circumstantial
variation in the testimony of witnesses confirms their substantial agreement.
There is no historical work of ancient times which carries on its very face
such a seal of truthfulness as these Gospels.
The credibility of the
canonical Gospels receives also negative confirmation from the numerous
apocryphal Gospels which by their immeasurable inferiority and childishness
prove the utter inability of the human imagination, whether orthodox or
heterodox, to produce such a character as the historical Jesus of Nazareth.
No post-apostolic
writers could have composed the canonical Gospels, and the apostles themselves
could not have composed them without the inspiration of the spirit of Christ.
Notes.
1. The Symbolism of the Gospels. This belongs
to the history of Christian poetry and art, but also to the history of
exegesis, and may be briefly mentioned here. It presents the limited
recognition of the individuality of the Gospels among the fathers and
throughout the middle ages.
The symbolic attributes
of the Evangelists were suggested by Ezekiel’s vision of the four cherubim which
represent the creation and carry the throne of God (<scripRef passage =
"Ez. 1:15 sqq.; 10:1 sqq.; 11:22">Ez. 1:15 sqq.; 10:1 sqq.; 11:22</scripRef>), and by the four "living creatures" (<foreign
lang="el">zw'a, </foreign>not<foreign lang="el">
qhriva</foreign>, "beasts," with which the E. V.
confounds them) in the Apocalypse (<scripRef passage =
"Rev. 4:6–9; 5:6, 8, 11, 14; 6:1, 3, 5, 6, 7; 7:11; 14:3; 15:7;
19:4">Rev. 4:6–9;
5:6, 8, 11, 14; 6:1, 3, 5, 6, 7; 7:11; 14:3; 15:7; 19:4</scripRef>).
(1.) The theological
use. The cherubic figures which the prophet saw in his exile on the banks of
the Chebar, symbolize the divine attributes of majesty and strength reflected
in the animal creation; and the winged bulls and lions and the eagle-beaded men
of Assyrian monuments have a similar significance. But the cherubim were
interpreted as prophetic types of the four Gospels as early as the second
century, with some difference in the application.
Irenaeus (about 170)
regards the faces of the cherubim (man, lion, ox, eagle) as "images of the
life and work of the Son of God," and assigns the man to Matthew, and the
ox to Luke, but the eagle to Mark and the lion to John (Adv.
Haer., III. 11, 8, ed. Stieren I. 469 sq.). Afterwards the signs of Mark
and John were properly exchanged. So by Jerome (d. 419) in his Com. on Ezekiel
and other passages. I quote from the Prologus to his Comment. in Ev.
Matthaei (Opera, vol. VII., p. 19, ed. Migne): "<foreign
lang="la">Haec
igitur quatuor Evangelia multo ante praedicta, Ezechielis quoque volumen
probat, in quo prima visio ita contexitur: ’Et in medio sicut similitudo
quatuor animalium: et vultus eorum facies hominis, et facies leonis, et facies
vituli, et facies aquilae’ (Ezech. 1:5 et 10). Prima hominis facies Matthaeum significat, qui quasi de
homine exorsus est scribere: ’Liber generationis Jesu Christi, filii David,
filii Abraham’ (Matth. 1). Secunda, Marcum, in quo [al.
qua] vox leonis in eremo rugientis auditur: ’Vox clamantis in deserto
[al. eremo], Parate viam Domini, rectas facile semitas ejus’
(Marc. 1:3). Tertia,
vituli, quae evangelistam Lucam a Zacharia sacerdote sumpsisse initium
praefigurat. Quarta, Joannem evangelistam, qui assumptis pennis aquilae, et ad
altiora festinans, de Verbo Dei disputat.
</foreign>Augustin (De Consens. Evang., Lib. I., c. 6, in Migne’s ed. of the
Opera, tom. III., 1046) assigns the lion to Matthew, the man to Mark
(whom he wrongly regarded as an abbreviator of Matthew), the ox to Luke, and
the eagle to John, because "he soars as an eagle above the clouds of human
infirmity, and gazes on the light of immutable truth with most keen and steady
eyes of the heart." In
another place (Tract. XXXVI. in Joh. Ev., c. 8, § 1) Augustin
says: "The other three Evangelists walked as it were on earth with our
Lord as man (<foreign lang="la">tamquam cum homine Domino in terra ambulabant</foreign>) and said but little of his divinity. But John,
as if he found it oppressive to walk on earth, opened his treatise, so to
speak, with a peal of thunder .... To the sublimity of this beginning all the
rest corresponds, and he speaks of our Lord’s divinity as no other." He calls the evangelic quaternion
"the fourfold car of the Lord, upon which he rides throughout the world
and subdues the nations to his easy yoke." Pseudo-Athanasius (Synopsis Script.) assigns the man
to Matthew, the ox to Mark, the lion to Luke. These variations in the
application of the emblems reveal the defects of the analogy. The man might as
well (with Lange) be assigned to Luke’s Gospel of humanity as the sacrificial
ox. But Jerome’s distribution of the symbols prevailed and was represented in
poetry by Sedulius in the fifth century.
Among recent divines, Bishop Wordsworth, of
Lincoln, who is in full sympathy with the fathers and all their pious
exegetical fancies, has thus eloquently reproduced the cherubic symbolism (in
his Com. on The New Test., vol. I., p. xli): "The Christian church, looking at the
origin of the Four Gospels, and the attributes which God has in rich measure
been pleased to bestow upon them by his Holy Spirit, found a prophetic picture
of them in the four living cherubim, named from heavenly knowledge, seen by the
prophet Ezekiel at the river of Chebar. Like them the Gospels are four in
number; like them they are the chariot of God, who sitteth between the
cherubim; like them they bear him on a winged throne into all lands; like
them they move wherever the Spirit guides them; like them they are marvellously
joined together, intertwined with coincidences and differences: wing interwoven
with wing, and wheel interwoven with wheel; like them they are full of eyes,
and sparkle with heavenly light; like them they sweep from heaven to earth, and
from earth to heaven, and fly with lightning’s speed and with the noise of many
waters. Their sound is gone out into all lands, and the words to the end of
the world." Among German
divines, Dr. Lange is the most ingenious expounder of this symbolism, but he
exchanges the symbols of Matthew and Luke. See his Leben Jesu, I., 156
sqq., and his Bibelkunde (1881), p. 176.
(2.) The pictorial
representations of the four Evangelists, from the rude beginnings in the
catacombs and the mosaics of the basilicas at Rome and Ravenna to modern times,
have been well described by Mrs. Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art, vol.
I, 132–175 (Boston ed., 1865). She distinguishes seven steps in the progress of
Christian art: 1st, the mere fact,
the four scrolls, or books of the Evangelists; 2d, the idea, the four rivers of salvation flowing from on
high to fertilize the whole earth; 3d,
the prophetic symbol, the winged cherub of fourfold aspect; 4th, the Christian symbol, the four
"beasts" (better, "living creatures") in the Apocalypse,
with or without the angel-wings; 5th,
the combination of the emblematical animal with the human form; 6th, the human personages, each of
venerable or inspired aspect, as becomes the teacher and witness, and each
attended by the scriptural emblem—no longer an emblem, but an attribute—marking
his individual vocation and character; 7th,
the human being only, holding his Gospel, i.e., his
version of the teaching and example of Christ.
(3.) Religious poetry
gives expression to the same idea. We find it in Juvencus and Sedulius, and in
its perfection in Adam of St. Victor, the greatest Latin poet of the middle
ages (about 1172). He made the Evangelists the subject of two musical poems:
"<foreign
lang="la">Plausu
chorus laetabundo</foreign>," and "<foreign
lang="la">Jocundare
plebs fidelis</foreign>."
Both are found in
Gautier’s edition (1858), and with a good English translation by Digby S.
Wrangham in The Liturgical Poetry of Adam of St. Victor, London, 1881,
vol, II., pp. 156–169. The first has been well reproduced in English by Dr.
Plumptre (in his Com. on the Synoptists, in Ellicott’s series, but with
the omission of the first three stanzas). I will quote the third stanza of the
first (with Wrangham’s version):
"<foreign
lang="la">
Circa thema generale,
Habet quisque speciale
Styli privilegium:
Quod praesignat in propheta
Forma pictus sub discreta
Vultus
animalium</foreign>."
"Though
one set of facts is statted,
They
by each one are related
In
a manner all his own:
This
the prophet by four creatures,
Each
of different form and features,
Pictures
for us, one by one."
In the second poem the
following stanzas are the best:
<foreign
lang="la">
Formam
viri dant Matthaeo,
Quia
scripsit sic de Deo,
Sicut
descendit ab eo,
Quem
plasmavit, homine.
Lucas
bos est in figura
Ut
praemonstrat in Scriptura,
Hostiarum
tangens jura
Legis
sub velamine</foreign>.
Matthew
as the man is treated,
Since
'tis he, who hath related,
How
from man, by God created,
God
did, as a man, descend.
Luke
the ox's semmblance weareth,
Since
his Gospel first declareth,
As
he thence the Law's veil teareth,
Sacrifice'
aim and end.
<foreign
lang="la">
Marcus,
lleo per desertum
Clamans,
rugit in apertum:
Iter
fiat Deo certum,
Mundum
cor a crimine.
Sed
Johannes, ala bina
Charitatis,
aquilina
Forma,
fetur in divinaa
Puriori
lumine.
</foreign>
Mark,
the lion, his voice upraises,
Crying
out in desert places:
"Cleanse
your hearts from all sin's traces,
For
our God a way prepare!"
John,
the eagle's feature having,
Earth
on love's twain pinions leaving,
Soars
aloft, God's truth perceiving
In
light's purer atmosphere.
<foreign
lang="la">
Ecce
forma bestialis
Quam
Scriptura prophetalis
Notat,
sed materialis
Haec est impositio.
Currunt
rotis, volant alis;
Inest
sensus spiuritalis;
Rota
gressus est aequalis,
Ala
contemplatio.
</foreign>
Thus
the Thus the forms of brute creation
Prophets
in their revelation
Use;
but in their application
All
their sacred lessons bring.
Mystic
meaning underlieth
Wheels
that run, or wing that flieth
One
consent the first implieth,
Contemplation
means the wing.
<foreign
lang="la">
Quatuor
decribunt isti
Quadriformes
actus Christi:
Et
figurant, ut audisti,
Quisque
sua formula.
Natus
homo declaratur
Vitulus
sacrificatur,
Leo
mortem depraedatur,
Et
ascendit aquila.
</foreign>
These
four writers, in portraying
Christ,
his fourfold acts displaying.
Show
him – thou hast heard the saying –
Each
of them distinctively;
Man
– of woman generated;
Ox
– in offering dedicated;
Lion
– having death defeated;
Eagle – mounting to the
sky.
<foreign
lang="la">
Paradisus
lis regature,
Viret,
floret, foecundatur,
His
abundat, his laetatur
Quatuor
fluminibus:
Fons
est Christus, hi aunt rivi,
Fons
est altus, hi proclivi,
Ut
saporem fontis vivi
Ministrent fidelibus.
</foreign>
These
four streams, through Eden flowing,
Moisture,
verdure, still bestowing,
Make
the flowers and fruit there growing
In
rich plenty kaugh and sing
Christ
the cource, these streams forth sending;
High
the source, these downward trending;
That
they thus a taste transcending
Of
life's fount to saints may bring.
<foreign
lang="la">
Horum
rivo debriatis
Sitis
crescat caritatis,
Ut
de fonte pietatis
Satiemur
plenius.
Horum
trabat nos doctrina
Vitiorum
de sentinâ,
Sicque
ducat ad divina
Ab
imo superius.
</foreign>
At
their stream inebriated,
Be
our love's thirst aggravated,
More
completely to be sated
At
a holier love's full fount!
May
the doctrine they provide us
Draw
us from sin's slough beside us,
An
to things divine thus guide us,
As from earth
we upward mount!
II. The Credibility of
the Gospels would never have been denied if it were not for the philosophical
and dogmatic skepticism which desires to get rid of the supernatural and
miraculous at any price. It impresses itself upon men of the highest culture as
well as upon the unlearned reader. The striking testimony of Rousseau is well
known and need not be repeated. I will quote only from two great writers who
were by no means biased in favor of orthodoxy. Dr. W. E. Channing,
the distinguished leader of American Unitarianism, says (with reference to the
Strauss and Parker skepticism): "I know no histories to be compared with
the Gospels in marks of truth, in pregnancy of meaning, in quickening
power." ... "As to his
[Christ’s] biographers, they speak for themselves. Never were more simple and
honest ones. They show us that none in connection with Christ would give any
aid to his conception, for they do not receive it .... The Gospels are to me
their own evidence. They are the simple records of a being who could not have
been invented, and the miraculous and more common parts of his life so hang
together, are so permeated by the same spirit, are so plainly outgoings of one
and the same man, that I see not how we can admit one without the other." See Channing’s Memoir by his
nephew, tenth ed., Boston, 1874 Vol. II., pp. 431, 434, 436. The testimony of Goethe will have with
many still greater weight. He recognized in the Gospels the highest
manifestation of the Divine which ever appeared in this world, and the summit
of moral culture beyond which the human mind can never rise, however much it
may progress in any other direction. "<foreign
lang="de">Ich halte die Evangelien," he says, "für durchaus ächt;
denn es ist in ihnen der Abglanz einer Hoheit wirksam, die von der Person
Christi ausging: die ist qöttlicher Art, wie nur je auf Erden das Göttliche
erschienen ist</foreign>." (Gespräche mit Eckermann,
III., 371.) Shortly before his
death he said to the same friend: "<foreign
lang="de">Wir wissen gar nicht, was wir Luther’n und der
Reformation zu danken haben. Mag die geistige Cultur immer Fortschreiten, mögen
die Naturwissenschaften in immer breiterer Ausdehnung und Tiefe wachsen und der
menschliche Geist sick erweitern wie er will: über die Hoheit und sittliche
Cultur des Christenthums, wie es in den Evangelien leuchtet, wird er nicht
hinauskommen</foreign>."
And such Gospels Strauss and Renan would fain make us believe to be
poetic fictions of illiterate Galilaeans!
This would be the most incredible miracle of all.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="79" title="The
Synoptists">
§ 79. The Synoptists.
(See the Lit. in § 78.)
<index
type = "globalSubject"
subject1 =
"Synoptics" />
The Synoptic Problem.
The fourth Gospel stands by
itself and differs widely from the others in contents and style, as well as in
distance of time of composition. There can be no doubt that the author, writing
towards the close of the first century, must have known the three older ones.
But the first three
Gospels present the unique phenomenon of a most striking agreement and an
equally striking disagreement both in matter and style, such as is not found
among any three writers on the same subject. Hence they are called the Synoptic
or Synoptical Gospels, and the three Evangelists, Synoptists.877 This fact makes a harmony of the Gospels
possible in all essentials, and yet impossible in many minor details. The
agreement is often literal, and the disagreement often borders on
contradiction, but without invalidating the essential harmony.
The interrelationship
between Matthew, Mark, and Luke is, perhaps, the most complicated and
perplexing critical problem in the history of literature. The problem derives
great importance from its close connection with the life of Christ, and has
therefore tried to the utmost the learning, acumen, and ingenuity of modern
scholars for nearly a century. The range of hypotheses has been almost
exhausted, and yet no harmonious conclusion reached.
The Relationship.
The general agreement of
the Synoptists consists:
1. In the harmonious
delineation of the character of Christ. The physiognomy is the same, only under
three somewhat different aspects. All represent him as the Son of man and as
the Son of God, as the promised Messiah and Saviour, teaching the purest
doctrine, living a spotless life, performing mighty miracles, suffering and
dying for the sins of the world, and rising in triumph to establish his kingdom
of truth and righteousness. Such unity in the unique character of the hero of
the three narratives has no parallel in secular or sacred histories or
biographies, and is the best guarantee of the truthfulness of the picture.
2. In the plan and
arrangement of the evangelical history, yet with striking peculiarities.
(a.) <scripRef
passage = "Matthew 1–2">Matthew 1–2</scripRef>, and <scripRef passage =
"Luke 1–2; 3:23–38">Luke 1–2, and 3:23–38</scripRef>, begin with the genealogy and infancy of Christ,
but with different facts drawn from different sources. Mark opens at once with
the preaching of the Baptist; while the fourth Evangelist goes back to the
eternal pre-existence of the Logos. About the thirty years of Christ’s private
life and his quiet training for the great work they are all silent, with the
exception of Luke, who gives us a glimpse of his early youth in the temple (<scripRef
passage = "Luke2:42–52">Luke2:42–52</scripRef>).
(b.) The
preaching and baptism of John which prepared the way for the public ministry of
Christ, is related by all the Synoptists in parallel sections: <scripRef
passage = "Matt. 3:1–12">Matt. 3:1–12</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Mark
1:1–8">Mark 1:1–8</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Luke
3:1–18">Luke 3:1–18</scripRef>.
(c.) Christ’s
baptism and temptation, the Messianic inauguration and Messianic trial: <scripRef
passage = "Matt. 3:13–17; 4:1–11">Matt. 3:13–17; 4:1–11</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Mark 1:9–11, 12,
13">Mark 1:9–11, 12,
13</scripRef> (very brief); <scripRef passage =
"Luke 3:21–23; 4:1–13">Luke 3:21–23; 4:1–13</scripRef>. The variations here between Matthew and Luke
are very slight, as in the order of the second and third temptation. John gives
the testimony of the Baptist to Christ, and alludes to his baptism (<scripRef
passage = "John 1:32–34">John 1:32–34</scripRef>), but differs from the Synoptists.
(d.) The public
ministry of Christ in Galilee: <scripRef passage = "Matt.
4:12–18:35">Matt.
4:12–18:35</scripRef>; <scripRef
passage = "Mark 1:14–9:50">Mark 1:14–9:50</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Luke
4:14–9:50">Luke
4:14–9:50</scripRef>. But <scripRef passage =
"Matthew 14:22–16:12">Matthew 14:22–16:12</scripRef>, and <scripRef passage =
"Mark 6:45–8:26">Mark
6:45–8:26</scripRef>, narrate a series of events connected with the
Galilaean ministry, which are wanting in Luke; while <scripRef passage =
"Luke 9:51–18:14">Luke 9:51–18:14</scripRef>, has another series of events and parables
connected with the last journey to Jerusalem which are peculiar to him.
(e.) The journey
to Jerusalem: <scripRef passage = "Matt. 19:1–20:31">Matt. 19:1–20:31</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Mark
10:1–52">Mark 10:1–52</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Luke
18:15–19:28">Luke
18:15–19:28</scripRef>.
(f.) The entry
into Jerusalem and activity there during the week before the last passover: <scripRef
passage = "Matt. 21–25">Matt. 21–25</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Mark
11–13">Mark 11–13</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Luke
19:29–21:38">Luke
19:29–21:38</scripRef>.
(g.) The passion,
crucifixion, and resurrection in parallel sections, but with considerable minor
divergences, especially in the denial of Peter and the history of the
resurrection: <scripRef passage = "Matt. 26–28">Matt. 26–28</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Mark
14–16">Mark 14–16</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Luke
22–24">Luke 22–24</scripRef>.
The events of the last
week, from the entry to the resurrection (from Palm Sunday to Easter), occupy
in all the largest space, about one-fourth of the whole narrative.
3. In the selection of
the same material and in verbal coincidences, as in the eschatological
discourses of Christ, with an almost equal number of little differences. Thus
the three accounts of the hearing of the paralytic (<scripRef passage =
"Matt. 9:1–8">Matt.
9:1–8</scripRef>, and parallel passages), the feeding of the five
thousand, the transfiguration, almost verbally agree. Occasionally the
Synoptists concur in rare and difficult words and forms in the same connection,
as <foreign
lang="el">ejpiouvsio" »in the
Lord'" Prayer¼, the diminutive wjtivon</foreign>, little ear (of Malchus, Matt. 26:51, and parallel passages), <foreign
lang="el">duskovlw",</foreign> hard (for a rich man to enter into the
kingdom, Matt. 19:23, etc.). These coincidences are the more striking since our
Lord spoke usually in Aramaic; but those words may have been Palestinian
provincialisms.878
The largest portion of
verbal agreement, to the extent of about seven-eighths, is found in the words
of others, especially of Christ; and the largest portion of disagreement in the
narratives of the writers.879 This fact bears against the theory of
interdependence, and proves, on the one hand, the reverent loyalty of all the
Synoptists to the teaching of the great Master, but also, on the other hand,
their freedom and independence of observation and judgment in the narration of
facts. Words can be accurately reported only in one form, as they were spoken;
while events may be correctly narrated in different words.
Numerical Estimates Of The Harmony And Variation.
The extent of the
coincidences, and divergences admits of an approximate calculation by sections,
verses, and words. In every case the difference of size must be kept in mind:
Luke is the largest, with 72 pages (in Westcott and Hort’s Greek Testament);
Matthew comes next, with 68 pages; Mark last, with 42 pages. (John has 55
pages.)
1. Estimate by Sections.
Matthew has in all 78,
Mark, 67, Luke, 93 sections.
Dividing the Synoptic text
into 124 sections, with Dr. Reuss,880
All Evangelists have in
common 47 sections.
Matthew and Mark alone
have 12
"
Matthew and Luke "
" 2 "
Mark and Luke
" " 6 "
Sections peculiar to
Matthew 17
"
" " Mark 2
"
" " Luke 38
Another arrangement by
sections has been made by Norton, Stroud, and Westcott.881 If
the total contents of the Gospels be represented by 100, the following result
is obtained:
Mark has
7 peculiarities and 93 coincidences.
Matthew has 42
"
" 58 "
Luke has
59
"
" 41 "
[John has
92
"
"
8 " ]
If the extent of all the
coincidences be represented by 100, their proportion is:
Matthew, Mark, and Luke
have
53 coincidences.
Matthew and Luke
have
21 "
Matthew and Mark
have
20 "
Mark and Luke have
6 "
"In St. Mark,"
says Westcott, "there are not more than twenty-four verses to which no
parallel exists in St. Matthew and St. Luke, though St. Mark exhibits
everywhere traits of vivid detail which are peculiar to his narrative."
2. Estimate by Verses.
According to the
calculation of Reuss,882
Matthew contains
330 verses peculiar to him.
Mark contains
68 " "
"
Luke contains
541 "
" "
Matthew and Mark have
from 170 to 180 verses in common, but not found in Luke.
Matthew and Luke have
from 230 to 240 verses in common, but not found in Mark.
Mark and Luke have about
50 verses in common, but not found in Matthew.
The total number of
verses common to all three Synoptists is only from 330 to 370. But, as the
verses in the second Gospel are generally shorter, it is impossible to make an
exact mathematical calculation by verses.
3. Estimate by Words.
A still more accurate
test can be furnished by the number of words. This has not yet been made as far
as I know, but a basis of calculation is furnished by Rushbrooke in his
admirably printed Synopticon (1880), where the words common to the three
Synoptists, the words common to each pair, and the words peculiar to each, are
distinguished by different type and color.883 The words found in all constitute the
"triple tradition," and the nearest approximation to the common Greek
source from which all have directly or indirectly drawn. On the basis of this Synopticon
the following calculations have been made:
A.
–– Number of words in
Words common to all
Per cent of words in common.
Matthew 18,222
2,651, or
.14 1/2
Mark 11,158
2,651, or
.23 3/4
Luke 19,209
2,651, or
.13 3/4
Total 48,589
7,953, or
.16 1/3
B. –– Additional
words in common. Whole per cent in common
Matthew 2,793 (or in all 5,444) with Mark 29+
Mark 2,793 (or in all 5,444) with Matthew 48+
Matthew 2,415 (or in all 5,066) with Luke 27+
Luke 2,415 (or in all 5,066) with Matthew 26+
Mark 1,174 (or in all 3,825) with Luke 34+
Luke 1,174 (or in all 3,825) with Mark 20-
C. –– Words peculiar to Matthew 10,363, or 56+ percent.
Words peculiar to Mark 4,540,
or 40+ percent
Words peculiar to Luke 12,969, or 67+
percent
Total
27,872
D. –– These
figures give the following results:
(a.) The
proportion of words peculiar to the Synoptic Gospels is 28,000 out of 48,000,
more than one half.
In Matthew
56 words out of every 100 are peculiar.
In Mark
40 words out of every 100 are peculiar.
In Luke
67 words out of every 100 are peculiar.
(b.) The number
of coincidences common to all three is less than the number of the divergences.
Matthew agrees with the other two Gospels in 1 word out of 7.
Mark agrees with the other two Gospels in 1 word out of 4½.
Luke agrees with the other two Gospels in 1 word out of 8.
(c.) But, comparing
the Gospels two by two, it is evident that Matthew and Mark have most in
common, and Matthew and Luke are most divergent.
One-half of Mark is found in Matthew.
One fourth of Luke is found in Matthew.
One-third of Mark is found in Luke.886
(d.) The general
conclusion from these figures is that all three Gospels widely diverge from the
common matter, or triple tradition, Mark the least so and Luke the most (almost
twice as much as Mark). On the other hand, both Matthew and Luke are nearer
Mark than Luke and Matthew are to each other.
The Solution of the Problem.
Three ways open themselves
for a solution of the Synoptic problem: either the Synoptists depend on one
another; or they all depend on older sources; or the dependence is of both
kinds. Each of these hypotheses admits again of several modifications.887
A satisfactory solution
of the problem must account for the differences as well as for the
coincidences. If this test be applied, the first and the third hypotheses with
their various modifications must be ruled out as unsatisfactory, and we are
shut up to the second as at least the most probable.
The Canonical Gospels Independent of One Another.
There is no direct
evidence that any of the three Synoptists saw and used the work of the others;
nor is the agreement of such a character that it may not be as easily and
better explained from antecedent sources. The advocates of the theory of
interdependency, or the "borrowing" hypothesis,888 differ widely among themselves: some make
Matthew, others. Mark, others Luke, the source of the other two or at least of
one of them; while still others go back from the Synoptists in their present
form to a proto-Mark (Urmarkus), or proto-Matthew (Urmatthaeus), proto-Luke
(Urlukas), or other fictitious antecanonical documents; thereby confessing
the insufficiency of the borrowing hypothesis pure and simple.
There is no allusion in
any of the Synoptists to the others; and yet Luke expressly refers to many
earlier attempts to write the gospel history. Papias, Irenaeus, and other
ancient writers assume that they wrote independently.889 The
first who made Mark a copyist of Matthew is Augustin, and his view has been
completely reversed by modern research. The whole theory degrades one or two
Synoptists to the position of slavish and yet arbitrary compilers, not to say
plagiarists; it assumes a strange mixture of dependence and affected
originality; it weakens the independent value of their history; and it does not
account for the omissions of most important matter, and for many differences in
common matter. For the Synoptists often differ just where we should most expect
them to agree. Why should Mark be silent about the history of the infancy, the
whole sermon on the Mount (the Magna Charta of Christ’s kingdom), the Lord’s
Prayer, and important parables, if he had <scripRef passage =
"Matthew 1–2, 5–7, 13">Matthew 1–2, 5–7, 13</scripRef>, before him? Why should he, a pupil of Peter, record the Lord’s severe
rebuke to Peter (<scripRef passage = "Mark 8:27–33">Mark 8:27–33</scripRef>), but fail to mention from <scripRef
passage = "Matthew 16:16–23">Matthew 16:16–23</scripRef> the preceding remarkable laudation: "Thou
art Rock, and upon this rock I will build my church?" Why should Luke omit the greater part
of the sermon on the Mount, and all the appearances of the risen Lord in
Galilee? Why should he ignore the
touching anointing scene in Bethany, and thus neglect to aid in fulfilling the
Lord’s prediction that this act of devotion should be spoken of as a memorial
of Mary "wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world (<scripRef
passage = "Matt. 26:13">Matt. 26:13</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Mark
14:9">Mark 14:9</scripRef>)?
Why should he, the pupil and companion of Paul, fail to record the
adoration of the Magi, the story of the woman of Canaan, and the command to
evangelize the Gentiles, so clearly related by Matthew, the Evangelist of the
Jews (<scripRef
passage = "Matt. 2:1–12; 15:21–28; 24:14; 28:19">Matt. 2:1–12; 15:21–28; 24:14; 28:19</scripRef>)?
Why should Luke and Matthew give different genealogies of Christ, and
even different reports of the model prayer of our Lord, Luke omitting (beside
the doxology, which is also wanting in the best MSS. of Matthew) the petition,
"Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth," and the concluding
petition, "but deliver us from evil" (or "the evil one"),
and substituting "sins" for "debts," and "Father"
for "Our Father who art in heaven"? Why should all three Synoptists differ even in the brief and
official title on the Cross, and in the words of institution of the Lord’s
Supper, where Paul, writing in 57, agrees with Luke, referring to a revelation
from the Lord (<scripRef passage = "1 Cor. 11:23">1 Cor. 11:23</scripRef>)?
Had the Synoptists seen the work of the others, they could easily have
harmonized these discrepancies and avoided the appearance of contradiction. To
suppose that they purposely varied to conceal plagiarism is a moral
impossibility. We can conceive no reasonable motive of adding a third Gospel to
two already known to the writer, except on the ground of serious defects, which
do not exist (certainly not in Matthew and Luke as compared with Mark), or on
the ground of a presumption which is inconsistent with the modest tone and the
omission of the very name of the writers.
These difficulties are
felt by the ablest advocates of the borrowing hypothesis, and hence they call
to aid one or several pre-canonical Gospels which are to account for the startling
discrepancies and signs of independence, whether in omissions or additions or
arrangement. But these pre-canonical Gospels, with the exception of the lost
Hebrew Matthew, are as fictitious as the Syro-Chaldaic Urevangelium of Eichhorn, and have been compared to the
epicycles of the old astronomers, which were invented to sustain the tottering
hypothesis of cycles.
As to Luke, we have
shown that he departs most from the triple tradition, although he is supposed
to have written last, and it is now almost universally agreed that he did not
use the canonical Matthew.890 Whether he used the Hebrew Matthew
and the Greek Mark or a lost proto-Mark, is disputed, and at least very
doubtful.891 He
follows a plan of his own; he ignores a whole cycle of events in <scripRef
passage = "Mark 6:45–8:26">Mark 6:45–8:26</scripRef>; he omits in the common sections the graphic
touches of Mark, for which he has others equally graphic; and with a far better
knowledge of Greek he has yet more Hebraisms than Mark, because he drew largely
on Hebrew sources. As to Matthew, he makes the impression of primitive
antiquity, and his originality and completeness have found able advocates from
Augustin down to Griesbach and Keim. And as to Mark, his apparent abridgments,
far from being the work of a copyist, are simply rapid statements of an
original writer, with many fresh and lively details which abundantly prove his
independence. On the other hand, in several narratives he is more full and
minute than either Matthew or Luke.892 His independence has been successfully
proven by the most laborious and minute investigations and comparisons.893
Hence many regard him as the primitive Evangelist made use of by both
Matthew and Luke, but disagree among themselves as to whether it was the
canonical Mark or a proto-Mark.894 In either case Matthew and Luke would
be guilty of plagiarism. What should we think of an historian of our day who
would plunder another historian of one-third or one-half of the contents of his
book without a word of acknowledgment direct or indirect? Let us give the Evangelists at least
the credit of common honesty, which is the basis of all morality.
Apostolic Teaching the Primary Source of All the Synoptists.
The only certain basis
for the solution of the problem is given to us in the preface of Luke. He mentions
two sources of his own Gospel—but not necessarily of the two other Synoptic
Gospels—namely, the oral tradition or deliverance of original
"eyewitnesses and ministers of the word" (apostles, evangelists, and
other primitive disciples), and a number of written "narratives,"
drawn up by "many," but evidently incomplete and fragmentary, so as
to induce him to prepare, after accurate investigation, a regular history of
"those matters which have been fulfilled among us." Besides this important hint, we may be
aided by the well-known statements of Papias about the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew
and the Greek Mark, whom he represents as the interpret
The chief and common
source from which the Synoptists derived their Gospels was undoubtedly the
living apostolic tradition or teaching which is mentioned by Luke in the first
order. This teaching was nothing more or less than a faithful report of the
words and deeds of Christ himself by honest and intelligent eye-witnesses.895 He
told his disciples to preach, not to write, the gospel, although the writing
was, of course, not forbidden, but became necessary for the preservation of
the gospel in its purity. They had at first only "hearers;" while the
law and the prophets had readers.896
Among the Jews and Arabs
the memory was specially trained in the accurate repetition and perpetuation of
sacred words and facts.897 The Mishna was not reduced to writing
for two or three hundred years. In the East everything is more settled and
stationary than in the West, and the traveller feels himself as by magic
transferred back to manners and habits as well as the surroundings of apostolic
and patriarchal times. The memory is strongest where it depends most on itself
and least upon books.898
The apostolic tradition
or preaching was chiefly historical, a recital of the wonderful public life of
Jesus of Nazareth, and centred in the crowning facts of the crucifixion and
resurrection. This is evident from the specimens of sermons in the Acts. The
story was repeated in public and in private from day to day and sabbath to
sabbath. The apostles and primitive evangelists adhered closely and reverently
to what they saw and heard from their divine Master, and their disciples
faithfully reproduced their testimony. "They continued steadfastly in the
apostles’ teaching" (<scripRef passage = "Acts 2:42">Acts 2:42</scripRef>). Reverence would forbid them to vary from it;
and yet no single individual, not even Peter or John, could take in the whole
fulness of Christ. One recollected this, another another part of the gospel
story; one had a better memory for words, another for facts. These differences,
according to varying capacities and recollection, would naturally appear, and
the common tradition adapted itself, without any essential alteration, to
particular classes of hearers who were first Hebrews in Palestine, then Greek
Jews, proselytes, and Gentiles.
The Gospels are nothing
more than comprehensive summaries of this apostolic preaching and teaching.
Mark represents it in its simplest and briefest form, and agrees nearest with
the preaching of Peter as far as we know it from the Acts; it is the oldest in
essence, though not necessarily in composition. Matthew and Luke contain the
same tradition in its expanded and more matured form, the one the Hebrew or
Jewish Christian, the other the Hellenistic and Pauline type, with a
corresponding selection of details. Mark gives a graphic account of the main
facts of the public life of Christ "beginning from the baptism of John
unto the day that he was received up," as they would naturally be first
presented to an audience (<scripRef passage = "Acts 1:22">Acts 1:22</scripRef>). Matthew and Luke add the history of the
infancy and many discourses, facts, and details which would usually be presented
in a fuller course of instruction.
Written Documents.
It is very natural that
parts of the tradition were reduced to writing during the thirty years which
intervened between the events and the composition of the canonical Gospels. One
evangelist would record for his own use a sketch of the chief events, another
the sermon on the Mount, another the parables, another the history of the
crucifixion and resurrection, still another would gather from the lips of Mary
the history of the infancy and the genealogies. Possibly some of the first
hearers noted down certain words and events under the fresh impressions of the
moment. The apostles were indeed unlearned, but not illiterate men, they could
read and write and had sufficient rudimentary education for ordinary
composition. These early memoranda were numerous, but have all disappeared,
they were not intended for publication, or if published they were superseded by
the canonical Gospels. Hence there is room here for much speculation and
conjectural criticism.899 "Many," says Luke, "have
taken in hand to draw up a narrative concerning those matters which have been
fulfilled among us."900 He cannot mean the apocryphal Gospels
which were not yet written, nor the canonical Gospels of Matthew and Mark which
would have spared him much trouble and which he would not have dared to
supersede by an improved work of his own without a word of acknowledgment, but
pre-canonical records, now lost, which emanated from "eye-witnesses and
ministers of the word," yet were so fragmentary and incomplete as to
justify his own attempt to furnish a more satisfactory and connected history.
He had the best opportunity to gather such documents in Palestine, Antioch,
Greece, and Rome. Matthew, being himself an eyewitness, and Mark, being the
companion of Peter, had less need of previous documents, and could rely
chiefly, oil their own memory and the living tradition in its primitive
freshness. They may have written sketches or memoranda for their own use long
before they completed their Gospels; for such important works cannot be
prepared without long continued labor and care. The best books grow gradually and
silently like trees.
Conclusion.
We conclude, then, that
the Synoptists prepared their Gospels independently, during the same period
(say between a.d. 60 and 69), in
different places, chiefly from the living teaching of Christ and the first
disciples, and partly from earlier fragmentary documents. They bear independent
testimony to the truth of the gospel. Their agreement and disagreement are not
the result of design, but of the unity, richness, and variety of the original
story as received, understood, digested, and applied by different minds to
different conditions and classes of hearers and readers.901
The Traditional Order.
There is no good reason
to doubt that the canonical arrangement which is supported by the prevailing
oldest tradition, correctly represents the order of composition.902
Matthew, the apostle, wrote first in Aramaic and in Palestine, from his
personal observation and experience with the aid of tradition; Mark next, in
Rome, faithfully reproducing Peter’s preaching; Luke last, from tradition and sundry
reliable but fragmentary documents. But all wrote under a higher inspiration,
and are equally honest and equally trustworthy; all wrote within the lifetime
of many of the primitive witnesses, before the first generation of Christians
had passed away, and before there was any chance for mythical and legendary
accretions. They wrote not too late to insure faithfulness, nor too early to
prevent corruption. They represent not the turbid stream of apocryphal
afterthoughts and fictions, but the pure fountain of historic truth.
The gospel story, being
once fixed in this completed shape, remained unchanged for all time to come.
Nothing was lost, nothing added. The earlier sketches or pre-canonical gospel
fragments disappeared, and the four canonical records of the one gospel, no
more nor less, sufficient for all purposes, monopolized the field from which
neither apocryphal caricatures nor sceptical speculations have been able to
drive them.
Exoteric and Esoteric Tradition.
Besides the common
Galilaean tradition for the people at large which is embodied in the Synoptic
Gospels, there was an esoteric tradition of Christ’s ministry in Judaea and his
private relation to the select circle of the apostles and his mysterious
relation to the Father. The bearer of this tradition was the beloved disciple
who leaned on the beating heart of his Master and absorbed his deepest words.
He treasured them up in his memory, and at last when the church was ripe for
this higher revelation he embodied it in the fourth Gospel.
Notes.
The problem of the Relationship of the Synoptists was first
seriously discussed by Augustin (d. 430), in his three books De Consensu
Evangelistarum (Opera, Tom. III., 1041–1230, ed. Migne). He defends
the order in our canon, first Matthew, last John, and the two apostolic
disciples in the middle (in loco medio constituti tamquam filii amplectendi,
I., 2), but wrongly makes Mark dependent on Matthew (see below, sub. I. 1).
His view prevailed during the middle ages and down to the close of the
eighteenth century. The verbal inspiration theory checked critical
investigation.
The problem was resumed
with Protestant freedom by Storr (1786), more elaborately by Eichhorn (1794),
and Marsh (1803), and again by Hug (a liberal Roman Catholic scholar, 1808),
Schleiermacher (1817), Gieseler (1818), De Wette (1826), Credner (1836), and
others. It received a new impulse and importance by the Leben Jesu of
Strauss (1836), and the Tübingen school, and has been carried forward by Baur
(1847), Hilgenfeld, Bleek, Reuss, Holtzmann, Ewald, Meyer, Keim, Weiss, and
others mentioned in the Literature (p. 577). Starting in Germany, the
investigation was prosecuted also in France, Holland, England, and the United
States.
It is not easy to find a
way through the labyrinth of the Synoptic question, with all its by-ways and
cross-ways, turns and windings, which at first make the impression:
<foreign
lang="de">"Mir wird von alle dem so dumm,
Als ging mir ein Mühlrad im Kopf herum."
</foreign>
Holtzmann gives a brief
history of opinions (in his able work, Die Synopt. Evang.) down to 1863, and
Hilgenfeld (Hist. Krit. Einl. in das N. T, pp. 173–210) down to 1874.
Comp. also Reuss (Gesch. der heil. Schr. N. T., I., §§ 165–198, 6th ed.,
1887), Holtzmann, Einleitung, 351 sqq., and Weiss, Einl., 473
sqq. The following classification of theories is tolerably complete, but
several overlap each other, or are combined.
I. The Inspiration hypothesis cuts the gordian
knot by tracing the agreement of the Synoptists directly and solely to the Holy
Spirit. But this explains nothing, and makes God responsible for all the
discrepancies and possible inaccuracies of the Evangelists. No inspiration
theory can stand for a moment which does not leave room for the personal agency
and individual peculiarities of the sacred authors and the exercise of their
natural faculties in writing. Luke expressly states in the preface his own
agency in composing his Gospel and the use he made of his means of information.
II. The Interdependency hypothesis, or Borrowing hypothesis (Benützungshypothese)
holds that one or two Evangelists borrowed from the other. This admits of as
many modifications as the order in which they may be placed.
1. Matthew, Mark, Luke. This is the
traditional order defended by Augustin, who called Mark, rather
disrespectfully, a "footman and abbreviator of Matthew" (tamquam
pedissequus et breviator Matthäi, II., 3), Grotius, Mill, Bengel, Wetstein,
Hug (1808), Hilgenfeld, Klostermann, Keil. Among English writers Townson and
Greswell.
Many scholars besides
those just mentioned hold to this order without admitting an interdependence,
and this I think is the correct view, in connection with the tradition
hypothesis. See below, sub V. and the text.
2. Matthew, Luke,
Mark. So first Clement of
Alexandria (Eus., H. E., VI. 14), but, without intimating a dependence
of Mark except on Peter. Griesbach (in two Programs, 1789) renewed this order
and made Mark an extract from both Matthew and Luke. So Theile (1825),
Fritzsche (1830), Sieffert (1832), De Wette, Bleek, Anger, Strauss, Baur, Keim.
The Tübingen school utilized this order for the tendency theory (see below).
Keim puts Matthew a.d. 66, Luke,
90, Mark, 100.
Bleek is the most
considerate advocate of this order (Einleitung in das N. T., 2d ed.,
1866, 91 sqq., 245 sqq.), but Mangold changed it (in the third ed. of Bleek,
1875, pp. 388 sqq.) in favor of the priority of a proto-Mark.
3. Mark, Matthew,
Luke. The originality and
priority of Mark was first suggested by Koppe (1782) and Storr (1786 and 1794).
The same view was renewed by Lachmann (1835), elaborately carried out by Weisse
(1838, 1856; Hilgenfeld calls him the "Urheber der conservativen
Markushypothese "), and still more minutely in all details by
Wilke (Der Urevangelist, 1838; but he assumes numerous interpolations in
the present Mark and goes back to a proto-Mark), and by B. Weiss (Das
Marcusevangelium, 1872). It is maintained in various ways by Hitzig (Johannes
Markus, 1843), Ewald (1850, but with various prior sources), Ritschl
(1851), Reuss, Thiersch, Tobler, Réville (1862), Eichthal (1863), Schenkel,
Wittichen, Holtzmann (1863), Weizsäcker (1864), Scholten (1869), Meyer (Com.
on Matt., 6th ed., 1876, p. 35), Renan (Les Évangiles, 1877, pp.
113, but the Greek Mark was preceded by the lost Hebrew Matthew, p. 93 sqq.).
Among English writers, James Smith, of Jordan Hill (Dissertat. on the Origin
of the Gospels, etc., Edinb., 1853), G. P. Fisher (Beginnings of
Christianity, New York, 1877, p. 275), and E. A. Abbott (in "Encyclop.
Brit.," vol. X., 1879, art. "Gospels") adopt the same view.
The priority of Mark is
now the prevailing theory among German critics, notwithstanding the protest of
Baur and Keim, who had almost a personal animosity against the second
Evangelist. One of the last utterances of Keim was a passionate protest against
the Präkonisation des Markus (Aus dem Urchristenthum, 1878, pp.
28–45). But the advocates of this theory are divided on the question whether
the canonical Mark or a lost proto-Mark was the primitive evangelist. The one
is called the Markushypothese, the other the Urmarkushypothese. We
admit the originality of Mark, but this does not necessarily imply priority of
composition. Matthew and Luke have too much original matter to be dependent on
Mark, and are far more valuable, as a whole, though Mark is indispensable for
particulars.
4. Mark, Luke,
Matthew. Herder (1796), Volkmar (1866 and 1870).
5. Luke, Matthew,
Mark. Büsching (1776), Evanson (1792).
6. Luke, Mark,
Matthew. Vogel (1804),
Schneckenburger (1882).
The conflicting variety
of these modifications shakes the whole borrowing theory. It makes the
omissions of most important sections, as Matt. 12–17; 14:22 – 16:12; and Luke
10–18:14, and the discrepancies in the common sections entirely inexplicable.
See text.
III. The hypothesis of a
Primitive Gospel (Urevangelium)
written before those of the Synoptists and used by them as their common
source, but now lost.
1. A lost Hebrew or
Syro-Chaldaic Gospel of official character, written very early, about
35, in Palestine by the apostles as a manual for the travelling preachers. This
is the famous Urevangeliumshypothese of the learned Professor Eichhorn
(1794, 1804, 1820), adopted and modified by Bishop Herbert Marsh (1803), Gratz
(1809), and Bertholdt (who, as Baur says, was devoted to it with "carnal
self-security").
But there is no trace of
such an important Gospel, either Hebrew or Greek. Luke knows nothing about it,
although he speaks of several attempts to write portions of the history. To
carry out his hypothesis, Eichhorn was forced to assume four altered copies or
recensions of the original document, and afterwards he added also Greek
recensions. Marsh, outgermanizing the German critic, increased the number of recensions
to eight, including a Greek translation of the Hebrew original. Thus a new
recension might be invented for every new set of facts ad infinitum. If
the original Gospel was an apostolic composition, it needed no alterations and
would have been preserved; or if it was so defective, it was of small account
and unfit to be used as a basis of the canonical Gospels. Eichhorn’s hypothesis
is now generally abandoned, but in modified shape it has been renewed by Ewald
and others. See below.
2. The Gospel "according
to the Hebrews," of which some fragments still remain. Lessing (1784,
in a book published three years after his death), Semler (who, however, changed
his view repeatedly), Weber (1791), Paulus (1799). But this was a heretical or
Ebionitic corruption of Matthew, and the remaining fragments differ widely from
the canonical Gospels.
3. The Hebrew Matthew
(Urmatthäus). It is supposed in this case that the famous Logia,
which Matthew is reported by Papias to have written in Hebrew, consisted not
only of a collection of discourses of our Lord (as Schleiermacher, Ewald,
Reuss, I., 183, explained the term), but also of his deeds: "things said and
done." But in any case
the Hebrew Matthew is lost and cannot form a safe basis for conclusions. Hug
and Roberts deny that it ever existed. See next section.
4. The canonical
Mark.
5. A pre-canonical proto-Mark
(Urmarkus). The last two hypotheses have already been mentioned under
the second general head (II. 3).
IV. The theory of a
number of fragmentary documents (the Diegesentheorie), or different
recensions. It is based on the remark of Luke that "many have
taken in hand to draw up a narrative (<foreign
lang="el">dihvghsin</foreign> concerning those matters which have been
fulfilled among us" (Luke 1:1). Schleiermacher (1817) assumed a large
number of such written documents, or detached narratives, and dealt very freely
with the Synoptists, resting his faith chiefly on John.
Ewald (1850) independently
carried out a similar view in fierce opposition to the "beastly
wildness" of the Tübingen school. He informs us with his usual oracular
self-assurance that Philip, the evangelist (Acts 8), first wrote a historical
sketch in Hebrew, and then Matthew a collection of discourses (the <foreign
lang="el">lovgia</foreign> of Papias), also in Hebrew, of which several
Greek translations were made; that Mark was the third, Matthew the fifth, and
Luke the ninth in this series of Gospels, representing the "Höhebilder,
die himmlische Fortbewegung der Geschichte," which at last assumed
their most perfect shape in John.
Köstlin, Wittichen, and
Scholten likewise assume a number of precanonical Gospels which exist only in
their critical fancy.
Renan (Les Evang., Introd.,
p. vi.) distinguishes three sets of Gospels: (1) original Gospels of the first
hand, taken from the oral tradition without a previous written text: the Hebrew
Matthew and the Greek proto-Mark; (2) Gospels partly original and partly
second-handed: our canonical Gospels falsely attributed to Matthew, Mark, and
Luke; (3) Gospels of the second and third hand: Marcion’s and the Apocryphal
Gospels.
V. The theory of a
common Oral Tradition (Traditionshypothese).
Herder (1796), Gieseler (who first fully developed it, 1818), Schulz
(1829), Credner, Lange, Ebrard (1868), Thiersch (1845, 1852), Norton, Alford,
Westcott (1860, 6th ed., 1881), Godet (1873), Keil (1877), and others. The
Gospel story by constant repetition assumed or rather had from the beginning a
uniform shape, even in minute particulars, especially in the words of Christ.
True, as far as it goes, but must be supplemented, at least in the case of
Luke, by pre-canonical, fragmentary documents or memoranda (<foreign
lang="el">dihghvsei"</foreign>). See the text.
VI. The Tendency hypothesis (Tendenzhypothese),
or the theory of Doctrinal
Adaptation. Baur (1847) and the Tübingen school (Schwegler, Ritschl,
Volkmar, Hilgenfeld, Köstlin), followed in England by Samuel Davidson (in his Introd.
to the New Test., 1868, revised ed., 1882). Each Evangelist modified the
Gospel history in the interest of the religious school or party to which he
belonged. Matthew represents the Jewish Christian, Luke the Pauline or Gentile
Christian tendency, Mark obliterates the difference, or prepares the way from
the first to the second. Every individual trait or characteristic feature of a
Gospel is connected with the dogmatic antithesis between Petrinism and
Paulinism. Baur regarded Matthew as relatively the most primitive and credible
Gospel, but it is itself a free reproduction of a still older Aramaic Gospel
"according to the Hebrews."
He was followed by an Urlukas, a purely Pauline tendency Gospel.
Mark is compiled from our Matthew and the Urlukas in the interest of
neutrality. Then followed the present Luke with an irenical Catholic tendency.
Baur overstrained the difference between Petrinism and Paulinism far beyond the
limits of historic truth, transformed the sacred writers into a set of
partisans and fighting theologians after modem fashion, set aside the fourth
Gospel as a purely ideal fiction, and put all the Gospels about seventy years
too far down (130–170), when they were already generally used in the Christian
church—according to the concurrent testimonies of Justin Martyr, Tatian,
Irenaeus, and Tertullian. Volkmar went even beyond Baur in reckless radicalism,
although he qualified it in other respects, as regards the priority of Mark,
the originality of Luke (as compared with Marcion), and the date of Matthew
which he put back to about 110. See a summary of his views in Hilgenfeld’s Einleitung,
pp. 199–202. But Ritschl and Hilgenfeld have considerably moderated the
Tübingen extravagancies. Ritschl puts Mark first, and herein Volkmar agrees.
Hilgenfeld assigns the composition of Matthew to the sixth decade of the first
century (though he thinks it was somewhat changed soon after the destruction of
Jerusalem), then followed Mark and paved the way from Petrinism to Paulinism,
and Luke wrote last before the close of the first century. He ably maintained
his theory in a five years’ conflict with the Tübingen master (1850–1855) and
reasserts it in his Einleitung (1875). So he brings us back to the
traditional order. As to the time of composition, the internal evidence
strongly supports the historical tradition that the Synoptists wrote before the
destruction of Jerusalem.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="80" title="Matthew">
<index
type = "globalSubject"
subject1 = "New
Testament"
subject2 = "Matthew"
/>
§ 80. Matthew.
Critical.
Bernh.
Weiss: Das Matthäusevangelium und
seine Lucas-Parallelen erklärt. Halle, 1876. Exceedingly elaborate.
Edw.
Byron Nicholson: The Gospel
according to the Hebrews. Its Fragments translated and annotated. Lond., 1879.
Exegetical
Commentaries on Matthew by
Origen, Jerome, Chrysostom, Melanchthon (1523), Fritzsche, De Wette, Alford,
Wordsworth, Schegg (R. Cath., 1856–58, 3 vols.), J. A. Alexander, Lange (trsl.
and enlarged by Schaff, N. Y., 1864, etc.), James Morison (of Glasgow, Lond.,
1870), Meyer, (6th ed., 1876), Wichelhaus (Halle, 1876), Keil (Leipz., 1877),
Plumptre (Lond., 1878), Carr (Cambr., 1879), Nicholson (Lond., 1881), Schaff
(N. Y., 1882).
Life of Matthew.
Matthew,903
formerly called Levi, one of the twelve apostles, was originally a publican or
taxgatherer904 at Capernaum, and hence well acquainted with
Greek and Hebrew in bilingual Galilee, and accustomed to keep accounts. This
occupation prepared him for writing a Gospel in topical order in both
languages. In the three Synoptic lists of the apostles he is associated with
Thomas, and forms with him the fourth pair; in Mark and Luke he precedes
Thomas, in his own Gospel he is placed after him (perhaps from modesty).905
Hence the conjecture that he was a twin brother of Thomas (Didymus, i.e.,
Twin), or associated with him in work. Thomas was an honest and earnest
doubter, of a melancholy disposition, yet fully convinced at last when he saw
the risen Lord; Matthew was a strong and resolute believer.
Of his apostolic labors
we have no certain information. Palestine, Ethiopia, Macedonia, the country of
the Euphrates, Persia, and Media are variously assigned to him as missionary
fields. He died a natural death according to the oldest tradition, while later
accounts make him a martyr.906
The first Gospel is his
imperishable work, well worthy a long life, yea many lives. Matthew the
publican occupies as to time the first place in the order of the Evangelists,
as Mary Magdalene, from whom Christ expelled many demons, first proclaimed the
glad tidings of the resurrection. Not that it is on that account the best or
most important—the best comes last,—but it naturally precedes the other, as the
basis precedes the superstructure.907
In his written Gospel he
still fulfils the great commission to bring all nations to the school of Christ
(<scripRef
passage = "Matt. 28:19">Matt. 28:19</scripRef>).
The scanty information
of the person and life of Matthew in connection with his Gospel suggests the
following probable inferences:
1. Matthew was a Hebrew
of the Hebrews, yet comparatively liberal, being a publican who came in
frequent contact with merchants from Damascus. This occupation was indeed
disreputable in the eyes of the Jews, and scarcely consistent with the national
Messianic aspirations; but Capernaum belonged to the tetrarchy of Herod
Antipas, and the Herodian family, which, with all its subserviency to heathen
Rome, was yet to a certain extent identified with the Jewish nation.
2. He was a man of some
means and good social position. His office was lucrative, he owned a house, and
gave a farewell banquet to "a great multitude" of his old associates,
at which Jesus presided.908 It was at the same time his farewell to
the world, its wealth, its pleasures and honors. "We may conceive what a
joyous banquet that was for Matthew, when he marked the words and acts of
Jesus, and stored within his memory the scene and the conversation which he was
inspired to write according to his clerkly ability for the instruction of the
church in all after ages."909 It was on that occasion that Jesus
spoke that word which was especially applicable to Matthew and especially
offensive to the Pharisees present: "I came not to call the righteous, but
sinners." It is remarkable
that the first post-apostolic quotation from the Gospel of Matthew is this very
passage, and one similar to it (see below).
3. He was a man of
decision of character and capable of great sacrifice to his conviction. When
called, while sitting in Oriental fashion at his tollbooth, to follow Jesus, he
"forsook all, rose up, and followed Him," whom he at once recognized
and trusted as the true king of Israel.910 No one can do more than leave his
"all," no matter how much or how little this may be; and no one can
do better than to "follow Christ."
Character and Aim of the Gospel.
The first Gospel makes
the impression of primitive antiquity. The city of Jerusalem, the temple, the
priesthood and sacrifices, the entire religious and political fabric of Judaism
are supposed to be still standing, but with an intimation of their speedy
downfall.911 It
alone reports the words of Christ that he came not to destroy but to fulfil the
law and the prophets, and that he was only sent to the lost sheep of the house
of Israel.912
Hence the best critics put the composition several years before the
destruction of Jerusalem.913
Matthew’s Gospel was
evidently written for Hebrews, and Hebrew Christians with the aim to prove that
Jesus of Nazareth is the promised Messiah, the last and greatest prophet,
priest, and king of Israel. It presupposes a knowledge of Jewish customs and
Palestinian localities (which are explained in other Gospels).914 It
is the connecting link between the Old and the New Covenant. It is, as has been
well said,915 "the ultimatum of Jehovah to his
ancient people: Believe, or prepare to perish! Recognize Jesus as the Messiah, or await Him as your
Judge!" Hence he so often
points out the fulfilment of Messianic prophecy in the evangelical history with
his peculiar formula: "that it might be fulfilled," or "then was
fulfilled." 916
In accordance with this
plan, Matthew begins with the genealogy of Jesus, showing him to be the son and
heir of David the king, and of Abraham the father, of the Jewish race, to whom
the promises were given. The wise men of the East come from a distance to adore
the new-born king of the Jews. The dark suspicion and jealousy of Herod is
roused, and foreshadows the future persecution of the Messiah. The flight to
Egypt and the return from that land both of refuge and bondage are a fulfilment
of the typical history of Israel. John the Baptist completes the mission of
prophecy in preparing the way for Christ. After the Messianic inauguration and
trial Jesus opens his public ministry with the Sermon on the Mount, which is
the counterpart of the Sinaitic legislation, and contains the fundamental law
of his kingdom. The key-note of this sermon and of the whole Gospel is that
Christ came to fulfil the law and the prophets, which implies both the harmony
of the two religions and the transcendent superiority of Christianity. His
mission assumes an organized institutional form in the kingdom of heaven which
he came to establish in the world. Matthew uses this term (<foreign
lang="el">hJ basileiva tw'n oujranw'n</foreign>) no less than thirty-two times, while the other
Evangelists and Paul speak of the "kingdom of God" (<foreign
lang="el">hJ basileiva tou' qeou'</foreign>). No other Evangelist has so fully
developed the idea that Christ and his kingdom are the fulfilment of all the
hopes and aspirations of Israel, and so vividly set forth the awful solemnity
of the crisis at this turning point in its history.
But while Matthew wrote
from the Jewish Christian point of view, he is far from being Judaizing or
contracted. He takes the widest range of prophecy. He is the most national and
yet the most universal, the most retrospective and yet the most prospective, of
Evangelists. At the very cradle of the infant Jesus he introduces the adoring
Magi from the far East, as the forerunners of a multitude of believing Gentiles
who "shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven;" while "the sons
of the kingdom shall be cast forth into the outer darkness." The heathen centurion, and the heathen
woman of Canaan exhibit a faith the like of which Jesus did not find in Israel.
The Messiah is rejected and persecuted by his own people in Galilee and Judaea.
He upbraids Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, wherein his mighty works were
done, because they repented not; He sheds tears over Jerusalem because she
would not come to Him; He pronounces his woe over the Jewish hierarchy, and
utters the fearful prophecies of the destruction of the theocracy. All this is
most fully recorded by Matthew, and he most appropriately and sublimely
concludes with the command of the universal evangelization of all nations, and
the promise of the unbroken presence of Christ with his people to the end of
the world.917
Topical Arrangement.
The mode of arrangement
is clear and orderly. It is topical rather than chronological. It far surpasses
Mark and Luke in the fulness of the discourses of Christ, while it has to be
supplemented from them in regard to the succession of events. Matthew groups
together the kindred words and works with special reference to Christ’s
teaching; hence it was properly called by Papias a collection of the Oracles of
the Lord. It is emphatically the didactic Gospel.
The first didactic group
is the Sermon on the Mount of Beatitudes, which contains the legislation of the
kingdom of Christ and an invitation to the whole people to enter, holding out
the richest promises to the poor in spirit and the pure in heart (<scripRef
passage = "Matt. 5–7">Matt. 5–7</scripRef>. The second group is the instruction to the disciples in their
missionary work (<scripRef passage = "Matt. 10">Matt. 10</scripRef>). The third is the collection of the parables on
the kingdom of God, illustrating its growth, conflict, value, and consummation
(<scripRef
passage = "Matt. 13">Matt. 13</scripRef>). The fourth, the denunciation of the Pharisees (Matt. 23), and the
fifth, the prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world (<scripRef
passage = "Matt. 24 and 25">Matt. 24 and 25</scripRef>).
Between these chief
groups are inserted smaller discourses of Christ, on his relation to John the
Baptist (<scripRef
passage = "Matt. 11:1–19">11:1–19</scripRef>); the woe on the unrepenting cities of Galilee (<scripRef passage =
"Matt. 11:20–24">11:20–24</scripRef>); the thanksgiving for the revelation to those
of a childlike spirit (<scripRef passage = "Matt.
11:25–27">11:25–27</scripRef>); the invitation to the weary and heavy laden (<scripRef
passage = "Matt. 11:28–30">11:28–30</scripRef>); on the observance of the Sabbath and warning to the Pharisees who were
on the way to commit the unpardonable sin by tracing his miracles to Satanic
powers (<scripRef
passage = "Matt. 12">Matt. 12</scripRef>); the attack on the traditions of the elders and the hypocrisy of the
Pharisees (<scripRef passage = "Matt. 15 and 16">Matt. 15 and 16</scripRef>); the prophecy of the founding of the church
after the great confession of Peter, with the prediction of his passion as the
way to victory (<scripRef passage = "Matt. 16">Matt. 16</scripRef>); the discourse on the little children with
their lesson of simplicity and humility against the temptations of hierarchial
pride; the duty of forgiveness in the kingdom and the parable of the
unforgiving servant (<scripRef passage = "Matt. 18">Matt. 18</scripRef>); the discourse about divorce, against the
Pharisees; the blessing of little children; the warning against the danger of
riches; the parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard and the nature of the
future rewards (<scripRef passage = "Matt. 19, 20">Matt. 19 and 20</scripRef>); the victorious replies of the Lord to the
tempting questions of the Pharisees and Sadducees (<scripRef passage =
"Matt. 22">Matt.
22</scripRef>).
These discourses are
connected with narratives of the great miracles of Christ and the events in his
life. The miracles are likewise grouped together (as in <scripRef passage =
"Matt. 8–9">Matt.
8–9</scripRef>), or briefly summed up (as in <scripRef
passage = "Matt. 4:23–25">4:23–25</scripRef>). The transfiguration (<scripRef passage = "Matt.
17">Matt. 17</scripRef>) forms the turning-point between the active and
the passive life; it was a manifestation of heaven on earth, an anticipation of
Christ’s future glory, a pledge of the resurrection, and it fortified Jesus and
his three chosen disciples for the coming crisis, which culminated in the
crucifixion and ended in the resurrection.918
Peculiar Sections.
Matthew has a number of
original sections:
1. Ten Discourses of our
Lord, namely, the greater part of the Sermon on the Mount (<scripRef
passage = "Matt. 5–7">Matt. 5–7</scripRef>); the thanksgiving for the revelation to babes (<scripRef passage =
"Matt. 11:25–27">11:25–27</scripRef>); the touching invitation to the heavy laden (<scripRef
passage = "Matt. 11:28–30">11:28–30</scripRef>), which is equal to anything in John; the warning against idle words (<scripRef
passage = "Matt. 12:36, 37">12:36, 37</scripRef>); the blessing pronounced upon Peter and the prophecy of founding the
church (<scripRef
passage = "Matt. 16:17–19">16:17–19</scripRef>); the greater part of the discourse on humility and forgiveness (Matt.
18); the rejection of the Jews (<scripRef passage = "Matt.
21:43">21:43</scripRef>); the denunciation of the scribes and Pharisees
(<scripRef
passage = "Matt. 23">Matt. 23</scripRef>); the description of the final judgment (<scripRef passage =
"Matt. 25:31–46">25:31–46</scripRef>); the great commission and the promise of
Christ’s presence to the end of time (<scripRef passage =
"Matt. 28:18–20">28:18–20</scripRef>).
2. Ten Parables: the
tares; the hidden treasure; the pearl of great price; the draw-net (<scripRef
passage = "Matt. 13:24–50">13:24–50</scripRef>); the unmerciful servant (<scripRef passage = "Matt.
18:23–35">18:23–35</scripRef>); the laborers in the vineyard (<scripRef
passage = "Matt. 20:1–16">20:1–16</scripRef>); the two sons (<scripRef passage = "Matt.
21:28–32">21:28–32</scripRef>); the marriage of the king’s son (<scripRef
passage = "Matt. 22: 1–14">22: 1–14</scripRef>); the ten virgins (<scripRef passage = "Matt. 25:1–13">25:1–13</scripRef>); the talents (<scripRef passage =
"Matt. 25:14–30">25:14–30</scripRef>).
3. Two Miracles: the
cure of two blind men (<scripRef passage = "Matt. 9:27–31">9:27–31</scripRef>); the stater in the fish’s mouth (<scripRef
passage = "Matt. 17:24–27">17:24–27</scripRef>).
4. Facts and Incidents:
the adoration of the Magi; the massacre of the innocents; the flight into
Egypt; the return from Egypt to Nazareth (all in <scripRef passage =
"Matt. 2">Matt.
2</scripRef>); the coming of the Pharisees and Sadducees to
John’s baptism (<scripRef passage = "Matt. 3:7">3:7</scripRef>); Peter’s attempt to walk on the sea (<scripRef
passage = "Matt. 14:28–31">14:28–31</scripRef>); the payment of the temple tax (<scripRef passage =
"Matt. 17:24–27">17:24–27</scripRef>); the bargain of Judas, his remorse, and suicide
(<scripRef
passage = "Matt. 26:14–16; 27:3–10">26:14–16; 27:3–10</scripRef>); the dream of Pilate’s wife (<scripRef
passage = "Matt. 27:19">27:19</scripRef>); the appearance of departed saints in Jerusalem (<scripRef
passage = "Matt. 27:52">27:52</scripRef>); the watch at the sepulchre (<scripRef passage =
"Matt. 27:62–66">27:62–66</scripRef>); the lie of the Sanhedrin and the bribing of
the soldiers (<scripRef passage = "Matt. 28:11–15">28:11–15</scripRef>); the earthquake on the resurrection morning (<scripRef
passage = "Matt. 28:2">28:2</scripRef>, a repetition of the shock described in <scripRef passage =
"Matt. 27:51">27:51</scripRef>, and connected with the rolling away of the
stone from the sepulchre).
The Style.
The Style of Matthew is
simple, unadorned, calm, dignified, even majestic; less vivid and picturesque
than that of Mark; more even and uniform than Luke’s, because not dependent on
written sources. He is Hebraizing, but less so than Mark, and not so much as <scripRef
passage = "Luke 1–2">Luke 1–2</scripRef>. He omits some minor details which escaped his observation, but which
Mark heard from Peter, and which Luke learned from eye-witnesses or found in
his fragmentary documents. Among his peculiar expressions, besides the constant
use of "kingdom of heaven," is the designation of God as
"our heavenly Father," and of Jerusalem as "the holy city"
and "the city of the Great King." In the fulness of the teaching of Christ he surpasses all
except John. Nothing can be more solemn and impressive than his reports of
those words of life and power, which will outlast heaven and earth (<scripRef
passage = "Matt. 24:34">24:34</scripRef>). Sentence follows sentence with overwhelming force, like a succession
of lightning flashes from the upper world.919
Patristic Notices of Matthew.
The first Gospel was
well known to the author of the "Didache of the Apostles," who wrote
between 80 and 100, and made large use of it, especially the Sermon on the
Mount.920
The next clear allusion
to this Gospel is made in the Epistle of Barnabas, who quotes two passages from
the Greek Matthew, one from <scripRef passage =
"Matt. 22:14">22:14</scripRef>: "Many are called, but few chosen,"
with the significant formula used only of inspired writings, "It is
written."921
This shows clearly that early in the second century, if not before, it
was an acknowledged authority in the church. The Gospel of John also indirectly
presupposes, by its numerous emissions, the existence of all the Synoptical
Gospels.
The Hebrew Matthew.
Next we hear of a Hebrew
Matthew from Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, "a hearer of John and a
companion of Polycarp."922 He collected from apostles and their
disciples a variety of apostolic traditions in his "Exposition of Oracles
of the Lord," in five books (<foreign
lang="el">logivwn kuriakw'n ejxhvghsi"¼.</foreign> In
a fragment of this lost work preserved by Eusebius, he says distinctly that
"Matthew composed the oracles [of the Lord] in the Hebrew tongue,
and everyone interpreted them as best he could."923
Unfortunately the Hebrew
Matthew, if it ever existed, has disappeared, and consequently there is much
difference of opinion about this famous passage, both as regards the proper
meaning of "oracles" (<foreign lang="el">logiva</foreign>) and the truth of the whole report.
1. The
"oracles" are understood by some to mean only the discourses of our
Lord;924 by others to include also the narrative
portions.925 But
in any case the Hebrew Matthew must have been chiefly an orderly collection
of discourses. This agrees best with the natural and usual meaning of Logia,
and the actual preponderance of the doctrinal element in our canonical Matthew)
as compared with our Mark. A parte potiori fit denominatio.
2. The report of a
Hebrew original has been set aside altogether as a sheer mistake of Papias, who
confounded it with the Ebionite "Gospel according to the Hebrews,"
known to us from a number of fragments.926 It is said that Papias was a credulous
and weak-minded, though pious man.927 But this does not impair his veracity
or invalidate a simple historical notice. It is also said that the universal
spread of the Greek language made a Hebrew Gospel superfluous. But the Aramaic
was still the vernacular and prevailing language in Palestine (comp. <scripRef
passage = "Acts 21:40; 22:2">Acts 21:40; 22:2</scripRef>) and in the countries of the Euphrates.
There is an intrinsic
probability of a Hebrew Gospel for the early stage of Christianity. And the
existence of a Hebrew Matthew rests by no means merely on Papias. It is
confirmed by the independent testimonies of most respectable fathers, as
Irenaeus,928 Pantaenus,929
Origen, 930 Eusebius,931
Cyril of Jerusalem,932
Epiphanius,933 and Jerome.934
This Hebrew Matthew must
not be identified with the Judaizing "Gospel according to the
Hebrews," the best among the apocryphal Gospels, of which in all
thirty-three fragments remain. Jerome and other fathers clearly distinguish the
two. The latter was probably an adaptation of the former to the use of the
Ebionites and Nazarenes.935 Truth always precedes heresy, as the
genuine coin precedes the counterfeit, and the real portrait the caricature.
Cureton and Tregelles maintain that the Curetonian Syriac fragment is virtually
a translation of the Hebrew Matthew, and antedates the Peshito version. But
Ewald has proven that it is derived from our Greek Matthew.936
Papias says that
everybody "interpreted" the Hebrew Matthew as well as he could. He
refers no doubt to the use of the Gospel in public discourses before Greek
hearers, not to a number of written translations of which we know nothing. The
past tense (<foreign lang="el">hjrmhvneuse</foreign>) moreover seems to imply that such necessity
existed no longer at the time when he wrote; in other words, that the authentic
Greek Matthew had since appeared and superseded the Aramaic predecessor which
was probably less complete.937 Papias accordingly is an indirect
witness of the Greek Matthew in his own age; that is, the early part of the
second century (about a.d. 130).
At all events the Greek Matthew was in public use even before that time, as is
evident from the, quotations in the Didache, and the Epistle
of Barnabas (which were written before 120, probably before 100).
The Greek Matthew.
The Greek Matthew, as we
have it now, is not a close translation from the Hebrew and bears the marks of
an original composition. This appears from genuine Greek words and phrases to
which there is no parallel in Hebrew, as the truly classical "Those wretches
he will wretchedly destroy,"938
and from the discrimination in Old Testament quotations which are freely taken
from the Septuagint in the course of the narrative, but conformed to the Hebrew
when they convey Messianic prophecies, and are introduced by the solemn
formula: "that there might be fulfilled," or "then was
fulfilled."939
If then we credit the
well nigh unanimous tradition of the ancient church concerning a prior Hebrew
Matthew, we must either ascribe the Greek Matthew to some unknown translator
who took certain liberties with the original,940 or, what seems most probable, we must assume
that Matthew himself at different periods of his life wrote his Gospel first in
Hebrew in Palestine, and afterward in Greek.941 In doing so, he would not literally
translate his own book, but like other historians freely reproduce and improve
it. Josephus did the same with his history of the Jewish war, of which only the
Greek remains. When the Greek Matthew once was current in the church, it
naturally superseded the Hebrew, especially if it was more complete.
Objections are raised to
Matthew’s authorship of the first canonical Gospel, from real or supposed
inaccuracies in the narrative, but they are at best very trifling and easily
explained by the fact that Matthew paid most attention to the words of Christ,
and probably had a better memory for thoughts than for facts.942
But whatever be the view
we take of the precise origin of the first canonical Gospel, it was universally
received in the ancient church as the work of Matthew. It was our Matthew who
is often, though freely, quoted by Justin Martyr as early as a.d. 146 among the "Gospel
Memoirs;" it was one of the four Gospels of which his pupil Tatian
compiled a connected "Diatessaron;" and it was the only Matthew used
by Irenaeus and all the fathers that follow.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="81" title="Mark">
<index
type = "globalSubject"
subject1 = "New
Testament"
subject2 = "Mark" />
§ 81. Mark.
Commentaries.
George
Petter (the largest Com. on M., London, 1661, 2 vols. fol.); C. Fr. A.
Fritzsche (Evangelium Marci, Lips., 1830); A. Klostermann
(Das
Marcusevangelium nach seinem Quellenwerthe für die evang. Gesch., Göttingen, 1867); B. Weiss (Das Marcusevangelium und seine synopt. Parallelen, Berlin, 1872); Meyer
(6th ed. by Weiss, Gött., 1878); Joseph A. Alexander (New York, 1858, and
London, 1866); Harvey Goodwin (London, 1860); John H. Godwin (London, 1869);
James Morison (Mark’s Memoir of Jesus Christ, London and Glasgow,
1873, second ed., 1876, third ed., 1881, one of the very best Com., learned,
reverential, and sensible); C. F. Maclear
(Cambridge, 1877); Canon Cook (London, 1878); Edwin W. Rich (Philad., 1881);
Matthew B. Riddle (New York, 1881).
Life of Mark
The second Evangelist
combines in his name, as well as in his mission, the Hebrew and the Roman, and
is a connecting link between Peter and Paul, but more especially a pupil and
companion of the former, so that his Gospel may properly be called the Gospel
of Peter. His original name was John or Johanan (i.e., Jehovah is gracious,
Gotthold) his surname was Mark (i.e., Mallet).943 The
surname supplanted the Hebrew name in his later life, as Peter supplanted
Simon, and Paul supplanted Saul. The change marked the transition of
Christianity from the Jews to the Gentiles. He is frequently mentioned in the
Acts and the Epistles.944
He was the son of a
certain Mary who lived at Jerusalem and offered her house, at great risk no
doubt in that critical period of persecution, to the Christian disciples for
devotional meetings. Peter repaired to that house after his deliverance from
prison (a.d. 44). This accounts
for the close intimacy of Mark with Peter; he was probably converted through
him, and hence called his spiritual "son" (<scripRef passage =
"1 Pet. 5:13">1
Pet. 5:13</scripRef>).945 He may have had a superficial
acquaintance with Christ; for he is probably identical with that unnamed
"young man" who, according to his own report, left his "linen
cloth and fled naked" from Gethsemane in the night of betrayal (<scripRef
passage = "Mark 14:51">Mark 14:51</scripRef>). He would hardly have mentioned such a trifling
incident, unless it had a special significance for him as the turning-point in
his life. Lange ingeniously conjectures that his mother owned the garden of
Gethsemane or a house close by.
Mark accompanied Paul
and Barnabas as their minister (<foreign lang="el">uJphrevth"</foreign>) on their first great missionary journey; but
left them half-way, being discouraged, it seems, by the arduous work, and
returned to his mother in Jerusalem. For this reason Paul refused to take him
on his next tour, while Barnabas was willing to overlook his temporary weakness
(<scripRef
passage = "Acts 15:38">Acts 15:38</scripRef>). There was a "sharp contention" on
that occasion between these good men, probably in connection with the more
serious collision between Paul and Peter at Antioch (<scripRef passage =
"Gal. 2:11 sqq.">Gal.
2:11 sqq.</scripRef>). Paul was moved by a stern sense of duty;
Barnabas by a kindly feeling for his cousin.946 But the alienation was only temporary.
For about ten years afterwards (63) Paul speaks of Mark at Rome as one of his
few "fellow-workers unto the kingdom of God," who had been "a
comfort" to him in his imprisonment; and he commends him to the brethren
in Asia Minor on his intended visit (<scripRef passage =
"Col. 4:10, 11">Col.
4:10, 11</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Philem.
24">Philem. 24</scripRef>). In his last Epistle he charges Timothy to
bring Mark with him to Rome on the ground that he was "useful to him for
ministering" (<scripRef passage = "2 Tim. 4:11">2 Tim. 4:11</scripRef>). We find him again in company with Peter at
"Baby]on," whether that be on the Euphrates, or, more probably, at
Rome (<scripRef
passage = "1 Pet. 5:3">1 Pet. 5:3</scripRef>).
These are the last
notices of him in the New Testament. The tradition of the church adds two
important facts, that he wrote his Gospel in Rome as the interpreter of Peter,
and that afterwards he founded the church of Alexandria. The Coptic patriarch
claims to be his successor. The legends of his martyrdom in the eighth year of
Nero (this date is given by Jerome) are worthless. In 827 his relics were
removed from Egypt to Venice, which built him a magnificent five-domed
cathedral on the Place of St. Mark, near the Doge’s palace, and chose him with
his symbol, the Lion, for the patron saint of the republic.
His Relation to Peter.
Though not an apostle,
Mark had the best opportunity in his mother’s house and his personal connection
with Peter, Paul, Barnabas, and other prominent disciples for gathering the
most authentic information concerning the gospel history.
The earliest notice of
his Gospel we have from Papias of Hierapolis in the first half of the second
century. He reports among the primitive traditions which he collected, that
"Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter (<foreign
lang="el">eJrmhneuth;" Pevtrou
genovmeno"¼, wrote down accurately »ajkribw'" e[grayen</foreign>) whatever he remembered,947 without, however, recording in order (<foreign
lang="el">ta;xei</foreign>) what was either said or done by Christ. For
neither did he hear the Lord, nor did he follow Him; but afterwards, as I said,
[he followed] Peter, who adapted his instructions to the needs [of his
hearers], but not in the way of giving a connected account of the Lord’s
discourses.948 So
then Mark committed no error in thus writing down such details as he
remembered; for he made it his one forethought not to omit or to misrepresent
any details that he had heard."949
In what sense was Mark
an "interpreter" of Peter?
Not as the translator of a written Aramaic Gospel of Peter into the
Greek, for of such an Aramaic original there is no trace, and Peter (to judge
from his Epistles) wrote better Greek; nor as the translator of his discourses
into Latin, for we know not whether he understood that language, and it was
scarcely needed even in Rome among Jews and Orientals who spoke Greek;950 nor in the wider sense, as a mere clerk or
amanuensis, who wrote down what Peter dictated; but as the literary editor and
publisher of the oral Gospel of his spiritual father and teacher. So Mercury
was called the interpreter of the gods, because he communicated to mortals the
messages of the gods. It is quite probable, however, that Peter sketched down
some of the chief events under the first impression, in his vernacular tongue,
and that such brief memoirs, if they existed, would naturally be made use of by
Mark.951
We learn, then, from
Papias that Mark wrote his Gospel from the personal reminiscences of Peter’s
discourses, which were adapted to the immediate wants of his hearers; that it
was not complete (especially in the didactic part, as compared with Matthew or
John), nor strictly chronological.
Clement of Alexandria
informs us that the people of Rome were so much pleased with the preaching of
Peter that they requested Mark, his attendant, to put it down in writing, which
Peter neither encouraged nor hindered. Other ancient fathers emphasize the
close intimacy of Mark with Peter, and call his Gospel the Gospel of Peter.952
The Gospel.
This tradition is
confirmed by the book: it is derived from the apostolic preaching of Peter, but
is the briefest and so far the least complete of all the Gospels, yet replete
with significant details. It reflects the sanguine and impulsive temperament,
rapid movement, and vigorous action of Peter. In this respect its favorite
particle "straightway" is exceedingly characteristic. The break-down
of Mark in Pamphylia, which provoked the censure of Paul, has a parallel in the
denial and inconsistency of Peter; but, like him, he soon rallied, was ready to
accompany Paul on his next mission, and persevered faithfully to the end.
He betrays, by omissions
and additions, the direct influence of Peter. He informs us that the house of
Peter was "the house of Simon and Andrew" (<scripRef
passage = "Mark 1:29">Mark 1:29</scripRef>). He begins the public ministry of Christ with the calling of these two
brothers (<scripRef passage = "Mk. 1:16">1:16</scripRef>) and ends the undoubted part of the Gospel with
a message to Peter (<scripRef passage = "Mk. 16:7">16:7</scripRef>), and the supplement almost in the very words of
Peter.953 He
tells us that Peter on the Mount of Transfiguration, when he proposed to erect
three tabernacles, "knew not what to say" (<scripRef passage =
"Mk. 9:6">9:6</scripRef>). He gives the most minute account of Peter’s
denial, and—alone among the Evangelists—records the fact that he warmed himself
"in the light" of the fire so that he could be distinctly seen (<scripRef
passage = "Mk. 14:54">14:54</scripRef>), and that the cock crew twice, giving him a second warning (<scripRef
passage = "Mk. 14:72">14:72</scripRef>). No one would be more likely to remember and report the fact as a
stimulus to humility and gratitude than Peter himself.
On the other hand, Mark omits the laudatory words of Jesus to Peter: "Thou art Rock, and upon this rock I will build my church;" while yet he records the succeeding rebuke: "Get thee behind me, Satan."954 The humility of the apostle, who himself warns so earnestly against the hierarchical abuse of the former passage, offers the most natural explanation of this conspicuous omission. "It is likely," says Eusebius, "that Peter maintained silence on these points; hence the silence of Mark."955
Character and Aim of Mark.
The second Gospel
was—according to the unanimous voice of the ancient church, which is sustained
by internal evidence—written at Rome and primarily for Roman readers, probably
before the death of Peter, at all events before the destruction of Jerusalem.956
It is a faithful record
of Peter’s preaching, which Mark must have heard again and again. It is an
historical sermon on the text of Peter when addressing the Roman soldier
Cornelius: "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with
power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the
devil; for God was with him."957 It omits the history of the infancy,
and rushes at once into the public ministry of our Lord, beginning, like Peter,
with the baptism of John, and ending with the ascension. It represents Christ
in the fulness of his living energy, as the Son of God and the mighty
wonder-worker who excited amazement and carried the people irresistibly before
him as a spiritual conqueror. This aspect would most impress the martial mind
of the Romans, who were born to conquer and to rule. The teacher is lost in the
founder of a kingdom. The heroic element prevails over the prophetic. The
victory over Satanic powers in the healing of demoniacs is made very prominent.
It is the gospel of divine force manifested in Christ. The symbol of the lion
is not inappropriate to the Evangelist who describes Jesus as the Lion of the
tribe of Judah.958
Mark gives us a Gospel
of facts, while Matthew’s is a Gospel of divine oracles. He reports few
discourses, but many miracles. He unrolls the short public life of our Lord in
a series of brief life-pictures in rapid succession. He takes no time to
explain and to reveal the inside. He dwells on the outward aspect of that
wonderful personality as it struck the multitude. Compared with Matthew and
especially with John, he is superficial, but not on that account incorrect or
less useful and necessary. He takes the theocratic view of Christ, like
Matthew; while Luke and John take the universal view; but while Matthew for his
Jewish readers begins with the descent of Christ from David the King and often
directs attention to the fulfilment of prophecy, Mark, writing for Gentiles,
begins with "the Son of God" in his independent personality.959 He
rarely quotes prophecy; but, on the other hand, he translates for his Roman
readers Aramaic words and Jewish customs and opinions.960 He
exhibits the Son of God in his mighty power and expects the reader to submit to
his authority.
Two miracles are
peculiar to him, the healing of the deaf and dumb man in Decapolis, which
astonished the people "beyond measure" and made them exclaim:
"He hath done all things well: he maketh even the deaf to hear, and the
dumb to speak" (<scripRef passage = "Mark 7:31–37">Mark 7:31–37</scripRef>). The other miracle is a remarkable specimen of
a gradual cure, the healing of the blind man at Bethsaida, who upon the
first touch of Christ saw the men around him walking, but indistinctly as
trees, and then after the second laying on of hands upon his eyes "saw all
things clearly" (<scripRef passage = "Mk. 8:22–26">8:22–26</scripRef>). He omits important parables, but alone gives
the interesting parable of the seed growing secretly and bearing first the
blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear (<scripRef passage =
"Mk. 4:26–29">4:26–29</scripRef>).
It is an interesting feature to which Dr. Lange first has directed attention, that Mark lays emphasis on the periods of pause and rest which "rhythmically intervene between the several great victories achieved by Christ." He came out from his obscure abode in Nazareth; each fresh advance in his public life is preceded by a retirement, and each retirement is followed by a new and greater victory. The contrast between the contemplative rest and the vigorous action is striking and explains the overpowering effect by revealing its secret spring in the communion with God and with himself. Thus we have after his baptism a retirement to the wilderness in Judaea before he preached in Galilee (<scripRef passage = "Mk. 1:12">1:12</scripRef>); a retirement to the ship (<scripRef passage = "Mk. 3:7">3:7</scripRef>); to the desert on the eastern shore of the lake of Galilee (<scripRef passage = "Mk. 6:31">6:31</scripRef>); to a mountain (<scripRef passage = "Mk. 6:46">6:46</scripRef>); to the border land of Tyre and Sidon (<scripRef passage = "Mk. 7:24">7:24</scripRef>); to Decapolis (<scripRef passage = "Mk. 7:31">7:31</scripRef>); to a high mountain (<scripRef passage = "Mk. 9:2">9:2</scripRef>); to Bethany (<scripRef passage = "Mk. 11:1">11:1</scripRef>); to Gethsemane (<scripRef passage = "Mk. 14:34">14:34</scripRef>); his rest in the grave before the resurrection; and his withdrawal from the world and his reappearance in the victories of the gospel preached by his disciples. "The ascension of the Lord forms his last withdrawal, which is to be followed by his final onset and absolute victory."961
Doctrinal Position.
Mark has no distinct
doctrinal type, but is catholic, irenic, unsectarian, and neutral as regards
the party questions within the apostolic church. But this is not the result of
calculation or of a tendency to obliterate and conciliate existing differences.962
Mark simply represents the primitive form of Christianity itself before
the circumcision controversy broke out which occasioned the apostolic
conference at Jerusalem twenty years after the founding of the church. His
Gospel is Petrine without being anti-Pauline, and Pauline without being
anti-Petrine. Its doctrinal tone is the same as that of the sermons of Peter in
the Acts. It is thoroughly practical. Its preaches Christianity, not theology.
The same is true of the
other Gospels, with this difference, however, that Matthew has a special
reference to Jewish, Luke to Gentile readers, and that both make their
selection accordingly under the guidance of the Spirit and in accordance with
their peculiar charisma and aim, but without altering or coloring the facts.
Mark stands properly between them just as Peter stood between James and Paul.
The Style.
The style of Mark is
unclassical, inelegant, provincial, homely, poor and repetitious in vocabulary,
but original, fresh, and picturesque, and enlivened by interesting touches and
flickers..963
He was a stranger to the arts of rhetoric and unskilled in literary composition, but an attentive listener, a close observer, and faithful recorder of actual events. He is strongly Hebraizing, and uses often the Hebrew and, but seldom the argumentative for. He inserts a number of Latin words, though most of these occur also in Matthew and Luke, and in the Talmud.964 He uses the particle "forthwith" or "straightway" more frequently than all the other Evangelists combined.965 It is his pet word, and well expresses his haste and rapid transition from event to event, from conquest to conquest. He quotes names and phrases in the original Aramaic, as "Abba," "Boanerges," "Talitha kum," "Corban," "Ephphathah," and "Eloi, Eloi," with a Greek translation.966 He is fond of the historical present,967 of the direct instead of the indirect mode of speech,968 of pictorical participles,969 and of affectionate diminutives.970 He observes time and place of important events.971 He has a number of peculiar expressions not found elsewhere in the New Testament.972
Characteristic Details.
Mark inserts many
delicate tints and interesting incidents of persons and events which he must
have heard from primitive witnesses. They are not the touches of fancy or the
reflections of an historian, but the reminiscences of the first impressions.
They occur in every chapter. He makes some little contribution to almost every
narrative he has in common with Matthew and Luke. He notices the overpowering
impression of awe and wonder, joy and delight, which the words and miracles of
Jesus and his very appearance made upon the people and the disciples;973 the actions of the multitude as they were
rushing and thronging and pressing upon Him that He might touch and heal them,
so that there was scarcely standing room, or time to eat.974 On
one occasion his kinsmen were about forcibly to remove Him from the throng. He
directs attention to the human emotions and passions of our Lord, how he was
stirred by pity, wonder, grief, anger and indignation.975 He
notices his attitudes, looks and gestures,976
his sleep and hunger.977
He informs us that
Jesus, "looking upon" the rich young ruler, "loved him,"
and that the ruler’s "countenance fell" when he was told to sell all
he had and to follow Jesus. Mark, or Peter rather, must have watched the eye of
our Lord and read in his face the expression of special interest in that man
who notwithstanding his self-righteousness and worldliness had some lovely
qualities and was not very far from the kingdom.978
The cure of the demoniac
and epileptic at the foot of the mount of transfiguration is narrated with
greater circumstantiality and dramatic vividness by Mark than by the other
Synoptists. He supplies the touching conversation of Jesus with the father of
the sufferer, which drew out his weak and struggling faith with the earnest
prayer for strong and victorious faith: "I believe; help Thou mine unbelief."979 We
can imagine how eagerly Peter, the confessor, caught this prayer, and how often
he repeated it in his preaching, mindful of his own weakness and trials.
All the Synoptists
relate on two distinct occasions Christ’s love for little children, but Mark
alone tells us that He "took little children into his arms, and laid his
hands upon them."980
Many minor details not
found in the other Gospels, however insignificant in themselves, are yet most
significant as marks of the autopticity of the narrator (Peter). Such are the
notices that Jesus entered the house of "Simon and Andrew, with James and
John" (<scripRef passage = "Mark 1:29">Mark 1:29</scripRef>); that the Pharisees took counsel "with the
Herodians" (<scripRef passage = "Mark 3:6">3:6</scripRef>); that the raiment of Jesus at the
transfiguration became exceeding white as snow "so as no fuller on earth
can whiten them" (<scripRef passage = "Mark 9:3">9:3</scripRef>); that blind Bartimaeus when called,
"casting away his garment, leaped up" (<scripRef passage =
"Mark 10:50">10:50</scripRef>), and came to Jesus; that "Peter and James
and John and Andrew asked him privately" on the Mount of Olives about the
coming events (<scripRef passage = "Mark 13:3">13:3</scripRef>); that the five thousand sat down "in
ranks, by hundreds and fifties" (<scripRef passage =
"Mark 6:40">6:40</scripRef>); that the Simon who carried the cross of Christ
(<scripRef
passage = "Mark 15:21">15:21</scripRef>) was a "Cyrenian" and "the father of Alexander and
Rufus" (no doubt, two well-known disciples, perhaps at Rome, comp. <scripRef
passage = "Rom. 16:13">Rom. 16:13</scripRef>).
We may add, as peculiar
to Mark and "bewraying" Peter, the designation of Christ as "the
carpenter" (<scripRef passage = "Mark 6:3">Mark 6:3</scripRef>); the name of the blind beggar at
Jericho, "Bartimaeus" (<scripRef passage = "Mark
10:46">10:46</scripRef>); the "cushion" in the boat on which
Jesus slept (<scripRef passage = "Mark 4:38">4:38</scripRef>); the "green grass" on the hill side
in spring time (<scripRef passage = "Mark 4:39">4:39</scripRef>); the "one loaf" in the ship (<scripRef
passage = "Mark 8:14">8:14</scripRef>); the colt "tied at the door without in the open street" (<scripRef
passage = "Mark 11:4">11:4</scripRef>); the address to the daughter of Jairus in her mother tongue (<scripRef
passage = "Mark 5:41">5:41</scripRef>); the bilingual "Abba, Father," in the prayer at Gethsemane (<scripRef
passage = "Mark 14:36">14:36</scripRef>; comp. <scripRef passage = "Rom. 8:15">Rom. 8:15</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Gal.
4:6">Gal. 4:6</scripRef>).
Conclusion.
The natural conclusion
from all these peculiarities is that Mark’s Gospel, far from being an extract
from Matthew or Luke or both, as formerly held,981 is a thoroughly independent and original work,
as has been proven by minute investigations of critics of different schools and
aims.982 It
is in all its essential parts a fresh, life-like, and trustworthy record of the
persons and events of the gospel history from the lips of honest old Peter and
from the pen of his constant attendant and pupil. Jerome hit it in the fourth
century, and unbiassed critics in the nineteenth century confirm it: Peter was
the narrator, Mark the writer, of the second Gospel.983
Some have gone further
and maintain that Mark, "the interpreter of Peter," simply translated
a Hebrew Gospel of his teacher;984
but tradition knows nothing of a Hebrew Peter, while it speaks of a Hebrew
Matthew; and a book is called after its author, not after its translator. It is
enough to say Peter was the preacher, Mark the reporter and editor.
The bearing of this fact upon the reliableness of the Synoptic record of the life of Christ is self-evident. It leaves no room for the mythical or legendary hypothesis.985
Integrity of the Gospel.
The Gospel closes (<scripRef
passage = "Mark 16:9–20">Mark 16:9–20</scripRef>) with a rapid sketch of the wonders of the
resurrection and ascension, and the continued manifestations of power that
attend the messengers of Christ in preaching the gospel to the whole creation.
This close is upon the whole characteristic of Mark and presents the gospel as
a divine power pervading and transforming the world, but it contains some
peculiar features, namely: (1) one of the three distinct narratives of
Christ’s ascension (<scripRef passage = "Mark 16:19">16:19</scripRef>, "he was received up into heaven;" the
other two being those of <scripRef passage = "Luke 24:51">Luke 24:51</scripRef> and <scripRef passage =
"Acts 1:9–11">Acts
1:9–11</scripRef>), with the additional statement that he
"sat down at the right hand of God" (comp. the similar statement, <scripRef
passage = "1 Pet. 3:22">1 Pet. 3:22</scripRef>) (2) an emphatic declaration of the necessity of
baptism for salvation ("he that believeth and is baptized shall be
saved"), with the negative clause that unbelief (i.e., the
rejection of the gospel offer of salvation) condemns ("he that
disbelieveth shall be condemned");986
(3) the fact that the apostles disbelieved the report of Mary Magdalene until
the risen Lord appeared to them personally (<scripRef passage =
"Mark 16:11–14">Mark
16:11–14</scripRef>; but John intimates the same, <scripRef
passage = "John 20:8, 9">John 20:8, 9</scripRef>, especially in regard to Thomas, <scripRef
passage = "John 20:25">20:25</scripRef>, and Matthew mentions that some doubted, <scripRef passage =
"Matt. 28:17">Matt.
28:17</scripRef>; comp. <scripRef passage =
"Luke 24:37–41">Luke
24:37–41</scripRef>); (4) an authoritative promise of supernatural
powers and signs which shall accompany the believers (<scripRef passage =
"Mark 16:17, 18">Mark
16:17, 18</scripRef>). Among these is mentioned the pentecostal
glossolalia under the unique name of speaking with new tongues.987
The genuineness of this
closing section is hotly contested, and presents one of the most difficult
problems of textual criticism. The arguments are almost equally strong on both
sides, but although the section cannot be proven to be a part of the
original Gospel, it seems clear: (1) that it belongs to primitive tradition
(like the disputed section of the adulteress in John 8); and (2) that Mark
cannot have closed his Gospel with <scripRef passage =
"Mark 16:8">Mark
16:8</scripRef> (<foreign lang="el">gavr</foreign>) without intending a more appropriate
conclusion. The result does not affect the character and credibility of the
Gospel. The section may be authentic or correct in its statements, without
being genuine or written by Mark. There is nothing in it which, properly
understood, does not harmonize with apostolic teaching.
Note
on the Disputed Close of <scripRef passage = "Mark 16:9–20">Mark, 16:9–20</scripRef>.
I. Reasons against the
genuineness:
1. The section is
wanting altogether in the two oldest and most valuable uncial manuscripts, the
Sinaitic (<foreign lang="he">a</foreign> ) and the Vatican (B). The latter, it is true,
after ending the Gospel with Mark 16:8 and the subscription kata mapkon, leaves the remaining third
column blank, which is sufficient space for the twelve verses. Much account is
made of this fact by Drs. Burgon and Scrivener; but in the same MS. I find, on
examination of the facsimile edition, blank spaces from a few lines up to
two-thirds and three-fourths of a column, at the end of Matthew, John, Acts, 1
Pet. (fol. 200), 1 John (fol. 208), Jude (fol. 210), Rom. (fol. 227), Eph.
(fol. 262), Col. (fol. 272). In the Old Testament of B, as Dr. Abbot has first
noted (in 1872), there are two blank columns at the end of Nehemiah, and a blank
column and a half at the end of Tobit. In any case the omission indicates an
objection of the copyist of B to the section, or its absence in the earlier
manuscript he used.
I add the following
private note from Dr. Abbot:, "In the Alexandrian MS. a column and a third
are left blank at the end of Mark, half a page at the end of John, and a whole
page at the end of the Pauline Epistles. (Contrast the ending of Matthew and
Acts.) In the Old Testament, note
especially in this MS. Leviticus, Isaiah, and the Ep. of Jeremiah, at the end
of each of which half a page or more is left blank; contrast Jeremiah, Baruch,
Lamentations. There are similar blanks at the end of Ruth, 2 Samuel, and
Daniel, but the last leaf of those books ends a quaternion or quire in the MS.
In the Sinaitic MS. more than two columns with the whole following page are
left blank at the end of the Pauline Epistles, though the two next leaves
belong to the same quaternion; so at the end of the Acts a column and
two-thirds with the whole of the following page; and at the end of Barnabas a
column and a half. These examples show that the matter in question depended
largely on the whim of the copyist; and that we can not infer with confidence
that the scribe of B knew of any other ending of the Gospel."
There is also a shorter
conclusion, unquestionably spurious, which in L and several MSS. of the
Aethiopic version immediately follows Mark 16:8, and appears also in the
margin of 274, the Harclean Syriac, and the best Coptic MS. of the Gospel, while
in k of the Old Latin it takes the place of the longer ending. For details, see
Westcott and Hort, II., Append., pp. 30, 38, 44 sq.
2. Eusebius and Jerome
state expressly that the section was wanting in almost all the Greek copies of
the Gospels. It was not in the copy used by Victor of Antioch. There is also
negative patristic evidence against it, particularly strong in the case of
Cyril of Jerusalem, Tertullian, and Cyprian, who had special occasion to quote
it (see Westcott and Hort, II., Append., pp. 30–38). Jerome’s statement,
however, is weakened by the fact that he seems to depend upon Eusebius, and
that he himself translated the passage in his Vulgate.
3. It is ’wanting in the
important MS. k representing the African text of the Old Latin version, which
has a different conclusion (like that in L), also in some of the best MSS. of
the Armenian version, while in others it follows the usual subscription.
It is also wanting in an unpublished Arabic version (made from the Greek) in
the Vatican Library, which is likewise noteworthy for reading <foreign
lang="el">o{"</foreign> in 1 Tim. 3:16.
4. The way in which the
section begins, and in which it refers to Mary Magdalene, give it the air of a
conclusion derived from some extraneous source. It does not record the fulfilment of the promise in <scripRef
passage = "Mark 16:7">Mark 16:7</scripRef>. It uses (<scripRef passage = "Mark 16:9">16:9</scripRef>) <foreign lang="el">prwvth/
sabbavtou</foreign> for the Hebraistic <foreign
lang="el">th'/ mia'/ tw'n sabbavtwn</foreign> of <scripRef passage =
"Mark 16:2">16:2</scripRef>. It has many words or phrases (e.g., <foreign
lang="el">poreuvomai</foreign> used three times) not elsewhere found in Mark,
which strengthen the impression that we are dealing with a different writer,
and it lacks Mark’s usual graphic detail. But the argument from difference of
style and vocabulary has been overstrained, and can not be regarded as in
itself decisive.
II. Arguments in favor
of the genuineness:
1. The section is found
in most of the uncial MSS., A C D <foreign
lang="el">C G D S</foreign>, in all the late uncials (in L as a secondary
reading), and in all the cursive MSS., including 1, 33, 69, etc.; though a
number of the cursives either mark it with an asterisk or note its omission in
older copies. Hence the statements of Eusebius and Jerome seem to need some
qualification. In MSS 22 (as Dr. Burgon has first pointed out) the liturgical
word <foreign
lang="el">tevlo"</foreign> denoting the end of a reading lesson, is
inserted after both <scripRef passage = " Mark 16:8,
20">Mark 16:8 and
16:20</scripRef>, while no such word is placed at the end of the
other Gospels. This shows that there were two endings of Mark in different
copies.
2. Also in most of the
ancient versions, the Itala (with the exception of "k," or the codex
Bobbiensis, used by Columban), the Vulgate, the Curetonian Syriac (last part),
the Peshito, the Philoxenian, the Coptic, the Gothic (first part), and the
Aethiopic, but in several MSS. only after the spurious shorter conclusion. Of
these versions the Itala, the Curetonian and Peshito Syriac, and the Coptic,
are older than any of our Greek codices, but the MSS. of the Coptic are
not older than the twelfth or tenth century, and may have undergone changes as
well as the Greek MSS.; and the MSS. of the Ethiopic are all modern. The best
MSS. of the old Latin are mutilated here. The only extant fragment of Mark in
the Curetonian Syriac is <scripRef passage = "Mark 16:17–20">16:17–20</scripRef>, so that we cannot tell whether <scripRef
passage = "Mark 16:9–20">Mark 16:9–20</scripRef> immediately followed 16:8, or appeared as they
do in cod. L. But Aphraates quotes it.
3. In all the existing
Greek and Syriac lectionaries or evangeliaries and synaxaries, as far as
examined, which contain the Scripture reading lessons for the churches. Dr.
Burgon lays great stress on their testimony (ch. X.), but he overrates their
antiquity. The lection-systems cannot be traced beyond the middle of the fourth
century when great liturgical changes took place. At that time the disputed
verses were widely circulated and eagerly seized as a suitable resurrection and
ascension lesson.
4. Irenaeus of Lyons, in
the second half of the second century, long before Eusebius, expressly quotes
Mark 16:19 as a part of the Gospel of Mark (Adv. Haer., III. 10, 6). The
still earlier testimony of Justin Martyr (Apol., I. 45) is doubtful (The
quotation of <scripRef passage = "Mark 16:17, 18">Mark 16:17 and 18</scripRef> in lib. viii., c. 1 of the Apostolic Constitutions
is wrongly ascribed to Hippolytus.) Marinus, Macarius Magnes (or at least the
heathen writer whom he cites), Didymus, Chrysostom (??), Epiphanius, Nestorius,
the apocryphal Gesta Pilati, Ambrose, Augustin, and other later fathers
quote from the section.
5. A strong intrinsic
argument is derived from the fact that Mark cannot intentionally have
concluded his Gospel with the words <foreign
lang="el">ejfobou'nto gavr</foreign> (Mark 16:8). He must either have himself written
the last verses or some other conclusion, which was accidently lost before the
book was multiplied by transcription; or he was unexpectedly prevented from
finishing his book, and the conclusion was supplied by a friendly hand from
oral tradition or some written source.
In view of these facts
the critics and exegetes are very much divided. The passage is defended as
genuine by Simon, Mill, Bengel, Storr, Matthaei, Hug, Schleiermacher, De Wette,
Bleek, Olshausen, Lange, Ebrard, Hilgenfeld, Broadus ("Bapt.
Quarterly," Philad., 1869), Burgon (1871), Scrivener, Wordsworth,
McClellan, Cook, Morison (1882). It is rejected or questioned by the critical
editors, Griesbach, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Alford, Westcott and Hort
(though retained by all in the text with or without brackets), and by such
critics and Commentators as Fritzsche, Credner, Reuss, Wieseler, Holtzmann,
Keim, Scholten, Klostermann, Ewald, Meyer, Weiss, Norton, Davidson. Some of
these opponents, however, while denying the composition of the section by Mark,
regard the contents as a part of the apostolic tradition. Michelsen surrenders
only <scripRef
passage = "Mk. 16:9–14">16:9–14</scripRef>, and saves <scripRef passage = "Mark 16:15–20">16:15–20</scripRef>. Ewald and Holtzmann conjecture the original
conclusion from <scripRef passage = "Mark 16:9, 10">16:9, 10</scripRef> and <scripRef passage =
"Mark 16–20">16–20</scripRef>; Volkmar invents one from elements of all the
Synoptists.
III. Solutions of the
problem. All mere conjectures; certainty is impossible in this case.
1. Mark himself added
the section in a later edition, issued perhaps in Alexandria, having been
interrupted in Rome just as he came to 16:8, either by Peter’s imprisonment and
martyrdom, or by sickness, or some accident. Incomplete copies got into
circulation before he was able to finish the book. So Michaelis, Hug, and
others.
2. The original
conclusion of Mark was lost by some accident, most probably from the original
autograph (where it may have occupied a separate leaf), and the present
paragraph was substituted by an anonymous editor or collector in the second
century. So Griesbach, Schulthess, David Schulz.
3. Luke wrote the
section. So Hitzig (Johannes Marcus, p. 187).
4. Godet (in his Com.
on Luke, p. 8 and p. 513, Engl. transl.) modifies this hypothesis by
assuming that a third hand supplied the close, partly from Luke’s Gospel, which
had appeared in the mean time, and partly (<scripRef passage =
"Mark 16:17, 18">Mark
16:17, 18</scripRef>) from another source. He supposes that Mark was
interrupted by the unexpected outbreak of the Neronian persecution in 64 and
precipitously fled from the capital, leaving his unfinished Gospel behind,
which was afterward completed when Luke’s Gospel appeared. In this way Godet
accounts for the fact that up to Mark 16:8 Luke had no influence on Mark, while
such influence is apparent in the concluding section.
5. It was the end of one
of the lost Gospel fragments used by <scripRef passage =
"Luke 1:1">Luke
1:1</scripRef>, and appended to Mark’s by the last redactor.
Ewald.
6. The section is from
the pen of Mark, but was purposely omitted by some scribe in the third century
from hierarchical prejudice, because it represents the apostles in an
unfavorable light after the resurrection, so that the Lord "upbraided them
with their unbelief and hardness of heart" (<scripRef passage =
"Mark 16:14">Mark
16:14</scripRef>). Lange (Leben Jesu, I. 166). Unlikely.
7. The passage is
genuine, but was omitted in some valuable copy by a misunderstanding of the
word <foreign
lang="el">tevlo"</foreign> which often is found after <scripRef
passage = "Mark 16:8">Mark 16:8</scripRef> in cursives. So Burgon. "According to the Western order," he
says (in the "Quarterly Review" for Oct., 1881), "S. Mark
occupies the last place. From the earliest period it had been
customary to write <foreign lang="el">tevlo"</foreign> (The End)
after 16:8, in token that there a famous ecclesiastical lection comes to
a close. Let the last leaf of one very ancient archetypal copy have begun at <scripRef
passage = "Mark 16:9">16:9</scripRef>, and let that last leaf have perished;—and all is plain. A faithful
copyist will have ended the Gospel perforce—as B and a have done—at S. Mark 16:8." But this liturgical mark is not old
enough to explain the omission in a, B, and the MSS. of Eusebius and Jerome; and a
reading lesson would close as abruptly with <foreign
lang="el">gavr</foreign> as the Gospel itself.
8. The passage cannot
claim any apostolic authority; but it is doubtless founded on some tradition of
the apostolic age. Its authorship and precise date must remain unknown, but it
is apparently older than the time when the canonical Gospels were generally
received; for although it has points of contact with them all, it contains no
attempt to harmonize their various representations of the course of events. So
Dr. Hort (II., Appendix, 51). A similar view was held by Dean Alford.
For full information we
refer to the critical apparatus of Tischendorf and Tregelles, to the monograph
of Weiss on Mark (Das Marcusevang., pp. 512–515), and especially
to the exhaustive discussion of Westcott and Hort in the second volume (Append.,
pp. 29–51). The most elaborate vindication of the genuineness is by Dean
Burgon: The Last Twelve Verses o f the Gospel according to S. Mark
Vindicated against Recent Critical Objections and Established (Oxford and
Lond., 1871, 334 pages), a very learned book, but marred by its over-confident
tone and unreasonable hostility to the oldest uncial MSS. (a and B)
and the most meritorious textual critics (Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles).
For other able defences see Dr. Scrivener (Introd. to the Criticism of the
New Test., 3d ed., 1883, pp. 583–590), Dr. Morison (Com. on Mark,
pp. 446 and 463 sqq.), and Canon Cook (in Speaker’s Com. on Mark, pp.
301–308).
Lachmann gives the
disputed section, according to his principle to furnish the text as found in
the fourth century, but did not consider it genuine (see his article in
"Studien und Kritiken" for 1830, p. 843). Tischendorf and Tregelles
set the twelve verses apart. Alford incloses them in single brackets, Westcott
and Hort in double brackets, as an early interpolation; the Revised Version of
1881 retains them with a marginal note, and with a space between Mark 16:8 and
9. Dean Burgon ("Quarterly Rev." for Oct., 1881) holds this note of
the Revision (which simply states an acknowledged fact) to be "the gravest
blot of all," and triumphantly refers the critical editors and
Revisionists to his "separate treatise extending over 300 pages, which for
the best of reasons has never yet been answered," and in which he has
"demonstrated," as he assures us, that the last twelve verses in Mark
are "as trustworthy as any other verses which can be named." The infallible organ in the Vatican
seems to have a formidable rival in Chichester, but they are in irreconcilable
conflict on the true reading of the angelic anthem (Luke 2:14): the Pope
chanting with the Vulgate the genitive (<foreign
lang="el">eujdokiva",</foreign> bonae voluntatis), the Dean, in
the same article, denouncing this as a "grievous perversion of the truth
of Scripture," and holding the evidence for the nominative (<foreign
lang="el">eujdokiva</foreign>) to be "absolutely decisive," as if
the combined testimony of a* A B D, Irenaeus, Origen (lat.), Jerome, all the
Latin MSS., and the Latin Gloria in Excelsis were of no account, as
compared with his judgment or preference.
</div3><div3 type =
"Section" n="82" title="Luke">
<index
type = "globalSubject"
subject1 = "New
Testament"
subject2 = "Luke" />
§ 82. Luke.
<foreign
lang="la">Lucas,
Evangelii el medicinae munera pandens;
Artibus hinc, illinc religione, valet:
Utilis ille labor, per
quem vixere tot aegri;
Utilior, per quem tot didicere mori!"
</foreign>
Critical and Biographical
Schleiermacher: Ueber die Schriften des Lukas. Berlin, 1817.
Reprinted in the second vol. of his Sämmtliche Werke, Berlin, 1836 (pp.
1–220). Translated by Bishop Thirlwall, London, 1825.
James
Smith (of Jordanhill, d. 1867):
Dissertation on the Life and Writings of St. Luke, prefixed to his Voyage and
Shipwreck of St. Paul (1848), 4th ed., revised by Walter E. Smith, London, 1880
(pp. 293). A most important monograph, especially for the historical accuracy
and credibility of the Acts, by an expert in navigation and an able scholar.
E. Renan: Les Évangiles.
Paris, 1877. Ch. XIX, pp. 435–448.
Th.
Keim: Aus dem Urchristenthum.
Zürich, 1878, Josephus im N. T., pp.
1–27. An unsuccessful attempt to prove that Luke used Josephus in his
chronological statement, Luke 3:1, 2. Keim assumes that the third Gospel was
written after the "Jewish war" of Josephus (about 75–78), and
possibly after his "Antiquities" (a.d.
94), though in his Geschichte Jesu (I. 71) he
assigns the composition of Luke to a.d.
90.
Scholten: Das Paulinische Evangelium, transl. from the Dutch by Redepenning. Elberf.,
1881.
The Ancient Testimonies on
the Genuineness of Luke, see in Charteris
(Kirchhofer): Canonicity, Edinb., 1880, pp. l54–166.
On the relation of Luke to
Marcion, see especially Volkmar: Das Evangelium Marcions, Leipz., 1852, and Sanday:
The Gospels in the Second Century, London, 1876 (and his article in the
"Fortnightly Review" for June, 1875).
Exegetical.
Commentaries by Origen (in
Jerome’s Latin translation, with a few Greek fragments), Eusebius (fragments),
Cyril of Alexandria (Syriac Version with translation, ed. by Dean Smith, Oxf.,
1858 and 1859), Euthymius Zigabenus, Theophylact.—Modern Com.: Bornemann (Scholia
in Luc. Ev., 1830), De Wette (Mark and Luke, 3d ed., 1846), Meyer (Mark
and Luke, 6th ed., revised by B. Weiss, 1878), James Thomson (Edinb., 1851,
3 vols.), J. J. Van Oosterzee (in Lange, 3d ed., 1867, Engl. ed. by Schaff and
Starbuck, N. Y., 1866), Fr. Godet (one of the very best, 2d French ed., 1870,
Engl. transl. by Shalders and Cusin, Edinb., 1875, 2 vols., reprinted in N. Y.,
1881), Bishop W. B. Jones (in Speaker’s Com., Lond. and N. Y., 1878), E.
H. Plumptre (in Bp. Ellicott’s Com. for English Readers, Lond., 1879),
Frederich W. Farrar (Cambridge, 1880), Matthew B. Riddle (1882).
Life of Luke.
As Mark is inseparably
associated with Peter, so is Luke with Paul. There was, in both cases, a
foreordained correspondence and congeniality between the apostle and the
historian or co-laborer. We find such holy and useful friendships in the great
formative epochs of the church, notably so in the time of the Reformation,
between Luther and Melanchthon, Zwingli and Oecolampadius, Calvin and Beza,
Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley; and at a later period between the two Wesleys and
Whitefield. Mark, the Hebrew Roman "interpreter" of the Galilaean
fisherman, gave us the shortest, freshest, but least elegant and literary of
the Gospels; Luke, the educated Greek, "the beloved physician," and
faithful companion of Saul of Tarsus, composed the longest and most literary
Gospel, and connected it with the great events in secular history under the
reigns of Augustus and his successors. If the former was called the Gospel of
Peter by the ancients, the latter, in a less direct sense, may be called the
Gospel of Paul, for its agreement in spirit with the teaching of the Apostle of
the Gentiles. In their accounts of the institution of the Lord’s Supper there
is even a verbal agreement which points to the same source of information. No
doubt there was frequent conference between the two, but no allusion is made to
each other’s writings, which tends to prove that they were composed
independently during the same period, or not far apart.988
Luke nowhere mentions
his name in the two books which are by the unanimous consent of antiquity
ascribed to him, and bear all the marks of the same authorship; but he is
modestly concealed under the "we" of a great portion of the Acts,
which is but a continuation of the third Gospel.989 He
is honorably and affectionately mentioned three times by Paul during his
imprisonment, as "the beloved physician" (<scripRef passage =
"Col. 4:14">Col.
4:14</scripRef>), as one of his "fellow-laborers" (<scripRef
passage = "Philem. 24">Philem. 24</scripRef>), and as the most faithful friend who remained
with him when friend after friend had deserted him (<scripRef passage =
"2 Tim. 4:11">2
Tim. 4:11</scripRef>). His medical profession, although carried on
frequently by superior slaves, implies some degree of education and accounts
for the accuracy of his medical terms and description of diseases.990 It
gave him access to many families of social position, especially in the East,
where physicians are rare. It made him all the more useful to Paul in the
infirmities of his flesh and his exhausting labors.991
He was a Gentile by
birth,992 though he may have become a proselyte of the
gate. His nationality and antecedents are unknown. He was probably a Syrian of
Antioch, and one of the earliest converts in that mother church of Gentile
Christianity.993
This conjecture is confirmed by the fact that he gives us much
information about the church in Antioch (<scripRef passage =
"Acts 11:19–30; 13:1–3; 15:1–3, 22–35">Acts 11:19–30; 13:1–3; 15:1–3, 22–35</scripRef>), that he traces the origin of the name "Christians"
to that city (<scripRef passage = "Acts 11:19">11:19</scripRef>), and that in enumerating the seven deacons of
Jerusalem he informs us of the Antiochian origin of Nicolas (<scripRef
passage = "Acts 6:5">Acts 6:5</scripRef>), without mentioning the nationality of any of the others.994
We meet Luke first as a
companion of Paul at Troas, when, after the Macedonian call, "Come over
and help us," he was about to carry the gospel to Greece on his second
great missionary tour. For from that important epoch Luke uses the first
personal pronoun in the plural: "When he [Paul] had seen the vision,
straightway we sought to go forth into Macedonia, concluding that God had
called us to preach the gospel unto them" (<scripRef passage =
"Acts 16:10">Acts
16:10</scripRef>). He accompanied him to Philippi and seems to
have remained there after the departure of Paul and Silas for Corinth (a.d. 51), in charge of the infant
church; for the "we" is suddenly replaced by "they" (<scripRef
passage = "Acts 17:1">17:1</scripRef>). Seven years later (a.d.
58) he joined the apostle again, when he passed through Philippi on his last
journey to Jerusalem, stopping a week at Troas (<scripRef passage =
"Acts 20:5, 6">Acts
20:5, 6</scripRef>); for from that moment Luke resumes the
"we" of the narrative. He was with Paul or near him at Jerusalem and
two years at Caesarea, accompanied him on his perilous voyage to Rome, of which
he gives a most accurate account, and remained with him to the end of his first
Roman captivity, with which he closes his record (a.d. 63). He may however, have been temporarily absent on
mission work during the four years of Paul’s imprisonment. Whether he
accompanied him on his intended visit to Spain and to the East, after the year
63, we do not know. The last allusion to him is the word of Paul when on the
point of martyrdom: "Only Luke is with me" (<scripRef passage =
"2 Tim. 4:11">2
Tim. 4:11</scripRef>).
The Bible leaves Luke at
the height of his usefulness in the best company, with Paul preaching the
gospel in the metropolis of the world.
Post-apostolic
tradition, always far below the healthy and certain tone of the New Testament,
mostly vague and often contradictory, never reliable, adds that he lived to the
age of eighty-four, labored in several countries, was a painter of portraits of
Jesus, of the Virgin, and the apostles, and that he was crucified on an
olive-tree at Elaea in Greece. His real or supposed remains, together with those
of Andrew the apostle, were transferred from Patrae in Achaia to the Church of
the Apostles in Constantinople.995
The symbolic poetry of
the Church assigns to him the sacrificial ox; but the symbol of man is more
appropriate; for his Gospel is par excellence the Gospel of the Son of
Man.
Sources of Information.
According to his own
confession in the preface, Luke was no eye-witness of the gospel history,996 but derived his information from oral reports of
primitive disciples, and from numerous fragmentary documents then already in
circulation. He wrote the Gospel from what he had heard and read, the Acts
from, what he had seen and heard. He traced the origin of Christianity
"accurately from the beginning."
His opportunities were
the very best. He visited the principal apostolic churches between Jerusalem
and Rome, and came in personal contact with the founders and leaders. He met
Peter, Mark, and Barnabas at Antioch, James and his elders at Jerusalem (on Paul’s
last visit) Philip and his daughters at Caesarea, the early converts in Greece
and Rome; and he enjoyed, besides, the benefit of all the information which
Paul himself had received by revelation or collected from personal intercourse
with his fellow-apostles and other primitive disciples. The sources for the
history of the infancy were Jewish-Christian and Aramaean (hence the strongly
Hebraizing coloring of <scripRef passage = "Luke 1–2">Luke 1–2</scripRef>); his information of the activity of Christ in
Samaria was probably derived from Philip, who labored there as an evangelist
and afterwards in Caesarea. But a man of Luke’s historic instinct and
conscientiousness would be led to visit also in person the localities in
Galilee which are immortalized by the ministry of Christ. From Jerusalem or
Caesarea he could reach them all in three or four days.
The question whether
Luke also used one or both of the other Synoptic Gospels has already been
discussed in a previous section. It is improbable that he included them among
his evidently fragmentary sources alluded to in the preface. It is certain that
he had no knowledge of our Greek Matthew; on the use of a lost Hebrew Matthew
and of Mark the opinion of good scholars is divided, but the resemblance with
Mark, though very striking in some sections,997
is not of such a character that it cannot as well, and even better, be
explained from prior oral tradition or autoptical memoirs, especially if we
consider that the resemblances are neutralized by unaccountable differences and
omissions. The matter is not helped by a reference to a proto-Mark, either
Hebrew or Greek, of which we know nothing.
Luke has a great deal of
original and most valuable matter, which proves his independence and the
variety of his sources. He adds much to our knowledge of the Saviour, and
surpasses Matthew and Mark in fulness, accuracy, and chronological order—three
points which, with all modesty, he claims to have aimed at in his preface.998
Sometimes he gives special fitness and beauty to a word of Christ by
inserting it in its proper place in the narrative, and connecting it with a
particular occasion. But there are some exceptions, where Matthew is fuller,
and where Mark is more chronological. Considering the fact that about thirty
years had elapsed since the occurrence of the events, we need not wonder that
some facts and words were dislocated, and that Luke, with all his honest zeal,
did not always succeed in giving the original order.
The peculiar sections of
Luke are in keeping with the rest. They have not the most remote affinity with
apocryphal marvels and fables, nor even with the orthodox traditions and
legends of the post-apostolic age, but are in full harmony with the picture of
Christ as it shines from the other Gospels and from the Epistles. His accuracy
has been put to the severest test, especially in the Acts, where he frequently
alludes to secular rulers and events; but while a few chronological
difficulties, as that of the census of Quirinius, are not yet satisfactorily
removed, he has upon the whole, even in minute particulars, been proven to be a
faithful, reliable, and well informed historian.
He is the proper father
of Christian church history, and a model well worthy of imitation for his study
of the sources, his conscientious accuracy, his modesty and his lofty aim to
instruct and confirm in the truth.
Dedication and Object.
The third Gospel, as
well as the Acts of the Apostles, is dedicated to a certain Theophilus (i.e.,
Friend of God), a man of social distinction, perhaps in the service of the
government, as appears from his title "honorable" or "most
noble."999 He
was either a convert or at least a catechumen in preparation for church
membership, and willing to become sponsor and patron of these books. The custom
of dedicating books to princes and rich friends of literature was formerly very
frequent, and has not died out yet. As to his race and residence we can only
conjecture that Theophilus was a Greek of Antioch, where Luke, himself probably
an Antiochean, may have previously known him either as his freedman or
physician. The pseudo-Clementine Recognitions mention a certain nobleman of
that name at Antioch who was converted by Peter and changed his palace into a
church and residence of the apostle.1000
The object of Luke was
to confirm Theophilus and through him all his readers in the faith in which he
had already been orally instructed, and to lead him to the conviction of the
irrefragable certainty of the facts on which Christianity rests.1001
Luke wrote for Gentile
Christians, especially Greeks, as Matthew wrote for Jews, Mark for Romans, John
for advanced believers without distinction of nationality. He briefly explains
for Gentile readers the position of Palestinian towns, as Nazareth, Capernaum,
Arimathaea, and the distance of Mount Olivet and Emmaus from Jerusalem.1002 He
does not, like Matthew, look back to the past and point out the fulfilment of
ancient prophecy with a view to prove that Jesus of Nazareth is the promised
Messiah, but takes a universal view of Christ as the Saviour of all men and fulfiller
of the aspirations of every human heart. He brings him in contact with the
events of secular history in the vast empire of Augustus, and with the whole
human race by tracing his ancestry back to Adam.
These features would
suit Gentile readers generally, Romans as well as Greeks. But the long
residence of Luke in Greece, and the ancient tradition that he labored and died
there, give strength to the view that he had before his mind chiefly readers of
that country. According to Jerome the Gospel was written (completed) in Achaia
and Boeotia. The whole book is undoubtedly admirably suited to Greek taste. It
at once captivates the refined Hellenic ear by a historic prologue of classic
construction, resembling the prologues of Herodotus and Thucydides. It is not
without interest to compare them.
Luke begins: "Forasmuch as many have taken in
hand to draw up a narrative concerning those matters which have been fufilled
among us, even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were
eyewitnesses and ministers of the word: it seemed good to me also, having
traced the course of all things accurately from the first, to write unto thee
in order, most noble Theophilus; that thou mightest know the certainty
concerning the things wherein thou wast instructed."
Herodotus: "These are the researches of Herodotus of
Halicarnassus, which he publishes, in order to preserve from oblivion the
remembrance of former deeds of men, and to secure a just tribute of glory to
the great and wonderful actions of the Greeks and the barbarians; and withal to
put on record what were their grounds of feud."
Thucydides: "Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the
history of the war in which the Peloponnesians and the Athenians fought against
one another. He began to write when they first took up arms, believing that it
would be great and memorable above any previous war. For he argued that both
States were then at the full height of their military power, and he saw the
rest of the Hellenes either siding or intending to side with one or other of
them. No movement ever stirred Hellas more deeply than this; it was shared by
many of the barbarians, and might be said even to affect the world at
large." (Jowett’s
translation.)
These prefaces excel
alike in brevity, taste, and tact, but with this characteristic difference: the
Evangelist modestly withholds his name and writes in the pure interest of truth
a record of the gospel of peace for the spiritual welfare of all men; while the
great pagan historians are inspired by love of glory, and aim to immortalize
the destructive wars and feuds of Greeks and barbarians.
Contents of the Gospel of Luke.
After a historiographic
preface, Luke gives us: first a history of the birth and infancy of John the
Baptist and Jesus, from Hebrew sources, with an incident from the boyhood of
the Saviour (Luke 1 and 2). Then he unfolds the history of the public ministry
in chronological order from the baptism in the Jordan to the resurrection and
ascension. We need only point out those facts and discourses which are not
found in the other Gospels and which complete the Synoptic history at the
beginning, middle, and end of the life of our Lord.1003
Luke supplies the
following sections:
I.
In the history of the Infancy of
John and Christ:
The
appearance of the angel of the Lord to Zacharias in the temple announcing the
birth of John, <scripRef passage = "Luke 1:5–25">Luke 1:5–25</scripRef>.
The
annunciation of the birth of Christ to the Virgin Mary, <scripRef passage =
"Luke 1:26–38">1:26–38</scripRef>.
The
visit of the Virgin Mary to Elizabeth; the salutation of Elizabeth, <scripRef
passage = "Luke 1:39–45">1:39–45</scripRef>.
The
Magnificat of the Virgin Mary, <scripRef passage = "Luke
1:46–56">1:46–56</scripRef>.
The
birth of John the Baptist, <scripRef passage = "Luke 1:57–66">1:57–66</scripRef>.
The
Benedictus of Zacharias, <scripRef passage = "Luke 1:67–80">1:67–80</scripRef>.
The
birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, <scripRef passage = "Luke
2:1–7">2:1–7</scripRef>.
The
appearance of the angels to the shepherds of Bethlehem, and the "Gloria in
excelsis," <scripRef passage = "Luke 2:8–20">2:8–20</scripRef>.
The
circumcision of Jesus, and his presentation in the Temple, <scripRef
passage = "Luke 2:21–38">2:21–38</scripRef>.
The
visit of Jesus in his twelfth year to the passover in Jerusalem, and his
conversation with the Jewish doctors in the Temple, <scripRef passage = "Luke
2:41–52">2:41–52</scripRef>.
To
this must be added the genealogy of Christ from Abraham up to Adam; while
Matthew begins, in the inverse order, with Abraham, and presents in the
parallel section several differences which show their mutual independence, <scripRef
passage = "Luke 3:23–38">Luke 3:23–38</scripRef>; comp. <scripRef passage =
"Matt. 1:1–17">Matt.
1:1–17</scripRef>.
II.
In the Public Life of our Lord a
whole group of important events, discourses, and incidents which occurred at
different periods, but mostly on a circuitous journey from Capernaum to
Jerusalem through Samaria and Peraea (<scripRef passage =
"Luke 9:51–18:14">9:51–18:14</scripRef>). This section includes—
1.
The following miracles and incidents:
The miraculous draught of fishes, <scripRef passage =
"Luke 5:4–11">5:4–11</scripRef>.
The raising of the widow’s son at Nain, <scripRef passage =
"Luke 7:11–18">7:11–18</scripRef>.
The pardoning of the sinful woman who wept at the feet of Jesus, <scripRef
passage = "Luke 7:36–50">7:36–50</scripRef>.
The support of Christ by devout women who are named, <scripRef
passage = "Luke 8:2, 3">8:2, 3</scripRef>.
The rebuke of the Sons of Thunder in a Samaritan village, <scripRef
passage = "Luke 9:51–56">9:51–56</scripRef>.
The Mission and Instruction of the Seventy, <scripRef passage =
"Luke 10:1–6">10:1–6</scripRef>.
Entertainment at the house of Martha and Mary; the one thing needful, <scripRef
passage = "Luke 10:38–42">10:38–42</scripRef>.
The woman who exclaimed: "Blessed is the womb that bare thee," <scripRef
passage = "Luke 11:27">11:27</scripRef>.
The man with the dropsy, <scripRef passage = "Luke
14:1–6">14:1–6</scripRef>.
The ten lepers, <scripRef passage = "Luke 17:11–19">17:11–19</scripRef>.
The visit to Zacchaeus, <scripRef passage = "Luke
19:1–10">19:1–10</scripRef>.
The tears of Jesus over Jerusalem, <scripRef passage =
"Luke 19:41–44">19:41–44</scripRef>.
The sifting of Peter, <scripRef passage = "Luke 22:31,
32">22:31, 32</scripRef>.
The healing of Malchus, <scripRef passage = "Luke 22:50,
51">22:50, 51</scripRef>.
2.
Original Parables:
The two Debtors, <scripRef passage = "Luke 7:41–43">7:41–43</scripRef>.
The good Samaritan, <scripRef passage = "Luke 10:25–37">10:25–37</scripRef>.
The importunate Friend, <scripRef passage = "Luke
11:5–8">11:5–8</scripRef>.
The rich Fool, <scripRef passage = "Luke 12:16–21">12:16–21</scripRef>.
The barren Fig-tree, <scripRef passage = "Luke 13:6–9">13:6–9</scripRef>.
The lost Drachma, <scripRef passage = "Luke 15:8–10">15:8–10</scripRef>.
The prodigal Son, <scripRef passage = "Luke 15:11–32">15:11–32</scripRef>.
The unjust Steward, <scripRef passage = "Luke 16:1–13">16:1–13</scripRef>.
Dives and Lazarus, <scripRef passage = "Luke 16:19–31">16:19–31</scripRef>.
The importunate Widow, and the unjust Judge, <scripRef passage =
"Luke 18:1–8">18:1–8</scripRef>.
The Pharisee and the Publican <scripRef passage =
"Luke 18:10–14">18:10–14</scripRef>.
The ten Pounds, <scripRef passage = "Luke 19:11–28">19:11–28</scripRef> (not to be identified with the Parable of the
Talents in <scripRef passage = "Matt. 25:14–30">Matt. 25:14–30</scripRef>).
III.
In the history of the Crucifixion and Resurrection
The lament of the women on the way to the cross, <scripRef passage =
"Luke 23:27–30">Luke
23:27–30</scripRef>.
The prayer of Christ for his murderers, <scripRef passage =
"Luke 23:3">23:3</scripRef>
His conversation with the penitent malefactor and promise of a place in
paradise, <scripRef passage = "Luke 23:39–43">23:39–43</scripRef>.
The appearance of the risen Lord to the two Disciples on the way to
Emmaus, <scripRef
passage = "Luke 24:13–25">24:13–25</scripRef>; briefly mentioned also in the disputed conclusion of <scripRef
passage = "Mark 16:12, 13">Mark, 16:12, 13</scripRef>.
The account of the ascension, <scripRef passage =
"Luke 24:50–53">Luke
24:50–53</scripRef>; comp. <scripRef passage =
"Mark 16:19, 20">Mark
16:19, 20</scripRef>; and <scripRef passage =
"Acts 1:3–12">Acts
1:3–12</scripRef>.
Characteristic Features of Luke.
The third Gospel is the
Gospel of free salvation to all men.1004 This corresponds to the two cardinal
points in the doctrinal system of Paul: gratuitousness and universalness of
salvation.
1. It is eminently the
Gospel of free salvation by grace through faith. Its motto is: Christ
came to save sinners. "Saviour" and "salvation" are the
most prominent ideas1005 Mary, anticipating the birth of her
Son, rejoices in God her "Saviour" (<scripRef passage =
"Luke 1:47">Luke
1:47</scripRef>); and an angel announces to the shepherds of
Bethlehem "good tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people
"(2:10), namely, the birth of Jesus as the "Saviour" of men (not
only as the Christ of the Jews). He is throughout represented as the merciful
friend of sinners, as the healer of the sick, as the comforter of the
broken-hearted, as the shepherd of the lost sheep. The parables peculiar to
Luke—of the prodigal son, of the lost piece of money, of the publican in the
temple, of the good Samaritan—exhibit this great truth which Paul so fully sets
forth in his Epistles. The parable of the Pharisee and the publican plucks up
self-righteousness by the root, and is the foundation of the doctrine of
justification by faith. The paralytic and the woman that was a sinner received
pardon by faith alone. Luke alone relates the prayer of Christ on the cross for
his murderers, and the promise of paradise to the penitent robber, and he ends
with a picture of the ascending Saviour lifting up his hands and blessing his
disciples.
The other Evangelists do
not neglect this aspect of Christ; nothing can be more sweet and comforting
than his invitation to sinners in Matthew 11, or his farewell to the disciples
in John; but Luke dwells on it with peculiar delight. He is the painter of Christus Salvator and Christus Consolator.
2. It is the Gospel of universal
salvation. It is emphatically the Gospel for the Gentiles. Hence the genealogy
of Christ is traced back not only to Abraham (as in Matthew), but to Adam, the
son of God and the father of all men (<scripRef passage =
"Luke 3:38">Luke
3:38</scripRef>). Christ is the second Adam from heaven, the
representative Head of redeemed humanity—an idea further developed by Paul. The
infant Saviour is greeted by Simeon as a "Light for revelation to the
Gentiles, and the glory of his people Israel" (<scripRef passage =
"Luke 2:32">2:32</scripRef>). The Baptist, in applying the prophecy of
Isaiah concerning the voice in the wilderness (<scripRef passage =
"Isa. 40">Isa.
40</scripRef>), adds the words (from <scripRef passage =
"Isa. 52:10">Isa.
52:10</scripRef>): "All flesh shall see the salvation of
God" (<scripRef passage = "Luke 3:6">Luke 3:6</scripRef>). Luke alone records the mission of the Seventy
Disciples who represent the Gentile nations, as the Twelve represent the twelve
tribes of Israel. He alone mentions the mission of Elijah to the heathen widow
in Sarepta, and the cleansing of Naaman the Syrian by Elisha (<scripRef
passage = "Luke 4:26, 27">4:26, 27</scripRef>). He contrasts the gratitude of the leprous Samaritan with the
ingratitude of the nine Jewish lepers (<scripRef passage =
"Luke 17:12–18">17:12–18</scripRef>). He selects discourses and parables, which
exhibit God’s mercy to Samaritans and Gentiles1006 Yet
there is no contradiction, for some of the strongest passages which exhibit
Christ’s mercy to the Gentiles and humble the Jewish pride are found in
Matthew, the Jewish Evangelist.1007 The assertion that the third Gospel is
a glorification of the Gentile (Pauline) apostolate, and a covert attack on the
Twelve, especially Peter, is a pure fiction of modern hypercriticism.
3. It is the Gospel of
the genuine and full humanity of Christ.1008 It
gives us the key-note for the construction of a real history of Jesus from
infancy to boyhood and manhood. Luke represents him as the purest and fairest
among the children of men, who became like unto us in all things except sin and
error. He follows him through the stages of his growth. He alone tells us that
the child Jesus "grew and waxed strong," not only physically, but
also in "wisdom" (<scripRef passage = "Luke 2:40">Luke 2:40</scripRef>); he alone reports the remarkable scene in the
temple, informing us that Jesus, when twelve years old, sat as a learner
"in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking
questions;" and that, even after that time, He "advanced in wisdom
and stature, and in favor with God and men" (<scripRef passage =
"Luke 2:46, 52">2:46,
52</scripRef>). All the Synoptists narrate the temptation in
the wilderness, and Mark adds horror to the scene by the remark that Christ was
"with the wild beasts" (<scripRef passage =
"Mark 1:12">Mark
1:12</scripRef>, <foreign lang="el">meta;
tw'n qhrivwn</foreign>); but Luke has the peculiar notice that the devil departed from Jesus
only "for a season." He
alone mentions the tears of Jesus over Jerusalem, and "the bloody
sweat" and the strengthening angel in the agony of Gethsemane. As he brings
out the gradual growth of Jesus, and the progress of the gospel from Nazareth
to Capernaum, from Capernaum to Jerusalem, so afterwards, in the Acts, he
traces the growth of the church from Jerusalem to Antioch, from Antioch to
Ephesus and Corinth, from Greece to Rome. His is the Gospel of historical
development. To him we are indebted for nearly all the hints that link the
gospel facts with the contemporary history of the world.
4. It is the Gospel of universal
humanity. It breathes the genuine spirit of charity, liberty, equality,
which emanate from the Saviour of mankind, but are so often counterfeited by
his great antagonist, the devil. It touches the tenderest chords of human
sympathy. It delights in recording Christ’s love and compassion for the sick,
the lowly, the despised, even the harlot and the prodigal. It mentions the
beatitudes pronounced on the poor and the hungry, his invitation to the maimed,
the halt, and the blind, his prayer on the cross for pardon of the wicked
murderers, his promise to the dying robber. It rebukes the spirit of bigotry
and intolerance of the Jews against Samaritans, in the parable of the good
Samaritan. It reminds the Sons of Thunder when they were about to call fire
from heaven upon a Samaritan village that He came not to destroy but to save.
It tells us that "he who is not against Christ is for Christ," no
matter what sectarian or unsectarian name he may bear.
5. It is the Gospel for woman.
It weaves the purest types of womanhood into the gospel story: Elizabeth, who
saluted the Saviour before his birth; the Virgin, whom all generations call
blessed; the aged prophetess Anna, who departed not from the temple; Martha,
the busy, hospitable housekeeper, with her quiet, contemplative sister Mary of
Bethany; and that noble band of female disciples who ministered of their
substance to the temporal wants of the Son of God and his apostles.
It reveals the tender
compassion of Christ for all the suffering daughters of Eve: the widow at Nain
mourning at the bier of her only son; for the fallen sinner who bathed his feet
with her tears; for the poor sick woman, who had wasted all her living upon
physicians, and whom he addressed as "Daughter;" and for the
"daughters of Jerusalem" who followed him weeping to Calvary. If
anywhere we may behold the divine humanity of Christ and the perfect union of purity
and love, dignity and tender compassion, it is in the conduct of Jesus towards
women and children. "The scribes and Pharisees gathered up their robes in
the streets and synagogues lest they should touch a woman, and held it a crime
to look on an unveiled woman in public; our Lord suffered a woman to minister
to him out of whom he had cast seven devils."
6. It is the Gospel for children,
and all who are of a childlike spirit. It sheds a sacred halo and celestial
charm over infancy, as perpetuating the paradise of innocence in a sinful
world. It alone relates the birth and growth of John, the particulars of the
birth of Christ, his circumcision and presentation in the temple, his obedience
to parents, his growth from infancy to boyhood, from boyhood to manhood. Luke 1
– 2 will always be the favorite chapters for children and all who delight to
gather around the manger of Bethlehem and to rejoice with shepherds on the
field and angels in heaven.
7. It is the Gospel of poetry.1009 We
mean the poetry of religion, the poetry of worship, the poetry of prayer and
thanksgiving, a poetry resting not on fiction, but on facts and eternal truth.
In such poetry there is more truth than in every-day prose. The whole book is
full of dramatic vivacity and interest. It begins and ends with thanksgiving
and praise. Luke 1–2 are overflowing with festive joy and gladness; they are a
paradise of fragrant flowers, and the air is resonant with the sweet melodies
of Hebrew psalmody and Christian hymnody. The Salute of Elizabeth ("Ave
Maria"), the "Magnificat" of Mary, the "Benedictus" of
Zacharias, the "Gloria in Excelsis" of the Angels, the "Nunc
Dimittis" of Simeon, sound from generation to generation in every tongue,
and are a perpetual inspiration for new hymns of praise to the glory of Christ.
No wonder that the third
Gospel has been pronounced, from a purely literary and humanitarian standpoint,
to be the most beautiful book ever written.1010
The Style.
Luke is the best Greek
writer among the Evangelists.1011 His style shows his general culture. It
is free from solecisms, rich in vocabulary, rhythmical in construction. But as
a careful and conscientious historian he varies considerably with the subject
and according to the nature of his documents.
Matthew begins
characteristically with "Book of generation" or "Genealogy"
(<foreign
lang="el">bivblo" genevsew"</foreign>), which looks back to the Hebrew Sepher
toledoth (comp. <scripRef passage = "Gen. 5:1; 2:4">Gen. 5:1; 2:4</scripRef>); Mark with "Beginning of the gospel"
(<foreign
lang="el">ajrch tou' eujaggelivou</foreign>), which introduces the reader at once to the
scene of present action; Luke with a historiographic prologue of classical
ring, and unsurpassed for brevity, modesty, and dignity. But when he enters
upon the history of the infancy, which he derived no doubt from Aramaic
traditions or documents, his language has a stronger Hebrew coloring than any other
portion of the New Testament. The songs of Zacharias, Elizabeth, Mary, and
Simeon, and the anthem of the angelic host, are the last of Hebrew psalms as
well as the first of Christian hymns. They can be literally translated back
into the Hebrew, without losing their beauty.1012 The
same variation in style characterizes the Acts; the first part is Hebrew Greek,
the second genuine Greek.
His vocabulary
considerably exceeds that of the other Evangelists: he has about 180 terms
which occur in his Gospel alone and nowhere else in the New Testament; while
Matthew has only about 70, Mark 44, and John 50 peculiar words. Luke’s Gospel
has 55, the Acts 135 <foreign lang="el">a{pax
legovmena</foreign>, and among them many verbal compounds and rare
technical terms.
The medical training and
practice of Luke, "the beloved physician," familiarized him with
medical terms, which appear quite naturally, without any ostentation of
professional knowledge, in his descriptions of diseases and miracles of
healing, and they agree with the vocabulary of ancient medical writers. Thus he
speaks of the "great fever" of Peter’s mother-in-law, with
reference to the distinction made between great and small fevers (according to
Galen);1013 and of "fevers and dysentery,"
of which the father of Publius at Melita was healed (as Hippocrates uses fever
in the plural).1014
He was equally familiar
with navigation, not indeed as a professional seaman, but as an experienced
traveller and accurate observer. He uses no less than seventeen nautical terms
with perfect accuracy.1015 His description of the Voyage and
Shipwreck of Paul in Acts 27–28, as explained and confirmed by a scholarly
seaman, furnishes an irrefragable argument for the ability and credibility of
the author of that book.1016
Luke is fond of words of
joy and gladness.1017 He often mentions the Holy Spirit, and
he is the only writer who gives us an account of the pentecostal miracle.1018
Minor peculiarities are the use of the more correct <foreign
lang="el">livmnh</foreign> of the lake of Galilee for <foreign
lang="el">qavlassa</foreign>, <foreign lang="el">nomikov"</foreign> and <foreign
lang="el">nomodidavskalo"</foreign> for <foreign
lang="el">grammateuv"</foreign>, <foreign lang="el">to;
eijrhmevnon</foreign> in quotations for <foreign lang="el">rjhqevn</foreign>, <foreign lang="el">nu'n
for a[rti</foreign>, <foreign lang="el">eJspevra</foreign> for <foreign
lang="el">ojyiva</foreign>, the frequency of attraction of the relative
pronoun and participial construction.
There is a striking resemblance between the style of Luke and Paul, which corresponds to their spiritual sympathy and long intimacy.1019 They agree in the report of the institution of the Lord’s Supper, which is the oldest we have (from a.d. 57); both substitute: "This cup is the new covenant in My blood," for "This is My blood of the (new) covenant," and add: "This do in remembrance of Me" (<scripRef passage = "Luke 22:19, 20">Luke 22:19, 20</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "1 Cor. 11:24, 25">1 Cor. 11:24, 25</scripRef>). They are equally fond of words which characterize the freedom and universal destination of the gospel salvation.1020 They have many terms in common which occur nowhere else in the New Testament.1021 And they often meet in thought and expression in a way that shows both the close intimacy and the mutual independence of the two writers.1022
Genuineness.1023
The genuineness of Luke
is above reasonable doubt. The character of the Gospel agrees perfectly with
what we might expect from the author as far as we know him from the Acts and
the Epistles. No other writer answers the description.
The external evidence is
not so old and clear as that in favor of Matthew and Mark. Papias makes no
mention of Luke. Perhaps he thought it unnecessary, because Luke himself in the
preface gives an account of the origin and aim of his book. The allusions in
Barnabas, Clement of Rome, and Hermas are vague and uncertain. But other testimonies
are sufficient for the purpose. Irenaeus in Gaul says: "Luke, the
companion of Paul, committed to writing the gospel preached by the
latter." The Muratori
fragment which contains the Italian traditions of the canon, mentions the
Gospel of "Luke, the physician, whom Paul had associated with himself as
one zealous for righteousness, to be his companion, who had not seen the Lord
in the flesh, but having carried his inquiries as far back as possible, began
his history with the birth of John."
Justin Martyr makes several quotations from Luke, though he does not
name him.1024
This brings us up to the year 140 or 130. The Gospel is found in all
ancient manuscripts and translations.
The heretical testimony
of Marcion from the year 140 is likewise conclusive. It was always supposed
that his Gospel, the only one he recognized, was a mutilation of Luke, and this
view is now confirmed and finally established by the investigations and
concessions of the very school which for a short time had endeavored to reverse
the order by making Marcion’s caricature the original of Luke.1025 The
pseudo-Clementine Homilies and Recognitions quote from Luke. Basilides and
Valentinus and their followers used all the four Gospels, and are reported to
have quoted <scripRef passage = "Luke 1:35">Luke 1:35</scripRef> for their purpose.
Celsus must have had
Luke in view when he referred to the genealogy of Christ as being traced to
Adam.
Credibility.
The credibility of Luke
has been assailed on the ground that he shaped the history by his motive and
aim to harmonize the Petrine and Pauline, or the Jewish-Christian and the
Gentile-Christian parties of the church. But the same critics contradict
themselves by discovering, on the other hand, strongly Judaizing and even
Ebionitic elements in Luke, and thus make it an incoherent mosaic or clumsy
patchwork of moderate Paulinism and Ebionism, or they arbitrarily assume
different revisions through which it passed without being unified in plan.
Against this
misrepresentation we have to say: (1) An irenic spirit, such as we may freely
admit in the writings of Luke, does not imply an alteration or invention of
facts. On the contrary, it is simply an unsectarian, catholic spirit which aims
at the truth and nothing but the truth, and which is the first duty and virtue
of an historian. (2) Luke certainly did not invent those marvellous parables
and discourses which have been twisted into subserviency to the tendency
hypothesis; else Luke would have had a creative genius of the highest order,
equal to that of Jesus himself, while he modestly professes to be simply a faithful
collector of actual facts. (3) Paul himself did not invent his type of
doctrine, but received it, according to his own solemn asseveration, by
revelation from Jesus Christ, who called him to the apostleship of the
Gentiles. (4) It is now generally admitted that the Tübingen hypothesis of the
difference between the two types and parties in the apostolic church is greatly
overstrained and set aside by Paul’s own testimony in the Galatians, which is
as irenic and conciliatory to the pillar-apostles as it is uncompromisingly
polemic against the "false" brethren or the heretical Judaizers. (5)
Some of the strongest anti-Jewish and pro-Gentile testimonies of Christ are
found in Matthew and omitted by Luke.1026
The accuracy of Luke has
already been spoken of, and has been well vindicated by Godet against Renan in
several minor details. "While remaining quite independent of the other
three, the Gospel of Luke is confirmed and supported by them all."
Time of Composition.
There are strong
indications that the third Gospel was composed (not published) between 58 and
63, before the close of Paul’s Roman captivity. No doubt it took several years
to collect and digest the material; and the book was probably not published, i.e.,
copied and distributed, till after the death of Paul, at the same time with the
Acts, which forms the second part and is dedicated to the same patron. In this
way the conflicting accounts of Clement of Alexandria and Irenaeus may be
harmonized.1027
1. Luke had the best
leisure for literary composition during the four years of Paul’s imprisonment
at Caesarea and Rome. In Caesarea he was within easy reach of the surviving
eyewitnesses and classical spots of the gospel history, and we cannot suppose
that he neglected the opportunity.
2. The Gospel was
written before the book of Acts, which expressly refers to it as the first
treatise inscribed to the same Theophilus (<scripRef passage =
"Acts 1:1">Acts
1:1</scripRef>). As the Acts come down to the second year of
Paul’s captivity in Rome, they cannot have been finished before a.d. 63; but as they abruptly break off
without any mention of Paul’s release or martyrdom, it seems quite probable
that they were concluded before the fate of the apostle was decided one way or
the other, unless the writer was, like Mark, prevented by some event, perhaps
the Neronian persecution, from giving his book the natural conclusion. In its
present shape it excites in the reader the greatest curiosity which could have
been gratified with a few words, either that the apostle sealed his testimony
with his blood, or that he entered upon new missionary tours East and West
until at last he finished his course after a second captivity in Rome. I may
add that the entire absence of any allusion in the Acts to any of Paul’s
Epistles can be easily explained by the assumption of a nearly contemporaneous
composition, while it seems almost unaccountable if we assume an interval of
ten or twenty years.
3. Luke’s ignorance of
Matthew and probably also of Mark points likewise to an early date of
composition. A careful investigator, like Luke, writing after the year 70,
could hardly have overlooked, among his many written sources, such an important
document as Matthew which the best critics put before a.d. 70.
4. Clement of Alexandria
has preserved a tradition that the Gospels containing the genealogies, i.e.,
Matthew and Luke, were written first. Irenaeus, it is true, puts the third
Gospel after. Matthew and Mark and after the death of Peter and Paul, that is,
after 64 (though certainly not after 70). If the Synoptic Gospels were written
nearly simultaneously, we can easily account for these differences in the
tradition. Irenaeus was no better informed on dates than Clement, and was
evidently mistaken about the age of Christ and the date of the Apocalypse. But
he may have had in view the time of publication, which must not be confounded
with the date of composition. Many books nowadays are withheld from the market
for some reason months or years after they have passed through the hands of the
printer.
The objections raised
against such an early date are not well founded.1028
The prior existence of a
number of fragmentary Gospels implied in <scripRef passage =
"Luke 1:1">Luke
1:1</scripRef> need not surprise us; for such a story as that
of Jesus of Nazareth must have set many pens in motion at a very early time.
"Though the art of writing had not existed," says Lange, "it
would have been invented for such a theme."
Of more weight is the
objection that Luke seems to have shaped the eschatological prophecies of
Christ so as to suit the fulfilment by bringing in the besieging (Roman) army,
and by interposing "the times of the Gentiles" between the
destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world (<scripRef passage =
"Luke 19:43, 44; 21:20–24">Luke 19:43, 44; 21:20–24</scripRef>). This would put the composition after
the destruction of Jerusalem, say between 70 and 80, if not later.1029 But
such an intentional change of the words of our Lord is inconsistent with the
unquestionable honesty of the historian and his reverence for the words of the
Divine teacher.1030 Moreover, it is not borne out by the
facts. For the other Synoptists likewise speak of wars and the abomination of
desolation in the holy place, which refers to the Jewish wars and the Roman
eagles (<scripRef
passage = "Matt. 24:15">Matt. 24:15</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Mark
13:14">Mark 13:14</scripRef>). Luke makes the Lord say:, Jerusalem shall be
trodden down by the Gentiles till the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled"
(<scripRef
passage = "Luke 21:24">Luke 21:24</scripRef>). But Matthew does the same when he reports that
Christ predicted and commanded the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom in
all parts of the world before the end can come (<scripRef passage =
"Matt. 24:14; 28:19">Matt. 24:14; 28:19</scripRef>; comp. <scripRef passage =
"Mark 16:15">Mark
16:15</scripRef>). And even Paul said, almost in the same words
as Luke, twelve years before the destruction of Jerusalem: "Blindness is
happened to Israel until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in" (<scripRef
passage = "Rom. 11:25">Rom. 11:25</scripRef>). Must we therefore put the composition of
Romans after a.d. 70? On the other hand, Luke reports as
clearly as Matthew and Mark the words of Christ, that "this generation
shall not pass away till all things" (the preceding prophecies)
"shall be fulfilled" (<scripRef passage = "Luke
21:32">Luke 21:32</scripRef>). Why did he not omit this passage if he
intended to interpose a larger space of time between the destruction of
Jerusalem and the end of the world?
The eschatological
discourses of our Lord, then, are essentially the same in all the Synoptists,
and present the same difficulties, which can only be removed by assuming: (1)
that they refer both to the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world,
two analogous events, the former being typical of the latter; (2) that the two
events, widely distant in time, are represented in close proximity of space
after the manner of prophetic vision in a panoramic picture. We must also
remember that the precise date of the end of the world was expressly disclaimed
even by the Son of God in the days of his humiliation (<scripRef passage =
"Matt. 24:36">Matt.
24:36</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Mark
13:32">Mark 13:32</scripRef>), and is consequently beyond the reach of human
knowledge and calculation. The only difference is that Luke more clearly
distinguishes the two events by dividing the prophetical discourses and
assigning them to different occasions (<scripRef passage =
"Luke 17:20–37; 21:5–33">Luke 17:20–37 and 21:5–33</scripRef>); and here, as in other cases, he is probably
more exact and in harmony with several hints of our Lord that a considerable
interval must elapse between the catastrophe of Jerusalem and the final
catastrophe of the world.
Place of Composition.
The third Gospel gives
no hint as to the place of composition. Ancient tradition is uncertain, and
modern critics are divided between Greece,1031
Alexandria,1032 Ephesus,1033
Caesarea, 1034 Rome.1035 It was probably written in sections
during the longer residence of the author at Philippi, Caesarea, and Rome, but
we cannot tell where it was completed and published.1036
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="83" title="John">
§ 83. John.
See Literature on John, § 40, of this vol.; Life and
Character of John, §§ 41–43, of this vol.; Theology of John, § 72, pp. 549 sqq.
The best comes last. The
fourth Gospel is the Gospel of Gospels, the holy of holies in the New
Testament. The favorite disciple and bosom friend of Christ, the protector of
his mother, the survivor of the apostolic age was pre-eminently qualified by
nature and grace to give to the church the inside view of that most wonderful
person that ever walked on earth. In his early youth he had absorbed the
deepest words of his Master, and treasured them in a faithful heart; in extreme
old age, yet with the fire and vigor of manhood, he reproduced them under the
influence of the Holy Spirit who dwelt in him and led him, as well as the other
disciples, into "the whole truth."
His Gospel is the golden
sunset of the age of inspiration, and sheds its lustre into the second and all
succeeding centuries of the church. It was written at Ephesus when Jerusalem
lay in ruins, when the church had finally separated from the synagogue, when
"the Jews" and the Christians were two distinct races, when Jewish
and Gentile believers had melted into a homogeneous Christian community, a
little band in a hostile world, yet strong in faith, full of hope and joy, and
certain of victory.
For a satisfactory
discussion of the difficult problems involved in this Gospel and its striking
contrast with the Synoptic Gospels, we must keep in view the fact that Christ
communed with the apostles after as well as before his visible departure, and
spoke to them through that "other Advocate" whom he sent to them from
the Father, and who brought to remembrance all things he had said unto them.1037
Here lies the guarantee of the truthfulness of a picture which no human
artist could have drawn without divine inspiration. Under any other view the
fourth Gospel, and indeed the whole New Testament, becomes the strangest enigma
in the history of literature and incapable of any rational solution.
John and the Synoptists.
If John wrote long after
the Synoptists, we could, of course, not expect from him a repetition of the
story already so well told by three independent witnesses. But what is
surprising is the fact that, coming last, he should produce the most original
of all the Gospels.
The transition from
Matthew to Mark, and from Mark to Luke is easy and natural; but in passing from
any of the Synoptists to the fourth Gospel we breathe a different atmosphere,
and feel as if we were suddenly translated from a fertile valley to the height
of a mountain with a boundless vision over new scenes of beauty and grandeur.
We look in vain for a genealogy of Jesus, for an account of his birth, for the
sermons of the Baptist, for the history of the temptation in the wilderness,
the baptism in the Jordan, and the transfiguration on the Mount, for a list of
the Twelve, for the miraculous cures of demoniacs. John says nothing of the
institution of the church and the sacraments; though he is full of the mystical
union and communion which is the essence of the church, and presents the
spiritual meaning of baptism and the Lord’s Supper (John 3 and John 6). He
omits the ascension, though it is promised through Mary Magdalene (20:17). He
has not a word of the Sermon on the Mount, and the Lord’s Prayer, none of the
inimitable parables about the kingdom of heaven, none of those telling answers
to the entangling questions of the Pharisees. He omits the prophecies of the
downfall of Jerusalem and the end of the world, and most of those proverbial,
moral sentences and maxims of surpassing wisdom which are strung together by
the Synoptists like so many sparkling diamonds.
But in the place of
these Synoptical records John gives us an abundance of new matter of equal, if
not greater, interest and importance. Right at the threshold we are startled,
as by a peal of thunder from the depths, of eternity: "In the beginning
was the Word." And as we
proceed we hear about the creation of the world, the shining of the true light
in darkness, the preparatory revelations, the incarnation of the Logos, the
testimony of the Baptist to the Lamb of God. We listen with increasing wonder
to those mysterious discourses about the new birth of the Spirit, the water of
life, the bread of life from heaven, about the relation of the eternal and
only-begotten Son to the Father, to the world, and to believers, the mission of
the Holy Spirit, the promise of the many mansions in heaven, the farewell to
the disciples, and at last that sacerdotal prayer which brings us nearest to
the throne and the beating heart of God. John alone reports the interviews with
Nicodemus, the woman of Samaria, and the Greek foreigners. He records six
miracles not mentioned by the Synoptists, and among them the two greatest—the
changing of water into wine and the raising of Lazarus from the grave. And
where he meets the Synoptists, as in the feeding of the five thousand, he adds
the mysterious discourse on the spiritual feeding of believers by the bread of
life which has been going on ever since. He makes the nearest approach to his
predecessors in the closing chapters on the betrayal, the denial of Peter, the
trial before the ecclesiastical and civil tribunals, the crucifixion and
resurrection, but even here he is more exact and circumstantial, and adds,
interesting details which bear the unmistakable marks of personal observation.
He fills out the
ministry of Christ in Judaea, among the hierarchy and the people of Jerusalem,
and extends it over three years; while the Synoptists seem to confine it to one
year and dwell chiefly on his labors among the peasantry of Galilee. But on
close inspection John leaves ample room for the Galilaean, and the Synoptists
for the Judaean ministry. None of the Gospels is a complete biography. John expressly
disclaims, this (20:31). Matthew implies repeated visits to the holy city when
he makes Christ exclaim: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem ... how often
would I have gathered thy children together" (23:37; comp. 27:57). On the
other hand John records several miracles in Cana, evidently only as typical
examples of many (2:1 sqq.; 4:47 sqq.; 6:1 sqq.). But in Jerusalem the great
conflict between light and darkness, belief and unbelief, was most fully
developed and matured to the final crisis; and this it was one of his chief
objects to describe.
The differences between
John and the Synoptists are many and great, but there are no contradictions.
The Occasion.
Irenaeus, who, as a
native of Asia Minor and a spiritual grand-pupil of John, is entitled to
special consideration, says: "Afterward" [i.e., after Matthew,
Mark, and Luke] "John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon
his breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in
Asia."1038 In
another place he makes the rise of the Gnostic heresy the prompting occasion of
the composition.1039
A curious tradition,
which probably contains a grain of truth, traces the composition to a request
of John’s fellow-disciples and elders of Ephesus. "Fast with me,"
said John, according to the Muratorian fragment (170), "for three days
from this time" [when the request was made], "and whatever shall be
revealed to each of us" [concerning my composing the Gospel], "let us
relate it to one another. On the same night it was revealed to Andrew, one of
the apostles, that John should relate all things in his own name, aided by the
revision of all.1040 ... What wonder is it then that John
brings forward every detail with so much emphasis, even in his Epistles, saying
of himself, What we have seen with our eyes, and heard with our ears, and our
hands have handled, these things have we written unto you. For so he professes
that he was not only an eyewitness, but also a hearer, and moreover a writer of
all the wonderful works of the Lord in their historical order."1041
The mention of Andrew in
this fragment is remarkable, for he was associated with John as a pupil of the
Baptist and as the first called to the school of Christ (<scripRef
passage = "John 1:35–40">John 1:35–40</scripRef>). He was also prominent in other ways and stood
next to the beloved three, or even next to his brother Peter in the catalogues
of the apostles.1042
Victorinus of Pettau (d.
about 304), in the Scholia on the Apocalypse, says that John wrote the Gospel
after the Apocalypse, in consequence of the spread of the Gnostic heresy and at
the request of "all the bishops from the neighboring provinces."1043
Jerome, on the basis of
a similar tradition, reports that John, being constrained by his brethren to
write, consented to do so if all joined in a fast and prayer to God, and after
this fast, being saturated with revelation (revelatione saturatus), he
indited the heaven-sent preface: "In the beginning was the Word."1044
Possibly those
fellow-disciples and pupils who prompted John to write his Gospel, were the
same who afterward added their testimony to the genuineness of the book,
speaking in the plural ("we know that his witness is true," <scripRef
passage = "John 21:24">21:24</scripRef>), one of them acting as scribe ("I suppose," <scripRef
passage = "John 21:25">21:25</scripRef>).
The outward occasion
does not exclude, of course, the inward prompting by the Holy Spirit, which is
in fact implied in this tradition, but it shows how far the ancient church was
from such a mechanical theory of inspiration as ignores or denies the human and
natural factors in the composition of the apostolic writings. The preface of
Luke proves the same.
The Object.
The fourth Gospel does
not aim at a complete biography of Christ, but distinctly declares that Jesus
wrought "many other signs in the presence of the disciples which are not
written in this book" (<scripRef passage = "John 20:30">John 20:30</scripRef>; comp. <scripRef passage =
"John 21:25">21:25</scripRef>).
The author plainly
states his object, to which all other objects must be subordinate as merely
incidental, namely, to lead his readers to the faith "that Jesus is the
Christ, the Son of God; and that believing they may have life in his
name" (20:31). This includes three points: (1) the Messiahship of Jesus,
which was of prime importance to the Jews, and was the sole or at least the
chief aim of Matthew, the Jewish Evangelist; (2) the Divine Sonship of Jesus,
which was the point to be gained with the Gentiles, and which Luke, the Gentile
Evangelist, had also in view; (3) the practical benefit of such faith, to gain
true, spiritual, eternal life in Him and through Him who is the personal
embodiment and source of eternal life.
To this
historico-didactic object all others which have been mentioned must be
subordinated. The book is neither polemic and apologetic, nor supplementary,
nor irenic, except incidentally and unintentionally as it serves all these
purposes. The writer wrote in full view of the condition and needs of the
church at the close of the first century, and shaped his record accordingly,
taking for granted a general knowledge of the older Gospels, and refuting
indirectly, by the statement of facts and truths, the errors of the day. Hence
there is some measure of truth in those theories which have made an incidental
aim the chief or only aim of the book.
1. The anti-heretical
theory was started by Irenaeus. Being himself absorbed in the controversy with
Gnosticism and finding the strongest weapons in John, he thought that John’s
motive was to root out the error of Cerinthus and of the Nicolaitans by showing
that "there is one God who made all things by his word; and not, as they
say, one who made the world, and another, the Father of the Lord."1045
Jerome adds the opposite error of Ebionism, Ewald that of the disciples
of the Baptist.
No doubt the fourth
Gospel, by the positive statement of the truth, is the most effective
refutation of Gnostic dualism and doketism, which began to raise its head in
Asia Minor toward the close of the first century. It shows the harmony of the
ideal Christ of faith and the real Christ of history, which the ancient and
modern schools of Gnosticism are unable to unite in one individual. But it is
not on this account a polemical treatise, and it even had by its profound
speculation a special attraction for Gnostics and philosophical rationalists,
from Basilides down to Baur. The ancient Gnostics made the first use of it and
quoted freely from the prologue, e.g., the passage: "The true
light, which enlighteneth every man, was coming into the world" (<scripRef
passage = "John 1:9">1:9</scripRef>).1046
The polemical aim is
more apparent in the first Epistle of John, which directly warns against the
anti-Christian errors then threatening the church, and may be called a
doctrinal and practical postscript to the Gospel.
2. The supplementary
theory. Clement of Alexandria (about 200) states, on the authority of
"presbyters of an earlier generation," that John, at the request of
his friends and the prompting of the divine Spirit, added a spiritual Gospel
to the older bodily Gospels which set forth the outward facts.1047 The
distinction is ingenious. John is more spiritual and ideal than the Synoptists,
and he represents as it were the esoteric tradition as distinct from the
exoteric tradition of the church. Eusebius records also as a current opinion
that John intended to supply an amount of the earlier period of Christ’s
ministry which was omitted by the other Evangelists.1048
John is undoubtedly a most welcome supplementer both in matter and
spirit, and furnishes in part the key for the full understanding of the
Synoptists, yet he repeats many important events, especially in the closing
chapters, and his Gospel is as complete as any.1049
3. The Irenic
tendency-theory is a modern Tübingen invention. It is assumed that the fourth
Gospel is purely speculative or theological, the last and crowning literary
production which completed the process of unifying Jewish and Gentile
Christianity and melting them into the one Catholic church of the second
century.
No doubt it is an
Irenicon of the church in the highest and best sense of the term, and a
prophecy of the church of the future, when all discords of Christendom past and
present will be harmonized in the perfect union of Christians with Christ,
which is the last object of his sacerdotal prayer. But it is not an Irenicon at
the expense of truth and facts.
In carrying out their
hypothesis the Tübingen critics have resorted to the wildest fictions. It is
said that the author depreciated the Mosaic dispensation and displayed jealousy
of Peter. How in the world could this promote peace? It would rather have defeated the object. But there is no
shadow of proof for such an assertion. While the author opposes the unbelieving
Jews, he shows the highest reverence for the Old Testament, and derives
salvation from the Jews. Instead of showing jealousy of Peter, he introduces
his new name at the first interview with Jesus (<scripRef passage =
"John 1:42">1:42</scripRef>), reports his great confession even more fully
than Matthew (<scripRef passage = "John 6:68, 69">John 6:68, 69</scripRef>), puts him at the head of the list of the
apostles (<scripRef passage = "John 21:2">21:2</scripRef>), and gives him his due prominence throughout
down to the last interview when the risen Lord committed to him the feeding of
his sheep (<scripRef passage = "John 21:15–19">21:15–19</scripRef>). This misrepresentation is of a piece with the
other Tübingen myth adopted by Renan, that the real John in the Apocalypse
pursues a polemical aim against Paul and deliberately excludes him from the
rank of the twelve Apostles. And yet Paul himself, in the acknowledged Epistle
to the Galatians, represents John as one of the three pillar-apostles who
recognized his peculiar gift for the apostolate of the Gentiles and extended to
him the right hand of fellowship.
Analysis.
The object of John
determined the selection and arrangement of the material. His plan is more
clear and systematic than that of the Synoptists. It brings out the growing
conflict between belief and unbelief, between light and darkness, and leads
step by step to the great crisis of the cross, and to the concluding
exclamation of Thomas, "My Lord and my God."
In the following
analysis the sections peculiar to John are marked by a star.
*I. The Prologue. The theme of the Gospel:
the Logos, the eternal Revealer of God:
(1.) In relation to God, <scripRef
passage = "John 1:1, 2">John 1:1, 2</scripRef>.
(2.) In relation to the
world. General revelation, <scripRef passage = "John 1:3–5">1:3–5</scripRef>.
(3.) In relation to John
the Baptist and the Jews. Particular revelation, <scripRef passage =
"John 1:6–13">1:6–13</scripRef>.
(4.) The incarnation of
the Logos, and its effect upon the disciples, <scripRef passage =
"John 1:14–18">1:14–18</scripRef>.
II. The Public
Manifestation of the Incarnate Logos in Active Word and Work, <scripRef
passage = "John 1:19 - 12:50">1:19 to 12:50</scripRef>.
*(1.) The preparatory
testimony of John the Baptist pointing to Jesus as the promised and expected
Messiah, and as the Lamb of God that beareth the sin of the world, <scripRef
passage = "John 1:19–37">1:19–37</scripRef>.
*(2.) The gathering of
the first disciples, <scripRef passage = "John 1:38–51">1:38–51</scripRef>.
*(3.) The first sign: the
changing of water into wine at Cana in Galilee, <scripRef passage =
"John 2:1–11">2:1–11</scripRef>. First sojourn in Capernaum, <scripRef
passage = "John 2:12">2:12</scripRef>. First Passover and journey to Jerusalem during the public ministry, <scripRef
passage = "John 2:13">2:13</scripRef>.
*(4.) The reformatory
cleansing of the Temple, <scripRef passage = "John 2:14–22">2:14–22</scripRef>. (Recorded also by the Synoptists, but at the
close of the public ministry.)
Labors among the Jews in Jerusalem, <scripRef passage =
"John 2:23–25">2:23–25</scripRef>.
*(5.) Conversation with
Nicodemus, representing the timid disciples, the higher classes among the Jews.
Regeneration the condition of entering into the kingdom of God, <scripRef
passage = "John 3:1–15">3:1–15</scripRef>. The love of God in the sending of his Son to save the world, <scripRef
passage = "John 3:16–21">3:16–21</scripRef>. (Jerusalem.)
*(6.) Labors of Jesus in
Judaea. The testimony of John the Baptist: He must increase, but I must
decrease, <scripRef passage = "John 3:22–36">3:22–36</scripRef>. (Departure of Jesus into Galilee after John’s
imprisonment, <scripRef passage = "John 4:1–3">4:1–3</scripRef>; comp. <scripRef passage =
"Matt. 4:12">Matt.
4:12</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Mark
1:14">Mark 1:14</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Luke
4:14">Luke 4:14</scripRef>.)
*(7.) Labors in Samaria
on the journey from Judaea to Galilee. The woman of Samaria; Jacob’s well; the
water of life; the worship of God the Spirit in spirit and in truth; the fields
ripening for the harvest, <scripRef passage = "John 4:1–42">John 4:1–42</scripRef>. Jesus teaches publicly in Galilee, <scripRef
passage = "John 4:43–45">4:43–45</scripRef> (comp. <scripRef passage = "Matt. 4:17">Matt. 4:17</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Mark 1:14,
15">Mark 1:14, 15</scripRef> <scripRef passage = "Luke 4:14,
15">Luke 4:14, 15</scripRef>).
*(8.) Jesus again visits
Cana in Galilee and heals a nobleman’s son at Capernaum, <scripRef
passage = "John 4:46–54">John 4:46–54</scripRef>.
*(9.) Second journey to
Jerusalem at a feast (the second Passover?). The healing of the infirm man at
the pool of Bethesda on the Sabbath, <scripRef passage =
"John 5:1–18">5:1–18</scripRef>. Beginning of the hostility of the Jews.
Discourse of Christ on his relation to the Father, and his authority to judge
the world, <scripRef passage = "John 5:19–47">5:19–47</scripRef>.
(10.) The feeding of the
five thousand, <scripRef passage = "John 6:1–14">6:1–14</scripRef>. The stilling of the tempest, <scripRef
passage = "John 6:15–21">6:15–21</scripRef>.
*The mysterious discourse
in Capernaum on the bread of life; the sifting of the disciples; the confession
of Peter: "To whom shall we go," etc.; the hinting at the treason of
Judas, <scripRef
passage = "John 6:22–71">6:22–71</scripRef>.
*(11.) Third visit to
Jerusalem, at the feast of the Tabernacles. The hasty request of the brethren
of Jesus who did not believe on him. His discourse in the Temple with opposite
effect. Rising hostility of the Jews, and vain efforts of the hierarchy to
seize him as a false teacher misleading the people, <scripRef passage =
"John 7:1–52">7:1–52</scripRef>.
[*(12a.) The woman taken in adultery and
pardoned by Jesus, <scripRef passage = "John
7:53–8:11">7:53–8:11</scripRef>. Jerusalem. Probably an interpolation from oral
tradition, authentic and true, but not from the pen of John. Also found at the
end, and at <scripRef passage = "Luke 21">Luke 21</scripRef>.]
*(12b.) Discourse on the light of the world.
The children of God and the children of the devil. Attempts to stone Jesus, <scripRef
passage = "John 8:12–59">John 8:12–59</scripRef>.
*(13.) The healing of the
man born blind, on a Sabbath, and his testimony before the Pharisees, <scripRef
passage = "John 9:1–41">9:1–41</scripRef>.
*(14.) The parable of the
good shepherd, <scripRef passage = "John 10:1–21">10:1–21</scripRef>. Speech at the feast of Dedication in Solomon’s
porch, <scripRef
passage = "John 10:22–39">10:22–39</scripRef>. Departure to the country beyond the Jordan, <scripRef passage =
"John 10:40–42">10:40–42</scripRef>.
*(15.) The resurrection
of Lazarus at Bethany, and its effect upon hastening the crisis. The counsel of
Caiaphas. Jesus retires from Jerusalem to Ephraim, <scripRef passage =
"John 11:1–57">11:1–57</scripRef>.
(16.) The anointing by
Mary in Bethany, <scripRef passage = "John 12:1–8">12:1–8</scripRef>. The counsel of the chief priests, <scripRef
passage = "John 12:9–11">12:9–11</scripRef>.
(17.) The entry into
Jerusalem, <scripRef passage = "John 12:12–19">12:12–19</scripRef>. (Comp. <scripRef passage =
"Matt. 21:1–17">Matt.
21:1–17</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Mark
11:1–11">Mark 11:1–11</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Luke
19:29–44">Luke
19:29–44</scripRef>.)
*(18.) Visit of the
Greeks. Discourse of Jesus on the grain of wheat which must die to bear fruit;
the voice from heaven; the attraction of the cross; the opposite effect;
reflection of the Evangelist; summary of the speeches of Jesus, <scripRef
passage = "John 12:20–50">John 12:20–50</scripRef>.
III. The Private Manifestation of Christ in the
Circle of his Disciples. During the fourth and last Passover week.
Jerusalem, <scripRef passage = "John 13:1–17:26">13:1–17:26</scripRef>.
*(l.) Jesus washes the
feet of the disciples before the Passover meal, <scripRef passage =
"John 13:1–20">13:1–20</scripRef>.
(2.) He announces the
traitor, <scripRef
passage = "John 13:21–27">13:21–27</scripRef>. The departure of Judas, <scripRef passage = "John
13:27–30">13:27–30</scripRef>.
*(3.) The new commandment
of love, <scripRef
passage = "John 13:31–35">13:31–35</scripRef>. (Here is the best place for the institution of the Lord’s Supper,
omitted by John, but reported by all the Synoptists and by Paul.)
(4.) Prophecy of Peter’s
denial, <scripRef
passage = "John 13:36–38">13:36–38</scripRef>.
*(5.) The farewell
discourses to the disciples; the promise of the Paraclete, and of Christ’s
return, <scripRef
passage = "John 14:1 – 16:33">14:1 – 16:33</scripRef>.
*(6.) The Sacerdotal
Prayer, <scripRef
passage = "John 17:1–26">17:1–26</scripRef>.
IV. The Glorification of
Christ in the Crucifixion and Resurrection, <scripRef passage =
"John 18:1–20:31">18:1–20:31</scripRef>.
(1.) The passage over the
Kedron, and the betrayal, <scripRef passage = "John 18:1–11">18:1–11</scripRef>.
(2.) Jesus before the
high priests, Annas and Caiaphas, <scripRef passage =
"John 18:12–14, 19–24">18:12–14, 19–24</scripRef>.
(3.) Peter’s denial, <scripRef
passage = "John 18:15–18, 25–27">18:15–18, 25–27</scripRef>.
(4.) Jesus before the
Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, <scripRef passage = "John
18:28–19:16">18:28–19:16</scripRef>. Original in part (<scripRef passage =
"John 19:4–16">19:4–16</scripRef>).
(5.) The crucifixion, <scripRef
passage = "John 19:17–37">19:17–37</scripRef>.
(6.) The burial of Jesus,
<scripRef
passage = "John 19:38–42">19:38–42</scripRef>.
(7.) The resurrection.
Mary Magdalene, Peter and John visit the empty tomb, <scripRef passage =
"John 20:1–10">20:1–10</scripRef>.
(8.) Christ appears to
Mary Magdalene, <scripRef passage = "John 20:11–18">20:11–18</scripRef>.
*(9.) Christ appears to
the apostles, except Thomas, on the evening of the resurrection day, <scripRef
passage = "John 20:19–23">20:19–23</scripRef>.
*(10.) Christ appears to
the apostles, including Thomas, on the following Lord’s Day, <scripRef
passage = "John 20:26–29">20:26–29</scripRef>.
*(11.) Object of the
Gospel, <scripRef
passage = "John 20:30, 31">20:30, 31</scripRef>
*V. The Appendix and
Epilogue, <scripRef passage = "John 21:1–25">21:1–25</scripRef>.
(1.) Christ appears to
seven disciples on the lake of Galilee. The third manifestation to the
disciples, <scripRef passage = "John 21:1–14">21:1–14</scripRef>.
(2.) The dialogue with
Simon Peter: "Lovest thou Me?"
"Feed My sheep."
"Follow Me," <scripRef passage = "John
21:15–19">21:15–19</scripRef>.
(3.) The mysterious word
about the beloved disciple, <scripRef passage = "John 21:1–23">21:1–23</scripRef>.
(4.) The attestation of
the authorship of the Gospel by the pupils of John, <scripRef passage =
"John 21:24, 25">21:24,
25</scripRef>.
Characteristics of the Fourth Gospel.
The Gospel of John is
the most original, the most important, the most influential book in all
literature. The great Origen called it the crown of the Gospels, as the Gospels
are the crown of all sacred writings.1050 It is pre-eminently the spiritual and
ideal, though at the same time a most real Gospel, the truest transcript of the
original. It lifts the veil from the holy of holies and reveals the glory of
the Only Begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. It unites in
harmony the deepest knowledge and the purest love of Christ. We hear as it were
his beating heart; we lay our hands in his wound-prints and exclaim with
doubting Thomas: "My Lord and my God." No book is so plain and yet so deep, so natural and yet so
full of mystery. It is simple as a child and sublime as a seraph, gentle as a
lamb and bold as an eagle, deep as the sea and high as the heavens.
It has been praised as
"the unique, tender, genuine Gospel," "written by the hand of an
angel," as "the heart of Christ," as "God’s love-letter to
the world," or "Christ’s love-letter to the church." It has exerted an irresistible charm on
many of the strongest and noblest minds in Christendom, as Origen in Egypt,
Chrysostom in Asia, Augustin in Africa, the German Luther, the French Calvin,
the poetic Herder, the critical Schleiermacher, and a multitude of less famous
writers of all schools and shades of thought. Even many of those who doubt or
deny the apostolic authorship cannot help admiring its more than earthly
beauties.1051
But there are other
sceptics who find the Johannean discourses monotonous, tedious, nebulous,
unmeaning, hard, and feel as much offended by them as the original hearers.1052
Let us point out the
chief characteristics of this book which distinguish it from the Synoptical
Gospels.
1. The fourth Gospel is
the Gospel of the Incarnation,
that is, of the perfect union of the divine and human in the person of Jesus of
Nazareth, who for this very reason is the Saviour of the world and the fountain
of eternal life. "The Word became flesh." This is the theoretical theme. The writer begins with the eternal
pre-existence of the Logos, and ends with the adoration of his incarnate
divinity in the exclamation of the sceptical Thomas: "My Lord and my
God!" Luke’s preface is
historiographic and simply points to his sources of information; John’s
prologue is metaphysical and dogmatic, and sounds the keynote of the subsequent
history. The Synoptists begin with the man Jesus and rise up to the recognition
of his Messiahship and divine Sonship; John descends from the pre-existent Son
of God through the preparatory revelations to his incarnation and crucifixion
till he resumes the glory which he had before the world began. The former give
us the history of a divine man, the latter the history of a human God. Not that
he identifies him with the Godhead (<foreign lang="el">oJ
qeov"</foreign>); on the contrary, he clearly distinguishes the Son and the
Father and makes him inferior in dignity ("the Father is greater than
I"); but he declares that the Son is "God" (<foreign
lang="el">qeov"</foreign>), that is, of divine essence or nature.
And yet there is no
contradiction here between the Evangelists except for those who deem a union of
the Divine and human in one person an impossibility. The Christian Church has
always felt that the Synoptic and the Johannean Christ are one and the same,
only represented from different points of view. And in this judgment the
greatest scholars and keenest critics, from Origen down to the present time,
have concurred.
For, on the one hand,
John’s Christ is just as real and truly human as that of the Synoptists. He
calls himself the Son of man and "a man" (<scripRef passage =
"John 8:40">John
8:40</scripRef>); he "groaned in the spirit" (<scripRef
passage = "John 11:33">11:33</scripRef>), he "wept" at the grave of a friend (<scripRef passage =
"John 11:35">11:35</scripRef>), and his "soul" was
"troubled" in the prospect of the dark hour of crucifixion (<scripRef
passage = "John 12:27">12:27</scripRef>) and the crime of the traitor (<scripRef passage =
"John 13:1">13:1</scripRef>). The Evangelist attests with solemn emphasis
from what he saw with his own eyes that Jesus truly suffered and died (<scripRef
passage = "John 19:33–35">19:33–35</scripRef>).1053
The Synoptic Christ, on
the other hand, is as truly elevated above ordinary mortals as the Johannean.
It is true, he does not in so many words declare his pre-existence as in <scripRef
passage = "John 1:1; 6:62; 8:58; 17:5, 24">John 1:1; 6:62; 8:58; 17:5, 24</scripRef>, but it is implied, or follows as a legitimate
consequence. He is conceived without sin, a descendant of David, and yet the Lord
of David (<scripRef passage = "Matt. 22:41">Matt. 22:41</scripRef>); he claims authority to forgive sins, for which
he is accused of blasphemy by the Jews (quite consistently from their
standpoint of unbelief); he gives his life a ransom for the redemption of the
world; he will come in his glory and judge all nations; yea, in the very Sermon
on the Mount, which all schools of Rationalists accept his genuine teaching, He
declares himself to be the judge of the world (<scripRef passage =
"Matt. 7:21–23">Matt.
7:21–23</scripRef>; comp. <scripRef passage =
"Matt. 25:31–46">25:31–46</scripRef>), and in the baptismal formula He associates
himself and the Holy Spirit with the eternal Father, as the connecting link
between the two, thus assuming a place on the very throne of the Deity (<scripRef
passage = "Matt. 28:19">28:19</scripRef>). It is impossible to rise higher. Hence Matthew, the Jewish Evangelist,
does not hesitate to apply to Him the name Immanuel, that is, "God with
us"(<scripRef
passage = "Matt. 1:23">1:23</scripRef>). Mark gives us the Gospel of Peter, the first who confessed that Jesus
is not only "the Christ" in his official character, but also
"the Son of the living God."
This is far more than a son; it designates his unique personal relation
to God and forms the eternal basis of his historical Messiahship (<scripRef
passage = "Matt. 16:16">Matt. 16:16</scripRef>; comp. <scripRef passage =
"Matt. 26:63">26:63</scripRef>). The two titles are distinct, and the high
priest’s charge of blasphemy (<scripRef passage = "Matt.
26:65">26:65</scripRef>) could only apply to the latter. A false Messiah
would be an impostor, not a blasphemer. We could not substitute the Messiah for
the Son in the baptismal formula. Peter, Mark, and Matthew were brought up in
the most orthodox monotheism, with an instinctive horror of the least approach
to idolatry, and yet they looked up to their Master with feelings of adoration.
And, as for Luke, he delights in representing Jesus throughout as the sinless
Saviour of sinners, and is in full sympathy with the theology of his elder
brother Paul, who certainly taught the pre-existence and divine nature of
Christ several years before the Gospels were written or published (<scripRef
passage = "Rom. 1:3, 4; 9:5">Rom. 1:3, 4; 9:5</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "2 Cor.
8:9">2 Cor. 8:9</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Col.
1:15–17">Col. 1:15–17</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Philippans
2:6–11">Phil. 2:6–11</scripRef>).
2. It is the Gospel of Love. Its practical motto is: "God
is love." In the incarnation
of the eternal Word, in the historic mission of his Son, God has given the
greatest possible proof of his love to mankind. In the fourth Gospel alone we
read that precious sentence which contains the very essence of Christianity:
"God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life" (<scripRef
passage = "John 3:16">John 3:16</scripRef>). It is the Gospel of the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for the
sheep (<scripRef
passage = "John 10:11">10:11</scripRef>); the Gospel of the new commandment: "Love one another" (<scripRef
passage = "John 13:34">13:34</scripRef>). And this was the last exhortation of the aged disciple "whom
Jesus loved."
But for this very reason
that Christ is the greatest gift of God to the world, unbelief is the greatest
sin and blackest ingratitude, which carries in it its own condemnation. The
guilt of unbelief, the contrast between faith and unbelief is nowhere set forth
in such strong light as in the fourth Gospel. It is a consuming fire to all
enemies of Christ.
3. It is the Gospel of Mystic Symbolism.1054 The
eight miracles it records are significant "signs" (<foreign
lang="el">shmei'a</foreign>) which symbolize the character and mission of
Christ, and manifest his glory. They are simply his "works" (<foreign
lang="el">e[rga</foreign>), the natural manifestations of his marvellous
person performed with the same ease as men perform their ordinary works. The
turning of water into wine illustrates his transforming power, and fitly
introduces his public ministry; the miraculous feeding of the five thousand set
him forth as the Bread of life for the spiritual nourishment of countless
believers; the healing of the man born blind, as the Light of the world; the
raising of Lazarus, as the Resurrection and the Life. The miraculous draught of
fishes shows the disciples to be fishers of men, and insures the abundant
results of Christian labor to the end of time. The serpent in the wilderness
prefigured the cross. The Baptist points to him as the Lamb of God which taketh
away the sin of the world. He represents himself under the significant figures
of the Door, the good Shepherd, the Vine; and these figures have inspired
Christian art and poetry, and guided the meditations of the church ever since.
The whole Old Testament
is a type and prophecy of the New. "The law was given by Moses; grace and
truth came by Jesus Christ" (<scripRef passage =
"John 1:17">1:17</scripRef>). Herein lies the vast superiority of
Christianity, and yet the great importance of Judaism as an essential part in
the scheme of redemption. Clearly and strongly as John brings out the
opposition to the unbelieving Jews, he is yet far from going to the Gnostic
extreme of rejecting or depreciating the Old Testament; on the contrary
"salvation comes from the Jews" (says Christ to the Samaritan woman, <scripRef
passage = "John 4:22">4:22</scripRef>); and turning the Scripture argument against the scribes and Pharisees
who searched the letter of the Scriptures, but ignored the spirit, Christ
confronts them with the authority of Moses on whom they fixed their hope.
"If ye believed Moses, ye would believe me; for he wrote of me. But ye
believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?" (<scripRef
passage = "John 5:46">5:46</scripRef>). John sees Christ everywhere in those ancient Scriptures which cannot
be broken. He unfolds the true Messianic idea in conflict with the carnal
perversion of it among the Jews under the guidance of the hierarchy.
The Johannean and Synoptic Discourses of Christ.
4. John gives prominence
to the transcendent Discourses
about the person of Christ and his relation to the Father, to the world, and
the disciples. His words are testimonies, revealing the inner glory of his
person; they are Spirit and they are life.
Matthew’s Gospel is
likewise didactic; but there is a marked difference between the contents and
style of the Synoptic and the Johannean discourses of Jesus. The former discuss
the nature of the Messianic kingdom, the fulfilment of the law, the duty of
holy obedience, and are popular, practical, brief, pointed, sententious,
parabolic, and proverbial; the latter touch the deepest mysteries of theology
and Christology, are metaphysical, lengthy, liable to carnal misunderstanding,
and scarcely discernible from John’s own style in the prologue and the first
Epistle, and from that used by the Baptist. The transition is almost
imperceptible in <scripRef passage = "John 3:16;
3:31">John 3:16 and
3:31</scripRef>.
Here we reach the chief
difficulty in the Johannean problem. Here is the strong point of sceptical
criticism. We must freely admit at the outset that John so reproduced the words
of his Master as to mould them unconsciously into his own type of thought and
expression. He revolved them again and again in his heart, they were his daily
food, and the burden of his teaching to the churches from Sunday to Sunday; yet
he had to translate, to condense, to expand, and to apply them; and in this
process it was unavoidable that his own reflections should more or less mingle
with his recollections. With all the tenacity of his memory it was impossible
that at such a great interval of time (fifty or sixty years after the events)
he should be able to record literally every discourse just as it was spoken;
and he makes no such claim, but intimates that he selects and summarizes.
This is the natural view
of the case, and the same concession is now made by all the champions of the
Johannean authorship who do not hold to a magical inspiration theory and turn
the sacred writers into unthinking machines, contrary to their own express
statements, as in the Preface of Luke. But we deny that this concession
involves any sacrifice of the truth of history or of any lineament from the
physiognomy of Christ. The difficulty here presented is usually overstated by
the critics, and becomes less and less, the higher we rise in our estimation of
Christ, and the closer we examine the differences in their proper connection.
The following reflections will aid the student:
(1) In the first place
we must remember the marvellous heighth and depth and breadth of Christ’s
intellect as it appears in the Synoptists as well as in John. He commanded the
whole domain of religious and moral truth; he spake as never man spake, and the
people were astonished at his teaching (<scripRef passage =
"Matt. 7:28, 29">Matt.
7:28, 29</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Mark 1:22;
6:2">Mark 1:22; 6:2</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Luke
4:32">Luke 4:32</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "John
7:46">John 7:46</scripRef>). He addressed not only his own generation, but
through it all ages and classes of men. No wonder that his hearers often
misunderstood him. The Synoptists give examples of such misunderstanding as
well as John (comp. <scripRef passage = "Mark 8:16">Mark 8:16</scripRef>). But who will set limits to his power and
paedagogic wisdom in the matter and form of his teaching? Must he not necessarily have varied his
style when he addressed the common people in Galilee, as in the Synoptists, and
the educated, proud, hierarchy of Jerusalem, as in John? Or when he spoke on the mountain,
inviting the multitude to the Messianic Kingdom at the opening of his ministry,
and when he took farewell from his disciples in the chamber, in view of the
great sacrifice? Socrates appears
very different in Xenophon and in Plato, yet we can see him in both. But here
is a far greater than Socrates.1055
(2) John’s mind, at a
period when it was most pliable and plastic, had been so conformed to the mind
of Christ that his own thoughts and words faithfully reflected the teaching of
his Master. If there ever was spiritual sympathy and congeniality between two
minds, it was between Jesus and the disciple whom he loved and whom he intrusted
with the care of his mother. John stood nearer to his Lord than any Christian
or any of the Synoptists. "Why should not John have been formed upon the
model of Jesus rather than the Jesus of his Gospel be the reflected image of
himself? Surely it may be left to
all candid minds to say whether, to adopt only the lowest supposition, the
creative intellect of Jesus was not far more likely to mould His disciple to a
conformity with itself, than the receptive spirit of the disciple to give birth
by its own efforts to that conception of a Redeemer which so infinitely
surpasses the loftiest image of man’s own creation."1056
(3) John reproduced the
discourses from the fulness of the spirit of Christ that dwelt in him, and
therefore without any departure from the ideas. The whole gospel history
assumes that Christ did not finish, but only began his work while on earth,
that he carries it on in heaven through his chosen organs, to whom he promised
mouth and wisdom (<scripRef passage = "Luke 21:15">Luke 21:15</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Matt.
10:19">Matt. 10:19</scripRef>) and his constant presence (<scripRef
passage = "Matt. 19:20; 28:20">Matt. 19:20; 28:20</scripRef>). The disciples became more and more convinced
of the superhuman character of Christ by the irresistible logic of fact and
thought. His earthly life appeared to them as a transient state of humiliation
which was preceded by a pre-existent state of glory with the Father, as it was
followed by a permanent state of glory after the resurrection and ascension to
heaven. He withheld from them "many things" because they could not
bear them before his glorification (<scripRef passage =
"John 16:12">John
16:12</scripRef>). "What I do," he said to Peter,
"thou knowest not now, but thou shalt come to know hereafter" (<scripRef
passage = "John 13:7">13:7</scripRef>). Some of his deepest sayings, which they had at first misunderstood,
were illuminated by the resurrection (<scripRef passage =
"John 2:22; 12:16">2:22; 12:16</scripRef>), and then by the outpouring of the Spirit, who
took things out of the fulness of Christ and declared them to the disciples (<scripRef
passage = "John 16:13, 14">16:13, 14</scripRef>). Hence the farewell discourses are so full of the Promises of the
Spirit of truth who would glorify Christ in their hearts. Under such guidance
we may be perfectly sure of the substantial faithfulness of John’s record.
(4) Beneath the surface
of the similarity there is a considerable difference between the language of
Christ and the language of his disciple. John never attributes to Christ the
designation Logos, which he uses so prominently in the Prologue and the first
Epistle. This is very significant, and shows his conscientious care. He
distinguished his own theology from the teaching of his Master, no matter
whether he borrowed the term Logos from Philo (which cannot be proven), or
coined it himself from his reflections on Old Testament distinctions between
the hidden and the revealed God and Christ’s own testimonies concerning his
relation to the Father. The first Epistle of John is an echo of his Gospel, but
with original matter of his own and Polemical references to the anti-Christian
errors of big day. "The phrases of the Gospel," says Westcott,
"have a definite historic connection: they belong to circumstances which
explain them. The phrases in the Epistle are in part generalizations, and in
part interpretations of the earlier language in view of Christ’s completed work
and of the experience of the Christian church."
As to the speeches of
the Baptist, in the fourth Gospel, they keep, as the same writer remarks,
strictly within the limits suggested by the Old Testament. "What he says
spontaneously of Christ is summed up in the two figures of the ’Lamb’ and the
’Bridegroom,’ which together give a comprehensive view of the suffering and
joy, the redemptive and the completive work of Messiah under prophetic imagery.
Both figures appear again in the Apocalypse; but it is very significant that
they do not occur in the Lord’s teaching in the fourth Gospel or in St. John’s
Epistles."
(5) There are not
wanting striking resemblances in thought and style between the discourses in
John and in the Synoptists, especially Matthew, which are sufficient to refute
the assertion that the two types of teaching are irreconcilable.1057 The
Synoptists were not quite unfamiliar with the other type of teaching. They
occasionally rise to the spiritual height of John and record briefer sayings of
Jesus which could be inserted without a discord in his Gospel. Take the prayer
of thanksgiving and the touching invitation to all that labor and are heavy
laden, in <scripRef passage = "Matt. 11:25–30">Matt. 11:25–30</scripRef>. The sublime declaration recorded by <scripRef
passage = "Luke 10:22">Luke 10:22</scripRef> and <scripRef passage =
"Matthew 11:27">Matthew
11:27</scripRef>: "No one knoweth the Son, save the Father;
neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son
willeth to reveal him," is thoroughly Christ-like according to John’s
conception, and is the basis of his own declaration in the prologue: "No
man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of
the Father, he hath declared him"(<scripRef passage =
"John 1:18">John
1:18</scripRef>). Jesus makes no higher claim in John than he
does in Matthew when he proclaims: "All authority hath been given unto me
in heaven and on earth" (<scripRef passage = "Matt.
28:18">Matt. 28:18</scripRef>). In almost the same words Jesus says in John <scripRef
passage = "17:2">17:2</scripRef>: "Thou hast given him power over all
flesh."
On the other hand, John
gives us not a few specimens of those short, pithy maxims of oriental wisdom
which characterize the Synoptic discourses.1058
The Style of the Gospel of John.
The style of the fourth
Gospel differs widely from the ecclesiastical writers of the second century,
and belongs to the apostolic age. It has none of the technical theological
terms of post-apostolic controversies, no allusions to the state of the church,
its government and worship, but moves in the atmosphere of the first Christian
generation; yet differs widely from the style of the Synoptists and is
altogether unique in the history of secular and religious literature, a fit
expression of the genius of John: clear and deep, simple as a child, and mature
as a saint, sad and yet serene, and basking in the sunshine of eternal life and
love. The fourth Gospel is pure Greek in vocabulary and grammar, but thoroughly
Hebrew in temper and spirit, even more so than any other book, and can be
almost literally translated into Hebrew without losing its force or beauty. It
has the childlike simplicity, the artlessness, the imaginativeness, the
directness, the circumstantiality, and the rhythmical parallelism which
characterize the writings of the Old Testament. The sentences are short and
weighty, coordinated, not subordinated. The construction is exceedingly simple:
no involved periods, no connecting links, no logical argumentation, but a
succession of self-evident truths declared as from immediate intuition. The
parallelism of Hebrew poetry is very apparent in such double sentences as:
"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you;" "A servant
is not greater than his lord; neither one that is sent greater than he that
sent him;" "All things were made by him, and without him was not
anything made that hath been made."
Examples of antithetic parallelism are also frequent: "The light
shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not;" "He
was in the world, and the world knew him not;" "He confessed, and
denied not;" "I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never
perish."
The author has a limited
vocabulary, but loves emphatic repetition, and his very monotony is solemn and
impressive. He uses certain key-words of the profoundest import, as Word, life,
light, truth, love, glory, testimony, name, sign, work, to know, to behold, to
believe. These are not abstract conceptions but concrete realities. He views
the world under comprehensive contrasts, as life and death, light and darkness,
truth and falsehood, love and hatred, God and the devil, and (in the first
Epistle) Christ and Antichrist.
He avoids the optative,
and all argumentative particles, but uses very frequently the simple particles <foreign
lang="el">kaiv, dev, ou|n, i{na</foreign>. His
most characteristic particle in the narrative portions is "therefore"
(<foreign
lang="el">ou|n¼, which i" with him not
syllogistic »like a[ra</foreign> and its compounds), but indicative simply of
continuation and retrospect (like "so" and "then" or the
German "nun"), yet with the
idea that nothing happens without a cause; while the particle "in order
that" (<foreign lang="el">i{na</foreign>) indicates that nothing happens without a
purpose. He avoids the relative pronoun and prefers the connecting
"and" with the repetition of the noun, as "In the beginning was
the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God .... In him
was life, and the life was the light of men." The "and" sometimes takes the place of
"but," as "The light shineth in the darkness, and the
darkness comprehended it not" (<scripRef passage =
"John 1:5">John
1:5</scripRef>).
We look in vain for such
important words as church, gospel, repentance (<foreign
lang="el">metavnoia</foreign>), but the substance is there in different forms.
He does not even use the noun "faith" (<foreign
lang="el">pivsti"</foreign>), which frequently occurs in the Synoptists and
in Paul, but he uses the verb "to believe" (<foreign
lang="el">pisteuvein</foreign>) ninety-eight times, about twice as often as all
three Synoptists together.
He applies the
significant term Logos (ratio and oratio) to Christ as the
Revealer and the Interpreter of God (1:18), but only in the Prologue, and such
figurative designations as "the Light of the world," "the Bread
of life," "the Good Shepherd," "the Vine," "the
Way," "the Truth," and "the Life." He alone uses the double
"Verily" in the discourses of the Saviour. He calls the Holy Spirit
the "Paraclete" or "Advocate" of believers, who pleads
their cause here on earth, as Christ pleads it on the throne in heaven. There
breathes through this book an air of calmness and serenity, of peace and repose,
that seems to come from the eternal mansions of heaven.1059
Is such a style
compatible with the hypothesis of a post- and pseudo-apostolic fiction? We have a large number of fictitious
Gospels, but they differ as much from the fourth canonical Gospel as midnight
darkness from noonday brightness.
Authorship.
For nearly eighteen
centuries the Christian church of all denominations has enjoyed the fourth
Gospel without a shadow of doubt that it was the work of John the Apostle. But
in the nineteenth century the citadel was assailed with increasing force, and
the conflict between the besiegers and defenders is still raging among scholars
of the highest ability. It is a question of life and death between constructive
and destructive criticism. The vindication of the fourth Gospel as a genuine
product of John, the beloved disciple, is the death-blow of the mythical and
legendary reconstruction and destruction of the life of Christ and the
apostolic history. The ultimate result cannot be doubtful. The opponents have
been forced gradually to retreat from the year 170 to the very beginning of the
second century, as the time when the fourth Gospel was already known and used
in the church, that is to the lifetime of many pupils and friends of John and
other eye-witnesses of the life of Christ.1060
I. The External Proof of the Johannean
authorship is as strong, yea stronger than that of the genuineness of any
classical writer of antiquity, and goes up to the very beginning of the second
century, within hailing distance of the living John. It includes catholic
writers, heretics, and heathen enemies. There is but one dissenting voice,
hardly audible, that of the insignificant sect of the Alogi who opposed the
Johannean doctrine of the Logos (hence their name, with the double meaning of
unreasonable, and anti-Logos heretics) and absurdly ascribed both the Gospel of
John and the Apocalypse to his enemy, the Gnostic Cerinthus.1061 Let
us briefly sum up the chief testimonies.
1. Catholic testimonies. We begin at
the fourth century and gradually rise up to the age of John. All the ancient
Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, including the Sinaitic and the Vatican,
which date from the age of Constantine and are based upon older copies of the
second century, and all the ancient versions, including the Syriac and old
Latin from the third and second centuries, contain without exception the Gospel
of John, though the Peshito omits his second and third Epistles and the
Apocalypse. These manuscripts and versions represent the universal voice of the
churches.
Then we have the
admitted individual testimonies of all the Greek and Latin fathers up to the
middle of the second century, without a dissenting voice or doubt: Jerome (d.
419) and Eusebius (d. 340), who had the whole ante-Nicene literature before
them; Origen in Egypt (d. 254), the greatest scholar of his age and a
commentator on John; Tertullian of North Africa (about 200), a Catholic in
doctrine, a Montanist in discipline, and a zealous advocate of the dispensation
of the Paraclete announced by John; Clement of Alexandria (about 190), a
cultivated philosopher who had travelled in Greece, Italy, Syria, and
Palestine, seeking religious instruction everywhere; Irenaeus, a native of Asia
Minor and from 178 bishop of Lyons, a pupil of Polycarp and a grand-pupil of
John himself, who derived his chief ammunition against the Gnostic heresy from
the fourth Gospel, and represents the four canonical Gospels—no more and no
less—as universally accepted by the churches of his time; Theophilus of Antioch
(180), who expressly quotes from the fourth Gospel under the name of John;1062 the Muratorian Canon (170), which reports the
occasion of the composition of John’s Gospel by urgent request of his friends
and disciples; Tatian of Syria (155–170), who in his "Address to the
Greeks" repeatedly quotes the fourth Gospel, though without naming the
author, and who began his, "Diatessaron"—once widely spread in the
church notwithstanding the somewhat Gnostic leanings of the author, and
commented on by Ephraem of Syria—with the prologue of John.1063
From him we have but one step to his teacher, Justin Martyr, a native of
Palestine (103–166), and a bold and noble-minded defender of the faith in the
reigns of Hadrian and the Antonines. In his two Apologies and his Dialogue with
Trypho the Jew, he often quotes freely from the four Gospels under the name of
Apostolic "Memoirs" or "Memorabilia of the Apostles," which
were read at his time in public, worship.1064 He made most use of Matthew, but once
at least he quotes a passage on regeneration1065
from Christ’s dialogue with Nicodemus which is recorded only by John. Several
other allusions of Justin to John are unmistakable, and his whole doctrine of
the pre-existent Logos who sowed precious seeds of truth among Jews and
Gentiles before his incarnation, is unquestionably derived from John. To
reverse the case is to derive the sunlight from the moon, or the fountain from
one of its streams.
But we can go still
farther back. The scanty writings of the Apostolic Fathers, so called, have
very few allusions to the New Testament, and breathe the atmosphere of the
primitive oral tradition. The author of the "Didache" was well
acquainted with Matthew. The first Epistle of Clement has strong affinity with
Paul. The shorter Epistles of Ignatius show the influence of John’s
Christology.1066
Polycarp (d. a.d. 155 in
extreme old age), a personal pupil of John, used the First Epistle of John, and
thus furnishes an indirect testimony to the Gospel, since both these ’books
must stand or fall together.1067 The same is true of Papias (died about
150), who studied with Polycarp, and probably was likewise a bearer of John. He
"used testimonies from the former Epistle of John."1068 In
enumerating the apostles whose living words he collected in his youth, he
places John out of his regular order of precedence, along with Matthew, his
fellow-Evangelist, and "Andrew, Peter, and Philip" in the same order
as <scripRef
passage = "John 1:40–43">John 1:40–43</scripRef>; from which it has also been inferred that he
knew the fourth Gospel. There is some reason to suppose that the disputed
section on the woman taken in adultery was recorded by him in illustration of <scripRef
passage = "John 8:15">John 8:15</scripRef>; for, according to Eusebius, he mentioned a similar story in his lost
work.1069
These facts combined, make it at least extremely probable that Papias
was familiar with John.1070 The joint testimony of Polycarp and
Papias represents the school of John in the very field of his later labors, and
the succession was continued through Polycrates at Ephesus, through Melito at
Sardis, through Claudius Apollinaris at Hieropolis, and Pothinus and Irenaeus
in Southern Gaul. It is simply incredible that a spurious Gospel should have
been smuggled into the churches under the name of their revered spiritual
father and grandfather.
Finally, the concluding
verse of the appendix, <scripRef passage = "John 21:24">John 21:24</scripRef>, is a still older testimony of a number of
personal friends and pupils of John, perhaps the very persons who, according to
ancient tradition, urged him to write the Gospel. The book probably closed with
the sentence: "This is the disciple who beareth witness of these things,
and wrote these things." To
this the elders add their attestation in the plural: "And we know that
his witness is true." A
literary fiction would not have been benefited by an anonymous postscript. The
words as they, stand are either a false testimony of the pseudo-John, or the
true testimony of the friends of the real John who first received his book and
published it before or after his death.
The voice of the whole
Catholic church, so far as it is heard, on the subject at all, is in favor of
the authorship of John. There is not a shadow of proof to the contrary opinion
except one, and that is purely negative and inconclusive. Baur to the very last
laid the greatest stress on the entangled paschal controversy of the second
century as a proof that John could not have written the fourth Gospel because
he was quoted as an authority for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper on the
14th of Nisan; while the fourth Gospel, in flat contradiction to the
Synoptists, puts the crucifixion on that day (instead of the 15th), and
represents Christ as the true paschal lamb slain at the very time when the
typical Jewish passover was slain. But, in the first place, some of the ablest
scholars know how to reconcile John with the Synoptic date of the crucifixion
on the 15th of Nisan; and, secondly, there is no evidence at all that the
apostle John celebrated Easter with the Quartodecimans on the 14th of Nisan in
commemoration of the day of the Lord’s Supper. The controversy was between
conforming the celebration of the Christian Passover to the day of the month,
that is to Jewish chronology, or to the day of the week on which Christ
died. The former would have made Easter, more conveniently, a fixed festival
like the Jewish Passover, the latter or Roman practice made it a movable feast,
and this practice triumphed at the Council of Nicaea.1071
2. Heretical testimonies. They all the more important in view
of their dissent from Catholic doctrine. It is remarkable that the heretics
seem to have used and commented on the fourth Gospel even before the Catholic
writers. The Clementine Homilies, besides several allusions, very clearly quote
from the story of the man born blind, <scripRef passage =
"John 9:2, 3">John
9:2, 3</scripRef>.1072 The Gnostics of the second century,
especially the Valentinians and Basilidians, made abundant use of the fourth
Gospel, which alternately offended them by its historical realism, and
attracted them by its idealism and mysticism. Heracleon, a pupil of Valentinus,
wrote a commentary on it, of which Origen has preserved large extracts;
Valentinus himself (according to Tertullian) tried either to explain it away,
or he put his own meaning into it. Basilides, who flourished about a.d. 125, quoted from the Gospel of John
such passages as the "true light, which enlighteneth every man was coming
into the world" (<scripRef passage = "John 1:9">John 1:9</scripRef>), and, my hour is not yet come "(<scripRef
passage = "John 2:4">2:4</scripRef>).1073
These heretical
testimonies are almost decisive by themselves. The Gnostics would rather have
rejected the fourth Gospel altogether, as Marcion actually did, from doctrinal
objection. They certainly would not have received it from the Catholic church,
as little as the church would have received it from the Gnostics. The
concurrent reception of the Gospel by both at so early a date is conclusive
evidence of its genuineness. "The Gnostics of that date," says Dr.
Abbot,1074 "received it because they could not help
it. They would not have admitted the authority of a book which could be
reconciled with their doctrines only by the most forced interpretation, if they
could have destroyed its authority by denying its genuineness. Its genuineness could
then be easily ascertained. Ephesus was one of the principal cities of the
Eastern world, the centre of extensive commerce, the metropolis of Asia Minor.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of people were living who had known the apostle
John. The question whether he, the beloved disciple, had committed to writing
his recollections of his Master’s life and teaching, was one of the greatest
interest. The fact of the reception of the fourth Gospel as his work at so
early a date, by parties so violently opposed to each other, proves that the
evidence of its genuineness was decisive. This argument is further confirmed by
the use of the Gospel by the opposing parties in the later Montanistic
controversy, and in the disputes about the time of celebrating Easter."
3. Heathen testimony. Celsus, in his book against
Christianity, which was written about a.d.
178 (according to Keim, who reconstructed it from the fragments preserved in
the refutation of Origen), derives his matter for attack from the four Gospels,
though he does not name their authors, and he refers to several details which
are peculiar to John, as, among others, the blood which flowed from the body of
Jesus at his crucifixion (<scripRef passage = "John 19:34">John 19:34</scripRef>), and the fact that Christ "after his death
arose and showed the marks of his punishment, and how his hands had been
pierced" (<scripRef passage = "John 20:25, 27">20:25, 27</scripRef>).1075
The radical assertion of
Baur that no distinct trace of the fourth Gospel can be found before the last
quarter of the second century has utterly broken down, and his own best pupils have
been forced to make one concession after another as the successive discoveries
of the many Gnostic quotations in the Philosophumena, the last book of the
pseudo-Clementine Homilies, the Syrian Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron,
revealed the stubborn fact of the use and abuse of the Gospel before the middle
and up to the very beginning of the second century, that is, to a time when it
was simply impossible to mistake a pseudo-apostolic fiction for a genuine
production of the patriarch of the apostolic age.
II. Internal Evidence. This is even still
stronger, and leaves at last no alternative but truth or fraud.
1. To begin with the style
of the fourth Gospel, we have already seen that it is altogether unique and
without a parallel in post-apostolic literature, betraying a Hebrew of the
Hebrews, impregnated with the genius of the Old Testament, in mode of thought
and expression, in imagery and symbolism, in the symmetrical structure of
sentences, in the simplicity and circumstantiality of narration; yet familiar
with pure Greek, from long residence among Greeks. This is just what we should
expect from John at Ephesus. Though not a rabbinical scholar, like Paul, he was
acquainted with the Hebrew Scriptures and not dependent on the Septuagint. He
has in all fourteen quotations from the Old Testament.1076
Four of these agree with the Hebrew and the Septuagint; three agree
with the Hebrew against the Septuagint (<scripRef passage =
"John 6:45; 13:18 19:37">6:45; 13:18 19:37</scripRef>), the rest are neutral, either agreeing with
both or differing from both, or being free adaptations rather than citations;
but none of them agrees with the Septuagint against the Hebrew.1077
Among the post-apostolic
writers there is no converted Jew, unless it be Hegesippus; none who could read
the Hebrew and write Hebraistic Greek. After the destruction of Jerusalem the
church finally separated from the synagogue and both assumed an attitude of
uncompromising hostility.
2. The author was a Jew
of Palestine. He gives, incidentally and without effort, unmistakable
evidence of minute familiarity with the Holy Land and its inhabitants before
the destruction of Jerusalem. He is at home in the localities of the holy city
and the neighborhood. He describes Bethesda as "a pool by the sheep gate,
having five porches" (<scripRef passage = "John 5:2">5:2</scripRef>), Siloam as "a pool which is by
interpretation Sent" (<scripRef passage = "John 9:7">9:7</scripRef>), Solomon’s porch as being "in the
Temple" (<scripRef passage = "John 10:23">10:23</scripRef>), the brook Kedron "where was a
garden" (<scripRef passage = "John 18:1">18:1</scripRef>); he knows the location of the praetorium (<scripRef
passage = "John 18:28">18:28</scripRef>), the meaning of Gabbatha (<scripRef passage =
"John 19:13">19:13</scripRef>), and Golgotha (<scripRef passage =
"John 19:17">19:17</scripRef>), the distance of Bethany from Jerusalem
"about fifteen furlongs off" (<scripRef passage =
"John 11:18">11:18</scripRef>), and he distinguishes it from Bethany beyond
Jordan (<scripRef
passage = "John 1:28">1:28</scripRef>). He gives the date when the Herodian reconstruction of the temple began
(<scripRef
passage = "John 2:19">2:19</scripRef>). He is equally familiar with other parts of Palestine and makes no
mistakes such as are so often made by foreigners. He locates Cana in Galilee (<scripRef
passage = "John 2:1; 4:26 21:2">2:1; 4:26 21:2</scripRef>), to distinguish it from another Cana; Aenon
"near to Salim" where there are "many waters" (<scripRef
passage = "John 3:23">3:23</scripRef>); Sychar in Samaria near "Jacob’s, well," and in view of Mount
Gerizim (<scripRef
passage = "John 4:5">4:5</scripRef>). He knows the extent of the Lake of Tiberias (<scripRef
passage = "John 6:19">6:19</scripRef>); he describes Bethsaida as "the city of Andrew and Peter" (<scripRef
passage = "John 1:44">1:44</scripRef>), as distinct from Bethsaida Julias on the eastern bank of the Jordan;
he represents Nazareth as a place of proverbial insignificance (<scripRef
passage = "John 1:46">1:46</scripRef>).
He is well acquainted
with the confused politico-ecclesiastical Messianic ideas and expectations of
the Jews (<scripRef passage = "John 1:19–28, 45–49; 4:25; 6:14, 15
7:26; 12:34">1:19–28,
45–49; 4:25; 6:14, 15 7:26; 12:34</scripRef>, and other passages); with the hostility between
Jews and Samaritans (<scripRef passage = "John 4:9, 20, 22
8:48">4:9, 20, 22
8:48</scripRef>); with Jewish usages and observances, as baptism
(<scripRef
passage = "John 1:25; 3:22, 23 4:2">1:25; 3:22, 23 4:2</scripRef>), purification (<scripRef passage =
"John 2:6; 3:25">2:6;
3:25</scripRef>, etc.), ceremonial pollution (<scripRef
passage = "John 18:28">18:28</scripRef>), feasts (<scripRef passage = "John 2:13, 23; 5:1
7:37">2:13, 23; 5:1
7:37</scripRef>, etc.), circumcision, and the Sabbath (<scripRef
passage = "John 7:22, 23">7:22, 23</scripRef>). He is also acquainted with the marriage and burial rites (<scripRef
passage = "John 2:1–10; 11:17–44">2:1–10; 11:17–44</scripRef>), with the character of the Pharisees and their
influence in the Sanhedrin, the relationship between Annas and Caiaphas. The
objection of Bretschneider that he represents the office of the high-priest as
an annual office arose from a misunderstanding of the phrase "that
year" (<scripRef passage = "John 11:49, 51
18:13">11:49, 51
18:13</scripRef>), by which he means that memorable year in which Christ died for the sins of the
people.
3. The author was an eye-witness
of most of the events narrated. This appears from his life-like familiarity
with the acting persons, the Baptist, Peter, Andrew, Philip, Nathanael, Thomas,
Judas Iscariot, Pilate, Caiaphas, Annas, Nicodemus, Martha and Mary, Mary
Magdalene, the woman of Samaria, the man born blind; and from the minute traits
and vivid details which betray autopticity. He incidentally notices what the
Synoptists omit, that the traitor was "the son of Simon" ( <scripRef
passage = "John 6:71; 12:4; 13:2, 26">6:71; 12:4; 13:2, 26</scripRef> at Thomas was called "Didymus" (<scripRef
passage = "John 11:16; 20:24 21:2">11:16; 20:24 21:2</scripRef>); while, on the other hand, he calls the Baptist
simply "John" ( he himself being the other John), without adding to
it the distinctive title as the Synoptists do more than a dozen times to
distinguish him from the son of Zebedee.1078 He indicates the days and hours of
certain events,1079
and the exact or approximate number of persons and objects mentioned.1080 He
was privy to the thoughts of the disciples on certain occasions, their
ignorance and misunderstanding of the words of the Master,1081 and even to the motives and feelings of the
Lord.1082
No literary artist could
have invented the conversation of Christ with Nicodemus on the mystery of
spiritual regeneration (<scripRef passage = "John 3">John 3</scripRef>), or the conversation with the woman of Samaria
(<scripRef
passage = "John 4">John 4</scripRef>), or the characteristic details of the catechization of the man born
blind, which brings out so naturally the proud and heartless bigotry of the
Jewish hierarchy and the rough, outspoken honesty and common sense of the blind
man and his parents (<scripRef passage = "John 9:13–34">9:13–34</scripRef>). The scene at Jacob’s well, described in John
4, presents a most graphic, and yet unartificial picture of nature and human
life as it still remains, though in decay, at the foot of Gerizim and Ebal:
there is the well of Jacob in a fertile, well-watered valley, there the
Samaritan sanctuary on the top of Mount Gerizim, there the waving grain-fields
ripening for the harvest; we are confronted with the historic antagonism of
Jews and Samaritans which survives in the Nablus of to-day; there we see the
genuine humanity of Jesus, as he sat down "wearied with his journey,"
though not weary of his work, his elevation above the rabbinical prejudice of
conversing with a woman, his superhuman knowledge and dignity; there is the
curiosity and quick-wittedness of the Samaritan Magdalene; and how natural is
the transition from the water of Jacob’s well to the water of life, and from
the hot dispute of the place of worship to the highest conception of God as an
omnipresent spirit, and his true worship in spirit and in truth.1083
4. The writer represents
himself expressly as an eye-witness of the life of Christ. He differs from
the Synoptists, who never use the first person nor mix their subjective
feelings with the narrative. "We beheld his glory," he says, in
the name of all the apostles and primitive disciples, in stating the general
impression made upon them by the incarnate Logos dwelling.1084 And
in the parallel passage of the first Epistle, which is an inseparable companion
of the fourth Gospel, he asserts with solemn emphasis his personal knowledge of
the incarnate Word of life whom he heard with his ears and saw with his eyes
and handled with his hands (<scripRef passage = "1 John 1:1–3">1 John 1:1–3</scripRef>). This assertion is general, and covers the
whole public life of our Lord. But he makes it also in particular a case of
special interest for the realness of Christ’s humanity; in recording the flow
of blood and water from the wounded side, he adds emphatically: "He that hath
seen hath borne witness, and his witness is true: and he knoweth that he
saith things that are true, that ye also may believe" (<scripRef
passage = "John 19:35">John 19:35</scripRef>). Here we are driven to the alternative: either
the writer was a true witness of what he relates, or he was a false witness who
wrote down a deliberate lie.
5. Finally, the writer
intimates that he is one of the Twelve, that he is one of the favorite
three, that he is not Peter, nor James, that he is none other than the beloved
John who leaned on the Master’s bosom. He never names himself, nor his brother
James, nor his mother Salome, but he has a very modest, delicate, and
altogether unique way of indirect self-designation. He stands behind his Gospel
like a mysterious figure with a thin veil over his face without ever lifting
the veil. He leaves the reader to infer the name by combination. He is
undoubtedly that unnamed disciple who, with Andrew, was led to Jesus by the
testimony of the Baptist on the banks of the Jordan (<scripRef passage =
"John 1:35–40">1:35–40</scripRef>), the disciple who at the last Supper "was
reclining at the table in Jesus’ bosom" (<scripRef passage =
"John 13:23–25">13:23–25</scripRef>), that "other disciple" who, with
Peter, followed Jesus into the court of the high-priest (<scripRef
passage = "John 18:15, 16">18:15, 16</scripRef>), who stood by the cross and was intrusted by the dying Lord with the
care of His mother (<scripRef passage = "John 19:26,
27">19:26, 27</scripRef>), and that "other disciple whom Jesus
loved," who went with Peter to the empty sepulchre on the resurrection
morning and was convinced of the great fact by the sight of the grave-cloths,
and the head-cover rolled up in a place by itself (<scripRef passage =
"John 20:2–8">20:2–8</scripRef>). All these narratives are interwoven with
autobiographic details. He calls himself "the disciple whom Jesus
loved," not from vanity (as has been most strangely asserted by some
critics), but in blessed and thankful remembrance of the infinite mercy of his
divine Master who thus fulfilled the prophecy of his name Johanan, i.e.,
Jehovah is gracious. In that peculiar love of his all-beloved Lord was summed
up for him the whole significance of his life.
With this mode of
self-designation corresponds the designation of members of his family: his
mother is probably meant by the unnamed "sister of the mother" of
Jesus, who stood by the cross (<scripRef passage = "John
19:25">John 19:25</scripRef>), for Salome was there, according to the
Synoptists, and John would hardly omit this fact; and in the list of the
disciples to whom Jesus appeared at the Lake of Galilee, "the sons of
Zebedee" are put last (<scripRef passage = "John 21:2">21:2</scripRef>), when yet in all the Synoptic lists of the
apostles they are, with Peter and Andrew, placed at the head of the Twelve.
This difference can only be explained from motives of delicacy and modesty.
What a contrast the
author presents to those pseudonymous literary forgers of the second and third
centuries, who unscrupulously put their writings into the mouth of the apostles
or other honored names to lend them a fictitious charm and authority; and yet
who cannot conceal the fraud which leaks out on every page.
Conclusion.
A review of this array
of testimonies, external and internal, drives us to the irresistible conclusion
that the fourth Gospel is the work of John, the apostle. This view is clear,
self-consistent, and in full harmony with the character of the book and the
whole history of the apostolic age; while the hypothesis of a literary fiction
and pious fraud is contradictory, absurd, and self-condemned. No writer in the
second century could have produced such a marvellous book, which towers high
above all the books of Justin Martyr and Irenaeus and Tertullian and Clement
and Origen, or any other father or schoolman or reformer. No writer in the
first century could have written it but an apostle, and no apostle but John,
and John himself could not have written it without divine inspiration.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="84" title="Critical Review of the
Johannean Problem">
§ 84. Critical Review of the Johannean Problem.
See the Liter. in § 40,
pp. 408 sqq., and the history of the controversy by Holtzmann, in Bunsen’s Bibelwerk, VIII. 56 sqq.; Reuss, Gesch. der heil. Schriften N.
T.’s (6th ed.), I. 248 sqq.; Godet,
Com. (3d ed.), I. 32 sqq.; Holtzmann,
Einleitung (2d ed.), 423 sqq.; Weiss,
Einleitung (1886), 609 sqq.
The importance of the
subject justifies a special Section on the opposition to the fourth Gospel,
after we have presented our own view on the subject with constant reference to
the recent objections.
The Problem Stated.
The Johannean problem is
the burning question of modern criticism on the soil of the New Testament. It
arises from the difference between John and the Synoptists on the one hand, and
the difference between the fourth Gospel and the Apocalypse on the other.
I. The Synoptic aspect
of the problem includes the differences between the first three Evangelists and
the fourth concerning the theatre and length of Christ’s ministry, the picture
of Christ, the nature and extent of his discourses, and a number of minor
details. It admits the following possibilities:
(1.) Both the Synoptists
and John are historical, and represent only different aspects of the same
person and work of Christ, supplementing and confirming each other in every
essential point. This is the faith of the Church and the conviction of nearly
all conservative critics and commentators.
(2.) The fourth Gospel
is the work of John, and, owing to his intimacy with Christ, it is more
accurate and reliable than the Synoptists, who contain some legendary
embellishments and even errors, derived from oral tradition, and must be
rectified by John. This is the view of Schleiermacher, Lücke, Bleek, Ewald,
Meyer, Weiss, and a considerable number of liberal critics and exegetes who yet
accept the substance of the whole gospel history as true, and Christ as the
Lord and Saviour of the race. The difference between these scholars and the
church tradition is not fundamental, and admits of adjustment.
(3.) The Synoptists
represent (in the main) the Christ of history, the fourth Gospel the ideal
Christ of faith and fiction. So Baur and the Tübingen school (Schwegler,
Zeller, Köstlin, Hilgenfeld, Volkmar, Holtzmann, , Hausrath, Schenkel, Mangold,
Keim, Thoma), with their followers and sympathizers in France (Nicolas,
d’Eichthal, Renan, Réville, Sabatier), Holland (Scholten and the Leyden
school), and England (the anonymous author of "Supernatural Religion,"
Sam. Davidson, Edwin A. Abbott). But these critics eliminate the miraculous
even from the Synoptic Christ, at least as far as possible, and approach the
fourth hypothesis.
(4.) The Synoptic and
Johannean Gospels are alike fictitious, and resolve themselves into myths and
legends or pious frauds. This is the position of the extreme left wing of
modern criticism represented chiefly by Strauss. It is the legitimate result of
the denial of the supernatural and miraculous, which is as inseparable from the
Synoptic as it is from the Johannean Christ; but it is also subversive of all
history and cannot be seriously maintained in the face of overwhelming facts
and results. Hence there has been a considerable reaction among the radical
critics in favor of a more historical position. Keim’s, "History of Jesus
of Nazara" is a very great advance upon Strauss’s "Leben Jesu,"
though equally critical and more learned, and meets the orthodox view half way
on the ground of the Synoptic tradition, as represented in the Gospel of Matthew,
which he dates back to a.d. 66.
II. The Apocalyptic
aspect of the Johannean problem belongs properly to the consideration of the
Apocalypse, but it has of late been inseparably interwoven with the Gospel
question. It admits likewise of four distinct views:
(1.) The fourth Gospel
and the Apocalypse are both from the pen of the apostle John, but separated by
the nature of the subject, the condition of the writer, and an interval of at
least twenty or thirty years, to account for the striking differences of temper
and style. When he met Paul at Jerusalem, a.d.
50, he was one of the three "pillar-apostles" of Jewish Christianity
(Gal. 2:9), but probably less than forty years of age, remarkably silent with
his reserved force, and sufficiently in sympathy with Paul to give him the
right hand of fellowship; when he wrote the Apocalypse, between a.d. 68
and 70, he was not yet sixty, and when he wrote the Gospel he was over eighty
years of age. Moreover, the differences between the two books are more than
counterbalanced by an underlying harmony. This has been acknowledged even by
the head of the Tübingen critics, who calls the fourth Gospel an Apocalypse
spiritualized or a transfiguration of the Apocalypse.1085
(2.) John wrote the
Gospel, but not the Apocalypse. Many critics of the moderate school are
disposed to surrender the Apocalypse and to assign it to the somewhat doubtful
and mysterious "Presbyter John," a contemporary of the Apostle John.
So Schleiermacher, Lücke, Bleek, Neander, Ewald, Düsterdieck, etc. If we are to
choose between the two books, the Gospel has no doubt stronger claims upon our
acceptance.
(3.) John wrote the
Apocalypse, but for this very reason he cannot have written the fourth Gospel.
So Baur, Renan, Davidson, Abbott, and nearly all the radical critics (except
Keim).
(4.) The fourth Gospel
and the Apocalypse are both spurious and the work of the Gnostic Cerinthus (as
the Alogi held), or of some anonymous forger. This view is so preposterous and
unsound that no critic of any reputation for learning and judgment dares to
defend it.
There is a
correspondence between the four possible attitudes on both aspects of the
Johannean question, and the parties advocating them.
The result of the
conflict will be the substantial triumph of the faith of the church which
accepts, on new grounds of evidence, all the four Gospels as genuine and
historical, and the Apocalypse and the fourth Gospel as the works of John.
The Assaults on the Fourth Gospel.
Criticism has completely
shifted its attitude on both parts of the problem. The change is very
remarkable. When the first serious assault was made upon the genuineness of the
fourth Gospel by the learned General Superintendent Bretschneider (in 1820), he
was met with such overwhelming opposition, not only from evangelical divines
like Olshausen and Tholuck, but also from Schleiermacher, Lücke, Credner, and
Schott, that he honestly confessed his defeat a few years afterward (1824 and
1828).1086 And
when Dr. Strauss, in his Leben Jesu (1835), renewed the denial, a host of old and
new defenders arose with such powerful arguments that he himself (as he
confessed in the third edition of 1838) was shaken in his doubt, especially by
the weight and candor of Neander, although he felt compelled, in self-defence,
to reaffirm his doubt as essential to the mythical hypothesis (in the fourth
edition, 1840, and afterward in his popular Leben Jesu, 1864).
But in the meantime his
teacher, Dr. Baur, the coryphaeus of the Tübingen school, was preparing his
heavy ammunition, and led the second, the boldest, the most vigorous and
effective assault upon the Johannean fort (since 1844).1087 He
was followed in the main question, though with considerable modifications in
detail, by a number of able and acute critics in Germany and other countries.
He represented the fourth Gospel as a purely ideal work which grew out of the
Gnostic, Montanistic, and paschal controversies after the middle of the second
century, and adjusted the various elements of the Catholic faith with
consummate skill and art. It was not intended to be a history, but a system of
theology in the garb of history. This "tendency" hypothesis was
virtually a death-blow to the mythical theory of Strauss, which excludes
conscious design.
The third great assault
inspired by Baur, yet with independent learning and judgment, was made by Dr.
Keim (in his Geschichte Jesu von Nazara, 1867). He went beyond Baur in one point: he
denied the whole tradition of John’s sojourn in Ephesus as a mistake of
Irenaeus; he thus removed even the foundation for the defence of the Apocalypse
as a Johannean production, and neutralized the force of the Tübingen assault
derived from that book. On the other hand, he approached the traditional view
by tracing the composition back from 170 (Baur) to the reign of Trajan, i.e., to within a few years after the death of the
apostle. In his denial of the Ephesus tradition he met with little favor,1088 but strong opposition from the Tübingen critics,
who see the fatal bearing of this denial upon the genuineness of the
Apocalypse.1089 The
effect of Keim’s movement therefore tended rather to divide and demoralize the
besieging force.
Nevertheless the effect
of these persistent attacks was so great that three eminent scholars, Hase of
Jena (1876), Reuss of Strassburg, and Sabatier of Paris (1879), deserted from
the camp of the defenders to the army of the besiegers. Renan, too, who had in
the thirteenth edition of his Vie de Jesus (1867) defended the fourth Gospel at least in part, has now (since 1879,
in his L’Église chrétienne)
given it up entirely.1090
The Defence of the Fourth Gospel.
The incisive criticism
of Baur and his school compelled a thorough reinvestigation of the whole
problem, and in this way has been of very great service to the cause of truth.
We owe to it the ablest defences of the Johannean authorship of the fourth
Gospel and the precious history which it represents. Prominent among these
defenders against the latest attacks were Bleek, Lange, Ebrard, Thiersch,
Schneider, Tischendorf, Riggenbach, Ewald, Steitz, Aberle, Meyer, Luthardt,
Wieseler, Beyschlag, Weiss, among the Germans; Godet, Pressensé, Astié, among
the French; Niermeyer, Van Oosterzee, Hofstede de Groot, among the Dutch;
Alford, Milligan, Lightfoot, Westcott, Sanday, Plummer, among the English;
Fisher, and Abbot among the Americans.1091
It is significant that
the school of negative criticism has produced no learned commentary on John.
All the recent commentators on the fourth Gospel (Lücke, Ewald, Lange,
Hengstenberg, Luthardt, Meyer, Weiss, Alford, Wordsworth, Godet, Westcott,
Milligan , Moulton, Plummer, etc.) favor its genuineness.
The Difficulties of the Anti-Johannean Theory.
The prevailing theory of
the negative critics is this: They accept the Synoptic Gospels, with the
exception of the miracles, as genuine history, but for this very reason they
reject John; and they accept the Apocalypse as the genuine work of the apostle
John, who is represented by the Synoptists as a Son of Thunder, and by Paul (<scripRef
passage = "Gal. 2">Gal. 2</scripRef>) as one of the three pillars of conservative Jewish Christianity, but
for this very reason they deny that he can have written the Gospel, which in
style and spirit differs so widely from the Apocalypse. For this position they
appeal to the fact that the Synoptists and the Apocalypse are equally well, and
even better supported by internal and external evidence, and represent a
tradition which is at least twenty years older.
But what then becomes of
the fourth Gospel? It is
incredible that the real John should have falsified the history of his Master;
consequently the Gospel which bears his name is a post-apostolic fiction, a
religious poem, or a romance on the theme of the incarnate Logos. It is the
Gospel of Christian Gnosticism, strongly influenced by the Alexandrian
philosophy of Philo. Yet it is no fraud any more than other literary fictions.
The unknown author dealt with the historical Jesus of the Synoptists, as Plato
dealt with Socrates, making him simply the base for his own sublime
speculations, and putting speeches into his mouth which he never uttered.
Who was that Christian
Plato? No critic can tell, or even
conjecture, except Renan, who revived, as possible at least, the absurd view of
the Alogi, that the Gnostic heretic, Cerinthus the enemy of John, wrote the
fourth Gospel1092
Such a conjecture requires an extraordinary stretch of imagination and
an amazing amount of credulity. The more sober among the critics suppose that
the author was a highly gifted Ephesian disciple of John, who freely reproduced
and modified his oral teaching after he was removed by death. But how could his
name be utterly unknown, when the names of Polycarp and Papias and other
disciples of John, far less important, have come down to as? "The great unknown" is a
mystery indeed. Some critics, half in sympathy with Tübingen, are willing to
admit that John himself wrote a part of the book, either the historic
narratives or the discourses, but neither of these compromises will do: the
book is a unit, and is either wholly genuine or wholly a fiction.
Nor are the negative
critics agreed as to the time of composition. Under the increasing pressure of
argument and evidence they have been forced to retreat, step by step, from the
last quarter of the second century to the first, even within a few years of
John’s death, and within the lifetime of hundreds of his hearers, when it was
impossible for a pseudo-Johannean book to pass into general currency without
the discovery of the fraud. Dr. Baur and Schwegler assigned the composition to a.d. 170 or 160; Volkmar to 155; Zeller
to 150; Scholten to 140; Hilgenfeld to about 130; Renan to about 125; Schenkel
to 120 or 115; until Keim (in 1867) went up as high as 110 or even 100, but
having reached such an early date, he felt compelled (1875)1093 in self-defence to advance again to 130, and
this notwithstanding the conceded testimonies of Justin Martyr and the early
Gnostics. These vacillations of criticism reveal the impossibility of locating
the Gospel in the second century.
If we surrender the
fourth Gospel, what shall we gain in its place? Fiction for fact, stone for bread, a Gnostic dream for the
most glorious truth.
Fortunately, the whole
anti-Johannean hypothesis breaks down at every point. It suffers shipwreck on
innumerable details which do not fit at all into the supposed dogmatic scheme,
but rest on hard facts of historical recollections.1094
And instead of removing
any difficulties it creates greater difficulties in their place. There are
certain contradictions which no ingenuity can solve. If "the great
unknown" was the creative artist of his ideal Christ, and the inventor of
those sublime discourses, the like of which were never heard before or since,
he must have been a mightier genius than Dante or Shakespeare, yea greater than
his own hero, that is greater than the greatest: this is a psychological
impossibility and a logical absurdity. Moreover, if he was not John and yet
wanted to be known as John, he was a deceiver and a liar:1095 this is a moral impossibility. The case of Plato
is very different, and his relation to Socrates is generally understood. The
Synoptic Gospels are anonymous, but do not deceive the reader. Luke and the
author of the Epistle to the Hebrews honestly make themselves known as mere
disciples of the apostles. The real parallel would be the apocryphal Gospels
and the pseudo-Clementine productions, where the fraud is unmistakable, but the
contents are so far below the fourth Gospel that a comparison is out of the
question. Literary fictions were not uncommon in the ancient church, but men
had common sense and moral sense then as well is now to distinguish between
fact and fiction, truth and lie. It is simply incredible that the ancient
church should have been duped into a unanimous acceptance of such an important
book as the work of the beloved disciple almost from the very date of his
death, and that the whole Christian church, Greek, Latin, Protestant, including
an innumerable army of scholars, should have been under a radical delusion for
eighteen hundred years, mistaking a Gnostic dream for the genuine history of
the Saviour of mankind, and drinking the water of life from the muddy source of
fraud.1096
In the meantime the fourth
Gospel continues and will continue to shine, like the sun in heaven, its own
best evidence, and will shine all the brighter when the clouds, great and
small, shall have passed away.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="85" title="The Acts of the Apostles">
<index
type = "globalSubject"
subject1 = "New
Testament"
subject2 = "Acts" />
§ 85. The Acts of the Apostles.
Comp. § 82.
1. Critical Treatises.
M. Schneckenburger: Zweck der Apostelgeschichte. Bern, 1841.
Schwanbeck: Quellen der Ap. Gesch. Darmstadt, 1847.
Ed.
Zeller: Contents and Origin of
the Acts of the Apostles. Stuttg., 1854; trsl. by Jos. Dare, 1875–76,
London, 2 vols.
Lekebusch: Composition u. Entstehung der Ap. Gesch. Gotha, 1854.
Klostermann: Vindiciae Lucancae. Göttingen, 1866.
Arthur
König (R. C.): Die Aechtheit der
Ap. Gesch. Breslau, 1867.
J. R. Oertel: Paulus in der Ap. Gesch. Der
histor. Char. dieser Schrift, etc.
Halle, 1868.
J. B. Lightfoot: Illustrations of the Acts
from recent Discoveries, in the "Contemporary Review" for May,
1878, pp. 288–296.
Dean
Howson: Bohlen Lectures on the
Evidential Value of the Acts of the Apostles, delivered in Philadelphia,
1880. London and New York, 1880.
Friedr.
Zimmer: Galaterbrief und
Apostelgeschichte. Hildburghausen,
1882.
Comp. also, in part, J. H.
Scholten: Das Paulinische Evangelium,
trsl. from the Dutch by Redepenning, Elberf., 1881. A critical essay on the writings of Luke (pp. 254 sqq.).
2. Commentaries on Acts.
By Chrysotom; Jerome;
Calvin; Olshausen; De Wette (4th ed., revised by Overbeck, 1870); Meyer
(4th ed., 1870; 5th ed., revised by Wendt 1880); Baumgarten (in 2 parts,
1852, Engl. transl. in 3 vols., Edinburgh, 1856); Jos. A. Alexander; H. B.
Hackett (2d ed., 1858; 3d ed., 1877); Ewald (1872); Lecher-Gerok (in Lange’s Bibelwerk,
transl. by Schaeffer, N. Y., 1866); F. C. Cook (Lond., 1866); Alford;
Wordsworth; Gloag; Plumptre; (in Ellicott’s Com.); Jacobson (in the
"Speaker’s Com.," 1880); Lumby (in the "Cambridge Bible for
Schools," 1880); Howson and Spence (in Schaff’s "Popul. Com.,"
1880; revised for "Revision Com.," N. Y., 1882); K. Schmidt (Die Apostelgesch.
unter dem Hauptgesichtspunkt ihrer Glaubwürdigkeit kritisch exegetisch
bearbeitet. Erlangen, 1882, 2
vols.); Nösgen (Leipz. 1882), Bethge (1887).
The Acts and the Third Gospel.
The book of Acts, though
placed by the ancient ecclesiastical division not in the "Gospel,"
but in the "Apostle," is a direct continuation of the third Gospel,
by the same author, and addressed to the same Theophilus, probably a Christian
convert of distinguished social position. In the former he reports what he
heard and read, in the latter what he heard and saw. The one records the life
and work of Christ, the other the work of the Holy Spirit, who is recognized at
every step. The word Spirit, or Holy Spirit, occurs more frequently in the Acts
than in any other book of the New Testament. It might properly be called
"the Gospel of the Holy Spirit."
The universal testimony of the ancient church traces the two books to the same author. This is confirmed by internal evidence of identity of style, continuity of narrative, and correspondence of plan. About fifty words not found elsewhere in the New Testament are common to both books.1097
Object and Contents
The Acts is a cheerful
and encouraging book, like the third Gospel; it is full of missionary zeal and
hope; it records progress after progress, conquest after conquest, and turns
even persecution and martyrdom into an occasion of joy and thanksgiving. It is
the first church history. It begins in Jerusalem and ends in Rome. An
additional chapter would probably have recorded the terrible persecution of
Nero and the heroic martyrdom of Paul and Peter. But this would have made the
book a tragedy; instead of that it ends as cheerfully and triumphantly as it
begins.
It represents the origin
and progress of Christianity from the capital of Judaism to the capital of
heathenism. It is a history of the planting of the church among the Jews by
Peter, and among the Gentiles by Paul. Its theme is expressed in the promise of
the risen Christ to his disciples (<scripRef passage =
"Acts 1:8">Acts
1:8</scripRef>): "Ye shall receive power, when the Holy
Spirit is come upon you (<scripRef passage = "Acts 2">Acts 2</scripRef>): and ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem
(<scripRef
passage = "Acts 3–7">Acts 3–7</scripRef>), and in all Judaea and Samaria (<scripRef passage =
"Acts 8–12">Acts
8–12</scripRef>), and unto the uttermost part of the earth"
(<scripRef
passage = "Acts 13–28">Acts 13–28</scripRef>). The Gospel of Luke, which is the Pauline
Gospel, laid the foundation by showing how salvation, coming from the Jews and
opposed by the Jews, was intended for all men, Samaritans and Gentiles. The
Acts exhibits the progress of the church from and among the Jews to the
Gentiles by the ministry of Peter, then of Stephen, then of Philip in Samaria,
then of Peter again in the conversion of Cornelius, and at last by the labors
of Paul and his companions.1098
The Acts begins with the
ascension of Christ, or his accession to his throne, and the founding of his
kingdom by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit; it closes with the joyful
preaching of the Apostle of the Gentiles in the capital of the then known
world.
The objective
representation of the progress of the church is the chief aim of the work, and
the subjective and biographical features are altogether subordinate. Before
Peter, the hero of the first or Jewish-Christian division, and Paul, the hero
of the second or Gentile-Christian part, the other apostles retire and are only
once named, except John, the elder James, Stephen, and James, the brother of
the Lord. Even the lives of the pillar-apostles appear in the history only so
far as they are connected with the missionary work. In this view the
long-received title of the book, added by some other hand than the author’s, is
not altogether correct, though in keeping with ancient usage (as in the
apocryphal literature, which includes "Acts of Pilate," "Acts of
Peter and Paul," "Acts of Philip," etc.). More than three-fifths
of it are devoted to Paul, and especially to his later labors and journeys, in
which the author could speak from personal knowledge. The book is simply a
selection of biographical memoirs of Peter and Paul connected with the planting
of Christianity or the beginnings of the church (Origines Ecclesiae).
Sources.
Luke, the faithful pupil
and companion of Paul, was eminently fitted to produce the history of the
primitive church. For the first part he had the aid not only of oral tradition,
but she of Palestinian documents, as he had in preparing his Gospel. Hence the
Hebrew coloring in the earlier chapters of Acts; while afterward he writes as
pure Greek, as in the classical prologue of his Gospel. Most of the events in
the second part came under his personal observation. Hence he often speaks in
the plural number, modestly including himself.1099 The
"we" sections begin <scripRef passage = "Acts
16:10">Acts 16:10</scripRef>, when Paul started from Troas to Macedonia (a.d. 51); they break off when he leaves
philippi for corinth (<scripRef passage = "Acts
17:1">17:1</scripRef>); they are resumed (<scripRef passage =
"Acts 20:5, 6">20:5, 6</scripRef>) when he visits
macedonia again seven years later (58), and then continue to the close of the
narrative (a.d. 63). Luke probably
remained several years at Philippi, engaged in missionary labors, until Paul’s
return. He was in the company of Paul, including the interruptions, at least
twelve years. He was again with Paul in his last captivity, shortly before his
martyrdom, his most faithful and devoted companion (<scripRef passage =
"2 Tim. 4:11">2
Tim. 4:11</scripRef>).
Time of Composition.
Luke probably began the
book of Acts or a preliminary diary during his missionary journeys with Paul in
Greece, especially in Philippi, where he seems to have tarried several years;
he continued it in Caesarea, where he had the best opportunity to gather reliable
information of the earlier history, from Jerusalem, and such living witnesses
as Cornelius and his friends, from Philip and his daughters, who resided in
Caesarea; and he finished it soon after Paul’s first imprisonment in Rome,
before the terrible persecution in the summer of 64, which he could hardly have
left unnoticed.
We look in vain for any
allusion to this persecution and the martyrdom of Paul or Peter, or to any of
their Epistles, or to the destruction of Jerusalem, or to the later organization
of the church, or the superiority of the bishop over the presbyter (Comp. <scripRef
passage = "Acts 20:17, 28">Acts 20:17, 28</scripRef>), or the Gnostic heresies, except by way of
prophetic warning (<scripRef passage = "Acts 20:30">20:30</scripRef>). This silence in a historical work like this
seems inexplicable on the assumption that the book was written after a.d. 70, or even after 64. But if we
place the composition before, the martyrdom of Paul, then the last verse
is after all an appropriate conclusion of a missionary history of Christianity
from Jerusalem to Rome. For the bold and free testimony of the Apostle of the
Gentiles in the very heart of the civilized world was the sign and pledge of
victory.
The Acts and the Gospels.
The Acts is the connecting
link between the Gospels and Epistles. It presupposes and confirms the leading
events in the life of Christ, on which the church is built. The fact of the
resurrection, whereof the apostles were witnesses, sends a thrill of joy and an
air of victory through the whole book. God raised Jesus from the dead and
mightily proclaimed him to be the Messiah, the prince of life and a Saviour in
Israel; this is the burden of the sermons of Peter, who shortly before had
denied his Master. He boldly bears witness to it before the people, in his
pentecostal sermon, before the Sanhedrin, and before Cornelius. Paul likewise,
in his addresses at Antioch in Pisidia, at Thessalonica, on the Areopagus
before the Athenian philosophers, and at Caesarea before Festus and Agrippa,
emphasizes the resurrection without which his own conversion never could have
taken place.
The Acts and the Epistles.
The Acts gives us the
external history of the apostolic church; the Epistles present the internal
life of the same. Both mutually supplement and confirm each other by a series
of coincidences in all essential points. These coincidences are all the more
conclusive as they are undesigned and accompanied by slight discrepancies in
minor details. Archdeacon Paley made them the subject of a discussion in his Horae Paulinae,1100 which will retain its place among classical
monographs alongside of James Smith’s Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul. Arguments
such as are furnished in these two books are sufficient to silence most of the
critical objections against the credibility of Acts for readers of sound common
sense and unbiased judgment. There is not the slightest trace that Luke had
read any of the thirteen Epistles of Paul, nor that Paul had read a line of
Acts. The writings were contemporaneous and independent, yet animated by the
same spirit. Luke omits, it is true, Paul’s journey to Arabia, his collision
with Peter at Antioch, and many of his trials and persecutions; but he did not
aim at a full biography. The following are a few examples of these
conspicuously undesigned coincidences in the chronological order:
Paul’s Conversion.
Comp. <scripRef
passage = "Acts 9; 22; 26">Acts chs. 9; 22and 26</scripRef>; three accounts which differ only in minor
details.
<scripRef passage = "Gal. 1:15–17">Gal. 1:15–17</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "1 Cor.
15:8">1 Cor. 15:8</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "1 Tim. 1:13–16">1 Tim. 1:13–16</scripRef>.
Paul’s Persecution and Escape at Damascus.
<scripRef passage = "Acts 9:23–25">Acts 9:23–25</scripRef>. The Jews took counsel together to kill him ...
but his disciples took him by night, and let him down through the wall lowering
him in a basket.
<scripRef passage = "2 Cor. 11:32, 33">2 Cor. 11:32, 33</scripRef>. In Damascus the governor under Aretas the king
guarded the city of the Damascenes, in order to take me; and through a window I
was let down in a basket by the wall, and escaped his hands
Paul’s Visits to Jerusalem.
<scripRef passage = "Acts 9:26, 27">9:26, 27</scripRef>. And when he was come to Jerusalem ... Barnabas
took him, and brought him to the apostles.
<scripRef passage = "Gal. 1:18">Gal. 1:18</scripRef>. Then after three years [counting from his
conversion] I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and tarried with him
fifteen days.
<scripRef passage = "Acts 15:2">15:2</scripRef>. They appointed that Paul and Barnabas, and
certain other of them, should go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders
[to the apostolic conference to settle the question about circumcision].
<scripRef passage = "Gal. 2:1">Gal. 2:1</scripRef>. Then after the space of fourteen years I went
up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus also with me. And I went up
by revelation. [This inner motive does, of course, not exclude the church
appointment mentioned by Luke.]
Paul Left at Athens Alone.
<scripRef passage = "Acts 17:16">17:16</scripRef>. Now while Paul waited for them [Silas and
Timothy] at Athens.
<scripRef passage = "1 Thess. 3:1">1 Thess. 3:1</scripRef> We
thought it good to be left behind at Athens alone, and sent Timothy, etc. Comp <scripRef
passage = "1 Thess. 3:7">3:7</scripRef>.
Paul Working at his Trade.
<scripRef passage = "Acts 18:3">18:3</scripRef>. And because he [Aquila] was of the same trade,
he abode with them, and they wrought; for by their trade they were tent makers.
Comp. <scripRef
passage = "Acts 20:34">20:34</scripRef>.
<scripRef passage = "1 Thess. 2:9">1 Thess. 2:9</scripRef>. Ye remember, brethren, our labor and travail:
working night and day, that we might not burden any of you. Comp. <scripRef
passage = "1 Cor. 4:11, 12">1 Cor. 4:11, 12</scripRef>.
Paul’s Two Visits to Corinth.
<scripRef passage = "Acts 18:1; 20:2">18:1; 20:2</scripRef>.
<scripRef passage = "1 Cor. 2:1; 4:19; 16:5">1 Cor. 2:1; 4:19; 16:5</scripRef>.
Work of Apollos at Corinth.
<scripRef passage = "Acts 18:27, 28">18:27, 28</scripRef>.
<scripRef passage = "1 Cor. 1:12; 3:6">1 Cor. 1:12; 3:6</scripRef>.
Paul Becoming a Jew to the Jews.
<scripRef passage = "Acts 16:3; 18:18 21:23–26">16:3; 18:18 21:23–26</scripRef>.
<scripRef passage = "1 Cor. 9:20">1 Cor. 9:20</scripRef>.
Baptism of Crispus and Gaius.
<scripRef passage = "Acts 18:8">18:8</scripRef>.
<scripRef passage = "1 Cor. 1:14–17">1 Cor. 1:14–17</scripRef>.
Collection for the Poor Brethren.
<scripRef passage = "Acts 28:23">28:23</scripRef>.
<scripRef passage = "1 Cor. 16:1">1 Cor. 16:1</scripRef>.
Paul’s Last Journey to Jerusalem.
<scripRef passage = "Acts 20 ;6; 24:17">20 ;6; 24:17</scripRef>
<scripRef passage = "Rom. 15:25, 26">Rom. 15:25, 26</scripRef>
His Desire to Visit Rome.
<scripRef passage = "Acts 19:21">19:21</scripRef>.
<scripRef passage = "Rom. 1:13;15:23">Rom. 1:13;15:23</scripRef>.
Paul an Ambassador in Bonds.
<scripRef passage = "Acts 28:16–20">28:16–20</scripRef>.
<scripRef passage = "Eph. 6:19, 20">Eph. 6:19, 20</scripRef>
The Acts and Secular History.
The Acts brings
Christianity in contact with the surrounding world and makes many allusions to
various places, secular persons and events, though only incidentally and as far
as its object required it. These allusions are—with a single exception, that of
Theudas—in full harmony with the history of the age as known from Josephus and
heathen writers, and establish Luke’s claim to be considered a well-informed,
honest, and credible historian. Bishop Lightfoot asserts that no ancient work
affords so many tests of veracity, because no other has such numerous points of
contact in all directions with contemporary history, politics, and typography,
whether Jewish or Greek or Roman. The description of persons introduced in the
Acts such as Gamaliel, Herod, Agrippa I., Bernice, Felix, Festus, Gallio,
agrees as far as it goes entirely with what we know from contemporary sources.
The allusions to countries, cities, islands, in Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, and
Italy are without exception correct and reveal an experienced traveller. We
mention the chief points, some of which are crucial tests.
1. The rebellion of
Theudas, <scripRef
passage = "Acts 5:36">Acts 5:36</scripRef>, alluded to in the speech of Gamaliel, which was delivered about a.d. 33. Here is, apparently, a conflict
with Josephus, who places this event in the reign of Claudius, and under the
procuratorship of Cuspius Fadus, a.d.
44, ten or twelve years after Gamaliel’s speech.1101 But
he mentions no less than three insurrections which took place shortly after the
death of Herod the Great, one under the lead of Judas (who may have been
Theudas or Thaddaeus, the two names being interchangeable, comp. <scripRef
passage = "Matt. 10:3">Matt. 10:3</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Luke
6:16">Luke 6:16</scripRef>), and he adds that besides these there were many
highway robbers and murderers who pretended to the name of king.1102 At
all events, we should hesitate to charge Luke with an anachronism. He was as
well informed as Josephus, and more credible. This is the only case of a
conflict between the two, except the case of the census in <scripRef
passage = "Luke 2:2">Luke 2:2</scripRef>, and here the discovery of a double governorship of Quirinius has
brought the chronological difficulty within the reach of solution.1103
2. The rebellion of
Judas of Galilee, mentioned in the same speech, <scripRef passage =
"Acts 5:37">Acts
5:37</scripRef>, as having occurred in the days of the enrolment
(the census of Quirinius), is confirmed by Josephus.1104 The
insurrection of this Judas was the most vigorous attempt to throw off the Roman
yoke before the great war.
3. Candace, Queen of the
Ethiopians, <scripRef passage = "Acts 8:27">8:27</scripRef>. Strabo mentions a queen of Meroè in Ethiopia,
under that name, which was probably, like Pharaoh, a dynastic title.1105
4. The famine under
Claudius, <scripRef passage = "Acts 11:28">11:28</scripRef>. This reign (a.d.
41–54) was disturbed by frequent famines, one of which, according to Josephus,
severely affected Judaea and Syria, and caused great distress in Jerusalem
under the procuratorship of Cuspius Fadus, a.d.
45.1106
5. The death of King Herod
Agrippa I. (grandson of Herod the Great), <scripRef passage =
"Acts 12:20–23">12:20–23</scripRef>. Josephus says nothing about the preceding
persecution of the church, but reports in substantial agreement with Luke that
the king died of a loathsome disease in the seventh year of his reign (a.d. 44), five days after he had
received, at the theatre of Caesarea, divine honors, being hailed, in heathen
fashion, as a god by his courtiers.1107
6. The proconsular (as
distinct from the propraetorian) status of Cyprus, under Sergius Paulus, <scripRef
passage = "Acts 13:7">13:7</scripRef> (<foreign
lang="el">suvn tw' ajnqupavtw/ Sergivw/
Pauvlw/</foreign>). Here Luke was for a long time considered
inaccurate, even by Grotius, but has been strikingly confirmed by modern
research. When Augustus assumed the supreme power (b.c. 27), he divided the government of the provinces with
the Senate, and called the ruler of the imperatorial provinces, which needed
direct military control under the emperor as commander of the legions, propraetor (<foreign
lang="el">ajntistravthgo"</foreign>) or legate (<foreign
lang="el">presbuvth"</foreign>), the ruler of a senatorial province, proconsul (<foreign
lang="el">ajnquvpato"</foreign>). Formerly these terms had signified that
the holder of the office had previously been praetor (<foreign
lang="el">strathgo;"</foreign> or <foreign
lang="el">hJgemwvn</foreign>) or consul (<foreign
lang="el">u{pato"</foreign>); now they signified the administrative heads of
the provinces. But this subdivision underwent frequent changes, so that only a
well-informed person could tell the distinction at any time. Cyprus was in the
original distribution (b.c. 27)
assigned to the emperor,1108
but since b.c. 22, and at the time
of Paul’s visit under Claudius, it was a senatorial province;1109 and hence Sergius Paulus is rightly called
proconsul. Coins have been found from the reign of Claudius which confirm this
statement.1110
Yea, the very name of (Sergius) Paulus has been discovered by General di
Cesnola at Soli (which, next to Salamis, was the most important city of the
island), in a mutilated inscription, which reads: "in the proconsulship of
Paulus."1111
Under Hadrian the island was governed by a propraetor; under Severus,
again by a proconsul.
7. The proconsular
status of Achaia under Gallio, <scripRef passage = "Acts
18:12">18:12</scripRef> (<foreign lang="el">Gallivwno"
ajnqupavtou o[nto" th'" Acaiva"</foreign>). Achaia, which included the whole of Greece
lying south of Macedonia, was originally a senatorial province, then an
imperatorial province under Tiberius, and again a senatorial province under
Claudius.1112 In
the year 53–54, when Paul was at Corinth, M. Annaeus Novatus Gallio, the
brother of the philosopher L. Annaeus Seneca, was proconsul of Achaia, and
popularly esteemed for his mild temper as "dulcis Gallio."
8. Paul and Barnabas
mistaken for Zeus and Hermes in Lycaonia, <scripRef passage =
"Acts 14:11">14:11</scripRef>. According to the myth described by Ovid,1113 the gods Jupiter and Mercury (Zeus and Hermes)
had appeared to the Lycaonians in the likeness of men, and been received by
Baucis and Philemon, to whom they left tokens of that favor. The place where
they had dwelt was visited by devout pilgrims and adorned with votive
offerings. How natural, therefore, was it for these idolaters, astonished by
the miracle, to mistake the eloquent Paul for Hermes, and Barnabas who may have
been of a more imposing figure, for Zeus.
9. The colonial dignity
of the city of Philippi, in Macedonia, <scripRef passage =
"Acts 16:12">16:12</scripRef> ("a Roman colony," <foreign
lang="el">kolwvnia</foreign>; comp. 16:21, "being Romans").
Augustus had sent a colony to the famous battlefield where Brutus and the
Republic expired, and conferred on the place new importance and the privileges
of Italian or Roman citizenship (jus
Italicum).1114
10. "Lydia, a
seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira," <scripRef passage =
"Acts 16:14">16:14</scripRef>. Thyatira (now Akhissar), in the valley of Lycus
in Asia Minor, was famous for its dying works, especially for purple or
crimson.1115
11. The
"politarchs" of Thessalonica, <scripRef passage =
"Acts 17:6, 8">17:6,
8</scripRef>.1116 This was a very rare title for
magistrates, and might easily be confounded with the more usual designation
"poliarchs." But Luke’s accuracy has been confirmed by
an inscription still legible on an archway in Thessalonica, giving the names of
seven "politarchs" who governed before the visit of Paul.1117
12. The description of
Athens, the Areopagus, the schools of philosophy, the idle curiosity and
inquisitiveness of the Athenians (mentioned also by Demosthenes), the altar of
an unknown God, and the quotation from Aratus or Cleanthes, in <scripRef
passage = "Acts 17">Acts 17</scripRef>, are fully borne out by classical authorities.1118
13. The account of
Ephesus in the nineteenth chapter has been verified as minutely accurate by the
remarkable discoveries of John T. Wood, made between 1863 and 1874, with the
aid of the English Government. The excessive worship of Diana, "the great
goddess of Artemis," the temple-warden, the theatre (capable of holding
twenty-five thousand people) often used for public assemblies, the distinct
officers of the city, the Roman proconsul (<foreign
lang="el">ajnquvpato"</foreign>), the recorder or "town-clerk" (<foreign
lang="el">grammateuv"</foreign>), and the Asiarchs (<foreign
lang="el">jAsiarcaiv</foreign>) or presidents of the games and the religious
ceremonials, have all reappeared in ruins and on inscriptions, which may now be
studied in the British Museum. "With these facts in view," says
Lightfoot, "we are justified in saying that ancient literature has
preserved no picture of the Ephesus of imperial times—the Ephesus which has
been unearthed by the sagacity and perseverance of Mr. Wood—comparable for its
life-like truthfulness to the narrative of St. Paul’s sojourn there in the
Acts."1119
14. The voyage and
shipwreck of Paul in <scripRef passage = "Acts 27">Acts 27</scripRef>. This chapter contains more information about
ancient navigation than any work of Greek or Roman literature, and betrays the
minute accuracy of an intelligent eye-witness, who, though not a professional
seaman, was very familiar with nautical terms from close observation. He uses
no less than sixteen technical terms, some of them rare, to describe the motion
and management of a ship, and all of them most appropriately; and he is
strictly correct in the description of the localities at Crete, Salmone, Fair
Havens, Cauda, Lasea and Phoenix (two small places recently identified), and
Melita (Malta), as well as the motions and effects of the tempestuous northeast
wind called Euraquilo (A. V. Euroclydon) in the Mediterranean. All this has
been thoroughly tested by an expert seaman and scholar, James Smith, of
Scotland, who has published the results of his examination in the classical
monograph already mentioned.1120 Monumental and scientific evidence
outweighs critical conjectures, and is an irresistible vindication of the
historical accuracy and credibility of Luke.
The
Acts an Irenicum.
But some critics have
charged the Acts with an intentional falsification of history in the interest
of peace between the Petrine and Pauline sections of the church. The work is
said to be a Catholic Irenicum, based probably on a narrative of Luke, but not
completed before the close of the first century, for the purpose of harmonizing
the Jewish and Gentile sections of the church by conforming the two leading
apostles, i.e., by raising Peter to the Pauline and lowering Paul to the
Petrine Plane, and thus making both subservient to a compromise between
Judaizing bigotry and Gentile freedom.1121
The chief arguments on
which this hypothesis is based are the suppression of the collision between
Paul and Peter at Antioch, and the friendly relation into which Paul is brought
to James, especially at the last interview. <scripRef passage =
"Acts 15">Acts
15</scripRef> is supposed to be in irreconcilable conflict
with Galatian. But a reaction has taken place in the Tübingen school, and it is
admitted now by some of the ablest critics that the antagonism between
Paulinism and Petrinism has been greatly exaggerated by Baur, and that Acts is
a far more trustworthy account than he was willing to admit. The Epistle to the
Galatians itself is the best vindication of the Acts, for it expressly speaks
of a cordial agreement between Paul and the Jewish pillar-apostles. As to the
omission of the collision between Peter and Paul at Antioch, it was merely a
passing incident, perhaps unknown to Luke, or omitted because it had no bearing
on the course of events recorded by him. On the other hand, he mentions the
"sharp contention" between Paul and Barnabas, because it resulted in
a division of the missionary work, Paul and Silas going to Syria and Cilicia,
Barnabas and Mark sailing away to Cyprus (<scripRef passage =
"Acts 15:39–41">15:39–41</scripRef>). Of this Paul says nothing, because it had no
bearing on his argument with the Galatians. Paul’s conciliatory course toward
James and the Jews, as represented in the Acts, is confirmed by his own
Epistles, in which he says that he became a Jew to the Jews, as well as a
Gentile to the Gentiles, in order to gain them both, and expresses his
readiness to make the greatest possible sacrifice for the salvation of his
brethren after the flesh (<scripRef passage = "1 Cor. 9:20">1 Cor. 9:20</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Rom.
9:3">Rom. 9:3</scripRef>).
The Truthfulness of the Acts.
The book of Acts is,
indeed, like every impartial history, an Irenicum, but a truthful Irenicum,
conceived in the very spirit of the Conference at Jerusalem and the concordat
concluded by the leading apostles, according to Paul’s own testimony in the
polemical Epistle to the Galatians. The principle of selection required, of
course, the omission of a large number of facts and incidents. But the
selection was made with fairness and justice to all sides. The impartiality and
truthfulness of Luke is very manifest in his honest record of the imperfections
of the apostolic church. He does not conceal the hypocrisy and mean selfishness
of Ananias and Sapphira, which threatened to poison Christianity in its cradle
(<scripRef
passage = "Acts 5:1 sqq.">Acts 5:1 sqq.</scripRef>); he informs us that the institution of the diaconate
arose from a complaint of the Grecian Jews against their Hebrew brethren for
neglecting their widows in the daily ministration (<scripRef passage =
"61 sqq.">61
sqq.</scripRef>) he represents Paul and Barnabas as "men of
like passions" with other men (<scripRef passage =
"Acts 14:15">14:15</scripRef>), and gives us some specimens of weak human
nature in Mark when he became discouraged by the hardship of missionary life
and returned to his mother in Jerusalem (<scripRef passage =
"Acts 13:13">13:13</scripRef>), and in Paul and Barnabas when they fell out
for a season on account of this very Mark, who was a cousin of Barnabas (<scripRef
passage = "Acts 15:39">15:39</scripRef>); nor does he pass in silence the outburst of Paul’s violent temper when
in righteous indignation he called the high-priest a "whited wall" (<scripRef
passage = "Acts 23:3">23:3</scripRef>); and he speaks of serious controversies and compromises even among the
apostles under the guidance of the Holy Spirit—all for our humiliation and
warning as well as comfort and encouragement.
Examine and compare the
secular historians from Herodotus to Macaulay, and the church historians from
Eusebius to Neander, and Luke need not fear a comparison. No history of thirty
years has ever been written so truthful and impartial, so important and
interesting, so healthy in tone and hopeful in spirit, so aggressive and yet so
genial, so cheering and inspiring, so replete with lessons of wisdom and
encouragement for work in spreading the gospel of truth and peace, and yet
withal so simple and modest, as the Acts of the Apostles. It is the best as
well as the first manual of church history.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="86" title="The Epistles">
§ 86. The Epistles.
The sermons of Stephen
and the apostles in Acts (excepting the farewell of Paul to the Ephesian
Elders) are missionary addresses to outsiders, with a view to convert them to
the Christian faith. The Epistles are addressed to baptized converts, and aim
to strengthen them in their faith, and, by brotherly instruction, exhortation,
rebuke, and consolation, to build up the church in all Christian graces on the
historical foundation of the teaching and example of Christ. The prophets of
the Old Testament delivered divine oracles to the people; the apostles of the
New Testament wrote letters to the brethren, who shared with them the same
faith and hope as members of Christ.
The readers are supposed
to be already "in Christ," saved and sanctified "in
Christ," and holding all their social and domestic relations and
discharging their duties "in Christ." They are "grown together"1122 with Christ, sharing in his death, burial, and
resurrection, and destined to reign and rule with him in glory forever. On the
basis of this new relation, constituted by a creative act of divine grace, and
sealed by baptism, they are warned against every sin and exhorted to every
virtue. Every departure from their profession and calling implies double guilt
and double danger of final ruin.
Occasions and calls for
correspondence were abundant, and increased with the spread of Christianity
over the Roman empire. The apostles could not be omnipresent and had to send
messengers and letters to distant churches. They probably wrote many more
letters than we possess, although we have good reason to suppose that the most
important and permanently valuable are preserved. A former letter of Paul to
the Corinthians is implied in <scripRef passage = "1 Cor.
5:9">1 Cor. 5:9</scripRef>: "I wrote to you in my epistle;"1123 and traces of further correspondence are found
in <scripRef
passage = "1 Cor. 16:3">1 Cor. 16:3</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "2 Cor.
10:9">2 Cor. 10:9</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Eph.
3:3">Eph. 3:3</scripRef>. The letter "from Laodicea," referred
to in <scripRef
passage = "Col. 4:16">Col. 4:16</scripRef>, is probably the encyclical Epistle to the Ephesians.
The Epistles of the New
Testament are without a parallel in ancient literature, and yield in importance
only to the Gospels, which stand higher, as Christ himself rises above the
apostles. They are pastoral letters to congregations or individuals, beginning
with an inscription and salutation, consisting of doctrinal expositions and
practical exhortations and consolations, and concluding with personal
intelligence, greetings, and benediction. They presuppose throughout the Gospel
history, and often allude to the death and resurrection of Christ as the
foundation of the church and the Christian hope. They were composed amidst
incessant missionary labors and cares, under trial and persecution, some of
them from prison, and yet they abound in joy and thanksgiving. They were mostly
called forth by special emergencies, yet they suit all occasions. Tracts for
the times, they are tracts for all times. Children of the fleeting moment, they
contain truths of infinite moment. They compress more ideas in fewer words than
any other writings, human or divine, excepting the Gospels. They discuss the
highest themes which can challenge an immortal mind—God, Christ, and the
Spirit, sin and redemption, incarnation, atonement, regeneration, repentance,
faith and good works, holy living and dying, the conversion of the world, the
general judgment, eternal glory and bliss. And all this before humble little
societies of poor, uncultured artisans, freedmen and slaves! And yet they are of more real and
general value to the church than all the systems of theology from Origen to
Schleiermacher—yea, than all the confessions of faith. For eighteen hundred
years they have nourished the faith of Christendom, and will continue to do so
to the end of time. This is the best evidence of their divine inspiration.
The Epistles are divided into
two groups, Catholic and Pauline. The first is more general; the second bears
the strong imprint of the intense personality of the Apostle of the Gentiles.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="87" title="The Catholic
Epistles">
§ 87. The Catholic Epistles.
I. Storr: De Catholicarum Epp. Occasione et Consilio. Tüb. 1789. Staeudlin:
De
Fontibus Epp. Cath. Gott. 1790. J.
D. Schulze: Der schriftstellerische
Charakter und Werth des Petrus, Jacobus und Judas. Leipz. 1802. Der
schriftsteller. Ch. des Johannes.
1803.
II. Commentaries on all
the Catholic Epistles by Goeppfert
(1780), Schlegel (1783), Carpzov (1790), Augusti (1801), Grashof (1830),
Jachmann (1838), Sumner (1840), De Wette (3d ed. by Brückner 1865), Meyer (the
Cath. Epp. by Huther, Düsterdieck, Beyerschlag), Lange (Eng. transl. with
additions by Mombert, 1872), John T. Demarest (N. York, 1879); also the
relevant parts in the "Speaker’s Com.," in Ellicott’s Com.,
the Cambridge Bible for Schools (ed. by Dean Perowne),
and in the International Revision Com. (ed. by Schaff),
etc. P. I. Gloag: Introduction, to the Catholic Epp., Edinb., 1887.
The seven Epistles of
James, 1st and 2d Peter, 1st, 2d, and 3d John, and Jude usually follow in the
old manuscripts the Acts of the Apostles, and precede the Pauline Epistles,
perhaps as being the works of the older apostles, and representing, in part at
least, the Jewish type of Christianity. They are of a more general character,
and addressed not to individuals or single congregations, as those of Paul, but
to a larger number of Christians scattered through a district or over the
world. Hence they are called, from the time of Origen and Eusebius, Catholic. This does not mean in this
connection anti-heretical (still less, of course, Greek Catholic or Roman
Catholic), but encyclical or circular. The designation, however, is not
strictly correct, and applies only to five of them. The second and third
Epistles of John are addressed to individuals. On the other hand the Epistle to
the Hebrews is encyclical, and ought to be numbered with the Catholic Epistles,
but is usually appended to those of Paul. The Epistle to the Ephesians is
likewise intended for more than one congregation. The first Christian document
of an encyclical character is the pastoral letter of the apostolic Conference
at Jerusalem (a.d. 50) to the
Gentile brethren in Syria and Cilicia (<scripRef passage =
"Acts 15:23–29">Acts
15:23–29</scripRef>).1124
The Catholic Epistles
are distinct from the Pauline by their more general contents and the absence of
personal and local references. They represent different, though essentially
harmonious, types of doctrine and Christian life. The individuality of James,
Peter, and John stand out very prominently in these brief remains of their
correspondence. They do not enter into theological discussions like those of
Paul, the learned Rabbi, and give simpler statements of truth, but protest
against the rising ascetic and Antinomian errors, as Paul does in the
Colossians and Pastoral Epistles. Each has a distinct character and purpose,
and none could well be spared from the New Testament without marring the beauty
and completeness of the whole.
The time of composition
cannot be fixed with certainty, but is probably as follows: James before a.d. 50; 1st Peter (probably also 2d Peter and
Jude) before a.d. 67; John between a.d. 80 and 100.
Only two of these
Epistles, the 1st of Peter and the 1st of John, belong to the Eusebian Homologumena, which were universally accepted by the ancient church as inspired and
canonical. About the other five there was more or less doubt as to their origin
down to the close of the fourth century, when all controversy on the extent of
the canon went to sleep till the time of the Reformation. Yet they bear the
general imprint of the apostolic age, and the absence of stronger traditional
evidence is due in part to their small size and limited use.
<index
type = "globalSubject"
subject1 =
"New Testament"
subject2 =
"James" />
James.
Comp. on the lit., biography, and doctrine of James, §§ 27
and 69.
The Epistle of James the Brother of the Lord was
written, no doubt, from Jerusalem, the metropolis of the ancient theocracy and
Jewish Christianity, where the author labored and died a martyr at the head of
the mother church of Christendom and as the last connecting link between the
old and the new dispensation. It is addressed to the Jews and Jewish Christians
of the dispersion before the final doom in the year 70.
It strongly resembles
the Gospel of Matthew, and echoes the Sermon on the Mount in the fresh,
vigorous, pithy, proverbial, and sententious style of oriental wisdom. It
exhorts the readers to good works of faith, warns them against dead orthodoxy,
covetousness, pride, and worldliness, and comforts them in view of present and
future trials and persecutions. It is eminently practical and free from subtle
theological questions. It preaches a religion of good works which commends
itself to the approval of God and all good men. It represents the primary stage
of Christian doctrine. It takes no notice of the circumcision controversy, the
Jerusalem compromise, and the later conflicts of the apostolic age. Its
doctrine of justification is no protest against that of Paul, but prior to it,
and presents the subject from a less developed, yet eminently practical aspect,
and against the error of a barren monotheism rather than Pharisaical legalism,
which Paul had in view. It is probably the oldest of the New Testament books,
meagre in doctrine, but rich in comfort and lessons of holy living based on
faith in Jesus Christ, "the Lord of glory." It contains more reminiscences of the words of Christ than
any other epistle.1125 Its leading idea is "the perfect
law of freedom," or the law of love revealed in Christ.
Luther’s harsh, unjust,
and unwise judgment of this Epistle has been condemned by his own church, and
reveals a defect in his conception of the doctrine of justification which was
the natural result of his radical war with the Romish error.
<index
type = "globalSubject"
subject1 =
"New Testament"
subject2 =
"Peter" />
Peter.
See on the lit., biography, and theology of Peter, §§ 25,
26, and 70.
The First Epistle of Peter, dated from
Babylon,1126 belongs to the later life of the apostle, when
his ardent natural temper was deeply humbled, softened, and sanctified by the
work of grace. It was written to churches in several provinces of Asia Minor,
composed of Jewish and Gentile Christians together, and planted mainly by Paul
and his fellow-laborers; and was sent by the hands of Silvanus, a former
companion of Paul. It consists of precious consolations, and exhortations to a
holy walk after the example of Christ, to joyful hope of the heavenly
inheritance, to patience under the persecutions already raging or impending. It
gives us the fruit of a rich spiritual experience, and is altogether worthy of
Peter and his mission to tend the flock of God under Christ, the chief shepherd
of souls.1127
It attests also the
essential agreement of Peter with the doctrine of the Gentile apostle, in which
the readers had been before instructed (<scripRef passage =
"1 Pet. 5:12">1
Pet. 5:12</scripRef>). This accords with the principle of Peter
professed at the Council in Jerusalem (<scripRef passage =
"Acts 15:11">Acts
15:11</scripRef>) that we are saved without the yoke of the law,
"through the grace of the Lord Jesus." His doctrinal system, however, precedes that of Paul and is
independent of it, standing between James and Paul. Peculiar to him is the
doctrine of the descent of Christ into Hades (<scripRef passage =
"1 Pet. 3:19; 4:6">1 Pet. 3:19; 4:6</scripRef>; comp. <scripRef passage =
"Acts 2:32">Acts
2:32</scripRef>), which contains the important truth of the
universal intent of the atonement. Christ died for all men, for those who lived
before as well as after his coming, and he revealed himself to the spirits in
the realm of Hades. Peter also warns against hierarchical ambition in prophetic
anticipation of the abuse of his name and his primacy among the apostles.
The Second Epistle of Peter is addressed,
shortly before the author’s death, as a sort of last will and testament, to the
same churches as the first. It contains a renewed assurance of his agreement
with his "beloved brother Paul," to whose Epistles he respectfully
refers, yet with the significant remark (true in itself, yet often abused by
Romanists) that there are in them "some things hard to be understood"
(<scripRef
passage = "2 Pet. 3:15, 16">2 Pet. 3:15, 16</scripRef>). As Peter himself receives in one of these
Epistles (<scripRef passage = "Gal. 2:11">Gal. 2:11</scripRef>) a sharp rebuke for his inconsistency at Antioch
(which may be included in the hard things), this affectionate allusion proves
how thoroughly the Spirit of Christ had, through experience, trained him to
humility, meekness, and self-denial. The Epistle exhorts the readers to
diligence, virtue, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly love, and
brotherly kindness; refers to the Transfiguration on the Mount, where the
author witnessed the majesty of Christ, and to the prophetic word inspired by
the Holy Spirit; warns against antinomian errors; corrects a mistake concerning
the second coming; exhorts them to prepare for the day of the Lord by holy
living, looking for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness;
and closes with the words: "Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord
and Saviour Jesus Christ, to whom be glory both now and forever."
The second Epistle is
reckoned by Eusebius among the seven Antilegomena, and its Petrine authorship
is doubted or denied, in whole or in part, by many eminent divines1128 but defended by competent critics.1129 The
chief objections are: the want of early attestation, the reference to a
collection of the Pauline Epistles, the polemic against Gnostic errors, some
peculiarities of style, and especially the apparent dependence of the second
chapter on the Epistle of Jude.
On the other hand, the
Epistle, at least the first and third chapters, contains nothing which Peter
might not have written, and the allusion to the scene of transfiguration admits
only the alternative: either Peter, or a forger. It seems morally impossible
that a forger should have produced a letter so full of spiritual beauty and
unction, and expressly denouncing all cunning fabrications. It may have been
enlarged by the editor after Peter’s death. But the whole breathes an apostolic
spirit, and could not well be spared from the New Testament. It is a worthy
valedictory of the aged apostle awaiting his martyrdom, and with its still
valid warnings against internal dangers from false Christianity, it forms a
suitable complement to the first Epistle, which comforts the Christians amidst
external dangers from heathen and Jewish persecutors.
<index
type = "globalSubject"
subject1 =
"New Testament"
subject2 =
"Jude" />
Jude.
The Epistle of Jude, a, "brother of James"
(the Just),1130 is very short, and strongly resembles 2 Peter 2,
but differs from it by an allusion to the remarkable apocryphal book of Enoch
and the legend of the dispute of Michael with the devil about the body of
Moses. It seems to be addressed to the same churches and directed against the
same Gnostic heretics. It is a solemn warning against the antinomian and licentious
tendencies which revealed themselves between a.d.
60 and 70. Origen remarks that it is "of few lines, but rich in words of
heavenly wisdom." The style
is fresh and vigorous.
The Epistle of Jude
belongs likewise to the Eusebian Antilegomena, and has signs of post-apostolic origin, yet may
have been written by Jude, who was not one of the Twelve, though closely
connected with apostolic circles. A forger would hardly have written under the
name of a "brother of James" rather than a brother of Christ or an
apostle.
The time and place of
composition are unknown. The Tübingen critics put it down to the reign of
Trajan; Renan, on the contrary, as far back as 54, wrongly supposing it to have
been intended, together with the Epistle of James, as a counter-manifesto
against Paul’s doctrine of free grace. But Paul condemned antinomianism as
severely as James and Jude (comp. <scripRef passage =
"Rom. 6">Rom. 6</scripRef>, and in fact all his Epistles). It is safest to
say, with Bleek, that it was written shortly before the destruction of
Jerusalem, which is not alluded to (comp. <scripRef passage =
"Jude 14, 15">Jude
14, 15</scripRef>).
<index
type = "globalSubject"
subject1 =
"New Testament"
subject2 =
"Epistles of John" />
The Epistles of John.
Comp. §§ 40–43, 83 and 84.
The First Epistle of John betrays
throughout, in thought and style, the author of the fourth Gospel. It is a
postscript to it, or a practical application of the lessons of the life of
Christ to the wants of the church at the close of the first century. It is a
circular letter of the venerable apostle to his beloved children in Asia Minor,
exhorting them to a holy life of faith and love in Christ, and earnestly
warning them against the Gnostic "antichrists," already existing or
to come, who deny the mystery of the incarnation, sunder religion from
morality, and run into Antinomian practices.
The Second and Third Epistles of John are,
like the Epistle of Paul to Philemon, short private letters, one to a Christian
woman by the name of Cyria, the other to one Gains, probably an officer of a
congregation in Asia Minor. They belong to the seven Antilegomena, and have been ascribed by some to the "Presbyter John," a
contemporary of the apostle, though of disputed existence. But the second
Epistle resembles the first, almost to verbal repetition,1131 and such repetition well agrees with the
familiar tradition of Jerome concerning the apostle of love, ever exhorting the
congregation, in his advanced age, to love one another. The difference of
opinion in the ancient church respecting them may have risen partly from their
private nature and their brevity, and partly from the fact that the author
styles himself, somewhat remarkably, the "elder," the
"presbyter." This term,
however, is probably to be taken, not in the official sense, but in the
original, signifying age and dignity; for at that time John was in fact a
venerable father in Christ, and must have been revered and loved as a patriarch
among his "little children."
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="88" title="The Epistles of
Pau">
§ 88. The Epistles of Paul
<foreign
lang="el">Pau'lo"
genovmeno: mevgisto": uJpogrammov"</foreign>. (Clement of Rome.)
Comp. §§ 29–36 and 71.
General Character.
Paul was the greatest
worker among the apostles, not only as a missionary, but also as a writer. He
"labored more than all."
And we may well include in this "all" the whole body of
theologians who came after him; for where shall we find an equal wealth of the
profoundest thoughts on the highest themes as in Paul? We have from him thirteen Epistles; how
many more were lost, we cannot even conjecture. The four most important of them
are admitted to be genuine even by the most exacting and sceptical critics.
They are so stamped with the individuality of Paul, and so replete with tokens
of his age and surroundings, that no sane man can mistake the authorship. We
might as well doubt the genuineness of Luther’s work on the Babylonian captivity,
or his Small catechism. The heretic Marcion, in the first half of the second
century, accepted ten, excluding only the three Pastoral Epistles which did not
suit his notions.
The Pauline Epistles are
pastoral addresses to congregations of his own founding (except that of Rome,
and probably also that of Colossae, which were founded by his pupils), or to
individuals (Timothy, Titus, Philemon). Several of them hail from prison, but
breathe the same spirit of faith, hope, and joy as the others, and the last ends
with a shout of victory. They proceeded from profound agitation, and yet are
calm and serene. They were occasioned by the trials, dangers, and errors
incident to every new congregation, and the care and anxiety of the apostle for
their spiritual welfare. He had led them from the darkness of heathen idolatry
and Jewish bigotry to the light of Christian truth and freedom, and raised them
from the slime of depravity to the pure height of saving grace and holy living.
He had no family ties, and threw the whole strength of his affections into his
converts, whom he loved as tenderly as a mother can love her offspring.1132
This love to his spiritual children was inspired by his love to Christ,
as his love to Christ was the response to Christ’s love for him. Nor was his
love confined to the brethren: he was ready to make the greatest sacrifice for
his unbelieving and persecuting fellow-Jews, as Christ himself sacrificed his
life for his enemies.
His Epistles touch on
every important truth and duty of the Christian religion, and illuminate them
from the heights of knowledge and experience, without pretending to exhaust
them. They furnish the best material for a system of dogmatics and ethics. Paul
looks back to the remotest beginning before the creation, and looks out into
the farthest future beyond death and the resurrection. He writes with the
authority of a commissioned apostle and inspired teacher, yet, on questions of
expediency, he distinguishes between the command of the Lord and his private
judgment. He seems to have written rapidly and under great pressure, without
correcting his first draft. If we find, with Peter, in his letters, "some
things hard to be understood," even in this nineteenth century, we must remember
that Paul himself bowed in reverence before the boundless ocean of God’s truth,
and humbly professed to know only in part, and to see through a mirror darkly.
All knowledge in this world "ends in mystery."1133 Our
best systems of theology are but dim reflections of the sunlight of revelation.
Infinite truths transcend our finite minds, and cannot be compressed into the
pigeon-holes of logical formulas. But every good commentary adds to the
understanding and strengthens the estimate of the paramount value of these
Epistles.
The Chronological Order.
Paul’s Epistles were
written within a period of about twelve years, between a.d. 52 or 53 and 64 or 67, when he stood at the height of
his power and influence. None was composed before the Council of Jerusalem.
From the date of his conversion to his second missionary journey (a.d. 37 to 52) we have no documents of
his pen. The chronology of his letters can be better ascertained than that of
the Gospels or Catholic Epistles, by combining internal indications with the
Acts and contemporary events, such as the dates of the proconsulship of Gallio
in Achaia, and the procuratorship of Felix and Festus in Judaea. As to the
Romans, we can determine the place, the year, and the season of composition: he
sends greetings from persons in Corinth (<scripRef passage =
"Rom. 16:23">Rom.
16:23</scripRef>), commends Phoebe, a deaconess of Kenchreae, the
port of Corinth, and the bearer of the letter (<scripRef passage =
"Rom. 16:1">16:1</scripRef>); he had not yet been in Rome (<scripRef
passage = "Rom. 1:13">1:13</scripRef>), but hoped to get there after another visit to Jerusalem, on which he
was about to enter, with collections from Macedonia and Achaia for the poor
brethren in Judaea (<scripRef passage = "Rom. 15:22–29">15:22–29</scripRef>; comp. <scripRef passage =
"2 Cor. 8:1–3">2
Cor. 8:1–3</scripRef>); and from Acts we learn that on his last visit to Achaia he abode three
months in Corinth, and returned to Syria between the Passover and Pentecost (<scripRef
passage = "Acts 20:3, 6, 16">Acts 20:3, 6, 16</scripRef>). This was his fifth and last journey to
Jerusalem, where he was taken prisoner and sent to Felix in Caesarea, two years
before he was followed by Festus. All these indications lead us to the spring
of a.d. 58.
The chronological order
is this: Thessalonians were written first, a.d.
52 or 53; then Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans, between 56 and 58; then the
Epistles of the captivity: Colossians, Ephesians, Philemon, Philippians,
between 61 and 63; last, the Pastoral Epistles, but their date is uncertain,
except that the second Epistle to Timothy is his farewell letter on the eve of
his martyrdom.
It is instructive to
study the Epistles in their chronological order with the aid of the Acts, and
so to accompany the apostle in his missionary career from Damascus to Rome, and
to trace the growth of his doctrinal system from the documentary truths in
Thessalonians to the height of maturity in Romans; then through the
ramifications of particular topics in Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians, and
the farewell counsels in the Pastoral Epistles.
Doctrinal Arrangement.
More important than the
chronological order is the topical order, according to the prevailing object
and central idea. This gives us the following groups:
1.
Anthropological and Soteriological: Galatians and Romans.
2.
Ethical and Ecclesiastical: First and Second Corinthians.
3.
Christological: Colossians and Philippians.
4.
Ecclesiological: Ephesians (in part also Corinthians).
5.
Eschatological: Thessalonians.
6.
Pastoral: Timothy and Titus.
7.
Social and Personal: Philemon.
The Style.
"The style is the
man." This applies with
peculiar force to Paul. His style has been called "the most personal that
ever existed."1134 It fitly represents the force and fire
of his mind and the tender affections of his heart. He disclaims classical
elegance and calls himself "rude in speech," though by no means
"in knowledge." He
carried the heavenly treasure in earthen vessels. But the defects are more than
made up by excellences. In his very weakness the Strength of Christ was
perfected. We are not lost in the admiration of the mere form, but are kept
mindful of the paramount importance of the contents and the hidden depths of
truth which he behind the words and defy the power of expression.
Paul’s style is manly,
bold, heroic, aggressive, and warlike; yet at times tender, delicate, gentle,
and winning. It is involved, irregular, and rugged, but always forcible and expressive,
and not seldom rises to more than poetic beauty, as in the triumphant paean at
the end of the eighth chapter of Romans, and in the ode on love (1 Cor. 13).
His intense earnestness and overflowing fulness of ideas break through the
ordinary rules of grammar. His logic is set on fire. He abounds in skilful
arguments, bold antitheses, impetuous assaults, abrupt transitions, sudden
turns, zigzag flashes, startling questions and exclamations. He is dialectical
and argumentative; he likes logical particles, paradoxical phrases, and plays
on words. He reasons from Scripture, from premises, from conclusions; he drives
the opponent to the wall without mercy and reduces him ad absurdum, but without ever indulging in personalities. He is familiar with the
sharp weapons of ridicule, irony, and sarcasm, but holds them in check and uses
them rarely. He varies the argument by touching appeals to the heart and bursts
of seraphic eloquence. He is never dry or dull, and never wastes words; he is
brief, terse, and hits the nail on the head. His terseness makes him at times
obscure, as is the case with the somewhat similar style of Thucydides, Tacitus,
and Tertullian. His words are as many warriors marching on to victory and
peace; they are like a mountain torrent rushing in foaming rapids over
precipices, and then calmly flowing over green meadows, or like a thunderstorm
ending in a refreshing shower and bright sunshine.
Paul created the
vocabulary of scientific theology and put a profounder meaning into religious
and moral terms than they ever had before. We cannot speak of sin, flesh,
grace, mercy, peace, redemption, atonement, justification, glorification,
church, faith, love, without bearing testimony to the ineffaceable effect which
that greatest of Jewish rabbis and Christian teachers has had upon the language
of Christendom.
Notes.
Chrysostom justly compares the Epistles of Paul to metals more precious than gold
and to unfailing fountains which flow the more abundantly the more we drink of
them.
Beza: "When I more closely consider the whole genius and character of
Paul’s style, I must confess that I have found no such sublimity of speaking in
Plato himself ... no exquisiteness of vehemence in Demosthenes equal to
his."
Ewald begins his Commentary on the Pauline Epistles (Göttingen, 1857) with
these striking and truthful remarks: "Considering these Epistles for
themselves only, and apart from the general significance of the great Apostle
of the Gentiles, we must still admit that, in the whole history of all centuries
and of all nations, there is no other set of writings of similar extent, which,
as creations of the fugitive moment, have proceeded from such severe troubles
of the age, and such profound pains and sufferings of the author himself, and
yet contain such an amount of healthfulness, serenity, and vigor of immortal
genius, and touch with such clearness and certainty on the very highest truths
of human aspiration and action .... The smallest as well as the greatest of
these Epistles seem to have proceeded from the fleeting moments of this earthly
life only to enchain all eternity they were born of anxiety and bitterness of
human strife, to set forth in brighter lustre and with higher certainty their
superhuman grace and beauty. The divine assurance and firmness of the old
prophets of Israel, the all-transcending glory and immediate spiritual presence
of the Eternal King and Lord, who had just ascended to heaven, and all the art
and culture of a ripe and wonderfully excited age, seem to have joined, as it
were, in bringing forth the new creation of these Epistles of the times which
were destined to last for all times."
On the style of
Paul, see my Companion, etc., pp. 62 sqq. To the testimonies there given
I add the judgment of Reuss (Geschichte der h. Schr. N. T., I. 67):
"Still more [than the method] is the style of these Epistles the true
expression of the personality of the author. The defect of classical
correctness and rhetorical finish is more than compensated by the riches of
language and the fulness of expression. The condensation of construction
demands not reading simply, but studying. Broken sentences, ellipses,
parentheses, leaps in the argumentation, allegories, rhetorical figures express
inimitably all the moods of a wide-awake and cultured mind, all the affections
of a rich and deep heart, and betray everywhere a pen at once bold, and yet too
slow for the thought. Antitheses, climaxes, exclamations, questions keep up the
attention, and touching effusions win the heart of the reader."
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="89" title="The Epistles to the
Thessalonians">
<index
type = "globalSubject"
subject1 = "New
Testament"
subject2 = "Epistles to the
Thessalonians" />
§ 89. The Epistles to the Thessalonians.
Thessalonica,1135 a large and wealthy commercial city of
Macedonia, the capital of "Macedonia secunda," the seat of a Roman
proconsul and quaestor, and inhabited by many Jews, was visited by Paul on his
second missionary tour, a.d. 52 or
53, and in a few weeks he succeeded, amid much persecution, in founding a
flourishing church composed chiefly of Gentiles. From this centre Christianity
spread throughout the neighborhood, and during the middle ages Thessalonica
was, till its capture by the Turks (a.d.
1430), a bulwark of the Byzantine empire and Oriental Christendom, and largely
instrumental in the conversion of the Slavonians and Bulgarians; hence it
received the designation of "the Orthodox City." It numbered many learned archbishops,
and still has more remains of ecclesiastical antiquity than any other city in
Greece, although its cathedral is turned into a mosque.
To this church Paul, as
its spiritual father, full of affection for his inexperienced children, wrote
in familiar conversational style two letters from Corinth, during his first
sojourn in that city, to comfort them in their trials and to correct certain
misapprehensions of his preaching concerning the glorious return of Christ, and
the preceding development of "the man of sin" or Antichrist, and
"the mystery of lawlessness," then already at work, but checked by a
restraining power. The hope of the near advent had degenerated into an enthusiastic
adventism which demoralized the every-day life. He now taught them that the
Lord will not come so soon as they expected, that it was not a matter of
mathematical calculation, and that in no case should the expectation check
industry and zeal, but rather stimulate them. Hence his exhortations to a
sober, orderly, diligent, and prayerful life.
It is remarkable that
the first Epistles of Paul should treat of the last topic in the theological
system and anticipate the end at the beginning. But the hope of Christ’s speedy
coming was, before the destruction of Jerusalem, the greatest source of
consolation to the infant church amid trial and persecution, and the church at
Thessalonica was severely tried in its infancy, and Paul driven away. It is
also remarkable that to a young church in Greece rather than to that in Rome
should have first been revealed the beginning of that mystery of anti-Christian
lawlessness which was then still restrained, but was to break out in its full
force in Rome.1136
The objections of Baur
to the genuineness of these Epistles, especially the second, are futile in the
judgment of the best critics.1137
The
Theoretical Theme:: The parousia of
Christ. The Practical Theme:
Christian hope in the midst of persecution.
Leading
Thoughts: This is the will of God,
even your sanctification (<scripRef passage = "1 Thess. 4:3">1 Thess. 4:3</scripRef>). Sorrow not as the rest who have no hope (<scripRef
passage = "1 Thess. 4:13">4:13</scripRef>). The Lord will descend from heaven, and so shall we ever be with the
Lord (<scripRef
passage = "1 Thess. 4:16, 17">4:16, 17</scripRef>). The day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in
the night (<scripRef passage = "1 Thess. 5:2">5:2</scripRef>). Let us watch and be sober (<scripRef
passage = "1 Thess. 5:6">5:6</scripRef>). Put on the breastplate of faith and love, and
for a helmet, the hope of salvation (<scripRef passage =
"1 Thess. 5:8">5:8</scripRef>). Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in
everything give thanks (<scripRef passage = "1 Thess. 5:16">5:16</scripRef>). Prove all things; hold fast that which is
good; abstain from every form of evil (<scripRef passage =
"1 Thess. 5:21, 22">5:21, 22</scripRef>). The Lord will come to be glorified in his saints (<scripRef
passage = "2 Thess. 1:10">2 Thess. 1:10</scripRef>). But the falling away must come first, and the
man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition (<scripRef passage =
"2 Thess. 2:3, 4">2:3, 4</scripRef>). The mystery of lawlessness doth already work, but is restrained for
the time (<scripRef passage = "2 Thess. 2:7">2:7</scripRef>). Stand fast and hold the traditions which ye
were taught, whether by word, or by epistle of ours (2:15). If any will not
work, neither let him eat (<scripRef passage = "2 Thess. 3:10">3:10</scripRef>). Be not weary in well-doing (3:13). The God of
peace sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved
entire, without blame at the coming (<foreign
lang="el">ejn th'/ parousiva/</foreign>) our Lord Jesus Christ (<scripRef passage =
"1 Thess. 5:23">1
Thess. 5:23</scripRef>).
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="90" title="The Epistles to the
Corinthians">
<index
type = "globalSubject"
subject1 = "New
Testament"
subject2 = "Epistles to the
Corinthians" />
§ 90. The Epistles to the Corinthians.
Corinth was the
metropolis of Achaia, on the bridge of two seas, an emporium of trade between
the East and the West—wealthy, luxurious, art-loving, devoted to the worship of
Aphrodite. Here Paul established the most important church in Greece, and
labored, first eighteen months, then three months, with, perhaps, a short visit
between (<scripRef
passage = "2 Cor. 12:14; 13:1">2 Cor. 12:14; 13:1</scripRef>). The church presented all the lights and shades
of the Greek nationality under the influence of the Gospel. It was rich in
"all utterance and all knowledge," "coming behind in no
gift," but troubled by the spirit of sect and party, infected with a
morbid desire for worldly wisdom and brilliant eloquence, with scepticism and
moral levity—nay, to some extent polluted with gross vices, so that even the
Lord’s table and love feasts were desecrated by excesses, and that the apostle,
in his absence, found himself compelled to excommunicate a particularly
offensive member who disgraced the Christian profession.1138 It
was distracted by Judaizers and other troublers, who abused the names of
Cephas, James, Apollos, and even of Christ (as extra-Christians), for
sectarian ends.1139 A number of questions of morality and
casuistry arose in that lively, speculative, and excitable community, which the
apostle had to answer from a distance before his second (or third) and last
visit.
Hence, these Epistles
abound in variety of topics, and show the extraordinary versatility of the mind
of the writer, and his practical wisdom in dealing with delicate and
complicated questions and unscrupulous opponents. For every aberration he has a
word of severe censure, for every danger a word of warning, for every weakness
a word of cheer and sympathy, for every returning offender a word of pardon and
encouragement. The Epistles lack the unity of design which characterizes
Galatians and Romans. They are ethical, ecclesiastical, pastoral, and personal,
rather than dogmatic and theological, although some most important doctrines,
as that on the resurrection, are treated more fully than elsewhere.
I. The First Epistle to the Corinthians was
composed in Ephesus shortly before Paul’s departure for Greece, in the spring
of a.d. 57.1140 It
had been preceded by another one, now lost (<scripRef passage =
"1 Cor. 5:9">1
Cor. 5:9</scripRef>). It was an answer to perplexing questions
concerning various disputes and evils which disturbed the peace and spotted the
purity of the congregation. The apostle contrasts the foolish wisdom of the
gospel with the wise folly of human philosophy; rebukes sectarianism; unfolds
the spiritual unity and harmonious variety of the church of Christ, her offices
and gifts of grace, chief among which is love; warns against carnal impurity as
a violation of the temple of God; gives advice concerning marriage and celibacy
without binding the conscience (having "no commandment of the Lord," <scripRef
passage = "1 Cor. 7:25">7:25</scripRef>); discusses the question of meat sacrificed to idols, on which Jewish
and Gentile Christians, scrupulous and liberal brethren, were divided; enjoins
the temporal support of the ministry as a Christian duty of gratitude for
greater spiritual mercies received; guards against improprieties of dress;
explains the design and corrects the abuses of the Lord’s Supper; and gives the
fullest exposition of the doctrine of the resurrection on the basis of the resurrection
of Christ and his personal manifestations to the disciples, and last, to
himself at his conversion. Dean Stanley says of this Epistle that it
"gives a clearer insight than any other portion of the New Testament into
the institutions, feelings and opinions of the church of the earlier period of
the apostolic age. It is in every sense the earliest chapter of the history of
the Christian church." The
last, however, is not quite correct. The Corinthian chapter was preceded by the
Jerusalem and Antioch chapters.
Leading
Thoughts: Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you (<scripRef
passage = "1 Cor. 1:13">1 Cor. 1:13</scripRef>) ?
It was God’s pleasure through the foolishness of the preaching [not
through foolish preaching] to save them that believe (<scripRef passage =
"1 Cor. 1:21">1:21</scripRef>). We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a
stumbling block, and unto Gentiles foolishness, but unto them that are called,
both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God (<scripRef
passage = "1 Cor. 1:24">1:24</scripRef>). I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus, and him
crucified (<scripRef passage = "1 Cor. 2:2">2:2</scripRef>). The natural man receiveth not the things of
the Spirit of God (<scripRef passage = "1 Cor. 2:14">2:14</scripRef>). Other foundation can no man lay than that
which is laid, which is Jesus Christ (<scripRef passage =
"1 Cor. 3:11">3:11</scripRef>). Know ye not that ye are a temple of God, and
that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?
If any man destroy the temple of God, him shall God destroy (<scripRef
passage = "1 Cor. 3:16, 17">3:16, 17</scripRef>). Let a man so account of ourselves as of ministers of Christ, and
stewards of the mysteries of God (<scripRef passage =
"1 Cor. 4:1">4:1</scripRef>). The kingdom of God is not in word, but in
power (<scripRef
passage = "1 Cor. 4:20">4:20</scripRef>). Purge out the old leaven (<scripRef passage =
"1 Cor. 5:7">5:7</scripRef>). All things are lawful for me; but not all
things are expedient (<scripRef passage = "1 Cor. 6:12">6:12</scripRef>). Know ye not that your bodies are members of
Christ (<scripRef
passage = "1 Cor. 6:15">6:15</scripRef>) ? Flee fornication (<scripRef
passage = "1 Cor. 6:18">6:18</scripRef>). Glorify God in your body (<scripRef passage =
"1 Cor. 6:20">6:20</scripRef>). Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is
nothing; but the keeping of the commandments of God (<scripRef passage =
"1 Cor. 7:19">7:19</scripRef>). Let each man abide in that calling wherein he
was called (<scripRef passage = "1 Cor. 7:20">7:20</scripRef>). Ye were bought with a price; become not
bondservants of men (<scripRef passage = "1 Cor. 7:23">7:23</scripRef>). Take heed lest this liberty of yours become a
stumbling block to the weak (<scripRef passage = "1 Cor.
8:9">8:9</scripRef>). If meat [or wine] maketh my brother to
stumble, I will eat no flesh [and drink no wine] for evermore, that I make not
my brother to stumble (<scripRef passage = "1 Cor. 8:13">8:13</scripRef>). They who proclaim the gospel shall live of the
gospel (<scripRef
passage = "1 Cor. 9:14">9:14</scripRef>). Woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel (<scripRef passage =
"1 Cor. 9:16">9:16</scripRef>). I am become all things to all men, that I may
by all means save some (<scripRef passage = "1 Cor. 9:22">9:22</scripRef>). Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed
lest he fall (<scripRef passage = "1 Cor. 10:12">10:12</scripRef>). All things are lawful, but all things are not
expedient. Let no man seek his own, but each his neighbor’s good (<scripRef
passage = "1 Cor. 10:23">10:23</scripRef>). Whosoever shall eat the bread or drink the cup of the Lord in an
unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord ... He
that eateth and drinketh eateth and drinketh judgment unto himself if he
discern (discriminate) not the body (<scripRef passage =
"1 Cor. 11:27–29">11:27–29</scripRef>). There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit (<scripRef
passage = "1 Cor. 12:4">12:4</scripRef>). Now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these
is love (<scripRef
passage = "1 Cor. 13:13">13:13</scripRef>). Follow after love (<scripRef passage = "1 Cor. 4:1">14:1</scripRef>). Let all things be done unto edifying (<scripRef
passage = "1 Cor. 4:26">14:26</scripRef>). By the grace of God I am what I am <scripRef passage =
"1 Cor. 15:9">(15:9)</scripRef>. If Christ hath not been raised, your faith is
vain; ye are yet in your sins <scripRef passage = "1 Cor.
15:17">(15:17)</scripRef>. As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all
be made alive <scripRef passage = "1 Cor. 15:22">(15:22)</scripRef>. God shall be all in all <scripRef passage =
"1 Cor. 15:28">(15:28)</scripRef>. If there is a natural body, there is also a
spiritual body <scripRef passage = "1 Cor. 15:44">(15:44)</scripRef>. This corruptible must put on incorruption, and
this mortal must put on immortality <scripRef passage =
"1 Cor. 15:54">(15:54)</scripRef>. Be ye steadfast, immovable, always abounding in
the work of the Lord <scripRef passage = "1 Cor. 15:58">(15:58)</scripRef>. Upon the first day in the week let each one of
you lay by him in store, as he may prosper <scripRef passage =
"1 Cor. 16:2">(16:2)</scripRef>. Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you
like men, be strong. Let all that ye do be done in love <scripRef passage =
"1 Cor. 16:13, 14">(16:13, 14.)</scripRef>.
II. The Second Epistle to the Corinthians
was written in the summer or autumn of the same year, 57, from some place in
Macedonia, shortly before the author’s intended personal visit to the
metropolis of Achaia.1141 It evidently proceeded from profound
agitation, and opens to us very freely the personal character and feelings, the
official trials and joys, the noble pride and deep humility, the holy
earnestness and fervent love, of the apostle. It gives us the deepest insight
into his heart, and is almost an autobiography. He had, in the meantime, heard
fuller news, through Titus, of the state of the church, the effects produced by
his first Epistle, and the intrigues of the emissaries of the Judaizing party,
who followed him everywhere and tried to undermine his work. This unchristian
opposition compelled him, in self-defence, to speak of his ministry and his
personal experience with overpowering eloquence. He also urges again upon the
congregation the duty of charitable collections for the poor. The Epistle is a
mine of pastoral wisdom.
Leading
Thoughts: As the sufferings of
Christ abound unto us, even so our comfort also aboundeth through Christ (<scripRef
passage = "2 Cor. 1:5">2 Cor. 1:5</scripRef>). As ye are partakers of the sufferings, so also
are ye of the comfort <scripRef passage = "2 Cor. 1:7">(1:7)</scripRef>. Not that we have lordship over your faith, but
are helpers of your joy <scripRef passage = "2 Cor. 1:24">(1:24)</scripRef>. Who is sufficient for these things <scripRef
passage = "2 Cor. 2:16">(2:16)</scripRef>? Ye are our epistle,
written in our hearts, known and read of all men <scripRef passage =
"2 Cor. 3:2">(3:2)</scripRef>. Not that we are sufficient of ourselves, but
our sufficiency is from God <scripRef passage = "2 Cor. 3:5">(3:5)</scripRef>. The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life <scripRef
passage = "2 Cor. 3:6)">(3:6)</scripRef>. The Lord is the Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is
liberty <scripRef
passage = "2 Cor. 3:17">(3:17)</scripRef>. We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as
your servants for Jesus’ sake <scripRef passage = "2 Cor.
4:5">(4:5)</scripRef>. We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that
the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves <scripRef
passage = "2 Cor. 4:7">(4:7)</scripRef>. Our light affliction, which is for the moment, worketh for us more and
more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory <scripRef passage =
"2 Cor. 4:17">(4:17)</scripRef>. We know that if the earthly house of our
tabernacle be dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with
hands, eternal, in the heavens <scripRef passage = "2 Cor.
5:1">(5:1)</scripRef>. We walk by faith, not by sight <scripRef
passage = "2 Cor. 5:7">(5:7)</scripRef>. We must all be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ <scripRef
passage = "2 Cor. 5:10">(5:10)</scripRef>. The love of Christ constraineth us, because we thus judge, that one
died for all, therefore all died <scripRef passage = "2 Cor.
5:14">(5:14)</scripRef>. And he died for all, that they who live should
no longer live unto themselves, but unto him who for their sakes died and rose
again <scripRef
passage = "2 Cor. 5:15">(5:15)</scripRef>. If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are
passed away; behold, they are become new <scripRef passage =
"2 Cor. 5:17">(5:17)</scripRef>. God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto
himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses, and having committed unto us
the word of reconciliation <scripRef passage = "2 Cor. 5:19">(5:19)</scripRef>. We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be ye
reconciled to God <scripRef passage = "2 Cor. 5:20">(5:20)</scripRef>. Him who knew no sin he made to be sin in our
behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in him <scripRef
passage = "2 Cor. 5:21">(5:21)</scripRef>. Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers <scripRef passage =
"2 Cor. 6:14">(6:14)</scripRef>. I am filled with comfort, I overflow with joy
in all our affliction <scripRef passage = "2 Cor. 7:4">(7:4)</scripRef>. Godly sorrow worketh repentance unto salvation,
but the sorrow of the world worketh death <scripRef passage =
"2 Cor. 7:10">(7:10)</scripRef>. Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through
his poverty might become rich <scripRef passage = "2 Cor.
8:9">(8:9)</scripRef>. He that soweth sparingly shall reap also
sparingly; and he that soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully <scripRef
passage = "2 Cor. 9:6">(9:6)</scripRef>. God loveth a cheerful giver <scripRef passage =
"2 Cor. 9:7">(9:7)</scripRef>. He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord <scripRef
passage = "2 Cor. 10:17">(10:17)</scripRef>. Not he that commendeth himself is approved, but whom the Lord
commendeth <scripRef passage = "2 Cor. 10:18">(10:18)</scripRef>. My grace is sufficient for thee; for my power
is made perfect in weakness <scripRef passage = "2 Cor. 12:9">(12:9)</scripRef>. We can do nothing against the truth, but for
the truth <scripRef passage = "2 Cor. 13:8">(13:8)</scripRef>. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the
love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all <scripRef
passage = "2 Cor. 13:14">(13:14)</scripRef>.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="91" title="The Epistles to the
Galatians">
<index
type = "globalSubject"
subject1 = "New
Testament"
subject2 = "Epistles to the
Galatians" />
§ 91. The Epistles to the Galatians.
Comp. the introduction to my Com. on Gal. (1882).
Galatians and Romans
discuss the doctrines of sin and redemption, and the relation of the law and
the gospel. They teach salvation by free grace and justification by faith,
Christian universalism in opposition to Jewish particularism, evangelical
freedom versus legalistic bondage. But Galatians is a rapid sketch and the
child of deep emotion, Romans an elaborate treatise and the mature product of
calm reflexion. The former Epistle is polemical against foreign intruders and
seducers, the latter is irenical and composed in a serene frame of mind. The
one rushes along like a mountain torrent and foaming cataract, the other flows
like a majestic river through a boundless prairie; and yet it is the same
river, like the Nile at the Rapids and below Cairo, or the Rhine in the Grisons
and the lowlands of Germany and Holland, or the St. Lawrence at Niagara Falls
and below Montreal and Quebec where it majestically branches out into the
ocean.
It is a remarkable fact
that the two races represented by the readers of these Epistles—the Celtic and
the Latin—have far departed from the doctrines taught in them and exchanged the
gospel freedom for legal bondage; thus repeating the apostasy of the sanguine,
generous, impressible, mercurial, fickle-minded Galatians. The Pauline gospel
was for centuries ignored, misunderstood, and (in spite of St. Augustin) cast
out at last by Rome, as Christianity itself was cast out by Jerusalem of old.
But the overruling wisdom of God made the rule of the papacy a training-school
of the Teutonic races of the North and West for freedom; as it had turned the
unbelief of the Jews to the conversion of the Gentiles. Those Epistles, more
than any book of the New Testament, inspired the Reformation of the Sixteenth
century, and are to this day the Gibraltar of evangelical Protestantism.
Luther, under a secondary inspiration, reproduced Galatians in his war against
the "Babylonian captivity of the church;" the battle for Christian
freedom was won once more, and its fruits are enjoyed by nations of which
neither Paul nor Luther ever heard.
The Epistle to the Galatians (Gauls, originally from the
borders of the Rhine and Moselle, who had migrated to Asia Minor) was written
after Paul’s second visit to them, either during his long residence in Ephesus
(a.d. 54–57), or shortly
afterwards on his second journey to Corinth, possibly from Corinth, certainly
before the Epistle to the Romans. It was occasioned by the machinations of the
Judaizing teachers who undermined his apostolic authority and misled his
converts into an apostasy from the gospel of free grace to a false gospel of
legal bondage, requiring circumcision as a condition of justification and full
membership of the church. It is an "<foreign
lang="la">Apologia
pro vita sua</foreign>," a personal and doctrinal self-vindication. He defends his
independent apostleship (<scripRef passage = "Gal.1:1–2:14">Gal.1:1–2:14</scripRef>), and his teaching (<scripRef passage =
"Gal. 2:15–4:31">2:15–4:31</scripRef>), and closes with exhortations to hold fast to
Christian freedom without abusing it, and to show the fruits of faith by holy
living (<scripRef
passage = "Gal. 5–6">Gal. 5–6</scripRef>).
The Epistle reveals, in
clear, strong colors, both the difference and the harmony among the Jewish and
Gentile apostles—a difference ignored by the old orthodoxy, which sees only the
harmony, and exaggerated by modern scepticism, which sees only the difference.
It anticipates, in grand fundamental outlines, a conflict which is renewed from
time to time in the history of different churches, and, on the largest scale,
in the conflict between Petrine Romanism and Pauline Protestantism. The
temporary collision of the two leading apostles in Antioch is typical of the
battle of the Reformation.
At the same time
Galatians is an Irenicon and sounds the key-note of a final adjustment of all
doctrinal and ritualistic controversies. "In Christ Jesus neither
circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith working
through love" (<scripRef passage = "Gal. 5:6">5:6</scripRef>). "And as many as shall walk by this rule,
peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God" (<scripRef
passage = "Gal. 6:16">6:16</scripRef>).
Central
Idea: Evangelical freedom.
Key-Words:
For freedom Christ set us free: stand fast therefore, and be not entangled
again in the yoke of bondage <scripRef passage = "Gal.
5:1">(5:1)</scripRef>. A man is not justified by works of the law, but
only through faith in Jesus Christ <scripRef passage =
"Gal. 2:16">(2:16)</scripRef>. I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no
longer I that live but Christ liveth in me <scripRef passage =
"Gal. 2:20">(2:20)</scripRef>. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law,
having become a curse for us <scripRef passage = "Gal.
3:13">(3:13)</scripRef>. Ye were called for freedom, only use not your
freedom for an occasion to the flesh, but through love be servants one to
another <scripRef
passage = "Gal. 5:13">(5:13)</scripRef>. Walk by the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh <scripRef
passage = "Gal. 5:16">(5:16)</scripRef>.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="92" title="The Epistle to the
Romans">
§ 92. The Epistle to the Romans.
On the church in Rome, see § 36 (pp. 360 sqq.); on the
theology of the Ep. to the Rom., § 71 (pp. 525 sqq.).
A few weeks before his
fifth and last journey to Jerusalem, Paul sent, as a forerunner of his intended
personal visit, a letter to the Christians in the capital of the world, which
was intended by Providence to become the Jerusalem of Christendom. Foreseeing
its future importance, the apostle chose for his theme: The gospel the power of
God unto salvation to every believer, the Jew first, and also the Gentile (<scripRef
passage = "Rom. 1:16, 17">Rom. 1:16, 17</scripRef>). Writing to the philosophical Greeks, he
contrasts the wisdom of God with the wisdom of man. To the world-ruling
Romans he represents Christianity as the power of God which by spiritual
weapons will conquer even conquering Rome. Such a bold idea must have struck a
Roman statesman as the wild dream of a visionary or madman, but it was
fulfilled in the ultimate conversion of the empire after three centuries of
persecution, and is still in the process of ever-growing fulfilment.
In the exposition of his
theme the apostle shows: (1) that all men are in need of salvation, being under
the power of sin and exposed to the judgment of the righteous God, the Gentiles
not only <scripRef
passage = "Rom. 1:18–32">(1:18–32)</scripRef>, but also the Jews, who are still more guilty, having sinned against the
written law and extraordinary privileges <scripRef passage =
"Rom. 2:1–3:20">(2:1–3:20)</scripRef>; (2) that salvation is accomplished by Jesus
Christ, his atoning death and triumphant resurrection, freely offered to all on
the sole condition of faith, and applied in the successive acts of
justification, sanctification, and glorification <scripRef passage =
"Rom. 3:21–8:17">(3:21–8:17)</scripRef>; (3) that salvation was offered first to the
Jews, and, being rejected by them in unbelief, passed on to the Gentiles, but
will return again to the Jews after the fulness of the Gentiles shall have come
in (<scripRef
passage = "Rom. 9–11">Rom. 9–11</scripRef>); (4) that we should show our gratitude for so great a salvation by
surrendering ourselves to the service of God, which is true freedom (<scripRef
passage = "Rom. 12–16">Rom. 12–16</scripRef>).
The salutations in <scripRef
passage = "Rom. 16">Rom. 16</scripRef>, the remarkable variations of the manuscripts in <scripRef passage =
"Rom. 15:33">15:33</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Rom. 16:20, 24,
27">16:20, 24, 27</scripRef>, and the omission of the words "in
Rome," <scripRef passage = "Rom. 1:7, 15">1:7, 15</scripRef>, in Codex G, are best explained by the
conjecture that copies of the letter were also sent to Ephesus (where Aquila
and Priscilla were at that time, <scripRef passage = "1 Cor.
16:19">1 Cor. 16:19</scripRef>, and again, some years afterwards, <scripRef
passage = "2 Tim. 4:19">2 Tim. 4:19</scripRef>), and perhaps to other churches with appropriate
conclusions, all of which are preserved in the present form.1142
This letter stands
justly at the head of the Pauline Epistles. It is more comprehensive and
systematic than the others, and admirably adapted to the mistress of the world,
which was to become also the mistress of Western Christendom. It is the most
remarkable production of the most remarkable man. It is his heart. It contains
his theology, theoretical and practical, for which he lived and died. It gives
the clearest and fullest exposition of the doctrines of sin and grace and the
best possible solution of the universal dominion of sin and death in the
universal redemption by the second Adam. Without this redemption the fall is
indeed the darkest enigma and irreconcilable with the idea of divine justice
and goodness. Paul reverently lifts the veil from the mysteries of eternal
foreknowledge and foreordination and God’s gracious designs in the winding
course of history which will end at last in the triumph of his wisdom and mercy
and the greatest good to mankind. Luther calls Romans "the chief book of
the New Testament and the purest Gospel," Coleridge: "the profoundest
book in existence." Meyer:
"the greatest and richest of all the apostolic works," Godet (best of
all): "the cathedral of the Christian faith."
Theme: Christianity the power of free and universal
salvation, on condition of faith.
Leading
Thoughts: They are all under sin (<scripRef
passage = "Rom. 3:9">Rom. 3:9</scripRef>). Through the law cometh the knowledge of sin <scripRef passage =
"Rom. 3:20">(3:20)</scripRef>. Man is justified by faith apart from works of
the law <scripRef
passage = "Rom. 3:28">(3:28)</scripRef>. Being justified by faith we have (<foreign
lang="el">e[comen</foreign> or, let us have, <foreign
lang="el">e[cwmen</foreign>) peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ <scripRef
passage = "Rom. 5:1">(5:1)</scripRef>. As through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin,
and so death passed unto all men, for that all sinned <scripRef passage =
"Rom. 5:12">(5:12)</scripRef>: [so through one man righteousness entered into
the world, and life through righteousness, and so life passed unto all men on
condition that they believe in Christ and by faith become partakers of his
righteousness]. Where sin abounded, grace did abound much more exceedingly:
that as sin reigned in death, even so might grace reign through righteousness
unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord <scripRef passage =
"Rom. 5:20, 21">(5:20,
21)</scripRef>. Reckon yourselves to be dead unto sin, but
alive unto God in Christ Jesus <scripRef passage = "Rom.
6:11">(6:11)</scripRef>. There is no condemnation to them that are in
Christ Jesus <scripRef passage = "Rom. 8:1">(8:1)</scripRef>. To them that love God all things work together
for good <scripRef
passage = "Rom. 8:28">(8:28)</scripRef>. Whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be conformed to the image of
his Son ... and whom he foreordained them he also called: and whom he called,
them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified <scripRef
passage = "Rom. 8:29, 30">(8:29, 30)</scripRef>. If God is for us, who is against us <scripRef
passage = "Rom. 8:31">(8:31)</scripRef>? Who shall separate us from
the love of Christ <scripRef passage = "Rom. 8:35">(8:35)</scripRef>?
Hardening in part hath befallen Israel, until the fulness of the
Gentiles be come in; and so all Israel shall be saved <scripRef passage =
"Rom. 11:25">(11:25)</scripRef>. God hath shut up all unto disobedience, that he
might have mercy upon all <scripRef passage = "Rom. 11:32">(11:32)</scripRef>. Of Him, and through Him, and unto Him are all
things <scripRef
passage = "Rom. 11:36">(11:36)</scripRef>. Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which
is your reasonable service <scripRef passage = "Rom. 12:1">(12:1)</scripRef>.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="93" title="The Epistles of the
Captivity">
§ 93. The Epistles of the Captivity.
During his confinement in
Rome, from a.d. 61 to 63, while
waiting the issue of his trial on the charge of being "a mover of
insurrections among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the
sect of the Nazarenes" (<scripRef passage = "Acts
24:5">Acts 24:5</scripRef>), the aged apostle composed four Epistles, to
the Colossians, Ephesians, Philemon, and
Philippians. He thus turned the prison into a pulpit, sent inspiration
and comfort to his distant congregations, and rendered a greater service to
future ages than he could have done by active labor. He gloried in being a
"prisoner of Christ." He
experienced the blessedness of persecution for righteousness’ sake (<scripRef
passage = "Matt. 5:10">Matt. 5:10</scripRef>), and "the peace of God which passeth all
understanding" (<scripRef passage = "Philippians
4:7">Phil. 4:7</scripRef>). He often refers to his bonds, and the coupling
chain or hand-cuff (<foreign lang="el">a{lusi"</foreign>) by which, according to Roman custom, he was
with his right wrist fettered day and night to a soldier; one relieving the
other and being in turn chained to the apostle, so that his imprisonment became
a means for the spread of the gospel "throughout the whole praetorian
guard."1143 He
had the privilege of living in his own hired lodging (probably in the
neighborhood of the praetorian camp, outside of the walls, to the northeast of
Rome), and of free intercourse with his companions and distant congregations.
Paul does not mention
the place of his captivity, which extended through four years and a half (two
at Caesarea, two at Rome, and six months spent on the stormy voyage and at
Malta). The traditional view dates the four Epistles from the Roman captivity,
and there is no good reason to depart from it. Several modern critics assign
one or more to Caesarea, where he cannot be supposed to have been idle, and
where he was nearer to his congregations in Asia Minor.1144 But
in Caesarea Paul looked forward to Rome and to Spain; while in the Epistles of
the captivity he expresses the hope of soon visiting Colossae and Philippi. In
Rome he had the best opportunity of correspondence with his distant friends,
and enjoyed a degree of freedom which may have been denied him in Caesarea. In
Philippians he sends greetings from converts in "Caesar’s household"
(<scripRef
passage = "Philippians 4:22">Phil. 4:22</scripRef>), which naturally points to Rome; and the
circumstances and surroundings of the other Epistles are very much alike.
Ephesians, Colossians,
and Philemon were composed about the same time and sent by the same messengers
(Tychicus and Onesimus) to Asia Minor, probably toward the close of the Roman
captivity, for in <scripRef passage = "Philemon 22">Philemon 22</scripRef>, he engaged a lodging in Colosae in the prospect
of a speedy release and visit to the East.
Philippians we place
last in the order of composition, or, at all events, in the second year of the
Roman captivity; for some time must have elapsed after Paul’s arrival in Rome
before the gospeI could spread "throughout the whole praetorian
guard" (<scripRef passage = "Philippians 1:13">Phil. 1:13</scripRef>), and before the Philippians, at a distance of
seven hundred miles from Rome (a full month’s journey in those days), could
receive news from him and send him contributions through Epaphroditus, besides
other communications which seem to have preceded the Epistle.1145
On the other hand, the
priority of the composition of Philippians has been recently urged on purely
internal evidence, namely, its doctrinal affinity with the preceding
anti-Judaic Epistles; while Colossians and Ephesians presuppose the rise of the
Gnostic heresy and thus form the connecting link between them and the Pastoral
Epistles, in which the same heresy appears in a more matured form.1146 But
Ephesians has likewise striking affinities in thought and language with Romans
in the doctrine of justification (comp. <scripRef passage =
"Eph. 2:8">Eph.
2:8</scripRef>), and with <scripRef passage =
"Romans 12">Romans
12</scripRef> and <scripRef passage =
"1 Cor. 12, 14">1
Cor. 12 and 1 Cor. 14</scripRef>) in the doctrine of the church. As to the
heresy, Paul had predicted its rise in Asia Minor several years before in his
farewell to the Ephesian elders. And, finally, the grateful and joyful tone of
Philippians falls in most naturally with the lofty and glorious conception of
the church of Christ as presented in Ephesians.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="94" title="The Epistle to the
Colossians">
<index
type = "globalSubject"
subject1 = "New
Testament"
subject2 = "Epistle to the
Colossians" />
§ 94. The Epistle to the Colossians.
The Churches in Phrygia.
The cities of Colossae,
Laodicea, and Hierapolis are mentioned together as seats of Christian churches
in the closing chapter of Colossians, and the Epistle may be considered as
being addressed to all, for the apostle directs that it be read also in the
churches of the Laodiceans (<scripRef passage = "Col. 4:13–16">Col. 4:13–16</scripRef>). They were situated within a few miles of each
other in the valley of the Lycus (a tributary of the Maeander) in Phrygia on
the borders of Lydia, and belonged, under the Roman rule, to the proconsular
province of Asia Minor.
Laodicea was the most
important of the three, and enjoyed metropolitan rank; she was destroyed by a
disastrous earthquake a.d. 61 or
65, but rebuilt from her own resources without the customary aid from Rome.1147 The
church of Laodicea is the last of the seven churches addressed in the
Apocalypse (<scripRef passage = "Rev. 3:14–22">Rev. 3:14–22</scripRef>), and is described as rich and proud and
lukewarm. It harbored in the middle of the fourth century (after 344) a council
which passed an important act on the canon, forbidding the public reading of
any but "the canonical books of the New and Old Testaments" (the list
of these books is a later addition), a prohibition which was confirmed and
adopted by later councils in the East and the West.
Hierapolis was a famous
watering-place, surrounded by beautiful scenery,1148 and the birthplace of the lame slave Epictetus,
who, with Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, ranks among the first heathen moralists,
and so closely resembles the lofty maxims of the New Testament that some
writers have assumed, though without historic foundation, a passing
acquaintance between him and Paul or his pupil Epaphras of Colossae.1149 The
church of Hierapolis figures in the post-apostolic age as the bishopric of
Papias (a friend of Polycarp) and Apollinaris.
Colossae,1150 once likewise famous, was at the time of Paul
the smallest of the three neighboring cities, and has almost disappeared from
the earth; while magnificent ruins of temples, theatres, baths, aqueducts,
gymnasia, and sepulchres still testify to the former wealth and prosperity of
Laodicea and Hierapolis. The church of Colossae was the least important of the
churches to which Paul addressed an Epistle, and it is scarcely mentioned in
post-apostolic times; but it gave rise to a heresy which shook the church in
the second century, and this Epistle furnished the best remedy against it.
There was a large Jewish
population in Phrygia, since Antiochus the Great had despotically transplanted
two thousand Jewish families from Babylonia and Mesopotamia to that region. It
thus became, in connection with the sensuous and mystic tendency of the
Phrygian character, a nursery of religious syncretism and various forms of
fanaticism.
Paul and the Colossians.
Paul passed twice
through Phrygia, on his second and third missionary tours,1151 but probably not through the valley of the
Lycus. Luke does not say that he established churches there, and Paul himself
seems to include the Colossians and Laodiceans among those who had not seen his
face in the flesh.1152 He names Epaphras, of Colossae, his
"dear fellow-servant" and "fellow-prisoner," as the teacher
and faithful minister of the Christians in that place.1153 But
during his long residence in Ephesus (a.d.
54–57) and from his imprisonment he exercised a general supervision over all
the churches in Asia. After his death they passed under the care of John, and
in the second century they figure prominently in the Gnostic, Paschal,
Chiliastic, and Montanistic controversies.
Paul heard of the
condition of the church at Colossae through Epaphras, his pupil, and Onesimus,
a runaway slave. He sent through Tychicus (<scripRef passage =
"Col. 4:7">Col.
4:7</scripRef>) a letter to the church, which was also intended
for the Laodiceans (<scripRef passage = "Col. 4:16">4:16</scripRef>); at the same time he sent through Onesimus a
private letter of commendation to his master, Philemon, a member of the church
of Colossae. He also directed the Colossians to procure and read "the
letter from Laodicea,"1154
which is most probably the evangelical Epistle to the Ephesians which was
likewise transmitted through Tychicus. He had special reasons for writing to
the Colossians and to Philemon, and a general reason for writing to all the
churches in the region of Ephesus; and he took advantage of the mission of
Tychicus to secure both ends. In this way the three Epistles are closely
connected in time and aim. They would mutually explain and confirm one another.
The Colossian Heresy.
The special reason which prompted Paul to write to the Colossians was the rise of a new heresy among them which soon afterward swelled into a mighty and dangerous movement in the ancient church, as rationalism has done in modern times. It differed from the Judaizing heresy which he opposed in Galatians and Corinthians, as Essenism differed from Phariseeism, or as legalism differs from mysticism. The Colossian heresy was an Essenic and ascetic type of Gnosticism; it derived its ritualistic and practical elements from Judaism, its speculative elements from heathenism; it retained circumcision, the observance of Sabbaths and new moons, and the distinction of meats and drinks; but it mixed with it elements of oriental mysticism and theosophy, the heathen notion of an evil principle, the worship of subordinate spirits, and an ascetic struggle for emancipation from the dominion of matter. It taught an antagonism between God and matter and interposed between them a series of angelic mediators as objects of worship. It thus contained the essential features of Gnosticism, but in its incipient and rudimental form, or a Christian Essenism in its transition to Gnosticism. In its ascetic tendency it resembles that of the weak brethren in the Roman congregation (<scripRef passage = "Rom. 14:5, 6, 21">Rom. 14:5, 6, 21</scripRef>). Cerinthus, in the age of John, represents a more developed stage and forms the link between the Colossian heresy and the post-apostolic Gnosticism.1155
The Refutation.
Paul refutes this false
philosophy calmly and respectfully by the true doctrine of the Person of
Christ, as the one Mediator between God and men, in whom dwells all the fulness
of the Godhead bodily. And he meets the false asceticism based upon the
dualistic principle with the doctrine of the purification of the heart by faith
and love as the effectual cure of all moral evil.
The Gnostic and the Pauline Pleroma.
"Pleroma" or
"fulness" is an important term in Colossians and Ephesians.1156
Paul uses it in common with the Gnostics, and this has been made an
argument for the post-apostolic origin of the two Epistles. He did, of course,
not borrow it from the Gnostics; for he employs it repeatedly in his other
Epistles with slight variations. It must have had a fixed theological meaning,
as it is not explained. It cannot be traced to Philo, who, however, uses
"Logos" in a somewhat similar sense for the plenitude of Divine
powers.
Paul speaks of "the
pleroma of the earth," i.e., all that fills the earth or is contained
in it (<scripRef passage = "1 Cor. 10:26, 28">1 Cor. 10:26, 28</scripRef>, in a quotation from <scripRef passage =
"Ps. 24:1">Ps.
24:1</scripRef>); "the pleroma," i.e., the fulfilment or accomplishment, "of the
law," which is love (<scripRef passage = "Rom. 13:10">Rom. 13:10</scripRef>1157); "the pleroma," i.e., the fulness
or abundance, "of the blessing of Christ" ( <scripRef
passage = "Rom. 15:29">Rom. 15:29</scripRef>)
"the pleroma," or full measure, "of the time" ( <scripRef
passage = "Gal. 4:4">Gal. 4:4</scripRef>; comp. <scripRef passage =
"Eph. 1:10">Eph.
1:10</scripRef>; <scripRef passage =
"Mark 1:15">Mark
1:15</scripRef>; <scripRef passage =
"Luke 21:24">Luke
21:24</scripRef>); "the pleroma of the Gentiles,"
meaning their full number, or whole body, but not necessarily all individuals (<scripRef
passage = "Rom. 11:25">Rom. 11:25</scripRef>); "the pleroma of the Godhead," i.e., the fulness or plenitude of all Divine attributes
and energies (<scripRef passage = "Col. 1:19; 2:9">Col. 1:19; 2:9</scripRef>); "the pleroma of Christ," which is
the church as the body of Christ (<scripRef passage =
"Eph. 1:23">Eph.
1:23</scripRef>; comp. <scripRef passage =
"Eph. 3:19; 4:13">3:19; 4:13</scripRef>).
In the Gnostic systems,
especially that of Valentinus, "pleroma" signifies the intellectual
and spiritual world, including all Divine powers or aeons, in opposition to the
"kenoma," i.e., the void, the emptiness, the material world.
The distinction was based on the dualistic principle of an eternal antagonism
between spirit and matter, which led the more earnest Gnostics to an
extravagant asceticism, the frivolous ones to wild antinomianism. They included
in the pleroma a succession of emanations from the Divine abyss, which form the
links between the infinite and the finite; and they lowered the dignity of
Christ by making him simply the highest of those intermediate aeons. The burden
of the Gnostic speculation was always the question: Whence is the world? and
whence is evil? It sought the
solution in a dualism between mind and matter, the pleroma and the kenoma; but this is no solution at all.
In opposition to this
error, Paul teaches, on a thoroughly monotheistic basis, that Christ is
"the image of the invisible God" (<foreign
lang="el">ei'kw;n tou' qeou' tou' ajoravtou </foreign><scripRef
passage = "Col. 1:15">Col. 1:15</scripRef>; comp. <scripRef passage = "2 Cor. 4:4">2 Cor. 4:4</scripRef>—an expression often used by Philo as a description
of the Logos, and of the personified Wisdom, in <scripRef passage =
"Wisd. 7:26">Wisd.
7:26</scripRef>); that he is the preëxistent and incarnate
pleroma or plenitude of Divine powers and attributes; that in him the whole
fulness of the Godhead, that is, of the Divine nature itself,1158 dwells bodily-wise or corporeally (<foreign
lang="el">swmatikw'"</foreign>), as the soul dwells in the human body;
and that he is the one universal and all-sufficient Mediator, through whom the
whole universe of things visible and invisible, were made, in whom all things
hold together (or cohere, <foreign lang="el">sunevsthken</foreign>) , and through whom the Father is pleased to
reconcile all things to himself.
The Christology of
Colossians approaches very closely to the Christology of John; for he
represents Christ as the incarnate "Logos" or Revealer of God, who
dwelt among us "full (<foreign lang="el">plhvrh"¼
of grace and truth," and out of whose Divine sfulness" »ejk tou'
plhrwvmato" aujtou'</foreign>) we all have received grace for grace (<scripRef
passage = "John 1:1, 14, 16">John 1:1, 14, 16</scripRef>). Paul and John fully agree in teaching the
eternal preëxistence of Christ, and his agency in the creation and preservation
of the world (<scripRef passage = "Col. 1:15–17">Col. 1:15–17</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "John
1:3">John 1:3</scripRef>). According to Paul, He is "the first-born
or first-begotten" of all creation (<foreign
lang="el">prwtovtoko" pavsh"
ktivsew",</foreign> <scripRef
passage = "Col. 1:15">Col. 1:15</scripRef>, distinct from <foreign lang="el">prwtovktisto",</foreign> first-created), i.e., prior and superior to
the whole created world, or eternal; according to John He is "the
only-begotten Son" of the Father. (<foreign
lang="el">oJ monogenh;" uiJov"</foreign>1159 <scripRef passage = "John 1:14,
18">John 1:14, 18</scripRef>; comp. <scripRef passage =
"John 3:16, 18">3:16,
18</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "1 John
4:9">1 John 4:9</scripRef>), before and above all created children of God.
The former term denotes Christ’s unique relation to the world, the latter his
unique relation to the Father.
The Pauline authorship
of the Epistle to the Colossians will be discussed in the next section in
connection with the Epistle to the Ephesians.
Theme: Christ all in all. The true gnosis and the
false gnosis. True and false asceticism.
Leading
Thoughts: Christ is the image of the
invisible God, the first-begotten of all creation (<scripRef passage =
"Col. 1:15">Col.
1:15</scripRef>).—In Christ are hidden all the treasures of
wisdom and knowledge (<scripRef passage = "Coloss. 2:3">2:3</scripRef>).—In him dwelleth all the fulness (<foreign
lang="el">to; plhvrwma</foreign>) of the Godhead bodily (<scripRef passage =
"Coloss. 2:9">2:9</scripRef>).—If ye were raised together with Christ, seek
the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God <scripRef
passage = "Coloss. 3:1">(3:1)</scripRef>.—When Christ, who is our life, shall be manifested, then shall ye also
with him be manifested in glory <scripRef passage = "Coloss.
3:4">(3:4)</scripRef>.—Christ is all, and in all <scripRef
passage = "Coloss. 3:11">(3:11)</scripRef>.—Above all things put on love, which is the bond of perfectness <scripRef
passage = "Coloss. 3:14">(3:14)</scripRef>.—Whatsoever ye do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord
Jesus <scripRef
passage = "Coloss. 3:17">(3:17)</scripRef>.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="95" title="The Epistle to the
Ephesians">
<index
type = "globalSubject"
subject1 = "New
Testament"
subject2 = "Epistle to the
Ephesians" />
§ 95. The Epistle to the Ephesians.
Contents.
When Paul took leave of the
Ephesian Elders at Miletus, in the spring of the year 58, he earnestly and
affectionately exhorted them, in view of threatening disturbances from within,
to take heed unto themselves and to feed "the church of the Lord, which he
acquired with his own blood."1160
This strikes the
key-note of the Epistle to the Ephesians. It is a doctrinal and practical
exposition of the idea of the church, as the house of God (<scripRef
passage = "Eph. 2:20–22">Eph. 2:20–22</scripRef>), the spotless bride of Christ <scripRef
passage = Eph. 5:25–27">(5:25–27)</scripRef>, the mystical body of Christ <scripRef passage =
"Eph. 4:12–16">(4:12–16)</scripRef>, "the fulness of Him that filleth all in
all" <scripRef passage = "Eph. 1:23">(1:23)</scripRef>. The pleroma of the Godhead resides in Christ
corporeally; so the pleroma of Christ, the plenitude of his graces and
energies, resides in the church, as his body. Christ’s fulness is God’s
fulness; the church’s fulness is Christ’s fulness. God is reflected in Christ,
Christ is reflected in the church.
This is an ideal
conception, a celestial vision, as it were, of the church in its future state
of perfection. Paul himself represents the present church militant as a gradual
growth unto the complete stature of Christ’s fulness <scripRef passage =
"Eph. 4:13–16">(4:13–16)</scripRef>. We look in vain for an actual church which is
free from spot or wrinkle or blemish <scripRef passage =
"Eph. 5:27">(5:27)</scripRef>. Even the apostolic church was full of defects,
as we may learn from every Epistle of the New Testament. The church consists of
individual Christians, and cannot be complete till they are complete. The body
grows and matures with its several members. "It is not yet made manifest
what we shall be" (<scripRef passage = "1 John 3:2">1 John 3:2</scripRef>).
Nevertheless, Paul’s
church is not a speculation or fiction, like Plato’s Republic or Sir Thomas
More’s Utopia. It is a reality in Christ, who is absolutely holy, and is
spiritually and dynamically present in his church always, as the soul is
present in the members of the body. And it sets before us the high standard and
aim to be kept constantly in view; as Christ exhorts every one individually to
be perfect, even as our heavenly Father is perfect (<scripRef passage =
"Matt. 5:48">Matt.
5:48</scripRef>).
With this conception of
the church is closely connected Paul’s profound and most fruitful idea of the
family. He calls the relation of Christ to his church a great mystery (<scripRef
passage = "Eph. 5:32">Eph. 5:32</scripRef>), and represents it as the archetype of the marriage relation, whereby
one man and one woman become one flesh. He therefore bases the family on new
and holy ground, and makes it a miniature of the church, or the household of
God. Accordingly, husbands are to love their wives even as Christ loved the
church, his bride, and gave himself up for her; wives are to obey their
husbands as the church is subject to Christ, the head; parents are to love
their children as Christ and the church love the individual Christians;
children are to love their parents as individual Christians are to love Christ
and the church. The full and general realization of this domestic ideal would
be heaven on earth. But how few families come up to this standard.1161
Ephesians and the Writings of John.
Paul emphasizes the
person of Christ in Colossians, the person and agency of the Holy Spirit in
Ephesians. For the Holy Spirit carries on the work of Christ in the church.
Christians are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise unto the day of
redemption <scripRef passage = "Eph. 1:13; 4:30">(Eph. 1:13; 4:30)</scripRef>. The spirit of wisdom and revelation imparts the
knowledge of Christ <scripRef passage = "Eph. 1:17;
3:16">(1:17; 3:16)</scripRef>. Christians should be filled with the Spirit <scripRef
passage = "Eph. 5:18">(5:18)</scripRef>, take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, and pray in the
Spirit at all seasons <scripRef passage = "Eph. 6:17, 18">(6:17, 18)</scripRef>.
The pneumatology of
Ephesians resembles that of John, as the christology of Colossians resembles
the christology of John. It is the Spirit who takes out of the
"fulness" of Christ, and shows it to the believer, who glorifies the
Son and guides into the truth <scripRef passage = "John 14:17;
15:26; 16:13–15">(John
14:17; 15:26; 16:13–15, etc.)</scripRef>. Great prominence is given to the Spirit also in
Romans, Galatians, Corinthians, and the Acts of the Apostles.
John does not speak of
the church and its outward organization (except in the Apocalypse), but he
brings Christ in as close and vital a contact with the individual disciples as
Paul with the whole body. Both teach the unity of the church as a fact, and as
an aim to be realized more and more by the effort of Christians, and both put
the centre of unity in the Holy Spirit.
Encyclical Intent
Ephesians was intended
not only for the church at Ephesus, the metropolis of Asia Minor, but for all
the leading churches of that district. Hence the omission of the words "in
Ephesus" (<scripRef passage = "Eph. 1:1">Eph. 1:1</scripRef>) in some of the oldest and best MSS.1162
Hence, also, the absence of personal and local intelligence. The
encyclical destination may be inferred also from the reference in Col. 4:16 to
the Epistle to the church of Laodicea, which the Colossians were to procure and
to read, and which is probably identical with our canonical Epistle to the
Ephesians."1163
Character and Value of
the Epistle.
Ephesians is the most
churchly book of the New Testament. But it presupposes Colossians, the most
Christly of Paul’s Epistles. Its churchliness is rooted and grounded in
Christliness, and has no sense whatever if separated from this root. A church
without Christ would be, at best, a praying corpse (and there are such
churches). Paul was at once the highest of high churchmen, the most evangelical
of evangelicals, and the broadest of the broad, because most comprehensive in
his grasp and furthest removed from all pedantry and bigotry of sect or party.1164
Ephesians is, in some
respects, the most profound and difficult (though not the most important) of
his Epistles. It certainly is the most spiritual and devout, composed in an
exalted and transcendent state of mind, where theology rises into worship, and
meditation into oration. It is the Epistle of the Heavenlies (<foreign
lang="el">ta; ejpouravnia</foreign>), a solemn liturgy, an ode to Christ and his
spotless bride, the Song of Songs in the New Testament. The aged apostle soared
high above all earthly things to the invisible and eternal realities in heaven.
From his gloomy confinement he ascended for a season to the mount of
transfiguration. The prisoner of Christ, chained to a heathen soldier, was
transformed into a conqueror, clad in the panoply of God, and singing a paean
of victory.
The style has a
corresponding rhythmical flow and overflow, and sounds at times like the swell
of a majestic organ.1165 It is very involved and presents unusual
combinations, but this is owing to the pressure and grandeur of ideas; besides,
we must remember that it was written in Greek, which admits of long periods and
parentheses. In <scripRef passage = "Eph. 1:3–14">Eph. 1:3–14</scripRef> we have one sentence with no less than seven
relative clauses, which rise like a thick cloud of incense higher and higher to
the very throne of God.1166
Luther reckoned
Ephesians among "the best and noblest books of the New
Testament." Witsius
characterized it as a divine Epistle glowing with the flame of Christian love
and the splendor of holy light. Braune says: "The exalted significance of
the Epistle for all time lies in its fundamental idea: the church of Jesus
Christ a creation of the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit, decreed
from eternity, destined for eternity; it is the ethical cosmos; the family of
God gathered in the world and in history and still further to be gathered, the
object of his nurture and care in time and in eternity."
These are Continental
judgments. English divines are equally strong in praise of this Epistle. Coleridge calls it "the
sublimest composition of man;" Alford: "the greatest and most
heavenly work of one whose very imagination is peopled with things in the
heavens;" Farrar: "the Epistle of the Ascension, the most sublime,
the most profound, and the most advanced and final utterance of that mystery of
the gospel which it was given to St. Paul for the first time to proclaim in all
its fulness to the Gentile world."
Theme: The church of Christ, the family of God, the
fulness of Christ.
Leading
Thoughts: God chose
us in Christ before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and
without blemish before him in love (<scripRef passage =
"Eph. 1:4">Eph. 1:4</scripRef>). In him we have our redemption through his blood, the
forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace <scripRef
passage = "Eph. 1:7">(1:7)</scripRef>. He purposed to sum up all
things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth <scripRef
passage = "Eph. 1:10">(1:10)</scripRef>. God gave him to be head over
all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth
all in all <scripRef passage = "Eph. 1:23">(1:23)</scripRef>. God, being rich in mercy,
quickened us together with Christ and raised us up with him, and made us to sit
with him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus <scripRef passage =
"Eph. 2:4–6">(2:4–6)</scripRef>. By grace have ye been saved
through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of
works, that no man should glory <scripRef passage = "Eph. 2:8,
9">(2:8,
9)</scripRef>. Christ is our peace, who made
both one, and broke down the middle wall of partition <scripRef passage =
"Eph. 2:14">(2:14)</scripRef>. Ye are no more strangers and
sojourners, but ye are fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of
God, being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus
himself being the chief corner stone <scripRef passage =
"Eph. 2:19, 20">(2:19, 20)</scripRef>. Unto me, who am less than the
least of all saints, was this grace given, to preach Unto the Gentiles the
unsearchable riches of Christ <scripRef passage = "Eph.
3:8">(3:8)</scripRef>. That Christ may dwell in your
hearts through faith; to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,
may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length
and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge,
that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God <scripRef passage =
"Eph. 3:17–19">(3:17–19)</scripRef>. Give diligence to keep the
unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace <scripRef passage =
"Eph. 4:3">(4:3)</scripRef>. There is one body, and one Spirit, one Lord,
one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through
all, and in all <scripRef passage = "Eph. 4:6">(4:6)</scripRef>. He gave some to be apostles;
and some, prophets; and some, pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the
saints <scripRef
passage = "Eph. 4:11, 12">(4:11, 12)</scripRef>. Speak the truth in love <scripRef
passage = "Eph. 4:15">(4:15)</scripRef>. Put on the new man, which
after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of truth <scripRef
passage = "Eph. 4:24">(4:24)</scripRef>. Be ye therefore imitators of
God, as beloved children, and walk in love, even as Christ also loved you, and
gave himself up for as, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odor of a
sweet smell <scripRef passage = "Eph. 5:1, 2">(5:1, 2)</scripRef>. Wives, be in subjection unto
your own husbands, as unto the Lord <scripRef passage =
"Eph. 5:22">(5:22)</scripRef>. Husbands, love your wives,
even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it <scripRef
passage = "Eph. 5:25">(5:25)</scripRef>. This mystery is great; but I
speak in regard of Christ and of the church (<scripRef passage =
"Eph. 5:32">5:32</scripRef>). Children, obey your parents
in the Lord <scripRef passage = "Eph. 6:1">(6:1)</scripRef>. Put on the whole armor of God,
that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil <scripRef
passage = "Eph. 6:11">(6:11)</scripRef>.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="96" title="Colossians and
Ephesians Compared and Vindicated">
§ 96. Colossians and Ephesians Compared and Vindicated.
Comparison.
The Epistles to the
Colossians and Ephesians were written about the same time and transmitted
through the same messenger, Tychicus. They are as closely related to each other
as the Epistles to the Galatians and to the Romans. They handle the same theme,
Christ and his church; as Galatians and Romans discuss the same doctrines of
salvation by free grace and justification by faith.
But Colossians, like
Galatians, arose from a specific emergency, and is brief, terse, polemical;
while Ephesians, like Romans, is expanded, calm, irenical. Colossians is
directed against the incipient Gnostic (paganizing) heresy, as Galatians is
directed against the Judaizing heresy. The former is anti-Essenic and
anti-ascetic, the latter is anti-Pharisaic and anti-legalistic; the one deals
with a speculative expansion and fantastic evaporation, the latter, with a
bigoted contraction, of Christianity; yet both these tendencies, like all
extremes, have points of contact and admit of strange amalgamations; and in
fact the Colossian and Galatian errorists united in their ceremonial observance
of circumcision and the Sabbath. Ephesians, like Romans, is an independent
exposition of the positive truth, of which the heresy opposed in the other
Epistles is a perversion or caricature.
Again, Colossians and
Ephesians differ from each other in the modification and application of their
common theme: Colossians is christological and represents Christ as the true
pleroma or plenitude of the Godhead, the totality of divine attributes and
powers; Ephesians is ecclesiological and exhibits the ideal church as the body
of Christ, as the reflected pleroma of Christ, "the fulness of Him who
filleth all in all."
Christology naturally precedes ecclesiology in the order of the system,
as Christ precedes the church; and Colossians preceded Ephesians most probably,
also in the order of composition, as the outline precedes the full picture; but
they were not far apart, and arose from the same train of meditation.1167
This relationship of resemblance and contrast can be satisfactorily explained only on the assumption of the same authorship, the same time of composition, and the same group of churches endangered by the same heretical modes of thought. With Paul as the author of both everything is clear; without that assumption everything is dark and uncertain. <foreign lang="la">"Non est cuiusvis hominis," says Erasmus, "Paulinum pectus effingere; tonat, fulgurat, meras flammas loquitur Paulus."</foreign>1168
Authorship.
The genuineness of the
two cognate Epistles has recently been doubted and denied, but the negative
critics are by no means agreed; some surrender Ephesians but retain Colossians,
others reverse the case; while Baur, always bolder and more consistent than his
predecessors, rejects both.1169
They must stand or fall
together. But they will stand. They represent, indeed, an advanced state of
christological and ecclesiological knowledge in the apostolic age, but they
have their roots in the older Epistles of Paul, and are brimful of his spirit.
They were called forth by a new phase of error, and brought out new statements
of truth with new words and phrases adapted to the case. They contain nothing
that Paul could not have written consistently with his older Epistles, and
there is no known pupil of Paul who could have forged such highly intellectual
and spiritual letters in his name and equalled, if not out-Pauled Paul.1170 The
external testimonies are unanimous in favor of the Pauline authorship, and go
as far back as Justin Martyr, Polycarp, Ignatius, and the heretical Marcion
(about 140), who included both Epistles in his mutilated canon.1171
The difficulties which
have been urged against their Pauline origin, especially of Ephesians, are as
follows:
1. The striking
resemblance of the two Epistles, and the apparent repetitiousness and
dependence of Ephesians on Colossians, which seem to be unworthy of such an
original thinker as Paul.1172 But this resemblance, which is more
striking in the practical than in the doctrinal part, is not the resemblance
between an author and an imitator, but of two compositions of the same author,
written about the same time on two closely connected topics; and it is
accompanied by an equally marked variety in thought and language.
2. The absence of
personal and local references in Ephesians. This is, as already remarked,
sufficiently explained by the encyclical character of that Epistle.
3. A number of peculiar
words not found elsewhere in the Pauline Epistles.1173 But
they are admirably adapted to the new ideas, and must be expected from a mind
so rich as Paul’s. Every Epistle contains some hapaxlegomena. The only thing which is somewhat
startling is that an apostle should speak of "holy apostles and prophets" (<scripRef
passage = "Eph. 3:5">Eph. 3:5</scripRef>), but the term "holy" (<foreign
lang="el">a{gioi</foreign>) is applied in the New Testament to all
Christians, as being consecrated to God (<foreign
lang="el">aJgiasmevnoi</foreign>, <scripRef passage = "John
17:17">John 17:17</scripRef>), and not in the later ecclesiastical sense of a
spiritual nobility. It implies no contradiction to <scripRef passage =
"Eph. 3:8">Eph.
3:8</scripRef>, where the author calls himself "the least
of all saints" (comp. <scripRef passage = "1 Cor. 15:9">1 Cor. 15:9</scripRef>, "I am the least of the apostles").
4. The only argument of
any weight is the alleged post-Pauline rise of the Gnostic heresy, which is
undoubtedly opposed in Colossians (not in Ephesians, at least not directly).
But why should this heresy not have arisen in the apostolic age as well as the
Judaizing heresy which sprung up before a.d.
50, and followed Paul everywhere?
The tares spring up almost simultaneously with the wheat. Error is the
shadow of truth. Simon Magus, the contemporary of Peter, and the Gnostic
Cerinthus, the contemporary, of John, are certainly historic persons. Paul
speaks (<scripRef
passage = "1 Cor. 8:1">1 Cor. 8:1</scripRef>) of a "gnosis which puffeth up," and
warned the Ephesian elders, as early as 58, of the rising of disturbing
errorists from their own midst; and the Apocalypse, which the Tübingen critics
assign to the year 68, certainly opposes the antinomian type of Gnosticism, the
error of the Nicolaitans (<scripRef passage = "Rev. 2:6, 15,
20">Rev. 2:6, 15, 20</scripRef>), which the early Fathers derived from one of
the first seven deacons of Jerusalem. All the elements of Gnosticism—Ebionism,
Platonism, Philoism, syncretism, asceticism, antinomianism—were extant before
Christ, and it needed only a spark of Christian truth to set the inflammable
material on fire. The universal sentiment of the Fathers, as far as we can
trace it up to Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and Polycarp found the origin of
Gnosticism in the apostolic age, and called Simon Magus its father or
grandfather.
Against their testimony, the
isolated passage of Hegesippus, so often quoted by the negative critics,1174 has not the weight of a
feather. This credulous, inaccurate, and narrow-minded Jewish Christian writer
said, according to Eusebius, that the church enjoyed profound peace, and was
"a pure and uncorrupted virgin," governed by brothers and relations
of Jesus, until the age of Trajan, when, after the death of the apostles,
"the knowledge falsely so called" (<foreign
lang="el">yeudwvnumo"
gnw'si",</foreign> comp. <scripRef passage = "1 Tim.
6:20">1 Tim. 6:20</scripRef>), openly raised its head.1175 But he speaks of the church in Palestine, not in Asia Minor;
and he was certainly mistaken in this dream of an age of absolute purity and
peace. The Tübingen school itself maintains the very opposite view. Every
Epistle, as well as the Acts, bears testimony to the profound agitations,
parties, and evils of the church, including Jerusalem, where the first great
theological controversy was fought out by the apostles themselves. But
Hegesippus corrects himself, and makes a distinction between the secret
working and the open and shameless manifestation of heresy. The former
began, he intimates, in the apostolic age; the latter showed itself afterward.1176 Gnosticism, like modern Rationalism,1177 had a growth of a hundred years
before it came to full maturity. A post-apostolic writer would have dealt very
differently with the fully developed systems of Basilides, Valentinus, and
Marcion. And yet the two short Epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians strike
at the roots of this error, and teach the positive truth with an originality,
vigor, and depth that makes them more valuable, even as a refutation, than the
five books of Irenaeus against Gnosticism, and the ten books of the
Philosophumena of Hippolytus; and this patent fact is the best proof of their
apostolic origin.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="97" title="The Epistle to the
Philippians">
<index
type = "globalSubject"
subject1 = "New
Testament"
subject2 = "Epistle to the
Philippians" />
§ 97. The Epistle to the Philippians.
The Church at Philippi.
Philippi was a city of
Macedonia, founded by and called after Philip, the father of Alexander the
Great, in a fertile region, with contiguous gold and silver mines, on the banks
of a small river and the highway between Asia and Europe, ten miles from the
seacoast. It acquired immortal fame by the battle between Brutus and Mark
Antony (b.c. 42), in which the
Roman republic died and the empire was born. After that event it had the rank
of a Roman military colony, with the high-sounding title, "Colonia Augusta
Julia Philippensis."1178 Hence its mixed population, the Greeks,
of course, prevailing, next the Roman colonists and magistrates, and last a
limited number of Jews, who had a place of prayer on the riverside. It was
visited by Paul, in company with Silas, Timothy, and Luke, on his second
missionary tour, in the year 52, and became the seat of the first Christian
congregation on the classical soil of Greece. Lydia, the purple dealer of
Thyatira and a half proselyte to Judaism, a native slave-girl with a divining
spirit, which was used by her masters as a means of gain among the
superstitious heathen, and a Roman jailer, were the first converts, and fitly
represent the three nationalities (Jew, Greek, and Roman) and the classes of
society which were especially benefited by Christianity. "In the history
of the gospel at Philippi, as in the history of the church at large, is
reflected the great maxim of Christianity, the central truth of the apostle’s
teaching, that here is ’neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, neither
male nor female, but all are one in Christ Jesus.’ "1179
Here, also, are the first recorded instances of whole households (of
Lydia and the jailer) being baptized and gathered into the church, of which the
family is the chief nursery. The congregation was fully organized, with bishops
(presbyters) and deacons at the head (<scripRef passage =
"Philippians 1:1">Phil. 1:1</scripRef>).
Here the apostle was
severely persecuted and marvellously delivered. Here he had his most loyal and
devoted converts, who were his "joy and crown." For them he felt the strongest personal
attachment; from them alone he would receive contributions for his support. In
the autumn of the year 57, after five years’ absence, he paid a second visit to
Philippi, having in the meantime kept up constant intercourse with the
congregation through living messengers; and on his last journey to Jerusalem,
in the spring of the following year, he stopped at Philippi to keep the paschal
feast with his beloved brethren. They had liberally contributed out of their
poverty to the relief of the churches in Judaea. When they heard of his arrival
at Rome, they again sent him timely assistance through Epaphroditus, who also
offered his personal services to the prisoner of the Lord, at the sacrifice of
his health and almost his life. It was through this faithful fellow-worker that
Paul sent his letter of thanks to the Philippians, hoping, after his release,
to visit them in person once more.
The Epistle.
The Epistle reflects, in
familiar ease, his relations to this beloved flock, which rested on the love of
Christ. It is not systematic, not polemic, nor apologetic, but personal and
autobiographic, resembling in this respect the First Epistle to the
Thessalonians, and to some extent, also, the Second Epistle to the Corinthians.
It is the free outflow of tender love and gratitude, and full of joy and
cheerfulness in the face of life and death. It is like his midnight hymn of
praise in the dungeon of Philippi. "Rejoice in the Lord alway; again I will
say, Rejoice" <scripRef passage = "Phil. 4:4">(Phil. 4:4)</scripRef>.1180 This is the key-note of the letter.1181 It
proves that a healthy Christian faith, far from depressing and saddening the
heart, makes truly happy and contented even in prison. It is an important
contribution to our knowledge of the character of the apostle. In acknowledging
the gift of the Philippians, he gracefully and delicately mingles manly
independence and gratitude. He had no doctrinal error, nor practical vice to
rebuke, as in Galatians and Corinthians.
The only discordant tone
is the warning against "the dogs of the concision" (<foreign
lang="el">katatomhv</foreign>, <scripRef passage
="Philippians 3:2">3:2</scripRef>), as he sarcastically calls the champions of
circumcision (<foreign lang="el">peritomhv</foreign>), who everywhere sowed tares in his wheat
fields, and at that very time tried to check his usefulness in Rome by
substituting the righteousness of the law for the righteousness of faith. But
he guards the readers with equal earnestness against the opposite extreme of
antinomian license <scripRef passage = "Philippians
3:2–21">(3:2–21)</scripRef>. In opposition to the spirit of personal and
social rivalry and contention which manifested itself among the Philippians,
Paul reminds them of the self-denying example of Christ, who was the highest of
all, and yet became the lowliest of all by divesting himself of his divine
majesty and humbling himself, even to the death on the cross, and who, in
reward for his obedience, was exalted above every name <scripRef passage =
"Philippians 2:1–11">(2:1–11)</scripRef>.
This is the most
important doctrinal passage of the letter, and contains (together with <scripRef
passage = "2 Cor. 8:9">2 Cor. 8:9</scripRef>) the fruitful germ of the speculations on the
nature and extent of the kenosis,
which figures so prominently in
the history of christology.1182 It is a striking example of the
apparently accidental occasion of some of the deepest utterances of the
apostle. "With passages full of elegant negligence <scripRef passage =
"Philippians 1:29">(Phil. 1:29)</scripRef>, like Plato’s dialogues and Cicero’s letters, it
has passages of wonderful eloquence, and proceeds from outward relations and
special circumstances to wide-reaching thoughts and grand conceptions."1183
The objections against
the genuineness raised by a few hyper-critical are not worthy of a serious
refutation.1184
The Later History.
The subsequent history
of the church at Philippi is rather disappointing, like that of the other
apostolic churches in the East. It appears again in the letters of Ignatius,
who passed through the place on his way to his martyrdom in Rome, and was
kindly entertained and escorted by the brethren, and in the Epistle of Polycarp
to the Philippians, who expressed his joy that "the sturdy root of their
faith, famous from the earliest days, still survives and bears fruit unto our
Lord Jesus Christ," and alludes to the labors of "the blessed and
glorious Paul" among them. Tertullian appeals to the Philippian church as
still maintaining the apostle’s doctrine and reading his Epistle publicly. The
name of its bishop is mentioned here and there in the records of councils, but
that is all. During the middle ages the city was turned into a wretched
village, and the bishopric into a mere shadow. At present there is not even a
village on the site, but only a caravansary, a mile or more from the ruins,
which consist of a theatre, broken marble columns, two lofty gateways, and a portion
of the city wall.1185 "Of the church which stood
foremost among all the apostolic communities in faith and love, it may
literally be said that not one stone stands upon another. Its whole career is a
signal monument of the inscrutable counsels of God. Born into the world with
the brightest promise, the church of Philippi has lived without a history and
perished without a memorial."1186
But in Paul’s Epistle
that noble little band of Christians still lives and blesses the church in
distant countries.
Theme: Theological: The self-humiliation (<foreign
lang="el">kevnwsi"</foreign>) of Christ for our salvation (<scripRef
passage = "Philippians 2:5–11">Phil. 2:5–11</scripRef>). Practical: Christian cheerfulness.
Leading
Thoughts: He who began a good work
in you will perfect it <scripRef passage = "Philippians
1:6">(1:6)</scripRef>. If only Christ is preached, I rejoice <scripRef
passage = "Philippians 1:13">(1:13)</scripRef>. To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain <scripRef passage =
"Philippians 1:21">(1:21)</scripRef>. Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who emptied
himself, etc. <scripRef passage = "Philippians 2:5 sqq.">(2:5 sqq.)</scripRef>. God worketh in you both to will and to work <scripRef
passage = "Philippians 2:13">(2:13)</scripRef>. Rejoice in the Lord alway; again I will say, Rejoice <scripRef
passage = "Philippians 3:1; 4:1">(3:1; 4:1)</scripRef>. I count all things to be loss for the
excellency of the knowledge of Christ <scripRef passage =
"Philippians 3:8">(3:8)</scripRef>. I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in
Christ Jesus <scripRef passage = "Philippians 3:14">(3:14)</scripRef>. Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things
are honorable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure,
whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be
any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things <scripRef
passage = "Philippians 4:8">(4:8)</scripRef>. The peace of God passeth all understanding <scripRef passage =
"Philippians 4:7">(4:7)</scripRef>.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="98" title="The Epistle to
Philemon">
<index
type = "globalSubject"
subject1 = "New
Testament"
subject2 = "Epistle to
Philemon" />
§ 98. The Epistle to Philemon.
Of the many private letters
of introduction and recommendation which Paul must have written during his long
life, only one is left to us, very brief but very weighty. It is addressed to
Philemon, a zealous Christian at Colossae, a convert of Paul and apparently a
layman, who lent his house for the religious meetings of the brethren.1187 The
name recalls the touching mythological legend of the faithful old couple,
Philemon and Baucis, who, in the same province of Phrygia, entertained gods
unawares and were rewarded for their simple hospitality and conjugal love. The
letter was written and transmitted at the same time as that to the Colossians.
It may be regarded as a personal postscript to it.
It was a letter of
recommendation of Onesimus (i.e., Profitable),1188 a slave of Philemon, who had run away from his
master on account of some offence (probably theft, a very common sin of
slaves),1189 fell in with Paul at Rome, of whom he may have
heard in the weekly meetings at Colossae, or through Epaphras, his
fellow-townsman, was converted by him to the Christian faith, and now desired
to return, as a penitent, in company with Tychicus, the bearer of the Epistle
to the Colossians (<scripRef passage = "Col. 4:9">Col. 4:9</scripRef>).
Paul and Slavery.
The Epistle is purely
personal, yet most significant. Paul omits his official title, and substitutes
the touching designation, "a prisoner of Christ Jesus," thereby going
directly to the heart of his friend. The letter introduces us into a Christian
household, consisting of father (Philemon), mother (Apphia), son (Archippus,
who was at the same time a "fellow-soldier," a Christian minister),
and a slave (Onesimus). It shows the effect of Christianity upon society at a
crucial point, where heathenism was utterly helpless. It touches on the
institution of slavery, which lay like an incubus upon the whole heathen world
and was interwoven with the whole structure of domestic and public life.
The effect of
Christianity upon this gigantic social evil is that of a peaceful and gradual
care from within, by teaching the common origin and equality of men, their
common redemption and Christian brotherhood, by, emancipating them from slavery
unto spiritual freedom, equality, and brotherhood in Christ, in whom there is neither
Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, neither male nor female, but all are one
moral person (<scripRef passage = "Gal. 3:28">Gal. 3:28</scripRef>). This principle and the corresponding practice
wrought first an amelioration, and ultimately the abolition of slavery. The
process was very slow and retarded by the counteracting influence of the love
of gain and power, and all the sinful passions of men; but it was sure and is
now almost complete throughout the Christian world; while paganism and Mohammedanism
regard slavery as a normal state of society, and hence do not even make an
attempt to remove it. It was the only wise way for the apostles to follow in
dealing with the subject. A proclamation of emancipation from them would have
been a mere <foreign lang="la">brutum fulmen</foreign>, or, if effectual, would have resulted in a
bloody revolution of society in which Christianity itself would have been
buried.
Paul accordingly sent
back Onesimus to his rightful master, yet under a new character, no more a
contemptible thief and runaway, but a regenerate man and a "beloved
brother," with the touching request that Philemon might receive him as
kindly as he would the apostle himself, yea as his own heart (<scripRef
passage = "Philem. 16, 17">Philem. 16, 17</scripRef>). Such advice took the sting out of slavery; the
form remained, the thing itself was gone. What a contrast! In the eyes of the heathen philosophers
(even Aristotle) Onesimus, like every other slave, was but a live chattel; in
the eyes of Paul a redeemed child of God and heir of eternal life, which is far
better than freedom.1190
The New Testament is
silent about the effect of the letter. We cannot doubt that Philemon forgave
Onesimus and treated him with Christian kindness. In all probability he went
beyond the letter of the request and complied with its spirit, which hints at
emancipation. Tradition relates that Onesimus received his freedom and became
bishop of Beraea in Macedonia; sometimes he is confounded with his namesake, a
bishop of Ephesus in the second century, or made a missionary in Spain and a
martyr in Rome, or at Puteoli. 1191
Paul and Philemon.
The Epistle is at the
same time an invaluable contribution to our knowledge of Paul. It reveals him
to us as a perfect Christian gentleman. It is a model of courtesy, delicacy,
and tenderness of feeling. Shut up in a prison, the aged apostle had a heart
full of love and sympathy for a poor runaway slave, made him a freeman in
Christ Jesus, and recommended him as if he were his own self.
Paul and Pliny.
Grotius and other
commentators1192 quote the famous letter of Pliny the Consul to
his friend Sabinianus in behalf of a runaway slave. It is very creditable to
Pliny, who was born in the year when Paul arrived as a prisoner in Rome, and
shows that the natural feelings of kindness and generosity could not be
extinguished even by that inhuman institution. Pliny was a Roman gentleman of
high culture and noble instincts, although he ignorantly despised Christianity
and persecuted its innocent professors while Proconsul in Asia. The letters
present striking points of resemblance: in both, a fugitive slave, guilty, but
reformed, and desirous to return to duty; in both, a polite, delicate, and
earnest plea for pardon and restoration, dictated by sentiments of
disinterested kindness. But they differ as Christian charity differs from
natural philanthropy, as a Christian gentleman differs from a heathen
gentleman. The one could appeal only to the amiable temper and pride of his
friend, the other to the love of Christ and the sense of duty and gratitude;
the one was concerned for the temporal comfort of his client, the other even
more for his eternal welfare; the one could at best remand him to his former
condition as a slave, the other raised him to the high dignity of a Christian
brother, sitting with his master at the same communion table of a common Lord
and Saviour. "For polished speech the Roman may bear the palm, but for
nobleness of tone and warmth of heart he falls far short of the imprisoned
apostle."
The Epistle was poorly
understood in the ancient church when slavery ruled supreme in the Roman
empire. A strong prejudice prevailed against it in the fourth century, as if it
were wholly unworthy of an apostle. Jerome, Chrysostom, and other commentators,
who themselves had no clear idea of its ultimate social bearing, apologized to
their readers that Paul, instead of teaching metaphysical dogmas and enforcing
ecclesiastical discipline, should take so much interest in a poor runaway
slave.1193 But
since the Reformation full justice has been done to it. Erasmus says:
"Cicero never wrote with greater elegance." Luther and Calvin speak of it in high terms, especially
Luther, who fully appreciated its noble, Christ-like sentiments. Bengel: "mire
<foreign
lang="el">ajstei'o"</foreign>." Ewald: "Nowhere can the sensibility
and warmth of a tender friendship blend more beautifully with the loftier
feeling of a commanding spirit than in this letter, at once so brief, and yet
so surpassingly full and significant." Meyer: "A precious relic of a great character, and,
viewed merely as a specimen of Attic elegance and urbanity, it takes rank among
the epistolary masterpieces of antiquity." Baur rejects it with trifling arguments as post-apostolic,
but confesses that it "makes an agreeable impression by its attractive
form," and breathes "the noblest Christian spirit."1194
Holtzmann calls it "a model of tact, refinement, and
amiability." Reuss: "a
model of tact and humanity, and an expression of a fine appreciation of
Christian duty, and genial, amiable humor." Renan, with his keen eye on the literary and aesthetic
merits or defects, praises it as "a veritable little f-d’oeuvre, of the art of letter-writing." And Lightfoot, while estimating still
higher its moral significance on the question of slavery, remarks of its
literary excellency: "As an expression of simple dignity, of refined
courtesy, of large sympathy, of warm personal affection, the Epistle to
Philemon stands unrivalled. And its pre-eminence is the more remarkable because
in style it is exceptionally loose. It owes nothing to the graces of rhetoric;
its effect is due solely to the spirit of the writer."
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="99" title="The Pastoral
Epistles">
§ 99. The Pastoral Epistles.
Comp. § 33, pp. 327–329.
Contents.
The three Pastoral
Epistles, two to Timothy and one to Titus, form a group by themselves, and
represent the last stage of the apostle’s life and labors, with his parting
counsels to his beloved disciples and fellow-workers. They show us the
transition of the apostolic church from primitive simplicity to a more definite
system of doctrine and form of government. This is just what we might expect
from the probable time of their composition after the first Roman captivity
of Paul, and before the composition of the Apocalypse.
They are addressed not
to congregations, but to individuals, and hence more personal and confidential
in their character. This fact helps us to understand many peculiarities.
Timothy, the son of a heathen father and a Jewish mother, and Titus, a
converted Greek) were among the dearest of Paul’s pupils.1195
They were, at the same time, his delegates and commissioners on special
occasions, and appear under this official character in the Epistles, which, for
this reason, bear the name "Pastoral."
The Epistles contain
Paul’s pastoral theology and his theory of church government. They give
directions for founding, training, and governing churches, and for the proper
treatment of individual members, old and young, widows and virgins, backsliders
and heretics. They are rich in practical wisdom and full of encouragement, as
every pastor knows.
The Second Epistle to
Timothy is more personal in its contents than the other two, and has the
additional importance of concluding the autobiography of Paul. It is his last
will and testament to all future ministers and soldiers of Christ.
The Pauline Authorship.
There never was a
serious doubt as to the Pauline authorship of these Epistles till the
nineteenth century, except among a few Gnostics in the second century. They
were always reckoned among the Homologumena, as distinct from the seven
Antilegomena, or disputed books of the New Testament. As far as external
evidence is concerned, they stand on as firm a foundation as any other Epistle.
They are quoted as canonical by Eusebius, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria,
and Irenaeus. Reminiscences from them, in some cases with verbal agreement, are
found in several of the Apostolic Fathers. They are included in the ancient
MSS. and Versions, and in the list of the Muratorian canon. Marcion (about
140), it is true, excluded them from his canon of ten Pauline Epistles, but he
excluded also the Gospels (except a mutilated Luke), the Catholic Epistles, and
the Apocalypse.1196
But there are certain
internal difficulties which have induced a number of modern critics to assign
them all, or at least First Timothy, to a post-Pauline or pseudo-Pauline
writer, who either changed and adapted Pauline originals to a later state of
the church, or fabricated the whole in the interest of Catholic orthodoxy. In
either case, the writer is credited with the best intentions and must not be
judged according to the modern standard of literary honesty and literary
property. Doctrinally, the Pastoral Epistles are made the connecting link
between genuine Paulinism and the Johannean Logos—philosophy; ecclesiastically,
the link between primitive Presbyterianism and Catholic Episcopacy; in both
respects, a necessary element in the formation process of the orthodox Catholic
church of the second century.
The objections against the Pauline authorship deserve serious consideration, and are as follows: (1) The impossibility of locating these Epistles in the recorded life of Paul; (2) the Gnostic heresy opposed; (3) the ecclesiastical organization implied; (4) the peculiarities of style and temper. If they are not genuine, Second Timothy must be the oldest, as it is least liable to these objections, and First Timothy and Titus are supposed to represent a later development.1197
The Time of Composition.
The chronology of the
Pastoral Epistles is uncertain, and has been made an objection to their
genuineness. It is closely connected with the hypothesis of a second Roman
captivity, which we have discussed in another place.
The Second Epistle to Timothy,
whether genuine or not, hails from a Roman prison, and appears to be the last
of Paul’s Epistles; for he was then hourly expecting the close of his fight of
faith, and the crown of righteousness from his Lord and Master (2 Tim. 4:7, 8).
Those who deny the second imprisonment, and yet accept Second Timothy as
Pauline, make it the last of the first imprisonment.
As to First Timothy and
Titus, it is evident from their contents that they were written while Paul was
free, and after he had made some journeys, which are not recorded in the
Acts. Here lies the difficulty. Two ways are open:
1. The two Epistles were
written in 56 and 57. Paul may, during his three years’ sojourn in Ephesus, a.d. 54–57 (see <scripRef passage =
"Acts 19:8–10; 20:31">Acts 19:8–10; 20:31</scripRef>), easily have made a second journey to
Macedonia, leaving Ephesus in charge of Timothy (<scripRef passage =
"1 Tim. 1:3">1
Tim. 1:3</scripRef>); and also crossed over to the island of Crete,
where he left Titus behind to take care of the churches (<scripRef
passage = "Tit. 1:5">Tit. 1:5</scripRef>). Considering the incompleteness of the record of Acts, and the probable
allusions in <scripRef passage = "2 Cor. 2:1; 12:13, 14, 21;
13:1">2 Cor. 2:1;
12:13, 14, 21; 13:1</scripRef>, to a second visit to Corinth, not mentioned in
the Acts, these two journeys are within the reach of possibility.1198 But
such an early date leaves the other difficulties unexplained.
2. The tradition of the
second Roman captivity, which can be raised at least to a high degree of
probability, removes the difficulty by giving us room for new journeys and
labors of Paid between his release in the spring of 63 and the Neronian
persecution in July, 64 (according to Tacitus), or three or four years later
(according to Eusebius and Jerome), as well as for the development of the
Gnostic heresy and the ecclesiastical organization of the church which is
implied in these Epistles. Hence, most writers who hold to the genuineness
place First Timothy and Titus between the first and second Roman captivities.1199
Paul certainly intended
to make a journey from Rome to Spain (Rom. 15:24), and also one to the East (<scripRef
passage = "Philem. 22">Philem. 22</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Philippians
1:25, 26; 2:24">Phil.
1:25, 26; 2:24</scripRef>), and he had ample time to carry out his intention even before the
Neronian persecution, if we insist upon confining this to the date of Tacitus.1200
Those who press the
chronological difficulty should not forget that a forger could have very easily
fitted the Epistles into the narrative of the Acts, and was not likely to invent
a series of journeys, circumstances, and incidents, such as the bringing of the
cloak, the books, and the parchments which Paul, in the hurry of travel, had
left at Troas (<scripRef passage = "2 Tim. 4:13">2 Tim. 4:13</scripRef>).
The Gnostic Heresy.
The Pastoral Epistles,
like Colossians, oppose the Gnostic heresy (<foreign
lang="el">gnw'si" yeudwvnumo",</foreign> <scripRef passage = "1 Tim.
6:20">1 Tim. 6:20</scripRef>) which arose in Asia Minor during his first
Roman captivity, and appears more fully developed in Cerinthus, the
contemporary of John. This was acknowledged by the early Fathers, Irenaeus and
Tertullian, who used these very Epistles as Pauline testimonies against the
Gnosticism of their day.
The question arises,
which of the many types of this many-sided error is opposed? Evidently the Judaizing type,
which resembled that at Colossae, but was more advanced and malignant, and
hence is more sternly denounced. The heretics were of "the
circumcision" (<scripRef passage = "Tit. 1:10">Tit. 1:10</scripRef>); they are called "teachers of the
law" (<foreign lang="el">nomodidavskaloi,</foreign> <scripRef passage = "1 Tim.
1:7">1 Tim. 1:7</scripRef>, the very reverse of antinomians), "given
to Jewish fables" (<foreign lang="el">
jIoudai>koi mu'qoi</foreign>, <scripRef passage = "Tit.
1:14">Tit. 1:14</scripRef>), and "disputes connected with the
law" (<foreign lang="el">mavcai
nomikaiv</foreign>, <scripRef passage = "Tit.
3:9">Tit. 3:9</scripRef>), and fond of foolish and ignorant questionings
(<scripRef
passage = "2 Tim. 2:23">2 Tim. 2:23</scripRef>). They were, moreover, extravagant ascetics,
like the Essenes, forbidding to marry and abstaining from meat (<scripRef
passage = "1 Tim. 4:3, 8">1 Tim. 4:3, 8</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Tit. 1:14,
15">Tit. 1:14, 15</scripRef>). They denied the resurrection and overthrew the
faith of some (<scripRef passage = "2 Tim. 2:18">2 Tim. 2:18</scripRef>).
Baur turned these
heretics into anti-Jewish and antinomian Gnostics of the school of
Marcion (about 140), and then, by consequence, put the Epistles down to the
middle of the second century. He finds in the "genealogies" ( <scripRef
passage = "1 Tim. 1:4">1 Tim. 1:4</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Tit.
3:9">Tit. 3:9</scripRef>) the emanations, of the Gnostic aeons, and in
the "antitheses" (<scripRef passage = "1 Tim. 6:20">1 Tim. 6:20</scripRef>), or anti-evangelical assertions of the
heretical teachers, an allusion to Marcion’s "antitheses"
(antilogies), by which he set forth the supposed contradictions between the Old
and New Testaments.1201 But this is a radical
misinterpretation, and the more recent opponents of the genuineness are forced
to admit the Judaizing character of those errorists; they identify them with
Cerinthus, the Ophites, and Saturninus, who preceded Marcion by several
decades.1202
As to the origin of the Gnostic heresy, which the Tübingen school would put down to the age of Hadrian, we have already seen that, like its counterpart, the Ebionite heresy, it dates from the apostolic age, according to the united testimony of the later Pauline Epistles, the Epistles of Peter, John, and Jude, the Apocalypse, and the patristic tradition.1203
Ecclesiastical Organization.
The Pastoral Epistles
seem to presuppose a more fully developed ecclesiastical organization than the
other Pauline Epistles, and to belong to an age of transition from apostolic
simplicity, or Christo-democracy—if we may use such a term—to the episcopal
hierarchy of the second century. The church, in proportion as it lost, after
the destruction of Jerusalem, its faith in the speedy advent of Christ, began
to settle down in this world, and to make preparations for a permanent home by
a fixed creed and a compact organization, which gave it unity and strength
against heathen persecution and heretical corruption. This organization, at
once simple and elastic, was episcopacy, with its subordinate offices of the
presbyterate and deaconate, and charitable institutions for widows and orphans.
Such an organization we have, it is said, in the Pastoral Epistles, which were
written in the name of Paul, to give the weight of his authority to the
incipient hierarchy.1204
But, on closer
inspection, there is a very marked difference between the ecclesiastical
constitution of the Pastoral Epistles and that of the second century. There is
not a word said about the divine origin of episcopacy; not a trace of a
congregational episcopate, such as we find in the Ignatian epistles, still less
of a diocesan episcopate of the time of Irenaeus and Tertullian. Bishops and
presbyters are still identical as they are in the <scripRef passage =
"Acts 20:17, 28">Acts
20:17, 28</scripRef>, and in the undoubtedly genuine Epistle to the
Philippians 1:1. Even Timothy and Titus appear simply as delegates of the
apostle for a specific mission.1205 The qualifications and functions
required of the bishop are aptness to teach and a blameless character; and
their authority is made to depend upon their moral character rather than their
office. They are supposed to be married, and to set a good example in governing
their own household. The ordination which Timothy received (<scripRef
passage = "1 Tim. 4:14; 5:22">1 Tim. 4:14; 5:22</scripRef>) need not differ from the ordination of deacons
and elders mentioned in <scripRef passage = "Acts 6:6;
8:17">Acts 6:6; 8:17</scripRef>; comp. <scripRef passage =
"Acts 14:23; 19:6">14:23; 19:6</scripRef>). "Few features," says Dr. Plumptre,
himself an Episcopalian, "are more striking in these Epistles than the
absence of any high hierarchical system." The Apocalypse, which these very critics so confidently
assign to the year 68, shows a nearer approach to episcopal unity in the
"angels" of the seven churches. But even from the "angels,"
of the Apocalypse there was a long way to the Ignatian and pseudo-Clementine
bishops, who are set up as living oracles and hierarchical idols.
The Style.
The language of the
Pastoral Epistles shows an unusual number of un-Pauline words and phrases,
especially rare compounds, some of them nowhere found in the whole New
Testament, or even in Greek literature.1206
But, in the first place,
the number of words peculiar to each one of the three epistles is much greater
than the number of peculiar words common to all three; consequently, if the
argument proves anything, it leads to the conclusion of three different
authors, which the assailants will not admit, in view of the general unity of
the Epistles. In the next place, every one of Paul’s Epistles has a number of
peculiar words, even the little Epistle of Philemon.1207 The
most characteristic words were required by the nature of the new topics handled
and the heresy combated, such as "knowledge falsely so called" (<foreign
lang="el">yeudwvnumo" gnw'si"</foreign>, <scripRef passage = "1 Tim.
6:20">1 Tim. 6:20</scripRef>) "healthful doctrine" (<foreign
lang="el">uJgiaivnousa didaskaliva</foreign>, <scripRef passage = "1 Tim.
1:10">1 Tim. 1:10</scripRef>);
"Jewish myths" (<scripRef passage = "Tit.
1:14">Tit. 1:14</scripRef>); "genealogies" (<scripRef
passage = "Tit. 3:9">Tit. 3:9</scripRef>); "profane babblings" (<scripRef passage =
"2 Tim. 2:16">2
Tim. 2:16</scripRef>). Paul’s mind was uncommonly fertile and capable
of adapting itself to varying, conditions, and had to create in some measure
the Christian idiom. The Tübingen critics profess the highest admiration for
his genius, and yet would contract his vocabulary to a very small compass. Finally,
the peculiarities of style are counterbalanced by stronger resemblances and
unmistakable evidences of Pauline authorship. "There are flashes of the
deepest feeling, outbursts of the most intense expression. There is rhythmic
movement and excellent majesty in the doxologies, and the ideal of a Christian
pastor drawn not only with an unfaltering hand, but with a beauty, fulness, and
simplicity which a thousand years of subsequent experience have enabled no one
to equal, much less to surpass."1208
On the other hand, we
may well ask the opponents to give a good reason why a forger should have
chosen so many new words when he might have so easily confined himself to the
vocabulary of the other Epistles of Paul; why he should have added
"mercy" to the salutation instead of the usual form; why he should
have called Paul "the chief of sinners" (<scripRef passage =
"1 Tim. 1:15">1
Tim. 1:15</scripRef>), and affected a tone of humility rather than a
tone of high apostolic authority?
Other Objections.
The Epistles have been
charged with want of logical connection, with abruptness, monotony, and
repetitiousness, unworthy of such an original thinker and writer as Paul. But
this feature is only the easy, familiar, we may say careless, style which forms
the charm as well as the defect of personal correspondence. Moreover, every
great author varies more or less at different periods of life, and under
different conditions and moods.
It would be a more
serious objection if the theology of these Epistles could be made to appear in
conflict with that of his acknowledged works.1209 But
this is not the case. It is said that greater stress is laid on sound doctrine
and good works. But in Galatians, Paul condemns most solemnly every departure
from the genuine gospel (<scripRef passage = "Gal. 1:8, 9">Gal. 1:8, 9</scripRef>), and in all his Epistles he enjoins holiness as
the indispensable evidence of faith; while salvation is just as clearly traced
to divine grace alone, in the Pastoral Epistles (<scripRef passage =
"1 Tim. 1:9">1
Tim. 1:9</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Tit.
3:5">Tit. 3:5</scripRef>), as in Romans.
In conclusion, while we
cannot be blind to certain difficulties, and may not be able, from want of
knowledge of the precise situation of the writer, satisfactorily to explain
them, we must insist that the prevailing evidence is in favor of the genuineness
of these Epistles. They agree with Paul’s doctrinal system; they are
illuminated with flashes of his genius; they bear the marks of his intense
personality; they contain rare gems of inspired truth, and most wholesome
admonition and advice, which makes them to-day far more valuable than any
number of works on pastoral theology and church government. There are not a few
passages in them which, for doctrine or practice, are equal to the best he ever
wrote, and are deeply lodged in the experience and affection of Christendom.1210
And what could be a more
fitting, as well as more sublime and beautiful, finale of such a hero of faith
than the last words of his last Epistle, written in the very face of martyrdom:
"I am already being offered, and the time of my departure is come. I have
fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith:
henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord,
the righteous judge, shall give to me at that day: and not only to me, but also
to all them that have loved his appearing."
Note.
Schleiermacher led the
way, in 1807, with his attack on 1 Timothy, urging very keenly historical,
philological, and other objections, but assuming 2 Timothy and Titus to be the
genuine originals from which the first was compiled. DeWette followed in his Introduction.
Baur left both behind and rejected all, in his epoch-making treatise, Die
sogenannten Pastoralbriefe, 1835. He was followed by Schwegler (1846),
Hilgenfeld (1875), Mangold, Schenkel, Hausrath, Pfleiderer (both in his
Paulinismus and in his Commentary in the Protestanten-Bibel, 1874),
Holtzmann; also by Ewald, Renan (L’Église chrétienne, pp. 85 sqq.), and
Sam. Davidson (Introd., revised ed., II. 21 sqq.). The most elaborate
book against the genuineness is Holtzmann’s Die Pastoralbriefe kritisch und
exeg. behandelt, Leipzig, 1880 (504 pp.); comp. his Einleitung (1886).
Reuss (Les épitres
Pauliniennes, 1878, II. 243 sq., 307 sq., and Gesch. des N. T, 1887,
p. 257 sqq.) rejects 1 Timothy and Titus, but admits 2 Timothy, assigning it to
the first Roman captivity. He thinks that 2 Timothy would never have
been doubted except for its suspicious companionship. Some of the opponents, as
Pfleiderer and Renan, feel forced to admit some scraps of genuine Pauline
Epistles or notes, and thus they break the force of the opposition. The three
Epistles must stand or fall together, either as wholly Pauline, or as wholly
pseudo-Pauline.
The genuineness has been
ably vindicated by Guericke, Thiersch, Huther, Wiesinger, Otto, Wieseler, Van
Oosterzee, Lange, Herzog, von Hofmann, Beck, Alford, Gloag, Fairbairn (Past.
Ep., 1874), Farrar (St. Paul, II. 607 sqq.), Wace (in the Speaker’s Com.
New Test., III., 1881, 749 sqq.), Plumptre (in Schaff’s Com. on the
New Test., III., 1882, pp. 550 sqq.), Kölling (Der erste Br. a. Tim.
1882), Salmon (1885), and Weiss (1886).
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="100" title="The Epistle To The
Hebrews">
<index
type = "globalSubject"
subject1 = "New
Testament"
subject2 = "Epistle To The
Hebrews" />
§ 100. The Epistle To The Hebrews.
I. Commentaries on
Hebrews by Chrysostom (d. 407,
<foreign
lang="el">eJrmhneiva</foreign>, in 34 Homilies publ. after his death by an
Antioch. presbyter, Constantinus); Theodoret
(d. 457); Oecumenius (10th cent.); Theophylact (11th cent.); Thomas Aquinas (d.
1274); Erasmus (d. 1536, Annotationes in N. T., with his Greek Test.,
1516 and often, and Paraphrasis in N. T., 1522 and often); Card. Cajetanus (Epistolae Pauli, etc.,
1531); Calvin (d. 1564, Com. in
omnes P. Ep. atque etiam in Ep. ad Hebraeos, 1539 and often, also Halle,
1831); Beza (d. 1605, transl. and notes,
1557 and often; had much influence on King Jame’s Version); Hyperius (at
Marburg, d. 1564); Dav. Pareus (d. 1615, Com. in Ep. ad Hebr.); Corn. A Lapide (Jesuit, d. 1637, Com.
in omnes Pauli Epp., 1627 and often); Guil.
Estius (R. C. Prof. at Douai, 1614, etc.); Jac. Cappellus (Sedan, 1624); Lud.
Cappellus (Geneva, 1632); Grotius (d. 1645, Arminian, a great classical and
general scholar); Joh. Gerhard (d. 1637); John Owen (the great Puritan
divine, d. 1683, Exercitations on the Epistle to the Hebrews, London,
1668–80, in 4 vols. fol., Lat. transl., Amsterd., 1700 [new Engl. ed. in 7
vols., in his Works, Lond., 1826, 21 vols.; Edinb. ed. of Works by W. H.
Goold, 1850–55; 24 vols., Philad. reprint, 1869], "a work of gigantic
strength as well as gigantic size," as Chalmers called it, and containing
a whole system of Puritan theology); Jac.
Pierce (Non-conformist, d. 1726); Sykes (d. 1756); Carpzov (d. 1803, Exercitat.,
etc., 1750); J. D. Michaelis (2d ed.,
1780–86, 2 vols.); Rosenmüller (1793); Storr (d. 1805; Tüb., 1789); Böhme
(Lips., 1825); Mos. Stuart (Andover, 1827, 2 vols., 4th ed., abridged and
revised by Robbins, 1860); Kühnöl (1831); Friedrich Bleek (Prof. in
Bonn., d. 1859; the large Com. in 3 vols., Berlin, 1836–40, an exegetical
masterpiece, most learned, critical, candid, judicious, and reverential, though
free; his Lectures on Hebrews were ed., after his death, by Windrath,
1868); Tholuck (Hamburg, 1836, dedicated
to Bunsen, 3d ed., 1850, transl. by James Hamilton, Edinb., 1852); Stier
(1842); DeWette (1847, 2d ed.); Ebrard (1850, in Olshausen’s Com., vol. v.;
Engl. transl., Edinb., 1853); Turner (new ed. N. Y., 1855); Sampson (ed. by
Dabney, N. Y., 1856); Lünemann (in Meyer’s Com., 1857, 4th ed., 1878);
Delitzsch (1857, transl. by Th. L. Kingsbury, Edinb., 1868, 2 vols.); John
Brown (Edinb., 1862, 2 vols.); Reuss (in French, 1862); Lindsay (Edinb., 1867,
2 vols.); Moll (in Lange’s Com., translated and enlarged by
Kendrick, 1868); Ripley (1868);
Kurtz (1869); Ewald (1870); Hofmann
(1873); Biesenthal (1878); Bloomfield; Alford; Wordsworth; W. Kay (in
the Speaker’s Com. N. T, vol. iv., 1882); Moulton (in Ellicott’s Com. for English Readers); A.
B. Davidson (of the New College,
Edinburgh. 1882); Angus (1883); Sam. T. Lowrie (1884); Weiss (1888).
II. The doctrinal
system of the Ep. has been most fully expounded by Riehm (d. 1888 in Halle): Der Lehrbegriff des Hebräerbriefs,
Basel und Ludwigsburg, 1858–59,
2 vols.; new ed., 1867, in 1 vol. (899 pages). Comp. the expositions of Neander, Messner, Baur, Reuss, and Weiss. On
the use of the O. T., see Tholuck: Das A. T. im N., Hamb., 3d ed., 1849; on the Christology of the
Epistle, Beyerschlag: Christologie des N.
T. (1866), 176 sqq.; on the
Melchisedek priesthood, Auberlen, in
"Studien und Kritiken" for 1857, pp. 453 sqq. Pfleiderer, in
his Paulinismus (pp. 324–366), treats of Hebrews, together with
Colossians and the Epistle of Barnabas, as representing Paulinism under the
influence of Alexandrinism.
III. On the introductory
questions, comp. Norton in the:
"Christian Examiner" (Boston), 1827–29; Olshausen: De
auctore Ep. ad Hebraeos (in Opusc. theol., 1834); Wieseler: Untersuchung über den Hebraeerbrief, Kiel, 1861; J. H. Thayer:
Authorship and Canonicity of the to the Hebrews, in the
"Bibliotheca Sacra," Andover, 1867; Zahn,
in Herzog’s "Encykl.," vol. v. (1879), pp. 656–671; and articles in
"Bible Dictionaries," and in "Encycl. Brit.," 9th ed., vol.
xi., 602 sqq.
The anonymous Epistle "to the Hebrews," like the Book of Job, belongs to the order of Melchizedek, combining priestly unction and royal dignity, but being "without father, without mother, without pedigree, having neither beginning of days nor end of life" (<scripRef passage = "Heb. 7:1–3">Heb. 7:1–3</scripRef>). Obscure in its origin, it is clear and deep in its knowledge of Christ. Hailing from the second generation of Christians <scripRef passage = "Heb. 2:3">(2:3)</scripRef>, it is full of pentecostal inspiration. Traceable to no apostle, it teaches, exhorts, and warns with apostolic authority and power. Though not of Paul’s pen, it has, somehow, the impress of his genius and influence, and is altogether worthy to occupy a place in the canon, after his Epistles, or between them and the Catholic Epistles. Pauline in spirit, it is catholic or encyclical in its aim.1211
Contents.
The Epistle to the
Hebrews is not an ordinary letter. It has, indeed, the direct personal appeals,
closing messages, and salutations of a letter; but it is more, it is a homily,
or rather a theological discourse, aiming to strengthen the readers in their
Christian faith, and to protect them against the danger of apostasy from
Christianity. It is a profound argument for the superiority of Christ over the
angels, over Moses, and over the Levitical priesthood, and for the finality of
the second covenant. It unfolds far more fully than any other book the great
idea of the eternal priesthood and sacrifice of Christ, offered once and
forever for the redemption of the world, as distinct from the national and
transient character of the Mosaic priesthood and the ever-repeated sacrifices
of the Tabernacle and the Temple. The author draws his arguments from the Old
Testament itself, showing that, by its whole character and express
declarations, it is a preparatory dispensation for the gospel salvation, a significant
type and prophecy of Christianity, and hence destined to pass away like a
transient shadow of the abiding substance. He implies that the Mosaic oeconomy
was still existing, with its priests and daily sacrifices, but in process of
decay, and looks forward to the fearful judgment which a few years, afterward
destroyed the Temple forever.1212 He interweaves pathetic admonitions and
precious consolations with doctrinal expositions, and every exhortation leads
him to a new exposition. Paul puts the hortatory part usually at the end.
The author undoubtedly
belonged to the Pauline school, which emphasized the great distinction between
the Old and the New Covenant; while yet fully acknowledging the divine origin
and paedagogic use of the former. But he brings out the superiority of Christ’s
priesthood and sacrifice to the Mosaic priesthood and sacrifice; while Paul
dwells mainly on the distinction between the law and the gospel. He lays chief
stress on faith, but he presents it in its general aspect as trust in God, in
its prospective reference to the future and invisible, and in its connection
with hope and perseverance under suffering; while Paul describes faith, in its
specific evangelical character, as a hearty trust in Christ and his atoning
merits, and in its justifying effect, in opposition to legalistic reliance on
works. Faith is defined, or at least described, as "assurance (<foreign
lang="el">uJpovstasi"</foreign>) of things hoped for, a conviction (<foreign
lang="el">e[legco"</foreign>) of things not seen" (<scripRef
passage ="Heb. 11:1">11:1</scripRef>). This applies to the Old Testament as well as the New, and hence
appropriately opens the catalogue of patriarchs and prophets, who encourage
Christian believers in their conflict; but they are to look still more to Jesus
as "the author and perfecter of our faith" <scripRef passage =
"Heb. 12:2">(12:2)</scripRef>, who is, after all, the unchanging object of our
faith, "the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever" <scripRef
passage = "Heb. 13:8">(13:8)</scripRef>.
The Epistle is eminently
Christological. It resembles in this respect Colossians and Philippians, and
forms a stepping-stone to the Christology of John. From the sublime description
of the exaltation and majesty of Christ in <scripRef passage =
"Heb. 1:1–4">Heb.
1:1–4</scripRef> (comp. <scripRef passage =
"Col. 1:15–20">Col.
1:15–20</scripRef>), there is only one step to the prologue of the
fourth Gospel. The exposition of the high priesthood of Christ reminds one of
the sacerdotal prayer (<scripRef passage = "John 17">John 17</scripRef>).
The use of proof-texts
from the Old Testament seems at times contrary to the obvious historical import
of the passage, but is always ingenious, and was, no doubt, convincing to
Jewish readers. The writer does not distinguish between typical and direct
prophecies. He recognizes the typical, or rather antitypical, character of the
Tabernacle and its services, as reflecting the archetype seen by Moses in the
mount, but all the Messianic prophecies are explained as direct (<scripRef
passage = "Heb. 1:5–14; 2:11–13; 10:5–10">Heb. 1:5–14; 2:11–13; 10:5–10</scripRef>). He betrays throughout a high order of Greek
culture, profound knowledge of the Greek Scriptures, and the symbolical import
of the Mosaic worship.1213 He was also familiar with the
Alexandrian theosophy of Philo,1214
but he never introduces foreign ideas into the Scriptures, as Philo did by his
allegorical interpretation. His exhortations and warnings go to the quick of
the moral sensibility; and yet his tone is also cheering and encouraging. He
had the charisma of exhortation and consolation in the highest degree.1215
Altogether, he was a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, and gifted
with a tongue of fire.
The Style.
Hebrews is written in
purer Greek than any book of the New Testament, except those portions of Luke
where he is independent of prior documents. The Epistle begins, like the third
Gospel, with a rich and elegant period of classic construction. The description
of the heroes of faith in the eleventh chapter is one of the most eloquent and
sublime in the entire history of religious literature. He often reasons a minori ad majus (<foreign lang="el">eij
... povsw/ ma'llon</foreign>). He uses a number of rare and choice
terms which occur nowhere else in the New Testament.1216
As compared with the
undoubted Epistles of Paul, the style of Hebrews is less fiery and forcible,
but smoother, more correct, rhetorical, rhythmical, and free from anacolutha
and solecisms. There is not that rush and vehemence which bursts through ordinary
rules, but a calm and regular flow of speech. The sentences are skilfully
constructed and well rounded. Paul is bent exclusively on the thought; the
author of Hebrews evidently paid great attention to the form. Though not
strictly classical, his style is as pure as the Hellenistic dialect and the
close affinity with the Septuagint permit.
All these considerations
exclude the idea of a translation from a supposed Hebrew original.
The Readers.
The Epistle is addressed
to the Hebrew Christians, that is, according to the usual distinction between
Hebrews and Hellenists (<scripRef passage = "Acts 6:1;
9:27">Acts 6:1; 9:27</scripRef>), to the converted Jews in Palestine, chiefly to
those in Jerusalem. To them it is especially adapted. They lived in sight of
the Temple, and were exposed to the persecution of the hierarchy and the
temptation of apostasy. This has been the prevailing view from the time of
Chrysostom to Bleek.1217 The objection that the Epistle quotes
the Old Testament uniformly after the Septuagint is not conclusive, since the
Septuagint was undoubtedly used in Palestine alongside with the Hebrew
original.
Other views more or less improbable need only be mentioned: (1) All the Christian Jews as distinct from the Gentiles;1218 (2) the Jews of Jerusalem alone;1219 (3) the Jews of Alexandria;1220 (4) the Jews of Antioch;1221 (5) the Jews of Rome;1222 (6) some community of the dispersion in the East (but not Jerusalem).1223
Occasion and Aim.
The Epistle was prompted
by the desire to strengthen and comfort the readers in their trials and
persecutions (<scripRef passage = "Heb. 10:32–39; 11, 12">Heb. 10:32–39; Heb. 11 and 12</scripRef>), but especially to warn them against the danger
of apostasy to Judaism (<scripRef passage ="Heb. 2:2, 3; 3:6, 14;
4:1, 14; 6:1–8; 10:23, 26–31">2:2, 3; 3:6, 14; 4:1, 14; 6:1–8; 10:23, 26–31</scripRef>). And this could be done best by showing the
infinite superiority of Christianity, and the awful guilt of neglecting so
great a salvation.
Strange that but thirty
years after the resurrection and the pentecostal effusion of the Spirit, there
should have been such a danger of apostasy in the very mother church of
Christendom. And yet not strange, if we realize the condition of things,
between 60 and 70. The Christians in Jerusalem were the most conservative of
all believers, and adhered as closely as possible to the traditions of their
fathers. They were contented with the elementary doctrines, and needed to be
pressed on "unto perfection" <scripRef passage =
"Heb. 5:12; 6:1–4">(5:12; 6:1–4)</scripRef>. The Epistle of James represents their doctrinal
stand-point. The strange advice which he gave to his brother Paul, on his last
visit, reflects their timidity and narrowness. Although numbered by
"myriads," they made no attempt in that critical moment to rescue the
great apostle from the hands of the fanatical Jews; they were "all zealous
for the law," and afraid of the radicalism of Paul on hearing that he was
teaching the Jews of the Dispersion "to forsake Moses, telling them not to
circumcise their children, neither to walk after the customs" <scripRef
passage = "Acts 21:20, 21">( Acts 21:20, 21)</scripRef>.
They hoped against hope
for the conversion of their people. When that hope vanished more and more, when
some of their teachers had suffered martyrdom (<scripRef passage =
"Heb. 13:7">Heb.
13:7</scripRef>), when James, their revered leader, was stoned
by the Jews (62), and when the patriotic movement for the deliverance of
Palestine from the hated yoke of the heathen Romans rose higher and higher,
till it burst out at last in open rebellion (66), it was very natural that
those timid Christians should feel strongly tempted to apostatize from the poor,
persecuted sect to the national religion, which they at heart still believed to
be the best part of Christianity. The solemn services of the Temple, the ritual
pomp and splendor of the Aaronic priesthood, the daily sacrifices, and all the
sacred associations of the past had still a great charm for them, and allured
them to their embrace. The danger was very strong, and the warning of the
Epistle fearfully solemn.
Similar dangers have
occurred again and again in critical periods of history.
Time and Place of Composition.
The Epistle hails and
sends greetings from some place in Italy, at a time when Timothy, Paul’s
disciple, was set at liberty, and the writer was on the point of paying, with
Timothy, a visit to his readers <scripRef passage = "Heb. 13:23, 24">(13:23, 24)</scripRef>. The passage, "Remember them that are in
bonds, as bound with them" <scripRef passage = "Heb.
13:3">(13:3)</scripRef>, does not necessarily imply that he himself was
in prison, indeed <scripRef passage ="Heb. 13:23">13:23</scripRef> seems to imply his freedom. These notices
naturally suggest the close of Paul’s first Roman imprisonment, in the spring
of the year 63, or soon after; for Timothy and Luke were with him there, and
the writer himself evidently belonged to the circle of his friends and
fellow-workers.
There is further
internal evidence that the letter was written before the destruction of
Jerusalem (70), before the outbreak of the Jewish war (66), before the Neronian
persecution (in July, 64), and before Paul’s martyrdom. None of these important
events are even alluded to;1224
on the contrary, as already remarked, the Temple was still standing, with its
daily sacrifices regularly going on, and the doom of the theocracy was still in
the future, though "nigh unto a curse," "becoming old and ready
to vanish away;" it was "shaken" and about to be removed; the
day of the fearful judgment was drawing nigh.1225
The place of composition was either Rome or some place in Southern Italy, if we assume that the writer had already started on his journey to the East.1226 Others assign it to Alexandria, or Antioch, or Ephesus.1227
Authorship.
This is still a matter
of dispute, and will probably never be decided with absolute certainty. The
obscurity of its origin is the reason why the Epistle to the Hebrews was ranked
among the seven Antilegomena of the ante-Nicene church. The controversy ceased
after the adoption of the traditional canon in 397, but revived again at the
time of the Reformation. The different theories may be arranged under three
heads: (1) sole authorship of Paul; (2) sole authorship of one of his pupils;
(3) joint authorship of Paul and one of his pupils. Among the pupils again the
views are subdivided between Luke, Barnabas, Clement of Rome, Silvanus, and
Apollos.1228
1. The Pauline Authorship was the prevailing
opinion of the church from the fourth century to the eighteenth, with the
exception of the Reformers, and was once almost an article of faith, but has
now very few defenders among scholars.1229 It rests on the following arguments:
(a) The unanimous
tradition of the Eastern church, to which the letter was in all probability
directed; yet with the important qualification which weakens the force of this
testimony, that there was a widely prevailing perception of a difference of
style, and consequent supposition of a Hebrew original, of which there is no
historic basis whatever. Clement of Alexandria ascribed the Greek composition
to Luke.1230
Origen observes the greater purity of the Greek style,1231 and mentions Luke and Clement, besides Paul, as
possible authors, but confesses his own ignorance.1232
(b) The mention
of Timothy and the reference to a release from captivity (<scripRef
passage = "Heb. 13:23">Heb. 13:23</scripRef>) point to Paul. Not necessarily, but only to the
circle of Paul. The alleged reference to Paul’s own captivity in <scripRef
passage ="Heb. 10:34">10:34</scripRef> rests on a false reading (<foreign lang="el">desmoi'"
mou</foreign>, E. V., "in my bonds," instead of the
one now generally adopted, <foreign lang="el">toi'"
desmivoi"</foreign>, "those that were in bonds"). Nor does the request <scripRef
passage ="Heb. 13:18, 19">13:18, 19</scripRef>, imply that the writer was a prisoner at the time of composition; for <scripRef
passage ="Heb. 13:23">13:23</scripRef> rather points to his freedom, as he expected, shortly to see his readers
in company with Timothy.
(c) The agreement
of the Epistle with Paul’s system of doctrine, the tone of apostolic authority,
and the depth and unction which raises the Epistle to a par with his genuine
writings. But all that can be said in praise of this wonderful Epistle at best
proves only its inspiration and canonicity, which must be extended beyond the
circle of the apostles so as to embrace the writings of Luke, Mark, James, and
Jude.
2. The Non-Pauline Authorship is supported by
the following arguments:
(a) The Western
tradition, both Roman and North African, down to the time of Augustin, is
decidedly against the Pauline authorship. This has all the more weight from the
fact that the earliest traces of the Epistle to the Hebrews are found in the
Roman church, where it was known before the close of the first century. Clement
of Rome makes very extensive use of it, but nowhere under the name of Paul. The
Muratorian Canon enumerates only thirteen Epistles of Paul and omits Hebrews.
So does Gaius, a Roman presbyter, at the beginning of the third century.
Tertullian ascribed the Epistle to Barnabas. According to the testimony of
Eusebius, the Roman church did not regard the Epistle as Pauline at his day (he
died 340). Philastrius of Brescia (d. about 387) mentions that some denied the
Pauline authorship, because the passage 6:4–6 favored the heresy and excessive
disciplinary rigor of the Novatians, but he himself believed it to be Paul’s,
and so did Ambrose of Milan. Jerome (d. 419) can be quoted on both sides. He wavered
in his own view, but expressly says: "The Latin custom (<foreign
lang="la">Latina
consuetudo</foreign>) does not receive it among the canonical Scriptures;" and in
another place: "All the Greeks receive the Epistle to the Hebrews, and
some Latins (<foreign lang="la">et nonnulli Latinorum</foreign>)."
Augustin, a profound divine, but neither linguist nor critic, likewise
wavered, but leaned strongly toward the Pauline origin. The prevailing opinion
in the West ascribed only thirteen Epistles to Paul. The Synod of Hippo (393)
and the third Synod of Carthage (397), under the commanding influence of
Augustin, marked a transition of opinion in favor of fourteen.1233
This opinion prevailed until Erasmus and the Reformers revived the
doubts of the early Fathers. The Council of Trent sanctioned it.
(b) The absence
of the customary name and salutation. This has been explained from modesty, as
Paul was sent to the Gentiles rather than the Jews (Pantaenus), or from
prudence and the desire to secure a better hearing from Jews who were strongly
prejudiced against Paul (Clement of Alexandria). Very unsatisfactory and set
aside by the authoritative tone of the Epistle.
(c) In <scripRef
passage ="Heb. 2:3">2:3</scripRef> the writer expressly distinguishes himself from
the apostles, and reckons himself with the second generation of Christians, to
whom the word of the Lord was "confirmed by them that heard" it at
the first from the Lord. Paul, on the contrary, puts himself on a par with the
other apostles, and derives his doctrine directly from Christ, without any
human intervention (<scripRef passage = "Gal. 1:1, 12, 15,
16">Gal. 1:1, 12, 15,
16</scripRef>). This passage alone is conclusive, and decided
Luther, Calvin, and Beza against the Pauline authorship.1234
(d) The
difference, not in the substance, but in the form and method of teaching and
arguing.1235
(e) The
difference of style (which has already been discussed). This argument does not
rest on the number of peculiar words for such are found in every book of the
New Testament, but in the superior purity, correctness, and rhetorical finish
of style.
(f) The
difference in the quotations from the Old Testament. The author of Hebrews
follows uniformly the Septuagint, even with its departures from the Hebrew;
while Paul is more independent, and often corrects the Septuagint from the
Hebrew. Bleek has also discovered the important fact that the former used the
text of Codex Alexandrinus, the latter the text of Codex Vaticanus.1236 It
is incredible that Paul, writing to the church of Jerusalem, should not have
made use of his Hebrew and rabbinical learning in quoting the Scriptures.
3 Conjectures concerning the probable
author. Four Pauline disciples and co-workers have been proposed, either as
sole or as joint authors with Paul, three with some support in
tradition—Barnabas, Luke, and Clement—one without any Apollos. Silvanus also
has a few advocates.1237
(a) Barnabas.1238 He
has in his favor the tradition of the African church (at least Tertullian), his
Levitical training, his intimacy with Paul, his close relation to the church in
Jerusalem, and his almost apostolic authority. As the <foreign
lang="el">uiJo;" paraklhvsew"</foreign> (<scripRef passage = "Acts
4:36">Acts 4:36</scripRef>), he may have written the <foreign
lang="el">lovgo" paraklhvsew"</foreign> (<scripRef passage = "Heb.
13:22">Heb. 13:22</scripRef>). But in this case he cannot be the author of
the Epistle which goes by his name, and which, although belonging to the
Pauline and strongly anti-Judaizing tendency, is yet far inferior to Hebrews in
spirit and wisdom. Moreover, Barnabas was a primitive disciple, and cannot be
included in the second generation (2:3).
(b) Luke.1239 He
answers the description of <scripRef passage ="Heb. 2:3">2:3</scripRef>, writes pure Greek, and has many affinities in
style.1240 But
against him is the fact that the author of Hebrews was, no doubt, a native Jew,
while Luke was a Gentile (<scripRef passage = "Col. 4:11, 14">Col. 4:11, 14</scripRef>). This objection, however, ceases in a measure
if Luke wrote in the name and under the instruction of Paul.
(c) Clemens Romanus.1241 He
makes thorough use of Hebrews and interweaves passages from the Epistle with
his own ideas, but evidently as an imitator, far inferior in originality and
force.
(d) Apollos.1242 A happy guess of the genius of Luther, suggested
by the description given of Apollos in the <scripRef passage =
"Acts 18:24–28">Acts
18:24–28</scripRef>, and by Paul (<scripRef passage =
"1 Cor. 1:12; 3:4–6, 22; 4:6; 16:12">1 Cor. 1:12; 3:4–6, 22; 4:6; 16:12</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Tit.
3:13">Tit. 3:13</scripRef>). Apollos was a Jew of Alexandria, mighty in the
Scriptures, fervent in spirit, eloquent in speech, powerfully confuting the
Jews, a friend of Paul, and independently working with him in the same cause at
Ephesus, Corinth, Crete. So far everything seems to fit. But this hypothesis
has not a shadow of support in tradition, which could hardly have omitted
Apollos in silence among the three or four probable authors. Clement names him
once,1243 but not as the author of the Epistle which he so
freely uses. Nor is there any trace of his ever having been in Rome, and having
stood in so close a relationship to the Hebrew Christians in Palestine.
The learned discussion
of modern divines has led to no certain and unanimous conclusion, but is,
nevertheless, very valuable, and sheds light in different directions. The
following points may be regarded as made certain, or at least in the highest
degree probable: the author of Hebrews was a Jew by birth; a Hellenist, not a
Palestinian; thoroughly at home in the Greek Scriptures (less so, if at all, in
the Hebrew original); familiar with the Alexandrian Jewish theology (less so,
if at all, with the rabbinical learning of Palestine); a pupil of the apostles
(not himself an apostle); an independent disciple and coworker of Paul; a
friend of Timothy; in close relation with the Hebrew Christians of Palestine,
and, when he wrote, on the point of visiting them; an inspired man of apostolic
insight, power, and authority, and hence worthy of a position in the canon as
"the great unknown."
Beyond these marks we
cannot go with safety. The writer purposely withholds his name. The arguments
for Barnabas, Luke, and Apollos, as well as the objections against them, are
equally strong, and we have no data to decide between them, not to mention
other less known workers of the apostolic age. We must still confess with
Origen that God only knows the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews.
Notes.
I.—The Position of Hebrews in the New
Testament. In the old Greek MSS. (a, B, C, D) the Epistle to the Hebrews stands
before the Pastoral Epistles, as being an acknowledged letter of Paul. This
order has, perhaps, a chronological value, and is followed in the critical
editions Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort), although
Westcott and Hort regard the Pastoral Epistles as Pauline, and the Ep. to the
Hebrews as un-Pauline. See their Gr. Test., vol. II., 321.
But in the Latin and
English Bibles, Hebrews stands more appropriately at the close of the
Pauline Epistles, and immediately precedes the Catholic Epistles.
Luther, who had some
doctrinal objections to Hebrews and James, took the liberty of putting them
after the Epistles of Peter and John, and making them the last Epistles except
Jude. He misunderstood <scripRef passage = "Heb. 6:4–6; 10:26, 27;
12:17">Heb. 6:4–6;
10:26, 27; 12:17</scripRef>, as excluding the possibility of a second
repentance and pardon after baptism, and called these passages, "hard
knots" that ran counter to all the Gospels and Epistles of Paul; but,
apart from this, he declared Hebrews to be, "an Epistle of exquisite
beauty, discussing from Scripture, with masterly skill and thoroughness, the
priesthood of Christ, and interpreting on this point the Old Testament with
great richness and acuteness."
The English Revisers
retained, without any documentary evidence, the traditional title, "The
Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews." This gives sanction to a particular
theory, and is properly objected to by the American Revisers. The Pauline
authorship is, to say the least, an open question, and should have been left
open by the Revisers. The ancient authorities entitle the letter simply, <foreign
lang="el">Pro;s JEbraivou",</foreign> and even this was probably added by the hand of
an early transcriber. Still less is the subscription, "Written to the
Hebrews from Italy by Timothy" to be relied on as original, and was
probably a mere inference from the contents (<scripRef passage =
"Heb. 13:23, 24">Heb.
13:23, 24</scripRef>).
II.—The Hapaxtegomena of the Epistle. <foreign
lang="el">ajgenealovghto",</foreign> without pedigree (said of Melchizedek), <scripRef
passage = "Heb. 7:3">Heb. 7:3</scripRef>. <foreign
lang="el">ajmhvtwr</foreign>, motherless, <scripRef passage
="Heb. 7:3">7:3</scripRef>. <foreign lang="el">ajpavtwr</foreign>, fatherless, <scripRef passage
="Heb. 7:3">7:3</scripRef>. <foreign lang="el">ajpauvgasma,</foreign> effulgence (said of Christ in relation to God), <scripRef
passage ="Heb. 1:2">1:2</scripRef>. <foreign lang="el">aijsqhthvrion</foreign>, sense, <scripRef passage
="Heb. 5:14">5:14</scripRef>. <foreign lang="el">ajkroqivnion</foreign>, spoils, <scripRef passage
="Heb. 7:4">7:4</scripRef>. <foreign lang="el">eujperivstato"</foreign> (from <foreign
lang="el">eu\</foreign> and <foreign
lang="el">periivsthmi,</foreign> to place round), a difficult word of uncertain
interpretation, easily besetting, closely clinging to (E. R. on the margin:
admired by many), <scripRef passage ="Heb. 12:1">12:1</scripRef>. <foreign
lang="el">kritikov",</foreign> quick to discern, <scripRef passage
="Heb. 4:12">4:12</scripRef>. <foreign lang="el">hJ
mevllousa oijkoumevnh</foreign>, the future world, <scripRef passage
="Heb. 2:5">2:5</scripRef>. <foreign lang="el">mesiteuvein</foreign>, to interpose one’s self, to mediate, <scripRef
passage ="Heb. 6:17">6:17</scripRef>., <foreign
lang="el">metriopaqei'n</foreign>, to have compassion on, to bear gently with, <scripRef
passage ="Heb. 5:2">5:2</scripRef> (said of Christ). <foreign
lang="el">oJrkwmosiva</foreign>, oath,
<scripRef
passage ="Heb. 7:20, 21, 28">7:20, 21, 28</scripRef>. <foreign lang="el">parapikraivnein</foreign>, to
provoke, 3:16. <foreign lang="el">parapikrasmov",</foreign> provocation, <scripRef passage
="Heb. 3:8, 15">3:8,
15</scripRef>. <foreign lang="el">polumerw'",</foreign> by divers portions, <scripRef passage
="Heb. 1:1">1:1</scripRef>. <foreign lang="el">polutrovpw",</foreign> in divers manners, <scripRef passage
="Heb. 1:1">1:1</scripRef>. <foreign lang="el">provdromo",</foreign> forerunner, <scripRef passage
="Heb. 6:20">6:20</scripRef> (of Christ). <foreign
lang="el">sunepimarturei'n</foreign>, to bear witness with, <scripRef passage
="Heb. 2:4">2:4</scripRef>. <foreign lang="el">trachlivzein</foreign>. to open, <scripRef passage
="Heb. 4:13">4:13</scripRef> (<foreign lang="el">tetrachlismevna</foreign>, laid open). <foreign
lang="el">uJpostasi",</foreign> substance (or person), <scripRef passage
="Heb. 1:3">1:3</scripRef> (of God); confidence, <scripRef passage
="Heb. 3:14">3:14</scripRef>; assurance, <scripRef passage
="Heb. 11:1">11:1</scripRef>. This word, however, occurs also in <scripRef
passage = "2 Cor. 11:17">2 Cor. 11:17</scripRef>, in the sense of confidence. <foreign
lang="el">carakthvr</foreign>, express image (Christ, the very image of the
essence of God), <scripRef passage = "Heb. 1:3">Heb. 1:3</scripRef>.
On the other hand, the
Ep. to the Hebrews has a number of rare words in common with Paul which are not
elsewhere found in the New Testament or the Septuagint, as <foreign
lang="el">aijdwv"</foreign> (<scripRef passage ="Heb.
12:13">12:13</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "1 Tim.
2:9">1 Tim. 2:9</scripRef>), <foreign lang="el">a[naqewrevw</foreign> (<scripRef passage = "Heb.
13:7">Heb. 13:7</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Acts
17:23">Acts 17:23</scripRef>), <foreign lang="el">ajnupovtakto"</foreign> (<scripRef passage =
"Heb.2:8">Heb.2:8</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "1 Tim.
1:9">1 Tim. 1:9</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Tit. 1:6,
10">Tit. 1:6, 10</scripRef>), <foreign lang="el">ajpeivqeia</foreign> (<scripRef passage = "Heb. 4:6, 11">Heb. 4:6, 11</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Rom. 11:30,
32">Rom. 11:30, 32</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Eph.
2:2">Eph. 2:2</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Col.
3:5">Col. 3:5</scripRef>), <foreign lang="el">ajpovlousi"</foreign> (<scripRef passage = "Heb.
11:25">Heb. 11:25</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "1 Tim.
6:17">1 Tim. 6:17</scripRef>), <foreign lang="el">ajfilavrguro"</foreign> (<scripRef passage = "Heb.
13:5">Heb. 13:5</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "1 Tim.
3:3">1 Tim. 3:3</scripRef>), <foreign lang="el">e[ndiko"</foreign> (<scripRef passage = "Heb.
2:1">Heb. 2:1</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Rom.
3:8">Rom. 3:8</scripRef>), <foreign lang="el">ejnerghv"</foreign> (<scripRef passage = "Heb.
4:12">Heb. 4:12</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "1 Cor.
16:9">1 Cor. 16:9</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Philem.
6">Philem. 6</scripRef>),<foreign lang="el">
ejfavpax</foreign> (<scripRef passage = "Heb. 7:27;
10:10">Heb. 7:27;
10:10</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Rom.
9:10">Rom. 9:10</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "1 Cor.
15:6">1 Cor. 15:6</scripRef>), <foreign lang="el">kosmikov"</foreign> (<scripRef passage = "Heb.
9:11">Heb. 9:11</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Tit.
2:12">Tit. 2:12</scripRef>), <foreign lang="el">mimhthv"</foreign> (<scripRef passage = "Heb.
6:12">Heb. 6:12</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "1 Cor.
4:16">1 Cor. 4:16</scripRef>, etc.), <foreign
lang="el">nekrovw </foreign>(<scripRef passage = "Heb.
11:12">Heb. 11:12</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Rom.
4:19">Rom. 4:19</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Col.
3:5">Col. 3:5</scripRef>), <foreign lang="el">ojrevgomai
</foreign>(<scripRef passage = "Heb.
11:16">Heb. 11:16</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "1 Tim. 3:1;
6:10">1 Tim. 3:1;
6:10</scripRef>), <foreign lang="el">parakohv</foreign> (<scripRef passage = "Heb.
2:2">Heb. 2:2</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Rom.
5:10">Rom. 5:10</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "2 Cor.
10:6">2 Cor. 10:6</scripRef>), <foreign lang="el">plhroforiva</foreign> (<scripRef passage = "Heb. 6:11;
10:22">Heb. 6:11;
10:22</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Col.
2:2">Col. 2:2</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "1 Thess.
1:5">1 Thess. 1:5</scripRef>), <foreign lang="el">filoxeniva</foreign> (<scripRef passage = "Heb.
13:2">Heb. 13:2</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Rom.
12:13">Rom. 12:13</scripRef>).
On the linguistic
peculiarities of Hebrews, see Bleek, I. 315–338 Lünemann, Com., pp. 12
and 24 sqq. (4th ed., 1878); Davidson, Introd., I. 209 sqq. (revised
ed., 1882); and the Speaker’s Com. N. T., IV. 7–16.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="101" title="The
Apocalypse">
<index
type = "globalSubject"
subject1 = "New
Testament"
subject2 = "Revelation"
/>
§ 101. The Apocalypse.
On the Lit. and life of
John, see §§ 40 and 41 (this vol.); on the authorship of the Apoc. and the time
of composition, § 37 (this vol.); § 41 (this vol.); and § 84 (this vol.)
1. Modern Critical, works of German and French scholars on the
Apocalypse: Lücke (Voltständige Einleitung, etc., 2d ed., 1852; 1,074 pages of introductory
matter, critical and historical; compare with it the review of Bleek in the "Studien and Kritiken"
for 1854 and 1855); DeWette Com., 1848, with a remarkable
preface, 3d ed. by Möller, 1862); Bleek
(Posthumous Lectures, ed. by Hossbach, 1862); Ewald (Die Johann.
Schriften, vol. II, 1862;
besides his older Latin Com., 1828); Düsterdieck
(in Meyer’s Com., 3d ed., 1877); Renan
(L’Antechrist, 1873); Reuss
(1878). A. Sabatier, in Lichtenberger’s "Encyclopédie," I. 396–407.
E. Vischer: Die Offenb. Joh. eine Jüd. Apok. in christl.
Bearbeitung, Leipz., 1886. F. Spitta: Die Offenb. Joh. untersucht,
Halle, 1889.
2. For Doctrinal and Practical exposition, the
Commentaries of Hengstenberg (1849, spoiled by false prophecies and arbitrary
fancies) Auberlen (on Daniel and Revelation, 2d ed., 1854); Gaussen (Daniel le prophète, 1850); Ebrard
(in Olshausen’s Com., 1853); Luthardt
(1861); J. C. K. Hofmann (1844 and 1862); J. L. Füller (follows Hofmann, 1874);
Lange (1871, Am. ed. enlarged by Craven, 1874); Gebhardt (Lehrbegriff der
Apok., 1873); Kliefoth (1874). Comp. also Rougemont: La Révélation de St.
Jean expliquant l’histoire (1866). Godet: Essay
upon the Apoc., in his Studies on the N. T., translated from the French by
W. H. Lyttleton, London, 1876,
294–398.
3. English Com.: E. H. Elliott (d. 1875, Horae Apoc., 5th
ed., 1862, 4 vols.); Wordsworth (4th ed.,
1866); Alford (3d ed., 1866); C. J. Vaughan (3d ed., 1870, practical); William Lee (Archdeacon
in Dublin, in the "Speaker’s" Com. N. T., vol. iv., 1881, pp.
405–844) E. Huntingford (Lond., 1882);
Milligan (1883 and 1886 the best). Trench: The Epistles to the Seven
Churches (2d ed., 1861), and Plumptre:
Expos. of the Epp. to the Seven Ch. (Lond. and N. Y., 1877).
4. American Com. by Moses Stuart (1845, 2 vols., new ed., 1864, with
an Excursus on the Number of the Beast, II. 452); Cowles (1871).
5. Of Older Commentaries, the most important
and valuable are the following:
(a) Greek: Andreas of Caesarea in Cappadocia (5th cent.;
the first continuous Com. on the Apoc., publ. 1596, also in the works of
Chrysostom; see Lücke, p. 983); Arethas Of Caes. in Cappad. (not of the
6th cent., as stated by Lücke, p. 990, and others, but of the 10th, according
to Otto, and Harnack, in Altchristl. Liter., 1882, pp, 36 sqq.; his <foreign
lang="el">suvvnoyi" scolikhv</foreign>, ed. by J. A. Cramner, in his Catenae Graec.
Patr. in N. T., Oxon., 1840, vol. VIII.; and in the works of Oecumenius); 0ecumenius (10th cent., see Lücke, p.
991).
(b) Rom. Cath.: Lud. Ab Alcasar (a Jesuit, 1614); Cornelius A
Lapide (1662); Bossuet (1690, and in Oeuvres, vol. III., 1819); Bisping (1876).
(c) Protestant: Jos. Mede (Clavis Apocalyptica, Cambr., 1632; Engl. transl. by More, 1643; a new
transl. by R. B. Cooper, Lond., 1833); Hugo
Grotius (first, 1644); Vitringa (1705, 1719, 1721); Bengel (1740); Bishop
Thomas Newton (in Dissertations on the Prophecies, 8 vols.,
1758).
This list is a small
selection. The literature on the Apocalypse, especially in English, is immense,
but mostly impository rather than expository, and hence worthless or even
mischievous, because confounding and misleading. Darling’s list of English works
on the Apocalypse contains nearly fifty-four columns (I., 1732–1786).
General Character of the Apocalypse.
The
"Revelation" of John, or rather "of Jesus Christ" through
John,1244 appropriately closes the New Testament. It is
the one and only prophetic book, but based upon the discourses of our Lord on
the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world, and his second advent (<scripRef
passage = "Matt. 24">Matt. 24</scripRef>). It has one face turned back to the prophecies of old, the other gazing
into the future. It combines the beginning and the end in Him who is "the
Alpha and the Omega." It
reminds one of the mysterious sphinx keeping ceaseless watch, with staring
eyes, at the base of the Great Pyramid. "As many words as many
mysteries," says Jerome; "Nobody knows what is in it," adds
Luther.1245 No
book has been more misunderstood and abused; none calls for greater modesty and
reserve in interpretation.1246
The opening and closing
chapters are as clear and dazzling as sunlight, and furnish spiritual
nourishment and encouragement to the plainest Christian; but the intervening
visions are, to most readers, as dark as midnight, yet with many stars and the
full moon illuminating the darkness. The Epistles to the Seven Churches, the
description of the heavenly Jerusalem, and the anthems and doxologies1247 which are interspersed through the mysterious
visions, and glister like brilliant jewels on a canopy of richest black, are
among the most beautiful, sublime, edifying, and inspiring portions of the
Bible, and they ought to guard us against a hasty judgment of those chapters
which we may be unable to understand. The Old Testament prophets were not
clearly understood until the fulfilment cast its light upon them, and yet they
served a most useful purpose as books of warning, comfort, and hope for the
coming Messiah. The Revelation will be fully revealed when the new heavens and
the new earth appear—not before.1248
"A prophet"
(says the sceptical DeWette in his Commentary on Revelation, which was his last
work) "is essentially an inspired man, an interpreter of God, who
announces the Word of God to men in accordance with, and within the limits of,
the divine truth already revealed through Moses in the Old Testament, through
Christ in the New (the <foreign lang="el">ajpokavluyi"
musthrivou</foreign>, <scripRef
passage = "Rom. 16:25">Rom. 16:25</scripRef>. Prophecy rests on faith in a continuous
providence of God ruling over the whole world, and with peculiar efficacy over
Israel and the congregation of Christ, according to the moral laws revealed
through Moses and Christ especially the laws of retribution. According to the
secular view, all changes in human affairs proceed partly from man’s power and
prudence, partly from accident and the hidden stubbornness of fate; but
according to the prophetic view, everything happens through the agency of God
and in harmony with his counsels of eternal and unchangeable justice, and man
is the maker of his own fortunes by obeying or resisting the will of God."1249
The prophecy of the
Bible meets the natural desire to know the future, and this desire is most
intense in great critical periods that are pregnant with fears and hopes. But
it widely differs from the oracles of the heathen, and the conjectures of
farseeing men. It rests on revelation, not on human sagacity and guesses; it
gives certainty, not mere probability; it is general, not specific; it does not
gratify curiosity, but is intended to edify and improve. The prophets are not
merely revealers of secrets, but also preachers of repentance, revivalists,
comforters, rebuking sin, strengthening faith, encouraging hope.
The Apocalypse is in the
New Testament what the Book of Daniel is in the Old, and differs from it as the
New Testament differs from the Old. Both are prophetic utterances of the will
of God concerning the future of his kingdom on earth. Both are books of the
church militant, and engage heaven and earth, divine, human, and satanic
powers, in a conflict for life and death. They march on as "a terrible
army with banners." They
reverberate with thunderings and reflect the lightning flashes from the throne.
But while Daniel looks to the first advent of the Messiah as the heir of the preceding
world-monarchies, John looks to the second advent of Christ and the new heavens
and the new earth. He gathers up all the former prophecies and sends them
enriched to the future. He assures us of the final fulfilment of the prophecy
of the serpent-bruiser, which was given to our first parents immediately after
the fall as a guiding star of hope in the dark night of sin. He blends the
glories of creation and redemption in the finale of the new Jerusalem from
heaven.
The Apocalypse, as to
its style of composition, is written in prose, like Daniel, but belongs to
prophetic poetry, which is peculiar to the Bible and takes there the place of
the epic poetry of the Greeks; God himself being the hero, as it were, who
rules over the destinies of man. It is an inspired work of art, and requires
for its understanding a poetic imagination, which is seldom found among
commentators and critics; but the imagination must be under the restraint of
sober judgment, or it is apt to run into fantastic comments which themselves
need a commentary. The apocalyptic vision is the last and most complete form of
the prophetic poetry of the Bible. The strong resemblance between the
Revelation and Daniel, Ezekiel and Zechariah is admitted, and without them it
cannot be understood.
But we may compare it
also, as to its poetic form and arrangement, with the book of Job. Both present
a conflict on earth, controlled by invisible powers in heaven. In Job it is the
struggle of an individual servant of God with Satan, the arch-slanderer and
persecutor of man, who, with the permission of God, uses temporal losses,
bodily sufferings, mental anguish, harassing doubt, domestic affliction, false
and unfeeling friends to secure his ruin. In the Apocalypse it is the conflict
of Christ and his church with the anti-Christian world. In both the scene begins
in heaven; in both the war ends in victory but in Job long life and temporal
prosperity of the individual sufferer is the price, in the Apocalypse redeemed
humanity in the new heavens and the new earth. Both are arranged in three
parts: a prologue, the battle with successive encounters, and an epilogue. In
both the invisible power presiding over the action is the divine counsel of
wisdom and mercy, in the place of the dark impersonal fate of the Greek drama.1250
A comparison between the
Apocalypse and the pseudo-apocalyptic Jewish and Christian literature—the
Fourth Book of Esdras, the Book of Enoch, the Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs, the Apocalypse of Baruch, the Sibylline Oracles, etc.—opens a wide
field on which we cannot enter without passing far beyond the limits of this
work. We may only say that the relation is the same as that between the
canonical Gospels and the apocryphal pseudo-Gospels, between real history and
the dreamland of fable, between the truth of God and the fiction of man.1251
The theme of the Apocalypse
is: "I come quickly," and the proper attitude of the church toward it
is the holy longing of a bride for her spouse, as expressed in the response (<scripRef
passage = "Rev. 22:20">Rev. 22:20</scripRef>): "Amen: come, Lord Jesus." It gives us the assurance that Christ
is coming in every great event, and rules and overrules all things for the
ultimate triumph of his kingdom; that the state of the church on earth is one
of continual conflict with hostile powers, but that she is continually gaining
victories and will at last completely and finally triumph over all her foes and
enjoy unspeakable bliss in communion with her Lord. From the concluding
chapters Christian poetry has drawn rich inspiration, and the choicest hymns on
the heavenly home of the saints are echoes of John’s description of the new
Jerusalem. The whole atmosphere of the book is bracing, and makes one feel
fearless and hopeful in the face of the devil and the beasts from the abyss.
The Gospels lay the foundation in faith, the Acts and Epistles build upon it a
holy life; the Apocalypse is the book of hope to the struggling Christian and
the militant church, and insures final victory and rest. This has been its
mission; this will be its mission till the Lord come in his own good time.1252
Analysis of Contents.
The Apocalypse consists
of a Prologue, the Revelation proper, and an Epilogue. We may compare this
arrangement to that of the Fourth Gospel, where <scripRef passage =
"John 1:1–18">John
1:1–18</scripRef> forms the Prologue, <scripRef passage =
"John 21">John
21</scripRef> the Epilogue, and the intervening chapters
contain the evangelical history from the gathering of the disciples to the
Resurrection.
I. The Prologue and the
Epistles to the Seven Churches, <scripRef passage = "Rev.
1–3">Rev. 1–3</scripRef>. The introductory notice; John’s salutation and
dedication to the Seven Churches in Asia; the vision of Christ in his glory,
and the Seven Churches; the Seven Epistles addressed to them and through them to
the whole church, in its various states.1253
II. The Revelation
proper or the Prophetic Vision of the Church of the Future, <scripRef
passage ="Rev. 4:1–22:5">4:1–22:5</scripRef>. It consists chiefly of seven Visions, which are again subdivided
according to a symmetrical plan in which the numbers seven, three, four, and
twelve are used with symbolic significance. There are intervening scenes of
rest and triumph. Sometimes the vision goes back to the beginning and takes a
new departure.
(1) The Prelude in
heaven, <scripRef
passage = "Rev. 4, 5">Rev. 4 and 5</scripRef>. (a) The appearance of the throne of God
(Rev. 4). (b) The appearance of the Lamb who takes and opens the sealed book
(<scripRef
passage = "Rev. 5">Rev. 5</scripRef>).
(2) The vision of the
seven seals, with two episodes between the sixth and seventh seals, <scripRef
passage = "Rev. 6:1–8:1">6:1–8:1</scripRef>.
(3) The vision of the
seven trumpets of vengeance, <scripRef passage ="Rev.
8:2–11:19">8:2–11:19</scripRef>.
(4) The vision of the
woman (the church) and her three enemies, <scripRef passage
="Rev. 12:1–13:18">12:1–13:18</scripRef>. The three enemies are the dragon (<scripRef
passage ="Rev. 12:3–17">12:3–17</scripRef>), the beast from the sea <scripRef passage = "Rev.
12:18–13:10">(12:18–13:10)</scripRef>, and the beast from the earth, or the false
prophet <scripRef
passage = "Rev. 13:11–18">(13:11–18)</scripRef>.
(5) The group of visions
in Rev 14: (a) the vision of the Lamb on Mount Zion <scripRef
passage = "Rev. 14:1–5">(14:1–5)</scripRef>; (b) of the three angels of judgment <scripRef
passage = "Rev. 14:6–11">(14:6–11)</scripRef>, followed by an episode <scripRef
passage = "Rev. 14:12, 13">(14:12, 13)</scripRef>; (c) the vision of the harvest and the vintage of the earth <scripRef
passage = "Rev. 14:14–20">(14:14–20)</scripRef>.
(6) The vision of the
seven vials of wrath, <scripRef passage ="Rev.
15:1–16:21">15:1–16:21</scripRef>.
(7) The vision of the
final triumph, <scripRef passage ="Rev. 17:1–22:5">17:1–22:5</scripRef>: (a) the fall of Babylon (<scripRef
passage ="Rev. 17:1–19:10">17:1–19:10</scripRef>); (b) the overthrow of Satan <scripRef
passage = "Rev. 19:11–20:10">(19:11–20:10)</scripRef>, with the millennial reign intervening <scripRef
passage = "Rev. 20:1–6">(20:1–6)</scripRef>; (c) the universal judgment <scripRef
passage = "Rev. 20:11–15">(20:11–15)</scripRef>; (d) the new heavens and the new earth, and the glories of the heavenly
Jerusalem (<scripRef passage ="Rev. 21:1–22:5">21:1–22:5</scripRef>).
III. The Epilogue, <scripRef
passage ="Rev. 22:6–21">22:6–21</scripRef>. The divine attestation, threats, and promises.
Authorship and Canonicity.
The question of
authorship has already been discussed in connection with John’s Gospel. The
Apocalypse professes to be the work of John, who assumes a commanding position
over the churches of Asia. History knows only one such character, the Apostle
and Evangelist, and to him it is ascribed by the earliest and most trustworthy
witnesses, going back to the lifetime of many friends and pupils of the author.
It is one of the best authenticated books of the New Testament.1254
And yet, owing to its
enigmatical obscurity, it is the most disputed of the seven Antilegomena; and this internal difficulty has suggested the hypothesis of the authorship
of "Presbyter John," whose very existence is doubtful (being based on
a somewhat obscure passage of Papias), and who at all events could not occupy a
rival position of superintendency over the churches in Asia during the lifetime
of the great John. The Apocalypse was a stumbling-block to the spiritualism of
the Alexandrian fathers, and to the realism of the Reformers (at least Luther
and Zwingli), and to not a few of eminent modern divines; and yet it has
attracted again and again the most intense curiosity and engaged the most
patient study of devout scholars; while humble Christians of every age are
cheered by its heroic tone and magnificent close in their pilgrimage to the
heavenly Jerusalem. Rejected by many as unapostolic and uncanonical, and assigned
to a mythical Presbyter John, it is now recognized by the severest school of
critics as an undoubted production of the historical Apostle John.1255
If so, it challenges for
this reason alone our profound reverence. For who was better fitted to be the
historian of the past and the seer of the future than the bosom friend of our
Lord and Saviour? Able scholars,
rationalistic as well as orthodox, have by thorough and patient investigation
discovered or fully confirmed its poetic beauty and grandeur, the consummate
art in its plan and execution. They have indeed not been able to clear up all
the mysteries of this book, but have strengthened rather than weakened its
claim to the position which it has ever occupied in the canon of the New
Testament.
It is true, the
sceptical critics who so confidently vindicate the apostolic origin of the
Apocalypse, derive from this very fact their strongest weapon against the
apostolic origin of the fourth Gospel. But the differences of language and
spirit which have been urged are by no means irreconcilable, and are overruled
by stronger resemblances in the theology and christology and even in the style
of the two books. A proper estimate of John’s character enables us to see that
he was not only able, but eminently fitted to write both; especially if we take
into consideration the intervening distance of twenty or thirty years, the
difference of the subject (prospective prophecy in one, and retrospective
history in the other), and the difference of the state of mind, now borne along
in ecstacy (<foreign lang="el">ejn
preuvmati</foreign>) from vision to vision and recording what the
Spirit dictated, now calmly collecting his reminiscences in full, clear
self-consciousness (<foreign lang="el">ejn
noi>v</foreign>).1256
The Time of Composition.
The traditional date of
composition at the end of Domitian’s reign (95 or 96) rests on the clear and
weighty testimony of Irenaeus, is confirmed by Eusebius and Jerome, and has
still its learned defenders,1257
but the internal evidence strongly favors an earlier date between the death of
Nero (June 9, 68) and the destruction of Jerusalem (August 10, 70).1258
This helps us at the same time more easily to explain the difference
between the fiery energy of the Apocalypse and the calm repose of the fourth
Gospel, which was composed in extreme old age. The Apocalypse forms the natural
transition from the Synoptic Gospels to the fourth Gospel. The condition of the
Seven Churches was indeed different from that which existed a few years before
when Paul wrote to the Ephesians; but the movement in the apostolic age was
very rapid. Six or seven years intervened to account for the changes. The
Epistle to the Hebrews implies a similar spiritual decline among its readers in
63 or 64. Great revivals of religion are very apt to be quickly followed by a
reaction of worldliness or indifference.
The arguments for the
early date are the following:
1. Jerusalem was still
standing, and the seer was directed to measure the Temple and the altar (<scripRef
passage = "Rev. 11:1">Rev. 11:1</scripRef>), but the destruction is predicted as approaching. The Gentiles
"shall tread (<foreign lang="el">pathvsousin</foreign>) the holy city under foot forty and two
months" (<scripRef passage ="Rev. 11:2">11:2</scripRef>; Comp. <scripRef passage =
"Luke 21:24">Luke
21:24</scripRef>), and the "dead bodies shall lie in the
street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where
also their Lord was crucified" (<scripRef passage =
"Rev. 11:8">Rev.
11:8</scripRef>). The existence of the twelve tribes seems also
to be assumed in <scripRef passage ="Rev. 7:4–8">7:4–8</scripRef>. The advocates of the traditional date
understand these passages in a figurative sense. But the allusion to the
crucifixion compels us to think of the historical Jerusalem.
2. The book was written
not long after the death of the fifth Roman emperor, that is, Nero, when the
empire had received a deadly wound (comp. <scripRef passage
="Rev. 13:3, 12, 14">13:3, 12, 14</scripRef>). This is the natural interpretation of <scripRef
passage ="Rev. 17:10">17:10</scripRef>, where it is stated that the seven heads of the scarlet-colored beast, i.e.,
heathen Rome, "are seven kings; the five are fallen, the one is, the other
is not yet come, and when he cometh, he must continue a little
while." The first five
emperors were Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero, with whom the
gens Julia ingloriously perished. Next came Galba, a mere usurper
(seventy-three years old), who ruled but a short time, from June, 68, to
January, 69, and was followed by two other usurpers, Otho and Vitellius, till
Vespasian, in 70, restored the empire after an interregnum of two years, and
left the completion of the conquest of the Jews and the destruction of
Jerusalem to his son Titus.1259 Vespasian may therefore be regarded as
the sixth head, the three rebels not being counted; and thus the composition of
the Apocalypse would fall in the spring (perhaps Easter) of the year 70. This
is confirmed by <scripRef passage ="Rev. 13:3, 12,
14">13:3, 12, 14</scripRef>, where the deadly wound of the beast is
represented as being already healed.1260 But if the usurpers are counted, Galba
is the sixth head, and the Revelation was written in 68. In either case Julius
Caesar must be excluded from the series of emperors (contrary to Josephus).
Several critics refer
the seventh head to Nero, and ascribe to the seer the silly expectation of the
return of Nero as Antichrist.1261 In this way they understand the passage
<scripRef
passage ="Rev. 17:11">17:11</scripRef>: "The beast that was, and is not, is himself also an eighth and is
of the seven." But John makes
a clear distinction between the heads of the beast, of whom Nero was one, and
the beast itself, which is the Roman empire. I consider it simply impossible
that John could have shared in the heathen delusion of Nero redivivus, which
would deprive him of all credit as an inspired prophet. He may have regarded
Nero as a fit type and forerunner of Antichrist, but only in the figurative
sense in which Babylon of old was the type of heathen Rome.
3. The early date is
best suited for the nature and object of the Apocalypse, and facilitates its
historical understanding. Christ pointed in his eschatological discourses to
the destruction of Jerusalem and the preceding tribulation as the great crisis
in the history of the theocracy and the type of the judgment of the world. And
there never was a more alarming state of society. The horrors of the French
Revolution were confined to one country, but the tribulation of the six years
preceding the destruction of Jerusalem extended over the whole Roman empire and
embraced wars and rebellions, frequent and unusual conflagrations, earthquakes
and famines and plagues, and all sorts of public calamities and miseries
untold. It seemed, indeed, that the world, shaken to its very centre, was coming
to a close, and every Christian must have felt that the prophecies of Christ
were being fulfilled before his eyes.1262
It was at this unique
juncture in the history of mankind that St. John, with the consuming fire in
Rome and the infernal spectacle of the Neronian persecution behind him, the
terrors of the Jewish war and the Roman interregnum around him, and the
catastrophe of Jerusalem and the Jewish theocracy before him, received those
wonderful visions of the impending conflicts and final triumphs of the
Christian church. His was truly a book of the times and for the times, and
administered to the persecuted brethren the one but all-sufficient consolation:
Maran atha! Maran atha!
Interpretation.
The different
interpretations are reduced by English writers to three systems according as
the fulfilment of the prophecy is found in the past, present, or future.1263
1. The Preterist system applies the Revelation
to the destruction of Jerusalem and heathen Rome. So among Roman Catholics:
Alcasar (1614), Bossuet (1690). Among Protestants: Hugo Grotius (1644), Hammond
(1653), Clericus (1698), Wetstein (1752), Abauzit, Herder, Eichhorn, Ewald,
Lücke, Bleek, DeWette, Reuss, Renan, F. D. Maurice, Samuel Davidson, Moses
Stuart Cowles, Desprez, etc. Some1264
refer it chiefly to the overthrow of the Jewish theocracy, others chiefly to
the conflict with the Roman empire, still others to both.
But there is a radical
difference between those Preterists who acknowledge a real prophecy and
permanent truth in the book, and the rationalistic Preterists who regard it as
a dream of a visionary which was falsified by events, inasmuch as Jerusalem,
instead of becoming the habitation of saints, remained a heap of ruins, while
Rome, after the overthrow of heathenism, became the metropolis of Latin
Christendom. This view rests on a literal misunderstanding of Jerusalem.
2. The Continuous (or Historical) system: The
Apocalypse is a prophetic compend of church history and covers all Christian
centuries to the final consummation. It speaks of things past, present, and
future; some of its prophecies are fulfilled, some are now being fulfilled, and
others await fulfillment in the yet unknown future. Here belong the great
majority of orthodox Protestant commentators and polemics who apply the beast
and the mystic Babylon and the mother of harlots drunken with the blood of
saints to the church of Rome, either exclusively or chiefly. But they differ
widely among themselves in chronology and the application of details. Luther,
Bullinger, Collado, Pareus, Brightman, Mede, Robert Fleming, Whiston, Vitringa,
Bengel, Isaac Newton, Bishop Newton, Faber, Woodhouse, Elliott, Birks, Gaussen,
Auberlen, Hengstenberg, Alford, Wordsworth, Lee.
3. The Futurist system: The events of the
Apocalypse from Rev. 4 to the close lie beyond the second advent of Christ.
This scheme usually adopts a literal interpretation of Israel, the Temple, and
the numbers (the 31 times, 42 months, 1260 days, 3 1/2 years). So Ribera (a
Jesuit, 1592), Lacunza (another Jesuit, who wrote under the name of Ben-Ezra
"On the coming of Messiah in glory and majesty," and taught the
premillennial advent, the literal restoration of the ancient Zion, and the future
apostasy of the clergy of the Roman church to the camp of Antichrist), S. R.
Maitland, De Burgh, Todd, Isaac Williams, W. Kelly.
Another important
division of historical interpreters is into Post-Millennarians
and Pre-Millennarians, according as the millennium predicted in Rev. 20
is regarded as part or future. Augustin committed the radical error of dating
the millennium from the time of the Apocalypse or the beginning of the
Christian era (although the seer mentioned it near the end of his book), and
his view had great influence; hence the wide expectation of the end of the
world at the close of the first millennium of the Christian church. Other
post-millennarian interpreters date the millennium from the triumph of
Christianity over paganism in Rome at the accession of Constantine the Great
(311); still others (as Hengstenberg) from the conversion of the Germanic
nations or the age of Charlemagne. All these calculations are refuted by
events. The millennium of the Apocalypse must he in the future, and is still an
article of hope.
The grammatical and
historical interpretation of the Apocalypse, as well as of any other book, is
the only safe foundation for all legitimate spiritual and practical
application. Much has been done in this direction by the learned commentators
of recent times. We must explain it from the standpoint of the author and in
view of his surroundings. He wrote out of his time and for his time of things
which must shortly come to pass (<scripRef passage ="Rev. 1:1, 3;
22:20">1:1, 3; 22:20</scripRef>), and he wished to be read and understood by his
contemporaries <scripRef passage = "Rev. 1:3">(1:3)</scripRef>. Otherwise he would have written in vain, and
the solemn warning at the close <scripRef passage = "Rev. 22:18,
19">(22:18, 19)</scripRef> would be unintelligible. In some respects they
could understand him better than we; for they were fellow-sufferers of the
fiery persecutions and witnesses of the fearful judgments described.
Undoubtedly he had in view primarily the overthrow of Jerusalem and heathen
Rome, the two great foes of Christianity at that time. He could not possibly
ignore that great conflict.
But his vision was not
confined to these momentous events. It extends even to the remotest future when
death and Hades shall be no more, and a new heaven and a new earth shall
appear. And although the fulfilment is predicted as being near at hand, he puts
a millennium and a short intervening conflict before the final overthrow of
Satan, the beast, and the false prophet. We have an analogy in the prophecy of
the Old Testament and the eschatalogical discourses of our Lord, which furnish
the key for the understanding of the Apocalypse. He describes the destruction
of Jerusalem and the general judgment in close proximity, as if they were one
continuous event. He sees the end from the beginning. The first catastrophe is
painted with colors borrowed from the last, and the last appears as a
repetition of the first on a grand and universal scale. It is the manner of
prophetic vision to bring distant events into close proximity, as in a
panorama. To God a thousand years are as one day. Every true prophecy,
moreover, admits of an expanding fulfilment. History ever repeats itself,
though never in the same way. There is nothing old under the sun, and, in
another sense, there is nothing new under the sun.
In the historical
interpretation of details we must guard against arbitrary and fanciful schemes,
and mathematical calculations, which minister to idle curiosity, belittle the
book, and create distrust in sober minds. The Apocalypse is not a prophetical
manual of church history and chronology in the sense of a prediction of
particular persons, dates, and events. This would have made it useless to the
first readers, and would make it useless now to the great mass of Christians.
It gives under symbolic figures and for popular edification an outline of the
general principles of divine government and the leading forces in the
conflict between Christ’s kingdom and his foes, which is still going on under
ever-varying forms. In this way it teaches, like all the prophetic utterances
of the Gospels and Epistles, lessons of warning and encouragement to every age.
We must distinguish between the spiritual coming of Christ and his personal
arrival or parousia. The former is progressive, the latter instantaneous. The
coming began with his ascension to heaven (comp. Matt. 26:64: "Henceforth ye
shall see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming on the
clouds of heaven") and goes on in unbroken succession of judgments and
blessings (for "the history of the world is a judgment of the
world"); hence the alternation of action and repose, of scenes of terror
and scenes of joy, of battles and victories. The arrival of the Bridegroom is
still in the unknown future, and may be accelerated or delayed by the free
action of the church, but it is as certain as the first advent of Christ. The
hope of the church will not be disappointed, for it rests on the promise of Him
who is called "the Amen, the faithful and true witness" (Rev. 3:14).
Notes.
The Number 666.
The historical
understanding of the Apocalypse turns, according to its own statement, chiefly
on the solution of the numerical riddle in the thirteenth chapter, which has
tried the wits of commentators from the time of Irenaeus in the second century
to the present day, and is still under dispute. The history of its solution is
a history of the interpretation of the whole book. Hence I present here a
summary of the most important views. First some preliminary remarks.
1. The text, <scripRef
passage = "Rev. 13:18">Apoc. 13:18</scripRef>: "Here is wisdom: he that hath
understanding, let him count the number of the beast; for it is the number of a
man (<foreign
lang="el">ajriqmo;" ga;r ajnqrwvpou
ejstivn</foreign>), and the number is six hundred and sixty-six
" <foreign
lang="el">cx"j </foreign>or<foreign lang="el">
eJxakovsioi eJxhvkonta e}x </foreign>).
This is the correct
reading in the Greek text (supported by Codd. a, A, B (2),
P (2), Origen, Primasius, and Versions), and is adopted by the best editors.
Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. v. 30, quoted also in full by Tischendorf in his
edition VIII. critica major) found it "in all the most approved and
ancient copies" (<foreign lang="el">ejn
pa'si toi'" spoudaivoi" kai; ajrcaivoi" ajntigravfoi"</foreign>), and "attested by those who had themselves
seen John face to face."
There was, however, in his day, a very remarkable variation, sustained
by Cod. C, and "some" copies, known to, but not approved by,
Irenaeus, namely, 616. (<foreign lang="el">ci"j</foreign>, i.e., <foreign
lang="el">eJxakovsioi devka e}x</foreign>) In
the Anglo-American revision this reading is noted in the margin.
2. "The number of a
man" may mean either the number of an individual, or of a corporate
person, or a human number (Menschenzahl), i.e., a number
according to ordinary human reckoning (so Bleek, who compares <foreign
lang="el">mevtron ajnqrwvpou</foreign>, , "the measure of a man," <scripRef passage =
"Rev. 21:17">Rev.
21:17</scripRef>, and <scripRef passage =
"Isa. 8:1">Isa.
8:1</scripRef>). Just because the number may be counted in the
customary way, the writer could expect the reader to find it out. He made the
solution difficult indeed, but not impossible. Dr. Lee (p. 687) deems it not inconsistent
with a proper view of inspiration that John himself did not know the meaning of
the number. But how could he then ask his less knowing readers to count the
number?
3. The mystic use of
numbers (the rabbinical Ghematria, <foreign
lang="el">gewmetriva</foreign>) was familiar to the Jews in Babylon, and passed
from them to the Greeks in Asia. It occurs in the Cabbala, in the Sibylline
Books (I. 324–331), in the Epistle of Barnabas, and was very common also among
the Gnostic sects (e g., the Abrasax or Abraxas, which signified the
unbegotten Father, and the three hundred and sixty-five heavens, corresponding
to the number of days in the year).1265 It arose from the employment of the
letters of the Hebrew and Greek alphabets for the designation of numbers. The
Hebrew Aleph counts 1, Beth 2, etc., Yodh 10; but Kaph (the
eleventh letter) counts 20, Resh (the twentieth letter) 200, etc. The
Greek letters, with the addition of an acute accent (as <foreign
lang="el">a</foreign>’, <foreign lang="el">b</foreign>’), have the same numerical value in their order
down to Sigma, which counts 200; except that <foreign
lang="el">"</foreign>’ (st) is used for 6, and <foreign
lang="el">F</foreign>’ (an antiquated letter Koppa between <foreign
lang="el">p</foreign> and <foreign
lang="el">r</foreign>) for 90. The Hebrew alphabet ends with Ta<foreign
lang="el">u</foreign> = 400,
the Greek with Omega = 800. To express thousands an accent is put
beneath the letter, as,<foreign lang="el">a</foreign>, = 1,000; ,<foreign
lang="el">b</foreign>, = 2,000; ,<foreign
lang="el">i</foreign>, = 10,000.
4. On this fact most
interpretations of the Apocalyptic puzzle are based. It is urged by Bleek,
DeWette, Wieseler, and others, that the number 666 must be deciphered from the
Greek alphabet, since the book was written in Greek and for Greek readers, and
uses the Greek letters Alpha and Omega repeatedly as a
designation of Christ, the Beginning and the End (<scripRef passage
="Rev. 1:8; 21:6; 22:13">1:8; 21:6; 22:13</scripRef>). On the other hand, Ewald and Renan, and all
who favor the Nero-hypothesis, appeal against this argument to the strongly
Hebraistic spirit and coloring of the Apocalypse and the familiarity of its
Jewish Christian readers with the Hebrew alphabet. The writer, moreover, may
have preferred this for the purpose of partial concealment; just as he
substituted Babylon for Rome (comp. <scripRef passage =
"1 Pet. 5:13">1
Pet. 5:13</scripRef>). But after all, the former view is much more
natural. John wrote to churches of Asia Minor, chiefly gathered from Gentile
converts who knew no Hebrew. Had he addressed Christians in Palestine, the case
might be different.
5. The number 666 (three
sixes) must, in itself, be a significant number, if we keep in view the
symbolism of numbers which runs through the whole Apocalypse. It is remarkable
that the numerical value of the name Jesus is 888 (three eights), and
exceeds the trinity of the sacred number (777) as much as the number of the
beast falls below it.1266
6. The "beast"
coming out of the sea and having seven heads and ten horns (<scripRef
passage = "Rev. 13:1–10">Rev. 13:1–10</scripRef>) is the anti-Christian world-power at war with
the church of Christ. It is, as in Daniel, an apt image of the brutal nature of
the pagan state. It is, when in conflict with the church, the secular or
political Antichrist; while "the false prophet," who works signs and
deceives the worshippers of the beast (<scripRef passage
="Rev. 16:13; 19:20; 20:10">16:13; 19:20; 20:10</scripRef>), is the intellectual and spiritual Antichrist,
in close alliance with the former, his high-priest and minister of cultus, so
to say, and represents the idolatrous religion which animates and supports the
secular imperialism. In wider application, the false prophet may be taken as
the personification of all false doctrine and heresy by which the world is led
astray. For as there are "many Antichrists," so there are also many
false prophets. The name "Antichrist," however, never occurs in the
Apocalypse, but only in the Epistles of John (five times), and there in the
plural, in the sense of "false prophets" or heretical teachers, who
deny that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh (<scripRef passage =
"1 John 4:1–3">1
John 4:1–3</scripRef>). Paul designates the Antichrist as, "the man of sin," the son
of perdition who opposeth and exalteth himself against all that is called God
or that is worshipped; so that he sitteth in the temple of God, setting himself
forth as God" (<scripRef passage = "2 Thess. 2:3,
4">2 Thess. 2:3, 4</scripRef>). But he seems to look upon the Roman empire as
a restraining power which, for a time at least, prevented the full outbreak of
the "mystery of lawlessness," then already at work (<scripRef
passage = "2 Thess. 2:6–8">2:6–8</scripRef>). He thus wrote a year or two before the accession of Nero, and sixteen
years or more before the composition of the Apocalypse.
The beast must refer to
heathen Rome and the seven heads to seven emperors. This is evident from the
allusion to the "seven mountains," that is, the seven-hilled city (urbs
septicollis) on which the woman sits, <scripRef passage
="Rev. 17:9">17:9</scripRef>. But not a few commentators give it a wider
meaning, and understand by the heads as many world-monarchies, including those
of Daniel, before Christ, and extending to the last times. So Auberlen,
Ganssen, Hengstenberg, Von Hofmann, Godet, and many English divines.
7. The numerous interpretations
of the mystic number of the beast may be reduced to three classes:
(a) The figures
666 represent the letters composing the name of a historical power, or of a
single man, in conflict with Christ and his church. Here belong the
explanations: Latinus, Caesar-Augustus, Nero, and other Roman emperors down to
Diocletian. Even such names as Julian the Apostate, Genseric, Mohammed (Maometis),
Luther (Martinus Lauterus), Joannes Calvinus, Beza Antitheos,
Louis XIV., Napoleon Bonaparte, the Duke of Reichstadt (called "King of
Rome"), Napoleon III., have been discovered in the three sixes by a
strange kind of imposition.1267
(b) The number is
chronological, and designates the duration of the life of the beast, whether it
be heathenism, or Mohammedanism, or popery.
(c) The number is
symbolical of Antichrist and the anti-Christian power.
We now proceed to the
principal interpretations.
Latinus or the Roman Empire.
Lateinos (<foreign lang="el">Latei'no"</foreign> for <foreign
lang="el">lati'no",</foreign> Latinus), i.e., the Latin or Roman
empire. This is the numerical value of 666 in Greek: <foreign
lang="el">l</foreign> = 30 +<foreign
lang="el">a</foreign> = 1 + <foreign
lang="el">t</foreign> = 300 + <foreign
lang="el">e </foreign>= 5 + <foreign
lang="el">i</foreign> = 10 + <foreign
lang="el">n</foreign> = 50 + <foreign
lang="el">o</foreign> = 70 + <foreign
lang="el">s</foreign> = 200 = total 666. The Greek form <foreign
lang="el">Latei'no"</foreign> is no valid objection; for <foreign
lang="el">ei </foreign>often represents the Latin long i, as in <foreign
lang="el"> jAntonei'no", Paulei'no", Papei'ro" Sabei'no", Faustei'o".</foreign> J.
E. Clarke shows that <foreign lang="el">hJ
Latinh; basileiva</foreign>, "the Latin empire," likewise gives
the number 666.1268
This interpretation is
the oldest we know of, and is already mentioned by Irenaeus, the first among
the Fathers who investigated the problem, and who, as a pupil of Polycarp in
Smyrna (d. 155), the personal friend of John, deserves special consideration as
a witness of traditions from the school of the beloved disciple. He mentions
three interpretations, all based on the Greek alphabet, namely <foreign
lang="el">Eujanqa"</foreign> (which is of no account), <foreign
lang="el">Lateino"</foreign> (which he deems possible), and <foreign
lang="el">Teitan</foreign>, i.e., Titus (which he, upon the whole,
prefers), but he abstains from a positive decision, for the reason that the
Holy Scripture does not clearly proclaim the name of the beast or Antichrist.1269
The interpretation Latinus
is the only sensible one among the three, and adopted by Hippolytus, Bellarmin,
Eichhorn, Bleek, DeWette, Ebrard, Düsterdieck, Alford, Wordsworth, Lee, and
others.
Latinus was the name of a king of Latium, but not of any
Roman emperor. Hence it must here be taken in a generic sense, and applied to
the whole heathen Roman empire.
Here the Roman Catholic
divines stop.1270 But
many Protestant commentators apply it also, in a secondary sense, to the Latin
or papal church as far as it repeated in its persecuting spirit the sins of
heathen Rome. The second beast which is described, <scripRef passage =
"Rev. 13:11–17">Rev.
13:11–17</scripRef>, as coming out of the earth, and having two
horns like unto a lamb, and speaking as a dragon, and exercising all the
authority of the first beast in his sight, is referred to the papacy. The false
prophet receives a similar application. So Luther, Vitringa, Bengel, Auberlen,
Hengstenberg, Ebrard, and many English divines.
Dean Alford advocates
this double application in his Commentary. "This name," he says,
"describes the common character of the rulers of the former Pagan Roman
Empire—’<foreign
lang="la">Latini sunt qui nunc regnant</foreign>,’ Iren.: and, which Irenaeus could not foresee,
unites under itself the character of the later Papal Roman Empire also, as
revived and kept up by the agency of its false prophet, the priesthood. The
Latin Empire, the Latin Church, Latin Christianity, have ever been its commonly
current appellations: its language, civil and ecclesiastical, has ever been
Latin: its public services, in defiance of the most obvious requisite for
public worship, have ever been throughout the world conducted in Latin; there
is no one word which could so completely describe its character, and at the
same time unite the ancient and modern attributes of the two beasts, as this.
Short of saying absolutely that this was the word in St. John’s mind, I
have the strongest persuasion that no other can be found approaching so near to
a complete solution." Bishop
Wordsworth gives the same anti-papal interpretation to the beast, and indulges
in a variety of pious and farfetched fancies. See his Com. on <scripRef
passage ="Rev. 13:18">13:18</scripRef>, and his special work on the Apocalypse.
Nero.
The Apocalypse is a
Christian counterblast against the Neronian persecution, and Nero is
represented as the beast of the abyss who will return as Antichrist. The number
666 signifies the very name of this imperial monster in Hebrew letters, <foreign
lang="he">rs'qi @woonoe
</foreign>, Neron Kaesar, as follows: <foreign
lang="he">n </foreign>(n) = 50, <foreign
lang="he">r </foreign> (r) = 200, <foreign
lang="he">/ </foreign> (o) = 6, <foreign
lang="he">@ </foreign>(n) = 50, <foreign
lang="he">q </foreign> (k) = 100, <foreign
lang="he"> s </foreign>(s) = 60, <foreign
lang="he">r </foreign> (r) = 200; in all 666. The Neronian coins of
Asia bear the inscription: <foreign lang="el">Nerwn
Kai</foreign>'<foreign
lang="el">sar</foreign>. But the omission of the <foreign
lang="he">iy</foreign> (which would add 10 to 666) from <foreign
lang="he">rsyq </foreign> = <foreign lang="el">Kai'sar</foreign>, has been explained by Ewald (Johanneische
Schriften, II. 263) from the Syriac in which it is omitted, and this view
is confirmed by the testimony of inscriptions of Palmyra from the third
century; see Renan (L’Antechrist, p. 415).
The coincidence,
therefore, must be admitted, and is at any rate most remarkable, since Nero was
the first, as well as the most wicked, of all imperial persecutors of
Christianity, and eminently worthy of being characterized as the beast from the
abyss, and being regarded as the type and forerunner of Antichrist.
This interpretation,
moreover, has the advantage of giving the number of a man or a particular
person (which is not the case with Lateinos), and affords a satisfactory
explanation of the varians lectio 616; for this number precisely
corresponds to the Latin form, Nero Caesar, and was probably substituted by a
Latin copyist, who in his calculation dropped the final Nun (= 50), from
Neron (666 less 50=616).
The series of Roman
emperors (excluding Julius Caesar), according to this explanation, is counted
thus: Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba. This makes Nero (who
died June 9, 68) the fifth, and Galba the sixth, and seems to fit precisely the
passage <scripRef
passage ="Rev. 17:10">17:10</scripRef>: "Five [of the seven heads of the beast] are fallen, the one [Galba]
is, the other [the seventh] is not yet come; and when he cometh he must
continue a little while."
This leads to the conclusion that the Apocalypse was written during the
short reign of Galba, between June 9, 68, and January 15, 69. It is further inferred
from <scripRef
passage ="Rev. 17:11">17:11</scripRef> ("the beast that was, and is not, is himself also an eighth, and is
of the seven; and he goeth into perdition"), that, in the opinion of the
seer and in agreement with a popular rumor, Nero, one of the seven emperors,
would return as the eighth in the character of Antichrist, but shortly perish.
This plausible solution
of the enigma was almost simultaneously and independently discovered, between
1831 and 1837, by several German scholars, each claiming the credit of
originality, viz.: C. F. A. Fritzsche (in the "Annalen der gesammten
Theol. Liter.," I. 3, Leipzig, 1831); F. Benary (in the "Zeitschrift
für specul. Theol.," Berlin, 1836); F. Hitzig (in Ostern und Pfingsten,
Heidelb., 1837); E. Reuss (in the "Hallesche Allg. Lit.-Zeitung"
for Sept., 1837); and Ewald, who claims to have made the discovery before 1831,
but did not publish it till 1862. It has been adopted by Baur, Zeller,
Hilgenfeld, Volkmar, Hausrath, Krenkel, Gebhardt, Renan, Aubé, Réville,
Sabatier, Sam. Davidson (I. 291); and among American commentators by Stuart and
Cowles. It is just now the most popular interpretation, and regarded by its
champions as absolutely conclusive.
But, as already stated
in the text, there are serious objections to the Nero-hypothesis:
(1) The language and
readers of the Apocalypse suggest a Greek rather than a Hebrew explanation of
the numerical riddle.
(2) The seer clearly
distinguishes the beast, as a collective name for the Roman empire (so used
also by Daniel), from the seven heads, i.e., kings (<foreign
lang="el">basilei'"</foreign>) or emperors. Nero is one of the five heads who
ruled before the date of the Apocalypse. He was "slain" (committed
suicide), and the empire fell into anarchy for two years, until Vespasian
restored it, and so the death-stroke was healed (<scripRef passage =
"Rev. 13:3">Rev.
13:3</scripRef>). The three emperors between Nero and Vespasian
(Galba, Otho, and Vitellius) were usurpers, and represent an interregnum and
the deadly wound of the beast. This at least is a more worthy interpretation
and consistent with the actual facts.
It should be noticed,
however, that Josephus, Ant. XVIIII. 2, 2; 6, 10, very distinctly
includes Julius Caesar among the emperors, and calls Augustus the second,
Tiberius the third, Caius Caligula the fourth Roman emperor.
Suetonius begins his Lives of the Twelve Caesars with Julius and ends
with Domitian, including the lives of Galba, Otho, and Vitellius. This fact
tends at all events to weaken the foundation of the Nero-hypothesis.
(3) It is difficult to
conceive of a reasonable motive for concealing the detested name of Nero after
his death. For this reason Cowles makes Nero the sixth emperor (by beginning
the series with Julius Caesar) and assigns the composition to his persecuting
reign. But this does not explain the wound of the beast and the statement that
"it was and is not."
(4) A radical error,
such as the belief in the absurd heathen fable of the return of Nero, is
altogether incompatible with the lofty character and profound wisdom of the
Apocalypse, and would destroy all confidence in its prophecy. If John, as these
writers maintain, composed it in 68, he lived long enough to be undeceived, and
would have corrected the fatal blunder or withheld the book from circulation.
(5) It seems incredible
that such an easy solution of the problem should have remained unknown for
eighteen centuries and been reserved for the wits of half a dozen rival
rationalists in Germany. Truth is truth, and must be thankfully accepted from
any quarter and at any time; yet as the Apocalypse was written for the benefit
of contemporaries of Nero, one should think that such a solution would not
altogether have escaped them. Irenaeus makes no mention of it.
The Emperor of Rome.
Caesar Romae, from <foreign
lang="he">. m/r rsyq</foreign>.
So Ewald formerly (in his first
commentary, published in 1828). But this gives the number 616, which is
rejected by the best critics in favor of 666. In his later work, Ewald adopts
the Nero-hypothesis (Die Johanneischen Schriften, Bd. II., 1862, p. 202
sq.).
Caligula.
From <foreign
lang="el">Gavio" Kai'sar</foreign>. But this counts likewise 616.
Titus.
The Greek <foreign
lang="el">Tei'tan</foreign>. Irenaeus considers this the most probable interpretation,
because the word is composed of six letters, and belongs to a royal tyrant. If
we omit the final <foreign lang="el">n</foreign> (n), we get the other reading (616). The
objection is that Titus, the destroyer of Jerusalem, was one of the best
emperors, and not a persecutor of Christians.
Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian.
Wetstein refers the
letters to Titus Flavius Vespasianus, father and sons (Titus and Domitian). He
thinks that John used both numbers, 616 in the first, 666 in the second edition
of his book. "Eleganter"
he says in his notes, et apposite Joannes Titum Flavium Vespasianum patrem
et filios hoc nomine designat ... Convenit secundo nomen. <foreign
lang="el">Teitavn</foreign> praenomini ipsorum Titus. Res ipsa etiam convenit. Titanes
fuerunt <foreign lang="el">qeomavcoi</foreign>, tales etiam Vespasiani." Nov. Test., II., p. 806; comp. his critical note on p. 805.
Diocletian.
Diocletian, Emperor, in
Roman characters, Diocles Augustus, counting only some of the letters, namely:
DIo CLes aVg Vst Vs.1271 Diocletian was the last of the
persecuting emperors (d. 313). So Bossuet. To his worthless guess the Huguenots
opposed the name of the "grand monarch" and persecutor of
Protestants, Louis XIV., which yields the same result (LVDo VICVs).
The Roman Emperors from Augustus To Vespasian.
Märcker (in the
"Studien und Kritiken" for 1868, p. 699) has found out that the
initial letters of the first ten Roman emperors from Octavianus (Augustus) to
Titus, including the three usurpers Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, yield the
numerical value of 666. Düsterdieck (p. 467) calls this "<foreign
lang="de">eine
frappante Spielerei</foreign>."
Caesar Augustus.
<foreign lang="el">Kaisarsebaston</foreign> (for-<foreign
lang="el">"</foreign>, suited to the neuter <foreign
lang="el">qhrivon</foreign>), i.e., the "Caesar Augustan"
beast.1272 The official designation of the Roman emperors
was <foreign
lang="el">Kaivsar Sebastov"</foreign> (Caesar Augustus), in which their blasphemous
apotheosis culminates. In support of it may be quoted "the names of
blasphemy on the heads of the beast," <scripRef passage =
"Rev. 13:1">Rev.
13:1</scripRef>.
This is the conjecture
proposed by Dr. Wieseler in his book: Zur Geschichte der Neutest. Schrift
und des Urchristenthums, 1880, p. 169. It is certainly ingenious and more
consistent with the character of the Apocalypse than the Nero-hypothesis. It
substantially agrees with the interpretation Lateinos. But the substitution of
a final <foreign
lang="el">n </foreign>for <foreign
lang="el">"</foreign> is an objection, though not more serious than
the omission of the yodh from <foreign lang="he">qyrs </foreign>
The Chronological Solutions.—The Duration of Antichrist.
The number 666 signifies
the duration of the beast or antichristian world power, and the false prophet
associated with the beast.
(1) The duration of
Heathenism. But heathen Rome, which persecuted the church, was Christianized
after the conversion of Constantine, a.d.
311. The other forms and subsequent history of heathenism lie outside of the
apocalyptic vision.
(2) Mohammedanism. Pope
Innocent III., when rousing Western Europe to a new crusade, declared the
Saracens to be the beast, and Mohammed the false prophet whose power would last
six hundred and sixty-six years. See his bull of 1213, in which he summoned the
fourth Lateran Council, in Hardouin, Conc., Tom. VII. 3. But six hundred and
sixty-six years have passed since the Hegira (622), and even since the fourth
Lateran Council (1215); yet Islam still sits on the throne in Constantinople,
and rules over one hundred and sixty million of consciences.
(3). The anti-Christian
Papacy. This interpretation was suggested by mediaeval sects hostile to Rome,
and was matured by orthodox Protestant divines of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries under the fresh impression of the fearful persecutions which were
directly instigated or approved by the papacy, and which surpass in cruelty and
extent the persecutions of heathen Rome. It is asserted that the terrible Duke
of Alva alone put more Protestants to death in the Netherlands within a few
years than all the heathen emperors from Nero to Diocletian; and that the
victims of the Spanish Inquisition (105,000 persons in eighteen years under
Torquemada’s administration) outnumber the ancient martyrs. It became almost a
Protestant article of faith that the mystical Babylon, the mother of harlots,
riding on the beast, the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with
the blood of the martyrs of Jesus (<scripRef passage =
"Rev. 17:5 sqq.">Apoc.
17:5 sqq.</scripRef>), is none other than the pseudo-Christian and
anti-Christian church of Rome, and this view is still widely prevalent,
especially in Great Britain and North America.
Luther struck the
key-note of this anti-popery exegesis. He had at first a very low opinion of
the Apocalypse, and would not recognize it as apostolic or prophetic (1522),
but afterward he utilized for polemic purposes (in a preface to his edition of
the N. T. of 1530). He dated the one thousand years (<scripRef passage =
"Rev. 20:7">Rev.
20:7</scripRef>) with Augustin from the composition of the book,
and the six hundred and sixty-six years from Gregory VII., as the supposed
founder of the papacy, and understood Gog and Magog to mean the unspeakable
Turks and the Jews. As Gregory VII. was elected pope 1073, the anti-Christian
era ought to have come to an end a.d.
1739; but that year passed off without any change in the history of the papacy.
Luther was followed by
Chytraeus (1563), Selnecker (1567), Hoe v. Honegg (1610 and 1640), and other
Lutheran commentators. Calvin and Beza wisely abstained from prophetic
exposition, but other Reformed divines carried out the anti-popery scheme with
much learning, as Bibliander (1549 and 1559), Bullinger (1557), David Pareus
(1618), Joseph Mede (the founder of the ingenious system of synchronism, in his
Clavis Apocalyptica, 1627), Coccejus (1696), Vitringa (a very learned
and useful commentator, 1705, 3d ed. 1721), and Joh. Albrecht Bengel (in his Gnomon,
his Ordo Temporum, 1741, and especially his Erklärte Offenbarung
Johannis, 1740, new ed. 1834). This truly great and good man elaborated a
learned scheme of chronological interpretation, and fixed the end of the
anti-Christian (papal) reign at the year 1836, and many pious people among his
admirers in Würtemburg were in anxious expectation of the millennium during
that year. But it passed away without any serious change, and this failure,
according to Bengel’s own correct prediction, indicates a serious error in his
scheme. Later writers have again and again predicted the fall of the papacy and
the beginning of the millennium, advancing the date as times progress; but the
years 1848 and 1870 have passed away, and the Pope still lives, enjoying a
green old age, with the additional honor of infallibility, which the Fathers
never heard of, which even St. Peter never claimed, and St. Paul effectually
disputed at Antioch. All mathematical calculations about the second advent are
doomed to disappointment, and those who want to know more than our blessed Lord
knew in the days of his flesh deserve to be disappointed. "It is not for
you to know times or seasons, which the Father hath set within his own
authority" (<scripRef passage = "Acts 1:7">Acts 1:7</scripRef>). This settles the question.
Mystical and Symbolical Interpretations.
The number is neither
alphabetical nor chronological, but the mystical or symbolical name of
Antichrist, who is yet to come. Here we meet again with different views.
Primasius, the African
commentator of the Apocalypse (a pupil of Augustin), mentions two names as
giving the general characteristics of Antichrist: <foreign
lang="el">jAntemo"</foreign> and <foreign
lang="el">ajrnoume</foreign>, the former honori contrarius the other
from <foreign
lang="el">ajrnevomai</foreign>, to deny, by which the Antichrist is
justly described, "utpote per duas partes orationis, nominis scilicet
et verbi, et personae qualitas et operis insinuatur asperitas." Utterly worthless. See Lücke, p. 997.
Züllig finds in the figure the name of Bileam. Not much better is
Hengstenberg’s explanation: Adonikam, i.e., "The Lord
arises," a good name for Antichrist (<scripRef passage =
"2 Thess. 2:4">2
Thess. 2:4</scripRef>)! He bases it on <scripRef
passage = "Ezra 2:13">Ezra 2:13</scripRef>: "The children of Adonikam, six hundred and sixty-six." Ezra gives a list of the children of
Israel who returned from the captivity under Zerubbabel. What this has to do
with Antichrist is difficult to see.
Von Hofmann and Füller
think that the number implies the personal name of Antichrist.
Another view is this:
the number is symbolical, like all other numbers in the Apocalypse, and
signifies the anti-Christian world-power in all its successive forms
from heathen Rome down to the end. Hence it admits of many applications, as
there are "many Antichrists."
The number six is the number of human work and toil (six days of the week),
as seven is the number of divine rest. Or, six is the half of twelve—the number
of the church—and indicates the divided condition of the temporal power. Three
sixes signify worldliness (worldly glory, worldly wisdom, worldly civilization)
at the height of power, which with all vaunted strength is but weakness and
folly, and falls short of the divine perfection symbolized by the numbers seven
and twelve. Such or similar views were suggested by Herder, Auberlen, Rösch,
Hengstenberg, Burger, Maurice, Wordsworth, Vaughan, Carpenter, etc.
The Messiah of Satan.
To the class of mystical
interpretation belongs the recent view of Professor Godet, of Neuchatel, which
deserves special mention. This eminent commentator sees in 666 the emblematic
name of The Messiah of Satan in
opposition to the divine Messiah. The number was originally represented by the
three letters <foreign lang="el">cx"</foreign>’. The first and the last letters are an
abridgment of the name of Christ, and have the value of 606 (<foreign
lang="el">x</foreign> = 600 + <foreign
lang="el">"</foreign>= 6); the middle <foreign
lang="el">x</foreign> is, in virtue of its form and of the sibilant
sound, the emblem of Satan, and as a cipher has the value of 60. Satan is
called in the Apocalypse the old serpent in allusion to the history of
the temptation (Gen. 3). This explanation was first suggested by Heumann and
Herder, and is made by Godet the basis of an original theory, namely, that
Antichrist or the man of sin will be a Jew who will set up a carnal
Israel in opposition to the true Messiah, and worship the prince of this world
in order to gain universal empire.1273
Corruptio optimi pessima. Renan says: "Nothing can equal in
wickedness the wickedness of Jews: at the same time the best of men have been
Jews; you may say of this race whatever good or evil you please, without danger
of overstepping the truth."
In blasphemy, as well as in adoration, the Jew is the foremost of
mankind. Only an apostate can blaspheme with all his heart. Our Gentile
Voltaires are but lambs as compared with Jews in reviling Christ and his
church. None but Israel could give birth to Judas, none but apostate Israel can
give birth to Antichrist. Israel answers precisely to the description of the
apocalyptic beast, which was and is not and shall be (<scripRef
passage = "Rev. 17:11">Rev. 17:11</scripRef>), which was wounded to death, and is to
be miraculously healed, in order to play, as the eighth head, the part
of Antichrist. Godet refers to the rising power of the Jews in wealth,
politics, and literature, and especially their command of the anti-Christian
press in Christian countries, as indications of the approach of the fulfilment
of this prophecy.
Godet holds to the late
date of the Apocalypse under Domitian, and rejects the application of the seven
heads of the beast to Roman emperors. He applies them, like Auberlen,
Hengstenberg, and others, to as many empires, before and after Christ, but
brings in, as a new feature, the Herodian dynasty, which was subject to the
Roman power.
According to his view,
the first head is ancient Egypt trying to destroy Israel in its cradle; the
second is the Assyro-Babylonian empire which destroyed the kingdom of the ten
tribes, and then Jerusalem; the third is the Persian empire, which held
restored Israel under its authority; the fourth is the Greek monarchy under
Antiochus Epiphanes (the little horn of Daniel 8, the Antichrist of the Old
Testament), who attempted to suppress the worship of God in Israel, and to
substitute that of Zeus; the fifth is the Jewish state under the Herods and the
pontificates of Annas and Caiaphas, who crucified the Saviour and then tried to
destroy his church; the sixth is the Roman empire, which is supposed to embrace
all political power in Europe to this day; the seventh head is that power of
short duration which shall destroy the whole political system of Europe, and
prepare it for the arrival of Antichrist from the bosom of infidel Judaism. In
this way Godet harmonizes the Apocalypse with the teaching of Paul concerning
the restraining effect of the Roman empire, which will be overthrown in order
to give way to the full sway of Antichrist. The eighth head is Israel restored,
with a carnal Messiah at its head, who will preach the worship of humanity and
overthrow Rome, the old enemy of the Jews (<scripRef passage =
"Rev. 18">Apoc.
18</scripRef>), but be overthrown in turn by Christ (<scripRef
passage = "Rev. 19">Rev. 19</scripRef> and <scripRef passage = "2 Thess. 2:8">2 Thess. 2:8</scripRef>). Then follows the millennium, the sabbath of
humanity on earth after its long week of work, not necessarily a visible reign
of Christ, but a reign by his Spirit. At the end of this period, Satan, who as
yet is only bound, shall try once more to destroy the work of God, but shall
only prepare his final defeat, and give the signal for the universal judgment (<scripRef
passage = "Rev. 20">Rev. 20</scripRef>). The terrestrial state founded on the day of creation now gives place
to the now heavens and the new earth (<scripRef passage =
"Rev. 21">Rev.
21</scripRef>), in which God shall be all in all. Anticipating
the sight of this admirable spectacle, John prostrates himself and invites all
the faithful to cry with the Spirit and the spouse, "Lord, come—come
soon" (<scripRef passage = "Rev. 22">Rev. 22</scripRef>). What a vast drama! What a magnificent conclusion to the Scriptures opening with
Genesis! The first creation made
man free; the second shall make him holy, and then the work of God is
accomplished.
Conclusion.
A very ingenious
interpretation, with much valuable truth, but not the last word yet on this
mysterious book, and very doubtful in its solution of the numerical riddle. The
primary meaning of the beast, as already remarked, is heathen Rome, as
represented by that monster tyrant and persecutor, Nero, the very incarnation
of satanic wickedness. The oldest interpretation (Lateinos), known
already to a grand-pupil of St. John, is also the best, and it is all the more
plausible because the other interpretations which give us the alphabetical
value of 666, namely, Nero and Caesar Augustus, likewise point to
the same Roman power which kept up a bloody crusade of three hundred years
against Christianity. But the political beast, and its intellectual ally, the
false prophet, appear again and again in history, and make war upon the church
and the truth of Christ, within and without the circle of the old Roman empire.
Many more wonders of exegetical ability and historical learning will yet be
performed before the mysteries of Revelation are solved, if they ever will be
solved before the final fulfilment. In the meantime, the book will continue to
accomplish its practical mission of comfort and encouragement to every
Christian in the conflict of faith for the crown of life.
</div3><div3
type = "Section" n="102" title="Concluding
Reflections. Faith and Criticism">
§ 102. Concluding Reflections. Faith and Criticism.
There is no necessary
conflict between faith and criticism any more than between revelation and
reason or between faith and philosophy. God is the author of both, and he
cannot contradict himself. There is an uncritical faith and a faithless
criticism as there is a genuine philosophy and a philosophy falsely so called;
but this is no argument either against faith or criticism; for the best gifts
are liable to abuse and perversion; and the noblest works of art may be
caricatured. The apostle of faith directs us to "prove all things,"
and to "hold fast that which is good." We believe in order to understand, and true faith is the
mother of knowledge. A rational faith in Christianity, as the best and final
religion which God gave to mankind, owes it to itself to examine the foundation
on which it rests; and it is urged by an irresistible impulse to vindicate the
truth against every form of error. Christianity needs no apology. Conscious of
its supernatural strength, it can boldly meet every foe and convert him into an
ally.
Looking back upon the
history of the apostolic age, it appears to us as a vast battle-field of
opposite tendencies and schools. Every inch of ground is disputed and has to be
reconquered; every fact, as well as every doctrine of revelation, is called in
question; every hypothesis is tried; all the resources of learning, acumen, and
ingenuity are arrayed against the citadel of the Christian faith. The citadel
is impregnable, and victory is certain, but not to those who ignorantly or
superciliously underrate the strength of the besieging army. In the sixteenth
century the contest was between Roman Catholicism and Evangelical
Protestantism; in the nineteenth century the question is Christianity or
infidelity. Then both parties believed in the inspiration of the New Testament
and the extent of the canon, differing only in the interpretation; now
inspiration is denied, and the apostolicity of all but four or five books is
assailed. Then the Word of God, with or without tradition, was the final
arbiter of religious controversies; now human reason is the ultimate tribunal.
We live in an age of
discovery, invention, research, and doubt. Scepticism is well nigh omnipresent
in the thinking world. It impregnates the atmosphere. We can no more ignore it
than the ancient Fathers could ignore the Gnostic speculations of their day.
Nothing is taken for granted; nothing believed on mere authority; everything
must be supported by adequate proof, everything explained in its natural growth
from the seed to the fruit. Roman Catholics believe in an infallible oracle in
the Vatican; but whatever the oracle may decree, the earth moves and will
continue to move around the sun. Protestants, having safely crossed the Red
Sea, cannot go back to the flesh-pots of the land of bondage, but must look
forward to the land of promise. In the night, says a proverb, all cattle are
black, but the daylight reveals the different colors.
Why did Christ not write
the New Testament, as Mohammed wrote the Koran? Writing was not beneath his dignity; he did write once in
the sand, though we know not what. God himself wrote the Ten Commandments on
two tables of stone. But Moses broke them to pieces when he saw that the people
of Israel worshipped the golden calf before the thunders from Sinai had ceased
to reverberate in their ears. They might have turned those tables into idols.
God buried the great law-giver out of sight and out of the reach of idolatry.
The gospel was still less intended to be a dumb idol than the law. It is not a
killing letter but a life-giving spirit. It is the spirit that quickeneth; the
flesh profiteth nothing; the words of Christ "are spirit and are
life." A book written by his
own unerring hand, unless protected by a perpetual miracle, would have been
subject to the same changes and corruptions in the hands of fallible
transcribers and printers as the books of his disciples, and the original
autograph would have perished with the brittle papyrus. Nor would it have
escaped the unmerciful assaults of sceptical and infidel critics, and
misinterpretations of commentators and preachers. He himself was crucified by
the hierarchy of his own people, whom he came to save. What better fate could
have awaited his book? Of course,
it would have risen from the dead, in spite of the doubts and conjectures and
falsehoods of unbelieving men; but the same is true of the writings of the
apostles, though thousands of copies have been burned by heathens and false
Christians. Thomas might put his hand into the wound-prints of his risen Lord;
but "Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed."
We must believe in the
Holy Spirit who lives and moves in the Church and is the invisible power behind
the written and printed word.
The form in which the
authentic records of Christianity have come down to us, with their variations
and difficulties, is a constant stimulus to study and research and calls into
exercise all the intellectual and moral faculties of men. Every one must strive
after the best understanding of the truth with a faithful use of his
opportunities and privileges, which are multiplying with every generation.
The New Testament is a
revelation of spiritual and eternal truth to faith, and faith is the work of
the Holy Spirit, though rooted in the deepest wants and aspirations of man. It
has to fight its way through an unbelieving world, and the conflict waxes
hotter and hotter as the victory comes nearer. For the last half century the
apostolic writings have been passing through the purgatory of the most
scorching criticism to which a book can be subjected. The opposition is itself
a powerful testimony to their vitality and importance.
There are two kinds of
scepticism: one represented by Thomas, honest, earnest, seeking and at last
finding the truth; the other represented by Sadducees and Pontius Pilate, superficial,
worldly, frivolous, indifferent to truth and ending in despair. With the latter
"even the gods reason in vain."
When it takes the trouble to assail the Bible, it deals in sneers and
ridicule which admit of no serious answer. The roots of infidelity he in the
heart and will rather than in the reason and intellect, and wilful opposition
to the truth is deaf to any argument. But honest, truth-loving scepticism
always deserves regard and sympathy and demands a patient investigation of the
real or imaginary difficulties which are involved in the problem of the origin
of Christianity. It may be more useful to the church than an unthinking and
unreasoning orthodoxy. One of the ablest and purest sceptical critics of the
century (DeWette) made the sad, but honorable confession:
"I lived in times of
doubt and strife,
When childlike faith was forced to yield;
I struggled to the end of
life,
Alas! I did not gain the
field."
But he did gain the
field, after all, at last; for a few months before his death he wrote and
published this significant sentence: "I know that in no other name can
salvation be found, than in the name of Jesus Christ the Crucified, and there
is nothing higher for mankind than the divine humanity (Gottmenschheit) realized in him, and the kingdom of God planted
by him." Blessed are those
that seek the truth, for they shall find it.
The critical and
historical rationalism which was born and matured in this century in the land
of Luther, and has spread in Switzerland, France, Holland, England, Scotland,
and America, surpasses in depth and breadth of learning, as well as in
earnestness of spirit, all older forms of infidelity and heresy. It is not
superficial and frivolous, as the rationalism of the eighteenth century; it is
not indifferent to truth, but intensely interested in ascertaining the real
facts, and tracing the origin and development of Christianity, as a great
historical phenomenon. But it arrogantly claims to be the criticism par excellence, as the Gnosticism of the ancient church pretended
to have the monopoly of knowledge. There is a historical, conservative, and
constructive criticism, as well as an unhistorical, radical, and destructive
criticism; and the former must win the fight as sure as God’s truth will
outlast all error. So there is a believing and Christian Gnosticism as well as
an unbelieving and anti- (or pseudo-) Christian Gnosticism.
The negative criticism
of the present generation has concentrated its forces upon the life of Christ
and the apostolic age, and spent an astonishing amount of patient research upon
the minutest details of its history. And its labors have not been in vain; on
the contrary, it has done a vast amount of good, as well as evil. Its strength
lies in the investigation of the human and literary aspect of the Bible; its
weakness in the ignoring of its divine and spiritual character. It forms thus
the very antipode of the older orthodoxy, which so overstrained the theory of
inspiration as to reduce the human agency to the mechanism of the pen. We must
look at both aspects. The Bible is the Word of God and the word of holy men of
old. It is a revelation of man, as well as of God. It reveals man in all his
phases of development—innocence, fall, redemption—in all the varieties of
character, from heavenly purity to satanic wickedness, with all his virtues and
vices, in all his states of experience, and is an ever-flowing spring of
inspiration to the poet, the artist, the historian, and divine. It reflects and
perpetuates the mystery of the incarnation. It is the word of him who
proclaimed himself the Son of Man, as well as the Son of God. "Men spake
from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit." Here all is divine and all is human.
No doubt the New
Testament is the result of a gradual growth and conflict of different forces,
which were included in the original idea of Christianity and were drawn out as
it passed from Christ to his disciples, from the Jews to the Gentiles, from
Jerusalem to Antioch and Rome, and as it matured in the mind of the leading
apostles. No doubt the Gospels and Epistles were written by certain men, at a
certain time, in a certain place, under certain surroundings, and for definite
ends; and all these questions are legitimate objects of inquiry and eminently
deserving of ever-renewed investigation. Many obscure points have been cleared
up, thanks, in part, to these very critics, who intended to destroy, and helped
to build up.
The literary history of
the apostolic age, like its missionary progress, was guided by a special
providence. Christ only finished a part of his work while on earth. He pointed
his disciples to greater works, which they would accomplish in his name and by
his power, after his resurrection. He promised them his unbroken presence, and the
gift of the Holy Spirit, who, as the other Advocate, should lead them into the
whole truth and open to them the understanding of all his words. The Acts of
the Apostles are a history of the Holy Spirit, or of the post-resurrection work
of Christ in establishing his kingdom on earth. Filled with that Spirit, the
apostles and evangelists went forth into a hostile world and converted it to
Christ by their living word, and they continue their conquering march by their
written word.
Unbelieving criticism
sees only the outside surface of the greatest movement in history, and is blind
to the spiritual forces working from within or refuses to acknowledge them as
truly divine. In like manner, the materialistic and atheistic scientists of the
age conceive of nature’s laws without a lawgiver; of a creature without a
creator; and stop with the effect, without rising to the cause, which alone
affords a rational explanation of the effect.
And here we touch upon
the deepest spring of all forms of rationalism, and upon the gulf which
inseparably divides it from supernaturalism. It is the opposition to the
supernatural and the miraculous. It denies God in nature and God in history,
and, in its ultimate consequences, it denies the very existence of God. Deism
and atheism have no place for a miracle; but belief in the existence of an
Almighty Maker of all things visible and invisible, as the ultimate and
all-sufficient cause of all phenomena in nature and in history, implies the
possibility of miracle at any time; not, indeed, as a violation of his own
laws, but as a manifestation of his law-giving and creative power over and
above (not against) the regular order of events. The reality of the miracle, in
any particular case, then, becomes a matter of historical investigation. It
cannot be disposed of by a simple denial from à priori philosophical
prejudice; but must be fairly examined, and, if sufficiently corroborated by
external and internal evidence, it must be admitted.
Now, the miracles of
Christ cannot be separated from his person and his teachings. His words are as
marvellous as his deeds; both form a harmonious whole, and they stand or fall
together. His person is the great miracle, and his miracles are simply his
natural works. He is as much elevated above other men as his words and deeds
are above ordinary words and deeds. He is separated from all mortals by his
absolute freedom from sin. He, himself, claims superhuman origin and
supernatural powers; and to deny them is to make him a liar and impostor. It is
impossible to maintain his human perfection, which all respectable rationalists
admit and even emphasize, and yet to refuse his testimony concerning himself.
The Christ of Strauss and of Renan is the most contradictory of all characters;
the most incredible of all enigmas. There is no possible scientific mediation
between a purely humanitarian conception of Christ, no matter how high he may
be raised in the scale of beings, and the faith in Christ as the Son of God,
whom Christendom has adored from the beginning and still adores as the Lord and
Saviour of the world.
Nor can we eliminate the
supernatural element from the Apostolic Church without destroying its very life
and resolving it into a gigantic illusion. What becomes of Paul if we deny his
conversion, and how shall we account for his conversion without the
Resurrection and Ascension? The
greatest of modern sceptics paused at the problem, and felt almost forced to
admit an actual miracle, as the only rational solution of that conversion. The
Holy Spirit was the inspiring and propelling power of the apostolic age, and
made the fishers of Galilee fishers of men.
A Christian, who has
experienced the power of the gospel in his heart, can have no difficulty with
the supernatural. He is as sure of the regenerating and converting agency of
the Spirit of God and the saving efficacy of Christ as he is of his own natural
existence. He has tasted the medicine and has been healed. He may say with the
man who was born blind and made to see: "One thing I do know, that, whereas
I was blind, now I see." This
is a short creed; but stronger than any argument. The fortress of personal
experience is impregnable; the logic of stubborn facts is more cogent than the
logic of reason. Every genuine conversion from sin to holiness is a psychological
miracle, as much so as the conversion of Saul of Tarsus.
The secret or open
hostility to the supernatural is the moving spring of infidel criticism. We may
freely admit that certain difficulties about the time and place of composition
and other minor details of the Gospels and Epistles are not, and perhaps never
can be, satisfactorily solved; but it is, nevertheless, true that they are far
better authenticated by internal and external evidence than any books of the
great Greek and Roman classics, or of Philo and Josephus, which are accepted by
scholars without a doubt. As early as the middle of the second century, that
is, fifty years after the death of the Apostle John, when yet many of his
personal pupils and friends must have been living, the four Canonical Gospels,
no more and no less, were recognized and read in public worship as sacred
books, in the churches of Syria, Asia Minor, Egypt, Italy, and Gaul; and such
universal acceptance and authority in the face of Jewish and heathen hostility
and heretical perversion can only be explained on the ground that they were
known and used long before. Some of them, Matthew and John, were quoted and
used in the first quarter of the second century by Orthodox and Gnostic
writers. Every new discovery, as the last book of the pseudo-"Clementine
Homilies," the "Philosophumena" of Hippolytus, the
"Diatessaron" of Tatian, and every deeper investigation of the
"Gospel Memoirs" of Justin Martyr, and the "Gospel" of
Marcion in its relation to Luke, have strengthened the cause of historical and
conservative criticism and inflicted bleeding wounds on destructive criticism.
If quotations from the end of the first and the beginning of the second century
are very rare, we must remember that we have only a handful of literary
documents from that period, and that the second generation of Christians was
not a race of scholars and scribes and critics, but of humble, illiterate
confessors and martyrs, who still breathed the bracing air of the living
teaching, and personal reminiscences of the apostles and evangelists.
But the Synoptical
Gospels bear the strongest internal marks of having been composed before the
destruction of Jerusalem (a.d.
70), which is therein prophesied by Christ as a future event and as the sign of
the fast approaching judgment of the world, in a manner that is consistent only
with such early composition. The Epistle to the Hebrews, likewise, was written
when the Temple was still standing, and sacrifices were offered from day to
day. Yet, as this early date is not conceded by all, we will leave the Epistle
out of view. The Apocalypse of John is very confidently assigned to the year 68
or 69 by Baur, Renan, and others, who would put the Gospels down to a much
later date. They also concede the Pauline authorship of the great anti-Judaic
Epistles to the Galatians, Romans, and Corinthians, and make them the very
basis of their assaults upon the minor Pauline Epistles and the Acts of the
Apostles, on the ground of exaggerated or purely imaginary differences. Those
Epistles of Paul were written twelve or fourteen years before the destruction
of Jerusalem. This brings us within less than thirty years of the resurrection
of Christ and the birthday of the church.
Now, if we confine
ourselves to these five books, which the most exacting and rigorous criticism
admits to be apostolic—the four Pauline Epistles and the Apocalypse—they alone
are sufficient to establish the foundation of historical faith; for they
confirm by direct statement or allusion every important fact and doctrine in
the gospel history, without referring to the written Gospels. The memory and
personal experience of the writers—Paul and John—goes back to the vision of
Damascus, to the scenes of the Resurrection and Crucifixion, and the first call
of the disciples on the banks of the Jordan and the shores of the Lake of
Galilee. Criticism must first reason Paul and John out of history, or deny that
they ever wrote a line, before it can expect sensible men to surrender a single
chapter of the Gospels.
Strong as the external
evidence is, the internal evidence of the truth and credibility of the
apostolic writings is still stronger, and may be felt to this day by the
unlearned as well as the scholar. They widely differ in style and spirit from
all post-apostolic productions, and occupy a conspicuous isolation even among
the best of books. This position they have occupied for eighteen centuries
among the most civilized nations of the globe; and from this position they are
not likely to be deposed.
We must interpret
persons and events not only by themselves, but also in the light of subsequent
history. "By their fruits ye shall know them." Christianity can stand
this test better than any other religion, and better than any system of
philosophy.
Taking our position at
the close of the apostolic age, and looking back to its fountain-head and
forward to succeeding generations, we cannot but be amazed at the magnitude of
the effects produced by the brief public ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, which
sends its blessings through centuries as an unbroken and ever-expanding river
of life. There is absolutely nothing like it in the annals of the race. The
Roman empire embraced, at the birth of Christ, over one hundred millions of
men, conquered by force, and, after having persecuted his religion for three
hundred years, it died away without the possibility of a resurrection. The
Christian church now numbers four hundred millions, conquered by the love of
Christ, and is constantly increasing. The first century is the life and light
of history and the turning point of the ages. If ever God revealed himself to
man, if ever heaven appeared on earth, it was in the person and work of Jesus
of Nazareth. He is, beyond any shadow of doubt, and by the reluctant consent of
sceptics and infidels, the wisest of the wise, the purest of the pure, and the
mightiest of the mighty. His Cross has become the tree of life to all nations;
his teaching is still the highest standard of religious truth; his example the
unsurpassed ideal of holiness; the Gospels and Epistles of his Galilean
disciples are still the book of books, more powerful than all the classics of
human wisdom and genius. No book has attracted so much attention, provoked so
much opposition, outlived so many persecutions, called forth so much reverence
and gratitude, inspired so many noble thoughts and deeds, administered so much
comfort and peace from the cradle to the grave to all classes and conditions of
men. It is more than a book; it is an institution, an all-pervading omnipresent
force, a converting, sanctifying, transforming agency; it rules from the pulpit
and the chair; it presides at the family altar; it is the sacred ark of every
household, the written conscience of every Christian man, the pillar of cloud
by day, the pillar of light by night in the pilgrimage of life. Mankind is bad
enough, and human life dark enough with it; but how much worse and how much
darker would they be without it?
Christianity might live without the letter of the New Testament, but not
without the facts and truths which it records and teaches. Were it possible to
banish them from the world, the sun of our civilization would be extinguished,
and mankind left to midnight darkness, with the dreary prospect of a dreamless
and endless Nirvana.
But no power on earth or
in hell can extinguish that sun. There it shines on the horizon, the king of
day, obscured at times by clouds great or small, but breaking through again and
again, and shedding light and life from east to west, until the darkest corners
of the globe shall be illuminated. The past is secure; God will take care of
the future.
<foreign lang="la">MAGNA EST VERITAS ET PRAEVALEBIT.
</foreign>
</ThML.body>
* Schaff, Philip, History of the Christian Church, (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.) 1997. This material has been carefully compared, corrected¸ and emended (according to the 1910 edition of Charles Scribner's Sons) by The Electronic Bible Society, Dallas, TX, 1998.
1 My "History of the Apostolic Church" (which bears a relation to my "History of the Christian Church," similar to that which Neander’s "History of the Planting and Training of the Christian Church by the Apostles" bears to his "General History of the Christian Religion and Church") appeared in German at Mercersburg, Pa., 1851, then in a revised edition, Leipzig, 1854, in an English translation by the late Dr. Yeomans, New York, 1853, at Edinburg, 1854 (in 2 vols.), and several times since without change. Should there be a demand for a new edition, I intend to make a number of improvements, which are ready in manuscript, especially in the General Introduction, which covers 134 pages. The first volume of my Church History (from A. D. 1 to 311) was first published in New York, 1858, (and in German at Leipzig, 1867); but when I began the revision, I withdrew it from sale. The Apostolic age there occupies only 140, the whole volume 535 pages.
2 A well-known saying of Tertullian, who lived in the midst of persecution. A very different estimate of martyrdom is suggested by the Arabic proverb "The ink of the scholar is more precious than the blood of the martyr." The just estimate depends on the quality of the scholar and the quality of the martyr, and the cause for which the one lives and the other dies.
3 Comp. F. Piper: Einleitung in die monumentale Theologie. Goths, 1867
4 This new word is coined after the analogy of ante-Nicene, and in imitation of the German vor-reformatorisch. It is the age of the forerunners of the Reformation, or reformers before the Reformation, as Ullmann calls such men as Wicklyffe, Huss, Savonarola, Wessel, etc. The term presents only one view of the period from Boniface VIII. to Luther. But this is the case with every other single term we may choose.
5 The German poet, Friedrich Rückert, thus admirably enjoins
the duty of condensation:
Wie
die Welt läuft immer weiter,
Wird stets die Geschicte breiter
Und uns wird je mehr je länger
Nöthig ein Zusammendränger:
Nicht
der aus dem Schutt der Zeiten
Wühle mehr Erbärmlichkeiten,
Sondern der den Plunder sichte
Und zum Bau die Steine schichte
Nicht
das Einzle unterdrückend
Noch damit willkühlich schmückend,
Sondern in des Einzlen Hülle
Legend allgemeine Fülle;
Der
gelesen Alles habe,
Und besitze Dichtergabe,
Klar zu schildern mir das Wesen,
Der ich nicht ein Wort gelesen.
Sagt
mir nichts von Resultaten!
Denn die will ich selber ziehen.
Lasst Begebenheiten, Thaten,
Heiden, rasch vorüberziehen."
6 These Greek historians have been best edited by Henri de Valois (Valesius), in Greek and Latin with notes, in 3 folios, Paris, 1659-73; also Amsterd., 1695, and, with additional notes by W. Reading, Cambridge, 1720. Eusebius has been often separately published in several languages.
7 Nikhfovrou Kallivstou tou' Xanqopouvlou jEkklhsiastikh'" iJ" toriva" Bibliva ihv. Edited by the Jesuit, Fronton le Duc (Fronto-Ducaeus), Par. 1630, 2 fol. This is the only Greek edition from the only extant MS., which belonged to the King of Hungary, then came into the possession of the Turks, and last into the imperial library of Vienna. But a Latin version by John Lang waspublished at Basle as early as 1561.
8 We omit the inferior continuations of the Polish Dominican, Abr. Bzovius, from 1198 to 1565, in 8 vols., and of Henr. Spondé, bishop of Pamiers, from 1197 to 1647, 2 vols. The best of the older editions, including the continuation of Raynaldi (but not of Laderchi) and the learned criticisms of Pagi and his nephew, was arranged by Archbishop Mansi, in 88 folios, Lucca, 1738-57. A hundred years later, a German scholar in Rome, Augustin Theiner, prefect of the Vatican Archives, resumed the continuation in 3 vols., embracing the pontificate of Gregory XIII. (a.d. 1572-’84), Rome and Paris, 1856, 3 vols fol, and hoped to bring the history down to the pontificate of Pius VII., a.d. 1800, in 12 folios; but he interrupted the continuation, and began, in 1864, a new edition of the whole work (including Raynaldi and Laderchi), which is to be completed in 45 or 50 volumes, at Bar-le-Duc, France. Theiner was first a liberal Catholic, then an Ultramontanist, last an Old Catholic (in correspondence with Döllinger), excluded from the Vatican (1870), but pardoned by the pope, and died suddenly, 1874. His older brother, Johann Anton, became a Protestant.
9 A portion of Fleury’s History, from the second oecumenical Council to the end of the fourth century (a.d. 381-400), was published in English at Oxford, 1842, in three volumes, on the basis of Herbert’s translation (London, 1728), carefully revised by John H Newman, who was at that time the theological leader of the Oxford Tractarian movement, and subsequently (1879) became a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church.
10 Discours sur l’histoire universelle depuis le commencement du monde jusgu’à l’empire de Charlemagne. Paris, 1681, and other editions.
11 Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire ecclésiastique des six premiers siècles, justifiés par les citations des auteurs originaux. Paris, 1693-1712, 16 vols. quarto. Reprinted at Venice, 1732 sqq. His Histoire des empereurs, Paris, 1690-1738, in 6 vols., gives the secular history down to emperor Anastasius.
12 Under the title: Nouvelle Bibliothèque des auteurs ecclésastiques, contenant l’Histoire de leur vie, le catalogue, la critique et la chronologie de leurs ouvrages. Paris and Amsterdam, 1693-1715, 19 vols.; 9th ed., Par., 1698 aqq., with the continuations of Goujet, Petit-Didier, to the 18th cent., and the critique of R. Simon, 61 vols. The work was condemned by Rome for its free criticism of the fathers.
13 Histoire générale des auteurs sacrés et ecclésaistiques. Paris, 1729-’63 in 23 vols. 4to. New ed. begun 1858.
14 Histoire universelle de l’église catholique. Nancy and Paris, 1842-’49; 3d ed., 1856-’6l, in 29 vols. oct.; 4th ed. by Chantral, 1864 sqq. A German translation by Hülskamp, Rump and others appeared at Münster, 1860 sqq.
15 Münster, 1819-’34, 5 vols 8vo.
16 Ravensburg, 1824 sqq., 9 vols
17 The first two volumes of the first ed. were translated by W. R. Clark and H. N. Oxenham, and published by T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1871 and 1876.
18 Handbuch der K G. Bonn, 3d ed., 1846; 6th ed., 1862, 2 vols.
19 His Kirchengeschichte was published from his lectures by Pius Boniface Gams. Regensburg, 1867-’68, in 3 vols. It is very unequal and lacks the author’s own finish. We have from Möhler also a monograph on Athanius (1827), and a Patrologie (covering the first three centuries, and published after his death, 1840).
20 Handbuch der Universal-Kirchengeschichte. 9th ed., Mainz, 1872, 2 vols.; 10th ed., 1882. Alzog aims to be the Roman Catholic Hase as to brevity and condensation. A French translation from the 5th ed. was prepared by Goeschler and Audley, 1849 (4th ed. by Abbé Sabatier, 1874); an English translation by F. J. Pabisch and Thos. Byrne, Cincinnati, O., 1874 sqq., in 3 vols. The Am. translators censure the French translators for the liberties they have taken with Alzog, but they have taken similar liberties, and, by sundry additions, made the author more Romish than he was.
21 English translation by Dr. Edw. Cox, Lond. 1840-’42, in 4 vols. This combines Döllinger’s Handbuch and Lehrbuch as far as they supplement each other.
22 See Schaff’s Creeds of Christendom, Vol. I., 195 sq.; Von Schulte: Der Altkatholicismus (Giessen, 1887), 109 sqq.
23 UnpartheiischeKirchen- und Ketzerhistorie. Frankfurt, 1699 sqq. 4 vol. fol.
24 Best edition: Institutes of Ecclesiastical History ancient and modern, by John Lawrence von Mosheim. A new and literal translation from the original Latin, with copious additional Notes, original and selected. By James Murdock, D. D. 1832; 5th ed., New York. 1854, 3 vols. Murdock was Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Andover, Mass. (d. 1856), and translated also Münscher’s Dogmengeschichte. Mosheim’s special history of the ante-Nicene period (1733) was translated from the Latin by Vidal (1813), and Murdock (1851), new ed., N. York, 1853, 2 vols.
25 Christliche Kirchengeschichte. Leipzig, 1768-1812, 45 vols. 8vo, including 10 vols. of the History after the Reformation (the last two by Tzschirner). Nobody ever read Schroeckh through (except the author and the proof-reader), and the very name is rather abschreckend, but he is as valuable for reference as Baronius, and far more impartial.
26 Allgemeine Geschichte der christlichen Religion und Kirche. Hamburg, 1825-’52, 11 parts; 3d ed. 1856, in 4 large vols., with an excellent introduction by Dr. Ullmann. The translation of Prof. Joseph Torrey (of Burlington, Vt., d. 1867) was published in Boston in 5 vols., 12th ed., 1881, with a model Index of 239 pages.
27 I have given a fuller account of the life and writings of Neander, my beloved teacher, in my "Kirchenfreund" for 1851, pp. 20 sqq. and 283 sqq and in Aug. Neander, Erinnerungen, Gotha, 1886 (76 pp.). Comp. also Harnack’s oration at the centennial of Neander’s birth, Berlin, Jan 17, 1889, and A. Wiegand, Aug. Neander, Erfurt, 1889.
28 Lehrbuch der Kirchengeschichte. Bonn, 1824-’56 (4th ed. 1844 sqq.), in 5 volumes, the last two published from his lectures after his death by Redepenning. Translated into English first by Cunningham, in Philadelphia, 1840 then by Davidson and Hull, in England, and last and best, on the basis of the former, by Henry B. Smith, New York (Harpers), in 5 vols., 1857-1880. The fifth and last volume of this edition was completed after Dr. Smith’s death (1877) by Prof. Stearns and Miss Mary A. Robinson, with an introductory notice by Philip Schaff. Gieseler’s Dogmengeschichte appeared separately in 1855.
29 Comp. Landerer’s Worte der Erinnerung an Dr. Baur, 1860, the article: "Baur und die Tübinger Schule," in Herzog and Plitt "Theol. Encykl.," Vol. II., 163-184 (2d ed.), and R. W. Mackay: The Tübingen School and its Antecedents. London, 1863. See also Zeller, Vorträge(1865), pp. 267 sqq.
30 Portions of Hagenbach’s History have been translated, namely, the History of the Church in the 18th and 19th Centuries by Dr. John P. Hurst (President of Drew Theol. Seminary, Madison, N. J.), N. York, 1869, 2 vols., and the History of the Reformation by Miss Evelina Moore (of Newark, N. J.), Edinburgh, 1879, 2 vols. A new ed. with literature by Nippold, 1885 sqq.
31 English translation by C. W. Buch, Edinburgh, 1846, revised from the 4th ed., and enlarged from Neander, Gieseler, Baur, etc., by Henry B. Smith, N. York, 1861, in 2 vols.; 6th Germ. ed. byK. Benrath, Leipz. 1888.
32 In 1885 Hass began the publication of his Lectures on Ch. Hist., 3 vols.
33 English translation from the 9th ed. by J. Macpherson, 1889, 3 vols.
34 Histoire de la Réformat du 16 siècle Paris, 1835 sqq., 4th ed. 1861 sqq., 5 vols. Histoire de la Réformation en Europe au temps de Calvin. Paris, 1863 sqq. German translation of both works, Stuttgart (Steinkopf), 1861 and 1863 sqq. English translation repeatedly published in England and the United States by the Amer. Tract Society (with sundry changes), and by Carter & Brothers. The Carter ed. (N. York, 1863-1879) is in 5 vols. for the Lutheran Reformation, and in 8 vols. for the Reformation in the time of Calvin. The last three vols. of the second series were translated and published after the author’s death by W L. Cates. By a singular mistake Dr. Merle goes in England and America by the name of D’Aubigné, which is merely an assumed by-name from his Huguenot ancestors.
35 Jésus Christ, son temps, sa vie, son oeuvre. Paris, 1866. Histoire des trois premiers siècles de l’église chrétienne. Paris, 1858 sqq. German translation by Fabarius (Leipzig, 1862-65), English translation by Annie Harwood. Lond. and N. York, 1870 sqq., 4 vols. Superseded by a revised ed. of the original, Paris, 1887 sqq.
36 Vie de Jèsus. Paris, 1863, and in many editions in different languages. This book created even a greater sensation than the Leben Jesu of Strauss, but is very superficial and turns the gospel history into a novel with a self-contradictory and impossible hero. It forms the first volume of his Histoire des origines du christianisme. The other volumes are: 2. Les Apótres, Paris, 1866; 3. St. Paul, 1869; 4. L’Antechrist, 1873; 5. La évangiles et la, seconde génération des chrétiens, 1877; 6. L’église chrétienne, 1879; Marc-Aurèle et la fin du monde antique, 1882. The work of twenty years. Renan wrote, he says, "without any other passion than a very keen curiosity."
37 Cardinal Newman, shortly before his transition from Oxford Tractarianism to Romanism (in his essay on Development of Christian Doctrine, 1845), declared "the infidel Gibbon to be the chief, perhaps the only English writer who has any claim to be considered an ecclesiastical historian." This is certainly not true any longer. Dr. McDonald, in an essay "Was Gibbon an infidel?" (in the "Bibliotheca Sacra" for July, 1868, Andover, Ham.), tried to vindicate him against the charge of infidelity. But Gibbon was undoubtedly a Deist and deeply affected by the skepticism of Hume and Voltaire. While a student at Oxford he was converted to Romanism by reading Bossuet’s Variations of Protestantism, and afterwards passed over to infidelity, with scarcely a ray of hope of any immortality but that of fame, See his Autobiography, Ch. VIII., and his letter to Lord Sheffield of April 27, 1793, where he says that his "only consolation" in view of death and the trials of life was "the presence of a friend." Best ed. of Gibbon, by W. Smith.
38 London, 1794-1812; new ed. by Grantham, 1847, 4 vols., 1860, and other ed. A German translation by Mortimer, Gnadau, 5 vols.
39 Republished by Harper & Brothers, New York, 1885. The author has transferred verbatim a large portion of his Manual from my church history, but with proper acknowledgment. Another church history by a writer nearer home has made even larger, but less honest use of my book.
40 The History of Christianity from the Birth of Christ to the Abolition of Paganism in the Roman Empire. Lond. 1840, revised ed., Lond. and N. York (Middleton), 1866, 3 vols. More important is his History of Latin Christianity to the Pontificate of Nicholas V. (a.d. 1455), Lond. and N. York, 1854 sqq, in 8 vols. Milman wrote also a History of the Jews, 1829 (revised 1862, 3 vols.), and published an edition of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall with useful annotations. A complete edition of his historical works appeared, Lond. 1866-’67, in 15 vols. 8vo.
41 Lectures on the History of the Eastern Church (delivered in Oxford), Lond. and N. York, 1862. No complete history, but a series of picturesque descriptions of the most interesting characters and scenes in the Eastern church. Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church, Lond. and N. York, l862-’76, in 3 vols. An independent and skilful adaptation of the views and results of Ewald’s Geschichte Israel’s, to which Stanley pays a fine tribute in the Prefaces to the first and third vols. His Historical Memorials of Canterbury Cathedral (1855, 5th ed. 1869), and of Westminster Abbey (1867, 4th ed. 1874), are important for English church history. His Lectures on the History of the, Church of Scotland (1872) have delighted the moderate and liberal, but displeased the orthodox Presbyterians of the land of Knox and Walter Scott.
42 Farrar’s Life of Christ appeared first in London, 1874, in 2 vols., and has up to 1879 gone through about thirty editions, including the American reprints. His Life and ’Work of St. Paul, Lond. and N. York, 1879, in 2 vols.; and The Early Days of Christianity, London and New York, 1882, 2 vols.; and Lives of the Fathers, Lond. and N. Y. 1889, 2 vols.
43 History of the Church of Christ in (16) Chronological Tables. N. York (Charles Scribner), 1860. Weingarten’s Zeittafeln zur Kirchengeschichte, 3ded., 1888, are less complete, but more convenient in size.
44 Comp. the author’s Christianity in the United States of America (a report prepared for the seventh General Conference of the Evang. Alliance, held at Basle, Sept., 1879), printed in the Proceedings of that Conference, and his Church and State in the U. S., N. York, 1888.
45 Mark 1:15; Gal. 4:4
46 Gen. 3:15
47 John 1:5; Rom 1:19, 20; 2:14, 15.
48 Acts 14:16.
49 Acts 17:26, 27.
50 Luke 15:11-32.
51 Acts 17:23.
52 St. Augustine, Conf. II . 1: "Fecisti nos ad Te, et inquietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in Te."
53 John 4:22. Comp. Luke 24:47; Rom. 9:4, 5.
54 Geschichte du Volkes Israel, Vol. I. p. 9 (3d ed.).
55 From vr'P; . They were separated from ordinary persons and all foreign and contaminating influences by the supposed correctness of their creed and the superior holiness of their life. Ewald (IV. 482): "Pharisäer bezeichnet Gesonderteoder Besondere, nämlich Leute die vor andern durch Frömmigkeit auszgezeichnet und gleichsam mehr oder heiliger als andere sein wollen.
56 So called either from their supposed founder, Zadoc (so Ewald, IV. 358), or from qyDix', "just."
57 The name is variously written (jEsshnoiv, jEssaiÀoi, jOssai'oi) and derived from proper names, or from the Greek, or from the Hebrew and Aramaic The most plausible derivations are from dysh, o{sio", holy; from ayba, physician (comp. the corresponding term of Philo, qerapeuthv", which, however, means worshipper, devotee); from ayzj, seer; from the rabbinical wZj, watchman, keeper (Ewald, formerly); from jva, to be silent (Jost, Lightfoot); from the Syriac chasi or chasyo, pious, which is of the same root with the Hebrew chasid, chasidim (De Sacy, Ewald, IV. 484, 3rd., and Hitzig). See Schürer, N. T. Zeitgesch. pp. 599 sqq., and Lightfoot’s instructive Excursus on the Essenes and the Colossian heresy, in Com. on Coloss. (1875), pp. 73, 114-179. Lightfoot again refutes the exploded derivation of Christianity from Essenic sources.
58 Rom. 3:20: Dia; novmou ejpivgnwsi" aJmartia".
59 Paidagwgo;" eij" Cristovn
60 Gal. 3:24
61 Novmo" parteishÀlqencame in besides, was added as an accessory arrangement, Rom. 5:20; comp. prosetevqh the law was " superadded"to the promise given to Abraham, Gal 3:19.
62 Deut. 18:15.
63 Comp. Paul’s picture of heathen immorality, Rom. 1:19-32
64 Comp. Matt. 8:10; 15:28. Luke 7:9. Acts 10:35.
65 Even Augustine, exclusive as he was, adduces the case of Job in proof of the assertion that the kingdom of God under the Old dispensation was not confined to the Jews, and then adds: "Divinitus autem provisum fuisse non dubito, ut ex hoc uno sciremus, etiam per alias gentes esse potuisse, qui secundum Deum vixerunt, eique placuerunt, pertinentes ad spiritualem Hierusalem." De Civit. Dei, xviii. 47.
66 Rom. 1:19, to; gnwsto;ntouÀ qeou'. Comp, my annotations on Lange in loc.
67 Rom. 2:14, 15. Comp. Lange in loc.
68 Comp. Acts 17:3, 27, 28, and my remarks on the altar to the qeo;" a[gnwsto" in the History of the Apost. Church. § 73, p. 269 sqq.
69 Testimonia animae naturaliter Christianae.
70 Lovgo" a[sarko" , Lovgo" spermatikov".
71 Comp. John 1:4, 5, 9, 10.
72 John 19:20.
73 Compare C. Ackermann, The Christian Element in Plato and the Platonic Philosophy, 1835, transl. from the German by S. R. Asbury, with an introductory note by Dr. Shedd. Edinburgh, 1861.
74 As in his excellent trestise: De sera numinis vindicta. It is strange that this philosopher, whose moral sentiments come nearest to Christianity, never alludes to it. Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius do mention it, but only once.
75 On the relation of Paul and Seneca comp. an elaborate dissertation of Bishop Lightfoot in his Commentary on the Philippians, pp. 268-331 (3d ed. 1873).
76 Charles Marivale, in his History of the Romans under the Empire (Lond. 1856), Vol. iv. p. 450 and 451, estimates the population of the Roman empire in the age of Augustus at 85 millions, namely, 40 millions for Europe, 28 millions for Asia, and 17 millions for Africa, but he does not include Palestine. Greswell and others raise the estimate of the whole population to 120 millions.
77 Hare Guesses at Truth, p. 432 (Lond. ed. 1867).
78 Raptores orbis, quos non oriens, non occidens satiaverit."
79 So the nephew of the modern Caesar transformed Parisinto a city of straight and broad streets and magnificent palaces.
80 Rev. 18:11-14.
81 "Unbelief and superstition, different hues of the same historical phenomenon, went in the Roman world of that day hand in hand, and there was no lack of individuals who in themselves combined both-who denied the gods with Epicurus, and yet prayed and sacrificed before every shrine." Theod. Mommsen, History of Rome. transl. by Dickson, Lond. 1867, vol. iv. p. 560.
82 "In the excess of their adoration, the Roman Senate desired even to place his image in the Temple of Quirinus himself, with an inscription to him as qeo;" ajnivkto", the invincible God. Golden chairs, gilt chariots, triumphal robes, were piled one upon another, with laurelled fasces and laurelled wreaths. His birthday was made a perpetual holiday, and the mouth Quinctilis was renamed, in honor of him, July. A temple to Concord was to be erected in commemoration of his clemency. His person was declared sacred and to injure him by word or deed was to be counted sacrilege. The Fortune of Caesar was introduced into the constitutional oath, and the Senate took a solemn pledge to maintain his acts inviolate. Finally, they arrived at a conclusion that he was not a man at all; no longer Caius Julius, but Divus Julius, a God or the Son of God. A temple was to be built to Caesar as another Quirinus, and Antony was to be his priest." J. A. Froude, Caesar (1879), Ch. XXVI. p. 491. The insincerity of these adulations shortly before the senatorial conspiracy makes them all the worse. "One obsequious senator proposed that every woman in Rome should be at the disposition of Caesar." Ibid., p 492.
83 De Ira, II. 8.
84 Principal Shairp, in an article on "Virgil as a Precursor of Christianity," in the "Princeton Review" for Sept., 1879, pp. 403-420. Comp. the learned essay of Professor Piper, in Berlin, on "Virgil als Theologe und Prophet," in his "Evang. Kalender" for 1862.
85 Jos., Bell. Jud., VII. c. 3, § 3: "As the Jewish nation is widely dispersed over all the habitable earth," etc. Antiqu., XIV. 7, 2: "Let no one wonder that there was so much wealth in our temple, since all the Jews throughout the habitable earth, and those that worship God, nay, even those of Asia and Europe, sent their contributions to it." Then, quoting from Strabo, he says: "These Jews are already gotten into all cities, and it is hard to, find a place in the habitable earth that has not admitted this tribe of men, and is not possessed by it; and it has come to pass that Egypt and Cyrene and a great number of other nations imitate their way of living, and maintain great bodies of these Jews in a peculiar manner, and grow up to greater prosperity with them, and make use also of the same laws with that nation."
86 Acts 2:5, 9-11.
87 Sueton., Caes., c. 84.
88 qr,x,h' yrEgE.
89 r['v'h yreg«. Ex. 20:10; Deut. 5:14.
90 oiJ eujsebeiÀ" oij fobouvmenoi to;n qeovn, Acts 10:2; 13:16, etc., and Josephus.
91 The system of Philo has been very thoroughly investigated, both independently, and in connection with John’s Logos-doctrine by Grossmann (1829). Gfrörer (1831), Dähne (1834), Lücke, Baur, Zeller, Dorner, Ueberweg, Ewald, J. G. Müller (Die Messian. Erwartungen des Juden Philo, Basel, 1870), Keim, Lipsius, Hausrath, Schürer, etc. See the literature in Schürer, N. T. Zeitgesch., p. 648.
92 P. E. Lucius: Die Therapeuten und ihre Stellung in der Geschichte der Askese. Strassburg, 1880.
93 A remnant of the Samaritans (about 140 souls) still live in Nablous, the ancient Shechem, occupy a special quarter, have a synagogue of their own, with a very ancient copy of the Pentateuch, and celebrate annually on the top of Mount Gerizim the Jewish Passover, Pentecost, and Feast of Tabernacles. It is the only spot on earth where the paschal sacrifice is perpetuated according to the Mosaic prescription in the twelfth chapter of Exodus. See Schaff, Through Bible Lands (N.York and Lond. 1878), pp. 314 sqq. and Hausrath, l.c. I. 17 sqq.
94 John 4.
95 Acts 8.
96 Luke 2:52.
97 Hebr. 5:8, 9.
98 See Cowper, l.c. pp. 212-214.
99 Mark 6:2, 3; Matt. 13:54-56; John 7:15.
100 John 12:32.
101 Augustine: "Deus; quid gloriosus? Caro; quid vilius? Deus in carne; quid mirabilius?"
102 On the testimony of Napoleon to the divinity of Christ see the letters of Bersier and Lutteroth appended to the twelfth ed. of my book on the Person of Christ (1882), p. 284, and pp. 219 sqq. Napoleon is reported to have asked the poet Wieland at a court-ball in Weimar, during the Congress of Erfurt, whether he doubted that Jesus ever lived; to which Wieland promptly and emphatically replied in the negative, adding that with equal right a thousand years hence men might deny the existence of Napoleon or the battle of Jena. The emperor smiled and said, très-bien! The question was designed not to express doubt, but to test the poet’s faith. So Dr. Hase reports from the mouth of Chancellor Müller, who heard the conversation. Geschichte Jesu, p. 9.
103 The fathers distinguish between the Nativity (gevnesi", Matt. 1:18) and the Incarnation (savrkwsi") and identify the Incarnation with the Conception or Annunciation. Since the time of Charlemagne the two terms seem to have been used synonymously. See Ideler, Chronol., ii. 383, and Gieseler, i. 70 (4th Germ. ed.).
104 Jos., Antiqu., xvii. 8,1: "Herod died ... having reigned since he had procured Antigonus to be slain [a.u. 717, or B.C. 37], thirty-four years, but since he had been declared king by the Romans [a.u. 714, or B.C. 40], thirty-seven." Comp. the same statement in Bell. Jud., i. 33, 8, and other passages.
105 According to Josephus, Antiqu. xvii. 6, 4: "And that night there was an eclipse of the moon." It is worthy of note that Josephus mentions no other eclipse in any of his works.
106 Matt. 2:16: pavnta" tou;" paiÀdo" ... ajpo;dietouÀ" kai; katwtevrw kata; ton; crovnon o}n hjkrivbwsen para; twÀn mavgwn.
107 Tradition has here most absurdly swelled the number of Innocents to 20,000, as indicated on the massive column, which marks the spot of their supposed martyrdom in the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem. XX M[artyres], i.e. martyrs, have become XX M[ilia], i.e. twenty thousands.
108 Macrob., Sat., ii 4: "Augustus, cum audisset, inter pueros, quos in Syria Herodes, rex Judaeorum, intra bimatum [perhaps taken from Matt. 2:16, Vulg.: a bimatu et infra]jussit interfici, filium quoque eius occisum, ait: melius est Herodis porcum esse quam filium." It is a pun on the similar sounding Greek terms for sow and son (u|" and uiJov"). Kepler already quoted thispassage in confirmation of Matthew.
109 Tacitus (Hist., v. 13) and Suetonius (Vespas.,c. 4) speak of a widespread expectation of that kind at the time of the Jewish war and before (Suetonius calls it a vetus et constans opinio), but falsely refer it to the Roman emperors Vespasianus and Titus. In this the heathen historians followed Josephus, who well knew and believed the Messianic hopes of his people (comp. Ant., iv. 6, 5; x. 10, 4; 11, 7), and yet was not ashamed basely to betray and pervert them, saying (Bell. Jud. vi. 5, 4): "What did the most to elevate the Jews in undertaking this war, was an ambiguous oracle that was found also in their sacred writings, how ’about that time, one from their country should become governor of the habitable earth.’ The Jews took this prediction to belong to themselves in particular, and many of the wise men were thereby deceived in their determination. Now, this oracle certainly denoted the goverment of Vespasian, who was appointed emperor in Judaea." Comp. Hausrath, N.T. Ztgesch., I. 173. The Messianic hopes continued long after the destruction of Jerusalem. The false Messiah, who led the rebellion under the reign of Hadrian (a.d. 135), called himself Bar-Cochba, i.e. "Son of the Star," and issued coins with a star, in allusion probably to Num. 24:17. When his real character was revealed, his name was turned into Bar-Cosiba, "Son of Falsehood."
110 In the beginning of his Bericht vom Geburtsjahr Christi (Opera, IV. 204) he describes this new star in these words: "Einungewöhnlicher, sehr heller und schöner Stern ... der wie die schönste, herrlichste Fackel so jemahl mit Augen gesehen worden, wenn sie von einem starken Wind getrieben wird, geflammet und gefunkelt, gerad neben den drey höchsten Planeten Saturno, Jove und Marte." He calls this phenomenon "ein überaus grosses Wunderwerk Gottes." A fuller description of the whole phenomenon he gives in his work De Stella Nova (Opera, II. 575 sqq. and 801 sqq., ed. Frisch). Upham (The Wise Men, N. Y. 1869, p. 145) says: "Tycho de Brahe had observed a similar wonder in the constellation Cassiopeia, on the night of the 11th of October, in the year 1572. These were not luminous bodies within our atmosphere; were not within, or near, the solar system; they were in the region of the fixed stars. Each grew more and more brilliant, till it shone like a planet. Then its lustre waned until it ceased to be visible,—the one in March, 1574, the other in February, 1606. The light was white, then yellow, then red, then dull, and so went out." On temporary stars, see Herschel’s Astronomy, Chap. XII.
111 The learned Jewish Rabbi Abarbanel, in his Commentary on Daniel (called Ma’jne hajeshuah, i.e."Wells of Salvation,"Isa. 12:3), which was published 1547, more than fifty years before Kepler’s calculation, says that such a conjunction took place three years before the birth of Moses (a.m. 2365), and would reappear before the birth of the Messiah, a.m. 5224 (or a.d. 1463). Ideler and Wieseler conjecture that this astrological belief existed among the Jews already at the time of Christ.
112 It has been so accepted by Dean Alford and others. See the note in 6th ed. of his Com. on Matt. 2:2 (1868), with the corrections furnished by Rev. C. Pritchard. McClellan (New Test., I, 402) assumes that the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn was premonitory and coincided with the conception of the birth of John the Baptist, Oct. 748, and that Kepler’s new star was Messiah’s star appearing a year later.
113 Comp. Num. 4:3, 35, 39, 43, 47.
114 In the new revision the passage, Luke 3:1, 2, is thus translated: "Now in the fifteenth year of the reign (hJgemoniva") of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor (hJgemoneuvonto") of Judaea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, in the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness." The statement must have been quite intelligible to the educated readers of that time.
115 The different interpretations of aujto;" h|n ajrcovmeno" wJsei; ejtwÀn triavkonta do not alter the result much, but the wJseiv leaves a margin for a few months more or less. Comp. McClellan, I. 404.
116 He uses the same term of Pontius Pilate (hJgemoneuvonto"). Zumpt, l.c. p. 296, says: "Eigentlich verstanden, bezeichnet hJgemoniva die Würde des militärischen Befehlshabers und des Regenten über die Provinzen. Hätte Lucas ’Augustus Kaiser’ (aujtokravtwr) oder auch nur ’Herrscher’ (a[rcwn) gesagt, so würde man an eine Zählung von Tiberius’ Provincialverwaltung weniger denken können .
117 Different modes of counting were not unusual, regarding the early Roman emperors, and Herod I. See above, p. 112, Zumpt, l. c. 282 sqq., and Andrews, p. 27. Suetonius (Tib., 33) and Tacitus (Annal., vi. 51) say that Tiberius died in the 23d year of his reign, meaning his sole reign; but there are indications also of the other counting, at least in Egypt and the provinces, where the authority of Tiberius as the active emperor was more felt than in Rome. There are coins from Antioch in Syria of the date a.u. 765, with the head of Tiberius and the inscription, Kaisar. Sebasto" (Augustus). In favor of the computation from the colleagueship are Ussher, Bengel, Lardner, Greswell, Andrews, Zumpt, Wieseler, McClellan; in favor of the computation from the sole reign are Lightfoot, Ewald. Browne. Wieseler formerly held that Luke refers to the imprisonment, and not the beginning of the ministry, of John, but he changed his view; see his art. in Herzog’s " Encykl.,"xxi. 547.
118 Andrews,l. c. p. 28, thus sums up his investigations upon this point: "We find three solutions of the chronological difficulties which the statements of Luke present: 1st. That the 15th year of Tiberius is to be reckoned from the death ot Augustus, and extends from August, 781, to August, 782. In this year the Baptist, whose labors began some time previous, was imprisoned; but the Lord’s ministry began in 780, before this imprisonment, and when he was about thirty years of age. 2d. That the 15th year is to be reckoned from the death of Augustus, but that the statement, the Lord was about thirty years of age, is to be taken in a large sense, and that he may have been of any age from thirty to thirty-five when he began he labors. 3d. That the 15th year is to be reckoned from the year when Tiberius was associated with Augustus in the empire, and is therefore the year 779. In this case the language, ’he was about thirty,’ may be strictly taken, and the statement, ’the word of God came unto John,’ may be referred to the beginning of his ministry."
119 Hase (Gesch. Jesu, p. 209) strangely defends the Dionysian era, but sacrifices the date of Matthew, together with the whole history of the childhood of Jesus. Against the view of Keim see Schürer, p. 242.
120 See the literature till 1874 in Schürer, p. 262, who devotes 24 pages to this subject. The most important writers on the census of Quirinius are Huschke (a learned jurist, in 2 treatises, 1840 and 1847), Wieseler (1843 and 1869), and Zumpt (1854 and 1869). Comp, also the article "Taxing," by Dr. Plumptre, supplemented by Dr. Woolsey, in Smith’s "Bible Dictionary" (Hackett and Abbot’s ed.), IV. 3185, and J. B. McClellan, New Test., I. 392.
121 This is the proper meaning of the original (according to the last text of Tischendorf, Westcott and Hort, who with B D omit the article hJ) au[th ajpografh; prwvth ejgevneto hJgemoneuvonto" th'" Suriva" Kurhnivou. Vulg.:Haec descriptio prima facta est a praeside Syriae Cyrino.The English version, " this taxing was first made when,"is ungrammatical, and would require prw'ton, or, prw'ta instead of prwvth. Luke either meant to say that there was no previous enrolment in Judea, or, more probably had in his mind a second enrolment made under Quirinius at his second governorship, which is noticed by him in Acts 5:37, and was well known to his readers. See below. Quirinius (Kurhvnio") is the proper spelling (Strabo, Josephus, Tacitus, Justin M)—not Quirinus, which was also a Roman name; hence the confusion. (See Weiss, in the 6th ed. of Meyer on Luke, p. 286.) His full name was Publius Sulpicius Quirinius (Tacitus, Annal., iii 48; Suetonius, Tiber., 49). He was consul a.u. 742, at the head of an army in Africa, 747, and died in Rome, a.d. 21. Josephus speaks of him at the beginning of the 18th book of his Archael. See, a full account of him in Zumpt, pp. 43-71.
122 Ulpian, quoted by Zumpt, Geburtsjahr Christi, p. 203 sq.
123 Josephus, Antiqu., xvii. 13, 5; xviii. 1, 1. The census here referred to is evidently the same which Luke means in Acts 5:37: "After this man arose Judas the Galilaean in the days of the enrolment." Josephus calls him "Judas, a Gaulanite," because he was of Gamala in lower Gaulanitis; but in Ant., xx. 5, 2, and Bell. Jud., ii. 8, 1, he calls him likewise a Galilaean. In this case, then, Luke is entirely correct, and it is extremely improbable that a writer otherwise so well informed as Luke should have confounded two enrolments which were ten years apart.
124 The usual solution of the difficulty is to give prwvth the sense of protevra before Quirinius was governor; as prw'tov" tino" is used (though not in connection with a participle) in the sense of prior to, John 1:15, 30; 15:18. So Ussher, Huschke, Tholuck, Wieseler, Caspari, Ewald. But this would have been more naturally and clearly expressed by privn or pro; touÀ hJgemeneuvein (as in Luke 2:21; 12:15; Acts 23:15). Paulus, Ebrard, Lange, Godet, and others accentuate authv (ipsa) and explain: The decree of the census was issued at the time of Christ’s birth, but the so-called first census itself did not take place till the governorship of Quirinius (ten years later). Impossible on account of Lk 2:3, which reports the execution of the decree, Lk 2:1. Browne (p. 46) and others understand hJgemoneuvein in a wider sense, so as to include an extraordinary commission of Quirinius as legatus Caesaris.
125 Annal., iii. 48, as interpreted by A. W. Zumpt in a Latin dissertation: De Syria Romanorum provincia ab Caesare Augusto ad T. Vespasianum, in Comment. Epigraph., Berol. 1854, vol. ii. 88-125, and approved by Mommsen in Res gesstae divi Augusti, 121-124. Zumpt has developed his views more fully in Das Geburtsjahr Christi, 1869, pp. 1-90. Ussher, Sanclemente, Ideler (II. 397), and Browne (p. 46) had understood Tacitus in the same way.
126 First published at Florence, 1765, then by Sanclemente (De vulg. aerae Emendat. Rom. 1793), and more correctly by Bergmann and Mommsen: De inscriptione Latina, ad P. Sulpicium Quirinium referenda, Berol. 1851. Mommsen discussed it again in an appendix to Res gestae Augusti, Berol. 1865, pp. 111-126. The inscription is defective, and reads: "... Pro. Consul. Asiam. Provinciam. Op[tinuit legatus]. Divi. Augusti[i]terum i.e., again, a second time]. Syriam. Et. Ph[oenicem administravit, or, obtinuit]. The name is obliterated. Zumpt refers it to C. Sentius Saturninus (who preceded Quirinius, but is not known to have been twice governor of Syria), Bergmann, Mommsen, and Merivale to Quirinius (as was done by Sanclemente in 1793, and by Ideler, 1826). Nevertheless Mommsen denies any favorable bearing of the discovery on the solution of the difficulty in Luke, while Zumpt defends the substantial accuracy of the evangelist.
127 Josephus, Antiqu., xvii. 11, 1; Tacitus, Hist., v. 9: "post mortem Herodis ... Simo quidam regium nomen invaserat; is a Quintilio Vare obtinento Syriam punitus," etc.
128 .Three censuses, held a.u. 726, 748, and 767, are mentioned on the monument of Ancyra; one in Italy, 757, by Dion Cassius; others in Gaul are assigned to 727, 741, 767; Tertullian, who was a learned lawyer, speaks of one in Judaea under Sentius Saturninus, a.u. 749; and this would be the one which must be meant by Luke. See Gruter, Huschke, Zumpt, Plumptre, l. c.
129 Suetonius, Aug. 28, 101; Tacitus, Annal., i. 11; Dio Cassius, lii. 30; Ivi. 33. The breviarium contained, according to Tacitus: "opes publicae quantum civium sociorumque in armis [which would include Herod], quot classes, regna, provinciae, tributa aut vectigalia, et necessitates ac largitiones. Quae cuncta sua manu perscripserat Augustus, addideratque consilium coërcendi intra terminos imperii, incertum metu anper invidiam"
130 Joseph. Ant. xvi. 9, § 4. Comp. Marquardt, Röm. Staatsverwaltung, I.249.
131 Such a decree has been often inferred from the passages of Suetonius and Tacitus just quoted. The silence of Josephus is not very difficult to explain, for he does not profess to give a history of the empire, is nearly silent on the period from a.u. 750-760, and is not as impartial a historian as Luke, nor worthy of more credit. Cassiodorus (Variarum, iii. 52) and Suidas (s. v., ajpografhv) expressly assert the fact of a general census, and add several particulars which are not derived from Luke; e.g. Suidas says that Augustus elected twenty commissioners of high character and sent them to all parts of the empire to collect statistics of population as well as of property, and to return a portion to the national treasury. Hence Huschke, Wieseler, Zumpt, Plumptre, and McClellan accept their testimony as historically correct (while Schürer derives it simply from Luke, without being able to account for these particulars). Wieseler quotes also John Malala, the historian of Antioch, as saying, probablyon earlier authorities, that "Augustus, in the 39th year and 10th month of his reign [i.e. B.C. 5 or 6] issued a decree for a general registration throughout the empire." Julius Caesar had begun a measurement of the whole empire, and Augustus completed it.
132 Not to be confounded with L. Volusius Saturninus, who is known, from coins, to have been governor of Syria a.u. 758 (a.d. 4).
133 Adv. Marc. iv. 19: "Sed et census constat actos sub Augusto tunc in Judaea per Sentium Saturninum, apud quos genus ejus inquirere potuissent."
134 Zumpt, the classical scholar and archaeologist, concludes (p. 223) that there is nothing in Luke’s account which does not receive, from modern research,"full historical probability" ("volle historische Wahrscheinlichkeit"); while Schürer, the theologian, still doubts (Matt. 28:17). Dr. Woolsey (s. v."Cyrenius," in "Smith’s Bible Dict.," Hackett and Abbot’s ed., p. 526), decides that "something is gained." In the art. "Taxing" he says that a registration of Judaea made under the direction of the president of Syria by Jewish officers would not greatly differ from a similar registration made by Herod, and need not have alarmed the Jews if carefully managed.
135 Antiqu. xv. 11, 1: "And now Herod, in the eighteenth year of his reign (ojktwkaidekavton thÀs JHrwvdon basileiva" ejniautou') ... undertook a very great work, that is, to build of himself the temple of God, and to raise it to a most magnificent altitude, as esteeming it to be the most glorious of all his actions, as it really was, to bring it to perfection, and that this would be sufficient for an everlasting memorial of him."
136 Bell. Jud. I. 21, pentekaidekavtw/ e[tei thÀ" basileiva" aujto;n de; to;n nao;" ejpeskeuvase
137 Adv. Jud. c. 8: "Huius [Tiberii] quinto decimo anno imperii passus est Christus, annos habens quasi triginta, cum pateretur .... Quae passio huius exterminii intra tempora LXX hebdomadarum perfecta est sub Tiberio Caesare, Consulibus Rubellio Gemino Et Fufio Gemino, mense Martio, temporibus paschae, die VIII Kalendarum Aprilium, die prima azymorum, quo agnum occiderunt ad vesperam, sicuti a Moyse fuerat praeceptum." Lactantius(De Mort. Persec. 2; De Vera Sap. 10) and Augustine make the same statement (De Civit. Dei, I xviii. c. 54: "Mortuus est Christus duobus Geminis Consulibus, octavo Kalendas Aprilis "). Zumpt assigns much weight to this tradition, pp. 268 sqq.
138 As in Switzerland the herds are driven to the mountain pastures in May and brought home in August or September.
139 The latest learned advocate of the traditional date is John Brown McClellan, who tries to prove that Christ was born Dec. 25, a.u. 749 (B.C. 5). See his New Test., etc. vol. I. 390 sqq.
140 Adv. Haer. II. c. 22, § 4-6.
141 This shows conclusively how uncertain patristic traditions are as to mere facts.
142 John 8:57. Irenaeus reasons that the Jews made the nearest approach to the real age, either from mere observation or from knowledge of the public records, and thus concludes: "Christ did not therefore preach only for one year, nor did he suffer in the twelfth month of the year; for the period included between the thirtieth and the fiftieth year can never be regarded as one year, unless indeed, among their aeons [he speaks of the Gnostics] there be such long years assigned to those who sit in their ranks with Bythos in thePleroma."
143 Comp. Matt. 4:12; 23:37; Mark 1:14; Luke 4:14; 10:38; 13:34.
144 John 2:13, 23; 6:4; 11:55; 12:1; 13:1. The Passover mentioned 6:4 Christ did not attend, because the Jews sought to kill him (7:1; comp. 5:18).
145 John 5:1 if we read the article hj before eJorth; twÀn jIoudivwn. See below.
146 Isa. 61:2; comp. Luke 4:14.
147 Exod. 12:5.
148 Keim, I. 130.
149 Henry Browne who, in his Ordo Saeclorum (pp.80 sqq.), likewise defends the one year’s ministry, in part by astronomical calculations, is constrained to eliminate without any MSS. authority to ;pavsca from John 6:4, and to make the eJorthv there mentioned to be the same as that in 7:2, so that John would give the feasts of one year only, in regular chronological order, namely, the Passover 2:13 in March, the Pentecost 5:1 in May, the Feast of Tabernacles 6:4; 7:2 in September, the Feast of Dedication 10:22 in December, the Passover of the Crucifixion in March.
150 The definite article before "feast, (hJ eJorthv ) which is supported by the Sinaitic MS. and adopted by Tischendorf (ed. viii.), favors the view that the feast was the Passover,the great feast of the Jews. The reading without the article, which has the weight of the more critical Vatican Ms, and is preferred by Lachmann, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort, and by the Revision of the E. V., favors the view that it was Pentecost, or Purim, or some other subordinate feast. (On the grammatical question comp. Thayer’s Winer, p. 125, and Moulton’s Winer, p. 155.) In all other passages John gives the name of the feast (to; pavsca John 2:13; 6:4; 11:55; hJ skhvnophgiva 7:2; ta; ejgkaivnia 10:22). It is objected that Jesus would not be likely to attend the patriotic and secular feast of Purim, which was not a temple feast and required no journey to Jerusalem, while he omitted the next Passover (John 6:4) which was of divine appointment and much more solemn; but the objection is not conclusive, since he attended other minor festivals (John 7:2; 10:22) merely for the purpose of doing good.
151 Luke 13:6-9.Bengel, Hengstenberg, Wieseler, Weizäcker, Alford Wordsworth, Andrews, McClellan.
152 By Eusebius (H. E., I. 10), Theodoret (in Dan. ix.), Robinson, Andrew, , McClellan, Gardiner, and many others. On the other hand Jerome, Wieseler, and Tischendorf hold the tripaschal theory. Jerome says (on Isaiah 29, in Migne’s ed. of the Opera, IV. 330): "Scriptum est in Evangelio secundum Joannem, per tria Pascha Dominum venisse in Jerusalem, quae duos annos efficiunt."
153 W. E. H. Lecky: History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne (1869) vol. II. p. 9. He adds: "Amid all the sins and failings, amid all the priestcraft and persecution and fanaticism that have defaced the Church, it has preserved, in the character and example of its Founder, an enduring principle of regeneration."
154 Mark 15:42; Matt. 27:62; Luke 23:54; John 19:14. Friday is called Preparation-day (paraskeuhv), because the meals for the Sabbath were prepared on the sixth day, as no fires were allowed to be kindled on the Sabbath (Ex. 16:5).
155 Matt. 26:17, 20; Mark 14:12; Luke 22:7, 15. Comp. John 18:9, 40.
Ex. 12:6; Lev. 23 5; Num. 9:3, 5. If the phrase "between the two evenings" (syIB'r][h; wy]Be) could be taken to mean between the evening of the 14th and the evening of the 15th of Nisan, we should have twenty-four hours for the slaying and eating of the paschal lambs, and the whole difficulty between John and the Synoptists would disappear. We could easier conceive also the enormous number of 270,000 lambs which, according to the statement of Josephus, had to be sacrificed. But that interpretation is excluded by the fact that the same expression is used in the rules about the daily evening sacrifice (Ex. 29:39, 41; Num. 28:4).
157 John 13:1; 13:29; 18:28 19:14.
158 John 13:1 "before the feast of the Passover" does not mean a day before (which would have been so expressed, comp, 12:1), but a short time before, and refers to the commencement of the 15th of Nisan. The passage, 13:29: "Buy what things we have need of for the feast," causes no difficulty if we remember that Jesus sat down with his disciples before the regular hour of the Passover (13:1), so that there was time yet for the necessary purchases. The passage on the contrary affords a strong argument against the supposition that the supper described by John took place a full day before the Passover; for then there would have been no need of such haste for purchases as the apostles understood Christ to mean when he said to Judas."That thou doest, do quickly" (13:27). In John 18:28 it is said that the Jews went not into the Praetorium of the heathen Pilate "that they might not be defiled, but might eat the Passover; " but this was said early in the morning, at about 3 A. M., when the regular paschal meal was not yet finished in the city; others take the word Passover "here in an unusual sense so as to embrace the chagigah ( j'gygÉh) or festive thank-offerings during the Passover week, especially on the fifteenth day of Nisan (comp. 2 Chr. 30:22); at all events it cannot apply to the paschal supper on the evening of the fifteenth of Nisan, for the defilement would have ceased after sunset, and could therefore have been no bar to eating the paschal supper (Lev. 15:1-18; 22:1-7). " The Preparation of the Passover,"hJ paraskeuh; touÀ pavsca, John 19:14, is not the day preceding the Passover (Passover Eve), but, as clearly in 19:31 and 42, the preparation day of the Passover week, i.e. the Paschal Friday; paraskeuhv being the technical term for Friday as the preparation day for the Sabbath, the fore-Sabbath, prosavbbaton, Mark 15:42 (comp. the German Sonnabend for Saturday, Sabbath-eve, etc.). For a fuller examination of the respective passages, see my edition of Lange on Matthew (pp. 454 sqq.), and on John (pp. 406, 415, 562, 569). Lightfoot, Wieseler, Lichtenstein, Hengstenberg, Ebrard (in the third ed. of his Kritik. 1868), Lange, Kirchner, Keil, Robinson, Andrews, Milligan, Plumptre and McClellan take the same view; while Lücke, Bleek, DeWette, Meyer, Ewald, Stier, Beyschlag, Greswell, Ellicott, Farrar, Mansel and Westcott maintain that Christ was crucified on the fourteenth of Nisan, and either assume a contradiction between John and the Synoptists (which in this case seems quite impossible), or transfer the paschal supper of Christ to the preceding day, contrary to law and custom. John himself clearly points to the fifteenth of Nisan as the day of the crucifixion, when he reports that the customary release of a prisoner " at the Passover"(ejn tw/À pavsca) was granted by Pilate on the day of crucifixion, John 18:39, 40. The critical and cautious Dr. Robinson says (Harmony, p. 222): " After repeated and calm consideration, there rests upon my own mind a clear conviction, that there is nothing in the language of John, or in the attendant circumstances, which upon fair interpretation requires or permits us to believe, that the beloved disciple either intended to correct, or has in fact corrected or contradicted, the explicit and unquestionable testimony of Matthew, Mark and Luke."Comp. also among the more recent discussions Mor. Kirchner: Die jüd. Passahfeier und Jesu letztes Mahl (Gotha, 1870); McClellan: N. Test. (1875), I. 473 sqq., 482 sqq.; Keil: Evang. des Matt. (Leipz. 1877), pp. 513 sqq.
159 The answer to this objection is well presented by Dr. Robinson, Harmony p. 222, and Keil, Evang. des Matt., pp. 522 sqq. The Mishna prescribes that "on Sabbaths and festival days no trial or judgment may be held;" but on the other hand it contains directions and regulations for the meetings and actions of the Sanhedrin on the Sabbaths, and executions of criminals were purposely reserved to great festivals for the sake of stronger example. In our case, the Sanhedrin on the day after the crucifixion, which was a Sabbath and "a great day," applied to Pilate for a watch and caused the sepulchre to be sealed, Matt. 27:62 sq.
160 See Wieseler, Chronol. Synopse, p. 446, and in Herzog, vol. XXI. 550; and especially the carefully prepared astronomical tables of new and full moons by Prof. Adams, in McClellan, I. 493, who devoutly exults in the result of the crucial test of astronomical calculation which makes the very heavens, after the roll of centuries, bear witness to the harmony of the Gospels.
161 Well says Hausrath (Preface to 2nd ed. of vol. I. p. ix) against the mythical theory: "Für die poëtische Welt der religiösen Sage ist innerhalb einer rein historischen Darstellung kein Raum; ihre Gebilde verbleichen vor einem geschichtlich hellen Hintergrund .... Wenn wir die heilige Geschichte als Bruchstück einer allgemeinen Geschichte nachweisen und zeigen können, wie die Ränder passen, wenn wir die abgerissenen Fäden, die sie mit der profanen Welt verbanden, wieder aufzufinden vermögen, dann ist die Meinung ausgeschlossen, diese Geschichte sei der schöne Traum eines späteren Geschlechtes gewesen."
162 The average length of Palestine is 150 miles, the average breadth east and west of the Jordan to the Mediterranean, from 80 to 90 miles, the number of square miles from 12,000 to 13,000. The State of Maryland has 11,124, Switzerland 15,992, Scotland 30,695 English square miles.
163 The tradition, which locates the Temptation on the barren and dreary mount Quarantania, a few miles northwest of Jericho, is of late date. Paul also probably went, after his conversion, as far as Mount Sinai during the three years of repose and preparation "in Arabia,"Gal. 1:17, comp. 4:24.
164 W. Hepworth Dixon (The Holy Land, ch. 14) ingeniously pleads for the traditional cave, and the identity of the inn of the Nativity with the patrimony of Boaz and the home of David.
165 We add the vivid description of Renan (Vie de Jésus, Ch. II. p. 25) from personal observation: "Nazareth was a small town, situated in a fold of land broadly open at the summit of the group of mountains which closes on the north the plain of Esdraëlon. The population is now from three to four [probably five to six] thousand, and it cannot have changed very much. It is quite cold in winter and the climate is very healthy. The town, like all the Jewish villages of the time, was a mass of dwellings built without style, and must have presented the same poor and uninteresting appearance as the villages in Semitic countries. The houses, from all that appears, did not differ much from those cubes of stone, without interior or exterior elegance, which now cover the richest portion of the Lebanon, and which, in the midst of vines and fig-trees, are nevertheless very pleasant. The environs, moreover, are charming, and no place in the world was so well adapted to dreams of absolute happiness (nul endroit du monde ne fut si bien fait pour les rêves de l’absolu bonheur). Even in our days, Nazareth is a delightful sojourn, the only place perhaps in Palestine where the soul feels a little relieved of the burden which weighs upon it in the midst of this unequalled desolation. The people are friendly and good-natured; the gardens are fresh and green. Antonius Martyr, at the end of the sixth century, draws an enchanting picture of the fertility of the environs, which he compares to paradise. Some valleys on the western side fully justify his description. The fountain about which the life and gayety of the little town formerly centered, has been destroyed; its broken channels now give but a turbid water. But the beauty of the women who gathered there at night, this beauty which was already remarked in the sixth century, and in which was seen the gift of the Virgin Mary, has been surprisingly well preserved. It is the Syrian type in all its languishing grace. There is no doubt that Mary was there nearly every day and took her place, with her urn upon her shoulder, in the same line with her unremembered countrywomen. Antonius Martyr remarks that the Jewish women, elsewhere disdainful to Christians, are here full of affability. Even at this day religious animosities are less intense at Nazareth than elsewhere." Comp. also the more elaborate description in Keim, I. 318 sqq., and Tobler’s monograph on Nazareth, Berlin, 1868.
166 Josephus no doubt greatly exaggerates when he states that there were no less than two hundred and four towns and villages in Galilee (Vita, c. 45, diakovsiai kai; tevssare" kata; th;n Galilaivan eijsi; povlei" kai; kwÀmai), and that the smallest of those villages contained above fifteen thousand inhabitants (Bell. Jud. III. 3, 2). This would give us a population of over three millions for that province alone, while the present population of all Palestine and Syria scarcely amounts to two millions, or forty persons to the square mile (according to Bädeker, Pal. and Syria, 1876, p. 86).
167 Matt. 11:20-24; Luke 10:13-15.
168 Comp. Fr. Delitzsch: Ein Tag in Capernaum, 2d ed. 1873; Furrer: Die Ortschaften am See Genezareth, in the "Zeitschrift des deutschen Palaestina-Vereins," 1879, pp. 52 sqq.: my article on Capernaum, ibid. 1878, pp. 216 sqq. and in the "Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund" for July, 1879, pp. 131 sqq., with the observations thereon by Lieut. Kitchener, who agrees with Dr. Robinson in locating Capernaum Khan Minyeh, although there are no ruins there at all to be compared with those of Tell Hum.
169 The present mongrel population of Jerusalem—Moslems, Jews, and Christians of all denominations, though mostly Greek—scarcely exceeds 30,000, while at the time of Christ it must have exceeded 100,000, even if we make a large deduction from the figures of Josephus, who states that on a Passover under the governorship of Cestius Gallus 256,500 paschal lambs were slain, and that at the destruction of the City, a.d. 70, 1,100,000 Jews perished and 97,000 were sold into slavery (including 600,000 strangers who had crowded into the doomed city). Bell. Jud. vi. 9, 3.
170 Matt. 28:6.
171 Matt. 24:2; Mark 13:2; Luke 19:44.
172 Renan sums up the results of his personal observations as director of the scientific commission for the exploration of ancient Phoenicia in 1860 and 1861, in the following memorable confession (Vie de Jêsus, Introd. p. liii.)."J’ai traversê dans tous les sens la province évangelique; j’ai visitê Jérusalem, Hêbron et la Samarie;presque aucune localité importante de l’histoire de Jésus ne m’a échappé. Toute cette histoire qui, à distance, semble flotter dans les nuages d’un monde sans réalité, prit ainsi un corps, une solidité qui m’étonnèrent. L’accord frappant des textes et des lieux, la merveilleuse harmonie de l’idéal évangélique avec le paysage qui lui servit de cadre furent pour moi comme une révélation. J’eus devant les yeux un cinquième évangile, lacéré, mais lisible encore, et désormais, à travers les récits de Matthieu et de Marc, au lieu d’un être abstrait, qu’on dirait n’avoir jamais existé, je vis une admirable figure humaine vivre, se mouvoir." His familiarity with the Orient accounts for the fact that this brilliant writer leaves much more historical foundation for the gospel history than his predecessorStrauss, who never saw Palestine.
173 Matt. 8:5-13; 15:21-28; Luke 7:1-9.
174 John 4:5-42; Luke 10:30-37.
175 John 12:20-32
176 Matt. 10:5, 6; 15:14.
177 Josephus, Bell. Jud. III. c. 3, § 2: "These two Galilees, of so great largeness, and encompassed with so many nations of foreigners, have been always able to make a strong resistance on all occasions of war; for the Galileans are inured to war from their infancy, and have been always very numerous; nor hath the country ever been destitute of men of courage, or wanted a numerous set of them: for their soil is universally rich and fruitful, and full of the plantations of trees of all sorts, insomuch that it invites the most slothful to take pains in its cultivation by its fruitfulness: accordingly it is all cultivated by its inhabitants, and no part of it lies idle. Moreover, the cities lie here very thick, and the very many villages there are so full of people, by richness of their soil, that the very least of them contained above fifteen thousand inhabitants (?)."
178 John 1:46;.7:52; Matt. 4:16. The Sanhedrists forgot in their blind passion that Jonah was from Galilee. After the fall of Jerusalem Tiberias became the headquarters of Hebrew learning and the birthplace of the Talmud.
179 rJabbiv from br' or with the suff yBir' My prince, lord, kujrio") sixteen times in the N. T.,. rJabboniv orrJabbouniv twice; didavskalo" (variously rendered in the E. V. teacher, doctor, and mostly master) about forty times; ejpistavth"(rendered master) six times, kaqhghthv" (rendered master) once in Matt. 23:10 (the text rec. also 10:8, where didavskalo" is the correct reading). Other designations of these teachers in the N. T. are grammatei'" , nomikoiv, nomodidavskaloi. Josephus calls them sofistaiv, iJerogrammatei'", patrivwn ejxhghtai; novmwn, the Mishna symikj} and syrip]/s scholars. See Schürer, p. 441.
180 Matt. 23:8; comp. Mark 12:38, 39; Luke 11:43; 20:46.
181 The same, however, was the case with Greek and Roman teachers before Vespasian, who was the first to introduce a regular salary. I was told in Cairo that the professors of the great Mohammedan University likewise teach gratuitously.
182 Ecclesiasticus 38:24-34: "The wisdom of a learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure; and he that hath little business shall become wise. How can he get wisdom that holdeth the plough," etc.
183 See FR. Delitzsch: Jüdisches Handwerkerleben zur Zeit Jesu. Erlangen, third ed. revised, 1879. He states (p. 77) that more than one hundred Rabbis who figure in the Talmud carried on a trade and were known by it, as R. Oshaja the shoemaker, R. Abba the tailor, R. Juda the baker, R. Abba Josef the architect, R. Chana the banker, R. Abba Shaul the grave-digger, R. Abba Oshaja the fuller, R. Abin the carpenter, etc. He remarks (p. 23): "The Jews have always been an industrious people and behind no other in impulse, ability and inventiveness for restless activity; agriculture and trade were their chief occupations before the dissolution of their political independence; only in consequence of their dispersion and the contraction of their energies have they become a people of sharpers and peddlers and taken the place of the old Phoenicians." But the talent and disposition for sharp bargains was inherited from their father Jacob, and turned the temple of God into "a house of merchandise." Christ charges the Pharisees with avarice which led them to "devour widows’ houses." Comp. Matt. 23:14; Mark 12:40; Luke 16:14; 20:47.
184 Mark 6:3 Jesus is called, by his neighbors, "the carpenter"oJ tevktwn), Matt. 13:55 "the carpenter’s son."
185 Luke 8:3 Matt. 27:55; Mark 15:41; John 13:29. Among the pious women who ministered to Jesus was also Joanna, the wife of Chuzas, King Herod’s steward. To her may be traced the vivid circumstantial description of the dancing scene at Herod’s feast and the execution of John the Baptist, Mark 6:14-29.
186 Acts 18:3; 20:33-35; 1 Thess. 2:9; 2 Thess. 3:8; 2 Cor. 11:7-9.
187 John 18:20. Comp. Matt. 4:23; 9:35; 21:23; 26:55; Mark 1:21, 39; 14:49; Luke 2:46; 4:14-16, 31, 44; 13:10; 21:37.
188 Acts 13:14-16; 16:13; 17:2, 3.
189 Luke 2:46; 5:17; Matt. 5:1; 26:55; John 8:2; Acts 22:3 ("at the feet of Gamaliel").
190 Josephus often speaks of this. C. Ap. I. 12: "More than all we are concerned for the education of our youth (paidotrofiva), and we consider the keeping of the laws (to; fulavttein tou;" novmou") and the corresponding piety (th;n kata; touvtou" paradedomevnhn eujsevbeian) to be the most necessary work of life."Comp. II. 18; Ant. IV. 8, 12. To the same effect is the testimony of Philo, Legat. ad Cajum. § 16. 31, quoted by Schürer, p. 467.
191 2 Tim, 1:5; 3:15; comp. Eph. 6:4.
192 Vita, § 2.
193 Schürer, p. 468; and Ginsburg, art. Education, in Kitto’s "Cyc. of Bibl. Liter.," 3d ed.
194 Acts 6:9 for the freedmen and the Hellenists and proselytes from different countries. Rabbinical writers estimate the number of synagogues in Jerusalem as high as 480 (i.e. 4 x 10 x 12), which seems incredible.
195 Luke 4:16-22.
196 Acts 2:8-12.
197 Comp. the description of King Josiah’s Passover, 2 Chr. 35:1-19.
198 The Rabbinical scholasticism reminds one of the admirable
description of logic in Goethe’s Faust:
"Wer will
was Lebendig’s erkennen und beschreiben,
Sucht
erst den Geist hinauszutreiben;
Dann
hat er die Theile in seiner Hand,
Fehlt leider! nur das geistige Band."
199 Matt. 15:2, 3, 6; Mark 7:3, 5, 8, 9, 13. It is significant that Christ uses the word paravdosi"always in a bad sense of such human doctrines and usages as obscure and virtually set aside the sacred Scriptures. Precisely the same charge was applied by the Reformers to the doctrines of the monks and schoolmen of their day.
200 Matt. 16:21-23; Mark 8:31-33; Luke 9:22, 44, 45; 18:34; 24:21 John 12:34.
201 See, of older works, Schöttgen, Horae Hebraicae et Talmudicae tom. II. (De Messia), of modern works, Schürer, l.c. pp. 563-599, with the literature there quoted; also James Drummond, The Jewish Messiah,Lond. 1877.
202 Matt. 18:1-6; comp. Mark 10:13-16; Luke 18:15-17.
203 Matt. 11:25-30. This passage, which is found only in Matthew
and (in part) in Luke 10:21, 22, is equal to any passage in John. It is a
genuine echo of this word when Schiller sings:
"Was kein
Verstand der Verständigen sieht,
Das übet in Einfalt ein kindlich Gemüth."
204 John 1:32-34; comp. 3:34.
205 Matt. 26:64; John l8:37; Luke23:43.
206 Luke 9:58; 19:10; Matt. 18:11; 20:17, 28; Mark 2:10, 28; John 1:51; 6:53, and many other passages. The term oJ uiJov" touÀ ajnqrwvpou occurs about 80 times in the Gospels. On its meaning comp. my book on the Person of Christ, pp. 83 sqq. (ed. of 1880).
207 Matt 16:20-23; Mark 8:30-33; Luke 9:21-27.
208 Acts 2:24, 32; Rom. 6:4; l0:9; 1 Cor. 15:15; Eph. 1:20; 1 Pet. 1:21.
209 John 2:19; 10:17, 18. In like
manner the first advent of the Lord is represented as his own voluntary act and
as a mission from the Father, John 8:42: ejgwV ejk teou~ ejxh~lqen KaiV
hJvkw; oujdeV gaVr ajpj ejmautou~ ejlhvluqa,
ajll! ejkei'novvv"
me
ajpevsteilen.)
210 Rom. 6:9, 10. Neander (Leben Jesu, pp. 596 and 597 of the 6th Germ. ed.) makes some excellent remarks on this inseparable connection between the resurrection and the ascension, and says that the asc ension would stand fast as a supernatural fact even if Luke had not said a word about it. A temporary resurrection followed by another death could never have become the foundation of a church.
211 1 Cor. 15:13-19; comp. Rom. 4:25, where Paul represents Christ’s death and resurrection in inseparable connection, as the sum and substance of the whole gospel.
212 Ewald makes the striking remark (VI. 90) that the resurrection is "the culmination of all the miraculous events which are conceivable from the beginning of history to its close."
213 Matt. 16:21-23; 17:9, 22, 23; 20:17-20; Mark 8:31; 9:9, 10, 31, 32 ("they understood not that saying, and were afraid to ask him"); Luke 9:22, 44, 45; 18:31-34; 24:6-8; John 2:21, 22; 3:14; 8:28; 10:17, 18; 12:32.
214 The devoted women went to the sepulchre on the first Christian Sabbath, not to see it empty but to embalm the body with spices for its long rest, Mark 16:1; Luke 23:56; and when they told the eleven what they saw, their words seemed to them "as idle talk," and "they disbelieved them," Luke 24:11. Comp. Matt. 28:17 ("some doubted"); Mark 16: 8 ("they were afraid"); John 20:25.
215 Dr. Baur states the contrast tersely thus: "Zwischen dem Tod [Jesu]und seiner Auferstehung liegt ein so tiefes undurchdringliches Dunkel, dass man nach so gewaltsam zerrissenem und so wundervoll wiederhergestelltem Zusammenhange sich gleichsam auf einem neuen Schauplatz der Geschichte sieht."Compare his remarks at the close of this section. Dr. Ewald describes the depression and sudden exaltation of the disciples more fully with his usual force (vol. vi. 54 sqq.). I will quote also the description of Renan, at the beginning of the first chapter of his work, Les Apôtres: "Jésus, quoique parlant sans cesse de résurrection, de nouvelle vie, n’avait jamais dit bien clairement qu’il ressusciterait en sa chair. Les disciples, (dans les premières heures qui suivirent sa mort, n’avaient à cet égard aucune espérance arrétée. Les sentimentsdont ils nous font la naive confidence supposent méme qu’ils croyaient tout fini. Ils pleurent et enterrent leur ami, sinon comme un mort vulgaire, du moins comme une personne dont la perte est irréparable (Marc 16:10; Luc 24:17, 21) ils sont tristes et abattus; l’espoir qu’ils avaient eu de le voir realiser le salut d’Israël est convaincu de vanité; on dirait des hommes qui ont perdu une grande et chère illusion. Mais l’ enthousiasme et l’amour ne connaissent par les situations sans issue. Ils se jouentde l’impossible, et plutot que d’abdiquer l’espérance, ils font violence à toute réalité," etc.
216 Matt. 28:18-20; Mark 16:15, 16; Luke 24;46-48; John 20:21-23; Acts 1:8.
217 So Meyer says, who is one of the fairest as well as most careful exegetes (Com. on John, 5th Germ. ed., p. 643). I will add the observations of Canon Farrar (Life of Christ, vol. II 432): "The lacunae, the compressions, the variations, the actual differences, the subjectivity of the narrators as affected by spiritual revelations, render all harmonies at the best uncertain. Our belief in the resurrection, as an historic fact, as absolutely well attested to us by subsequent and contemporary circumstances as any other event in history, rests on grounds far deeper, wider, more spiritual, more eternal, than can be shaken by divergences of which we can only say that they are not necessarily contradictions, but of which the true solution is no longer attainable. Hence the ’ten discrepancies’ which have been dwelt on since the days of Celsus, have never for one hour shaken the faith of Christendom. The phenomena presented by the narratives are exactly such as we should expect, derived as they are from different witnesses, preserved at first in oral tradition only, and written 1,800 years ago at a period when minute circumstantial accuracy, distinguished from perfect truthfulness, was little regarded. St. Paul, surely no imbecile or credulous enthusiast, vouches, both for the reality of the appearances, and also for the fact that the vision by which he was himself converted came, at a long interval after the rest, to him as to the ’abortive-born’ of the apostolic family (1 Cor. 15:4-8). If the narratives of Christ’s appearance to his disciples were inventions, how came they to possess the severe and simple character which shows no tinge of religious excitement? If those appearances were purely subjective, how can we account for their sudden, rapid, and total cessation ? As Lange finely says, the great fugue of the first Easter tidings has not come to us as a ’monotonous chorale,’ and mere boyish verbal criticism cannot understand the common feeling and harmony which inspire the individual vibrations of those enthusiastic and multitudinous voices (vol. V. 61). Professor Westcott, with his usual profundity, and insight, points out the differences of purpose in the narrative of the four Evangelists. St. Matthew dwells chiefly on the majesty and glory of the Resurrection; St. Mark, both in the original part and in the addition (Mark 16:9-20), insists upon it as a fact; St. Luke, as a spiritual necessity; St. John, as a touchstone of character (Introd. 310-315).
218 This theory was invented by the Jewish priests who crucified the Lord, and knew it to be false, Matt. 27:62-66; 28:12-15. The lie was repeated and believed, like many other lies, by credulous infidels, first by malignant Jews at the time of Justin Martyr, then by Celsus, who learned it from them, but wavered between it and the vision-theory, and was renewed in the eighteenth century by Reimarus in the Wolfenbüttel Fragments. Salvador, a French Jew, has again revived and modified it by assuming (according to Hase, Geschichte Jesu, p. 132) that Jesus was justly crucified, and was saved by the wife of Pilate through Joseph of Arimathaea or some Galilean women; that he retired among the Essenes and appeared secretly to a few of his disciples. (See his Jésus Christ et sa doctrine, Par. 1838.) Strauss formerly defended the vision-hypothesis (see below), but at the close of his life, when he exchanged his idealism and pantheism for materialism and atheism, he seems to have relapsed into this disgraceful theory of fraud; for in his Old and New Faith (1873) he was not ashamed to call the resurrection of Christ "a world-historical humbug." Truth or falsehood: there is no middle ground.
219 The Scheintod-Hypothese (as the Germans call it) was ably advocated by Paulus of Heidelberg (1800), and modified by Gfrörer (1838), who afterwards became a Roman Catholic. We are pained to add Dr. Hase (Gesch. Jesu, 1876, p. 601), who finds it necessary, however, to call to aid a "special providence," to maintain some sort of consistency with his former advocacy of the miracle of the resurrection, when he truly said (Leben Jesu, p. 269, 5th ed. 1865): "Sonach ruht die Wahrheit der Auferstehung unerschütterlich auf dem Zeugnisse, ja auf dem Dasein der apostolischen Kirche."
220 Dr. Strauss (in his second Leben Jesu, 1864, p. 298) thus strikingly and conclusively refutes the swoon-theory: "Ein halbtodt aus dem Grabe Hervorgekrochener, siech Umherschleichender, der ärztlichen Pflege, des Verbandes, der Stärkung und Schonung Bedürftiger, und am Ende doch dem Leiden Erliegender konnte auf die Jünger unmöglich den Eindruck des Sieqers über Tod und Grab, des Lebensfürsten machen, der ihrem spätern Auftreten zu Grunde lag. Ein solches Wiederaufleben hätte den Eindruck, den er im Leben und Tode auf sie gemacht hatte, nur schwächen, denselben höchstens elegisch ausklingen lassen, unmöglich aber ihre Trauer in Beigeisterung verwandeln, ihre Verehrung zur Anbetung steigern können." Dr. Hase (p. 603) unjustly calls this exposure of the absurdity of his own view, "Straussische Tendenzmalerei."Even more effective is the refutation of the swoon-theory by Dr. Keim (Leben Jesu v. Naz. III. 576): "Und dann das Unmöglichste: der arme, schwache, kranke, mühsam auf den Füssen erhaltene, versteckte, verkleidete, schliesslich hinsterbende Jesus ein Gegenstand des Glaubens, des Hochgefühles, des Triumphes seiner Anhänger, ein auferstandener Sieger und Gottessohn! In der That hier beginnt die Theorie armselig, abgeschmackt, ja verwerflich zu werden, indem sie die Apostel als arme Betrogene, oder gar mit Jesus selber als Betrüger zeigt. Denn vom Scheintod hatte man auch damals einen Begriff, und die Lage Jesu musste zeigen, dass hier von Auferstehung nicht die Rede war; hielt man ihn doch für auferstanden, gab er sich selbst als auferstanden, so. fehlte das nüchterne Denken, und hütete er sich gar, seinen Zustand zu verrathen, so fehlte am Ende auch die Ehrlichkeit. Aus allen diesen Gründen ist der Scheintod von der Neuzeit fast ausnahmslos verworfen worden."
221 The vision-hypothesis (Visions-Hypothese)was first
suggested by the heathen Celsus (see Keim, III. 577), and in a more respectful
form by the Jewish philosopher Spinoza, and elaborately carried out by Strauss
and Renan, with the characteristic difference, however, that Strauss traces the
resurrection dream to the apostles in Galilee, Renan (after Celsus) to Mary
Magdalene in Jerusalem, saying, in his Life of Jesus (almost
blasphemously), that "the passion of a hallucinated woman gave to the
world a risen God!" In his work on the Apostles, Renan enters more
fully into the question and again emphasizes, in the genuine style of a French
novelist, the part of the Magdalene."La gloire
de la résurrection (he says, p. 13) appartient à Marie de, Magdala.
Apres Jésus, c’est Marie qui a le plus fait pour la fondation du christianisme.
L’ombre créée par les sens délicats de Madeleine plane encore sur le monde ....
Sa grande affirmation de femme: ’Il est resuscité!’ a été la base de la foi de
l’humanité."The vision-theory has also been adopted and defended by Zeller, Holsten
(in an able treatise on the Gospel of Paul and Peter, 1868), Lang,
Volkmar, Réville, Scholten, Meijboom, Kuenen, Hooykaas. Comp. Keim, III. 579
sqq. Among English writers the anonymous author of Supernatural Religion is
its chief champion, and states it in these words (vol. III. 526, Lond. ed. of 1879):
"The explanation which we offer, and which has long been adopted in
various forms by able critics" [among whom, in a foot-note, he falsely
quotes Ewald] "is, that doubtless Jesus was seen Gr. (wjvfqh), but the
vision was not real and objective, but illusory and subjective; that is to say,
Jesus was not himself seen, but only a representation of Jesus within the minds
of the beholders."
On the other hand Ewald, Schenkel, Alex. Schweizer, and Keim have essentially modified the theory by giving the resurrection-visions an objective character and representing them as real though purely spiritual manifestations of the exalted Christ from heaven. Hase calls this view happily a Verhimmelung der Visionshypothese (Gesch. Jesu, p. 597). It is certainly a great improvement and a more than half-way approach to the truth, but it breaks on the rock of the empty sepulchre. It does not and cannot tell us what became of the body of Christ.
222 The author of Supernatural Religion (III. 530), calls to aid even Luther’s vision of the devil on the Wartburg, and especially the apparition of Lord Byron after his death to Sir Walter Scott in clear moonshine; and he fancies that in the first century it would have been mistaken for reality.
223 It is utterly baseless when Ewald and Renan extend these visions of Christ for months and years."Ces grands rêves mélancoliques," says Renan (Les Apötres, 34, 36), "ces entretiens sans cesse interrompus et recommecés avec le mort chéri remplissaient les jours et les mois .... Près d’un an s’écoula dans cette vie suspendue entre le ciel et la terre. Le charme, loin de décroître, augmentait," etc. Even Keim, III 598, protests against this view.
224 Acts 8:27.
225 Rom. 15:19.
226 Rom. 15:24. Comp. Clement of Rome, Ad Cor. c.5, ejpiV toV tevrma th~§` duvsew§ ejlqwvn. This passage, however, does not necessarily mean Spain, and Paul’s journey to Spain stands or falls with the hypothesis of his second Roman captivity.
227 Unless we find allusions to it in the Revelation of John, 6:9-11; 17:6; 18:24, comp. 18:20 ("ye holy apostles and prophets"). See Bleek, Vorlesungen über die Apokalypse,Berlin, 1862, p. 120.
228 Acts 2:41.
229 Tacitus, Anal. XV. 44, speaks of a "multitudo ingens"who were convicted of the "odium generis humani," i.e. of Christianity (regarded as a Jewish sect), and cruelly executed under Nero in 64.
230 Gal. 2:1 sqq.; 1 Cor. 3:3 sqq.
231 1Cor. 1:26-29.
232 On the typical import of apostolic Christianity compare the concluding section of my History of the Apostolic Church, pp. 674 sqq.
233 Matt. 22:23; Acts 12:2.
234 Gal. 2:9. James is even named before Cephas and John, and throughout the Acts from the Council of Jerusalem, at which he presided, he appears as the most prominent man in the churches of Palestine. In the Ebionite tradition he figures as the first universal bishop or pope.
235 The apocryphal tradition of the second and later centuries assigns to Peter, Andrew, Matthew, and Bartholomew, as their field of missionary labor, the regions north and northwest of Palestine (Syria, Galatia, Pontus, Scythia, and the coasts of the Black Sea); to Thaddaeus, Thomas, and Simon Cananites the eastern countries (Mesopotamia, Parthia, especially Edessa and Babylon, and even as far as India); to John and Philip Asia Minor (Ephesus and Hierapolis). Comp. the Acta Sanctorum; Tischendorf’s Acta Apostolorum Apocrylpha (1851); and for a brief summary my History of the Apost. Church, § 97, pp. 385 sqq.
236 Gal. 1:18, 19. The eijmhv in this connection rather excludes James from the number of the Twelve, but implies that he was an apostle in a wider sense, and a leader of apostolic dignity and authority. Comp. the eijmhv (sed tantum) Luke 4:26, 27; Rom. 14:14; Gal. 2:16.
237 Acts 15; Gal 2:1-10.
238 Gal. 2:11-21.
239 1 Cor. 9:5; Comp. Matt. 8:14.
240 2 Pet. 3:15, 16, dusnovvav tina. This passage, and the equally significant remark of Peter (2 Pet.1:20) that "no prophecy of Scripture is of private interpretation," or solution, have often been abused by the popes as a pretext for withholding the Scriptures from the people and insisting on the necessity of an authoritative interpretation. The passage refers to the prophecies of the Old Testament, which are not the productions of the human mind, but inspired by the Holy Ghost (1:21), and cannot be properly understood except as divinely inspired.
241 John 21:15-23. The last word of the Lord about Peter and John is very mysterious.
242 In this respect Baur differs from the standpoint of Strauss, who in his first Leben Jesu(1835) bad represented the gospel history as an innocent and unconscious myth or poem of the religious imagination of the second generation of Christians; but in his second Leben Jesu(1864) he somewhat modified his view, and at last (1873) he gave up the whole problem as a bad job. A tendency writing implies more or less conscious fiction and falsification of history. The Tübingen critics, however, try to relieve this fictitious literature of the odious feature by referring us to the Jewish and Christian apocryphal literature which was passed off under honored names without giving any special offence on that score.
243 Comp. here a valuable article of J. Oswald Dykes, in the "Brit. and For. Evang. Review," Lond. 1880, pp. 51 sqq.
244 It is amusing to read Renan’s account of this dispute (St. Paul, ch. x.). He sympathizes rather with Peter, whom he calls a "man profoundly kind and upright and desiring peace above all things," though he admits him to have been amiably weak and inconsistent on that as on other occasions; while he charges Paul with stubbornness and rudeness; but what is the most important point, he denies the Tübingen exegesis when he says: "Modern critics who infer from certain passages of the Epistle to the Galatians that the rupture between Peter and Paul was absolute, put themselves in contradiction not only to the Acts, but to other passages of the Epistle to the Galatians (1:18; 2:2). Fervent men pass their lives disputing together without ever falling out. We must not judge these characters after the manner of things which take place in our day between people well-bred and susceptible in a point of honor. This last word especially never had much significance with the Jews!"
245 See Hist. Apost. Ch. § 63, p. 235, and § 67, p. 265. The allusion to the governorship of Aretas in Damascus, 2 Cor. 11:32, 33, furnishes no certain date, owing to the defects of our knowledge of that period; but other indications combined lead to the year 37. Wieseler puts Paul’s conversion in the year 40, but this follows from his erroneous view of the journey mentioned in Gal. 2:1, which he identifies with Paul’s fourth journey to Jerusalem in 54, instead of his third journey to the Council four years earlier.
246 Rom. 1:13, 15, 22; 15:23-28; comp. Acts 19:21; 20:16; 23:11; 1 Cor. 16:3.
247 Rom. 15:25-27; 1 Cor. 16:1, 2; 2 Cor. 8 and 9; Acts 24:17.
248 Rom. 16:1, 23; comp. Acts 19:22; 2 Tim. 4:20; 1 Cor. 1:14.
249 See Wieseler, l. c., pp. 67 sqq.
250 Those who deny a second imprisonment of Paul assign these Epistles to the period of Paul’s residence in Ephesus, A.D. 54-57, and 2 Timothy to A.D. 63 or 64.
251 John 14:6, 26; 15:26; 16:7. The preparatory communication of the Spirit is related in John 20:22.
252 Comp. especially the classical chapters on the gifts of the Spirit, 1 Cor. 12, 13, and 14, and Rom. 12.
253 The Greek name hJ penthkosthv (hJmevra) is used (like quinquagesima) as a substantive, Tob. 2:1; 2 Macc. 12:32; Acts 2:1; 20:16; 1 Cor. 16:3, and by Josephus, Ant. III. 10, 6, etc. It survives not only in all the Romanic languages, but also in the German Pfingsten. The English Whit-Sunday is usually derived from the white garments of the candidates for baptism worn on that day (hence Dominica alba); others connect it with wit, the gift of wisdom from above. The Hebrew names of the festival are ry[iq;h' gj', eJorth; qerismou', the feast of harvest (Ex. 23:16), !yrIWBKh' !wOy and hJmevra tw'n nevwn, day of the first fruits (Num. 28:26), t/[;buv gj', eJorth; eJbdomavdwn, aJgiva eJpta; eJbdomavdwn, festival of (seven) weeks, as the harvest continued for seven weeks (Deut. 16:9, 10; Lev. 23:15; Tob. 2:1). It began directly after the Passover with the offering of the first sheaf of the barley-harvest, and ended at Pentecost with the offering of the first two loaves from the wheat-harvest.
254 Josephus speaks of "many tens of thousands being gathered together about the temple" on Pentecost, Ant. xiv. 13, 4; comp. xvii. 10, 2; Bell Jud. II. 3, 1. The Passover, of course, was more numerously attended by Jews from Palestine; but distant foreigners were often prevented by the dangers of travel in the early spring. Paul twice went to Jerusalem on Pentecost, Acts 18:21; 20:16. Many Passover pilgrims would naturally remain till the second festival.
255 Hence called the feast of the joy of the Law (hr;/Th' tj'im]vi). The date of Sinaitic legislation is based on a comparison of Ex. 12:2 with 19:1 (comp. my Hist. of the Ap. Ch., p. 192, note 5). The legislation on Pentecost, Deut. 16:9-12, represents it as a feast of rejoicing, and concludes with a reference to the bondage in Egypt and the commandments of Jehovah. Otherwise there is no allusion in the Bible, nor in Philo nor Josephus, to the historical significance of Pentecost. But there was a Jewish custom which Schöttgen (Hor. Heb. in Acts 2:1) traces to apostolic times, of spending the night before Pentecost in thanksgiving to God for the gift of the law. In the present Jewish observance the commemoration of the Sinaitic legislation is made prominent. Some Jews "adorn their houses with flowers and wear wreaths on their heads, with the declared purpose of testifying their joy in the possession of the Law."
256 The list of nations, Acts 2:8-11, gives a bird’s eye view of the Roman empire from the East and North southward and westward as far as Rome, and then again eastward to Arabia. Cyprus and Greece are omitted. There were Christians in Damascus before the conversion of Paul (9:2), and a large congregation at Rome long before he wrote his Epistle (Rom. 1:8).
257 Acts 1:15; 2:7. Ten times the number of tribes of Israel. These were, however, not all the disciples; Paul mentions five hundred brethren to whom the risen Lord appeared at once, 1 Cor. 15:6.
258 Exod. 19:16; comp. Hebr. 12:18, 19.
259 h|co" w{sper feromevnh" pnoh'" biaiva", ein Getöse wie von einem dahinfahrenden heftigen Wehen (Meyer). The term feromevnh, borne on, is the same which Peter uses of the inspiration of the prophets, 2 Pet. 1:21.
260 diamerizovmenai glw'ssai wJsei; purov", Acts2:3, are not parted or " cloven"tongues (E. V.)—resembling the fork-like shape of the episcopal mitre—but distributed tongues, spreading from one to another. This is the meaning of diamerivzein, in ver. 45; Luke 22:17; 23:34; John 19:24; Matt. 27:35. The distributive idea explains the change of number in ver. 3, glw'ssai—ejkavqisen, i.e., one tongue sat on each disciple.
261 Hence w{sper and wJseiv. John Lightfoot: "Sonus ventus vehementis, sed absque vento; sic etiam linguae igneae, sed absque igne."
262 Luke 3:22 (wJ" peristeravn); Matt. 3:10 (wJsei;); Mark 1:10; John 1:32. The
Rabbinical comment on Gen. 1:2 makes the same comparison, that " the
Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters like a dove," and
Milton sings (Parad, Lost, i. 20):
" With mighty wings
outspread
Dove-like sat’st brooding on the vast abyss."
263 They were baptized with water by John; but Christian baptism was first administered by them on the day of Pentecost. Christ himself did not baptize, John 4:2.
264 1 Pet. 1:3, 4.
265 Comp. Acts 1:13, 14.
266 Acts 2:3: "it (a tongue of fire) sat upon each of them."
267 Acts 2:3, 4, 17, 18.
268 Gal. 3:28.
269 ta; megalei'a tou' Qeou', Acts 2: 11; comp. the same term Luke 1:69, and the megaluvnein to;n qeovn, Acts 10:46.
270 Comp. 1 Cor. 14:22.
271 Acts 10:46.
272 Acts 19:6.
273 1 Cor. 12 and 14.
274 Acts 2:8:e{kasto" th/' ijdiva/ dialektw/ hJmw'n ejn h|/ ejgennhvqhmen. Comp. 2:11:ajkouvomen lalouvntwn aujtw'n tai'" hJmetevrai" glwvssai" ta; megalei'a tou' qeou'..
275 Comp. Acts 2:4, and 6.
276 1 Cor. 14:5, 13, 27, 28; comp. 1 Cor. 12:10, 30.
277 Comp. 1 Cor. 14:23.
278 Grotius (in loc.): "Paena linguarum dispersit homines, donum linguarum dispersos in unum populum collegit." See note on Glossolalia (p.17).
279 The former is the usual view, the latter is maintained by Stanley, Plumptre, and Farrar. Paul addressed the excited multitude in Jerusalem in the Hebrew tongue, which commanded greater silence, Acts 22:2. This implies that they would not have understood him in Greek as well, or listened as attentively.
280 What may be claimed for St. Bernard, St. Vincent Ferrer, and St. Francis Xavier is not a miraculous heteroglossolalia, but an eloquence so ardent, earnest, and intense, that the rude nations which they addressed in Latin or Spanish imagined they heard them in their mother tongue. St. Bernard (d. 1153) fired the Germans in Latin to the second crusade, and made a greater impression on them by his very appearance than the translation of the same speech by his interpreter. See Neander, Der heil. Bernhard, p. 338 (2d ed.). Alban Butler (Lives of the Saints, sub April 5) reports of St. Vincent Ferrer (died 1419) "Spondanus and many others say, the saint was honored with the gift of tongues, and that, preaching in his own, he was understood by men of different languages; which is also affirmed by Lanzano, who says, that Greeks, Germans, Sardes, Hungarians, and people of other nations, declared they understood every word he spoke, though he preached in Latin, or in his mother-tongue, as spoken at Valentia." This account clearly implies that Ferrer did not understand Greek, German, and Hungarian. As to Francis Xavier (d. 1552), Alban Butler says (sub Dec. 3) that the gift of tongues was "a transient favor," and that he learned the Malabar tongue and the Japanese "by unwearied application;" from which we may infer that his impression upon the heathen was independent of the language, Not one of these saints claimed the gift of tongues or other miraculous powers, but only their disciples or later writers.
281 Acts 2:46; 3:1; 5:42.
282 Acts 2:14 sqq.; 3:12 sqq.; 5:29 sqq.; 10:34 sqq.; 11:5 sqq.; 15:7 sqq.
283 Acts 2: 46, 47. Renan says, with reference to this period (Les apotres, ch. v.), that in no literary work does the word "joy" so often occur as in the New Testament, and quotes 1 Thess 1:6; 5:16; Rom. 14:17; 15:13; Gal. 5:22; Phil. 1:25; 3:1; 4:4; 1 John 1:4. Many other passages might be added.
284 On Stephen comp. Thiersch: De Stephani protomartyris oratione commentatio exegetica, Marb. 1849; Baur: Paul, ch. II.; my Hist. of the Apost. Church, pp. 211 sqq.; and the commentaries of Mover, Lechler, Hackett, Wordsworth, Plumptre, Howson and Spence, on Acts, chs. 6 and 7.
285 a.d. 50: Acts 15.
286 Gal. 2:11 sqq.
287 1 Cor. 9:5.
288 1 Pet. 1:1.
289 Rom. 15:20; 2 Cor. 10:16.
290 Alzog (§ 48), and other modern Roman church historians try to reconcile the tradition with the silence of the Scripture by assuming two visits of Peter to Rome with a great interval.
291 For particulars see my H. Ap. Ch. pp. 362-372. The
presence of Peter in Rome was the universal belief of Christendom till the
Reformation, and is so still in the Roman Catholic communion. It was denied
first in the interest of orthodox Protestantism against Romanism by U. Velenus
(1520), M. Flacius (1554), Blondel (1641), Salmasius (1645), and especially by
Fr. Spanheim (Da ficta Profectione Petri in urbem Romam, Lugd. B. 1679);
more recently in the interest of historical criticism by Baur (in special
essays, 1831 and 1836, and in his work on Paul, ch. IX.), K. Hase (1862,
doubtful in the 10th ed. of his Kirchengesch. 1877, p. 34), Mayerhoff,
De Wette, Greenwood (1856), Lipsius (1869), Volkmar (1873), Zeller (1876).
Volkmar denies even the martyrdom of Paul, and fancies that he died quietly in
a villa near Rome. Zeller (in Hilgenfeld’s "Zeitschrift," for 1876,
p. 46 sq.) was disposed to substitute "James" for the defective name
"Peter" in the testimony of Clemens Rom., Ad Cor. c. 5,
but this is now set aside by the edition of Bryennios from a more complete
manuscript, which clearly reads Pevtro" o{" in full. On the other hand the
presence and martyrdom of Peter in Rome is affirmed not only by all the Roman
Catholic, but also by many eminent Protestant historians and critics, as Bleek,
Credner, Olshausen, Gieseler, Neander, Niedner, Rothe, Thiersch, Krafft, Ewald,
Plumptre, and even by Hilgenfeld, who justly remarks (Einleitung in das N.
T. 1875 p. 624): "Man kann ein guter Protestant sein, wenn man den
Märtyrertod des Petrus in Rom festhält." Renan (in an appendix to his L’Antechrist,
551 sqq.) likewise asserts that Peter came to Rome, though not before 63,
and was among the victims of the Neronian persecution in 64, whom Tacitus
describes as crucibus affixi. He understands "Babylon,"1 Pet.
5:13, of Rome, according to the secret style of the Christians of those days.
In February, 1872, after the downfall of the temporal power of the papacy, a disputation was held in Rome between Protestant ministers (Gavazzi, Sciarelli, and Ribetto) and Roman divines (Guidi, and Canon Fabiani) on Peter’s presence in that city; the former denying, the latter affirming it. The disputation was published in several languages, and although destitute of critical value, it derives a sort of historical significance from the place where it was held, within a short distance from the residence of Pius IX., the first infallible pope. See Racconto autentico della disputa, etc., Roma, 1872; Authentic report of the Discussion held in Rome, February 9 and 10, 1872, between Catholic Priests and Evangelical Ministers, concerning the Coming of St. Peter to Rome. Translated by William Arthur, London, 1872; and Römische Disputation zwischen Katholiken und Protestanten über die These: War Petrus in Rom? Nach den stenographischen Berichten. Deutsche Ausg. Münster, 1872. Comp. the review of Lipsius in the "Jahrbücher für Protest. Theologie," 1876, Heft 4.
292 The old legend of Peter’s flight from the Mamertine prison in Rome, which seems to antedate the hierarchical glorification of Peter, would prove that his "consistent inconsistency" overtook him once more at the close of his life. A few days before his execution, it is said, he bribed the jailor and escaped from prison, but when he reached a spot outside the Porta San Sebastiano, now marked by a chapel, the Lord appeared to him with a cross, and Peter asked in surprise: "Lord, whither goest thou (Domine quo vadis)?"Jesus replied: "I go to Rome to be crucified again (venio Romam iterum crucifigi)." The disciple returned deeply humbled, and delivered himself to the jailor to be crucified head-downwards. The footprint of the Lord is still shown (or was shown in 1841, when I saw it) in the little chapel called "Domine quo vadis," and a rude fresco on the wall represents the encounter. The legend is first alluded to by Origen (quoting from the Pravxei" Pauvlou orPevtrou, the words of the Saviour: [Anwqen mevllw staurwqh'nai, see Opera IV. 332, and Hilgenfeld, l.c. IV. 72), then fully told in the apocryphal Acts of Peter and Paul, c. 82 (Tischendorf, l.c. p. 36, where Peter asks, Kuvrie, pou' poreuvh/; and the Lord answers: ejn Rwvmh/ ajpevrcomai staurwqh'nai), and by Ambrose in Sermo de basilicis non tradendis haereticis contra Auxentium (quoted by Lipsius, Petrus-Sage, p. 134 sq.).
293 1 Pet. 2:4-8. A striking instance of the impression of Christ’s word without a trace of boastfulness and assumption of authority.
294 1 Pet. 5:2; 2:25; comp. John 21:15-17.
295 Mark 14:72. "And straightway the second time the cock crew. And Peter called to mind the word how that Jesus said unto him, Before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice (comp.14:30); and when he thought thereon he wept."
296 Comp. Mark 8:27-33 with Matt. 16:13-23. The omission of the famous passage, "Thou art Rock," etc., can only be satisfactorily explained from the humility of Peter. An enemy or rival might have omitted them, but Mark was his faithful pupil, and would have mentioned them had he followed his own impulse, or had he been a papist.
297 Luke 22:31, 32, spoken in view of the approaching denial. This is the proper meaning of the passage which has been distorted by the Vatican Council into an argument for papal infallibility. Such application would logically imply also that every pope must deny Christ, and be converted in order to strengthen the brethren.
298 Acts 10:34, 35; 15:11.
299 Gal. 2:8, 9; comp. 1:18; 1 Cor. 15:5.
300 Acts 8:9-24. It is quite probable that in the description of the heretics in his second Epistle, Peter had in mind Simon Magus. Plumptre (l.c. p. 44) sees in the "great swelling words of vanity,"2 Pet. 2:18, an allusion to Simon’s boast that he was "the Great Power of God" (Acts 8:9, 10), and in the words "having eyes full of an adulteress,"etc. 2 Pet. 2:12-14, an allusion to Helena, the mistress of Simon, who is said to have accompanied him.
301 Gal. 2:11-14.
302 This is clear from the Epistles of Paul, especially the Galatians and Corinthians, and from Acts 21.
303 Justin Martyr (Apol. l.c. 26 and 56) reports that Simon Magus went to Rome under Claudius and received divine honors there, as was shown by a statue erected to him on an island in the Tiber. Such a statue was actually discovered in 1574, but with the inscription Semoni Sanco Deo Fidio sacrum, [not Simoni Deo sancto]. With reference to this supposed worship, Simon boasts in the pseudo-Clementine Recogn. II. 9: "Adorabor ut deus, publicis divins donabor honoribus, ita ut simulacrum mihi statuentes tanquam deum colant et adarent."
304 The chief of these productions are the twenty Greek pseudo-Clementine Homilies, which are based upon the older Khvrugma Pevtrou and other Jewish-Christian documents. See the ed. of Dressel: Clementis Romani quae feruntur Homilae viginti nunc prinum integrae, Gött. 1853 (429 pages), and of De Lagarde, Clementina, 1865. The Clementine literature has been thoroughly investigated by Baur, Hilgenfeld, Ritschl, Schliemann, Uhlhorn, Volkmar, and Lipsius. See a brief résumé in Baur’s Kirchengesch. vol. I. 85-94. Baur first tried to prove the identity of Simon Magus with Paul, in his essay on the Christuspartei in der Korinthischen Gemeinde, Tübingen, 1831. But Simon is a more comprehensive representative of all anti-Jewish and Gnostic heresies, especially that of Marcion. If he were meant to represent Paul alone, the author would not have retained the historic features from Acts 8, which are entirely irreconcilable with Paul’s well known history.
305 Such as the lost Khvrugma Pevtrou ejn JRwvmh/, and the Praedicatio Pauli (probably one book), used by Clement of Alexandria; the Syriac Sermon of Peter in Rome (in Curston’s "Ancient Syriac Doc.," Lond. 1864); the Acta Pauli, used by Origen and Eusebius; the Acts of Peter and Paul, of a later date, published by Thilo and Tischendorf. The last book has a conciliatory tendency, like the canonical Acts. Comp. Lipsius, l.c. pp. 47 sqq., and the fragments collected by Hilgenfeld, l.c. IV. 52 sqq.
306 The month is given in the Acta Petri et Pauli at the
close: jEteleiwvqhsan oiJ a{gioi e[ndoxoi ajpovstoloi
Pevtro" kai; Pau'lo" mhni; jIounivw/. kq. But different MSS. give July second or eighth.
See Tischendorf, l. c. p. 39. According to Prudentius (Hymn. 12)
the two apostles suffered on the same day, but a year apart:
"Unus utrumque dies, pleno tamen innovatus anno,
Vidit superba morte laureatum."
307 A bishop of the Vatican Council used this as an argument for papal absolutism and infallibility, inasmuch as Peter’s head supported his body, and not the body the head!
308 Baronius, Ad Ann. 69 (in Theiner’s ed. vol. I. 594 sq.) reconciles this difference by making the Janiculum and the Vatican one hill extending to the Milvian bridge.
309 tropai'a, Euseb. H. E. II. 25.
310 See Lipsius, l.c. pp. 96 sqq., and his Chronologie der röm. Päpste, pp. 49 sqq.
311 Hist. Eccl. II. 14. His statement is merely an inference from Justin Martyrs story about Simon Magus, which he quotes in ch. 13. But Justin M. says nothing about Simon Peter in that connection.
312 "Petrus apostolus, cum primum Antiochenam ecclesiam fundasset, Romanorum urbem proficiscitur, ibique evangelium praedicat, et commoratur illic antistes ecclesiae annis viginti."
313 Chr., ad ann. 44: "Petrus ... cum primum Antiochenam ecclesiam fundasset, Romam proficiscitur, ubi evangelium praedicans 25 annis ejusdem urbis episcopus perseverat."InDe viris illustr. cap. I, Jerome omits Antioch and says: "Simon Petrus ... secundo Claudii imperatoris anno, ad expugnandum Simonem Magum, Romam pergit, ibique, viginti quinque annis Cathedram Sacerdotatem tenuit, usque ad ultimum annum Neronis, id est, decimum quartum. A quo et affixus cruci, martyrio coronatus est, capite ad terram verso, et in sublime pedibus elevatis: asserens se indignum qui sic crucifigeretur ut Dominus suus.
314 Annal. ad ann. 69. Tom. I. 590, comp. I. 272, ed. Theiner.
315 Some Protestant writers press, in Matt. 16:18, the distinction between Pevtro":, stone, and pevtra, rock, which disappears in the translations, but this does not apply to the Aramaic Cepha, which was used by Christ, Comp. John 1:42; Gal. 2:9; 1 Cor. 1:12; 3:22; 9:5; 15:5 (and which, by the way, has analogies not only in Semitic but also in Aryan languages, as the Sanskrit kap-ala, the Greek kef-alhv, the Latin cap-ut, the German Kopf and Gipfel). On the interpretation of the famous passage in Matthew, see my annotations to Lange on Matthew, pp. 293 sqq., and my H. Ap. Ch., pp. 351 sqq.
316 On his relation to the Twelve and to Jesus, see the first note at the end of this section.
317 Gal. 2:12.
318 Mark 6:3; Matt. 13:55; John 7:5.
319 Mark 6:4; Matt. 13:57; Luke 4:24; John 4:44.
320 Acts 1:13; comp. 1 Cor. 9:5.
321 1 Cor. 15:7: e[peita w[fqh jIakwbw/.
322 The fragment is preserved by Jerome, De vir. ill. cap. 2. Comp. Hilgenfeld, Nov. Test. extra can. rec. IV. 17 and 29; and Nicholson, The Gospel according to the Hebrews (1879), pp. 63 sqq.
323 I follow here with Credner and Lightfoot the reading Dominus forDomini, corresponding to the Greek translation, which reads oJ kuvrio",and with the context, which points to the Lord’s death rather than the Lord’s Supper as the starting-point of the vow. See Lightfoot, Ep. to the Gal., p. 266. If we read "hora qu biberat calicem Domini,"the author of the Gospel of the Hebrews must have assumed either that James was one with James of Alphaeus, or that the Lord’s Supper was not confined to the twelve apostles. Neither of these is probable. James is immediately afterwards called " the Just."Gregory of Tours (Histor. Francorum, I. 21), relating this story, adds, in accordance with the Greek tradition: "Hic est Jacobus Justus, quem fratrem Domini nuncupant, pro eo quod Josephi fuerit filius ex alia uxore progenitus."See Nicholson, p.
324 "Greeting,"caivrein, Acts 15:23, and James 1:1, instead of the specific Christian cavri" kai; eijrhvnh.
325 1 Cor. 9:5.
326 Josephus calls James "the brother of Jesus the so-called Christ"(to;n ajdelfo;n jIhsou' tou' legomevnou Cristou', jIakwbo" o[noma aujtw'/ ), but these words an regarded by some critics (Lardner, Credner, and others) as a Christian interpolation.
327 Neander, Ewald, and Renan give the preference to the date of Josephus. But according to the pseudo-Clementine literature James survived Peter.
328 See below, Note II.
329 Gal. 2:12. How far the unnamed messengers of James from Jerusalem, who intimidated Peter and Barnabas at Antioch, acted under authority from James, does not appear; but it is certain from 2:9, as well as from the Acts, that James recognized the peculiar divine grace and success of Paul and Barnabas in the conversion of the Gentiles; he could therefore not without gross inconsistency make common cause with his adversaries.
330 Even Luther, in an unguarded moment (1524), called the epistle of James an "epistle of straw," because he could not harmonize it with Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith.
331 Ewald (vi. 608) remarks that it is just such a letter as we may expect from the centre of Christianity in that period, when most Christians were poor and oppressed by rich Jews.
332 The date of composition is as yet an unsolved problem, and critics vary between a.d. 45 and 62. Schneckenburger, Neander, Thiersch, Huther, Hofmann, Weiss, and Beyschlag, and among English divines, Alford, Bassett (who, however, wrongly vindicates the Epistle to James the son of Zebedee), and Plumptre assign it a very early date before the Council of Jerusalem (50) and the circumcision controversy, to which there is no allusion. On the other hand Lardner, De Wette, Wiesinger, Lange, Ewald, and also those commentators who see in the Epistle a polemical reference to Paul and his teaching, bring it down to 62. At all events, it was written before the destruction of Jerusalem, which would have been noticed by a later writer. The Tübingen school (Baur, Schwegler, Hilgenfeld) deny its genuineness and assign it to a.d. 80 or 90. Renan admits the genuineness of the Epistles of James and Jude, as counter-manifestoes of Jewish Christianity against Paulinism, and accounts for the good Greek style by the aid of a Greek secretary.
333 See the lists of parallel passages in Plumptre, pp. 7-9 and 33.
334 James 1:25. oJ parakuvya" eij" novmon tevleion to;n thÀ" ejleuqeriva".
335 James 2:1 e[cete th;n pivstin tou' kupivou hJmw'n JIhsou' Cristou' th'" dovxh" inscription, 1:1, the Lord Jesus Christ is associated with God.
336 Hegesippus apud Euseb. H. E. III., 11, 22, 32; IV., 5, 22. Const. Apost. VII. 46. Hegesippus assumes that Clopas, the father of Symeon, was, I brother of Joseph and an uncle of Jesus. He never calls Symeon "brother of the Lord," but only James and Jude (II. 23; III. 20).
337 The passage quoted from Papias Maria Cleophae sive Alphaei uxor, quae fuit mater Jacobi episcopi et apostoli,"is taken from Jerome and belongs not to the sub-apostolic Papias of Hierapolis (as has been supposed even by Mill and Wordsworth), but to a mediaeval Papias, the writer of an Elementarium or Dictionary in the 11th century. See Lightfoot, p. 265 sq.
338 Acts 8; comp. John 4.
339 Acts 10 and 11. The account which Peter gave to the brethren at Jerusalem was not a mere repetition of the facts related in Acts 10, but an apologetic adaptation to the peculiar wants of the audience. This has been well shown by Dean Howson in his Commentary on those two chapters (in Schaff’s Internat. Com. vol. II.). Comp. my Hist. of Ap. Ch. 217 sqq.
340 Acts, 11:26 comp. 26:28, and 1 Pet. 4:16
341 "Paul" (Little) is merely the Hellenized or Latinized form for his Hebrew name "Saul" (Desired), and has nothing whatever to do either with his own conversion, or with the conversion of Sergius Paulus of Cyprus. There are many similar instances of double names among the Jews of that time, as Hillel and Pollio, Cephas and Peter, John and Mark, Barsabbas and Justus, Simeon and Niger, Silas and Silvanus. Paul may have received his Latin name in early youth in Tarsus, as a Roman citizen; Paulus being the cognomen of several distinguished Roman families, as the gens AEmilia, Fabia, Julia, Sergia. He used it in his intercourse with the Gentiles and in all his Epistles. See Hist. Apost. Ch., p. 226, and my annotations to Lange on Romans 1:1, pp. 57 and 58.
342 When Paul wrote to Philemon, a.d. 63, he was an aged man (presbuvth", Phil. 9), that is, about or above sixty. According to Hippocrates a man was called presbuvth" from forty-nine to fifty-six, and after that gevrwn, senes. In a friendly letter to a younger friend and pupil the expression must not be pressed. Walter Scott speaks of himself as "an old grey man" at fifty-five. Paul was still a "youth" (neaniva", Acts 7:58) at the stoning of Stephen, which probably took place in 37; and although this term is likewise vaguely used, yet as he was then already clothed with a most important mission by the Sanhedrin, he must have been about or over thirty years of age. Philo extends the limits of neaniva" from twenty-one to twenty-eight, Xenophon to forty. Comp. Lightfoot on Philemon, v. 9 (p. 405), and Farrar, I., 13, 14.
343 Phil. 3:5. A Hebrew by descent and education, though a Hellenist or Jew of the dispersion by birth, Acts 22:3. Probably his parents were Palestinians. This would explain the erroneous tradition preserved by Jerome (De vir. ill. c. 5), that Paul was born at Giscala in Galilee (now El-Jish), and after the capture of the place by the Romans emigrated with his parents to Tarsus. But the capture did not take place till a.d. 67.
344 Comp. the sublime passage, Phil. 3:8-10, and 1 Cor. 2:1, 2.
345 Gal. 4:14: "I made progress in Judaism beyond many of mine own age in my nation, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers."
346 Scripture references and allusions abound in the Galatians, Romans, and Corinthians, but are wanting in the Thessalonians, Colossians, and Philemon, and in his address to the heathen hearers at Athens, whom he referred to their own poets rather than to Moses and the prophets.
347 As the reasoning from the singular or rather collective spevrma(zera)in Gal. 3:16, the allegorical interpretation of Hagar and Sarah, 4:22 sqq., and the rock in the wilderness, 1 Cor. 10:1-4. See the commentaries.
348 Comp. Gal. 1:21; Acts 9:30; 11:25.
349 1 Cor. 15:33. fqeivrousin h[qh crhsta; oJmilivai
kakaiv.
"Evil associations corrupt good manners."
350 Tit. 1:12. KrhÀte" ajei; yeuÀstai, kaka;
qhriva, gastevre" ajrgaiv.
"Cretans are liars alway,
bad beasts, and indolent gluttons."
As Epimenides was himself a Cretan, this contemptuous depreciation of his countrymen gave rise to the syllogistic puzzle: "Epimenides calls the Cretans liars; Epimenides was a Cretan: therefore Epimenides was a liar: therefore the Cretans were not liars: therefore Epimenides was not a liar," etc.
351 Acts 17:28. TouÀ [poetic for touvtou] ga;r kai;
gevno" ejsmevn.
"For we are also His
(God’s) offspring."
The passage occurs literally in
the Phoenomena of Aratus, v. 5, in the following connection:
...." We all greatly need
Zeus,
For we are his offspring; full of grace, he grants men
Tokens of favor ....
The Stoic poet, Cleanthes (Hymn. in Jovem, 5) uses the same expression in
an address to Jupiter: jEk souÀ ga;r gevno" ejsmevn, and in the Golden Poem, qeiÀon
ga;r gevno" ejsti; brotoiÀsin. We may also quote a parallel passage of Pindar, Nem.
VI., which has been overlooked by commentators:
}En
ajndrwÀn, e}n qewÀn gevno", ejk miaÀ" de; pnevomen matro;"
ajmfovteroi.
" One race of men and gods,
from one mother breathe we all."
It is evident, however, that all these passages were understood by their heathen authors in a materialistic and pantheistic sense, which would make nature or the earth the mother of gods and men. Paul in his masterly address to the Athenians, without endorsing the error, recognizes the element of truth in pantheism, viz., the divine origin of man and the immanence of God in the world and in humanity.
352 ta; stoiceiÀa touÀ kovsmou, Gal. 4:3, 9. So Hilgenfeld, Einleitung, p. 223. Thiersch assumes (p. 112) that Paul was familiar with the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, and that his dialectics is classical rather than rabbinical; but this is scarcely correct. In Romans 5:16, 18, he uses the word dikaivwma in the Aristotelian sense of legal adjustment (Rechtsausgleichung). See Eth. Nicom. v. 10, and Rothe’s monograph on Rom. 5:12-21. Baur compares Paul’s style with that of Thucydides.
353 Farrar, I. 629 sq., counts "upwards of fifty specimens of thirty Greek rhetorical figures in St. Paul," which certainly disprove the assertion of Renan that Paul could never have received even elementary lessons in grammar and rhetoric at Tarsus.
354 Cor. 9:1 refers to the vision of Christ at Damascus. In 2 Cor. 5:16: though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more," he particles eij kaiv (quamquam, even though, wenn auch) seem to chronicle a fact, as distinct from kai; eij (etiam si, even if, selbst wenn), which puts an hypothesis; but the stress lies on the difference between an external, carnal knowledge of Christ in his humility and earthly relations or a superficial acquaintance from hearsay, and a spiritual, experimental knowledge of Christ in his glory. Farrar (I. 73 sqq.), reasons that if Paul had really known and heard Jesus, he would have been converted at once.
355 He is called a tent-maker, skhnopoiov", Acts 18:3. Tents were mostly made of the coarse hair of the Cilician goat (Kilivkio" travgo", which also denotes a coarse man), and needed by shepherds, travellers, sailors, and soldiers. The same material was also used for mantelets, shoes, and beds. The Cilician origin of this article is perpetuated in the Latin cilicium and the French cilice, which means hair-cloth. Gamaliel is the author of the maxim that " learning of any kind unaccompanied by a trade ends in nothing and leads to sin."
356 Acts 23:16.
357 In 1 Cor. 9:5 (written in 57) he claims the right to lead a married life, like Peter and the other apostles, and the brethren of the Lord; but in 1 Cor. 7:7, 8 he gives for himself in his peculiar position the preference to single life. Clement of Alexandria, Erasmus, and others supposed that he was married, and understood Syzyge, in Phil. 4:3, to be his wife. Ewald regards him as a widower who lost his wife before his conversion (VI. 341). So also Farrar (I. 80) who infers from 1 Cor. 7:8 that Paul classed himself with widowers: "I say, therefore, to the unmarried [to widowers, for whom there is no special Greek word] and widows, it is good for them if they abide even as I." He lays stress on the fact that the Jews in all ages attached great importance to marriage as a moral duty (Gen. 1:28), and preferred early marriage; he also maintains (I. 169) that Paul, being a member of the Sanhedrin (as he gave his vote for the condemnation of the Christiana, Acts26:10), must have had, according to the Gemara, a family of his own. Renan fancies (ch. VI.) that Paul contracted a more than spiritual union with sister Lydia at Philippi, and addressed her in Phil. 4:3 as his suvzuge gnhvsie, that is, as his true co-worker or partner (conjux), since it is not likely that he would have omitted her when he mentioned, in the preceding verse, two deaconesses otherwise unknown, Euodia and Syntyche. The word suvzugo",as a noun, may be either masculine or feminine, and may either mean generally an associate, a co-worker ("yoke -fellow" in the E. V.), or be a proper name. Several persons have been suggested, Epaphroditus, Timothy, Silas, Luke. But Paul probably means a man, named Suvzugo"and plays upon the word: "Yokefellow by name and yoke-fellow in deed." Comp. a similar paronomasia in Philem. 10, 11jOnhvsimon, i.e., Helpful,-a[crhston, eu[crhston, unprofitable, profitable). See the notes of Meyer and Lange (Braune and Hackett) on these passages.
358 This sublime loneliness of Paul is well expressed in a poem, Saint
Paul, by Frederic W. H. Myers (1868), from which we may be permitted to
quote a few lines:
"Christ! I am Christ’s! and
let the name suffice you;
Aye, for me, too, He greatly hath sufficed;
Lo, with no winning words I would entice you;
Paul has no honor and no friend but Christ.
" Yes, without cheer of
sister or of daughter—
Yes, w ithout stay of father or of son,
Lone on the land, and homeless on the water,
Pass I in patience till the work be done.
"Yet not in solitude, if
Christ anear me
Waketh Him workers for the great employ;
Oh, not in solitude, if souls that hear me
Catch from my joyance the surprise of joy.
Hearts I have won of sister or of brother,
Quick on the earth or hidden in the sod
Lo, every heart awaiteth me, another
Friend in the blameless family of God."
359 2 Cor. 10:10 hJ parousiva touÀ swvmato" ajsqenh;" , kai; oJ lovgo" ejxouqenhmevno", or, as Cod. B. reads, ejxoudenhmevno", which has the same meaning. Comp. 10:1, where he speaks of his " lowly" personal appearance among the Corinthians (kata;provswpon tapeinov"). He was little, compared with Barnabas (Acts 14:12).
360 This is from the tradition preserved in the apocryphal Acts of Thecla. See the description quoted above, p. 282. Other ancient descriptions of Paul in the Philopatris of pseudo-Lucian (of the second, but more probably of the fourth century), Malala of Antioch (sixth century), and Nicephorus (fifteenth century), represent Paul as little in stature, bald, with a prominent aquiline nose, gray hair and thick beard, bright grayish eyes, somewhat bent and stooping, yet pleasant and graceful. See these descriptions in Lewin’s St. Paul, II. 412. The oldest extant portraiture of Paul, probably from the close of the first or beginning of the second century, was found on a large bronze medallion in the cemetery of Domitilla (one of the Flavian family), and is preserved in the Vatican library. It presents Paul on the left and Peter on the right. Both are far from handsome, but full of character; Paul is the homelier of the two, with apparently diseased eyes, open mouth, bald head and short thick beard, but thoughtful, solemn, and dignified. See a cut in Lewin, II. 211. Chrysostom calls Paul the three-cubit man (oJ trivphcu" a[nqrwpo", Serm. in Pet. et Paul.). Luther imagined: "St. Paulus war ein armes, dürres Männlein, wie Magister Philippus "(Melanchthon). A poetic description by J. H. Newman see in Farrar I. 220, and in Plumptre on Acts, Appendix, with another (of his own). Renan (Les Apôtres, pp. 169 sqq.) gives, partly from Paul’s Epistles, partly from apocryphal sources, the following striking picture of the apostle: His behavior was winning, his manners excellent, his letters reveal a man of genius and lofty aspirations, though the style is incorrect. Never did a correspondence display rarer courtesies, tenderer shades, more amiable modesty and reserve. Once or twice we are wounded by his sarcasm (Gal. 5: 12; Phil. 3:2). But what rapture! What fulness of charming words! What originality! His exterior did not correspond to the greatness of his soul. He was ugly, short, stout, plump, of small head, bald, pale, his face covered with a thick beard, an eagle nose, piercing eyes, dark eyebrows. His speech, embarrassed, faulty, gave a poor idea of his eloquence. With rare tact he turned his external defects to advantage. The Jewish race produces types of the highest beauty and of the most complete homeliness (des types de la plus grande beauté et de la plus complète laideur); but the Jewish homeliness is quite unique. The strange faces which provoke laughter at first sight, assume when intellectually enlivened, a peculiar expression of intense brilliancy and majesty (une sorte d’éclat profond et de majesté).
361 2 Cor. 12:7-9; Gal. 4:13-15. Comp. also 1 Thess. 2:18; 1 Cor. 2:3; 2 Cor. 1:8, 9; 4:10. Of the many conjectures only three: sick headache, acute ophthalmia, epilepsy, seem to answer the allusions of Paul which are dark to us at such a distance of time, while they were clear to his personal friends. Tertullian and Jerome, according to an ancient tradition, favor headache; Lewin, Farrar, and many others, sore eyes, dating the inflammation from the dazzling light which shone around him at Damascus (Acts 9:3, 17, 18; Comp. 22:13; 23:3, 5; Gal. 4:15); Ewald and Lightfoot, epilepsy, with illustration from the life of King Alfred (Mohammed would be even more to the point). Other conjectures of external, or spiritual trials (persecution, carnal temptations, bad temper, doubt, despondency, blasphemous suggestions of the devil, etc.) are ruled out by a strict exegesis of the two chief passages in 2 Cor. 12 and Gal. 4, which point to a physical malady. See an Excursus on Paul’s thorn in the flesh in my Commentary on Gal. 4:13-15 (Pop. Com. vol. III.).
362 2 Cor. 4:7; 12:9, 10.
363 Acts 9:4, the Hebrew form Saouvl, Saouvl, is used instead of the usual GreekSauÀlo", 9:8, 11, 22, 24, etc.
364 2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15.
365 Acts 9, 22, 26. These accounts are by no means mere repetitions, but modifications and adaptations of the same story to the audience under apologetic conditions, and bring out each some interesting feature called forth by the occasion. This has been well shown by Dean Howson in Excursus C on Acts 26, in his and Canon Spence’s Commentary on Acts. The discrepancies of the accounts are easily reconciled. They refer chiefly to the effect upon the companions of Paul who saw the light, but not the person of Christ, and heard a voice, but could not understand the words. The vision was not for them any more than the appearance of the risen Lord was for the soldiers who watched the grave. They were probably members of the Levitical temple guard, who were to bind and drag the Christian prisoners to Jerusalem.
366 Gal. 1:15, 16; 1 Cor. 15:8, 9; 9:1; 2 Cor. 4:6; Phil. 3:6; 1 Tim 1:12-14.
367 2 Cor. 4:6.
368 Gal. 1:1, 11, 12, 15-18.
369 This is implied in his words to King Agrippa, Acts 26:19.
370 Acts 26:14. Christ said to him: sklhrovn soi pro;" kevntra laktivzein. This is a proverbial expression used by Greek writers of refractory oxen in the plough when urged by a sharp-pointed instrument of the driver. The ox may and often does resist, but by doing so he only increases his pain. Resistance is possible, but worse than useless.
371 Rom. 7:7-25. This remarkable section describes the psychological progress of the human heart to Christ from the heathen state of carnal security, when sin is dead because unknown, through the Jewish state of legal conflict, when sin, roused by the stimulus of the divine command, springs into life, and the higher and nobler nature of man strives in vain to overcome this fearful monster, until at last the free grace of God in Christ gains the victory. Some of the profoundest divines-Augustin, Luther, Calvin-transfer this conflict into the regenerate state; but this is described in the eighth chapter which ends in an exulting song of triumph.
372 Phil 3:6, kata; dikaisuvnh th;n ejn novmw/ genovmeno" a[mempto".
373 Mark 10:21.
374 In his address to Peter at Antioch, Gal. 2:11-21, he gives an account of his experience and his gospel, as contrasted with the gospel of the Judaizers. Comp. Gal. 3:24; 5:24; 6:14; Rom. 7:6-13; Col. 2:20
375 1 Cor. 2:2; Gal. 6:14; Rom. 4:24, 25.
376 1 Cor. 15:9, 10; comp. Eph. 3:8: "Unto me who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace given;"1 Tim. 1:15, 16: "to save sinners of whom I am chief," etc.
377 Rom. 9:2, 3; comp. Ex. 32:31, 32.
378 Paul never numbers himself with the Twelve. He distinguishes himself from the apostles of the circumcision, as the apostle of the uncircumcision, but of equal authority with them. Gal. 2:7-9. We have no intimation that the election of Matthias (Acts 1:26) was a mistake of the hasty Peter; it was ratified by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit immediately following.
379 On the testimony of Paul to Christianity see above § 22. I will add some good remarks of Farrar, I. 202: "It is impossible," he says, "to exaggerate the importance of St. Paul’s conversion as one of the evidences of Christianity .... To what does he testify respecting Jesus? To almost every single primary important fact respecting his incarnation, life, sufferings, betrayal, last supper, trial, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and heavenly exaltation .... The events on which the apostle relied in proof of Christ’s divinity, had taken place in the full blaze of contemporary knowledge. He had not to deal with uncertainties of criticism or assaults on authenticity. He could question, not ancient documents, but living men; he could analyze, not fragmentary records, but existing evidence. He had thousands of means close at hand whereby to test the reality or unreality of the Resurrection in which, up to this time, he had so passionately and contemptuously disbelieved. In accepting this half-crushed and wholly execrated faith he had everything in the world to lose-he had nothing conceivable to gain; and yet, in spite of all-overwhelmed by a conviction he felt to be irresistible—Saul, the Pharisee, became a witness of the resurrection, a preacher of the cross."
380 See my History of the Creeds of Christendom, I. 426 sqq.
381 This is fully recognized by Renan, who, however, has little sympathy either with the apostle or the reformer, and fancies that the theology of both is antiquated. "That historical character," he says, "which upon the whole bears most analogy to St. Paul, is Luther. In both there is the same violence in language, the same passion, the same energy, the same noble independence, the same frantic attachment to a thesis embraced as the absolute truth." St. Paul, ch. XXII. at the close. And his last note in this book is this: "The work which resembles most in spirit the Epistle to the Galatians is Luther’s De Captivitate Babylonica Ecclesiae."
382 For particulars of his inner conflicts during his Erfurt period, see Köstlin’s Martin Luther (1875), I. 40 sqq. and 61 sqq.
383 Comp. the section on the Resurrection of Christ, pp. 172 sqq.
384 Reported by Epiphanius, Haer XXX. 16 (ed. Oehler, tom. I. 268 sq.).
385 In the Clem.
Hom., XVII., ch. 19 (p. 351, ed. Dressel), Simon Peter says to Simon Magus:
"If, then, our Jesus appeared to you in a vision (di j
oJravmato" oJfqeiv" made
himself known to
you, and conversed with you, it is as one who is enraged with an adversary (wJ"
ajntikeimevnw/ ojrgizovmeno"). And this is the reason why it was through visions and
dreams (di j oJramavtwn kai; ejnupnivwn), or through revelations
that, were from without (h] kai; di j ajpokaluvyewn e[zwqen
oujsw'n) that He
spoke to you. But can any one be rendered fit for instruction through
apparitions? (di j ojtasivan) .... And how are we to believe your word, when you
tell us that He appeared to you? And how did He appear to you, when you
entertain opinions contrary to His teaching? But if you have seen and were
taught by Him, and became His apostle for a single hour, proclaim His
utterances, interpret His sayings, love His apostles, contend not with me who
companied with Him. For you stand now in direct opposition to me, who am a firm
rock, the foundation of the church (sterea;n pevtran, qemevlion
ejkklhsiva",
comp. Matt. 16:18). If you were not opposed to me, you would not accuse me, and
revile the truth proclaimed by me, in order that I may not be believed when I
state what I myself have heard with my own ears from the Lord, as if I were
evidently a person that was condemned and had not stood the test [according to
the true reading restored by Lagarde, ajdokivmou o[nto" instead of ejudokimou'nto",’in good repute’]. But if you
say that I am ’condemned’ (eij kategnwsmevnon me levgei", comp. Gal. 2:11), you bring an
accusation against God, who revealed the Christ to me, and you inveigh against
Him who pronounced me blessed on account of the revelation (Matt. 16:17). But
if you really wish to be a co-worker, in the cause of truth, learn first of all
from us what we have learned from Him, and, becoming a disciple of the truth, become
a fellow-worker with me."
The allusions to Paul’s Christ-vision and his collision with Peter at Antioch are unmistakable, and form the chief argument for Baur’s identification of Simon Magus with Paul. But it is perhaps only an incidental sneer. Simon represents all anti-Jewish heresies, as Peter represents all truths.
386 This theory was proposed by the so-called "vulgar" or deistic rationalists (as distinct from the more recent speculative or pantheistic rationalists), and has been revived and rhetorically embellished by Renan in Les Apôtres (ch. X., pp. 175 sqq.). "Every step to Damascus," says the distinguished French Academicien, "excited in Paul bitter repentance; the shameful task of the hangman was intolerable to him; he felt as if he was kicking against the goads; the fatigue of travel added to his depression; a malignant fever suddenly seized him; the blood rushed to the head; the mind was filled with a picture of midnight darkness broken by lightning flashes; it is probable that one of those sudden storms of Mount Hermon broke out which are unequalled for vehemence, and to the Jew the thunder was the voice of God, the lightning the fire of God. Certain it is that by a fearful stroke the persecutor was thrown on the ground and deprived of his senses; in his feverish delirium he mistook the lightning for a heavenly vision, the voice of thunder for a voice from heaven; inflamed eyes, the beginning of ophthalmia, aided the delusion. Vehement natures suddenly pass from one extreme to another; moments decide for the whole life; dogmatism is the only thing which remains. So Paul changed the object of his fanaticism; by his boldness, his energy, his determination he saved Christianity, which otherwise would have died like Essenism, without leaving a trace of its memory. He is the founder of independent Protestantism. He represents le christianisme conquérant et voyageur. Jesus never dreamed of such disciples; yet it is they who will keep his work alive and secure it eternity." In this work, and more fully in his St. Paul, Renan gives a picture of the great apostle which is as strange a mixture of truth and error, and nearly as incoherent and fanciful, as his romance of Jesus in the Vie de Jésus.
387 So Strauss (Leben Jesu, § 138, in connection with the
resurrection of Christ), Baur (with much more seriousness and force, in his Paul,
P. I., ch. 3) and the whole Tübingen School, Holsten, Hilgenfeld, Lipsius,
Pfleiderer, Hausrath, and the author of Supernatural Religion (III. 498
sqq.). Baur at last gave up the theory as a failure (1860, see below). But
Holsten revived and defended it very elaborately and ingeniously in his essay
on the Christusvision des Paulus, in Hilgenfeld’s
"Zeitschrift" for 1861. W. Beyschlag (of Halle) very ably refuted it
in an article: Die Bekehrung des Paulus mit besonderer Rücksicht auf
die Erklärungsversuche von Baur und Holsten, in the "Studien und Kritiken" for 1864,
pp. 197-264. Then Holsten came out with an enlarged edition of his essay in
book form, Zum Evang. des Paulus und des Petrus, 1868, with a long reply
to Beyschlag. Pfleiderer repeated the vision-theory in his Hibbert Lectures (1885).
Some English writers have also written on Paul’s conversion in opposition to this modern vision-theory, namely, R. Macpherson: The Ressurection of Jesus Christ (against Strauss), Edinb., 1867, Lect. XIII., pp. 316-360; Geo. P. Fisher: Supernatural Origin of Christianity, N. York, new ed. 1877, pp. 459-470, comp. his essay on "St. Paul" in Discussions in History and Theology, N.Y. 1880, pp. 487-511; A. B. Bruce (of Glasgow): Paul’s Conversion and the Pauline Gospel, in the "Presbyt Review" for Oct. 1880 (against Pfleiderer, whose work on Paulinism Bruce calls "an exegetical justification and a philosophical dissipation of the Reformed interpretation of the Pauline system of doctrine").
388 He describes it as an oujravnio" ojptasiva Acts 26:19, and says that he saw Christ, that Christ was seen by him, 1 Cor. 9:1; 15:8. So the vision of the women at the tomb of the risen Lord is called an ojptasiva tw'n ajggevlwn, Luke 24:23. But even Peter, who was less critical than Paul, well knew how to distinguish between an actual occurrence (an ajlhqw'" genovmenon) and a merely subjective vision (a o{rama) Acts 12:9. Objective visions are divine revelations through the senses; subjective visions are hallucinations and deceptions.
389 Gal. 1:16, ajpokaluvyai tovn uiJo;n aujtou' ejn ejmoiv, within me, in my inmost soul and consciousness.
390 Baur was disposed to charge this confusion upon the author of
the Acts and to claim for Paul a more correct conception of the Christophany,
as being a purely inner event or "a spiritual manifestation of
Christ to his deeper self-consciousness" (Gal. 1:16, ejn
ejmoiv); but this
is inconsistent with Paul’s own language in 1 Cor. 9:1; 15:8. Holsten admits
that, without a full conviction of the objective, reality of the
Christophany, Paul could never have come to the conclusion that the crucified
was raised to new life by the almighty power of God. He states the case from
his standpoint clearly in these words (p. 65): "Der glaube
des Paulus an Jesus als den Christus war folge dessen, dass auch ihm Christus
erschienen war, (1
Cor. 15:8).Diese vision war für das bewusstsein des Paulus das
schauen einer objectiv-wirklichen, himmlischen gestalt, die aus ihrer
transcendenten unsichtbarkeit sich ihm zur erscheinung gebracht habe. Aus der
wirklichkeit dieser gesehauten gestalt, in welcher er den gekreuzigtenJesus
erkannte, folgerte auch er, dass der kreuzestote zu neuem leben von der
allmacht Gottes auferweckt worden, aus der gewissheit der auferweckung aber,
dass dieser von den toten auferweckte der sohn Gottes und der Messias sei. Wie
also an der wirklichkeit der auferweckung dem Paulus die ganze wahrheit seines
evangelium hängt (vgl. 1 Cor. 15, 12 f.), so ist es die, vision des
auferweckten, mit welcher ihm die wahrheit des messias-glaubens aufging, und
der umschwung seines bewusstseins sich vollendete.
"Diese vision war für Paulus der eingriff einer fremden transcendenten macht in sein geistesleben. Die historische kritik aber unter der herrschaft des gesetzes der immanenten entwicklung des menschlichen geistes aus innerweltlichen causalitäten muss die vision als einen immanenten, psychogischen akt seines eigenen geistes zu begreifen suchen. Ihr liegt damit eine ihrer schwiezigsten aufgaben vor, eine so schwierige, dass ein meister der historischen kritik, der zugleich so tief in das wesen des paulinischen geistes eingedrungen ist, als Baur, noch eben erklärt hat, dass ’keine, weder psychologische, noch dialektische analyse das innere geheimnis des aktes erforschen könne, in welchem Gott seinen sohn dem Paulus enthüllte.’Und doch darf sich die kritik von dem versuch, dies geheimnis zu erforschen, nicht abschrecken, lassen. Denn diese vision ist einer der entscheidendsten punkte für ein geschichtliches begreifen des urchristentums. In ihrer genesis ist der keim des paulinischen evangelium gegeben. So lange der schein nicht aufgehoben ist, dass die empfängnis dieses keims als die wirkung einer transcendenten kraft erfolgt sei, besteht über dem empfangenen fort und fort der schein des transcendenten. Und die kritik am wenigsten darf sich damit beruhigen, dass eine transcendenz, eine objectivität, wie sie von ihren gegnern für diese vision gefordert wird, von der selbstgewissheit des modernen geistes verworfen sei. Denn diese selbstgewissheit kann ihre wahrheit nur behaupten, solange und soweit ihre kategorieen als das gesetz der wirklichkeit nachgewiesen sind."Dr. Pfleiderer moves in the same line with Holsten, and eliminates the supernatural, but it is due to him to say that he admits the purely hypothetical character of this speculative theory, and lays great stress on the moral as well as the logical and dialectical process in Paul’s mind, "Darum war,"he says (Paulinismus, p. 16)."der Prozess der Bekehrung nichts weniger, als eine kalte Denkoperation; es war vielmehr der tiefsittliche Gehorsamsakt eines zarten Gewissens gegen die sich unwiderstehlich aufdrängende höhere Wahrheit (daher ihm auch der Glaube eine uJpakohvist), ein Akt grossartiger Selbstverleugnung, der Hingabe des alten Menschen und seiner ganzen religiösen Welt in den Tod, um fortan keinen Ruhm, ja kein Leben mehr zu haben, als in Christo, dem Gekreuzigten. Das ist ja der Grundton, den wir aus allen Briefen des Apostels heraustönen hören, wo immer er sein persönliches Verhältniss zum Kreuz Christi schildert; es ist nie bloss ein Verhältniss objectiver Theorie, sondern immer zugleich und wesentlich das der subjectiven Verbundenheit des innersten Gemüths mit dem Gekreuzigten, eine mystische Gemeinschaft mit dem Kreuzestod und mit dem Auferstehungsleben Christi."
391 Comp. 2 Cor. 12:2; Acts 18:9; 22:17. Some of these modern critics suppose that he was epileptic, like Mohammed and Swedenborg, and therefore all the more open to imaginary visions.
392 1 Cor. 15:8: e[scaton de; pavntwn, wJsperei; tw/À ejktrwvmati, w[fqh kajmoiv. Meyer justly remarks in loc.: e[scatonschliesst die Reihe leibhaftiger Erscheinungen ab, und scheidet damit diese von späteren visionären oder sonst apokalyptischen."Similarly Godet (Com. sur l’épitre aux Romains, 1879, I. 17) "Paul clôt l’énumeration des apparitions de Jésus ressuscité aux apôtres par celle qui lui a été accordée à lui-méme; il lui attribue donc la méme réalité qu’à celles-là, et il la distingue ainsi d’une manière tranchée de toutes les visions dont il fut plus tard honoré et que mentionnent le livre des Actes, et les épitres."
393 1 Cor 15:12 sqq. Dean Stanley compares this discussion to the Phaedo of Plato and the Tusculan Disputations of Cicero, but it is far more profound and assuring. Heathen philosophy can at best prove only the possibility and probability, but not the certainty, of a future life. Moreover the idea of immortality has no comfort, but terror rather, except for those who believe in Christ, who is "the Resurrection and the Life."
394 Gal. 1:16; 1 Cor. 9:1; 15:8; Acts 22:10, 14.
395 Acts 9:2; comp. Gal. 1:13; 1 Cor. 15:9; Phil. 3:6; 1 Tim. 1:13
396 See Baur’s Church History of the First Three Centuries, Tübingen, 2d ed. p. 45; English translation by Allan Menzies, London, 1878, vol. I. 47.
397 Geschichte Jesu von Nazara. Zürich, 1872, vol. III. 532.
398 Das Christusbild der Apostel. Leipzig, 1879, pp. 57 sq.
399 Les Épitres pauliniennes. Paris, 1878, vol. I. p. 11.
400 The eujqew"of Acts 9:20 compels us to put this short testimony during the few days (hJmejra" tinav") which he spent with the disciples at Damascus, before his departure to Arabia. About three years afterwards (or after "many days,"hJmevrai iJkanaiv, were fulfilled, Acts 9:23), he returned to Damascus to renew his testimony (Gal. 1:17).
401 Gal. 1:17, 18. In the Acts (9:23) this journey is ignored because it belonged not to the public, but private and inner life of Paul.
402 Comp. Gal. 4:25, where "Arabia" means the Sinaitic Peninsula.
403 2 Cor. 3:6-9.
404 Thus Godet sums up his life (Romans, Introd. I. 59). He thinks that Paul was neither the substitute of Judas, nor of James the son of Zebedee, but a substitute for a converted Israel, the man who had, single-handed, to execute the task which properly fell to his whole nation; and hence the hour of his call was precisely that when the blood of the two martyrs, Stephen and James, sealed the hardening of Israel and decided its rejection.
405 "Westward the course of empire takes its way." This famous line of Bishop Berkeley, the philosopher, express a general law of history both civil and religious. Clement of Rome says that Paul came on his missionary tour "to the extreme west" (ejpi; to; tevrma th'" duvsew"), which means either Rome or Spain, whither the apostle intended to go (Rom. 15:24, 28). Some English historians (Ussher, Stillingfleet, etc.) would extend Paul’s travels to Gaul and Britain, but of this there is no trace either in the New Test., or in the early tradition. See below.
406 Rom. 1:16, "to the Jews first," not on the ground of a superior merit (the Jews, as a people, were most unworthy and ungrateful), but on the ground of God’s promise and the historical order (Rom. 15:8).
407 2 Cor. 11:24-29.
408 2 Cor. 4:8, 9.
409 Rom. 8:31-39.
410 2 Tim. 4:6-8. We may add here the somewhat panegyric passage of Clement of Rome, who apparently exalts Paul above Peter, Ep. ad Corinth. c. 5: "Let as set before our eyes the good Apostles. Peter, who on account of unrighteous jealousy endured not one or two, but many toils, and thus having borne his testimony (marturhvsa", or, suffered martyrdom), went to his appointed place of glory. By reason of jealousy and strife Paul by his example pointed out the price of patient endurance. After having been seven times in bonds, driven into exile, stoned, and after having preached in the East and in the West, he won the noble reward of his faith, having taught righteousness unto the whole world and having reached the boundary of the West; and when he had borne his testimony before the magistrates, he departed from the world and went unto the holy place, having become the greatest example of patient endurance."
411 Acts 9:23-25; comp. 2 Cor. 11:32, 33. The window of escape is still shown in Damascus, as is also the street called Straight, the house of Judas, and the house of Ananias. But these local traditions are uncertain.
412 Gal. 1:18-24; Comp. Acts 9:26, 27.
413 Acts 22:17-21. It is remarkable that in his prayer he confessed his sin against "Stephen the martyr;" thus making public reparation for a public sin in the city where it was committed.
414 Acts 11:28-30; 12:25.
415 "Paul left Athens," says Farrar (I. 550 sq.), "a despised and lonely man. And yet his visit was not in vain .... He founded no church at Athens, but there-it may be under the fostering charge of the converted Areopagite-a church grew up. In the next century it furnished to the cause of Christianity its martyr bishops and its eloquent apologists (Publius, Quadratus, Aristides, Athenagoras). In the third century it flourished in peace and purity. In the fourth century it was represented at Nicaea, and the noble rhetoric of the two great Christian friends, St. Basil and St. Gregory of Nazianzus, was trained in its Christian schools. Nor were many centuries to elapse ere, unable to confront the pierced hands which held a wooden cross, its myriads of deities had fled into the dimness of outworn creeds, and its tutelary goddess, in spite of the flashing eyes which Homer had commemorated, and the mighty spear which had been moulded out of the trophies of Marathon, resigned her maiden chamber to the honour of that meek Galilaean maiden who had lived under the roof of the carpenter at Nazareth-the virgin mother of the Lord." Yet Athens was one of the last cities in the Roman empire which abandoned idolatry, and it never took a prominent position in church history. Its religion was the worship of ancient Greek genius rather than that of Christ. "Il est been moins disciple de Jésus et de saint Paul que de Plutarque et de Julien," says Renan, St. Paul, p. 208. His chapter on Paul in Athens is very interesting.
416 In Corinth Paul wrote that fearful, yet truthful description of pagan depravity in Rom. 1:18 sqq. The city was proverbially corrupt, so that korinqiavzomai means to practise whoredom, and korinqiasthv", a whoremonger. The great temple of Venus on the acropolis had more than a thousand courtezans devoted to the service of lust. With good reason Bengel calls a church of God in Corinth a "laetum et ingens paradoxon (in 1 Cor. 1:2). See the lively description of Renan, St. Paul, ch. VIII. pp. 211 sqq
417 Weiss (Bibl. Theol. des N. T., 3d ed. p. 202) is inclined to assign the composition of the Epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians to the period of the imprisonment at Caesarea. So also Thiersch, Reuss, Schenkel, Meyer, Zöckler, Hausrath. See Meyer Com. on Eph. (5th ed. by Woldemar Schmidt, 1878, p. 18), and on the other side, Neander, Wieseler, and Lightfoot (Philippians, 3d ed. 1873, p. 29), who date all the Epistles of the captivity from Rome.
418 Acts 28:30, 31. Comp. the Epistles of the captivity.
419 Bengel remarks on Acts 28:31 "Paulus Romae, apex evangelii, Actorum finis: quae Lucas alioqui (2 Tim. 4:11)facile potuisset ad exitum Pauli perducere. Hierosolymis cœpit: Romae desinit." The abruptness of the close seems not to be accidental, for, as Lightfoot remarks (Com. on Philippians, p. 3, note), there is a striking parallelism between the Acts and the Gospel of Luke in their beginning and ending, and there could be no fitter termination of the narrative, since it is the realization of that promise of the universal spread of the gospel which is the starting-point of the Acts.
420 Namely, to Ephesus 1 Tim. 1:3; 2 Tim. 4:13, 20; to Crete, Tit. 1:5 and to Nicopolis, Tit. 3:12.
421 Phil. 1:25; 2:24; Philem. 22. These passages, however, are not conclusive, for the Apostle claims no infallibility in personal matters and plans; he was wavering between the expectation and desire of speedy martyrdom and further labors for the brethren, Phil. 1:20-23; 2:17. He may have been foiled in his contemplated visit to Philippi and Colosse.
422 Rom. 15:24, 28. Renan denies a visit to the Orient, but thinks that the last labors of Paul were spent in Spain or Gaul, and that he died in Rome by the sword, a.d. 64 or later (L’Antechrist, 106, 190). Dr. Plumptre (in the Introduction to his Com. on Luke, and in an Appendix to his Com. on Acts) ingeniously conjectures some connection between Luke, Paul’s companion, and the famous poet, M. Annaeus Lucanus (the author of the Pharsalia, and a nephew of Seneca), who was a native of Corduba (Cordova) in Spain, and on this basis he accounts for the favorable conduct of J. Annaeus Gallic (Seneca’s brother) toward Paul at Corinth, the early tradition of a friendship between Paul and Seneca, and Paul’s journey to Spain. Rather fanciful.
423 Jos. Vita, c. 3. Comp. Plumptre, l.c.
424 Tertullian (De praescr. haeret. c. 36): "Romae Petrus passioni Dominica adaequatur, Paulus Joannis [Baptistae]exitu coronatur."
425 Comp. § 26, pp. 250, 257-259.
426 Ewald (VI. 631) conjectures that Paul, on hearing of the Neronian persecution, hastened back to Rome of his own accord, to bear testimony to Christ, and being seized there, was again brought to trial and condemned to death, a.d. 65. Ewald assumes an intervening visit to Spain, but not to the East.
427 2 Tim. 4:6-8. Bengel calls this Epistle testamentum Pauli et cycnes cantio.
428 1 Cor. 15:9 (a.d. 57); Eph. 3:8 (a.d. 62); 1 Tim. 3:15 (a.d. 63 or 64?)
429 A Latin inscription in Spain, which records the success of Nero in extirpating the new superstition, Gruter, Inscript., p. 238, is now commonly abandoned as spurious.
430 I must here correct an error into which I have fallen with Dr. Wieseler, in my Hist. of the Ap. Ch., p. 342, by reading uJpo; to; tevrma and interpreting it "before the highest tribunal of the West."ejpiv is the reading of the Cod. Alex. (though defectively written), as I have convinced myself by an inspection of the Codex in the British Museum in 1869, in the presence of Mr. Holmes and the late Dr. Tregelles. The preposition stands at the end of line 17, fol. 159b, second col., in the IVth vol. of the Codex, and is written in smaller letters from want of space, but by the original hand. The same reading is confirmed by the newly discovered MS. of Bryennios.
431 "Circumcision," says Renan (St. Paul, ch. III. p. 67)."was, for adults, a painful ceremony, one not without danger, and disagreeable to the last degree. It was one of the reasons which prevented the Jews from moving freely about among other people, and set them apart as a caste by themselves. At the baths and gymnasiums, those important parts of the ancient cities, circumcision exposed the Jew to all sorts of affronts. Every time that the attention of the Greeks and Romans was directed to this subject, outbursts of jestings followed. The Jews were very sensitive in this regard, and avenged themselves by cruel reprisals. Several of them, in order to escape the ridicule, and washing to pass themselves off for Greeks, strove to efface the original mark by a surgical operation of which Celsus has preserved us the details. As to the converts who accepted this initiation ceremony, they had only one course to pursue, and that was to hide themselves in order to escape sarcastic taunts. Never did a man of the world place himself in such a position; and this is doubtless the reason why conversions to Judaism were much more numerous among women than among men, the former not being put, at the very outset, to a test, in every respect repulsive and shocking. We have many examples of Jewesses married to heathens, but not a single one of a Jew married to a heathen woman."
432 Acts 10 and 11.
433 Acts 15:1, 5:tine;" tw'n ajpo; th'" aiJrevsew" twÀn Farisaivwn pepisteukovte" .
434 Gal. 2:4: pareivsaktoi (comp. pareisavxousin in 2 Pet. 2:1) yeudavdelfoi oi{tine" pareishÀlqon(who came in sideways, or crept in, sneaked in; comp. Jude 4, pareisevdusan) kataskoph'sai th;n ejleuqerivan hJmw'n h}n e[comen ejn Cristw/' jIhsou', i{na hJma'" katadoulwvsousin. The emissaries of these Pharisaical Judaizers are ironically called "super-extra-apostles,"uJperlivan ajpovstoloi, 2 Cor. 11:5; 12:11. For these are not the real apostles (as Baur and his followers maintained in flat contradiction to the connection of 2 Cor. 10 to 12), but identical with the "false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ,"2 Cor. 11:13. Baur’s monstrous misinterpretation has been completely refuted by Weizsäcker (on Paul and the Congregation of Corinth, l.c. p. 640), Keim, Klöpper, Wieseler, and Grimm (l.c. 432). Comp. also Godet, l.c. pp. 49 sq.
435 Gal. 1:22-24.
436 To what ridiculous extent some Jewish rabbis of the rigid school of Shammai carried the overestimate of circumcision, may be seen from the following deliverances quoted by Farrar (I. 401): "So great is circumcision that but for it the Holy One, blessed be He, would not have created the world; for it is said (Jer. 33:25), ’But for my covenant [circumcision] I would not have made day and night, and the ordinance of heaven and earth.’"" Abraham was not called ’perfect’ till he was circumcised."
437 Paul mentions the subjective motive, Luke the objective call. Both usually unite in important trusts. But Baur and Lipsius make this one of the irreconcilable contradictions!
438 Luke reports the former and hints at the latter (comp. Acts 5 and 6) Paul reports the private understanding and hints at the public conference, saying (Gal. 2:2): "I laid (ajneqevmhn) before them [the brethren of Jerusalem] the gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, but privately before them who were of repute (or, before those in authority),"i.e., the pillar-apostles of the circumcision, James, Cephas, and John, comp. Acts 2:9. Dr. Baur who denies the public conference, mistranslates kat j ijdivan de; toiÀ'" dokouÀsin und zwar wandte ich mich speciell (specially) an die vorzugsweise Geltenden,"so that toi'" dokou'sin would be the same as the preceding aujtoi'" (Paul, ch. V. p. 117, in the English translation, I. 122). But this would have been more naturally expressed by toi'" dokouÀsin ejn aujtoi''" and kat j ijdivan, as Grimm, the lexicographer of the N. T., remarks against Baur (l.c., p. 412), does not mean "specially" at all, but privatim, seorsum, "apart," "in private," as in Mark 4:34, and kat j ijdivan eijpei'n, Diod. I. 21.
439 The order in which they are named by Paul is significant: James first, as the bishop of Jerusalem and the most conservative, John last, as the most liberal of the Jewish apostles. There is no irony in the term oij doko'Ànte" and oij stuÀloi, certainly not at the expense of the apostles who were pillars in fact as well as in name and repute. If there is any irony in Gal 2:6, oJpoi'oiv pote h\san, oujdevn moi diafevrei, it is directed against the Judaizers who overestimated the Jewish apostles to the disparagement of Paul. Even Keim (l.c., p. 74) takes this view: "Endlich mag man aufhören, von ironischer Bitterkeit des Paulus gegenüber den Geltenden zu reden: denn wer gleich nachher den Bundesschluss mit den ’Säulen’feierlich und befriedigt registrirt, der hat seine Abweisung der menschlichen Autoritäten in v. 6nicht dem Andenken der Apostel gewidmet, sondern dem notorischen Uebermuth der judenchristlichen Parteigänger in Galatien."
440 Gal. 2:7-10; comp. Acts 11:30; 24:17; 1 Cor. 16:1-3; 2 Cor. 8 and 9; Rom. 15:25-27.
441 Barnabas, as the older disciple, still retained precedence in the Jewish church, and hence is named first. A later forger would have reversed the order.
442 Dr. Plumptre remarks against the Tübingen critics (on Acts 15:7): "Of all doctrines as to the development of the Christian church, that which sees in Peter, James, and John the leaders of a Judaizing anti-Pauline party is, perhaps, the most baseless and fantastic. The fact that their names were unscrupulously used by that party, both in their lifetime and, as the pseudo-Clementine Homilies and Recognitions show, after their death, cannot outweigh their own deliberate words and acts."
443 This is very evident from the indignant tone of Paul against the Judaizers, and from the remark in Acts 15:6: pollhÀ" suzhthvsew" genomevnh", comp. Acts 15:2: genomevnh" stavsew"(factious party spirit, insurrection, Luke 23:19; Mark 15:7) kaiv zhthvsew" oujk ojlivgh". Such strong terms show that Luke by no means casts the veil of charity over the differences in the apostolic church.
444 Gal. 2:3-5. See the note below.
445 Acts 16:3. The silence of Luke concerning the non-circumcision of Titus has been distorted by the Tübingen critics into a wilful suppression of fact, and the mention of the circumcision of Timothy into a fiction to subserve the catholic unification of Petrinism and Paulinism. What a designing and calculating man this anonymous author of the Acts must have been, and yet not shrewd enough to conceal his literary fraud or to make it more plausible by adapting it to the account in the Galatians, and by mentioning the full understanding between the apostles themselves! The book of Acts is no more a full history of the church or of the apostles than the Gospels are full biographies of Christ.
446 Comp. Rom. 14 and 15; 1 Cor. 9:19-23; Acts 21:23-26.
447 Gal. 5:6; 6:15; 1 Cor. 7:19. Dr. Plumptre’s remarks on the last passage are to the point: "Often those who regard some ceremony as unimportant magnify the very disregard of it into a necessary virtue. The apostle carefully guards against that by expressing the nothingness of both circumcision and uncircumcision (Rom. 2:25; Gal. 5:6; 6:15). The circumicision of Timothy, and the refusal to circumcise Titus by St. Paul himself, are illustrations at once of the application of the truth here enforced, and of the apostle’s scrupulous adherence to the principles of his own teaching. To have refused to circumcise Timothy would have attached some value to noncircumcision. To have circumcised Titus would have attached some value to circumcision."
448 Acts 15:7-11; comp. Acts 10: 28 sqq.; 1 Pet. 1:12; 5:12; 2 Pet. 3:15, 16. The style of Peter is distinctly recognizable, as in the epithet of God, oJ kardiognwvsth, Acts 15:8, comp. Acts 1:24. Such minute coincidences go to strengthen the documentary trustworthiness of the Acts.
449 Like the Popes, who do not attend synods at Jerusalem or elsewhere and make speeches, but expect all doctrinal controversies to be referred to them for their final and infallible decision.
450 Acts15:11: thÀ" cavrito" tou' kurivou jIhsou' pisteuvomen swqhnvai, kaq j o}n tropon kajkeinoi (the heathen). Comp. Rom. 10:12, 13.
451 Comp. Acts15:13-21; 21:18-25; James 1:25; 2:12; and the account of Hegesippus quoted in § 27, p. 274.
452 The Gentile form of greeting, caivrein, Acts 15:23, occurs again in James 1:1, but nowhere else in the New Testament, except in the letter of the heathen, Claudius Lysias (Acts 23:26); the usual form being cavri" kai; eijrhvnh. This is likewise one of those incidental coincidences and verifications which are beyond the ken of a forger.
453 According to the oldest reading, oiJ ajpovstoloi kai; oiJ presbuvteroi ajdelfoiv, which may also be rendered: "the apostles, and the presbyters, brethren;" comp. Acts 15:22. The omission of ajdelfoiv in some MSS. may be due to the later practice, which excluded the laity from synodical deliberations.
454 Acts 15:23-29.
455 Acts 16:4
456 Acts 21:15. Comp. also Rev. 2:14, 20. But why does Paul never refer to this synodical decree? Because he could take a knowledge of it for granted, or more probably because he did not like altogether its restrictions, which were used by the illiberal constructionists against him and against Peter at Antioch (Gal. 2:12). Weizsäcker and Grimm (l.c., p. 423) admit the historic character of some such compromise, but transfer it to a later period (Acts 21:25), as a proposition made by James of a modus vivendi with Gentile converts, and arbitrarily charge the Acts with an anachronism. But the consultation must have come to a result, the result embodied in a formal action, and the action communicated to the disturbed churches.
457 Justin Martyr, about the middle of the second century, considered the eating of eijdwlovquta as bad as idolatry. Dial. c. Tryph. Jud. 35
458 Ex. 34:,15; Lev. 17:7 sqq.; Deut. 12:23 sqq. The reason assigned for the prohibition of the taste of blood is that "the life of the flesh is in the blood," and the pouring out of blood is the means of "the atonement for the soul" (Lev. 17:11). The prohibition of blood as food was traced back to the time of Noah, Gen. 9:4, and seems to have been included in the seven "Noachian commandments" so-called, which were imposed upon the proselytes of the gate, although the Talmud nowhere specifies them very clearly. The Moslems likewise abhor the tasting of blood. But the Greeks and Romans regarded it as a delicacy. It was a stretch of liberality on the part of the Jews that pork was not included among the forbidden articles of food. Bentley proposed to read in Acts 15:20 porkeiva (frompovrko", porcus) for porneiva, but without a shadow of evidence.
459 1 Cor. 8:7-13; 10:23-33; Rom. 14:2, 21; 1 Tim. 4:4.
460 The word porvneia, without addition, must be taken in its usual sense, and cannot mean illegitimate marriages alone, which were forbidden to the Jews, Ex. 34; Lev. 18, although it may include them
461 Apoc. 2:14, 20.
462 1 Cor. 6:13-20; comp. 1 Cor. 5:9; 1 Thess. 4:4, 5; Eph. 5:3,
5; Col. 3:5. What a contrast between these passages and the sentence of Micio
in Terence.
"Non es flagitium, mihi crede,
adulescentulum
Scortari, neque potare."—Adelph. i. 2. 21,
22. (Ed. Fleckeisen p. 290.)
To which, however, Demea (his more virtuous married brother)
replies:
"Pro Juppiter, tu homo adigis me
ad insaniam.
Non est flagitium facere haec adulescentulum?"—Adelph. i. 2. 31, 32
463 Acts 15:21; comp. Acts 13:15; 2 Cor. 3:14, 15.
464 Acts 21:20-25. Irenaeus understood the decree in this sense (Adv. Haer III. 12, 15: "Hi qui circa Jacobum apostoli gentibus quidem libere agere permittebant; ipsi vero ... perseverabant in pristinis observationibus ... religiose agebant circadispositionem legis quae est secundum Mosem."Pfleiderer (l.c. 284) takes a similar view on this point, which is often overlooked, and yet most important for the proper understanding of the subsequent reaction. He says: "Die Judenchristen betreffend, wurde dabei stillschweigend als selbstverständliche Voraussetzung angenommen, dass bei diesen Alles beim Alten bleibe, dass also aus der Gesetzesfreiheit der Heidenchristen keierlei Consequenzen für die Abrogation des Gesetzes unter den Judenchristen zu ziehen seien; auf dieser Voraussetzung beruhte die Beschränkung der älteren Apostel auf die Wirksamkeit bei den Juden (da eine Ueberschreitung dieser Schranke ohne Verletzung des Gesetzes nicht möglich war); auf dieser Voraussetzung beruhte die Sendung der Leute von Jakobus aus Jerusalem nach Antiochia und beruhte der Einfluss derselben auf Petrus, dessen vorhergegangenes freieres Verhalten dadurch als eine Ausnahme von der Regel gekennzeichnet wird."
465 Without intending any censure, we may illustrate the position of the strict constructionists of the school of St. James by similar examples of conscientious and scrupulous exclusiveness. Roman Catholics know no church but their own, and refuse all religious fellowship with non Catholics; yet many of them will admit the action of divine grace and the possibility of salvation outside of the limits of the papacy. Some Lutherans maintain the principle: "Lutheran pulpits for Lutheran ministers only; Lutheran altars for Lutheran communicants only." Luther himself refused at Marburg the hand of fellowship to Zwingli, who was certainly a Christian, and agreed with him in fourteen out of fifteen articles of doctrine. High church Anglicans recognize no valid ministry without episcopal ordination; close communion Baptists admit no valid baptism but by immersion; and yet the Episcopalians do not deny the Christian character of non-Episcopalians, nor the Baptists the Christian character of Pedo-Baptists, while they would refuse to sit with them at the Lord’s table. There are psalm-singing Presbyterians who would not even worship, and much less commune, with other Presbyterians who sing what they call "uninspired" hymns. In all these cases, whether consistently or not, a distinction is made between Christian fellowship and church fellowship. With reference to all these and other forms of exclusiveness we would say in the spirit of Paul: "In Christ Jesus neither circumcision" (viewed as a mere sign) "availeth anything, nor uncircumcision," neither Catholicism nor Protestantism, neither Lutheranism nor Calvinism, neither Calvinism nor Arminianism, neither episcopacy nor presbytery, neither immersion nor pouring nor sprinkling, nor any other accidental distinction of birth and outward condition, but "a new creature, faith working through love, and the keeping of the commandments of God."Gal. 5:6; 6:15; 1 Cor. 7:19.
466 The imperfect sunhvsqien meta; tw'n ejqnw'n, Gal. 2:12, indicates habit he used to eat with the uncircumcised Christians. This is the best proof from the pen of Paul himself that Peter agreed with him in principle and even in his usual practice. The eating refers, in all probability, not only to common meals, but also to the primitive love-feasts (agapae) and the holy communion, where brotherly recognition and fellowship is consummated and scaled.
467 Acts 10:27-29, 34, 35; 11:3: "thou wentest in to men uncircumcised and didst eat with them."
468 tine;" ajpo; jIakwvbou, Gal, 2:12, seems to imply that they were sent by James (comp. Matt. 26:47; Mark 5:25; John 3:2), and not simply disciples of James or members of his congregation, which would be expressed by tine;" tw'n ajpo; jIakwvbou. See Grimm, l.c., p. 427.
469 There are not a few examples of successful intimidations of strong and bold men. Luther was so frightened at the prospect of a split of the holy Catholic church, in an interview with the papal legate, Carl von Miltitz, at Altenburg in January, 1519, that he promised to write and did write a most humiliating letter of submission to the Pope, and a warning to the German people against secession. But the irrepressible conflict soon broke out again at the Leipzig disputation in June, 1519.
470 Gal 2:14-21. We take this section to be a brief outline of Paul’s address to Peter; but the historical narrative imperceptibly passes into doctrinal reflections suggested by the occasion and adapted to the case of the Galatians. In the third chapter it naturally expands into a direct attack on the Galatians.
471 Paul draws, in the form of a question, a false conclusion of the Judaizing opponents from correct premises of his own, and rejects the conclusion with his usual formula of abhorrence, mh; gevnoito, as in Rom. 6:2.
472 Gal. 2:11, Peter stood self-condemned and condemned by the Gentiles, kategnwsmevno" h\n, not " blameworthy," or " was to be blamed"(E. V.).
473 Comp. 1 Cor. 9:5, 6; 15:5; Col. 4:10; Philem. 24; 2 Tim. 4:11.
474 1 Pet. 5:12; 2 Pet. 3:15, 16.
475 So Clement of Alexandria, and other fathers, also the Jesuit Harduin.
476 This monstrous perversion of Scripture was advocated even by such fathers as Origen, Jerome, and Chrysostom. It gave rise to a controversy between Jerome and Augustin, who from a superior moral sense protested against it, and prevailed.
477 Comp. 2 Cor, 4:7; Phil. 3:12; James 3:2; 1 John 1:8; 2:2.
478 Comp. Acts 21:17-20.
479 The E. V. translates uJperlivan ajpovstoloi, 2 Cor. 11:5, "the very chiefest apostles," Plumptre better, "those apostles-extraordinary." They are identical with the yeudapovstoloi, 11:13, and not with the pillar-apostles of the circumcision, Gal. 2:9; see above, p. 334, note 1.
480 Augustin thus distinguishes three periods in the Mosaic law: 1, lex viva, sed non vivifica; 2, l. moribunda, sed non mortifera; 3, l. mortua et mortifera.
481 Friedländer, I. 372 sqq.
482 See some of these eulogistic descriptions in Friedländer, I. 9, who says that the elements which produced this overwhelming impression were "the enormous, ever changing turmoil of a population from all lands, the confusing and intoxicating commotion of a truly cosmopolitan intercourse, the number and magnificence of public parks and buildings, and the immeasurable extent of the city." Of the Campagna he says, p. 10: "Wo sich jetzt eine ruinenerfüllte Einöde gegen das Albanesergebirge hinerstreckt, über der Fieberluft brütet, war damals eine durchaus gesunde, überall angebaute, von Leben wimmelden Strassen durchschnittene Ebene."See Strabo, v. 3, 12
483 Friedländer, I. 54 sqq., by a combination of certain data, comes to the conclusion that Rome numbered under Augustus (A. U. 749) 668,600 people, exclusive of slaves, and 70 or 80 years later from one and a half to two millions.
484 Friedländer, I. 11: "In dem halben Jahrhundert von Vespasian bis Hadrian erreichte Rom seinen höchsten Glanz, wenn auch unter den Antoninen und später noch vieles zu seiner Verschönerimg geschehen ist."
485 By Renan, L’Antechrist, p. 7; Friedländer, I. 310, 372; and Harnack, l.c., p. 253. But Hausrath, l.c., III. 384, assumes 40,000 Jews in Rome under Augustus, 60,000 under Tiberius. We know from Josephus that 8,000 Roman Jews accompanied a deputation of King Herod to Augustus (Ant. XVII. 11, 1), and that 4,000 Jews were banished by Tiberius to the mines of Sardinia (XVIII. 3, 5; comp. Tacitus, Ann. II. 85). But these data do not justify a very definite calculation.
486 Friedländer, III. 510: "Die Inschrift sind überwiegend griechisch, allerdings zum Theil bis zur Unverständlichkeit jargonartig; daneben finden sich lateinische, aber keine hebräischen."See also Garrucci, Cimiterio in vigna Rondanini, and the inscriptions (mostly Greek, some Latin) copied and published by Schürer, Die Gemeindeverfassung der Juden, etc., pp. 33 sqq.
487 Josephus, Ant. XVIII. 6,4. Comp. Harnack, l.c., p. 254.
488 Tacitus, Hist. V. 4: "Profana illic omnia quae apud nos sacra; rursum concessa apud illos quae nobis incesta."Comp. his whole description of the Jews, which is a strange compound of truth and falsehood.
489 "Poppaea Sabina, the wife of Otho, was the fairest woman of her time, and with the charms of beauty she combined the address of an accomplished intriguer. Among the dissolute women of imperial Rome she stands preëminent. Originally united to Rufius Crispinus, she allowed herself to be seduced by Otho, and obtained a divorce in order to marry him. Introduced by this new connection to the intimacy of Nero, she soon aimed at a higher elevation. But her husband was jealous and vigilant, and she herself knew how to allure the young emperor by alternate advances and retreats, till, in the violence of his passion, he put his friend out of the way by dismissing him to the government of Lusitania. Poppaea suffered Otho to depart without a sigh. She profited by his absence to make herself more than ever indispensable to her paramour, and aimed, with little disguise, at releasing herself from her union and supplanting Octavia, by divorce or even death." Merivale, Hist. of the Romans, VI. 97. Nero accidentally kicked Poppaea to death when in a state of pregnancy (65), and pronounced her eulogy from the rostrum. The senate decreed divine honors to her. Comp. Tac. Ann. XIII. 45, 46; XVI. 6; Suet., Nero, 35.
490 "Victi victoribus leges dederunt."Quoted by Augustin (De Civit. Dei, VI. 11) from a lost work, De Superstitionibus. This word received a singular illustration a few years after Seneca’s death, when Berenice, the daughter of King Agrippa, who had heard the story of Paul’s conversion at Caesarea (Acts 25:13, 23), became the acknowledged mistress first of Vespasianus and then of his son Titus, and presided in the palace of the Caesars. Titus promised to marry her, but was obliged, by the pressure of public opinion, to dismiss the incestuous adulteress. "Dimisit invitus invitam." Sueton. Tit., c. 7; Tacit. Hist., II. 81.
491 The history of the Roman Ghetto (the word is derived from [Dg:, caedo, to cut down, comp. Isa. 10:33; 14:12; 15:2; Jer. 48:25, 27, etc., presents a curious and sad chapter in the annals of the papacy. The fanatical Pope Paul IV. (1555-’59) caused it to be walled in and shut out from all intercourse with the Christian world, declaring in the bull Cum nimis: "It is most absurd and unsuitable that the Jews, whose own crime has plunged them into everlasting slavery, under the plea that Christian magnanimity allows them, should presume to dwell and mix with Christians, not bearing any mark of distinction, and should have Christian servants, yea even buy houses." Sixtus V. treated the Jews kindly on the plea that they were "the family from which Christ came;" but his successors, Clement VIII., Clement XI., and Innocent XIII., forbade them all trade except that in old clothes, rags, and iron. Gregory XIII. (1572-’85), who rejoiced over the massacre of St. Bartholomew, forced the Jews to hear a sermon every week, and on every Sabbath police agents were sent to the Ghetto to drive men, women, and children into the church with scourges, and to lash them if they paid no attention! This custom was only abolished by Pius IX., who revoked all the oppressive laws against the Jews. For this and other interesting information about the Ghetto see Augustus J. C. Hare, Walks in Rome, 1873, 165 sqq., and a pamphlet of Dr. Philip, a Protestant missionary among the Jews in Rome, On the Ghetto, Rome, 1874.
492 Acts 28:17-29.
493 Acts 2:10:oiJ ejpidhmou'ntes JRwmaiÀoi, jIoudaiÀoi te kai; proshvlutoi . Sojourners are strangers (comp. 17:21, oiJ epidhmou'nte" zevnoi), as distinct from inhabitants (katoikou'nte", 7:48; 9:22; Luke 13:4). Among the Hellenistic Jews in Jerusalem who disputed with Stephen were Libertini, i.e., emancipated Roman Jews, descendants of those whom Pompey had carried captive to Rome, Acts 6:9.
494 Given up even by Roman Catholic historians in Germany, but still confidently reasserted by Drs. Northcote and Brownlow, l.c. I.,p. 79, who naively state that Peter went to Rome with Cornelius and the Italian band in 42. Comp. on this subject §26, pp. 254 sqq.
495 Rom. 16:7, "Salute Andronicus and Junias (or Junia), my kinsmen, and my fellow-prisoners who ... have been in Christ before me." If Junias is masculine, it must be a contraction from Junianus, as Lucas from Lucanus. But Chrysostom, Grotius, Reiche, and others take it as a female, either the wife or sister of Andronicus.
496 Sueton., Claud., c. 25: "Judaeos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantes Roma expulit." The Romans often confounded Christus (the Anointed) andChrestus (from crhstov", useful, good), and called the Christians crhstianoiv, Chrestiani. Compare the French form chrétien. Justin Martyr uses this etymological error as an argument against the persecution of the Christians for the sake of their name. Apol. I.,c. 4 (I. p. 10, ed. Otto): Cristianoi; ei\nai kathgorouvmeqa, to; de; crhsto;n miseiÀ'sqai ouj divkaion. He knew, however, the true origin of the name of Christ, I.c. 12: jIhsou'" Cristov", ajf j ou\ kai; to; Cristianoi; ejponomavzesqai ejschvkamen. Tertullian says that the name Christus was almost invariably mispronounced Chrestus bythe heathen. Apol., c. 3; Ad Nat., I.3. This mistake continued to be made down to the fourth century, Lactantius, Instit. Div., IV. 7, and is found also in Latin inscriptions. Renan derives the name Christianus from the Latin (like Herodian, Matt. 22:16, Pompejani, Caesareani), as the derivation from the Greek would require Crivsteio" (Les âpotres, p. 234). Lightfoot denies this, and refers to Sardiano;", Trallianov"(Philippians, p.16, note 1); but Renan would regard these nouns as Latinisms like jAsianov" (Acts 20:4, Strabo, etc.). Antioch, where the name originated (Acts 11:26), had long before been Romanized and was famous for its love of nicknames. Renan thinks that the term originated with the Roman authority as an appellation de police. The other two passages of the N.T. in which it occurs, Acts 26:28; 1 Pet. 4:16, seem to imply contempt and dislike, and so it is used by Tacitus and Suetonius. But what was originally meant by the heathen to be a name of derision has become the name of the highest honor. For what can be nobler and better than to be a true Christian, that is, a follower of Christ. It is a remarkable fact that the name " Jesuit,"which was not in use till the sixteenth century, has become, by the misconduct of the order which claimed it, a term of reproach even in Roman Catholic countries; while the term " Christian"embraces proverbially all that is noble, and good, and Christ-like.
497 Acts 18:2; Rom. 16:3. An unconverted Jew would not have taken the apostle under his roof and into partnership. The appellation .jIoudai'o" often signifies merely the nationality (comp. Gal. 2:13-15). The name Aquila, i.e., Eagle, Adler, is still common among Jews, like other high sounding animal names (Leo, Leopardus, Löwe, Löwenherz, Löwenstein, etc.). The Greek jAkuvla" was a transliteration of the Latin, and is probably slightly altered in Onkelos, the traditional author of one of the Targums, whom the learned Emmanuel Deutsch identifies with Aquila (jAkuvla", slyq[ in the Talmud), the Greek translator of the Old Testament, a convert to Judaism in the reign of Hadrian, and supposed nephew of the emperor. Liter. Remains (N. York, 1874), pp. 337-340. The name of his wife, Priscilla (the diminutive form of Prisca), " probably indicates a connection with the gens of the Prisci, who appear in the earliest stages of Roman history, and supplied a long series of praetors and consuls." Plumptre on Acts, 18:2.
498 Rom. 1:8; 16:5, 14, 15, 19.
499 Acts 28:13. Puteoli was, next after Ostia, the chief harbor of Western Italy and the customary port for the Alexandrian grain ships; hence the residence of a large number of Jewish and other Oriental merchants and sailors. The whole population turned out when the grain fleet from Alexandria arrived. Sixteen pillars still remain of the mole on which St. Paul landed. See Friedländer, II. 129 sq.; III. 511, and Howson and Spence on Acts 28:13.
500 Acts 28:15. The Forum of Appius (the probable builder of the famous road called after him) is denounced by Horace as a wretched town "filled with sailors and scoundrel tavern-keepers." Tres Tabernae was a town of more importance, mentioned in Cicero’s letters, and probably located on the junction of the road from Antium with the Via Appia, near the modern Cisterna. The distances from Rome southward are given in the Antonine Itinerary as follows: "to Aricia, 16 miles; to Tres Tabernae, 17 miles; to Appii Forum, 10 miles."
501 Phil. 1:12-15; Acts 28:30.
502 Col. 4:7-14; Eph. 6:21; Philem. 24; Phil. 2:25-30; 4:18; comp. also 2 Tim. 4:10-12.
503 Phil. 1:15-18. Comp. Lightfoot in loc.
504 Ad Cor., ch. 6. The polu; plhÀqo" ejklektw'n corresponds precisely to the "ingens multitudo"of Tacitus, Ann. XV. 44.
505 Comp. my Hist. Ap. Ch., p. 296 sqq. Dr. Baur attempted to revolutionize the traditional opinion of the preponderance of the Gentile element, and to prove that the Roman church consisted almost exclusively of Jewish converts, and that the Epistle to the Romans is a defense of Pauline universalism against Petrine particularism. He was followed by Schwegler, Reuss, Mangold, Hilgenfeld, Volkmar, Holsten, Holtzmann., and also to some extent by Thiersch and Sabatier. But he was opposed by Olshausen, Tholuck, Philippi, De Wette, Meyer, Schott, Hofmann, in favor of the other view. Beyschlag proposed a compromise to the effect that the majority, in conformity with Paul’s express statements, were Gentile Christians, but mostly ex-proselytes, and hence shared Judaizing convictions. This view has been approved by Schürer and Schultz. Among the latest and ablest discussions are those of Weizsäcker and Godet, who oppose the views both of Baur and Beyschlag. The original nucleus was no doubt Jewish, but the Gentile element soon outgrew it, as is evident from the Epistle itself, from the last chapter of Acts, from the Neronian persecution, and other facts. Paul had a right to regard the Roman congregation as belonging to his own field of labor. The Judaizing tendency was not wanting, as we see from the 14th and 15th chapters, and from allusions in the Philippians and Second Timothy, but it had not the character of a bitter personal antagonism to Paul, as in Galatia, although in the second century we find also a malignant type of Ebionism in Rome, where all heretics congregated.
506 Lightfoot, Galat., p. 323.
507 Lightfoot, l.c., p. 20. See especially the investigations of Caspari, in his Quellen zur Geschichte des Taufsymbols, vol. III. (1875), 267-466. According to Friedländer, I. 142, 481, Greek was the favorite language at the imperial court, and among lovers.
508 Phil. 1:13; 4: 22. The praitwvrion embraces the officers as well as the soldiers of the imperial regiments; oiJ ek th'" kaivsaro" oijkiva" may include high functionaries and courtiers as well as slaves and freedmen, but the latter is more probable. The twenty names of the earlier converts mentioned in Rom. 16 coincide largely with those in the Columbaria of the imperial household on the Appian way. Comp. Lightfoot, Philipp., p. 169 sqq., Plumptre, Excursus to his Com. on Acts, and Harnack, l.c., pp. 258 sq. Harnack makes it appear that the two trusty servants of the Roman church, Claudius Ephebus and Valerius Bito, mentioned in the Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians, c. 63, belonged to the household of the emperor Claudius.
509 See above, § 29, p. 279, especially the essay of Lightfoot quoted there. Harnack (l.c., p. 260) and Friedländer regard the acquaintance of Paul with Seneca as very improbable, Plumptre as probable. An epitaph from the third century was found in Ostia which reads: D M. M. Anneo. Paulo. Petro. M. Anneus. Paulus. Filio. Carissimo. See De Rossi in the Bullet. di archeol. christ., 1867, pp. 6 sq., and Renan, L’Antechrist, p. 12. Seneca belonged to the gens Annaea. But all that the inscription can be made to prove is that a Christian member of the gens Annaea in the third century bore the name of "Paul," and called his son "Paulus Petrus," a combination familiar to Christiana, but unknown to the heathen. Comp, Friedländer, III. 535.
510 Here Christianity has been inferred from the vague description of Tacitus, Ann. XIII. 32. See Friedländer III. 534; Lightfoot, p. 21; Northcote and Brownlow, I. 82 sq. Harnack, p. 263. The inference is confirmed by the discovery of the gravestone of a Pomponius Graecinus and other members of the same family, in the very ancient crypt of Lucina, near the catacomb of St. Callistus. De Rossi conjectures that Lucina was the Christian name of Pomponia Graecina. But Renan doubts this, L’Antech., p. 4, note 2.
511 Plumptre, l.c. Martial, a Spaniard by birth, came to Rome a.d. 66.
512 Sueton., Domit. 15; Dion Cass., 67, 14; Euseb., H. E. III. 18.
513 De Rossi, Bullett. for 1865, 1874 and 1875; Lightfoot, St. Clement of Rome, Append., 257 sq., Harnack, 266-269.
514 Lange on Romans, p. 29 (Am. ed.): "As the light and darkness of Judaism was centralized in Jerusalem, the theocratic city of God (the holy city, the murderer of the prophets), so was heathen Rome, the humanitarian metropolis of the world, the centre of all the elements of light and darkness prevalent in the heathen world; and so did Christian Rome become the centre of all the elements of vital light, and of all the antichristian darkness in the Christian church. Hence Rome, like Jerusalem, not only possesses a unique historical significance, but is a universal picture operative through all ages. Christian Rome, especially, stands forth as a shining light of the nations, which is turned into an idol of magical strength to those who are subject to its rule."
515 In 2 Thess. 2:6, 7, to; katevcon is the Roman empire, oJ katevcwn the emperor as its representative. This is the patristic interpretation to which some of the beat modern commentators have returned. Mediaeval sects and many Protestant writers found the great apostacy in the Papacy and the restraining power in the German empire; while papal commentators took revenge by fastening the charge of apostacy on the Reformation which was restrained by the Papacy. I believe in a repeated and growing fulfilment of this and other prophecies on the historic basis of the apostolic age and the old Roman empire.
516 It is so represented in the Apocalypse 13 –18 after the Neronian persecution.
517 Comp. Renan’s portraiture of Nero, l.c. ch. I. He thinks that there is no parallel to this monster, and calls him un esprit prodigieusement déclamatoire, une mauvaise nature, hypocrite, légère, vaniteuse; un composé incroyable d’intelligence fausse, de méchanceté profonde, d’égoïsme atroce et sournois, avee des raffinements inouïs de subtilité."See also the description of Merivale, ch. LV. (vol. VI. 245 sqq.).
518 Tacitus (Ann. XV. 41) gives the date quarto decimo [ante] Kalendas Sextiles ... quo et Senones captam urbem inflammaverant. Friedländer, I. 6, wrongly makes it the 17th July. The coincidence with the day when the Gauls had set fire to Rome (July 19, A. U. 364, or 453 years before), was considered a bad omen. It was in the tenth year of Nero’s reign, ie., a.d. 64. See Clinton, Fasti Romani, I. Oxon. 1845, pp. 45, 46; Friedländer, l.c. I. 6; Schiller, l.c. pp. 173 sq.; Merivale, VI. 131, note. Eusebius, in his Chronicle, erroneously puts the fire in the year 66.
519 For a description of the Circus Maximus see Friedländer, III. 293 sqq. The amphitheatrical rows of seats were eight stadia long, with accommodation for 150,000 persons. After Nero’s reconstruction the seats amounted to 250,000 under Vespasianum, and subsequent additions raised the number, in the fourth century to 385,000. It was surrounded by wooden buildings for shopkeepers (among whom were many Jews), astrologers, caterers, prostitutes, and all sorts of amusements. Nero was most extravagant in his expenditure for the circus and the theatre to gratify the people’s passion for Panem et Circenses, to use Juvenal’s words.
520 "Per sex dies septemque noctes," Sueton. Nero, 38 sex dies,"Tacit. Ann. XV. 4
521 The nine days’ duration is proved by an inscription (Gruter, 61. 3). The great fire in London in 1666 lasted only four days and swept an area of 436 acres. Comp. Lambert’s Hist. of London,II. 91, quoted by Merivale. The fire in Chicago lasted only thirty-six hours, October 8 and 9, 1871, but swept over nearly three and one-third square miles (2,114 square acres), and destroyed 17,450 buildings, the homes of 98,500 people.
522 Tacitus XV. 39: "Pervaserat rumor ipso tempore flagrantis urbis inisse eum domesticam scenam et cecinisse Troianum excedium." Sueton. c. 38: "Quasi offensus deformitate veterum aedificiorum et angustiis flexurisque vicorum [Nero]incendit Urbem ... Hoc incendium e turre Maecenatiana prospectans, laetusque ’flammae,’ut ajebat, ’pulchritudine,’a{lwsin Ilii in illo suo scaenico habitu decantavit."Robbers and ruffians were seen to thrust blazing brands into the buildings, and, when seized, they affirmed that they acted under higher orders. The elder Pliny, Xiphilinus, and the author of the tragedy, Octavia, likewise charge Nero with incendiarism. But Schiller, l.c. 425 sqq., labors to relieve him of it.
523 We do not know the precise date of the massacre. Mosheim fixes it on November, Renan on August, a.d. 64. Several weeks or months at all events must have passed after the fire. If the traditional date of Peter’s crucifixion be correct there would be an interval of nearly a year between the conflagration, July 19, 64, and his martyrdom, June 29th.
524 "Crucibus affixi," says Tacitus. This would well apply to Peter, to whom our Lord had prophesied such a death, John 21:18, 19. Tertullian says:"Romae Petrus passioni Dominicae adaequatur"(De Praescript. Haeret., c. 36; comp. Adv. Marc., IV. 5; Scorpiace, 15). According to a later tradition he was, at his own request, crucified with his head downwards, deeming himself unworthy to be crucified as was his Lord. This is first mentioned in the Acta Pauli, c. 81, by Origen (in Euseb. H. E., III. 1) and more clearly by Jerome (Catal. 1); but is doubtful, although such cruelties were occasionally practised (see Josephus, Bell. Jud., V. 11, 1). Tradition mentions also the martyrdom of Peter’s wife, who was cheered by the apostle on her way to the place of execution and exhorted to remember the Lord on the cross (mevmnhso tou' Kurivou). Clement of Alexandria, Strom. VII. 11, quoted by Eusebius, H. E., III. 30. The orderly execution of Paul by the sword indicates a regular legal process before, or more probably at least a year after, the Neronian persecution in which his Roman citizenship would scarcely have been respected. See p. 326.
525 So Gibbon (ch. XVI.), more recently Merivale, l.c. ch. 54 (vol. VI. 220, 4th ed.), and Schiller, l.c., pp. 434, 585, followed by Hausrath and Stahr. Merivale and Schiller assume that the persecution was aimed at the Jews and Christians indiscriminately. Guizot, Milman, Neander, Gieseler, Renan, Lightfoot, Wieseler, and Keim defend or assume the accuracy of Tacitus and Suetonius.
526 Ant. XX. 8, 2, 3.
527 So Ewald. VI. 627, and Renan, L’Antechist, pp. 159 sqq. Renan ingeniously conjectures that the "jealousy" to which Clement of Rome (Ad Cor. 6) traces the persecution, refers to the divisions among the Jews about the Christian religion.
528 Orosius (about 400), Hist., VII. 7: "Primus Romae Christianos suppliciis et mortibus adferit [Nero],ac per omnes provincias pari persecutione excruciari imperavit."So also Sulpicius Severus, Chron. II. 29. Dodwell (Dissert. Cypr. XI., De Paucitate martyrum, Gibbon, Milman, Merivale, and Schiller (p. 438) deny, but Ewald (VI. 627, and in his Com. on the Apoc.)and Renan (p. 183) very decidedly affirm the extension of the persecution beyond Rome. "L’atrocité commandée par Néron,"says Renan, "dut avor des contre-coups dans les provinces et y exciter une recrudescence de persécution." C. L. Roth (Werke des Tacitus, VI. 117) and Wieseler (Christenverfolgungen der Cäsaren, p. 11) assume that Nero condemned and prohibited Christianity as dangerous to the state. Kiessling and De Rossi have found in an inscription at Pompeii traces of a bloody persecution; but the reading is dispated, see Schiller, p. 438, Friedländer III. 529, and Renan, p. 184.
529 Apoc. 2:9, 10, 13; 16:6; 17:6; 18:24.
530 1 Pet. 2:12, 19, 20; 3:14-18; 4:12-19.
531 At the close, 1 Pet. 5:13. not on page 384
532 "Those who survey," says Gibbon (ch. XVI.)."with a curious eye the revolutions of mankind, may observe that the gardens and circus of Nero on the Vatican, which were polluted with the blood of the first Christians, have been rendered still more famous by the triumph and by the abuse of the persecuted religion. On the same spot, a temple, which far surpasses the ancient glories of the capital, has been since erected by the Christian pontiffs, who, deriving their claim of universal dominion from a humble fisherman of Galilee, have succeeded to the throne of the Caesars, given laws to the barbarian conquerors of Rome, and extended their spiritual jurisdiction from the coast of the Baltic to the shores of the Pacific Ocean." Comp. Renan, L’Antechr. p. 177: "L’orgie de Néron fut le grand baptême de sanq qui désiqna Rome, comme la ville des martyrs, pour jouer un rôle à part dans l’histoire du christianisme, et en étre la seconde ville sainte. Ce fut la prise de possession de la colline Vatcane par ces triomphateurs d’un genre inconnu jusque-là ... Rome, rendue responsable de tout le sang versé, devint comme Babylone une sorte de ville sacramentelle et symbolique."
533 Tertullian mentions it in connection with the crucifixion of Peter and the decapitation of Paul as apparently occurring at the same time; De Praescript. Haer., c.36: "Ista quam felix ecclesia (the church of Rome) cui totam doctrinam apostoli sanguine suo profuderunt, ubi Petrus passioni Dominicae adaequatur, ubi Paulus Joannis exitu coronatur, ubi Apostolus Joannes, posteaquam in oleum igneum demersus nihil passus est, in insulam relegatur." Comp. Jerome, Adv. Jovin., 1, 26, and in Matt. 22: 23; and Euseb., H. E., VI. 5. Renan (p. 196) conjectures that John was destined to shine in the illumination of the Neronian gardens, and was actually steeped in oil for the purpose, but saved by an accident or caprice. Thiersch (Die Kirche im Apost. Zeitalter, p. 227, third edition, 1879) likewise accepts the tradition of Tertullian, but assumes a miraculous deliverance.
534 Rev. 11:7; 13:1; 17:1, 3, 5. Comp. Daniel’s description of the fourth (Roman) beast, "dreadful and terrible and strong exceedingly," with "ten horns,"Dan. 7:7 sqq.
535 Rev. 17:6.
536 Rev. 18:2. Comp. also Rev. 6:9-11.
537 This refers either to the crucifixion, or more probably to the edict of Claudius, who banished the Jews and Jewish Christians from Rome. See above, p. 363.
538 Confessed what? Probably the Christian religion, which was already regarded as a sort of crime. If they confessed to be guilty of incendiarism, they must have been either weak neophytes who could not stand the pain of the torture, or hired scoundrels.
539 This is to be understood in the active sense of the reputed enmity to mankind, with which Tacitus charges the Jews also in almost the same terms ("Adversus omnes alios hostile odium," Hist. V. 5). But Thiersch and others explain it of the hatred of mankind towards the Christians (comp. Matt. 10:22, "Ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake").
540 Hist. I. c. 2.
541 Matt. 24:1,2; Mark 13:1; Luke 19:43, 44; 21:6.
542 Jos, B. Jud., VI. 5, 3 sqq
543 The people called him Amor et Deliciae generis humani. He was born December 30, a.d. 40, and died September 13, 81. He ascended the throne 79, in the year when the towns of Herculaneum, Stabiae, and Pompeii were destroyed. His reign was marked by a series of terrible calamities, among which was a conflagration in Rome which lasted three days, and. a plague which destroyed thousands of victims daily. He made earnest efforts to repair the injuries, and used to say, when a day passed without an act of philanthropy, "Amici, diem perdidi." See Suetonius, Titus.
544 Josephus, VI. 3, 4, gives a full account of this horrible and most unnatural incident.
545 Josephus is, however, not quite consistent; he says first that Titus, perceiving that his endeavors to spare a foreign temple turned to the damage of his soldiers, commanded the gates to be set on fire (VI. 4, 1); and then, that on the next day he gave orders to extinguish it (§ 3, 6, and 37). Sulpicius Severus (II. 30) makes Titus responsible for the destruction, who thought that it would make an end both to the Jewish and the Christian religion. This is defended by Stange, De Titi imperatoris vita, P. I., 1870, pp. 39-43, but doubted by Schürer, l.c. p. 346. Renan (511 sqq.), following Bernays, Ueber die Chronik des Sulpicius Sev., 1861, p. 48, believes that Sulpicius drew his account from the lost portion of the Histories of Tacitus, and that Titus neither ordered nor forbade the burning of the Temple, but left it to its fate, with a prudent reservation of his motives. So also Thiersch, p. 224.
546 B. J., VI. 5, 1.
547 Daniel, 9:27; Matt. 24:15; comp. Luke 21:20; Josephus, B. Jud., VI.
548 B. Jud., VI. 9, 1. Titus is said to have approved such passages (Jos. Vita, 65).
549 B. Jud., V. 13, 6.
550 Merivale, l.c., p. 445.
551 Apoc. 11:2; comp. Luke, 21:24. In Dan. 7:25; 9:27; 12:7, the duration of the oppression of the Jewish people is given as seven half-years (= 42 months).
552 B Jud. VI. 9, 2-4. Milman (II. 388) sums up the scattered statements of Josephus, and makes out the total number of killed, from the beginning to the close of the war, to be 1,356,460, and the total number of prisoners 101,700.
553 The Temple of Peace was afterwards burned under Commodus, and it is not known what became of the sacred furniture.
554 B. Jud., VII. 5, 5-7. Josephus was richly rewarded for his treachery. Vespasian gave him a house in Rome, an annual pension, the Roman citizenship, and large possessions in Judaea. Titus and Domitian continued the favors. But his countrymen embittered his life and cursed his memory. Jost and other Jewish historians speak of him with great contempt. King Agrippa, the last of the Idumaean sovereigns, lived and died an humble and contented vassal of Rome, in the third year of Trajan, a.d. 100. His licentious sister, Berenice, narrowly escaped the fate of a second Cleopatra. The conquering Titus was conquered by her sensual charms, and desired to raise her to the imperial throne, but the public dissatisfaction forced him to dismiss her, "invitus invitam." Suet., Tit. 7. Comp. Schürer, l .c. 321, 322.
555 In Eusebius, H. E., III. 5: katav tina crhsmo;n toi'" aujtovqi dokivmoi" dij ajpokaluvyew" ejkdoqevnta. Comp. Epiphanius, De pond. et meis. c. 15, and the warring of Christ, Matt. 24:15 sq. Eusebius puts the, flight to Pella before the war (pro; tou' polevmou), four years before the destruction of Jerusalem.
556 It is alluded to in the Ep. of Barnabas, cap. 16.
557 Comp. 1 Cor. 7:18 sqq.; Acts 21:26 sqq.
558 Dr. Richard Rothe (Die Anfänge der Christl. Kirche, p. 341 sqq.). Thiersch (p. 225), Ewald (VII. 26), Renan (L’Antechr., p. 545), and Lightfoot (Gal., p. 301) ascribe the same significance to the destruction of Jerusalem. Ewald says: "As by one great irrevocable stroke the Christian congregation was separated from the Jewish, to which it had heretofore clung as a new, vigorous offshoot to the root of the old tree and as the daughter to the mother." He also quotes the newly discovered letter of Serapion, written about 75, as showing the effect which the destruction of Jerusalem exerted on thoughtful minds. See above, p. 171.
559 John 21:22, 23. Milligan and Moulton in loc. The point of contrast between the words spoken respectively to Peter and John, is not that between a violent death by martyrdom and a peaceful departure; but that between impetuous and struggling apostleship, ending in a violent death, and quiet, thoughtful, meditative waiting for the Second Coming of Jesus, ending in a peaceful transition to the heavenly repose. Neither Peter nor himself is to the Evangelist a mere individual. Each is a type of one aspect of apostolic working—of Christian witnessing for Jesus to the very end of time."
560 1 Kings 19:11, 12.
561 1 Cor., ch. 13; 1 John 4:8, 16.
562 The name John, from the Hebrew @n:jwO;hyÒ or @n:h;wœy, i.e., Jehovah is gracious (comp. the German Gotthold), implied to his mind a prophecy of his relation to Jesus, the incarnate Jehovah (comp. John 12:41 with Isa. 6:1), and is equivalent to "the disciple whom Jesus loved," John 13:23; 19:26; 20:2; 21:7, 20. The Greek fathers call John oJ ejpisthvqio", the leaner on the bosom, or, as we would say, the bosom-friend (of Jesus).
563 Mark 1:20; 15: 40 sq.; Luke 8:3; John 19:27. Godet (I. 37) thinks that his home was on the lake of Gennesareth, and accounts thus for his absence in Jerusalem at Paul’s first visit (Gal. 1:18, 19).
564 According to the correct interpretation of John 19:25, that four woman (not three) are meant there, as Wieseler, Ewald, Meyer., Lange, and other commentators now hold. The writer of the Fourth Gospel, from peculiar delicacy, never mentions his own name, nor the name of his mother, nor the name of the mother of our Lord; yet his mother was certainly at the cross, according to the Synoptists, and he would not omit her.
565 Acts 4:13, a[nqrwpoi ajgravmmatoi kai; ijdiw'tai.
566 John 1:35-40. The commentators are agreed that the unnamed of the two disciples is John. See my notes in Lange on the passage.
567 The well-known distinction made by Grotius between filovcristo" and filihsou'".
568 John 20:4; 21:7.
569 For an ingenious comparison between John and Salome, John and James, John and Andrew, John and Peter, John and Paul, see Lange’s Com on John, pp. 4-10 (Am. ed.).
570 Mark 3:17. Boanhrgev" (as Lachmann, Tischendorf, and Tregelles read, in. of Gr. Boanergev"), ie.,uiJoi; bronth'". The word is usually derived from vg,r, ynEB] (as pronounced in the broad Galilean dialect). vg,r, means a noisy crowd of men, but may have had the significance of thunder in Syriac. Robinson derives it from zg,ro which means tumult, alarm, and is used of the roaring noise of thunder, Job 37:2. The usual Hebrew word for thunder is r;['m (Ps. 77:19; 81:8; Job 26:14). This name completely dispels the popular notion of John. "Nichts,"says Hilgenfeld (Einleit., p. 393), "stimmt zu den synoptischen Evangelien weniger als jenes mädchenhafte Johannesbild, welches unter uns gangbar geworden ist."Comp. Godet’s remarks at the close of this section.
571 "The Lord thundered with a great thunder;" "The Lord shall send thunder and rain." See Ex. 9:23; 1 Sam. 7:10; 12:17, 18; Job 26:14; Ps. 77:18; 81:7; 104:7; Isa. 29:6, etc.
572 Luke 9:4-56. Some commentators think that this incident suggested the giving of the name Boanerges; but that would make it an epithet of censure, which the Lord would certainly not fasten upon his beloved disciple.
573 Acts 8:14-17.
574 Mark 9: 38-40; comp. Luke 9:49, 50.
575 Matt. 20:20-24; comp. Mark 10:35-41.
576 John 8:44; 1 John 1:6, 8, 10; 2:18 sqq.; 3:8, 15; 4:1 sqq.; 2 John 10 and 11.
577 Jerome (Com. ad Matth.,
Proaem., Opera, ed. Migne, Tom. vii. 19): Quarta [facies]Joannem evangelistam [significat],qui assumptis pennis aquilae, et
ad altiora festinans, de Verbo Dei disputat. An old epigram says of John:
"More volans aquila, verbo petit astra Joannes."
578 The author of Supernat. Relig., II.400, says: "Instead of the fierce and intolerant spirit of the Son of Thunder, we find [in the Fourth Gospel] a spirit breathing forth nothing but gentleness and love." How superficial this judgment is appears from our text.
579 This is well shown in Gebhardt’s Doctrine of the Apocalypse, and is substantially even acknowledged by those who deny the Johannean origin of either the Apocalypse (the Schleiermacher School), or of the Gospel (the Tübingen School)."Es ist nicht blos," says Baur (in his Church History, vol. I. p. 147), "eine äussere Anlehnnung an einen vielgefeierten Namen, es fehlt auch nicht an innern Berührungspunkten zwischen dem Evangelium und der Apokalypse, und man kann nur die tiefe Genialität und feine Kunst bewundern, mit welcher der Evangelist die Elemente, welche vom Standpunkt der Apokalypse auf den freiern und höhern des Evangeliums hinüberleiteten, in sich aufgenommen hat, um die Apokalypse zum Evangelium zu vergeistigen. Nur vom Standpunkt dei Evangeliums aus lässt sich das Verhältniss, in das sich der Verfasser desselben zu der Apokalypse setzte, richtig begreifen."Schwegler and Köstlin make similar concessions. See my Hist. of the Apost. Ch., p. 425.
580 In this way the opposite views of two eminent Hebrew scholars and judges of style may be reconciled. While Renan, looking at the surface, says of the fourth Gospel: "John’s style has nothing Hebrew, nothing Jewish, nothing Talmudic," Ewald, on the contrary, penetrating to the core, remarks: "In its true spirit and afflatus, no language can be more genuinely Hebrew than that of John." Godet agrees with Ewald when he says: "The dress only is Greek, the body is Hebrew."
581 Gal. 2:9, jIavkwbo", kai; Khfa'" kai; jIwavnnh", oij dokou'nte" stu'loi ei|nai ... aujtoi; eij" th;n peritomhvn. They are named in the order of their conservatism.
582 Gal. 2:12, tine;" ajpo; jIakwvbou. 1 Cor. 1:12, ejgwv eijmi Khfa'.
583 Acts 3:1 sqq.; 4:1, 13, 19, 20; 5:19, 20, 41, 42; 8:14-17, 25.
584 He is included among the "apostles," assembled in Jerusalem on that occasion, Acts 15:6, 22, 23, and is expressly mentioned as one of the three pillar-apostles by Paul in the second chapter of the Galatians, which refers to the same conference.
585 Acts 21:18. John may have been, however, still in Palestine, perhaps in Galilee, among the scenes of his youth. According to tradition he remained in Jerusalem till the death of the Holy Virgin, about a.d. 48.
586 Rev. 1:4, 9, 11, 20; 2 and 3. It is very evident that only an apostle could occupy such a position, and not an obscure presbyter of that name, whose very existence is doubtful.
587 Irenaeus, the disciple of Polycarp (a personal pupil of John), Adv. Haer. III. 1, 1; 3, 4; II. 22, 5, etc., and in his letter to Florinus (in Eusebius, H. E. V. 20); Clemens Alex., Quis dives salvetur, c.42; Apollonius and Polycrates, at the close of the second century, in Euseb. H. E. III. 31; V. 18, 24; Origen, Tertullian, Eusebius, Jerome, etc. Leucius, also, the reputed author of the Acts of John about 130, in the fragments recently published by Zahn, bears witness to the residence of John in Ephesus and Patmos, and transfers his martyrdom from Rome to Ephesus. Lützelberger, Keim (Leben Jesu v. Nazara, I. 161 sq.), Holtzmann, Scholten, the author of Supernatural Religion, (II. 410), and other opponents of the Gospel of John, have dared to remove him out of Asia Minor with negative arguments from the silence of the Acts, the Ephesians, Colossians, Papias, Ignatius, and Polycarp, arguments which either prove nothing at all, or only that John was not in Ephesus before 63. But the old tradition has been conclusively defended not only by Ewald, Grimm, Steitz, Riggenbach, Luthardt, Godet, Weiss, but even by Krenkel, Hilgenfeld (Einleitung, pp. 395 sqq.), and Weizsäcker (498 sqq.), of the Tübingen school.
588 "The maintenance of evangelical truth," says Godet (I. 42), "demanded at that moment powerful aid. It is not surprising then that John, one of the last survivors amongst the apostles, should feel himself called upon to supply in those countries the place of the apostle of the Gentiles, and to water, as Apollos had formerly done in Greece, that which Paul had planted." Pressensé (Apost. Era, p. 424): "No city could have been better chosen as a centre from which to watch over the churches, and follow closely the progress of heresy. At Ephesus John was in the centre of Paul’s mission field, and not far from Greece."
589 See his farewell address at Miletus, Acts 20:29, 30, and the Epistles to Timothy.
590 Bleek understands diav of the object: John was carried (in a vision) to Patmos for the purpose of receiving there the revelation of Christ He derives the whole tradition of John’s banishment to Patmos from a misunderstanding of this passage. So also Lücke, De Wette, Reuss, and Düsterdieck. But the traditional exegesis is confirmed by the mention of the qlivyi", basileiva and uJpomonhv in the same verse, by the natural meaning of marturiva, and by the parallel passages Rev. 6:9 and 20:4, where diav likewise indicates the occasion or reason of suffering.
591 Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Tertullian, Eusebius, Jerome, etc.
592 Tischendorf, Reise in’s Morgenland, II.257 sq. A grotto on a hill in the southern part of the island is still pointed out as the place of the apocalyptic vision, and on the summit of the mountain is the monastery of St. John, with a library of about 250 manuscripts.
593 Irenaeus, Adv. Haer., V. 30, says that the Apocalypse was seen pro;" tw/' tevlei th'" Dometianou' ajrch'". So also Eusebius, H. E. III. 18, 20, 33; Chron. ad ann. 14 Domitiani; and Jerome, De vir. illustr., c. 9. This view has prevailed among commentators and historians till quite recently, and is advocated by Hengstenberg, Lange, Ebrard (and by myself in the Hist. of the Ap. Ch., § 101, pp. 400 sqq.). It is indeed difficult to set aside the clear testimony of Irenaeus, who, through Polycarp, was connected with the very age of John. But we must remember that he was mistaken even on more important points of history, as the age of Jesus, which he asserts, with an appeal to tradition, to have been above fifty years.
594 Tacitus congratulates Agricola (Vita Agr., c. 44) that he did not live to see under this emperor "tot consularium caedes, tot nobilissimarum feminarum exilia et fugas." Agricola, whose daughter Tacitus married, died in 93, two years before Domitian.
595 Suetonius, Domit., c. 13: "Dominus et Deus noster hoc fieri jubet. Unde institutum posthac, ut ne scripto quidem ac sermone cujusquam appellaretur aliter."
596 Hegesippus in Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., III., 19, 20. Hegesippus, however, is silent about the banishment of John, and this silence has been used by Bleek as an argument against the fact.
597 Dion Cassius in the abridgment of Xiphilinus, 67, 14.
598 So the title of the Syriac translation of the Apocalypse (which, however, is of much later date than the Peshitto, which omits the Apocalypse): "Revelatio quam Deus Joanni Evangelistae in Patmo insula dedit, in quam a Nerone Caesare relegatus fuerat."Clement of Alexandria (Quis dives salv., c. 42, and quoted by Eusebius, III., 23) says indefinitely that John returned from Patmos to Ephesus after the death of "the tyrant" (tou' turavnnou teleuthvsanto"), which may apply to Nero as well as to Domitian. Origen mentions simply a Roman basileuv". Tertullian’s legend of the Roman oil-martyrdom of John seems to point to Nero rather than to any other emperor, and was so understood by Jerome (Adv. Jovin. I. 26), although Tertullian does not say so, and Jerome himself assigns the exile and the composition of the Apocalypse to the reign of Domitian (De vir. ill., c. 9). Epiphanius (Haer. LI. 33) puts the banishment back to the reign of Claudius (a.d. 41-53), which is evidently much too early.
599 Neander, Gieseler, Baur, Ewald, Lücke, Bleek, De Wette, Reuss, Düsterdieck, Weiss, Renan, Stanley, Lightfoot, Westcott.
600 These traditions are reproduced in a pleasing manner by Dean Stanley, in his Sermons and Essays on the Apost. Age, pp. 266-281 (3d ed.). Comp. my Hist. of the Ap. Ch, pp. 404 sqq.
601 Or Ebion, according to Epiphanius, Haer., xxx. 25.
602 Stanley mentions, as an illustration of the magnifying influence of fancy, that Jeremy Taylor, in relating this story, adds that "immediately upon the retreat of the apostle the bath fell down and crushed Cerinthus in the ruins" (Life of Christ, Sect. xii. 2).
603 parqevno" usually means a virgin (Matt. 1:23; Luke 1:27; Acts 21:9; 1 Cor. 7:25; 28, 34), but is applied also to men who never touched women, Apoc. 14:4, and in patristic writers.
604 Augustin, Tract. 124 in Joh. Evang. (Opera III. 1976, ed. Migne) "Sunt qui senserint ... a Christo Joannem apostolum propterea plus amatum quod neque uxorem duxerit, et ab ineunte pueritui castissimus vixerit."He quotes Jerome, Contr. Jovin. l.c., but adds: "Hoc quidem in Scriptuis non evidenter apparet."According to Ambrosiaster, Ad 2 Cor. 11:2, all the apostles were married except John and Paul. Tertullian calls John Christi spado.
605 In Euseb. H. E. III. 31, 3; V. 24, 3: jIwavnnh" ...o}" ejgennhvqh iJereu" to; pevtalon peforhkw;" kai;mavrtu" kai; didavskalo" ou|to" ejn Efevsw, kekoivmhtai. Epiphanius reports (no doubt from Hegesippus) the same, with some ascetic features, of James the brother of the Lord. See Stanley’s remarks, pp. 276-278, and Lightfoot on Galat., p. 345 note, and Philipp. p. 252. "As a figurative expression," says Lightfoot, "or as a literal fact, the notice points to St. John as the veteran teacher, the chief representative, of a pontifical race. On the other hand, it is possible that this was not the sense which Polycrates himself attached to the figure or the fact; and if so, we have here perhaps the earliest passage in any extant Christian writing where the sacerdotal view of the ministry is distinctly put forward." But in the Didache (ch. 13) the Christian prophets are called "high priests."
606 Augustin mentions the legend, but contradicts it, Trad. 224 in Ev. Joann.
607 1 Cor. 2:26-31.
608 Comp. the well known passage of Seneca, De Ira, II. 8: Omnia sceleribus ac vitiis plena sunt; plus committitur, quam quod possit coërcitione sanari. Certatur ingenti quodam nequitim certamine: maior quotidie peccandi cupiditas, minor verecundia est. Expulso melioris aequorisque respectu, quocunque visum est, libido se impingit; nec furtiva jam scelera sunt, praeter oculos eunt. Adeoque in publicum missa nequitia est, et in omnium pectoribus evaluit, ut innocentia non rara, sed nulla sit. Numquid enim singuli aut pauci rupere legem; undique, velut signo dato, ad fas nefasque miscendum coörti sunt." Similar passages might be gathered from Thucydides, Aristophanes, Sallust, Horace, Juvenal, Persius, Tacitus, Suetonius. It is true that almost every heathen vice still exists in Christian countries, but they exist in spite of the Christian religion, while the heathen immorality was the legitimate result of idolatry, and was sanctioned by the example of the heathen gods, and the apotheosis of the worst Roman emperors.
609 carivsmata.
610 Comp. 1 Cor. 12:7; 14:12.
611 sofiva andgnw'si".
612 didaskaliva.
613 profhteiva.
614 diakrivsei" pneumavtwn.
615 kainai'" or eJtevrai" glwvssai" lalei'", or simply, glwvssai", sometimes glwvssh/ lalei'n See § 24, p. 234.
616 1 Cor. 14:1-5.
617 shmei'on. 1 Cor. 14:22.
618 eJrmhneiva glwssw'n.
619 Of the pneu'ma.
620 Of the nou'".
621 diakoniva, ajntilhvyei".
622 kubernhvsei", gubernationes.
623 1 Pet. 5:1-4.
624 cavrisma ijamavtwn, duvnami" shmeivwn kai; teravtwn.
625 The Revision of 1881 has substituted, in 1 Cor. 13, "love" (with Tyndale, Cranmer, and Geneva Vers.) for "charity" (which came into James’s Version from the Vulgate through the Rheims Vera.). This change has given great offence among conservative people. It may indeed involve a loss of rhythm in that wonderful chapter, but it was necessitated by the restricted meaning which charity has assumed in modem usage, being identical with practical benevolence, so that Paul might seem to contradict himself in 13:3 and 8. The Saxon word love is just as strong, as musical, and as sacred as the Latin charity, and its meaning is far more comprehensive and enduring, embracing both God’s love to man and man’slove to God, and to his neighbor, both here and hereafter.
626 Comp. Phil. 3:12-14; 2 Cor. 4:7 sqq.; 12:7; 1 Cor. 9:27; Jas. 3:9; 1 John 1:8, 9; Gal. 2:11; Acts 15:36-39; 23:3 sqq.
627 1 Pet. 3:7; Gal 3:28.
628 Gen. 3:20. This parallel was first drawn by Irenaeus, but overdrawn and abused by later fathers in the service of Mariolatry.
629 Luke 1:47 ejpi tw' qew'/ tw'/ swth'riv mou.
630 Luke 8:3; Matt. 27:55; Mark 15:41.
631 John 19:15.
632 . Matt. 28:1; John 20:1.
633 Comp. Eph. 5:22-23; 6:1-9; Col. 8:18-25.
634 Comp. Matt. 19:10-12; 1 Cor. 7:7 sqq.; Rev. 14:4.
635 Lev. 25:10: "Ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof." Comp. Isa. 41: 1; Luke 4:19.
636 Gal. 8:28; Col. 3:11.
637 Acts 4:32.
638 Gal. 2:10; 2 Cor. 9:12-15; Rom. 15:25-27.
639 Gal. 8:28; Eph. 4:3.
640 The remainder of this paragraph is taken in part from my Hist. of the Apost. Church (§108, pp. 427 sqq.), where it is connected with the life and labors of St. John. Comp. also the monographs of Trench and Plumptre on the Seven Churches, and Lange’s Com. on Rev. 2 and 3.
641 The Jewish tradition traces it back to the schools of the prophets, and even to patriarchal times, by far-fetched interpretations of Gen. 25:27 Judg. 5:9; Isa. 1:13, etc.
642 Comp. § 17, p. 152.
643 "Bei dem Untergang aller Institutionen,"says Dr. Zunz (l.c. p. 1), " blieb die Synagoge als einziger Träger ihrer Nationalität; dorthin floh ihr Glauben und von dorther empfingen sie Belehrug für ihren irdischen Wandel, Kraft zur Ausdauer in unerhörten Leiden und Hoffnung auf eine künftige Morgenröthe der Freiheit. Der öffentliche Gottesdienst der Synagoge ward das Panier jüdischer Nationalität, die Aegide des jüdischen Glaubens."
644 sunagwghv, often in the Septuagint (130 times as translation of hd[e , 25 times for lh;q;); in the Greek Test. (Matt. 4:23; Mark 1:21; Luke 4:15; 12:11; Acts 9:2; 13:43, etc.; of a Christian congregation, James 2:2); also in Philo and Josephus; sometimes sunagwvgion (Philo), sabbatei'on (Josephus), proseukthvrion (Philo), proseuchv house of prayer, oratory (Acts 16:13 and Josephus); also ejkklhsiva. Hebrew designations: hd;][e‚ lh;q;‚ rWBxI‚ rb,j,‚ dl'w" tyBe‚ tL;pIT] tBe ‚ ts,n,K]h' tyBe .
645 Acts 15:21.
646 Luke 7:5.
647 Acts 6:9. The number of synagogues in Jerusalem is variously stated from 394 to 480.
648 Matt. 23:6; comp. James 2:2, 3. In the synagogue of Alexandria there were seventy-one golden chairs, according to the number of members of the Sanhedrin. The prwtokaqedrivai were near the ark, the place of honor.
649 Ruins of eleven or more ancient synagogues still exist in Palestine (all in Galilee) at Tell-Hum (Capernaum), Kerazeh (Chorazin), Meiron, Irbid (Arbela), Kasyun, Umm el-’Amud, Nebratein, two at Kefr-Birim, two at el-Jish (Giscala). See Palest. Explor. Quart. Statement for July, 1878.
650 The ajrcisunavgwgo"(ts,n<<,K]h' val), Luke 8:49; 13:14; Mark 5:36, 33; Acts 18:8, 17; or ajrcwn th'" sunagwgh'",Luke 8:41; or a[rcwn, Matt. 9:18. He was simply primus inter pares; hence, several ajrcisunavgwgoi appear in one and the same synagogue, Luke 13:14; Mark 5:22; Acts 13:15; 18:17. In smaller towns there was but one.
651 presbuvteroi (!ynIqez]).
652 After the Babylonian captivity an interpreter (Methurgeman) was usually employed to translate the Hebrew lesson into the Chaldee or Greek, or other vernacular languages.
653 ajpovstoloi, a[ggeloi (rWBxi h'ylivi ). Not to be confounded with the angels in the Apocalypse.
654 uJphrevth" (wZj'), Luke 4:20
655 Matt. 10:17; 23:34; Luke 12:11; 21:12; John 9:34; 16:2; Acts 22:19; 26:11. The Chazzan had to administer the corporal punishment.
656 1 Cor. 14:16. The responsive element is the popular feature in a liturgy, and has been wisely preserved in the Anglican Church.
657 The Thorah was divided into 154 sections, and read through in three years, afterwards in 54 sections for one year.
658 The ajnagnwsi" tou' novmou kai; tw'n profhtw'n, Acts 13:15.
659 Luke 4:17-20; 13:54; John 18:20; Acts 13:5, 15, 44; 14:1; 17:2-4, 10, 17; 18:4, 26; 19:8. Paul and Barnabas were requested by the rulers of the synagogue at Antioch in Pisidia to speak after the reading of the law and the prophets (Acts 13:15).
660 Comp. Ps. 55:18; Dan. 7:11; Acts 2:15; 3:1; 10:30. These hours of devotion are respectively called Shacharith, Minchah, and’Arabith.
661 Comp. John 2:19; 4:23, 24.
662 The Parashioth and Haphtaroth, as they were called.
663 Comp. Acts 13:15; 15:21.
664 1 Thess. 5:27; Col. 4:16.
665 Comp. Matt. 9:15; Acts 13:3; 14:23; 1 Cor. 7:5.
666 Matt. 6:9;Luke 11:1, 2. The Didache, ch. 8, gives the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew, with a brief doxology (comp. 1 Cor. 29:11), and the direction to pray it three times a day. See Schaff on the Did., p. 188 sq.
667 Didache chs. 8 –10; Clement, Ad Cor., chs. 59 –61. See vol. II. 226.
668 Comp. Matt. 26:30; Mark 14: 26.
669 Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16.
670 The "Gloria,"Luke 2:14.
671 Luke 2:29.
672 Luke 1:46 sqq.
673 Luke 1:68 sqq.
674 Acts 4:24-30. Comp. Ps. 2.
675 Eph. 5:14; 1 Tim. 3:16; 2 Tim.
2:11-13; 1 Pet. 3:10-12. The quotation is introduced by dio;
levgei and pisto;"
oJ lovgo" . The
rhythmical arrangement and adjustment in these passages, especially the first
two, is obvious, and Westcott and Hort have marked it in their Greek Testament
as follows:
[Egeire,
oJ kaqeuvdwn,
kai;
ajnavsta ejk tw'n nekrw'n,
kai; ejpifauvsei soi oJ cristov"
—Eph. 5:14.
}O"
ejfanerwvqh ejn sarkiv,
ejdikaiwvqh ejn pneuvmati,
w[fqh ajggevloi",
ejkhruvcqh
ejn e{qnesin,
ejpisteuvqh ejn kovsmw/,
ajnelhmfqh ejn dovxh/.
—1 Tim. 3:16.
The last passage is undoubtedly
a quotation. The received reading, Gr.464 qeov" , is justly rejected by
critical editors and exchanged for o{", which refers to God or Christ.
Some manuscripts read the neuter o{ which would refer to musthvrion
1 Pet. 3:10-12,
which reads like a psalm, is likewise metrically arranged by Westcott and Hort.
James 1:17, though probably not a quotation, is a complete hexameter:
pa'sa
dovsi" ajgaqh; kai; pa'n dwvrhma telei'on.
Liddon (Lectures on the Divinity of Christ, p. 328) adds to the hymnological fragments the passage Tit. 3:4-7, as "a hymn on the way of salvation," and several other passages which seem to me doubtful.
676 Apoc. 1:5-8; 3:7, 14; 5:9, 12, 13; 11:15, 17, 19; 15:4; 19:6-8, and other passages. They lack the Hebrew parallelism, but are nevertheless poetical, and are printed in uncial type by Westcott and Hort.
677 Mark 1:4 (bavptisma metanoiva" eij" a[fesin aJmartiw'n, said of John’s baptism), 1:8, where John distinguishes his baptism, as a baptism by water (u]dati), from the baptism of Christ, as a baptism by the Holy Spirit (pneuvmati aJgivw/); Matt. 3:1; Luke 3:16; John 1:33 (oJ baptivzwn ejn pneuvmati aJgivw/); Acts 2:38 (the first instance of Christian baptism, when Peter called on his hearers: Metanohvsate, kai; baptisqhvtw e]kasto" uJmw'n ejn tw'/ ojnovmati jIhsou' Cr. eij" a[fesin tw'n aJmartiw'n uJmw'n, kai; lhvmyesqe th;n dwrea;n tou" aJgivou pneuvmato"); 8:13; 11:16; 18:8 (ejpivsteuon kai; ejbaptivzonto); Rom. 6:4 (bavptisma eij" t;on qavnaton); Gal. 3:27 (eij" Cristo;n ejbaptivsqhte). The metavnoia was the connecting link between the baptism of John and that of Christ. The English rendering, "repentance" (retained in the Revision of 1881), is inaccurate (after the Latin paenitentia). The Greek means a change of mind, nou'" (a transmentation, as Coleridge proposed to call it), i.e., an entire reformation and transformation of the inner life of man, with a corresponding outward change. It was the burden of the preaching of John the Baptist, and Christ himself, who began with the enlarged exhortation: Metanoei'te kai; pisteuvete ejn tw'/ eujaggelivw/, Mark 1:15.
678 Comp. the German taufen, the English dip. Grimm defines baptivzw (the frequentative of bavptw): ’immergo, submergo;’Liddell and Scott: ’to dip in or under the water.’But in the Sept. and the New Test. it has also a wider meaning. Hence Robinson defines it: ’to wash, to lave, to cleanse by washing.’See below.
679 The Oriental and the orthodox Russian churches require even a threefold immersion, in the name of the Trinity, and deny the validity of any other. They look down upon the Pope of Rome as an unbaptized heretic, and would not recognize the single immersion of the Baptists. The Longer Russian Catechism thus defines baptism: "A sacrament in which a man who believes, having his body thrice plunged in water in the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, dies to the carnal life of sin, and is born again of the Holy Ghost to a life spiritual and holy." Marriott (in Smith and Cheetham, I., 161) says: "Triple immersion, that is thrice dipping the head while standing in the water, was the all but universal rule of the church in early time," and quotes in proof Tertullian, Cyril of Jerusalem, Chrysostom, Jerome, Leo I., etc. But he admits, on page 168 sq., that affusion and aspersion were exceptionally also used, especially in clinical baptism, the validity of which Cyprian defended (Ep. 76 or 69 ad Magnum). This mode is already mentioned in the Didache (ch. 7) as valid; see my book on the Did., third ed., 1889, pp. 29 sqq.
680 2 Kings 5:14 (Sept.); Luke 11:38; Mark 7:4 (baptismou;" pothrivwn, etc.); Heb. 6:2 (baptismw'n didachv); 9:10 (diafovroi" baptismoi'"). Observe also the remarkable variation of reading in Matt. 7:4: eja;n mh; baptivswntai (except they bathe themselves), and rJantivswntai (sprinkle themselves). Westcott and Hort adopt the latter in the text, the former in the margin. The Revision of 1881 reverses the order. The ’divers baptisms’ in Heb. 9:10 (in the Revision " washings") probably include all the ceremonial purifications of the Jews, whether by bathing (Lev. 11:25; 14:9; Num. 19:7), or washing (Num. 19:7; Mark 7: 8), or sprinkling (Lev. 14:7; Num. 19:19). In the figurative phrase baptivzein ejn pneuvmati aJgivw/, to overwhelm, plentifully to endow with the Holy Spirit (Matt. 3:11; Luke 3:16; Mark 1:8; John 1: 3; Acts 1:5; 11:16), the idea of immersion is scarcely admissible since the Holy Spirit is poured out. See my Hist. of the Apost. Ch., p. 569.
681 Acts 8:15; 19:6; Heb. 6:2.
682 1 Cor. 11:28.
683 John 6:63: "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing, the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life." This passage furnishes the key for the understanding of the previous discourse, whether it refers to the Lord’s Supper, directly or indirectly, or not at all. That the ejstiv in the words of institution may indicate a figurative or symbolical (as well as a real) relation, is now admitted by all critical exegetes; that it must be so understood in that connection is admitted by those who are not under the control of a doctrinal bias. See my annotations to Lange’s Com. on Matthew, 26:26, pp. 470 sqq.
684 Comp. John 4:24.
685 ejkklhsivai katj oi|kon, Rom. 16:5; 1 Cor. 16:19.
686 Luke 9:58.
687 Gen. 2:3. This passage is sometimes explained in a proleptic sense; but religious rest-days, dies feriati, are found among most ancient nations, and recent Assyrian and Babylonian discoveries confirm the pre-Mosaic origin of the weekly Sabbath. See Sayce’s revision of George Smith’s Chaldean Account of Genesis, Lond. and N. York, 1881, p. 89: "If references to the Fall are few and obscure, there can be no doubt that the Sabbath was an Accadian [primitive Chaldaean] institution, intimately connected with the worship of the seven planets. The astronomical tablets have shown that the seven-day week was of Accadian origin, each day of it being dedicated to the sun, moon, and five planets, and the word Sabbath itself, under the form of Sabattu, was known to the Assyrians, and explained by them as ’a day of rest for the heart.’A calendar of Saints’ days for the month of the intercalary Elul makes the 7th, 14th, 19th, 2lst, and 28th days of the lunar months, Sabbaths on which no work was allowed to be done. The Accadian words by which the idea of Sabbath is denoted, literally mean: ’a day on which work is unlawful,’and are interpreted in the bilingual tablets as signifying ’a day of peace or completion of labors.’" Smith then gives the rigid injunctions which the calendar lays down to the king for each of these sabbaths. Comp. also Transactions of Soc. for Bibl. Archaeol., vol. V., 427.
688 Matt. 12:1 sqq., 10 sqq., and the parallel passages in Mark and Luke; also John 5:8 sqq.; 6:23; 9:14, 16.
689 Gal. 4:10; Comp. Rom. 14:5; Col. 2:16. The spirit of the pharisaical sabbatarianism with which Christ and St, Paul had to deal may be inferred from the fact that even Gamaliel, Paul’s teacher, and one of the wisest and most liberal Rabbis, let his ass die on the Sabbath because he thought it a sin to unload him; and this was praised as an act of piety. Other Rabbis prohibited the saving of an ass from a ditch on the Sabbath, but allowed a plank to be laid so as to give the beast a chance to save himself. One great controversy between the schools of Shammai and Hillel turned around the mighty question whether it was lawful to eat an egg which was laid on the Sabbath day, and the wise Hillel denied it! Then it would be still more sinful to eat a chicken that had the misfortune to be born, or to be killed, on a Sabbath.
690 The day of Pentecost (whether Saturday or Sunday) is disputed, but the church always celebrated it on a Sunday. See § 24, p. 241.
691 John 20:19, 26; Acts 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2; Rev. 1:10.
692 Comp. Heb. 4:1-11; Rev. 4:18.
693 1 Cor. 5:7, 8; 16:8; Acts 18:21; 20:6, 16.
694 Comp. Matt. 16:18; 18:18; 28:18-20; Mark 16:15; Luke 22:19; John 20:21-23; Eph. 2:20 ff.; 4:11 ff.
695 2 Cor. 2:16.
696 Acts 20:28.
697 Acts 6:6; 1 Tim. 4:14; 5:22; 2 Tim. 1:6.
698 Pet. 2:5, 9; 5:3; comp. Rev. 1:6; 5:10; 20:6. The English "priest" (the German Priester) is etymologically a harmless contraction of "presbyter" (i.e., elder), but has become a synonyms for the Latin sacerdos (iJereuv", wjk ), meaning an offerer of sacrifices and a mediator between God and the people. Milton said rather sarcastically, "presbyter is priest writ large."
699 In Eph. 4:11, he adds "pastors and teachers." In 1 Cor. 12:28 he enumerates first, apostles; secondly, prophets; thirdly, teachers; then powers, then gifts of healing, helps, governments, kinds of tongues. Neither list is intended to be strictly methodical and exhaustive.
700 So Calvin, Inst. IV. ch. 3, § 4: "Secundum hanc interpretationem (qua mihi et verbis et sententiae Pauli consentanea videtur) tres iliae functiones [Apostoli, Prophetae, Evangelisttae]non ideo intitutae in ecclesia fuerunt, ut perpetuae forent, sed ad id modo tempus quo erigendae erant ecclesiae, ubi nullae ante fuerant, vel certe a Mose ad Christum traducendae. Quanquam non nego quin Apostolos postea quoque, vel saltem eorum loco Evangelistas interdum excitarit Deus, ut nostro tempore factum est."Most Protestant historians hold substantially the same view. The followers of the "Catholic Apostolic Church," usually called "Irvingites," claim to have apostles, prophets, evangelists raised up by the Lord himself in these last days preparatory to his Advent; but these "apostles" died one by one, and their places remain vacant. See my Hist. of the Ap. Church, pp. 516 sqq., and Creeds of Christendom, I. 905 sqq. In a very substantial sense the original apostles survive in their teaching, and need and can have no successors or substitutes.
701 Some commentators wrongly hold that the election of Matthias, made before the Pentecostal illumination, was a hasty and invalid act of Peter, and that Christ alone could fill the vacancy by a direct call, which was intended for Paul. But Paul never represents himself as belonging to the Twelve and distinguishes himself from them as their equal. See Gal., 1 and 2.
702 Acts 11:28; 21:19; 13:1; 15:32
703 1 Tim. 1:3; 3:14; 2 Tim. 4:9, 21; Tit. 1:5; 3:2; 1 Pet. 5:12. Calvin takes the same view of the Evangelists, Inst. IV., ch. 3, § 4: "Per Evangelistas eos intelligo, qui quum dignitate essent Apostolis minores, officio tamen proximi erant, adeoque vices eorum gerebant. Quales fuerunt, Lucas, Timotheus, Titus, et reliqui similes: ac fortassis etiam septuaginta quos secundo ab Apostolis loco Christus designavit (Luc. 10. 1)."
704 Lightfoot, p. 197. Other Episcopal writers, accepting the later tradition (Euseb., H. E. III. 4; Const. Apost. VII. 46), regard Timothy and Titus as apostolic types of diocesan bishops. So Bishop Chr. Wordsworth: A Church History to the Council of Nicaea (1880, p. 42), and the writer of the article "Bishop," in Smith and Cheetham (I. 211).
705 The presbuvteroi correspond to the Jewish zekenim; see above, § 51. It was originally a term of age, and then of dignity, like Senators, Sennatus, gerousiva (comp. our " Senate," "Alderman"), for the members of the governing body of a municipality or state. Aged and experienced men were generally chosen for office, but not without exceptions. Timothy was comparatively young when he was ordained (1 Tim. 4:12). The Roman Senate consisted originally of venerable men, but after the time of Augustus the aetas senatoria was reduced to twenty-five. The use of presbyter in the sense ofsacerdos, iJereuv", priest, dates from the time of Cyprian, and became common from the fifth century onward to the Reformation. In the New Test. there is no trace of any special sacerdotal office or caste.
706 The term ejpivskopo"occurs about a dozen times in the Septuagint for various Hebrew words meaning " inspector," "taskmaster," "captain," "president" (see Trommius, Concord. Gr. 492 LXX. Interpr. sub verbo, and also sub ejpiskophv and ejpiskopevw). It was used in Egypt of the officers of a temple, in Greece of overseers or guardians in general, or of municipal and financial officers. In Athens the commissioners to regulate colonies and subject states were called ejpivskopoi. The Spartans sent ejpimelhtaiv in the same capacity. The term was not only applied to permanent officers, but also to the governing body, or a committee of the governing body. The feminine ejpiskophv is not classical, but passed from the Sept. into the Greek Test. (Acts 1:20; 1 Tim. 3:1) and patristic usage with the meaning: the work or office of a bishop (inspectio, visitatio). See Lightfoot, Philippians, 93 sqq., Gebhardt and Harnack, Patr. Apost. Op. p. 5; Hatch, l.c., 37 sqq., and Hatch, art. "Priest" in Smith and Cheetham, II. 1698 sqq.
707 The distinction between them, as two separate orders of ministers, dates from the second century, and is made a dogma in the Greek and Roman churches. The Council of Trent (Sess. XXIII., cap. 4, and can. vii. de sacramento ordinis) declares bishops to be successor of the apostles, and pronounces the anathema on those who affirm "that bishops are not superior to priests (presbyters)." Yet there are Roman Catholic historians who are learned and candid enough to admit the original identity. So Probst, Sacramente, p. 215; Döllinger (before his secession), First Age of the Church, Engl. transl. II. 111; and Kraus, Real-Encykl. der christl. Alterthümer (1880), I. 62. Kraus says: "Anfangs werden beide Termini [ejpivskopo" and presbuvtero"] vielfach mit demselben Werthe angewendet (Act 20:17, 28; Tit. 1:5; Clem. ad Cor. I. 42, 44, 47). Noch im zweiten Jahrh. findet man die Bischöfe auch Gr. presbuteroi genannt, nicht aber umgekeht. Sofort fixirt sich dann der Sprachgebrauch: der B. ist der Vorsteher der paroikiva, dioivkhsi" ,als Nachfolger der Apostel; ihm unterstehen Volk und Geistlichkeit; ihm wohnt die Fülle der priesterlichen Gewalt inne."The sacerdotal idea, however, does not synchronize with the elevation of the episcopate, but came in a little later.
708 The only apparent exceptions are 1 Tim. 3:2; Tit. 1:7, but there the definite article before ejpivskopo"is generic.
709 Acts 20:17 (presbyters), 28 (bishops). In the English version the argument of the identity is obscured by the exceptional translation "overseers," instead of the usual "bishops." The Revised Version of 1881 has mended this defect by adopting "elders" and "bishops" in the text, and "presbyters" and "overseers" in the margin. The perversion of the passage, under the unconscious influence of a later distinction, began with Irenaeus, who says (Adv. Haer. III. 14, 2): "The bishops and presbyters were called together (convocatis episcopis et presbyter) at Miletus from Ephesus, and the other neighboring cities (et a reliquis proximis civitatibus)."The last addition was necessary to justify the plurality of bishops as distinct from presbyters. The latter alone are mentioned, Acts 20:17.
710 Phil. 1:1: pa'sin toi'" aJgivoi" ... suvn ejpiskovpoi" kai; diakovnoi"
711 1 Tim. 3:1-13; 5:17-19; Tit. 1:5-7.
712 1 Pet. 5:1, 2: presbutevrou" ... parakalw' oJ sunpresbuvtero"_ poimavnate to; ejn uJmi'n poivmnion tou' qeou', ejpiskopou'nte" … The last word is omitted by a and B. Tischendorf (8th ed.), Westcott and Hort, but poimavnate implies the episcopal function, the oversight of the flock.
713 Clem., Ad Cor. c. 42 ("bishops and deacons "), c. 44 ("bishopric ... the presbyters"). The Didache (ch. 15) knows only bishops and deacons, as local officers, the former being identical with presbyters. Irenaeus still occasionally calls the bishops "presbyters," and uses sussiones episcoporum and successiones presbyterorum synonymously, but he evidently recognized the episcopal constitution. The higher office includes the lower, but not conversely.
714 L. c., p. 194. He illustrates this usage by a parallel instance from the Athenian institutions. Neander has the same view of the origin of the episcopate. It dates, in fact, from Jerome.
715 See the patristic quotations in my Hist. of the Ap. Ch. pp. 524 sq. Even Pope Urban II. (a.d. 1091) says that the primitive church knew only two orders, the deaconate and the presbyterate. The original identity of presbyter and bishop is not only insisted on by Presbyterians, Lutherans, and Congregationalists, but freely conceded also by Episcopal commentators, as Whitby, Bloomfield, Conybeare and Howson, Alford, Ellicott, Lightfoot, Stanley, and others. It is also conceded by purely critical historians, as Rothe, Ritschl, Baur (K Gesch I. 270), and Renan (Les Evangiles, p. 332). Renan calls the history of the ecclesiastical hierarchy the history of a triple abdication: first the community of believers committed their power to the presbyters, then the corps of presbyters abdicated to the bishop, and, last, the bishops to the pope (in the Vatican council). "La création de l’épiscopat est l’aeuvre du IIe siècle. L’absorption de l’Eglise par les ’presbyteri’est un fait accompli avant la fin du premier. Dans l’èpître de Clément Romain, etc., ce n’est pas encore l’épiscopat, c’est le presbytérat qui est en cause. On n’y trouve pas trace d’un ’presbyteros’’supérieur aux autres et devant détrôner les autres. Mais l’auteur proclame hautement que le presbytérat, to clergé, est antérieur au peuple." Comp. also Renan’s Saint Paul, 238 sq., and L’Eglise Chrétienne, ch. VI. p. 85 sqq. This subject then may be regarded as finally settled among scholars. At the same time it should in all fairness be admitted that the tendency toward an episcopal concentration of presbyteral power may be traced to the close of the apostolic age.
716 See Hatch, Organiz. Lect. II. and IV., and his art. "Priest" in Smith and Cheetham, II. 1700. Hatch makes large use of the inscriptions found at Salkhad, in the Haurân, at Thera, and elsewhere. He advances the new theory that the bishops were originally a higher order of deacons and supreme almoners of the sovereign congregation, while the presbyters had charge of the discipline. He admits that bishops and presbyters were equals in rank, and their names interchangeable, but that their relations differed in different churches during the first two centuries, and that the chief function of the bishop originally was the care and disposition of the charitable funds. Hence the stress laid by Paul on the necessity of a bishop being ajfilavrguro" and filovzeno" . In the long series of ecclesiastical canons and imperial edicts, the bishops are represented especially in the light of trustees of church property.
717 Acts 11:30, at the time of the famine when the church of Antioch sent a collection to the elders for their brethren in Judaea.
718 Acts 14:23; comp. Tit. 1:5.
719 poimevne" kai; didavskaloi, Eph. 4:11.
720 Acts 14:23; Tit. 1:5; 1 Tim. 5:22; 4:14; 2 Tim. 1:6. On the election, ordination and support of ministers, see my Hist. Ap. Ch. pp. 500-506.
721 Acts 11:30; 14:23; 15:2, 4, 6, 23; 16:4; 20:17, 28; 21:18; Phil. 1:1; 1 Tim 4:14; James 5: 14; 1 Pet. 5: 1.
722 1 Tim. 5:17: "Let the elders that rule well (oiJ kalw'" proestw'te" presbuvteroi) be counted of double honor ( diplh'" timh'"), especially those who labor in the word and in teaching (ejn lovgw/ kai; didaskaliva/)." Some commentators emphasize kalw'", some refer the " double honor" to higher rank and position, others to better remuneration, still others to both.
723 1 Tim. 3:2: "The bishop must be ... apt to teach (didaktikovn)." The same is implied in Tit. 1:9; Act 20:28; and Heb. 13:17. Lightfoot takes the right view (p. 192): "Though government was probably the first conception of the office, yet the work of teaching must have fallen to the presbyters from the very first and have assumed greater prominence as time went on." On the question of teaching and ruling elders, compare, besides other treatises, Peter Colin Campbell: The Theory of Ruling Eldership (Edinb. and London, 1866), and two able articles by Dr. R. D. Hitchcock and Dr. E. F. Hatfield (both Presbyterians) in the "American Presbyterian Review" for April and October, 1868. All these writers dissent from Calvin’s interpretation of 1 Tim. 5:17, as teaching two kinds of presbyters: (1) those who both taught and ruled, and (2) those who ruled only; but Campbell pleads from 1 Cor. 12:28; Rom. 12:8; and Acts 15:22, 25 for what he calls "Lay Assessors." Dr. Hitchcock holds that the primitive presbyters were empowered and expected both to teach and to rule. Dr. Hatfield tries to prove that the Christian presbyters, like the Jewish elders, were only to rule; the office of teaching having been committed to the apostles, evangelists, and other missionaries. The last was also the view of Dr. Thornwell, of South Carolina (on Ruling Elders), and is advocated in a modified form by an Oxford scholar of great ability, Vice-Principal Hatch (l.c. Lecture III. pp. 35 sqq., and art ."Priest" in Smith and Cheetham, II. 1700). He holds that the Christian presbyters, like the Jewish, were at first chiefly officers of discipline, not of worship, and that the fitness for teaching and soundness in the faith were altogether subordinate to the moral qualities which are necessary to a governor. He also remarks (p. 1707) that neither Clement nor Ignatius makes any mention of presbyters in connection with teaching, and that teaching was a delegated function committed to the wiser presbyters.
724 Other interpretations of the apocalyptic angels: 1. Heavenly messengers, guardian angels of the several churches. Origen. Jerome, De Wette, Alford, Bishop Lightfoot. 2. Deputies or clerks of the churches, corresponding to the shelichai of the synagogues. Vitringa, John Lightfoot, Bengel, Winer. 3. Figurative personifications of the churches. Arethas, Salmasius. 4. Bishops proper. See my Hist. of the Ap Ch. pp. 537 sqq.
725 Rothe, Bunsen, Thiersch, and Bishop Lightfoot trace the institution of episcopacy to the Gentile churches in Asia Minor, and claim for it some sanction of the surviving apostle John during the mysterious period between a.d. 70 and 100. Neander, Baur, and Ritschl opposed Rothe’s theory (which created considerable sensation in learned circles at the time). Rothe was not an Episcopalian, but regarded episcopacy as a temporary historical necessity in the ancient church.
726 See §27, pp. 264 sqq.
727 Acts 21:18 comp, 11:30; 12:17; and Acts 15
728 diavkono", diaconus, in later usage also diavkwn, diacones (in Cyprian’s works and in synodical decrees).
729 Lightfoot (Hor. Hebr. in Act. 6:3) says: "Tralatum erat officium Diaconatus ... in Ecclesiam Evangelicam ex Judaica. Erant enim in unaquaque Synagoga !ysnrp ‘g , tres Diaconi quibus incubuit ista cura (pauperum)."
730 According to a letter of Cornelius, the Roman Church in 251 had forty-six presbyters, but only seven deacons, Euseb., H. E., VI. 43. The places were filled by sub-deacons. In Constantinople, Justinian authorized the appointment of a hundred deacons.
731 Acts 6:3; 1 Tim. 8:8 sqq.
732 hJ diavkono", afterwards also diakovnissa, diaconissa, diacona.
733 Rom. 16:1, where Phoebe is called (hJ) diavkono" th'" ejn Kegcreai'". Comp. 16:3, 6, 12. On the question whether the widows mentioned 1 Tim. 3:11; 5:9-15, were deaconesses, see my Hist. of the Ap. Ch., p. 536.
734 In the Roman Church, sisterhoods for charitable work have supplanted congregational deaconesses; and similar institutions (without the vow of celibacy) were established among the Moravians, in the Lutheran, Episcopal, and other churches. The Roman Catholic Sisters of Charity, and the Evangelical Deaconesses of Kaiserswerth are worthy of special honor. See art. Deacon, Deaconess, and Deaconesses in Schaff’s Rel. Cyclop., vol. I. (1882), pp. 613 sqq.
735 Comp. § 50, p. 450.
736 1 Cor. 5:5.
737 Comp. Matt. 18:15-18; Tit. 3:10; 1 Cor. 5:5.
738 Matt. 18:17. The words: "Tell it to the church," cannot apply to the church universal, as ejkklhsiva does in Matt. 16:18.
739 Acts 5:1-10.
740 1 Cor. 5:1 sqq.
741 2 Cor. 2:5-10.
742 Acts 15, and Galatians 2.
743 Acts 15:6, 12, 22, 23. See Notes.
744 Rom. 12:5; 1 Cor. 6:15; 10:17; 12:27; Eph. 1:23; 4:12; 5:23, 30; Col. 1:18, 24; 2:17.
745 Eph. 4:13.
746 Matt. 16:18. In the other passage where he speaks of the ejkklhsiva, Matt. 18:17, it denotes a local congregation (a synagogue), as in very many passages of the Acts and Epistles. We use the word church in two additional senses in which it never occurs in the New Test., because the thing did not exist then, namely, of church buildings and of denominations (as the Roman Church, Anglican Church, Lutheran Church).
747 We could not say "Thy church come " (Matt. 6:9); "to such (children) belongeth the church" (Mark 10:14); "the church cometh not with observation" (Luke 17:21); "neither fornicators, etc ... shall inherit the church " (1 Cor. 6:10); "the church is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit" (Rom. 15:17). On the other hand, it would be improper to call the kingdom of God "the body of Christ " or "the bride of the Lamb."
748 John 17:3.
749 euvaggevlion tetravmorfon.
750 ajpovstolo".
751 Comp. tuvposdidach'", Rom. 6:17, and the remarks of Weiss in loc. (6th ed. of Meyer’s Com., 1881), who takes the word in specific application to the Pauline doctrine of Christianity; while others refer it to the Christian system in general. Similar terms in Plato, tuvpoi paideiva", tuvpo" th'" didaskaliva", etc.
752 Gal. 2:11 sqq. See § 85, pp. 352 sqq.
753 Schelling’s great idea of the three ages in the history of Christianity, the Petrine (catholic), the Pauline (Protestant), and the Johannean (future), is well known. I saw the aged philosopher shortly before his death, in a hotel at Ragatz, Switzerland (August, l854), and found him lying on his bed, as pale as a corpse, but with clear mind and brilliant eyes. When I asked him whether he still held to that construction of church history, be emphatically replied in the affirmative, but added that he had, on further reflection, made room for James as the representative of the Greek church, in distinction from the Roman or Petrine church. I mention this as an interesting modification of his theory, not made known before, and as containing a grain of truth.
754 James 1:25: eij" novmon tejleion to;n th'" ejleuqeriva".
755 Gal. 5:1; 2 Cor. 3:6.
756 Comp. Gal. 6:2 (the law of Christ); Rom. 13:8 sqq.; 3:22; 8:2.
757 James 1:1; 2:1; thvn pivstin tou' Kurivou hJmw'n jIhsou' Cristou' th'" dovzh".
758 James 1:18: boulhqei" ajpekuvhsen hJma'" lovgw/ ajlhqeiva".
759 James 2: 22 hJ pivsti" sunhvrgei toi'" e[rgoi" aujtou' kai; ejk tw'n e[rgwn hJ pivsti" ejteleiwvqh.
760 1 Cor. 13:2.
761 James 2:19.
762 See Rom. 2:6 (oJ" ajpodwvsei eJkavstw/ kata; ta; e[rga auvtou'); 2 Cor. 5:10; Gal. 6:7; comp. Matt. 12:37; 25:35 sqq. The solution of the apparent contradiction between the doctrines of justification by faith and judgment by works lies in the character of the works as being the evidence of faith.
763 Gal. 5:6: pivsti" dij ajgavph" ejnergoumevnh, is operative (in the middle sense, as always in the New Test.). "These words," says Bishop Lightfoot (in loc.),"bridge the gulf which seems to separate the language of St. Paul and St. James. Both assert a principle of practical energy, as opposed to a barren in active theory." To quote from my own commentary on the passage (1882): "The sentence ’faith working through love’ reconciles the doctrine of Paul with that of James; comp. 6:15; 1 Thess. 1:3; 1 Cor. 13; 1 Tim. 1:5; James 2:22. Here is the basis for a final settlement of the controversy on the doctrine of justification. Romanism (following exclusively the language of James) teaches justification by faith and works; Protestantism (on the authority of Paul), justification by faith alone; Paul and James combined: justification and salvation by faith working through love. Man is justified by faith alone, but faith remains not alone: it is the fruitful mother of good works, which are summed up in love to God and love to men. Faith and love are as inseparable as light and heat in the sun. Christ’s merits are the objective and meritorious ground of justification; faith (as the organ of appropriation) is the subjective condition; love or good works are the necessary evidence; without love faith is dead, according to James, or no faith at all, according to Paul. A great deal of misunderstanding in this and other theological controversies has arisen from the different use of terms."
764 James 1:27; comp. 5:13sqq., and the concluding verse.
765 Matt. 16:16; comp. John 6:68, 69.
766 Weiss (p. 172): "Die Hoffnung bildet in der Anschauung des Petrus den eigentlichen Mittelpunkt des Christenlebens. Sie erscheint bei ihm in der höchsten Energie, wonach die gehoffte Vollendung bereits unmittelbar nahe gerückterscheint."
767 See his Pentecostal sermon, Acts 2:14 sqq.; his addresses to the people, 3:12 sqq.; before the Sanhedrin, 4:8 sqq.; 5:29 sqq.; to Cornelius, 10:34 sqq.
768 Acts 10:35; 15:7-11.
769 1 Pet. 1:3-5; 5:4; 2 Pet. 3:13.
770 1 Pet. 1:18 sqq.; 2:4; 3:18 sqq.
771 1 Pet. 1:20: Cristou' proegnwsmevnou mevn pro; katabolh'" kovsmou, fanerwqevnto" dev, k. t. l.; 1:11: to; ejn aujtoi'"(toi'" profhvtai")pneu'ma Cristou' promarturovmenon, k. t. l. Schmid, Lechler, Gess, and others understand these passages as teaching a real pre-existence; Beyschlag (l.c., p. 121) finds in them only an ideal pre-existence in the foreknowledge of God, and emphasizes the ejpoivhsen in Acts 2:36. He refers the pveu'ma Cristou'to the Holy Spirit, which was afterwards given in full measure to Christ at his baptism. So also Weiss (p. 161). But in this case Peter would have said to; peu'ma a{gion, as he did 1 Pet. 1:12; 2 Pet. 1:21; Acts 2:33, 38.
772 1 Pet. 3:19; 4:6; comp. Acts 2:27. The reference of the first passage to a preaching of Christ through Noah at the time of the flood is artificial, breaks the historic connection (ajpevqanen ... qamatwqeiv" ... zwopoihqeiv" pneuvmati ... ejkhvruxen ... poreuqei;" eij" oujranovn ) and is set aside by 1 Pet. 4:6, which explains and generalizes the statement of the former passage. Baur (p. 291) understands the pneuvmata ejn fulakh/' to be the fallen angels (comp. 2 Pet. 2:4; Gen. 6:1), and the preaching of Christ an announcement of the judgment. But in this case we should have to distinguish between the ejkhvruxen, 1 Pet. 3:9, and the eujhggelivsqh in 4:6. The latter always means preaching the gospel, which is a savor of life unto life to believers, and a savor of death unto death to unbelievers.
773 Dr. Baur, who was formerly disposed to make Paul the founder of Christian universalism, admits in his last elaboration of the Pauline system (N. T. liche Theol., p. 128), that "Paul only expressed to the consciousness what in itself, in principle and actually, or by implication, was contained already in the doctrine of Jesus (was an sich principiell und thatsächlich, oder implicite schon in der Lehre Jesu enthalten war)."Pressensé misstates here Baur’s position, but himself correctly calls Paul’s doctrine "as a whole and in all its parts, the logical deduction and development of the teaching of the Master" (Apost. Era, p. 255).
774 1 Cor. 1:30; 2:2.
775 1 Cor. 15:13.
776 Rom. 4: 23. The first diav is retrospective, the second prospective: for the destruction of sin and for the procurement of righteousness.
777 Rom. 1:17: duvnami"' qeou' eij" swthrivan panti; tw/' pisteuvonti , jIoudaivw/ te [prw'ton]kai; {Ellhni. Other pregnant passages in which Paul summarizes his dogmatics and ethics, are Rom. 1:16, 17:3: 21-26; 4:25; 11:32; 1 Cor. 15:22; Gal. 3:22; Tit. 3:3-7.
778 Rom. 1:18; 3:20. First the depravity of the heathen, then that of the Jews (2:1, comp. 2:17).
779 Rom. 1:18-21; 2:14-16; comp. Acts 17:28.
780 The Augustinian application of this conflict to the regenerate state, involves Rom. 7 in contradiction with Rom. 6 and 8, and obliterates the distinction between the regenerate and the unregenerate state. Augustine understood that chapter better in his earlier years, before the Pelagian controversy drove him to such an extreme view of total depravity as destroys all freedom and responsibility. We see here the difference between an inspired apostle and an enlightened theologian. The chief object of Rom. 7 is to show that the law cannot sanctify any more than it can justify (Rom. 3), and that the legal conflict with the sinful flesh ends in total failure. Paul always uses here nou'" for the higher principle in man (including reason and conscience); while in Rom. 8, where he speaks of the regenerate man, he uses pneu'ma, which is the nou'" sanctified and enlightened by the Holy Spirit. In 8:25 he indeed alludes to the regenerate state by way of anticipation and as an immediate answer to the preceding cry for redemption; but from this expression of thanks he once more points back with a\ra ou\n to the previous state of bondage before he enters more fully with a\ra nu'n into the state of freedom.
781 1 Tim. 1:15; 2:4, 6; Tit. 2:11. Particularistic restrictions of "all" in these passages are arbitrary. The same doctrine is taught 2 Pet. 3:9, and John 3:16; 1 John 2:2. The last passage is as clear as the sun: "Christ is the propitiation (iJlasmov") for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world"(ouj movnon ... ajlla; kai; peri; o{lou tou' kovsmou ).
782 Rom. 5:12-21; 1 Cor. 15:1, 22. The pavnte" and the oiJ polloiv (which is equivalent to pavnte" and opposed, not to a few, but to the one) in the second clause referring to the second Adam, is as comprehensive and unlimited as in the first clause. The English Version weakens the force of oiJ polloiv, and limits the number by omitting the article. The pollw'/ ma'llon (Rom. 5:15, 17) predicated of Christ’s saving grace, is not a numerical, nor a logical, but a dynamic plus, indicating a higher degree of efficacy, insomuch as Christ brought far greater blessings than we lost in Adam.
783 Rom. 11:32; Gal. 8:22. These contain the briefest statement of the sad mystery of the fall cleared up by the blessed mystery of redemption. In the first passage the masculine is used (tou;" pavnta"), in the second the neuter (ta; pavnta), and the application is confined to believers (toi'" pisteuvousin).
784 Rom. 3 –7; Gal. 2 –4; especially Rom. 3:20; 5:20; Gal. 3:24
785 Rom. 8:3, 32; Phil. 2:6-11; 2 Cor. 8:9. On the Christology of Paul, see the Notes at the end of this section.
786 Gal. 5:11; 6:12. 1 Cor. 1:23.
787 1 Cor. 15:3: "I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures."
788 Rom. 3:26: eij" to; ei\nai aujto;n divkaion kai; dikaiou'nta to;n ejk Cristou'. Bengel calls this "summum paradoxon evangelicum."
789 2 Cor. 5:15: o{ti ei\" ujpevr pavntwn ajpevqanen, a[ra oiJ pavnte" apevqanon. Mark the aorist. The prepositions uJpevr (used of persons) and periv (of things, but also of persons) express the idea of benefit, but often in close connection with the idea of vicariousness (ajntiv). Comp. Gal. 1:4; 3:13; Rom. 4:25; 5:6, etc
790 Rom. 3:21-26; 5:6-10; 8:32; 1 Cor. 1:17, 18; 2:2; 6:20; 7:23; 11:24; 15:3; 2 Cor. 5:15, 18, 19, 21; Gal. 1:4; 2:11 sqq.; 3:13; 6:14, etc. Comp. Weiss, p. 302; Pfleiderer, p. 7; Baur (N. T. Theol., p. 156). Holsten and Pfleiderer (in his able introduction) regard the atoning death of Christ as the kernel of Paul’s theology, and Holsten promises to develop the whole system from thus idea in his new work, Das Evangelium des Paulus, of which the first part appeared in 1880. But they deny the objective character of the revelation at Damascus, and resolve it into a subjective moral struggle and a dialectical process of reflection and reasoning. Luther passed through a similar moral conflict and reached the same conclusion, but on the basis of the Scriptures and with the aid of the divine Spirit.
791 The passages in which the Holy Spirit is mentioned are very numerous, especially in the Thessalonians, Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, and Ephesians. Comp. Rom. 5:5; 7:6; 8:2, 5, 9, 11, 14, 15, 16, 26; 1 Cor. 2: 4 sqq.; 3:16; 6:11, 17, 19; 12:3-16; 2 Cor. 1:12; 2:7; Gal. 4:6; 5:16, 22, 25; Eph. 1:17; 2:2; 4:23, 30; 5:18; 1 Thess. 1:5, 6; 4:8; 5:19, 23; 2 Thess. 2:2, 8, 13; 2 Tim. 1:7, 14; Tit. 3: 5.
792 The concluding verse in the second Epistle to the Corinthians; comp. Eph. 2:18, 22; 4:4-6, where God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit are mentioned as distinct personalities, if we may use this unsatisfactory yet indispensable term.
793 1 Cor. 13:13.
794 Rom. 8:29: "Whom he foreknew (ou}" proevgnw), he also foreordained (prowvrisen), to be conformed to the image of his Son. "The verb proginwvskw occurs in the New Test. five times (Rom. 8:29; 11:1, 2; Acts 26:5; 1 Pet. 1:20), the noun provgnwsi" twice (Acts 2:23; 1 Pet. 1:2), always, as in classical Greek, in the sense of previous knowledge (not election). The verb proorivzwoccurs six times, and means always to foreordain, to determine before. The words ejklegw and ejklevgomai, ejkloghv, ejklektov" occur much more frequently, mostly with reference to eternal choice or election. See note below.
795 Eph. 1:4: "Even as he chose us in Christ (ejxelevxato hJma'" ejn aujtw/') before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before him in love: having foreordained us unto adoption as sons (proorivsa" hJma'" eij" uiJoqesivan )through Jesus Christ unto himself, according to the good pleasure of his will."
796 Phil. 2:12, 13. Comp. Romans 9 with 10.
797 Rom. 8:30: "Whom he foreordained them he also called (ejkavlesen): and whom he called them he also justified (ejdikaivwsen), which is also the beginning of sanctification), and whom he justified, them he also glorified (ejdovxasen)."The proleptic aorist is used for the future to indicate the absolute certainty that God will carry out his gracious design to the glorious consummation.
798 Rom. 10:14, 15. A chain of abridged syllogisms (sorites) by which Paul reasons back from effect to cause till he reaches the first link in the chain. On the klh'si"(vocatio) see Rom. 11:29; 1 Cor. 1:26; 7:20; Gal. 1:6; Eph. 1:18; 4:14; Phil. 3:14, etc. The verb kalevw is of very frequent occurrence in the Gospels and Epistles.
799 Rom. 2:4; 2 Cor 7:9, 10; 2 Tim. 2:25.
800 Baur (p. 154) distinguished five conceptions of pivsti" (from peivqein): 1st, conviction in general, a theoretical belief or assent. In this sense it does not occur in Paul, but in James 1:17. 2d, conviction of the invisible and supernatural; 2 Cor. 5:7, pivsti" as distinct from ei|do". 3d, religious conviction, 1 Cor. 2:5; 2 Cor. 1:24, etc. 4th, trust in God, Rom. 4:17-21. 5th, trust in Christ, or the specific Christian faith, Rom. 3:22; 1 Cor. 15:14; Gal, 1:23, and always where justifying faith is meant. Weiss (p. 316) defines the Pauline idea of justifying faith as " the very opposite of all the works required by the law; it is no human performance, but, on the contrary, an abandonment of all work of our own, an unconditional reliance on God who justifies, or on Christ as the Mediator of salvation. "But this is only the receptive side of faith, it has an active side as well, pivsti" is ejnergoumevnh di j ajgavph". See below.
801 Rom. 5:1; 8:15-17; Gal. 4:5-7. If we read in Rom. 5:1 (with the oldest authorities) the hortative subjunctive e[cwmen "let us have" (instead of the indicative e[comen "we have "), peace is represented as a blessing which we should grasp and fully enjoy—an exhortation well suited for Judaizing and gloomy Christians who groan under legal bondage. On justification see the notes below.
802 Matt. 5:20; 6:33; 9:22, 29; 17:20; Mark 11:22; 16:16; Luke 5:50; 18:10-14; John 3:16, 17; 6:47, etc.
803 Comp. Rom. 6:19, 22; 1 Cor. 1:30; 1 Thess. 4:3, 4, 7; 2 Thess. 2:13.
804 1 Cor. 18:1, 2. Luther’s famous description of faith (in his Preface to Romans), as "a lively, busy, mighty thing that waits not for work, but is ever working, and is as inseparable from love as light is from heat," is in the very spirit of Paul, and a sufficient reply to the slander brought against the doctrine of justification by faith as being antinomian in its tendency.
805 1 Thess. 5:23: "The God of peace sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire, without blame at the coming (parousiva)of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calleth you, who will also do it." Comp. Romans 6 –8, which treat most fully of sanctification, also Rom. 12 –15, and all the ethical or hortatory portions of his other epistles.
806 Phil. 2:12, 13. The apostle emphatically uses the same verb, ejnergw'n and ejnerfei'n, while the E. V., with its usual love for variation, renders "worketh" and "to do." Augustin (De dono persev. 33): "Nos ergo volumus, sed Deus in nobis operatur et velle nos ergo operamur, sed Deus in nobis operatur at operari." Phil. 2:13 "supplies at once the stimulus to, and the corrective of the precept in the preceding verse: ’Work, for God works with you;’and ’The good is not yours but God’s.’" Lightfoot, in loc. Comp. also Calvin, Alford, and Braune, in loc.
807 Gal. 2:20. This passage is obscured in the E V. by the omission of oujkevti, "no longer," and the insertion of "nevertheless."
808 Gal. 3:27; Eph. 5:30; 1 Cor. 1:9; 2 Cor. 1:3, 5; 5:17; 13:4; Col. 3:4; Phil. 1:21; Rom. 6:4-8; 14:8; 1 Thess. 5:10. Comp. those numerous passages where Paul uses the significant phrase ejn Cristw/', living and moving and acting in Him, as the element of our spiritual existence.
809 Hence the Heidelberg Catechism, following the order of the Ep. to the Romans, represents Christian life, in the third and last part, under the head: "Thankfulness."
810 Erasmus justly regarded the conclusion of Rom. 8:31-39 as unsurpassed for genuine eloquence: "Quid unquam Cicero dixit grandiloquentius It is only equalled by the ode on love in 1".
811 This is the subject of Rom. 9–11. These three chapters contain a theodicy and an outline of the philosophy of church history. They are neither the chief part of Romans (Baur), nor a mere episode or appendix (De Wette), but an essential part of the Epistle in exposition of the concluding clause of the theme, Rom. 1:17 ... "to the Jew first, and also to the Greek" (or Gentile). Romans 9 treats of divine sovereignty; Rom. 10 (which should begin at Rom. 9:30) treats of human responsibility; Rom. 11 of the future solution of this great problem. They must be taken together as a unit. Romans 9 alone may be and has been made to prove Calvinism and even extreme supralapsarianism; Rom. 10 Arminianism; and Rom. 11 Universalism. But Paul is neither a Calvinist nor an Arminian nor a Universalist in the dogmatic sense. See the doctrinal expositions in Lange on Romans, much enlarged in the translation, pp. 327-334.
812 Rom. 11:32, 33, 86.
813 2 Thess. 2:3-12; 1 Cor. 15:28.
814 John 1:17.
815 Herein Baur agrees with Neander and Schmid. He says of the Johannean type (l.c., p. 351): In ihm erreicht die neuteitamentliche Theologie ihre höchste Stufe und ihre vollendetste Form." This admission makes it all the more impossible to attribute the fourth Gospel to a literary forger of the second century. See also some excellent remarks of Weiss, pp. 605 sqq., and the concluding chapter of Reuss on Paul and John.
816 For the theology of the Apocalypse as compared with that of the Gospel and Epistles of John, see especially Gebhardt, The Doctrine of the Apoc., transl. by Jefferson, Edinb., 1878.
817 John 1:14 (ejqeasavmeqa th;n dovxan aujtou'); 1 John 1:1-3.
818 In the strictest sense of qeolovgo" as the chief champion of the eternal deity of the Logos: John 1:1:qeov" h|n oJ lovgo".So in the superscription of the Apocalypse in several cursive MSS.
819 John 17 3; 15:11; 16:24; 1 John 1:4.
820 Comp. John 1:14; 3:16; 1 John 4:1-3.
821 John 4:24; 1 John 1:5; 4:8, 16. The first definition or oracle is from Christ’s dialogue with the woman of Samaria, who could, of course, not grasp the full meaning, but understood sufficiently its immediate practical application to the question of dispute between the Samaritans and the Jews concerning the worship on Gerizim or Jerusalem.
822 There is a remarkable variation of reading in John 1:18 between monogenhv" qeov" ,one who is God only-begotten, andoJ monogenhv" uiJov" ,the only-begotten Son. (A third reading: oJ monogenh;" qeov" ,"the only-begotten God," found in a’ and 33, arose simply from a combination of the two readings, the article being improperly transferred from the second to the first.) The two readings are of equal antiquity; qeov" is supported by the oldest Greek MSS., nearly all Alexandrian or Egyptian (a* BC*L, also the Peshitto Syr.);uiJov" by the oldest versions (Itala Vulg., Curet. Syr., also by the secondary uncials and all known cursives except 33). The usual abbreviations in the uncial MS., Qo-for qeov" and UO for uiJov" ,may easily be confounded. The connection of monogenhv" withqeov"is less natural than with uiJo;" although John undoubtedly could call the Son qeov" (not oJ qeov"), and did so in 1:1. Monogenhv" qeov"simply combines the two attributes of the Logos, qeov" 1:1, and monogenhv", 1:14. For a learned and ingenious defence of qeov" see Hort’s Dissertations (Cambridge, 1877), Westcott on St. John (p. 71), and Westcott and Hort’s Gr. Test. Introd. and Append., p. 74. Tischendorf and nearly all the German commentators (except Weiss) adopt uiJov", and Dr. Abbot, of Cambridge, Mass., has written two very able papers in favor of this reading, one in the Bibliotheca Sacra for 1861, pp. 840-872, and another in the " Unitarian Review" for June, 1875. The Westminster Revision first adopted " God" in the text, but afterwards put it on the margin. Both readings are intrinsically unobjectionable, and the sense is essentially the same. Monogenhv" does not necessarily convey the Nicene idea of eternal generation, but simply the unique character and superiority of the eternal and uncreated sonship of Christ over the sonship of believers which is a gift of grace. It shows his intimate relation to the Father, as the Pauline prwtovtoko" his sovereign relation to the world.
823 Lit."towards the bosom" (eij" to;n kovlpon), i.e., leaning on, and moving to the bosom. It expresses the union of motion and rest and the closest and tenderest intimacy, as between mother and child, like the German term Schoosskind, bosom-child. Comp. prov" to;n qeovn John 1:1 and Prov. 8:30, where Wisdom (the Logos) says: "I was near Him as one brought up with Him, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him."
824 With this sentence the Prologue returns to the beginning and suggests the best reason why Christ is called Logos. He is the Exegete, the Expounder, the Interpreter of the hidden being, of God. "The word ejxhghvsato used by classical writers of the interpretation of divine mysteries. The absence of the object in the original is remarkable. Thus the literal rendering is simply, he made declaration (Vulg. ipse enarravit). Comp. Acts 15: 4. Westcott, in loc. See the classical parallels in Wetstein.
825 John 1:1, 14:1 John 1:1; Rev. 19:13. The Logos theory of John is the fruitful germ of the speculations of the Greek church on the mysteries of the incarnation and the trinity. See my ed. of Lange’s Com. on John, pp. 51 and 55 sqq., where also the literature is given. On the latest discussions see Weiss in the sixth ed. of Meyer’s Com. on John (1880), pp. 49 sqq. Lovgo" means both ratio andoratio reason and speech, which are inseparably connected. " Logos," being masculine in Greek, is better fitted as a designation of Christ than our neuter " Word." Hence Ewald, in defiance of German grammar, renders it "der Wort."On the apocalyptic designation oJ logo" tou' quou' and on the christology of the Apocalypse, see Gebhardt, l.c., 94 and 333 sqq. On Philo’s idea of the Logos I refer to Schürer, Neutestam. Zeitgeschichte, pp. 648 sqq., and the works of Gfrörer, Zeller, Frankel, etc., there quoted.
826 These three ideas are contained in the first verse of the Gospel, which has stimulated and puzzled the profoundest minds from Origen and Augustin to Schelling and Goethe. Mark the unique union of transparent simplicity and inexhaustible depth, and the symmetry of the three clauses. The subject (lovgo") and the verb (h|n) are three times repeated. " The three clauses contain all that it is possible for man to realize as to the essential nature of the Word in relation to time and mode of being and character: He was (1) in the beginning: He was (2) with God: He was (3) God. At the same time these three clauses answer to the three great moments of the Incarnation of the Word declared in John 1:14. He who ’was God,’ became flesh: He who ’was with God,’ tabernacled among us (comp. 1 John 1:2): He who ’was in the beginning,’ became (in time)." Westcott (in Speaker’s Com.). A similar interpretation is given by Lange. The personality of the Logos is denied by Beyschlag. See Notes (in text at end of § 72).
827 Here we have the germ (but the germ only) of the orthodox distinction between unity of essence and trinity of persons or hypostases; also of the distinction between an immanent, eternal trinity, and an economical trinity, which is revealed in time (in the works of creation, redemption, and sanctification). A Hebrew monotheist could not conceive of an eternal and independent being of a different essence (eJteroouvsi") existing besides the one God. This would be dualism.
828 John 1:3, with a probable allusion to Gen. 1:3, "God said," as ejn arch/' refers to bereshith, Gen. 1:1. The negative repetition oujde; e[n, prorsus nihil, not even one thing (stronger than oujdevn nihil), excludes every form of dualism (against the Gnostics), and makes the pavnta absolutely unlimited. The Socinian interpretation, which confines it to the moral creation, is grammatically impossible.
829 John 1:14: oJ lovgo" sa;rx ejgevneto a sentence of immeasurable
import, the leading idea not only of the Prologue, but of the Christian
religion and of the history of mankind. It marks the close of the preparation
for Christianity and the beginning of its introduction into the human race.
Bengel calls attention to the threefold antithetic correspondence between 1:1
and 1:14:
The Logos
was (h|n) in the beginning
became (ejgevneto)
God,
flesh,
with God.
and dwelt among us.
830 Paul expresses the same idea: God sent his Son "in the likeness of the flesh of sin," Rom. 8:3; comp. Heb. 2:17; 4:15. See the note at the close of the section.
831 John 1:14: ejskhvnwsen ejn hJmi'n, in allusion to the indwelling of Jehovah in the holy of holies of the tabernacle (skhnhv) and the temple. The humanity of Christ is now the tabernacle of God, and the believers are the spectators of that glory. Comp. Rev. 7:15; 21:3
832 John 17:5, 24; 1 John 3:2.
833 John 20:31.
834 1 John 3:5, 8; comp. the words of Christ, John 8:44.
835 John 6:52-58; 10:11, 15; 1 John 2:2: aujto;" iJlasmov" ejstin peri; tw'n aJmartiw'n hJmw'n, ouj peri; tw'n hJmetevrwn de; movnon, alla; kai; peri; o]lou tou' kovsmou.. The universality of the atonement could not be more clearly expressed; but there is a difference between universal sufficiency and universal efficiency.
836 1 John 1:10; John 1:29; 11:50; comp. 18:14.
837 1 John 2:1: eja;n ti" aJmavrth/, paravklhton e[comen pro;" to;n patevra jIhsou'n Cristo;n divkaion.
838 1 John 1:2: hJ zwh; ejfanerwvqh, kai; eJwravkamen kai; marturou'men kai; ajpaggevllomen uJmi'nth'n zwhvn th;n aijwvnion h{ti" h|n pro;" to;n patevra kai; ejfanerwvqh hJmi'n. Comp. John 1:4; 5; 26; 14:6. The passage 1 John 5:20: ou|tov" ejstin oJ ajliqino;" qeo;" kai; zwh; aijwvnio" , is of doubtful application. The natural connection of ou|to"with the immediately preceding jIhsou' Cristw/', and the parallel passages where Christ is called " life," favor the reference to Christ; while the words oJ ajlhqino;" qeov" suit better for the Father. See Braune, Huther, Ebrard, Haupt, Rothe, in loc.
839 John 6:47; and the whole mysterious discourse which explains the spiritual meaning of the preceding miracle.
840 Apoc. 12:1-12; 20:2. Comp. with 1 John 3:8; John 8:44; 12:31, 13:2, 27; 14 30; 16:11.
841 Apoc. 1:6; 5:6, 9, 12, 13;7: 14, etc. Comp. John 1:29; 17:19; 19:36; 1 John 1:7; 2:2; 5:6. The apocalyptic diminutive ajrnion(agnellus, lambkin, pet-lamb) for ajmnov" is used to sharpen the contrast with the Lion. Paul Gerhardt has reproduced it in his beautiful passion hymn: "Ein Lämmlein geht und trägt die Schuld."
842 Apoc. 1:5: "Unto him that loveth us," etc.; comp. John 15:13; 1 John 3:16.
843 Apoc. 1:5, 17, 18 2:8; comp. John 5:21, 25; 6:39, 40 –11:25.
844 Apoc. 1:5; 3:21; 17:14; 19:16.
845 Apoc. 2:10; 3:21; 7:17; 14:1-5; 21:6, 7; 22:1-5. Comp. Gebhardt, l.c., 106-128, 343-353.
846 John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7. Comp. also 1 John 2:1, where Christ is likewise called paravklhto". He is our Advocate objectively at the throne of the Father, the Holy Spirit is our Advocate subjectively in our spiritual experience. The E. V. renders the word in all these passages, except the last, by " Comforter" (Consolator), which rests on a confusion of the passive paravklhto" with the active paraklhvtwr. See my notes in Lange’s Com. on John, pp. 440 sqq., 468 sqq.
847 There is a distinction between the eternal procession (ejkpovreusi")of the Spirit from the Father (para; tou' Patro;" ejkporeuvetai, procedit, John 15:26), and the temporal mission (pevmyi") of the Spirit from the Father and the Son (15:26, where Christ says of the Spirit: o}n ejgw; pevmyw, to, and 14:26, where he says: o} pevmyei oJ path;r ejn tw/' ojnovmativ mou). The Greek church to this day strongly insists on this distinction, and teaches an eternal procession of the Spirit from the Father alone, and a temporal mission of the Spirit by the Father and the Son. The difference between the present ejkporeuvetai and the future pevmyw seems to favor such a distinction, but the exclusive alone (movnon) in regard to the procession is an addition of the Greek church as much as the Filioque is an addition of the Latin church to the original Nicene Creed. It is doubtful whether John meant to make a metaphysical distinction between procession and mission. But the distinction between the eternal trinity of the divine being and the temporal trinity of the divine revelation has an exegetical basis in the pre-existence of the Logos and the Spirit. The trinitarian revelation reflects the trinitarian essence; in other words, God reveals himself as he is, as Father, Son, and Spirit. We have a right to reason from the revelation of God to his nature, but with proper reverence and modesty; for who can exhaust the ocean of the Deity!
848 1 John 5:8. There are different interpretations of water and blood: 1st, reference to the miraculous flow of blood and water from the wounded side of Christ, John 19:34; 2d, Christ’s baptism, and Christ’s atoning death; 3d, the two sacraments which he instituted as perpetual memorials. I would adopt the last view, if it were not for to; ai\ma, which nowhere designates the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and more naturally refers to the blood of Christ shed for the remission of sins. The passage on the three heavenly witnesses in 5:7, formerly quoted as a proof text for the doctrine of the trinity, is now generally given up as a mediaeval interpolation, and must be rejected on internal as well as external grounds; for John would never have written: "the Father, the Word, and the Spirit," but either "the Father, the Son, and the Spirit," or God, the Word (Logos), and the Spirit."
849 2 John 1:13: tevkna qeou' ... ejk qeou' ejgennhvqhsan. The classical section on the new birth is Christ’s discourse with Nicodemus, 3: 1-15. The terms gennhqh'nai a[nwqen, to be born anew, afresh, or from above, i. e., from heaven, Comp. 3:31; 19:11 (the reference is not to a repetition, again, a second time, pavlin, deuvteron, but to an analogous process); 3: 6, 7; gevnhqh'nai ejx u]dato" kai;pneuvmato" of water (baptism) and spirit, 3:5;ejk qeou', of God, ejk tou' oujranou'from heaven, are equivalent. John himself most frequently uses ejk qeou', 1:13; 1 John 2:29; 3:9; 4:7; 5:1, 4, 18. He does not use ajnagennavomai, to be begotten or born again (but it occurs in Justin Martyr’s quotation, Apol. I. 61; also in 1 Pet. 1:23, a[agennhmevnoi ... dia; lovgou zw'nto" qeou', and 1 Pet. 1:3, ajnagennhvsa" hJma'" eiv" ejlpivda), and the noun ajnagevnnhsi", regeneration, is not found at all in the Greek Test. (though often in the Greek fathers); but the analogous paliggenesiva occurs once in connection with baptism, Tit. 3:5 (e[swsen hJma'" dai; loutrou' paliggenesiva" kai; ajnakainwvsew" pneuvmato" aJgivou), and once in a more comprehensive sense of the final restitution and consummation of all things, Matt. 19:18. Paul speaks of the new creature in Christ (kainh; ktivsi" , 2 Cor. 5:17) and of the new (kaino;" a[nqrwpo" ,Eph. 4:24). In the Rabbinical theology regeneration meant simply the change of the external status of a proselyte to Judaism.
850 1 John 3:9; comp. 5:18. But 5:16 implies that a "brother" may sin, though not "unto death," and 1:10 also excludes the idea of absolute freedom from sin in the present state.
851 1 John 5:18: oJ ponhro;" oujc a}ptetai aujtou'.
852 John 17:3, words of our Lord in the sacerdotal prayer.
853 1 John 5:12, 13: oJ e[cwn to;n uiJo;n e[cei th;n zwh;n ... zwh;n e[cete aijwvnion. Comp. the words of Christ, John 3:36; 5:24; 6:47, 54; and of the Evangelist, 20:31.
854 1 John 3:2: oi|damen o{ti eja;n fanevrwqh/' (he, or it), o{moioi aujtw/' ejsovmeqa, o{ti oyovmeqa aujto;n kaqwv" ejstin.
855 1 John 5:4: au{th ejsti;n hJ nikhvsasa to;n kovsmon, hJ pivsti" hJmw'n.
856 John uses the term dikaiosuvnh, but never dikaivwsi" ordikaiovw. A striking example of religious agreement and theological difference.
857 John 17:22-24; 1 John 1:3, 4.
858 1 John 3:11, 23; 4:7, 11; comp. John 13:34, 35; 15:12, 17.
859 The word ejkklhsiva occurs in the third Epistle, but in the sense of a local congregation. Of the external organization of the church John is silent; he does not even report the institution of the sacraments, though he speaks of the spiritual meaning of baptism (John 3:5), and indirectly of the spiritual meaning of the Lord’s Supper (6:53-56).
860 1 John 2:3, 4; 3:22, 24; 4:7, 11; 5:2, 3; 2 John 6; comp. the Gospel, John 14:15, 21: "If ye love me, ye will keep my commandments," etc.
861 Rom. 13:7-10; 1 Cor. 13:1-13.
862 Matt. 18:7; 1 Cor. 11:19: "There must be also heresies (factions) among you, that they who are approved may be made manifest among you." Comp. Acts 20:30; 1 Tim. 4:1; 2 Pet. 2:1-3.
863 Acts 8:10: hJ Duvnami" tou' qeou' hJ kaloumevnh Megavlh.
864 1 John 2:23; 4:1-3.
865 2 Tim. 3:16. It applies to "every Scripture inspired of God," more immediately to the Old Test., but a fortiori still more to the New.
866 Comp. 2 Pet. 3:16, where a collection of Paul’s Epistles is implied.
867 This order is restored in the critical editions of Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort.
868 The Codex Sinaiticus puts the Pauline Epistles before the Acts, and the Hebrews between 2 Thessalonians and 1 Timothy.
869 This order agrees with the Muratorian Fragment, the catalogue of Eusebius (H. E., III. 25), that of the Synod of Carthage (a.d. 897), and the Codex Basiliensis. Luther took the liberty of disconnecting the Hebrews (which he ascribed to Apollos) from the Pauline Epistles, and putting it and the Epistle of James (which be disliked) at the end of the Catholic Epistles (except Jude)
870 The Greek word eujaggevlion which passed into the Latin evangelium, and through this into modern languages (French, German, Italian, etc.), means 1st, reward for good news to the messenger (in Homer); 2d, good news, glad tidings; 3d, glad tidings of Christ and his salvation (so in the New Test.); 4th, the record of these glad tidings (so in the headings of the Gospels and in ecclesiastical usage). The Saxon "gospel," i.e., God’s spell or good spell (from spellian, to tell), is the nearest idiomatic equivalent for eujaggevlion.
871 Irenaeus very properly calls them tetravmorfon to; eujaggevlion, eJni pneuvmati sunecovmenon, quadriforme evangelium quod uno spiritu continetur. Adv. Haer. III. 11, § 8.
872 This is expressly disclaimed in John 20:30; comp. 21:25
873 Hence Justin Martyr, in his two "Apologies" (written about 146), calls the Gospels "Memoirs" or "Memorabilia" (jApomnhmoneuvmata) of Christ or of the Apostles, in imitation no doubt of the Memorabilia of Socrates by Xenophon. That Justin means no other books but our canonical Gospels by theme "Memoirs," which he says were read in public worship on Sunday, there can be no reasonable doubt. See especially Dr. Abbot’s Authorship of the Fourth Gospel, 1880.
874 John 20:30, 31:tau'ta de; gevgraptai i{na pisteuvhte o]ti jIhsou'" ejsti;n Cristov" , oJ uiJo;" tou' qeou', kai; i{na pisteuvonte" zeh;n e[chte ejn tw/' ojnovmati auvtou'.
875 This characterization is very old, and goes back to Gregory
Nazianzen, Carmen 33, where he enumerates the books of the New Test.,
and says;
Matqei'o"
me;n e[grayen JEbraivoi"
qauvmata Cristou',
Mavrko"
dj jItalivh/, Louka's jAcaiivdi
Pa'si d j jIwavnnh" khvrux mevga" , oujranofoivth".
876 See on this subject Fisher’s Beginnings of Christianity, ch. XI.: "Water marks of Age in the New Test, Histories," pp. 363 sqq., especially p. 371.
877 Synopsis (conspectus), from suvn, together, and o[yi",view, is applied since Griesbach (though used before him) to a parallel arrangement of the Gospels so as to exhibit a general view of the whole and to facilitate a comparison. In some sections the fourth Gospel furnishes parallels, especially in the history of the passion and resurrection. The first three Evangelists should not be called Synoptics (as is done by the author of Supernatural Religion, vol. I., 213, and Dr. Davidson), but Synoptists. The former is a Germanism (Synoptiker.)
878 Holtzmann (p. 12) and others include also among the verbal coincidences the irregular ajfevwntai (the Doric form of pass. perf., 3 pers., plur.), Matt. 9:2, 5; Mark 2:5, 9; Luke 5:20, 23, and the double augment in ajpekatestavqjh, Matt. 12:13; Mark 3:5; Luke 6:10. But the former is ruled out by the better reading ajfiventai, which is adopted by Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, and Westcott and Hort, in Matt. 9:2, 5, and in Mark 2:5. Moreover, the Doric form is not confined to the New Test., but somewhat widely diffused; see Moulton’s Winer, p. 97, note. And as to the double augment, it occurs also in the Sept. (see Trommius’ Concord., I., 163, sub ajpokaqivsthmi); comp. also ajpekatevsth in Mark 8:25. Ebrard (Wiss. Krit., p. 1054) quotes a passage from Pseudo-Lucian (Philiopatr., c. 27) where ajpekatevsthse occurs.
879 Mr. Norton brings out this fact very fully in his Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels (Boston, ed. of 1875, p. 464 sq.). I give his results: "In Matthew’s Gospel, the passages verbally coincident with one or both of the other two Gospels amount to less than a sixth part of its contents; and of this about seven-eighths occur in the recital of the words of others, and only about one eighth in what, by way of distinction, I may call mere narrative, in which the evangelist, speaking in his own person, was unrestrained in the choice of his expressions. In Mark, the proportion of coincident passages to the whole contents of the Gospel is about one-sixth, of which not one-fifth occurs in the narrative. Luke has still less agreement of expression with the other evangelists. The passages in which it is found amount only to about a tenth part of his Gospel; and but an inconsiderable portion of it appears in the narrative, in which there are few instances of its existence for more than half a dozen words together. In the narrative, it may be computed as less than a twentieth part. These definite proportions are important, as showing distinctly in how small a part of each Gospel there is any verbal coincidence with either of the other two; and to how great a degree such coincidence is confined to passages in which the evangelists professedly give the words of others, particularly of Jesus.-The proportions should, however, be further compared with those which the narrative part of each Gospel bears to that in which the words of others are professedly repeated. Matthew’s narrative occupies about one-fourth of his Gospel, Mark’s about one-half, and Luke’s about one-third. It may easily be computed, therefore, that the proportion of verbal coincidence found in the narrative part of each Gospel, compared with what exists in the other part, is about in the following ratios: in Matthew as one to somewhat more than two, in Mark as one to four, and in Luke as one to ten .... We cannot explain this phenomenon by the supposition that the Gospels were transcribed either one from another, or all from common documents; for, if such transcription had been the cause, it would not have produced results so unequal in the different portions into which the Gospels naturally divide themselves."
880 Geschichte der heil. Schriften N. Test., I., p. 175 (5th ed., 1874). See also his Histoire Evangelique, Paris, 1876 (Nouveau Testament, I. partie).
881 See Westcott, Introd. to the Gospels, p. 191, fifth ed.
882 Gesch., etc., I., p. 175, followed by Archbishop Thomson in Speaker’s Com. New Test., vol. I., p. viii.
883 See the Literature above. Dr. Edwin A. Abbott, of London, suggested the work, and quotes a specimen (though all in black type) in his art. "Gospels" in the "Encycl. Brit." He draws from it a conclusion favorable to the priority of Mark, from whom, he thinks, Matthew and Luke have borrowed. The specimen is the parable of the wicked husbandmen, Matt. 21:33-44; Luke 20:9-18; Mark 12:1-11.
886 The following lines,
representing the relative lengths of the three Gospels, show the extent of
their verbal coincidence and divergence. The dots divide the lines in half, and
the marks into thirds:
Luke,
————
––——————————
Mark,
———|—•—|———
Matthew, —————•——————
887 German scholars have convenient terms for these various hypotheses, as Benützungshypothese ("borrowing" hypothesis), Urevangeliumshypothese, Traditionshypothese, Tendenzhypothese, Combinationshypothese, Diegesentheorie, Markushypothese, Urmarkushypothese, etc. See the Notes (II)at the end of this section.
888 Used by recent English writers as a rendering for Benützungshypothese.
889 Clement of Alexandria makes no exception, for be merely states (in Euseb. H. E., VI. 14) that those Gospels which contain the genealogies (Matthew and Luke) were written first, Mark next, and John last.
890 So Weisse, Ewald, Reuss, Ritschl, Thiersch, Plitt, Meyer, Holtzmann, Weizsäcker, Mangold, Godet, Weis. See Meyer on Matthew, p. 34 (6th ed.), and on Luke, p. 238 (6th ed. by Weiss, 1878). Only the Tübingen "tendency critics" maintain the contrary, and this is almost necessary in order to maintain the late date which they assign to Luke. Had he written in the second or even at the end of the first century, he could not possibly have been ignorant of Matthew. But him very independence proves his early date.
891 For the use of Mark by Luke are Reuss, Weiss, and most of the advocates of the Urmarkushypothese. Against such use are Weizsäcker, Godet, and all those who (with Griesbach) make Mark an epitomizer of Matthew and Luke. Farrar also, in his Com. on Luke, p. 9, very decidedly maintains the independence of Luke both on Matthew and Mark: "It may be regarded as certain," he says, "that among these ’attempts’ Luke did not class the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark. The inference that he was either unaware of the existence of those Gospels, or made no direct use of them, suggests itself with the utmost force when we place side by side any of the events which they narrate in common, and mark the minute and inexplicable differences which incessantly occur even amid general similarity."
892 Compare the healing of the paralytic, Mark 2:3-12, with Matt. 9:2-8 the murder of John the Baptist, Mark 6:14-29, with Matt. 14:1-13; Luke 9:7-9; the healing of the demoniac boy, Mark 9:14-29, with Matt. 17:14-21 and Luke 9:37-43; also the accounts of Peter’s denial.
893 I mean especially the works of Wilke (Der Urevangelist, 1838), Holtzmann (Die Synopt. Evang., 1863), and Weiss (Das Marcusevangelium und seine synoptischen Parallelen, 1872; comp. his Matthäusevangelium, etc., 1876). Weiss deserves all the more a hearing as he strenuously advocates the genuineness of John. See notes at the end of this section. Dr. Fisher thinks that "the independence of Mark as related to the other Gospels is one of the most assured and most valuable results of recent criticism." The Beginnings of Christianity, p. 275. Dr. Davidson in the "revised and improved edition" of his Introduction, Vol. I., 551-563, still adheres to the old Tübingen position of the dependence of Mark upon both Matthew and Luke, and ignores the works of Wilke, Holtzmann, Weiss, Renan, and the article of his own countryman, Abbott, in the "Encycl. Brit."
894 Holtzmann, Mangold, E. A. Abbott, and others go back to a fictitious Urmarkus; while Ewald, Meyer, and Weiss make our canonical Mark the basis of Matthew and Luke, yet with the important addition that Mark himself used, besides the oral tradition of Peter, the lost Hebrew Matthew, or rather a Greek translation of it, which was more than a mere collection of discourses (suvntaxi" tw'n logivwn) and embraced also brief narratives. But if Mark had the rich collection of our Lord’s discourses before him, his meagreness in that department is all the more difficult to account for.
895 Luke 1:2: kaqw;" parevdosan (handed down by the living word) hJmi'n oiJ ajp j ajrch'" (i.e., from the beginning of the public ministry of Christ; comp. Acts 1:21 sq.; John 15:27) aujtovptai kai; uJphrevtai genovmenoi tou' lovgou (the same persons).
896 Hearers and hearing of the gospel are spoken of in many passages, as Matt. 13:14; Luke 7:1; John 12:38; Acts 17:20; Rom. 2:13; 1 Thess. 2:13; James 1:22, 23, 25. The reading (ajnaginwvskein) is mostly used of the Old Testament: Matt. 12:3, 5; 21:16, 42; 24:15; Mark 25; 12:10, 26; 13:14; Luke 4:16; 6: 3; 10:26; Acts 8:28, 30, 32; 13:27; 15:21, etc.; of the Epistles of Paul: Eph. 3:4; Col. 4:16; 1 Thess. 6:27; of the book of Revelation: Rev. 1:3; 5:4.
897 The rabbinical rule (in Shabb. f. 15, 1) was: "Verba praeceptoris sine ulla immutatione, ut prolata ab illo fuerunt. erant recitanda, ne diversa illi affingeretur sententia."
898 Renan, Les Evangiles, p. 96: "La tradition vivante (zw'sa fwnh; kai; mevnousa, Papias) était le grand réservoir où tous puisaient .... Le même phénomène se retrouve, du reste, dans presque toutes les littératures sacrées. Les Védas ont traversé des siècles sans être éerits; un homme qui se respectait devait les savoir par coeur. Celui qui avait besoin d’un manuscrit pour rêciter ces hymnes antiques faisait un aveu d’ignorance; aussi les copies n’en ont-elles jamais été estimées. Citer de mémoire la Bible, le Coran, est encore de nos jours un point d’honneur pour les 0rientaux." Renan thinks that most of the Old Testament quotations in the New Test. are from memory. My own observations, and those of friends residing in the East, confirm the uniformity of oral tradition and the remarkable strength of memory among the Arabs.
899 In such conjectures Eichhorn, Marsh, Schleiermacher, Ewald, Volkmar, Wittichen, and Renan have shown great ingenuity, and accumulated a vast amount of docta ignorantia.
900 Luke 1:1: polloi; ejpeceivrhsan (indicating the difficulty of the undertaking and probably also the insufficiency of the execution) ajnatavxasqai dihvghsin peri; tw'n peplhroforhmevnwn ejn hJmi'n pragmavtwn.
901 In this conclusion (which I stated thirty years ago in the first edition of myHist. of the Ap. Ch.)some of the ablest investigators of the Synoptic problem independently agree, as Lange, Ebrard (Wissenschaftliche Kritik der ev. Gesch., third ed., pp. 1044 sqq.), Norton, Alford, Godet, Westcott, Farrar. "The Synoptic Gospels," says Alford (in his Proleg. to vol. I., p. 11, 6th ed.), contain the substance of the Apostles’ testimony, collected principally from their oral teaching current in the church, partly also from written documents embodying portions of that teaching: there is, however, no reason, from their internal structure, to believe, but every reason to disbelieve that any one of the three evangelists had access to either of the other two gospels in its present form." Godet concludes his discussion (Com. on Luke, 2d ed., p. 556, Am. ed.) with these words: " It is impossible to conceive anything more capricious and less reverential than the part which we make the author of any one whatever of our Synoptic Gospels play with the history and sayings of Jesus, supposing that he had before him the other two, or one of them. Such an explanation will only be allowable when we are brought absolutely to despair of finding any other. And even then it were better still to say, Non liquet. For this explanation involves a moral contradiction. Most of our present critics are so well aware of this that they have recourse to middle terms."
902 Irenaeus, III. 1, 1; Origen in Euseb., H. E., VI. 25; Tertullian, and others. Irenaeus gives this order with the approximate data: "Matthew issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome and laying the foundations of the church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the gospel preached by him. Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia." Clement of Alexandria differs by putting Mark after Matthew and Luke, and yet before the death of Peter; for he says (in Eus., H. E., VI. 14), that when Peter proclaimed the gospel at Rome, Mark was requested by the hearers to reduce it to writing, which he did, Peter neither hindering nor encouraging it. According to this view all the Synoptists would have written before 64.
903 Maqqai'o", Matt. 9:9 (according to the spelling of a B* D, adopted by Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort), or Matqai'o"(as spelled in the text. rec.), like Matthias and Mattathias, means Gift Jehovah ( hY;Tim' , hy;nÒT'm', yaTi:m', yT'm' ), and corresponds to the Greek Theodore. He perhaps took this name after his call; his former name being Levi, Leuiv", Leueiv" ( wyIlIi , a joining), according to Mark 2:12; Luke 5:27, 29. The new name overshadowed the old, as the names of Peter and Paul replaced Simon and Saul. The identity is evident from the fact that the call of Matthew or Levi is related by the three Synoptists in the same terms and followed by the same discourse. Nicholson (Com. on Matt. 9:9) disputes the identity, as Grotius and Sieffert did before, but on insufficient grounds. Before Mark 3:16 Peter is called by his former name Simon (Mark 1:16, 29, 30, 36), and thereby shows his historical tact.
904 Hence called Maqqai'o" oJ telwvnh" ,Matt. 10:3. He inserts his previous employment to intimate the power of divine grace in his conversion.
905 Matt. 10:3, compared with Mark 3:18; Luke 6:15. But in the list in Acts 1:13 he is associated with Bartholomew, and Thomas with Philip.
906 Clement of Alexandria represents him as a strict Jewish Christian who abstained from the use of flesh. This would make him one of the weak brethren whom Paul (Rom. 14:1sqq.) charitably judges. But there is nothing in the first Gospel to justify this tradition.
907 The priority and relative superiority of Matthew are maintained not only by Augustin and the catholic tradition, but also by moderately liberal critics from Griesbach to Bleek, and even by the radical critics of the Tübingen school (Baur, Strauss, Schwegler, Zeller, Hilgenfeld, Davidson), and especially by Keim..
908 So Luke 5:29. Mark 2:15 ("many publicans and sinners sat down with Jesus and his disciples") and Matt. 9:10 ("many publicans and sinners") agree; but Matthew modestly omits his own name in connection with that feast. Some commentators understand "the house" to be the house of Jesus, but Jesus had no house and gave no dinner parties. Luke says expressly that it was the house of Levi.
909 Carr, Com., p. 6.
910 Luke 5:28; Mark 2:14; Matt. 9:9.
911 Matt. 5:35 (" Jerusalem is the city of the great king"); 23:1 (sit on Moses’ seat") 23:16 (" swear by the temple"); 16:28; 24:15 (" in the holy place;" " let him that readeth understand"), and the whole twenty-fourth chapter.
912 Matt. 5:17; 15:24; comp. 10:6.
913 Hug, Bleek, Olshausen, Ebrard, Meyer, Reim, Lange, and most commentators fix the date between 60 and 69, other writers as early as 37-45 (but in conflict with Matt. 27:8; 28:15). Baur’s view, which brings the Greek Matthew down to the second destruction of Jerusalem under Hadrian, 130-134, is exploded. Even Volkmar puts it much earlier (105 to 115), Hilgenfeld (Einleitung in das N. T., p. 497) immediately after the destruction of Jerusalem, Keim a.d. 66. Dr. Samuel Davidson, in the second ed. of his Introd. to the N. T. (London, 1882, vol. I. 413-416), assigns the present Greek Matthew with Volkmar to 105, but assumes an Aramaean original and Greek paraphrases of the same which were written before the destruction of Jerusalem. He thinks that "the eschatological discourses which connect the fail of Jerusalem, the destruction of the temple and the end of the world, have been falsified by history" (?); that consequently Jesus did not utter them as they are recorded, but they were revised and altered by writers who incorporated with them Jewish ideas and expressions (I. 403).
914 Comp. Matt. 15:2 with Mark 7:3, 4. The translation of the exclamation on the cross, Matt. 27:46, is intended for Greek Jews,
915 By Godet, Studies on the New Testament, p. 23.
916 i{na (or o{pw")plhrwqh'/ to; rjhqevn, ortovte ejplhrwvqh to; rjhqevn. This formula occurs twelve times in Matthew (1:22; 2:15, 17, 23; 4:14; 8:17; 12:17, 13:35; 21:4; 26:56; 27:9, 35), six times in John, but nowhere in Luke nor in Mark; for Mark 15:28 (kai; ejplhrwvqh hJ grafh k. t. l.) in the text. rec. is spurious and probably inserted from Luke 22:37.
917 Comp. Matt. 2:1-12; 8:11, 12; 11:21; 12:41; 15:21-28; Matt. 23 and 24; 28:19, 20.
918 For a full analysis see the critical monograph of Weiss, and Lange’s Matth., pp. 43-46. Keim, who builds his Geschichte Jesu—the ablest and least objectionable of the purely critical biographies of Christ,—chiefly on Matthew, praises its plan as sorgfältig, einfach und einleuchtend, durchsichtig und sehr wohl durchgeführt (I. 52). He divides it into two chief sections: the entry upon the public ministry with the Bussruf and Reichspredigt (4:17: apo; tovte h[rxato oJ jIhsou'" khruvssein, k. t. l.), and the entry upon the path of death with the Leidensruf and the Zukunftspredigt (Matt16:21: ajpo tovte h[rxato oJ jIh"., k. t. l.). He also finds an ingenious symmetry of numbers in the collocation of 10 miracles, 8 [7] beatitudes, 7 woes, 4 and 3 parables, 3 temptations, etc.
919 For particulars on the style of Matthew and the other Evangelists see my Companion to the Study of the Greek Testament (third ed., 1888), pp. 43 sqq.
920 See my book on the Didache (N. York, third ed., 1889), pp. 61-88.
921 Ep. Barn., c. 4, at the close:prosevcwmen, mhvpote, wJ" gevgraptai, polloi; klhtoiv, ojlivgoi de; ejklektoi; euJreqw'men. Since the discovery of the entire Greek text of this Epistle in the Codex Sinaiticus (1859), where it follows the Apocalypse, there can be no doubt any more about the formula gevgraptai(scriptum est). The other passage quoted in Matt. 5 is from Matt. 9:13: oujk h|lqen kalevsai dikaivou" ajllav aJmartwlouv". The Ep. of Barnabas dates from the close of the first or the beginning of the second century. Some place it as early as a.d. 70, others an late as 120. The Didache is older.
922 Euseb., H. E., III. 39: jIwavnnou me;n ajkousthv",Polukavrpou de; eJtai'ro" gegonwv".. Whether this " John" is the apostle or the mysterious " Presbyter John," is a matter of dispute which will be discussed in the second volume in the section on Papias. Eusebius himself clearly distinguishes two Johns. The date of Papias must be set back several years with that of Polycarp, his " companion," who suffered martyrdom in 155 (not 164). The Chronicon Paschale which represents Papias as martyred at Pergamum about the same time, mistook PAPULOS in Eusebius, H. E., IV. 15 (at the close), for PAPIAS. See Lightfoot, " Contemp. Review" for August, 1875, p. 381 sqq.
923 Eus., Hist. Eccl., III. 39: Matqai'o" me;n ou|n JEbraivdi dialekvtw/ ta; lovgia sunatavxato (or, according to the reading of Heinichen, I. 150, sunagravyato), hjrmhvneuse d j aujta; wJ" h{n dunato;" e{kasto" . This testimony has been thoroughly discussed by Schleiermacher (in the "Studien und Kritiken," 1832), Holtzmann (Synopt. Evang., 248 sqq.), Weizsäcker (Untersuchungen üb. d. ev. Gesch., 27 sqq.). Ewald (Jahrbücher, VI., 55 sqq.), Zahn (in "Stud. u. Kritiken," 1866, 649 sqq.), Steitz (ibid., 1868, 63 sqq.), Keim (Gesch. Jesu v. Naz., I., 56 sqq.), Meyer (Com. Evang. Matth., 6th ed. (1876), 4 sqq.), Lightfoot (in "Contemp. Review" for August, 1875, pp. 396-403), and Weiss (Das Matthäusevang., 1876, 1 sqq.).
924 So Schleiermacher who first critically examined this passage (1832), Schneckenbarger (1834), Lachmann (1835), Credner, Wieseler. Ewald, Reuss, Weizsäcker, Holtzmann, Meyer (p. 11). It is supposed that Matthew’s Hebrew Gospel was similar to the lost work of Papias, with this difference that the former was simply a collection (suvntaxi" or suggrafhv), the latter an interpretation (ejxhvghsi"), of the Lord’s discourses (tw'n logivwn kuriakw'n).
925 So Lücke (1833), Kern, Hug, Harless, Anger, Bleek, Baur, Hilgenfeld, Lange, Ebrard, Thiersch, Keim, Zahn, Lightfoot, Thomson, Keil, Weiss (but the last with a limitation to a meagre thread of narrative). The chief arguments are: 1, that all early writers, from Irenaeus onward, who speak of a Hebrew Matthew mean a regular Gospel corresponding to our Greek Matthew; 2, the parallel passage of Papias concerning the Gospel of Mark (Eus., III. 39), where apparently "the Lord’s discourses" (lovgoi kuriakoiv) includes actions as well as words. ta; uJpo; tou' Cristou' h{ lecqevnta h{ pracqevnta. But it is said somewhat disparagingly, that Mark (as compared with Matthew) did not give "an orderly arrangement of the Lord’s words" (oujc w{sper suvntaxin tw'n kuriakw'n poiouvmeno" lovgwn). The wider meaning of logiva is supported by Rom. 3:1, where ta; logiva tou' qeou', with which the Jews were intrusted, includes the whole Old Testament Scriptures; and Hebr. 5:12, " the first principles of the oracles of God". (ta; stoicei'a th'" ajrch'" tw'n logiwn tou' qeou'). Lightfoot quotes also passages from Philo, Clement of Rome, Polycarp, and Origen (l.c., p. 400 sq.).
926 So Wetstein, Hug, De Wette, Bleek, Ewald, Ritschl, Holtzmann, Keim, Delitzsch, Keil. Some of these writers assume that the Gospel according to the Hebrews was an Ebionite translation and recension of the Greek Matthew. So Delitzsch and Keil (Com. p. 23). Keim is mistaken when he asserts (I. 54) that scarcely anybody nowadays believes in a Hebrew Matthew. The contrary opinion is defended by Meyer, Weiss, and others, and prevails among English divines.
927 Eusebius (III. 39) calls him sfovdra smikro;" to;n nou'n, " very narrow-minded," but on account of his millenarianism, as the context shows. In another place he calls him a man of comprehensive learning and great knowledge of the Scriptures (III. 39: ta; tavnta mavlista logiwvtato" kai; th'" grafh'" eijdhvmwn ).
928 Adv. Haer., III1, 1: oJ men; dh; Matqai'o" ejn toi's jEbraivoi" th' ijdiva/ dialevktw/ aujtw'n kai; grafh;n ejxhvnegken eujaggelivou, tou' Pevtrou kai; Pauvlou ejn JR wvmh eujaggelizomevnwn kai; qemeliouvntwn th;n ejkklhsivan. The chronological reference is so far inaccurate, as neither Peter nor Paul were personally the founders of the church of Rome, yet it was founded through their influence and their pupils, and consolidated by their presence and martyrdom.
929 He is reported by Eus., H.E. 10, to have found in India (probably in Southern Arabia) the Gospel according to Matthew in Hebrew (JEbraivwn gravmmasi), which had been left there by Bartholomew, one of the apostles. This testimony is certainly independent of Papias. But it may be questioned whether a Hebrew original, or a Hebrew translation, is meant.
930 In Eus., H. E., VI. 25. Origen, however, drew his report of a Hebrew Matthew not from personal knowledge, but from tradition (wJ" ejn paradovsei maqwvn).
931 H. E., III. 24: Matqai'o" me;n ga;r provteron JEbraivoi" khruvxa", wJ" e[melle kai; ef j eJtevrou" ijevnai, patrivw/ glwvtth/ grafh'/ paradou;" to; kat j aujto;n euvaggevlion, to; lei'pon th'/ aujtou' parousiva/ touvtoi", ajf j w|n ejstevlleto, dia; th'" : grafh'" ajpeplhvrou. " M., having first preached the Gospel in Hebrew, when on the point of going also to other nations, committed it to writing in his native tongue, and thus supplied the want of his presence to them by his book."
932 Catech. 14: Matq. oJ gravya" to; eujaggevlion JEbraivŸdi glwvssh/.
933 Haer., XXX. 3; comp. LI. 5.
934 Praef. in Matth.; on Matt. 12:13; Dial. c Pelag., III, c. 2; De Vir. illustr., c. 2 and 3. Jerome’s testimony is somewhat conflicting. He received a copy of the Hebrew M. from the Nazarenes in Beraea in Syria for transcription (392). But afterward (415) he seems to have found out that the supposed Hebrew Matthew in the library of Pamphilus at Caesarea was "the Gospel according to the Hebrews" (Evangelium juxta, or secundum Hebraeos), which he translated both into Greek and Latin (De vir. ill., c. 2). This would have been useless, if the Hebrew Gospel had been only the original of the canonical Matthew. See Weiss, l.c., pp. 7 sq.
935 The fragments of this Gospel ("quo utuntur Nazareni et Ebionitae," Jerome) were collected by Credner, Beiträge, I. 380 sqq.; Hilgenfeld, Nov. Test. extra can. rec., IV., and especially by Nicholson in the work quoted above. It is far superior to the other apocryphal Gospels, and was so much like the Hebrew Matthew that many confounded it with the same, as Jerome observes, ad Matth. 12:13 ("quod vocatur a plerisque Matthaei authenticum") and C. Pelag., III. 2. The Tübingen view (Baur, Schwegler, Hilgenfeld) reverses the natural order and makes this heretical gospel the Urmatthaeus (proto-Matthew), of which our Greek Matthew is an orthodox transformation made as late as 130; but Keim (I., 29 sqq.), Meyer (p. 19), and Weise (pp. 8 and 9) have sufficiently refuted this hypothesis. Nicholson modifies the Tübingen theory by assuming that Matthew wrote at different times the canonical Gospel and those portions of the Gospel according to the Hebrews, which run parallel with it.
936 See Holtzmann, p. 269, and Ewald’s "Jahrbücher," IX. 69 sqq.
937 So Meyer (p. 12, against Holtzmann), and Lightfoot (p. 397 against the author of "Supern. Rel."). Schleiermacher was wrong in referring hJrmhvneuse to narrative additions.
938 Matt. 21:41: kakouv" kakw'" ajpolevsei, pessimos pessime (or malos male) perdet. The E. Revision reproduces the paronomasis (which is obliterated in the E. V.) thus: "He will miserably destroy those miserable men." Other plays on words: Pevtro" and pevtra, 16:18; battologei'n and polulogiva, 6:7; ajfanivzousin o{pw" fanw'si, "they make their faces unappearable (disfigure them), that they may appear,"6:16; comp. 24:7. Weiss derives the originality of the Greek Matthew from the use of the Greek Mark; but this would not account for these and similar passages.
939 Jerome first observed that Matthew follows not Septuaginta translatorum auctoritatem, sed Hebraicam (De vir. illustr., c. 3). Credner and Bleek brought out this important difference more fully, and Holtzmann (Die Syn. Evang., p. 259), Ritschl, Köstlin, Keim (I., 59 sqq), Meyer (p. 9), and Weiss (p. 44) confirm it. But Hilgenfeld and Keim unnecessarily see in this fact an indication of a later editor, who exists only in their critical fancy.
940 Jerome acknowledges the uncertainty of the translator, De vir. ill., c. 3: Quis postea in Graecum transtulerit [the Hebrew Matthew], non satis certum est." It has been variously traced to James, the brother of the Lord Synops. Pseudo-Athan.), to a disciple of Matthew, or to another disciple.
941 So Bengel, Guericke, Schott, Olshausen, Thiersch.
942 Meyer and Weiss regard the reports of the resurrection of the dead at the crucifixion and the story of the watch, Matt. 27:52, 62-66, as post-apostolic legends; but the former is not more difficult than the resurrection of Lazarus, and the latter has all the marks of intrinsic probability. Meyer also gratuitously assumes that Matthew must be corrected from John on the date of the crucifixion; but there is no real contradiction between the Synoptic and the Johannean date. See p. 133. Meyer’s opinion is that Matthew wrote only a Hebrew collection of the discourses of our Lord, that an unknown hand at an early date added the narrative portions, and another anonymous writer, before the year 70, made the Greek translation which was universally and justly, as far as substance is concerned, regarded as Matthew’s work (pp. 14, 23). But these are an pure conjectures.
943 Marcus, and the diminutive Marcellus (Little Mallet), are well known Roman names. Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote an oration pro Marco Marcello.
944 Acts 12:12, 25; 13:5, 13; 15:37; Col. 4:10; 2 Tim. 4:11; Philem. 24; 1 Pet. 5:13.
945 There is no good reason for taking "son" here literally (with Credner), when the figurative meaning so fully harmonizes with Scripture usage and with what we otherwise certainly know of Mark’s intimate relations to Peter both from the Acts and from tradition. A daughter of Peter (Petronilla) is mentioned by tradition, but not a son. Clement of Alexandria says that Peter and Philip begat children."
946 ajneyiov", Col. 4:10.
947 ejmnhmovneuse. It is so translated by Valois, Lardner, Meyer, Weiss, Lightfoot. The rendering "recorded," which is preferred by Crusé and Morison, makes it tautological with the preceding e[grayen. The "he" may be referred to Mark or to Peter, probably to the former.
948 ajll j oujc w{sper suvntaxin tw'n kuriakw'n lovgwn(orlogivwn, oracles).
949 Euseb., Hist, Eccl., III. 39. For a critical discussion of this important testimony see Weiss and Morison, also Lightfoot in the "Contemp. Rev.," vol. XXVI. (1875), pp. 393 sqq. There is not the slightest evidence for referring this description to a fictitious pre-canonical Mark, as is still done by Davidson (new ed., I. 539).
950 The Latin was provincial, the Greek universal in the Roman empire. Cicero (Pro Arch., 10): "Graeca leguntur in omnibus fere gentibus; Latina suis finibus, exiguis sane, continentur." The tradition that Mark wrote his Gospel first in Latin is too late to deserve any credit. Baronius defends it in the interest of the Vulgate, and puts the composition back to the year 45. The supposed Latin autograph of Mark’s Gospel at Venice is a fragment of the Vulgate.
951 Justin Martyr (Dial.c. Tryph., c. 106) actually quotes from the "Memoirs (ajpomnemoneuvmata) of Peter" the designation of the sons of Zebedee, "Boanerges" or "Sons of Thunder;" but he evidently refers to the written Gospel of Mark, who alone mentions this fact, Mark 3:17.
952 See the testimonies of Jerome, Eusebius, Origen, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and Papias, well presented in Kirchhofer (ed. Charteris) on Canonicity, pp. 141-150, and in Morison’s Com., pp. xx-xxxiv
953 Mark 16:19: "The Lord Jesus ... was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God;" comp. 1 Pet, 3:22: "who is on the right hand of God, having gone into heaven."
954 Mark 8:27-33; compared with Matt. 16:13-33.
955 Dem. Evang., III. 5, quoted by Morison, p. xxxv. In view of the facts quoted above the reader may judge of Dr. Davidson’s assertion (Introd. 1882 vol. I., 541): "That Mark was not the writer of the canonnical Gospel may be inferred from the fact that it is not specially remarkable in particulars relative to Peter."
956 Irenaeus (Adv. Haer., III. 1) says "after the departure" of Peter and Paul, "post horum excessum," or in the original Greek preserved by Eusebius (H. E., V. 8. ed. Heinichen, 1. 224), meta; th;n touvtwn e[xodon. This must mean "after their decease," not "after their departure from Rome" (Grabe). But Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Epiphanius, Eusebius, Jerome, and other fathers assign the composition to a time before the martyrdom of Peter. Christophorson (in his Latin Version of the Church History of Eusebius, publ. 1570, as quoted by Stieren in Iren. Op., I. 423, note 4) suggested a different reading, meta; th;n e[kdosin, i.e., after the publication of Matthew’s Hebrew Gospel, as spoken of in the preceding sentence, and Morison (p. xxv) seems inclined to accept this conjecture. Very unlikely; all the MSS., Rufinus and the Latin translator of Irenaeus read e[xodon. See Stieren, in loc. The conflicting statements can be easily harmonized by a distinction between the composition before, and the publication after, the death of Peter. By publication in those days was meant the copying and distribution of a book.
957 Acts 10:38. The sermon of Peter to Cornelius is the Gospel of Mark in a nutshell.
958 Lange (Com., p. 2): "Mark delineates Christ as, from first to last, preeminently the victorious conqueror of all Satanic powers. He has left us a record of the manifestation of Christ’s power when that great Lion seized upon the ancient world, and of his brief but decisive victory, after which only the ruins of the ancient world are left, which in turn furnish the materials for the new one." Thomson (Speaker’s Com., Introd. to Gospels, p. xxxv): "The wonder-working son of God sweeps over his kingdom, swiftly and meteor-like: and men are to wonder and adore. His course is sometimes represented as abrupt, mysterious, awful to the disciples: He leaves them at night; conceals himself from them on a journey. The disciples are amazed and afraid (Mark 10:24, 32). And the Evangelist means the same impression of awe to be imparted to the reader."
959 The reading of the textus rec. uiJou' (tou') qeou' in Mark 1:1 is sustained by a ABDL, nearly all the cursives, and retained by Lachmann and Tregelles in the text, by Westcott and Hort in the margin. Tischendorf omitted it in his 8th ed. on the strength of his favorite a*(in its original form), and Origen. Irenaeus has both readings. The term occurs seven times in Mark, and is especially appropriate at the beginning of his Gospel and a part of its very title.
960 Mark 3:17; 5:41; 7:1-4; 12:18; 15:6, 35.
961 See Lange’s Analysis of Mark, Com., pp. 12-14; also his Bibelkunde, pp. 185-187. Lange discovered many characteristic features of the Gospels, which have passed without acknowledgment into many other books.
962 As asserted by Baur, Schwegler, Köstlin, and quite recently again by Dr. Davidson, who says (I. 505): "The colorless neutrality of the Gospel was an important factor in conciliating antagonistic parties." Dr. Morison (p. xlvi) well remarks against this Tübingen tendency criticism: "There is not so much as a straw of evidence that the Gospel of Mark occupied a position of mediation, or irenic neutrality, in relation to the other two Synoptic Gospels. It is in the mere wantonness of a creative imagination that its penman is depicted as warily steering his critical bark between some Scylla in St. Matthew’s representations and some Charybdis in St. Luke’s. There is no Scylla in the representations of St. Matthew. It must be invented if suspected. There is no Charybdis in the representations of St. Luke. Neither is there any indication in St. Mark of wary steering, or of some latent aim of destination kept, like sealed orders, under lock and key. There is, in all the Gospels, perfect transparency and simplicity, ’the simplicity that is in Christ.’"
963 Ewald characterizes Mark’s style as the Schmelz der frischen Blume, as the volle, reine Leben der Stoffe, Kahnis as drastisch and frappant, Meyer as malerisch anschaulich. Lange speaks of the "enthusiasm and vividness of realization which accounts for the brevity, rapidity, and somewhat dramatic tone of the narrative, and the introduction of details which give life to the scene."
964 kh'nso" (census), kenturivwn(centurio),xevsth"(sextarius),spekoulavtwp(speculator), and the Latinizing phrases to; iJkanovn poiei''n(satisfacere, Mark 15:15), ejscavtw" e[cei, (in extremis esse), sumbouvlion didovnai (consilium dare). Mark even uses the Roman names of coins instead of the Greek, kodravnth"(quadrans, 12:42).
965 eujqevw" or eujquv" occurs (according to Bruder’s Concord.) forty-one times in the Gospel of Mark, nearly as often as in all other New Test. writings combined. But there are some variations in reading. Codex D omits it in several passages. The English Version, by its inexcusable love of variations, obliterates many characteristic features of the sacred writers. This very particle is translated in no less than seven different ways: straightway, immediately, forthwith, as soon as, by and by, shortly, and anon.
966 Mark 3:17; 5:41 7:11, 34; 14:36; 15:34.
967 Mark 1:21, 40, 44 2:3, 10, 17; 11:1; 14:43, 66.
968 Mark 4:39; 5:8, 9, 12; 6:23, 31; 9:25; 12:6.
969 Such as ajnablevyai, ejmblevya", peribleyavmeno" , ajnaphdhvsa", kuvya" , ejmbrimhsavmeno", ejpistrafeiv" ajpostenavxa".
970 As paidivon, koravsion, kunavrion, qugavtrion, ivcquvdion, wjtavrion.
971 Time: Mark 1:35; 2:1; 4:35; 6:2; 11:11, 19; 15:25; 16:2. Place: 2:1; 5:20; 7:31; 12:41; 13:3; 14:68; 15:39; 16:5.
972 Asajgreuvein, a[lalo", ajlektorofwniva, gnafeuv" , ekqambei'sqai, ejnagkalivzesqai, ejxavpina, ejneilevw, ejxoudenovw, e[nnucon, mogilavlo", prasiai; prasiaiv, prosavbbaton, promerimna'n, prosormivzesqai, sunqlivbein, thlaugw'" , uJpolhvnion, and others.
973 Mark 1:22, 27; 2:12; 4:41; 6:2, 51; 10:24, 26, 32.
974 Mark 3:10, 20, 32; 4:1; 5:21, 31; 6:31, 33.
975 Mark 6:34: "he had compassion on them;" 6:6: "he marvelled because of their unbelief" (as he marvelled also at the great faith of the heathen centurion, Matt. 8:10; Luke 7:8); Mark 3:5: "when he had looked round about them with anger, being grieved at the hardening of their heart;" 8:12: "he sighed deeply in his spirit;" 10:14: "he was moved with indignation," or "was much displeased" with the conduct of the disciples.
976 Mark 1:31; 3:5, 34; 5:32; 7:33, 34; 8:12, 33 ("but he, turning about, and seeing his disciples, rebuked Peter") 9:35; 10:23, 32; 11:11.
977 Mark 4:38; 6:31; 11:12.
978 Mark 10:21, 22: ejmblevya" aujtw'/ hJgavphsen aujtovn. This must be taken in its natural meaning and not weakened into " kissed him," or " spoke kindly to him," or " pitied him." Our Saviour, says Morison, in l., " would discern in the young man not a little that was really amiable, the result of the partial reception and reflection of gracious Divine influences. There was ingenuousness, for instance, and moral earnestness. There was restraint of the animal passions, and an aspiration of the spirit toward the things of the world to come."
979 Mark 9:21-25. Comp. Matt. 17:14-18; Luke 9:37-42.
980 Mark 9:36; 10:16; comp. with Matt 18:2; 19:13; and Luke 9:48; 18:16.
981 By Augustin, Griesbach, De Wette, Bleek, Baur, Davidson.
982 As C. H. Weisse, Wilke, Ewald, Lange, Holtzmann, Bernhard Weiss, Westcott, Abbott, Morison. See § 79, this vol.
983 Jerome wrote to Hedibia, a pious lady in Gaul (Ep. CXX c. 10, in Opera, ed. Migne, I. 1002): "Habebat ergo [Paulus] Titum interpretem; sicut et beatus Petrus Marcum, cuius evangelium Petro narrante (not dictante), et illo [Marco]scribente, compositum est." This letter was written in 406 or 407, from Bethlehem. Morison (p. xxxvii): "If we assume the Patristic tradition regarding St. Peter’s relation to St. Mark, we find the contents and texture of the Gospel to be without a jar at any point, in perfect accord with the idea."
984 So James Smith in his Dissertation on the Origin and Connection of the Gospels, and again in the Dissertation on the Life and Writings of St. Luke, prefixed to the fourth ed. of his Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul (1880), pp. 29 sqq.
985 "In substance and style and treatment, the Gospel of St, Mark is essentially a transcript from life. The course and the issue of facts are imaged in it with the clearest outline. If all other arguments against the mythic origin of the Evangelic narratives were wanting, this vivid and simple record, stamped with the most distinct impress of independence and originality,—totally unconnected with the symbolism of the Old Dispensation, totally independent of the deeper reasonings of the New,—would be sufficient to refute a theory subversive of all faith in history. The details which were originally addressed to the vigorous intelligence of Roman bearers are still pregnant with instruction for us. The teaching which ’met their wants’ in the first age, finds a corresponding field for its action now." Westcott, l.c., 369 (Am. ed.).
986 Mark 16:16 oJ pisteuvsa" kai; baptisqei;" swqhvsetai, oJ de; ajpisthvsa" katakriqhvsetai. This declaration takes the place of the command to baptize, Matt. 28:19. It applies only to converted believers (oJ pisteuvsa"), not to children who are incapable of an act of faith or unbelief, and yet are included in the covenant blessing of Christian parents (comp. 1 Cor. 7:14). Hence it is only positive unbelief which condemns, whether with or without baptism; while faith saves with baptism, ordinarily, but exceptionally also without baptism. Else we should have to condemn the penitent thief, the Quakers, and all unbaptized infants. St. Augustin derived from this passage and from John 3:5 (ejx u{dato") the doctrine of the absolute and universal necessity of water-baptism for salvation; and hence the further (logical, but not theological inference drawn by the great and good bishop of Hippo, with reluctant heart, that all unbaptized infants dying in infancy are forever damned (or, at least, excluded from heaven), simply on account of Adam’s sin, before they were capable of committing an actual transgression. This is the doctrine of the Roman Church to this day. Some Calvinistic divines in the seventeenth century held the same view with regard to reprobate infants (if there be such), but allowed an indefinite extension of the number of elect infants beyond the confines of Christendom. Zwingli held that all infants dying in infancy are saved. Fortunately the Saviour of mankind has condemned the dogma horribile of infant damnation by his own conduct toward (unbaptized) children, and his express declaration that to them belongs the kingdom of heaven, and that our heavenly Father does not wish any of them to perish. Matt. 18:2-6; 19:13-15; Mark 10:13-16; Luke 18:15-17. In the light of these passages we must explain John 3:5 and Mark 16:16, which have been so grossly misunderstood.
987 glwvssai" lalhvsousin kainai'" .Tischendorf retains kainai'"_ Tregelles, Westcott and Hort put it in the margin, as it is omitted in several uncials and ancient versions.
988 Origen, Eusebius, and Jerome erroneously supposed that Paul meant the written Gospel of Luke when he speaks of "my gospel," Rom. 2:16; 16:25; 2 Tim. 2:8. The word gospel is not used in the New Test. in the sense of a written record, except in the titles which are of post-apostolic date; and the preface of Luke is inconsistent with the idea that he composed his work under the direction of any one man.
989 The name Louka'",Lucas, is abridged from lukanov" .Lucanus or Lucilius (as Apollos from Apollonius, Silas from Silvanus). It is not to be confounded with Lucius, Acts 13:1; Rom. 16:21. The name was not common, but contractions in as were frequent in the names of slaves, as Lobeck observes. Dr. Plumptre (in his Com.)ingeniously conjectures that Luke was from the region of Lucania in Southern Italy, and called after the famous poet, M. Annaeus Lucanus, as his freedman. In this way be accounts for Luke’s familiarity with Italian localities (Acts 28:13-15), the favor of the uncle of Lucanus, J. Annaeus Gallic, shown to Paul (18:14-17), the tradition of the friendship between Paul and Seneca (a brother of Gallio), and the intended journey of Paul to Spain (Rom. 15:28), where Seneca and Lucanus were born (at Corduba). But the chronology is against this hypothesis. Lucanus was born a.d. 39, when Luke must have been already about thirty years of age, as he cannot have been much younger than Paul.
990 Jerome (Ep. ad Paulinum) says of Luke "Fuit medicus, et pariter omnia verba illius animae languentis sunt medicinae."
991 Comp. Gal. 4:13; 2 Cor. 1:9; 4:10, 12, 16; 12:7.
992 He is distinguished from "those of the circumcision," Col. 4:14; comp. 4:11.
993 Eusebius, III. 4: Louka'" to; me;n gevno" w{n tw'n ajp J jAntioceiva", th;n ejpisthvmhn de; ijatrov" , k. t. l. Jerome, De vir. ill, 7: "Lucas medicus Antiochensis ... sectator apostoli Pauli, et omnis peregrinationis ejus comes.
994 James Smith (l.c., p. 4) illustrates the argumentative bearing of this notice by the fact that of eight accounts of the Russian campaign of 1812, three by French, three by English, and two by scotch authors (Scott and Alison), the last two only make mention of the Scotch extraction of the Russian General Barclay de Tolly.
995 Jerome, De vir. ill., 7: "Sepultus est Constantinopoli, ad quam urbem vicesimo Constantii anno ossa eius cum reliquiis Andreae apostoli translata sunt."
996 Hence the ancient tradition that he was one of the Seventy Disciples, or one of the two disciples of Emmaus, cannot be true.
997 As the account of the stilling of the tempest, Luke 8:22-25, compared with Mark 4:35-41; and the parable of the wicked husbandman, Luke 20:9-19, compared with Mark 12:1-12.
998 Luke1:3: pa'si"—ajkribw'"—kaqexh'". Says Godet " Matthew groups together doctrinal teachings in the form of great discourses; he is a preacher. Mark narrates events as they occur to his mind; he is a chronicler. Luke reproduces the external and internal development of events; he is the historian, properly so called."
999 Luke 1:4: kravtiste Qeovfile. In Acts 1:1 the epithet is omitted. Bengel infers from this omission that when Luke wrote the Acts he was on more familiar terms with Theophilus. The same title is applied to Governors Felix and Festus, Acts 23:26; 24:3; 20:25. The A. V. varies between "most excellent" and "most noble;" the R. V. uniformly renders "most excellent," which is apt to be applied to moral character rather than social position. "Honorable" or "most noble" would be preferable. Occasionally, however, the term is used also towards a personal friend (see passages in Wetstein).
1000 For other conjectures on Theophilus, which locate him at Alexandria or at Rome or somewhere in Greece, see the Bible Dicts. of Winer and Smith sub Theophilus. Some have fancied that he was merely an ideal name for every right-minded reader of the Gospel, as a lover of truth.
1001 Luke 1:4: i{na ejpignw'/" peri; w\n kathchvqh" th;n ajsfavleian.
1002 Luke 1:26; 4:31; 23:51; 24: 13 (Acts 1:12).
1003 For a full analysis of contents see Van Oosterzee, Com., 8-10; Westcott, Introd. to the G., 370-372 (Am. ed.); McClellan, Com. on N. T., I. 425-438; Farrar, Com., 31-36; Lange, Bibelkunde, 187-193.
1004 Lange (Leben Jesu, I. 258) gives as the theme of Luke: "the revelation of divine mercy;" Godet (Com.) "the manifestation of divine philanthropy" (Tit. 3:4); McClellan (I. 436): "salvation of sinners, by God’s grace, through faith in Jesus Christ, and him crucified;" Farrar (p. 17): "who went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil" (Acts 10:38, better suited for Mark); Van Oosterzee: "as Paul led the people of the Lord out of the bondage of the law into the enjoyment of gospel liberty, so did Luke raise sacred history from the standpoint of the Israelitish nationality to the higher and holier ground of universal humanity." .
1005 The term swthvr occurs, Luke 1: 47; 2:11; John 4:42, and often in the Acts and the Epistles of Paul, but neither in Matthew nor Mark; swthriva occurs, Luke 1:69, 77; 19:9; John 4:22, and repeatedly in the Acts and the Epistles; swthvrio",Luke 2:30; 3:6; Acts 28:28; Eph. 6: 17; Tit. 2:11
1006 Luke 4:25-27; 9:52-56; 10:33; 15:11 sqq.; 17:19; 18:10; 19:5.
1007 See § 80, this vol.
1008 Lange (Bibelkunde, p. 187) calls it "das Evangelium des Menschensohnes, der Humanität Christi, der Verklärung aller Humanität."
1009 Farrar (p. 23) calls Luke "the first Christian
hymnologist" (better hymnist), and quotes the lines from Keble:
"Thou hast an ear for angel
songs,
A breath the gospel trump to fill,
And taught by thee the Church prolongs
Her hymns of high thanksgiving still."
1010 This is the judgment of Renan, which is worth preserving in full. "L’Evangile de Luc," he says (in Les Evangiles, p. 282 and 283), "est le plus littéraire des évangiles. Tout y révèle un esprit large et doux, sage, modéré, sobre et raisonnable dans l’irrationnel. Ses exagérations, ses invraisemblances, ses inconséquences tiennent à la nature même de la parabole et en font le charme. Matthieu arrondit les contours un peu secs de Marc. Luc fait bien plus;il écrit, il montre une vraie entente de la composition. Son livre est un beau récit bien suivi, à la fois hébraîque et hellénique, joignant l’émotion du drama à la sérènité de l’idylle. Tout y rit, tout y pleure, tout y chante; partout des larmes et des cantiques; c’est l’hymne du peuple nouveau, L’hosanna des petits et des humbles introduits dans le royaume de Dieu. Un esprit de sainte enfance, de joie, de ferveur, le sentiment évangélique dans son originalité première répandent sur toute la légende une teinte d’une incomparable douceur. On ne fut jamais moins sectaire. Pas un reproche, pas un mot dur pour le vieux peuple exclu; son exclusion ne le punit-elle pas assez ? C’est le plus beau livre qu’il y ait. Le plaisir que l’auteur dut avoir à l’écrire ne sera jamais suffisamment compris."
1011 Jerome, who had a great genius for language, says, Epist. ad Dam., 20 (145): "Lucas qui inter omnes evangelistas Graeci sermonis eruditissimus fuit, quippe et medicus, et qui Evangelium Graecis scripserit." in another passage he says that Luke’s "sermo saecularem redolet eloqueiatiam."
1012 See the Version of Delitzsch in his Hebrew New Testament, published by the Brit. and For. Bible Society.
1013 Luke 4:38: h|n sunecomevnh puretw/' megavlw/. sunecomevnhis likewise a medical term.
1014 Acts 28:8: puretoi'" kai; dusenterivw/ sunecovmenon. Other instances of medical knowledge are found in Luke 8:46; 22:44; Acts 3:7; 9:18; 10:9, 10. Dr. Plumptre even traces several expressions of Paul such as "healthy doctrine" (1 Tim. 1:10; 6 3), " gangrene" or " cancer" (2 Tim. 2:17), the conscience " seared," or rather " cauterized"(1 Tim. 4:2), and the recommendation of a little wine for the stomach’s sake (1 Tim. 5:23), to the influence of " the beloved physician," who administered to him in his peculiar physical infirmities. Rather fanciful. Rev. W. K. Hobart, of Trinity College, Dublin, published a work (1882) on The Medical Language of St. Luke, in which he furnished the proof from internal evidence that the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles were written by the same person, and that the writer was a medical man. He has compared over four hundred peculiar words and phrases of these books with the use of the same words in Hippocrates, Aretaeus, Dioscorides, and Galen.
1015 Among these are seven compounds of plevw, describing the motion and management of a ship, as follows: plevw, to sail, Luke 8:23; Acts 21:3; 27:6, 24. ajpoplevw, to sail from, Acts 13:4; 14:26; 20:15; 27:1.braduploevw (from braduv", slow), to sail slowly, Acts 27:7. diaplevw, to sail through (not " over," as in the A. V.), Acts 27:5. ekplevw, to sail away, Acts 15:39; 18:18; 20:6. kataplevw, to arrive, Luke 8:26. uJpoplevw, to sail under the lee, Acts 27:4, 7. paraplevw, to sail by, Acts 20:16. Add to these the following nautical terms: aJnavgomai, to get under way, to put to sea, Acts 27:4. diaperavw to sail over, Acts 21:2. diafevromai, to be driven to and fro, Acts 27:27. ejpikevllw, to run the ship ashore, Acts 27:41. eujqudromevw, to make a straight course, Acts 16:11; 21:1. paralevgomai (middle), to sail by, Acts 27:8, 13. uJpotrevcw (aor. 2, uJpevdramon), to run under the lee, Acts 27:16. fevromai (pass.), to be driven, Acts 27:15, 17. Also, ejkbolh;n ejpoiou'nto, Acts 27:18, and ejkouvfizon to; ploi'on, 27:38, which are technical terms for lightening the ship by throwing cargo overboard.
1016 See James Smith, i.e., and Schaff’s Companion to the Gr. Test., pp.57-61.
1017 As carav, Luke 1:14; 2:10; 8:13; 10:17; 15:7, 10; 24:41, 51.
1018 pneu'ma a{gion or pneu'ma alone, Luke 1:15, 34, 35, 41, 67; 2:25, 26, 27; 3:16, 22, 4:1, 14, 18; 12:10, 12; and still more frequently in the Acts, which is the Gospel of the Holy Spirit.
1019 See Holtzmann, Syn. Evang., pp. 316-324, copied in part (without acknowledgment) by Davidson, Introd., I. 437 sqq. Holtzmann enumerates about two hundred expressions or phrases common to Luke and Paul, and more or less foreign to the other writers of the New Testament.
1020 As cavri", e[leo" , pivsti", dikaiosuvnh, divkaio" , a[gion, gnw'si", duvnami" kurivou.
1021 As ajgnoei'n, ajdikiva, ajqetei'n, aijcmalwtivzein, ajnapevmpein, ajntapokrivnesqai, ajntikeivmeno", ajntilambavnesqai, ajpelpivzein, ajpologei'sqai, ajtenivzein, ejkdiwvkein, ejpifaivnein, eujgenhv" , hjcei'n, katargei'n, kinduneuvein, kurieuvein, panopliva,paravdeiso", sugcaivrein, suneudokei'n, uJstevrhma, carivzesqai, yalmov" also the particlesajll J oujdev, eij kaiv, eij mhvti, tiv" ou\n.The word kuvrio"as a substitute for Jesus occurs fourteen times in Luke and often in the Epistles, but only once in the Synoptists (the closing verses of Mark, 16:19, 20).
1022 Take the following specimens of striking parallelism (quoted
by Holtzmann, 322):
Luke
Paul
6:48:e[qhken qemevlion ejpi; th;n
pevtran
1 Cor. 3:10: wj" sofo;"
ajpcitevktwn qemevlion e[qhka
8:15: karpoforou'sin uJpomonh'/.
Col. 1:10, 11: karpoforou'nte" kai;
aujxanovmenoi eij" pa'san uJpomonhvn.
9:56: oujk h\lqe yuca;" ajnqrwvpwn
ajpolevsai, ajlla; sw'sai.
2 Cor. 10:8:; [Edwken eij"
oijkodomh;n kai; oujk eij" kaqaivresin. 13:10.
10:8:ejsqivete ta; paratiqevmena uJmi'n.
1 Cor. 10:27: pa'n to; paratiqevmenon
uJmi'n ejsqivete.
10:20: ta; ojnovmata uJmw'n ejgravfh ejn
toi'" oujranoi'"
Phil. 4:3: w|n ta; ojnovmata ejn Bivblw/
zwh'".
10:21: ajpevkruya" tau'ta ajpo;
sofw'n kai; sunetw'n kai; ajpekavluya" aujta nhpivoi"
1 Cor. 1:19: ajpolw' th;n sofivan
tw'nsofw'n kai; th;n suvnesin tw'n sunetw'n ajqethvsw. 27: ta; mwra;
tou' kovsmou ejxelevxato oJ qeo;" i{na kataiscuvnh/ tou;"
sofouv".
11:41: pavnta kaqara; uJmi'n ejstin
Tit. 1:15:pavnta me;n kaqara; toi'"
kaqaroi'".
11:49; ajpostelw' eij" aujtou;"
profhvta" kai; ajpostovlou" kai; ejx aujtw'n ajpoktenou'si kai;
ekdiwvxousin
1 Thess. 2:15: tw'n kai; to;n kuvrion
ajpokteinavntwn jIhsou'n kai; tou;" profhvta" kai; hJma'"
ejkdiwxavntwn.
12:35:e[stwsan uJmw'n aij ojsfuve"
periezwsmevnai.
Eph. 6:14: sth'te ou\n perizwsavmenoi tw'n
ojsfu'n uJmw'n ejn ajlhqeiva/.
18:1: dei'n pavntote proseuvcesqai kai;
mh; ejkkakei'n.
2 Thess. 1:11: eij" o{ kai
proseuxovmeqa pavntote. Col. 4:12: pavntote aJgwvnizovmeno" uJpe;r uJmw'n ejn
tai'" proseuxai'" .. Comp. 1 Thess. 5:1, 7; Rom. 1:10.
20:16: mh; gevnoito.
Rom. 9:14; 11:11; Gal. 3:21.
20:38: pavnte" ga;r aujtw'/ zw'sin.
Rom. 14:7, 8: ejavn te ga;r zw'men, tw/
kupivw/ zw'men. Comp. 2 Cor. 5:15.
21:24: kai ; JIerousalh;m e[stai
patoumevnh uJpo; ejqnw'n a[cri plhrwqw'si kairoi; ejqnw'n.
Rom. 11:25: o{ti pwvrwsi" tw'/
jIsrah;l gevgonen a[cri" ou| to; plhvrwma tw'n ejqnw
1023 See the ancient testimonies in Charteris’s Kirchhofer, l.c., 154 sqq.
1024 Freely admitted by Zeller, Davidson (I. 444), and others of that school.
1025 Even the author of "Supernatural Religion" was forced at last to surrender to the arguments of Dr. Sanday, in 1875, after the question had already been settled years before in Germany by Hilgenfeld (1850) and Volkmar (1852). Davidson also (Introd., new ed., I. 446) admits: "There is no doubt that Marcion had the Gospel of Luke, which he adapted to his own ideas by arbitrary treatment. He lived before Justin, about a.d. 140, and is the earliest writer from whom we learn the existence of the Gospel."
1026 Davidson still adheres to this exploded Tübingen view in his new edition (I. 467): "Luke wished to bring Judaism [sic!] and Paulinism together in the sphere of comprehensive Christianity, where the former would merge into the latter. In conformity with this purpose, he describes the irreconcilable opposition between Jesus and his opponents." As if Matthew and Mark and John did not precisely the same thing. He even repeats the absurd fiction of Baur, which was refuted long ago, not only by Godet, but even in part at least by Zeller, Holtzmann, and Keim, that Luke had "the obvious tendency to depreciate the twelve, in comparison with the seventy" (p. 469). Baur derived the chief proof of an alleged hostility of Luke to Peter from his omission of the famous passage, "Thou art Rock;" but Mark omits it likewise; and Luke, on the other hand, is the only Evangelist who records the word of Christ to Peter, Luke 22:32, on which the Romanists base the dogma of papal infallibility.
1027 The critics differ widely as to the date of composition: (1) For a date prior to a.d. 70 are all the older divines, also Lange, Ebrard, Guericke, van Oosterzee, Godet (60-67), Thiersch (58-60), Alford (58), Riddle (60). (2) For a date between 70 and 90: De Wette, Bleek, Reuss, Holtzmann, Güder, Meyer, Weiss (70-80), Keim, Abbott (80-90). (3) For a.d. 100 and later: Hilgenfeld and Volkmar (100), Zeller and Davidson (100-110). The date of Baur, a.d. 140, is perfectly wild and made impossible by the clear testimonies of Justin Martyr and Marcion. Hence he was unwilling to retract in toto his former view about the priority of Marcion’s Gospel, though he felt obliged to do it in part (Kirchengesch. I. 75 and 78).
1028 Dr. Abbott, of London (in "Enc. Brit.," X. 813, of the ninth ed., 1879), discovers no less than ten reasons for the later date of Luke, eight of them in the preface alone: "(1) the pre-existence and implied failure of many ’attempts’ to set forth continuous narratives of the things ’surely believed;’ (2) the mention of ’tradition’ of the eye-witnesses and ministers of the word as past, not as present (parejdosan, Luke 1:2); (3) the dedication of the Gospel to a man of rank (fictitious or otherwise), who is supposed to have been ’catechized’ in Christian truth; (4) the attempt at literary style and at improvement of the ’usus ecclesiasticus’ of the common tradition; (5) the composition of something like a commencement of a Christian hymnology; (6) the development of the genealogy and the higher tone of the narrative of the incarnation; (7) the insertion of many passages mentioning our Lord as oJ kuvrio" not in address, but in narrative; (8) the distinction, more sharply drawn, between the fall of Jerusalem and the final coming; (9) the detailed prediction of the fall of Jerusalem, implying reminiscences of its fulfilment; (10) the very great development of the manifestations of Jesus after the resurrection. The inference from all this evidence would be that Luke was not written till about a.d. 80 at earliest. If it could be further demonstrated that Luke used any Apocryphal book (Judith, for example), and if it could be shown that the book in question was written after a certain date (Renan suggests a.d. 80 for the date of the book of Judith), it might be necessary to place Luke much later; but no such demonstration has been hitherto produced." But most of these arguments are set aside by the hJmi'n in Luke 1:2, which includes the writer among those who heard the gospel story from the eye-witnesses of the life of Christ. It is also evident from the Acts that the writer, who is identical with the third Evangelist, was an intimate companion of Paul, and hence belonged to the first generation of disciples, which includes all the converts of the apostles from the day of Pentecost down to the destruction of Jerusalem.
1029 Keim (I. 70) thus eloquently magnifies this little difference: "Anders als dem Matthaeus steht diesem Schrifstellen [Lukas] das Wirklichkeitsbild der Katastrophe der heiligen Stadt in seiner ganzen schrecklichen Grösse vor der Seele, die langwierige und kunstvolle Belagerung des Feindes, die Heere, die befestigten Lager, der Ring der Absperrung, die tausend Bedrängnisse, die Blutarbeit des Schwerts, die Gefangenführung des Volkes, der Tempel, die Stadt dem Boden gleich, Alles unter dem ernsten Gesichtspunkt eines Strafgerichtes Gottes für die dung des Gesandten. Ja über die Katastrophe hinaus, die äusserste Perspektive des ersten Evangelisten, dehnt sich dem neuen Geschichtschreiber eine new unbestimmbar grosse Periode der Trümmerlage Jerusalemz unter dem ehernen Tritt der Heiden und heidnischer Weltzeiten, innerhalb deren er selber schreibt. Unter solchen Umständen hat die grosse Zukunftrede Jesu bei aller Sorgfalt, die wesentlichen Züge, sogar die Wiederkunft in diesem ’Geschlect’zu halten die mannigfaltigsten Aenderungen erlitten." The same argument is urged more soberly by Holtzmann (Syn. Evang., 406 sq.), and even by Güder (in Herzog, IX. 19) and Weiss (in Meyer, 6th ed., p. 243), but they assume that Luke wrote only a few years after Matthew.
1030 "It is psychologically impossible," says Godet (p. 543), "that Luke should have indulged in manipulating at pleasure the sayings of that Being on whom his faith was fixed, whom he regarded as the Son of God."
1031 Jerome: Achaia and Boeotia; Hilgenfeld (in 1858): Achaia or Macedonia; Godet (in his first ed.): Corinth, in the house of Gaius (Rom. 16:23), but more indefinitely in the second ed.: Achaia.
1032 The Peshito, which gives the title: "Gospel of Luke the Evangelist, which he published and preached in Greek in Alexandria the Great."
1033 Köstlin and Overbeck, also Hilgenfeld in 1875 (Einleit., p. 612).
1034 Michaelis, Kuinöl, Schott, Thiersch, and others.
1035 Hug, Ewald, Zeller, Holtzmann, Keim, Davidson.
1036 Weiss, in the sixth ed. of Meyer (p. 244) "Wo das Evang. geschrieben sei, ist völlig unbekannt."
1037 John 14:26; 16:18. Comp. Matt. 10:19, 20; Luke 12:12; Acts 4:8.
1038 Adv. Haer., III., cap. 1, § 2.
1039 Ibid. III. 11, 1.
1040 "Ut recognoscentibus omnibus, Joannes suo nomine cuncta describeret.
1041 "Sic enim non solum visorem, sed et auditorem, sed et scriptorem omnium mirabilium Domini per ordinem profitetur." See the Latin text as published by Tregelles, also in Charteris, l.c., p. 3, and the translation of Westcott, History of the Canon, p. 187.
1042 Matt. 10:2; Luke 6:14; Mark 3:16; 13:3; John 1:41; 12:22; Acts 1:13.
1043 Quoted by Westcott and Hilgenfeld. I will add the original from Migne, Patrol., V. 333: "Cum enim essent Valentinus et Cerinthus, et Ebion, et caeteri scholae satanae, diffusi per orbem, convenerunt ad illum de finitimis provinciis omnes episcopi, et compulerunt eum, ut et ipse testimonium coscriberet."
1044 Preface to Com in Matt.
1045 Adv. Haer., III. 11, 1.
1046 Basilides in Hippolytus, Ref. Haer., VII. 22.
1047 In Eusebius, H. E., VI. 14 (quoting from the Hypotyposes):to;n jIwavnnhn e[scaton sunidovnta o{ti ta; swmatika; ejn toi'" eujaggelivoi" dedhvlwtai protrapevnta uJpo; tw'n gnwrivmwn[i.e., either well known friends, or distinguished, notable men], pneuvmati qeoforhqevnta, pneumatiko;n poih'sai eujaggevlion. Origen had a similar view, namely, that John alone among the Evangelists clearly teaches the divinity of Christ. Tom. 1:6 in Joan. (Opp., IV. 6).
1048 H. E., III. 24. Jerome repeats this view and connects it with the antiheretical aim, De vir. illustr., c. 9, comp. Com. in Matt. Proaem. Theodore of Mopsuestia thought that John intended to supplement the Synoptists chiefly by the discourses on the divinity of Christ. See Fritzsche’s ed. of fragments of his Commentaries on the New Test., Turici, p. 19 sq. (quoted by Hilgenfeld, Einleitung, p. 696).
1049 Godet expresses the same view (I. 862): "Cette intention de compléter les récits antérieurs, soit au point de vue historique,comme l’a pensé Eusébe, soit sous un rapport plus spirituel, comme l’a déclaré Clément d’Alexandrie, est donc parfaitement fondée en fait; nous la constatons commne un but secondaire at, pour mieux dire, comme moyen servant au but principal."
1050 Opera, IV. 6: tolmhtevon toivnun eijpei'n ajparch;n me;n pasw'n grafw'n ei|nai ta; eujaggevlia, tw'n de eujaggelivwn ajparch;n to; kata; jIwavnnhn.
1051 DeWette says that the discourses of Christ in John shine with more than earthly brilliancy (sie strahlen in mehr als irdischem Brillantfeuer, Exeg. Handbuch, I.3, p. 7). Holtzmann: "The fundamental ideas of the fourth Gospel lie far beyond the horizon of the church in the second century, and indeed of the whole Christian church down to the present day" (in Schenkel’s "Bibel. Lexik.," II. 234). Baur and Keim (I. 133) give the Gospel the highest praise asa philosophy of religion, but deny its historical value.
1052 Renan and John Stuart Mill have confessed a strong antipathy to these discourses. Renan’s last judgment on the Gospel of John (in L’église chrét., 1879, p. 51) is as follows: "On l’a trop admiré. Il a de la chaleur, parfois une sorte de sublimité, mais quelque chose d’enflé, de faux, d’obsur. La naïveté manque tout à fait. L’auteur ne raconte pas; il démontre. Rien de plus tatigant que ses longs récits de miracles et que ces discussions, roulant sur des malentendus, où les adversaires de Jésus jouent le rôle d’idiots. Combien à ce pathos verbeux nous préférons le doux style, tout hébreu encore, du Discours sur la montagne, et cette limpidité de narration qui fait le charme des évangélistes primitifs! Ceux-ci n’ont pas besoin de répéter sans cesse que ce qu’ils racontent est vrai. Leur sincérité, inconsciente de l’objection, n’a pas cette soif fébrile d’attestations répétéesqui montre que l’incrédulité, le doute, ont déjà commencé. Au ton légèrement excité de ce nouveau narrateur, on dirait qu’il a peur de n’étre pas cru, et qu’il cherche à surprendre la religion de son lecteur par des affirmations pleines d’emphase." John Stuart Mill (Three Essays on Religion, p. 253) irreverently calls the discourses in John "poor stuff," imported from Philo and the Alexandrian Platonists, and imagines that a multitude of Oriental Gnostics might have manufactured such a book. But why did they not do it?
1053 Notwithstanding such passages Dr. Davidson asserts (II. 278): "In uniting the only-begotten Son of God with the historical Jesus, the evangelist implies the absence of full humanity. The personality consists essentially of the Logos, the flesh being only a temporary thing. Body, soul, and spirit do not belong to Jesus Christ; he is the Logos incarnate for a time, who soon returns to the original state of oneness with the Father."
1054 Lange, Westcott, Milligan and Moulton dwell at length on this feature.
1055 Hase (Geschichte Jesu, p. 61) makes some striking remarks on this parallel: "Der Sokrates des Xenophon ist ein anderer als der des Plato, jeder hat diejenige Seite aufgefasst, die ihm die nächst und liebste war; erst aus beider. Darstellungen erkennen wir den rechten Sokrates. Xenophons anschauliche Einfachheit trägt das volle Gepräge der Wahrheit dessen, was er erzählt. Dennoch dieser Sokrates, der sich im engen Kreise sittlicher und politischer Vorstellungen herumdreht, ist nicht der ganze Sokrates, der weiseste in Griechenland, der die grosse Revolution in den Geistem seines Volks hervorgerufen hat. Dagegen der platonische Sokrates sich weit mehr zum Schöpfer der neuen Periods griechischer Philosophie eignet und darnach aussieht, als habe er die Weisheit vom Himmel zur Erde gebracht, der attische Logos."
1056 Milligan and Moulton, in their excellent Commentary on John, Introd., p. xxxiii.
1057 "Si Jésus," says Renan, "parlait comme le veut Matthieu, il n’a pu parler comme le veut Jean."
1058 John 1:26, 43; 2:19; 4:44; 6:20, 35, 37; 12:13, 25, 27;
18:16, 20:20:19, 23. See the lists in Godet, I. 197sq., and Westcott, p. lxxxii
sq. The following are the principal parallel passages:
John 2:19: Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy
this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.
Matt. 26:61: This man said, I am able to destroy the
temple of God, and to build it in three days. Cf. Mark 14:58; 15:29.
3:18: He that believeth on him is not judged: he that
believeth not hath been judged already.
Mark 16:16: He that believeth and is baptized shall be
saved; but he that disbelieveth shall be condemned.
4:44: For Jesus himself testified that a prophet hath no
honor in his own country.
Matt. 15:57: But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not
without honor, save in his own country, and in his own house. Cf. Mark 6:4;
Luke 4:24
5:8: Jesus saith unto him, Arise, take up thy bed, and
walk.
Matt. 9:6: Arise, and take up thy bed, and go unto thy
house. Cf. Mark 2:9; Luke 5:24.
6:20: It is I, be not afraid.
Matt 14:27: It is I, be not afraid. Cf. Mark 6:50.
6:35: He that cometh to me shall not hunger, and he that
believeth on me shall never thirst.
Matt. 5:6; Luke 6:21: Blessed are they that hunger and
thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
6:37: All that which the Father giveth me shall come
unto me; and him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out.
Matt. 11:28, 29: Come unto me, an ye that labor and are
heavy laden, ... and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
6:46: Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he
which is from God, he hath seen the Father. Cf. 1:18: No man hath seen God at
any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath
declared him.
Matt. 11:27: And no one knoweth the Son, save the
Father, neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever
the Son willeth to reveal him.
12:8: For the poor ye have always with you; but me ye
have not always.
Matt. 26:11: For ye have the poor always with you; but
me ye have not always. Cf. Mark 14:7.
12:25: He that loveth his life loseth it; and he that
hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.
Matt. 10: 39: He that findeth his life shall lose it;
and he thatloseth his life for my sake shall find it. Cf. 16:25; Mark 8:35;
Luke 9:24; 17:83.
12:27: Now is my soul troubled; and what shall say?
Father, save me from this hour. But for this cause came I unto this hour.
Matt. 26:38: Then saith he unto them, My soul is
exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. Cf. Mark 14:84.
13:3: Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things
into his hands ....
Matt. 11:27: All things have been delivered unto me of
my Father.
13:16: Verily, verily I say unto you, A servant is not
greater than his lord.
Matt. 10:24: A disciple is not above his master, nor a
servant above his lord. Cf. Luke 6:40.
13:20: He that receiveth whomsoever I send receiveth me;
and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me.
Matt. 10:40: He that receiveth you receiveth me, and he
that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me.
14:18: I will not leave you desolate; I come unto you.
Cf. 14:23: We will ... make our abode with him.
Matt. 28:20: I am with you alway, even unto the end of
the world.
15:21: But all these things will they do unto you for my
name’s sake.
Matt. 10:22: And ye shall be hated of all men for my
name’s make.
17:2: Even as thou gavest him authority over all flesh.
Matt. 28:18: All authority hath been given unto me in
heaven and on earth.
20:23: Whosover sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto
them.
Matt. 18:18: What things soever ye shall loose on earth
shall be loosed in heaven.
1059 For further particulars of John’s style see my Companion tothe Study of the Greek Test., pp. 66-75, where the opinions of Renan, Ewald, Luthardt, Keim, Godet, Westcott, Hase, and Weiss are given on the subject.
1060 See the literary notices on p. 405 sqq. To the able vindications of the genuineness of John there mentioned must now be added the masterly discussion of Dr. Weiss in his Leben Jesu (vol. I., 1882, pp. 84-124), which has just come to hand.
1061 Recently renewed in part by Renan (1879). See below.
1062 His quotation is considered the earliest by name; but Irenaeus, who wrote between 177 and 192, represents an older tradition, and proves to his satisfaction that there must be just four Gospels to answer the four cherubim in Ezekiel’s vision. Adv. Haer., III. 1, 1; 11, 8; V. 36, 2.
1063 The Commentary of Ephraem Syrus on the Diatessaron (375) has recently been discovered and published from an Armenian translation, at Venice, in 1876. Comp. Zahn, Tatian’s Diatessaron, Erlangen, 1881, and Harnack, Die Ueberlieferung der griechisch en Apologeten des zweiten Jahrh., Leipzig, 1882, pp. 213 sqq.
1064 The use of the Gospel of John by Justin Martyr was doubted by Baur and most of his followers, but is admitted by Hilgenfeld and Keim. It was again denied by the anonymous author of "Supernatural Religion," and by Edwin A. Abbott (in the art. Gospels, "Enc. Brit.," vol. X 821), and again conclusively proven by Sanday in England, and Ezra Abbot in America.
1065 The quotation is not literal but from memory, like most of
his quotations:
Justin, Apol., I. 61: "For
Christ also said, Except ye beborn again [ajnagennhqh'te, comp. 1 Pet. 3:23], ye shall
in no wise enter [eijsevlqh'te, but comp. the same word In John 8:5 and 7] into the
kingdom of heaven (the phrase of Matthew]. Now that it is impossible for
those who have once been born to re-enter the wombs of those that bare them is
manifest to all."
John 3:3, 4: "Jesus
answered and said to him [Nicodemus], Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a
man be born anew [or from above, gennhqh'/
a[nwqen], he cannot
see [ijdei'n 3: 5, enter into] the kingdom of God.
Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter a
second time into his mother’s womb and be born?"
Much account has been made by the Tübingen critics of
the slight differences in the quotation (ajnagennhqh'te for gennhqh'/ a[nwqen, eijselqei'n for ijdei'n and basileiva tw'n oujranw'n for ba". tou' qeou') to disprove the connection, or, as this is impossible,
to prove the dependence of John on Justin! But Dr. Abbot, a most accurate and
conscientious scholar, who moreover as a Unitarian cannot be charged with an
orthodox bias, has produced many parallel cases of free quotations of the same
passage not only from patristic writers, but even from modem divines, including
no less than nine quotations of the passage by Jeremy Taylor, only two of which
are alike. I think he has conclusively proven his case for every reasonable
mind. See his invaluable monograph on The Authorship of the Fourth Gospel, pp.
28 sqq. and 91 sqq. Comp. also Weiss, Leben Jesu, I. 83, who sees in
Justin Martyr not only "an unquestionable allusion to the Nicodemus story
of the fourth Gospel," but other isolated reminiscences
1066 Comp. such expressions as "I desire bread of God, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ ... and I desire as drink His blood, which is love imperishable," Ad Rom., ch. 7, with John 6:47 sqq.; "living water," Ad Rom. 7, with John 4:10, 11; "being Himself the Door of the Father," Ad Philad., 9, with John 10:9; [the Spirit] "knows whence it cometh and whither it goeth," Ad Philad., 7, with John 3:8. I quoted from the text of Zahn. See the able art. of Lightfoot in "Contemp. Rev." for February, 1875, and his S. Ignatius, 1885.
1067 Polyc., Ad Phil., ch. 7: "Every one that doth not confess that Jesus Christ hath come in the flesh is Antichrist; and whosoever doth not confess the mystery of the cross is of the devil." Comp. 1 John 4:3. On the testimony of Polycarp see Lightfoot in the "Contemp. Rev." for May, 1875. Westcott, p. xxx, says: "A testimony to one" (the Gospel or the first Ep.) "is necessarily by inference a testimony to the other."
1068 According to Eusebius, III. 39. See Lightfoot in the "Contemp. Rev." for August and October, 1875.
1069 Eusebius, H. E., III. 39, closes his account of Papias with the notice: "He has likewise set forth another narrative [in his Exposition of the Lord’s Oracles] concerning a woman who was maliciously accused before the Lord touching many sins, which is contained in the Gospel according to the Hebrews."
1070 In a tradition too late (ninth century) to be of any critical weight, Papias is even made the amanuensis of John in the preparation of his Gospel. A Vatican Codex (of Queen Christina of Sweden) has this marginal gloss: "Evangelium Johannis manifestatum et datum est ecclesiis ab Johanne adhuc in corpore constituto; sicut Papiss, nomine Hieropolitanus discipulus Johannis carus, in exotericis [exegeticis],id est in extremis, quinque libris retulit [referring no doubt to the five books of Logivwn Kuriakw'n ejxhghvsei"].Descripsit vero evangelium dictante Johanne recte." This was hailed as a direct testimony of Papias for John by Prof. Aberle (Rom. Cath.) in the " Tübing. Quartalschrift," 1864, No. 1, but set aside by Hilgenfeld versus Aberle, in his " Zeitschrift," 1865, pp. 77 sqq., and Hase, l.c, p. 35. If Eusebius had found this notice in the work of Papias, he would have probably mentioned it in connection with his testimonies on the Gospels of Matthew and Mark. But see Westcott, Canon, 5th ed., p. 77, note 1.
1071 See Schürer’s Latin dissertation De controversiis paschalibus, etc., Leipz., 1869, and the German translation in the "Zeitschrift für Hist. Theol." for 1970, pp. 182-284.
1072 In the last portion of the book, discovered and first published by Dressel (XIX. 22). This discovery has induced Hilgenfeld to retract his former denial of the quotations in the earlier books, Einleit. in d. N. T., p, 43 sq., note.
1073 See the Philosophumena of Hippolytus, VII. 22, 27; Hofstede de Groot, Basilides, trans. from the Dutch, Leipz, 1868; Hort, Basilides, in Smith and Wace, I. 271; Abbot, l.c. 85 sqq.
1074 L. c., p. 89.
1075 See Keim, Celsus’ Wahres Wort, 1873, pp. 223-230, besides the older investigations of Lardner, Norton, Tholuck, and the recent one of Dr. Abbot, l.c., 58 sq.
1076 John 1:23; 2:17; 6:31, 45; 7:38; 10:34; 12:14, 38, 40; 13:18; 15:25; 19:21, 36, 37.
1077 See the careful analysis of the passages by Westcott, Intr., pp. xiii sqq.
1078 Johannes als der Erzählende, in seinem Selbstbewusstsein, bedarf für den anderen Johannes des Beinamens nicht, ihm liegt die Verwechslung ganz fern." Hase, Geschichte Jesu, p. 48. The former belief of the venerable historian of Jena in the fall Johannean authorship of the fourth Gospel was unfortunately shaken in his conflict with the Tübingen giant, but he declares the objections of Baur after all inconclusive, and seeks an escape from the dilemma by the untenable compromise that the oral teaching of John a few years after his death was committed to writing and somewhat mystified by an able pupil. "Die Botschaft hört er wohl, allein ihm fehlt der Glaube."
1079 John 1:29, 35, 39, 43; 2:1; 4:6, 40, 43, 52; 6:22; 7:14, 37; 11:6, 17, 39; 12:1, 12; 13:30; 18:28; 19:31; 20:1, 19, 26; 21:4.
1080 John 1:35; 2:6; 4:18; 6:9, 10, 19; 19:23, 39; 21:8, 11.
1081 John 2:17, 22; 4:27; 6:60; 12:16; 13:22, 28; 20:9; 21:12.
1082 John 2:24, 25; 4:1-3; 5:6; 6:6, 15; 7:1; 11:33, 38; 13:1, 3, 11, 21 16:19; 18:4; 19:28.
1083 "How often has this fourth chapter been read since by Christian pilgrims on the very spot where the Saviour rested, with the irresistible impression that every word is true and adapted to the time and place, yet applicable to all times and places. Jacob’s well is now in ruins and no more used, but the living spring of water which the Saviour first opened there to a poor, sinful, yet penitent woman is as deep and fresh as ever, and will quench the thirst of souls to the end of time." So I wrote in 1871 for the English edition of Lange’s Com. on John, p. 151. Six years afterward I fully realized my anticipations, when with a company of friends I sat down on Jacob’s well and read John 4 as I never read it before. Palestine, even in "the imploring beauty of decay," is indeed a "fifth Gospel" which sheds more light on the four than many a commentary brimful of learning and critical conjectures.
1084 John 1:14: ejqeasavmeqa th;n dovxan. qeavomai is richer than oJravw, and means to behold or contemplate with admiration and delight. The plural adds force to the statement, as in 21:24; 1 John 1:1; 2 Pet. 1:16.
1085 See p. 419 sq., and my Companion to the Greek Testament, pp. 76 sqq.
1086 Before him Edward Evanson, an ex-clergyman of the Church of England, had attacked John and all other Gospels except Luke, in The Dissonance of the Four generally received Evangelists, 1792. He was refuted by the Unitarian, Dr. Priestley, who came to the conclusion that the Gospel of John "bears more internal and unequivocal marks of being written by an eye-witness than any other writings whatever, sacred or profane." See his Letters to a Young Man (Works, vol. XX. 430).
1087 Ueber die Composition und den Charakter des joh. Evangeliums, an essay in the "Theol. Jahrücher" of Zeller, Tübingen, 1844; again in his Krit. Untersuchungen über die kanon. Evang., Tüb., 1847, and in his Kirchengesch., 1853(vol. I., pp. 146 sqq., 166 sqq., third ed.). Godet (I. 17) calls the first dissertation of Baur justly "one of the most ingenious and brilliant compositions which theological science ever produced."
1088 From Wittichen and Scholten.
1089 Especially from Hilgenfeld. The tradition of the Ephesian sojourn of John is one of the strongest and most constant in the ancient church, and goes back to Polycrates, Irenaeus, Polycarp, and Papias, the very pupils and grandpupils of John, who could not possibly be mistaken on such a simple fact as this.
1090 Dr. Weiss (Leben Jesu, I. 106) accords to Dr. Baur the merit of having penetrated deeper into the peculiar character of the fourth Gospel and done more for the promotion of its understanding then the mechanical old exegesis, which had no conception of the difference and looked only for dicta probantia; but he justly adds that Baur’s criticism is "sicklied all over with the pale cast" of modern philosophical construction (von der Blässe moderner philosophischer Construction angekränkelt). We are prepared to say the same of Dr. Keim, a proud, but noble and earnest spirit who died of overwork in elaborating his History of Jesus of Nazara. The most scholarly, high-toned, and singularly able argument in the English language against the Johannean authorship of the fourth Gospel is the article "Gospels" in the "Encycl. Brit.," 9th ed., vol. X. 818-843 (1879), from the pen of Dr. Edwin A. Abbott, head-master of the City of London School.
1091 Without detracting from the merits of the many worthy champions of the cause of truth, I venture to give the palm to Dr. Godet, of Neuchâtel, in the introductory volume to his third and thoroughly revised Commentary on John (Introduction historique et critique, Paris, 1881, 376 pages), and to Dr. Weiss, of Berlin, in his very able Leben Jesu, Berlin, 1882, vol. I. 84-198. In England the battle has been fought chiefly by Bishop Lightfoot, Canon Westcott, Prof. Milligan, and Dr. Sanday. In America, Dr. Ezra Abbot (1880) is equal to any of them in the accurate and effective presentation of the historical argument for the Johannean authorship of the fourth Gospel. His treatise has been reprinted in his Critical Essays, Boston, l888 (pp. 9-107).
1092 "Tout est possible," says Renan (L’Église chrét., p. 54), "à cesépoques ténébreuses; et, si l’Église, en vénérant le quatrième Évangile comme l’oeuvre de Jean, est dupe de celui qu’elle regarde comme un de ses plus dangereux ennemis, cela n’est pas en somme plus étrange que tant d’autres malentendus qui composent la trame de l’histoire religieuse de l’humanité. Ce qu’il y a de sûr, c’est que l’auteur est à la fois le père et l’adversaire du gnosticisme, l’ennemi de ceux qui laissaient s’evaporer dans un docétisme nuageux l’humanité réelle de Jésus et le complice de ceus qui le reléguaient dans l’abstraction divine." He thinks it more probable, however (p. 47), that two Ephesian disciples of John (John the Presbyter and Aristion) wrote the Gospel twenty or thirty years after his death.
1093 In the last edition of his abridged Geschichte Jesu.
1094 As Weiss (I. 109) admirably expresses it: "Ueberall im Einzelnen wie in der Gesammtgestaltung des Lebens Jesu stossen wir auf das harte Gestein geschichtlicher Erinnerung, welches dem kritischen Auflösungsprozess, der es in ideelle Bildungen verwandeln will, unüberwindlichen Widerstand leistet."
1095 "Als die Dichtung eines halbgnostischen Philosophen aus dem zweiten Jahrhundert ist es [the fourth Gospel] ein trügerisches Irrlicht, ja in Wahrheit eine grosse Lüge,"Weiss, I. 124. Renan admits the alternative, only in milder terms:"Il y a là un petit artifice littéraire, du genre de ceux qu’affectionne Platon," l.c., p. 52.
1096 This absurdity is strikingly characterized in the lines of
the Swabian poet, Gustav Schwab, which he gave me when I was a student at
Tübingen shortly after the appearance of Strauss’s Leben Jesu:
"Hat dieses
Buch, das ew’ge Wahrheit ist,
Ein lügenhafter Gnostiker geschrieben,
So
hat seit tausend Jahren Jesus Christ
Den Teufel durch Beelzebub vertrieben."
1097 See the conclusive proof in Zeller, pp. 414-452 (Engl. transl. by Dare, vol. II. 213-254). Holtzmann (Syn. Evang., p. 875): "Als ausgemacht darf man heutzutage wohl annehmen, dass der Verfasser der Apostelgeschichte und des dritten Evangeliums ein und dieselbePerson sind."Renan speaks in the same confident tone (Les Apôtres, pp. x. and xi. .): "Une chose hors de doute, c’est que les Actes ont eut le méme auteur que le troisiéme évangile et sont une continuation de cet évangile ... La parfaite ressemblance du style et des idées fournissent à cet égard d’abondantes démonstrations .... Les deux livres réunis font un ensemble absolument du mime style, présentant les mémes locutions favorites et la méme façon de citer l’écriture."Scholten dissents from this view and vainly tries to show that while both books originated in the school of Paul, the third evangelist elevates Paulinism above Jewish Christianity, and the author of Acts recommends Paul to the Jewish-Christian party. The Gospel is polemical, the Acts apologetic. Das Paulinische Evangelium, etc., transl. from the Dutch by Redepenning, Elberf., 1881, p. 315.
1098 The history of the Reformation furnishes a parallel; namely, the further progress of Christianity from Rome (the Christian Jerusalem) to Wittenberg, Geneva, Oxford and Edinburgh, through the labors of Luther, Calvin, Cranmer and Knox.
1099 Ewald, in his Commentary on Acts (1872), pp. 35 sqq., infers from the use of the little word we and its connection with the other portions that the whole work is from one and the same author, who is none other than Luke of Antioch, the "beloved" friend and colaborer of Paul. Renan says (La apôtres, p. xiv.): "Je persiste à croire que le dernier rédacteur des Acts est bien le disciple de Paul qui dit ’nous’aux derniers chapitres,"but he puts the composition down to a.d. 71 or 72 (p. xx.), and in his Les Évangiles, ch. xix., pp. 435 sqq., still later, to the age of Domitian.
1100 First published in 1790, and often since. See also the list of parallel passages in Dr. Plumptre’s Com. on Acts, pp. x. and xi.
1101 Ant. XX. 5, § 1.
1102 Ant. XVII. 10.
1103 See above, p. 122.
1104 Ant. XVIII. 1; XX. 5, § 2; War, II. 8, § 1. In the first passage Josephus calls Judas a Gaulonite (i.e., from the country east of Galilee), but in the other passage he is described as a Galilaean. He may have been a native of Gaulonitis and a resident of Galilee.
1105 Strabo, XVII., p. 820; comp. Pliny IV. 35; Dion Cass., LIV. 5.
1106 Josephus, Ant. XX. 5; comp, Tacitus, Ann. XII. 43; Sueton., Claud. 28.
1107 Ant. XVIII. 8.
1108 Strabo, XIV., at the close.
1109 Dio Cassius, LIII. 12.
1110 Akerman, Numismatic Illustrations, pp. 39-42.
1111 TWN EPI - PAULOU - [ANQ]UPATOU. See Louis Palma di Cesnola’s Cyprus: Its Ancient Cities, Tombs, and Temples, New York, 1878, p. 424 sq. He says: "The Proconsul Paulus may be the Sergius Paulus of the Acts of the Apostles 13, as instances of the suppression of one or two names are not rare." Bishop Lightfoot ("Cont. Review" for 1876, p. 290 sq.) satisfactorily accounts for the omission of Sergius, and identifies also the name Sergius Paulus from the elder Pliny, who mentions him twice as a Latin author in the first book of his Natural History and as his chief authority for the facts in the second and eighteenth books, two of these facts being especially connected with Cyprus. The Consul L. Sergius Paulus, whom Galen the physician met at Rome a.d. 151, and whom he mentions repeatedly, first under his full name and then simply as Paulus, may have been a descendant of the convert of the apostle.
1112 Tacitus, Ann. I. 76; Sueton., Claudius, c. 25.
1113 Metam., VIII. 625-724.
1114 Dion Cass., LI. 4; Pliny, Nat. Hist. IV.11.
1115 Strabo, XIII. 4, § 14. Inscriptions found in the place attest the existence of a guild of purple-dealers, with which Lydia was probably connected.
1116 tou;" politavrca" , i.e.,touv" a[rconta" tw'n politw'n, praefectos civitatis, the rulers of the city. Grimm says: "Usitatius Graecis erat, polivarco""
1117 The Thessalonian inscription in Greek letters is given by
Boeckh. Leake, and Howson (in Conybeare and Howson’s Life and Letters of St.
Paul, ch. IX., large Lond. ed., I. 860). Three of the names are identical,
with those of Paul’s friends in that region-Sopater of Beraea (Acts 20:4),
Gaius of Macedonia (19:29), and Secundus of Thessalonica (20:4). I will only
give the first line:
POLEITARCOUNTWN SWSIPATROU TOU KLEO.
1118 See the commentaries on Acts 17:16, 18, 21, 22, 23, 28. The singular qew'/ in 17:23 creates some difficulty; for Pausanias (I. 1-4) mentions "altars to unknown gods" which were set up in the harbor and streets of Athens; and Diogenes Laërtius (Epimen., c. 3) speaks of "altars without name" in many parts of Athens. It is supposed that Paul meant one of these altars, or that he ingeniously adapted the polytheistic inscription to his argument. In the dialogue Philopatris which is erroneously ascribed to Lucian, one of the speakers swears "by the unknown god of Athens."
1119 See Wood:Discoveries at Ephesus, and Lightfoot’s article above quoted, p. 295. Lightfoot aided Mr. Wood in explaining the inscriptions.
1120 Comp. § 82 of this vol., and myCompanion to the Greek Test., p. 61.
1121 This view was first broached by Baur (1836, 1838, and 1845), then carried out by Schneckenburger (1841), more fully by Zeller (1854), and by Hilgenfeld (1872, and in his Einleitung, 1875). Renan also presents substantially the same view, though somewhat modified. "Les Actes"(Les Apôtres, p. xxix.) "sont une histoire dogmatique, arrangée pour appuyer les doctrines orthodoxes du temps ou inculquer les idées qui souriaíent le plus à la pieté de l’auteur."He thinks, it could not be otherwise, as we know the history of religions only from the reports of believers; "i il n’y a que le sceptique qui écrive l’histoire ad narrandum."
1122 suvmfutoi, Rom. 6:5; not "planted together" (as in the A. V. and the Vulgate); the word being derived from fuvw to cause to grow, not from futeuw, to plant.
1123 The so-called Epistle of the Corinthians to Paul and his answer, preserved in Armenian, are spurious and worthless.
1124 Hence Origen calls it an ejpistolh; kaqolikhv.
1125 Reuss (Gesch. d. heil. Schriften N. Testaments, 5th ed., I. 138): "Thatsache ist, dass die Ep. Jacobi für sich allein mehr wörtliche Reminiscenzen aus den Reden Jesu enthält als alle übrigen Apost. Schriften zusammen .... Insofern dieselben offenbar nicht aus schriftlichen Quellen geflossen sind, mögen sie mit das höhere Alter deg Briefs verbürgen." Beyschlag (in the new ed. of Huther in Meyer, 1881) and Erdmann (1881), the most recent commentators of James, agree with Schneckenburger, Neander, and Thiersch in assigning the Epistle to the earliest date of Christian literature, against the Tübingen school, which makes it a polemical treatise against Paul. Reuss occupies a middle position. The undeveloped state of Christian doctrine, the use of sunagwgh; for a Christian assembly (James 2:2), the want of a clear distinction between Jews and Jewish Christians, who are addressed as "the twelve tribes," and the expectation of the approaching parousia (5:8), concur as signs of the high antiquity.
1126 Commentators are divided on the meaning of Babylon, 1 Pet. 5:13, whether it be the mystic Babylon of the Apocalypse, i.e., heathen Rome, as a persecuting power (the fathers, Roman Catholic divines, also Thiersch, Baur, Renan), or Babylon on the Euphrates, or Babylon in Egypt (old Cairo). The question is connected with Peter’s presence in Rome, which has been discussed in § 26. On the date of composition commentators are likewise divided, as they differ in their views on the relation of Peter’s Epistle to Romans, Ephesians, and James, and on the character of the persecution alluded to in the Epistle. Weiss, who denies that Peter used the Epistles of Paul, dates it back as far as 54; the Tübingen critics bring it down to the age of Trajan (Volkmar even to 140!), but most critics assign it to the time between 63 and 67, Renan to 63, shortly before the Neronian persecution. For once I agree with him. See Huther (in the Meyer series), 4th ed., pp. 30 sqq.; Weiss, Die Petrinische Frage (1865); Renan, L’Antechrist, p. vi and 110; and, on the part of the Tübingen school, Pfleiderer, Paulinismus, pp. 417 sqq.; Hilgenfeld, Einleitung, pp. 625 sqq.; Holtzmann, Einleitung, pp. 514 sqq. (2d ed.).
1127 "This excellent Epistle," says Archbishop Leighton, whose Practical Commentary upon the First Epistle General of St. Peter is still unsurpassed for spirituality and unction, "is a brief and yet very clear summary both of the consolations and instructions needful for the encouragement and direction of a Christian in his journey to heaven, elevating his thoughts and desires to that happiness, and strengthening him against all opposition in the way, both that of corruption within and temptations and afflictions from without." Bengel: "Mirabilis est gravitas et alacritas Petrini sermonis, lectorem suavissime retinens." Alford: "There is no Epistle in the sacred canon, the language and spirit of which come more directly home to the personal trials and wants and weaknesses of the Christian life."
1128 Erasmus, Calvin, Grotius, Neander, De Wette, Huther, and all the Tübingen critics.
1129 Weiss, Thiersch, Fronmüller, Alford, and especially Fr. Spitta in his Der Zweite Brief des Petrus und der Brief des Judas (Halle, 1885, 544 pages).
1130 Clement of Alexandria, Origen (in Greek), and Epiphanius distinguish him from the Apostles. He is mentioned with James as one of the brothers of Jesus, Matt. 18:55; Mark 6:3. Comp. on this whole question the discussion in § 27.
1131 Comp. 2 John 4 –7 with 1 John 2:7, 8; 4, 2, 3.
1132 As he writes himself to the Thessalonians (1 Thess. 2:7): "We were gentle in the midst of you, as when a nurse cherisheth her own children." And to the ungrateful and unsteady Galatians 4:9 he writes: "My little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you."
1133 "Das ist das Ende der Philosophie: zu wissen, dass wir glauben müssen." -(Geibel.)
1134 By Renan, who, notwithstanding his fastidious French taste and antipathy to Paul’s theology, cannot help admiring his lofty genius.
1135 Strabo calls it Qessalonivkaia. Its present name is Salonichi.
1136 The difficult passage, 2 Thess. 2:1-12, must be explained in connection with the prophecies of Daniel (the fourth empire) and the Apocalypse. See the commentaries of Lünemann, Lange (Riggenbach, translated by Lillie), Ellicott, Jowett, Marcus Dods, and the Excursus of Farrar on the Man of Sin (St. Paul, II. 583-587). Many modern exegetes adopt the patristic interpretation that "the restraining power" (to; katevcon) is the Roman empire, "the restrainer" (oJ katevcwn) the then reigning emperor (Claudius), and "the man of sin" his successor, Nero. But the last is very doubtful. The whole passage must have a prophetic sweep far beyond the time of the old Roman empire. There are "many antichrists" and many restraining forces and persons in the successive ages, and the end is yet apparently afar off. "Obviously, whatever the words signify, they must mean something which has existed from Paul’s day to our own, something which, during that whole period, has had the effect of restraining wickedness." (Dods, in Schaff’s Com. on the N. T, III 535.)
1137 Grimm, Lünemann, Reuss, Lipsius, and others have refuted the arguments of Baur. The first Epistle is conceded to be genuine also by Hilgenfeld, who declares (Einleit., p 246):"In dem ganzen Brief erkennt man die Sprache des Paulus. Es ist kein Grund vorhanden, denselben dem Paulus abzusprechen. Nicht so bedeutsam, wie andere Briefe, ist derselbe eines Paulus keineswegs unwürdig, vielmehr ein liebenswürdiges Denkmal väterlicher Fürsorge des Apostels für eine junge Christengemeinde." But the second Ep. to the Thess. Hilgenfeld assigns to the age of Trajan, as a sort of Pauline Apocalypse; thus reversing the view of Baur, who regarded the First Ep. as an imitation of the second. Grotius and Ewald put the Second Ep. likewise first (especially on account of 1 Thess. 1:7, 8, which seems to imply that the congregation had already become famous throughout Greece), but they regarded both as genuine.
1138 Such scandals would be almost incredible in a Christian church if the apostle did not tell us so. As to the case of incest, 1 Cor. 5:1 sqq., we should remember that Corinth was the most licentious city in all Greece, and that in the splendid temple of her patron-goddess on the Acropolis there were kept more than a thousand sacred female slaves (iJerovdouloi) for the pleasure of strangers. Korinqiva kovrh was the name for a courtesan. Chastity was therefore one of the most difficult virtues to practice there; and hence the apostle’s advice of a radical cure by absolute abstinence under the peculiar circumstances of the time.
1139 The question of the Corinthian parties (with special reference to the Christ party) I have discussed at length in my Hist. of the Ap. Church, pp. 285-291. Baur’s essay on this subject (1831) was the opening chapter in the development of the Tübingen theory.
1140 Comp. 1 Cor. 16:5, 8; 5:7, 8; Acts 19:10, 21; 20: 31.
1141 2 Cor. 7:5; 8:1; 9:2. Some ancient MSS. date the second Epistle from Philippi.
1142 On the textual variations, see Westcott and Hort, Appendix, pp. 110-114. Reuss, Ewald, Farrar suppose that Rom. 16 (or 16:3-20) was addressed to Ephesus. Renan conjectures that an editor has combined four copies of the same encyclical letter of Paul, each addressed to a different church and having a different ending. Both these views are preferable to Baur’s rejection of the last two chapters as spurious; though they are full of the Pauline spirit. Hilgenfeld (Einleit., p. 323) and Pfleiderer (Paulinismus, p. 314) maintain, against Baur, the genuineness of Rom. 15 and Rom. 16. On the names in Rom. 16 see the instructive discussion of Lightfoot in his Com. on Philippians, pp. 172-176.
1143 Phil. 1:7, 13, 14, 17; Eph. 3:1 ("the prisoner of Christ Jesus in behalf of you Gentiles"); 4:1 ("the prisoner in the Lord"); Col. 4:3, 18 ("remember my bonds"); Philem. 10, 13; comp. Acts 28:17, 30.
1144 So Böttger, Thiersch, Reuss, Meyer, Weiss. Thiersch dates even 2 Timothy from Caesarea, but denies the second Roman captivity.
1145 This is the prevailing view among critics. I have discussed the order in the History of the Apost. Ch. (1853), pp. 322 sqq.
1146 So Lightfoot (p. 31), followed by Farrar (II. 417). Ewald likewise puts Philippianas before Colossians, but denies the genuineuess of Ephesians. Bleek regards the data as insufficient to decide the chronological order. See his Einleitung, p. 461, and his posthumous Lectures on Colossians, Philemon, and Ephesians, published 1865, p. 7.
1147 The earthquake took place, according to Tacitus (Ann, XIV. 27), in the seventh, according to Eusebius (Chron., Ol.210, 4), in the tenth year of Nero’s reign, and extended also to Hierapolis and Colossae.
1148 In a Greek inscription, published by Boeckh and quoted by
Lightfoot, Hierapolis is thus apostrophized:
"Hail, fairest soil in all
broad Asia’s realm;
Hail, golden city, nymph divine, bedeck’d
With flowing rills, thy jewels."
1149 Epictetus ( jEpivkthto"), a slave and then a freedman of Epaphroditus (who was himself a freedman of Nero), was considerably younger than Paul, and taught first at Rome, and, after the expulsion of the philosophers by Domitian, at Nicopolis in Epirus, where his discourses (Enchiridion) were taken down by Arrian. For, like Socrates, he himself wrote nothing. A meeting with Paul or Epaphras would " solve more than one riddle," as Lightfoot says. But he shows no trace of a knowledge of Christianity any more than Seneca, whose correspondence with Paul is spurious, though both lived at Rome under Nero. Marcus Aurelius, a century later, persecuted the Christians and alludes to them only once in his Meditations (XI. 3), where he traces their heroic zeal for martyrdom to sheer obstinacy. The self-reliant, stoic morality of these philosophers, sublime as it is, would have hindered rather than facilitated their acceptance of Christianity, which is based on repentance and humility.
1150 Kolossaiv, Colossae, is the correct reading of the oldest MSS. against the later Kolassaiv, Colossae. Herodotus calls it povli" megavlh, and Xenophon eujdaivmwn kai; megavlh. In the middle ages it was called Cw'nai. There are few remains of it left two miles north of the present town of Chonos, which is inhabited by Christians and Turks.
1151 Acts 16:6 (th;n Frugivan kai; Galatikh;n cwvran); 18:23.
1152 Col. 2:1; comp. 1:4, 8, 9; and Lightfoot, Com., pp. 23 sqq. and 238.
1153 Col. 1:7; 4:12; comp. Philem 23. Hilgenfeld (p. 663) thinks that Paul founded those churches, and uses this as an argument against the genuineness of the Epistle which implies the contrary. But how easily could a forger have avoided such an apparent contradiction.
1154 Col. 4:16: th;n ejk Laodikaiva" i{na kai; uJmei'" a jnagnw'te. An abridged expression for "the letter left at Laodicea which you will procure thence." So Bleek and Lightfoot, in loco.
1155 On the Colossian heresy I refer chiefly to Neander (I. 319 sqq.), the lectures of Bleek (pp. 11-19), and the valuable Excursus of Lightfoot, Com., pp. 73-113, who agrees with Neander and Bleek, but is more full. Lightfoot refutes the view of Hilgenfeld (Der Gnosticismus u. das N. Test., in the "Zeitschrift für wissensch. Theol.," vol. XIII. 233 sqq.), who maintains that the Ep. opposes two different heresies, pure Gnosticism (Col. 2:8-10) and pure Judaism (2:16-23). Comp. his Einleitung, pp. 665 sqq. The two passages are connected by ta; stoicei'a tou' kovsmou(2:8 and 2:20), and the later history of Gnosticism shows, in a more developed form, the same strange mixture of Judaizing and paganizing elements. See the chapter on Gnosticism in the second volume.
1156 The word plhvrwma, from plhrou'n, to fill, to complete, occurs eighteen times in the New Test., thirteen times in the Epistles of Paul (see Bruder). It designates the result of the action implied in the verb, i.e., complement, completeness, plenitude, perfection; and, in a wider sense (as in John 1:16; Col. 1:19; 2:9), fulness, abundance. Like other substantives ending in—ma, it has an active sense: the filling substance, that which fills (id quod implet, or id quo res impletur). So it is often used by the classics, e.g.,. plhvrwma povlew",the population of a city; in the Septuagint, for the Hebrew alm], abundance, e g., to; plhvrwma th'" gh'". or to; plhvrwma th'" qalavssh", that which fills the earth, or the sea; and in the New Test., e.g., Mark 6:43 (kofivnwn plhrwvmata); 8:20 (spurivdwn pl.). The passive sense is rare: that which is filled (id quod impletur or impletum est), the filled receptacle. Comp. Grimm and Robinson, sub verbo, and especially Fritzsche, Ad Rom. II. 469 sqq., and Lightfoot. Coloss. 323 sqq.
1157 In this passage it in equivalent to plhvrwsi", legis observatio.
1158 Col2:9 to; plhvrwma th'" qeovthto" , deitas, Deity, not qeiovthto", divinitas, divinity. Bengel remarks: " Non modo divinae virtutes, sed ipsa divina natura." So also Lightfoot.
1159 Or, according to the other reading, which is equally well supported, monogenh;" qeov" , one who is only-begotten God.
1160 Acts 20:28. Some of the best authorities (a, B, Vulg., etc.) read "church of God." So also Westcott and Hort, and the English Revision; but the American Committee prefers, with Tischendorf, the reading tou' kurivou, which is supported by A, C*, D, E, etc., and suits better in this connection. Paul often speaks of "the church of God," but nowhere of "the blood of God." Possibly, as Dr. Hort suggests, uiJou' may have dropped out in a very early copy after tou' ijdivou. See a full discussion by Dr. Abbot, in "Bibl. Sacra" for 1876, pp. 313 sqq. (for kurivou), and by Westcott and Hort, Greek Test., II., Notes, pp. 98 sqq. (for qeou').
1161 For a fine analysis of the Epistle, I refer to Braune’s Com. in the Lange Series (translated by Dr. Riddle). He adopts a twofold, Stier and Alford a threefold (trinitarian) division. See also Dr. Riddle’s clear analysis in Schaff’s Popular Com. on the New Test., III. (1882). p. 355. I. Doctrinal Part, chs. 1-3: The church, the mystical body of Christ, chosen, redeemed, and united in Christ. II. Practical Part. chs. 4-6: Therefore, let all the members of the church walk in unity, in love, in newness of life, in the armor of God. But we should remember that the Epistle is not strictly systematic, and the doctrinal expositions and practical exhortations interlace each other.
1162 ejn jEfevsw' is omitted in the Sinaitic and Vatican MSS. Marcion retained the Epistle under the title "To the Laodicenes," as Tertullian reports. Dr. Hort says: "Transcriptional evidence strongly supports the testimony of documents against ejn jEfevsw'." The arguments of Meyer and of Woldemar Schmidt (in the fifth ed. of Meyer on Colossians) in favor of the words are not conclusive.
1163 This was already the view of Marcion in the second century. Meyer, however, in loc., insists that another letter is meant, which was lost, like one to the Corinthians. The apocryphal Ep. to the Laodiceans (in Fabricius, Cod. Apocr. N. T., I. 873 sqq.), consisting of twenty verses, is a mere fabrication from the other Epistles of Paul. It was forbidden by the Second Council of Nicaea (787).
1164 But the very reverse of churchy. Nothing can be further removed from the genius of Paul than that narrow, mechanical, and pedantic churchiness which sticks to the shell of outward forms and ceremonies, and mistakes them for the kernel within.
1165 Eph. 5:14 may be a part of a primitive hymn after the type of
Hebrew parallelism:
"Awake thou that sleepest,
Arise thou from the dead
And Christ will shine upon thee."
1166 In literal English translation such a sentence is unquestionably heavy and cumbrous. Unsympathetic critics, like De Wette, Baur, Renan, Holtzmann, characterize the style of Ephesians as verbose, diffuse, overloaded, monotonous, and repetitious. But Grotius, a first-class classical scholar, describes it (in his Preface) as "rerum sublimitatem adaequans verbis sublimioribus quam ulla habuit unquam lingua humana." Harless asserts that not a single word in the Epistle is superfluous, and has proved it in his very able commentary. Alford (III. 25) remarks: "As the wonderful effect of the Spirit of inspiration on the mind of man is nowhere in Scripture more evident than in this Epistle, so, to discern those things of the Spirit, is the spiritual mind here more than anywhere required." He contrasts, under this view, the commentaries of De Wette and Stier, putting rather too high an estimate on the latter. Maurice (Unity of the N. T., p. 535): "Every one must be conscious of an overflowing fulness in the style of this Epistle, as if the apostle’s mind could not contain the thoughts that were at work in him, as if each one that he uttered had a luminous train before it and behind it, from which it could not disengage itself." Bishop Ellicott says that the difficulties of the first chapter are "so great and so deep that the most exact language and the most discriminating analysis are too poor and too weak to convey the force or connection of expressions so august, and thoughts so unspeakably profound." Dr. Riddle: "It is the greatness of the Epistle which makes it so difficult; the thought seems to struggle with the words, which seem insufficient to convey the transcendent idea."
1167 Lardner, Credner, Mayerhoff, Hofmann, and Reuss reverse the order on the ground of Col. 4:16, which refers to "the Epistle from Laodicea," assuming that this is the encyclical Epistle to the Ephesians. But Paul may have done that by anticipation. On the other hand, the kai; uJmei'" (that ye also as well as those to whom I have just written) in Eph. 6:21, as compared with Col. 4:7, justifies the opposite conclusion (as Harless shows, Com., p. lix). Reuss thinks that in writing two letters on the same topic the second is apt to be the shorter. But the reverse is more frequent, as a second edition of a book is usually larger than the first. De Wette, Baur, Hilgenfeld, and Holtzmann regard Ephesians as an enlarged recasting (Umarbeitung and Ueberarbeitung)of Colossians by a pupil of Paul.
1168 Annot. ad Col. 4:16.
1169 DeWette first attacked Ephesians as a verbose expansion (wortreiche Erweiterung)of the genuine Colossians by a pupil of Paul. See his Introd. to the New Test. (1826, 6th ed. by Messner and Lünemann, 1860, pp. 313 sqq., and especially his Com. on Eph., 1843 and 1847). He based his doubts chiefly on the apparent dependence of Ephesians on Colossians, and could not appreciate the originality and depth of Ephesians. Mayerhoff first attacked Colossians (1838) as a post-Pauline abridgment of Ephesians which he regarded as genuine. Baur attacked both (1845), as his pupil Schwegler did (1846), and assigned them to an anti-Gnostic writer of the later Pauline school. He was followed by Hilgenfeld (1870, 1873, and 1875). Hitzig proposed a middle view (1870), that a genuine Epistle of Paul to the Colossians was enlarged and adapted by the same author who wrote Ephesians, and this view was elaborately carried out by Holtzmann with an attempt to reconstruct the Pauline original (Kritik der Epheser- und Kolosserbriefe, Leipzig, 1872). But the assumption of another Epistle of Paul to the Colossians is a pure critical fiction. History knows only of one such Epistle. Pfleiderer (1873, Paulinismus, p. 370 sq. and 434) substantially agrees with Holtzmann, but assumes two different authors for the two Epistles. He regards Ephesians as an advance from old Paulinism to the Johannean theology. Renan and Ewald admit Colossians to be genuine, but surrender Ephesians, assigning it, however, to an earlier date than the Tülbingen critics (Ewald to a.d. 75 or 80). On the other hand, the genuineness of both Epistles has been ably defended by Bleek, Meyer, Woldemar Schmidt, Braune, Weiss, Alford, Farrar. Bishop Lightfoot, in his Com. on Col., promises to take the question of genuineness up in the Com. on Ephes., which, however, has not yet appeared. Dr. Samuel Davidson, in the revised edition of his Introduction to the Study of the New Test. (1882, vol. II. 176 sqq. and 205 sqq.), reproduces the objections of the Tübingen critics, and adds some new ones which are not very creditable to his judgment, e.g., Paul could not warn the Ephesians to steal no more (Eph. 4:28), and not to be drunk (5:18), because "the Christians of Asia Minor had no tendency to drunken excesses, but rather to ascetic abstinence from wine; and the advice given to Timothy might perhaps have been more suitable: ’Drink a little wine’" (p. 213). But what then becomes of the Epistle to the Corinthians who tolerated an incestuous person in their midst and disgraced the love feasts by intemperance? What of the Epistle to the Romans which contains a similar warning against drunkenness (Rom. 13:13)? And what could induce a pseudo-Paul to slander the church at Ephesus, if it was exceptionally pure?
1170 Farrar (II. 602): "We might well be amazed if the first hundred years after the death of Christ produced a totally unknown writer who, assuming the name of Paul, treats the mystery which it was given him to reveal with a masterly power which the apostle himself rarely equalled, and most certainly never surpassed. Let any one study the remains of the Apostolic Fathers, and he may well be surprised at the facility with which writers of the Tübingen school, and their successors, assume the existence of Pauls who lived unheard of and died unknown, though they were intellectually and spiritually the equals, if not the superiors, of St. Paul himself!"
1171 See the quotations in Charteris’s Canonicity, pp. 237 sqq and 247 sqq.
1172 This is DeWette’s chief argument. See his table of parallel passages in Einleitung, § 146a (pp. 313-318 of the sixth ed.).
1173 Such as aivscrologiva (Col. 3:8), ajntanaplhrovw (1:24), eijphvopoievw (1:20), ejqeloqrhskeiva (2:23), piqanologiva (2:4); ta; ejpouravnia (Eph. 1:3, 20; 2:6; 3:10; 6:12),ta; pveumatikav (6:12), kosmokravtore" (6:12), polupoivkilo" sofiva (3:10). Even the word a[fesi" (Col. 1:14 and Eph. 1:7) for pavresi" (Rom. 3:25) has been counted among the strange terms, as if Paul had not known before of the remission of sins. Holtzmann has most carefully elaborated the philological argument. But the veteran Reuss (I. 112) treats it as futile, and even Davidson must admit (II 219) that "the sentiments (of Ephesians) are generally Pauline, as well as the diction," though he adds that "both betray marks of another writer."
1174 Baur, Schwegler, and Hilgenfeld (Einleit., 652 sq.).
1175 Eus., H. E., III. 32: "The same author [Hegesippus], relating the events of the times, also says that ’the church continued until then as a pure and uncorrupt virgin (parqevno" kaqara; kai; ajdiavfqoro" e[menen hJ ejkklhsiva); whilst if there were any at all that attempted to pervert the sound doctrine of the saving gospel, they were yet skulking in darkness (ejn ajdhvlw/ pou skovtei); but when the sacred choir of the apostles became extinct, and the generation of those that had been privileged to hear their inspired wisdom had passed away, then also arose the combination of godless error through the fraud of false teachers. These also, as there was none of the apostles left, henceforth attempted, without shame (gumnh'/ loipo;n h[dh th'/ kefalh'/), to preach their falsely so-called gnosis against the gospel of truth.’ Such is the statement of Hegesippus." Comp. the notes on the passage by Heinichen in his ed. of Euseb., Tome III., pp. 100-103.
1176 The same Hegesippus, in Eus., IV. 22, places the rise of the heresies in the Palestinian church immediately after the death of James, and traces some of them back to Simon Magus. He was evidently familiar with the Pastoral Epistles, and borrowed from them the terms yeudwvnumo" gnw'si" , eJterodidavskaloi., uJgih;" kanwvn.
1177 The critical school of Rationalism began in Germany with Semler of Halle (1725-1791), in the middle of the eighteenth century, and culminated in the Tübingen School of our own age.
1178 Augustus conferred upon Philippi the special privilege of the "jus Italicum," which made it a miniature likeness of the Roman people, with "praetors" and "lictors," and the other titles of the Roman magistrates. Under this character the city appears in the narrative of the Acts (16:12 sqq.), where "the pride and privilege of Roman citizenship confront us at every turn." See Lightfoot, pp. 50 sqq., Braune, and Lumby.
1179 Lightfoot, l.c., p. 53.
1180 caivrete "combines a parting benediction with an exhortation to cheerfulness. It is neither ’farewell’ alone, nor ’rejoice’ alone" (Lightfoot).
1181 Bengel:"Summa Epistolae: Gaudeo, gaudete." Farrar (II. 423): "If any one compare the spirit of the best-known classic writers in their adversity with that which was habitual to the far deeper wrongs and far deadlier sufferings of St. Paul—if he will compare the Epistle to the Philippians with the ’Tristia’ of Ovid, the letters of Cicero from exile, or the treatise which Seneca dedicated to Polybius from his banishment in Corsica—he may see, if he will, the difference which Christianity has made in the happiness of man."
1182 The kenosis controversy between the Lutherans of Giessen and Tübingen in the early part of the seventeenth century, and the more extensive kenosis literature in the nineteenth century (Thomasius, Liebner, Gess, Godet, etc.).
1183 Dr. Braune, in Lange’s Com., p. 4.
1184 The arguments of Baur and Swegler have been set aside by Lünemann (1847), Brückner (1848), Resch (1850), Hilgenfeld (1871), and Reuss (1875); those of Holsten (1875 and 1876) by P. W. Schmidt, Neutestam, Hyperkritik, 1880. Comp. Holzmann in Hilgenfeld's "Zeitschrift für wiss. Theol.," 1881, 98 sqq.
1185 Dr. H. B. Hackett, who visited the spot, corrects the false statement of Meyer and other commentators that there is still a village (Felibah, or Filibidjek, as Farrar says) on the former site. See his translation of Braune on Phil., p. 6.
1186 Lightfoot, p. 64. But almost the same sad tale may be told of the churches of Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor, under the withering rule of the Mohammedan Turks. Even Ephesus, where both Paul and John labored so successfully, is little more than a heap of ruins.
1187 A worthless tradition makes him bishop of Colossae and a martyr in the Neronian persecution. So Onesimus and almost every important man in the apostolic church was turned into a bishop and martyr. On the names in the Epistle, see Lightfoot’s Com. on Col. and Philem., pp. 372 sqq.
1188 Hence the good-humored play on the meaning of the word, Philem. 11, a[crhsto", eu[crhsto" ,"unprofitable to thee, but now profitable to thee and to me;" and the play on the name, Philem. 20, ojnaivmhn, "let me have comfort in thee."
1189 Philem. 18 seems to describe the actual offence, though the case is stated hypothetically, eij dev ti ... ojfeivlei (a mild word for e[kleyen, stole). The apostle would not wound the feelings of the slave, nor irritate the master, and offers himself to discharge the debt.
1190 "The Gospel," says Lightfoot (p. 389), "never directly attacks slavery as an institution: the apostles never command the liberation of slaves as an absolute duty. It is a remarkable fact that St. Paul in this Epistle stops short of any positive injunction. The word ’emancipation’ seems to be trembling on his lips, and yet he does not once utter it. He charges Philemon to take the runaway slave Onesimus into his confidence again; to receive him with all affection; to regard him no more as a slave, but as a brother; to treat him with the same consideration, the same love, which he entertains for the apostle himself to whom he owes everything. In fact he tells him to do very much more than emancipate his slave, but this one thing he does not directly enjoin. St. Paul’s treatment of this individual case is an apt illustration of the attitude of Christianity toward slavery in general."
1191 For these conflicting legends, see the Acts Sanctorum Boll., XVI. Febr., II. 857 sqq.
1192 As Hackett (in Lange), Lightfoot, Lumby, and others.
1193 See Lightfoot, p. 383, and the Speaker’s Com. New Test., III. 829.
1194 "Es wird hier,"he says (Paulus, II. 88, second ed.), "im Christenthum die schöne Idee aufgefasst, dass die durch dasselbe mit einander Verbundenen in einer wahren Wesensgemeinschaft mit einander stehen, so dass der Eine in dem Anderen sein eigenes Selbst erkennt, sich mit ihm völlig Eins weiss und einer für alle Ewigkeit dauernden Vereinigung angehört."Hilgenfeld admits the genuineness, saying (p. 331): "Der ganze Brief trägt das Gepräge der einfachen Wahrheit an sich und verräth auch in den Wortspielen, Philem. 11, 20, die Schreibart des Paulus."
1195 For biographical details see the Bible Dictionaries and Commentaries.
1196 See the testimonies in Kirchhofer’s Quellensammlung, as translated and enlarged by Charteris, Canonicity, 255-268. Renan admits the resemblance between the First Epistle of Clemens Romanus (c. 44) and Second Timothy (e.g., in the use of the word ajnavlusi" for death), but assumes that both borrowed from a common source, the favorite language of the church of Rome, and also that the forger of the Pastoral Epistles probably made use of some authentic letters of Paul. L’Église chrét., p. 95: "Quelques passages de ces trois építres sont d’ailleurs si beaux, qu’on peut se demander si le faussaire n’avait pas entre les mains quelques billets authentiques de Paul."
1197 Baur and Hilgenfeld (Einleit., p. 764) bring them down to 150 (after Marcion, 140), and date them from Rome. But this is impossible, and rests on a false exegesis. Pfleiderer, of the same Tübingen school, puts 2 Timothy in the age of Trajan, the other two in the age of Hadrian. He, moreover, regards the passages 2 Tim 1:15-18 and 4:9-21 as fragments of a genuine Epistle of Paul. Comp. also Holtzmann, p. 271.
1198 So Schrader, Wieseler, Reythmayr, formerly also Reuss (in his Gesch., etc., 5th ed., 1875, but withdrawn in his French Com. on the Pauline Epp., 1878).
1199 So Theophylact, Oecumenius, Ussher, Pearson, Tillemont, Neander, Bleek, Ruffet, Lange, Farrar, Plumptre, Lightfoot, etc.
1200 A release of Paul from the first Roman captivity and a visit to Spain is also asserted by such critics as Ewald and Renan.
1201 The ajntiqevsei" th'" yeudwnuvmou gnwvsew"(" oppositions" in the E. V. and Revision) are understood by the best exegetes to mean simply the doctrinal theses which the heretics opposed to the sound doctrine (comp. 2 Tim. 2:23; Tit. 1:9). So DeWette, Matthies, and Wiesinger. Hofmann and Huther identify them with kenofwnivai and logomacivai (1 Tim. 5:4). Holtzmann (p. 131) likewise rejects Baur’s interpretation.
1202 Holtzmann, l.c., p. 127; also Lipsius, Schenkel, Pfleiderer.
1203 See above, § 96 (this vol.)
1204 Such is the ingenious reasoning of Baur and Renan (L’Egl. chrét., pp. 85 and 94 sqq.). Comp. the discussion of details by Holtzmann, l.c., ch. XI., pp. 190 sqq.
1205 1 Tim. 1:3; 3:14; 2 Tim. 4:9, 21; Tit. 1:5; 8:12. See above, § 61 (this vol.) The fact is acknowledged by impartial episcopal writers, as Dean Alford, Bishop Lightfoot, Dean Stanley, and Dean Plumptre (in Schaff’s Com. N. T., III. 552). I will quote from Canon Farrar (St. Paul. II. 417) "If the Pastoral Epistles contained a clear defence of the Episcopal system of the second century, this alone would be sufficient to prove their spuriousness; but the total absence of anything resembling it is one of the strongest proofs that they belong to the apostolic age. Bishop and presbyter are still synonymous, as they are throughout the New Testament ... Timothy and Titus exercise functions which would be now called episcopal; but they are not called ’bishops.’ Their functions were temporary, and they simply act as authoritative delegates of the Apostle of the Gentiles. Nor is there any trace of exalted pretensions in the overseers whom they appoint. The qualifications required of them are almost exclusively moral." Comp. also some good remarks of Prof. Wace, in the Speaker’s Com. on the New Test., III. 764, where it is justly said that the church polity in the Pastoral Epistles represents an intermediate stage between the Presbyterian episcopacy of the earlier apostolic period and the post-apostolic episcopacy.
1206 This
philological argument was begun by Schleiermacher, but confined to First
Timothy, and was carried out, with reference to all three Epistles, by
Holtzmann, l.c., ch. VI., pp. 84-118. I will give his results. The Pastoral
Epistles have, in all, 897 words. Of these there are 169 Hapaxlegomena
not found in the New Testament, namely:
(a) 74 in First Timothy, such as ajgaqoergei'n.
aJgneiva, ajdhlovth", ajndrapodisthv" , a[drofovno", ejterodidaskalei'n,
qeosevbeia, katastolhv, plevgma, orismov" , filarguriva, yeudolovgo",
yeudwvnumo" .
(b) 46 in Second Timothy, e.g ., ajgwghv,
ajqlei'n, bevltion, membravna, ojrqotomei'n, pragmateiva, filovqeo".
(c) 28 in Titus, e, g., aiJretikov"
, ajkatavgnwsto", ajfqoriva, ajyeudhv" , kalodidavskalo",
mataiolovgo" , presbuvti", swthvrio" , filavgaqo",
fivlandro" (palingenesiva, Tit. 3:5, occurs also Matt. 19:28, but in a different
sense).
(d) 21 common to two or three Past. Epp., e g, diavbolo", (as adjective), ajnovsio" , didaktikov", kenofwniva, nomivmw" , paraqhvkh, genealogiva, eujsebw'".
1207 Farrar (II. 611) affirms that there are no less than 111 peculiar terms in Romans, 180 in Corinthians, 57 in Galatians, 54 in Phillipians, 6 in Philemon. Luke’s peculiar vocabulary is especially rich; he uses, as Holtzmann observes (p. 96), 34 words in common with the Pastoral Epistles, and has, besides, 82 words not found in Paul.
1208 Farrer, II. 611.
1209 Pfleiderer (Protestanten-Bibel. p. 834) says: "Die kirchliche Lehrrichtung der Hirtenbriefe ist eine von der altpaulinischen sehr weit verschiedene. Von den eigenthümlich paulinischen Lehren über Gesetz und Evangelium, über Werke und Glauben finden sich in unseren Briefen nur abgeblasste Reste, die fast wie feststehende überliefte Formeln klingen, während das Glaubensbewusstsein ein anderes geworden ist."In this harsh and unjust judgment the fact is overlooked that the three Epistles are pastoral and not doctrinal Epistles.
1210 Such passages as 1 Tim. 1:15, 17; 2:1, 4-6, 8; 3:2, 16; 4:1, 4, 7, 10, 15; 5:8, 17, 18, 22; 6:6, 9-12; 2 Tim. 1:6; 2:11, 12, 19, 22; 8:12, 16, 17; 4:2, 6-8; Tit. 1:7, 15; 2:11; 8:5, 6.
1211 See notes at the end of the section.
1212 Heb. 9:8, "while as the first tabernacle is yet standing" (th'" prwvth" skhnh'" ejcouvsh" stavsin); 9:6, "the priests go in continually" (eijsivasin, not went in, as in the E. V.); 8:4; 13:10; 6:8; 8:13; 10:25, 27; 12:27. Those who assign the composition to a time after the destruction of Jerusalem, deprive the present tenses of their natural import and proper effect.
1213 The charge of partial ignorance of the Jewish ritual is unfounded, and can therefore not be made an argument either for or against the Pauline authorship. In the genuine text of Heb. 10:11, the high priest is not mentioned, but the priest (iJereuv"), and in 7:27 the high priest is not asserted to offer daily sacrifice, but to need daily repentance. The altar of incense is placed in the holy of holies, 9:4; but this seems to have been a current opinion, which is also mentioned in the Apocalypse of Baruch. See Harnack in "Studien und Kritiken" for 1876, p. 572, and W. R. Smith in " Enc. Brit.," xi., 606.
1214 See Carpzov, Sacrae Exercitationes in Ep. ad Heb. ex Philone Alex. (Helmstadii, 1750); Riehm, l.c., pp. 9 sqq.; Hilgenfeld, Einleit., p. 384; and Pfleiderer, Paulinismus.
1215 The Epistle is called a lovgo" paraklhvsew" , Heb. 13:22; comp. 12:5; 6:18
1216 See note II. at the close.
1217 So also DeWette, Tholuck, Thiersch, Delitzsch, Lünemann, Riehm, Moll (in Lange’s Com.), Langen, Weiss.
1218 So Oecumenius, Lightfoot, Lange; also Grimm (sub verbo): "Omnes de Judaeis sive aramaice sive graece loquentibus Christiani."
1219 Ebrard. Moulton, on the contrary, thinks that some other church in Palestine is addressed, and that Jerusalem is excluded by Heb. 2:3.
1220 Wieseler (who adds an unlikely reference to the temple of Onias in Leontopolis), Credner, Baur, Hilgenfeld, Köstlin, Reuss, Bunsen, Conybeare and Howson, and Plumptre.
1221 Von Hofmann.
1222 Wetstein, Alford, Holtzmann, Kurtz, Zahn; also Renan, who thinks (L’Antechrist. p. 211) that the Ep. was written by Barnabas in Ephesus, and addressed to the church in Rome; hence it was first known in Rome.
1223 A. B. Davidson (Ep. to the Hebr., 1882, p. 18).
1224 Zahn refers Heb. 10:32-34 to the Neronian persecution; but this is excluded by 12:4, "Ye have not yet resisted unto blood" (mevcri ai}mato"). Harnack finds also traces of the Domitian persecution. Still more unlikely.
1225 Lardner, Thiersch, Lindsay, Bullock (in Smith’s B. Dict., Am. ed., II., 1028), and others, assign the Epistle to a.d. 63; DeWette, Moll, and Lange to between 62 and 66 (between the death of James and the outbreak of the Jewish war); Ebrard to 62; Wieseler (Chronol, des Ap. Zeitalters, p. 519) to July, 64; Stuart and Tholuck to about 64; Weiss to 65 ("bald nach der Mitte der sechziger Jahre"); Hilgenfeld to between 64 and 66; Davidson (Introd., revised ed., I. 222) to 66; Ewald to 67; Renan and Kay to 65. On the other hand, Zahn gives as the date a.d. 80, Holtzmann and Harnack about 90, Volkmar and Keim, 116-118. These late dates are simply impossible, not only for intrinsic reasons and the allusion to Timothy, but also because Clement of Rome, who wrote about 95, shows a perfect familiarity with Hebrews.
1226 The inference of the place from oiJ ajpo; th's jItaliva" Heb. 13:24, is uncertain, since in the epistolary style it may imply that the writer was at that time out of Italy, or in Italy (which would be more distinctly expressed by ejn jItaliva/ oroiJ ejx ). The brethren may have been fugitives from Italy (so Bleek). But the latter view seems more natural, and is defended by Theodoret, who knew Greek as his mother tongue. Tholuck and Ebrard quote the phrases oiJ ajpo; gh'" and oiJ ajpo; qalavssh", travellers by land and sea, and from Polybius, oiJ ajpo; th's jAlexandreiva" basilei'", the Alexandrian kings. Still more to the point is Pseudo-Ignatius Ad. Her. 8, quoted by Zahn (see his ed. of Ign., p. 270, 12): ajspavzontaiv se ... pavnte" oiJ ajpo; Filivppwn ejn cristw'/, o]ten kai; ejpevsteilav soi.
1227 The Sinaitic MS. and C have the subscription "to the Hebrews," A adds "from Rome," K "from Italy." Sam. Davidson dates it from Alexandria, Renan from Ephesus, where he thinks Barnabas was at that time with some fugitive Italians, while Timothy was imprisoned perhaps at Corinth (L’Antechrist. p. 210).
1228 For the patristic testimonies, I refer to the collection in Charteris, Canonicity, pp. 272-288; for a candid and exhaustive discussion of the whole question, to Bleek’s large Com., I., 82-272; also to Alford’s Com., vol iv., Part I., pp. 1-62
1229 Von Hofmann (of Erlangen) is almost the only one in Germany; Bishop Wordsworth and Dr. Kay in England. Among the older defenders of the Pauline authorship we mention Owen (1668), Mill (1707), Carpzov (1750), Bengel (1752). Sykes (1755), Andr. Cramer (1757), Storr (1789), and especially the learned and acute Roman Catholic scholar, Hug, in his Einleitung.
1230 Dr. Biesenthal has, by a retranslation of the Ep. into Hebrew, endeavored to prove this theory in "Das Trostschreiben des Ap. Paulus an die Hebraeer,"Leipz., 1878. But, of course, this is no argument any more than Delitzsch’s Hebrew translation of the entire New Testament. Such happy phrases as polumerw'" kai; polutrovpw" (Heb.1:1) and e[maqen ejfj w|n e[paqen th;n uJpakohvn (5:8) cannot be reproduced in Hebrew at all.
1231 sunqevsei th'" levxew" ejllhnikwtevra. Ap. Euseb. H. E. VI. 25.
1232 tiv" de; oJ gravya" th;n ejpistolh;n, to; me;n ajlhqe;" qeo;" oi|den.
1233 "Pauli Apostoli epistolae tredecim, ejusdem ad Hebraeos una."
1234 Calvin: "Scriptor unum se ex apostolorum discipulis profitetur, quod est a Paulina consuetudine longe alienum." And on Heb. 2:3, "Hic locus indicio est; epistolam a Paulo non fuisse compositam,"etc.
1235 As Calvin expresses it: "Ipsa docendi ratio et stilus alium quam Paulum esse satis testantur." On this point see especially Riehm’s valuable Lehrbegriff, etc., and the respective sections in the works on the N. T. Theology; also Kurtz’s Com., pp. 24 sqq. The parallelisms which Dr. Kay sets against this argument in the Speaker’s Com., pp. 14 sqq., only prove what nobody denies, the essential agreement of Hebrews with the Pauline Epistles
1236 See the proof in Bleek, vol. I. 338-375. Conveniently ignored in the Speaker’s Com., p. 13.
1237 Of the other friends of Paul, Timothy is excluded by the reference to him in Heb. 13:23. Mark, Demas, Titus, Tychicus, Epaphroditus, Epaphras, Aristarchus, Aquila, Jesus Justus have never been brought forward as candidates. Silvanus, or Silas, is favorably mentioned by Böhme, Mynster, and Riehm (890 sqq.), on account of his prominent position, Acts 15:22, 27, 34, 40; 16:19; 1 Pet. 5:12.
1238 Tertullian, Ullmann, Wieseler, Thiersch, Ritschl, Renan, Zahn. W. R. Smith (in the "Enc. Brit.") likewise leans to the Barnabas hypothesis.
1239 Clement of Alexandria (who, however, regarded Luke only, and wrongly, as translator), Calvin, Grotius, Crell, Ebrard, Delitzsch, Döllinger. Ebrard supposes that Luke wrote the Epistle at the request and in the name of Paul, who suggested the general plan and leading ideas. This is the most plausible form of the Luke hypothesis, but does not account for the doctrinal differences.
1240 This linguistic argument has been overdone by Delitzsch and weakened by fanciful or far-fetched analogies. See the strictures of Lünemann, pp. 24-31.
1241 Mentioned as a subjective conjecture by Origen (Klhvmh" oJ genovmeno" ejpivskopos JRwmaivwn e[graye th;n ejpistolhvn) alongside with Luke. Renewed by Erasmus and Bisping.
1242 Luther, Osiander, Norton, Semler, Bleek, Tholuck, Credner, Reuss, Bunsen, Hilgenfeld, Lange, Moll, Kendrick, Alford, Lünemann, Kurtz, Samuel Davidson, A. B. Davidson. The Apollos hypothesis has been the most popular until, within the last few years, Renan, Zahn, and W. Robertson Smith have turned the current again in favor of the Barnabas hypothesis. Riehm, after a full and judicious discussion, wavers between Apollos and Silvanus, but ends with Origen’s modest confession of ignorance (p. 894).
1243 Ep. ad Cor., c. 47.
1244 jApokavluyis jIhsou' Cristou' Rev. 1:1. The oldest inscription in Cod. a is apokaluyi" iwanou. Later MSS. add tou' aJgivou and tou' qeolovgou, etc.
1245 "Tot verba, tot mysteria."—"Niemand weiss, was darinnen steht." Zwingli would take no doctrinal proof-text from Revelation.
1246 The amount of nonsense, false chronology, and prophecy which has been put into the Apocalypse is amazing, and explains the sarcastic saying of the Calvinistic, yet vehemently anti-Puritanic preacher, Robert South (Serm. XXIII., vol. I., 377, Philad. ed., 1844), that "the book called the Revelation, the more it is studied, the less it is understood, as generally either finding a man cracked, or making him so." The remark is sometimes falsely attributed to Calvin, but he had great respect for the book, and quotes it freely for doctrinal purposes, though he modestly or wisely abstained from writing a commentary on it.
1247 Rev. 4:11; 5:8-14; 7:12-17; 11:15; 14:13; 15:3; 19:1, 2, 6, 7.
1248 Herder: "How many passages in the prophets are obscure in their primary historical references, and yet these passages, containing divine truth, doctrine, and consolation, are manna for all hearts and all ages. Should it not be so with the book which is an abstract of almost all prophets and Apostles?"
1249 Zur Einleit. in die Offenb. Joh., p. 1. The translation is condensed.
1250 Prof. Godet compares the Apocalypse with the Song of Songs, viewed as a dramatic poem, and calls it "the Canticle of the New Testament," as the Song of Songs is "the Apocalypse of the Old." But I cannot see the aptness of this comparison. Eichhorn treated the Apocalypse as a regular drama with a prologue, three acts, and an epilogue.
1251 See Lücke, pp. 66-345; Lange, pp. 6 sqq.; Hilgenfeld, Die jüdische Apokalyptik (1857); Schürer, N. T’liche Zeitgeschichte (1874), pp. 511-563.
1252 Godet (p. 297): "The Apocalypse is the precious vessel in which the treasure of Christian hope has been deposited for all ages of the church, but especially for the church under the cross." Dr. Chambers (p. 15): "The scope of this mysterious book is not to convince unbelievers, nor to illustrate the divine prescience, nor to minister to men’s prurient desire to peer into the future, but to edify the disciples of Christ in every age by unfolding the nature and character of earth’s conflicts, by preparing them for trial as not a strange thing, by consoling them with the prospect of victory, by assuring them of God’s sovereign control over all persons and things, and by pointing them to the ultimate issue when they shall pass through the gates of pearl never more to go out."
1253 Comp. § 50, (this vol.).
1254 See the testimonies in Charteris, Canonicity, pp. 336-357; also Lücke (pp. 419-887), Alford (iv. 198-229), Lee (pp. 405-442), and other commentators.
1255 This is the almost unanimous opinion of the Tübingen critics and their sympathizers on the Continent and in England.
1256 Comp. Rev. 1:10; 1 Cor. 14:15. See, besides the references mentioned at the head of the section, the testimony of Dr. Weiss, who, in his Leben Jesu (1882), I. 97-101, ably discusses the difference, between the two books, and comes to the conclusion that they are both from the same Apostle John. "Yes" (he says, with reference to a significant concession of Dr. Baur), "the fourth Gospel is ’the spiritualized Apocalypse,’ but not because an intellectual hero of the second century followed the seer of the Apocalypse, but because the Son of Thunder of the Apocalypse had been matured and transfigured by the Spirit and the divine guidance into a mystic, and the flames of his youth had burnt down into the glow of a holy love."
1257 The great majority of older commentators, and among the recent ones Elliott, Alford, Hengstenberg, Ebrard, Lange, Hofmann, Godet, Lee, Milligan, and Warfield (in Schaff’s "Encycl." III. 2035). I myself formerly advocated the later date, in the Hist. of the Ap. Church (1853), pp. 418 sqq
1258 The early date is advocated or accepted by Neander, Lücke, Bleek, Ewald, DeWette, Baur, Hilgenfeld, Reuss, Düsterdieck, Renan, Aubé, Stuart, Davidson, Cowles, Bishop Lightfoot, Westoott, Holtzmann, Weiss; and among earlier writers by Alcasar, Grotius, Hammond, Abauzit, and John Lightfoot.
1259 Suetonius, Vespas. c. 1 "Rebellione trium principum et caede incertum diu et quasi vagum imperium suscepit firmavitque tandem gens Flavia."
1260 So Bleek (p. 121), Lücke (in the second ed.), Böhmer, Weiss, Düsterdieck (Introd. pp. 55 sqq. and Com. on Rev. 13:3, and 17:7-14).
1261 So Ewald, Reuss, Baur, etc. See NOTES below.
1262 Comp. ch. vi., pp. 376-402, and especially the most graphic description of those terrible years by Renan, in L’Antechrist, ch. xiv., pp. 320-339, which I would like to transcribe if space permitted. His facts are well supported by heathen and Jewish testimonies especially Tacitus, Suetonius, Strabo, Pliny, Josephus, etc.
1263 See Alford, Com. iv., 245 sqq.; Elliott, 4th vol.; Sam. Davidson, Introd. to the N. T., first ed. III. 619, revised ed., vol. II. 297, and Lee, Com. p. 488. Davidson adds a fourth class of "extreme," as distinguished from simple "Futurists," who refer the entire book, including Rev. 2 and 3, to the last times. Lee substitutes with Lücke the term "Historical" for "Continuous," but Historical applies better to the first class called "Preterists." Lee adds (491), as a fourth system, the "Spiritual system," and names Augustin (his "City of God," as the first philosophy of history), J. C. K. von Hofmann, Hengstenberg, Auberlen, Ebrard as its chief defenders. It is the same with what Auberlen calls the reichsgeschichtliche Auslegung.
1264 So Herder, in his suggestive book MARAN AQA, das Buch von der Zukunft des Herrn, des N. Testaments Siegel, Riga, 1779. He was preceded in the anti-Jewish explication by Abauzit of Geneva (1730), who assigned the book to the reign of Nero, and Wetstein (1752), and followed by Hartwig (1780) and Züllig. The last, in a learned work on the Apocalypse (Stuttgart, 1834, 2 vols., 1840), refers it exclusively to the Jewish state.
1265 a = 1, b = 2, r = 100, a = 1, x = 60, a = 1, " = 200; total, 365. A vast number of engraved stones, called " Abraxas-gems," are still extant. The origin of Abraxas is usually ascribed to Basilides or his followers.
1266 I = 10 + h = 8 + s = 200 + o = 70 + u = 400 + s = 200, total ijhsous = 888. Comp. Barnabas, Ep. c. 9; and the Sibylline Books, I. 324-331.
1267 These pious absurdities are surpassed by the rationalistic absurdity of Volkmar, who (in his Com. on the Apoc., 1862, p. 197) carries the imaginary hostility of John to Paul so far as to refer "the false prophet" (Rev. 16:13; 19:20) to the Apostle of the Gentiles, because he taught (Rom. 13) that every soul should be subject to the then reigning Nero (ie., the beast)! Even Hilgenfeld (Einleit. p. 436) and Samuel Davidson (I. 291), while agreeing with Volkmar in the Nero-hypothesis, protest against such impious nonsense.
1268 See Lee, Com. p. 687. Adam Clarke regarded this unanswerable.
1269 Adv. Haer., v. 30, §§3 and 4. Josephus, from prudential regard to his patrons, the Flavian emperors, withheld the interpretation of the fourth beast and the stone cut out of the mountain in Daniel’s vision. Ant. x. 10, § 4. On which Havercamp remarks: "Nor is this to be wondered at that he would not now meddle with things future; for he had no mind to provoke the Romans by speaking of the destruction of that city, which they called the eternal city."
1270 If they go farther, they discover the anti-Christian beast in the mediaeval German (the so-called "Holy Roman") empire in conflict with the papacy, in the Napoleonic imperialism, the Russian Czarism, the modern German empire (the anti-papal Cultur-Kampf ), in fact in every secular power which is hostile to the interests of the Roman hierarchy and will "not go to Canossa." This would be the very reverse of the old Protestant interpretation.
1271 D = 500 + I = 1 + C = 100 + L = 50 + V = 5 + V = 5 = 666.
1272 The numerical value of Kaisarsebaston is = 20 + 1 + 10 + 200 + 1 + 100 + 200 + 5 + 2 + 1 + 6 + 70 + 50, in all 666.
1273 In the essay above quoted, p. 388, and in the article Revelation in Johnson’s "Cyclopaedia," III. 1606 sqq.