No More Learning

During the flourishing period of Rationalistic theology, at the end of the last and beginning of this century, church history was written on the pragmatic method, of which the best known exponents were Spittler and Planck, both Swabians by birth, and invited from Tubingen to Gottingen, where they entered on long and successful careers both as teachers and authors. Spittler's Grundriss der Geschichte der christl. Kirche (1782), is written from the point of view of the Aufklarung, in order to show how the human mind had risen through the revolutions of eighteen centuries to its present freedom in religious matters. The book is mainly
anity guides
? of the secular-political side of the Church ; its religious and theological side being cast into the background.
Like Gottfried Arnold, Spittler sympathised with the heretics in their opposition to the orthodox Church ; but this sympathy
was not due in Spittler, as in Arnold, to religious mysticism, but to the dogmatic indifferentism of the Aufklarung, to which
the nature of Christianity as religion had become problem
descriptive
? ? ? 27S
BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL THEOLOGY. [Bk. III.
atic and incomprehensible. Since Christian history is thus from the beginning deprived of any guiding principle, it is
impossible to discover any theological coherence in and comes to be " one long lamentation over the weakness and corruption of the human mind," which, however, still gradu
Providence, which from time to time, the sending of wise men, brings about a change for the better. The persons and phenomena
ally improved by the happy dispensations of
of history are not explained and judged according to the
and motives of their own time, but all alike are estimated by the standard of the modes of thought of the Aufklarung, and anything not agreeing with forthwith condemned as stupidity, phantasy, and error.
More moderate in tone, but written essentially on the same pragmatic method, are Planck's works, Geschichte der Entstel- lung, der Verdnderungen nnd der Bildung unseres protestant ischen Lehrbegriffs von Anfang der Reformation bis zur Einfuhrung der Concordienformel vols. , 781-1800), and
principles
? Geschichte der christlich-kirchlichen
vols. 803-1 809). The excellence of these works consists
in the exactness of the examination of authorities, the careful regard of the various concurring circumstances, external rela tions, and inward inclinations conditioning actions, and the sagacity in the discovery and combination of motives, thus producing a lifelike and vivid picture of historical events.
But the weak side of this "psychological pragmatism" also specially evident in Planck he tries to explain everything that happens by the accidental subjective motives of individual persons, and fails to understand the deeper causes lying in the general ideas and prevailing tendencies of an age. The sub jectivism of the Aufklarung, which isolates and lays stress on the individual, with his peculiar nature and arbitrary will, reflected in this treatment of history, which substitutes for the great objective forces of human society the trivial play of accident and the caprice of individuals. And since the psy chological motives of men, especially of those living in the past, can never be known with certainty, but at most only conjectured, this pragmatism, which aims at explaining all events by men's subjective motives, leads unavoidably to the ascription of motives really quite foreign to the actors. We often get the impression that the astute aims and plans described by the historian are rather an invention of his own
Gesellschaftsverfassung
? ? is
it
:
by
is
(5 1
(6 1
it is
is
it,
? Ch. III. ] ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY AND HISTORY O* DOGMA. 279
than a part of the history itself. With this principle of the Aufklarung is further connected the incapacity to enter, impar tially and sympathetically, into the modes of thought and the religious interests and wants of the past. Such phenomena as the papacy, scholasticism, and mysticism, find as little favour in the eyes of Planck as of Spittler. That these things were in their time the necessary and therefore legitimate ex pressions of the spirit of religious society, is a fact the subjec tive understanding of the Aufklarung cannot comprehend, but it regards them categorically as lamentable errors, fanaticisms, or even frauds. From this point of view the historian fails to perceive the objective rationality of history, the development of mind through various stages, and the functions of indi viduals foreign to himself, in whom the common spirit of their time found a peculiar and forcible expression. August
Among Planck's auditors from 1 808-10 was Neander, who had shortly before given up Judaism for Chris tianity, and under the influence of Schleiermacher's Reden had resolved to study theology, in order, as he confessed to a friend, to " make war for ever on the common understanding, which gets further and further away from the eternal centre of all being, the Divine. " This confession sufficiently shows how different was the spirit of the scholar from that of his master ; nevertheless Neander was first led by Planck to study the sources of ecclesiastical history, though with very different results in his case. When, in 1813, Neander was called to a chair in the newly founded University of Berlin, he became,
after Schleiermacher, the most important representative of the new theology, which by its profounder appreciation of the
religious life gave him new insight into early Church history. In quick succession he published a series of monographs, on
During its publication appeared, as an independent supple ment, Die Geschichte der Pflanzung und Leitung der christ lichen Kirche durch die Apostel (2 vols. , 1832), and Das Leben
? and his Age, on St. Bernhard, Chrysostom, Tertullian,
Julian
the Gnostic Systems, and Memorials from the history of Christianity, and the Christian life ; then his Allgemeine Ge- schichte der christlichen Religion u. Kirche (10 vols. , 1826-45).
His departure from the earlier method of writ ing Church history was described by Neander himself in the
/esu (1837).
preface to the 2nd ed. of his St. Bernard as follows : "
A new life of faith had arisen, which began to revivify theological
? ? ? 280 BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL THEOLOGY. [Bk. III.
science also. This gave us the impulse to trace the stream of Christian life in former centuries, and lovingly to include every thing Christian. A shallow Aufklarung, without mind or heart, had, in its conceit and boastful poverty, taught us to despise what was greatest and noblest in former centuries ; but now this had been condemned alike by life and science. An
unhistorical age had given way to new insight into history and to a new desire sympathetically to understand and thoroughly comprehend the characteristic individuality of historical phenomena. " Neander's chief aim was everywhere to understand what was individual in history. In the princi pal figures of ecclesiastical history he tried to depict the repre sentative tendencies of each age, and also the types of the essential tendencies of human nature generally. His guiding principle in treating both of the history and of the present con dition of the Church was -- that Christianity has room for the various tendencies of human nature, and aims at permeating and glorifying them all that according to the divine plan these various tendencies are to occur successively and simultaneously and to counterbalance each other, so that the freedom and variety of the development of the spiritual life ought not to be forced into single dogmatic form. This was the source of his sympathetic appreciation of the most different historical characters, of gnostics and mystics, of saints and heretics, not even excepting the apostate Julian, whom he admired the pathos of phantastic religious enthusiasm even in its hea then garb. Hence also his generous tolerance of tendencies in his own time with which he could not sympathise (e. g. that of his teacher Planck), his championship of the freedom of scientific teaching, even on behalf of Rationalistic opponents, such as the Halle professors, Gesenius and Wegscheider,
when denounced to the government by Hengstenberg. In one direction only Neander failed to exercise his usual toler ance, viz. towards the Hegelian school and the Tubingen criticism. This was so distasteful to him that in his judgment of he became unjust and bitter -- a sign of the consciousness of having before him a scientific movement, not only opposed, but superior to his own. Doubtless that too was incomplete, and needed to be supplemented by Neander but equally certain that was strong just where Neander was weak. Neander divided history into a series of separate pictures, drawn with the loving hand of a master as edifying and instruc
? ? ? it
a
;
it is
it
in
;
it,
? Ch. III. ] ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY AND HISTORY OF DOGMA. 28 I
tive examples ; but he failed to grasp the connection between
phenomena, or the general ideas which dominate each age and
give to it its special character, or the regularity of the general
development of the religious spirit in the Church. His was too much an emotional nature, and his theology was too much
governed by the subjective point of view of Romanticism for him to be able to do justice to the importance of ideas in religion and to the mental conflict in the different movements of thought in the Church. The great dramatic forces of history were hidden from him by the lyrical emotions of single indi viduals. The same preponderance of emotion in his nature prevented him from fully appreciating historic characters of marked individuality. His own generous heart enabled him indeed sympathetically to study the character of historical per sons, but he always saw in them mainly those features which were in accordance with his own feelings ; the corners and angularities, in which the peculiarities of character find their most significant expression, he smoothed down, and idealised his heroes into copies, more or less, of his own individuality. This was the opposite error to that of the Rationalistic method ; in the latter a want of sympathetic appreciation had led to the misrepresentation and caricature of the figures of history, but in Neander these figures become dim ideal forms, like stars hard to distinguish in the surrounding mist. Finally, Nean- der's pectoral theology involved a serious lack of historical criticism. This failing was indeed shared by almost all Romanticists ; as they had grown tired of the sole sovereignty of the understanding, the understanding was henceforth to have no authority at all, and clear rational investigation be doomed to silence, even in its proper province --historical cri ticism. Too much influenced by the modern historical spirit consistently to exclude criticism on principle, and yet too much of an emotional theologian to make thorough-going use of it where it assailed treasured and beautiful traditions, Neander never freed himself from that hesitation and want of thorough ness which strikes us so painfully in his Life of Jesus} Neander, moreover, regarded miracles, in the proper sense,
as possible, not only in Biblical times, but down to the third
century. If so late, why should they not be accepted much
later, or throughout all history ? Because on that supposition
? f--. ' .
. --
1 Com p. ante, p. 219.
? ? ? 282 BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL THEOLOGY. [Bk. III.
the scientific weakness of a supernaturalistic treatment of history of such a kind would be much more strange and in tolerable than it actually is in Neander.
Closely allied to Neander, but of a more independent and versatile mind, is the ecclesiastical historian, Carl Hase.
His strength likewise lies mainly in the loving study and deli cate, subtle description of individual phenomena in history.
His pictures of mediaeval saints (Franz von Assisi, Katerina von Siena), and of neue Propheten (Die Jungfrau von Orleans, Savonarola, Thomas Munzer) are both in form and matter
model monographs, and evince a power of sympathetically entering into peculiar phases of religious life such as was possessed in an equal degree only by Neander. But Hase's attitude towards the figures of history is more independent than Neander's ; he does not emphasise merely those sides of a character which appeal to himself, but contrives, in a few brief, pregnant lines, to sketch a clear and complete objective picture of He does not, like Neander, seek for what edifying the religious life of men and nations, but for what
characteristic so that some details may be far from edifying, for the simple reason that the actors in history are men, and often caricature what sublime. In his Lehrbuch der Kirch- engeschichte ed. , 1834, now nth ed. ), Hase has succeeded in compressing an unusually large amount of material into the smallest possible space without anywhere creating the impres sion of a dry skeleton, but he makes " the wealth of life meet ing us in the original monuments of each age reveal itself even in the most compressed outline. " This was possible only to an historian who combined a mastery of style, formed on classic models, such as possessed by few scholars, with happy instinct separating the essential from the unessential. " Only what has at some time truly lived and thereby become im mortal, by representing a ray of the Christian spirit, forms part of history, which a history of the living and not of the dead. " This excellent principle, enunciated in his preface, adhered to by Hase throughout his work. By throwing over board much of the worthless cargo usually carried by the pedantry of scholars, he found room, in the small compass of a single volume, for matter hitherto omitted or insufficiently treated in Church histories, such as the religions of the hea then nations with which Christianity came into contact, or the history of ecclesiastical art. Although the strongest point of
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is
is is
is
in
in
it.
a
(1
;
is
? Ch. III. ] ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY AND HISTORY OF DOGMA. 283
Hase's Church History is its artistic presentation of a wealth
of material, he gives us also from the stores of his wide histori
cal knowledge, general reflections, birds-eye views, and main
points of observation, as well as his personal verdicts on men
and things. With the kindly tolerance which can be just to
other points of view, he combines a courageous honesty which
shows the dark as well as the bright side of his own Church,
and even of the period of the Reformation, which to other Pro
testant historians is generally too sacred to be freely criticised.
This incorruptible impartiality in judgment is a merit of Hase's history all the more valuable from its rareness among
our theologians. In the year 1885, the aged historian pub lished the first volume of a Church History, to be completed in three volumes, in which the brief outlines and indications of his text-book are further expanded for educated readers generally. A glance at this volume shows how thoroughly Hase, usually regarded rather as the historian of the middle ages and recent times, is acquainted also with ecclesiastical antiquity. He has, he himself acknowledges, learnt much from Tubingen criticism ; his refusal to follow it in every thing, we can only regard with approval. For my own part, at all events, 1 have, in following my own line of study, become more and more convinced of the truth of the verdict pronounced by Hase (p. 175): "The Tubingen school has perceived a part of the truth, -- the profound division in the Apostolic Church (formerly lightly passed over), two forms taken by primitive Christianity. But, as often happens, the discoverer of a new truth overrates its importance. A definite
Christianity existed towards the close of the cen tury in Palestine only, although there may have been a few individual Churches in Syria also. On the other hand, Paul's victory must not be understood to mean that the converted Gentiles at once grasped his profound ideas in opposition to the necessity of the law ; they in their strict consistency are not for the popular mind ; the Churches composed of Gentiles would be likely to feel themselves morally strengthened and
? Jewish
Christ, without troubling themselves about the Jewish law. " If it is
quickened religiously by the spirit proceeding from
granted to the venerable author to complete this admirable work, it will remain a lasting and valuable monument of the life-work of a German theologian and scholar. 1
1 Since the text was written the venerable historian has died.
? ? ? 286 BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL THEOLOGY. [Bk. III.
ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung bis auf die neueste Zeit (1838), and Die christliche Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit und
Menschwerdung Gottes in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung (3 vols. 1841-43), followed by the Lehrbuch der christlichen Dogmengesc hichte (1847), which contains a concise survey of the whole history of dogma. His method of treating these subjects is characterised by Baur himself in his prefaces as follows : The object of history is to give an account of the nature of mind itself, its inner movement and development, its consciousness of itself, advancing from point to point. This can only be done by a speculative treatment of the materials. For whenever there is inner connection there is reason, and whatever is by means of reason must also be for reason, for the contemplation of mind. Without speculation historical research fails to get below the surface and outside of the matter, and in proportion as the subject is comprehen sive and important, and belongs directly to the sphere of thought, it is necessary not merely to reproduce in oneself what individuals have thought and done, but also to follow in thought the thoughts of the eternal Mind of which history is the work. --This is indeed a magnificent conception of the historian's task, to trace the divine thoughts in history and comprehend the ideal or teleological necessity in the develop ment of mind. But when Baur thought with Hegel that the development of the living religious spirit was identical with the dialectical development of logical categories, and that the rise and growth of dogmas in the Christian Church can be adequately rendered in the formulae of Hegelian terminology, this was a decided error by which the value of his learned works was sensibly diminished. We are not told exactly what the real meaning of the Fathers was--for their opinions are always translated into the language of Hegel ; nor do we get a clear account of the various factors, religious and secu lar, individual and social, universal and temporal, contributing to the formation of dogma -- for instead of all these real fac tors appears always the imaginary cause in the "self-move
ment of the idea. " We may in fact affirm that Baur's slavery to the formulae of the Hegelian philosophy was a weak point in his treatment of the history of dogma, which only served to obscure the truth and profundity of his conception of his tory as a true development of the human mind, and to give the opponents of his principles many apparent advantages.
? ? ? ? Ch. III. ] ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY AND HISTORY OF DOGMA. 2S7
It is all the more important to notice that Baur in his later years freed himself to an observable degree from this defect, (which is specially characteristic of the monographs written when in middle life on the history of dogma), and advanced to a more independent conception of religious and historical life ; of religious life, by subsequently more definitely distin guishing between religion and philosophy, and making the former primarily ethical instead of intellectual ; and of histori cal life, by recognising the importance of the personalities, before almost concealed under the generality of the idea, as representatives of the idea, and as the concrete motive-forces of history. This advance is seen in his last work, his Kirchen-
geschichte, which is therefore the maturest and most substan tial fruit of his labours, while its superiority to all his former writings in point of clearness and ease of language is no doubt connected with this improvement in matter. Baur had thoroughly prepared himself for this work, in which he in tended to exhibit in connection the results of the labours of his life, by a critical account of the Epochen der kirchlichen
Geschichtsschreibung (1852), in which he showed the deficien cies of previous methods, and demanded that ecclesiastical history, like the secular history of our time (above all that of
? Ranke), should abandon its trivial discussion of proximate and accidental causes, and rather describe the great connexion and general causes of the phenomena in the ruling ideas of each age. This essay was followed by Das Christenthum und die christliche Kirche der drei ersten
Jahrhunderte next came, in Baur's lifetime, Die christliche Kirche
(1853);
von Anfang des vierten bis zum Ende des sec hsten Jahrhun-
derts (1859). The three subsequent volumes, containing the history of the mediaeval age, of the modern age, and of the nineteenth century, were published from his remains in the years immediately following his death (i860). In the preface to the first volume, Baur announces his intention of giving a more connected account of the early history of Christianity
than had previously been done ; in particular the basis pro
vided in history itself for Christianity in the form of a Church
must be more accurately and thoroughly investigated, the connexion and unity of the whole must be made plain, the differences and mutual relations of the various co-operating forces and principles explained ; in short, as harmonious a picture as possible formed of all the individual traits which
? ? ? 288 BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL THEOLOGY. [Bk. Ill-
distinguish this rich period. This conception of the object and method of Church history will remain a model for all time. In the execution, advancing knowledge will, of course, discover and correct errors in detail, but taken as a whole, it is the first
thorough and satisfactory attempt to explain the rise of Chris
and the Church on strictly historical lines, i. e. as a natural development of the religious spirit of our race under the combined operation of various human causes. This is what makes Baur's Church History, and especially its first volume, a classic for all time. It may perhaps be of some in terest to those who do not read German, and have not direct access to this work, if I here give a short sketch of Baur's account of primitive Christianity, thus carrying on the above (p. 263 sqq. ) outline of Wellhausen's history of Israel, which will assist in the formation of an approximately true idea of the results of modern criticism in respect to Biblical and early ecclesiastical history.
Baur begins with the preparation for Christianity in the Gentile and Jewish world. This includes, besides the political universalism of the Roman Empire, the Graeco-Roman philosophy ; the Socratic and Platonic idealism and the Stoic and Epicuraean search for the summum bonum contain the closest parallels to the religious questions of Christianity, and in the later eclecticism of a Cicero and Seneca we have the outlines of a natural theology, which was subsequently further developed on Christian soil. We may therefore say that in Christianity the various movements of the time con verge towards the same goal, and find in it their ultimate idea and most complete expression. Simultaneously,
form, new ideas were borrowed from the Greeks, and in particular the Old Testament conception of God was lifted out of the narrow sphere of the Jewish theocracy. Even the dread of contact with the world and the religious self- contemplation of the Essenes was one of the points of spiritual affinity between Judaism and Christianity. Thus the whole previous history of mankind was a preparation for Christianity ; it contained nothing which had not already in some form or other been recognised as a result of rational thought, or as a want of the human heart, or as a demand of the ethical consciousness. In order to ascertain the original character of Christianity, Baur starts from the Sermon
tianity
? Judaism had assumed in Alexandrine Hellenism a more subtle and
spiritual
? ? ? Ch. III. ] ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY AND HISTORY OF DOGMA. 289
on the Mount, Matthew v. In the Beatitudes we get a glance into the centre of the principle of thought and feeling of which it was the product, viz. " an infinitely sublime religious consciousness, which, though pervaded by the deepest feeling of the pressure of the finite and all the contradictions of the present, rises far above everything finite and limited. It is the pure feeling of the need of salvation, still undeveloped but containing within it the antithesis of sin and grace, and as such necessarily involving the reality of salvation. " The
emphasis laid by Jesus on the heart and character, as that
in which alone man's absolute moral worth consists, is an
essentially new step, a departure in principle from Mosaism,
and is the fundamental principle of Christianity. And just as
the idea of righteousness is deepened into a perfect surrender of man's own will to God's, so the Old Testament idea of
? the theocracy is so much spiritualised that everything relating to man's connexion with the kingdom of God is made
dependent solely upon ethical conditions. " Christianity, thus viewed, is in its most essential and primitive elements a
purely ethical religion, and its highest and peculiar excellence is its wholly ethical character as rooted in the ethical con sciousness of mankind. " But this spiritual substance of Christianity took concrete form in the Messianic idea, and by its aid entered on its historical development, the conscious ness of Jesus widening to universality by means of the national consciousness. By the name " Son of man " Jesus
expressed his truly universal Messianic vocation ; in Peter's confession this became an acknowledged fact for himself and for his disciples ; in Jerusalem he put the nation to the test, whether they adhered to their traditional, material and par- ticularist Messianic belief, or would recognise a Messiah such as he was and had shown himself by his whole life and work. The answer could only be the one of which he had long himself been assured. But his apparent overthrow was really the most decisive victory and entrance upon life. His death
was the complete rupture between him and Judaism. What the Resurrection really was lies outside the province of his torical inquiry, which has only to maintain that in the belief
of the disciples the resurrection of Jesus was the most certain
and incontrovertible of facts.
So far as history is concerned,
the necessary pre-supposition for everything that follows is not so much the fact of the resurrection of Jesus itself as
G. T. U
? ? ? BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL THEOLOGY. [Bk. IIS.
29O
the belief in it ; but no psychological analysis can penetrate the inward spiritual process by which this belief was gene rated in the mind of the disciples. In their view the return of Jesus at the end of the world was so closely connected with his departure, that by this expectation the old Messianic hopes might easily be renewed and strengthened in them, whereby the difference between the disciples and the other Jews would sink into insignificance. What was it that raised the belief in the risen Jesus to a new principle of universal importance? It was, Baur answers, the work of the Apostle
Paul, prepared for by the Hellenist Stephen. His conversion,
even though we cannot get to the bottom of it by any psy
chological analysis, may be conceived as brought about by the help of the great impression made on him by the death of Jesus, which from the very fact of its contradicting all Jewish national assumptions, necessarily gained in Paul's view an importance extending far beyond Jewish particularism, so that he first fully grasped the universalism of Christianity. The two points of view which had been united in the person of Jesus -- the universal or ethical and the national Jewish or Messianic, --were respectively divided amongst his disciples, the elder apostles, generally laying emphasis on the national
character of Jesus, while Paul gave energetic expression to his ethical universality. He did not indeed appeal to the details of the life or teaching of Jesus, since the whole of Christianity was for his mind concentrated in the person of Jesus and the great facts of his death and resurrection. After
Paul had for a considerable time been working among the
pursue its own independent course separate from the other. How deep the disunion really was, in spite of the brotherly shake of the hand, was soon seen at Antioch, in the personal
quarrel between Paul and Peter, which left a lasting impres
sion on both sides. In none of Paul's epistles have we the
slightest sign of the two apostles having afterwards been in any way reconciled ; the Acts passes over the scene in Antioch in such deliberate silence that we can plainly enough infer how little the recollection of it accorded with the concili atory Tendenz of the writer ; and in the pseudo-Clementine Homilies (of the latter half of the second cen^--*? \ we can
? mixed Churches in Syria, he and the
including the Apostles, became involved in a dispute, which ended with the resolution that each of the two parties should
Jewish
Christians,
? ? ? Ch. III. ] ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY AND HISTORY OF DOGMA. 29 I
see that even then the Jewish Christians could not forgive Paul his harsh words about their chief apostle. Soon after we meet with the systematic opposition of the Jewish Chris
tians to the Apostle Paul in Galatia, where they wished to convert the Pauline Church to Jewish legalism ; and then in Corinth, where they tried to destroy Paul's authority by aU the resources of intrigue and under the pretext of the authority of the original apostles. And even in Rome, Baur holds, Paul had to contend with Jewish Christians ; in order to defend his mission to the Gentiles against their prejudices he wrote his Epistle to the Romans, the last, in Baur's view, which we have of his. During the Apostle's last stay in Jerusalem also, the Jewish Christians took part in the tumult which led to his imprisonment, and thus proved the implaca bility of their hatred of the Apostle of the Gentiles, whom they regarded as an apostate from the Law of their fathers. by which they continued to feel themselves bound. --The reconciliation, so far as possible, of these two parties, hitherto sharply opposed to each other, by the adjustment of their differences and the softening of their antagonism, was, accord ing to Baur, the chief object aimed at in the sub-apostolic age; the whole literature of this period appears from this point of view as a series of monuments of this opposition, and its gradual reduction by the advances of both sides. Of the Gos pels, Luke is the purest and most important record of Paulin- ism, while Matthew represents Jewish Christianity. The latter found its strongest anti-Pauline expression in the Apocalypse, which Baur regarded as a work of the Apostle John, and interpreted thoughout from the point of view of the primitive Christian party struggle ; so that even in the censure of the Balaamites and Nicolaitans (i. e. libertine
Gnostics), he only saw an attack on Paul. As further chief witnesses for the continued power and even supremacy of Jewish Christianity, Baur appeals to Hegesippus and the
pseudo-Clementine writings, from the middle of the second
? but he is too hasty when he makes use of the " Tendenzroman " of the latter as a sign of the Judaistic ten dencies of the Church at that time. But in spite of this bitter enmity to Paul, he holds that Jewish Christianity had
an infinite capacity for development, and was so prudent in everywhere meeting the needs of the Church by the sacrifice of its former legalism, that it came to exercise an influence on
century,
? ? ? 292 BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL THEOLOGY. [Bk. III.
the formation of the Christian Church which cannot be exaggerated, as is specially proved by the development of the hierarchy, altogether an outcome of Jewish Christianity. At the head of the canonical writings, which were at once the expression and the agents of this process of conciliation, he places the Epistle to the Hebrews, which by the emphasis it lays on the priesthood is shown to be a product of Jewish Christianity, although of a higher and more spiritual form of
already influenced by Paulinism. (This opinion receives a remarkable correction in a note which describes the charac teristics of the Epistle to the Hebrews as " Alexandrinism," which neither Judaism nor Paulinism, but intermediate between them, and by its limitation of them superior to both --an excellent remark, which only needs to be consistently worked out to lead to a different conception of the develop ment of post-Pauline Christianity. ) The same effort at recon ciliation, represented in the Epistle to the Hebrews on the Jewish Christian side, represented on the Pauline side by the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians they em phatically insist on the unity of the Church, as the essential result of Christ's death as healing all division, and of Christ's central all-inclusive position the universe. In the Pastoral Epistles, and in those of the pseudo- Ignatius, the Pauline party displays an eirenical readiness, for the sake of an effec tive opposition to the heretics, to meet the efforts of the
? Christians in the direction of a hierarchical organisa tion of the Church. In return, the Jewish Christians, in the
fication, still speaks of a " law of liberty " and " royal law of love," and by its practical morals makes a contribution to the formation of Catholic Christianity. In particular the First Epistle of Peter proves that the Jewish Christians were even able to accommodate themselves to the dogmatic ideas of Paulinism by direct quotation of Pauline Epistles and the Second Epistle of Peter even gives " brother Paul " a certifi cate of orthodoxy, and only laments that some things in his epistles are hard to be understood, and had been misinter preted. Finally, in order to remove all disturbing recollection of the Apostolic struggles out of the way of the union of
parties desired by both sides, the Acts of the Apostles gave an ideal picture of the Apostolic age, in which the two party
Jewish
Epistle of James, so far made concession to the followers of Paul that spite of its rejection of Paul's doctrine of justi
? ? ;
a
it
in
it, is
is in
;
? Ch. Ill] ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY AND HISTORY OF DOGMA. 293
leaders, Paul and Peter, were designedly made so much alike that they really seem to have changed places. Since this deviation from history must be intentional, the Acts must be regarded as " an effort at conciliation and a proposal of terms of peace on the part of a Paulinist, who wished to pro cure the recognition by the Jewish Christians of Gentile Christianity, by concessions from his own party to Judaism, and sought to influence both parties in this manner (on this view, compare the remarks above, p. 229). A similar position is taken by Baur with regard to the writings of the Apostolic Fathers and of Justin Martyr, and he explains the legend of the death of both Paul and Peter in Rome as the expression of the finally consummated reconciliation of the primitive Christian parties. The same process of development, of which this was the practical side in the Roman Church, is seen on its ideal side in the Gospel of John ; while in the former case the object was the realisation of the idea of the Church, it was here the evolution of an ideal theology. As there Peter and Paul were fraternally united as patrons of
the Roman Church, so here in this Johannine theology faith
and works disappear in love as their higher unity. The
opposition through which Paulinism had been compelled to fight its way, is in John removed into the far distance. The particularism of Judaism, with all the contradictions it in cluded, is lost in the general contradiction of the two prin ciples of light and darkness, which forms the background of John's theology and also dominates the sphere of ethics. This is a point of affinity between the Johannine Gospel and Gnosticism, that great movement of the second century, which both directly and indirectly greatly contributed to the forma tion of catholic and ecclesiastical Christianity. Here fresh questions present themselves, the horizon is widened, but new dangers threaten. God and world, spirit and matter, origin,
development, and consummation of the world, are the concep tions here involved, and in their development the antitheses of the religions take a share. The questions of salvation and of the ethico-religious consciousness are generalised into questions of metaphysical speculation. But the Catholic Church, everywhere careful to preserve the proper mean, had to avoid this extreme equally with that of Jewish particularism. For it was here threatened by an equally serious peril from ideas by which the Christian consciousness would altogether
? ? ? ? 294
BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL THEOLOGY. [Bk. III.
lose its historical character. The tendency of Gnosticism is to regard Christianity not primarily as the principle of
salvation but as the principle of the development of the world
generally ; it does not rest so much on a religious as on a
philosophical basis, and conducts again to philosophy as the highest product of the heathen world ; it is the extension and
development of the Alexandrine religious philosophy which had sprung from the philosophy of Greece. But in so far as it clothes philosophical ideas less in the form of abstract conceptions than of myths and allegories, it is in this respect more akin to religion than to philosophy ; it is therefore neither pure philosophy nor pure religion, but both together, a combination of the two elements which Baur (perhaps not very happily) calls " Religionsphilosophie. " He further dis
three main forms of Gnosis, in one of which Christianity is mixed with heathenism, in another with Juda ism, and in the third is opposed to both. With Gnosticism Baur contrasts Montanism as the opposite heresy. While in the former the idea supplants the historical reality, the latter is a reaction of the realism of the Jewish Christian hope of the future against its idealistic evaporation and ecclesiastical secularisation. In an age in which the belief in the nearness of the parousia failed, prophetic ecstasy grew rare or ceased, and when, with this enthusiasm of the early Churches, their ascetic zeal and love of holiness grew faint, there sprang up
in the Montanists a new form of ecstatic prophecy, a burning chiliastic belief and a rigorous penitential zeal. These move ments of the second century, so different in character, and crossing each other in all directions, all led to the develop ment and consolidation of the Church's doctrine and constitu tion as the indispensable breakwater against the billows of the time. Not only had the practical religious side of Christian
ity to be maintained against the transcendental speculations of the Gnostics, but also the very ground to be conquered against the chiliastic fanaticism of the Montanists, which cut off all possibility of the historical development and progress of Christianity in the world. It was therefore by means of its antagonism to the Gnostics and Montanists that the definite consciousness and growing solidity of the Catholic Church were developed out of the reconciliation of Jewish and Gentile Christians. In the struggle with the Gnostics was evolved the principle of ecclesiastical tradition as the f>-- 4
? tinguishes
? ? ? Ch. III. ] ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY AND HISTORY OF DOGMA. 295
appeal in all disputes, the appeal to the Apostolic writings having proved insufficient, owing to the possibility of various and especially allegorical interpretations. That only on which the Apostolic Churches agree can be received as true, for that must have been taught by the Apostles ; what is inconsistent with it is heresy, i. e. an arbitrary and new individual opinion.
But who was to decide what was Apostolical tradition and the common faith of the Church ? The bishops alone could do this, it being assumed that they were appointed by the Apostles as their successors. It is true this assumption did not correspond to the fact, since all indications go to prove that the Churches were originally autonomous and chose their own presidents, who were bishops and presbyters in one, while the function of teaching was not confined to this office.
It was not until the struggle with the heretics showed the need of a stricter centralisation of the Churches, that there was instituted, at first in the individual Churches, the monarchical episcopate superior to the presbyters. This epis copate provided a fixed rallying point against the separatist tendencies of the heretics, and applied the Christian conception of a supernatural world to the practical needs of the present, thus initiating the further historical development of Christianity on the basis of a universal Church. But the same effort at unity which had first raised the bishop of the individual Church above the presbyters, went on to elevate the Bishop of Rome above the others who were originally his equals. That the Roman bishop was Peter's successor in Rome, is an his torical fiction, Peter never having been in Rome. The unhistorical legend about Peter took its rise at first merely
in Rome's political importance, and since the papacy itself depends on this legend, we must seek for the origin of the
in the simple fact that the importance enjoyed by Rome, as the capital of the world, was transferred to the bishop of the Roman Church. The most striking feature of the hierarchical system thus established is the simplicity of the forms on which it depends. The fundamental form is the relation of the bishop to the Church of which he is the head. This form continues unchanged, however much the system may be developed, enlarged, or modified. The bishop of the smallest Church is essentially the same as the pope at
the summit of the papacy. At all stages of this hierarchical system the same fundamental form repeats itself, its greatest
? papacy
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? ? ? 295 BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL THEOLOGY. [Bk. III.
peculiarity being its capacity of indefinite extension. And this hierarchical system is at the same time essentially theocratic ; everything rests on divine authority ; the relation of the bishop to his community is a repetition of the relation of Christ to the Church. " The whole system is conditioned by a stage of religious development in which men require to see a visible representation of the relation in which Christ as the Lord of the Church stands to it. " The form assumed by the Church in its episcopal constitution demanded also a corre sponding fixed and systematic expression in dogma. The close connexion between the evolution of the constitutional form and of dogma as its expression, is made very manifest at the close of the first period of ecclesiastical development : the oecumenical synod at Nica:a saw the completest repre sentation of the episcopate and also the enunciation of the highest content of the Christian consciousness in the dogma of the Homoousia. In this period the whole development of dogma is concentrated in the doctrine of Christ's person. This is the reflection and concrete expression of the current view of Christian salvation as a whole. The Christ of the Synoptists was still a human Messiah, miraculously born, it is true, and anointed with the Spirit, and raised by his resur rection and ascension to divine honours, but still essentially man. In Paul's view also Christ is man, not, however, an earthly and phenomenal man, but a heavenly and spiritual one, the eternal type of the spiritual sons of God, appearing in time in the flesh, the second Adam. This higher phase of Christology in Paul was connected with his higher view of
? as the universal revelation of salvation for all the world. The Christ of the Apocalypse also has divine attributes predicated of him which seem to leave no essential difference between him and God, but they are only externally connected with the person of the Messiah, who is essentially the instrument for the execution of the divine
The Christology of the Epistle to the Hebrews and the smaller Pauline Epistles, on the other hand, rises to a higher stage of development, and marks the transition to the Johan- nine Christology, in which the idea of the Logos, borrowed
from the Alexandrine religious philosophy, and widely current in the philosophy of the time, is transferred to Christ, the doctrine of the Church corresponding to the Gnostic doctrine of the a^ons. As in philosophy, the Logos in the Fourth
Christianity
judgment.
? ? ? Ch. III. ] ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY AND HISTORY OF DOGMA. 297
Gospel is the intermediate being connecting the transcendental
God with the world. This being becomes by the incarnation
the person of Jesus, who is accordingly regarded by the Fourth Gospel as the self-revelation of a divine principle, the historical view of the Synoptists being thus left far behind. In
the latter half of the second century the Johannine concep tion of the Logos came to be the dominant one, superseding the earlier less definite ideas. This imposed on the theo logical thought of the Church the duty to define the relation of this divine Logos or Son to God the Father. This was first done in the sense form of a gradual emanation, corre sponding to the materialistic realism of Tertullian's con
of God ; while in the abstract, transcendental idea of God of the Alexandrians (Clement), almost all personal dis tinction vanishes between the Father and the Son. This view lived on in the " Monarchians " of the third century, of whom
Sabellius particularly is ably interpreted by Baur. In the Christology of Origen the two views, hitherto running parallel, the one emphasising the distinction between God and the Son, and the other their unity, balance each other in such a way that his Christology became the turning point in the history of the dogma, and the point of separation of the two views, which were henceforward opposed to each other as Arianism and Athanasianism. At Nicaea, with the victory of the Athanasian formula of Christ's equality with God
(homoousia), the hierarchical aristocracy of the episcopate also triumphed over the democratic presbyters. When Christian ity had, under Constantine, overcome the Roman world, its consciousness of being the sole true and valid, or the " abso lute," religion found expression in the dogmatic enunciation
of the orthodox doctrine of the absolute equality of its founder with God. Thus the inner history of the consciousness of the Church, simultaneously with the external history of the relation of the Church to the world and State, came under Constantine to a climax which marked the close of
an era.
Here I must end this extract from Baur's Christianity in
the First Three Centuries, space forbidding me to give more. But I hope that enough has been given to show the mag nificently historical spirit of this work, and to prove that the traditional accusations of an " a priori construction of history," " twisting of facts," etc. , are baseless conventional fables, by
ception
? ? ? ? 298 BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL THEOLOGY. [Bk. III.
which smaller men try to protect themselves in view of the superiority of Baur.
Since Baur's, no important work has appeared embracing the whole of Church history (of Hase's unfinished work we have spoken above, p. 283). Much labour has, however, been devoted to the more accurate investigation of particular questions, both of the ancient Church, and especially of the period of the Reformation, and valuable material for the illumination of the past has been accumulated in monographs and biographies. An enumeration of these works does not, however, fall within the scope of this book. We can here mention only the most recent work on the history of dogma, as it represents, with pre-eminent ability as well as^partiality, a new school of historical theology ; it is Adolf HarnaCk's Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, vol. die Entstehung des
? kirchlichen Dogmas (1886), and vol. ii. ,part die Entwickelung des kirchl. Dogmas (1887). On the publication of the first volume, the work at once attracted general attention, and gained for its author the well-deserved reputation of an eminent historian. based on a thorough independent investigation of the authorities, and the vast mass of material
arranged with rare skill and clearness the writer's style lucid and
vigorous, and he always pleasing and suggestive, even when not convincing. But the book owes its special im portance to its fundamental view of the history of dogma, by which gives typical expression to a prevalent mode of thought and feeling of our time. Perhaps we can most simply describe its character by saying that to Baur's opti mistic evolutionary theory of history opposes a pessimistic view of Church history, which makes this history to consist, not a progressive teleological and rational development and ever richer unfolding of the Christian spirit, but in a progressive obscuration of the truth, in the progress of disease in the Church, produced by the sudden irruption of
Hellenic philosophy and other secularising influences. We can understand that such a view acceptable to realistic and practical age which has long lost all touch with the ancient dogmas we cannot deny that contains relative truth, and might, in fact, serve as a salutary complement to Baur's optimism but adapted to form the supreme guiding principle of ecclesiastical history, or can justly claim to be the only scientific view, or the right to condemn
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? Ch. III. ] ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY AND HISTORY OF DOGMA. 299
as unscientific scholasticism the teleological theory of evo lution, which, in the manifold play of individual causes, recognises the governance of a higher Reason ? These are questions to be seriously asked. Moreover, this pessimistic verdict on Church history is by no means a new one ; it is found, in a certain sense, in the Magdeburg Centuriators, in a different form in the mystic Gottfried Arnold, and in yet another in the Rationalists. All these historians, however, in their condemnation of the development of the Church had a definite standard in what they assumed to be the original truth of Biblical Christianity. But if we ask wherein, ac
cording to Harnack, uncorrupted Christianity consists, we nowhere get a clear answer. He cannot regard it as con sisting in the whole teaching of the New Testament, or he would not with such surprising indifference hurry over the Pauline and Johannine theology. Are we therefore to go back to Jesus ? But Harnack leaves us in complete un certainty whether we are to take as the genuine, permanent constituents of Christianity all that is reported in the Gospels as the preaching of Jesus, including the declarations regarding the permanent validity of the Jewish law, the limitation of the preaching of the gospel to Israel, Christ's visible return to establish an earthly kingdom, and similar matters. But where a definite conception, based on history, of the nature of Christianity is so wholly wanting, the question as to whether individual phenomena are truly Christian or a de generation, corruption, and secularisation of true Christianity, can only be answered according to personal taste. In so far this method of writing Church history is at least as subjective as the Rationalistic method of the last century. Harnack's keen-sighted realism is undoubtedly of great value, but it needs to be combined with the profound idealism of a Baur to form the true combination which can yield a completely satisfactory treatment of Church history.
? ? ? ? ? BOOK IV.
THE PROGRESS OF THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1825.
? ? ? CHAPTER I.
THE SCHOOLS OF PHILOSOPHY IN THEIR RELATION TO THEOLOGY.
At the opening of the present century the state of religious life in England was substantially the same as in Germany.